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US Foreign Policy

The Grayzone Debates NED Vice President On Group’s CIA Ties

On April 4, 2023, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Vice President of Communications and Public Engagement Leslie Aun contacted me, Alex Rubinstein, to request a phone conversation about an article I published at The Grayzone a day before. My report detailed the open justification of the terrorist bombing of a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia by a top staffer of Bellingcat, which receives significant sponsorship from the NED, which functions as the regime change arm of the US government. In the article, I described the NED as a “CIA cutout,” which clearly displeased Aun and prompted her appeal for a call.

The Need For A New US Foreign Policy

U.S. foreign policy is based on an inherent contradiction and fatal flaw. The aim of U.S. foreign policy is a U.S.-dominated world, in which the U.S. writes the global trade and financial rules, controls advanced technologies, maintains militarily supremacy and dominates all potential competitors. Unless U.S. foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly World War III. The inherent contradiction in U.S. foreign policy is that it conflicts with the U.N. Charter, which commits the U.S. (and all other U.N. member states) to a global system based on U.N. institutions in which no single country dominates.

Wilson Center Think Tank Reloads The US Roadmap Against Venezuela

The recent teachers’ protests in Venezuela took place in a climate where, along with the inflationary pressure of the beginning of 2023, they seem to be linked to a type of mobilization that has been gradually getting expressed, at the national level, with unions and other ”visible” platforms of “civil society,” in the background of the advances and tensions around the government-opposition dialogue process in Mexico. In the midst of this, the definitive collapse of the “Guaidó project,” the reckoning of Voluntad Popular with the G3 [other main parties of the opposition], and the loss of initiative of the opposition in general, seem to force a correction of Washington’s approach to Venezuela.

The US Is Legitimizing Jewish Terrorism Against Palestinians

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently visited Palestine, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority “President” Mahmoud Abbas. People ask in wonder what was achieved, what the United States might do to relieve the tensions, and whether it is possible that the U.S. can bring about the renewal of “peace negotiations.” However, no such serious advances were made, and apparently they were not even discussed. Indeed, it seems that they were not even needed. According to the official State Department website, Blinken said, We bolstered our assistance to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, including approximately $50 million in new funding that I announced today in Ramallah, enabling the provision of essential services like food, vaccines, education, as well as vital aid for refugees. That brings U.S. total funding for Palestinians over the last two years to nearly $940 million. We’re supporting quality health care through the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, and we’re making real progress toward implementing an agreement to provide a 4G network in the Palestinian territories.” Blinken must be a very talented diplomat.

Fighting The ‘Psyopcracy’

Cathy Vogan, the executive producer of Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live!, recently coined a new term to describe rule by psyops, or psychological operations: psyopcracy.   According to Wikipedia: Psychological operations (PSYOP) are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of United States psychological operations is to induce or reinforce behavior perceived to be favorable to U.S. objectives. William Casey, C.I.A. director under Ronald Reagan, said: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” Thus the American people are continuously subject to a number of psychological operations otherwise known as “the news.”

Biden Is Bringing Africa’s Leaders To Washington, Hoping To Impress

The Biden administration is holding a summit with some 40 leaders of African countries. The New York Times headline of its reporting on the summit is revealing: Biden Is Bringing Africa’s Leaders to Washington, Hoping to Impress "Bringing Africa's Leaders to Washington"? Why not "invited African leaders to Washington"? Isn't this reminiscent to the millions of Africans who had been "brought to America" in past centuries? The U.S. is late in fostering better relations with Africa: NAIROBI, Kenya — In Russia, Africa’s leaders were feted at a seaside resort where military aircraft for sale were parked outside the summit hall. In China, they dined with President Xi Jinping, some of them one-on-one, and received promises of investments worth $60 billion. In Turkey, they won support for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.Now they are headed to Washington for a major summit hosted by President Biden — the latest diplomatic drive by a major foreign power seeking to strengthen its ties to Africa, a continent whose geopolitical clout has grown greatly in the past decade.

Report: Dismantling Racism And Militarism In US Foreign Policy

The prevailing, militaristic conception of “national security” is steeped in racism and perpetuates white supremacy. The Racism-Militarism Paradigm is a way of looking at the world, widely shared among the U.S. policymaking community and much of the public, that arises from a largely unacknowledged doctrine of white supremacy and the necessity of using violence to uphold it. This paradigm establishes a rigid hierarchy, based on race, that values white lives more than any other—at home and abroad. It embraces militarism as the most effective mechanism to guarantee this ordering of society and the world.

Biden’s Foreign Policy Sinking His Party And Ukraine

President Joe Biden is undermining his party’s congressional prospects through a deeply flawed foreign policy.  Biden believes that America’s global reputation is at stake in the Ukraine War and has consistently rejected a diplomatic off-ramp.  The Ukraine War, combined with the administration’s disruptions of economic relations with China, is aggravating the stagflation that will likely deliver one or both houses of Congress to the Republicans.  Far worse, Biden’s dismissal of diplomacy prolongs the destruction of Ukraine and threatens nuclear war.   Biden inherited an economy beset by deep disruptions to global supply chains caused by the pandemic and by former President Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies.

US Foreign Policy Impasse Over Venezuela

The seamless official policy of the Trump and Biden administrations has been that Juan Guaidó is Venezuela’s “interim president.” The US is thusly caught in the self-inflicted fiction of having to deal with a powerless puppet because it does not accept the democratically elected Nicolás Maduro. Although Trump has at least retreated to Mar-a-Lago, Guaidó keeps on asking to be invited to the party, much to Biden’s embarrassment. A related conundrum of its own making is the US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry and at the same time needing the fuel. It wasn’t so long ago that Venezuela supplied the US with a significant amount of its daily petroleum consumption. Now Uncle Sam finds himself confronted with price inflation at the gas pump and the inevitability of negotiating with a government it does not recognize.

Washington And Caracas Carry Out Prisoner Exchange

Caracas, October 1, 2022 (OrinocoTribune.com)—On Saturday, October 1, the US government confirmed through a statement the release of seven US citizens, four of whom are naturalized US citizens and one is US residents. Among the released prisoners are five of the CITGO 6. In a similar manner, the Venezuelan government reported in an official statement about the release by US authorities of “two young Venezuelans who had been unjustly detained,” without providing their names. The seven freed US nationals, sentenced by the Venezuelan justice system for committing corruption and/or terrorist crimes, are now on their way to the US and are in good health, according to White House officials who provided more detail on the issue in a press conference. It was also informed that US President Joe Biden “spoke to the families of those detained in the CITGO case and shared the good news.”

Asylum, Migration And US Foreign Policy

Every day the republican governors of Texas, Greg Abbott, and Florida, Ron DeSantis, eagerly announce that they are sending people generically labeled as migrants to what are known as sanctuary cities. The corporate media report that thousands of people have been convinced to board buses to New York City or Washington DC or Sacramento or Chicago or even chartered flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. What they don’t explain is who these migrants are and why their status is highly problematic and a function of imperialist foreign policy. Republicans rail against what are called sanctuary cities and imply that federal law doesn’t apply in these places or that undocumented people get some sort of special deal. However, the term sanctuary city doesn’t really mean very much.

An Objective Look At US Foreign Policy: Joe Lombardo Interview

Joe Lombardo is the co-coordinator of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and has been an organizer in the anti-war movement and a labor activist for decades. He is a cofounder and lead organizer for Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace, a local anti-war group based near Albany, New York, a member of the Troy Area Labor Council, and former staff person of the Vietnam era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC). He is the author of many articles and a frequent radio and TV commentator. We focus here on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.

Lessons From Vietnam For Ukraine

Learning no lessons from the failure and mass slaughter of the Korean War in the previous decade, the US military commenced widespread bombing of Vietnam and sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers. At the time, spring 1965,  about 400 US soldiers had died in the conflict. The war was not yet  widely unpopular. Americans who protested against the Vietnam War were a small minority. It would be two years before Martin Luther King’s famous denunciation of the war. Years later, after hundreds of thousands had been drafted into the military with the deaths of tens of thousands, the war became widely unpopular. Ultimately, over 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died in the war. The cost in human lives and wasted resources was immense.

Challenging The AFL-CIO’s Labor Imperialism

A little known fact, even to those who work there, is that the AFL-CIO organizes in support of US imperialist policies that drive a global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, negatively impacting US workers too. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center is one of the four core components of the National Endowment for Democracy. Clearing the FOG speaks with Kim Scipes, a co-founder of the new Labor Education Project on the AFL-CIO's International Operations (LEPAIO). Scipes describes the long history of labor imperialism and how unions are challenging it. Adrienne Pine provides a brief report on workers protesting the brutal labor practices of the State Department's main contractor, BL Harbert, building the US Embassy in Honduras.

Ukraine Is A Pawn On The Grand Chessboard

Brzezinski was a very powerful National Security Advisor to President Carter. Before that, he founded the Trilateral Commission. Later he taught Madeline Albright and many other key figures in US foreign policy. Brzezinski initiated the “Afghanistan Trap”. That was the secret 1979 US program to mobilize and support mujahedin foreign fighters to invade and destabilize Afghanistan. In this period, Afghanistan was undergoing dramatic positive changes. As described by Canadian academic John Ryan, “Afghanistan once had a progressive secular government, with broad popular support. It had enacted progressive reforms and gave equal rights to women.” The Brzezinski plan was to utilize reactionary local forces and foreign fighters to create enough mayhem that the government would ask the neighboring Soviet Union to send military support.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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