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US Sanctions

Europe’s Real-Time Experiment In Energy Contraction

September 19, 2022 Kurt Cobb, Resilience. , , ,
European society is currently undergoing a real-time experiment in energy contraction. Sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict have led to a dramatic reduction in imports of Russian oil and natural gas. The Europeans are still receiving some Russian oil via pipeline though that flow was reduced last month. The reasons for the decline in natural gas deliveries from Russia—deliveries not prevented by Western sanctions—are disputed with each side accusing the other of being the cause. Those of us who have been warning about the coming energy stringency believed that it would result from the rising cost of extracting hydrocarbons—and the inability to bring new production online faster than production is declining from existing wells. In Europe, we are getting an early preview of what such a future looks like when a society is unprepared for a sudden decline in the availability of oil and natural gas.

Sanctions Won’t Stop Latin American Leaders From Talking With US Workers

September 17, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
On September 24, leaders from Cuba and Venezuela will speak at an event titled “The People’s Summit: Democracy Beyond the US Empire”. The event is convened by the International Peoples’ Assembly, an international network of people’s movements and organizations. The event will be held in the historic Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, as the UN General Assembly convenes further downtown in Manhattan. Speakers include Bruno Rodriguez, the Foreign Minister of Cuba, Carlos Faria, the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Kristin Richardson Jordan, District 9 Council Member for New York City, Vijay Prashad, Director of the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research, and Claudia De La Cruz, Co-Executive Director of The People’s Forum.

Possible Prisoner Exchange In US Hybrid War Against Venezuela

September 9, 2022 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. , , ,
US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens is on a case which could lead to freeing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Pressure is building on the Biden administration to swap Saab for some American citizens currently incarcerated in Venezuela. Alex Saab, who has been confined for over two years, is a victim of the US economic war calculated to achieve regime-change in Venezuela. He has been targeted because of his role in helping circumvent the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US. These measures, really collective punishment, are intended to make conditions so onerous there that the people would renounce their elected government. Such unilateral coercive measures are illegal under international law.

NPR Devotes Almost Two Hours To Afghanistan Over Two Weeks

September 4, 2022 Bryce Greene, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
NPR ran several stories on Afghanistan to mark the anniversary of the August 2021 US withdrawal, even sending host Steve Inskeep to the country to produce a series of pieces. His visit happened to coincide with Biden’s claimed assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri; Inskeep says that he and his team were staying in close proximity to the Al Qaeda leader. With the anniversary and assassination providing a renewed focus on Afghanistan, NPR could have used this opportunity to call attention to the US policy of starving Afghanistan by restricting its international trade activity and seizing its central banking reserves.

Untold Truth About EMTRASUR Plane: FBI Running The Show

September 3, 2022 Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
One of the crew members of the Venezuelan plane seized in Argentina lambastes the US for the kidnapping not only the Venezuelan asset, but innocent people, too. “It is something unprecedented because I believe that for the first time in history a situation like this is experienced, of a kidnapping not only of the asset, but also of human beings, yes, directly affecting people,” said Mario Arraga, manager of Administration and Finance of the Venezuelan airline EMTRASUR in an exclusive interview with the Lebanese news outlet , published on Saturday, August 28. Arraga is one of the 19 crew members —14 Venezuelans and five Iranians— of the Venezuelan Boeing 747-300 cargo plane held since June at the request of the United States on Argentine soil.

Disaster In Cuba Highlights Biden’s Disastrous (And Illegal) Foreign Policy

August 22, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , ,
On August 5, lightning caused a fire at an oil supertanker base in Matanzas, Cuba. The fire caused the collapse of three large oil tanks, killed 16 people and wounded 146 people. Immediately, friendly nations sent aid, including $70 million in oil from Russia, but the United States only provided technical advice to the neighboring Caribbean nation that has been crippled by six decades of the US' economic blockade. Clearing the FOG speaks with Arturo Lopez-Levy of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs about the fire, the Biden administration's continuation of Trump's policies in Cuba and the campaign to change that, as well as the shifting politics in Latin America as more nations defy the illegal blockade and work to create a zone of peace.

London Brazenly Steals Venezuelan Gold As US Hijacks Boeing 747

August 8, 2022 Robert Araujo, Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, accused the United Kingdom on Wednesday, August 3, of stealing in a “brazen and outrageous” way the Venezuelan gold deposited in London, where a court announced last week that it would continue to retain the precious metal from Venezuela’s reserves. In a conference with entrepreneurs at the Teresa Carreño facilities in Caracas, the head of state stated that for Venezuela it is an operation of “kidnapping and theft” of the 31 tons of gold, valued at approximately 1,600 million euros. “Venezuela must know that it is an act of piracy and theft, and the whole world must know that there is no legal certainty in London or in the Bank of England, that at any moment the countries of the world can be robbed of their international reserves, their gold reserves,” he said.

Europe Facing Major Economic Crisis From Sanctions Against Russia

July 19, 2022 Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com. , , ,
The US-led sanctions campaign against Russia has done nothing to stop the war in Ukraine or hurt Vladimir Putin, but the toll continues to mount on Western economies and there are increasing signs that Europe is facing a major economic crisis. The euro has reached a 20-year low against the dollar, inflation is at a record-high 8.6%, and economists are predicting a recession if the EU is cut off from Russian gas. Russia has already stopped supplying some EU members for their refusal to pay in rubles, something Putin required in retaliation for sanctions that targeted Russia’s use of the dollar and euro. The Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline that connects Russia and Germany is currently shut down for routine maintenance, but there are growing fears that the pipeline might not come back into service.

Fresh US Sanctions On Iran Despite Wanting To Revive Nuclear Deal

July 8, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
The current round of sanctions add to the numerous rounds of similar coercive measures imposed by the US on Iran after the Donald Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the multi-party JCPOA in May 2018. On Wednesday, July 7, the US Treasury and State Departments announced fresh sanctions on various entities involved in Iranian oil trade with China and other East Asian countries. The fresh sanctions come despite the ongoing efforts to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, in Qatar.

The War In Ukraine Marks The End Of The American Century

June 21, 2022 Mike Whitney, Information Clearing House. , , , ,
Here’s your ‘reserve currency’ thought for the day: Every US dollar is a check written on an account that is overdrawn by 30 trillion dollars. It’s true. The “full faith and credit” of the US Treasury is largely a myth held together by an institutional framework that rests on a foundation of pure sand. In fact, the USD is not worth the paper it is printed on; it is an IOU flailing in an ocean of red ink. The only thing keeping the USD from vanishing into the ether, is the trust of credulous people who continue to accept it as legal tender. But why do people remain confident in the dollar when its flaws are known to all? After all, America’s $30 trillion National Debt is hardly a secret, nor is the additional $9 trillion that’s piled up on the Fed’s balance sheet.

What’s Stopping The Revival Of The Iran Nuclear Deal?

June 7, 2022 Rania Khalek, People's Dispatch. , , ,
Rania Khalek of BreakThrough News talks about the latest developments (or lack of) in talks to restore the Iran nuclear deal. Despite Iran and other signatories to the deal being very keen to restore it, the US hesitation and varying positions have proved a stumbling block. She also talks about why the status of the IRGC continues to be a sticking point.

African Union Leaders Meet With Russian Government

June 4, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. , , ,
In at least two regions of the African continent food deficits are a major concern for political officials and humanitarian organizations. The Russian special military operations in neighboring Ukraine have brought to the surface a number of persistent economic problems which have plagued the world since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged during the early months of 2020. President Macky Sall of the West African state of Senegal, the current elected chairman of the 55 member-states African Union (AU) along with AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, visited the Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss measures which could alleviate the escalating problems related to the lack of food and agricultural inputs.

Maduro’s Success: Principled Resistance To Imperialism Pays Off

June 1, 2022 Francisco Dominguez, Morning Star. , , ,
The world has been stunned by a double wonder: Bolivarian Venezuela’s political survival and its miraculous economic recovery: the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has reported that it expects the Venezuelan economy to grow for the first time since 2014, by 5 per cent, one of the highest in the region. Venezuela’s rate of inflation has come down from something like 10 million per cent, as reported by CNBC in 2019, and described as the “biggest economic disaster in modern history” by the Washington Post in the same year, to 7.1 per cent in September 2021 and to an incredible 1.4 per cent in March 2022. The March 2022 issue of the PSUV magazine Economia Politica y Revolucion reports that corn production, essential for arepas — Venezuela’s staple food — has increased by 60 per cent, rice 17 per cent, with an increase of non-oil exports of 76 per cent.

G7 Downplays US Sanctions’ Role In Food Shortage

May 28, 2022 John Ross, Consortium News. , , ,
“There is really no true solution to the problem of global food security without bringing back the agriculture production of Ukraine and the food and fertilizer production of Russia and Belarus into world markets despite the war.” These blunt words by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres accurately describe the present global food crisis. As the U.S. and the G7 (comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) insist that cutting off food exports from Ukraine poses the biggest threat to world food security, rather than admitting the far more powerful negative effect of Western sanctions against Russia, their propaganda does immense damage to the world’s understanding and capability of avoiding a looming global food disaster.

Rapid Grocery Delivery Service Buyk Accused Of Wage Theft

May 18, 2022 Amir Khafagy, In These Times. , ,
In early March, 28-year-old Michael Perez received an alarming email from one of his co-workers at Buyk, the Russian-funded, New York City-based ultra-fast grocery app. Because of the severe sanctions against Russia, the letter announced, the company had lost access to its investors and was forced to furlough 98 percent of its workforce. For Perez, the letter was just one more disappointment in a long string he had experienced working for the company. “I was at a loss of words, to be honest,” said Perez, who worked as a delivery person. “I try to make the best with the company, but I just kept getting disappointed.” Prior to its abrupt closure, Buyk was one of the largest and most rapidly growing ultrafast grocery delivery apps in New York City, promising its customers deliveries in 15 minutes or less.
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