Tag: Sanctions

Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion

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Friday, 13 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

US President Joe Biden and leaders of Association of Southeast Asian Nations at a special summit, Washington, May 12, 2022

The Chinese daily Global Times featured a political cartoon marking the US-ASEAN summit meeting in Washington on May 12-13. It showed the US President Joe Biden seeking help from a bus load of ASEAN officials to give a push to his battle tank hopelessly stuck on slush and mud and is sinking.

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EU stumbles over Russian oil slick

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Wednesday, 11 May 2022 — Indian Punchline

by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán (R) with  President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Budapest, May 10, 2022

The European Union officials are insisting that oil sanctions against Russia are coming. On Sunday, France’s Ecological Transition Minister Barbara Pompili was certain that “we will reach (an agreement) by the end of the week.”

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Venezuela Seeks Investigation by International Criminal Court (ICC) as to Whether U.S. Sanctions Constitute Crimes Against Humanity

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Monday, 11 April 2022 — CovertAction Magazine

By Ryan Swan

Report: US Sanctions Have Cost 40,000 Venezuelan Lives | Venezuelanalysis.com[Source: venezuelaanalysis.com]

Adopted as part of regime-change operation, sanctions have killed at least 40,000 Venezuelans.

Economic coercive measures, commonly known as economic sanctions, are a means of coercive pressure through disruption of trade relations and economic isolation. The use of sanctions under international law is governed chiefly by Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, providing that the Security Council may decide to enact a “complete or partial interruption of economic relations” in order to restore international peace and security.

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To NATO’s Mafia, Sport Is Strictly Business

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Friday, 1 April 2022 — Strategic Culture Foundation

Declan Hayes

Valieva, Mitchell and today’s other sporting greats best fix up their spare bedrooms as plenty of redundant athletes are coming their way.

Though terrorizing Russian teenage figure skating sensation Kamila Valieva and cancelling Russian Paralympians from the international stage both spit in the face of the spirit of Greece’s original Olympics, they are in full harmony with how NATO’s Mafiosi and their political commissars regard their lucrative sports’ empire. To the Mafia, excluding the world’s largest country from all sports is strictly business.

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India, US have different priorities

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Wednesday, 23 March 2022 — Indian Punchline

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

The cruelty and cynical complacency with which the Biden Administration and the EU conduct their foreign polices is absolutely stunning. And, mind you, all this is happening in the name of “democratic values” and “international law”!
Prime Minister Modi and President Biden (File photo) 

An extraordinary week has passed for the Modi government’s dalliance with the Quad. Call it a defining moment, a turning point or even an inflection point — it has elements of all three.

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Watch:  Ukraine War: How Sanctions on Russia Will Backfire Against Western Imperialism, w/ Prabhat Patnaik

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Friday, 18 March 2022 — TheAltWorld

The fighting in Ukraine might be a European war but its consequences are global, and it may even cause changes in geopolitical balances, relations and multipolarity. How can we understand this war as anti-imperialists? What will its global economic consequences be? And what will be the result of the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia?

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Russia adjusts to “sanctions from hell”

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Friday, 11 March 2022 — Indian Punchline

Russia’s Central Bank is under western sanctions

The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks at his meeting with government ministers on Thursday constituted his first comments on the West’s “sanctions from hell.” They were focused almost entirely on “a set of measures to minimise the consequences of sanctions on the Russian economy and the people of our country.”

Putin’s number one priority is to hold himself accountable to his people. Unlike his American counterpart, Joe Biden, Putin feels no need of grandstanding, given his high approval rating above 70%.

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Russia’s judo kick to the western financial gut

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Tuesday, 8 March 2022 — TheAltWorld

Washington’s sanctions on Moscow will destroy Europe, not Russia

The battlefield is drawn.

The official Russian blacklist of hostile sanctioning nations includes the US, the EU, Canada and, in Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore (the only one from Southeast Asia). Notice how that ‘international community’ keeps shrinking.

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Russia hits back on “sanctions from hell”

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Saturday, 5 March 2022 — Indian Punchline

Moscow Kremlin has demanded from Biden or Blinken a waiver of sanctions to allow Iran deal to go through.

An innocuous tweet from Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organisations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov earlier today in the afternoon said that he met with the EU Coordinator at the Vienna talks on Iran nuclear issue Enrique Mora and “raised a number of questions which need to be duly addressed now in order to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.”

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Disarming Ukraine – Day 5 | Money War On Russia – Day 1

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Monday, 28 February 2022 — Moon of Alabama

Historian Anne Morelli has summarized Arthur Ponsonby’s classic book Falsehood in War-Time as this:

  1. We do not want war.
  2. The opposite party alone is guilty of war.
  3. The enemy is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
  4. We defend a noble cause, not our own interests.
  5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mishaps are involuntary.
  6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
  7. We suffer small losses, those of the enemy are enormous.
  8. Recognized artists and intellectuals back our cause.
  9. Our cause is sacred.
  10. All who doubt our propaganda are traitors.

h/t Bernd Neuner

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Russia: from sanctions to slump?

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Monday, 28 February 2022 — Michael Roberts Blog

by michael roberts

The economic war between the US-led NATO group and Russia is hotting up alongside the real war in Ukraine itself.  In response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the US and Europe have upped the ante in imposing economic sanctions. The first of these was the suspension of any dealings with several leading Russian banks, including the two largest, Sberbank and VTB.  However, it was significant that the sanctions excluded Gazprombank, the major Russian lender to energy export companies.  Clearly, the West does not want to disrupt oil and gas exports through sanctions, when Germany alone relies on 40% of its energy from Russian imports.

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US pips regional states at race for Kabul

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Thursday, 3 February 2022 — Indian Punchline

UN SG António Guterres: “Afghanistan is hanging by a thread.”

In a hugely consequential advisory, the US Treasury Department quietly signalled on Wednesday that it was “tweaking” the sanctions against the Haqqani Network. The international banks can transfer money to Taliban, including Haqqani Network without fear of breaching sanctions.

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Something Hopeful for the New Year – Sort of

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5 January 2022 — Russia Observer

by Patrick Armstrong

The wise men of that Academy of Wisdom (aka The Atlantic Council) tell us “How to deal with the Kremlin-created crisis in Europe“. The piece is mostly codswallop, boasting, cheap threats and hot air but there is one good thing about it:

It doesn’t threaten war.

Never mind that Russia won’t “invade Ukraine” for a host of reasons which I (for one – I certainly don’t pretend to be the only person who can see the obvious) laid out in 2014: Why Russia Hasn’t and Won’t Invade Ukraine. These reasons are only stronger now because Ukraine has become more decayed, more poor, more nazi, more corrupt, more divided and more hopeless. It is a huge hostile expensive liability that Moscow doesn’t want to pay for and police. Let those who broke it, pay for it.

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Watch: Exclusive Interview with Jorge Arreaza on Venezuela’s Recovery Plan

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24 November 2021 — MintPress News

EXCLUSIVE: Jorge Arreaza on Venezuela Recovering from Sanctions In New Post-Petro Economic Plan

UN Special Rapporteurs estimate that 100,000 people have died in Venezuela in the last decade because of the lack of medicine brought on by U.S. sanctions. Nearly 60% of those deaths took place under the Trump administration after Washington escalated its economic warfare on the Bolivarian state. During the Trump era, Jorge Arreaza served as Venezuela’s foreign minister and spent years building diplomatic ties with other nations amid Washington’s aggressive hybrid war.
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Sandinistas Poised to Win Election in Nicaragua Despite U.S. Sabotage and Smears

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6 November 2021 — CovertAction Magazine

By Yader Lanuza

Ballot in upcoming election. [Source: telesurtv.net]

Media repeats big lie that Nicaraguan migrants to the U.S. are escaping Ortega’s repression

The Nicaraguan elections are on Nov. 7, 2021. The U.S. government, the media that does its bidding, and even some self-described “leftists,” present a Nicaragua in “turmoil” and “crisis”—and the elections as a farce.

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Cuba: The Blockade and the Crisis

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13 July 2021 — Internationalist 360°

Atilio Borón

https://images.pagina12.com.ar/styles/focal_3_2_960x640/public/2021-07/177481-diptico-20hermoso-20cuba.jpeg?itok=5QJl8ceW

…there is no precedent in world history of a nation that has been assaulted by another without pause for sixty years…

Washington believes that the time has come to intensify its attacks on any government in the region that does not obey its orders. In the last few days we have seen the suspicious assassination of the president of Haiti, with a modus operandi that bears the imprint of the CIA. Also the brutal attack by Colombian paramilitaries and drug traffickers, equipped with weapons of war, in the Cota 905 in the outskirts of Caracas and shooting at the top of their lungs at residents surprised by the unusual and unexpected aggression. The offensive against Nicaragua gained strength as opinion polls anticipated a resounding victory for Sandinismo in the next presidential elections.

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Between the Lines: Congressional Report Finds US Sanctions to Blame for Venezuela Crisis

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5 May 2021 — Mint Press News

If the U.S. government’s propaganda is correct that the current crisis is due to Maduro’s mismanagement and corruption, then illegal and inhumane sanctions would not be needed to dislodge the “regime.”

by Roger D. Harris

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Venezuela was once one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. The popular classes enjoyed major advances from the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by Hugo Chávez. Today Venezuela is experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis with severe humanitarian consequences.

The U.S. government blames the crisis on the mismanagement and corruption of the Venezuelan government headed by Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan government faults the U.S. and its allies for imposing sanctions, unilateral coercive measures illegal under international law.

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