The US Has Placed Itself In Charge Over
Which Nations Get To Eat
By Caitlin Johnstone
October 17, 2021 -- "Information
Clearing House -
The globally influential
propaganda multiplier news agencies AP and AFP
have both informed their readers that a
“fugitive” has been extradited to the United
States.
“Fugitive businessman close to Venezuela’s Maduro
extradited to US,”
reads the AFP headline.
“Alex Saab, a top fugitive close to Venezuela’s
socialist government, has been put on a plane to the
U.S. to face money laundering charges,” AP
announced on Twitter.
You’d be forgiven for wondering what specifically
makes this man a “fugitive”, and what that status
has to do with his extradition to a foreign
government whose laws should have no bearing on his
life. The Colombian-born Venezuelan citizen Alex
Saab, as it happens, is a “fugitive” from the US
government’s self-appointed authority to decide
which populations on our planet are permitted to
have ready access to food. His crime is working to
circumvent the crushing US sanctions which have been
starving Venezuelan civilians to death by the
tens of thousands.
Absolutely shameful that @AP is describing a Venezuelan diplomat being kidnapped by the US as a "fugitive." https://t.co/52AxFOFB80
Special Envoy and Ambassador to the African
Union for Venezuela Alex Saab was on a
humanitarian mission flying from Caracas to Iran
to procure food and gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food
assistance program. Saab was detained on a refueling
stop in the African nation of Cabo Verde and
has been held in custody ever since June 12,
2020.
Saab’s “crime” — according to the U.S.
government, which ordered the imprisonment — was
money laundering. That is, Saab conducted
perfectly legal international trade. Still, his
circumventing of the U.S. sanctions – which are
designed to prevent relief to the Venezuelans –
is considered by Washington to be money
laundering.
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After a two-year investigation into Saab’s
transactions with Swiss banks, the Swiss
government concluded on March 25 that there was no
money laundering. Saab is being prosecuted
because he is serving his country’s interest
rather than that of the U.S.
News agencies like AP and AFP are well aware that
Saab is being extradited not for breaking any actual
law but for daring to transgress Washington’s
unilateral sanctions. As FAIR’s Joe Emersberger
wrote back in July:
Reuters (3/15/21, 3/18/21)
has casually reported that Saab “faces
extradition to the United States, which accuses
him of violating US sanctions,” and that he has
been “repeatedly named by the US State
Department as an operator who helps Maduro
arrange trade deals that Washington is seeking
to block through sanctions.” A Reuters article (8/28/20)
about Saab’s case in 2020 mentioned in passing
that “the United States this month seized four
cargoes of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela,
where fuel shortages are once again worsening.”
The extradition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab is a clear signal the Biden Administration has made no break with Trump’s all out assault on int’l law
Also a worrying sign for the case of Julian Assange— another foreign citizen the US has essentially kidnapped and held hostage https://t.co/aBVcWI8E3Z
Critics of the US empire have had harsh words for
the extradition.
“Biden, picking up Trump’s baton, has kidnapped
Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab for the crime of
trying to feed Venezuelans in defiance of US
sanctions designed to prevent that,”
tweeted journalist Aaron Maté. “Venezuelans
aren’t allowed to eat so long as the D.C. Mafia has
marked their government for regime change.”
Yes indeed. The US government has appointed
itself the authority to unilaterally decide which of
the world’s populations get to eat and which do not,
and to imprison anyone who tries to facilitate
unauthorized eating in a US-sanctioned nation.
“The extradition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab
is a clear signal the Biden Administration has made
no break with Trump’s all out assault on
international law,”
tweeted journalist Anya Parampil. “Also a
worrying sign for the case of Julian Assange—
another foreign citizen the US has essentially
kidnapped and held hostage.”
This is true. It would seem that the primary
difference between Assange’s case and Saab’s is that
the US empire is working to extradite Assange
because he transgressed its self-appointed authority
over the world’s access to information, whereas Saab
transgressed its self-appointed authority over the
world’s access to food.
“The US rogue state just ripped up every
international law, after imprisoning and now
extraditing Venezuelan DIPLOMAT Alex Saab.
Diplomatic immunity is dead; the US empire killed
it. Now all foreign diplomats are fair game to be
kidnapped and imprisoned, if Washington wants to,”
tweeted
journalist Ben Norton, adding, “The US accusations
of ‘money laundering’ are absurd and politically
motivated. The US claims anyone who violates its
ILLEGAL sanctions is a ‘criminal’.”
Indeed, “money
laundering” is a vague charge which basically
just means trying to conceal the source or
destination of money that is deemed to have been
obtained illegally, and since the US government
considers itself the arbiter of what financial
transactions are lawful in nations it is
sanctioning, it can apply that claim to anyone who
tries to get around US sanctions financially.
The US government also does not deny that the
starvation sanctions it has inflicted upon Iran are
directed at its civilian population, with
then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
openly admitting in 2019 that Washington’s
economic warfare against that nation is designed to
pressure Iranian civilians to “change the
government,” i.e. make them so miserable that they
wage a domestic uprising to topple Tehran.
The US government also does not deny that the
starvation sanctions it has inflicted upon Syria are
designed to hurt its civilian population, with
current Secretary of State Tony Blinken reaffirming
just this past Wednesday that it is the Biden
administration’s policy to “oppose the
reconstruction of Syria” as long as Assad remains in
power. In other words the US will not allow Syria
the funds to help rebuild itself from the
devastating regime
change proxy war the US and its allies waged
against it, even as
the UN reports that 60 percent of the nation’s
population is close to starvation.
And of course there’s the US power alliance’s
horrific blockade on Yemen which is murdering
people by the hundreds of thousands via starvation
and disease, with the UN
reporting that a further 16 million people are
“marching towards starvation.”
Starvation is the only kind of warfare where,
because of the continual reframing of mass media
propaganda, it is considered perfectly normal and
acceptable to deliberately target a civilian
population with deadly force.
Last month, the UN warned that 16 million Yemenis are currently “marching towards starvation” due to the US-backed Saudi war on Yemen. https://t.co/fkefzYQtQX
The US empire is entirely open about the fact
that it sees itself as the gatekeeper of the world’s
food supply. If a population disobeys the empire its
people will starve, and anyone who tries to obtain
food for them will be arrested by US proxies and
extradited to a US jail cell.
This is the imperialist’s vision of heaven on
earth. A world where America’s
stranglehold
over global financial systems allows it to choke
off entire populations if their governments disobey
imperial decrees, without even firing a shot. A
world where the PR nightmares of bombed civilians
and destroyed nations are a thing of the past, where
disobedient nations can simply be squeezed to death
by modern siege warfare tactics while imperial
propaganda firms like AP and AFP blame their
starvation on their nation’s leaders.
That’s ultimate power right there. That’s total
control. Having the world so bent to the will of the
almighty dollar and the massive military force with
which it is inextricably intertwined to such an
extent that disobedience becomes impossible. That’s
what’s being fought for in the
slow motion third world war that the empire is
waging against unabsorbed governments like
Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia and China. And that’s
why those unabsorbed governments are fast at work
moving away from the dollar in response.
It should really go without saying, but a power
structure that would openly starve civilians to
death to ensure global domination is not the sort of
power structure that humanity should want dominating
the globe. The willingness to do such monstrous
things exposes a depravity and a lack of wisdom
which has no business determining what direction our
world should take into the future.
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