Well, Tucker Carlson was fired at FOX. At the same time, the ax fell on CNN. Now blogger Gonzalo Lira is arrested and silenced.

Some one, probably a “leader / dictator” in the United States gave “the order”. Sort of like this…

The Sopranos ordering hits

Indonesia rebuffs Australia, turns to Brazil for live cattle imports

‘Nearly A Third Of The World Economy Is Now Subject To Sanctions’

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) just published a study about:

The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions.

The results are as any observer of such acts would expect. Sanctions are used too broadly. They hardly ever serve their supposed original purpose and do not reach their aims. They hurt the poor more than the supposedly targeted leaders of this or that country.

These numbers though are astonishing:

Over the past six decades, there has been significant growth in the use of economic sanctions by Western powers and international organizations. Less than 4 percent of countries were subject to sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union, or United Nations in the early 1960s; today, that share has risen to 27 percent. 

The magnitudes are similar when we consider their impact on the global economy: the share of world GDP produced in sanctioned countries rose from less than 4 percent to 29 percent in the same period. 

In other words, more than one fourth of countries and nearly a third of the world economy is now subject to sanctions by the UN or Western nations.

Under international law only sanction imposed by the United Nations’ Security Council have legal standing. Sanctions by the U.S. or EU are under international law an illegal use of state instruments. The U.S. is using sanctions constantly to press under nations to do its bidding. Until the recent war in Ukraine the EU has used sanctions mostly to ‘do something’ because it had run out of ideas or diplomatic abilities.

The recent sanctions on Russia proved to be hurting the Russians much less than they are hurting the people living in the European Union. It was a catastrophic mistake by EU leaders to preemptively agree to the sanctions the U.S. had been pushing for before Russia entered the civil war in Ukraine on the side of its Ukrainian brethren. The consequences had obviously not been gamed out and thought through.

When nearly one third of the world economy is under sanctions the other two-third are losing out too. It would therefore make sense for everyone to abolish all sanctions that have not been issued by the UNSC. Even UNSC sanctions should only be used sparsely and in a very narrowly targeted manner. Sanctions that hit the whole economy of a country are inhuman and should be prohibited.

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His last video prior to his arrest

On The Hypocrisy Of The New EU Sanction Regime

Once upon a time the European Union rejected secondary sanctions which the U.S. used to press third party countries to follow its sanction regimes against other once:

Making use of the centrality of the US in the global economy, it has imposed ‘secondary sanctions’ on foreign firms, which are forced to choose between trading with US sanctions targets or forfeiting access to the lucrative US market. In addition, the US has penalized foreign firms for breaching US sanctions legislation.

To counter these extraterritorial measures the EU introduced a blocking mechanism:

The lawfulness of these sanctions could be contested before various domestic and international judicial mechanisms, although each mechanism comes with its own limitations. To counter the adverse effects of secondary sanctions, third states and the EU can also make use of, and have already made use of, various non-judicial mechanisms, such as blocking statutes, special purpose vehicles to circumvent the reach of sanctions, or even countermeasures.

Blocking statutes prohibit EU companies from complying with U.S. sanctions:

Pursuant to Art. 5(1) of the EU Blocking Regulation, EU operators are prohibited from complying “with any requirement or prohibition, including requests of foreign courts, based on or resulting, directly or indirectly” from a set of foreign sanctions laws deemed to apply extraterritorially by the European Union, “or from actions based thereon or resulting therefrom.” The laws in question are listed in the Regulation’s Annex; currently, all are US statutes. Art. 5(2) provides that the European Commission (the Commission) may, upon request, authorize EU operators to comply fully or partially with these laws, to the extent that noncompliance would seriously damage their interests or those of the European Union.In 2018, the Commission updated the Annex of the EU Blocking Regulation to include the (reimposed) US secondary sanctions against Iran. It also adopted an Implementing Regulation laying down the criteria that would be taken into account for the granting of compliance authorizations, and issued a Guidance Note on the application of the reactivated EU Blocking Regulation.

The blocking statute was used to reject sanctions the U.S. instated against Iran after the U.S. left the nuclear agreement.

Now however, the conflict in Ukraine has seemingly killed any resistance in the EU against illegal acts from the U.S. In fact the EU has now gone mad and is itself considering the introduction of extraterritorial measures against countries which do not follow its own sanction regime against Russia:

The European Union is discussing a new sanctions mechanism to target third countries it believes aren’t doing enough to prevent Russia from evading sanctions, particularly those that can’t explain spikes in trade of key goods or technologies, according to people familiar with the matter.The primary aim of the tool would be to deter countries from helping Russia and crack down on trade channels that Moscow may be exploiting, the people said. If that doesn’t work, the bloc would have the option as a second step of imposing targeted restrictions on key goods.
…
The new enforcement mechanism, aspects of which were first reported by the Financial Times, would give member states the authority to create two lists — one of affected third countries and the other of banned goods.

If the mechanism is approved by national governments, decisions on which countries and goods to list would be for member states to take unanimously, the people said. The measures were unlikely to target China at first, but focus mostly on nations in central Asia and Russia’s immediate neighbors, the people added.

Elsewhere, the proposed package would make it easier to sanction companies in third countries that are circumventing the EU’s sanctions.

The EU politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels are killing their own moral defense against the U.S. application of secondary sanctions against third parties.

How will they ever be able to again argue for their own blocking statute. Moreover what will they do when third party countries, like Turkey or China, introduce their own blocking statutes against secondary EU sanctions on their companies?

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Zelenski’s Regime Is Finished

Yesterday’s drone attack on the Kremlin (and other installations) mark the end of the Zelenski regime. While Russia had so far refrained from regime change in Kiev it will now have to pursue it.

The former prime minister of Israel Naftali Bennet had reported that president Putin had promised him not to hit Zelenski:

“I knew Zelensky was under threat, in a bunker… I said to [Putin], ‘Do you intend to kill Zelensky?’ He said, ‘I won’t kill Zelensky,’” Bennett recalled in the interview, which was published on his own YouTube channel.
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Bennett said he called the Ukrainian president immediately after the three-hour encounter with Putin, and told him, “I’ve just come out of a meeting — [Putin] is not going to kill you.“[Zelensky] asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ I said 100 percent. [Putin’s] not going to kill you.”

Bennett recalled: “Two hours later, Zelensky went to his office, and did a selfie in the office, [in which the Ukrainian president said,] ‘I’m not afraid.’”

Well, now he has very good reason to again be afraid, very afraid. As former ambassador MK Bhadrakumar writes:

Make no mistake, this is a tipping point; the clumsy attempt on Putin’s life jolts the kaleidoscope beyond recognition. The only comforting thought is that the Kremlin leadership is not going to be driven by emotion. The considered Kremlin reaction is available from the remarks by the Russian Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov:“How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol or the Pentagon? The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for an average citizen: the punishment will be harsh and inevitable.”

The ambassador went on to draw the bottom line: “Russia will respond to this insolent and presumptuous terrorist attack. We will answer when we consider it necessary. We will answer in accordance with the assessments of the threat that Kiev posed to the leadership of our country.”

I agree with Bhadrakumar that there will be no knee-jerk reaction from Moscow. But public opinion in Russia demands that there will be payback for the attack and against anyone involved in it.

Putin’s hands are tied beyond a point when the country is in rage and demanding retribution, as evident from the comments by former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev: “After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left except for the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique.”

That Zelenski fled to Finland, then to the Netherlands and Germany after the drones hit the Kremlin is a sure sign of his complicity in the act.

When (if?) he comes back to Kiev it will be bunker life for the rest of his reign.

Posted by b on May 4, 2023 at 16:08 UTC | Permalink

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