sanctions

Via Zerohedge…

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the readmission of Russia into the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in what appears be the first concrete signal that Europe’s appetite for indefinite sanctions against the Russian Federation is crumbling.
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Last week, Elham Pourtaher, an Iranian graduate student at the State University of New York in Albany, wrote about how U.S. policies cause suffering and trauma far beyond U.S. borders.

The study highlights that sanctions are an act of war with lethal consequences that affect civilians, despite being presented as a humane alternative to armed combat.

The recent escalation of conflict between the United States and Iran threatens another US military quagmire that would create crisis and chaos in Iran, the region and perhaps globally as well as costing the US trillions of dollars. The US needs to change course — a deeply wrong course it has been on regarding Iran since the 1950s, escalating since Iran declared its independence in their 1979 Revolution. There is a path out of this situation, but it requires leadership from President Trump, which will only come if the people of the United States mobilize to demand it.

An American surveillance drone was shot down by Iranian forces and Trump was set to strike three sites in Iran but he reversed course after military leaders disclosed that 150 people would likely be killed. Trump wrote that it would not be a proportionate response to downing a drone that did not have anyone on board.

Who is responsible for the recent attacks on the fuel tankers in the Gulf of Oman? Washington blames Iran, and has offered what it calls proof—a grainy video allegedly showing what are said to be Iranians removing what is said to be a mine from what is said to be the hull of a stricken tanker.  But the video proves nothing more than someone removed, or appeared to remove, (not affixed but removed) something from the hull of a ship. Even The New York Times was skeptical of the video-graphic indictment.

Japan used to be the number one foreign consumer of Iranian oil, slipping to number two as China increased its purchases. Now, obliged to defer to the U.S., Japan purchases none. Germany has been Iran’s largest European trade partner, and was hoping for major deals following the conclusion of the Iran Deal in 2015. These plans have been sabotaged by the U.S. using its control over the international banking system, one of its main weapons to use against free market principles and free trade, to inflict pain on people who do not submit, and to (try to) assert its global hegemony.

Venezuelan lawyer Lucrecia Hernández, director of the NGO Sures, discusses how US-funded opposition groups have politicized and weaponized “human rights”…
The post How Venezuela’s US-backed opposition distorts ‘human rights’ to push regime change appeared first on The Grayzone.

Authored by Serban V.C. Enache via Hereticus Economicus: