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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
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 16, 2021
Saab is being extradited from the African nation of Cabo Verde where he has been imprisoned since last year under pressure from the US government. In an article published this past May titled “Alex Saab v. The Empire: How the US Is Using Lawfare To Punish a Venezuelan Diplomat“, Roger D Harris explains how the US uses its domination of the international financial system to crush nations which disobey it and outlines the real reasons for Saab’s imprisonment, which has included torture and draconian living conditions. Harris writes:
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.
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
— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) October 16, 2021
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 does not deny that its sanctions hurt Venezuelans by attacking the economy they rely on to feed themselves, in fact it has openly admitted that “sanctions, particularly on the state oil company in 2019, likely contributed to the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy.”
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.
https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1449506307304615936?s=20
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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38 responses to “The US Has Placed Itself In Charge Over Which Nations Get To Eat”
I thought Biden might not be quite as evil as Trump. No, he’s just better at not sounding crazy when speaking in public.
Clear!!!
Capitalism is the pandemic. Invite you to go to fsp and look up capitalism is the pandemic or just is use DuckDuckGo and search for that phrase capitalism is the pandemic thank you so much
USurpers are US.
Caitlin, it takes a lot of time and effort to slog through all the information on the Internet and distill it into a succinct, easy-to-read format as you have done here. I am grateful.
Mike Pompeo summed it up perfectly for the annals: “We lied, we cheated, we stole! It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment!”
Couldn’t make that stuff up in a million years if you tried!
Then again, if you can’t make your own rules with a $740 billion military budget, what’s the world coming to? :o)
During the 1990’s, an Iraqi-American doctor collected food and medicine for Iraqi children in defiance of the sanctions on Iraq. At the time he was not prosecuted for this, probably because the U.S. government did not want to publicize its starvation policy against Iraq. However, after the invasion, this was no longer a concern, and he was arrested and sentenced to years in jail. There were actually many Americans defying the sanctions, but for some reason this doctor was prosecuted.
Another standout piece. I’m getting spoiled. Johnston cuts new ground almost every week.
Let them eat skunk…
“Unauthorized Freedoms”: Alex Saab, you are not a Diplomat (with immunity) of another sovereign country; you are now a “top fugitive” (without recourse) – to be rendered. Julian Assange, you are not a world-recognized Journalist (with immunity); you are now reclassified as a rights-free “information broker” (without recourse) – to be rendered. Steve Donziger, you are not a Human Rights lawyer covered by any rules of a previously-understood (national or international) judicial system; you are now a “villain” declared guilty of “Contempt,” by a corporation – to be rendered from your house of arrest to our version of house arrest.
“Unauthorized Eating”: “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.” Yes, starving people to death in other countries through sanctions is one way. Another way to starve people to death is to continually expand the term of “unauthorized eating,” through mandates, so that it also engulfs national citizens: Pelosi 2020: “You cannot require that someone get vaccinated.” Biden 2020: Mandate vaccines? “I don’t think it should be mandatory.” Biden 2021: Mandate For Businesses With 100 Or More Workers. One Result: Have your National IDs/Vaccine Passports/Papers ready. Refuse: Lose your job, car, and home – while wondering how you will eat. https://seaclearly.com/2021/09/23/mandated-christian-persecution
Hear, hear. However, anyone who refuses to be vaccinated is putting my life in danger as well as the lives of others. That is wrong.
Yes, yes. One of the ways the ….have lately for reducing the world population is to promote this idiotic idea that requiring people to vaccinate is interfering with “rights”.
Does not your vaccine protect you from the Great Unvaxxed? What’s the point of vaccination?
One among many very good reasons to demand that antivaxx jackasses get vaxxed, is so if I get run over or have a stroke tomorrow, the hospital is not collapsing under the weight of idiots who did not vaxx.
So, the critical reason to impose an experimental clot shot on everyone is too ensure enough hospital beds for the vaxxed? Do you have evidence to show a shortage of medical capacity, “collapsing under the weight of idiots” due to unvaccinated infection rates?
4.8 million dead worldwide and climbing, thanks to antivaxxers incubating new covid variants. It could have been over by now if not for a spiteful few.
At least 18 million deaths EVERY YEAR from the rapacious consumption of animal fats.
Prove me wrong John.
Evidence? It’s off topic for this article, so I won’t take up more space here, but to better understand why people are reluctant to accept desperate official narratives (by big-pharma, big-media, proven liars like Fauci, and silicon valley gatekeepers) and mandates for an experimental vaccine given emergency-use authorization without rigorous testing, read up on what conspiracy realists have discovered.
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/will-vaccine-linked-deaths-rise-sharply-this-winter/
The virologists in Russia agree with the virologists in America, who agree with the virologists in China, Japan, and everywhere else.
Oh, by the way, Cait comments section inhabitants; I do not think I remembered to run my own little piece on this topic by you. Well, here it is. Hasn’t got to many readers yet. Don’t know why I think its pretty good.
https://yaxls.wordpress.com/2021/10/17/facing-down-the-bullies/
Wrong?
You mean like the PCR test for ‘Covid’, when run above 25 cycles (Most governments are using it at 35-40 cycles) is an ineffective diagnostic tool?
(As stated by its inventor Kary Mullis).
apparently you already have a blood clot in your brain
Oh looky Lex!
A pretty rainbow
Hi Carolyn, I’ve read your posts on various sites for a very long time and I agree with the majority of your opinions that I’ve read over the years. FWIW I tell anyone who’ll listen – and plenty who don’t – that capitalism is a death cult. But I 100% disagree with the idea that “anyone who refuses to be vaccinated is putting my life in danger as well as the lives of others.” It is simply not true.
You of all people, Marxist and severe capitalism critic that you are, should be first in line to follow the money and connect the dots. Hard to believe you haven’t given much thought at all to how many billions of dollars are in play to be hoovered up by the pharmaceutical companies and how getting the masses to comply greatly benefits them as well as the rest of the oligarch class who are committed to keeping us herded into compliance so they can continue to wield power and control most of the wealth.
I urge you to take a half an hour or so and read the following article (actually a book excerpt) and reconsider your opinion, it very meticulously and thoroughly blows the “everyone needs to be vaxxed” canard completely out of the water.
The Snake-Oil Salesmen and the COVID-Zero Con: A Classic Bait-And-Switch for a Lifetime of Booster Shots (Immunity as a Service)
https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html
So I kept the comments full on for this Cait article. Blech! I see why even Cait things this is a cesspool. One thing I love about this format; the recomments get narrow and pushed to the side, until they are cut off.
It seems that with a lot of these people everything goes back to the propaganda campaign against protecting public health. The “covid is a hoax thought up by…” whatever. I think it is time to introduce into this community something I wrote about this awhile ago.
https://yaxls.wordpress.com/2021/08/23/the-three-way-battle-of-the-pandemic/
It seems to have a slight following on the net, a view very few days. The basic theme is that the debate about covid has three sides to it. The ones who want to make covid endemic so they can sell vaccines, among other nefarious goals, the ones who just want their cattle back in harness and let covid cull the weak. And then there is the Truth; the sane people led by qualified public health professionals trying to get done what needs to be done, in the face of all this disruption and confusion from the first two.
I followed your link and read your blog post. Your level-headed and cogent analysis is appreciated.
Your approach of viewing the pandemic argument “sides” as a division of three factions makes sense, and even helps make sense of the irrational arguments going on in the comments section here and in other on-line media.
Someone else in the world gets it! Thanks!
Perhaps Venezuela would be wise to take a page out of the Chinese playbook and kidnap an American somewhere in the world.
And collectivize!
Hello Cait;
You will notice that the countries the western Imperialists go after like this have internal problems which make them vulnerable to such attacks. In the primary example of Venezuela, it is famous for having vast swathes of prime agricultural land sitting idle while its people starve.
The problem is not that they are being blockaded but that the government is incapable of organizing agriculture. They cannot get the land back into the hands of small farmers. They cannot organize the upstream infrastructure to support them, or the downstream infrastructure to process food and get it in into local markets.
Iran and Syria both have very corrupt and inefficient governments. Yemen was riven by tribal conflicts for generations before the Saudis and friends decided to wipe them off the map. Yet nobody is starving in China or Russia.
The lesson is that countries which are minimally well ordered are generally able to provide all necessities to their populations. They easily repel attempts to start insurgencies. They ride out economic blockades. They also help each other against imperial aggression.
As for this recent practice of abducting the diplomats and business people of targeted governments, you will notice that they tend not to do this to countries which have means and will to retaliate. The arrest of Meng Wangzhou did not go very well for Canada or the USA.
This would be little comfort to Mr. Saab in his predicament. However, the measures which would get him back on the street and deter any further such abductions are obvious.
Some would argue the near certainty of such measures provoking the USA to take their aggression to the next level. The best reply is that Venezuela has reasonably capable armed forces.
The USA has consistently lost wars against nominally much weaker opponents. It should be understood that the reason the USA adopts these chickenshit forms of aggression against Venezuela is because it cannot attack with conventional forces. tr
https://yaxls.wordpress.com/
Oh come now, 2 large asset management firms control every corporations and the US government is their hired gun. Can we get the minions to turn on their master? Money controls everything and BlackRock and Vanguard own all the big banks. Lets focus on the real issue, the control of the money system. https://rumble.com/embed/vkcqwx/
Yes, MMT reveals the true nature of (fiat) money and points to extraordinary possibilities were it created and spent for people and planet (instead of the billions of dollars spent daily for military aggression). But to drop down even deeper, Jesus and other sages reveal that money is a full-blown alternative deity that will claim our hearts and minds so long as we remain spiritually undeveloped. Only, for example, when the majority of Americans care more about starving people than their cell phones will the stranglehold Caitlin describes be broken. That a spiritual awakening must precede a political one is a foundational point of this blog. You might be interested in the free sample (look inside) of this strange little book.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Truth-synoptic-gospel-Theophilus-ebook/dp/B00NIZOJ4C
Not quite correct. Blackrock and Vanguard are in reality best thought of as custodians of these companies’ shares on behalf of the underlying owners who are the individuals who own the ETFs that Blackrock and Vanguard sell. SPY for example has over 300bn in assets, but is really a tracker fund for the S&P500. As such it will have around $18bn in Apple, but Larry Fink does not control those shares. The REAL danger is that the institutional investment world has now been totally captured by ESG and Larry Fink IS now using the voting power he has accrued to himself to influence corporate behaviour on behalf of various NGOs and lobby groups. The actual owners have been disenfranchised.
The agenda of the WEC is far greater. Their covert aim is to disrupt supply chains with Covid, raise food prices, reduce food production and starve poor nations in a bid to reduce world population. The US is producing less food for export. This is due in part to Bill Gates and others buying up farm land and allowing it to go fallow. The world supply system was predicated on a supply on demand system with little or no backlog of inventory. The system was complex and at a tipping point. There is no quick catch up. Food scarcity is coming with food inflation along with all commodities. The poor will starve under such a scenario as planned. What better time for the US to put the screws to Venzuela in a bid to topple Madero and get their oil.
A great article, Caitlin. There must be some ‘nice’ people in US that disagree with their government or even leaders of countries around the world who can see what’s happening. Are they all so scared that US will cut off their food supplies? US and Israel appear to be the greatest terrorists the world has seen since 1945!
There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who despise their capitalist, militarist, imperialist government. I am one of them.
Since 2020, there are tens of millions of Americans, and growing, who despise this illegitimate government. I believe we’re nearing a tipping point.
America’s economic system is no longer a capitalist meritocracy or a democracy for that matter; it’s post-capitalist, the inevitable natural regression of capitalism into a corporate kleptocracy — socialism for the rich and shameless. In May ’21 Ben Norton aired an excellent interview with Michael Hudson about the new third edition of his book Super Imperialism explaining the nature of the world’s largest organized crime syndicate. Empires invariably overreach and commit suicide, as the AngloZionist government is doing now. It’s bound to be a painful suicide for many of us.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/05/12/new-cold-war-super-imperialism-michael-hudson/
The scary thing is to read Yuppie Liberals’ spittle-flecked vehemence, at actual journalists picking through complicit media lies. Kidnapping folks, or torturing for inconvenient truth-sayin might’ve changed incrementally (Clinton’s trade bills kinda handed ANY say we had, over to multinational/ ISDS Panel oilgarchy) but, RABID retired yuppie/ Creative Class pearl-clutching fulmination grew exponentially after Debbie, Robby, John & Hills’ installation of Trump went a tiny bit overboard. How’d Dale Dye put it in “Platoon?” Hunker DOWN!
https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/us-elites-imperial-corruption-compares-to-opium-war/
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/13/energy-crunch-heating-us-homes-set-to-break-the-bank-this-winter
https://www.dailyposter.com/weekend-reader-making-sense-of-the-great-supply-chain-disruption/
https://mobile.twitter.com/DGBassani/status/1420133070838157316
the not-so-deep-any-more global state = zionist = THE enemy of humanity