Trump's Sanction War, Just Another Weapon in the Rogue State's Arsenal

 

Johnathan Cook wrote:

 

“Edward Snowden blew the whistle on illegal mass surveillance by US authorities of their own population – and had to flee into permanent exile.

 

Julian Assange published details of the US military's war crimes – and spent years locked up in a high-security jail, denied his most basic rights.

 

Francesca Albanese has documented US government and corporate complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza – and now, thanks to US sanctions, cannot have a bank account. As she explains here, anyone who deals with her faces up to 20 years in a US jail.

 

Notice a pattern? The US is the ultimate rogue state, destroying anyone who tries to hold it to account. It is utterly lawless. Its methods are those of the gangster, ruling a world where there are no police who can bring it to heel.

 

Trump is different only in that he no longer bothers to hide the fact.” 

End

 

The point about Trump is well taken. We should be grateful that he has taken the mask off US imperialism’s activities and openly do what all US presidents do. The interference in the political life of other nations, bribing foreign leaders openly and threatening entire nations that if they don’t elect his supporters they will be denied aid or finances and worse, be sanctioned. Sanctioning is economic warfare and for poor nations it can mean a matter of life and death. 

 

The oil the US has just stolen from Venezuela was, I understand, heading for Cuba that desperately needs it for heating among other things. The US has starved this small island for over 60 years simply for defending its own interests as a nation state. 

 

The CIA, that Trump claims is on the ground in Venezuela, is the largest terrorist organization in the world and has a long record of assassinations, murder and drug dealing, particularly in Latin America but also Africa, the murder of leaders like Lumumba, for example.  The first American’s in Vietnam were CIA. 

 

The Trump Administration is not the first one to meddle in the affairs of Honduras, or other Central American countries spending billions destabilizing the region, undermining any attempts at self-determination and supporting right wing death squads in the process. Trump is simply following a long tradition; we are seeing it as it is. Richard Mellor