"Responsibility to Protect" (R2P): A Cover for U.S. Interventionism

 

Ukraine notwithstanding, it is the United States more than any country in the world, that upholds the notion of “responsibility to protect,” known as r2p, which is a cover for interventionism and violation of national sovereignty. I discuss this issue in the context of interventionism in Haiti and Venezuela in a radio interview on the program “The Critical Hour” conducted by Wilmer Leon.  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k39oWpyxlJAC_gkZI6kHng2TClgjJunx/view

Chevron to Venezuela: Pay off your foreign debt and the heck with feeding people

Chevron is requesting that the Biden administration allow them to purchase oil from Venezuela for the exclusive purpose of providing that government with cash to pay off its debt to the company. The money can't go to anything else. And the Biden administration is receptive to the idea and it only hesitates because it fears losing votes in Florida. The proposal is asking a lot from Venezuela, a nation that is facing acute shortages of food and medicine as a result of the U.S.-imposed embargo. It's all about greed and nothing else. That's nothing new for most of us but the capitalists and politicians aren't supposed to make it all so obvious.

iness/energy/exclusive-us-weighs-chevron-request-take-venezuela-oil-debt-payments-sources-2022-02-07/

 

ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF JUST HOW UNDEMOCRATIC U.S. DEMOCRACY IS

 

Trump’s strategy for reelection in 2020, as MD congressman Jamie Raskin pointed out in yesterday’s Democracy Now interview, is now clear. Had Pence annulled the 2020 presidential electoral results, the House of Representatives would have decided the outcome of the elections. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, but in that situation each state would have had one vote. Since the Republicans control more states than the Democrats, Trump would have been named president. And just like Michael Flynn was calling for, Trump would have immediately declared martial law. Hence, just like in the Senate, each state would have had the same weight in determining the outcome. Nothing to do with population. What ever happened to what used to be called “one man one vote”?

ONLY A POPULIST STRATEGY CAN HOLD UNDEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS IN CHECK AND AVOID A REPUBLICAN COMEBACK

If Joe Biden wants to avoid heavy losses for the Democrats in November, he is going to have to follow a populist strategy, which most political scientists mistakenly consider to be inherently anti-democratic and opportunistic. Specifically, Biden needs to scrap his consensus politics approach in which he in effect pleads with, and kowtows to, Joe Manchin and in doing so waters down His Build Back Better program. A populist strategy would mean ruling by executive order to fulfill such promises as cutting the student debt significantly. The strategy must also include rallying the rank and file to counter undemocratic institutions such as the Senate, in which minorities get greatly overrepresented and the filibuster is employed thus making a mockery of majority rule. Such a strategy (executive orders, mass mobilizations, countering undemocratic institutions) typically gets called "populist" in the pejorative sense. Populism is by nature undemocratic, or so it is said, because democratic institutions are spurned. In fact, undemocratic are the institutions themselves - the Senate and the Supreme Court, to name but two.

 

Leftist writers who harshly condemn progressive Latin American governments with the "extractivism" argument overstate their case

Progressive governments in Latin America are making a comeback and winning elections in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, and Chile. Some on the left have harshly criticized the governments ranging from Chávez to Lula, the Kirchners, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. In some cases these writers place the progressive governments in the same category as conservative and right-wing ones and even claim that they followed neoliberal policies. The bottom line, according to these writers, is that the progressives continued to rely on extractivist industries and global exports of primary commodities. This view is simplistic, fails to place the predicaments these governments faced in the larger context of U.S. hostility and aggression, and glosses over positive achievements. I put forward this latter position in my edited “Latin Amiecan Extractivism” book reviewed below. 

https://www.e-ir.info/2021/06/04/review-latin-american-extractivism/?fbclid=IwAR08U-Zl9feZ1OfyuvFWFP2JUBMkrfXtNjbVtt0b5lGi2kTVnQyzWjopQZ0