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Parallel US Regime Change Operations Likely Occurred In Pakistan & Bangladesh
Parallel US Regime Change Operations Likely Occurred In Pakistan & Bangladesh
Authored by Jeffrey D. Sachs via Common Dreams,
Two former leaders of major South Asian countries have reportedly accused the United States of covert regime change operations to topple their governments. One of the leaders, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, languishes in prison, on a perverse conviction that proves Khan’s assertion. The other leader, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, fled to India following a violent coup in her country. Their grave accusations against the U.S., as reported in the world media, should be investigated by the UN, since if true, the U.S. actions would constitute a fundamental threat to world peace and to regional stability in South Asia. The two cases seem to be very similar. The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
In the case of Pakistan, Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia, met with Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., on March 7, 2022. Ambassador Khan immediately wrote back to his capital, conveying Lu’s warning that PM Khan threatened U.S.-Pakistan relations because of Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” regarding Russia and Ukraine.
The Ambassador’s March 7 note (technically a diplomatic cypher) quoted Assistant Secretary Lu as follows: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” The very next day, members of the parliament took procedural steps to oust PM Khan.
On March 27, PM Khan brandished the cypher, and told his followers and the public that the U.S. was out to bring him down. On April 10, PM Khan was thrown out of office as the parliament acceded to the U.S. threat.
We know this in detail because of Ambassador Khan’s cypher, exposed by PM Khan and brilliantly documented by Ryan Grim of The Intercept, including the text of the cypher. Absurdly and tragically, PM Khan languishes in prison in part over espionage charges, linked to his revealing the cypher.
The U.S. appears to have played a similar role in the recent violent coup in Bangladesh. PM Hasina was ostensibly toppled by student unrest, and fled to India when the Bangladeshi military refused to prevent the protestors from storming the government offices. Yet there may well be much more to the story than meets the eye.
According to press reports in India, PM Hasina is claiming that the U.S. brought her down. Specifically, she says that the U.S. removed her from power because she refused to grant the U.S. military facilities in a region that is considered strategic for the U.S. in its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” to contain China. While these are second-hand accounts by the Indian media, they track closely several speeches and statements that Hasina has made over the past two years.
On May 17, 2024, the same Assistant Secretary Liu who played a lead role in toppling PM Khan, visited Dhaka to discuss the US Indo-Pacific Strategy among other topics. Days later, Sheikh Hasina reportedly summoned the leaders of the 14 parties of her alliance to make the startling claim that a “country of white-skinned people” was trying to bring her down, ostensibly telling the leaders that she refused to compromise her nation’s sovereignty. Like Imran Khan, PM Hasina had been pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, including constructive relations not only with the U.S. but also with China and Russia, much to the deep consternation of the U.S. government.
To add credence to Hasina’s charges, Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the U.S. had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of U.S. regime-change operations. One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington. The Government of PM Hasina was clearly not enthusiastic to sign it.
The U.S. is by far the world’s leading practitioner of regime-change operations, yet the U.S. flatly denies its role in covert regime change operations even when caught red-handed, as with Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call in late January 2014 planning the U.S.-led regime change operation in Ukraine. It is useless to appeal to the U.S. Congress, and still less the executive branch, to investigate the claims by PM Khan and PM Hasina. Whatever the truth of the matter, they will deny and lie as necessary.
This is where the UN should step in. Covert regime change operations are blatantly illegal under international law (notably the Doctrine of Non-Intervention, as expressed for example in UN General Assembly Resolution 2625, 1970), and constitute perhaps the greatest threat to world peace, as they profoundly destabilize nations, and often lead to wars and other civil disorders. The UN should investigate and expose covert regime change operations, both in the interests of reversing them, and preventing them in the future.
The UN Security Council is of course specifically charged under Article 24 of the UN Charter with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When evidence arises that a government has been toppled through the intervention or complicity of a foreign government, the UN Security Council should investigate the claims.
In the cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the UN Security Council should seek the direct testimony of PM Khan and PM Hasina in order to evaluate the evidence that the U.S. played a role in the overthrow of the governments of these two leaders. Each, of course, should be protected by the UN for giving their testimony, so as to protect them from any retribution that could follow their honest presentation of the facts. Their testimony can be taken by video conference, if necessary, given the tragic ongoing incarceration of PM Khan.
The U.S. might well exercise its veto in the UN Security Council to prevent such a investigation. In that case, the UN General Assembly can take up the matter, under UN Resolution A/RES/76/, which allows the UN General Assembly to consider an issue blocked by veto in the UN Security Council. The issues at stake could then be assessed by the entire membership of the UN. The veracity of the U.S. involvement in the recent regime changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh could then be objectively analyzed and judged on the evidence, rather than on mere assertions and denials.
The U.S. engaged in at least 64 covert regime change operations during 1947-1989, according to documented research by Lindsey O’Rourke, political science professor at Boston Collage, and several more that were overt (e.g. by U.S.-led war). It continues to engage in regime-change operations with shocking frequency to this day, toppling governments in all parts of the world. It is wishful thinking that the U.S. will abide by international law on its own, but it is not wishful thinking for the world community, long suffering from U.S. regime change operations, to demand their end at the United Nations.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/05/2024 – 17:20
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When Fiscal And Monetary Policy Join At The Hip, Markets Can Be Told What To Do… Or To Do Nothing
When Fiscal And Monetary Policy Join At The Hip, Markets Can Be Told What To Do… Or To Do Nothing
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Final Destination
Yesterday, stocks were mostly down, but Nividia was up after refuting its DOJ subpoena story; oil lower after an aborted rally; Treasury yields down as the US curve disinverted; and JPY up.
The Fed’s Beige Book noted consumer spending ticked lower in most Districts, activity “grew slightly” in three, and was flat or declined in nine, with isolated reports of firms only filling necessary positions, reducing hours and shifts, or lowering employment levels via attrition, even if layoffs were rare, wage growth modest, and input costs and selling price rises slight to moderate.
More focus was placed on JOLTS job openings at 7,673K vs 8,100K consensus, with the last print revised from 8,184K to 7,910K. However, as Zerohedge underlined, this survey represents just 0.8% of all US establishments, with only one in three of the small number of firms in the survey replying. Moreover, JOLTS relative to those unemployed is now back to where it was pre Covid, which was considered high at the time.
The BOC cut rates 25bp again to take the base rate to 4.25%, while promising more to come, but as Christian Lawrence and Molly Schwartz note, the Bank was keen to highlight decisions will be made meeting by meeting and are data dependent, with two opposing forces likely to impact the policy path: on the upside, shelter inflation and some services; on the downside, excess supply and labour market slack. The same is true in many locations. We expect two more BOC 25bp rate cuts this year to 3.75% by year end, and four 25bp cuts in 2025 to a terminal rate of 2.75%.
In short, the direction of travel is perhaps clear, but the final destination isn’t, at least relative to what the market is pricing for.
Meanwhile, in Canada, expect political turbulence. A federal election looms in 2025, and PM Trudeau just saw the New Democratic Party which helps keep his minority Liberal government in power withdraw its support. Trudeau will now have to find new alliances to govern.
Incredulously for those in every other democracy, tomorrow marks the start of early voting ahead of the US 5 November election ‘day’. Presumably, some voters don’t need to wait for the Harris-Trump debate, because it’s not like these can ever provide fresh angles(!); nor do they need to wait to see if key policy pledges change over time. Yet Harris is now lowering her proposed capital gains tax to 28%. Could there be electoral implications from President Biden saying he will block the proposed Nippon Steel takeover of Pennsylvania-based US Steel (on national security grounds) if, as US Steel says, without it jobs in this key swing state are “at risk”?
Showing this is going to be a looong two months: a prominent New York Democrat and several conservative media figures were accused of being influenced by China or Russia – they forgot Iran, which has influence elsewhere; Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk platformed an historian who says Churchill was a greater WW2 villain than Hitler, and the Holocaust was a catering error; and student protesters at Columbia demanded the “total collapse of the university structure and the American empire itself”; “to undermine and eradicate America as we know it”; and “unrest and violence in America.” We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Although it isn’t a benchmark, the betting site Polymarket this morning in Asia had the odds of a Trump win at 53%.
With those kinds of headlines, it’s no coincidence the Financial Times has a long read today on ‘How national security has transformed economic policy’. One should read it; but let me add two things:
First, we made this call in January 2016. We flagged the US-China trade war a year before it started. We talked of Great Power struggles in 2018. We projected a ‘World of 2030’ in 2020. We warned Russia wasn’t joking about invading Ukraine in January 2022. And we flagged that the Suez Canal could be a victim of October 7 days after that attack. In short, we don’t just say “geopolitics.”
Second, this has vastly further to run. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have been transformative there. On Ukraine, obviously; yet Russia is now running a war economy, as some talk of a thanatopathic “Deathocracy” cultural shift to jihadi-style see-you-in-heaven mentality and staggering financial rewards for a soldier’s death; and Israel’s finance minister states its war vs. Hamas could cost 13% of GDP – before a potential escalation vs. Hezbollah and/or Iran.
Yet the US is still seeing real terms declines in its defence budget despite constant warnings of the looming dangers of this approach. The Wall Street Journal now bewails ‘The US Navy’s Chief Supplier Is in Peril’, and that a lack of crew mothballing of 17 sealift support ships will “embolden America’s foes.” Supply chains are not just about getting goods to shoppers, but to choppers. The ‘geopolitical’ bill to do so is going to be enormous.
Worse, Süddeutsche Zeitung reports Germany argues bridge and highway repairs are defence spending as public roads are used to transport tanks. In July, it declared €91bn in NATO spending, over the 2% target for the first time since the early 1990s. However, only €52bn was assigned to defence in its domestic budget, which included weapons for Ukraine, while much of the rest went on paperwork and pensions. Yes, good infrastructure is vital in war: the US interstate highway network was a Cold War response to ensure its troops could reach either coast in an emergency, while early European railways had military as much as commercial goals. However, these both went hand in hand with a military – having nice roads and no army just makes you easier to invade! In short, Germany, and most of Europe, aren’t taking things seriously yet. The EU needs to spend at least 3% of GDP, and much more of it on procurement, for decades. We already estimated the enormous annual cost of a “strategic autonomy” push: up to 6% of GDP, for years.
History is clear on how much more extreme geopolitics can get vis-à-vis markets even before we see war economies or war.
What starts off as trying to limit access to one kind of “strategic” good can widen into limiting access to all of them as whatever helps a civilian economy helps a military one directly or indirectly; tariffs can go much higher; subsidies can rise much further; full trade embargos can appear; and neutral countries can be dragged in, even to the extent of physical blockades on their ports, or at sea.
On the capital side, sanctions can be tightened against one party; but, as we flagged early, have to also be applied to third parties vigorously to be effective; capital controls can be introduced; and assets seized.
Commodities can be stockpiled by states; or stockpiles confiscated; and their trading ranges can be restricted, price- and geography-wise.
Moreover, fiscal and monetary policy can join at the hip, and markets can be told what to do, or to do nothing.
If any of the above were to be our final destination, then the market volatility we have seen so far from “geopolitics” is just the beginning. That remains true even if the near-term focus remains whether we see Fed rate cuts, RATE CUTS, or RATE CUTS!
Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/05/2024 – 10:15