The US Empire Sanctions: Comparison of Zimbabwe and Venezuela

Dr Mustafa Bothwell Mheta 

Sanctions are viewed as representing the middle ground in international politics. Considered more severe than verbal condemnation, they are less severe than the use of force.

According to Article 41 of the United Nations Charter, authority to impose sanctions lies exclusively with the Security Council.

Regional organisations are authorised under Article 52 to “achieve pacific settlement of local disputes” without express permission of the Security Council, “provided that…their activities are consistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations”.

In practice, sanctions have comprised a wide range of actions, from economic embargoes to restrictions on participation in the Olympic games.

Here is a brief classification of sanctions: economic, travel, military, diplomatic and cultural. Trade sanctions restrict imports and exports to and from the target country.

Comprehensive trade sanctions are the target of the current criticism of sanctions regimes, because of the humanitarian crises that have erupted in countries against which such sanctions have been imposed.

Financial sanctions address monetary issues. They can include blocking governmental assets held abroad, limiting access to financial markets and restricting loans and credits, restricting international transfer payments and restricting the sale and trade of property abroad. Governments will be unable to pay for imports, and trade will suffer.

Travel sanctions can include both sanctions against the travel of certain individuals or groups and sanctions against certain kinds of air transport. Bans on certain types of air travel include the current ban on taking off or landing of any aircraft owned, leased or operated by or on behalf of the Taliban, established by the Security Council in its resolution 1267 (1999).

Military sanctions may include arms embargoes or the termination of military assistance or training. This may also include refusal to sell military equipment to a country.

Diplomatic sanctions directly target the rulers of a sanctioned State. Other steps towards diplomatic isolation include the withdrawal of diplomatic personnel and international organizations from the target country.

Finally, cultural sanctions, while having less of a negative impact than other forms of sanctions, can still have undesired results.

Having highlighted the different categories of sanctions, I will now turn to challenge the notion of sanctions as applied by the US Empire.

First, there are many instances in our contemporary history when sanctions have been applied unilaterally as a tool for regime change by the US Empire and the Zionist entity.

There are many examples to draw from. From Iraq, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran to North Korea and now to the drama that is currently unfolding in Venezuela.

Second, according to international law sanctions are a prerogative of the collective called the UN Security Council. An individual country cannot go about imposing sanctions for its own selfish ends.

Let us take the case of Zimbabwe. The negotiations that led to a settlement of the protracted Rhodesian war that pitted the freedom fighters from ZANU-PF (ZANLA) and PF-ZAPU (ZIPRA), that later united and merged into ZANU-PF, was a bilateral dispute between Zimbabwe and Britain.

When an independent Zimbabwe sought to address this historical imbalance, which was skewed in favour of 4000 white commercial farmers who owned about 70% of arable farmland, the US Empire joined in support of the British stance and unilaterally imposed sanctions on the Southern African country.

The economic sanctions that have been imposed on Zimbabwe amount to “terrorism”. They were designed to foment an uprising like the kind that is currently unfolding in Venezuela that have seen the country’s economy crumbling and has inflicted much suffering on ordinary people.

What the US Empire had in mind was clearly regime change. It tried to prop up the MDC party and many civic organisations by funding them to the tune of billions of dollars, but it failed.

The liberation party, ZANU-PF prevailed, thanks to the resilience of the people of Zimbabwe. Just last week, President Trump again renewed these terrible sanctions even though the country held an election that was considered fair and credible by many international observers.

The US Empire and its Zionist allies are reenacting the same scenario in Venezuela as happened in Zimbabwe. Washington’s imposition of sanctions on Venezuela is not new.

When Hugo Chavez rose to power in Venezuela, he chose a path of total political and economic independence for his country, a development that did not go down well with the US Empire.

The Empire and its Zionist allies have their eyes on the vast oil resources of Venezuela and have been seeking to control for their own benefit.

What many people do not know is that when Trump came to power he imposed sanctions on Venezuela as a prelude to regime change. It is important to note that these sanctions are not UN sanctions, but are unilateral in nature, thus illegal.

Surely, the people of Venezuela will resist this latest plot by the US Empire. The economic terrorism imposed by the Washington warlords will be defeated.

Lastly, in light of the above, one must challenge the notion and definition of democracy as is being peddled.

Instead of “goverment of the people, by the people, for the people”, it should be “government for the people, by the elite, for the elite”.

Africa must wake up!

Dr Mustafa Bothwell Mheta has a PhD in Semitic Languages and Cultures from the University of Johannesburg, Department of Religion Studies. He is also a Researcher at the Media Review Network.

The Queen's Secret (3)

From 1960s-1970s, 20 African countries got their independence from Britain. The legacy of the British colonialism was extreme poverty, political, economic and cultural backwardness. Zimbabwe – which used to be called Rhodesia by the British – was one of these countries.

Ian Smith, the white racist minister of the country, called for unilateral independence from Britain while announcing loyalty to the Queen. This announcement endangered the Queen's popularity as the Rhodesian government believed on white supremacy over the black. Thus, Elizabeth II was forced not to accept the communique for Rhodesia's independence. Rhodesia was under the dominance of the white for another decade and Britain didn’t do any serious and practical move to oppose them. Canada, as the largest dominion of the Queen, faced problems as well. In 1965, when Elizabeth II traveled to Quebec, the advocates of independence rebelled against her. The security staff were safeguarding the Queen but the protests showed that she is the embodiment of colonialism. Many of the Canadians were enraged to see their country under the British dominance. The Queen tried to beguile the people of Canada by a few changes in the Constitution. Before these changes, the Canadian laws used to be determined by the British parliament. The Canadians asked the Queen to nullify the role of the parliament and just let the monarchy remain.

Australia, like Canada, is administered by a governor-general under the UK. In 1975, when the Australian Senate rejected the budget bill proposed by Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, governor-general, John Kerr, who had been appointed by the Queen, dismissed Whitlam. The prime minister enjoyed the majority vote the representatives and only the senate was opposed to him. Thus, the majority party demanded the Queen to interfere and rescind the view of the governor-general. But the Queen didn't interfere saying that she would not meddle in the authority of the governor-general!!! This stirred protests against the monarchy among Australians.

Another region that was dominated and colonized by the British in the 18th century was the Malvinas Islands which belonged to Argentina. The British put the name of Falkland on these islands. In 1982, the British royal army initiated a war against Argentina on the islands. The British were not intent to give back the islands to their original owners. The third child of the Queen, Prince Andrew, took part in the war and proved to all that the Queen is always complicit in the wars that her government wages.

The British war against Argentina extended to football, too. After the war which ended with the defeat of Argentina, the Argentinians were looking for an opportunity to retaliate and humiliate the UK. This opportunity was attained in 1986 in quarter final World Cup in Mexico. Four years after the British war and usurpation of the Malvinas Islands, the Argentine football team was playing vs. the Brits. Till the 51st minute the match had no goal, but Diego Armando Maradona scored a goal which was loudly applauded by the fans at the stadium. The Brits were demoralized and received the second goal within just two minutes, again by Maradona. Thus, Argentina defeated Britain 2-1 which eliminated the Brits from the competitions.

In the Vietnam war, which has been a very big blot on the US, the UK was not a neutral country but supported the US genocide of the Vietnamese and devastation of their country. During the 8-year war that was imposed by the US through its minion Saddam of Iraq, the UK regime stood on the US side and supported Saddam's aggressive army politically, economically and in terms of arms. During the first Persian Gulf War, the British supported the American invasion and sent more than 53 thousand troops to Kuwait. Afghanistan was another scene of the British partnership-in-crime with the US as they dispatched troops, through NATO, to help the American criminals in Afghanistan.

The last but not least, Britain was an ally of the US during the second war in the Persian Gulf which broke out in 2003 with no UN permission. During these years, governments have changed, elections have been held and everything has altered but the policies have remained fixed since the Queen is monitoring the world developments from the Buckingham Palace and has the first say in the UK.  

Why the West Loves Mandela (and Hates Mugabe)

By Stephen Gowans

In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, hosannas continue to be sung to the former ANC leader and South African president from both the left, for his role in ending the institutional racism of apartheid, and from the right, for ostensibly the same reason. But the right’s embrace of Mandela as an anti-racist hero doesn’t ring true. Is there another reason establishment media and mainstream politicians are as Mandela-crazy as the left?

According to Doug Saunders, reporter for the unabashedly big business-promoting Canadian daily, The Globe and Mail, there is.

In a December 6 article, “From revolutionary to economic manager: Mandela’s lesson in change,” Saunders writes that Mandela’s “great accomplishment” was to protect the South African economy as a sphere for exploitation by the white property-owning minority and Western corporate and financial elite from the rank-and-file demands for economic justice of the movement he led.

Saunders doesn’t put it in quite these terms, hiding the sectional interests of bond holders, land owners, and foreign investors behind Mandela’s embrace of “sound” principles of economic management, but the meaning is the same.

Saunders quotes Alec Russell, a Financial Times writer who explains that under Mandela, the ANC “proved a reliable steward of sub-Sahara Africa’s largest economy, embracing orthodox fiscal and monetary policies…” That is, Mandela made sure that the flow of profits from South African mines and agriculture into the coffers of foreign investors and the white business elite wasn’t interrupted by the implementation of the ANC’s economic justice program, with its calls for nationalizing the mines and redistributing land.

Instead, Mandela dismissed calls for economic justice as a “culture of entitlement” of which South Africans needed to rid themselves. That he managed to persuade them to do so meant that the peaceful digestion of profits by those at the top could continue uninterrupted.

But it was not Mandela’s betrayal of the ANC’s economic program that Saunders thinks merits the right’s admiration, though the right certainly is grateful. Mandela’s genius, according to Saunders, was that he did it “without alienating his radical followers or creating a dangerous factional struggle within his movement.”

Thus, in Saunder’s view, Mandela was a special kind of leader: one who could use his enormous prestige and charisma to induce his followers to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good of the elite that had grown rich off their sweat, going so far as to acquiesce in the repudiation of their own economic program.

“Here is the crucial lesson of Mr. Mandela for modern politicians,” writes Saunders. “The principled successful leader is the one who betrays his party members for the larger interests of the nation. When one has to decide between the rank-and-file and the greater good, the party should never come first.”

For Saunders and most other mainstream journalists, “the larger interests of the nation” are the larger interests of banks, land owners, bond holders and share holders. This is the idea expressed in the old adage “What’s good for GM, is good for America.” Since mainstream media are large corporations, interlocked with other large corporations, and are dependent on still other large corporations for advertising revenue, the placing of an equal sign between corporate interests and the national interest comes quite naturally. Would we be shocked to discover that a mass-circulation newspaper owned by environmentalists (if such a thing existed) opposed fracking? (Journalists will rejoin, “I say what I like.” But as Michael Parenti once pointed out, journalists say what they like because their bosses like what they say.)

Predictably, Saunders ends his encomium to the party-betraying Mandela, the ‘good’ liberation hero, with a reference to the ‘bad’ south African liberation hero, Robert Mugabe. “One only needs look north to Zimbabwe to see what usually happens when revolutionaries” fail to follow Mandela’s economically conservative path, writes Saunders.

At one point, Mugabe’s predilection for orthodox fiscal and monetary policy was a strong as Mandela’s. Yet after almost a decade-and-a-half of the Western media demonizing Mugabe as an autocratic thug, it’s difficult to remember that he, too, was once the toast of Western capitals.

The West’s love affair with Mugabe came to an abrupt end when he rejected the Washington Consensus and embarked on a fast-track land reform program. Its disdain for him deepened when he launched an indigenization program to place majority control of the country’s mineral resources in the hands of black Zimbabweans.

Mugabe’s transition from ‘good’ liberation hero to ‘bad’, from saint to demon, coincided with his transition from “reliable steward” of Zimbabwe’s economy (that is, reliable steward of foreign investor and white colonial settler interests) to promoter of indigenous black economic interests.

That’s a transition Mandela never made. Had he, the elite of the imperialist world would not now be flocking to South Africa for Saint Mandela’s funeral, overflowing with fulsome eulogies.