The Covid-19 pandemic could have brought humanity together in cooperation to combat the deadly disease. Instead, 2020 has seen an expansion of the use of unilateral sanctions, which target entire nations and hurt their ability to respond to outbreaks on their territory while undermining global efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to them. The result is that people keep dying, not getting medical treatment for their diseases and are otherwise being denied their basic human rights.

The damning assessment comes from Alena Douhan, UN’s Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, who received her tenure in March. This week she released a set of guidelines on how to alleviate human suffering from sanctions.

UN expert @AlenaDouhan issues a series of guidelines to ensure that #humanitarian assistance – including medicine, medical equipment, food and other essential goods – reaches countries affected by unilateral #sanctions during #COVID19. Learn more: https://t.co/c1IWkuB7Wopic.twitter.com/zUGjwLUUs2

While the better outcome would be to cancel or at least suspend unilateral sanctions at least until the global health crisis is over, Douhan sees this outcome as unrealistic. Her more modest suggestions include making impact assessments of all sanctions that countries seek to impose before they do so and having a general good-faith attitude to humanitarian organizations instead of obstructing their work.

Leading humanitarian groups she consulted named sanctions as “the main obstacle to the delivery of aid” today. A sanctions regime is “multi-layered, confusing, non-transparent and extensive” while humanitarian exemptions “remain ineffective, inefficient and inadequate.” With the threat of exterritorial secondary sanctions growing this year, there is a “growing overcompliance from the side of banks, donors and delivery companies.”

Ex-Cle Soluciones Biometricas C.A., a Venezuela-registered subsidiary of an Argentine-based tech company, specializes in providing biometric verification equipment and has been accused by the US government of “undermining democracy and suppressing the voices of the Venezuelan people,”apparently for the deadly sin of facilitating the recent elections to the Venezuela’s National Assembly.

“Ex-Cle C.A. has millions of dollars of contracts with the illegitimate Maduro regime, providing electoral hardware and software to regime-aligned government agencies,” US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Friday, adding that the company was “aware of and involved” in the alleged Maduro government plot “to rig the fraudulent December 6 elections.”

...

Maduro did not mince words as he responded to the new bunch of penalties, branding them “stupid.”

“Stupid sanctions like the idiot [Pompeo] that he is, as he is on his way out, against the company and the businessmen who manufactured the machines so that the people of Venezuela could vote," Maduro said, as cited by AFP.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/510169-venezuela-sanctions-maduro-elections/

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In Australia, Everyone of voting age HAS TO VOTE (including informal if one wishes) and voting is still done with pen and paper... (very few postal votes. Special "absentee" voting booths are set up ahead of voting day for those who travel outside their circumscription). As well, so far, the vote has to be "preferential" in order of preferred candidates...

Scenes from the US Capitol on Wednesday, as protesters backing President Donald Trump disrupted the joint session of Congress meeting to certify the election of Democrat Joe Biden, looked very much like Belgrade in October 2000. 

The Senate pic.

— Steven Nelson () January 6, 2021

The sight was later repeated in Ukraine – twice, in 2004 and 2014 – Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and several Central Asian former Soviet republics. On every occasion, the US backed the “people power,” because American NGOs and embassies were supporting what became known as “color revolutions.”

Same thing happened in 2011 with the “Arab Spring” that started in Tunisia and then burned its way across North Africa to the Persian Gulf. In some places it “succeeded,” overthrowing decades-old governments. In others it failed, setting off wars in Libya and Syria and leaving blood on the streets of Bahrain. Again, the US cheered this on as democracy – except for Bahrain, which hosts a major naval base. 

More recently, the US denounced as illegitimate the presidential elections in Belarus, Bolivia and Venezuela. While Minsk and Caracas managed to resist – and got sanctioned for it – the “democrats” in La Paz were successful for a while, but ended up losing the vote last year. 

Way back in 2004, the Guardian wrote approvingly about how the US has created a “slick”operation of “engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience,” developing since Belgrade a “template for winning other people’s elections.” 

Now the same mainstream media that slavishly followed the State Department line in denouncing elections elsewhere as “rigged” and color revolutions as spontaneous democracy are clutching their pearls when Americans who believe their election was stolen take to the streets and storm their Capitol.

In other nations, when demonstrators, urged by a cornered president, try to take over the capital building it’s called a coup. Nothing else.

— Richard Engel  January 6, 2021

Ah, but this election wasn’t stolen, they’d say – it was pure as driven snow, “most secure ever,” all the experts who told us for four years the previous one was “hacked by Russia” tell us so! And Joe Biden won the most votes in history while hardly leaving his basement. Whether you believe this official narrative about the US election or not doesn’t really matter, however. Partisan myopia simply won’t let people understand the magnitude of what is on display here: utter moral bankruptcy of the entire US political and media establishment. 

Why isn’t Victoria Nuland passing out cookies? (see https://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33008)

— Anya Parampil  January 6, 2021

Republicans and Democrats alike used “color revolutions” as a political weapon for years, preaching democracy even as their astroturfed coups snuffed out any vestiges of it that might have developed organically. Over the past year, they’ve done so at home as well, using Covid-19 lockdowns to abolish elementary constitutional rights, culminating with changing the electoral rules to better serve “our democracy,” defined as whatever gets them power. 

What did they think people would do when all avenues of airing their grievances were closed off? Meekly submit – or take a page out of the same playbook the politicians and the media spent 20 years celebrating?

I told you this was coming and I’ll tell you something else right now: It gets worse from here. The people within The System simply do not have a clue the level of anger there is outside of The System.I told you all. You poked and prodded and laughed and mocked. Now it’s here

— Jesse Kelly  January 6, 2021

Don’t go “but Trump,” either. The supposed Nazi fascist dictator himself ordered National Guard and police to clear out the protesters who sided with him, and protect the establishment that did not. He’s a real Hitler, right? No matter, expect the media to paint him as such anyway.

Perhaps the US ought to take a long, hard look at its own house before it continues calling out, sanctioning, regime-changing or bombing other countries over their supposed lack of “democracy.”Maybe actually answer the question Russian President Vladimir Putin asked at the UN back in 2015, addressing the consequences of the ‘Arab Spring’: “Do you realize now what you have done?”

But we all know that’s not going to happen, don’t we?

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/511740-us-democracy-congress-stormed/

Of course the men in white coats should come and remove Trump for insanity... The US have been insane since WW2 (haven't you been paying attention?) and hopefully the new administration of Joe Biden might fall asleep on its foreign diplomacy, having to spend time looking at its own navel. But as we know, most law and order system of the West is designed to manage democracy, as long as we hate socialism and love capitalism, though in the USA, the choice has been between "despotic freedom" and "authoritarian democracy" — both on offer from the Deep State. There was revolt, looting and destruction against "racist" Trump in the streets and when Trump wanted to send in the troops, he was chastise by the "liberal" media. If you are not confused, you must be part of the jetsam and flotsam...

But looking at the votes, 49 per cent of the stupid population will be shafted by 51 per cent of the clever population, while before, 49 per cent of the stupid population, that had elected Trump, was shafting 51 per cent of the clever population. And everyone went to MacDonald's for a bit of KFC... Still confused? 

Decency will only start returning to America IF JOE BIDEN DROPS ALL CHARGES AGAINST JULIAN ASSANGE. Then we will be able to talk of decency... You know what I mean.

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I'm sorry for what we did because we have offended you. I know we should love you above all things. Help me to do penance, to do better, and to avoid anything that might lead us to sin again...

                           The US administration

For your penance and redressing the wrongs, you will accept and regret these wrongs, by dropping all charges against Julian Assange who, by releasing the list of your sins you (your country) have committed, is showing you the way to redemption.

                            Justice and Truth

And this goes beyond "freedom of the press". It goes to the heart of trust.

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