By John Scales Avery
The UN Security Council alone has the power to impose sanctions
According to the Charter of the United Nations, only the UN Security Council has a mandate by the international community to apply sanctions (Article 41) that must be complied with by all UN member states (Article 2,2). Therefore sanctions on Iran, unilatterally imposed by the United States government, are illegal. They are a violation of the United Nations Charter. With amazing hubris and arrogance, the US government has imposed sanctions on various countries, including Iran. In the case of Iran, these sanctions have caused the suffering of millions of innocent people, who are unable to buy medicines for serious illnesses, and whose financial security is threatened by the economic damage produced by US sanctions. Although other nations realize that the US sanctions are a violation of international law, they nevertheless comply because they fear US financial reprisals.
Who is Meng Wanzhou?
Meng Wanzhou is the Chief Financial Officer of Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer. She is also the daughter of Huawei’s founder. While flying from Hong Kong to Mexico, Ms. Meng was changing planes at the Vancouver International Airport when she was suddenæy detained by the Canadian government on an August US warrent. She faces extadition to a
New York City courtroom, where she could receive up to thirty years in federal prison for having allegedly conspired in 2010 to violate America’s unilateral (and illegal) trade sanctions against Iran.
The US is drifting towards facism
The kidnaping of Ms. Meng is yet another example of the almost insane hubris and arrogance of the present government of the United States. Insane is not not too strong a word, since many psichiatrists consider Donald Trump to be mentally unstable. Furthermore, Trump’s racism and his advocacy of violence are worryingly similar the the facists of the 1930’s, such as Hitler and Mussolini. It is clear from Trump’s actions that the present government of the United States no longer belongs to the American people. It belongs instead to corporate oligarchs, to Wall Street, and to the Israel Lobby. Trump’s advocacy of fossil fuels is an existential threat to the future of human civiluzation and the biosphere. Will he be re-elected in 2020? Worryingly we can remember that Hitler was legally elected, but retained his power through illegal means.
Leader of the Free World?
Just as the United States once declared its independence from Britain, so Europe and the remainder of the world ought to declare independence from the United States. Chearly, insane arrogance, hubris, contempt for international law, racism and many of the aspects of facism, do not deserve to be blindly followed. Whatever moral authority the United States may once have had has evaporated in a seemingly endless series of aggressive foreign wars and drone killings. If we must have leaders (and it is not clear that we must), China might not be a bad choice.
John Scales Avery is a theoretical chemist at the University of Copenhagen.
16 December 2018
Source: countercurrents.org