Question of Legitimacy

Bolton in America’s Decline and Fall

Many men creep into, through and out of Yale, Princeton and Harvard holding a collection of high-powered connections but no substantive credentials, common sense, or human sensibility. They seem to feel themselves entitled to demonize and kill other people and nations and wrap their crimes in clever words and out and out lies. 

And many Americans swallow line by line without mumbling a question or dissenting ugh.

S

erial appointee and U.S. executive office adviser John Robert Bolton holds a Yale law degree with no studies, credentials or awards in the field of international affairs/international relations; and no significant experience in the field.

 

In his successive appointments, John Bolton has earned a reputation for “rudeness” and an “undiplomatic” demeanor. 

• Bolton’s resume

Assistant administrator USAID (program/policy coordinator 1982-1983, R Reagan admin); Assistant secretary for international organization affairs U.S. Department of State (1989-1993, George HW Bush admin); Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs (2001-2005, George W. Bush admin); U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1 year, 2005-2006, George W. Bush admin); National Security Advisor (April 2018, DJ Trump admin)

 

I

ran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif 

• Service

August 5, 2002 – July 25, 2007 Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations

September 6, 2013 – July 14, 2015 Iran’s Chief Nuclear Negotiator

August 15, 2013 – present Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs

• Profession, Fields of study, work

International law, International relations, International studies

Graduate Thesis “Self-Defense in International Law and Policy” (1988)

Academics:

San Francisco State University (baccalaureate and master’s)

University of Denver (master’s and doctorate)

Other Institutions: School of International Relations

University of Tehran

Islamic Azad University

Mohammad Javad Zarif’s reputation and popularity have received high marks among the Iranian people. March 2016: Rated “the most popular political figure in Iran” (approval rating: 76%; source: Information and Public Opinion Solutions LLC/iPOS).

Recipient of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) Prize (2016); and “‘Champion of Champions of Diplomacy’ by 9th Festival of National Industry Champions (Iran1392 SH)

National orders:

Order of Merit and Management First Class (Iran February 2016); Grand Cross of Order of the Condor of the Andes (Bolivia August 2016); Order of Friendship (Kazakhstan September 10, 2018  

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ohnny’s illegitimacies enabling America’s Decline and Fall

Cowardice incapable of withstanding Independent Judiciary Tribunal

• Palestine and ICC “illegitimate”

Bolton’s Trump administration slashes “$25 million earmarked for the care of Palestinians in East Jerusalem,” funding for a United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees and hospitals.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat (statement): “We reiterate that the rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale”; we will not succumb to U.S. threats and bullying…. We continue to call upon the International Criminal Court to open its immediate investigation into Israeli crimes.”

U.S. (Bolton) responds: “The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this ‘illegitimate’ (italics added) court….

“We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

The aim of the International Criminal Court “is to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.” The United States is not a signatory to the Rome Treaty that established the ICC in 2002.

Hostility toward Difference, National Sovereignty, Self Determination

• Venezuelan presidency “illegitimate”

John Bolton (repeating the earlier threat by U.S. special envoy Elliott Abrams) reported March 2019:

“The United States is putting foreign financial institutions on notice that they will face sanctions for being involved in facilitating ‘illegitimate’ (italics added) transactions that benefit Nicolas Maduro and his corrupt network.”

Hostility toward, Intolerance of Independent Thought

• Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif  “illegitimate”

The Minister warns:

“‘Refuse to bow to #B_Team ‘s whims, [and] you can’t even possess peaceful nuclear energy. It apparently matters not that ‘Iran is killing ISIS’ while US’ clients arm it’ … echoing accusations that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have been directly and indirectly supporting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

And this:

“‘Kill 3,000+ Americans but remain a US client and you can have nuclear weapons—even get help in acquiring them.” [Fifteen of the 19 alleged hijackers accused of carrying out the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (in the United States) were Saudi nationals]

John Bolton’s Royal “We” outburst:

“We consider Javad Zarif an illegitimate spokesperson for Iran.”

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hose Illegitimacy, indeed!  Let thinkers be independent thinkers who appraise and decide for themselves.

Perhaps they might assist in averting the United States of America’s further decline and fall.

Sources

The Hill “Bolton to label International Criminal Court ‘illegitimate’: report” by Emily Birnbaum September 10, 2018 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/405818-bolton-to-label-international-criminal-court-illegitimate-report

Reuters “Trump administration takes aim at International Criminal Court, PLO”

Steve Holland September 9, 2018

“The Trump administration on Monday threatened tough action against the International Criminal Court should it try to prosecute Americans for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and said the PLO’s office in Washington would be closed for seeking to punish Israel through the court. ‘The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,’ national security adviser John Bolton told the Federalist Society, a conservative group, in his first major address since joining President Donald Trump’s White House in April. The U.S. response could include sanctions against ICC judges should such prosecutions proceed, Bolton warned.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-icc/trump-administration-to-take-tough-stance-against-international-criminal-court-idUSKCN1LQ076

The Guardian “John Bolton threatens war crimes court with sanctions in virulent attack:

John Bolton, the hawkish US national security adviser, has threatened the international criminal court (ICC) with sanctions and made an excoriating attack on the institution in a speech in Washington.” September 10, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/10/john-bolton-castigate-icc-washington-speech

Financial Times “John Bolton threatens US sanctions against ‘illegitimate’ ICC: Trump national security adviser says Washington will act if court investigates Americans” https://www.ft.com/content/484182aa-b513-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe

RT “US puts foreign financial institutions on notice of sanctions if they deal with Maduro – Bolton” March 6, 2019 https://www.rt.com/news/453182-bolton-threaten-foreign-institutions/

RT “‘Kill 3,000+ Americans but remain a US client state’: Zarif shreds hypocrisy of US-Saudi partnership” July 31, 2019 https://www.rt.com/news/465482-zarif-iran-saudis-client-us/

Yahoo/Fox Business Videos July 31, 2019 https://finance.yahoo.com/video/john-bolton-consider-javad-zarif-233304676.html

Fox Business by Nick Giampia July 31, 2019 https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/john-bolton-we-consider-iranian-foreign-minister-zarif-an-illegitimate-spokesman-for-iran

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Venezuelan American views US-Venezuela Relations

Pattern of Pushing Overthrow of Venezuelan Governments

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va Winifred Golinger on Venezuela’s veteran public official, 46th President, Nicolás Maduro Moros

Eva Winifred Golinger prefaces these 2017 statements by saying that she knows Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro well, which is more than any U.S. public official can state honestly. This is some of what she had to say about Venezuela-U.S. relations in a 2017 interview.

President Nicolas Maduro “never aspired to be president. It’s not something he dreamed of or worked for his whole life.” In his position, “he’s become this international pariah in the Western world and he’s striving for legitimacy, not just amongst his own people; but also internationally. And that, unfortunately, starts with the United States.” Since 2016, they have made “all kinds of overtures to the Trump Administration… — lobbying efforts; and they even gave over a half a billion dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund.

 … [I]t’s amazing the efforts people undergo to try to get on the good side of a government that’s clearly hostile as the U.S. has been to Venezuela.”

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va Winifred Golinger on Venezuelan Elections

In “every election the opposition has lost against the Bolivarian Revolution or the Chavez movement and now the Maduro government,” the opposition “has cried fraud. It didn’t matter how bulletproof the system was.

Now saying fraud and it may in fact be fraud, it just seems like such a loss on the government side. They should have accepted whatever numbers they had, and said, ‘Look, in the midst of all this violence and this economic crisis, we were still able to garner around 6.6 million votes.’ That should be a showing of force.”

However, concerning the opposition in Venezuela, if the violent protests that involved the burning of buildings, burning buses, burning people, often innocent people, had occurred in Washington D.C. or on the streets of New York City, they “would not have lasted more than an hour.” This is not to justify what was happening in Venezuela, Golinger said, but rather “to show a more accurate picture of what’s going on.”

Violence has occurred “on both sides and overall and the opposition leadership — the anti-government leadership in Venezuela (with which U.S. leadership has joined forces) — have been reluctant to come out and fully condemn the violent protests. In fact, they’ve been encouraging them.” 

They have seen these protests as “sort of this way to heat up the streets to pressure the government …; that is, to force Maduro to resign, force regime change….”

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va Winifred Golinger on U.S.- Venezuela relations

“… [T]he United States funds and supports some of the worst elements of the opposition in Venezuela; (this) is a fact. There is a long history of Washington meddling in the affairs of Venezuela.”

There’s been an “ongoing escalation coming out of the United States government against the Venezuelan government since Hugo Chavez was in power.

“From the time Chavez first was elected in 1998 and those initial years when he didn’t comply with what the U.S. was looking for … having always had in Venezuela a client state; that’s when the U.S. backed a coup against Chavez in 2002.” 

Over the years the Venezuelan government “has sort of dug in deeper with their ideological model leaning more towards this anti-imperialist alliance internationally. They’ve opened more to countries like Russia and China and Iran as their trade partners” …; overall taking an “adversarial position” toward the United States.

U.S. President Barack Obama during his tenure in office “declared Venezuela an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States and put the first sort of sanctions on Venezuela officially.”

Those sanctions “were renewed” in 2017 before President Donald “Trump really had a full understanding of what was taking place. So it’s really just been an ongoing escalation.”

There has been a definite escalation of aggression under President Trump “because the people … who are pushing this particular escalation, right now—the more reactionary sectors of the Republican Party … —have (U.S. President Donald) Trump’s ear.” And this more reactionary sector has “been looking for a way to push regime change in Venezuela.

Rising tensions between the two nations “has nothing to do with a change in policy.” It is regime change that has always been “a sort of (U.S.) state policy towards Venezuela since the Chavez government.”

But Venezuela is one of the principal suppliers of oil to the United States and the relationship between the two nations is “a commercial relationship.” Though a lot of rhetoric goes back and forth, the nations “are interdependent.”

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va Winifred Golinger is a Venezuelan-American lawyer practicing in New York and specializing in immigration and international law. She is a writer and journalist; and since the summer of 2017, she has been a host on RT’s Spanish language television network. She has also been editor of the Correo del Orinoco International, a newspaper financed by the Venezuelan government; and a writer with Venezuelanalysis.com.

Golinger was born at Langley Airforce Base (Northern Virginia, USA) and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and City University of New York School of Law (Juris Doctorate or JD, international human rights law.

Several of her books—published in multiple languages by different publishers in several countries— focus on

“Hugo Chavez’s relationship with the United States, based on research using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act on what she describes as links between US government agencies and Venezuelan organizations, particularly in relation to the 2002 Venezuelan coup d’état attempt.”

Major works by Eva Winifred Golinger 

• Fact Not Fiction - US Aggression Against Venezuela (February 2015), CounterPunch
• The Same Old Dirty Tactics - Venezuela: a Coup in Real Time (January 2015), CounterPunch
• La Agresión Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA, Caracas: Ministerio del Poder Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información, (in Spanish) (with Jean-Guy Allard), 2009
• La Telaraña Imperial: Enciclopedia de Injerencia y Subversión (Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion), Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, (in Spanish) 2008
• Bush Versus Chávez: Washington's War on Venezuela, Monthly Review Press, 2008
• Bush Vs. Chavez: Washington's War on Venezuela, Aakar Books, 2008
• The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, Pluto Press, 2006

 Sources

News

RT “Maduro orders ‘total revision’ of Venezuela-US diplomatic ties after Pence calls for regime change” January 23, 2019

Vice President Mike Pence

✔

@VP

.@POTUS & the US stand w/ the Venezuelan people as they seek to regain their liberty from dictator Nicolás Maduro. For the sake of our vital interests & the sake of the Venezuelan people, we will not stand by as Venezuela crumbles. Read my op-ed in @WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela-america-stands-with-you-11548202850 …

10.8K 8:18 PM - Jan 22, 2019

https://www.rt.com/news/449458-venezuela-maduro-us-relations-pence/

The Intercept “The Battle for Venezuela and Its Oil,” Interview by Jeremy Scahill with Eva Golinger August 12 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/08/12/the-battle-for-venezuela-and-its-oil/

Wikipedia

Eva Winifred Golinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Golinger

Hugo Rafael Chávez (July 28, 1954 –March 5, 2013) was a Venezuelan politician and 45th President of Venezuela (1999-2013). From 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV, Chávez was leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party. He led the PSUV until 2012. “Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States’ foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of U.S.-supported neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez

Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Venezuelan politician and 46th President of Venezuela (2013-); from 2006 to 2013, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs; and  from 2012 to 2013 Vice President of Venezuela, serving under President Hugo Chávez. After the 2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election, the United States imposed sanctions on President Maduro, “freezing his U.S. assets,” barring him from the United States, and erroneously labeling Maduro as one of U.S. leaders’ favorite slanders, second to “terrorist,” “dictator.” Western nations and many of the Americas followed the U.S. lead, “although allies as well as China, Cuba, Iran and Russia offered support and denounced the interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro

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