…Yet There is Almost No Opposition or Outcry—Even When Sanctions are Increasingly Having a Boomerang Effect
The U.S. may try piously to defend sanctions as a ‘response to foreign tyranny,’ but they are really a pretext to steal foreign bank accounts and cripple commercial rivals of U.S. corporations.
On November 14, the Biden administration announced yet another round of sanctions on Russia, targeting this time Russia’s military supply chains by imposing sanctions on 14 individuals and 28 entities that it said were part of a transnational network that procured technology to support Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine.
One of the companies blacklisted was Milandr, a Russian microelectronics company that Washington says is part of Moscow’s military research and development structure.
The sanctions additionally targeted several aviation-related companies and two individuals—Abbas Djuma and Tigran Khristoforovich Srabionov—who facilitated the Russian mercenary Wagner Group’s acquisition of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Iran, which have been used in the Ukraine War.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that “the United States will continue to disrupt Russia’s military supply chains and impose high costs on President Putin’s enablers, as well as all those who support Russia’s brutality against its neighbor.”
According to Statistica.com, the U.S. has imposed 1,683 separate sanctions on Russia since the war with Ukraine broke out in February 2022, and 2,634 since February 2014, when the U.S. supported the Maidan coup overthrowing the democratically elected pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych. Canada has followed suit by imposing 1,418 sanctions on Russia since February 2022, and 1,872 since February 2014, while the UK has imposed 1,381 since February 2022, and 1,617 since February 2014.......More Below
Nvidia would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday, Bloomberg reported. A Chinese expert said the move is shortsighted, noting that tightening restrictions despite domestic industry opposition will only accelerate China’s tech innovation and further diminish Nvidia’s chances of reentering the Chinese market.
Known as the Secure and Feasible Exports Act, the bill would order the US Commerce Department to halt export licenses for sales of chips to adversaries, including China and Russia for at least 30 months. Any processors more powerful than those already approved for export to those nations would be subject to the measure, the Bloomberg report said.
The legislation comes as the White House weighs whether to allow Nvidia to export the....more below
A high-ranking ICC official, Nicolas Herrera, secretly financed the sanctioned UPC armed group in the Central African Republic, according to court materials obtained by Sputnik.
Nicolas Herrera, a high-ranking official in the Registry Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC), secretly recruited and financed the Union for Peace (UPC) in the Central African Republic (CAR) armed group, led by local warlord Ali Darassa, to capture ICC target Joseph Kony, by using US-based NGO employee Joseph Martin Figueira as a covert intermediary, thereby violating the ICC’s financial accountability standards by funding an armed group, according to a Sputnik correspondent's analysis of public court records.
The conviction of Joseph Martin Figueira, a Belgian-Portuguese anthropologist found guilty of espionage and collaborating with militants in the Central African Republic (CAR) in November, has uncovered a complex financial trail linking ICC staff to the country’s armed militants, evidence ...
Hundreds of retired Israeli police officers have urged the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, to reject Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon in corruption cases.
On November 30, Netanyahu, who faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust in three separate cases, submitted a formal pardon request to the office of Herzog, claiming the long-running corruption cases were tearing the regime apart.
In a letter to Herzog, about 400 former officers, including ex-commissioners and deputy commissioners, said Netanyahu’s request contains “not even a hint of admission of guilt,” making it unacceptable.
They warned that “such a step without [Netanyahu’s] confession and remorse is liable to ignite severe violence in Israeli society.”.....more below
