Alfred de Zayas (of UN): New US Economic Sanctions (which you-know-who imposed in early 2017) constitute “economic warfare”; asks International Criminal Court to investigate for “crimes against humanity”– sanctions pulled $6 billion from Venezuelan economy in 1st year

This comes from a letter to USA Today that they reprinted in a a regular column, this time titled: “Democrats set the morality bar for themselves: Readers sound off.”  The letter was apparently signed “Walt Zlotow, Glenn Ellyn, Ill.”  This is entirely uncorroborated but sounds so true I thought I’d pass it along with a warning that it may not be true… it’s just the sort of thing He would do and just the sort of thing the UN would do.  It just makes the whole thing that has been going on in Venezuela for the last two or three (or more) years more understandable when you know why.   They’re starving because of US (and other countries) economic sanctions, and He turned the screws tighter as soon as he became *president because He so desperately wants socialism to fail– it’s central to his argument against creeping socialism in this country.  He has to be able to hold up Venezuela as an example of the failure of socialism or He has nothing to prove that American capitalism is better than socialism in any country.

Republicans see the Affordable Care Act as being socialist, and Medicare for All as an extreme leftist-socialist position.  This one principle underlies much of what they are trying to accomplish with their administration– although they keep running into roadblocks like detailed regulations put down by previous administrations.

China should look sharp to the essential philosophical underpinnings of “Americanism” as practiced by McCain-type conservatives.  These basic rules of being American include, among the top two or three principles, the idea that capitalism is good and socialism is bad– therefore socialist (in principle) countries like China are intolerable and should be regarded as enemies.  This attitude underlies His aggressive approach to trade negotiations with China.