Russia to Exit WHO, WTO and Other UN Agencies?

 

Russia to Exit WHO, WTO and Other UN Agencies?

By Peter Koenig

Global Research, July 28, 2022

Region: Russia and FSU

Theme: Intelligence, United Nations

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Is Russia about to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) – and possibly other UN and international bodies?

This topic has received little or no coverage by the western mainstream media.

According to Russian Duma’s Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, the Russian Government is evaluating the possibility to withdraw from a number of UN agencies, most visibly WHO and WTO which they consider do Russia more harm than good. This may be particularly the case with WTO which Russia only joined in 2012 after 8 years of negotiations, because WTO allows countries under the western sanctions program to increase tariffs on Russian goods way above the WTO guidelines.

WTO removed Russia’s “most favored nation” status in response to its invasion of Ukraine, which led several countries to suspend Moscow’s trade preferences and impose tariffs in excess of what WTO rules typically allow. WTO, created under the Charter of the UN, is not to take political decisions in favor, or against a member of its 164 member-organization.

See this.

Under pressure from the US and European governments, hundreds of western businesses, from Adidas, McDonald’s, and Pepsi to BP, Renault, British American Tobacco, Starbucks and many many more, have pulled out of Russia for fear of direct western sanctioning. McDonald’s said its cost for leaving Russia was equivalent to US$ 1.3 billion. Is the sacrifice worth it?

Never mind, it is contributing to anti-Russian propaganda – which in itself, contributes to the ever-mounting western pressure for “regime change”. 

As to WHO – while the agency pretends being non-political, in reality it is just the contrary, only political. WHO, under pressure from Bill Gates and the US, never approved the Russian Sputnik V as an official “vaccine” – like Pfizer, J&J, Moderna and all the western fake vaxxes.

The COVID Crime Continues Full Speed. Don’t be Fooled by the War. “Watch the Water”

WHO joined the west in condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine, never looking at the reasons that may have prompted the war, and never looking into the health impacts of 8 years bombarding and aggressing the Donbas Region by the Kiev regime with the help by Neo-Nazi Azov Battalions.

While no war is justified, analyzing the reasons that led up to war might help negotiating for peace and preventing other wars.

Nor did WHO evaluate independently the damage on Eastern Ukraine’s health facilities and inhabitants since the beginning of the war on 24 February 2022. Because most, if not all, attacks on Donbas health facilities, as well as outright killing of civilians Kiev claims and the west confirms, were Russian inflicted, when in fact the very Ukraine government carried out “false flags” against their own people.

It would behoove a neutral WHO to analyze causes of mass death, disease and injury reports. Not doing so and instead simply supporting the western version is a serious breach of WHO’s Constitution and role in determining the cause of the deteriorating state of a society’s wellbeing.

No war is justified – including economic wars (sanctions), wars with fear as the chief weapon, and wars destroying food, causing famine and death. The UN Human Rights Commission did not speak out against the WEF’s Great Reset nor did the UN. In fact, on June 13, 2019, the UN signed a Strategic Partnership Framework with the WEF, outlining areas of cooperation, notably the infamous UN Agenda 2030.

By doing so, the 193 member-UN body not only lost its luster (if it still had any), but more importantly its role as Peace Arbiter in the world, and as a defender of justice and human rights. The WEF is an insanely wealthy NGO at the service of Big-Big Finance and individual oligarchs.

The Great Reset which was in the making long before the Partnership Framework Agreement with the UN, is the ultimate control mechanism for the world’s resources and for humanity.

Russia is not only by far the world’s largest country, surface-wise, but arguably also by far the wealthiest in terms of natural resources. Russia is, therefore, in the crosshairs of western empire forces, including and foremost the WEF and its handlers.

Hence, the Russian Foreign Ministry is right when claiming that many of the UN institutions are working against the interests of Russia — which is a good reason to exit them.

Looking back at recent history may bring some insight as to why Russia, and especially President Putin, is so much slandered and outright hated by the west – of course, 24/7 supported by Western-corrupted media propaganda.

The West would have loved Boris Yeltsin (10 July 1991 – 31 December 1999) to stay in power into the 21^st century. Yeltsin allowed the West – mainly FED, IMF and World Bank – ravage and privatize Russia’s state-owned economy during his ten-year tenure.

Perhaps out of remorse for his leniency towards Western depredation of his country, Yeltsin was looking out for a strong and intellectually brilliant successor. In August 1999, he appointed the then little-known KGB Officer, Vladimir Putin, as Prime Minister. It was a clear sign that President Yeltsin was preparing Putin for leading the Kremlin.

Nobody in the West suspected Putin to bring Russia up from her knees to a full world power position. And that in less than two decades.

Russia, close ally of China and active member of Eastern integration, will not only survive the pressure but will thrive under the slandering pressure.

Leaving nefarious UN agencies may give other think-alike countries which wanted, but didn’t so far dare, to take such drastic action, a signal that they too may be better off not belonging to this Western-corrupted international network, including the European Union.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2022

 

Posted wit the permission of the author.

IMF – WB – WTO – Scaremongering Threats on De-Globalization and Tariffs – The Return to Sovereign Nations

By Peter Koenig

Global Research, October 14, 2018

 

 As key representatives of the three chief villains of international finance and trade, the IMF, World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) met on the lush resort island of Bali, Indonesia, they warned the world of dire consequences in terms of reduced international investments and decline of economic growth as a result of the ever-widening trade wars initiated and instigated by the Trump Administration. They criticized protectionism that might draw countries into decline of prosperity. The IMF cuts its global economic growth forecast for the current year and for 2019.
This is pure scaremongering based on nothing. In fact, economic growth of the past that claimed of having emanated from increased trade and investments has served a small minority and driven a widening wedge between rich and poor of both developing and industrialized countries. It’s interesting, how nobody ever talks about the internal distribution of GDP growth that these handlers and instruments of empire and liars for the elite are boasting about; nobody ever seems to question the way these growth rates are calculated – or perhaps just drawn out of hot air? Take the case of Peru, a resource-rich country that boasted in the past often an economic growth of 5% to 7%. On average, the distribution of this growth was such that 80% went to 5% of the population and 20% was to be distributed among 95% of the people. This doesn’t even address the fragmentation of the lower and higher tiers of the percentage breakdowns, but it surely creates more poverty, more inequality, more unemployment and more delinquency. 
Or just look at the insane and totally unfounded IMF prediction of 1 million percent inflation of the Venezuelan new currency in 2018 and 2019? – What are they talking about? No substantiation whatsoever. The same with the prediction of dire consequences from reduced trade, when trade as we know it, has and is serving almost exclusively the corporate world of rich industrialized countries, leaving poorer developing countries behind with a burden of unfair deals and often a resulting debt trap.
Such manipulations of truth coming out of international financial and trade organizations, especially the IMF and the WB, are so flagrantly and scrupulously wrong that they cannot be backed with a shred of professionalism, yet they get away with it, because of their apparent unfailable reputation, scaremongering government into doing what is against their and their peoples’ best interest, namely caring for their own local, sovereign economy, without any foreign interference. 
Time and again it has been proven that countries that need and want to recover from economic fallouts do best by concentrating on and promoting their own internal socioeconomic capacities, with as little as possible outside interference. One of the most prominent cases in point is China. After China emerged on 1 October 1949 from centuries of western colonization and oppression by Chairman Mao’s creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao and the Chinese Communist party first had to put a devastated ‘house in order’, a country ruined by disease, lack of education, suffering from hopeless famine as a result of shameless exploitation by western colons. In order to do that China remained practically closed to the outside world until about the mid- 1980’s. Only then, when China had overcome the rampant diseases and famine, built a countrywide education system and became a net exporter of grains and other agricultural products, China, by now totally self-sufficient, gradually opened its borders for international investments and trade. – And look where China is today. Only 30 years later, China has not only become the world’s number one economy, but also a world super power that can no longer be overrun by western imperialism.
But you don’t need to look that far. North Dakota saved herself from the 2008 “crisis”, by using public banking addressing the ND State’s economic needs – not the shareholder’s greed – and planning production and service activities that guaranteed basically full employment, while the rest of the country’s unemployment skyrocketed. The State’s economy grew by close to 3% in 2008 and 2009 – and is still today the State with the fastest growth rate in the country and with the lowest unemployment rate. This is mostly due to a state economic development policy that concentrates on local capacities and that banks on public banking. Today, North Dakota has still the only public bank in the country; but other States, like New Jersey, New Mexico, Arizona and others, as well as the city of Los Angeles are at the brink of creating pubic banking. The mainstream media, however, doesn’t propagate such examples, as they are not in the interest of the banking and corporate oligarchs.

Trump’s Trade War – or “De-Globalization”?

Local economy with local investments for the benefit of the local population, is, of course, not what the ultra-capitalist system wants. It doesn’t fit the neoliberal economic doctrine – driving globalization forward, pushing its bitter medicine of austerity down poor governments throats, so to further exploit their people, creating more poverty, milking their social systems and steeling their natural resources.
Enough! Wake up! – Whatever you may think of President Trump – and he is certainly no panacea for world peace and his abject policy of interference in foreign lands and fueling conflicts and wars in the Middle East and around the globe must be condemned – but his protectionist policies, the “tariff wars” are a welcome sword into the belly of globalization – of the very neoliberal doctrine that has for the last thirty years brought more misery to 99.99% of the planet’s population than any other economic doctrine since Adam Smith. Trump may or may not know what he is doing, but certainly his handlers and advisers, hidden or overt, know the purpose of their newly professed turn of international policy. 
Its intention is to cut the political cohesion created by globalization, to divide again for the empire to conquer. Yes. The intention is not to promote local economies, per se, but rather to get countries ready for unguarded bilateral negotiations and agreements between Washington and the developing world, under which the latter have no protection, and with their mostly corrupt leaders, they buckle under facing the harsh conditions of the empire. So, the purpose is not to help, say, the Latin American US backyard to become sovereign again, to the contrary, with imposed bilateral deals – see Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia – they are slated to become increasingly vulnerable to and dependent on the US and US-dollar hegemony.
The point is – for self-conscious and alert governments with the desire to return to their sovereign national politics – this is a crucial moment of truth to take advantage of. The ship is turning. It is the moment to jump off the globalized bandwagon, the globalized trade – the open borders for indiscriminate foreign investments; it is time to sit down and reflect – and return to autonomous local policies: local economies, for local markets, with local money and local public banking for the benefit of the local economy. Trade, of course is part of a local economy; but trade should best be kept within the realm of friendly neighbors and nations that have similar interests and similar political convictions. Trade under de-globalized circumstances should and will return equal benefits for partners, a win-win situation for all trading partners – as it should be according to the original interpretation of trade. By contrast, modern trade as we know it, has almost consistently benefitted the rich countries to the detriment of the poorer ones. 
A good example for fair and equal trade may be ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) – an association of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries (Antigua and Barbuda Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Surinam, the Grenadines and Venezuela), initiated and created by Venezuela and Cuba. ALBA may be an excellent illustration on how trade should work between countries or groups of countries. Most people have never heard of ALBA, for the simple reason, the international media are typically silent about it, because the neoliberal elite doesn’t want a case of equality to become an example for others to follow. There exist currently other similar, even lesser known cases of fair and equal trade, throughout the world, that are equally silenced by the media. 
Promoting fair and equal trade is not an agenda item of WTO, nor of the IMF or the World Bank. Their role is just the contrary, being facilitators for the west to further exploit the people of the South and to further deplete the workers’ accumulated funds of their social safety-net that are still available in many western industrialized countries, especially in the western EU. It’s the bedrock of social safety that can be privatized and sucked empty by the international corporate banking system, along with privatization of social infrastructure, such as water supply and sanitation, electricity, hospitals, airports, railways – and much more. All what has the air of profitability can and must be privatized under neoliberal economic doctrines.
Countries, nations and societies, beware from listening and adhering to and working with these nefarious globalizing organizations – IMF, WTO and WB. They are mere servants of western corporatism and debt enslaving financial systems driven by the US Federal Reserves (FED), as well as Wall Street and their European banking partners.
This is an appeal to all countries that are proud of regaining their political sovereignty and economic autonomy, to ignore scaremongering and fear imposing threats by the IMF, the World Bank and WTO. They are not representing the truth, but their nasty role is to belie reality in favor of manipulative invented statistics that are expected to being believed because they stem from these so-called well-reputed institutions. Again, the best example of the IMF’s nonsensical statements is their repeated denigration of Venezuela, accusing the country of fostering an economy that creates a one million percent inflation in 2018 and even higher, they say, in 2019. – Can you imagine? – That says it all. Be aware – their words, whether spoken in Bali, Washington or Geneva, are nothing more than fear- and threat mongering hot air.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21^st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

The original source of this article is Global Research

 

 

Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2018

Submitted by IWB, on May 14th, 2016

 

« Pew Research Study – The American Middle Class Declined in 90% of Metro Areas From 2000-2014     Gold & Silver Demand Skyrockets as “Chinese Floor” Ensures Upward Price Moves » TTIP is the Bookend to the WTO Agreement to Protect Bankers Submitted by IWB, on May 14th, 2016 inShare0 by Martin Armstrong The TTIP proposal is bought and paid for by the banks. Pick up the rug and you will always find the dirt. The USA has been fining European banks for vast amounts of money. The New York banks, especially Goldman Sachs, is shaking like a leaf at the thought that they could be hauled into European courts to pay for the collapse of Greek debt (for starters). The main stumbling block with TTIP is how, at the request of the bankers, the agreement prohibits any foreign country from suing New York banks anywhere outside of New York City — where they own all the judges today just as the mafia did during the Prohibition days. Back in 1999, ex-Goldman Sachs U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said that crafting a deal to allow China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) was “eminently doable.” Yes, it was Robert Rubin who orchestrated the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and few people realize that he also opened the door so that Goldman Sachs could sell derivative time bombs outside the USA. Rubin managed to stuff the financial services portion into the World Trade Organization Agreement and placed the world at Goldman Sachs’ doorstep. “This deal covers 95% of the global financial services market as measured in revenue. With this deal, 102 WTO members now have market-opening commitments in the financial services sector, including 70 improved offers in this round of negotiations. The commitments before us now encompass $17.8 trillion in global securities assets; $38 trillion in global (domestic) bank lending; and $22.2 trillion in worldwide insurance premiums. In insurance alone, US companies now have more than $200 billion in foreign premiums.” (Statement by Secretary Rubin and Ambassador Barshefsky Regarding the Successful Conclusion of the WTO Financial Services Negotiations 12/13/1997) TTIP is now all about protecting the banks from lawsuits because they blew up the world and seriously damaged the global economy. Under Ronald Reagan, the annual GDP growth was 3.5%. Obama will pray for 1.5%. Trading volume in the S&P 500 and the velocity of money crashed and burned after Rubin connived to repeal Glass-Steagall and gave birth to transactional banking. TTIP is by no means a real trade deal. It is one-sided and intended primarily to protect the New York bankers.

TISA SECRETYLY NEGOTIATED AT THE WTO THREATENS INTERNET FREEDOM, AND OURS TO

THANKS TO COMMON DREAMS FOR THIS ARTICLE

Published on

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

by

Common Dreams

Secret WTO Trade Deal Threatens Internet Freedom, New Leak Reveals

Newly exposed text of Trade in Services Agreement raises alarm of analysts

by

Sarah Lazare, staff writer

• 0Share
"Given the raging domestic debate over net neutrality, the growing demands for more data privacy and the constantly changing technology, a pact negotiated in secret that is not subject to changes absent consensus of all signatories seems like a very bad place to be setting U.S. Internet governance policies," said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen.(Photo: Joseph Gruber/flickr/cc)

Global governments are secretly negotiating a little-known mega trade deal that poses a threat to internet freedoms and boon to corporate interests, analysts warned Wednesday, citing a just-leaked U.S. proposal.

The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), under discussion between a 50-country subset of World Trade Organization members for nearly two years, is so secretive that its talks aren't even announced to the public, making it even more shadowy than the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Kept in the dark about the deal, the global public will be hugely impacted by its provisions.

"What these closed-door negotiations do is cement in place rules for global governance—rules that affect a whole host of issues that aren't about trade at all, such as privacy, financial stability and much more," Melinda St. Louis, International Campaigns Director for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, told Common Dreams.

"There is extreme industry influence in this closed-door trade negotiation process," St. Louis explained. "On the U.S. side there are more than 500 corporate advisers who have access to these texts while the public and many elected officials are locked out."

All that is publicly known about the content of the TISA pact was exposed through leaks, the first of which was publishedby Wikileaks in June and revealed that negotiators aim to further deregulate global financial markets.

The latest leak shows that negotiators are also taking aim at internet freedoms.

TISA's text on "E-Commerce, Technology Transfer, Cross-border Data Flows and Net Neutrality," proposed by the U.S. Trade Representative in April, was publishedearly Wednesday morning by Associated Whistleblowing Press, a non-profit organization with local platforms in Iceland and Spain.

According to an analysis of the text from watchdog organization Public Citizen:

With respect to privacy protections, the leaked text reveals that the U.S. negotiators are pushing for new corporate rights for unrestricted cross-border data flows and prohibitions on requirements to hold and process data locally, thus removing governments’ ability to ensure that private and sensitive personal data is stored and processed only in jurisdictions that ensure privacy.

Such measures are considered critical to ensuring that medical, financial and other data provided protection by U.S. law are not made public when sent offshore for processing and storage, with no legal recourse for affected individuals. Numerous U.S. organizations are pushing for improvements in such policies, which are considerably stronger in other countries. If the proposed TISA terms on free data movement were to become binding on the United States, such needed progress would be foreclosed.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, declared: "Given the raging domestic debate over net neutrality, the growing demands for more data privacy and the constantly changing technology, a pact negotiated in secret that is not subject to changes absent consensus of all signatories seems like a very bad place to be setting U.S. Internet governance policies."

"The US proposal aims to advance the commercial interests of its services industry that supplies services across the border, mainly through e-commerce, and foreign direct investment in manufacturing and services," according to a summary by Public Services International—a global trade union federation.

"The leaked documents confirm our worst fears that TISA is being used to further the interests of some of the largest corporations on earth," said Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary for PSI.

The alarm raised by Public Citizen follows previous criticisms, including from the Global Trade in Services Forum, a gathering of more than 140 representatives from unions, civil society organizations, and governments, which took place in Geneva in October.

"From education to transport, from finance to health," reads a statement from the gathering, "the new Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) is posing serious threats to quality standards in various public sectors that affect the lives of citizens."

Last year, 341 civil society organizations from around the world sent an open letter which declares, "The TISA negotiations largely follow the corporate agenda of using 'trade' agreements to bind countries to an agenda of extreme liberalization and deregulation in order to ensure greater corporate profits at the expense of workers, farmers, consumers and the environment."

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