There is not a US Public Perception that Intl law has been Routinely Violated since WWII because it’s not given proper coverage by MSM:
Dr. Alfred de Zayas Presents What Proper Coverage Would Look Like
Key Words:
Sanctions, International Law, Democracy, Syria, Cuba, Ukraine, Russia, Minsk Agreement
Pedro Gatos 00:00 - Introduction
Welcome alternative news listeners. This is 91.7 KOOP community radio. This is bringing light into darkness news and analysis. I'm your host Pedro Gatos and we are transmitting from Austin, Texas. All comments are welcomed and can be sent to Pedro at pgatos00@gmail.com. That's pgatos00@gmail.com. Many of the shows are archived at pedrogatos.org. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to have a recording of the show up on pedrogatos.org for your closer scrutiny within the week. We have a sensational show tonight as quite frankly, we have every Monday night. If your interest is to get as close to the truth as any news and analysis show will allow you then you are in the right place. Welcome to bringing light into darkness where we invite you to join in our weekly pursuit for social justice, a pursuit where we seek to separate fact from fiction and where we acknowledge uncertainty where we seek to deconstruct deceit by identifying where unproven allegations are presented as fact through repetition and the absence of evidence and where uncertainties are approached from a humble, critical thinking perspective, because our interest is in deconstructing deceit and depression not enabling it. Tonight's show seeks to bring light into the darkness around international law and its violations. We are very excited to be welcoming back to bringing light into darkness. Alfred de Zayas, professor of international law and world history at the Geneva School of diplomacy with immense experience and insights into international law. Enjoy. Welcome this is 91.7 KOOP Hornsby Austin. This is Bringing Light into Darkness, monday news and analysis. I'm your host Pedro Gatos. Today is Thursday, February the 9th 2023. This show will be broadcast live on coop radio on Monday, February the 13th 2023. We come to you from the capital city of Austin, Texas. Before introducing our very special guest just a very brief introduction, it's really about double standards that it's a hallmark sign of inequality. Being a bully is to seek to harm intimidate or coerce by means of force or coercion. Instead of doing right or wrong, I use my physical advantage to get my way we're all familiar with what bullying is. It's an action of exerting inequality, you must follow these rules, but I do not have to because of my arrogant status. With that being said when we look at the world theater of international activities and international law, one of the most important issues of course, is the UN Charter, and the UN Charter was created (this is according to the charter itself) originally to prevent the scourge of war following World War Two and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person and the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small. Also, another important issue of the UN Charter, among so many others was to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained and to promote social progress and better standards of life for all in larger freedoms to practice tolerance and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and advancement of all peoples. With that being said, I wanted to introduce and welcome back to bringing light into darkness Dr. Alfred de Zayas . He's a professor of international law and world history at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Alfred, welcome back to Bringing Light Into Darkness.
Alfred de Zayas 05:00
Pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Pedro Gatos 05:04
Absolutely. Well, there's a couple of articles that I have been studying for the last few weeks. And some of them not that long, because that just came out principles of international order that you wrote back in November 2820 22. In counterpunch, the other more recently, on February the 6th 2023, the Ukraine war in light of the UN Charter, also published in counterpunch. Before turning to some of the substance of those articles, I wanted to more formally and properly introduce you not only as the professor of international law and world history at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, but you are an attorney, a PhD, a former UN Independent Expert on international order from 2012 to 2018. You are also a former secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, you are author of over 10 books, including the most recent 2021 publication of building a just world order. With that being said, let me ask you, you're a former senior UN staffer and former rapporteur can you start off by sharing with people? What does that mean to be a rapporteur and a little bit about the functioning of rapporteur within the UN system in international law? Can you share that with us briefly?
Alfred de Zayas 06:26
Well, first, for 25 years, I was an international civil servant, meaning I was under the Secretary General of the United Nations. And I serve the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the function of Secretary of the Human Rights Committee in the function of registrar since all the petitions pass through my desk to the Human Rights Committee to the Committee Against Torture to the committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, etc. Now, in that capacity, of course, I was an employee. After that, I took early retirement and went back to teaching so I taught in Chicago, in Vancouver, in Galway, Ireland, in Spain, and here, of course in Geneva, at the Graduate Institute in Geneva at the University of Geneva, and subsequently, and that's where I'm teaching right now at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Out of this happy retirement, I was recycled. And I became the first United Nations independent expert for international order. This is a new mandate created in 2011. And my successor is Dr. Livingstone Sewanyana, from Uganda who took over from me in 2018. So for six years, I was the mandate holder, and I was an independent expert, meaning I did not get a salary. I got, of course, my expenses covered every time I flew to the General Assembly, every time I flew on special mission, when I did a consultation in Brussels, or whatever, that of course, was paid by the organization. But I did not get a salary for writing 14 rather long and detailed reports, and the office did not interfere with my work. As I said, the principle, shall we say, added value of being a rapporteur is that you're supposed to be independent. That doesn't mean that all rapporteurs are, in fact, independent, or even objective or even professional because the system like every human enterprise, has been, let's not say hijacked. But let's say influenced by lobbyists, by governments, by pressure groups, etc, etc. So this group of rapporteur experts, they serve the Human Rights Council, not to be confused with the Human Rights Committee. The committee is a quasi judicial organ of experts, all of our lawyers, whereas the council is a political body under the General Assembly, and I was as a civil servant, I served the quasi judicial treaty bodies of the United Nations. As an independent expert I served the very political Human Rights Council. Now in 14 reports, I addressed the issues that I thought were most crucial for the international order, certainly peace, peace as a human right as certainly the concept of democracy and take resolution 60 bar one of the 24th of October 2005 That is when the organization was celebrating 60 years of its existence. Well, a resolution was adopted, say among other things, that there is no one single model of democracy, that democracy cannot be exported, that every country has a right to find its own way to democracy, and that it is not for other countries to interfere in the internal affairs of states. I also wrote a report on the illegality of what is called unilateral coercive measures. Now, I don't like the use in the press of the concept of sanctions, unilateral course of measurements are, of course, economic sanctions, and financial blockades, etc. But if you use the word sanction, you're actually implying you're suggesting that the country imposing sanctions is legitimate, that it has authority that it has a right to punish somebody. The fact is that the only sanctions that are legal in international law are sanctions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter. Other than that, you have the use of force, the use of economic force by states, which is actually contrary to the letter and spirit of the UN Charter, in particular, Article Two of the UN Charter. Now talking about these unilateral course of measures, they are actually crimes against humanity, when they cause 1000s of deaths. They have already caused 1000s of deaths in Cuba and Nicaragua and Venezuela, and in Syria, and Iran, etc. And even now, after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, and Syria, the United States refuses to lift the sanctions against Syria, which makes it much more difficult for your Syrian relief.
Pedro Gatos 11:58
Let me just interrupt for a second here, because you've gone through important insightful information and a really nice manner to get more of a global picture, not just your own experience in the UN, but the UN itself. The thing that is striking to me, and I'm really glad you started off with this whole thing about the illegitimacy of sanctions, and let's say are endorsed by the Security Council, but we presently it's close to what 1/3 of the world's population is sanctioned by the United States in the West, and like you're saying it is a violation of international law because it more than anything else, it impacts negatively the majority populations that have nothing to do with what is being sought to be changed. In one of your articles the one that I alluded to earlier the principles of international order back on the 28th of November, you talk about the principal basis of international law in principle 19, providing, in part that states must refrain from interfering in the matters within the internal jurisdiction of another state. Yet, that is exactly what we do. And we have a long documented track record of doing our classic example is in Chile and leading to the overthrow of the democratically elected government in 1973. I won't go into the particulars, but I am particularly well studied and how we have covertly undermined the sovereignty of nations whose governments and policy decisions we seek to influence and control I visited back in 2003, with Philip Agee, the ex CIA agent who's passed away, who detailed in writings as well as in our own interview, how the United States routinely penetrates civil societies of other countries, which you have clearly indicated as a gross violation of international law, their institutions of other nations in order to seek that influence and control. We make huge investments in media, we make extraordinary large payments to political parties to influence their impacts. We infiltrate trade unions. In fact, in Chile, we actually funded trucker strikes in order to paralyze the economy of the government, we penetrate business associations, in short, we penetrate and therefore undermine the sovereignty of nations as a regular order of business, all in contravention of this perhaps most important un principle that there is no single model of democracy, that it does not belong to any country or region and reaffirm the necessity of due respect for sovereignty and the right of self determination. I am particularly intrigued by your comments and UN principle that democracy is the legitimate expression by the people have a specific government or country as they deem it's appropriate and that no other country can tell another country how to run their democracy yet it seems that we have have an extraordinary influence on the internal affairs of other countries, not just by sanctions, but by the threat of sanctions. So if you don't do this or that or join this coalition against this, then we may do this. Can you speak a little bit about those unseen forms of coercion that, of course, are in violation of the charter, but nonetheless seem to be pretty flagrant and regular throughout the last number of decades?
Alfred de Zayas 15:27
Well, they're not even covert, they're quite evident that the United States is not only imposing sanctions, but threatening all the time. And I've seen that happen. And it's not even necessary to, shall we say, publish it. In the New York Times, or in the Washington Post, it just happens. And there is a culture of imposing sanctions on others, the United States is an imperial power. And as an imperial power, it wants its order to be followed. And if you're not prepared to follow orders from Washington, there are consequences. And the consequences can be very devastating. The intention of the United States has been to asphyxiate the economy of Cuba, of Nicaragua, of Venezuela, of Syria in the hope that the populations will rebel against their governments, and that there will be regime change, that there will be a coup d'etat or that the President will be assassinated, etc. Interestingly enough, after 62 years of sanctions against Cuba, the Cuban government has not fallen, and it's not about to fall.
Pedro Gatos 16:43
I find that very interesting, too, because, you know, when you're in those countries, and I visited Cuba, you know, seven or eight times, it's very clear to the Cubans what's going on, but it's not clear to the US population, right?
Alfred de Zayas 16:56
No, certainly not. I mean, the Cubans are not necessarily revolutionaries, who are enamored with President Diaz canal, or with Raul Castro, or with the system, but they are patriotic, and they see that their country is being siege by the United States, they see that the United States is aggressing Cuba in every possible way. So the anger of the Cuban population is directed against the United States, and not against the government. So the problem in the United States is the mainstream media, the conglomerates, the corporate press that actually lies to the American people systematically, and that suppresses all information, the inconvenient truths that do not fit the narrative. And that, by the way, is also the same reason why there is censorship of RT and Sputnik and so many other organs because they don't want people to be aware that there is a different perspective, that there is a different way of looking at the historical facts. So going back to the press, the United States press and talking about what self defined quality press New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, these are in the service of Washington, they are the echo chambers, of the Pentagon, the echo chambers of the State Department. Their original function as Watch Dogs has been transformed into that of attack dogs, that is New York Times simply incites the American people to hate Putin, to hate he to hate Russian culture to reject Chinese industry and Chinese advances in technology, etc. There is a lot of fear mongering, and that fear mongering is not because Putin is threatening the United States, or because he is threatening the United States. As a matter of fact, Putin since the year 2000, has been trying to find a friendly cooperative models Vivendi with the United States, and it would have been possible if Bill Clinton had wanted it if George W. Bush had wanted it if Barack Obama had wanted it, but we don't want it for very good reason. We have the military industrial financial complex, that depends on having enemies, it needs enemies, it needs wars, it needs tension. It needs to justify military bases abroad and we have 800 of them. It needs to exist bought weapons have those weapons used blown up, whether that be missiles, or whether they be drones or whether they be landmines, but we produce all of these weapons, we sell them at an enormous profit. And then we want the worst so that this weaponry is destroyed and can be replaced with new ones that we produce.
Pedro Gatos 20:25
If I could add one other comment just I wanted to ask you to speak to to. But what you say is important is that if you go back to the the relationship between the media, the US government in our foreign policy, it seems that your claim of US foreign policy promoting conflict and war that the US public is completely ignorant of that history and historical facts, especially since World War Two from which we emerged as the world's most powerful economic and military nation, it seems like all of the countries that challenge economic hegemony of the United States, like in the case in Russia and China, where they actually challenge our unit polar hegemony over the world economy, such as Russia's action to intervene in support Syria, in preventing the US desired regime change of just a few years ago. So if you challenge that US Western led economic hegemony of the world or challenge us Western led unfettered access and financial penetration and profiteering of natural resources within economies of other nations, they become in the crosshairs of our information worlds. It is striking to me that there has not been media coverage, and therefore there has not been accountability for destroying millions of lives. You know, we went into Iraq, we went into Libya, we went into Syria.
Alfred de Zayas 21:54
Further back, I mean, we went into Grenada in the 80s we went into Canada. We went, of course, and to Vietnam. I mean, we have been waging war nonstop, since the Second World War to show that we have a big stick, and we're gonna hit everyone over their head who does not obey our orders. And that, of course, is reality. That is not what the mainstream media tells the American public, the American public lives in a bubble lives in the fantasy world thinking that we are exceptional, that we are the indispensable country as Madeleine Albright once said. That we are by definition, the good guys that we have a mission to bring democracy and human rights to the rest of the world. Of course, what does democracy and human rights means? It means money. We only believe in business friendly, human rights, those human rights that will allow American transnational corporations to make a killing, whether it be in Venezuela, whether it be in Brazil, or whether it be in Africa. I mean, America's business is business. And what we want is short term profits. We don't have a vision for the future.
Pedro Gatos 23:24
Well short term profits and also to eliminate any competition to that dominance. Right. So when Russia-
Alfred de Zayas 23:32
It's emblematic, what we did with a Chinese competition that he 5g competition, and now 6g competition from Huawei.
Pedro Gatos 23:42
Dr de Zayas Let me ask you this, because I want to bring this back to the present a little bit. And I want to remind our listeners that we have the great honor of speaking with Dr. Alfred de Zayas with immense UN and international law experience, more so than anyone I've had the privilege of being around. So thank you for that. But also, he's speaking from Geneva, Switzerland, and in one of your articles the Ukraine war in the light of the UN Charter that you just published in counterpunch on February 6, I think there's an important part of history that is being left out. And that was, according to the UN Charter, every possible diplomatic path should always be tried to be pursued before you have any type of military action and such. And in December 2021, the Russians floated to NATO and to the United States proposals of a path to peace and averting a military confrontation and expressing their concerns of their own existential, national security issues and such. And in your piece, you speak a little bit to the importance of that, but also how they were rather arrogantly not even considered by the West and Now that is also a violation, I believe you said pursuant to Article Two Three of the charter by not even considering them. And you indicated that it was a provocation in contravention of Article Two, paragraph four of the UN Charter. Can you explain that a little bit in that process as well. But before you do Doctor de Zayas, we need to take a brief pause for the cause. This is 91.7 KOOP. Hornsby, Austin. And this is bringing light into darkness. And we'll be back in just a flash. Don't touch that dial.
Part 2
Pedro Gatos 00:00
Welcome back. And we return now to bringing light into darkness with Dr. Alfred de Zayas UN rapporteur and international law expert, enjoy. Because I know your position is that the Russian invasion and attack of Ukraine is a violation of international law. However, the provocation side of all of this has not been given the same type of coverage in the Western press. And I was hoping you could maybe fill in a more balanced view of all of these forces.
Alfred de Zayas 00:34
Whoever has a laptop or PC can go on the sites of democracy now. And the Real News Network and Gray Zone and Push Back and the Intercept, there are plenty of alternative news services that will give you the facts and will explain to you why the United States is violating articles one and two, and 55 and 51 of the UN Charter, etc. The fact is that there's no right to intransigence in the UN Charter or an international law, there is an obligation to negotiate in good faith. Now, once the Minsk agreements were signed in 2014 and 15, there was an obligation to implement them. And as we know, from the special mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, that admission in the Donbass 80% of the violations of the Minsk agreements came from the Ukraine. And we also know that Angela Merkel, and Francois Holanda, respectively, the Chancellor of Germany and the president of France and had guaranteed the means agreements entered into those agreements in bad faith, meaning they entered into the agreement for one reason and one reason only to have time to arm Ukraine to the teeth and the consequences. We see them today if Putin had acted feeling threatened, and I think that the threat was very real, feeling threatened by Ukraine, and of course, Ukraine as a proxy for NATO feeling threatened in 2014, when the democratically elected president of Ukraine was overthrown in a vulgar coup d'etat in a push. And then the Europeans immediately started dealing with this illegal regime with the push government, which instead of stretching a hand toward the Russians started adopting anti Russian legislation prohibiting the use of the Russian language, etc, etc. If Putin had acted in 2014, he would have undone the illegal coup d'etat against Yanukovych, and maybe matters would have been solved with very little blood being shed. But Putin decided to play according to the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force and simply to negotiate according to Article Two, paragraph three, so Putin went for the Minsk agreements and wanted to see those men's agreements implemented. Ukraine went in agreements in bad faith, and decided to gain time. And we have seen that in the eight years from 2014 2022, Ukraine was armed to the teeth, and that the United States and United Kingdom had sent their contractors and they're experts to train the Ukrainian army. Not only did we deliver missiles and drones and whole Windsors and everything to the Ukrainians, we also train their army. And that is what explains how come the Ukrainian army has survived the Russian invasion of 24th of February 2022. So having said that, I reaffirm my commitment and my conviction that the United Nations Charter is the only rules based order we have and that Article Two, paragraph three obliges everybody to negotiate in good faith. And there is where the problem arises when there's no good faith on the part of Kev and no good faith on the part of Washington, London, Paris, Berlin. I mean, when you take a world leader like Vladimir Putin for a ride, when you lie brazenly to Vladimir Putin, If the man actually waits eight years before he takes action now, the action that he took is technically, without a doubt, a violation of article two, paragraph four of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force. But that use of force was predicated on the threat of the use of force, by Kyiv. And by NATO, seem to forget that in January 2022, Solinsky, actually signed an order to attack and try to invade the Russian speaking republics of Lugansk, and donuts, and even Crimea. Now, if that was not a provocation, if that was not a threat of the use of force prohibited in Article Two, paragraph four of the UN Charter? I don't know what is.
Pedro Gatos 05:54
I think you're right about the fact that most Americans are not aware that the Lugansk and Donetsk area of Russian speakers had suffered some 14,000 deaths before the invasion of February of 2022. But also in your article, and I wanted you to maybe tie this back into what you're currently talking about, is that one of the great tragedies of the undermining of international law lies in the fact that the West went into Iraq, the West went into Libya, the West with respect to what occurred in Yugoslavia, all of these violations occurred yet there was no repercussions. There was no accountability, there's no teeth or consequences of that. Can you speak briefly to that? And again, let me just remind our listeners, we're speaking with the honorable UN diplomat, repertoire, Alfred de Zayas from Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. de Zayas, can you from the legal perspective, talk about the absolute importance of understanding when you violate a law, and there are no consequences internationally, how that undermines international law to begin with, and we've invented this term of rules based order, which to this day, just seems to be some type of circumvention of international law that we kind of make up the rules as we go along. In your article, you also mentioned that there is no legitimacy to a preemptive strike, which is what occurred, or that was apparently the pseudo legitimacy of the Iraq intervention back in 2003. Can you elaborate on those issues, please?
Alfred de Zayas 07:31
Well, the United States and a number of NATO countries, I've engaged in a series of aggressions against other countries. Now the United States keeps invoking the concept of the international community, and George Walker Bush invented the idea of a coalition of the willing back in 2003, to assault the people of Iraq, something that was tantamount to a revolt against international law and a revolt against the UN Charter. Even Secretary General Kofi Annan clearly declared the Iraq war to be an illegal war, referred to it as a war incompatible with the UN Charter, that did not make much of an impact because the mainstream media did not give it visibility. So you will find it in the internet, as you say, Kofi Annan illegal the Iraq War, you will get several articles in the BBC in The Guardian and The Independent, etc. But there was no perception in the general public that here international law had been violated in a most flagrant manner. Now, the violation of international law does not change international law. I mean, the United States seems to think that because it gets away with its violations of international law, it has actually changed international law. When the United States imposes sanctions, which are illegal and gets away with it. It's like the sanctions now have been somehow legitimized. Well, they have not. We have a situation of international wrongful acts, we have a situation of grave violations of international law in total impurity, which only manifests the fact that we do not have effective enforcement mechanisms in the UN system. Why don't we have them because the drafters of the UN Charter did not want to give the organization that power. So you have rules, the rules are valid. The United States and United Kingdom and Canada and France and Germany violate those rules, but there's no court capable of bringing them on the dock and condemning Now. Now, having said that, I still believe that it's better to have rules to have the UN Charter than to have nothing at all. And the role of the media that could be the antidote against these violations if the media were to call Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and Donald Trump and Joe Biden to win accounting, but as I said, the mainstream media is actually the cheerleader and mainstream media engages in incitement to hatred, incitement to rules of phobia, and xenophobia, in a manner inconsistent with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that specifically in article 20, prohibits war propaganda, and prohibits incitement to hatred and incitement to violence, something that we read in the New York Times and in the Washington Post on a daily basis. Now, not only do we do these things, we also lie who has forgotten Colin Powell poles and tracks via which he showed in the Security Council accusing Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction. I mean, these things are public record, everybody knows about them. But then the phenomenon is that no one takes any consequences. No one says our government is a criminal government. Our mainstream media lies on a daily basis manipulates on a daily basis censors on a daily basis. No, we keep living in that fantasy world, that we are the exceptional nation, that we are the good guys, and that we have a free press, and then keep repeating that to you. It's like when they tell you every article I read in the US press, even in scientific journals, like foreign affairs, you read about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, I'm sorry, if there was ever a pre emptive war, that was it.
Pedro Gatos 12:24
So even though it was illegal under international law, you are acknowledging which we all should if we had a proper understanding of history, that there was an extreme provocation going on for a number of decades. We won't get into all that in this moment. But that still does not constitute a legitimate military response.
Alfred de Zayas 12:47
Correct? Correct. The same as George W. Bush's claim that our war in Iraq was justified through pre emptive self defense, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is also not justified by article 51 of the UN Charter, which only allows for self defense if the other guy has actually aggressed you, the other country has invaded or bombarding you. That all goes under the term crime of aggression in article five of the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the definition of aggression in Kampala, but practice and you know, what, as I know it, and the people know, there's no way to bring one of the five members of the Security Council before the International Court of Justice, you will not see Bloody Mary putting in The Hague, before the International Court of Justice, just as little as you will see George W. Bush, or Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Joe Biden, before the court. Now, I don't think that punishment is the answer. What the international community should do is, engage in negotiations, engage in mediation, arrange for a ceasefire, and then find a quid pro quo.
Pedro Gatos 14:23
Let me ask you on that issue real quick, because I think this is important while we have he's still on the interview here. So part of the violations that have been going on to is the fact that Russia and Ukraine were very close to a peace negotiated settlement draft in March of this year and on other occasions.
Alfred de Zayas 14:43
So it's not only President Erdogan of Turkey, who successfully arranged for a compromise that was acceptable to care and to Moscow, and that was a great diplomatic success, the Israeli Prime Minister Bennett clearly that his own Israeli mediation and the mediation by Turkey, were specifically torpedoed by the United States, the Linsky. And Putin were in agreement to end the fighting. The United States is willing to fight against Russia, till the last Ukrainian, and Szalinski is a traitor to his own people, by having his people slaughtered in a proxy war for the benefit of the United States. It is not for the benefit of the Ukrainian people.
Pedro Gatos 15:38
Let me ask you this, because I think it's really an important distinction. While we're on the subject that, on the one hand, and you've been saying this, there's just been a billboard deceit going on to the American public. And one of the great examples of that is, on the one hand, we tell the American public look, if Ukraine wants to join NATO or this or that of the other, that's a sovereign decision of theirs, and no one has the right to get in the way of their sovereign decision making. Yet, that's exactly what we did in sabotaging the peace process through us. And through Boris Johnson in the UK, on multiple occasions, they blew up or torpedoed, as you said, a very promising peace process. Basically, if I understand the UN Charter correctly, that if war breaks out, the most important thing is to seek negotiated settlements
Alfred de Zayas 16:30
immediately, and that is a use Golden's obligation under Article Two, paragraph three of the charter, whoever prolongs a war, whoever refuses to negotiate peace is in violation of the UN Charter. But this United States does this sort of thing on a regular basis. I give you one example, back in 2017, when I was the first United Nations rapporteur to go to Venezuela in 21 years, shortly before my mission to Venezuela, the Venezuelan government, and the opposition had reached an agreement, which by the way, I published in my report to the General Assembly, but as the case may be, that agreement was a sensible agreement, it was an implementable agreement was pragmatic. It was a give and take. And at the last minute, on the day of signature, the representative of the opposition, Julio Barr has gets a phone call. And the phone call just simply told them, no hear me Don't sign. So there are different stories whether that phone came from Washington, or it came from the US Embassy in Colombia, the time during the regime of Eman dukkha, or whether that was from the Colombian President himself or whoever, but he didn't sign. I mean, the two sides had negotiated for two years. And that document was there, the compromise had been reached and agreed upon. And then on the last moment, there is no signature because the United States intervenes and says don't, you don't have to deal with these communist or Marxist or whatever, we will put you on the driver's seat. And then after that, of course, the United States invented for the character, or the caricature of Juan guaido, who was then suddenly auto proclaimed the new president of Venezuela, this ridiculous things, these massive interferences in the internal affairs of states. That is what creates a conflict, that is what leads to war. And unfortunately, the United States has been getting away with that for decades upon decades, and mainstream media has been supporting it. The mainstream media tells the American people whom to like and whom to dislike, I mean, for the last 30 years, we've been subjected to propaganda against the Russians propaganda against Putin, propaganda against met with propaganda against Russian culture, propaganda against Russian athletes, etc, etc.
Pedro Gatos 19:23
Dr. de Zayas in the last couple of minutes that we have left with you. Can you speak just a little bit more about this we, Otto and how we created there's a term called lawfare that we undermine other nation's sovereignty by yet another tool in the toolbox, where laws can be created or people can be incarcerated improperly or charged improperly like what we saw with Lula in Brazil, but going back to the Venezuelan model, that was really striking to me how out of the blue we created, or ostensibly created a parallel government to Venezuela. that we recognized in the last couple of minutes, can you talk about the legitimacy or I should say the legitimacy of those actions?
Alfred de Zayas 20:07
Well, of course, they're all violations of the UN Charter. They're all violations of the charter of the old as the Organization of American States, and certainly articles 319 20. They're all violated by the United States in doing that, and violated by the other countries, such as Canada and European countries that recognize this puppet, this figure called a one guaido with zero legitimacy. On the other hand, what are you going to do, if like in the courts of Great Britain, where the rule of law has collapsed a long time ago, as we know, among other things, from the emblematic case of Julian Assange, as we know from the book of my colleague, you'll end up with a curb Professor Niels Meltzer, on the trial of Julian Assange, this is lawfare of the worst kind. This is massive interference in the internal affairs of other states. And this is actually what I would say, an action that constitutes a violation of article 39 of the UN Charter, a threat to international peace and security. Because by destabilizing the world, by destabilizing the Government of Venezuela by destabilizing the government of Brazil at the time of the law fair against Lula, etc, we actually feed into those forces that will want to solve this by violence that will want to solve this imbalance by war.
Pedro Gatos 21:54
Dr. de Zayas, we're just about out of time. And I just wanted to say we will have to continue this discussion. I think this law fair is a huge deal. And we wanted to end the show, with not just reminding folks that we've been visiting with a distinguished and honorable international law and world history expert, Dr. Alfred de Zayas as professor of international law in world history at the Geneva School of diplomacy. But also, I wanted to just share there's a number of articles on counterpunch by Alfred de Zayasthat people can download and study and get more information about some of the issues that Dr. de Zayas has touched on today. Also, he has among a number of books and important book building adjust order that was recently published in 2021. If the world is going to be saved, we need to have some type of legal framework and rules of the road that everyone needs to be accountable to. And I think the American public would make our government accountable to it if they knew the truth of these histories that are kept from us by this media that you have referred to time and time again to this discussion as one that has turned its back to its function to protect a democracy from egregious self interests, and instead has become a cheerleader, enabler and promoter of such self interest. Dr. de Zayas. Thank you so much for your time. We would love to have you back on soon for this important education. And thank you again for joining bringing light into darkness. I hope I get to see you next week. Don't be late.