From Nord Stream to Syria sanction, U.S. interventions are damaging the world

The world is unsettled with earthquakes causing severe damage in Türkiye and Syria, Pulitzer winner journalist Seymour Hersh disclosing that the U.S. Navy is behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion, and a Chinese airship's force majeure entry into U.S. airspace triggering another round of U.S. hostility against China.

As of Monday, the death toll in Türkiye and Syria caused by the earthquake on February 6 and its aftershocks has risen above 33,000. The U.S. on Thursday changed its policies, giving a 180-day exemption to its sanctions on Syria for "all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts" due to international pressure. However, the 72-hour "golden window" has long passed, and the 180-day exemption is hardly a respite compared to Syria's 12 years of suffering.

U.S. sanctions on quake-stricken Syria aggravate the humanitarian crisis

On February 6, a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck south-central Türkiye near the Türkiye-Syria border. In Syria, the disaster has left many people, who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old civil war, homeless yet again.

Steven Sahiounie, a Syrian American freelance journalist and chief editor of Mideast Discourse, told CGTN that in Aleppo, 400,000 people lost their homes and that in Lattakia city, where he lives, 150,000 people also lost their homes.

"People are dying in the hospitals and are injured because there is no medical, and they cannot get any medicine. As I said before, Syria has had 12 years of war, so the medical system is very weak," Sahiounie said.

According to China Media Group's (CMG) correspondent in Syria, U.S. sanctions are causing serious difficulties in the aftermath of the earthquake, most notably shortages of oil and diesel. The reporter said the Syrian government had been unable to secure any oil supplies since January, and it had to redistribute diesel fuel used for heating to heavy vehicles used for rescue after the earthquake. In addition, 70 percent of Syria's medical workers have fled the country because of years of fighting and sanctions. He said medicine and materials for medicine-making cannot reach the epicenter due to U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Syria since 1979 when the Syrian army got involved in Lebanon, and the U.S. designated it as a "state sponsor of terrorism." In 2011, the U.S. government imposed additional sanctions on current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government after mass protests erupted in the country, leading to an outbreak of civil war. Following the U.S., the European Council also imposed sanctions on Syria in 2011.

Kevork Almassia, a political analyst on the YouTube channel Syriana Analysis who now lives in Berlin, said in many Western countries, people don't realize that sanctions on Syria have blocked humanitarian aid and medicine and reconstruction materials to Syria as "the governments here are in full control of the influential media outlet," and "there is a united narrative when it comes to important issues, such as Syria, such as China, such as Russia, Ukraine, et cetera."

Alena Douhan, a UN-appointed independent human rights expert, in November, presented detailed informationon the catastrophic effects of sanctions on all aspects of life for the Syrian people following her 12-day visit to the country. She reported that 90 percent of Syria's population is currently living below the poverty line, pointing to their limited access to food, water, electricity, shelter, cooking and heating fuel, transportation, and healthcare.

At the same time, blocking bank payments and refusing deliveries by foreign producers, coupled with sanctions-induced limited foreign currency reserves, have caused severe shortages in medicines and specialized medical equipment, particularly to treat chronic and rare diseases.

The economic and financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. on other countries have seen exponential growth since the September 11 attacks. By the end of the fiscal year 2021, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on 9,421 entities and individuals, up 933 percent from 2000. The Donald Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, equivalent to three a day, according to the 2021 Sanctions Review report released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in October 2021.

U.S. global surveillance network

Aside from draconian sanctions, U.S. interventions in other countries are also embodied in its mass surveillance of other countries.

Recently, the U.S. accused China of spying on its country by letting a "surveillance balloon" fly into its airspace, which triggered the immediate delay of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China despite the fact that China has repeatedly said it's a total accident and the airship is a civilian airship for meteorological purposes. The Chinese side also called on the U.S. to handle the accident in a "cool-headed" manner and not overreact, but the U.S. side eventually shot it down.

U.S. officials also claimed on Wednesday that China, in this way, is collecting intelligence in more than 40 countries without giving any evidence. During Wednesday's news briefing, a reporter from Associated Press asked U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price to give the other 39 names of these countries and how the U.S. government knows that the other 39 countries' airspace sovereignties are being violated if the U.S. is not spying on the 39 countries. Price refused to answer, saying giving out the sources will "weaken our defenses against programs like this."

However, more and more evidence shows that the U.S. government is the world's biggest surveillance body.

In 2013, documents leaked by former contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was tracking online communication via major technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. The surveillance program is known as Prism. And Britain's electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ was also tapping global communications and sharing the data with the NSA.

The U.S. government not only spies on its people but also on other countries and world leaders. Snowden also disclosed that 38 embassies and missions have been "targets" of U.S. spying operations. Countries targeted included Belgium, France, Italy, Greece, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile, as well as America's non-European allies such as Japan, South Korea and India. The NSA had also monitored the phones of 35 world leaders, including then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

After fleeing to China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the NSA also had hacking operations in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland, saying targets in Hong Kong included the Chinese University, public officials and businesses.

Charles W. Freeman, a retired American diplomat who had served in the State and Defense Departments of the U.S., told CMG that he knows many people in the intelligence community, none of whom agree with the so-called balloon "surveillance" claim and that the balloon hype is a small group of neoconservatives manufacturing evidence and falsely claiming that China is spying on the U.S.

Collective silence of Western media on Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion

Contrasting with the balloon hype, the recent breaking news by Seymour Hersh alleging that U.S. Navy divers laid bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September barely drew any attention. The U.S. mainstream media is keeping a collective silence on the astonishing disclosure, aligning themselves with the U.S. government on the issue.

Hersh, a former New York Times and New Yorker reporter who won numerous awards for his investigative journalism, including the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in 1968 and the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal following the U.S. invasion of Iraq, cited an unnamed source reporting that the decision to bomb the pipelines was made in secret by U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off Moscow's ability to earn billions of dollars from natural gas sales to Europe.

The U.S. believed that the pipelines gave Russia political leverage over Germany and Western Europe that could be used to weaken their commitment to Ukraine after the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, according to Hersh.

The extent of the damage means the Nord Stream pipelines are unlikely to be able to carry any gas to Europe in the winter. Plunging Russian gas supplies have caused prices to soar in Europe, where countries have struggled to find alternative energy supplies to heat homes, generate electricity and run factories. And the leak also worried environmentalists as the pipelines contained pressurized natural gas, the vast majority of which is methane. The escape of the greenhouse gas would also cause grave damage to the ozone layer and further impact global warming.

CMG researched the number of reports on the Chinese balloon and Nord Stream pipeline explosion and found that there are over 10,825 reports about the Chinese balloon from Western media outlets from February 3 to 5, while there were only 1,552 reports from February 8 to 10 about Hersh's disclosure of Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion. Also, compared with last September's reports when the pipeline explosion was first found, the largest daily number of reports on it surpassed 1,800 on September 29, while the largest daily number of reports on Hersh's latest disclosure barely reached 200 on February 8.

Mainstream U.S. media has always claimed that they seek the truth, fairness and balance in their reports, but sometimes, when it comes to things that matter, it seems that they tell the public nothing.