The US government applied sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil firm PDVSA yesterday because of corruption.



Mr Bolton and Mr Mnuchin said the sanctions were intended to prevent Mr Maduro's government from taking funds from the state oil company. "We have continued to expose the corruption of Maduro and his cronies and today's action ensures they can no longer loot the assets of the Venezuelan people," Mr Bolton said.

Ah, yes. Corruption. Washington knows a thing or two about corruption.

In an ironic twist, this report came out the exact same day that Washington was denouncing corruption.



The U.S. has slipped out of the top 20 countries perceived to have the least corruption, according to an annual report released Tuesday by the watchdog group Transparency International. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2018 finds the U.S. in 22nd place, with a score of 71, right behind France and ahead of the United Arab Emirates....Last year, the U.S. was ranked 16th. Zoe Reiter, Transparency International's acting representative to the U.S., noted that this is the lowest score given to the United States in seven years.

Of course we are also denouncing and punishing the Venezuelan government for human rights abuses.



The United States Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green released a statement on Thursday blaming Maduro for “hunger, a severe health crisis, violence, and countless violations of human rights, while causing a massive exodus of Venezuelan citizens.”

The United States, the nation that imprisons more of it's citizens than any other nation on Earth, is very concerned about human rights violations in Venezuela.

Domestic human rights is another story.



“For the second year running, the Trump administration assaulted human rights in the US and abroad with an array of policies that harmed refugees, immigrants, women, and many others,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, US director at Human Rights Watch. “The reality of rights abuses by the US is that they frequently have an impact that goes far beyond US borders.”

In another ironic twist, Human Rights Watch isn't the only ones to say that the U.S. has a human rights problem. The United Nations are investigating our human rights abuses, and we've decided to stonewall them.



The Trump administration is no longer cooperating with United Nations investigators tasked with keeping an eye on human rights violations in the United States, according to a Friday report from the Guardian.

...The State Department has not responded to official complaints from the rapporteurs since May 2018, leaving at least 13 formal queries unanswered. What’s more, the Trump administration has not invited the UN to monitor human rights issues inside the country, a break from past presidents. The move “sends a dangerous signal to authoritarian regimes around the world,” the Guardian writes.

...In June, the Trump administration pulled out of the UN human rights council—an inter-governmental body of UN-member states charged with promoting and protecting human rights around the world—characterizing it as a “cesspool of political bias.” By not cooperating with UN investigations within the country, the United States joins the few nations in the world that have resisted oversight, many with terrible human rights records.

Oh, the irony! It burns!

And that's not all.

Remember when the Trump Administration threatened the international criminal court (ICC) because they dared to investigate our war crimes in Afghanistan?

Well, the threats are working. This happened just a few days ago.



A senior judge has resigned from one of the UN’s international courts in The Hague citing “shocking” political interference from the White House and Turkey. Christoph Flügge, a German judge, claimed the US had threatened judges after moves were made to examine the conduct of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

..

Flügge said the judges on the court had been “stunned” that “the US would roll out such heavy artillery”.

“It is consistent with the new American line: ‘We are No 1 and we stand above the law,’” he said.

You are right, Flügge.

We not only stand above the law, we stand above irony.

Might makes right.