Against the backdrop of US aggression against North Korea, NATO is intensifying its preparations for war with Russia, the world’s second largest nuclear power. A report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel (Issue 43/2017) based on a secret NATO document indicates how far plans for war have progressed. The news magazine concludes: “In plain language: NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia.”
In the document entitled “Progress report on the Alliance’s Enhanced Deterrence and Defence Disposition,” leading military figures call for a major boost to military capabilities in order to conduct a so-called “Major Joint Operation Plus.” The abstruse terminology in fact stands for a war involving the main military organisations of all NATO countries, i.e. hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Der Spiegel notes: “The period of the peace dividend is past, the command structures of the Cold War are returning.”
The secret report states that NATO must be able to “quickly strengthen one or more threatened allies, underpin peace and wartime deterrence, and support allies in the event of an attack.” The mobilisation of the necessary troops requires “robust military logistics and capabilities”. The lines of communication would have to extend from North America to the eastern and southern borders of the NATO Alliance.
The report notes that in particular, when relocating large-scale military units to Eastern Europe, NATO is insufficiently prepared, due to the reduction and increased demands of flexibility of the armed forces for foreign missions. In the field of logistics, “the risks involved in rapid reinforcement is considerable”. The alliance lacks low loaders for tanks and rail cars to move heavy equipment to the front. The infrastructure is not designed for the heavy battle tank of the German Army the 2Leopard 2.”
The core of the NATO paper is the demand for two new battlegroups comprising 2,000 troops.
The first of these units is based on the example of the Cold War Supreme Allied Command, which was to ensure the transfer of troops and supplies across the Atlantic for war in Europe. “According to high-ranking NATO military officers the sea route could prove to be an Achilles heel for replenishment in cases of emergency,” Spiegel writes. “In the secret meetings of the central command, analysts warned that Russia is able to manoeuvre its submarines in the Atlantic Ocean largely unobserved.” Based on the current command structure, NATO convoys in the Atlantic are defenceless.
The establishment of such a command unit would involve a massive militarisation of the North Atlantic. This is illustrated by a look at its historical precedent.
Up to its dissolution in 2003, the “Striking Fleet Atlantic” constituted the core of the Supreme Allied Command Atlantic. This included up to four aircraft carrier battle groups, two anti-submarine commandos, an amphibious unit for landing operations and 22,000 sailors. The purpose of this major federation was to maintain the supremacy of the seas between North America and Europe.
A second command unit known as “Rear Area Operation Command” is planned to organise the distribution of war supplies across Europe. According to Der Spiege l, its main task would be “to plan and secure logistics between Central Europe and the eastern member states….In reality the unit represents “the renaissance of the mobilisation concept of the Cold War”.
In plain language: the remit of the new battlegroup is to organise the deployment of large-scale contingents of troops at the Russian border and prepare an attack on Russia. Preparations are already in full swing and Berlin—the location of the command in Germany—is playing a key role. According to Der Spiegel talks between high-ranking US military officers and German officers had already taken place at the beginning of October, shortly after the federal election.
The first telephone conversation between German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) and her American counterpart James “Mad Dog” Mattis also centred on setting up the new command unit. This means that Germany, which has been engaged in a massive military build up for the past three years now and is seeking to increase its military presence in NATO, will become even more centrally involved in NATO’s preparations for war with Russia.
Der Spiegel comments “Domestically, the project would probably be unproblematic even in a possible Jamaica coalition with the Greens, because Germany would not provide combat troops, but only staff soldiers” This is confirmed by the aggressive rhetoric used by the Greens against Russia and the conduct of the exploratory talks for a Jamaica coalition, which has made clear there are only tactical differences between the various parties.
A decision on the establishment of new command structures is expected at the meeting of NATO defence ministers on 8 and 9 November in Brussels—despite increasing tensions within the NATO alliance.
The NATO secret report and the report in Der Spiegel both justify the preparations for a war, which would threaten millions of lives, as a response to the “Russian annexation” of Crimea. This turns reality on its head. There is nothing progressive about the Putin regime, and its own military policy increases the danger of war. But the real aggressors in Eastern Europe are the US and western powers. The United States has been systematically encircling and attempting to subjugate Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, and in February 2014, both Washington and the German government supported a right-wing coup against the pro-Russian Yanukovych government in Ukraine.
The depiction of Russia as an aggressive superpower waiting for the chance to take over all of Eastern Europe, has been used by the imperialist powers to justify the deployment of NATO troops at the Russian border. In 2014/15, NATO increased its “Rapid Reaction Force” to 40,000 soldiers. Its so-called “spearhead” comprises four “multinational battlegroups” with 1,000 soldiers stationed in each of the three Baltic States and Poland, led by Great Britain, Canada, Germany and the US.
The secret report now calls for a further increase in size of these battlegroups. There is “insufficient assurance that the NATO Response Force will be able to react quickly and sustainably when necessary.” Der Spiegel makes clear that what is contemplated is not merely a reaction to Russian aggression but rather active preparations for war with Moscow. The magazine concludes “hardly anyone expects that Russia could actually attack a NATO country.”
Former FBI special agent Ali H. Soufan has confirmed that Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd has been killed during an attempt by the authorities to arrest him as part of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s great purge of the Saudi elites. He died when his security contingent got into a firefight with regime gunmen attempting to make an arrest.
Prince Abdul Aziz was deeply involved in Saudi Oger Ltd, a company which until it ceased operations in the summer of this year, was owned by the Hariri family. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was punitively in charge of the company until it ceased operations.
Abdul Aziz is confirmed dead. He was 44 years old. Earlier, Mansour son of the former crown prince Muqrin was also declared dead. https://t.co/IsUyU896o4
Prince Abdul Aziz’s strange and sudden death which is said to have occurred during an attempted arrest, sheds light on the theory that the clearly forced resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had more to do with internal Saudi affairs than the Saudi attempt to bring instability to Lebanon.
As I wrote yesterday,
“This therefore, forces one to consider why the Saudi regime would involve itself in the Hariri affair on the same day as the ‘great purge’?
The answer lies in exploring whether the Hariri ‘purge’ was more for domestic consumption than for international consumption. As a powerful Saudi citizen, one could think of Hariri’s apparently forced resignation as the first Saudi purge of the day, on a day that saw many powerful Saudi citizens dethroned from powerful places in society.
The message to all powerful Saudis, including to Hariri, is that no one is too big to fall at the hands of MBS, even a Saudi citizen who is the Prime Minister in a foreign democracy. The fact that both Hariri and MBS are young men in a leadership role, would indicate that for the famously politically trigger happy MBS, it was also an ego boost”.
Furthermore, during his speech yesterday afternoon, Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah remarked that perhaps Hariri was involved with the business dealings or personal relations of some of the Saudi officials who had been victims of great purge.
The sudden death of Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd now appears to confirm this line of thinking. This also sheds light on yesterday’s helicopter crash which killed another Saudi prince, Mansour bin Muqrin. When taken in totality, the ‘crash’ does not appear to be an accident.
With reports of no-fly lists being drawn up by the Saudi regime to keep various princes and other official inside the country, the purge looks to be only growing in terms of its scope and its brutality.
President Donald Trump candidly reveals his ignorance of geography and international politics.”I never knew we had so many countries”.
We recall the circumstances of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the dangers of nuclear war, fifty-five years ago in October 1962.
What distinguishes October 1962 to the 2017 realities of the Donald Trump presidency is that the leaders on both sides, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev were accutely aware of the dangers of nuclear annihilation.
In contrast, Donald Trump is totally ignorant and misinformed regarding the dangers of nuclear war: “We will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea”
Michel Chossudovsky, November 7, 2017
***
Trump Tells Japanese Dignitaries He Never Knew There Were ‘So Many Countries’ Until He Was Elected
While giving a speech to Japanese dignitaries on the first leg his Asian tour, President Donald Trump admitted that he was unaware of how many countries there are in the world until he became president.
Addressing how he first became acquainted with Japanese Prime Minister Abe — who Trump referred to by his first name, Shinzo — Trump made the off-hand comment, appearing to go off-script from his prepared remarks.
“So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am,” Trump remarked. “But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries.”
You can watch the president’s remarks in the video below. The countries comment comes at the 14 minute mark:
Transcript of President Trump’s Statement in Response to Japan’s Prime Minister Abe
Source: White House
emphasis added
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Prime Minister and Mrs. Abe, this has been a really wonderful two days. We have to spend more time together because I have enjoyed every minute of it, even though he’s a very, very tough negotiator. And, Melania, a real friend of yours now is Mrs. Abe. And I know you enjoyed it with me. You enjoyed it in Florida and you enjoyed it here, and maybe even more so. But I want to thank you for the royal welcome.
And it was really a — very much a working holiday, even on the golf course. So we can call it a couple of days off, but it wasn’t. It was full work. Even as we played golf, all we did was talk about different things. (Laughter.) We better not go into it. But I have to tell you, we did, and we made a lot of progress on a lot of fronts.
I do want to congratulate Mr. Aoki. He was one of the great putters — probably still is. They say you never lose your putting. When you’re a great putter, you never lose your putting.
But I remember a specific tournament, believe it or not, because it was one of the best I ever saw. It was the greatest putting display that I ever saw. It was you and Jack Nicklaus. Was that the U.S. Open? The U.S. Open. And you would get up and sink a 30-footer. He’d get up and sink a 25-footer. And this went on for the whole back nine. And then, ultimately, Jack won by one stroke. I thought it was one of the greatest putting displays anybody has ever seen and there ever was. And I even know your putting stroke — very flat.
And I spoke yesterday with the great Matsuyama, who is doing great, right? He’s going to be a big star, and he’s going to be great. I don’t even know if he’s with us tonight. I don’t think he’s with us tonight. But he does want to get together in New York, and we’re going to get together. And even though I want to have a great interpreter, but he’s rapidly learning the language.
But I will tell you that it’s an honor to be with you because everyone in the world of golf talks about that one great afternoon. Just putt after putt, and it was really great. So congratulations. Great gentleman, great gentleman. (Applause.)
So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am. But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries. (Laughter.)
So I was now President-elect. But I didn’t know you were supposed to not see world leaders until after you were in office, which was January 20th. So you were just not supposed to because it was considered bad form. It was not a nice thing to do, and I understand that from the standpoint of the President whose place you were taking.
So you can only take so many calls from world leaders — because, you know, everybody was calling. But Japan, you take. And some others — we took Germany, we took Russia, we took China, we took — we took your Prime Minister.
So it’s November, and he said to me, “Congratulations on your victory, it was a great victory, I would like to see you. I would like to see you as soon as possible.” And I said, “Anytime you want, just come on in, don’t worry about it.” But I was referring to after January 20th. (Laughter.) So I said, don’t worry about it. Anytime you want, I look forward to seeing you. Just give us a call, no problem, anytime you want. And all of the sudden, I get a call from, actually, Japan press. And they said that our Prime Minister is going to New York to meet with the President-elect.
So the press is going crazy because the Prime Minister of Japan is coming to see me. I think it’s absolutely fine, but I didn’t really mean now. I meant some time in February, March, or April. Meaning, you have a very aggressive — very, very aggressive, strong, tough Prime Minister. That’s a good thing, by the way — not a bad thing. (Laughter.)
So then the New York media started calling me, and I was getting all sorts of signals from Hope and Sarah, in a different position, and everybody. And they’re going crazy. They’re saying, “You cannot see him. It’s so inappropriate. It looks bad.” I say, “What’s wrong?” They said, “It’s a bad thing to see him. You have to wait until after, in all fairness, Barack Obama leaves office.” And I said, “What do I do?” And they said, “Let’s call.”
So I called him, and he wasn’t there. He was on the airplane flying to New York. (Laughter.) And I said, “You know what? There’s no way he’s going to land and I’m not seeing him.”
So I saw him, and it worked out just fine. Do you agree with that? (Laughter.) And he actually brought me the most beautiful golf club I’ve ever seen. It was a driver that’s totally gold. Right? It’s gold. (Laughter.) And I looked at it — I said, “If I ever use this driver — me — to use that driver at a golf club, I will be laughed off every course I ever go onto.” But it is the most beautiful weapon I’ve ever seen, so I thank you for that.
But we had a great meeting. It lasted forever. It was a very long meeting in Trump Tower. And for some reason, from that moment on, we had a really — and developed a really great relationship. And here we are today and better than ever, and we’re going to work together. And it’s going to get more and more special, and we’re going to work out problems of Japan and problems of the United States. And it’s going to be something very, very special for both countries.
I just want to finish by saying that Melania and I today visited the palace. This is a beautiful, beautiful place. And we met two very beautiful people, the Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress, and spent a long time talking to them today. And there was a lot of love in that room for all of you people — I can tell you — from everyone from Japan. They love the people of Japan, they love this country dearly, and they have great, great respect for your Prime Minister. And they truly think that your Prime Minister did very, very well when he decided to marry — or she decided to marry him, Mrs. Abe. But they have great, great respect — I can tell you that.
And I just want to conclude by saying that our two great countries will have incredible friendship and incredible success for many centuries to come — not years, not decades, but for many centuries to come.
And again, it’s an honor to have you as my good friend, and I just want to thank you and Mrs. Abe. This is a very, very special two days. We will not forget, and we will be back soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
A small town in Texas was the scene of a horrific mass shooting Sunday morning. A lone gunman, wearing black tactical gear and a ballistics vest, and toting what authorities described as an “assault-type rifle,” opened fire at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, population about 700, southeast of San Antonio, killing 26 people.
At least a dozen of the dead were children, one as young as 18 months. Eight members of one family were killed. The grandmother of the shooter’s wife was also killed. Fifteen of the 20 wounded remain in area hospitals, several in critical condition.
The shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, was pursued by a local resident, who saw the attack and drew a weapon and fired on the gunman. Kelley dropped his weapon and attempted to escape by driving away. Two people followed him by car and he was eventually found dead in his vehicle, crashed by the roadside in a neighboring county. Authorities believe he died of a self-inflicted wound, with several weapons at his side.
When Americans turned on their televisions or checked their phones or laptops midday Sunday, many shook their heads in disgust at the news of yet another gruesome mass shooting in America. More innocent lives gunned down in what authorities would have us believe are “senseless killings,” with no real explanation provided aside from describing the gunman as someone gripped by “pure evil.”
But do such banal explanations hold up under conditions where these mass shootings continue to occur with regularity and increasing brutality? The Sutherland Springs shooting took place just five weeks after the Las Vegas shooting at a country music festival, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, which left 59 dead and 546 injured.
Eight of the 20 deadliest mass shootings in the US have taken place over the past five years (all figures include the perpetrators):
November 5, 2017: Sutherland Springs, Texas church shooting—27 dead
October 1, 2017: The Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada—59 dead
June 12, 2016: Pulse Nightclub, Orlando, Florida—49 dead
December 2, 2015: San Bernardino, California shooting—14 dead
October 1, 2015: Umpqua Community College shooting, Oregon—10 dead
September 16, 2013: Washington Navy Yard shooting, Washington DC—13 dead
December 14, 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Newtown, Connecticut—28 dead
July 20, 2012: Century 16 movie theater shooting, Aurora, Colorado—12 dead
Following Sunday’s shootings, the authorities were quick to chime in with their religious platitudes, as well as cynically seizing on the tragedy as an opportunity to advance their pro-gun-lobby or gun-control agendas.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Japanese President Abe Shinzo in Japan, President Trump stated: “I think that mental health is a problem here. Based on preliminary reports, this was a very deranged individual with a lot of problems over a very long period of time … but this isn’t about guns.”
Former president Barack Obama tweeted:
“We grieve with all the families in Sutherland Springs harmed by this act of hatred, and we’ll stand with the survivors as they recover. May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst.”
But such statements are cold comfort to the Sutherland Springs families who are grieving and offer little by way of explanation to the public at large as to why such atrocities continue to happen. Of course, the perpetrators of these mass shootings are invariably deranged individuals. How could it be otherwise? What “sane” person would gun down innocent people at a church, a university, an elementary school, or a music festival? But there are always deeper societal issues at work in the lives and actions of these individuals that drive them to lash out with violence.
In his 26 years, Devin Patrick Kelley had already participated in his share of violence before Sunday’s incident. A spokeswoman for the Air Force confirmed that Kelley, who joined the military after graduating from high school in 2009, was court-martialed in 2012 on two charges of assaulting his first wife and her child. The child reportedly suffered a fractured skull.
He was confined for a year, given a bad conduct discharge, and reduced in rank to an airman basic. Although this discharge should have barred him from purchasing weapons, the Air Force never informed the FBI of the charges against him.
Kelley’s first wife divorced him in 2012 and he remarried in Texas in 2014. Authorities say there was a “domestic situation” between him and his in-laws that led to the assault. His mother-in-law was a parishioner at the Sutherland Springs church, and she had reportedly received threatening text messages from him, although she was not present at the church on Sunday.
NBC also reported that two of Kelley’s ex-girlfriends said he stalked them after breakups. A search of criminal records in Comal County, Texas, where he lived, found a record of only minor violations, including driving with an expired registration, speeding, and driving without insurance.
While Kelley lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado for a short time in 2014, he was arrested on an animal cruelty charge, according to police records, involving beating a dog with both fists and punching it in the head and chest, a witness said. He paid a fine in that case.
But the question remains, what kind of society molds such an individual, willing to settle a seemingly petty score by carrying out mass murder? One must first look to the US military. For Kelley and other young men and women, the US has been in a perpetual state of war—in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere—for their entire lives. The current occupant of the White House is threatening the obliteration of an entire nation and people in North Korea.
Kelley—faced with the prospect of unemployment, a low-paying job in the service industry or the precarious “gig” economy—chose to enlist in the military upon graduation from high school. He likely absorbed the military’s jingoism and “America First” mentality, but the Air Force eventually spit him out with a bad conduct discharge after he abused his family.
Thousands of young people have also been drawn into the abuse of opioids, spurred on by the lack of job opportunities and the predatory drug companies. Opioid overdoses claimed the lives of about 64,000 Americans last year, a jump of 21 percent over the previous year, according to new figures release by the Centers for Disease Control.
And while the Trump administration claims that not one cent in additional funding can be provided for the opioid “public health emergency,” the White House and the Republicans are pushing through a massive tax cut for corporations that will lower the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to 20 percent.
Increasing numbers of older workers are unable to retire, and are working into their 70s to maintain their health insurance and enough money to pay their rent or mortgages. For the first time since 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, life expectancy actually declined between 2014 and 2015.
It is no wonder that a new report from the American Psychological Association, “Stress in America: The State of Our Nation,” reveals that nearly two thirds of Americans (63 percent) are “really, really, really stressed” about the future of the United States. This stress about the future of America supersedes even the usual suspects: money (62 percent) and work (61 percent).
Other common sources of stress reported by those surveyed include social divisiveness (59 percent), health care (43 percent), the economy (35 percent), potential wars/conflicts with other countries (30 percent), unemployment and low wages (22 percent), and climate change and environmental issues (21 percent).
Despite these very real concerns among ordinary Americans, the two big-business parties have no interest in addressing issues of social inequality and the struggles of workers and young people on a daily basis to survive and provide for their families.
The mainstream media and cable news networks took some time away from talk of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 elections to provide some sensationalist and uninformative coverage of the Sutherland Springs church massacre. But this coverage was peppered with new “revelations” about Russia and Vladimir Putin’s intervention into every aspect of American political life. It would not be shocking to hear one of the media’s talking heads suggest that Putin may have somehow been responsible for Sunday’s shooting tragedy.
US and South Korean Defense Chiefs Agree to Increase Scale of Military Exercises and US Strategic Assets in Korea
The U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs agreed last week to bolster their joint military capabilities against North Korea. At the 49th annual US-ROK Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held on October 28 at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, Secretary James Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo released a joint statement committing both countries to increase the scale of future joint military exercises. The statement also included plans to expand the presence of U.S. strategic assets in and near the Korean Peninsula in response to North Korea’s recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
The defense chiefs praised past joint naval exercises, including the most recent exercise in October, which featured U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. The two countries plan to enhance naval exercises near the Northern Limit Line — the contested maritime demarcation boundary separating North and South Korea.
Donald Trump’s summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Seoul on November 7-8 will likely include discussions on further intensifying pressure to isolate North Korea and increasing South Korea’s share of the alliance’s defense cost.
South Korean peace groups plan to protest Trump before and during his stop in Seoul on November 7. The protests are organized by a broad-based coalition, which includes the Korean Alliance For Progressive Movements (KAPM), Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), Korean Peasants League (KPL), Korean Women Peasants Association (KWPA), and Korean Youth Solidarity. Koreans in the U.S. and Japan will also organize solidarity actions starting Friday November 3.
The following is a schedule of solidarity actions in the United States:
New York | When: Friday, November 3rd @ 6 p.m. | Where: Koreatown, Broadway & 32nd St., Manhattan
Washington DC | When: Saturday, November 4th @ 2 p.m. | Where: Pennsylvania Ave NW in front of the White House
Los Angeles | When: Saturday, November 4th @ 4 p.m. | Where: Wilshire + Western Ave
U.S. Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Prevent First Strike on North Korea
U.S. House representatives John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) seek to prevent the Trump administration from taking rash military action against North Korea. The two lawmakers introduced H.R.4140, the No Unconstitutional Strike against North Korea Act, on October 26. The bill had the support of 60 co-sponsors at the time of its introduction.
A similar bill was introduced in the senate by Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) with the support of five other senators. These bills aim to ensure that Trump will not pull the preemptive trigger on North Korea without approval from congress.
Technically, the Constitution and the War Powers Act prevent the administration from ordering a military action without the approval of Congress. Trump, however, bypassed Congress when he ordered missile strikes in Syria in April of this year, just four months after his inauguration. The Conyers-Massie bill is meant to remind the Trump administration that a unilateral preemptive strike against North Korea would be unconstitutional and undemocratic. H.R.4140 also calls on the Trump administration to seek talks with North Korea with the goal of freezing its nuclear weapons program.
Ahead of Trump’s arrival in South Korea as part of his 13-day tour through Asia, hundreds of civil society organizations from Japan, South Korea and the United States issued a joint statement denouncing his policy of sanctions and war threats against North Korea and demanding a halt to military exercises that impede dialogue. The joint statement also calls on South Korea’s Moon Jae-in administration to assertively pursue inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation and Japan’s Abe government to cease moves to change Article 9, the peace clause of its constitution.
“Washington is forcing a trilateral military alliance and provocative war drills on Tokyo and Seoul that threatens North Korea and the region,” said Christine Ahn, international coordinator of Women Cross DMZ. “The people of Japan, South Korea and United States oppose war. Our demands are an urgent pivot towards peace.”
“In Japan, Prime Minister Abe utilizes the U.S.-North Korea crisis to promote public hysteria and fear and encourage right-wing groups that call for Japan’s militarization, including the acquisition of nuclear weapons for itself,”
explains Yoshioka Tatsuya, Co-Founder and Director of Peace Boat, Japan’s largest peace organization.
“But we really have to understand that the joint military exercises by the U.S., Japan, and South Korea increase the risk of war in this region. Japan has the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We have to work to abolish nuclear weapons, but it’s unreasonable to demand that North Korea be the only one to give up theirs. All of us, including the U.S. and Japan, must say no to them.”
“The South Korean public is highly critical of Trump for making threats of war and dismissing the gravity of its consequences as something ‘over there,’” says Choi Eun-a of the Korean Alliance for Progressive Movements, which is among the 222 South Korean civil society organizations from the Candlelight Revolution that have called for nationwide protest timed with Trump’s visit to South Korea. “The war-threatening, weapons salesman Trump is not welcome here, especially as he demands that South Korea pay more to host U.S. troops and set aside land for useless weapons like the THAAD missile defense system.”
“Peace-loving people in the United States, Japan, and South Korea reject the war-mongering policies of our governments and express our friendship and solidarity with the people of North Korea,” said Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation in California, and the National Co-Convener of United for Peace and Justice.
“The U.S. government must end its policy of sanctions and military threats against North Korea, cease the deployment of more weapons of mass destruction to the Korean peninsula and the region, and halt large-scale military exercises that impede dialogue with North Korea.”
“It’s time for peace-makers, for diplomats, and particularly for the people of South Korea, Japan and the U.S. to demand a peaceful resolution from our governments,” noted Kevin Martin, President of Peace Action, the United States’ largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization. “While not excusing its behavior, North Korea has legitimate security concerns that need to be addressed in order to move toward an enduring peace on the Korean Peninsula.”
Joint Statement:
U.S., South Korean, and Japanese Civil Society Organizations Call for a Bold Shift in Policy for Peace in Korea and Northeast Asia
As U.S. President Trump travels to Asia, we civil society groups from the United States, South Korea, and Japan call for a diplomatic solution to the dangerous conflict between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). As those who would be directly impacted by the outbreak of such a conflict, we call on our leaders to take bold steps to ensure lasting peace.
Recent events have set the stage for a possible catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula and even throughout the greater Northeast Asian region. Any further escalation of tensions could rapidly degenerate into violence. In its 27 October 2017 report, the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimates that over 300,000 people would die in the opening days of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, even without nuclear weapons, and would ultimately claim 25 million lives.
Even as President Trump calls his predecessor’s policy of “strategic patience” on North Korea a failure, he continues the same policy, i.e., intensifying U.N. and unilateral sanctions and military threats. Meanwhile, North Korea continues to escalate the pace and scale of its nuclear and missile tests. The Abe government, seizing on the crisis in Korea, has quickened the pace of remilitarization and revision of Article 9 of its constitution. South Korean President Moon Jae-in meanwhile, despite an unambiguous mandate from the South Korean people, who ousted his hawkish predecessor in hopes of a radical transition to harmonious North-South relations, instead continues to do the bidding of the United States as he assumes a hostile posture vis-à-vis North Korea. We therefore demand that:
The Trump administration boldly shift to a policy of peace by:
Ending its policy of sanctions and military threats against North Korea;
Ceasing the deployment of more weapons of mass destruction on the Korean peninsula and in the region, and withdrawing the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system from South Korea as it only exacerbates tensions in the region; and
Halting large-scale military exercises that impede dialogue with North Korea
The administration of President Moon Jae-in of South Koreahonor the spirit of past North-South joint declarations for peace and reconciliation by:
Assertively pursuing inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation;
Halting future large-scale U.S.-South Korea combined military exercises to minimize the risk of confrontation ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongchang, South Korea; and
No longer cooperating with investments in costly weapon systems with the United States and Japan, including spending on missile defense, which only exacerbates tensions in the region and diverts precious resources away from human needs.
The government of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abeimmediately cease all further moves toward military buildup and instead contribute to regional peace by:
Abolishing the controversial “Conspiracy Law” and “State Secrecy Law,” as well as the 2015 “Peace and Security Legislation” or war bills which permit the use of the so-called right to collective self-defense;
Pursuing the normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea based upon the principles of the Pyongyang Declaration and the Stockholm Agreement; and
Ceasing moves to change Article 9, the peace clause in its constitution.
These are among the hundreds of civil society organizations who have signed on:
Japan[1]
Citizens Association against Constitutional Revision (許すな！憲法改悪・市民連絡会)
This was another case of the big and the powerful undercutting the tax systems of the world. But could anyone be genuinely surprised at the revelations to come out of the Paradise Papers on the workings of the tax haven industry?
Of the 13.4 million files revealed by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and some 90 global media partners, 6.8 million stem from the offshore law firm Appleby. A further half million derive from the Asiaciti Trust based in Singapore, with six million obtained from corporate registries spanning 19 tax havens.[1]
This is a field where denial is followed by qualification, and then, ultimately, a dismissive shrug. Nothing exemplifies this more than the dispute over what a “tax haven” constitutes. The Bermuda minister for finance, Bob Richards, for instance, rejects the suggestion that his country is a joyful tax haven for the stinking rich and robustly powerful.
Language and perception is everything here. A tax haven, according to the Bermuda side of things, suggests terrorism and money laundering. A no-tax or low-tax threshold is an entirely decent incentive. “We didn’t pass a law to say,” disclaimed Richards, “that the Googles of this world don’t get taxed.”[2]
Besides, claimed the evidently irritated finance minister, the UK was itself a tax haven. “You have more billionaires resident in London than any place on earth. They are not here for the weather, they are here for the tax climate. We have a double standard going on here.”[3]
Richards does have a point. In the world of tax havens, countries with a supposedly more keen disposition to netting tax are found wanting. The Netherlands, for instance, is a the place of choice for General Electric, Heinz, Caterpillar, Time Warner, Foot Locker and Nike. In the sharp observation of Jesse Frederik, “The land of tulips and windmills, the home of the International Criminal Court, and the number one tax have for American multinationals.”[4]
Combing through the papers has already revealed the activities of a few big fish, though again, there are few surprises. US President Donald Trump, for instance, is the least surprising of all. Despite railing against the unelected global elites who do boardroom deals, his circle is filled with that very same ilk. The corporate boardroom, in fact, stalks the land and haunts the cabinet.
Take US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. His private equity firm W.L. Ross & Co., LLC was a company that became, in time, one of Appleby’s biggest clients. Despite divesting most of his empire, he retained a stake in the shipping company Navigator Holdings, with W.L. Ross being its largest shareholder.[5] Navigating Holdings, in turn, does extensive business with the Russian gas processing and petrochemicals company SIBUR. A resounding tut-tut has duly followed.
Do these revelations actually matter? The very fact that the Paradise Papers duly followed in the tracks of the enormous documentation in the Panama Papers is evidence that the enterprising accountant is always ahead of the plodding taxman.
Nonetheless, Will Fitzgibbon and Emilia Díaz-Struck would suggest in November 2016 for the ICIJ that the Panama Papers investigation had “produced an almost daily drumbeat of regulatory moves, follow-up stories and calls by politicians and activists for more action to combat offshore financial secrecy.”[6]
The problem with such companies is that they, in a sense, have every right, or, to be more precise, liberty, to exist in an environment teaming with advisors on how best to trick the tax departments. Companies are not in the habit of feeding social consciences or the public good, and have an incentive to obtain the biggest dividends for their shareholders.
The problem is so endemic that even the ICIJ supplies a disclaimer noting how offshore companies and trusts have “legitimate uses”. “We do not intend to suggest or imply that people, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly.” Precisely.
What is easy to ignore is the degree of collusion states afford companies. Some are in the habit of encouraging companies to operate on their territory, the incentive here being a zero tax rate. Capital duly migrates; outsourcing takes place. Tax that would otherwise find its way into coffers is simply not collected. Infrastructure and services duly suffers.
Matt Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy based in Washington sees an inexorable trend, one that threatens to reduce democratic practice to a shell. The tax bases of the globe are shrinking, as is trust in state institutions.
“When its documented as well as it has that companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft – these incredibly profitable companies – are just able to use the tax system like a piñata, that just reinforces the belief that no-one cares about the plight of middle-income families.”[7]
Till a good reason exists to abolish such entities as Mossack Fonseca or Appleby, the world of the tax haven will continue to thrive, however vigorous a prune it might receive from periodic bursts of moral outrage.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
The world is in ruins. It is literally burning, covered by slums, by refugee camps, and its great majority is ‘controlled by markets’, as was the dream and design of individuals such as Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Führers like Kissinger and Brzezinski, sacrificed tens of millions of human lives all over our planet, just to prevent nations from trying to fulfill their spontaneous socialist, and even, God forbid, Communist dreams and aspirations. Some of the tyrants were actually very ‘honest’: Henry Kissinger once observed, publicly, that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to “go Marxist” merely because “its people are irresponsible”. He was thinking about Chile. He “saw no reason” and as a result, several thousands of people were murdered…
Ruining, wiping out entire countries, just to prevent them from ‘going their own way’, has been fully acceptable in the circles of politicians, military strategists, intelligence officers and economists who are based in London, New York, Washington, Paris and in other centers of the so-called “free world”, from where almost all dispensable lives of “un-people” inhabiting Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Oceania are being controlled unceremoniously.
The system of Western oppression often appears to be almost ‘perfect’. To a great extent it is certainly bulletproof.
But there is always one serious obstacle blocking the way of Western imperialism – the barrier that prevents it from fully controlling and ruining the Planet. That obstacle, the barrier, is called the Great October Revolution and its legacy.
Since 1917, for exactly one hundred years, there has been this ‘ghost’ haunting the European and North American empires: it is a ghost which whispers relentlessly about internationalism, about egalitarianism, about great humanistic dreams in which all people are equal, have exactly the same rights and opportunities, and cannot be exploited by one particular race, and by one economic dogma.
To make things even worse, this red and somehow very optimistic ghost does much more than just whispering: it is also singing, dancing, reciting revolutionary poetry and periodically taking up arms and fighting for the oppressed, even totally desperate human beings, regardless of the color of their skin.
One often wonders whether the ghost is really a ghost, or a living creature. Which makes it all even more frightening, at least for the tyrants and the imperialists.
*
The West is totally petrified! It tries to appear cool, in full control. It deploys its elaborate propaganda system, it regurgitates its dogmas everywhere; it injects them into arts, entertainment, news bulletins, school curricula, psychology, and even advertisements. It lies, twists facts, perverts history and constructs pseudo-reality. All available means are used; the ideological warfare is complete.
No matter what the Western Empire does, the red ghost is still here, all around; it is inspiring millions of educated and dedicated men and women all over the world. It is tremendously resilient. It never surrenders, never gives up fighting, even in those countries where all hopes and dreams appear to be totally destroyed. And where there are only ashes left, it at least never gives up haunting – frightening both the local elites and the implanted imperialist regimes.
While to many people living in the Western capitals, this red ghost is synonymous with the worst enemy, in most of the oppressed, occupied and humiliated nations, it represents the perpetual struggle against colonialism and oppression, and it symbolizes resistance, resilience, pride and the belief in a totally different world.
*
Imperialists know that unless this creature, the ghost and the hope it represents, are thoroughly destroyed, wiped out and buried somewhere deep underground, there can be no final victory, and therefore no celebration.
They are doing all in their power to discredit the ghost and the ideals it professes. They are presenting it in the bleakest colors, confusing people by connecting it with fascism and Nazism (while it is them – the Western imperialists – and their own system, that have been fascist and ‘Nazi’, for decades and even centuries).
They brutalize, terrorize and murder innocent people in countries that dare to decide to go Communist, socialist or simply ‘independent’. Such heinous acts are forcing the governments of embattled nations to become defensive, to protect their citizens, to take ‘extraordinary measures’. And these defensive measures are, in turn, described by the Western propaganda as oppressive, dogmatic and ‘undemocratic’.
The strategy and tactics of the Empire are clear and highly effective: you keep punching, molesting and harassing an innocent person who is simply trying to live her life. When she has had enough, when she decides to punch back, even arm herself, change the lock, you describe her as aggressive, paranoid, and dangerous to the society. You claim that her behavior is giving you the right to break into her house, to beat her up, to rape her, and then to force her into thoroughly changing her beliefs and lifestyle.bb
Right after the Revolution, 100 years ago, the Soviets gave the right to secede to all the former parts of the Russian empire. Sweeping democratic reforms were introduced. All the feudal and oppressive structures of Tsarist rule collapsed, overnight. But the young country was almost immediately attacked from abroad, by a group of nations that included the UK, the US, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Japan. Ruthless aggressions and foreign campaigns of sabotage radicalized the Soviet state, as they later radicalized Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, China, Venezuela and many other revolutionary countries.
It is an appalling, disgusting way of running the world, but it is highly effective; ‘it works’. And it has been done for so long, that no one is surprised, anymore. This is how the West has been controlling, manipulating and ruining the world for many centuries, enjoying absolute impunity, even congratulating itself for being ‘free’ and ‘democratic’, shamelessly using clichés such as ‘human rights’.
But at least now, there is a struggle.
The world used to be totally at the mercy of Europe and North America.
Until the Great October Socialist Revolution!
*
Recently, I wrote a book about The Great October Socialist Revolution, its impact on the world, and on the birth of internationalism. I had to write it. I had enough of reading and watching that entire anti-Soviet, anti-Communist propaganda bordello, that fundamentalist gospel; I had enough of being bombarded with brainwashing rubbish day after day, year after year, decade after decade!
After working in more than 160 countries, in all corners of the world, witnessing the Western murderous drive against democracy and the free will of the people, I felt it was my obligation to at least explain my position on the event that took place 100 years ago in the city and in the country where I was born.
And in my book I did exactly that.
It is not what some would call ‘an objective’ book. It is definitely not some tiresome academic essay, full of footnotes and useless citations. I don’t believe in ‘objectivity’. Or more precisely, I don’t think that human beings are capable of being objective, or that they should even aim at that. However, I strongly believe that they should clearly and honestly say and define where they stand, without deceiving their readers.
And that’s precisely what I did in my latest book: I took sides. I clarified what the Revolution means to me. I recalled what it means to hundreds of millions of oppressed and tormented human beings worldwide. I quoted some of them.
The Great October Socialist Revolution was not perfect. Nothing in this world is, nothing ever should be ‘perfect’. Perfection is appalling, cold, and even imagining it is tremendously boring.
Instead, the Great October Socialist Revolution made a heroic attempt to liberate people from archaic beliefs, from feudalism and blind submission, from physical, intellectual and emotional slavery. It also defined all human beings as equal, regardless of their race and sex. It did not do it through hypocritical ‘political correctness’, which only spreads some second-rate sticky honey over the surface of shit, leaving the excrement itself intact; it cut to the core; it built a brand new lexicon, understanding of the world, and it created a totally new reality.
It returned hope to hundreds of millions of human beings who had already lost all faith in better life. It gave pride and courage to slaves. It returned all colors and shades to the world, which was brutally divided between white and black, between those who had and had not, between those who were racially and ‘culturally’ destined to rule and those who were only destined to serve.
The West hated the red revolutionary ghost from the start. It hates it to this very day. It is because if Communist Soviet Union had won, that would have meant the end of colonialism and imperialism, as we know it. There would be no more plunder and destruction, no monstrous annihilation of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, no ruin of Syria; no mortal threat hanging over North Korea, Iran and Venezuela, no millions of men, women and children sacrificed on the altar of global capitalism as is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in so many other corners of the globe.
There would be nothing left of a racist, post-Christian global dictatorship; no system of twisted ‘values’ and no hypocritical ‘culture’ pushed down the throat of all conquered countries of the world, by a handful of historically gangster states, mostly located in Europe and North America.
The West fought the Great October Socialist Revolution from its first day. It fought the Soviet Union on all fronts, bathing it in blood, brainwashing its people and murdering its allies. It finally managed to injure it mortally in Afghanistan, breaking all the bones of the USSR first, and then of Afghanistan right afterwards.
Immediately after that, a rejuvenated campaign of indoctrination began. Its goal has been to fully obliterate the great legacy of the “Great October”. The West spared no means and billions of dollars were spent.
Naturally, what kind of ‘objectivity’ could one expect from a ‘culture’, from the part of the world which has been brutally tyrannizing and plundering the entire Planet for more than 500 years? How could it be lenient towards the event, towards the movement and country, which made the purpose of its existence the battle for the liberation of the world from imperialism and colonialism?
*
Now the struggle against neo-colonialist barbarity goes on, but under various banners. Red, Communist banners are still flying over China and Cuba, as well as Venezuela, Angola and other nations. There are many other colors of the resistance, as well. The coalition is broad.
But what is clear and essential is that The Revolution of 1917 inspired billions, consciously and sub-consciously.
What is also clear is that the West never really won. Had it won, it would not be shaking in fear, as it is now. It would not be oppressing free thought, overthrowing democratically elected governments, murdering the leaders who are struggling against its monstrous global regime.
*
To be frank, the ‘red revolutionary ghost’ is not really a ghost. It is still an extremely mighty creature. It is just hiding for now, regrouping, getting ready to raise its banners and drag to the battlefield all imperialist tyrants.
The West loves to talk about peace. It loves to lecture the world about ‘peace’. But its ‘peace’ is in fact nothing else other than a horrid status quo, in which there are only a few rich and mighty nations that are reigning over the world, and then there is the rest of humankind, one that consists of weak, miserable, submissive and servile ‘un-people’.
To hell with such ‘peace’! Such peace cannot last long; should not last long, as it is totally grotesque and immoral. It is not much better than the ‘peace’ on a slave plantation!
It is only the legacy of the Great October that can finish such a status quo. And it will.
The red ghost is haunting the tyrants. They are trying, but they just cannot expunge it from the hopes and dreams of the people who inhabit our Planet. The more scared the tyrants get, the more brutal are their deeds. And the more determined the people in the subjugated countries get.
100 years since the battleship Aurora fired its first salvo at the Winter Palace in Petrograd.
100 years since the world opened its eyes, realizing that a new world is possible.
100 years, and the Red October is still on the lips of people in Latin America, in Africa, Asia, everywhere.
Imperialists are brutal but naive. You can murder a man or a woman, you can murder thousands of them, even millions. But you cannot murder dreams. You cannot murder the courage of the human race, unless you murder the entire human race. You can kill, but you cannot permanently turn people into slaves.
During the Great October Socialist Revolution, people stood up. They rose. They smashed their chains.
They will rise again. They are rising again; just look carefully.
In the last 100 years, so much changed, and nothing changed. The hopes and dreams are still the same. And just as then, now, there is no peace without justice. And there is hardly any justice in the way our world is arranged.
Long Live the Great October Socialist Revolution!
Forward! As Hugo Chavez used to shout from his balcony: “Here no one surrenders!”
The red ghost is here, the ghost of the Great Red October. It is tremendously mighty. It is the ally of all oppressed beings. One day it will lead people to victory. There can be absolutely no doubt about it.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
In spite of its irresistible urge to address the challenges it created by a handful of armed interventions in various states of the world, we’re witnessing Washington’s ever decreasing commitment to direct warfare, as it prefers to lead regional forces from behind. The experience accumulated in this sort of leadership in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa is now going to be applied on a global scale by the US.
Under these circumstances, we’re noticing an ever growing demand for “military instructors” that are sent to all sorts of states as an instrumental part of the new US military doctrine. In fact, a new industry is being created as entire drill brigades started to get formed by 2016 as the US 10th Mountain Division prepared Iraqi Army units for an assault on Mosul.
For this reason, last summer the Pentagon would announce its plan to create six Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) which will be employed as “military advisers and instructors” across the world to support the power of pro-US regimes across the world. This process is being carefully supervised by the 39th Chief of Staff for the US Army, General Mark Milley.
The first brigade of such instructors that is known as 1SFAB or the “Legion” started its formation in the spring of 2017 on the basis of Fort Benning (Georgia) under the supervision of Col. Scott Jackson. Of its 529 troopers, 360 are officers. Servicemen of the brigade receive a bonus of five thousand dollars a year in addition to their respective salaries. The subdivision is formed on a voluntary basis. As early as November 30, the 1SFAB “Legion” brigade should be operational and prepared to carry out its missions abroad, while the funds have already been allocated on the creation of the second similar brigade.
All six such SFAB, according to the Pentagon, are expected to be fully operational by 2022. It is planned that each regional command of the USA (for example, AFRICOM, EUCOM, etc.) will receive a SFAB brigade under its command. Should the situation in any of US satellite states become aggravated, the Pentagon expects that local forces trained by SFABs will be dispatched to “resolve the situation” on their own. Should there be any more assistance needed from Washington, a full-fledged brigade of four thousand servicemen will be formed on the basis of one of such SFABs, consisting of 500 servicemen in the shortest possible time.
The Pentagon’s SFAB brigade program provides training for US military personnel in foreign languages, it’s expected that more that 200 servicemen will undergo intensive foreign languages courses for four months, while they will be allowed to get acquainted with foreign weapons samples. Also, SFAB soldiers will be informed of the importance of understanding local customs, culture, traditions, political nuances. The officers will also be instructed to establish personal contacts with local political and military figures.
The training of new military advisers will take place with the involvement of the same US special forces that are already operating in various regions. This will be an additional burden for them. Therefore, the decision of the Pentagon on the new brigades SFAB caused a lot of controversy in the military environment, especially among representatives of the special forces, as many did not understand what functions will be assigned to this new type of units. Indeed, until recently, it was the US special forces that would spend a lot of their time instructing and training local security agencies, learning the situation on the ground, while establishing informal contacts with local populations. It would be understatement to say that those units were simply engaged in routine military operations. Many fear that the new SFAB will either duplicate certain functions of special forces, or will simply replace them.
For this reason, in the military environment of the United States in recent months, additional explanatory work has been conducted on the true aims of the SFAB program. In particular, the high-ranking of the US military department was forced to emphasize that the SFAB is designed not to create individual combat-ready units, but also indirectly work on the emergence of the entire military structure of a state, which would ultimately advance US interests. As a result, the US military units will work more closely with those forces within a country.
The US special forces are not designed to create foreign armies. At best, as we’re witnessing in Iraq and Afghanistan, it can effectively train elite units in other countries.
In any case, according to the estimates of the US military establishment, the creation of SFAB will become an important element of the US war machine, but also a tool to advance American values abroad. And by 2022, the six SFAB brigades will be ready to be assigned to a wide variety of tasks, thus strengthening the US military expansion around the world.
Valeriy Kulikov, expert politologist, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
After all of the trumpeting against Donald Trump by the ‘news’ media and by all Democratic politicians and many Republican politicians, about his utter untrustworthiness; and after the loads of exposés that have been published, over decades, documenting Trump’s psychopathic behaviors and business scams; what do we now have, adding to this unsavory if not criminal record by Mr. Trump, in the first criminal indictment, published on October 27th, by the Special Prosecutor, Robert Mueller, who is tasked to nail Trump to some prison cell for crimes committed during his Presidential campaign, after Trump’s having previously racked up already such a lifetime record of alleged (and even some documented) outrages perpetrated by him?
The indictments, of Paul Manafort II and of Richard W. Gates III, make serious charges against these two men, for their allegedly laundering $75 million of income to mainly Manafort during the period from 2006 to 2015. The charges are basically tax-evasion and “a series of false and misleading statements” by them to the U.S. Department of Justice during and after the men’s subsequent work for Trump’s Presidential campaign.
This income had been derived during 2006 to 2015 from what was then the leading political Party in Ukraine, and Paragraph 10 of the Indictment states that this Party, “The Party of Regions was a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.”
Is that legally relevant? Is it criminal in America for a politician in a nation that borders Russia to be “pro-Russia”? (Should it be criminal in Russia for a politician in a nation that borders America to be pro-American?)
It wasn’t criminal in that neighboring country, Ukraine, to be pro-Russian, but is it criminal in America?
Did a legal basis exist, during 2005 through 2014, and up till the U.S. coup that overthrew this Party in 2014, for the U.S. to outlaw this Ukrainian Party, retrospectively, after the U.S. Government had replaced their rule by the rule of one far-right Party, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, and two racist-fascist or ideologically nazi Parties — the Right Sector, and the former Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine — all three of which Parties rabidly hate Russians?
The Party of Regions had been elected to power in Ukraine’s final democratic election (2010) in which the residents in all parts of Ukraine were permitted to vote for or against candidates for Ukrainian national office. That’s what its having been called “The Party of Regions” meant: acceptance, as being part of Ukraine, of the residents in all regions of Ukraine, not discriminating against any, and not blocking any from being able to vote for President and for other national elective offices. What was illegal, anywhere (even in the United States), about that? If nothing, then why does Mueller even mention it, except in order to prejudice jurors?
The Indictment states that this Party “retained MANAFORT, through DMP and then DMI, to advance its interests in Ukraine, including the election of its slate of candidates. In 2010, its candidate for President, Yanukovych, was elected President of Ukraine.” Is that criminal, or is it instead merely prejudicial against the defendants (Manafort and Gates)? Is this Indictment designed to appeal to Americans’ prejudices, or to America’s laws?
Paragraph 11 states:
“The European Centre for a Modem Ukraine (the Centre) was created in or about 2012 in Belgium as a mouthpiece for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. The Centre was used by MANAFORT, GATES, and others in order to lobby and conduct a public relations campaign in the United States and Europe on behalf of the existing Ukraine regime. The Centre effectively ceased to operate upon the downfall of Yanukovych in 2014.”
The last Ukrainian election in which the people in the parts of the country where the main language that was spoken was Russian were allowed to live in peace and to vote in Ukrainian national elections, had produced, according to Mueller, what was, until the coup “the existing regime” — not “the existing Government.” Is the presumption here that the coup-government is “the Ukrainian Government,” but that the democratically elected Government which had preceded the coup-government was instead “the existing Ukraine regime”? It contradicts the history — it contradicts the solidly documented record of what had happened there.
Then follow, until Paragraph 25, specific alleged documents that will be produced at trial in order to prove the money-laundering and the lying aimed to hide it. Paragraph 25 states that, “In November 2016 and February 2017, MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI caused false and misleading letters to be submitted to the Department of Justice, which mirrored the false cover story set out above.”
Starting with Paragraph 37 are the “Statutory Allegations” and the numbered criminal “Counts.” All pertain to the alleged money-laundering and the alleged lies in order to cover it up. Then Paragraph 52 states that upon conviction, the men “shall forfeit to the United States any property, real or personal, involved in such offense, and any property traceable to such property,” etc.
Among the cited U.S. criminal laws, and their punishments, which were referenced, were:
18 U.S.C. § 1956(h) (“shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is greater, or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both”)
31 U.S.C. § 5322(b) (“shall be fined not more than $500,000, imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both”)
22 U.S.C. § 618(a)(2) (“a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than five years, or both”)
So, the expectation is that, if neither Manafort nor Gates will testify that Trump colluded with Russia in order to win the U.S. Presidency, then both Manafort and Gates will face perhaps 35 years in prison, or else be pardoned by Trump — which latter pardoning might assist his becoming replaced by either a different Republican in primaries, or else by the Democratic nominee, in 2020 — if Trump’s Presidency even lasts that long.
“Surprising or not, the indictment does not mention neither Trump nor Russia! The story is about Ukraine. Paul Manafort had ties with Ukraine’s Party of Regions, which was considered as a ‘pro-Moscow’ political force. That’s the only ‘Russia connection.’ Everything related to Manafort pertains to the period before he started to work for Donald Trump. And Rick Gates has never had any relation to the incumbent president or his team.”
It goes on to note that:
“Manafort’s indictment (Item 22, page 15) states very seriously that Yulia Tymoshenko had served as Ukraine’s President prior to Yanukovych! It takes a few seconds to have a look at the list of Ukraine’s presidents to find out that Yulia Timoshenko has never been the holder of the highest office.”
That was actually referencing Paragraph 22 on page 16, but the point being made is accurate: The former FBI chief and now the prestigious Special Counsel chosen in order to replace Trump by Pence, is so incompetent that he permits a historical falsehood that’s documentable even merely by reference to a Wikipdeia article, to appear in Mueller’s piece of propaganda for the appointment of the rabid Russia-hater and current Vice President, Mike Pence, to complete Trump’s term-of-office.
Is this the ‘Justice’ system in a democracy, or is it now just a two-bit dictatorship that’s the fading ghost of anything that the United States of America formerly was?
So: Was Trump really this honest? Was he so honest, so that the only way he can even be framed enough for him to be forced out of office, is to unleash against him an ‘expert lawyer’ such as Mueller, who obviously isn’t even a competent piranha? In the U.S., as Alan Dershowitz has said, “A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor wants them to”. But almost all Americans believe that an indictment is itself evidence of a person’s ‘guilt’. That’s the remarkable trust the people in a dictatorship have when the dictatorship is so total that the public trust even an indictment to be the result of some kind of authentic democratic process proving something, instead of the result of an extremely effective system of public mind-control, which it is.
Mueller wasn’t hired because he’s some kind of legal whiz, but because he looks and sounds like a person who isn’t a lawyer but “who plays one on TV” — he’s the caricature of the part. And, in a dictatorship, that’s the type of person who fills the bill, especially for an assignment like this one.
In addition to the October 27th indictments of Manafort and Gates, there was on October 5th a signed guilty plea by an unpaid but self-inflated volunteer for the Trump campaign, who had solicited from, allegedly, the Russian Government, via a third party, “dirt” that the third party alleged to have somehow acquired against candidate Hillary Clinton, and the “Statement of the Offense” to which he signed included no “dirt” against Donald Trump, and no cooperation with the defendant on the part of Trump’s campaign, other than that the campaign, on one occasion in candidate Trump’s presence, heard this “advisor to the campaign” state in general terms what the third-party informer was seeking to deliver to the campaign. The defendant, George Papadopoulos, confessed there to having lied to the FBI. What, if anything, the ‘Justice’ Department had agreed to (the other side of this plea-deal) in order to extract these admissions from Papadopoulos, is not known. The confession didn’t allege that the Trump campaign authorized, nor ever accepted, the alleged offer, which Papadopoulos had allegedly midwifed, but which, apparently, aborted, never delivered.
Then, on November 1st, that magazine’s Gabriel Sherman bannered “‘YOU CAN’T GO ANY LOWER’: INSIDE THE WEST WING, TRUMP IS APOPLECTIC AS ALLIES FEAR IMPEACHMENT”, and reported that Sherman’s sources inside the White House were panicking (which hardly makes sense) and that “Trump blamed Jared Kushner for his role in decisions, specifically the firings of Mike Flynn and James Comey, that led to Mueller’s appointment, according to a source briefed on the call.” Sherman reported that, “For the first time since the investigation began, the prospect of impeachment is being considered as a realistic outcome and not just a liberal fever dream.” No explanation was provided for that allegedly “realistic outcome” to result from either the Manafort-Gates indictments or the Papadopoulos plea-deal.
Mueller has indicted his two ham-sandwiches, regarding their allegedly hiding and lying about their income from the pre-coup leading political Party in Ukraine, and has gotten an unpaid Trump-campaign volunteer to admit only to his own lying to the FBI about what he himself had done. There is still no testimony against Trump, nor against anyone in his Administration.
Is Trump really so honest, that this piranha, Mueller, can’t yet bite even close to this President? Not a big bite — not any bite at all? Really? And the Trump White House now considers impeachment “a realistic outcome” — from this? Maybe some reasonable explanation exists, other than: Trump’s team want to keep their ‘lows’ as low as possible until, late in his term, the shoddiness of the campaign against him becomes undeniable, and so sets him up for a stunning re-election, as the least-disgusting of the Presidential options, from amongst which, the American electorate will be allowed to choose, in 2020.
That’s what I hold quite likely in case the present US administration under Donald Trump’s formal leadership continues down the path its in-fighting militarist factions seem to have chosen.
We’re in the worst, most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Sitting down and hoping for the best is neither responsible nor viable or wise.
I can only hope that I will be proved wrong. That the present extremely dangerous tension-building will die down by some kind of unforeseen events or attention being directed elsewhere.
The world could quite well be drifting toward what Albert Einstein called ’unparalleled catastrophe’. It’s something we may – or may not – know more about when President Trump returns from his trip to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam (APEC where he also likely to meet Russian President Putin) and the Philippines.
Except for 93-year old Jimmy Carter offering to go to North Korea, we witness nobody taking any mediation initiative – not the UN’ S-G Guterres, not the EU, not European NATO countries, not BRICS, not single countries like Sweden, not… well, you name them.
It’s about denial, about heads deep down in the sand, people hoping for the best at the moment when humanity’s future is in the hands of a couple of leaders from whom they would probably not buy a used bicycle.
That this silence all around is a roaring fact, is about as tragic and dangerous as the situation itself.
What most people don’t recognise – mainly thanks to the Western mainstream media – is that this is an a-symmetric conflict, an extremely a-symmetric conflict at that. For instance, North Korea’s military expenditures compared with those it must see as its adversaries in case of war is about 1:100, China excluded.
Why is the present situation so dangerous?
Why are we facing, seriously and for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, an increasing risk of nuclear war?
Here some, but not all, the reasons:
– the vastly superior US is run by what must in a historical perspective be close to a kakistocracy – government by the worst, least qualified and most unscrupulous citizens. There was no reason for Trump’s spontaneous golf club statement about doing something the world has never seen before, i.e. worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki; neither for his post-dinner party statement about calm before the storm; North Korea issues statements and make tests that indeed offer reason for concern but they come out of dwarf who sees himself cornered and cheated repeatedly;
– asymmetric conflicts are particularly dangerous because the superior side may successively be seduced by love of his own strength and belief in his infallibility – while the weak side may react in panic and draw the conclusion that it is better to strike first than be hit by an overwhelming, all-destructive blow by the superior adversary;
– the rush into ’group think’ – we can make no mistakes, we are morally superior. Attacks and warfare, by definition, rest on what Norwegian philosopher Harald Ofstad so precisely called ’contempt for weakness’ – an integral part also of the Nazi ideology. All US leaders and the far majority of news reports in our media build on little but clear contempt for North Korea;
– since the US of today is inept at diplomacy and second to none in only one field, namely the military, hubris is a factor that can’t be excluded; additionally, the US has not yet bothered to appoint an ambassador to Seoul. One indeed wonders what kind of contacts there actually are beyond the North Korean ambassador to the UN; the risk of the parties getting their lives crossed is immanent and large;
– as reported by the New York Times, one can already sense the rationale behind the increasingly serious talk in South Korea and Japan about acquiring some national nuclear capacity; they too do not feel confident or secure with the so-called nuclear umbrella ’protection’ of a US under Trump that is even more unpredictable than Pyongyang and they know that North Korea could make them victims in a game that would not hit or hurt the US mainland. If within a few months or a year, 2-3 countries in the region feel compelled to acquire nuclear weapons, I for one fail to see how a nuclear exchange at some point later can be avoided;
– President Trump’s speech to and about Iran and the nuclear deal was not only totally unacceptable in terms of US-Iran relation and his – fake – image of Iran; in all its primitive anti-diplomacy thrust, it also sent a signal to everybody in Pyongyang that there is no point in trying to achieve a written agreement with the U.S. because, simply, you cannot trust it;
– today’s US does not have a unified, consolidated foreign policy and much less a cohesive strategy or doctrine. We see helter-skelter procedures and ongoing fight among the White House, Congress, Pentagon, State Department, CIA and other so-called intelligence services – something that can only add to the increasing danger;
– there is no clear taboo in the US against the US using nuclear weapons. A recent scientific study reveals that a clear majority of men and women in the US would find it OK to kill 2 million civilian Iranians if that could save the lives of 20.000 US soldiers in trouble in that country;
– Western mainstream media that still shape most people’s opinions about the world and adversaries of US and NATO has stopped, long ago, asking critical questions and using alternative expertise. We’re fed with only Western perspectives while the North Koreans, their interests, history, fears, worldview, leadership and policies are written off as not worthy of analysis and reporting;
– experts used by these media have been educated in understanding only Western academic theories and perspectives and they themselves and their research is paid by NATO governments, think tanks and corporate funds – no risk there that such unfree, for all practical purposes commissioned, research would lead to massive critique of US policies in this case either. One may easily imagine, however, how the same media and experts would express themselves and fulfill their expert roles had any other country in the world repeatedly, recklessly and unpredictably issued one nuclear-use threat after the other;
– politics have gradually become devoid of intellectualism and, to quite an extent, knowledge and awareness of dilemmas, compared with a couple of decades ago. The type of people and background that populated the White House at the time of Kennedy don’t exist anymore. More money is spent on marketing decision than on intellectual inputs into them.
– and if there is no nuclear exchange in the near future, there may well be later because the U.S. leads in absurd investments nuclear weapons development, planning to spend US$ 1200 billion – 1,2 trillion – on nuclear weapons development. Without fearology, making citizens – taxpayers – fear whoever is around, there would be a mass mobilisation against such perverse squandering of money.
The hashtag #metoo against sexual harassment is urgently important, pointing to a huge problem and the necessity of ending patriarchy – which happens to also be a basic driving force underlying militarism and war.
Sexual harassment is totally unacceptable. But threatening the annihilation of large parts of, or all of, humanity is an issue of quite a different order.
It is indeed time, too, that hashtags such as, say,
#metoo_fornuclearfreedom or #metoo_notonuclearwar or #metoo_forBANtreaty –
taking the larger perspective of humanity as one – would be used by millions or billions of people in months to come.
However, in these dark times, we need of course much much more than clicking Like buttons and using hashtags on social media.
We need a sweeping global mobilisation and manifestation of civil society demanding that weapons in the hands of a few hundred people that can kill us all are incompatible with civilisation.
We need emphasis on the fact that there has never been held a referendum that gave these few people a mandate to hold humanity’s being or not being in their hands.
We need pointing out that the real international law violators and terrorists – nuclear balance of terror advocates – be stopped.
That is, a sweeping BAN and nuclear abolition movement, particularly in the nuclear weapons countries.
Part 2 to follow shortly will outline some of the steps that must be taken.
At present time, Israel’s top political leadership is in the state of outright hysteria regarding the Lebanese movement Hezbollah. Recent statements by senior Foreign Affairs and Defence ministries’ officials certainly lead to that conclusion.
“We will not allow Iran and Hezbollah to concentrate their forces in the border areas in the Golan Heights”, the Minister of Defence of Israel Avigdor Lieberman wrote on his Facebook page on 26 April 2017.
“… we are determined not to give our enemy opportunities and even a hint of an opportunity to harm the security of Israel and its inhabitants. We will do everything to prevent the creation of a Shi’ite corridor between Tehran and Damascus”,
wrote Avigdor Lieberman on his Facebook page on 7 September 2017.
Image: Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Photo: Gil Yohanan)
On September 11, 2017, he also wrote “I very much advise our northern neighbours not to test us and not to threaten, because we take threats seriously. I do not recommend that they start a conflict with Israel, because for them this will end badly. Very badly”. This is the answer to Syria’s statement about the strike on the Masyaf plant, in the province of Hama in Syria, where according to unconfirmed reports from the Israeli intelligence, a missile production plant operated. “Aggressive actions against the security and stability in the region will have dangerous consequences”, said the communiqué of the Syrian command.
Israel’s Minister of Defence statement of 19 September 2017 was
“We do not intend to tolerate any threats or attempts to harm the security of Israel. Whoever tries to undermine our sovereignty, our security, must know that he will pay a very high price. We are ready for any eventuality, from any direction. The IDF will cope with any surprises, problems and threats”.
This statement was as a result of the shooting down of the Iranian UAV by the Israeli air defence, launched from southern Lebanon and which has not crossed the Israeli border.
In response Hassan Nasrallah said at the August 13, 2017 rally commemorating the Second Lebanon War that “Israel continuously violates Lebanese airspace, and it complains to the UN about each member of Hezbollah, or any ordinary Lebanese, standing with binoculars on the border”.
Image: Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters during a public appearance at a religious procession to mark Ashura in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Aziz Taher
In addition to the financial and military assistance, United States provides international support in this matter. During the August 23, 2017 UN Security Counci session, Special Envoy of the President of the United States Nikki Haley, responding to a question concerning the extension of the peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, insisted that the UNIFIL mandate be changed so that the UN peacekeepers could use force against Hezbollah which the US considers “terrorists”. Haley’s comments mirrored those of Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danin Danon who said that “Hezbollah continues activities directed at increasing and strengthening its presence on the southern borders, which threaten the security of the entire region. The international community cannot ignore the danger”.
Image: Nikki Haley
The US and Israel introduced alternative resolutions introduced before the UN Security Council, which call for :
provisions to allow UN troops to enter villages occupied by Hezbollah,
increasing patrols and conducting more active and intensive inspections on the controlled territory,
monitoring events and reporting violations,
more thorough examination of Israeli complaints of Hezbollah violations.
The already difficult situation in southern Lebanon and Syria is further complicated by “The Light of Dagan”, a major military exercise named in honour of the former Director of Foreign Intelligence Service of Israel, Mossad, Meir Dagan, which strongly resembles preparations and a rehearsal for armed aggression.
Image: Meir Dagan
The exercise lasted eleven days, from 4 to 14 September 2017, and involved tens of thousands of troops from all branches of service. The exercise legend posited that terrorists attacked the village of Shavey Zion, fifteen kilometres from the Lebanese border and, together with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters from the Radwan units, carried out the invasion in the north, captured civilians. and occupied the local synagogue. Their ultimate goal was to plant Hezbollah flag of the movement on Israeli soil and send a photo to Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. In response, Israel carried out the evacuation of civilians, then units of the IDF conducted a large-scale operation in southern Lebanon, which was carried out in three stages. The first stage was defensive, including a counter-attack and the deployment of additional units to counter the Hezbollah movements. The second stage consisted of launching an assault on southern Lebanon. The third phase pushed Hezbollah forces back into Lebanon. The exercises were held in southern Galilee to the south from Highway 85 Akko-Carmiel. The goal of the exercises was the full capitulation of the Hezbollah movement, “depriving them of their ability and willingness to resist”. According to the IDF command, the IDF excelled at these tasks.
Image: IDF reservists sitting atop tanks as they maneuver during a drill at a military zone near Kibbutz Revivim. Credit: Reuters
The Causes of the Aggressive Rhetoric
The first cause is the parliamentary majority in the Knesset consisting of right-wing and ultra-Orthodox Zionists who badly want revenge for the de-facto Israeli defeat in the Second Lebanon war of 2006. These factions exhibit extreme hostility towards Iran and the Shi’a Muslims because of their political and religious unity. This attitude was expressed in the words of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, Yair Golan, September 7, 2017 at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
According to Golan,
“Iran is far more dangerous to Israel than ISIS because the Iranians are complex, they represent a higher stage of civilization. They have a great academic infrastructure, strong industry, a lot of good scientists, many talented young people. They are very similar to us. Due to the fact that they look like us, they are much more dangerous”.
The second cause is the Israeli flirtation with the Sunni world and with Saudi Arabia in particular, which is taking place with Donald Trump’s blessing expressed in the May 21, 2017 statement at the Arab-Islamic-American Summit labeling Iran the “main sponsor of international terrorism”, and calling for its isolation. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly voiced desire to improve relations between Israel and Sunni countries, hinting at Saudi Arabia in particular. According to the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (ICB) radio, one of the Saudi royal princes made a secret visit to Israel September of 2017 to discuss the “consolidation of peace in the region”.
The third reason is the damage to Syria’s military capabilities which will need years or decades to restore and in the meantime will not be able to provide military assistance to Hezbollah. Many Hezbollah experienced fighters were killed in battle in Syria. Therefore, the leadership of Israel believes that now is the time to inflict a decisive blow to the movement.
Image: A funeral procession in Lebanon of a Hezbollah fighter killed in Syria. Credit: Reuters
The IDF Today
Currently the IDF in the regional scale is a formidable force. Below are the data from the yearbook Military Balance 2017.
IDF numbers 176 thousand servicemembers, of which 133 thousand are in the Army, 34 thousand in the Air Force, 9.5 thousand in the Navy. In addition, there are 465 thousand troops in reserve. The border police (MAGAV) may provide 8000 troops to assist the military.
Image: Israeli Border Police arrest a Palestinian youth during clashes in the Shoafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, September 18, 2015. Credit: AFP
Land forces are organised into three regional commands (North, Central, South), two armoured divisions, five territorial infantry divisions, three battalions of Special Forces, and a team of special operations forces. Overall they command a number of separate reconnaissance battalions, three tank brigades, three mechanised brigades (consisting of three mechanised battalions, a combat support battalion and a signal company), a mechanised brigade (consisting of five mechanised battalions), a separate mechanised brigade, two separate infantry battalions, an airborne brigade (composed of three airborne battalions, a combat support battalion and a signal company), and a training tank brigade. Three artillery brigades, three engineering battalions, two military policy battalions, a company of sappers, a chemical protection battalion and a brigade of military intelligence provide battlefield support.
The Navy consists of a surface ship group, a submarine group, as well as a battalion of commandos.
Click to see the full-size map
The Israeli Air Force consist of two fighter squadrons, five attack squadrons, six mixed fighter-attack squadrons (plus two squadrons in reserve), an ASW squadron, a maritime patrol and support squadron (patrol and transport aircraft, tanker aircraft), two EW squadrons, an AWACS squadron, two squadrons of transport and tanker aircraft, two training squadrons, two squadrons of attack helicopters, four squadrons of transport helicopters, an air ambulance division and three squadrons of UAVs.
It is believed that Israel has nuclear weapons. The number of nuclear warheads is debatable, but its delivery vehicles include F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, the Jericho-2 ballistic medium-range missiles, and Dolphin/Tanin class diesel-electric submarines capable of carrying cruise missiles.
There are nine orbital military and dual-purpose satellites:
Three Amos-type satellites.
One reconnaissance satellite with remote sensing of the Earth of the EROS type, located on the sun-synchronous orbit.
Four optical reconnaissance satellites of the Ofeq type (No. 7, 9, 10 and 11), located in the low earth orbit.
One radar-reconnaissance satellite of the TecSAR-1 type, located in low earth orbit.
Image: Merkava IV MBT
Land Forces Armaments
Tanks. 500 main battle tanks (Merkava II, III, IV), plus 1060 in storage.
APCs: There are 1200 APCs, including 400 Nagmachon on Centurion MBT chassis, 200 Achzarit heavy APCs on T-55 tank chassis, 100 Namer APCs on Merkava tank chassis, and about 5000 American M113 APCs in storage.
Self-propelled Artillery:
250 155mm M109A5
300 in storage:
155mm Soltam L-33, 30 M109
175mm M107, 203mm M110.
Towed artillery:
276 guns of different types and calibers (all in storage):
5 122mm D-30 howitzers
100 130mm M-46 cannon
40 155mm M-46 cannon
50 155mm M-68 howitzers
81 155m M-839P/845P howitzers).
Multiple Rocket Launchers:
30 227mm M270 MLRS
182 other MRLs in storage, including:
58 122mm BM-21 Grad
50 160mm LAR-160
18 227mm M270 MLRS
36 240mm BM-24
20 290mm LAR-290 in storage
Mortars. All in storage
1100 81mm
650 120mm
18 160mm
Medium range ballistic missiles
Approximately 24 rockets of the Jericho-2 type.
Surface-to-Air Missile Systems
20 Machbet.
A number of Stinger MANPADS.
Navy Combat Forces
Submarines
5 ships:
3 submarines of the Dolphin class. Armed with 6 533mm torpedo tubes and 4 650mm torpedo tubes. May carry Harpoon SSMs.
2 Tanin type submarines (Dolphin class equipped with air-independent propulsion engines). Armed with 6 533mm torpedo tubes and 4 650mm torpedo tubes. May carry Harpoon SSMs.
Frigates
Three Eilat type. Armed with 2 x 4 Harpoon launchers, 2 x Barak SAM launchers, 2 x 3 324mm torpedo tubes, 1 76mm gun, 1 Sea Vulcan.
Missile boats of the Hetz type
8 ships. Armed with 6 Gabriel SSMs, 2 x 2 Harpoon SSMs, 1 Barak SAM launcher, 76mm, 25mm and 20mm cannon.
Patrol boats
18 ships:
5 Shaldag class. Armed with 1 25mm gun.
3 Stingray class. Unarmed, intended for reconnaissance and sabotage operations.
10 Super Dvora MkIII class. May carry SSM and torpedo tubes.
Torpedo boats
13 ships
9 Dvora Mk I class. Armed with 2 324mm torpedo tubes (may carry SSMs)
4 Super Dvora Mk II class. Armed with 2 324mm torpedo tubes.
Torpedo patrol boats
11 Dabur class. Armed with 2 x 1 324mm torpedo tubes.
Air Force
Aircrafts
151 fighters
15 F-15A
6 F-15B
17 F-15C
19 F-15D
77 F16A
16 F16B
248 attack aircraft
25 F-15I
76 F-16C
49 F-16D
98 F-16I
Unknown number of A-4N/F-4, F-15-A, F-16A/B, C-7 in storage.
Naval Patrol Aircraft
3 IAI-1124
Electronic Reconnaissance Airplanes
6 RC-12D
EW and AWACS
1 EC-707
3 Gulfstream G550
Tanker Aircraft
4 KC-130H
7 KC-707.
Transport aircraft
62 aircraft of various types
Training aircraft
67 aircraft of various types
Helicopters
Attack helicopters
44 Apache AH-64 A/D
Anti-submarine helicopters
7 Panther AS565SA
Scout helicopters
12 Kiowa OH-58B
Transport helicopters
81 helicopters of various types
UAV
Tactical and electronic intelligence UAV
Over 24 UAVs total
Air Defence
Self-propelled guns
165 weapons
105 20mm Vulcan M163
60 23mm ZSU-23-4
Towed air defence guns
755 weapons
150 23mm ZU-23-2
455 20/37mm M167 Vulcan/M-1939/TCM-20
150 40mm L/70 Bofors
IDF Problems
As can be seen from the above list of arms, the IDF at the moment is a unique and astounding combination of nuclear weapons with delivery vehicles, an arsenal of equipment produced in the 1960s and of modern weapons on par with the leading world powers. This combination has its drawbacks and they do not make themselves wait for long.
Image: An Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter lands at the Ramon air force base in the Negev Desert, southern Israel, on October 21, 2013. Credit: AFP / Jack Guez
In September 2016, during the removal of the machine gun from a tank at the training base in Shizafon in the south of Israel several soldiers were severely injured.
On 5 October 2016 on the approach to the Ramon airbase in southern Israel the pilot was killed as a result of the ejection from the F-16.
In July 2017 during the course of an exercise, due to his own negligence Lieutenant David Golovenchick was shot dead by a soldier.
On 8 August 2017 an AH-64 helicopter crashed at the Ramon airbase, as a result the pilot was killed, and others sustained injuries.
On 9 August 2017 during IDF operations in the suburbs of Bethlehem, an Israeli soldier suffered wounds of moderate severity as a result of friendly fire.
At the end of August 2017 ten soldiers were lightly injured at the Shizafon base in southern Israel after a smoke grenade exploded.
At the beginning of September 2017 an Israeli soldier was severely injured by a grenade that exploded during military training on the base in the south of the country.
These incidents indicate that the Israeli military has serious shortcomings in the realm of personnel proficiency and equipment maintenance.
The Gideon Plan
In order to give the IDF the ability to confront modern threats from various armed groups, while implementing budget cuts and minimizing the number of accidents, Israel adopted the five-year Gideon Plan in 2015.
Image: Israeli soldiers patrol near Ramallah on Friday, June 20, 2014. Credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash 90
Main Provisions of the Plan
Reduction of 2500 professional soldiers and officers.
Reduction of military service of male draftees from 36 to 32 months. (Reduction of military service of female soldiers from the draft is not considered so far).
Reduction of the age of commanders. If the average age of the regiment staff officers, including the commander of the regiment, was 35 to 37 years, now for these positions officers from the age of 32 will be appointed. The staff officers of the brigade, including the brigade commander, 40 to 42 years instead of 45 to 46 years respectively.
The reduction in the number of reservists to 100 thousand. The reservists who will remain in service will be trained and armed as support troops.
Reducing the number of artillery and light infantry brigades.
Structures such as the Education Corps, Military Rabbinate, Chief Reserve Officer, the Chief of Staff’s Advisor on Women’s Affairs, Army Radio and the Military Censor must undergo reduction and optimization. The command of the Northern District will be merged with the command of the land forces.
Creation of the cyber-troops. Jerusalem Post, citing a senior officer of the IDF, reported at the beginning of 2017 that it was decided to postpone establishing the cyber-troops center.
Bolstering of the Navy group through the procurement and construction of surface ships and a submarine.
Rearming the Air Force by purchasing the American F-35 and UAVs of American and local production.
Ending deferment to students in yeshivas (religious high schools) is not mentioned in this plan.
These provisions indicate IDF’s leaders had decided to focus on transforming it from conscript army to a professional one, staffed with a large number of trained soldiers as well as young and promising officers, capable to implement and employ in practice new ideas. The fact that the command of the Northern District will be united with the command of the land forces indicates that this area (south of Lebanon and Hezbollah) is given special attention. The new army will be armed with more modern equipment and thus will be able to withstand modern threats.
The Israeli Missile Defence Systems vs. the Hezbollah Missile Arsenal
Knowing that Hezbollah will not invade Israel itself, its most capable units are involved in the fighting in Syria, and Hezbollah’s armored forces of the movement are in the development stages, for the Israeli military the biggest threat is Hezbollah’s missile arsenal.
Israel Defence Systems
Click to see the full-size image
There are 17 batteries of MIM-23 I-HAWK available for air defence but presumably due to their obsolescence they are not in active service.
For comparison purposes, the cost of Qassam type rockets of Palestinian production according to Israeli experts is in the neighbourhood of a few hundred dollars. Rockets for the BM-21 Grad cost few thousand. The cost of production of ballistic, anti-ship and medium-range Iranian-made missiles is unknown, but may be assumed that they do not exceed several hundred thousand dollars.
Of course, human life is priceless and the potential loss in this case from Grad rockets, not to mention Scud and Iranian missiles, exceeds the cost of the interceptor missile. While the Iron Dome control system will only launch missiles if incoming missiles are calculated to fall in residential areas, the cost balance is still not in Israel’s favor.
Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
Over time, IDF’s military effectiveness had declined. Israel has won the 1967 fully and unconditionally. The Egyptian and Syrian armies were dealt a powerful blow, and the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the western shore of the river Jordan were occupied. The war of 1973 was won by Israel with heavy human and material losses; however, neither the Egyptian nor the Syrian army was completely defeated. In the 1982 war, where the IDF had numerical superiority, it had won a tactical victory but the task of reaching Beirut to link up with the right-wing Christian Phalangists was not completed. In the Second Lebanon War of 2006 due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure to reassert IDF’s lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature only two sides, IDF and Hezbollah. Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be initiated by Israel.
The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the north and centre of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah units will will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure and some damage to Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.
Image: Israeli soldiers walk together after crossing back into Israel from Lebanon Monday, July 31, 2006. Credit: David Guttenfelder, AP
Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare systems will not paralysed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war. Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the pre-defined call signs and codes.
Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols and checkpoints will cause further losses.
The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure, allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel’s missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon IDF’s Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the bombardment of Israel with long-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah’s Iranian solid-fuel rockets do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel, causing further losses.
It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain is that Israel shouldn’t count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September’s exercises. Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.
Conclusions
The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities, Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.
Image Credit: Israeli Air Force
Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are paid for with soldiers’ blood and commanders’ careers. The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality, Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah, it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights, tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.
While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says: “War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out”.
The Pentagon budget alone for illegal war propaganda is about $626,000,0001 per year. Generous taxpayers relinquish these funds so that the Pentagon can contaminate the public mindset to the detriment of humanity, foreign and domestic.
The contamination of the public mindset is a necessary precondition to aggressive, criminal warfare in furtherance of a self-devouring political economy. Once the public is convinced that there is a War On Terror (which is a Big Lie), further astronomical transfers of money from the people to the oligarchs and narrow vested interests – all to the detriment of the vast majority of the population – are easy to justify.
Over the course of the dirty war on Syria, for example, the annual CIA budget in support of the terrorists invading Syria — all of the terrorists – has been about $1,000,000,000 per year2, and that is only a small fraction of monies spent to support terrorism in Syria. Bill Van Auken notes in “General lets slip US escalation in Syria” that Washington’s “key regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, poured in billions more to ignite a war that has killed hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees.”3
An important component of the Pentagon’s “public deception apparatus” (a.k.a illegal war propaganda) consists of “think tanks”. The RAND corporation is one such example.
The strategy of “branding” has been particularly effective throughout the fake War on Terror. For example, governing agencies of deception would have us believe that there are “moderate terrorists.” The name itself is an oxymoron, but the strategy has been highly effective. Credulous people still believe that lie.4
The “Public Relations” liars, however, are paid to be aware of perception shifts, and the “Moderates” lie as well as the strategy of constantly re-naming terror groups5 is wearing thin, so the branding is also shifting. A new trend now is to re-brand al Qaeda – and all of the terrorists invading Syria are al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates, including ISIS – as the “good guys”.
Syrian Ambassador to the UN, Bashar Ja’afari is well aware of the importance of word choices and how words are used to contaminate public perceptions. He stresses the importance, for example, of recognizing that the Syrian government is a government, and not a “regime”.
Similarly, the terrorists are not “Islamic” not only because of their deviant ideology, but especially because their actions defy any sane notions of Islam. Nor are the terrorists “jihadis”, especially since some of their most ardent supporters are Zionists. And of course the war isn’t a civil war. The terrorists are there because of the West and its allies, not despite the West and its allies. When incorrect nomenclature is used and repeated, however, public perceptions invariable shift.
All of this leads to an often over-looked observation by Christopher C. Black, a former lawyer at the UN:
Journalists who prostitute themselves by telling their fellow citizens lies are not only betraying the trust put in them by the people, and treating them with contempt, they are also war criminals and should be judged as such. Their responsibility in preparing the way for war is as great as those who plan the war and carry out the military operations of the war.6
***
All of the post-9/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that disseminate propaganda to both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda levelled at Syria and contaminating humanity at this moment is likely unprecedented. I had studied and written about Syria for years, so I was not entirely surprised by what I saw.
(Excerpt from Preface, Mark Taliano’s book “Voices from Syria“, Global Research Montreal, 2017)
November 7th, 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution.
We bring to the attention of our readers a selection of article, including Eisenstein’s 1928 film entitled “10 Days that Shook the World” as well as an hour long discussion on the Global Research News Hour radio program.
How did factors as diverse as the country’s participation to WWI, constitutional reforms and economic conditions combine to enable the Bolsheviks to take down the tsarist regime?
A fresh and compelling new account of the Russian revolution to mark its centenary concludes by paying tribute to the Bolsheviks for acting as history’s switchmen, a term derived from the small booths that dotted the railway tracks across the Russian empire, where local revolutionaries had long gathered for clandestine meetings.
Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece: “Ten Days that Shook the World” (1928). In documentary style, events in Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year. While the Mensheviks vacillate, an advance guard infiltrates the palace. Antonov-Ovseyenko leads the attack and declares the proclamation dissolving the provisional government.
The Versailles Treaty was eventually signed on 28 June 1919 without Soviet Russia being involved. Even so, this treaty cancelled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The October Revolution was launched when the Red Guard took over key locations within the capital Petrograd. Twenty thousand Red Guards in the streets, backed by a squadron of seven rebel warships from Kronstadt, and trainloads of armed sailors from Helsingfors in Finland, managed to execute a nearly bloodless coup. Having taken over the Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government, Vladmir Lenin declared that the government had been overthrown and that the Bolsheviks were in control.
The object of the US and its allies from the very outset in 1917 was to destabilize and destroy the Soviet Union.According to a secret document datedSeptember 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas.All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.
Donald Trump is set to arrive in Beijing on November 8 after he stops in Japan and South Korea. Widespread expectations are for an all-smiles, low-substance visit.
China is making efforts to not “view [Trump] as an ‘other’ or a joke,” one Chinese international relations professor toldReuters, but at the same time, another Chinese scholar said that “we must seize upon his special characteristics, such as liking instant gratification,” and let him “rejoice in grandiosity,” as ego-stroking is now “important to keeping relations stable.”
The New York Timescites (paywall) several Chinese analysts who believe that Trump, given his adoration of who he calls China’s “king,” will be much more likely than former president Obama to agree to Xi Jinping’s idea of a “new type of great power relations.” This would be a significant strategic shift, because this idea has traditionally been seen by the U.S. as “code for allowing China to establish a sphere of influence in Asia, with the United States withdrawing to minimize conflict.”
Both U.S. and Chinese officials expect this American president to be unusually submissive to his Chinese counterpart while he is visiting Beijing — to the point that human rights is not even expected to be on the agenda, CNBCreports.
However, the Washington Post reports, “The Trump administration is slowly but surely coming around to a more hawkish, traditional Republican stance on China.”
The Post explains that “Trump is filling his Asia policy team with China hawks inside the national security agencies and around the region,” and they are conducting an “Indo-Pacific strategy review” that will result in the administration “being much more explicit about the challenge that China poses.”
Part of that push to refocus on the “Indo-Pacific” — a term targeted to sound less Chinese than “Asia-Pacific” — begins with an unusual four-party meeting between India, the U.S., Japan, and Australia to happen on the sidelines of the APEC meeting on November 13–14. China’s foreign ministry has already raised concerns about this plan, warning that it should not “target or damage” a “third party’s interest,” India Today reports.
China will almost certainly offer some tweetable business deals to Trump while he is there. Here are a few potentials:
Reported last week by Reuters: China may offer a lucrative oil deal to Trump from its state-owned giant Sinopec, which “could reduce China’s trade deficit with the United States…while allowing Beijing to tap growing U.S. crude supplies as the top global oil importer seeks to diversify its import sources.”
A $5 billion fund for investing in U.S. manufacturing and other sectors is being negotiated between China Investment Corp., China’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street giant that China sees as having favor within the administration, the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall).
The Journal says that “other contracts” and “letters of intent,” and “agreements [that] involve aviation, liquefied natural gas and soybeans” are also expected to be announced by Trump in Beijing.
Lucas Niewenhuis is an associate editor at SupChina who helps curate daily news and produce the company’s newsletter, app, and website content. Previously, Lucas researched China-Africa relations at the Social Science Research Council and interned at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He has studied Chinese language and culture in Shanghai and Beijing, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan.
Saturday night was a busy one for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The kingdom’s 32-year old heir to the throne excelled himself. He surpassed the high levels of chaos and human misery he had already achieved as the defence minister who launched the air campaign on Yemen.
First up was the sudden resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri after just one year in office. Hariri made his announcement from Riyadh, which is a curious place to resign the premiership of Lebanon. His speech was hardline anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran, setting a tone not heard from him in years.
A few days before he gave no indication that he was under the threat of assassination, as he claimed in his speech. He allowed airport workers to take selfies with him, and left Lebanon in a sunny and optimistic mood.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that when he left Lebanon, Hariri had no intention of resigning, that he himself did not know that he would resign and that this resignation had been forced on him by the Saudis
Al-Sabhan tweeted that the two agreed on “many things that are of interest”. But the minister’s tone changed rapidly after Hariri’s resignation. He then tweeted: “The hands of treachery and aggression must be amputated,” referring to Hezbollah and Iran.
The well informed but anonymous Saudi commentator, who uses the Twitter handle Mujtahidd, discounted the theory that Hariri felt under threat of assassination from Iran. He said the Lebanese premier was under greater physical threat from the Islamic State group.
Mujtahidd said Hariri emerged from his latest talks with Ali Akbar Velayati, the Iranian supreme leader’s senior international affairs adviser, in good spirits.
“The main reason for summoning him back to Riyadh is to hold him captive with the rest of the detained princes and businessmen to blackmail him and force him to bring back the funds he has abroad, particularly those not linked to Lebanon.”
“The statement he read was written for him. He was not convinced about it, neither in terms of content nor in terms of submitting his resignation from Riyadh. For how is it possible for a political leader to announce his resignation from another country’s capital?”
Mujtahidd wrote on Twitter.
Image: Mujtahidd’s tweets
Hossein Sheikholeslam, senior advisor to the Iranian foreign minister, appeared to agree with Mujtahidd. He accused US President Donald Trump and the Saudi crown prince of pressurising Hariri into resigning: “Al-Hariri’s resignation was done in coordination with Trump and Mohammed bin Salman to foment tension in Lebanon and the region,” Sheikholeslam said.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, reacted calmly to the news on Sunday. He placed the blame for Hariri’s removal on the Saudis, calling the resignation a violation of Lebanese sovereignty and an attack on “Hariri’s dignity”. He referred to Hariri as “our prime minister,” not, note, our former prime minister.
Put all these statements together, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that when he left Lebanon, Hariri had no intention of resigning, that he himself did not know that he would resign and that this resignation had been forced on him by the Saudis. My information, however, is that he has not been arrested.
The second event was a bump in the night quite literally. It came just hours after Hariri’s bellicose speech. A long range missile launched by Houthi rebels thousands of kilometres away in Yemen came down somewhere near Riyadh airport in the north of the capital. The missile was allegedly intercepted by Saudi air defence missiles, but there were reports of scenes of panic on the ground.
Until now, the Houthis have usually targeted Jeddah. A long-range missile aimed at the capital was read by the Saudis as a clear message from an Iranian proxy: “You ramp up the pressure on Hezbollah and we will ramp up the pressure on you in Riyadh,” the launchers of the missile seemed to say.
McCarthy reborn
The third event to disturb the peace had been well planned. Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah’s demise had been widely predicted. He was in charge of the kingdom’s third military force, the national guard, and as Mohammed bin Salman had taken control of the ministry of defence and the ministry of interior (after ousting his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef). It was only a matter of time before he would take the scalp of Mutaib and put all three of the kingdom’s armies under his personal control.
The National Guard recruits historically from the kindgom’s tribes. On Sunday the bank accounts of the tribal sheikhs involved in the army were frozen and prominent sheikhs have been banned from travel. They were mainly from the Motair and Otaiba tribes who had been loyal to the late King Abdullah. This was done to crack down on dissent.
We did not predict how brutally bin Salman would move against Mutaib. He and his brother Turki were arrested and charged with corruption. His arrest was signalled by websites close to the Royal Court, which printed initials and said the corruption was linked to military sales in his ministry. They created a special hashtag for the occasion which read: “Salman is confronting corruption”.
This committee is McCarthyite in its powers and scope. The first thing to note in the decree which set it up, is that it puts itself above and beyond the law
Al-Arabiya broke the news that first 10 and then 11 princes had been arrested, along with 38 top businessmen and former ministers.
In a style of government which is unique to the kingdom, the decision to carry out this purge appears to have preceded the announcement of the committee formed to make these arrests. This is how the young prince acts, a man who some Middle East experts persist in referring to as a Western-style reformer. He acts with total disregard to habeas corpus, due process and the rule of law. In his eyes, those arrested are guilty before they are proven guilty.
This committee is McCarthyite in its powers and scope. The first thing to note in the decree which set it up, is that it puts itself above and beyond the law. The decree states that the committee (which bin Salman chairs) is
“exempt from laws, regulations, instructions, orders and decisions while the committee shall perform the following tasks … the investigation issuance of arrest warrants, travel ban, disclosure and freezing of accounts and portfolios, tracking of funds, assets, and preventing their remittance or transfer by persons and entities whoever they might be. The committee has the right to take any precautionary measures it sees, until they are referred to the investigating authorities or judicial bodies.”
In other words, the prince can do anything he likes to anyone, seizing their assets in and outside the kingdom. Let’s just remind ourselves of what he now controls. The prince heads all three of Saudi Arabia’s armies; he heads Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company; he heads the committee in charge of all economic affairs which is just about to launch the biggest privatisation the kingdom has seen; and he now controls all of Saudi’s media chains.
If previous moves bin Salman took constituted a power grab, Saturday’s moves were a wealth grab
This was apparent from the list of businessmen arrested. ART, MBC and Rotana Media group dominate the Arab media. These Saudi media corporations account for most of what is put out on air in the Middle East, apart from the news output of Qatari-owned Al Jazeera.
Their respective owners, Saleh Kamel, Walid al-Ibrahim and Prince Waleed bin Talal are behind bars. Presumably too their wealth has been confiscated. Forbes prices bin Talal, chairman of the Kingdom Holding Corporation, at $18bn. He owns sizeable shares in numerous companies, including Newscorp, Citigroup, 21st Century Fox and Twitter. These shares too are under new management. The head of STC, the biggest mobile operator in Saudi, was also arrested.
If previous moves bin Salman took constituted a power grab, Saturday’s moves were a wealth grab.
Quite apart from the political dangers of stripping so many very rich Saudis of their wealth, this is a bizarre way to encourage foreigners to invest in the kingdom. BIn Salman’s actions on Saturday seemed to be designed to scare them all off.
The economy is in recession and foreign reserves are being depleted. Bin Salman has just seized the assets of the kingdom’s biggest businessmen and set up a committee that can seize assets at will at home or abroad. What would stop him doing the same to the assets of foreign investors who fell out with him?
The purge of other top oligarchs like Bakr bin Laden, who headed the top construction company in the country, will also have a knock-on effect in the rest of the economy. The bin Laden group employs thousands of sub-contractors. Purges and business do not mix, as bin Salman will soon find out.
Cracks in royal family
I am told by a reliable source that Prince Waleed bin Talal refused to invest in Neom, the mega city bin Salman announced would be built, and that was the reason why the crown prince removed his cousin. But bin Talal had also clashed with his cousin by calling openly for bin Nayef’s release from house arrest.
All branches of the royal family have been affected by this purge, and others that preceded it
The other point to note is that all branches of the royal family have been affected by this purge, and others that preceded it. Just look at the names of the princes who have been taken out – bin Talal, bin Fahd, bin Nayef, bin Muqrin. The latter died in a plane crash, apparently trying to flee the country. These names tell you one thing – the cracks in the royal family go far and deep and extend to its very core.
Would all this have happened without another green light from Trump? He tweeted yesterday that he “would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange, important to the United States!” Trump also called King Salman, congratulating him for everything he did since coming to power. The moves follow Jared Kushner’s third visit to the kingdom this year.
If it was not apparent to one and all, it surely must be now. The capital of insecurity in the Middle East is Riyadh, and moves by a 32-year old prince to acquire absolute power are capable of destabilising neighbouring countries and removing their prime ministers. Worse, this prince appears to be encouraged by a US president who does not know what he is doing.
Wiser heads in Washington DC, like the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson or the Defence Secretary James Mattis must be tearing their hair out – or what is left of it. It would not surprise me to learn that Tillerson has had enough of trying to put out the fires that his president and his immediate entourage keep on igniting.
David Hearst is editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He was chief foreign leader writer of The Guardian, former Associate Foreign Editor, European Editor, Moscow Bureau Chief, European Correspondent, and Ireland Correspondent. He joined The Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.
Yesterday the ruling Salman clan in Saudi Arabia executed a Night of the Long Knives cleansing the state of all potential competition. The Saudi King Salman and his son Clown Prince Mohammad bin Salman initiated a large arrest wave and purge of high ranking princes and officials. Part of this internal coup was the confiscation of huge financial estates to the advantage of the Salman clan.
The earlier forced resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri is probably related to the last night’s events. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahou endorsed the resignation. This guarantees that Hariri will never again be accepted in a leading role in Lebanon.
In Saudi Arabia eleven princes, including sons of the deceased King Abdullah, more than thirty former and acting ministers as well as the heads of three major TV stations were taken into custody or put under house arrest. The National Guard Commander Prince Mitieb Bin Abdullah was relieved from his post and replaced with Prince Khalid Bin Abdulaziz al Muqrin. The National Guard was the last intelligence and security power center held by the Abdullah branch of the al-Saud family.
An earlier purge in July had dethroned the former Crown Prince Nayaf and replaced him with the young Mohammad Bin-Salman. Then the Nayef branch of the al-Saud family was removed from all power centers. The Abdullah branch followed yesterday. The purged officials were replaced with stooges of the ruling Salman clan.
The Salman branch of the current king and clown prince has now eliminated all of potential internal competition. This goes against the consensus model that had been the foundation of the Saudi family rule over the last century. Tens of thousands of clans and people depended on the patronage of the removed princes and officials. They will not just sit back as their fortunes evaporate.
One effect of the purges will be the concentration of Saudi wealth in the hands of the Salmans.
One of the arrested persons is the allegedly sixth richest man of the world, Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (video). He has (had?) an estimated net-worth between $18 and $32 billion. Al-Waleed had publicly clashed with U.S. President Donald Trump. (Al-Waleed is (was?) the largest shareholder of Citygroup which selected Barack Obama’s cabinet before receiving a huge government bailout.) Another casualty is Bakr bin Laden, brother of Osama Bin Laden, chairman of the Saudi Binladin Group and fifth richest man of the country.
Official pretext for the purge are corruption allegations going back to 2009. This financial subterfuge will allow the ruling Salmans to confiscate the wealth of the accused. The total haul of this raid will amount to dozens of billions of dollars. A new anti-corruption committee was installed under Clown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. It has dictatorial powers and can freeze and confiscate whatever financial assets it deems worth its attention:
It may take whatever measures it deems necessary to deal with those involved in public corruption cases and take what it considers to be the right of persons, entities, funds, fixed and movable assets, at home and abroad, return funds to the state treasury and register property and assets in the name of state property.
The events in Lebanon and Riyadh would have been impossible without U.S. approval and support. In late October Trump’s son in law and senior adviser Jared Kushner made an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia. In a tweet yesterday Donald Trump, sworn to the Wahhabi orb, named the price for his consent and cooperation:
Would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange. Important to the United States!
A primary listing of Aramco oil conglomerate at the NYSE will give the U.S. government regulatory and legal authority over the most valuable company of the world.
Also last night Yemeni forces fired a medium range missile from north Yemen towards Riyadh airport. The well targeted 1,000 kilometer (660 miles) shot is impressive and unprecedented. The Saudi air-defense near the airport, U.S. Patriot systems manned by contractors, launched four interceptor missiles (video) towards the incoming Yemeni projectile. The Saudis claim that one of the interceptors hit the target. A uprising smoke column was seen from the airport (video). It is not possible to say if it was the result of the original missile or of an interception.
That the Saudi capital can be hit will come as another shock to many Saudis. It discourages investment in Saudi Arabia.
The Yemeni missiles, fired by the original Yemen army under former president Saleh, may have their origin in Iran. But they could also be older ones Yemen had purchased elsewhere decades ago. The Saudis will surely blame Iran without explaining how such missiles could be smuggled through their tight blockade cordon around the resistance held country.
The missile launch is unlikely to be related to the Hariri resignation or to the purge in Riyadh. It takes days for the Yemenis to prepare such a missile and its launch. It is presumably in retaliation for Wednesday’s devastating Saudi air attack on an open market in the northern Saada province of Yemen. According to Yemeni sources more than 60 people were killed. After the missile launch on Riyadh Saudi jets again bombed the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
Since the incapacitated King Salman took the throne in Riyadh his ruthless 32 year old son Mohammad bin Salman has taken control of all branches of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi launched a war on a defenseless Yemen and supported al-Qaeda, ISIS and other “rebels” against the Iraqi and Syrian governments. He split the Gulf Cooperation Council by attacking Qatar. After a stalemate in Yemen and Qatar and losing in Iraq and Syria he has now initiated a war against Hizbullah in Lebanon. None of these bloody initiatives has achieved its aim of weakening the influence of the perceived enemy Iran. All of them helped Iran to consolidate its position.
The financial position of the Saudi state is in disarray. To the applause of the western claque Bin Salman announced the economic, social and religious liberation of Saudi Arabia. But little, if any, of the grand promises have been delivered.
Yesterday’s purge can be perceived as a panic-fueled move. All of Bin Salman’s endeavors have failed. The successful targeting of Riyadh’s airport only underscores this. He is under pressure but unable to deliver. The internal resistance to him is growing.
When Hitler initiated the Night of Long Knives against the socialist part of his party he was on an upward trend of his political power. The country was at peace, its international standing was growing, the economy surged and the majority of the people endorsed him. Bin Salman’s remake of that night comes while his initiatives fail. It is doubtful that the consolidation he seeks will be equally successful.
President Erdogandeclared that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is “an important chain in the New Silk Road, which aims to connect Asia, Africa, and Europe” while speaking in the Azerbaijani capital during at the opening ceremony for this transnational connectivity corridor.
The event was also attended by the Prime Ministers of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, as well as ministers from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, demonstrating its broad geographic appeal. Erdogan most immediately hopes that it will enhance comprehensive relations between Turkey and its fellow ethno-Turkish compatriots in Central Asia, and that afterwards the BTK railway could be utilized by Europeans and North Africans in connecting to this landlocked region as well. Ultimately, the goal is to turn this South-Central Corridor into a well-traversed New Silk Road linking the Western and Eastern corners of Eurasia together by connecting the EU with China, and while a quick look at the physical map would suggest that this multimodal route is somewhat unwieldly, the political one says otherwise.
Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) Railway map
The most direct routes connecting the EU with China are the planned Eurasian Land Bridge across Russia and the Northern Sea Route through the Arctic Ocean, but both are comparatively underdeveloped at the moment for various reasons. In addition, while there are plans to construct a high-speed railway across Central Asia in connecting China with Iran, and thenceforth to Turkey and the EU, this idea has yet to get past the drawing board and could in any case be endangered by the regular risk of Kurdish terrorist activity in these two Great Powers’ shared Mideast borderlands. Another key point is that the US-provoked New Cold War has created artificial geopolitical obstacles to Eurasian integration as Washington seeks to “isolate” Moscow and Tehran, so there’s a chance that China’s planned corridors across its multipolar partners’ territories might not materialize as quickly as expected.
All of these factors surprisingly make the BTK railway the most presently efficient route for the EU, Turkey, and North Africa to access Central Asia, and eventually even China as well once the proper connectivity infrastructure is built in the region to facilitate this. Looking forward, while it’s doubtful that this route will ever become the primary corridor for EU-Chinese trade, it’ll probably be much more successful in strengthening Turkey’s influence in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, something that many Turkish strategists had spoken about and hoped for since 1991 but barely made any progress on. This could contribute to diversifying the regional governments’ foreign partnerships and, in the true sense of the word, making them more multipolar.
By establishing a more robust presence in Central Asia, which is historically in Russia’s sphere of influence, Turkey would also be expanding the complex strategic interdependency that’s developed between Moscow and Ankara since their fast-moving rapprochement kicked off last summer.
This would in turn tighten their bilateral partnership and diminish the chances that the US would ever again be successful in turning them against one another due to the heightened collateral damage that this would entail to both of their interests as a result of the long-term geopolitical changes introduced by the BTK railway.
In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.
Washington’s Blog asked high-level NSA official Bill Binney* if he had heard of the term “false flags” when he was with the NSA.
Binney responded:
Sure, they were under deception and manipulation programs. I was not involved in doing them; but, I did have to figure out some that the other side was doing. The other side called them “dezsinformatsiya” and Manipulatsiya.”
The Brits have been doing this for several hundred years and are quite good at it.
Washington’s Blog asked Philip Giraldi – a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA – the same question with regards to his experience with the CIA.
Giraldi responded:
Yes, of course. We did false flags, and called them that, frequently in the operations directorate using false documentation to indicated that we were nationals of a country that was not the United States. Almost every CIA officer had false third country identification when operating overseas….
We followed up by asking:
Is it fair to say some of the false flags were for the purpose (i.e. premeditated) of blaming another country or group … not only just in case caught?
Giraldi replied:
Sometimes if it were a covert action attempting to do just that but more often just for cover reasons to make one appear to not be American…
Robert David Steele – a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer – said:
Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.
***
In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI.
Steele has repeatedly and publicly said (and also confirmed to Washington’s Blog) that he personally carried out a “false flag” attack while working as a U.S. intelligence officer.
Indeed, false flags are so common that there are official rules of engagement prohibiting false flags in naval, air and land warfare.
* William Binney is the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history. Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).
Videos
Examples of False Flags mentioned by senior US officials
Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of being responsible for the ballistic missile launched from Yemen that targeted Riyadh airport on Saturday, warning that it could be “considered an act of war.”
In a statement in the wee hours of Monday, Saudi Arabia laid the blame for the attack directly at Iran’s feet, claiming it would not have happened had Iran not been supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen. “Iran’s role and its direct command of its Houthi proxy in this matter constitutes a clear act of aggression that targets neighboring countries, and threatens peace and security in the region and globally,” the statement, published by the official Saudi Press Agency, reads. “Therefore, the coalition’s command considers this a blatant act of military aggression by the Iranian regime, and could rise to be considered as an act of war against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”Saudi Arabia also said it “reserves [the] right to respond to Iran in the appropriate time and manner.”
The Saudi-led military coalition also announced it was closing off all land border crossings, seaports and airports in Yemen in response to the missile launch.
The coalition has been fighting against Shiite Houthi rebels, who took control of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in early 2015. The Saudis are backing ousted Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
On Saturday, a ballistic missile was launched from Yemeni territory, allegedly targeting the King Khalid International Airport near the Saudi capital, Riyadh. It was intercepted and landed “on the airport’s grounds” causing little to no damage, according to Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority. No flights were disrupted by the attack.
Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the Volcano-1 ballistic missile was domestically produced. Saudi Arabia, however, is accusing Iran of supplying the weapon to the Houthis and thus enabling the attack. Iran, while backing the rebels, has denied arming them.
The shocking latest twist in what has been a chaotic weekend in Saudi Arabia is news that a helicopter transporting 8 high-ranking Saudi officials (including prince Mansour bin-Muqrin) has crashed in the south of the Kingdom, near the border with Yemen.
As PTI reports, a Saudi prince was killed today when a helicopter with several officials on board crashed near the kingdom’s southern border with war-torn Yemen, state television said.
The news channel Al-Ekhbariya announced the death of Prince Mansour bin Muqrin, the deputy governor of Asir province and son of a former crown prince.
It did not reveal the cause of the crash or the fate of the other officials aboard the aircraft.
The crash also comes after Saudi Arabia yesterday intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile near Riyadh’s international airport after it was fired from Yemen in an escalation of the kingdom’s war against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.
Sky News Arabia confirms an earlier report from Al-Watan news…“Newsletter: loss of a helicopter carrying a number of officials in the southern Asir, Saudi Arabia”
الإخبارية السعودية: فقدان طائرة مروحية تقل عددا من المسؤولين في عسير جنوبي السعودية
Details are few for now but some headlines report that the high-ranking officials aboard included Crown Prince Mansour bin-Muqrin, deputy Emir of Asir province. He was a son of Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the ex-intelligence chief who briefly was Saudi Arabia’s crown prince from January to April 2015.
#Saudi state tv just announced the death of Prince Mansour bin Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, Deputy Governor of Asir Region, in a helicopter crash https://t.co/JoT1twshBB
The incident occurred as the officials were on their way back from an inspection trip to al-Saida al-Sawalha Center in the municipality of Mahail Asir…
A video, believed to be the last one of Prince Mansour alive, was released by the channel, showing him and accompanying officials boarding the helicopter ….
The crash site is reported near Abha, in the south of The Kingdom in the Asir Region, bordering Yemen. The area has seen a number of cross-border retaliatory attacks from Yemen in recent months, reportedly leading to casualties among Saudi troops.
There are sources saying all aboard have died…
KSA :A helicopter with Saudi officials on board(among them : vice-governor of Asir Mansour bin Muqrin) crashed today:all passengers died https://t.co/8vrf5bTybP
So – Trump pushes Aramco IPO (out of the blue), Prime Minister of Lebanon forced to resign, Saudis intercept missiles, 11 Saudi princes arrested, numerous officials charged, and now a dead crown prince near the border with Yemen…
President Putin arrived in Tehran on 1 November for talks with the Ayatollah Khamenei. First, to cement the Nuclear Agreement of 2015 (Vienna), as far as Russia is concerned, thereby sidelining Trump’s attempt at reneging on the agreement. Second, to sign billions worth of tripartite hydrocarbon deals between Russia, Iran and Azerbeijan.The deal is slated to be be transacted in Russian rubles, rather than US dollars, thus, effectively detaching Iran from the dollar hegemony.
In other words – helping Iran in de-dollarizing her economy – and effectively and drastically contributing to diminishing the dollar’s stance as a world reserve currency.
That’s “Resistance Economy” at its best. De-dollarization is a key principal of the concept of Resistance Economy which also implies economic auto-reliance and trading only with friendly partners.
Iran has full technological, agricultural and intellectual capacity to become self-sufficient. This is a great step towards a new economy – a sea change in economic parameters of freedom and equality. It is in particular a detachment from the uncountable illegal ‘sanctions’ the US is keen on imposing on countries that refuse to follow her dictate. Belonging to another monetary system, trading and investing outside the dollar-dominated western banking system, is like a breath of fresh air.
Other countries may take an example. Venezuela has already done so, by signing hydrocarbon deals with China in Yuan – gold-convertible yuans. Chapeau! – Away from the dollar. For Venezuela, only a few thousand kilometers apart from the border of the great abusive emperor, this is a daring move and a demonstration for Washington of Venezuela’s independence. Venezuela has the support of Russia and China, as both have huge investment and trade agreements in Venezuela, i.e. China in excess of 12 billion dollars of trade agreements alone, one of the largest, if not the largest with any Latin American country.
Washington is aware of it. Threatening Venezuela is therefore more of Trump-type bluff and propaganda than anything else. Besides, US mercenaries and CIA agents were vital in initiating and inciting violent disruptions in Venezuela’s elections, causing more than hundred deaths. Venezuela’s democracy has survived and is a shining example of a peaceful, democratic and sovereign country, despite these vicious outside interferences.
Iran is also at the point of joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which comprises China, Russia and most of Eurasia, plus India and Pakistan – embracing about half of the globe’s population and one third of the world’s GDP. The SCO is a strategic economic but also defense association – and foremost, the SCO has an economy free from the dollar dominion. There is a ‘waiting list’ of more countries wanting to join the SCO.
What Mr. Putin said in terms of self-reliance and ‘sanctions’ has worldwide significance. It not only applies to Iran, but to any country across the globe that is tired of corporate globalization, of the subservience to Washington and of being enslaved by debt. Here are Mr. Putin’s words to the Ayatollah repeated:
“Some Russian producers and traders pray that the US sanctions wouldn’t end, because as a result of them, their capacities have started to attract attention. From 2014, i.e. the start of US sanctions, we devoted our funds to scientific and technological progress, and we had significant growth in the fields of biotechnology, IT, agriculture and space industries. Now, in spite of the initial concerns, we have realized that we can do whatever we decide to.”
These words translate into a new economic paradigm, ‘local production for local consumption with local money and public banking for a sovereign local economy and sovereign and friendly trading partners.’
The Russian leader also referred to Iran as a vital pillar for stability and peace in the Middle East; he lauded Iran’s role in helping defeat the ISIS / Daesh terror and bringing Syria back into control of Damascus.
In addition, Iran will be part of President Xi (China) initiated New Silk Road, or OBI – ‘One Belt Initiative’ – which is already designed in four routes connecting China and Russia throughout Eurasia, the Middle East – and even Africa – with the western most links of Eurasia, i.e. western Europe – that is, if Europe will finally see the light and accept that the future is in the EAST – also Europe’s future – and that the west, led by Washington into an abyss, is slowly committing suicide by its war atrocities, greed-sponsored terrorism continuous lies. There is no lie that will not be discovered sooner or later – and when that happens a quantum shift in public opinion may take place and the west’s credibility and the fake abusive debt-and-interest based dollar economy will become a collapsing Ponzi scheme.
The One Belt Initiative has the potential for massive economic, scientific and cultural development over the next few centuries, involving trillions of (today’s) dollar in investment and millions of jobs and livelihoods for the populations along the OBI route – with wide-ranging positive socioeconomic repercussions way beyond the geographic OBI sphere. The OBI inspires new dynamics in future socioeconomic thinking and relations between nations. Countries are welcome to join the One Belt Road or Initiative, but are never forced, into this new economic direction, one of peace and equality, of a multi-polar world economy and political system.
Iran has chosen – and is well on her way to fully recover from the wrongly and criminally imposed punishments from a nation that has no right whatsoever to police and oppress sovereign nations according to her will. Those times are on a fast track to oblivion.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, 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.
First published by “Opinion- English-on Khamenei.ir”
Politics, especially local politics, is hard work. Easier to share headlines flashed at us through the national press. There’s always another juicy or outrageous anecdote to absorb, dismiss, or share. So our political conversations keep advancing. Maybe.
Following local political trends at my county level (in upstate New York’s Catskills[1]) is another matter. I suspect my problem would apply to downstate too.
I just want to carry out my democratic duty at election time. Voting could help build a local political barrier to thwart threats charging towards us from Washington. Yet I find myself facing one obstacle after another. Perusing local political issues in advance of Tuesday’s nationwide election, I feel stymied and isolated.
If I weren’t so dogged, I’d forget about democracy altogether; this business of voting responsibly needs sustained attention and real commitment. Take the question of who’s running for office in our towns (in this “off-election” year): now is when we select our supervisors, judges, and town councils, among others. It’s not only a humdrum affair; it’s often obscure. Most voters don’t know who presently holds these offices, and, for example, if the sheriff is an elected official. And new candidates? Not easy to learn their identities and what party they represent.
Since the last local election (two years ago?), admittedly I’ve not been as active as I might have. So I ask others: “What happens at town council meetings between elections? Few can tell me. (It’s a drag getting to a town meeting after work and tending to family needs at suppertime.)
I know town councils assign our tax money. But do citizens approve the budget? I don’t know. Would that be on the November 7th ballot? What about our dwindling fire department—is its future a town issue? Can we take problems in the district school to our council? What about the decrepit bridge on South Street? Our local opioid crisis?
I’ve been a fulltime resident here for 20 years. As a registered Democrat, I usually check any democratic candidate box on the ballot. Afterwards I forget about council business. I rarely follow these election results anyway. (You may think I’m a shirker but I’m sure I’m typical of folks here.)
I confess, I may have been inattentive, initially. Six years ago, I decided to better prepare myself before casting my ballot. I would do my homework. My good intentions notwithstanding, I could learn little about local candidates: campaign literature was scarce; some lawn signs planted here and there, but no calls and no personal canvassing. Worse, perusing a ballot on Election Day, I found I had few choices –incumbents were running unopposed. Often the names meant nothing to me.
One year, seeing an invitation to meet candidates for town offices before a local election, I stopped in at our fire hall. I found more candidates than potential voters present. Moreover, this was a Republican Party event, and all four candidates greeting us were Republicans. I was welcome however; the pastries were tasty and I could ask about the offices being sought—town judgeship for example.
Optimistically, I phoned the Democratic Party office. Maybe it would sponsor a candidates’ gathering here. I called several times. No reply, not even to steer me to a webpage. Speaking with neighbors, I learned many are on the same page as me politically. About candidates and the local party committee, they shrug. “No use voting.” As for local governance: no one I ask is clear when town meetings take place, who are the supervisor (mayor), highway chief, council members. “Phone the town clerk,” I’m advised. “Try the board of elections.”
A party committee member helped explain the local structure to me. “You’re represented by so-and-so, a good fellow but can’t attend meetings. Do you want to be a committee member? You wouldn’t have to do anything.” They just needed a name.
Any resident can sit in on a local party meetings; same for the town council. “Very boring; they do what they want”, I am told by my neighbor, Elena.
Sometimes people get stirred up—if a child dies from substance abuse, or if crime is on the rise. Disputes about sharing resources get attention too: water management, which district should pay police, enforcing zoning laws. These issues can bring out citizens and often involve lengthy legal disputes. Otherwise it’s humdrum bureaucratic stuff, and difficult for an outsider–a citizen–to follow.
The widespread victory of Republicans in January saw a flurry of activity from the opposing side, generated mainly by shock (and embarrassment). Attendance at party meetings spiked. People networked, sharing their fears and outrage, vowing to become ‘politically engaged’—some for the first time in their (middle-aged) lives. Activist groups blossomed.
Here in New York State an important referendum is on Tuesday’s ballot—do we want a new state constitution? It’s complicated. So we’ve seen many public forums and debates over the past weeks. Newspapers and legal organizations, the League of Women Voters and some unions have endorsed, or opposed. At one presentation in a sizable town nearby, about 15 people sat scattered through a large hall to hear details and ask questions. When the discussion ended, half the audience left hurriedly. Among those remaining, five were candidates running for seats in the town’s administration, there to address voters.
All our regional papers have noted how few seats are being contested. “Sullivan County has 55 uncontested races” moans The River Reporter . The Walton paper notes that most candidates are incumbents running unopposed. October 3rd front page of another concurs–“General election marked by lack of candidates.” Perusing the past three issues of Times Herald Record, our main regional paper, I see a flurry of 30 ‘letters to the editor’—each one espousing the merits of a candidate. Maybe that’s the most a reader will learn about the names they’ll find on Tuesday’s ballot.
Oh well, there’s always another election.
Notes:
[1] Sullivan County with a population of about 78,000 and Delaware County with almost 48,000 residents)
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has delivered a rage filled resignation address from the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Hariri, who is a duel Lebanese-Saudi citizen, leads the Lebanese party Future Movement which forms part of the March 14 Allience in the Lebanese parliament. The future movement attracts few Shi’a and Christian voters and has been openly critical of Hezbollah’s assistance to Syria in its war against al-Qaeda, FSA and ISIS.
During his resignation speech, he blasted Iran and Hezbollah in a manner that is highly reminiscent of Israeli propaganda. In a phrase echoing remarks made by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Hariri said that “Iran’s hand in the region would be cut off”, although Hariri, like Netanyahu, failed to explain how Iran has a ‘hand in the region’ in a way that violates any norms of international law. Hariri then stated that he feared for his life, should he remain in office, while providing no evidence of credible threats to his safety.
The timing of the surprise resignation is in many ways, more significant than the content of the resignation speech.
The speech came shortly after Hariri met with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman and only hours after the CIA published suspicious documents which perversely try to link Iran with al-Qaeda.
The fact of the matter is, as everyone except the CIA seems to know, that al-Qaeda is a declared enemy of Iran and Iran is a declared enemy of al-Qaeda, both in terms of geo-strategic interests as well as ideology.
In 1998, Iran almost went to war with Afghanistan to avenge the slaughter of Iranian diplomats by al-Qaeda who at the time were headquartered in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.
More recently, Iran has fought with Iraqi and Syrian troops in their war against al-Qaeda and ISIS, an organisation which was founded by members of a group called al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Moreover, Iranians are targeted by al-Qaeda terrorists across the world in a ruthless fashion.
The absurdity of the CIA’s claim that Iran and al-Qaeda had attempted to work together is not only insulting to those with a sense of reality, but it obscures the fact that in Syria and Libya before that, the US has allied itself with al-Qaeda forces. The US in fact founded al-Qaeda in the 1980s when it was known as the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen. Members of the group even met with Ronald Reagan in the White House.
In spite of supporting al-Qaeda in Syria and Libya and helping to form what became al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the US is now trotting out al-Qaeda as a kind of strange boogieman in order to whip up tensions against Iran, a country which like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Gaddafi’s Libya, was totally opposed to the group.
The supreme disinformation campaign by Mike Pompeo’s CIA has now been effectively regurgitated by the aloof and increasingly unpopular Saad Hariri.
Hariri’s resignation will be welcomed by his many opponents, including perhaps, Lebanon’s Christian President Michel Aoun, who has been working to restore Lebanon’s ties with Syria after a personally touch-and-go relationship with Damascus over the decades.
However, the style of Hariri’s resignation is deeply irresponsible as his speech contained inflammatory sectarian rhetoric which could potentially set off a Sunni extremist uprising in a country which was ripped apart by a 15 year long civil war.
There remains a further danger that Hariri’s anti-Hezbollah and anti-Iran tirade was calculated in order to provoke a wider conflict in and around Lebanon involving Hezbollah, Israel and Sunni terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.
It is also clear that as the war against Takfiri terrorism in western Iraq and eastern Syria is being won by Syria and Iraq, those who continue to seek the destabilisation of Syria and the wider Levant, are now doing so by trying to sow discord in western Syria.
This has manifested itself first of all, in the al-Qaeda offensive on the Golan Heights, assisted by Israeli artillery attacks and secondly, with the resignation of Hariri in Lebanon, which is a move designed to draw Syria’s Hezbollah ally into a new sectarian conflict. These two events crucially happened within 24 hours of one another.
I tend to agree that the attempt to plunge Lebanon into a new civil war will ultimately fail, it is also important remember that this is in many ways the last stand for the ‘regime change’ policy still favoured by Saudi, Israel and the US. The west in particular has been interfering with Lebanon’s internal situation dating from a time when they were still hesitant to full provoke Syria, Iraq and Egypt.
If they fail in Lebanon, that means there are no other stops left on the regime change train–certainly no easy ones seeing as the US, Israel and Saudi are still (thankfully) too afraid of attacking Iran directly.
It seems clear enough that Hezbollah will not take the bait and be provoked into taking measures that could lead to instability. Hezbollah, after all, does not need to respond to such provocations, because in Syria and elsewhere, Hezbollah are winning and Hezbollah continues to gain popularity in Lebanon, even among non-Shi’a Muslims. Furthermore, Hezbollah’s leadership are far more intelligent than many in Saudi wish that they were.
So while Hezbollah and other parties in Lebanon including the Amal Movement and President Michel Aoun’s FPM will not feed the chaos as Saudi and Israel are clearly hoping, what is clear is that Saudi and its de-facto allies are making a final push. Is it desperate?…yes. But desperation can lead to renewed hyper-aggression as much as to a sense of despair. Vigilance will be the key for all parties in Lebanon looking to avoid the worst: a re-commencing of civil war.
The Saudi propaganda machine is already in overdrive, with Saudi and pro-Saudi media suggesting that the apparent Houthi missile which was intercepted over Riyadh was somehow a Hezbollah attempt to make Saad Hariri’s ‘assassination fears’ become a reality. Such a claim amounts to the most childish attempt at a pseudo-false flag in history.
While Harari was likely made a mafioso style offer he could not refuse by an ever more assertive Muhammad Bin Salman, one cannot discount the madness of famously unethical states in a moment of desperation.
Hariri has clearly been thrown under the bus, along with 11 Saudi princes and 30 ministers who are now under arrest for “corruption” charges, almost certainly on the orders of MBS. When it comes to further provocations in Lebanon, will Israel and al-Qaeda begin to do militarily/terroristically what Saudi has begun doing politically?
There is no absolute answer to such a question, but anything less than total vigilance, preparedness and military readiness from the Lebanese resistance would be worse than a crime, it would be a blunder.
Many in Lebanon will be happy to see Hariri go, but many will also be worried about how he may have opened the door to pro-Saudi sectarianism as a result of the timing and place of his abrupt withdrawal from office.
In 1919, following the first World War, the victorious Allied Powers met in Paris to remake the world (see image below). The prime ministers of Italy, France, and Great Britain as well as U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, collectively known as “The Big Four,” were the decisive diplomatic players at the meeting. Under their leadership, the lands of the defeated Central Powers were picked apart. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved into smaller central European nations. Germany lost territory and was served with an extremely punitive and expensive peace treaty. In several cases, the triumphant Big Four parceled out bits of land to themselves.
It was in this context of post-war imperial conquest that the fate of the Arab lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire was decided.
During WWI, the Allies had overcome the Ottomans with the important assistance of local Arabs who had rebelled against Turkish rule. Among these formerly Ottoman subjects was Emir Faisal, the son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca. Faisal arrived in Paris seeking assurance that the British would honor the commitment they had made to his father: post-war independence for all the Arab lands that had been liberated from Turkish control.
The conference also heard from Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the British Zionist movement. Weizmann argued for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Arab territory known as Palestine. During his presentation, Weizmann cited in its entirety the Balfour Declaration –the 1917 promise made to the Zionist movement by British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, stating that the British government favored the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.
Photo: Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference.
It was exactly this conflicting maze of treaties and agreements that led to the outbreak of the World War. And it was with the very aim of preventing another such calamity that in 1919 Woodrow Wilson proposed the foundation of a League of Nations—a body designed to bring international diplomacy into the light of day and rule of law. Wilson believed that by promoting international agreement and democracy, sovereignty, liberty, and self-determination, an environment for a lasting peace would be created. Wilson, therefore, did not arrive in Paris with an agenda of expanding U.S. territory in the East, but with the idea that a lasting peace was achievable and the best outcome.
So when the Ottoman question arose, Wilson made a proposal in keeping with his ideal of self-determination: Ask the people who live there what they want. This was, of course, an idea completely alien to the imperial ambitions of France and Britain and certainly out of place at the Paris conference, where the unofficial motto was “To the victor belong the spoils.” Yet Wilson was not daunted by the radical nature of his suggestion. Instead, he declared that the newly liberated Arabs should shape their own destiny and that any settlement “of territory [or] of sovereignty [should be determined on] the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned.”
With that, Wilson commissioned the first survey of Arab opinion. In June of 1919, an American commission, led by the President of Oberlin College, Dr. Henry King, and a businessman and diplomat named Charles Crane, arrived in the Mediterranean coastal city of Jaffa to begin the first-ever Arab public opinion survey. The Commission traveled throughout what was then known as Greater Syria, including modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine. They visited three dozen towns, met with representatives of 442 organizations and received nearly 2,000 petitions. At each stop they tried to ascertain what the local population wanted for their political future—to be independent or placed under the mandate of a foreign power. They asked how the people viewed British and French plans to divide their region. They also questioned local populations about Britain’s intention to support the Zionist goal of a “Jewish Homeland” in Palestine. At the time, the population of the region in question was 3,247,500, of whom 2,365,000 were Muslim, 587,560 were Christian, 140,000 were Druze and 11,000 were Jewish.
The results were particularly adamant on certain issues. Among them: “The non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program […] There was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this.” This feeling was also shared by the broader population of the entire Arab East: “Only two requests – those for a united Syria and for independence – had a larger support,” continued the King-Crane report.
Based on the responses of the local populations, the King-Crane report made a series of suggestions. With regard to the fate of Palestine, they suggested that the Zionist project, to which they had been initially sympathetic, should be dramatically scaled back—both by limiting Jewish migration and by dismissing the eventual goal of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The report’s suggestions continued on for pages on certain specific issues, but strikingly, what comes across is the recognition that local, in this case largely Arab, opinions mattered. Like Wilson, King and Crane fully accepted that imposing policy against the will of the population would generate massive resistance. However, the British and French—old hands at the colonial game—were undeterred.
Lord Balfour, for one, sharply rejected the Wilsonian approach. “In Palestine,” he declared,
“we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American commission has. [. . .] Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is…of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
In the end, Lord Balfour had his way. Instead of independence, boundaries were drawn, dismembering the Arab East and creating British and French spheres of influence over the newly created states of Lebanon and Syria (France) and trans-Jordan and Iraq (Britain) as well as Palestine (also to the British, with the understanding that it would become the “Jewish Homeland”).
These deplorable actions by the imperial powers set the stage for the multiple conflicts that have plagued the region ever since. As British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the New Statesman in 2002:
“A lot of the problems we are having to deal with now, I have to deal with now, are a consequence of our colonial past […] The Balfour declaration and the contradictory assurances which were being given to Palestinians in private at the same time as they were being given to the Israelis – again, an interesting history for us but not an entirely honourable one.”
And so, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration is not cause for celebration. Rather it should prompt us to recall the grave injustice that imperial acquisitiveness and racist insensitivity have done to an innocent Arab nation. Their rights and opinions were ignored and as a result the last 100 years have been marked by unceasing conflict and suffering. This is the shame of Balfour.
James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.
If you think nuclear weapons went the way of the Berlin Wall and shoulder pads at the end of the 1980s, think again.
The U.S. still has a very large nuclear arsenal, and we’re considering spending quite a lot of money to update it. Based on our recent video conversation, we compiled a list of six things you should know about the nuclear arsenal.
If you’re not a millionaire (or billionaire, or trillionaire – just kidding, those doesn’t exist, at least not yet), numbers with a bunch of zeros after them can start to look the same.
But rest assured, $1 trillion is a lot of money, even—or especially—for our debt-laden federal government. Is it really a good idea to spend $1 trillion to update our arsenal? (That’s $1,000,000,000,000, in case you were wondering).
“We’re at a pivot point,” said Jim Walsh, a research associate in the Security Studies Program at MIT.
“These systems are showing their age. Decisions are going to have to be made over the next several years about what to do about that. Those decisions will have consequences for the future, and we should not just do it out of habit or autopilot—we really need to engage this, and engage it now in a strong way…This modernization is not simply life-extension. In some cases, we would be adding new capabilities we haven’t had before, and new weapons systems we haven’t had before.”
If we do decide to proceed with costs of up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years, many of these bills will be due around the same time. It’s important to take into consideration the opportunity cost of spending this amount of money on modernizing the nuclear arsenal.
“It’s been considered a budgetary train wreck, because we’re trying to modernize all of the legs of the nuclear triad (sea, air, and land) at the same time,” said Greg Terryn, a policy analyst at The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
“The real concern there is either that you can’t finish a program you started and your nuclear arsenal changes based on budgetary constrictions, or that every dollar you spend on nuclear arsenal is money you’re not spending on your conventional forces or domestic needs. That means that troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, where we still have deployed forces and military operations, might not get the funding they need to complete their objectives.”
Nuclear-armed cruise missiles are considered by many nuclear policy experts to be particularly destabilizing. These weapons are launched without warning, and it’s impossible for the target to determine whether the weapon has a nuclear or conventional tip. Essentially, a recipe for disaster.
Yet despite these risks, the U.S. military is planning to build up to 1,100 new nuclear-capable cruise missiles. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Andrew Weber wrote an Op-Ed in The Washington Post in October calling for President Obama to scrap this part of the plan.
“I believe in a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent for the U.S.,” said Weber in Reinvent’s recent video conversation.
“I’m proud of some of the efforts that the Obama administration made to reverse decades of neglect in our nuclear arsenal. That said, I think we have some real opportunities moving forward to think more about types of nuclear weapons…Bill Perry and I would like President Obama, in his last year, to challenge the world, all of the nuclear weapons-possessors, to either forego or eliminate this particularly dangerous class of nuclear weapons.”
In 2013, advocacy organization Global Zero polled 70 members of Congress about the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. Ninety-nine percent didn’t even get close to the correct number (which is more than 7,000). And in a 2004 poll, fewer than 20 percent of Americans guessed that we had more than 1,000 weapons.
“You need a groundswell of support from the constituencies in the United States in order to enact political change,” said Terryn.
“The challenge is that Millennials don’t think of nuclear weapons as a realistic concern right now. When I left policy school to come into the nuclear field and told my friends I would be working on nuclear weapons policy, they said, ‘We still have those?’…When people realize this is an existential threat, and maybe the biggest threat to human life we have, that can motivate political change.”
The perception that nuclear weapons are a 20th-century problem is a dangerous one, because it becomes much more difficult to gain enough momentum for substantive policy change.
“There is no real consciousness—particularly among young people, but really young and old alike, that we have as many nuclear weapons as we have, and that the dangers we face are not only from our enemies who have them, but from the weapons themselves,”
said Walsh.
Of the roughly 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world, around 93% are owned by the U.S. and Russia.
In 2012, then Senator and future Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright, among others, signed a report advocating for a reduction of the nuclear arsenal to around 900 weapons.
“The world has changed, but the current arsenal carries the baggage of the cold war,” General Cartwright told TheNew York Times. “What is it we’re really trying to deter? Our current arsenal does not address the threats of the 21st century.” An approach to nuclear weapons policy that isn’t primarily focused on “keeping up” with other countries could help prevent potentially destabilizing arms racing and brinksmanship.
“I’d like to get away from the thinking that numerical values are the most important thing,” said Terryn.
“I’d like to focus more on strategic stability in a broader sense. That’s looking at the nuclear arsenal, but not just how many weapons we have—looking at variety, flexibility of the delivery systems, command and control, intelligence, conventional weapons, economic deterrents—taking that entire approach to strategic stability, instead of what we often see in the halls of Congress, which is, ‘Does Russia have one more nuclear weapon than we do, and does that mean we’re all going to die?’”
Members of the U.S. military called “missileers” sit underground and guard our intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos. Low morale among missileers, including cheating on nuclear training tests, has been a problem for decades, and can have potentially disastrous consequences. “Being a missileer means that your worst enemy is boredom,” one such missileer wrote in a 2011 article in Wired. “No battlefield heroism, no medals to be won. The duty is seen today as a dull anachronism.” (Another tidbit from the article: the missileers sitting underground right now, who hold the fate of the world in their hands, very well may be wearing Snuggies).
“Is this really a fixable problem?” asked Walsh. “We’ve had this for decades now, and it seems structural.” Mistakes among missileers often lead to more regulation and testing, Walsh said, which adds more pressure, thus leading to more failed tests and even lower morale.
“I think some of that is inevitable,” said Christine Parthemore, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Parthemore pointed out that while it’s difficult to trump the appeal of fields like cyber and space among newly enlisted servicemen and women, the Department of Defense continues to work towards boosting missileer morale and improving performance.
“A lot of the focus in the last two years in particular has been on how to take the pressure off these young men and women. Going back on the notion that testing them more and applying more and more pressure is the way to go…Taking some of the stress off while maintaining very high standards is a really hard thing to balance, but I think the department is trying.”
When it comes to nuclear weapons, the U.S. has gotten lucky more than once. While the military has made adjustments to procedures after accidents and mistakes, “accident” and “mistake” aren’t words you want associated with nuclear weapons in the first place.
“There was an instance [in 1980] in which a wrench was dropped in a silo. It detonated a missile and it actually flew off,” said Terryn. One airman died and 23 people were injured.
“After that, we stopped using liquid fuel. We had another instance [in 1961] in which a live nuclear weapon was dropped on North Carolina. Luckily it didn’t detonate. Three out of four of the failsafes failed but one worked, and that’s why we still have 50 states. After that, we stopped flying live alerts.”
Author of Command and Control (and past Reinvent roundtable participant) Eric Schlosser, who revealed North Carolina’s near-miss in 2013, estimates there were at least 700 accidents related to nuclear weapons between 1950 and 1968 alone.
Walsh reiterated the dual potential of these weapons: to protect and destroy. It’s like buying a handgun and keeping it in the bedroom for protection, Walsh said. The gun might enable you to protect yourself, but there are also risks to having a handgun in your home. In order to jumpstart a broader conversation about the pros and cons of modernization, it’s imperative that we elevate public consciousness about the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons.
“In this election season,” Walsh said, “we should be asking presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican alike, what their views are, and challenging them to explain why they think the choices they’re making will make us safer.”
It seems that matters are coming to a head in the Middle East. For many states, the coming period will likely prove to be the moment in which they determine their futures — as well as that for the region as a whole.
The immediate peg for “crunch time” is Russia’s fast-track proposal of a conference to be held in Sochi, with the near-full kaleidoscope of Syrian opposition invited, which, if all goes as planned, might mean 1,000 delegates arriving in Sochi as soon as Nov. 18.
The Syrian government has agreed to attend. Of course, when one hears of attendance in these numbers, it suggests that this is not intended as a “sleeves rolled-up” working session, but rather as a meeting in which Russian thoughts will be mooted on the constitution, the system of government, and the place of “minorities” – with a chaser that Russia wants fresh elections pretty darned quick: which is to say, in six months’ time. In short, this is to be the “last chance saloon” for opposition figures: come aboard now, or be shut out, in the cold.
Image: President Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on May 22, 2017. (Screenshot from Whitehouse.gov)
This initiative has plenty of push behind it, including President Putin’s personal endorsement, but no guarantee of success. Both Iran and Turkey (the co-guarantors of Astana) privately may have reservations, not knowing precisely what Moscow might unveil. Iran is insistent on Syria retaining a strong centralized government, and Turkey is likely to worry about whether the Kurds might receive too much from Moscow; it will also have reservations about sitting down with the YPD (Syrian Kurds), which it views to be little more than a re-branded PKK, which Turkey regards as a terrorist organization. If Turkey does pull out, it will take an important slice of the opposition with it.
Critical moments in history, however, do have a habit of proving to be less critical than first imagined, but this one effectively marks the beginning of the winding up process of the Syrian war and of the 20-year “New Middle East” project (as devised by the U.S. and Israeli governments). How each state responds, will determine the Middle East landscape for the next years.
Military Mop-up
Late last week, the Syrian army took the rest of Deir Ezzor city, and with it its rear now secure, the Syrian army is free to continue the 30 or so kilometers to reach Abu Kamal (al-Bukumal) – the last ISIS urban outpost – and the vital border crossing on the Euphrates with Iraq. It is estimated that there may be 3,500 Da’esh (another name for the Islamic State or ISIS) in Abu Kamal. But Abu Kamal’s “twin” (on the Iraqi side of the border), al-Qaim, was taken by the Iraqi government’s PMU militia forces on Friday. The Iraqi forces are now clearing the city of its estimated 1,500 Da’esh fighters.
The Syrian army, backed up by several thousand recently injected Hezbollah forces, is poised to enter Abu Kamal in the coming days from two directions – and from the south, a co-ordinated thrust north up and into Abu Kamal by the Iraqi Hash’d a- Sha’abi (PMU) militia, will form a pincer.
American-supported SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces), however, are also trying to reach Abu Kamal from the east (the U.S., pressured by Israel, would like to seal and close the border crossing). U.S. allied forces can move more quickly, as U.S. officers are seeking to bribe local tribal leaders who formerly had sworn allegiance to ISIS (with Saudi money), to switch sides, or at least to allow the SDF forces to advance unhindered by ISIS (as happened in the environs of Deir Ezzor).
In short, the military outcome in Syria is done (after six years of war), and now comes the political bargaining. How this plays out will determine the relative strengths of the forces that will shape the Middle East in the coming years. The outcome will likely see whether Turkey can be bullied back towards NATO (by threats such as that by General Petr Pavel, head of NATO’s military committee, warning of “consequences” for Turkey’s attempts to buy Russian air defenses), or whether Turkey’s determination to limit Kurdish aspirations will see Turkey position itself alongside Iran and Iraq (who share a common interest).
Turkey’s role in Idlib, in overseeing the de-escalation zone there, remains opaque. Effectively, its forces are positioned more to control the Afrin Kurdish “canton” (rather than monitor the Idlib de-escalation zone). It is possible that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping to use Turkish troops to carve out a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border – in contravention to the Astana understandings. If so, this will place him at odds with both Moscow and Damascus (but will not necessarily imply a return to the NATO camp, either).
Syria’s Future
The bargaining at Sochi will also make clearer whether Syria will be a strong centralized state (as Iran prefers), or a looser federal state as America (and perhaps Russia) would prefer. Sochi will be something of a litmus for the extent to which American influence can shape outcomes in today’s Middle East. At present, it looks as if there is co-ordination between Moscow and Washington for a speedy political settlement in Syria, a U.S. declaration of victory over ISIS, Syrian elections, and an American exit from the Syrian theatre.
The outcome of the conference will also perhaps clarify whether the Syrian Kurds finally will remain with the U.S. CentCom project for retaining a permanent U.S. presence in northeast Syria (as Israel wants), or whether the Syrian Kurds will cut a deal with Damascus (after witnessing the crushing of the Barzani Kurdish independence project by neighboring powers).
Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses UN General Assembly on Sept. 28, 2015. (UN Photo)
If the latter occurs, the argument for retaining a longer-term U.S. presence in northeast Syria would lose force. The Saudis will have either to accept defeat in Syria, or act the party-pooper (by trying to re-ignite the remaining proxy forces in Idlib) – but, for that, the kingdom would need Turkey’s compliance, and that may not be forthcoming.
Iraq too, irked by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments suggesting that the PMU are Iranian – and must “go home” – has already shown signs of re-orientating towards Russia. (It has recently signed an expansive energy and economic protocol with Russia – after having reclaimed control of its borders and of Iraq’s energy resources – and is procuring Russian arms). Evidence of Iraq’s close connections with Syria, Turkey and Iran was very manifest in the quick execution of the put-down to the Kurdish independence gambit.
But the state facing the biggest dilemma in respect to the Syrian outcome is Israel. Alex Fishman, the doyen of Israeli defense columnists, has written that Israel simply has failed to adjust to strategic change, and is locked in a narrow “cold war” mentality:
“The Syrians fire rockets at open areas: Israel destroys Syrian cannons in response; the Iranians threaten to deploy Shiite forces in Syria: Israel announces ‘red lines’ and threatens a military conflict; Fatah and Hamas hold futile talks on a unity government: the prime minister declares Israel is suspending talks with the Palestinans – and everyone here applauds the security and political echelons: – ‘there, we showed them the meaning of deterrence’, [the Israeli leadership repeats].
“But what we are seeing here is a provincial defense policy, a false representation of a leadership that barely sees beyond the tip of its nose, and is busy putting out fires day and night.
“It’s a leadership that sees national security through a narrow regional viewpoint. It’s as if everything beyond Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran doesn’t exist. It’s as if the world around us hasn’t changed in the past decades, and we are stuck in the era of aggressive solutions in the form of reward and punishment as the main political-security activity. The current political-security echelon isn’t solving problems, isn’t dealing with problems, but simply postponing them, passing them on to the next generation”
Missing the Strategic Picture
What Fishman is pointing to is profound: Israel has gained some tactical victories in the neighborhood (i.e. over the Palestinians generally, and in weakening Hamas), but it has lost sight of the wider strategic picture. In effect, Israel has lost its ability to dominate the region. It had wanted a weakened and fragmented Syria; it had wanted a Hezbollah mired in the Syrian mud, and an Iran circumscribed by Sunni sectarian antipathy towards the Shi’a generally. It is unlikely to get any of these.
Rather, Israel finds itself being deterred (rather than doing the deterring) by the knowledge that it cannot now overturn its strategic weakness (i.e. risk a three-front war) – unless, and only if, America will fully enter into any conflict, in support of Israel. And this is what worries the security and intelligence echelon: Would America now contemplate a decisive intervention on behalf of Israel – unless the latter’s very survival was at risk?
In 2006, Israeli officials recall, the U.S. did not enter Israel’s war against Hizbullah in Lebanon, and after 33 days, it was Israel that sought a ceasefire.
Fishman is right too that attacking Syrian factories and radar positions “out of old habit” solves nothing. It may be sold to the Israeli public as “deterrence,” but rather it is playing with fire. Syria has started to fire back with aged surface-to-air missiles (S200s) at Israeli aircraft. These missiles may not have hit an Israeli jet yet, and maybe were not even intended so to do. The Syrian message however, is clear: these missiles may be old, but they have a longer range than the newer S300: Potentially, their range is sufficient to reach Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv.
Are the Israelis sure that Syria and Hezbollah don’t have more modern missiles? Are they certain that Iran or Russia will not provide them such? The Russian defense minister was very angry on his visit to Tel Aviv to have been faced with an Israeli retaliatory air attack on a Syrian radar and missile position – as a welcome gift on landing in Israel. To his protests, his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Lieberman condescendingly said that Israel needed nobody’s advice in respect to Israel’s security. General Sergey Shoygu reportedly was not amused.
Can Israel come to terms with its new strategic situation? It seems not. Ibrahim Karagul, a Turkish political commentator and an authoritative voice of President Erdogan, writing in Yeni Safak, notes that “the foundations of a new disintegration [and] division are being laid in our region. Saudi Arabia’s ‘We are switching to moderate Islam’ announcement contains a dangerous game. The U.S.-Israel axis is forming a new regional front line.”
Karagul continues:
“We have been watching the strange developments in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Israel and the U.S. for some time now. There is a new situation in the region, which we know is [principally aimed] against Iran; but has recently taken an open anti-Turkey state, aimed at limiting Turkey’s influence in the region … You will see, the ‘moderate Islam’ announcement will be immediately followed by a sudden and unexpected strengthening of Arab nationalism. This wave will not differentiate between Shiite or Sunni Arabs, but it will isolate the Muslim Arab world from the entire Muslim world.
“This separation will be felt most by the Shiite Arabs in Iraq. With this new block, Iraq and Iran are going to stage a new power showdown [i.e. will react forcefully to counter it]. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s future in power is also most likely going to [become contingent on the outcome to] this showdown.”
An American ‘Buy-in’
To give this project American “buy-in,” Israel and Saudi Arabia are focusing it on Lebanese Hezbollah, which the U.S. has declared to be a terrorist entity though the movement was part of Lebanon’s government, which was headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri until he ominously resigned today in an announcement made in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Hariri is a dual Saudi-Lebanese national.)
Image: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive to the Murabba Palace, escorted by Saudi King Salman on May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to attend a banquet in their honor. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Saudi State Minister for Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan (in Beirut last week) called for“toppling Hezbollah” and promised “astonishing” developments in “the coming days. Those who believe that my tweets are a personal stance, are delusional … the coming developments will definitely be astonishing.”
Al-Sabhan added that the kingdom’s escalation against Hezbollah could take several forms that would
“definitely affect Lebanon. Politically, it might target the government’s relations with the world. At the economic and financial levels, it could target commercial exchange and funds, and militarily it might involve the possibility of a strike on Hizbullah by the U.S.-led coalition, which labels Hizbullah a terrorist organization.”
(Comment: this latter point probably was made more in hope, than in expectation. Europe and the U.S. set considerable store on maintaining Lebanon as stable).
Karagul reflects further on this U.S.-Gulf-Israeli initiative:
“The moderate Islam project was tried the most in Turkey. We always said this is ‘American Islam’ and opposed it. The February 28 military intervention is the product of such a project. It was implemented by the U.S./Israel extreme right-wing and their partners on the inside. The Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) is the product of such a project, and the Dec. 17/25 and July 15 attacks were made for this very reason. They were all aimed at trapping Turkey within the U.S./Israel axis.
“But Turkey’s local and national resistance has overcome them all. Now they are burdening Saudi Arabia with the same mission. That is how they are making it appear. I do not think that it is possible for Saudi Arabia to undertake such a mission. This is impossible both in terms of the regime’s character and its social structure. This is impossible because of the ‘Israel/U.S. sauce’.
“The discourse of making the switch to moderate Islam will cause serious confusion in the Saudi administration and grave social reactions. The actual conflict is going to take place within Saudi Arabia. Also, the Riyadh administration has no chance of exporting something to the region or setting an example.
“Especially once it is further revealed that the project is security-based, that a new front line has been formed, that it is all planned by the U.S.-Israel, it will result in a fiasco. This project is suicide for Saudi Arabia, it is a destruction plan; it is a plan that will destroy it unless it comes to its senses.”
Karagul makes the point well: the attempt to make Islam in the Christian “Westphalian” image has a disastrous history. The metaphysics of Islam are not those of Christianity. And Saudi Arabia cannot be made “moderate” by Mohammad bin Salman just ordering it. It would entail a veritable cultural revolution to shift the basis of the kingdom, away from the rigors of Wahhabism to some secularized Islam.
More War?
Where is this taking the Middle East: to conflict? Maybe. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not noted for his audacity: he his noted more for rhetoric which often has proved empty; and Israeli security officials are being cautious, but both sides are preparing against the possibility of what Karagul calls a “great power showdown.” It looks, though – from this and other Turkish statements – as if Turkey will be with Iran and Iraq, and standing against America and Saudi Arabia.
And President Trump? He is wholly (and understandably) preoccupied with the low-intensity war being waged against him at home. He probably tells Netanyahu whatever it is that might advance his domestic battles (in Congress, where Netanyahu has influence). If Bibi wants a fiery speech at the U.N. berating Iran, then, why not? Trump can then call on the trifecta of White House generals to “fix it” (just as he did with JCPOA, passing it to Congress “to fix”), knowing that the generals do not want a war with Iran.
The danger is a “black swan.” What happens if Israel goes on attacking the Syrian army and industrial premises in Syria (which is happening almost daily) – and Syria does shoot down an Israeli jet?
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
Trump touched down in Hawaii on his way to Asia. He was met with protests there and huge marches are happening across South Korea in anticipation of his meeting with the newly elected President Moon in Seoul.
Moon is turning out to be a disappointment to peaceniks across Korea as he carries water for the US imperial project. It’s a clear sign that those supposedly in charge in South Korea are not. They are at the mercy of Washington and the military industrial complex.
China during the last couple of days sent nuclear bombers bumping up with the coast of Guam in a certain statement before Trump visits Beijing. Just weeks ago, while speaking at the UN, Trump blasted socialism as a failed system – many taking it as a shot across China’s bow before his trip there. China has fired back showing the Donald that two can play the nuclear ‘fire and fury’ ball game.
Beijing has repeatedly warned the US that if Washington decides to ‘decapitate’ North Korea then China will be forced to come into the war to stop the US invasion of the north.
North Korea borders both China and Russia and neither of those nations can afford to allow an aggressive US military outpost in the northern region of the Korean peninsula. It’s a deal breaker to use Trumpian lingo.
Trump’s Asia-Pacific sales trip will take him to Japan (to meet with the fascist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, grandson of an imperial Japanese war criminal), South Korea, China, Vietnam (where the US is trying to cut a deal get to permission to use the Cam Ranh Bay Navy base), and the Philippines (where the US is once again porting its warships at Subic Bay after being kicked out in 1992).
Trump’s primary job is to hold the line as anti-American fervor sweeps the Asia-Pacific. US base expansions in Okinawa and South Korea has fueled popular resistance to the Obama-Clinton era ‘pivot’ of 60% of American military forces into the region which requires more ports-of-call, more airfields and more barracks for US troops. With these base expansions comes environmental degradation, dramatically increased noise pollution, GI disrespect and mistreatment of local citizens, stealing of lands from farm and fishing communities, Pentagon arrogance about its control over host governments and many other local grievances. Washington is not interested in hearing about, or seriously negotiating, these deep concerns thus the official Pentagon response is more bluster and domination which only fuels the fires of domestic rage.
The US military is the loaded gun placed at the head of all Asia-Pacific nations – you either comply with Washington’s economic demands or this instrument of destruction will be used. The cancerous US military occupation of the region has nothing to do with defending the American people. The Pentagon defends corporate ‘interests’ which require a submissive region.
The US is in a bind as its imperil project collapses overseas and at home. Trump’s ‘Make American Great Again’ mantra are code words to restore the empire’s prestige and domination. But there is no going back – like white supremacy at home, those days are long gone.
The US’s only option is to close its more than 800 military bases around the world and bring its occupation troops home. Learn to get along with others and bury the idea that America is the master race – the ‘exceptional’ nation.
The other option is World War III which would go nuclear in a cold hard flash. No one wins that one.
The American people ought to wise up and see the writing on the wall. But they’d need a real media to share with them the true feelings of the occupied people around the world and we don’t have that – ours is a subservient media that promotes only corporate interests to US citizens.
Plus the American people would need to care about other people around the world – human solidarity has largely been beaten out of the hearts of our citizenry. Even most liberals currently babble the anti-Russian recycled red-baiting being fomented by elected Democrats in the hardened halls of Washington.
There is no escaping the sad fact that it will be a brutal collapse for America and it is surely coming.
On October 4, four US Special Forces soldiers died in clashes in the West African country of Niger during a routine reconnaissance mission near the border with Mali. While hobby pastor Donald Trump turned via telephone to the mourning widow of one of the four killed soldiers with the empathetic words “He knew what he signed up for”, most Americans probably wondered where Niger was located in the first place (and in case they are no geography nerds like the author, they are forgiven).
The second and even more glaring question, I assume, was the following: “What the hell are we doing in Niger?” Most Americans were probably also more than surprised to find out that the US has deployed a total of 800 soldiers in the Nigerian desert.
The rank and file of the US Empire
The uproar about the dead from Niger sparked a debate on the global US military presence, which quickly showed that the hundreds of troops in Niger are just the tip of the iceberg and pale against the global contingent. On the Pentagon website, there is a quarterly updated Excel chart that meticulously lists all troop deployments. In the process, it brings to light astonishing facts.
The US has deployed a total of 240,000 troops in at least 172 countries around the world. As a reminder, there are only 194 countries on the globe (193 UN members plus Palestine), so in 89 percent of these countries, the US military has a presence.
If we want to remember one important number in 2017, it certainly is this: 172 countries.
The list is led by Japan with 39,980 troops spread across a hefty number of 84 US military bases. As part of the more than 130,000 troops of the US Pacific Fleet, “the Japanese” are thus the spearhead of the world war against China – the global Sword of Damocles in the coming years and decades.
The US Pacific Fleet, with its more than 130,000 troops, is the spearhead of a potential confrontation with China. Here you see 42 ships and submarines during the RIMPAC exercise in 2014. (IMAGE: US Pacific Fleet, Flickr, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0).
The Second country on the list is Germany with 36,034 troops stationed in 38 US military bases. And that is 72 years after the end of World War II and 27 years after German reunification.
In total there are 19 countries on this globe with at least 1,000 US troops stationed. In addition to Afghanistan and Iraq, harboring together 19,567 troops, the repressive and partly fascist oil dictatorships of the Gulf region are mainly among these. With Italy, the UK, Spain and even Austria, as well as dozens of smaller country contingents, tens of thousands of US soldiers are stationed all over Europe as well, with their headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
After Japan, the actual second place, when adding deployed civilian Pentagon staff, goes to a rather unexpected “country”: UNKNOWN.
What exactly lies behind these 51,490 ghosts, we can all fantasize about ourselves. I suspect that they are Special Forces operating outside of the regular mechanisms and protocols, perhaps infiltrated into high cadres in Iran or hiding somewhere in the forests around Moscow. Or to use the loving words of the German Interior Secretary Thomas de Maizière: Part of these answers would unsettle the population.
The endless war
The US Empire is the most powerful empire in human history. But it is inevitably going to crumble in the decades to come.
In the medium term, China will overtake the US in all areas – economy, trade, finance, technology, spaceflight, top-level research, politics, diplomacy, development aid, infrastructure – or has already done so, as in the field of global trade.
Only in the area of culture, there is no end in sight for global US dominance. China is simply “uncool” – as Foreign Policy put it.
A Chinese defence base in the South China Sea, pictured under construction last year.
Basically, the current US supremacy is sustained by a single pillar: its military. And thus, by the daunting, unwavering willingness demonstrated over the last 100 years to not only threaten with military retaliation, but to use it against every country which dares to substantially resist Washington. Whether big or small, poor or rich, ally or enemy, it plays no role here.
With the attacks of September 11, the subsequent proclamation of the Axis of Evil, and the beginning of the Global War on Terror, we entered a new age. Just as there is a time before and after Christ, there seems to be an era before and after 9/11.
It is the age of the endless war. Endless, not only because it is unlimited in time, but also because its effect permanently recreates its cause and thus it keeps itself alive.
A self-fulfilling prophecy: In 2000, worldwide a total of 405 people were killed by terror attacks. In 2014 that number escalated to 32,727 killed, an 81-fold increase in 14 years of supposed war on terror. Endless, moreover, because it is by definition impossible to end it victoriously. There has always been and will always be terrorism, at least as long as there is no change in the basic mechanisms of how living together in this world is organized. But terror cannot be overcome with military force.
Enemies can be extinguished. But terrorism is not a physical enemy, it is a military strategy, a tactic. Just as boxer XYZ can be defeated, but not the left uppercut as such, bin Laden can be defeated, but not terrorism as such.
After Donald Trump fired 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Shayrat Airbase in Syria on April 7th, he still remembered every detail of the chocolate cake he ate together with China’s President Xi while commanding the strikes, but he thought he had just bombed the Iraq, not Syria. (IMAGE: U.S. Navy, Robert S. Price, Wikimedia Commons, published under public domain.)
But the US as a patron saint of this ideology is doing everything in their power to ensure we keep chasing this phantom. They are blundering into one deceptively so-called anti-terror war after the other. From classic invasions, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, via air warfare such as in Libya and the IS territories, through to shadow warfare under the radar of the public, as in the Philippines or West Africa, with Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan somewhere in between these limit values. Or with (still) merely cyber warfare as in Iran or North Korea.
The appropriate war model is imposed on each country – and 240,000 soldiers in 172 countries will ensure that every country in the world can easily be next in line. A sprawling global network without democratic control or debate serves as a permanent threatening gesture towards potential adversaries.
With a mentally ill, hate-filled, ultranationalistic, all-militaristic and megalomaniac narcissist for four or even eight years in the White House, it is certainly hard to imagine a non-bloody scenario for the 21st Century, which is the scenario of a shrunken giant that landed with only a few bruises and a few broken ribs on an equal footing in the multipolar world.
With Donald Trump, dropping the Mother of All Bombs, not even knowing which country he has just bombed, sadly, it is easier to imagine a global fireball. But the hope of an end to war as a political tool is palpable everywhere.
It is in the reason of the US population, and in that of all other countries in the world. It is in the peaceable minds of the billions of people on this globe.
It is in the protest of these people against their political leaders.
Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 30 that the Trump administration has all the legal authority it needs to kill people anywhere in the world. But just in case Congress wishes to update its old Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), Mattis and Tillerson told them how to do it: Write a blank check to the president.
The October 4 killings of four US soldiers on a “routine training mission” in Niger brought the committee’s hearing into sharper focus. It turns out the presence of these troops in Niger was unlawful.
Mattis claimed the four dead US soldiers were just there on a train-and-advise mission. “I think it was reasonable to think they could go out there and train these [Niger] troops without the idea they’re going into direct combat; but” he admitted, “that’s not a complete answer. I need to wait until I get the investigation to fully appraise it.”
Derek Gannon, a former Green Beret, said, “[US military involvement in Africa] is called Low Intensity Irregular Warfare, yet technically, it’s not considered war by the Pentagon. But,” he added, “warfare is warfare to me.”
Mattis insisted that Title 10 of the US Code grants authority for train-and-advise missions anywhere in the world. But the War Powers Resolution (WPR), passed by Congress in the wake of the Vietnam War, specifies that the president’s authority to order US troops into hostilities cannot be inferred from any provision of law that does not specifically authorize the use of US forces in hostilities. And Title 10 does not.
The WPR allows the president to introduce US Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities in only three situations:
First, after Congress has declared war, which has not happened since World War II. Second, in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” which had not occurred prior to the killings of the US troops in Niger. And third, when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
In the 2001 AUMF, Congress authorized the president to use military force against individuals, groups and countries that had supported the 9/11 attacks. Congress rejected the George W. Bush administration’s request for open-ended military authority “to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” That AUMF does not authorize US military action in Niger against ISIS, which didn’t even exist in 2001 when Congress issued it.
The WPR requires the president to report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing US forces into hostilities. That report must explain the circumstances necessitating the introduction of US Armed Forces, the constitutional and statutory authority for the deployment, and the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement.
Many in Congress, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), were not aware there are currently 800 US troops stationed in Niger. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) told the New York Times, “I don’t think Congress has been completely kept up to date.”
The president must withdraw the troops within 60 days of initiating the use of military force unless Congress declares war or provides a “specific authorization.” Congress has not specifically authorized US troops to fight ISIS in Niger.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated at the hearing that Congress has been notified of troop deployments around the world, including the buildup in Niger, and has responded by funding the Department of Defense.
According to the Congressional Research Service, “Congress has shaped US engagement with Niger and the US military footprint in the country through its authorization and appropriation of funding for US security cooperation and assistance programs, and through its authorization of funding for US military construction.”
Corker cited Trump’s June 27 notice to Congress identifying 19 countries in which US military personnel are deployed and equipped for combat. They include Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Cuba, Kosovo and Niger.
“As Niger proved,” Corker noted, “those forces can find themselves in combat at any moment.”
However, appropriating funds to support a particular operation does not constitute “specific authorization” under the WPR.
The practice of using questionable legal logic to justify military operations is not unique to the Trump administration. In fact, our last president engaged in similar maneuvers.
Barack Obama rationalized his use of military force in several countries with reference to the 2001 AUMF, as well as to a second AUMF issued in 2002.
The 2002 AUMF was granted to Bush by Congress specifically to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. That license ended once that purpose was accomplished. So, the 2002 AUMF does not provide a legal basis for US combat troops in Niger either.
Ranking committee member Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) stated at the committee hearing that the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs have now become “mere authorities of convenience for presidents to conduct military activities anywhere in the world,” adding, “They should not be used as the legal justification for military activities around the world.”
Cardin said he voted for the 2001 AUMF, and he “and all of us never intended it would still be used to justify the use of military force against ISIS.”
Now Mattis and Tillerson are attempting to rely on the same two AUMFs to justify US military intervention throughout the world. At the hearing, they also cited the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution.
Article II states, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” However, Article I specifies that only Congress has the power to declare war. Taken together, the articles convey that the president commands the armed forces once Congress authorizes war.
Under the United Nations Charter, the president can order military interventions, but only in self-defense against an armed attack. That does not apply to the situation in Niger, which was not prosecuted in self-defense in the face of an armed attack against the United States or another UN member nation. Indeed, we have seen no evidence that the people who killed the US troops were with ISIS.
While Mattis and Tillerson maintain that the president already has unfettered power to introduce US troops into hostilities, they testified they would welcome a new AUMF tailored to the use of military force against ISIS. Both secretaries stated that a new AUMF should have no geographical or temporal limitations and the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs should not be repealed until a new one is in place.
In other words, Mattis and Tillerson want Congress to give the president a blank check to make war anytime, anywhere on Earth, as he sees fit. They seek the imprimatur of Congress for perpetual war with the whole world as the president’s battlefield.
However, they are conveniently forgetting that in addition to the WPR, the president must comply with the UN Charter, a treaty the US has ratified. The charter requires that states settle their international disputes peacefully and prohibits the use of military force except in self-defense.
Countries may engage in individual or collective self-defense only in the face of an armed attack. To the extent the United States claims the right to kill suspected terrorists or their allies before they act, there must exist “a necessity of self-defence, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation,” under the well-established Caroline Case.
The hostilities in Niger that resulted in the deaths of four US troops were not conducted in self-defense. In addition, the deployment of these forces to engage in hostilities was not authorized by any other provision of law, as explained above.
Congress must retain the power to authorize war, which is what the framers intended. They should refrain from relinquishing it to an unpredictable and volatile president.
Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and a member of the national advisory board of Veterans for Peace. The second, updated edition of her book, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, will be published in November. Visit her website: http://marjoriecohn.c om/.
US and NATO representatives keep trying to convince the world that Afghanistan is not a corruption-ridden quagmire of violence, and US Defence Secretary, General Mattis,told reporters in Kabul on September 28 that “uncertainty has been replaced by certainty” because of new US policy, and that “the sooner the Taliban recognizes they cannot win with bombs, the sooner the killing will end.”
At the same press conference NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that following a Taliban attack on Kabul airport that day, which he described as “a sign of weakness, not of strength,” he “would like commend the Afghan Security Forces which are handling these kind of attacks and it is yet another example of how professional they are, how committed they are and how they are able to handle this kind of security threat.” (In September the US Air Force dropped more bombs on Afghanistan “than in any other month for nearly seven years.”)
In the following month, from October 17 to 23, there were six major insurgent attacks which demonstrated that the militants are far from weak:
At least 71 people were killed and hundreds wounded in suicide and gun attacks on police and soldiers in Ghazni and Paktia Provinces… Some 50 soldiers were killed in a Taliban assault on a military base in Kandahar province… A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Shiite mosque during evening prayers in Kabul, killing 56 people and wounding 55 others and another suicide bombing killed at least 33 people at a mosque in the central province of Ghor… A further suicide bomber killed 15 army officer cadets travelling in a bus in Kabul, and four policemen were killed in a Taliban attack on a security post in Ghazni province.
So the carnage continues, as do the visitors, and the New York Timesreported that on October 23, the same day as the Ghazni policemen were killed, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson “made a secret two-hour visit” and the Washington Postnoted he “flew from Doha to Bagram [the massive US base]” while “a total news blackout was imposed until after they left the country and returned to Qatar.”
The Times was forthright in stating how shocking it is “that top American officials must sneak into this country after 16 years of war, thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars spent” and considered the furtive two-hour stopover to be “testimony to the stalemate confronting the United States because of a stubborn and effective Taliban foe that is increasingly ascendant.” But deception capers went further than disguising the visit itself.
It was noted by the BBC that both the Afghan and US governments said the meeting between Mr Tillerson and Afghanistan’s President Ghani took place in Kabul, as tweeted by the State Department (“Today, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with #Afghanistan’s President @ashrafghani in Kabul”). And this was right and proper, because visiting foreign government representatives should call on heads of state and not vice versa, and it seemed that appropriate civility had been observed.
Except that it hadn’t, because Tillerson didn’t go to the President’s office in Kabul, but spent his entire two hours at the heavily guarded US air base at Bagram. He didn’t dare travel the 50 kilometres from Kabul to Bagram to meet President Ghani, but President Ghani had to travel to Bagram to meet with him, which tells us a great deal about how Washington regards Afghanistan and its elected president. And then the attempt to have the world believe that the meeting took place in Kabul didn’t work out.
The deception collapsed because of a difference in a photograph of the meeting. According to the Times, “a press release from the US embassy in Afghanistan includes a photo with the wall above the two men’s heads cropped out” by photoshopping, but another photograph showed a clock on the wall displaying international time, which indicated that the photograph was taken at the US base and not in the President’s office in Kabul. (A helpful State Department spokesperson suggested that “the Afghan Government changed those photos probably to make it aesthetically more pleasing” which at least added a little humour to an otherwise gruesome farce.)
It isn’t clear what the visit was supposed to achieve, given that the Tillerson-Ghani meeting lasted less than an hour, although there was an eight-minute “media availability” at which four questions were asked by the six American journalists who were travelling with Tillerson in his aircraft. No Afghan reporters were permitted to be present, a decision indicative of the character of the visit as a whole, and it can hardly be expected that their exclusion would be regarded with approval by the Afghan government or media The conduct of this visit gave the Taliban and all other anti-American elements in the country a boost that is unquantifiable but is bound to be substantial.
Which takes us to another disastrous episode in US-Afghanistan relations, in May 2014, at which there were no aesthetically displeasing clocks in photographs when President Obama visited Afghanistan, because there was no meeting between him and the then Afghan Head of State, President Karzai.
Like Mr Ghani with the Tillerson visit, Mr Karzai had not been told in advance that Obama was coming to Afghanistan, but when eventually he was informed of his arrival he refused to travel to Bagram to call on him. A US official said that President Karzai had been “offered a meeting with Mr Obama during the brief visit but declined… We did offer him the opportunity to come to Bagram, but we’re not surprised that it didn’t work on short notice.”
The condescending contempt of that statement and the arrogance of the US attitude did not escape the citizens of Afghanistan, and the Wall Street Journalobserved that “Afghans praised President Hamid Karzai for refusing to meet with President Barack Obama during a brief visit to their country.” But it is disgraceful that the President of the United States (and any Washington administration official, such as Tillerson) can visit Afghanistan without informing its president beforehand. It wouldn’t work with France or China or Tahiti — but it seems that Afghanistan isn’t important enough to matter.
The ultimate insult of the Obama visit was that he brought “country music star Brad Paisley with him to provide entertainment for the troops,” which may have added to the vexation of President Karzai whose office issued a statement that “The president of Afghanistan said he was ready to warmly welcome the president of the United States in accordance with Afghan traditions but had no intention of meeting him at Bagram.”
Three years ago the president of Afghanistan made it clear that the president of the United States had failed to observe international custom and common courtesy and would be treated appropriately for his patronising conduct. But things have changed since then, and when a US official now visits Afghanistan, and scorns custom and courtesy, the current president of Afghanistan has to ignore the condescension and bow his knee by obeying orders to go to the visitor’s security cocoon in the Bagram base.
It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Afghanistan that after sixteen years of US military operations and expenditure of over 800 billion dollars it is unsafe for the Secretary of State to visit the place unless his travel is kept entirely secret from the world — including the president of the country he is visiting. But it is even more appalling that the United States treats Afghanistan like a US colony, as evidenced by the fact that the US Secretary of State can summon the Afghan president to meet him in a US military base, rather than paying him basic respect as he would to a national leader anywhere else in the world.
Washington has not yet learned that winning wars and influencing people takes more than brute force. Trump declared in August that “Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win. From now on, victory will have a clear definition… preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan.” But he’ll never do that if the United States continues to behave like a colonial master.
In early 2003 it was claimed that Iraq was a threat to other countries. Despite ten years of crushing economic sanctions plus intrusive inspections, supposedly Iraq had acquired enough “weapons of mass destruction” to threaten the West. It was ridiculous on its face but few people in power said so. Establishment politicians and media across the U.S. promoted the idea. In the Senate, Joe Biden chaired the committee looking into the allegations but excluded knowledgeable critics such as Scott Ritter. This led to the invasion of Iraq.
Swedish Doctors for Human Rights say they have found evidence that the chemical attack in Syria was a ‘false flag’ by the White Helmets.
Today we have something similarly ridiculous and dangerous. Supposedly the Syrian government decided to use a banned chemical weapon which they gave up in 2013-2014. Despite advancing against the insurgents, the Syrian government supposedly put sarin in a Russian chemical weapon canister and dropped this on the town Khan Shaykhun which has been under the control of Syria’s version of Al Qaeda for years. To top off the stupidity, they left paint markings on the canister which identify it as a chemical weapon. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing there are many “White Helmet” activists in the town along with with their cameras, videos, computers, internet uplinks and western social media promoters. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing that neo-conservatives, neo-liberals and zionists are keen to prolong the conflict and drag the US and NATO into it. Supposedly the Syrian government did this despite knowing the one thing that could trigger direct US aggression in the conflict is the use of chemical weapons …. the “red line” laid down by Barack Obama.
If the above sounds unlikely, it is. But even if these accusations should be laughed out of the room, as they should have been in 2002, let’s take the claims about the event at Khan Shaykun in Syria on 4 April 2017 seriously. Certainly the consequences will be serious if the trend is not reversed.
What Happened at Khan Shaykhun?
The report titled “Seventh report of the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism” was provided to select governments and media on Thursday 26 October. Media announced the key finding without criticism or question. They highlighted the sentence that the committee is “confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin in Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017”.
About 36 hours later, the report was leaked via the internet. But the die was already cast as establishment media had “confirmed” Syrian guilt.
Following are key contradictions and inconsistencies in the report produced by the Joint Investigative Mechanism of the UN and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The Investigation Ignores the Essential Element of Motive.
The three essentials in criminal investigation are Motive, Means and Opportunity. All three must be present. Yet the investigation team ignores the question of motive. The Syrian government has every motive to NOT use proscribed weapons. On the other side, the armed opposition has a strong motive to implicate the Syrian government. They have been calling for US and NATO intervention for years. They are losing ground, recruits and allies. Yet these facts are never considered.
The Investigation Relies Primarily on Biased Sources.
On page 1 the Joint Investigative Mechanism claims they have conducted a “rigorous independent examination”. But most experts and witnesses are biased toward the “regime change” policies of western governments. On page 4 the report says “The Mechanism engaged several internationally recognized forensic and specialist defense institutes… to provide forensic and expert support to the investigation.”
Any “defense institute” connected or contracting with France, UK or USA will have inherent assumptions and bias since these governments have actively promoted overthrow of the Syrian government.
The Investigation Ignores Credible but Critical Analyses.
The Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) team makes no mention of the published analysis and findings of numerous researchers, investigative journalists and scientists. For example:
– MIT Professor Theodore Postol has analyzed the Khan Shaykhun incident. He persuasively challenges the main theory about the crater site and munition.
– American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has also written about he incident. His information from U.S. military and intelligence officers reveal that the American military knew about the forthcoming attack in advance. He reports the Syrian jet attack was “not a chemical weapons strike …. That’s a fairy tale.”
The above “open source” analysis and information was published well before the current report but apparently not considered. A “rigorous, independent examination” needs to evaluate investigations such as these.
Victims Appear before the Attack.
On pages 28-29 it is reported that
“Certain irregularities were observed in elements of information analyzed. For example, several hospitals appeared to start admitting casualties of the attack between 0640 and 0645 hours…. in 57 cases patients were admitted in five hospitals before the incident in Khan Shaykhun….in 10 such cases, patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 125 km away from Khan Shaykhun at 0700 hours while another 42 patients appear to have been admitted to a hospital 30 km away at 0700 hours.”
It is reported that “The Mechanism did not investigate these discrepancies and cannot determine whether they are linked to any possible staging scenario, or to poor record-keeping in chaotic conditions”. Given the importance of determining whether this incident was caused by the Syrian government or staged by elements of the armed opposition and their supporters, why were these discrepancies not investigated further? Clearly it is not possible that victims were transported 125 kms and delivered to a hospital in 15 minutes. This is potentially powerful evidence of a staged event.
“’Operation Mass Appeal’ was an MI6 campaign to plant stories in the media about WMDs in Iraq. Used to sell the war.”
‘White Helmets’ Were Warning of a Chemical Weapon Attack before the Attack.
On page 20 it says “The Mechanism collected information from witnesses to the effect that a first warning of a possible upcoming chemical attack was received by “Syrian Civil Defense” (also known as the “White Helmets”) and spotters in Kahn Shaykun…. The witness stated that the alert advised residents to be careful as the aircraft was likely carrying toxic chemicals.”
It seems reasonable to ask: Was the advance talk of “toxic chemicals” a signal to get ready for a staged event? How would a plane spotter know there was a one-time chemical bomb aboard? This is another area that needs more investigation.
Were Syrian Planes over Khan Shaykhun at the Critical Time?
The basic question of whether or not there were Syrian jets over Khan Shaykhun is unanswered. The Syrian military says they did NOT fly over Khan Shaykhun in the early morning.
Page 21 documents that the Syrian pilot and log books record that the Su-22 jet was executing attacks at other nearby towns and not closer than 7 – 9 kms from Khan Shaykhun. Radar track data from the U.S. appears to support this, indicating the Syrian jet path was 5 kms from Khan Shaykun.
On page 7 it says “SAAF aircraft may have been in a position to launch aerial bombs”. On page 22 it says,
“the witness reported waking up at around 0700 hours on 4 April 2017 to the sound of explosions. The witness stated that there had been no aircraft over Khan Shaykhun at the time and that aircraft had only started launching attacks at around 1100 hours.”
There are conflicting testimonies on this issue but curiously no video showing jet fighters at the time of the explosions in Khan Shaykun. It is unconfirmed how the ground explosions occurred.
The Investigation Team Did Not Try to Visit the Scene of the Crime.
On page 3 the report says
“The Mechanism did not visit the scenes of the incidents…. While the Leadership Panel considered that a visit to these sites would have been of value, such value would diminish over time. Further, the panel was required to weigh the security risks against the possible benefits to the investigation.”
While it is certainly appropriate to consider security, the actual scene of a crime provides unique opportunities for evidence. The OPCW has previously stated the necessity of having access to a crime site then taking and transferring samples to a certified lab with a clear chain of custody.
If the insurgents still controlling Khan Shaykhun have nothing to hide, they should welcome the investigation.
Furthermore, Russian authorities offered to guarantee the safety of the inspection team. Yet the investigation team apparently made no effort to visit the site. Why? In an investigation of this importance, with potentially huge political consequences, visiting and analyzing the scene of the crime should be a requirement if at all possible.
The Material Evidence Come from Insurgents with No Verifiable Chain of Custody.
On page 23 it says “Samples taken from the crater and its surroundings were found by the Fact Finding Mission to contain sarin.” On the day of the event, insurgents took soil samples and victims to Turkey where they were received and subsequently tested. Without verified origins and “chain of custody”, this data cannot be verified and must be considered skeptically.
As indicated in the report, one theory about the 4 April 2017 event is that it was staged to implicate the Syrian government. If that theory is correct, it is predictable that the plotters would have samples prepared in advance, including sarin samples with markers matched to the Syrian stockpile. The Syrian sarin was destroyed aboard the US vessel “MV Cape Ray”. Given the heavy involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Syrian conflict it is likely they analyzed and retained some portion.
The Report Repeats Discredited Claims about Bomb Fragment and Filler Cap.
On page 26 it is reported that
“two objects of interest … were the filler cap from a chemical munition and a deformed piece of metal protruding from deep within the crater. According to information obtained by the Mechanism, the filler cap, with two closure plugs, is uniquely consistent with Syrian chemical aerial bombs.”
This information may come from a Human Rights Watch report which has been discredited. The “filler cap” was supposedly a match for an external plug for a Russian chemical weapon bomb but was found to not match and to be based on a 1950’s era museum photo. An insightful and amusing critique of the HRW report is here.
The authenticity of the fragments in the crater is also challenged by the lack of a tailfin or any other bomb fragments. A chemical weapon bomb is designed to release and not burn up the chemical and therefore the munition casing should be on site.
Strange Actions Suggesting a Staged Event.
On page 28 the report notes methods and procedures “that appeared either unusual or inappropriate in the circumstances.” For example they observe that a Drager X-am 7000 air monitor was shown detecting sarin when that device is not able to detect sarin, and “para-medical interventions that did not seem to make medical sense, such as performing heart compression on a patient facing the ground.”
On page 29 it is reported that one victim had blood test showing negative for sarin and urine test showing positive. This is an impossible combination. Also on page 29 it is noted that some of the rescue operations were inappropriate but might have been “attempts to inflate the gravity of the situation for depiction in the media.”
The report does not mention the video which shows “White Helmet” responders handling victims without any gloves or protection. If the patients truly died from sarin, touching the patients’ skin or clothing could be fatal. Incidents such as these support the theory that this was a contrived and staged event with real victims.
The Team Is “Confident” in Their Conclusions yet Basic Facts Are in Dispute.
On page 22, the report acknowledges that “To date the Mechanism has not found specific information confirming whether or not an SAA Su-22 operating from Al Shayrat airbase launched an aerial attack against Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017.”
How can they be “confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017” when such basics have not been confirmed?
Conclusion
The report of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) gives the impression of much more certainty than is actually there. Seizing on the false “confidence”, the White House has denounced the “horrifying barbarism of Bashar al Assad” and “lack of respect for international norms” by Syria’s ally Russia. International diplomacy is being steadily eroded. .
Most western “experts” were dead wrong in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Are these same “experts”, institutes, intelligence agencies and biased organizations going to take us down the road to new aggression, this time against Syria?
In contrast with the JIM report, Gareth Porter reached the opposite conclusion: “The evidence now available makes it clear that the scene suggesting a sarin attack at the crater was a crudely staged deception.” That is also more logical. The armed opposition had the motive, means and opportunity.
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist. He can be contacted at [email protected]
On November 2, Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the CIA and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank of spreading fake news using the Bin Laden files that were released by the CIA on November 1.
In a tweet, Zarif accused both the CIA and the FDD of selectively releasing documents that link Iran with al-Qaeda in order to accuse Iran of playing a role in the 9/11 attack.
A record low for the reach of petrodollars: CIA & FDD fake news w/ selective AlQaeda docs re: Iran can’t whitewash role of US allies in 9/11
Back on November 1, the FDD highlighted one of the Bin Laden’s files that describes an alleged deal between al-Qaeda and Iran. Al-Qaeda planned to strike US interests in “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf” in exchange for Iran offering them “money, arms, [and] training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon.” The file was allegedly written by one of bin Laden’s lieutenants.
This was not the first time western think tanks attempted to accuse Iran of participating in 9/11. The FDD itself is known for its anti-Iran studies and reports. Such think tanks are usually founded by Arabian Gulf countries, or Israel.
Even after 16 years after 9/11 most of mainstream think tanks and main stream media still ignore the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens when they provide coverage of the horrifying terrorist attack.
The Ministry of Security and Justice of the Netherlands will not expose a number of documents related to the crash of Flight MH17 of Malaysia Airlines over the Donbass in 2014.
According to the Broadcasting Corporation of the Netherlands (HTK), the decision was made by the Supreme Court of the country. According to the court, “the right of the government to secrecy of its activities, the unity of state policy and sensitivity of the question outweigh the importance of disclosure.”
Thus, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands has revoked a decision of a lower court that earlier ruled that the information about the air crash should be exposed to the general public.
Shortly after the air crash over the Donbass, the Broadcasting Corporation of the Netherlands, RTL TV channel and Volksrant newspaper requested relevant information from the government to restore the sequence of actions of the authorities that followed the tragedy that occurred on July 17, 2014. The request from the media outlets was based on the law on freedom of access to information.
The Ministry of Security and Justice of the Netherlands published several hundreds of documents in February and April 2015, but most of information in them was retouched so much it was difficult to understand what the documents were saying.
It soon became clear that a whole package of documents on the subject had never been declassified. The department said, however, that exposing the data may complicate the relationship with other countries and international organisations.
A court subsequently confirmed the right of the media to receive information. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court sided with the government and ministers.
HTK, RTL and Volksrant currently consider prospects to appeal the decision of the Supreme Court.
On July 17, 2014, Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the east of the Donetsk region., killing all 298 on board, including 196 Dutch nationals.
A fresh and compelling new account of the Russian revolution to mark its centenary concludes by paying tribute to the Bolsheviks for acting as history’s switchmen, a term derived from the small booths that dotted the railway tracks across the Russian empire, where local revolutionaries had long gathered for clandestine meetings.
Against those so-called ‘legal Marxists’ who in 1917 used the term as an epithet to scorn those who would try to divert the locomotive of history on its route from the feudal to the capitalist political station it was scheduled to arrive at before it could depart for its final socialist destination, China Miéville asks:
‘What could be more inimical to any trace of teleology than those who take account of the sidings of history?’ What makes October 1917 not only ‘ultimately tragic’ but still ‘ultimately inspiring’ is that it showed it was possible to act decisively so as to engage ‘the switches onto hidden tracks through wilder history’ (Miéville, 2017, pp. 1, 318-19).
There were, of course, no hidden tracks. If the metaphor were to continue to be deployed, it would require recognizing that the tracks which would form a branch line away from the siding of the October 1917 insurrection had yet to be forged and laid. The Bolsheviks who led the insurrection, above all Lenin and Trotsky, certainly weren’t intending to construct a parallel branch line. Rather they believed that those trains already far ahead of Russia’s on history’s track were scheduled to imminently reach capitalism’s final station (the “highest”, as Lenin had designated it in his 1916 pamphlet on imperialism).
And they expected that those trains would hasten to leave that station, once inspired by the determination of the Russian switchmen, who would then reengage the switches to merge onto history’s track to the socialist station. But, as was quickly signaled by the failure of the German communist revolution of 1919, the trains on the main track failed to leave the capitalist station. The result, as Miéville puts it, was that the ‘months and years to follow will see the revolution embattled, assailed, isolated, ossified, broken. We know where this is going: purges, gulags, starvation, mass murder’ (Miéville, 2017, p. 306).
Actual Construction
The branch line that was actually constructed – tortuously winding from the Civil War through the marketized NEP of Lenin’s last years to Stalin’s centrally planned industrialization and forced agricultural collectivization – made two-track time a reality for most of the twentieth century. The revolutionaries who broke most sharply with the practice of ‘socialism in one country’, and suffered grievously from its particular methods, still believed that, as Trotsky put it in exile in 1932, ‘capitalism has outlived itself as a world system’ (Trotsky, 2016, pp. 208).[1]
And even amidst the American-led capitalist dynamism of the post-1945 era, it was the Soviet track to industrialization that most impressed revolutionaries – and a good many reformists – in developing countries. Yet it turned out that it was the parallel branch line that was constructed from the siding of the October revolution which culminated in an historical dead-end. Before the century was out, eying the high-speed trains now running on the capitalist track, new switchmen appeared all too eager to engage the switches once more and merge with the track on which capitalism sped into the 21st century to who knows where.
It is time to dispense with the metaphor. And what should also be dispensed with is the proclivity to proclaim the imminent ‘end of capitalism’ (Streeck, 2016). However useful historical materialism still proves in revealing how capitalism displaced previous modes of production – and thereby in revealing the possibility of a post-capitalist future – there are no hidden tracks through history. There are still only people making history under conditions not of their choosing. And however essential Marxist analyses of capitalism’s old and new contradictions may be for understanding those conditions, neither constraints on the development of productive forces, nor economic crises, or even ecological ones, will themselves end capitalism. Only people capable of making history can do that, and if that new history is to be a socialist one, they will have to become capable of doing that too.
It should be noted in this respect that there is also a strong trace of teleology inherent in the all too common view that, in diverting Russia from its presumed ‘natural path of development’, October 1917 signifies an arbitrary act organized behind the back of Russian society by a group of Marxist ideologues who were bent on carrying out their so-called ‘socialist experiment’ at any price. In fact, what still lends October ‘historical legitimacy, as David Mandel reminds us in another new book commemorating the centenary, is how extensive was the support for it. ‘October was indeed a popular revolution’ (Mandel, 2016, p. 155).
Insofar as the centenary of the Russian revolution occasions some new reflections on the possibility of a transition from capitalism to socialism a quarter century after the demise of Communism, this is much to be welcomed, with two provisos. First, the proper place to start is a quarter century before 1917, i.e., with the novel political phenomenon of the widespread emergence of organized mass socialist parties deeply embedded in the working classes. And second, the point of this returning must be to identify and learn from not only the possibilities they evinced but also their misconceptions and limitations, the better to see whether and how these might be, if not avoided, then at least transcended in new attempts that will no doubt be made under 21st century capitalist conditions to develop new political parties to act as the organizational and strategic fulcrum between working class formation, on the one hand, and capitalist state transformation, on the other.
Social Democracy’s Legacy
Subordinate classes had throughout history engaged in slave revolts, or in bread riots usually led by women, but such long standing institution building as was involved in the mass working class political parties spawned by the late 19th century were an entirely new historical phenomenon. They did not come out of nowhere. They often involved the confluence of various previous formations which had been unable to be as encompassing of the working classes or sustain such longevity. But it was for the most part the socialist parties which emerged between the 1870s and 1920s out of previous attempts at political organization and revolt as well as a myriad of trade union struggles that, as Eley affirms,
‘consistently pushed the boundaries of citizenship outward and onward, demanding democratic rights where anciens regimes refused them, defending democratic gains against subsequent attack and pressing the case for ever-greater inclusiveness. Socialist and Communist parties – parties of the Left – sometimes managed to win elections and form governments, but more important, they organized civil society into the basis from which existing democratic gains could be defended and new ones could grow’ (Eley, 2002).
As C.B. Macpherson once put it, even though
‘the principle introduced into predemocratic liberal theory in the nineteenth century to make it liberal-democratic… [was] a concept of man as at least potentially a doer, an exerter and developer and enjoyer of his human capacities, rather than merely a consumer of utilities’, the practical advancement of such a conception largely depended on the emergence of these entirely new forms of political agency which were explicitly aiming for a ‘maximization of democracy’ through ‘a revolution in democratic consciousness’ of the working classes (Macpherson, 1973, pp. 51-2, 173-4, 182-4).
A good deal of the inspiration these parties took from Marx and Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto was the stress it had put on ‘the formation of the proletariat into a class, and hence a political party’ (Marx, 1996, p. 13). And when Marx and Engels had even earlier contended that
‘the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution’, their notion of both ‘movement’ and ‘revolution’ was conceived not so much as a spontaneous cathartic moment of insurrection, but rather as involving a long process of class organization and institution building through which workers’ capacities could be developed, so they would ‘become fitted to found society anew’ (Marx, 1947, p. 69; see also Carver and Blanks, 2014a; 2014b; Nimtz, 2000).
They were likely thinking here of something like the German Workers Educational Society founded in London in 1840, which advertized on one of its posters:
“The main principle of the Society is that men can only come to liberty and self-consciousness by cultivating their intellectual faculties. Consequently, all the evening meetings are devoted to instruction. One evening English is taught, on another, geography, on a third history, on the fourth, drawing and physics, on a fifth, singing, on a sixth, dancing and on the seventh communist politics” (Bender, 1988, p. 10).
The Communist Leaguers who as part of ‘their historic mission to change the world’ had founded that educational society and later commissioned the Manifesto – let alone ‘the quarante-huitards that soon crowded the streets of Paris’ (Gabriel, 2011, pp. 109, 132) – could hardly qualify as a party in the sense that this would come to be understood some four decades later by the time the Second International of mass socialist parties was founded on Bastille Day in 1889. When the Communist League broke up in 1850 amidst a factional dispute, Marx defined the issue behind the fatal split as the difference between his sides’ materialism and the other sides’ idealism in their approach to revolutionary time: ‘The materialist standpoint of the Manifesto has given way to idealism. The revolution is seen not as the product of realities of the situation but as the result of an effort of will.
Whereas we say to the workers: You have 15, 20, 50 years of civil war to go through in order to alter the situation and to train yourselves for the exercise of power, it is said we must take power at once, or else we may as well take to our beds’ (Marx, 1978, p. 626; see also Nimtz 2016, pp. 248-52).
Marx’s timeline for party building was remarkably prescient. The new Social Democratic parties which emerged over the following 15, 20, 50 years, with mass working class involvement over these decades, premised their activities on the understanding that, as Engels himself put in 1895, ‘the time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what it is they are going for, body and soul. The history of the last 50 years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long persistent work is required’ (Engels, 1960, pp. 199-200).
The Marxist legacy these new parties drew on, and to no little extent manufactured, involved bringing the Manifesto back from relative obscurity as a key aid in their own role of forming ‘the proletariat into a class’. This was explicitly seen as involving a patient process of organization building and mass popular education. The most recent and comprehensive analysis of socialist party programmes before 1914 – starting with the foundational 1891 German Erfurt programme but also covering those of the Belgian, Swedish, French and Russian Social Democratic parties as well as of the British Labour party – clearly demonstrates that inspirational socialist goals were always linked to the articulation of more immediate reforms. These ranged from those designed to improve living and work conditions, to those aimed at the extension of the suffrage, freedom of association and the rule of law, to those designed to secure full equality for women, separation of church and state, universal secular education and the democratization of arts and culture. They showed to broadly-defined working classes, as August Bebel once put it, that the parties ‘were acting for them in practice, and not simply referring them to some future socialist state, the date of whose arrival nobody knows.’ Even so, they were also seen as crucial ‘to equip the working class intellectually and culturally to master its own political destiny’, which involved, above all, developing the self-governing capacities of the working classes.
To be sure, Marx’s early admonition of the German party for its statist tendencies in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program of the German Social Democratic Party, in sharp contrast with the admiration he had expressed for the forms of democratic administration briefly evinced in the Paris Commune, stands as a notable marker that something was always amiss here. In any case, by the time Marx died, it was by no means clear that the German Social Democratic (SPD) would survive its legal proscription by the 1878 Anti-Socialist Law.[2]
Forcing the law’s repeal by 1890 was an historic victory but it was also notable that Engels critique of the SPD’s 1891 Erfurt programme warned that, ‘fearing a renewal of the Anti-Socialist law’, a certain ‘opportunism’ was gaining ground in the party. This he saw as not only reflected in the programme’s apparent acceptance that all of the party’s demands could be achieved within the ‘present legal order in Germany’, but even more so in the programme’s implication that ‘present-day society is developing toward socialism’ (Engels, 1970, pp. 434-5).
What Engels was discerning here, avant la lettre Bernstein so to speak, was what later became known as ‘revisionism’.[3] The issue was not so much whether a peaceful road to socialism was possible; it was rather what ‘opportunism’ represented in terms of the growing autonomy of the leadership of the party from the mass membership amidst a host of internal party practices which inhibited rather than developed workers’ revolutionary ambitions and democratic capacities. So far had this gone in the first decade of the 20th century that Roberto Michels could conclude his famous study of the operation of ‘iron law of oligarchy’ within the SPD by pinning his hopes instead on the public education system ‘to raise the intellectual level of the masses so they may be enabled, within the limits of what is possible, to counteract the oligarchical tendencies of the working class movement.’
Still, even Michels did not ‘wish to deny that every revolutionary working class movement, and every movement sincerely inspired by the democratic spirit, may have a certain value as contributing to the enfeeblement of oligarchic tendencies’ (Michels, 1962, pp. 368-9).
It was this democratic spirit which had infused Rosa Luxemburg’s famous series of articles in 1898-99 on ‘Social Reform or Revolution’, written as a direct response to Eduard Bernstein’s explicit justification and elaboration of the view that ‘present-day society is developing toward socialism’. Bernstein asserted that the social reforms produced by trade union and parliamentary action, sustained by the concentration and socialization of production and finance accompanying the full development of capitalism, would prove to have an inherent socialist character. Against this, Luxemburg argued that pursuing only this type of reform would ensure that ‘the daily practical activity of Social Democracy loses all connection with socialism’ (Luxemburg, 2004e, p. 141).
With razor sharp clarity, Rosa Luxemburg foresaw that a strategic perspective premised on the compatibility of capitalist and working class interests, with the party treating ‘immediate practical results, the social reforms… as the principal aim’, could only lead to the adoption of a ‘policy of compensation, a policy of horse-trading, and an attitude of sage diplomatic conciliation’. And in this context a revolutionary perspective based on a ‘clear-cut irreconcilable class standpoint’ would come to be seen by the party as an obstacle to be overcome.
What would be foregone thereby was ‘the great socialist significance of the trade-union and parliamentary struggles’ – which was precisely ‘that through them the awareness, the consciousness of the proletariat becomes socialist, and it is organized as a class. But if they are considered as instruments for the direct socialization of the capitalist economy, they lose not only their supposed effectiveness, but also cease to be a means of preparing the working class for the proletarian conquest of power.’ Luxemburg pithily summed up the revolutionary perspective as follows:
“Socialism will be the consequence only of the ever growing contradictions of capitalist economy and the comprehension by the working class of the unavoidability of the suppression of these contradictions through a social transformation. When the first condition is denied and the second rejected, as is the case with revisionism, the labor movement is reduced to a simple cooperative and reformist movement, and moves in a straight line toward the total abandonment of the class standpoint” (Luxemburg, 2004, p. 142).
This was initially articulated in the late 1890s as a defense of the party’s revolutionary strategy ‘on which up to now everybody agreed’: but it would very accurately capture the predominant revisionist practice of Social Democracy, certainly from the turn of the century onward. This would culminate in 1914 in the historic split of Second International Social Democracy between those who supported each particular state and ruling class at the outset of the Great War, on the one side, and those who sustained a revolutionary perspective, on the other.
Yet there was much that was deeply problematic in the articulation of this revolutionary perspective against the revisionist one at the turn of twentieth century. And this reflected problems deeply embedded in the Marxist legacy as it was both inherited and manufactured by the mass socialist parties. The first of these had to do with what Luxemburg simply called ‘The Breakdown’.
In rejecting what Bernstein claimed was capitalism’s propensity to ‘adaptation’ which would smooth its contradictions and facilitate its morphing into socialism, Luxemburg insisted that socialist theory’s ‘point of departure for a transition to socialism’ was not just ‘a general and catastrophic crisis’, but the ‘fundamental idea’ that as a result of ‘its own inner contradictions’, capitalism moves to the point ‘when it will simply become impossible’ (Luxemburg, 2004, p. 132).
Engels had admitted that in his 1895 Preface to Marx’s Class Struggles in France (originally published in the wake of the 1848 defeats) that he and Marx – ‘and all who thought like us’ – were wrong in thinking at the time that conditions were ‘ripe for the elimination of capitalist production’, insofar as the second half of the 19th century had proved that capitalism still had ‘great capacity for expansion’ (Engels, 1960, pp. 191-2).
But by the end of the century most revolutionary Marxists, including Engels, generally shared Luxemburg’s view that this very expansion had ‘accelerated the coming of a general decline of capitalism.’ Against Bernstein’s claim that the spread of financial credits accompanying the concentration of capital in cartels allowed for the mobility of capital so as to overcome otherwise ‘fettered productive forces’, Luxemburg insisted that this only reflected the ‘greater anarchy of capitalism’ and aggravated ‘the contradiction between the international character of the capitalist world economy and the national character of the capitalist state’ (Luxemburg, 2004e, pp. 134-9).
This perspective – so fundamental to revolutionary strategy in the years before World War One as well as after (indeed, right through the Great Depression of the 1930s) – neither foresaw the capitalist state’s capacity for adaptation so as to contain severe capitalist crises, nor capitalism’s continuing dynamic expansion of productive forces (Panitch and Gindin, 2011, pp. 1-20). And it is precisely this which now allows us to see exactly how problematic was a strategy which presented socialism as a ‘historical necessity’, as Luxemburg put it, on the basis of the expectation of systemic capitalist collapse on a world scale at the beginning of the 20th century.
To be fair, for revolutionaries who were, if anything, obsessed with the importance of working class agency, the notion of socialism as a ‘historical necessity’ did not, ipso facto, imply an economistic conception of history. Rather, it stressed the importance, on the basis of the material conditions and the contradictions capitalism had created, of actively engaging in working class formation so as to develop the potential for its revolutionary agency. Indeed, Luxemburg explicitly rejected ‘a mechanical conception of social development… positing for the victory of the class struggle a time fixed outside and independent of class struggle’. She argued instead that – since it was ‘impossible to imagine that a transformation as formidable as the passage from capitalist to socialist society can be realized in one act’ – the proletariat would ‘necessarily have to come to power “too early” once or several times before it can enduringly maintain itself in power’ (Luxemburg, 2004e, p. 159).
There was nevertheless a fundamentally problematic disjuncture between, on the one hand, a strategic orientation based on the imminent collapse of capitalism (usually combined, moreover, as it was by Luxemburg herself, with an expectation of ‘the abandonment by bourgeois society of the democratic conquests won up to the present’) and, on the other hand, a strategic recognition of the sheer length of time and the amount of political space that would be needed for ‘preparing the working class for the proletarian conquest of power’ (Luxemburg, 2004, p. 153). This was further aggravated by the enthusiastic embrace of the no less problematic strategic conception of this ‘conquest’ in terms of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, a concept which only further obscured the ‘long and persistent work’ involved in workers ‘training themselves for the exercise of power’ (see Panitch, 1985, pp. 231-40).[4]
Luxemburg’s allowed, citing Marx, for the possibility of ‘the peaceful exercise of the dictatorship of the proletariat’, even while insisting it was impossible to imagine that ‘the henhouse of bourgeois parliamentarism’ could usher in ‘the most formidable social transition in history, the passage of society from the capitalist to the socialist form’ (Luxemburg, 2004, p. 157). But her Social Reform or Revolution completely left aside what she would so famously identify as ‘the problem of dictatorship’ twenty years later in her critical comments on Lenin’s The State and Revolution:
“Lenin says: the bourgeois state is an instrument of oppression of the working class; the socialist state, of the bourgeoisie. To a certain extent, he says, it is only the capitalist state stood on its head. This simplified view misses the most essential thing: bourgeois class rule has no need of the political training and education of the entire mass of the people, at least not beyond certain narrow limits. But for the proletarian dictatorship that is the life element, the very air without which it is not able to exist” (Luxemburg, 2004d, pp. 304-5).
The Russian Revolution
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was always something of an outlier among the parties of the Second International. The social and political conditions in Western Europe by the 1890s, which led Engels to insist that insurrections were a thing of the past, simply did not obtain at the time in Russia. Although the RSDLP grounded itself in the rapid growth of an industrial proletariat in the cities of the Russian empire, it was the peasantry which remained by far the larger subordinate class.
Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was still more like Germany had been in 1848 than what it had become half a century later. Moreover, Russia’s Czarist regime afforded almost none of the political space available to the SPD and its affiliated unions in Germany by the 1890s. This is precisely why Lenin told the RSDLP’s first Congress ‘that in Russia, the Social Democrats would need to work underground, create false identities, and rely on other forms of deception’. As he explicitly put it: ‘Without a strengthening and development of revolutionary disciplines, organization and underground activity, struggle against the government is impossible’ (Ali, 2017, p. 79).
As Lars Lih has shown, the organization of the RSDLP as a vanguard-led party was thus more a matter of its operation in the Czarist regime in Russia than of Lenin’s rejection of the German mass social democratic party model (Lih, 2005, pp. 517, 527, 547-8).[5] To be sure, Lenin stood steadfastly with the revolutionary wing of German Social Democracy: What Is To Be Done (1902) opens with a decisive rejection of the Bernsteinian revisionist ‘trend’ in Social Democracy for its attempt to change it ‘from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms’. Yet the stress this seminal tract placed on ‘training in revolutionary activity’ had nothing to do with mastering techniques of violent insurrection, but rather with developing hegemonic capacities.
‘Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless workers are trained to respond to all cases of political tyranny, oppression and abuse no matter what class is affected… unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata and groups in the population.’
This could only take root through the party developing the capacity
‘to organize sufficiently wide, striking and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages… to bring before the working masses prompt exposures on all possible issues… to deepen, expand and intensify political exposures and political agitation’ (Lenin, 1970, pp. 175-7).
The emphasis here was similar to Luxemburg’s in terms of the party’s key role in ‘preparing the working class for the proletarian conquest of power’. But Lenin gave much less weight than she did to trade-union and parliamentary struggles through which ‘the consciousness of the proletariat becomes socialist, and it is organized as a class’. This was only to be expected given how restricted all such activity was in Russia. And it was a highly significant measure of how limited trade union and parliamentary activity in Germany itself had become in terms of developing class capacities that Luxemburg came to see the 1905 mass strikes in Russia as spontaneously showing what the SPD itself needed to most be attuned to instead.
The central argument of her famous 1906 pamphlet on this was that ‘the mass strike in Russia does not represent an artificial product of premeditated tactics on the part of the Social Democrats, but a natural historical phenomenon.’ The development in absolutist Russia of ‘large-scale industry with all its consequences [of] modern class divisions, sharp social contrasts, modern life in large cities and the modern proletariat’ had come at a time when ‘the whole cycle of capitalist development had run its course’ in the more advanced capitalist countries. The result of this, she claimed, was that bourgeoisies – not only in Russia, but everywhere – were ‘partly directly counterrevolutionary, partly and weakly liberal’. And this in turn meant that Russia, far from being the outlier in what should be the Second International’s strategic considerations, had become the leading edge:
“The present revolution realizes in the particular affairs of absolutist Russia the general results of international capitalist development, and appears not so much as the last successor of the old bourgeois revolutions as the forerunner of the new series of proletarian revolutions of the West. The most backward country of all, just because it has been so unpardonably late with its bourgeois revolution, shows ways and methods of further class struggle to the proletariat of Germany and the most advanced capitalist countries” (Luxemburg, 1971, pp. 70-3).[6]
If this was similar in substance to the theory of ‘uneven and combined development’, it went beyond what even Trotsky, let alone Lenin, would yet claim, at least in terms of the strategic implications to be drawn from it. The stakes involved were signaled by Luxemburg in her address to the fifth Congress of the RSDLP in 1907, decrying the ‘very negative attitude to the general strike [that] prevailed in the ranks of the German Social-Democratic Party; it was thought to be a purely anarchistic, which meant reactionary slogan, a harmful utopia’.
It may have been more wishful thinking than entirely accurate when she went on to tell them that the German proletariat itself ‘saw in the general strike of the Russian proletariat a new form of struggle… and hastened fundamentally to change its attitude to the general strike, acknowledging its possible application in Germany under certain conditions’ (Luxemburg, 2004a, p. 201).
But what is certainly the case is that both the trade union and the party leadership were determined that their memberships should not come to see things this way; hence Luxemburg’s subsequent polemics against Kautsky’s steadfast insistence that the mass strike actually signaled Russia’s backwardness, and that to emulate it in Germany would be the worst strategic blunder (Luxemburg, 2004f, pp. 208-31). The intra-party struggle between revolutionists and reformists in the SPD was thus taken to another level, foretelling the historic split that was soon to come.
But Luxemburg was also concerned with what the mass strike revealed about the Russian party, which as early as 1904, as well as subsequently, she criticized for a lethal combination of ultra-centralism with vanguardist factionalism. As was also the case with the ‘more temporizing parties… in Germany and elsewhere’, it could not accept ‘the insignificant role of a conscious minority in shaping tactics… in the face of great creative acts, often of spontaneous, class struggle’ (Luxemburg, 2004c, p. 256; see also 2004b pp. 266-80).
In any case, amidst massive state repression as well as the unmistakable waning of the strike wave between 1907 and 1911, the RSDLP collapsed from over a hundred thousand members to a few thousand. While the Menshevik wing of the party looked more and more toward a strategic alliance with the small liberal bourgeoisie, Lenin in exile clung, as Miéville tells us, “to a pitiful optimism, managing to interpret any scrap – an economic dip there, and up-tick in radical publications here – as a ‘turning point’” (Miéville, 2017, p. 27). When the Bolsheviks failed to predict the renewed labour upsurge of 1912-14 in Russia, this appeared to confirm Luxemburg’s general claim that ‘the initiative and conscious leadership of social democratic organizations played an extremely insignificant role’ in such developments.
Yet this did not prevent the Bolsheviks from this point onwards becoming ‘the dominant political force in the labour movement’ (Leblanc, 2016, p. xi). After the massive demonstrations of January 9, 1917 – the twelfth anniversary of 1905’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ – it was the Bolsheviks who were most acutely attuned to keeping pace with the many waves of protests and strikes that shook the old regime right up to the moment it collapsed at the end of February.
What they were especially attuned to was that through the course of this popular upsurge “to be a ‘worker’ took on important social and political meaning, even if one worked as a waiter in a Petrograd café or a cab driver in Piatogoirsk” (Koerner and Robinson, 1992, p. 135). As a fascinating study of the press at the time has shown, what especially distinguished the Bolshevik’s strike reports was the recognition that “activist behaviour by generally ‘dormant’ workers like shop assistants, and women laundry employees was itself a matter of real political import.” Moreover, not only the editors of the Bolshevik papers, but ‘socialist editors of all persuasions appeared to portray class struggle, as illustrated by the strike movement, in the broadest possible terms, encouraging diverse segments of the labour force to abandon their narrow interests and to identify with a working class that transcended the limits of manufacturing industries.’ The conclusion drawn from this is especially important:
“The very identification of shop assistants with leather workers, laundresses with industrial workers, could not help but suggest a broad commonality of interest and an aggregate workers’ ‘class’, legitimately entitled on these grounds to share in determining the political future of Russia. In these circumstances, the competitive identity of ‘citizen’… was seriously compromised… and the liberal values, on which Provisional Government authority was based, were likewise weakened” (Koerner and Robinson, 1992, p. 143).
Trotsky’s own monumental History of the Russian Revolution, written in the first years after his forced exile by Stalin from the USSR, captured exactly this in relating two significant incidents in the days just before the February revolution, both of a kind that go unrecorded in most accounts. The first describes a street encounter of workers and Cossacks which
“a lawyer observed from his window, and which he communicated to the deputy… [This] was to them an episode in an impersonal process: a factory locust stumbled against a locust from the barracks. But it did not seem that way to the Cossack who had dared wink to the worker, nor to the worker who instantly decided that the Cossack ‘had winked in a friendly manner’. The molecular interpenetration of the army with the people was going on continuously. The workers watched the temperature of the army and instantly sensed its approach to the critical mark.”
Trotsky’s account of the second incident is based on a quote from a senator’s incensed report against a tramcar conductor (“I can still see the face of that unanswering conductor: angrily resolute, a sort of wolf look”) who on encountering a street demonstration had immediately told everyone to get off. On which Trotsky comments:
“That resolute conductor, in whom the liberal official could already catch a glimpse of the ‘wolf look’ must have been dominated by a high sense of duty in order all by himself to stop a car containing officials on the streets of imperial Petersburg in a time of war. The conductor on Liteiny boulevard was a conscious factor of history. It had been necessary to educate him in advance” (Trotsky, 1934, pp. 167-8).
Thus does Trotsky introduce his brilliant critique of ‘spontaneity’:
“The mystic doctrine of spontaneousness explains nothing. In order correctly to appraise the situation and determine the moment for a blow at the enemy, it was necessary that the masses or their guiding layers should make their examination of historical events and have their criteria for estimating them. In other words, it was necessary that there should be not masses in the abstract, but masses of Petrograd workers and Russians in general… It was necessary that throughout this mass should be scattered workers who had thought over the experience of 1905, criticized the constitutional illusions of the liberals and Mensheviks, assimilated the perspectives of the revolution, meditated hundreds of times about the question of the army, watched attentively what was going on in its midst – workers capable of making revolutionary inferences from what they observed and communicating them to others. And finally, it was necessary that there should be in the troops of the garrison itself progressive soldiers, seized, or at least touched, in the past by revolutionary propaganda.
“In every factory, in each guild, in each company, in each tavern, at the military hospital, at the transfer stations, even in the depopulated villages, the molecular work of revolutionary thought was in progress. Everywhere were to be found the interpreters of events, chiefly from among the workers, from whom one inquired: ‘What’s the news’ and from whom one awaited the needed words. These leaders had often been left to themselves, had nourished themselves upon fragments of revolutionary generalizations arriving in their hands by various routes, had studied out by themselves between the lines of the liberal papers what they needed. Their class instinct was refined by a political criterion, and though they did not think all their ideas through to the end, nevertheless their thought ceaselessly and stubbornly worked its way in a single direction. Elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacrifice, seeped down through the mass and created, invisibly to a superficial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanics of the revolutionary movement as a conscious process” (Trotksy, 1934, p. 169).
Dual Power
It was their attunement to this that led the Bolsheviks, gradually and not without considerable divisions among the leadership, to move strategically as they did between February and October. Even if they initially accepted what Trotsky admitted was the “equivocal formula ‘democratic dictatorship’” in reference to cross-class party alliances constituted in the Duma ‘at a time when the official Social Democratic programme was still common to the Bolsheviks and Menshiviks’, the Bolsheviks themselves nevertheless stayed out of any such parliamentary alliances (Trotsky, 1934, p. 337). Their acute sense was that the Russian bourgeoisie, whatever promises were made, would not be able to actually accommodate even the eight hour day, let alone ‘land reform as the peasants wanted it – without compensation’, or the workers’ ubiquitous demands for the right to elect representatives to factory committees which would ‘oversee internal work rules’ as well as hiring and firing in the factories (Mandel, 2016, pp. 119-54). As the Bolsheviks took ever greater distance from the various attempts other socialist parties made to sustain alliances with the representatives of the propertied classes, popular support for them increasingly grew.
The novel notion of ‘dual power’ – which placed the haphazard democracy of various layers of representation in the workers and soldiers councils (‘soviets’) at the centre of Bolshevik strategy, was developed in this context. But there were many fits and starts, entailing much controversy within the leadership, before the Bolsheviks moved to adopt an unequivocal stance just before the October insurrection in favour of an immediate ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ under the heady slogan of ‘All Power to the Soviets’.
To be sure, this was Lenin’s inclination from time he arrived in Petrograd from exile earlier in the spring, once he observed, as did Trotsky later, just how far ‘elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacrifice, seeped down through the mass and created, invisibly to a superficial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanics of the revolutionary movement as a conscious process.’ Yet what must be kept in mind is that the central message of Lenin’s famous April Theses – already proclaiming the passage ‘from the first stage of the revolution… to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants’ (Ali, 2017, p. 162) – was not primarily conceived with the intention of launching what anti-revolutionists derided as an irresponsible socialist ‘experiment’ on the morrow of taking power. It was rather, as it always had been, strategically bound up with breaking the capitalist chain at its weakest link – that is, with what decisively ending Russia’s participation in the terrible imperialist war would also do by way of inspiring a revolution in Germany and elsewhere in the more advanced capitalist countries. Lenin, as well as Trotsky, still saw this as the sine qua non for rendering viable any transition from capitalism to socialism.
The diffuse but palpable anger at the suffering and chaos of Russia’s continued participation in the Great War, together with an accumulating sense that a pro-Czarist counterrevolution against the weak and vacillating Kerensky government might succeed, is what lay behind the mass popular support for the October revolution. That said, David Mandel is completely convincing in his assessment that a crucial factor in addition to this was the fear among militant class conscious workers, whom the Bolsheviks had not only influenced but whose attitudes they were always most attentive to, that employers were about to resort again to the prolonged lockouts that had broken the 1905 uprising. Yet in terms of what happened after the Bolsheviks took power, he is no less convincing in showing that ‘the Bolshevik organization in the capital almost disappeared in the year following the October revolution. The politically active workers – and most of these were organized in the Bolshevik party – felt that, now that the people had taken power in its hands, the task was to work in the soviets, in the economic administrations, to organize the Red Army’ (Mandel, 2016, p. 162).
To this should be added Sheila’s Fitzpatrick’s insightful observations on how ‘radical intellectuals who knew… little about the working of bureaucracy…, whose study of Marx had given them some understanding of economic interest but none of institutional’ responded once they entered the highest offices of the old state.
‘It was a shock to members of the first Soviet government when they found that being socialists, bound by Party discipline, did not automatically produce consensus once they were put in charge of a particular sector – industry, education, the army – and started to see the world through its eyes’ (Fitzpatrick, 2015, p. 184).
The notion that creating a totalitarian state was the whole object of the revolutionary exercise was always either a figment of the counter-revolutionaries’ imaginations, or a cynically-deployed arrow from their ideological toolbox. The anti-Marxist historians’ position has always been to claim contingency rather than inevitability regarding the revolution itself, but ‘when the contingency in question applied to the revolution’s Stalinist outcome… to insist on inevitability’ (Fitzpatrick, 2017, p. 13).
There was no direct passage from Lenin to Stalin’s leadership, and even under the latter, as all of Fitzpatrick’s great historical work on the USSR has shown, both the party and the state were much less monolithic, if not any less bureaucratic, that they looked from the outside.
Lenin’s own antipathy to bureaucratic statism was evident in The State and Revolution, written on the very eve of the October revolution. While extolling some aspects of the planning capacity of the wartime German state (especially the post office), his central concern was with showing how a ‘workers’ state’ founded on the soviets which had formed in the process of making the revolution would displace the ‘bourgeois state’ with something like ‘facility and ease’ (Krausz, 2015, p. 183). Even if that is regarded more as unrealistic rhetoric than as a sober assessment of possibilities, Lenin was also concerned to show that he was not ‘utopian’ in this respect, explicitly recognizing that ‘an unskilled labourer or cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration’. The key point is that in challenging the prejudiced view that only ‘officials chosen from rich families are capable of administering the state’, Lenin was explicitly defining the central revolutionary task as the preparation of workers for this task. Lenin’s first proclamation after the October revolution “To the Population” as Chairman of the new council of People’s Commissars clearly drew on this perspective: ‘Comrades, working people! Remember that now you yourselves are at the helm of state. No one will help you if you yourselves do not unite and take into your hands all affairs of the state. Your Soviets are from now on the organs of state authority, legislative bodies with full powers’ (Lenin, 2016, p. 173).
Whatever capacities workers and soldiers may have developed through the soviets during the course of 1917, how far they could respond adequately to such an exhortation was bound to be most severely tested, especially in wake of the failure of German revolution, during the civil war, exacerbated as it was by the interventions, military and otherwise, of the victorious capitalist states in World War One. As Miéville puts it:
‘Under such unrelenting pressures, these are months and years of unspeakable barbarity and suffering, starvation, mass death, the near-total collapse of industry and culture, of banditry, pogroms, torture and cannibalism. The beleagured regime unleashes its own Red Terror’ (Miéville, 2017, p. 311).
Far from the soviet democracy of workers and peasants the revolutionaries had envisaged and promised, thus was established the dictatorship of what from 1918 was called the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks). If it was in any sense a dictatorship of the proletariat, it was only one that would ‘at best represent the idea of the class, not the class itself’, as Isaac Deutscher later insightfully put. The Bolsheviks had not merely ‘clung to power for its own sake’, he insisted. In identifying the new republic’s fate with their own – banning opposition parties and reconstructing the soviets as well as trade unions as agents of the new party-state as ‘the only force capable of safeguarding the revolution’ – they were steadfastly refusing to allow ‘the famished and emotionally unhinged country to vote their party out of power and itself into a bloody chaos.’ Nevertheless, his key point was this:
“They had always tacitly assumed that the majority of the working class, having backed them in the revolution, would go on to support them unswervingly until they had carried out the full programme of socialism. Naive as the assumption was, it sprang from the notion that socialism was the proletarian idea par excellence and that the proletariat, having once adhered to it, would not abandon it… It had never occurred to Marxists to reflect whether it was possible or admissible to try to establish socialism regardless of the will of the working class” (Deutscher, 1954, pp. 505-6).
What Rosa Luxemburg discerned within the October revolution’s first year would soon come to definitively mark the outcome. The revolutionary party itself would become a ‘clique affair’ where ‘in reality only a dozen outstanding heads do the leading and an elite of the working class is invited from time to time to meetings where they are to applaud the speeches of the leaders, and to approve proposed resolutions unanimously.’ The great danger, Luxemburg foresaw, was that in a state ‘without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element’ (Luxemburg, 2004d, pp. 304-6).
Lenin himself admitted in 1923 that virtually no progress had been made in developing capacities for popular administration. He lamented that state institutions still bore all the traces ‘of the overbearing, centralized, merciless Russian Bureaucracy, inherited in large part from the tsarist system.’ Tamas Krausz has recently aptly summed Lenin’s quandary in coming to this conclusion shortly before his death:
“Because of the limits imposed by historical circumstances and individual mortality, Lenin was able to provide only a limited Marxist answer to the issue of having to resort to a dictatorship even against its own social base for the sake of preserving Soviet power. On the one hand, he tried to compensate for political oppression by proclaiming, in opposition to the remaining and ever stronger state power, that ‘the working class must defend itself against its own state’. He left unexplained how it could do so with the support of that very state. In other words, the workers must confront the state, yet defend the state and all its institutions at the same time. There was no dialectical solution for such a contradiction” (Krausz, 2015, pp. 342, 368).
The effects of this on working class consciousness and democratic capacities was chillingly captured by what a leader of a local trade union committee at the Volga Automobile plant expressed in 1990, just before the USSR collapsed:
‘Insofar as workers were backward and underdeveloped, this is because there has in fact been no real political education since 1924. The workers were made fools of by the party’ (Panitch and Gindin, 1992, p. 19).
The words here need to be taken literally: the workers were not merely fooled, but made into fools; their democratic capacity was undermined. The Russian revolution yielded not so much a ‘deformed workers state’ in the authoritarian communist regimes as a deformed working class. There is indeed a lesson here. If the revolution party, after a long and active process of class formation, proves incapable of effecting a state transformation that in fact yields a ‘maximization of democracy’, the effect of this will be class deformation.
Conclusions
From our 21st century perspective amidst neoliberal global capitalism it is very clear that the understanding of the revolutionists within the Second International – that capital concentration plus social reform, far from gradually tipping capitalist societies into socialist ones, could at best only ameliorate certain contradictions and conflicts within capitalism while intensifying others – has been proven completely correct. Moreover, the parlous state of the liberal democracies today, where increasingly precarious and disorganized working classes have been left politically naked before xenophobic appeals, depressingly reveals the consequences of an absence of mass socialist parties engaged in developing democratic capacities through their role in class formation. This brings us back to where we began – with the historical importance of such parties as the fulcrum between class formation and state transformation.
Redeeming this historical fact is not a matter of nostalgia. It was for good reason that Simone Signoret forty years ago already titled her autobiography, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be (Signoret, 1976). Nor is it the ‘left-wing melancholia’ so haunted by ‘the defeated revolutions of the past’ as to be rendered immobile in the present, and thus effectively negate the admirably positive spin Enzo Traverso today proposes to give to the notion of a ‘fruitful melancholia’ which ‘does not mean to abandon the idea of socialism or the hope for a better future; it means to rethink socialism at a time in which memory is lost, hidden, and forgotten and needs to be redeemed. This melancholia does not mean lamenting a lost utopia, but rather rethinking a revolutionary project in a nonrevolutionary time’ (Traverso, 2016, p. 20).[7]
The various attempts that were made at ‘redeeming the revolutionary project’ via new Leninist parties in the wake of the heady spirit of 1968 proved so barren precisely because they did not encourage such rethinking. As Ralph Miliband noted in his famous ‘Moving On’ essay in the 1976 Socialist Register:
‘All these organizations have a common perception of socialist change in terms of the revolutionary seizure of power on the Bolshevik model of October 1917. This is their common point of departure and of arrival, the script and scenario which determines their whole mode of being’.
It was this ‘basic perspective’ rather than some innate ‘sectarianism, dogmatism, adventurism and authoritarianism’ that explained not only why they ‘failed to become mass parties or even large parties’ but even ‘why they have scarcely become parties at all’, and it was ‘their isolation which at least in part if not wholly produces their unpleasant characteristics’ (Miliband, 1976, pp. 138-9).
The final demise of the authoritarian communist regimes between 1989 and 1991 hardly rated as very significant in itself for a 1960s left generation which had been radicalized not because of but rather in spite of the example of ‘actually – existing socialism.’ Nor was it necessary to await the ‘realism without imagination’ that the craven accommodation to neoliberalism of the Blairite ‘Third Way’ represented by the late 1990s to recognize that social democracy’s own reformist historical course had long before this reached its own dead end. As traditional working class supporters of both Communist and Social Democratic parties were left bereft of any ideological – let alone material – buffers against the grotesquely rising class disparities of the early 21st century (advanced capitalism, advanced inequality, one might call it), it should not be surprising to see them falling prey today to the patriotism of political scoundrels.
The accumulating failures of both Communist and Social Democratic parties over the past 50 years was accompanied by a marked shift on the radical left toward a broad-ranging ‘movementism’ – whether in its pressure-group or protest-oriented dimensions. As Jodi Dean has recently argued, those trying thereby to escape ‘the constraints of party’ often reduced it to ‘the actuality of its mistakes’ while ‘its role as concentrator of collective aspirations and affects [was] diminished if not forgotten.’ She observes that more and more movement actors themselves today
‘increasingly recognize the limitations of a politics conceived in terms of issue- and identity-focused activisms, mass demonstrations which for all intents and purposes are essentially one-offs, and the momentary localism of anarchist street fighting. Thus they are asking again the organizational question, reconsidering the political possibilities of the party form’ (Dean, 2016, pp. 202-3, 205).
It is just this which also serves to heighten a sense of the importance, and yet also the inadequacies, of Syriza and Podemos among the newer parties, as well as of the Corbyn/Momentum and Sanders/Our Revolution insurgencies in the old ones (Panitch and Gindin, 2016).
These have emerged in direct response to the severe demobilizing effects of the old social democratic reformism even vis-à-vis its own base. Yet they also clearly have regarded the Bolshevik model as anachronistic. What new party forms will emerge to succeed both of these in the very different conditions of the 21st century, with all that will mean for class formation as well as state transformation, remains to be seen. But one thing is very clear. The question of the party – which appeared to have been relegated to the political scrapheap of history, rather like the steam locomotives that once powered certain teleological representations of historical materialism – is palpably back on the agenda of the left. •
Leo Panitch is emeritus professor of political science at York University, co-editor (with Greg Albo) of the Socialist Register and author (with Sam Gindin) of the Making of Global Capitalism (Verso).
This article will appear in the forthcoming issue of the journal Constellations on the Russian Revolution.
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1. While stressing the ‘seamy side of the Soviet economy,’ Trotsky (2016, pp. 204-5) noted that its industrial production had increased fourfold since 1925, while in America industrial production was cut in half by 1932; only a socialist revolution along the lines of October would be able to harness America’s ‘unbounded practical initiative, its rationalized technique, its economic energy’ to the benefit of humanity.
2. There were no less than ‘332 trade unions linked to the SPD dissolved, 1,300 newspapers and magazines banned, more than 1000 activists sent underground and 1500 members imprisoned for at least a year’, before the law was finally repealed in 1890 in the face of increasing working class support for the party despite all this repression (see Ali, 2017, p. 116).
3. Engels (1970, pp. 434-5) insisted against the SPD’s ‘opportunists’ that the ‘semi-absolutist’ Wilhemine regime in Germany did not allow for a peaceful transition to socialism there – as might happen in a constitutional monarchy like the UK, or democratic republics like France and the USA, his main argument in the 1890s was that in Germany – ‘our Party and the working class can only come to power under the form of a democratic republic. This is even the specific form of the dictatorship of the proletariat…’ Notably when Engels new introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France was published in the party newspaper De Neue Zeit in 1895 crucial passages were omitted. What was included was the stress Engels put on the positive effects of mass suffrage and the legal political space already secured by the working classes, on the one hand, and on the other, the greatly increased capacity of the state’s coercive apparatuses as well as important changes in urban form over the previous decades which impeded the construction of barricades and street fighting. What was omitted was this: ‘Does that mean that in the future street fighting will no’ longer play any role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavourable for civilian fighters and far more favourable for the military. In future, street fighting can, therefore, be victorious only if this disadvantageous situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress; and will have to be undertaken with greater forces’ (Engels, 1960, pp. 199-200; for a more thorough account see Carchedi, 1987, pp. 12-14).
4. For my own long-standing critique of this concept, as well as the concepts of ‘smashing the state’ and the ‘withering away of the state’, see Panitch, 1985, chapter 9 “The State and the Future of Socialism”, especially pp. 231-40.
5. The famous split at the 1903 party congress was originally over whether affiliated membership should be allowed, not over ‘democratic centralism’ which was in fact a term first adopted by the Mensheviks.
6. Emphasis in text. Chapter ten of Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike (from which this quotation is drawn) is not included in Hudis and Anderson’s 2006 compilation of Luxemburg’s writings, perhaps because parts of it were used by Luxemburg again in her 1910 ‘Theory and Practice’ polemic with Kautsky, which is included there. See Luxemburg, 2004f, pp. 225-6.
7. Traverso (2016) ascribes such fruitful melancholia to Walter Benjamin in the 1930s, and to Daniel Bensaid in the 1990s. See also Antentas, 2016, pp. 51-106.
A perversidade inerentemente degragante do sistema capitalista, deploravelmente redutor da existência no planeta, pode ser facilmente entendida a seguir por dizer respeito à tão declarada paixão global: envolve o nível vertiginosamente descendente do futebol mundial há mais de três décadas.
Esta modalidade esportiva começou a se transformar, proporcionalmente muito mais que as outras no mesmo período, em um bilionário negócio transnacional, fonte de lucro fácil e exorbitante para empresários e dirigentes a partir do final dos anos de 1970 e início dos de 1980 através, sobretudo, das negociações em massa de jogadores ao exterior especialmente os do chamado Terceiro Mundo, particularmente atletas sul-americanos, exportados aos financeiramente poderosos clubes europeus.
Concomitantemente, e nem poderia ser diferente, acabou florescendo também a indústria do marketing esportivo como complemento a este emergente mercado que “revolucionava” o futebol mundial, transformando a tudo e a todos – inclusive atletas – em meras marcas esportivas a serem exploradas pela mídia e por empresários, produtos comercializáveis acima de tudo ainda que se tratassem de vidas humanas.
A alma do marketing esportivo, que acabou virando até carreira universitária no início do século XXI, é vender marcas, imagens de atletas e de clubes de futebol ao público e ao próprio mercado, é claro. Alguém já notou que grandes pernas-de-pau, clubes falidos, desorganizados e dirigentes de futebol dos mais incompetentes e picaretas em muitos casos são, “misteriosamente”, idolatrados por jornalistas e alguns tietes a mais? Pois é. Trata-se da elitização bandida e completamente ilusória do futebol, no sentido que nem sempre – ou na minoria das vezes, até – premia o melhor, mas inevitavelmente os interesses do mercado.
Diante disso tudo, o assunto principal dos “debates” futebolísticos contemporâneos (igualmente empobrecidos pelo sistema) já não era mais a graça do futebol, o bem-estar de atletas e torcedores, a justa elaboração de torneios e calendários das competições esportivas, mas sim como estes poderiam melhor se adequar ao lucro financeiro.
O foco passou a ser o quanto o futebol pode ser rendoso aos burocratas que regem o esporte, a empresários de atletas e de marcas esportivas, e aos principais meios de comunicação em nada preocupados com a qualidade dos espetáculos esportivos em primeiro lugar, passando desapercebido do grande público o quanto o futebol tem se nivelado por baixo, cada vez mais.
Não por mera coincidência, já em meados da década de 1980 o mundo passou a assistir desoladamente à queda vertiginosa da qualidade dos jogos de futebol, vendo logo sua denominada era romântica que se estendia por quase meia década desmanchar-se no ar. Tal ciclo foi encerrado na Copa do Mundo do México em 1986, com o futebol já em visível decadência técnica.
No caso particular do Brasil, logo em maio de 1985 já se sentia os efeitos nefastos da globalização do mercado do futebol: em 1985, enquanto se preparava para o Mundial do ano seguinte com Evaristo de Macedo no comando técnico, entre uma série de jogos sofríveis veio a primeira derrota para a então fraquíssima Colômbia, até então sem nenhuma tradição no futebol sul-americano: 1-0 em Bogotá, onde a seleção “canarinho” levou um “vareio”. Ali, sinais bastante claros já eram dados de que o futebol estava se nivelando por baixo e o Brasil viria a colecionar, nos anos seguintes, derrotas inéditas no cenário esportivo internacional.
Eis que após uma participação com bons jogos na Copa do México no ano seguinte, quando o Brasil do brilhante técnico Telê Santana em determinados momentos fez lembrar o futebol espetáculo de anos anteriores, tendo perdido injustamente nos pênaltis para a boa França, veio a Copa América de 1987 no Chile: a melancólica participação da “amarelinha”, que já havia desfilado como melhor seleção do mundo por várias décadas, foi finalizada ainda na primeira fase com estrondosa, vergonhosa derrota para os donos da casa:4-0 para os chilenos.
A Copa seguinte, em 1990 na Itália, do primeiro ao último jogo marcou o início da nova era de apresentações futebolísticas patéticas, sem a menor graça em sua grande maioria que em nada lembravam um passado que enchia os olhos e os corações de paixão em todo o mundo. Mesmo naqueles que outrora se haviam consagrado como grandes clássicos mundiais, já se havia instalado a pateticidade o notável desfile de interesses mercadológicos que afetavam diretamente a qualidade dos jogos e, paradoxalmente, retiravam o interesse das pessoas.
Nas Eliminatórias de 1993 para a Copa do ano seguinte, a ser disputada nos Estados Unidos, também marcada pelo baixo nível técnico, outra derrota histórica do Brasl: 2-0 para a fragilíssima Bolívia em La Paz; mais uma apresentação de uma longa série, para trás e adiante, que em nada fazia lembrar a velha seleção brasileira a não ser a cor do uniforme. E mais: o Brasil, sempre muito forte politicamente junto à dona FIFA dos negócios tão bilionários quanto obscuros, recebeu naquela competição, como é tradicional na história, uma mão bastante amiga das arbitragens para chegar à disputa nos EUA, o que se repetiria gritantemente em Eliminatórias posteriores.
Um relance interno: quem não se lembra – e sente saudades – dos campeonatos estaduais até meados da década de 1980, especialmente do Paulista com seus belos clássicos e jogos pelo interior do Estado? Guarani, Ponte Preta, Bragantino, Inter de Limeira, Ferroviária, São Bento, Taubaté, XV de Piracicaba, Portuguesa Santista, XV de Jaú, América, Juventus, Paulista, Noroeste, Marília, Santo André, São José, Botafogo, Comercial, Taquaritinga, Francana, Prudentina, União São João, Ituano, Novorizontino, Rio Branco, Mogi-Mirim… Como eram apaixonantes aqueles jogos, e o quanto era complicado a qualquer equipe grande, de São Paulo e do Brasil, jogar contra esses clubes! E quantos jogadores cada um desses clubes revelou ao longo da história! Um tempo que, lamentavelmente, já se foi há muito.
Saindo novamente das fronteiras esportivas brasileiras: a Taça Libertadores dos anos de 1960, 70 e 80, que reunia apenas campeão e vice de cada país sul-americano, era outro espetáculo à parte, jogo a jogo. Outra saudosa paixão, por mais que de vários anos ara cá, exatamente em nome dos interesses financeiros, inchem a competiççao continental com jogos caça-níquies, sem a menor graça mesmo envolvendo os históricos grandes clássicos.
E essa tendência apenas piora ano a ano tanto quanto, claro sinal dos tempos, a empáfia desses atletas-produtos contemporâneos cujas “personalidades” não fazem, em nada, lembrar aquelas dos jogadores das épocas áureas do futebol quando dava gosto ouvi-los falar, era prazeroso conversar e ouvir entrevistas de atletas daquela época à áltura da paixão com que jogavam bola (Zico, Sócrates, Falcão, Pita, Zenon, Casagrande, Basílio, Edu Marangon, Careca, Silas, Ademir da Guia, Dudu, Afonsinho, Luís Pereira, Evair, Pelé, Murici Ramalho, Chicão, Leandro, Andrade, Júnior, Roberto Dinamite, João Leite, Reynaldo, Oscar, Dario Pereyra, Rivellino, Tostão, Gerson, Carlos Alberto Torres, Jairzinho, Clodoaldo, Nilton Santos, Zagallo, Zito, Garrincha, Bellini etc), entresistecendo uma comparação com as figuras dos perfeitos idiotas dos tempos atuais.
Vale ressaltar que também se deve ao sistema capitalista a feroz briga entre jornalistas esportivos pelo famoso jabá, isto é, uma porcentagem financeira “presenteada” por empresários e cartolas àqueles que valorizam, artificialmente, seus atletas de estimação em comentários na TV, no rádio e na mídia impressa, cada vez que uma negociação é efetivada.
E a própria qualidade dos jornalistas acabou afetada por essa maximização do capitalismo no esporte: são simplesmente incomparáveis os grandes especialistas em futebol do passado – com alguns remanescentes hoje, tais como como Jorge Kajuru, José Trajano e Juca Kfouri -, que além da maestria em analisar a modalidade esportiva ainda colocavam no contexto de suas ideiais questões políticas e sociais como deve ser, em relação aos aloprados do presente, panfletários e polemizadores mais rasos que palram o dia inteirinho sobre futebol, sem acrescentar absolutamente nada a não ser expor sua própria imbecilidade, a mais evidente ausência da visão de mundo e do próprio esporte.
E como esporte tem tudo a ver com sociedade e política, conforme o óbvio sugerido acima, tal sistema ratificado por jornalistas alienados e elitistas acaba também retirando a identidade nacional do futebol, além de afastar os setores populares, as massas de torcedores apaixonados dos estádios, transformados em “arenas” com shopping centers, boates etc.
The work to transform society involves two parallel paths: resisting harmful systems and institutions and creating new systems and institutions to replace them. Our focus in this article is on positive work that people are doing to change current systems in ways that reduce the wealth divide, meet basic needs, ensure sustainability, create economic and racial justice and provide people with greater control over their lives.
When we and others organized the Occupation of Washington, DC in 2011, we subtitled the encampment ‘Stop the Machine, Create a New World’, to highlight both aspects of movement tasks — resistance and creation. One Popular Resistance project, It’s Our Economy, reports on economic democracy and new forms of ownership and economic development.
Throughout US history, resistance movements have coincided with the growth of economic democracy alternatives such as worker cooperatives, mutual aid and credit unions. John Curl writes about this parallel path in “For All the People,” which we summarized in “Cooperatives and Community Work are Part of American DNA.”
Mahatma Gandhi’s program of nonviolent resistance, satyagraha, had two components: obstructive resistance and constructive programs. Gandhi promoted Swaraj, a form of “self-rule” that would bring independence not just from the British Empire but also from the state through building community-based systems of self-sufficiency. He envisioned economic democracy at the village level. With his approach, economics is tied to ethics and justice — an economy that hurts the moral well-being of an individual or nation is immoral and business and industry should be measured not by shareholder profit but by their impact on people and community.
Today, we suffer from an Empire Economy. We can use Swaraj to break free from it. Many people are working to build a new economy and many cities are putting in place examples of economic democracy. One city attempting an overall transformation is Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi.
Economic Democracy in response to neoliberalism
In his new book, “Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis,” George Monbiot argues that a toxic ideology of greed and self–interest resulting in extreme competition and individualism rules the current economic and political culture. It is built on a misrepresentation of human nature. Evolutionary biology and psychology show that humans are actually supreme altruists and cooperators. Monbiot argues that the economy and government can be radically reorganized from the bottom up, enabling people to take back control and overthrow the forces that have thwarted human ambitions for a more just and equal society.
In an interview with Mark Karlin, Monbiot describes how neolibealism arose over decades, beginning in the 1930s and 40s with John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek and others, and is now losing steam, as ideologies do. Monbiot says we need a new “Restoration Story.”
We are in the midst of writing that new story as people experience the injustice of the current system with economic and racial inequality, destruction of the environment and never ending wars. Indeed, we are further ahead in creating the new Restoration Story than we realize.
Cooperatives
New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for Cooperatives(UWCC) has found there are 39,594 cooperatives in the United States, excluding the housing sector, and there are 7 million employer businesses that remain “potential co-op candidates.” These cooperatives account for more than $3 trillion in assets, more than $500 billion in annual revenue and sustain nearly two million jobs. This May, the Office of Management and Budget approved including coop questions in the Economic Census so that next year the US should have more accurate figures. The massive growth of cooperatives impacts many segments of the economy including banking, food, energy, transit and housing among others.
In cooperatives, workers or consumers decide directly how their business operate and work together to achieve their goals; it is a culture change from the competitive extreme capitalist view dominated by self-interest.
In Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions, editors Denise Fairchild and Al Weinrub describe energy cooperatives that are creating a new model for how we organize the production and distribution of energy, which is decentralized, multi-racial and multi-class.
Lyn Benander of Co-op Power, a network of many cooperatives in New England and New York, writes that they transform not just energy but also their communities:
“First, people come together across class and race to make change in their community by using their power as investors, workers, consumers, and citizens ready to take action together. Then, they work together to build community-owned enterprises with local capital and local jobs to serve local energy needs. It’s a proven strategy for making a real difference.”
In Lancaster, CA, the mayor has turned the town into a solar energy capital where they produce power not just for themselves, but also to sell to other cities. They are also moving to create manufacturing jobs in electric buses, which more cities are buying, and energy storage. Research finds that rooftop solar and net-metering programs reduce electricity prices for all utility customers, not just those with solar panels. The rapid growth of rooftop solar is creating well-paying jobs at a rate that’s 17 times faster than the total U.S. economy. Rooftop solar, built on existing structures, such as homes and schools, puts energy choices in the hands of customers rather than centralized monopolies, thereby democratizing energy.
Related to this are community land trusts. A section of land is owned in a trust run as a non-profit that represents the interests of local residents and businesses. Although the land is owned by the trust, buildings can be bought and sold. The trust lowers prices and can prevent gentrification.
Universal Basic Income
Another tool gaining greater traction is a universal basic income. James King writes in People’s Policy Project that “. . . a universal basic income (UBI) – a cash payment made to every person in the country with no strings attached – is becoming increasingly popular in experimental policy circles. . . payments [would be] large enough to guarantee a minimum standard of living to every person independent of work. In the US, that would be roughly $12,000 per person based on the poverty line.”
The wealth divide has become so extreme in the United States that nearly half of all people are living in poverty. A small UBI would provide peace of mind, financial security and the possibility of saving money and building some wealth. A report by the Roosevelt Institute, this week, found that a conservative analysis of the impact of a UBI of $1,000 per month would grow the economy by 12.56 percent after an eight-year implementation, this translates to a total growth of $2.48 trillion.
Public Finance
Another major area of economic democracy is the finance sector. At the end of 2016 there were 2,479 credit unions with assets under 20 million dollars in the United States. Members who bank in credit unions are part of a cooperative bank where the members vote for the board and participate in other decisions.
Another economic democracy approach is a public bank where a city, state or even the national government creates a bank using public dollars such as taxes and fee revenues. Public banks save millions of dollars that are usually paid in fees to Wall Street banks, and the savings can be used to fund projects such as infrastructure, transit, housing, healthcare and education, among other social needs. Public banks can also partner with community banks or credit unions to fund local projects. This could help to offset one of the negative impacts of Dodd-Frank, which has been a reduction in community banks. In testimony, the Secretary of Treasury, Stephen Munchin, said we could “end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country.”
North Dakota is the only state with a public bank, and it has the most diverse, locally-owned banking system in the country. Stacey Mitchell writes that “North Dakota has six times as many locally owned financial institutions per person as the rest of the nation. And these local banks and credit unions control a resounding 83 percent of deposits in the state, more than twice the 30 percent market share such banks have nationally.” Public banking campaigns are making progress in many parts of the country, among them are Oakland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and other areas.
Mutual Aid
When crises occur, no matter what their cause, people can work together cooperatively and outside of slow and unresponsive state systems to meet their needs. This is happening in Athens, Greece, which has been wracked by financial crisis and austerity for years. People have formed “networks of resistance” that meet in community assemblies organized around needs of the community, such as health care and food. They started with time banks as a base for a new non-consumer society.
Similar efforts are underway in Puerto Rico following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. A group called El Llamado is coordinating more than 20 mutual aid efforts, and providing political education and support for self-organizing at the same time.
As George Monbiot describes it, this is consistent with the truth about what human beings are:
We survived despite being weaker and slower than both our potential predators and most of our prey. We did so through developing, to an extraordinary degree, a capacity for mutual aid. As it was essential to our survival, this urge to cooperate was hard-wired into our brains through natural selection.
As we face more crises, whether in lack of access to health care, education, housing, food or economic and climate disasters, let’s remember that we have the capacity to meet our needs collectively. In fact, every day, people are putting in place a new economic democracy that allows people to participate based on economic and racial justice as well as real democracy. As these alternatives are put in place, they may become dominant in our economy, communities and politics and bring real democracy and security to our lives.
A gunman identified as 26-year-old Devin Kelley received a bad conduct discharge from the military in 2014.
Reportedly he entered the town’s First Baptist Church, lethally shooting two dozen worshipers, another two outside, wounding around two dozen others.
The incident was the deadliest mass-shooting in state history. Texas Department of Public Safety regional director Freeman Martin said Kelley “was seen dressed in all black. He started firing at the church.”
“He moved to the right side of the church and continued to fire, then he went in the church. (He was) dressed all in black tactical type gear and was wearing a ballistic (bullet-proof) vest.”
They’re legal, available over-the-counter in some states or can be bought online. In Illinois, my home state, it’s illegal to wear body armor while armed with a dangerous weapon during the commission or attempted commission of an offense.
It’s standard police attire in Chicago and elsewhere in America. Alleged shooter Kelley reportedly was armed with a Ruger AR assault rifle.
It’s a legal semi-automatic weapon, typically loaded with a 30-round magazine. Larger magazines carrying 75 to 100 rounds are commercially available. They’re unwieldy and prone to jamming.
If Kelley used the smaller capacity magazine, he had to reload several times. He killed or wounded around 50 individuals.
Not every round fired hits targets. In multiple shootings, most rounds usually miss them. Alleged shooter Kelley could have fired a couple of hundred rounds or more, requiring multiple reloadings – unless multiple gunmen involved.
No one tried intervening until the gunman or gunmen left the crime scene. An unidentified individual chased Kelley while allegedly fleeing. He was found dead, lethally shot in his vehicle some distance from the church – conveniently unable to tell tales.
Local authorities claiming it’s unknown if he was lethally shot attempting to escape or by a self-inflicted gunshot leaves key questions unanswered?
If Kelley wanted to take his own life, why did he flee the scene, that’s what happened? Makes no sense.
Who was the unidentified individual chasing him, likely responsible for his death?
Reports indicated all worshipers inside the church were killed or wounded. Were multiple gunmen involved? Solid evidence proved the Las Vegas one-gunman claim was a bald-faced lie.
Shooting came from multiple directions. Suspect Stephen Paddock is dead so he can’t talk. From what’s known, he appears used as a convenient patsy.
So were all others accused in previous high-profile US and European violent incidents – proven false flags. Was Sutherland Springs, Texas the latest one?
Kelley’s pursuer was likely outside the church since everyone inside was reportedly killed or wounded.
Texas gun laws are lax. Residents can carry them openly. Americans can easily obtain semi-automatic weapons wherever they live, even if local ordinances ban them. They’re practically as available as toothpaste, yet high-priced.
If Kelly was responsible for what happened, no motive is known. Ealier he was a bible studies teacher. His wife teaches children at the church where the shooting took place.
They have two young children. They reportedly live in the luxury home of Kelley’s parents. All of the above are reasons to live, not die, or be imprisoned.
First Baptist Church Pastor Frank Pomeroy and his wife were out of town at the time of the shooting – not preaching to parishioners on Sunday.
High school friend Patrick Boyce called Kelley “fairly normal.” From what’s known so far, there’s reason to be suspicious about the official account of what happened.
High-profile incidents like Sunday’s always warrant suspicions. Virtually always, official accounts turn out to be false, important evidence conveniently suppressed to conceal hard truths – the FBI taking over investigations to control the information flow.
Sutherland Springs, Texas could be the latest US false flag? The fullness of time will likely explain more.
Today, Israel kicked off its largest international aerial training exercise ever – coined: Blue Flag 2017.
Air-forces from nine countries with about 50 planes are now starting to drill in the most southern region of the country utilizing Uvda Air Base in Israel.
Teams from India, the United States, Greece, Poland, France, Italy and Germany with be flying over 300 sorties simulating ‘real war’.
Throughout the first week of the two-week-long exercise, the international aircrews will acclimate themselves to the base and get to know each other. Throughout the second week, the participants will rehearse complex scenarios and coalition flights.
During some of the sorties, the participants will fly against the “Flying Dragon” Squadron, the IAF’s aggressor squadron, which will simulate enemy forces via “enemy” aircraft, SAM (Surface-to-air missile) batteries and MANPADS (Man-portable air-defense systems).
Lt. Col. Nadav, Commander of the 133rd Squadron (“Knights of the Twin Tail”), which operates “Baz” (F-15) fighter jets and is heading up the drill says,
“…the Blue Flag exercise is a significant quantum leap in our ability to hold an exercise and provide our multi-national participants with a quality training experience as performed in Israel. This is a significant milestone in our relationship with the international air forces, some of which are arriving in Israel to train for the first time. This exercise will allow us to continue cooperating with these forces in the future as well.”
The Indian Air Force sent a C-130J transport plane, other countries sent fighter jets, transport planes and refueling aircraft. Israel Defense notes some other various types of aircraft participating in the war games,
Participating on behalf of Israel are a “Baz” (F-15) squadron, a “Sufa” (F-16I) squadron and two “Barak” (F-16C/D) squadrons, alongside tactical transport aircraft, helicopters, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and EL (Electronic Warfare).
The US, Hellenic, and Polish air forces arrived with F-16 fighters; the French with “Mirage” 2000D fighters; the Germans with “Eurofighter Typhoon” jets; the Italians with variants of the “Panavia Tornado” multirole fighter and the Indians with a C-130J “Super Hercules.”
According to Maj. (res.) Tal, Head of the Blue Flag Management Team:
“One of the more significant ways to improve international relationships and connect countries is to create military cooperation. The IAF is Israel’s ‘display window,’ and the direct encounter between the air forces is an inseparable part of forming strong, continuous relationships with other countries, near or far.”
* * *
Meanwhile, across the sand dunes this evening, a far more interesting story is developing, and could shed light on the end game for Blue Flag 2017.
Yesterday we reported that the Saudis intercepted a ballistic missile over the nation’s capital of Riyadh. Now the Saudis call the missile attack from Yemen a “blatant act of aggression” allegedly by Iran and “could be considered act of war”.
The smell of war is in the air and simultaneously Israel and other countries are drilling for ‘real war’ [against Iran]. As, what we’ve seen before – drills sometime go live.
Women of Japanese nationality have been erased in relation to the history of the wartime ‘comfort women’.
For many decades after the war the existence of military ‘comfort women’ as a whole was ignored, and Japanese women, too, were ignored, at least in respect of their status as victims of wartime sexual violence. As we know, this deadlock over the history of the so-called comfort women was broken in the 1990s by survivors publicly testifying about their experiences, specifically those from North and South Korea.
These women spoke widely about their experience of violence and abuse at the hands of the Japanese military, and campaigned for the restoration of their human dignity, compensation for their suffering, and for the Japanese state to take responsibility for apology and reparation. It was this bravery that gradually turned invisibility into visibility for the former ‘comfort women’, and led to the restoration of their individual subjectivity and dignity as survivors. This achievement was attained not on the basis of just one public action; it took years of persistent campaigning, and not just by survivors. Many individuals and organisations supported their work.
This successful work was undertaken, moreover, in the face of dogged opposition from powerful political forces that sought to again make invisible the existence of former ‘comfort women’ as survivors of wartime sexual violence. The struggle of survivors and their supporters was waged in the knowledge that any small relaxation in their persistence of efforts would lead, again, to the suffering of survivors being consigned to the dustbin of history. On this basis, in an extremely pressurised environment, and in the face of continuing intimidation and threats, they continued daily efforts at the front line of political struggle.
In the midst of this hard-fought struggle between erasure and visibility, however, the former ‘comfort women’ of Japanese nationality were doubly erased. Local women interned in comfort stations from countries and areas invaded and colonised by imperial Japan were typically the victims of both racism and sexism, and they endured this double oppression within the context of war as the most violent of settings, and at the hands of the military, as the most violent of institutions. As a result, they suffered a fate of the most brutal kind. However, in the case of the Japanese ‘comfort women’, in the absence of colonial racist discrimination, no discrimination was recognised as exercised against them. We might expect sexist discrimination to be recognised even in the absence of racism, but, inexplicably, in the case of multiple intersecting oppressions, it seems that the absence of any oppression except sexism renders the fact of multiply experienced oppressions no longer recognisable. Oppression, discrimination and violence all become matters of no historical consequence. This is the unique mechanism operating at the base of sexist discrimination. Usually only in combination with forms of oppression and discrimination experienced also by men does sexism become clearly recognisable. At the same time, and strangely, when sexism is thus recognised, it is then equated with, or subordinated to, other forms of oppression and discrimination, and no longer recognised on its own terms. In this way, rather than a direct violent expression of sexist discrimination, rape is rendered merely violence. Similarly, rather than sexist discrimination exercised through relations of power in the workplace, sexual harassment is rendered mere illegal sexual conduct.
While a black youth being brutally murdered by a white person is recognised as the most despicable form of hate crime, innumerable women are murdered by men each year, but no-one names the phenomenon gender-based hate crime. Each one of these crimes is just individually labelled a murder over and over. Unless some other form of oppression or discrimination is pertinent to the crimes, moreover, none of them are seen as manifesting any type of oppression or discrimination in the first place. For example, in the case of child pornography, its violation of human rights is recognised on the basis of the relationship of power that exists between adults and children. But for pornography involving adults, no such violation is recognised, and the material is merely deemed a hobby or expression of free speech. Its existence is defended even by leftists and human rights advocates.
Because of this unique mechanism operating at the base of sexist oppression, the victimisation of former ‘comfort women’ of Japanese nationality specifically has never been recognised as an historical harm because racist discrimination did not feature. Japanese women have always been excluded from the category of victim in relation to military sexual slavery.
Another reason for the double erasure of Japanese ‘comfort women’ is their widely assumed involvement in Japan’s pre-war legalised sex industry as ‘prostitutes’. It was the case that most Japanese women who went abroad into comfort stations during the war had been in some form of prostitution beforehand. In Japan’s male dominant culture, prostitution is not perceived as systematised sex discrimination or exploitation; at worst, it is seen as a necessary evil. Sometimes it is held up as something to be celebrated, even in the current day. The problem with this is that prostitution escapes attribution to the men who are its customers, its entrepreneurs, and its whole-of-society male supporters. Rather, it is seen as wholly the problem of individual women in prostitution, and these women are seen as ‘prostitutes’ who are sullied and no longer eligible for marriage and normal womanhood. In a Japanese culture that upholds the Madonna/whore sexist division of women, ‘prostitutes’ were the ones sent abroad to service the sexuality of conscripts and officers, and buffer their wholesale raping of local women. This task was held up as their essential wartime mission, and the women were viewed as nothing more than a sexual resource who were collectively suited to be used in this way.
However, most women in Japan’s pre-war sex industry were the daughters of poor families, were trafficked, and were direct victims of violence and exploitation. But because male dominant societies see systems of prostitution as necessary, even if poverty (i.e., relations of economic dominance), trafficking or violence are deeply implicated in the prostitution of these daughters, these things often escape recognition. Like the Midas touch that turns everything to gold, for the institutions that undergird male dominant societies, things like violence and oppression don’t exist, and instead are rendered freedom, free choice, or some other legitimate concept like ‘work’.
These mutually intertwined mechanisms rendered the Japanese ‘comfort women’ invisible. This invisibility arises from the fact of prostitution being a bedrock institution of male dominant society that is considered a necessary evil, or even fortunately necessary. Confronting the invisibility of the Japanese ‘comfort women’, therefore, involves confronting one of the pillars of male dominant sexist culture.
The book edited by the Violence Against Women in War Research Action Center (VAWW-RAC) titled Japanese ‘comfort women’: Nationalism and trafficking is the first instance of a written work that confronts this double erasure of Japanese comfort women.
The book is the joint work of 13 authors from Japan and South Korea. As longstanding activists in the ‘comfort women’ advocacy movement, the authors for three years contributed to a project team specifically convened to examine the history of the ‘comfort women’ of Japanese nationality. They constructed a three-dimensional picture of these women in history through examining a wide range of primary sources, including pre-war police and court records, military documents and other public records, as well as innumerable media articles and memoirs, testimonies and interviews of victims, and various reports.
The book comprises three parts, covering how the women were recruited, how they were treated, and how they fared after the war. But the content of each section is not strictly demarcated, and information about recruitment appears in the second section, and information about local conditions of women’s internment in the first. I will review each section in turn, but with the understanding that information common to the sections is found across the whole monograph.
With regard to how Japanese women were recruited for comfort station internment, and how they were moved into the stations, the authors reveal that, just as the Japanese military (or Home Ministry) ordered the recruitment of women in the colonies and conquered areas, the same was done in Japan. This was undeniably an action of the Japanese state, and a policy of it. The entities that acted upon these orders and actually recruited and trafficked the women abroad were private sector businesses and individuals. The funds used to entrap the women in prostitution abroad through debt bondage were illegal in international law at the time, and were outlawed even in Japanese domestic law. In spite of this, advanced loans were able to be used in this way on the basis of official sanction by Japan’s home ministry and military. However, because the legal exemption was not known about in some parts of Japan (because the military believed its arbitrary legalising of the military prostitution system might bring into disrepute the name of the emperor, it implemented the policy in some secrecy), regional police in Japan sometimes found themselves dealing with the contradiction as part of their official duties.
For example, in a January 1938 case, a Wakayama policeman named Tanabe detained three men who had been picked up for recruiting women to send abroad in the local restaurant district. However, these three men testified that they were not predators, but merely acting on a request from military high command (army general Sadao Araki) to recruit barmaids for Shanghai comfort stations. They had already trafficked 70 women to the stations, and for this purpose had received certification from police stations in both Osaka and Nagasaki. When Wakayama police checked this story with their Osaka and Nagasaki counterparts, they found it generally checked out. In the end, Tanabe released the trio on the basis that he was able to confirm their story about military comfort stations, and because Osaka police had been able to pass on their permit relating to barmaid recruitment. Accordingly, with involvement by the state and the military, what had originally been criminal conduct no longer had such a quality (p. 92).
VAWW-RAC’s book records various means by which private brokers recruited women for comfort stations. First was through offering women who were already debt bonded or subject to other horrific contracts of servitude inducement to encourage their agreement to go abroad. These women had often been sold into prostitution as children by their parents. The military could buy out their debt contracts, or could guarantee an individual’s manumission from prostitution within a period that compared favourably to the conditions they faced in the civilian sex industry. This arrangement for the recruitment of women was the least heinous of the tactics used. Those Japanese women who were recruited this way early on, and who managed to return home to Japan before the war intensified, tend to recall relatively favourably their experience of the comfort stations. But this favourable recollection is wholly a product of the inhuman conditions in which they were interned in civilian prostitution, and the lack of hope for the future that tended to accompany debt bondage in Japan’s peacetime sex industry. It does not detract from the historical fact of their status as victims of wartime sexual violence.
A second means of recruitment involved recruiters directly approaching impoverished households and buying their daughters. This was a standard trafficking technique. For example, one trafficker recalls making sure local rice dealers accompanied him whenever he approached impoverished households because, even more than offering money, families would respond to the immediate prospect before their eyes of having that day’s meal taken care of. Negotiations over how many bags of rice the daughter was worth would be conducted on the spot (p. 164).
A third means of recruitment involved whole businesses moving abroad as military comfort stations in the case of high-class geisha restaurants catering to military officers.
Fourthly, using the same technique that was widely used against local women outside Japan, women would be tricked into entering comfort stations abroad on the ruse they were being recruited as nurses and the like. This kind of manipulation, which is a well-known form of forced recruitment, was not uncommon for Japanese women. For example, officer Gengo of the 59th division garrisoned in Shandong’s capital Jinan recalls a day in 1941 when 200 Japanese women from the ‘continental comfort squad’ of the Patriotic Women’s Association visited the area. They came with the intention of cooking for the troops and the like, but instead they were forced into military prostitution. In another example, a girl who had just graduated from school in Kyushu and had been recruited for administrative work with the military was forced into prostitution in a station for officers. She had relayed this story in tears (p. 117).
Even though, formally, the military at the time did not admit to going so far as to trick women into travelling abroad, no record exists of the military taking any action to suppress such activity. In fact, the illegal manipulation of women to travel abroad had become an easier crime to undertake after the military had legalised the recruitment of women for cross-border trafficking into comfort stations. After all, it is very difficult to differentiate among those who are in prostitution abroad on the basis of free will, and those on the basis of fraud.
For the women mentioned above who were recruited from Japan’s sex industry, their agreement to travel abroad was secured on the basis of one other important strategy, in addition to the provision of debt relief and limited contracts of comfort station internment. This was nationalism, and it explains the VAWW-RAC book sub-title, which refers to the trafficking of Japanese women into military comfort stations that was crucially organised on the basis of their ‘love of country’. Many Japanese survivors after the war talked about having agreed to go abroad ‘for their country’ or in the belief they would be interred in Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine if they died while serving the military. But their hopes were betrayed. In this regard, the former Japanese comfort woman Yamanaka Keiko said the following:
If Mr Yokoi was a sacrifice of war then so was I. I went for the sake of the emperor, but it ended up being really just for the army. But that’s what we were told [that we were going for the sake of the emperor], dammit. I want the welfare ministry to know that I agreed to go thinking I would be treated the same as a veteran when I got back, since I wouldn’t be able to get married after the war (p. 26).
For people who are socially subordinated in peacetime society, war and nationalism hold out the hope of being treated as equal members of the nation if they work hard. This hope is alluring. It led, for example, before the war, to burakumin leaders being co-opted in efforts towards militarism. However, as Clausewitz writes, war is just the continuation of politics by other means. As a thoroughly sexist state in peacetime, imperial Japan was unlikely to treat women as equals in war. On the contrary, in wartime this inequality escalated to the point of heinousness. The existence of huge numbers of comfort women in battle zones manifested the extreme end of the aggravated inequality that was enacted in wartime. The problem with this is not the post-war unequal treatment of former ‘comfort women’ after their contribution to the nation in war, but, rather, the fact they were made into ‘comfort women’ in the first place. This is problematic for being a typically standard way of enacting female inequality. It is for this very reason that the women found themselves after the war ignored, and left out of consideration of historical memory.
With regard to the way Japanese women were treated as ‘comfort women’ once they had moved abroad, it is first necessary to note that their treatment, compared to that of Korean women, was relatively tolerable, and this was the case particularly for Japanese women who entered stations catering to officers rather than rank-and-file recruits. They were generally older than Korean victims, and had a better chance of eventually leaving the stations. Racist discrimination was exercised in extreme terms by the military, and the amount of the advance loans and payments made to Japanese victims while in the stations were generally higher. However, this creation of hierarchy and rank among a population that was subject to exactly the same form of wartime sexual violence represents nothing more than a strategy of divide and rule. Nishino Rumiko writes the following in this regard:
The provision of special privileges to Japanese comfort women worked to obscure the discrimination, victimisation and sexism that these women were nonetheless subject to. The superiority complex that came with being a comfort woman of Japanese nationality came on the flipside of the discrimination and contempt that was shown Korean comfort women. This construction of privilege based on ethnic hierarchy worked against the Japanese comfort women in that their own experience of discrimination was thereby concealed (pp. 130-131).
Additionally, in comparison to victims recruited from the Korea peninsula who were, stereotypically, young virgins untouched by venereal disease, from the outset Japanese women were sourced from the sex industry (p. 132). It was believed that Japanese troops encountering pure Japanese female youth in the stations would be demoralising and therefore counterproductive. This consideration did not arise out of respect for Japanese women but, rather, the Madonna/whore dichotomy that was maintained for the Japanese female population who were divided by status into wholesome young women and mothers, and prostitutes. Each group served a different purpose as a sex-based ‘resource’. (It might be parenthetically noted that today’s LDP government and the business world in Japan use similar language in reference to women.) In other words, the former group served a reproductive function in birthing and bringing up new imperial soldiers, and the latter functioned as a physiological resource in servicing the sexuality of soldiers.
The conditions in which Japanese women were interned in wartime comfort stations were hardly better than horrendous. One former ‘comfort woman’ testified that, ‘after each one I raced to the bathroom to douche. When I would return to the room, there would be another waiting. It was just man after man after man’ (p. 124). Another commented that, ‘I served around 30 per day. I wore not even a dressing gown. I just lay on the mattress and waited for them’. A third former ‘comfort woman’ testified that she was led around by the Japanese military from one front line to another, and in total spent eight years interned in comfort stations in various locations. She ‘returned home with absolutely nothing but one free public transport ticket’ (p. 127).
Among the recruitment tactics described above, the first-mentioned scheme of recruitment was noted as comparatively less heinous, and the second-mentioned tactic involving trafficking was noted as revealing the operation of domestic schemes of female sexual exploitation in Japan. In relation to such schemes, a Japanese survivor of a Taiwan-based comfort station, Shirota Suzuko, has noted of her time in civilian prostitution in Japan that her debts would not decline, even after half a year’s internment in a brothel (p. 129).
Lastly, in regard to the post-war experiences of Japanese former ‘comfort women’, it must be first noted that the vast majority of Japanese returnees of wartime comfort stations never surfaced publicly, and their experiences never entered the historical record (p. 136). Japanese society after the war, which manifested a climate that had persisted widely and over a long historical period, orchestrated their silence. This climate held prostituted women and victims of sexual assault in contempt, and oversaw discrimination against them. Because there were so few survivors able to give testimony, it was difficult to confirm particular characteristics and historical patterns among their experiences, given the recorded pool of these experiences was so shallow. Accordingly, it has been necessary, in the case of the former ‘comfort women’ of Japanese nationality, to present individual case studies in the most sympathetic way possible. This is also the approach of the VAWW-RAC book.
Among the case studies presented is the abovementioned example of Shirota Suzuko. Her post-war experienced involved returning from abroad as the ‘third wife’ of a Japanese man, but then leaving his household to enter the sex industry in Hakata catering to occupying American troops.After this, in 1955, as a result of incidentally reading about a women’s welfare facility in the Sunday Mainichi, Shirota exited prostitution and entered a women’s residential facility called Jiairyou. It was at this facility that Shirota became a Christian.
Next, after suffering a range of illnesses and after a number of hospitalisations, Shirota moved to a public welfare residential facility for women, Izumiryou,1 Lastly, Shirota moved to the Chiba-based Kanita Women’s Village, and it was there she spent her last years. Since becoming a Christian at the previously facility, Shirota had begun testifying as to her wartime experience as a ‘comfort woman’, and it was while she was based at Kanita that she recorded the precious testimony of her life that is featured in the biography Maria no sanka published in 1971. Also while at Kanita she expressed the strong desire to have a memorial constructed to ‘comfort women’ who did not survive the war. She is recorded as commenting that, ‘I’m the only one able to speak out [as a former ‘comfort woman’]. No one who survived [a comfort station] would ever speak out about such an embarrassing experience’ (p. 217). In line with her wishes, in 1986, a memorial to former ‘comfort women’ was erected at the top of the hill on which Kanita sits. Shirota spent her final days in Kanita’s aged nursing care wing, and is recorded as saying that, ‘all I ever wanted was to live my life in a quiet hospital room. I prayed and prayed for it every night. Now God has answered my prayers!’ Shirota passed away in 1993 (p. 219).
Other comfort station survivors of Japanese nationality discussed in the VAWW-RAC book remained overseas after the end of the war. One woman from Nagasaki at age 19 or 20 was lured to the South Pacific on the ruse of paid work, but was interned in a comfort station in Singapore. According to part of her testimony recorded in tears, Japanese soldiers were repatriated at the end of the war, but women interned in comfort stations were not even informed of the end of the war, let alone repatriated. She remained in Singapore after marrying a kind-hearted local man. She never returned to Japan out of concern that returning to her hometown in Japan might have involved hardship for her family if neighbours found out about her wartime experience and discriminated against her family as a result (pp. 220-221).
This experience of military prostituted women being left abroad after the war is unfortunately common in the case of Korean and Chinese women, and the VAWW-RAC book shows its occurrence also for women of Japanese nationality.
The end of the war did not spell the end of the Japanese government’s ‘comfort women’ policy. After the war, it deployed the same policy for the sake of occupying forces in Japan. It feared suffering the same fate as had been inflicted by Japanese troops against colonised and invaded populations in the war who suffered rape and pillage. Via a directive issued by the head of the security agency in the Home Affairs Ministry, sex industry entrepreneurs operating around domestic military bases in Japan were required to establish comfort stations. Thereby commenced the ‘Recreation and Amusement Association’ (RAA) system of prostitution, which, in spite of common misunderstanding, was an organisation operating not throughout Japan but was limited to the Tokyo metropolitan area (pp. 225-226). In this instance, too, it was prostituted women who were organised to enter the venues, and again the inducement to ‘serve the country’ was used against them. The puppet government of the time had not changed a bit. Still, for these men, women were nothing more than a sexual resource to be used in the exercise of statecraft.
In spite of the long post-war history of democracy in Japan, right-wing and conservative politicians in Japan to the current day have not extricated themselves from such thinking. There continues to be the public statements of Osaka mayor Hashimoto, for example, as well as the endless arguments of the conservative right. These men have fundamentally not changed. As such, the history of the ‘comfort women’ is not yet a historical problem of a bygone era; it remains today a problem of utmost seriousness.
In conclusion I would like to cite analysis by Hirayama Kazuko advanced in her thesis examining the RAA system of post-war Japan.
Roughly seventy years after the wartime defeat, the system enacted by Article 9 of the Constitution that was embraced by the Japanese people is being hollowed out in the name of ‘leaving behind the post-war regime’ by the second Abe Shinzou government. In the guise of ‘re-interpretation’, the system is being snuffed out. But those of us who examine the historical human rights violations of the wartime and post-war ‘comfort women’ systems know that, in the event of war, the Japanese military (i.e., the state) will not only fail to protect its female citizens, but will push us forward in sacrifice to its own protection. In light of this grievous history, it is incumbent upon us (both men and women) to forge ideas and practices that overcome the Madonna/whore division of women (in which good women are protected and other women sacrificed), which is rhetoric used endlessly in the process of militarisation.
This article was published in Joukyou, Vol. 4, November 2015, pp. 185-193.
Morita Seiya lectures at Kokugakuin University in Marxist political economy, and is the translator of Catharine MacKinnon and David Harvey’s work into Japanese. His most recent book is a translation and commentary of an unpublished Marx manuscript from 1866. For over a decade, Morita has campaigned against prostitution and pornography in Japan via two organisations: the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS). His textbooks on Marxist political philosophy attract a growing following, as do his regular public lectures on the topic.
Caroline Norma is a research fellow at RMIT University in Australia researching the history of the Japanese military ‘comfort women’ system in wartime New Guinea. She is the author of The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery during the China and Pacific Wars (2016).
Note
1Translator’s note: This facility is still in operation in Tokyo, and continues to prioritise women survivors of prostitution among its cohort intake. Its director is active in anti-prostitution and pornography campaigning.
Donald Trump, accompanied by a coterie of minders and corporate executives, departed yesterday for a 12-day tour of what US foreign policy strategists now officially designate as the “Indo-Pacific.”
This will be one of the longest official trips to Asia ever undertaken by an American president, and its objectives are clear. In the short-term, Washington is seeking to stiffen the backbone of its allies for a catastrophic and potentially nuclear war against North Korea. In the longer term, US imperialism is seeking to maintain its waning global dominance by exerting military and economic pressure on China in order to undermine, and ultimately shatter, its growing influence.
Trump has left the US with his administration mired in disarray and under siege from its political rivals. There is consensus, however, within American ruling circles and both the Republican and Democratic parties, on utilising every means available to prevent China from emerging as a serious challenge to US hegemony. Regime-change in North Korea, on China’s border, is viewed as a means of radically altering the balance of forces in Asia, to the strategic detriment of Beijing.
One of the leading generals in Trump’s cabinet, National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, bluntly spelled out the message to be delivered to the region. “The president,” McMaster insisted on Thursday, “recognises that we’re running out of time [before a war with North Korea] and will ask all nations to do more.”
Trump will make state visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, and attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Vietnam. Capitulating to a torrent of criticism, he has changed his schedule and will stay for at least the first day of the East Asia Summit (EAS), being held this year in the Philippines, November 13–14.
In advance of the tour, the American establishment was so concerned that the US president’s chauvinist and boorish personality could result in a diplomatic disaster, it insisted he undergo weeks of “briefings”—on everything from whom he will meet; what he can say or tweet; what colour clothing he can wear; and, one suspects, where he cannot put his hands. As one “Washington-based Asia expert” told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Trump has been instructed to “just stick with the script.”
Symbolically, Trump’s visit began Friday in Hawaii, with a visit by the president to the Pearl Harbor naval base, where the war between the US and Japan for dominance over Asia began in December 1941. This was preceded by talks with Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of US Pacific Command (PACOM), on the 21st century war being prepared against North Korea. Harris has at his disposal one of the largest US naval armadas ever assembled. Three aircraft carrier battle groups are converging on waters off the Korean Peninsula, along with at least two cruise missile-armed submarines, an undisclosed number of nuclear missile-armed subs, and South Korean, Japanese and Australian warships.
The naval force, along with several hundred aircraft on the carriers, is complemented by B-2, B-1 and B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters, a squadron of F-35 “fifth generation” fighters and hundreds of F-16 fighters and F-18 fighter-bombers, deployed at bases in South Korea, Guam, Japan and Alaska.
If Trump gives Harris the order, he can unleash hundreds of cruise missiles against North Korea in a matter of minutes, followed by wave after wave of air strikes.
On Sunday, Trump is set to arrive in Japan. His daughter Ivanka was dispatched prior to his arrival to hold talks with recently re-elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, presumably so the Japanese leader would not have to air controversial issues between the two powers, especially over trade, with Trump himself. The highlight of their interaction will be a game of golf. They will then co-host a meeting with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime between 1977 and 1983, which will be used in Japan and the US to further demonise Pyongyang and propagandise for war.
Abe’s ultra-nationalist government has given unconditional backing to Trump’s threat to “totally destroy” North Korea, despite massive popular opposition in Japan to militarism and war. Abe has also fully aligned Japanese imperialism, in its own self-interest, with the US preparations for confrontation and war with China initiated in 2011 with the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia.”
On November 7, Trump will arrive in South Korea, where the population faces the prospect of hundreds of thousands of deaths and ruination if the United States provokes war on the peninsula. He will deliver a speech to the country’s National Assembly, which is expected to focus on the necessity for South Korea to support US plans to attack North Korea on the pretext of preventing the impoverished country from developing its limited nuclear arsenal.
The venality of the South Korean ruling elite is underscored by its acceptance of the US military taking full command over its own armed forces as soon as hostilities begin.
On November 8, Trump will travel to Beijing. His meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly generated the most nervousness among his minders. While ahead of the talks both governments have issued statements referring to the strength of their relations, the true state of affairs is one of ever-growing tension and sources of conflict.
Trump’s task, for which numerous American strategists consider him woefully inadequate, is to advance the demands of US imperialism that China make far-reaching strategic and economic concessions.
He will insist, firstly, that Xi and his regime stand aside in the event of war with North Korea, a country with which China has a formal military alliance. Secondly, Trump is expected to stipulate that Beijing accept the pro-imperialist United Nations court ruling of 2016, which rejected its territorial claims over islets and reefs in the South China Sea. Finally, he will table demands for greater access to the domestic Chinese market for American and other transnational corporations.
From China, Trump will proceed to Vietnam, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is convening on November 10 in the city of Da Nang. The Vietnamese regime has increasingly aligned itself with Washington against Beijing and reportedly intends to bestow extravagant state honours on the US president.
Whether Trump will use the occasion of APEC to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will be there, is not yet clear. Beset by accusations that his election victory was the outcome of “Russian interference,” a meeting between Trump and Putin could be explosive, particularly given Moscow’s vocal opposition to any military action against North Korea.
From Vietnam, Trump will travel to the Philippines, where he will participate in an official state meeting with the country’s fascistic president, Rodrigo Duterte. The White House has brushed aside concerns over Duterte’s reign of terror and his agenda of murdering thousands of people in the name of a “war on drugs.” Anything is acceptable to the American ruling class providing the Philippines continues to serve as a frontline US client state. Under Obama and now under Trump, the US has used Manila’s territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea as one of the justifications for its military build-up in the region.
Whilst in the Philippines, Trump has scheduled meetings with Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister of Australia, and Jacinda Ardern, the newly elected Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Australia is considered by the US strategic and military establishment to be a critical ally in the preparations for, and waging of, a war with China. The country serves as one of the most vocal supporters of American foreign policy internationally, hosts key US military facilities, and has dispatched naval forces to join the US fleet that is gathering off the Korean Peninsula. New Zealand is likewise a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance and hosts significant US spying bases. Ardern and her right-wing Labour coalition government have signalled that they will align more closely with the US against China.
The APEC talks and East Asia Summit will bring into stark focus the dilemma confronting every Asian state, as China’s economic weight continues to expand and the global role of the United States continues to decline.
Beijing is offering participation in its multi-billion-dollar “One Belt One Road” projects, aimed at developing energy and transport links between East Asia and Europe.
Donald Trump, the personification of the degeneration and decay of American imperialism, is offering ultimatums to China and the region that they accept the destruction of North Korea and the economic dictates of his administration, or face the prospect of nuclear war.
DAMASCUS, Syria. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today that the Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump will soon hold a meeting in Vietnam where they will discuss several important issues, the settlement of the Syrian crisis including.
During a press conference on Saturday, Peskov said that arrangements are being made to prepare a meeting between the two leaders, where particular attention will be paid to the settlement of the Syrian crisis.
The meeting will take place in scope of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, which will be held between November 10th and 11th in Vietnam.
Peskov pointed out to plenty of the topics to be discussed, stressing they are in the interest of both, Kremlin and the White House.
He noted that the settlement of the Syrian crisis has recently seen lots of positive developments, adding that the whole thing now requires more joint efforts and coordination between different sides in order to take it to a whole new level so that the crisis itself would be over much sooner.
“Search for nothing anymore, nothing except truth.
Be very still and try to get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is: How great a liar am I?”
– D. H. Lawrence, Search For Truth
Like existential freedom, honesty and truth-seeking demand a perpetually renewed commitment. No one ever fully arrives, and all of us are blown off course on the journey. Even when we think we have reached our destination, we are often startled by the enigma of arrival, and must set sail again. We are all in the same boat. The search for truth is a process, an experiment, an essay – a trying without end.
Yet surely it is not an exaggeration to say that most people are liars and self-deceivers. Honesty, while touted as a virtue, is practiced far less than it is praised. There is almost nothing that people are less honest about than their attitudes toward honesty. Few think of themselves as dishonest, and even to hint that someone is so is received as a great insult that usually elicits an angry response. So most people follow the advice of the character Jean-Baptiste Clamence from Albert Camus’ The Fall: “promise to tell the truth and then lie as best you can.” In that way you satisfy your own and others’ secret desires for deception and play-acting, and other people will love you for it.
However, it is widely accepted that political leaders and the mass media lie and dissemble regularly, which, of course, they do. That is their job in an oligarchy. Today we are subjected to almost total, unrelenting media and government propaganda. Depending on their political leanings, people direct their anger toward politicians of parties they oppose and media they believe slant their coverage to favor the opposition.
Trump is a liar. No, Obama is a liar. And Hillary Clinton. No, Fox News. Ridiculous! – it’s CNN or NBC. And so on and so forth in this theatre of the absurd that plays out within a megaplex of mainstream media (MSM) propaganda, where there are many shows but one producer, whose overall aim is to engineer the consent of all who enter while setting the different audiences against each other. It is a very successful charade that evokes name-calling from all quarters.
In other words, for many people their opponents lie, as do other people, but not them. This is as true in personal as well as public life. Here the personal and the political converge, despite protestations to the contrary.
Sartre and Bad Faith
Lying and dissembling are ubiquitous. Being lied to by the MSM is mirrored in people’s personal lives. People lie and want to be deceived. They choose to play dumb, to avoid a confrontation with truth. They want to be nice (Latin, nescire, not to know, to be ignorant) and to be liked. They want to tuck themselves into a safe social and cultural framework where they imagine they will be safe. They choose to live in what Jean Paul Sartre called bad faith (mauvaise foi): He put it as follows:
In bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. But with this “lie” to myself, the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.
Such bad faith allows people to fabricate a second act of bad faith: that they are not responsible for their ignorance of the truths behind the government’s and corporate media’s lies and propaganda, even as the shades of the prison house ominously close around us and the world edges toward global death that could arrive in an instant with nuclear war or limp along for years of increasing suffering.
Those of us who write about the U.S. led demented wars and provocations around the world and the complementary death of democracy at home are constantly flabbergasted and discouraged by the willed ignorance of so many Americans. For while the mainstream media does the bidding of the power elite, there is ample alternative news and analyses available on the internet from fine journalists and writers committed to truth, not propaganda. There is actually far too much truth available, which poses another problem. But it doesn’t take a genius to learn how to research important issues and to learn how to distinguish between bogus and genuine information. It takes a bit of effort, and, more importantly, the desire to compare multiple, opposing viewpoints and untangle the webs the Web weaves. We are awash in information (and disinformation) and both good and bad reporting, but it is still available to the caring inquirer.
The problem is the will to know. But why, why the refusal to investigate and question; why the indifference? Stupidity? Okay, there is that. Ignorance? That too. Willful ignorance, ditto. Laziness, indeed. Careerism and ideology? For certain. Upton Sinclair put it mildly when he said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it.” Difficult? No, it’s almost impossible.
But then there are many very intelligent people who have nothing to lose and yet adamantly refuse to entertain alternative possibilities to the reigning orthodoxies that have them in their grip.
As do many others, I know many such people who will yes me to death and then never fully research issues. They will remain in limbo or else wink to themselves that what may be true couldn’t be true. They close down. This is a great dilemma and frustration faced by those who seek to convince people to take an active part in understanding what is really going on in the world today, especially as the United States wages war across the globe, threatens Russia and China, among others, as it expands and modernizes its nuclear weapons capabilities.
Jacques Ellul on Propaganda
The French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, has argued convincingly that modern propaganda in a technological mass society is more complicated than the state and media lying and deceiving the population. He argues that propaganda meets certain needs of modern people and therefore the process of deceit is reciprocal. The modern person feels lost, powerless, and empty. Ellul says, “He realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair.” But he can’t live in despair; desires that life be meaningful; and wants to feel he lives in a world that makes sense. He wants to participate and have opinions that suggest he grasps the flow of events. He doesn’t so much want information, but value judgments and preconceived positions that provide him with a framework for living. Ellul wrote the following in 1965 in his classic book Propaganda:
The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion: this gives them the feeling of participation. For they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a ‘key’ that will permit them to take a position, and even readymade opinions….The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework….the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his own worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego. All this propaganda – and only propaganda – can give him.
Another way of saying this is that people want to be provided with myths to direct them to the “truth.” But such so-called truth has been preconceived within the overarching myth provided by propaganda, and while it satisfies people’s emotional need for coherence, it also allows them to think of themselves as free individuals arriving at their own conclusions, which is a basic function of good propaganda. In today’s mass technological society, it is essential that people be convinced that they are free-thinking individuals acting in good faith. Then they can feel good about themselves as they lie and act in bad faith.
The Spirit of Existential Rebellion
In the wake of World War II and the complete shattering of any illusion about the human capacity for evil, there arose in Western Europe, particularly in France and Germany a “philosophy” called existentialism. More an attitude towards life rather than a formal philosophy, and with its roots going back at least as far as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the 19th century, existentialism emphasized individual freedom, authenticity, personal responsibility, and the need to confront the unimaginable horrors of World War II and the absurd situation in which human beings had created nuclear weapons that could obliterate the planet in a flash, as the United States had used to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How to respond to the birth of global state nuclear terrorism became a task for the existential imagination.
The traditional belief that an all-powerful God could bring the world to an end had now been replaced by the idolatry of nuclear madmen who had hubristically violated the limits that the Greeks had long ago warned us not to exceed by making themselves into gods. Having unleashed the Furies, these false gods have created a world in which the droning sound of nuclear intercontinental missiles haunts the secret nightmares of the world. We have been living with this unspeakable and unspoken truth for more than seventy years.
Opposition to the nuclear standoff and its accompanying proxy wars has waxed and waned over the years. Dissident minorities and sometimes many millions across the globe have mobilized to oppose not only nuclear weapons but the war makers who have waged continuous wars of aggression throughout the world and have created the national-security warfare state, seemingly intent on world destruction.
However, today the sound of silence fills the empty streets, as passivity has overtaken those who oppose the growing nuclear threat and the ongoing U.S.- led wars throughout the world. The spirit of resistance has gone to sleep. The German writer Karl Kraus understood this in the days of Hitler’s rise during the 1930s when he said, “The real end of the world is the destruction of the spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such destruction the world can go on.”
We need to somehow resurrect the spirit of resistance that will bring together millions of people across the world who oppose the death dealers. I think it is time to recall the power and possibility implicit in the spirit of existential thought.
The existential emphasis on individual responsibility and authentic truth telling in the works of various writers, including Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel, and Albert Camus (who didn’t consider himself and existentialist but whose work emphasized many of the same themes, Image left), inspired large numbers of people in the late’ 50s into the mid-to-late’60s, including the international anti-nuclear movement and young American anti-war activists. Contrary to popular understanding, existentialism is not about navel gazing and hopelessness, but is about responding freely and authentically to the situations people find themselves in, which today, is the end- time that is a time when the fate of the world lies in the hands of nuclear madmen.
But by the end of the 1960s this existential spirit of rebellion started to dissipate. Academic gibberish replaced this rebellious spirit with the introduction of ideas, such as post structuralism, leading eventually to postmodernist nonsense that not only refuted the need for personal responsibility, but eliminated the person altogether. By 1999 a leading exponent of postmodern rhetoric, Jean Baudrillard, was dismissing everything the existentialists emphasized. He said, “No one needs this kind of ‘existential garb’ any more. Who cares about freedom, bad faith, and authenticity today?”
If such words were just the ranting of an intellectual lost in a fantasy world of abstractions, that would be one thing. But they are a form of propaganda echoed throughout western societies, particularly the United States, through the repeated emphases over the decades that people are not free but are the products of biological brain processes, etc. Deterministic memes have become dominant in cultural mind control. Such postmodern abstractions have denied everything that makes possible the fight against nuclear annihilation and the warfare states’ domination of western Europe and NATO, led by the United States.
The self is an illusion. Freedom is an illusion. Responsibility is an illusion. Guilt is an illusion. Everything is an illusion. A kaleidoscopic mad world in which no on exists and nothing really matters. This deterministic and nihilistic message has become the main current in western cultural propaganda since the late 1960s and has reached a crescendo in the present day. It is responsible for the growth of passivity and denial that dominates contemporary public consciousness. It underlies the refusal of so many otherwise intelligent people to engage themselves in the search for truth that would lead to their joining forces with others to create a mass anti-war movement.
While many people think of existentialism as only an atheistic approach to existence, this is incorrect. There are atheist and agnostic existentialists, yes, , but existentialism’s core emphases have deep roots in the various religious traditions, such as Judaism and Christianity, etc. That is because freedom, authenticity, truth telling, and social responsibility, while often buried within the institutional structures of these faiths, lie at their core. So if we are going to resurrect the spirit of rebellion necessary to transform today’s world, we need to renew the virtues that the existentialists emphasize.
The first step in this process is to ask with D.H.Lawrence the question, “How great a liar am I?”
Anti-war activist and author of the indispensable book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, James Douglass, made an intriguing suggestion in another book, Lightning East to West, when he said:
The exact opposite of the H bomb’s destructive purpose, but psychic equivalent of its energy, is the Kingdom of Reality which would be the final victory of Truth in history –a force of truth and love powerful enough to fuse billions of individual psyches into a global realization of essential oneness. There is no reason why the same psyche which, when turned outward, was able to create the condition for a self-acting force of over 100 million degrees of heat, thus realizing an inconceivable thermonuclear fusion, cannot someday turn sufficiently inward to create the condition for an equally inconceivable (but nature balancing) fusion in its own psychic or spiritual reality. An end-time can also be a beginning.
Gandhi said:
‘When the practice of the law becomes universal, God will reign on the earth as God does in heaven. Earth and heaven are in us. We know the earth, and we are strangers to the heaven within us.’
While Gandhi’s words are couched in religious language, their meaning can resonate with secular-minded people as well. These words speak to the power implicit in the human spirit as a whole. That power begins and builds when people of all persuasions are convinced that they must freely pursue the truth at all costs. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
In these very dark times – these end- times created by nuclear weapons – seeing the truth is dependent on the will to truth, and the will to truth only arises when people believe they are free to alter the circumstances in which they find themselves. This belief in freedom is at the core of all existential thought and is why we need to resurrect it today.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/
What a weekend it has been. The Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea may well have closed, but the protests, and those resident at the camp, continue to defy and prevaricate. At a protest in Melbourne on Saturday, Australian Greens MP Adam Bandt decided to get down and indignant with his calls to the Australian government.
“These people,” claimed Bandt, referencing those refusing to leave the Lombrum naval base, “have committed no crime other than to do what every single one of us would do if we thought our lives, or our family’s lives, were at risk.”
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, stonily silent, was singled out for special mention. “To look at the face of Peter Dutton is to stare into the eyes of someone who is prepared to kill people for political gain, and it’s time he was held to account for his crime against humanity.”[1]
Dutton, for his part, insists that the new facilities are better, a sort of accommodation promotion. On Channel 9’s Today Show on November 2, the minister explained that the new residences constituted a “much better facility that where people are at the moment and I’d just say to the advocates here who are telling people not to move, to resist moving centres; that they’re not doing those people any favours.”[2]
The new facilities, comprising three sites for accommodation, have been given a curiously travel touch up in some reports. Peter Hartcher of The Age, for instance, describes the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre as having “room for 400 people” with healthcare and “security for the protection of the residents.”[3]
West Lorengau Haus has room for a further 300 refugees. “For confirmed refugees, the PNG government pays an allowance for food and other necessities but they need to cook their own food.” The third facility, Hillside Haus, covers those whose claims for refugee status have failed, one which will receive catered mills.
The sting in Hartcher’s commentary lies in pouring cold water, and more, on the claims that there is a crisis, or at least one that has not been manufactured by Australian or PNG authorities. The former detention facility at Lombrum navy base, for instance, had been open for some 18 months, “with asylum seekers able to come and go as they pleased”. They merely had to return to the centre at night.
These descriptions fortify the line of the irresponsible refugee, dandified, coddled, indignant and even fraudulent. This, despite the legal ruling by the PNG Supreme Court that such a facility was illegal, not to mention the numerous accounts of violence that have been documented by Human Rights Watch.
On the ground, not much coddling is taking place and few are buying the paradise packaged rhetoric that hope is around the corner. One such unflappable sceptic is Behrouz Boochani, who has been incessant on his Twitter account, streaming updates with pious, pilgrim-like dedication. Of latest concern in the next chapter of whether a move to the designated sites at Lorengau will take place centred on the heart condition of one of the refugees.
“The refugee with heart problems just arrived in Lorengau, about 40 kilometres from here [the camp]. Such a terrible night, will write about it later.”[4] Then followed a tweet that the situation was “critical in Manus” and that a doctor was tending to the patient after four and a half hours. “Such a long time for emergency cases.”
Boochani, as is his wont, then shot a moral warning, a call to Australian authorities on complicity. “Anything bad [sic] happen for the refugee with heart pain Australia is responsible. You can not continue to kill people because of medical neglect.”[5]
The infliction of death is a matter of relative assessment. The Australian government, backed by the Labor opposition, holds that a policy detaining people in tropical centres in the Pacific away from the mainland saves foolish lives and retards the “people smuggling industry”.
This fine cut fiction is based largely on a brutish assumption that the problem vanishes, when it, in fact, merely moves elsewhere. Where there are means to flee, and individuals happy to capitalise on assisting, there will be trade, however bestial and risky it may be. (What would Dutton make of the people smugglers of the post-Second World War period?)
The global problem on accepting and processing refugee claims, and the issue of settlement and integration, remain ones where wealthy states, on the whole, remain stern and austere in the face of desperation. Poorer states, challenged by a lack of infrastructure, are left to foot the bill, the modern serfs of the international humanitarian system. The Australian solution, singular and very colonial in inspiration, is to pay middlemen states and outsource legal obligations.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
In 1917, the British government unleashed the Zionist Jewish colonial enterprise that is now Israel. In the process, it meted out on Palestinians destruction, dispossession and oppression that are ongoing to this day.
The language used in the document that facilitated this disaster, the Balfour Declaration, is devious and self-serving, the kind of language that can be found in every document to which the Palestinian people have been subjected — and supposedly drafted by an impartial power — only to be revealed later as a Zionist instrument.
For example, the final clause of the Balfour Declaration includes the so-called “safeguard” for Palestinian Arabs. It reads:
“… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country.”
The craftily phrased reference to “non-Jewish communities” is especially galling and fraudulent, as it was written to conceal the true ratio between Palestinian Arabs (91% at the time) and Jews — “an Arab population with a dash of Jew. Half of the Jews were recent arrivals” as it has been described, and thereby to make easier the suppression of the indigenous population.
Notice also in this infamous clause that “civil and religious rights” qualify “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” and “political status” is added only about Jewish rights — a political bias against Palestinian Arabs and for Jewish colonial supremacy in Palestine that is flagrantly evident to this day, not only in the UK, but also in the US.
Here are eight memes that explain the terrible triple bind Palestinians continue to suffer under the Balfour Declaration:
Meme One: The Balfour Declaration taught the Zionist movement that a Jewish state in Palestine relying on a superpower patron will have impunity from censure.
(L-R) Chaim Weizmann, future president of Israel, with Louis Brandeis, US Supreme Court Justice, in Palestine, 1919. The two were instrumental in obtaining the Balfour Declaration, a British document that many feel was a critical step in the establishment of Israel. Zionists’ promise that they would get the U.S. to join Britain in “the Great War” was the enticement.
Meme Three: Zionism’s Jewish-state mission had its own independent sources of finance & support, besides those offered by Britain’s Balfour Declaration. [See Zionism: World Zionist Organization (WZO)
Meme Four: Double Whammy! Unlike most other colonized peoples, Palestinians had to fight against not only the foreign colonial Jewish entity in their midst but also the Balfour Declaration. [See Rashid Khalidi: Balfour Declaration Must be Matched by National Home for Palestinians]
Meme Five: The legality accorded to the Balfour Declaration by the League of Nations also explains the challenges facing Palestinians trying to retain their ancestral homeland. [Read The Real Story of How Israel Was Created]
The bind in which Palestinians find themselves because of the Balfour Declaration is a triple whammy. They continue to fight not only the well-funded Jewish Zionist colonization of Palestine but also the Zionist-propelled machinations of imperial powers, both in the waning British and rising American empires. And as the Declaration was accepted by the League of Nations, Palestinians also must face the “legality” of a corrupt international order [Read Why is it so difficult to reform the United Nations Security Council?].
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
Sexual harassment – it’s revelation, that is – is all around at the moment, a toxic cold that is giving political establishments not so much a sneeze as debilitating pneumonia. In Britain, the cold covered various parties, initiating investigations, concerns and the promise of further actions.
It also hit Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary who found himself without a portfolio, resigning for having engaged in conduct that fell, in the words of his resignation letter, “below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces and that I have the honour to represent.”
Those standards were allegedly given a good dumping in past remarks made to Andrea Leadsom, leader of the House of Commons. On Monday, Leadsom wished to give some instruction about what needed to be done. “I have made it clear that the issue is around, first, those who are made to feel uncomfortable: I am setting the bar significantly below criminal activity. If people are made uncomfortable, that is not correct.”[1]
Not that all whom he has allegedly touched feel the same way. Journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer had no desire to be considered a “victim” of Fallon’s advances fifteen years ago, her knee the unfortunate excuse for ending a ministerial career. Fallon has been busy on that front, effusively expressing apologies for placing his hand on Hartley-Brewer’s knee at a Tory party conference dinner in 2002. Hartley-Brewer, for her own part, thought it all ridiculous, an over-egging of an already overdone pudding.
The letter from Prime Minister Theresa May did everything to mollify and ease the fall of the axe. Was Fallon to be remembered as deviant, fondler and ogler, one inclined to press flesh rather than move armaments and send men and women to their deaths? Or perhaps a mighty figure of the realm, swaddled in the blue of good British conservatism in the fight against terror?
May insisted that his qualities be remembered. “You should take particular pride in the way the United Kingdom has risen to the challenge of tackling the barbaric threat of Daesh. Thanks to the bravery of our Armed Forces, Daesh is being defeated, and three million people have been freed from its murderous rule.”[2]
Well he might have had “a long and impressive Ministerial career”, having served in four departments under four prime ministers. He had also been Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. But for all that, the smear cloaked and caked with sufficient force. May is simply too vulnerable to treat these matters as farcical utterances and suspicions. Nor can she afford having encores.
The Tories have decided to engage in, much in the manner of what they have done at stages of their muddle through history, some promised, and ultimately failed behavioural modification. The bad Tory intends becoming good, entailing some awakening and self-chastening. As always, it is a cursory case of moral response: codify conduct that is bound to be undermined at every given moment.
When John Major won the election as Margaret Thatcher’s successor in 1992, his moral insistence on angelic purity for members of his party was disastrous. Major himself was found out to be having more than just his hand in the cookie jar.
Now, Prime Minister May is insisting on fundamental “minimum standards” for members of the party fuelled by the doctrine of taking “all reasonable steps” to investigate concerns raised over inappropriate conduct. An element of independence in the process is also being encouraged.
This procedure is one which replaces the voluntary code embraced in 2014. It all sounds prosaic, determinative and expected, the material that suggests what has been essentially considered in the order of normality. Conservative members must “treat others with civility, courtesy and respect” and avoid using “their position to bully, abuse, harass or unlawfully discriminate against others.”
On the Labour side of politics, investigations are also being undertaken into two of its MPs. Suspensions have taken place, with Kelvin Hopkins having to cool off over allegations made by Labour activist Ava Etemadzadeh that he embraced her inappropriately after a student event in 2014.[3] A new complaints procedure has been introduced, though the need for an external, independent body is also being mooted.
In the aftermath of Fallon’s fall, the relieved and the delighted are directing their bolts. But they mention, less the issue of his alleged misbehaviour than the general sense that he has been an atrocious being worthy of overthrow.
The New Statesman reminded readers that he had sterling form, the sort that terriers and attack dogs tend to have for their owners. Fallon had described the current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as a “Labour lackey who speaks alongside extremists”.[4] He had also attempted to box Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a category comfortable with terrorist insurrection.
The bigger, more besmirched picture is one where cultures are being outed, behaviour given a wringing. From Hollywood to Westminster, the veils are being lifted on power, misguided hands and more. Fallon’s problem is hardly unique, or individual. Given a society where sex is deemed problematic, dysfunctional and dirty, harassment is bound to given a further layering of significance.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email:[email protected]
Phil Murphy, a former banker with a double-digit lead in New Jersey’s race for governor, has made a state-owned bank a centerpiece of his platform. If he wins on November 7, the nation’s second state-owned bank in a century could follow.
A UK study published on October 27, 2017 reported that the majority of politicians do not know where money comes from. According to City A.M. (London) :
More than three-quarters of the MPs surveyed incorrectly believed that only the government has the ability to create new money. . . .
The Bank of England has previously intervened to point out that most money in the UK begins as a bank loan. In a 2014 article the Bank pointed out that “whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.”
The Bank of England researchers said that 97% of the UK money supply is created in this way. In the US, the figure is about 95%. City A.M. quoted Fran Boait, executive director of the advocacy group Positive Money, who observed:
“Despite their confidence in telling the public that there is ‘no magic money tree’ to pay for vital services, politicians themselves are shockingly ignorant of where money actually comes from.
“There is in fact a ‘magic money tree’, but it’s in the hands of commercial banks, such as Barclays, HSBC and RBS, who create money whenever they make loans.”
For those few politicians who are aware of the banks’ magic money tree, the axiom that the people should own the banks – or at least some of them – is a no-brainer. One of these rare politicians is Phil Murphy, who has a double-digit lead in New Jersey’s race for governor. Formerly a Wall Street banker himself, Murphy knows how banking works. That helps explain why he has boldly made a state-owned bank a centerpiece of his platform. He maintains that New Jersey’s billions in tax dollars should be kept in the state’s own bank, where it can leverage its capital to fund local infrastructure, small businesses, affordable housing, student loans, and other state needs. New Jersey voters go to the polls on November 7.
That means New Jersey could soon have the second publicly-owned depository bank in the country, following the very successful century-old Bank of North Dakota (BND). Other likely contenders among about twenty public banking initiatives now underway include Washington State, which has approved a feasibility study for a state bank; and the cities of Santa Fe in New Mexico and Los Angeles and Oakland in California, which are exploring the feasibility of their own city-owned banks.
A Bank Is Not Simply an Intermediary
An article in City Watch LA critical of the idea of a city-owned bank observed that Los Angeles formerly had a bank that failed, closing its doors in 2003 due to insolvency. The argument illustrates the confusion over what a bank is and what it can do for the local government and local communities. The Los Angeles Community Development Bank was not a bank. It was a loan fund, and it was designed to fail. It was not chartered to take deposits or to create deposits as loans, and it was only allowed to lend to businesses that had been turned down by other banks; in other words, they were bad credit risks.
With a loan fund, a dollar invested is a dollar lent, which must return to the bank before it can be lent again. By contrast, as the Bank of England acknowledged in its 2014 paper, “banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with them.” A chartered depository bank can turn one dollar of capital into ten dollars in bank credit, something it does simply by creating a deposit in the account of the borrower. If the bank’s books don’t balance at the end of the day, it borrows very cheaply from other banks, the Federal Home Loan Banks, or the repo market. It borrows at bankers’ rates rather than retail rates, and that is one of the many perks that a publicly-owned bank can recapture for local governments. Borrowing from banks rather than the bond market actually expands the circulating money supply, stimulating the local economy.
Compelling Precedents
Public sector banks, while rare in the US, are common in other countries; and recent studies have shown that they are actually more profitable, safer, less corrupt, and more accountable overall than private banks.
This is particularly true of the Bank of North Dakota, currently the only publicly-owned depository bank in the US. According to the Wall Street Journal, it is more profitable than Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase. The BND is risk-averse, lends conservatively, does not gamble in derivatives or put deposits at risk. It is able to lend at lower than market rates because its costs are very low.
The BND holds all of its home state’s revenues as deposits by law, acting as a sort of “mini-Fed” for North Dakota. It has seen record profits for almost 15 years. It continued to report record profits after two years of oil bust in the state, showing that it is highly profitable on its own merits because of its business model. It does not pay bonuses, fees, or commissions; has no high paid executives; does not have multiple branches; does not need to advertise; and does not have private shareholders seeking short-term profits. The profits return to the bank, which either distributes them as dividends to the state or uses them to build up its capital base in order to expand its loan portfolio.
The BND does not compete but partners with local banks, which act as the front office dealing with customers. It does make loans that community banks are unable to service, but this is not because the borrowers are bad credit risks. It is because either the loans are too big for the smaller banks to handle by themselves or the smaller banks cannot afford the regulatory burden of lending in rural communities where they get only a few loans a year.
Among other cost savings, the BND is able to make 2% loans to North Dakota communities for local infrastructure — half or less the rate paid by local governments in other states. The BND also lends to state agencies. For example, in 2016 it extended a $200,000 letter of credit to the State Water Commission at 1.75% and a $56,000 loan to the Water Commission to pay off its bond issues. Since 50% of the cost of infrastructure is financing, the state can cut infrastructure costs nearly in half by financing through its own bank, which can return the interest to the state.
If Phil Murphy wins the New Jersey governorship and succeeds in establishing a New Jersey state-owned bank, expect a wave of public banks to follow, as more and more elected officials come to understand how banking works and to see the obvious benefits of establishing their own.
For the moment it looks as if Russian three-dimensional geopolitical chess moves in the turbulent Middle East have thrown a giant monkey wrench into Washington plans to create an independent Kurdistan. In September the Kurdish population in Iraq voted apparently overwhelmingly for creation of an independent Kurdistan that would control some of the richest oil fields of Iraq in and around Kirkuk as well. Today, a month later, Massoud Barzani, the US and Israel-backed Kurd leader, is facing a major loss of powers from the Iraq Kurd Parliament. In the middle of the fast-changing developments—whose outcome is decisive to far more than the Middle East—is Russia and the Russian state-owned oil giant, Rosneft.
Contrary to the slick US and EU propaganda that has portrayed former President Massoud Barzani and his Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) as champions of western-style democracy, Barzani is a clan warlord who has ruthlessly pursued ethnic cleansing against a Yazidi and Christian Assyrian minority in order to gain control of oil lands those peoples had historically occupied until 2014. The Barzani clan and his Peshmerga military arm were trained beginning the late 1960s by Israeli Mossad Lt Colonel Tzuri Sagi, initially to go against Saddam Hussein’s rule. Israeli ties to the Barzani clan have remained since.
Since that time the Massoud Barzani clan has built a dictatorial power in the Kurdish region of Iraq using assassination, corruption and since 2014, control of sales of Iraqi oil via Turkey. Such is Barzani’s mafia-power, despite the fact that his term as President of the Iraqi Kurdistan ended in 2015 and the Kurd regional parliament refused to renew it, he has ruled since without any legal basis by preventing the parliament from convening and formally ousting him. Massoud’s son controls the region’s security council and all all military and civilian intelligence.
Barzani, with open backing of Israel’s Netanyahu, despite major opposition from most of the world, went ahead with a referendum for an independent Kurdish state. It was to have been the beginning of a domino-style reshaping of the geopolitical map of the entire Middle East along the lines of US Army Col. Ralph Peters’ 2006 Armed Forces Journal, “Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look.”
Since the British and French carved up the oil-rich lands of the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 during the First World War, the ethnic peoples known as Kurds were divided, deliberately, between the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and of Turkey. To now create a single Kurdish state would destabilize the entire region and beyond. The issues among the various ethnic Kurds themselves are as well vast with differences in Kurd dialects sometimes being as vast as that between English and modern German. The political differences as well are significant.
Had the US and Israel succeeded in forming an independent Kurdish state in Iraq as a precursor to a Greater Kurdistan of some 23 million people, it would have thrown the entire region from Iran to Iraq to Syria and Turkey into war, the kind of really big war the Pentagon neoconservatives have salivated over since they concocted the fake proof in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Interesting to note, the same California PR firm, Russo Marsh & Rogers, that created Move America Forward (MAF), as a pro-war lobby for the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein, using fabrications to whip up popular support in the US for war in Iraq, is the PR firm used since 2005 by the Barzani clan to promote the idea in the US that Kirkuk oil should be part of an independent Kurdistan.
One month later…
One month later and how the Iraqi Kurd landscape has changed. In a blitz military action that was clearly supported by a strong anti-Barzani faction of the Kurds, the Baghdad army retook Kirkuk and the key oilfields occupied since 2014 illegally by Barzani’s forces.
This meant that the financial key to Barzani and Tel Aviv’s “independent” Iraqi Kurdistan, the oil revenues from Kirkuk and Bai Hasaan fields of around 1.2 million barrels per day are no longer in the hands of the Barzani mafia.
After Barzani’s gang took control of the Kirkuk oil-rich region in 2014, driving hundreds of thousands of ethnic Yazidis and Assyrian Christians from their homes, US oil interests helped to build Barzani’s power. Rex Tillerson as CEO of ExxonMobil defied the Baghdad government and invested in the Kurd region of Iraq along with Chevron after 2014 as a clear part of the US preparation for an independent oil-rich Kurdistan.
Amidst the chaos of the conquests of ISIS across Iraq and Syria after 2014, a conquest that was initially facilitated by Barzani in his bid to grab Kirkuk oil, Barzani’s clan made an illegal deal with the family of Turkish President Erdogan to sell the oil via Turkish pipelines where it was sold on to Israel earning Barzani’s clan billions of dollars. By August 2015 the Jerusalem Post reported that as much as 77% of Israel oil imports were coming from Kurd-occupied Kirkuk region, via pipeline from Turkish Ceyhan to the Israel oil port at Ashkelon.
Following Barzani’s bombastic declaration of a 93% independence referendum yes vote, the Iraq government, as did others including that of Turkey and Iran, declared the vote illegal. Baghdad swiftly moved to impose sanctions on the Iraqi Kurdish region. Erdogan’s Turkey, fearing a spread of Kurdish independence to Turkish Kurds, a significant minority bordering Syria and Iraq, cut off Kurd pipeline flows.
Then Baghdad held secret talks with the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of the recently deceased Jalal Talabani. PUK had opposed the idea of referendum, and it was their soldiers who largely controlled Kirkuk.
According to Bafel Talabani, the son of recently-deceased Jalal Talabani, just before the Iraqi forces, in a joint operation of the Iraqi army and the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militias were moving to retake Kirkuk, a deal was reached with Baghdad to peacefully withdraw PUK-controlled Peshmerga forces from the city, opening the way for dialogue and saving thousands of lives. Talabani called the decision of Barzani to go ahead with a referendum, despite clear warnings of the consequences, a “colossal mistake.”
On October 29, Massoud Barzani announced he would step down as (illegitimate) President of the Iraqi Kurdish region, acknowledging the utter failure of the Israel-backed referendum ploy.
Russian Oil Geopolitics
A crucial if little-noted factor in making the strategic shift in the geopolitical energy field of the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish regions in the last months has been Russia, specifically Russia’s giant state-owned Rosneft.
Surprising many, just after the September 25 Iraqi Kurd referendum vote, Rosneft CEO, Igor Sechin announced that Rosneft had agreed to buy control of Iraqi Kurdistan’s main oil pipeline, boosting its investment in the autonomous region to $4 billion according to remarks by Sechin on October 18 at a conference this author attended in Italy two days before the signing of the deal.
Rosneft plans to increase pipeline capacity to 950,000 bpd. Under the agreement Rosneft will control the majority 60% with the rest held by the current operator, the Kurdish KAR Group in Erbil. In addition to investing $3.5 billion into the Kurdish pipeline, Rosneft earlier this year lent the regional Kurdish government $1.2 billion to ease a budget crisis, making Russia far and away the largest foreign investor in the Iraqi Kurdish region.
The same day, October 19, the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), strongly backed by US weapons and training, in the ongoing war in Syria’s oil and gas-rich Deir Ezzor province, made a surprise deal to turn over the rich gas field to troops of the Russian Ground Forces, according to a report in the Beirut Almasdar News.
The report that the Kurdish SDF agreed to turn over Al-Tabiya gas field it had just taken from ISIS control on September 23 suggests more than a minor role of Russia in both Syrian and in Iraqi oil and gas developments as well, of course, in Kurdish developments. The Al-Tabiya gas field, formerly operated by Conoco of the US had the largest capacity of any field in Syria, capable of producing 13 million cubic meters of natural gas per day. The Almasdar News report states that the Russians will turn control back to the Syrian Damascus government. The deal followed secret talks between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East in the self-declared Kurdish autonomous zone of Rojava to meet with Kurdish and Syrian leaders in the northern city of Qamishli.
On October 25 Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi met with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, a significant thaw in their relations. The US-Israeli-backed Kurdistan independence ploy of Barzani has completely backfired. Again, Washington geopolitical stupidity and neoconservative war mania has driven hitherto geopolitical foes to cooperate in ways unimaginable just three years ago.
Russia has shrewdly played a game of geopolitical chess. Moscow knows that if Rosneft holds the trump card in the Iraqi Kurdish energy economy, the Kurds have no option to get their oil out but via Turkey. Two years ago, before Erdogan offered a rapprochement to Russia over the shooting of a Russian jet over Syria, Turkey was financing ISIS against the regime of Bashar al Assad and at the same time reportedly facilitating export sales of oil from Syria via a Turkish state company. Qatar was spending billions of dollars to finance Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and other Salafist terror groups in Syria. Now Turkey has to deal with Rosneft for Iraqi gas and with Damascus where Bashar al Assad remains firmly entrenched with Russian support. And Turkey seems to be doing just that, one reason for the growing hostility between Ankara and Washington.
Further setback for Washington is the development around Qatar. Since Washington and Israel goaded the incalculable Saudis last summer into the laughable idea of creating an “Arab NATO” of Sunni oil states (plus Israel), aimed at Iran, that “Arab NATO” as its first act imposed an economic embargo against former Gulf Cooperation Council ally and Muslim Brotherhood-backed Qatar. Qatar was targeted by the Saudis because they had openly sought the cooperation of former arch foe Iran in building a common gas route to the EU. Now Qatar is working with Iran, Turkey, Russia and China in a new geopolitical alignment opposed by Saudi Arabia.
Russia, placing herself in the midst of the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria has managed a brilliant political coup against the Anglo-American and Israeli designs for a Greater Kurdistan and a NATO-controlled Greater Middle East.
Checkmate! Washington. You have just lost the Middle East. The unfolding of further events with Russia and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, are just a matter of time, as the unprecedented recent visit of the Saudi King to Moscow to ask for Russian weaponry suggests.
The neocons around D.J. Trump and his neophyte son-in-law, 36-year-old “Senior Advisor” Jared Kushner, and the increasingly pathetic ExxonMobil Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, are a sad bunch. The world has tired of their wars of destruction. It’s time to build up new.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
US journalists and commentators, politicians and Sinologists spend considerable time and space speculating on the personality of China’s President Xi Jinping and his appointments to the leading bodies of the Chinese government, as if these were the most important aspects of the entire 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18-24, 2017).
Mired down in gossip, idle speculation and petty denigration of its leaders, the Western press has once again failed to take account of the world-historical changes which are currently taking place in China and throughout the world.
World historical changes, as articulated by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are present in the vision, strategy and program of the Congress. These are based on a rigorous survey of China’s past, present and future accomplishments.
The serious purpose, projections and the presence of China’s President stand in stark contrast to the chaos, rabble-rousing demagogy and slanders characterizing the multi-billion dollar US Presidential campaign and its shameful aftermath.
The clarity and coherence of a deep strategic thinker like President Xi Jinping contrasts to the improvised, contradictory and incoherent utterances from the US President and Congress. This is not a matter of mere style but of substantive content.
We will proceed in the essay by contrasting the context, content and direction of the two political systems.
China: Strategic Thinking and Positive Outcomes
China, first and foremost, has established well-defined strategic guidelines that emphasize macro-socio-economic and military priorities over the next five, ten and twenty years.
China is committed to reducing pollution in all of its manifestations via the transformation of the economy from heavy industry to a high-tech service economy, moving from quantitative to qualitative indicators.
Secondly, China will increase the relative importance of the domestic market and reduce its dependence on exports. China will increase investments in health, education, public services, pensions and family allowances.
Thirdly, China plans to invest heavily in ten economic priority sectors. These include computerized machinery, robotics, energy saving vehicles, medical devices, aerospace technology, and maritime and rail transport. It targets three billion (US) dollars to upgrade technology in key industries, including electrical vehicles, energy saving technology, numerical control (digitalization) and several other areas. China plans to increase investment in research and development from .95% to 2% of GDP.
Moreover, China has already taken steps to launch the ‘petro-Yuan’, and end US global financial dominance.
China has emerged as the world’s leader in advancing global infrastructure networks with its One Belt One Road (Silk Road) across Eurasia. Chinese-built ports, airports and railroads already connect twenty Chinese cities to Central Asia, West Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Europe. China has established a multi-lateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (with over 60 member nations) contributing 100 billion dollars for initial financing.
China has combined its revolution in data collection and analysis with central planning to conquer corruption and improve the efficiency in credit allocation. Beijing’s digital economy is now at the center of the global digital economy. According to one expert, “China is the world leader in payments made by mobile devices”, (11 times the US). One in three of the world’s start-ups, valued at more than $1 billion, take place in China (FT 10/28/17, p. 7). Digital technology has been harnessed to state-owned banks in order to evaluate credit risks and sharply reduce bad debt. This will ensure that financing is creating a new dynamic flexible model combining rational planning with entrepreneurial vigor (ibid).
As a result, the US/EU-controlled World Bank has lost its centrality in global financing. China is already Germany’s largest trading partner and is on its way to becoming Russia’s leading trade partner and sanctions-busting ally.
China has widened and expanded its trade missions throughout the globe, replacing the role of the US in Iran, Venezuela and Russia and wherever Washington has imposed belligerent sanctions.
While China has modernized its military defense programs and increased military spending, almost all of the focus is on ‘home defense’ and protection of maritime trade routes. China has not engaged in a single war in decades.
China’s system of central planning allows the government to allocate resources to the productive economy and to its high priority sectors. Under President Xi Jinping, China has created an investigation and judicial system leading to the arrest and prosecution of over a million corrupt officials in the public and private sector. High status is no protection from the government’s anti-corruption campaign: Over 150 Central Committee members and billionaire plutocrats have fallen. Equally important, China’s central control over capital flows (outward and inward) allows for the allocation of financial resources to high tech productive sectors while limiting the flight of capital or its diversion into the speculative economy.
As a result, China’s GNP has been growing between 6.5% – 6.9% a year – four times the rate of the EU and three times the US.
As far as demand is concerned, China is the world’s biggest market and growing. Income is growing – especially for wage and salaried workers. President Xi Jinping has identified social inequalities as a major area to rectify over the next five years.
The US: Chaos, Retreat and Reaction
In contrast, the United States President and Congress have not fashioned a strategic vision for the country, least of all one linked to concrete proposals and socio-economic priorities, which might benefit the citizenry.
The US has 240,000 active and reserve armed forces stationed in 172 countries. China has less than 5,000 in one country – Djibouti. The US stations 40,000 troops in Japan, 23,000 in South Korea, 36,000 in Germany, 8,000 in the UK and over 1,000 in Turkey. What China has is an equivalent number of highly skilled civilian personnel engaged in productive activity around the world. China’s overseas missions and its experts have worked to benefit both global and Chinese economic growth.
The United States’ open-ended, multiple military conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Jordan and elsewhere have absorbed and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars away from productive investments in the domestic economy. In only a few cases, military spending has built useful roads and infrastructure, which could be counted a ‘dual use’, but overwhelmingly US military activities abroad have been brutally destructive, as shown by the deliberate dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.
The US lacks the coherence of China’s policy making and strategic leadership. While chaos has been inherent in the politics of the US ‘free market’ financial system, it is especially widespread and dangerous during the Trump regime.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans, united and divided, actively confront President Trump on every issue no matter how important or petty. Trump improvises and alters his policies by the hour or, at most, by the day. The US possesses a party system where one party officially rules in the Administration with two militarist big business wings.
US has been spending over 700 billion dollars a year to pursue seven wars and foment ‘regime changes’ or coups d’état on four continents and eight regions over the past two decades. This has only caused disinvestment in the domestic economy with deterioration of critical infrastructure, loss of markets, widespread socioeconomic decline and a reduction of spending on research and development for goods and services.
The top 500 US corporations invest overseas, mainly to take advantage of low tax region and sources of cheap labor, while shunning American workers and avoiding US taxes. At the same time, these corporations share US technology and markets with the Chinese.
Today, US capitalism is largely directed by and for financial institutions, which absorb and divert capital from productive investments, generating an unbalanced crisis-prone economy. In contrast, China determines the timing and location of investments as well as bank interest rates, targeting priority investments, especially in advanced high-tech sectors.
Washington has spent billions on costly and unproductive military-centered infrastructure (military bases, naval ports, air stations etc.) in order to buttress stagnant and corrupt allied regimes. As a result, the US has nothing comparable to China’s hundred-billion-dollar ‘One Belt-One Road’ (Silk Road) infrastructure project linking continents and major regional markets and generating millions of productive jobs.
The US has broken global linkages with dynamic growth centers. Washington resorts to self-defecating, mindless chauvinistic rhetoric to impose trade policy, while China promotes global networks via joint ventures. China incorporates international supply linkages by securing high tech in the West and low cost labor in the East.
Big US industrial groups’ earnings and rising stock in construction and aerospace are products of their strong ties with China. Caterpillar, United Technologies 3M and US car companies reported double-digit growth on sales to China.
In contrast, the Trump regime has allocated (and spent) billions in military procurement to threaten wars against China’s peripheral neighbors and interfere with its maritime commerce.
US Decline and Media Frenzy
The retreat and decline of US economic power has driven the mass media into a frenzy of idiotic ad hominem assaults on China’s political leader President Xi Jinping. Among the nose pickers in print, the scribes of the Financial Times take the prize for mindless vitriol. Mercenaries and holy men in Tibet are described as paragons of democracy and ‘victims’ of a …flourishing modernizing Chinese state lacking the ‘western values’ (sic) of floundering Anglo-American warmongers!
To denigrate China’s system of national planning and its consequential efforts to link its high tech economy with improving the standard of living for the population, the FT journalists castigate President Xi Jinping for the following faults:
1.) For not being as dedicated a Communist as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaopeng
2.) For being too ‘authoritarian’ (or too successful) in his campaign to root out corrupt officials.
3.) For setting serious long-term goals while confronting and overcoming economic problems by addressing the ‘dangerous’ level of debt.
While China has broadened its cultural horizon, the Anglo-Saxon global elite increases possibility of nuclear warfare. China’s cultural and economic outreach throughout the world is dismissed by the Financial Times as ‘subversive soft power’. Police-state minds and media in the West see China’s outreach as a plot or conspiracy. Any serious writer, thinker or policymaker who has studied and praised China’s success is dismissed as a dupe or agent of the sly President Xi Jinping. Without substance or reflection, the FT (10/27/17) warns its readers and police officials to be vigilant and avoid being seduced by China’s success stories!
China’s growing leadership in automobile production is evident in its advance towards dominating the market for electric vehicles. Every major US and EU auto company has ignored the warnings of the Western media ideologues and rushed to form joint ventures with China.
China has an industrial policy. The US has a war policy. China plans to surpass the US and Germany in artificial intelligence, robotics, semi-conductors and electric vehicles by 2025. And it will —because those are its carefully pronounced scientific and economic priorities.
Shamelessly and insanely, the US press pursues the expanding stories of raging Hollywood rapists like the powerful movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, and the hundreds of victims, while ignoring the world historic news of China’s rapid economic advances.
The US business elites are busy pushing their President and the US Congress to lower taxes for the billionaire elite, while 100 million US citizens remain without health care and register decreased life expectancy! Washington seems committed to in State-planned regression.
As US bombs fall on Yemen and the American taxpayers finance the giant Israeli concentration camp once known as ‘Palestine’, while China builds systems of roads and rail linking the Himalayas and Central Asia with Europe.
While Sherlock Holmes applies the science of observation and deduction, the US media and politicians perfect the art of obfuscation and deception.
In China, scientists and innovators play a central role in producing and increasing goods and services for the burgeoning middle and working class. In the US, the economic elite play the central role in exacerbating inequalities, increasing profits by lowering taxes and transforming the American worker into poorly-paid temp-labor – destined to die prematurely of preventable conditions.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping works in concert with the nation’s best technocrats to subordinate the military to civilian goals, President Trump and his Administration subordinate their economic decisions to a military-industrial-financial-Israeli complex.
Beijing invests in global networks of scientists, researchers and scholars. The US ‘opposition’ Democrats and disgruntled Republicans work with the giant corporate media (including the respectable Financial Times) to fund and fabricate conspiracies and plots under Trump’s Presidential bed.
Conclusion
China fires and prosecutes corrupt officials while supporting innovators. Its economy grows through investments, joint ventures and a great capacity to learn from experience and powerful data collection. The US squanders its domestic resources in pursuing multiple wars, financial speculation and rampant Wall Street corruption.
China investigates and punishes its corrupt business and public officials while corruption seems to be the primary criteria for election or appointment to high office in the US. The US media worships its tax-dodging billionaires and thinks it can mesmerize the public with a dazzling display of bluster, incompetence and arrogance.
China directs its planned economy to address domestic priorities. It uses its financial resources to pursue historic global infrastructure programs, which will enhance global partnerships in mutually beneficial projects.
It is no wonder that China is seen as moving toward the future with great advances while the US is seen as a chaotic frightening threat to world peace and its publicists as willing accomplices.
China is not without shortcomings in the spheres of political expression and civil rights. Failure to rectify social inequalities and failure to stop the outflow of billions of dollars of illicit wealth, and the unresolved problems with regime corruption will continue to generate class conflicts.
But the important point to note is the direction China has chosen to take and its capacity and commitment to identify and correct the major problems it faces.
The US has abdicated its responsibilities. It is unwilling or unable to harness its banks to invest in domestic production to expand the domestic market. It is completely unwilling to identify and purge the manifestly incompetent and to incarcerate the grossly corrupt officials and politicians of both parties and the elites.
Today overwhelming majorities of US citizens despise, distrust and reject the political elite. Over 70% think that the inane factional political divisions are at their greatest level in over 50 years and have paralyzed the government.
80% recognize that the Congress is dysfunctional and 86% believe that Washington is dishonest.
Never has an empire of such limitless power crumbled and declined with so few accomplishments.
China is a rising economic empire, but it advances through its active engagement in the market of ideas and not through futile wars against successful competitors and adversaries.
As the US declines, its publicists degenerate.
The media’s ceaseless denigration of China’s challenges and its accomplishments is a poor substitute for analysis. The flawed political and policy making structures in the US and its incompetent free-market political leaders lacking any strategic vision crumble in contrast to China’s advances.
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US journalists and commentators, politicians and Sinologists spend considerable time and space speculating on the personality of China’s President Xi Jinping and his appointments to the leading bodies of the Chinese government, as if these were the most important aspects of the entire 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18-24, 2017).
Mired down in gossip, idle speculation and petty denigration of its leaders, the Western press has once again failed to take account of the world-historical changes which are currently taking place in China and throughout the world.
World historical changes, as articulated by Chinese President Xi Jinping, are present in the vision, strategy and program of the Congress. These are based on a rigorous survey of China’s past, present and future accomplishments.
The serious purpose, projections and the presence of China’s President stand in stark contrast to the chaos, rabble-rousing demagogy and slanders characterizing the multi-billion dollar US Presidential campaign and its shameful aftermath.
The clarity and coherence of a deep strategic thinker like President Xi Jinping contrasts to the improvised, contradictory and incoherent utterances from the US President and Congress. This is not a matter of mere style but of substantive content.
We will proceed in the essay by contrasting the context, content and direction of the two political systems.
China: Strategic Thinking and Positive Outcomes
China, first and foremost, has established well-defined strategic guidelines that emphasize macro-socio-economic and military priorities over the next five, ten and twenty years.
China is committed to reducing pollution in all of its manifestations via the transformation of the economy from heavy industry to a high-tech service economy, moving from quantitative to qualitative indicators.
Secondly, China will increase the relative importance of the domestic market and reduce its dependence on exports. China will increase investments in health, education, public services, pensions and family allowances.
Thirdly, China plans to invest heavily in ten economic priority sectors. These include computerized machinery, robotics, energy saving vehicles, medical devices, aerospace technology, and maritime and rail transport. It targets three billion (US) dollars to upgrade technology in key industries, including electrical vehicles, energy saving technology, numerical control (digitalization) and several other areas. China plans to increase investment in research and development from .95% to 2% of GDP.
Moreover, China has already taken steps to launch the ‘petro-Yuan’, and end US global financial dominance.
China has emerged as the world’s leader in advancing global infrastructure networks with its One Belt One Road (Silk Road) across Eurasia. Chinese-built ports, airports and railroads already connect twenty Chinese cities to Central Asia, West Asia, South-East Asia, Africa and Europe. China has established a multi-lateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (with over 60 member nations) contributing 100 billion dollars for initial financing.
China has combined its revolution in data collection and analysis with central planning to conquer corruption and improve the efficiency in credit allocation. Beijing’s digital economy is now at the center of the global digital economy. According to one expert, “China is the world leader in payments made by mobile devices”, (11 times the US). One in three of the world’s start-ups, valued at more than $1 billion, take place in China (FT 10/28/17, p. 7). Digital technology has been harnessed to state-owned banks in order to evaluate credit risks and sharply reduce bad debt. This will ensure that financing is creating a new dynamic flexible model combining rational planning with entrepreneurial vigor (ibid).
As a result, the US/EU-controlled World Bank has lost its centrality in global financing. China is already Germany’s largest trading partner and is on its way to becoming Russia’s leading trade partner and sanctions-busting ally.
China has widened and expanded its trade missions throughout the globe, replacing the role of the US in Iran, Venezuela and Russia and wherever Washington has imposed belligerent sanctions.
While China has modernized its military defense programs and increased military spending, almost all of the focus is on ‘home defense’ and protection of maritime trade routes. China has not engaged in a single war in decades.
China’s system of central planning allows the government to allocate resources to the productive economy and to its high priority sectors. Under President Xi Jinping, China has created an investigation and judicial system leading to the arrest and prosecution of over a million corrupt officials in the public and private sector. High status is no protection from the government’s anti-corruption campaign: Over 150 Central Committee members and billionaire plutocrats have fallen. Equally important, China’s central control over capital flows (outward and inward) allows for the allocation of financial resources to high tech productive sectors while limiting the flight of capital or its diversion into the speculative economy.
As a result, China’s GNP has been growing between 6.5% – 6.9% a year – four times the rate of the EU and three times the US.
As far as demand is concerned, China is the world’s biggest market and growing. Income is growing – especially for wage and salaried workers. President Xi Jinping has identified social inequalities as a major area to rectify over the next five years.
The US: Chaos, Retreat and Reaction
In contrast, the United States President and Congress have not fashioned a strategic vision for the country, least of all one linked to concrete proposals and socio-economic priorities, which might benefit the citizenry.
The US has 240,000 active and reserve armed forces stationed in 172 countries. China has less than 5,000 in one country – Djibouti. The US stations 40,000 troops in Japan, 23,000 in South Korea, 36,000 in Germany, 8,000 in the UK and over 1,000 in Turkey. What China has is an equivalent number of highly skilled civilian personnel engaged in productive activity around the world. China’s overseas missions and its experts have worked to benefit both global and Chinese economic growth.
The United States’ open-ended, multiple military conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Jordan and elsewhere have absorbed and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars away from productive investments in the domestic economy. In only a few cases, military spending has built useful roads and infrastructure, which could be counted a ‘dual use’, but overwhelmingly US military activities abroad have been brutally destructive, as shown by the deliberate dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.
The US lacks the coherence of China’s policy making and strategic leadership. While chaos has been inherent in the politics of the US ‘free market’ financial system, it is especially widespread and dangerous during the Trump regime.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans, united and divided, actively confront President Trump on every issue no matter how important or petty. Trump improvises and alters his policies by the hour or, at most, by the day. The US possesses a party system where one party officially rules in the Administration with two militarist big business wings.
US has been spending over 700 billion dollars a year to pursue seven wars and foment ‘regime changes’ or coups d’état on four continents and eight regions over the past two decades. This has only caused disinvestment in the domestic economy with deterioration of critical infrastructure, loss of markets, widespread socioeconomic decline and a reduction of spending on research and development for goods and services.
The top 500 US corporations invest overseas, mainly to take advantage of low tax region and sources of cheap labor, while shunning American workers and avoiding US taxes. At the same time, these corporations share US technology and markets with the Chinese.
Today, US capitalism is largely directed by and for financial institutions, which absorb and divert capital from productive investments, generating an unbalanced crisis-prone economy. In contrast, China determines the timing and location of investments as well as bank interest rates, targeting priority investments, especially in advanced high-tech sectors.
Washington has spent billions on costly and unproductive military-centered infrastructure (military bases, naval ports, air stations etc.) in order to buttress stagnant and corrupt allied regimes. As a result, the US has nothing comparable to China’s hundred-billion-dollar ‘One Belt-One Road’ (Silk Road) infrastructure project linking continents and major regional markets and generating millions of productive jobs.
The US has broken global linkages with dynamic growth centers. Washington resorts to self-defecating, mindless chauvinistic rhetoric to impose trade policy, while China promotes global networks via joint ventures. China incorporates international supply linkages by securing high tech in the West and low cost labor in the East.
Big US industrial groups’ earnings and rising stock in construction and aerospace are products of their strong ties with China. Caterpillar, United Technologies 3M and US car companies reported double-digit growth on sales to China.
In contrast, the Trump regime has allocated (and spent) billions in military procurement to threaten wars against China’s peripheral neighbors and interfere with its maritime commerce.
US Decline and Media Frenzy
The retreat and decline of US economic power has driven the mass media into a frenzy of idiotic ad hominem assaults on China’s political leader President Xi Jinping. Among the nose pickers in print, the scribes of the Financial Times take the prize for mindless vitriol. Mercenaries and holy men in Tibet are described as paragons of democracy and ‘victims’ of a …flourishing modernizing Chinese state lacking the ‘western values’ (sic) of floundering Anglo-American warmongers!
To denigrate China’s system of national planning and its consequential efforts to link its high tech economy with improving the standard of living for the population, the FT journalists castigate President Xi Jinping for the following faults:
1.) For not being as dedicated a Communist as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaopeng
2.) For being too ‘authoritarian’ (or too successful) in his campaign to root out corrupt officials.
3.) For setting serious long-term goals while confronting and overcoming economic problems by addressing the ‘dangerous’ level of debt.
While China has broadened its cultural horizon, the Anglo-Saxon global elite increases possibility of nuclear warfare. China’s cultural and economic outreach throughout the world is dismissed by the Financial Times as ‘subversive soft power’. Police-state minds and media in the West see China’s outreach as a plot or conspiracy. Any serious writer, thinker or policymaker who has studied and praised China’s success is dismissed as a dupe or agent of the sly President Xi Jinping. Without substance or reflection, the FT (10/27/17) warns its readers and police officials to be vigilant and avoid being seduced by China’s success stories!
China’s growing leadership in automobile production is evident in its advance towards dominating the market for electric vehicles. Every major US and EU auto company has ignored the warnings of the Western media ideologues and rushed to form joint ventures with China.
China has an industrial policy. The US has a war policy. China plans to surpass the US and Germany in artificial intelligence, robotics, semi-conductors and electric vehicles by 2025. And it will —because those are its carefully pronounced scientific and economic priorities.
Shamelessly and insanely, the US press pursues the expanding stories of raging Hollywood rapists like the powerful movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, and the hundreds of victims, while ignoring the world historic news of China’s rapid economic advances.
The US business elites are busy pushing their President and the US Congress to lower taxes for the billionaire elite, while 100 million US citizens remain without health care and register decreased life expectancy! Washington seems committed to in State-planned regression.
As US bombs fall on Yemen and the American taxpayers finance the giant Israeli concentration camp once known as ‘Palestine’, while China builds systems of roads and rail linking the Himalayas and Central Asia with Europe.
While Sherlock Holmes applies the science of observation and deduction, the US media and politicians perfect the art of obfuscation and deception.
In China, scientists and innovators play a central role in producing and increasing goods and services for the burgeoning middle and working class. In the US, the economic elite play the central role in exacerbating inequalities, increasing profits by lowering taxes and transforming the American worker into poorly-paid temp-labor – destined to die prematurely of preventable conditions.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping works in concert with the nation’s best technocrats to subordinate the military to civilian goals, President Trump and his Administration subordinate their economic decisions to a military-industrial-financial-Israeli complex.
Beijing invests in global networks of scientists, researchers and scholars. The US ‘opposition’ Democrats and disgruntled Republicans work with the giant corporate media (including the respectable Financial Times) to fund and fabricate conspiracies and plots under Trump’s Presidential bed.
Conclusion
China fires and prosecutes corrupt officials while supporting innovators. Its economy grows through investments, joint ventures and a great capacity to learn from experience and powerful data collection. The US squanders its domestic resources in pursuing multiple wars, financial speculation and rampant Wall Street corruption.
China investigates and punishes its corrupt business and public officials while corruption seems to be the primary criteria for election or appointment to high office in the US. The US media worships its tax-dodging billionaires and thinks it can mesmerize the public with a dazzling display of bluster, incompetence and arrogance.
China directs its planned economy to address domestic priorities. It uses its financial resources to pursue historic global infrastructure programs, which will enhance global partnerships in mutually beneficial projects.
It is no wonder that China is seen as moving toward the future with great advances while the US is seen as a chaotic frightening threat to world peace and its publicists as willing accomplices.
China is not without shortcomings in the spheres of political expression and civil rights. Failure to rectify social inequalities and failure to stop the outflow of billions of dollars of illicit wealth, and the unresolved problems with regime corruption will continue to generate class conflicts.
But the important point to note is the direction China has chosen to take and its capacity and commitment to identify and correct the major problems it faces.
The US has abdicated its responsibilities. It is unwilling or unable to harness its banks to invest in domestic production to expand the domestic market. It is completely unwilling to identify and purge the manifestly incompetent and to incarcerate the grossly corrupt officials and politicians of both parties and the elites.
Today overwhelming majorities of US citizens despise, distrust and reject the political elite. Over 70% think that the inane factional political divisions are at their greatest level in over 50 years and have paralyzed the government.
80% recognize that the Congress is dysfunctional and 86% believe that Washington is dishonest.
Never has an empire of such limitless power crumbled and declined with so few accomplishments.
China is a rising economic empire, but it advances through its active engagement in the market of ideas and not through futile wars against successful competitors and adversaries.
As the US declines, its publicists degenerate.
The media’s ceaseless denigration of China’s challenges and its accomplishments is a poor substitute for analysis. The flawed political and policy making structures in the US and its incompetent free-market political leaders lacking any strategic vision crumble in contrast to China’s advances.
The main elements in Taiwan’s green power shift are reviewed, with focus on developments since the election of the DPP government in early 2016 and its commitment to phase out nuclear power in Taiwan by 2025. The drivers of the shift are identified, concentrating on solar PV power and the potential for offshore wind power. Like other countries in East Asia similarly pursuing a green shift, Taiwan is as much concerned with the business and export prospects for green industry as with reducing carbon emissions. The argument is developed that further progress in Taiwan is linked to liberalization of the electric power sector, creating genuine competition for the quasi-monopoly, TaiPower.
Since the election of the DPP government led by Tsai Ing-wen, in Jan 2016, the goal of an energy transformation in Taiwan has been pursued vigorously. The most significant element of the shift is the phasing out of nuclear power, guided by the oft-repeated policy of achieving a nuclear-free homeland by 2025. But politics is never easy, and a major power outage in August, lasting for five hours, and caused by malfunction of a gas supply valve in a gas-fuelled power generator, prompted widespread debate and recriminations. Both the Minister for Economic Affairs (Lee Chih-kung) and the Chairman of the gas supply company CPC Corp. (Chen Chin-te) resigned in order to take symbolic responsibility for the disastrous incident.
Nuclear-powered electricity generation has already shown signs of a sharp reduction, down from 400 TWh in 2015 to 300 TWh in 2016, and anticipated further reductions to zero by 2025 as no new starts are to be allowed. But debate over the possible future of nuclear power in Taiwan continues, and the power outage in August (the ‘815 incident’) has prompted calls for the restart of nuclear reactors that have been shuttered.
The DPP government has pursued a strong commitment to raising the contribution of green sources (meaning: power sourced from water, wind and sun) to electric power generation. In proportional terms the contribution from WWS sources has risen from 4.8% in 2015 to 6.6% in 2016 (including 1.5% of pumped hydro storage), with a target of 20% to be reached by 2025, i.e. over the next eight years. Excluding nuclear, this is planned to come largely from a strong expansion of the solar PV sector, being raised from a capacity of 1.3 GW in 2016 to 20 GW by 2025. Over the same period wind power is to be raised in capacity from 755 MW to 4200 MW (4.2 GW). But again complexities in approvals processes mean that progress in actually installing the new capacity for solar PV and wind power is slow. It was a welcome development when a new offshore wind farm, the Formosa1 project, saw turbines installed and delivering power to the grid. Taiwan has attracted support from foreign renewable energy companies, notably the Danish energy giant DONG Energy as partner in the new Formosa1 wind farm project.
The DPP government has an energy security policy commitment which focuses on natural gas as interim bridging fuel while nuclear is wound back and renewables are wound up – more or less as in the case of Germany’s energy transformation (Energiewende) program. The contribution of coal is to be wound back, with its proportional contribution being lowered from 45% down to 30% of electricity generated by 2025, while gas is seen as the bridging power source and is projected to peak at 50% of power generation by 2025.
The arresting feature of Taiwan’s green shift is that it is part of a comprehensive industrial strategy that sees new industries and innovation as the driver of the next phase of Taiwan’s industrial development. The present government’s strategy has morphed into what is called the ‘5+2’ industrial innovation plan. The aim is to shift Taiwan’s industrial base, which is still very strong in manufacturing industry, away from traditional reliance on contract manufacturing and focus instead on higher value-added service and green oriented business models. President Tsai’s election campaign in late 2015 had as one of its central elements the anticipated promotion of ‘Five Pillar Industries’ to drive growth in the future – the Internet of Things (IoT) (also known as the ‘Asian Silicon Valley’ project), biomedical industries, green energy, smart machinery and defence. Since the election of the DPP government in January 2016 the focus has broadened to encompass two new concepts, namely a ‘new agricultural paradigm’ and the ‘circular economy’ so that the project became known as the ‘5+2’ industrial strategy. It has since broadened even further to encompass the digital economy and cultural innovation – but the name ‘5+2’ remains. Taiwan is distinctive amongst industrial powers in its clear conception of linking green energy and wider economy goals with industrial development strategy.
Meanwhile there are moves to further liberalize Taiwan’s electric power market, reducing the monopoly control of Taiwan Power Co. (TaiPower) with its legacy commitments to nuclear power and fossil fuels, in a bid to promote green entrepreneurial initiatives and innovation in the power sector.
Taiwan thus presents a fascinating case of the global green shift that is underway, where the commitment to move to a green power system is reinforced by a political shift to the DPP, and the government is taking every possible measure to strengthen its green shift with supportive industrial strategy aimed at building innovative green industries for the future. In this sense Taiwan is pursuing a renewable energy strategy that is common across East Asia – in China, Japan, Korea as well as Taiwan. To borrow the phrase used by DeWit in relation to Japan, this may be termed a strategy of building ‘energy resilience’.2
Clean energy targets: Green shift in electric power generation
The situation in terms of electric power generation in Taiwan in 2016 is shown in Fig. 1 – the situation at the start of the country’s green shift. The legacy of thermal power (burning fossil fuels) and nuclear is clearly strong. Total power generation in 2016 amounted to 2257 TWh (or billion kWh), with 37% coming from coal and 36% from gas. The changes in Taiwan’s electric power generation, and anticipated changes in capacity, are shown in Figs. 2 and 3. and Table 1. Fig. 2 depicts the history of the changes in power sources and Fig. 3 the new renewable energy targets for 2025 (i.e. in 8 years’ time), in the proportions as anticipated and in the amounts generated, assuming only marginal growth in electric power generation overall due to efficiency improvements and direct solar power generation.
Figure 1. Taiwan’s electricity generation, 2016 Source: Based on data from TaiPower
Source: Based on data from TaiPower
Figure 2. Changing electricity sources in Taiwan, 1950-2016 Source: Based on Taiwan Power Company historical data, re-organized by Justin Chou
Source: Based on Taiwan Power Company historical data, re-organized by Justin Chou
Table 1. Renewable energy capacity expansion target, by Taiwan Bureau of Energy
Figure 3 depicts the anticipated proportions in 2025, and probable actual generation levels, based on what we assume to be total generation in that year of 2400 TWh. This is plausible if consumption growth is constrained by energy efficiency measures and growth in direct solar photovoltaic (PV) generation.
Figure 3. Changing sources for electric power generation in Taiwan, 1950-2016
In October 2016 the Taiwan government (Executive Yuan) issued short-term targets for solar PV growth and again in June 2017 for wind power. The solar PV program is to be phased out over two years, raising solar PV capacity to 1.5 GW. Measures are to be taken to release land needed for the development of solar PV farms, including rooftops in public buildings owned by the central government, factories, farms and agricultural production facilities, land used by the salt industry, aquatic areas such as reservoirs, irrigation ponds, fish farms (collectively known locally as ‘floatovoltaics’) and landfills. The program will also be addressing planning and regulatory controls that are inhibiting rapid shift to solar PV power.3 In addition to the national policy goals there is strong promotion of renewables at municipal level, particularly by Taipei, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Taoyuan local jurisdictions.
Wind power is to be promoted under a four-year plan that aims at enhancing domestic demand and taking a balanced approach to both onshore wind and offshore wind power. The target is to reach an extra capacity of 3 GW offshore wind power and 1.2 GW in onshore (land-based) capacity, making 4.2 GW of wind power over the period 2017 to 2020, and calling for investment of NT$610 billion (US$19.2 billion). In keeping with the tradition of formulating pragmatic industrial policies in Taiwan, the offshore wind power program is to be supported with promotion of special purpose piers and industrial zones in ports, by fleets of construction ships for building the offshore wind turbines, better grid connections via submarine cables and landing points, as well as harmonizing of offshore power regulations, standards and third-party certification.4
These programs are designed to connect with programs that go back to those of previous governments including the ‘Thousand wind turbines and million solar roofs’ project, under which feed-in tariffs are offered to promote household adoption of solar PV rooftop power.
The green shift industrial strategy
As noted above, Taiwan is distinctive in pursuing a green shift that is underpinned by a strong industrial policy. According to the New Energy Policy, the Executive Yuan of Taiwan has taken decisive action in short term and long term strategy designed to achieve a non-nuclear homeland by 2025.5 This has included stabilizing thermal power supply with better efficiency, adopting demand respond (DR) and price differentiation on electricity, and planned reductions in energy consumption levels. In the medium – term, natural gas power generator will play the role of bridging fuel and will be expected to peak at 50% of power generation. Overall renewable energy sources are anticipated to reach 20% of the power generation by 2025. To achieve this goal, smart grid and metering have to be implemented and large energy storage solution such as more hydro pump is required.
By having a goal of strengthening the industry of Taiwan, MOEA aims to increase the manufacturing GDP share of green energy and emergent technology to 30% of total manufacturing in Taiwan by 20206, which was only 4% in 2008. The Taiwanese government aims to export its green energy total solution worldwide to boost economic growth by first setting up large demonstration sites and creating a domestic market before seeking to penetrate foreign markets.
The green shift in Taiwan is being pursued across a number of fronts. Let us review progress made in the following sectors: manufacturing of solar cells; the Shalun greentech industrial park; green transport; smart grid promotion and liberalization of the electric power sector.
Manufacture of solar PV cells
Taiwan has been a strong contender in manufacturing solar PV cells, and great efforts have been expended to generate a local value chain encompassing production of silicon and other components needed to produce solar PV modules. Yet as in other manufacturing activities, the Taiwan model of low-cost manufacturing (frequently without branding, through contract manufacturing) has prevailed.
Taiwan had risen to second largest solar PV manufacturing country by 2008/9, when it overtook both Japan and Germany as a producer – through the efforts of companies such as Gintech, Motech, NeoSolarPower (NSP). Indeed, three companies – NeoSolar, Gintech and SolarTech – announced a merger in late 2017, to consolidate manufacturing in Taiwan. And there is diversification along the value chain: Motech recently announced its plan to build a 400MW solar farm in the south tip of Taiwan with PingTung county government, thus indicating a significant move for the company from manufacture to power generation.7
The situation in global solar PV cell manufacturing up to 2015 is depicted in Fig. 4. As the 2nd largest PV cell manufacturing nation, Taiwan has been facing price competition with China and USA’s anti-dumping duty (ADs). Although the cell capacity is about 15% of the world market, Taiwan’s module capacity only takes 2%, indicating that domestic PV installation demand is still weak.8 A new strategy led by DPP government with a goal of 20GW PV installation by 2025 is considered as antidote to increase domestic demand and create value-added products. Taiwanese PV manufacturing is leaving the price competition game with China (which rose to global dominance over the years 2005 to 2010) and moving towards higher efficiency PV cell production.
Figure 4. Global manufacturing of solar PV cells, 1995 to 2015 Source: JC, based on data from IEA PVPS
Source: JC, based on data from IEA PVPS
Shalun Green Energy Park
A green energy technology park has been launched in the south of the island, with a ceremony marking its inauguration being staged at the end of 2016. Now the Shalun Green Energy Technology Park (or Science City) is advancing, with vigorous promotion by the Tainan mayor. (This is a feature of the DPP’s ‘5+2’ innovation program, which features collaboration on each facet of the program between the central government administration and local cities.) The Shalun park is intended to promote a cluster of green industries spearheading green energy development, with key ministries designated as the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MoEA) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST). A dedicated green energy research institute is to be established. The park is being laid out on a site spanning 23 hectares, located next to the Tainan high-speed rail station, thus linking it to the capital Taipei and the Hsinchu Science Park.
Green transport
In transport, electric vehicles and particularly two-wheeled vehicles (scooters and electric bicycles?) are making great strides, stimulated by successive government programs of tax exemptions. The Taiwan government through the MoEA adopted a Smart EV Development Strategy and Action Plan, offering subsidies and incentives particularly a five-year exemption from the Commodity Tax for EV purchases, covering small passenger cars, motorcycles, taxis and buses available in Taiwan. This program builds on an earlier tax exemption policy introduced in January 2011, then extended a second time to January 2021. The Plan envisages extra sales of electric cars of 5,939 units, while sales of electric motor-scooters are anticipated to increase by 150,000. While some Tesla components are supplied from Taiwan, the tax exemption program also benefits Tesla suppliers by boosting green energy manufacturing GDP in Taiwan. With investment from National Development Fund, now new start-ups like Taipei-based Gogoro are leading the way. Gogoro is famous in Taiwan for its smart, stylish scooters, which have captured 8.3% of the market in Taiwan, and more than 10% in Taipei itself – according to an article published by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.9
Promotion of the smart grid
Deployment of smart electricity consumption meters for households is expected to be rolled out from 2017, with a first round of 200,000 meters to be installed within two years and a total of three million to be installed by 2026 – thereby making the grid fit for coping with fluctuating power sources and facilitating demand-response energy conservation and efficiency improvement programs. These measures will facilitate the policy goal in Taiwan of integrating measures taken to improve energy generation, energy storage and energy conservation.
There are clear parallels between developments in Taiwan and those in other East Asian countries pursuing a green shift, notably Korea, Japan and China. All these countries are promoting the smart grid as both a means of facilitating the input of fluctuating sources of renewable power, and as a means of building export platforms for the future. China is doing so perhaps most robustly of all, because the necessity to create energy security is so keenly felt as a political imperative. Japan is pursuing smart grid initiatives in the name of national energy resilience, while Korea has been pursuing such initiatives under the rubric of ‘green growth’ and most recently as a ‘creative economy’ initiative. But progress in Taiwan is widely viewed as being linked to liberalization of the electric power market, to reduce the quasi-monopoly control of TaiPower.
Liberalization of Taiwan electric power market
The heavily regulated monopoly of power generation and distribution maintained by Taiwan Power Co. (TaiPower) with its legacy of commitment to nuclear power and fossil fuels, has long been viewed as an obstacle to any green energy shift in Taiwan. Now there is some movement towards liberalization under way. In January 2017 the Taiwan legislature passed amendments to the Electricity Act, that regulates the power grid monopolized by TaiPower, allowing independent green power producers to sell their power direct to consumers, and not just to TaiPower. The rates at which such sales can be effected were stated in the feed-in tariffs that are promulgated from time to time. These changes to the law are now on the point of being put into practice. ‘Power distributors will be able to start applying for permits to transmit and distribute power from renewable energy suppliers to customers at the end of next month at the earliest,’ a Bureau of Energy official Lee Chih-yuan told the Taipei Times at the ministry in September.10
Greening of agriculture and the circular economy
To demonstrate the broad appeal of greening strategies, Taiwan is also playing a lead role in developing new green approaches to enclosed systems of agriculture (‘new agricultural paradigm’) and the development of a circular economy to reduce waste generation and improve resource efficiency. Many of the agricultural initiatives were displayed at the first Asia AgriTech Expo & Forum staged in Taipei in September 2017, where vegetable growing in enclosed systems, using hydroponics and LED lighting, were demonstrating clean, green urban food production. One of the companies exhibiting was Tatung, with its ‘Smart Farms’ range of food production systems.
Incoming President Tsai Ing-wen announced in her inaugural address in 2016 that ‘We will bring Taiwan into an age of circular economy, turning waste into renewable resources’. This is a welcome move where Taiwan can learn lessons from both Japan’s and China’s decade-long commitment to improve its resource efficiency via circular economy initiatives.11 Some specific industrial ecological initiatives taken by companies include the following.
Semiconductors and electronic waste: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor contract manufacturer that is based in Taiwan, currently recycles 15% of its waste materials – and has published plans to raise this level to 61% by 2020. Often the manufacturing process requires so much water, TSMC is already turning waste sulfuric acid into electronics-grade acid and recycles water for 3.5 times use.
Steel: Taiwan’s leading steel producer, China Steel Corp. (CSC), produces 5.6 million tonnes of waste products per year (e.g. blast furnace slag and waste refractory materials), and the company is increasingly re-using these as raw materials at its Linhai industrial park or supplying them to other firms. One project involves recovering iron by recycling desulphurizing slag, a project completed in 2015 at a cost of NT$ 2 billion (US$64.5 million). CSC also shares energy resources – steam, heat and power – with other companies in the Linhai park.
Paper: Cheng Loong Corp. (CLC), a leading producer of packaging paper, states that 94% of the 1.69 million tonnes of raw material it uses each year is recycled paper. The company uses the recycled paper in producing, e.g. shoe boxes for Nike. Other circular flow initiatives include using sludge from papermaking to feed the steam power cogeneration system (along with other fuels) and recovering fly and bottom ash from its papermaking operations to be onsold to cement producers.
Tyres: Taiwan has as much as 120,000 tonnes of used tyres to be put away each year. The simplest ways are typically by burning or put to landfill. One company, Enrestec Ltd, invented a pyrolysis process that can thermally decompose tyre chips to useful materials such as pyrolysis oil, flammable gas, steel wire, and high grade carbon black from used tyres for reuse in new tyre making and printer cartridge, while the Jia Qian Rubber Tech Corp. transforms used tyres into rubber mats for playgrounds.12
Concluding remarks
Taiwan’s green shift is now clearly getting under way, driven by a strong commitment by the incoming DPP government to a fresh industrial strategy with a focus on green energy and a greening more generally of the economy. But problems in terms of moving quickly to implement the medium-term solar and wind power goals, and upgrade the grid to enhance stability, resilience and to accommodate fluctuating power sources, are still clearly evident.
Despite a strong will led by DPP government to pursue the development of green energy economy, through green governance, the energy transformation is backed by a powerful coalition of Taiwanese citizens. There is indeed a strong popular green movement in Taiwan, and this is what drives the anti-nuclear decisions of the DPP government and the new emphasis on shifting to green power systems. The short-term economic constraint from increasing electricity price and unstable grid service will require more advocacy, public support, and passion from local citizens so the progress of heading a green (circular) economy is continuously achievable.
The next phase in the green shift will likely be felt across several sectors, encompassing green power and energy storage, as well as transport (electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles), industry and agriculture. After a slow start, Taiwan is now beginning to close the gap with the world’s leaders in the green shift, including China and Germany.
Acknowledgment: Our thanks to Ms Carol Huang for assistance in preparing the graphics.
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Justin Chou is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Technology Management at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and currently also a consultant for fuel cell technology, assisting early technology adopters to realize future energy solutions (i.e. fuel cell and electromobility). He can be reached at [email protected].
8The value chain for solar photovoltaics (PV) runs from silicon ingot to solar cell production to module assembly and then installation on rooftop or other insulated locations. The focus of manufacture in Taiwan has been on cell production rather than module production.
Has Saudi Arabia’s brinkmanship and heavy-handed policies of intervention in the Middle East come back to haunt the desert kingdom?
After decades of playing the role of middle man between foreign states and establishing itself as a regional power, Saudi Arabia’s policies of meddling in the affairs of neighbor states and support for terror appear to have finally exacerbated issues in the country which could threaten to plunge it into chaos. Growing anger over attempted austerity cutbacks, economic issues due to the fluctuating price of oil and tell tale signs of royal disagreement over the successor to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud mean that Saudi adventures abroad are preparing a perfect storm for civil conflict which could lead to further instability in the Middle East. The disruption comes as other states such as Iran and Turkey are positioning themselves as potential competitors to the de facto leader of the Arab world.
I. Saudi Arabia Is Experiencing Increasing Signs Of Instability
Saudi Arabia has experienced a number of issues which contribute to internal destabilization. In April 2017, Bloomberg reported that King Salman was forced to restore bonuses and allowances for state employees, reversing attempts to reform Saudi Arabia’s generous austerity programs. The Saudi government insisted that the move was due to “higher than expected revenue” despite the fact that observers were noting in March that Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves were plunging as one third of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have seen their credit ratings slashed and have increasingly disagreed on common foreign policy towards Iran.
The kingdom’s increasing financial problems are due in part to the falling price of oil. In January 2016, The Independent noted that the dropping value of oil would put Saudi Arabia’s man spending programs in jeopardy and that a third of 15 to 24-year-olds in the country are out of work. The Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering estimates that Saudi Arabia will experience a peak in its oil production by 2028, but this may be an incredible underestimation. The Middle East Eye has noted that experts in the United States who state that Saudi Arabia’s net oil exports began to decrease in 2006, continuing to drop annually by 1.4% each year from 2005 to 2015. Citigroup has estimated that the Kingdom may run out of oil to export entirely by 2030. The end of the Kingdom’s cash cow is likely to cause problems in a nation that The Atlantic has accused of running itself like a “sophisticated criminal enterprise.”
II. Increasing Signs Of Internal Conflict In Saudi Arabia
There are a number of indications that Saudi Arabia’s royal family is also experiencing a significant amount of internal strife. King Salman has caused significant upheaval in the kingdom by taking the controversial step of totally overhauling Saudi Arabia’s line of succession and appointing his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as crown prince. The move is a dangerous one given that it has caused division in the royal family. Foreign Policy has noted that Saudi Arabia’s security forces are not under a single command authority, meaning that the military runs the risk of becoming fractured in the event of an internal conflict.
In 2015, The Independent spoke with a Saudi prince who revealed that eight of Salman’s 11 brothers were dissatisfied with his leadership and were contemplating removing him from office, replacing him with former Interior Minister Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz. NBC News revealed that the promotion of Salman’s son to the position of crown prince has also angered Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, who was previously in line for the throne and is known for his hardline stance towards Iran. On June 28th, 2017, the New York Times reported that Nayef had been barred from leaving Saudi Arabia and was confined to his palace in Jidda with his guards replaced by others loyal to Mohammed bin Salman.
Nayef rules over Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Region, which is described as one of the provinces most likely to rebel in the event of civil conflict due to the region’s large population of Shi’a Muslims. He is generally believed to be one of the leading advocates for the 2016 execution of Shi’a cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a move which caused serious anger amongst Iranians. Nayef’s family also has historic ties to insurgent groups used by Saudi Arabia as a foreign policy tool. His father, Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, served as Interior Minister and controlled Saudi Arabia’s internal intelligence services, police, special forces, drug enforcement agency and mujahideen forces.
King Salman has used the war in Yemen to counteract elite dissatisfaction by causing what the Washington Postdescribes as a surge in nationalist sentiment among citizens. The move also served as an attempt to take proactive steps against Iranian support for Yemeni Houthi rebels and prevent destabilization from the Arab Spring. But while intervention may have provided Saudi Arabia with short term benefits, it has also contributed to further fracturing of the Middle East and allowed neighbor states to take steps to replace Saudi Arabia as the region’s dominant power.
III. Geopolitical Changes Increase The Likelihood Of Conflict
It is not merely Yemen that causes the Saudis concern. Years of meddling now mean that the kingdom is increasingly conducting its foreign affairs with the goal of avoiding internal destabilization and balancing a regional house of cards. Wikileaks releases of diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that officials are committed to continuing to destroy the Syrian regime out of fear that Assad’s government might engage in reprisals for the destructive civil war there. Saudi Arabia has helped fuel the war through their support of Islamic terror groups. State Department cables released by Wikileaks show that Saudi Arabia is considered to be the most significant funder of Sunni terror groups internationally. But like foreign intervention, terrorism as a foreign policy tool serves as a means of directing destructive energy at best.
There have long been fears that the method could grow out of hand and create problems for the benefactors of terror. Saudi security forces have routinely had issues with infiltration by terror groups. In 2001, Stratfor noted the royal family’s growing concern over the increase in terror sympathizers amongst the military due to fears that some of the insurgent groups were not friendly towards the kingdom. Terror groups such as ISIS have in the past several years engaged in a number of attacks against Saudi targets, including suicide attacks which targeted the holy Islamic city of Medina and the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Traditionally, power in the Middle East has been split between the Israeli and Saudi governments. This regional order may be starting to shift however, due to a combination of changing U.S. strategy and attempts by other Middle Eastern states to become more important players in the region. In March 2016, Julian Assange noted to the New Internationalist that U.S. strategists such as John Brennan increasingly viewed the Israeli-Saudi nexus as getting in the way of broader American strategic interests, especially in regards to Iran.
This political shift is now playing out with the current crisis in Qatar. Qatar has historically positioned itself as a diplomatic center in the Middle East, staying friendly with Iran and providing multiple insurgent groups such as the Taliban with a venue for negotiation. Emails from John Podesta reveal that Qatar has supported terror groups such as ISIS alongside Saudi Arabia, but does so with the intent of vying for influence with terror groups. Factions in Qatar have also leant support to Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra, Hamas and the Taliban. Additionally, Qatar’s Al-Jazeera outlet has also provoked Saudi Arabia by providing hard hitting coverage of previously unacknowledged issues in the Middle East (though critical coverage of Qatari politics has been off limits). NPR has also noted that Qatar openly competed with Saudi Arabia during the Arab Spring, when the two sides supported opposing factions in nations such as Egypt. The conflict with Qatar creates a very real risk that hostilities could spill into Saudi Arabia, given both sides’ support of terror groups.
The recent flare up has also revealed the emergence of a new order in the Middle East: states which stand behind the old, Saudi-Israeli nexus and those who wish to redraw the balance of power. Saudi Arabia is supported by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen and the Maldives. Qatar has been supported by Saudi Arabia’s regional opponent Iran and Turkey. Turkey has been steadily increasing its role in the Middle East in recent years, and is seen by the United States as a suitable player to balance Saudi influence in nations like Pakistan. Turkey and Iran now are now actively posturing to challenge Saudi Arabia, as Turkey deploys troops to Qatar and Iran supports the small gulf state with food aid. Should the two states survive the destabilization of coups and terrorism, they are well positioned to benefit from any future reduction in Saudi influence.
IV. Dangers Of A Saudi Civil Conflict
A civil war or internal conflict in Saudi Arabia would quickly become international in nature. Defense contractorsare being increasingly courted by Saudi cash as part of an effort to overhaul the military, part of which includes the recent $100 billion arms deal with the United States. Saudi Arabia has also increasingly used private military corporations such as Blackwater, which currently provides personnel to the Saudi-lead coalition in Yemen.
The specter of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East also raises concerns that weapons could fall into the wrong hands or be used indiscriminately. Julian Assange has repeated 2010 claims from the head of Al-Jazeera that Qatar is in possession of a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia itself also is suspected of possessing nuclear arms. In 2013, BBC News reported that Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons “on order” from Pakistan, whose nuclear program was bankrolled by the Saudis. In 2012, the Saudis also entered into an Atomic Collaboration Deal with China which projects that Riyadh will construct 16 nuclear reactors in the country by no later than 2030. Arab acquisitions of weapons of mass destruction have created concern among Israeli intelligence officials, who fear that the countries acquiring these weapons systems will not use them effectively.
Should the conflict with Qatar (or any of the multiple regions where Saudi Arabia has intervened) spiral out of control, the potential proliferation of nuclear arms systems pose a serious danger. International conflicts, regional interventions and terror operations all create the risk that these weapons, whether intentionally or inadvertently, might be used. A Saudi civil war also creates risk for the international community, as there would be widespread unrest should the holy cities of Mecca and Medina be damaged during a conflict.
Falling currency reserves, a dwindling supply of oil, conflict within the royal family and the ever present threat that terror networks will cause backlash for their benefactors all indicate that Saudi Arabia is on a crash course for a crisis. With the Qatari conflict continuing to heat up, the real questions should not be about the potential end of terrorism or the ethics of further weapons sales to Arab nations, but what the world hopes that the Middle East will look like once the dust clears.
The Versailles Treaty was eventually signed on 28 June 1919 without Soviet Russia being involved. Even so, this treaty cancelled the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Under Article 116 of the Versailles Treaty, Russia could claim compensation from Germany;yet, consistent with its demand for peace without any annexation or any claim for compensation, it did not do so. What mattered most to Soviet Russia was that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk should be cancelled and the territories that Germany had annexed in March 1918 be given back to the peoples to whom they had belonged (the Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian peoples), in accordance with the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination upheld by the new Soviet government.
Treaties with the Baltic Republics, Poland, Persia and Turkey
This principle was also called upon in the first article of each of the peace treaties signed between Soviet Russia and the new Baltic States in 1920: Estonia on 2 February, Lithuania on 12 July and Latvia on 11 August. The peace treaties resembled one another and the independence of those States – that had been forceably integrated into the Tsarist Empire – was systematically asserted in the first or second article. Through such treaties, Russia reasserted its opposition to the domination of financial capital and its determination to repudiate Tsarist debts. Indeed the treaty that was signed with Estonia on 2 February 1920 states: “Estonia will bear no responsibility for any of Russia’s debts or other obligations (…). All claims of the creditors of Russia for the share of the debt concerning Estonia should be addressed to Russia only.” Similar dispositions appeared in the treaties signed with Lithuania and Latvia. As well as asserting that peoples did not have to pay illegitimate debts that were contracted in their names though not in their interest, Soviet Russia also acknowledged the oppressive role played by Tsarist Russia towards minority nations within the Empire.
Signature of the Tartu treaty between Estonia and Russia, February 2nd, 1920.
To be fully consistent with the principles it upheld, Soviet Russia went even further. In those peace treaties, it committed itself to restoring to the oppressed Baltic nations all property and articles of value that had been removed by the Tsarist regime (especially cultural and academic property such as schools, libraries, archives, museums) as well as personal goods that had been removed from the Baltic territories during the First World War. As compensation for war damage resulting from the involvement of Tsarist Russia, Soviet Russia stated that it would grant fifteen million gold roubles to Estonia, 3 million gold roubles to Lithuania and 4 million gold roubles to Latvia, as well as concessions for those three States to exploit Russian forests across the borders. While Russian State loans to citizens of the Baltic states were transferred to the newly independent governments, the peace treaties signed with Lithuania and Latvia stipulated that claims against smallholders against the former Russian agricultural banks since nationalized should not be transferred to the new governments but “purely and simply cancelled”. The same measures also applied to Estonian smallholders under article 13 of the Peace Treaty with Estonia, which stated that “if, when such Treaties are concluded, Russia grants to any one of these new States or to its subjects special exemptions, rights or privileges, these shall be extended in full immediately and without special agreement to Estonia and its subjects.”
By signing these treaties, Soviet Russia meant to try and break out of the isolation to which it had been confined by the imperialist powers since the October Revolution, while at the same time implementing principles the new state wanted to uphold.. The Baltic States were the first to breach the blockade imposed upon Russia, and those peace agreements opened the way to trade contracts between the various parties. In March 1921, a similar peace agreement was signed between Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus on the one hand and Poland on the other. This document released Poland from the obligation to pay any share of the debts of the former Russian Empire, committed Russia to restoring property that had been removed by Tsarist Russia, and specified that Russia and the Ukraine would pay 30 million gold rubles in compensation to Poland. This treaty was even more significant than the one with the Baltic States, as Poland was seen by the allied capitalist powers as key to the isolation of Russia.
The friendship treaty signed between Soviet Russia and Persia on 26 February 1921 is a further token of Soviet Russia’s determination to contribute to the emancipation of oppressed people and to their right to self-determination. In this treaty Russia officially broke away from the tyrannical policies of Tsarist Russia’s colonizing governments and gave up all its territories and economic interests in Persia. The very first article declares all treaties and conventions between Persia and Tsarist Russia, which denied the rights of the Persian people, to be null and void. Article 8 unambiguously cancelled debts owed by Persia to the Tsarist regime: the new Russian government definitively “renounced the economic policy pursued in the Orient by Tsarist regime, which consisted of lending money to the Persian government, not for the economic development of the country but rather for its political subservience.” |1| Consequently it cancelled all Russian claims on Persia.
Fraternization between soldiers and workers
A few weeks later the Soviet government similarly renounced all liabilities, including monetary, that Turkey had towards Russia as a consequence of agreements signed by the Tsarist government. |2|
Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Bankocracy(2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc. See his bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ric_Toussaint He co-authored World debt figures 2015 with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and with Damien Millet Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. Since the 4th April 2015 he is the scientific coordinator of the Greek Truth Commission on Public Debt.
Notes
|1| Quoted in Jeff King. 2016. The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law: A Restatement, Cambridge University Press, p. 84.
|2| Edward H. Carr. 1952. (A History of Soviet Russia), The Bolshevik Revolution (1917-1923) Vol. 3, Norton Paperback Editions, New York, 1985 (Macmillan, 1953) pp. 311-312.
A new analysis of satellite data found 29.7 million hectares of tree cover was lost in 2016. The number represents a 51 percent jump over 2015.
The analysts say fire is the big culprit. The data indicate big upticks in fires around the around the world, both in areas where fire naturally occurs as well as wetter areas of the tropics where fire is a rare phenomenon.
El Nino coupled with human-caused land disturbance like slash-and-burn clearing is thought to have been a big contributor to increase in fire activity around the world.
Preliminary data indicate 2017 may also be a big fire year. The analysts recommend improved forest management to lower the risks of fire and tree cover loss.
Last year the world lost an area of tree cover the size of New Zealand, according to satellite data. That’s around 29.7 million hectares (297,000 square kilometers) – and was a 51 percent jump over 2015.
The tree cover loss data came from the University of Maryland (UMD) and were analyzed by World Resources Institute (WRI). While the data don’t just represent deforestation (they also lump in tree plantation harvesting), the analysts attribute most of the tree cover loss to human impacts affecting forests such agriculture, logging and mining.
But why the big jump in tree cover loss from 2015 to 2016? The analysis points specifically to fire as the primary culprit. The data indicate big upticks in fires around the world, both in areas where fire naturally occurs — like northern Alberta, Canada — and wetter areas of the tropics where fire is (or perhaps more accurately, used to be) a rare phenomenon.
One of these latter areas is the Brazilian Amazon. Rainforest is, by definition, rainy and moist, and the Amazon rainforest is no exception. Rainforest shouldn’t burn on its own — and yet, WRI’s analysis found understory fires contributed to a tripling of tree cover loss in the Brazilian Amazon (3.3 million hectares) over that time.
Brazil also showed high fire activity this year, with particularly high levels in the state of Para. The fires shown were detected in the first week of October, 2017. Fire data provided by VIIRS via NASA/NOAA.
Researchers believe many of these fires were set intentionally by people seeking to clear land for agriculture and other developments. Compounding the problem was an unusual dryness in the region, the result of climatic shifts like El Nino.
“At risk is maintenance of the hydrological cycle and the Amazon as a system,” Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist and Amazon expert at George Mason University, told the Washington Post last year. “When the drought is combined with more people using fire AND more people who are inexperienced using fire, the opportunity for things to get out of control gets considerably larger.”
Indonesia also saw an increase in tree cover loss last year. The WRI analysts attribute this in part to the lingering effects of the wildfire crisis that wracked the country (as well as downwind portions of mainland Southeast Asia) during the latter part of 2015 and resulted in an estimated 100,000 deaths.
Peatland draining and slash-and-burn agriculture are considered the primary causes of the 2015 fires. In response, Indonesia present Joko Widodo implemented a nationwide ban on peatland clearing in the hopes of heading off future catastrophic fires.
In addition to fire, the analysis points to logging and agroindustrial expansion as contributors to Indonesia’s tree cover loss. In particular, West Papua – which has so far avoided the large-scale conversion of its rainforests that has heavily affected other parts of the country – showed an uptick in clearing for oil palm plantations in 2016.
Together, the analysis found Brazil’s and Indonesia’s loss numbers amounted to more than 25 percent of the world’s 2016 tree cover loss. It also called out Portugal (which lost 4 percent of its tree cover in one year), the Republic of Congo (which experienced one of the largest Central African fires ever recorded), and Canada.
A forest fire burns in Tanzania. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
With the loss of forests comes the loss of valuable habitat for wildlife and ecosystem services for human communities. Trees are also big storehouses of carbon; if they’re destroyed, that carbon is released into the atmosphere, advancing global warming. Scientists worry that a warming world will, in turn, lead to more forest fires as once-moist tropical regions dry and fire seasons in northern temperate areas lengthen.
WRI’s analysis cautions that while 2016 has “record” levels of tree cover loss, initial numbers for 2017 indicate this year may be giving it a run for its money. Indeed, figures from the Brazilian government show more than 208,000 fires were recorded by October 5, putting 2017 on track to be a record year of fire activity. Of those fires, nearly half were detected in September alone.
The WRI analysts say better forest management is needed to stop such high levels of tree cover loss.
“Recent blazes in Brazil, California, Portugal and elsewhere suggest that forest fires are not going away – indeed, they may only get worse as the planet warms,” the analysts write. “The large scale of forests affected by fire and other drivers in 2016 makes it clear that, now more than ever, we need to work together towards better forest management.”
These assertions are some of many unearthed in newly revealed government documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Following a deadline 25 years in the making, the National Archives on Thursday evening released a horde of JFK files. President Donald Trump blocked the release of some documents at least temporarily, citing national security concerns, leaving researchers, conspiracy theorists and interested onlookers 52 previously unreleased full documents and thousands in part to sift through.
Here are some of the highlights from the trove so far:
Sabotaging plane parts
A national security council document from 1962 — before Kennedy’s murder — referenced “Operation Mongoose,” a covert attempt to topple communism in Cuba.
CIA-mafia plot on Castro
A 1975 document from the Rockefeller Commission detailing the CIA’s role in foreign assassinations said plans to assassinate Castro were undertaken in the early days of the Kennedy administration.
The report said Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the President’s brother, told the FBI he learned the CIA hired an intermediary “to approach Sam Giancana with a proposition of paying $150,000 to hire some gunman to go into Cuba and kill Castro.”
The attorney general said that made it hard to prosecute Giancana, a Sicilian American mobster.
“Attorney General Kennedy stated that the CIA should never undertake the use of mafia people again without first checking with the Department of Justice because it would be difficult to prosecute such people in the future,” the report reads.
The report also said the CIA was later interested in using mobsters to deliver a poison pill to Castro in order to kill him.
During Operation Mongoose in 1960, the CIA also considered staging terror events in Miami and blaming it on pro-Castro Cubans.
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”
The FBI got a death threat on Oswald the day before his murder A document dated November 24, 1963, showed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover addressing the death of Oswald at the hands of Jack Ruby.
“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead,” Hoover begins.
Hoover said the FBI’s Dallas office received a call “from a man talking in a calm voice,” saying he was a member of a committee to kill Oswald.
He said they pressed the Dallas chief of police to protect Oswald, but Ruby was nevertheless able to kill the gunman.
“Ruby says no one was associated with him and denies having made the telephone call to our Dallas office last night,” Hoover said.
Hoover went on to say the FBI had evidence of Oswald’s guilt and intercepts of Oswald’s communications with Cuba and the Soviet Union. He said he was concerned there would be doubt in the public about Oswald’s guilt and that President Lyndon Johnson would appoint a commission to investigate the assassination.
In the transcript, Helms said he thought former President Richard Nixon believed the CIA was responsible for the death of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who died following a coup linked to the CIA.
“There is absolutely no evidence of this in the agency records and the whole thing has been, I mean rather — what is the word I want — heated by the fact that President Johnson used to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Diem and this was just … justice,” Helms said.
Helms added:
“where he got this from, I don’t know.”
The deposition continues, with him being asked if Oswald was in “some way a CIA agent or an agent,” before the document cuts off.
Alleged Cuban intel officer said he knew Oswald A cable from the FBI in 1967 quoted one man quipping Oswald must have been a good shot.
The alleged Cuban officer returned, “oh, he was quite good.”
Asked why he said that, the officer said, “I knew him.”
Soviets said killing was an ‘organized conspiracy’ FBI Director Hoover forwarded a memo to the White House in 1963, shortly after Kennedy’s death. The memo, obtained by the Church Committee and classified top secret, detailed US sources’ sense of the reaction in the USSR to Kennedy’s death.
“According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the ‘ultraright’ in the United States to effect a ‘coup,’” the memo said. “They seem convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part.”
The source said the Soviet officials claimed no connection between Oswald and the USSR, and described him as “a neurotic gunman.”
CIA intercepts call from Oswald to KGB
A CIA memo from the day of Kennedy’s assassination outlined a CIA intercept of a call from Oswald, then in Mexico City, to the Russian embassy in Mexico. Oswald spoke to the consul, Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, an “identified KGB officer” “in broken Russian.”
The memo’s author said he was told by the FBI’s liaison officer that the bureau believed Oswald’s visit was to get help with a passport or visa.
Featured image is from JFK Presidential Library and Museum.
Forget the hacked/leaked emails showing that the Democratic National Committee stole the primary from Sanders and handed it to Clinton.
Forget whether the Ruskies hacked the emails in an attempt to throw the election to Trump or whether a DNC insider leaked the emails to Wikileaks.
The former interim Chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, just confirmed in writing that the DNC rigged the election for Hillary.
Specifically, she says that a signed agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign gave all decision-making power to Clinton – and hosed Sanders – because the DNC was flat broke, and the Clinton campaign agreed to bail it out (and then more or less laundered money through the DNC).
Remembers, Sanders might have beat Trump had the DNC and Clinton campaign not sabotaged the primary.
So can we all forget about the emails and focus for one minute on the real story: this episode of collusion … and the corruption of the mainstream parties?
Last year the African Union resisted Western pressure to intervene militarily in Burundi. On October 26, Burundi officially completed its withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) without being indicted. The next day the Non-Aligned Movement of 120 member nations rejected the UN Commission of Inquiry’s report accusing Burundi of human rights crimes within its own borders. That’s quite a list of anti-imperial accomplishments for a tiny East African nation that’s always ranked among the 10 poorest in the world.
Burundi is the first African nation to withdraw from the ICC’s jurisdiction. Neither the US, Russia, China, nor Israel have ever accepted its jurisdiction, and it has prosecuted Africans almost exclusively. In 2011, it indicted Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi for alleged human rights crimes and issued an arrest warrant that became part of NATO’s case for bombing Libya. Other African nations have said they plan to withdraw from the ICC as well, but they haven’t yet filed formal notice.
Western powers, NGOs, and press have accused Burundi of human rights abuse within its own borders but not of invading another country. I asked Canadian lawyer David Paul Jacobs, an expert in international law, to contextualize this distinction:
David Paul Jacobs: The context of this is that none of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals that sprang to life after the end of the Cold War had the power to indict any state or any other party for the crime of aggression. And that’s really important in this case because Burundi has made very credible claims that it’s been attacked by agents of neighboring Rwanda, but the attackers have escaped back into Rwanda, where they have state protection.
At the ICC, Rwanda is absolutely immune from prosecution for the crime of aggression against Burundi. The problem is that without a mechanism for trying crimes of aggression, what you’re left with is simply the context of violence and problems going on within a state. The fact that the violence and the problems within the state can be instigated by aggression from an outside state is outside of the court’s purview.
To understand this, you have to roll the clock back to look at what should be our lodestone for understanding international law, and that is the Nuremberg Tribunal. And the Nuremberg Tribunal declared fairly famously that:
“War is essentially an evil thing, and the consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime. It is a supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulative evil of the whole.”
Within the Nuremberg Principles drafted after World War II there are three types of war crimes. One is the crime of aggression, which is initiating a war contrary to international treaties establishing the boundaries of nations. The other two subordinate crimes are crimes against humanity and war crimes, but it’s only those two subordinate crimes that the international criminal court, or any international criminal court, has the power to look at. So people of states can and do accuse other states of those two crimes when they want to initiate “regime change.
Aggressor states such as Rwanda, or the United States, can thus wage war against other states with impunity at the ICC, as Rwanda has in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or as the US has in Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, etc. These aggressor states enlist the international criminal courts to indict the leaders of their target states, and then these courts become accomplices in the supreme international law crime, which is the crime of aggression, also known as a crime against peace.
Ann Garrison: So if an army invades another country, even with armed forces, fighter bombers, drones, and the other country captures and tortures some invading soldiers, the torture would be a crime that the ICC could prosecute, but the invasion would not.
DPJ: Yes, at the International Criminal Court.
However, invasion is in fact a war of aggression subject to indictment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which was created by the UN Charter and which codified the Nuremberg Principles drafted after World War II. The ICJ did try the United States for supporting the contra terrorists in Nicaragua, and the US argued that it was a humanitarian intervention. The ICJ responded that international law doesn’t recognize the legality of any such intervention and then convicted the US, but of course the US just ignored it.
The Nuremberg Principles, the UN Charter, and the International Court of Justice all preceded the international criminal tribunals which weakened them. What’s called the “responsibility to protect” then weakened them further and made the world a very dangerous place.
AG: Okay. Some African people, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have said that despite the ICC’s failings, it should continue to exist in the hope that it can be reformed because Africans living under dictatorship have no other legal protection from the human rights abuse of their own leaders. What’s your response to that?
DPJ: My guess is there are few Africans who say that. Burundi is the first country to formally withdraw from the ICC, but it’s not the first country to complain about it. South Africa’s withdrawal seems to be on hold at the moment because of technical issues. South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Justice wrote:
“The International Criminal Court isn’t the court we signed up for. It’s diverted from its mandate, and allowed itself to be influenced by powerful non-member states. We signed up for court that would hold human beings accountable for their war crimes regardless of where they were from. We perceive that it’s turning out to be a proxy instrument for these states. We see no need to subject ourselves to its persecution of African leaders and its regime change goals on the continent.
***
Given this continent’s history of colonialism, the problem is obvious. And the problem, of course, is the selective nature of prosecution before the ICC. Nobody can be confident that the ICC is going to punish what you described as dictators who are inflicting human rights abuses on their own country. One need only look at the examples like President Kagame of Rwanda, who is widely considered to be running a murderous dictatorship. Not just that, but he’s also violating the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As you know, nations have said that Rwandan forces have been responsible for the death of literally millions of people. How do we look at that? You say ‘Well, OK’ to Kagame who has absolute immunity, as do the successive presidents of the United States and prime ministers of Britain who are complicit in illegal wars, and the death of hundreds of thousands of people in places like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the list could go on and on.”
AG: Okay, but we still have African people who imagine that the court could change. A Congolese author told me this week that he hoped the court would survive and be reformed, because Africans have no recourse if they’re living under dictatorship without a judicial system that could offer them any legal protection. And that’s even though the US and its Western allies have put many of those dictators in place.
DJP: I think it’s quixotic to rely on a court with colonial roots and selective prosecution to punish their own leaders. To be fair, such a court would have to prosecute violations of sovereignty, which the ICC does not do. At the end of the day, one of the great things that happened at the end of World War II was the enactment of the UN Charter to prevent future wars. It said that each nation in the world was sovereign and equal. The idea that an extra sovereign power has the power of life and death over your nation and your people, whether that’s the US military or a court that the US ensconced, violates those principles.
Another argument against the ICC is that the African Union itself is trying to create an international court that all African nations will join.
AG: That’s the African Court of Human and People’s rights that is hearing Victoire Ingabire’s appeal of her conviction and 15-year sentence in Rwanda, right?
DPJ: Yes.
***
David Paul Jacobs is a lawyer and an expert in international law practicing in Toronto, Ontario Canada. He is the author of the essay “How the International Criminal Law Movement Undermined International Law—Michael Mandel’s Groundbreaking Analyses”. The essay appears in the Baraka Books anthology “Justice Belied, The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice.”
Significantly, Robert Fisk notes US, UK and French intentions to kill citizens who join ISIS, or might. 1 All three countries lecture the world on human rights. They claim to respect the right of anyone, no matter their views, to a fair trial.
Yet US envoy, Brett McGurk, says:
“Our mission is to make sure that any foreign fighter who is here, who joined ISIS from a foreign country and came into Syria, will die here in Syria.”
Germany offers its citizens consular services but US citizens in Raqqa, according to McGurk, will be shot dead in Raqqa.
It is the crossing of a moral line. It is a bad idea, morally, to kill people you don’t like, or whose views you don’t like, because you then become the phenomenon you claim to oppose.
But it also indicates, again, a world view that rejects science. This month is the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution. It was the first successful revolution against capitalism. It denounced the imperialist blood-bath of WW1, supported by “socialists”, killing 18 million.
It also opened new ways of thinking, more realistic ways. Lenin died too soon. He was an innovative thinker. 2 Revolution requires intellectual innovation at every level. Marx’s view was innovatively philosophical, not just political and economic. 3 The philosophical is harder than the political.
It can affect how you see yourself, and how you think.
Lenin pursued it. He described the mechanics of intellectual innovation. He said knowing the world, including its people, is like a passage through dark waters. There’s risk: moral risk. It cannot be otherwise because we understand the world starting from ourselves.
The latter is a well-known truth, but much distorted by post-modernists and constructionists who deny truth altogether. They make the left ineffective. 4 Lenin read Hegel, and scribbled notes in the margins. Hegel got the dialectic wrong but he understood interconnectedness. Lenin’s notes are worth reading.
We learn why the moral failure in killing ISIS members, without trial, is not as interesting as the denial of science. A few hundred years ago, European philosophers drew a distinction between facts about how the world is – science – and facts about how it ought to be – ethics. In so doing they undermined ethics.
In North American universities, ethicists do not discuss the nature of reality, or how to know it. They leave this for philosophers of science. They think ethics does not require science.
Marx thought differently. So did Lenin, and Gramsci, and José Martí. They knew how capitalism and imperialism makes human beings, or some, unknowable. It is not a moral issue. It is a factual issue. Morality, if we believe in it, requires knowing human beings.
The Buddha, 2500 years ago, had no truck with the so-called “fact/value distinction”. It wouldn’t have occurred to him. It took European philosophers to come up with the idea. They didn’t need truth.
And so it continues. Yet, to know how to live, we have to know people, including “non-persons”, who happen to be the majority. We have to know what is shared, humanly: that which makes us who we are, as human beings.
Lenin identified a highly unscientific view of freedom, promoted even by socialists. Commenting on Hegel, he writes:
“In actual fact, men’s ends are engendered by the objective world and presuppose it … But it seems to man as if his ends are taken from outside the world, and are independent of the world (‘freedom’)”. 5
It is partly why Lenin described knowledge as a “passage through dark waters”. If your very own thinking presupposes the “objective world”, you have to lose your attachment to that thinking in order to learn what lies beyond it: the world as it is. Lenin was a realist. So was Marx, and Martí, and the Buddha.
Lenin’s passage through dark waters, by itself, opened new ways of thinking. It was so in South America. José Ingenieros, brilliant Argentinean psychiatrist who turned his copious talents to anti-imperialism after the First World War, led a movement for educational reform, across the continent.
Like Lenin, he died too soon. Ingenieros saw that the entire educational system had brought South America to the feet of the imperialists. 6 He singled out the hypocrisy of philosophers, engaged in intellectual game-playing when they could have been deepening and broadening understanding of the human condition.
They could have explained how we know, and why it matters for ethics and political philosophy. Instead, they argued. And so it goes on. Fidel Castro said in Caracus 1999,
“They discovered smart bombs. We discovered that people think and feel.”
That is, Cubans discovered, or rediscovered, the ancient truth that human beings know the world dialectically. How we are plays a role in what we can know.
So the moral line-crossing, which, as Fisk notes, has been happening all along, is not most interestingly a moral failing, although it is that. It is part of a disastrous worldview that denies the intricate connection between who we are and what we can know.
In an interview in 2005, Fisk said that nothing gives him hope for the Middle East, at least nothing political. But he added that the dignity of ordinary people, speaking out, does give him hope. In The Great War for Civilization he describes such dignity, found in unusually horrible situations.
Dehumanizing situations. Fisk’s book gave me hope. It tells things as they are. It exposes the hypocrisy of those who claim to respect human rights, hypocrisy the depth of which is not always easy to detect. It is better to see that hypocrisy than to remain “pathologically upbeat” about a failed (liberal) world view.
For this, we need Lenin, among others. But we need him also as a philosopher.
And we need Ana Belén Montes. 7 She spoke up about hypocrisy. She is in jail, in the US, under harsh conditions, having hurt no one. Please sign petition here.
“We’ll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American people believe is false.” – William Casey, Director of the CIA under Ronald Reagan (1981)
“’Conspiracy theory’ is a term that at once strikes fear and anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events as off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States, raising legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs.” – Professor James F. Tracy
(To read the original CIA Document 1035-960, that is the origin of the term that weaponized the term “conspiracy theory, go to this site)
***
It has been 54 years since President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Many eyewitnesses who were on the scene heard multiple gun shots, some of them coming from the “grassy knoll” at Dealey Plaza. One expert eyewitness at Parkland Hospital ER, a surgeon, has testified many times that he saw a small round entry wound in the front of the neck and large exit wound in the back of his head, which contradicts the official “no-conspiracy” “single shooter” theory.
Ever since that fateful day, every attentive, alert, non-distracted, truth-seeking American patriot who wants and needs to know the truth of the matter has been asking questions and doing independent investigations because they don’t believe the official, approved story and have no reason to believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission. With every deceptive, dismissive or untruthful answer, these patriots know that they have been duped.
Being treated as ignoramuses or loony “conspiracy theorists” has a way of energizing intelligent folks who have seen through official attempts at obfuscation, which is why more and more inquiring people are losing confidence in our nation’s over-privileged and often sociopathic, serially-lying elites, politicians, corporatists, multibillionaires, militarists, talking heads, media celebrities and other so-called leaders.
I also have been energized to find out the truth about what were the institutions or who were the individual conspirators that behind the obvious, censored-out plans to assassinate JFK, MLK, RFK and orchestrate the many false flag operations (which, by definition, are conspiracies in that more than one conspirator has to have been involved in planning a false flag op.
Two of the most obvious false flag ops that justified recent US wars were 1) the Gulf of Tonkin incident that justified the massive bombing campaigns against North Vietnam and 2) the controlled demolitions of 9/11/01 that justified the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (for simply planes hitting skyscrapers wouldn’t have done it by itself).
Being treated with disdain by elites who can punish whistle-blowers (and their paid trolls) is why 9/11 Truth-seekers are such committed tellers of unwelcome truths.
The examples of false flag operations from history are legion (google “The Ever-Growing List of ADMITTED False Flag Attacks” for scores of examples of US military and/or intelligence service false flag ops).
Over the 50+ years since the JFK assassination (which could rightfully have been considered a coup d’etat) many honorable, patriotic and independent investigators have uncovered a plethora of documented proof that has directly contradicted the “no conspiracy” theories about
1) the “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald,
2) the “lone gunman” James Earl Ray” (MLK’s falsely accused killer),
3) the “lone gunman” Sirhan Sirhan (one of RFK’s assassins) or, for that matter,
4) the “lone gunman” James Holmes (the ‘Batman shooter’ of Aurora, CO who undoubtedly did not act alone), or
5) Stephen Paddock (the alleged ‘Las Vegas shooter’ who, it appears, may have been only a patsy rather than the “lone gunman”. Thus each of those history-altering events actually were conspiracies as has been documented by many expert observers who have examined the evidence and connected the dots).
Every attempt by independent, courageous, non-brain-washable investigators to establish documentary proof that contradicts official secret service agency stories provokes studied outrage and vigorously attempts to discredit the whistle-blower or otherwise tries to debunk incriminating information.
The same type of attempts at pseudo-scientific debunking happens all the time when corruption in Big Business is exposed. Every Big Business has full-time lobbyists that are well-placed in positions of power. These lobbyist/trolls are – as part of their job description – supposed to try to obfuscate or contradict any unwelcome information that weakens their paymaster’s profitability or credibility.
Such “trolls” have often carefully developed cozy relationships with politicians, bureaucratic agencies and the mainstream media, which gives them powerful control over any message that gets past the censorship and manages to get out to the public. The same thing happened my medical clinic offices, when Big Pharma’s sales “reps” used to wine and dine me in order to get me to listen to their sales pitches. This time-honored technique has been used by snake oil salesmen, political lobbyists and legitimate salespersons from time immemorial. The professional lobbyist reality explains how it is that pro-corporate legislation gets such favorable treatment by politicians whose corporate paymasters, behind closed doors, demand a return on their “investment” (AKA demanding pay-back for their campaign bribery/donations). He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
Peace and justice activists have learned similar lessons about clever sales techniques as well, having to endure spooks, cunning FBI agents or secret service “agents provocateur” who infiltrate their groups in order to spy on them or to get them to engage in dubious activities that could lead to legal charges and destruction of the group.
Last week the Trump administration tried to OK the lawful release of some of the previously top secret, censored-out Warren Commission papers that were sealed from public scrutiny after their infamous hearings had been completed. The release of the censored-out documents had been legislated to occur after 25 years had passed. But the scheduled releases had been repeatedly delayed by every subsequent administration since the 1980s. As has become obvious, the CIA and FBI have been very selective in what documents were released. Knowing the nature of the Deep State that is in control of our alleged democracy, we will probably never know everything that needs to be known in order to make sense of America’s conspiratorial history.
Planning and executing secret conspiracies is what all spy agencies do. and the CIA and FBI are no exception. Keeping secrets and planning conspiracies is their nature and the justification for it is in their founding documents and traditions; and since they refuse to talk and reveal what those conspiracies are all about, the duty of every patriot who is a seeker of justice is to investigate the secrets. Hence being a conspiracy theorist is an honorable endeavor, especially when the conspirators may be performing unethical activities or cover-ups of crimes.
The Warren Commission was charged to investigate the JFK assassination, but the appointed individuals, especially the arch-spook Allen Dulles, were all rabid Cold Warriors. The decision to regard certain testimony as top secret national security issues came about because the members of the commission felt that we naïve and simple-minded taxpayers couldn’t handle the truth. Instead, fearful of incurring the wrath of their own CIA or FBI operatives (or risking assassination themselves?), the commission criminally conspired to hide the hideous truths about those agency’s involvement in the JFK assassination.
Knowing the track record of the many covert operations that American intelligence agencies have orchestrated around the world ever since World War II, there are no politicians that have dared to oppose the power of the CIA or FBI (or the Mafia, for that matter). JFK, MLK, RFK and Paul Wellstone were the last ones to try. JFK famously proclaimed that he was going to “smash the CIA into a million pieces and scatter it to the wind” and every politician who similarly wanted to “drain the swamp” at Langley or the Pentagon has learned the lesson about who is really in charge in DC. RFK was going to expose the real conspirators, especially the Mafia, when he became president, and Wellstone was going to investigate 9/11 when he was re-elected Senator.
Dear Readers, some of you are pushing me to continue with the Las Vegas shooting story (ballistics evidence proving multiple shooters using different weapons at different locations – GGK Note) while others are asking to know what to make of the release of files pertaining to President Kennedy’s assassination. I appreciate that you are interested and are unsatisfied with official explanations.
My answer is that we already know, thanks to exhaustively researched books such as James W. Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable (Simon & Schuster, 2008), far more than is in the released files.
My answer is also that it doesn’t matter what we know or what the facts are, the official story will never be changed. For example, we know as an absolute indisputable fact that Israel intentionally attacked the USS Liberty inflicting enormous casualties on US Navy personnel, and the US government continues the coverup that it was all a mistake despite unequivocal statements to the contrary by the Moorer Commission, led by Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
My answer also is that time is better spent in trying to prevent conspiracies in the making, such as the endless stream of lies and accusations against Russia that are turning a friendly country into an enemy and renewing the risk of nuclear armageddon. Indeed, the biggest conspiracy theory of the present time is the one issuing from the military/security complex, the Democratic National Committee, and the presstitute media that Russia in collusion with Donald Trump hacked the US presidential election.
The Russian government knows that this is a lie, and when they see a lie repeated endlessly now for one year without a shred of evidence to support it, the Russian government naturally concludes that Washington is preparing the American people for war. I cannot imagine a more reckless and irresponsible policy than destroying Russia’s trust in Washington’s intentions. As Putin said, the main lesson life has taught him is that “if a fight is unavoidable, strike first.”
If you really want to know who killed President Kennedy and why, read JFK and the Unspeakable. Yes, there are other carefully researched books that you can read.
Douglass concludes that Kennedy was murdered because he turned to peace. He was going to work with Khrushchev to end the Cold War. He refused the CIA US air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He rejected the Joint Chiefs’ Operation Northwoods, a plan to conduct false flag attacks on Americans that would be blamed on Castro to justify regime change. He refused to reappoint General Lyman Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He told US Marine commandant General David Shoup that he was taking the US out of Vietnam. He said after his reelection he was going to “break the CIA into 1,000 pieces.” All of this threatened the power and profit of the military/security complex and convinced military/security elements that he was soft on communism and a threat to US national security.
The film of the motorcade taken by Zapruder shows that the bullet that killed Kennedy hit him from the front, blowing out the back of his head. You can see Kennedy’s wife Jackie reaching from the back seat onto the trunk of the limo to recover the back of his head. Other tourist films show moments before the shot the Secret Service agents being ordered off of the presidential limo so that a clear shot at Kennedy is possible. The film shows one Secret Service agent protesting the order.
The medical “evidence” that Kennedy was hit from behind was falsified by medical doctors under orders. Navy medical corpsmen who helped the Navy doctors with the autopsy testified that they were dismayed by orders from Admiral Calvin Galloway to ignore entry wounds from the front. One of the corpsmen testified “all at once I understood that my country was not much better than a third world country. From that point on in time, I have had no trust, no respect for the government.”
Dr Charles Crenshaw, one of the doctors forced to lie, later broke his silence with a book and was rewarded with a fierce media campaign to discredit him.
Lt. Commander William Pitzer, director of the Audio-Visual Department of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, filmed the autopsy. The film clearly showed the entry wound from the front. Pitzer was found shot to death on the floor of the production studio of the National Naval Medical Center. It was ruled a suicide, as always.
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI knew that Oswald, who Douglass believes was on the payroll of both the CIA and FBI, was sent to Cuba by the CIA in order to establish the story for the patsy role Oswald was unaware was being prepared for him. However, Hoover, along with LBJ, Earl Warren and the members of the Warren Commission understood that it was impossible to tell the American people that their president has been assassinated by the US military and US security agencies. At a dicey time of the Cold War, clearly it would have been reckless to destroy Americans’ trust in their own government.
Finian Cunningham presents a summary of much of the accumulated evidence. All experts long ago concluded that the Warren Commission report is a coverup.
I am not an expert. I have not spent 30 years or longer, as has Douglass, investigating, interviewing witnesses, tracking down unexplained deaths of witnesses, and piecing together the available voluminous information. if you want to know what happened, put down your smart phones, close your video screens, and read Douglass’ or a similar book.
***
Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American imperialism, friendly fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, and the dangers of Big Pharma, psychiatric drugging, the over-vaccinating of children and other movements that threaten American democracy, civility, health and longevity and the future of the planet. Many of his columns are archived at
Nippon Kaigi [The Japan Conference], established in 1997, is the largest right-wing organization in Japan. The organization is a major supporter of the current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, and both Japanese and foreign media report that Abe, and many of his cabinet, are prominent member of its Diet Members League. Despite Nippon Kaigi’s influence on governmental policies of Japan, the organization was little known to the general public until 2015. In 2016, however, numerous books and magazine articles focusing on Nippon Kaigi were published, some becoming best sellers. This created a “Nippon Kaigi boom” in the publishing world.2
These 2016 works on Nippon Kaigi, however, were not the first. A number of journalists, scholars and activists have long paid attention to the history and activism of Nippon Kaigi. Tawara Yoshifumi, a leading specialist on education and textbook adoption issues, and the secretary general of Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, has published articles and books that on Nippon Kaigi over the years.
The article translated here appeared in the December 2016 volume of the magazine, Heiwa Undō (Peace Movement), and summarizes his most recent book Nippon Kaigi no Zenbō: Shirarezaru Kyodai Soshiki no Jittai[The Complete Picture of Nippon Kaigi: The Unknown Reality of an Mammoth Organization.] (Kadensha 2016.) In the book, Tawara utilized data on Nippon Kaigi accumulated over a long period of time to describe Nippon Kaigi’s history, organizational structure, “grassroots” movement style, and goals.
Tawara traces the history of the right-wing movement that led to the formation of Nippon Kaigi from the 1970s, starting with a movement to legalize imperial era names. The two organizations that played significant roles in this movement, namely, Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi [National Conference to Protect Japan] and Nihon wo Mamoru Kai [Association to Protect Japan], merged in 1997 to form Nippon Kaigi. Tawara points out that unlike these organizations, Nippon Kaigi appointed business leaders and intellectuals as board members and hid its right-wing priorities, but the nature of the organization remained unchanged. Tawara then introduces various affiliated organizations of Nippon Kaigi, such as its Diet Members’ League and Local Assembly Members’ League, its women’s section called Japan Women’s Association, and Nihon Seinen Kyōgikai [Japan Youth Council]. Nippon Kaigi has various front organizations for independent issues, such as the Utsukushii Nippon no Kenpō wo Tsukuru Kokumin no Kai [National Citizens’ Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan] promoting constitutional reform. Mobilizing local branches and various affiliated organizations across Japan in national and local levels, Tawara shows, Nippon Kaigi operates a “grassroots right-wing movement,” while maintaining strong ties with the Abe administration.
Tawara emphasizes that Nippon Kaigi presents the Constitution, education, and defense as a set of interlocking issues, an approach shared with Prime Minister Abe’s policy priorities. Tawara particularly focuses on two issues: education and the Constitutional amendment. Tawara’s greatest contribution centers on education, reflecting his long-term commitment to issues of education and textbooks, from Ienaga Saburō’s textbook trials beginning in 1965 to the present.
Tawara shows how the Abe administration’s concept of Kyōiku Saisei [education rebuilding] seeks to overturn the foundations of contemporary education. The 2006 revision of the Fundamental Law of Education, which defined the goal of education not to serve students but the state by emphasizing patriotic education, was a major victory of the first Abe administration (2006-7). This had a tremendous impact on the direction of education – not simply in schools but also in communities and even in families (the revised Law includes an article on “family education”.) Abe’s modification of the Board of Education system in 2014 made it much easier for governors and mayors to intervene in education and the textbook adoption process. Under this new system, Tawara notes, members of the Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly Members League have played significant roles in promoting a conservative and revisionist history and civic textbooks published by Ikuhōsha (connected with the Japan Education Rebuilding Organization) and Jiyūsha (connected with the Society for History Textbook Reform).
Moreover, under the second Abe administration, “moral education” (dōtoku) was introduced as an “official subject” (i.e., with grades assigned, based on evaluation of degree of patriotism among other rubrics) in elementary and junior high schools, which has been criticized for potentially interfering with children’s freedom of thought. As of September 2017, the adoption process of elementary school moral education textbooks to be used from 2018 is under way. The textbook published by Kyōiku Shuppan includes members of the Japan Education Rebuilding Organization among its editors, and has an especially patriotic content, with photos of conservative politicians, including Abe Shinzo, in the text.3 In the translated text, Tawara stresses the danger of the next Gakushū Shidō Yoryō [Education Guideline], which fundamentally changes the guidelines for all aspects of schools, families and communities. Tawara insists that the aim of education became two-fold in the new guideline: to strengthen “human resources” for the sake of the state by promoting patriotism, and also in the service of large corporations by promoting neoliberal policies.
Currently the most important goal for Nippon Kaigi is undoubtedly to amend the post-war Constitution. Nippon Kaigi founded the National Citizens’ Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan in 2014, to promote a constitutional revision movement based on a “national referendum” to be held during Abe’s administration. The organization has actively pursued approaches introduced in the 1970s to pass legislation that requires the use of imperial era names, ranging from a massive “10 million” signature drive, collecting petitions from local assemblies, holding gatherings in such major venues as Nippon Budōkan of Tokyo, conducting small study group meetings across Japan, distributing leaflets and a DVD, and broadcasting videos on YouTube. It is important to note that while there is no doubt that amendment of Article 9 receives the greatest attention, Nippon Kaigi calls for seven important constitutional revisions including the making of a new clause on emergency powers and the addition of a family protection clause to Article 24.5 On May 3, 2017, Prime Minister Abe delivered a video message at a symposium held by the National Citizens’ Association. There, he called for making “explicit the status” of the self-defense forces in Article 9 of the Constitution by the year 2020. Clearly, Article 9 has become a priority for Nippon Kaigi.
On August 15 this year, I visited the booth of the National Citizens’ Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan at a street near Yasukune Shrine. There flags and signs included “Write the SDF into the Constitution” and “Thank you, SDF,” along with a photo of journalist Sakurai Yoshiko, who is also one of the co-chairs of the National Citizens’ Association. I also received a flyer “Thank you, SDF.” Despite heavy rain, Nippon Kaigi was holding a gathering in a tent on the grounds of the shrine. The main speaker was LDP Upper House representative and former SDF member Sato Masahisa discussing the importance of the SDF and the need to revise the Constitution. It was obvious that the goal of amending the Constitution by 2020, by writing the SDF into Article 9 of the Constitution, remains a Nippon Kaigi priority as it is of the Abe administration.
The flags at the booth of the Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan in front of Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2017.
The flyer “Thank you, SDF” by the National Citizens’ Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan.
Picture book, Jieitai tte Naani? [What is the SDF?] (Author: Sonoda Haru, Meiseisha 2017), sold at the Nippon Kaigi booth of Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2017. The book is recommended by LDP Upper House Representative, Sato Masahisa.5
On September 28, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo dissolved the lower house of the parliament, and a snap election was held on October 22. Abe’s LDP and its coalition partners secured a major victory, with more than half of the seats won by the LDP. As the LDP and the Komeito Party that currently form a coalition government, gained two-third of the Lower House, which is the number of votes needed to assure a national referendum for constitutional revision, the likelihood is that a proposal to hold a national referendum will be submitted to the Diet in the very near future. Under Japan’s national referendum law, a majority (more than 50%) vote is required to amend the Constitution, with no stipulation as to the minimum number of votes cast. Since 2014, with its “10 million signature campaign,” the priority for Nippon Kaigi has been holding a successful national referendum to amend the constitution.
The new Kibō no Tō (Party of Hope) led by Tokyo governor Koike Yuriko was formed immediately before the election, absorbing a significant number of candidates from the then-biggest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan. Koike, a former LDP representative, was once the vice president of the Nippon Kaigi’s Diet Members’ League. Like Abe, she supports constitutional revision, and in a press conferenceheld on September 22, she indicated her commitment to constitutional revision efforts, and encouraged further discussion of the issue in her new party. In 2003, Koike stated in Voice magazine that she considers it possible for Japan to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Journalist Aoki Osamu reports that Koike may not have a very close relationship with Nippon Kaigi compared to other conservative politicians at this moment, but it is entirely possible that she may become closer to Nippon Kaigi in future.6 Breaking with the practice of previous Tokyo governors, including conservative Ishihara Shintarō, Koike declined to send eulogies to the commemoration of Korean victims massacred at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which also suggests her historical revisionist stance.7Akahata reported on September 28 that six members of the Party of Hope belong to the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members’ League. The Party of Hope struggled in the election, failing to become the main opposition party, while the LDP scored a landslide victory. On the other hand, a newly established Rikken Minshu-tō [Constitutional Democratic Party] led by Edano Yukio, former DPJ politician who did not join the Party of Hope, won 55 seats, and became the second biggest party in the Lower House after the LDP. The party’s platform included opposition to the revision of the Article 9, the Constitution’s peace clause.
The National Citizens’ Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan announced plans to hold a “National Citizens’ Rally” in Tokyo on October 25 to promote constitutional revision. The National Citizens’ Association is inviting representatives from the LDP, Komeitō Party, Nippon Ishin no Kai and the Party of Hope to forge a cross-party coalition, especially to revise the Article 9. The struggle regarding constitutional revision will become much more intense in the coming months. (TY)
What is the Aim of Nippon Kaigi, The Ultra-Right Organization that is a Pillar of Japan’s Abe Administration?
What is Japan’s largest ultra-right organization, Nippon Kaigi, whose slogan is “Build a nation with pride”? On its official website, Nippon Kaigi explains: “We, the Nippon Kaigi, are a civic group that presents policy proposals and promotes a national movement for restoring a beautiful Japan and building a proud nation.” Nippon Kaigi is a national movement organization with a nationwide grassroots network that was established on May 30, 1997 by the merger of Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi [National Conference to Protect Japan] and Nihon wo Mamoru Kai [Association to Protect Japan]. We will briefly look at these two organizations.
Forerunners of Nippon Kaigi
The Nihon wo Mamoru Kai was a religious-affiliated rightwing organization formed in April 1974 as a Shintō and Buddhist-affiliated religious group by the (then) chief abbot, Asahina Sōgen, of Kamakura’s Enkakuji Temple. The central religious association at the time of its founding was Seichō-no-Ie [House of Growth]. In July 1978, springing from the Nihon wo Mamoru Kai, the Gengō Hōseika Jitsugen Kokumin Kaigi [National Conference to Establish Reign Era Name Use as Law] Legislate Era Names (chaired by the late Ishida Kazuto, a former Supreme Court judge) was formed.8 Centered on this organization, a “national movement” [kokumin undō] was launched, and on June 6, 1979, the Diet passed a bill on era names, making the practice into law.
This rightwing organization, having successfully led a movement to pass a law formalizing era names, reorganized in October 1981 into the Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi (or Kokumin Kaigi — National Conference), as a standing rightwing organization for promoting a “national movement” to revise the Constitution and establish a unity government.9
At its launch, its officials included Chairman Kase Shunji (Japan’s first ambassador to the United Nations; now deceased), Steering Committee Chairman Mayuzumi Toshirō (musician, later chairman of Kokumin Kaigi; deceased), Secretary General Soejima Hiroyuki (permanent consultant to Meiji Shrine, former senior member of the Nippon Kaigi; deceased), Executive Secretary Kabashima Yūzō (currently Executive Secretary of Nippon Kaigi).
The first issue of Kokumin Kaigi’s official organ Nihon no Ibuki [Japan’s Breath of Energy] was issued on April 15, 1984. It was not a monthly publication then, and prior to the launching of Nippon Kaigi, about 113 issues had been published. Even after it became the official organ of Nippon Kaigi, it continued to be published with the same name, and labeled, “an opinion magazine aiming at building a country that has pride” (As of Nov. 2016, the total number of issuespublished is 348).
In a keynote report at the inaugural plenary meeting of the Kokumin Kaigi, then-Steering Committee Chairman Mayuzumi Toshirō outlined the basic goal of “revising” the Constitution and forming a nation centered on the Emperor:
In order to protect Japan, there are two major problems: that of defense or protecting
the country with physical military power, and of education or protecting the country
with our minds and spirit. In unifying these two, the Constitution is a main obstacle, but
I believe that the heart of protecting the country boils down to how we perceive our
nation state or, in other words, how we perceive the role of the Emperor.
When we call for amending the Constitution, it depends first of all on our thinking about
the national consciousness. We also must consider starting from the establishment
of a clear national polity linked to the Emperor. In other words, I believe that if
there is to be a proper national consciousness, the problems of the Constitution,
education, and defense must be approached by starting from the root problem of the
mind – that is to say, the establishment of a proper patriotic spirit. (Nihon no Ibuki, #2,
July 15, 1984)
In October 1982, Kokumin Kaigi held a “Conference to Consider the Textbook Problem,” and proposed an independent textbook. Then, in December 1983, by consolidating rightwing forces, the “National Conference to Normalize Textbooks” was established, and the organization began to write a history textbook. It was Kokumin Kaigi that worked on the task.
At the plenary meeting of the Kokumin Kaigi, Secretary General Soejima Hiroyuki (now deceased, but at the time, permanent consultant to Meiji Shrine), who had proposed a “Basic Policy for a National Movement in Showa 59 (1984),” stated: “In tackling such tasks as publishing a textbook, I would like to lay the ideological groundwork for constitutional revision” (Nihon no Ibuki, #2, July 15, 1984). In this way, Kokumin Kaigi positioned the publishing of a high-school history textbook as “forming an ideal flow” toward meeting the goal of amending the Constitution in order to create a national polity centered on the Emperor. Moreover, placing the Constitution, defense, and education on the agenda, Kokumin Kaigi considered it necessary to publish a high school Japanese history textbook that would nurture a national consciousness or patriotism. The association issued an officially approved textbook that passed the Ministry of Education’s screening, Shinpen Nihon Shi [New Edition of Japanese History] (Hara Shobō, now published by Meiseisha as Saishin Nihon Shi [Most Recent Japanese History]), in commemoration of the 60th year of the reign of the Showa Emperor.
After that, Kokumin Kaigi, while making constitutional revision its central goal, developed other tactics, such as education and the textbook issue, a movement to justify Japan’s war of aggression and its atrocities, a movement to respect and love the Imperial Household, a movement to denounce the displays of peace materials in halls set up by local authorities across the country. At this time, Kokumin Kaigi strengthened its ties with rightwing Diet members in the LDP and other parties, becoming the central organization of the rightwing movement.
Mergers Lead to Birth of Nippon Kaigi: Business executives became officials.
On May 30, 1997, Kokumin Kaigi merged with the Nihon wo Mamoru Kai to launch Nippon Kaigi as an organization dedicated to amending the Constitution and to promoting Imperial rule.
Looking at Kokumin Kaigi’s officials and members, most people could conclude that it was a rightwing organization, but after it became Nippon Kaigi, it hid its rightwing nature by appointing as officials, others such as business executives, university professors, and intellectuals. However, its true nature did not change. Among the first generation of chairmen of the Kokumin Kaigi was the late Tsukamoto Kōichi (then chairman of an intimate apparel company, Wacoal). He was succeeded as the second chairman (June 2000-December 2001) by Inaba Kōsaku (now deceased), who was then head of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Former Supreme Court justice Miyoshi Tōru became the third chairman in December 2001, and on April 16, 2015, Takubo Tadae, a former journalist and college professor, was appointed the fourth chairman, with Miyoshi becoming the honorary chair.
The executive secretary is now Kabashima Yūzō (chairman of Nihon Kyōgikai [Japan Council] and Nihon Seinen Kyōgikai[Japan Youth Council]), who was the executive secretary of both organizations when they merged in 1997. The vice chairs are Anzai Aiko (musician), Odamura Shirō (former president of Takushoku University, representative of worshippers at Yasukuni Shrine), Kobori Keiichirō (professor emeritus at Tokyo University), Tanaka Tsunekiyo (president of Jinja Honchō [Association of Shinto Shrines]). The director is Amitani Michihiro (chief priest at Meiji Jingū and head of the association of worshippers at Meiji Jingū). The executive director is Matsumura Toshiaki (executive director of Nippon Kaigi). Those listed as consultants are Ishii Kōichirō (president of Bridgestone Bicycle), Kitashirakawa Michihisa (executive director of Jinja Honchō), Takatsukasa Naotake (head of Ise Shrine). Among those named above, five of the 12 officers are connected to religious organizations, and five are officials of rightwing organizations, such as Kaikōsha and Eirei ni Kotaeru Kai [the Association to Respect Deceased Soldiers (at Yasukuni Shrine). Of the 40 representative committee members, 16 are associated with religious organizations, such as the head priest at Yasukuni Shrine (as of July 1, 2016).
After its founding, Nippon Kaigi launched an organizational system, starting with the establishment of headquarters in prefectures across the country, and specialized
committees. (According to records of Nippon Kaigi, in August 1997, “headquarters in the prefectures were established one after another.”)
In order to conduct research on a new Constitution and promote the revision of the current Constitution, Nippon Kaigi took over Shin Kenpō Kenkyū Kai [New Constitution Study Group] (headed by Vice Chairman Odamura Shirō), which Kokumin Kaigi had established in June 1995. And in June 1997, it established “the Seisaku Kenkyūkai [Policy Committee] to Consider the Current Situation and Policy Agenda” (headed by then Executive Director Ōhara Yasuo). In January 1999, Nippon Kaigi launched the Kokusai Kōhō Iinkai [International Public Relations Committee’ For Broadcasting Japan’s New Image to the World] (chaired by the committee member, Takemoto Tadao), and in March, it established the “Nihon Kyōiku Kaigi [the Japan Educational Conference] for Promoting Educational Reforms” (chaired by Adviser Ishii Koichirō, with Takahashi Shirō (currently a board member of the Japan Education Rebuilding Organization [Nihon Kyoiku Saisei Kikō] as principal investigator.
Along with the New Constitution Study Group, the Policy Committee, the International Public Relations Committee, and the Japan Educational Conference, the Japan Women’s Association [Nihon Josei no Kai] and the Japan Youth Council [Nihon Seinen Kyōgikai] functions as its daily operations organizations of Nippon Kaigi. In addition, in response to various challenges of the times, various affiliated front organizations rose to carry out specialized activities. Among them, there was a particular front organization for the constitutional revision movement, as explained below, and another for activities related to the historical consciousness issue, which Sankei Shimbun now calls the “history wars.” For this purpose, on October 1, 2016, Nippon Kaigi established the “Historical Awareness Research Committee” [Rekishi Ninshiki Mondai Kenkyūkai]. When the organization was established, it was chaired by Takahashi Shirō, and its vice chairman and executive secretary was Nishioka Tsutomu, and one of its advisers was Sakurai Yoshiko.10 It is made up of key “theorists” of Nippon Kaigi. On the issue of historical views toward the comfort women and the Nanjing Incident, the organization states: “Anti-Japan views of history have damaged Japan’s diplomacy and damaged our country’s honor and national interests.” It also states: “In response to criticism of Japan regarding historical consciousness, we will present materials for rebuttal, based on historical facts.”
Closely-Linked Round-Table Conference of Diet Members of Nippon Kaigi
On May 29, 1997, the day before Nippon Kaigi was launched, the LDP’s Obuchi Keizō and Mori Yoshirō (both of whom later became prime ministers), together with then Shinshintō [New Frontier Party] member Ozawa Tatsuo, formed a non-partisan Round Table Conference of Diet Members of Nippon Kaigi (a.k.a. Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League), with the aim of fully backing and linking to Nippon Kaigi. After it was launched, Nippon Kaigi was closely aligned with these Diet Members and promoted various maneuvers behind the scenes, such as efforts to revise the Constitution and the Basic Education Law. The group also promoted the adoption of a textbook that distorted Japanese history. In order to Support the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform [Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho wo Tsukurukai] that predated the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League, in February 1997, Nippon no Zento to Rekishi Kyōiku wo Kangaeru Wakate Giin no Kai [The Young Diet Members For Japan’s Future and History Education (a.k.a. Textbook Parliamentarians’ League) was launched centered on Nakagawa Shōichi (now deceased), Abe Shinzō, and Etō Seiichi. In February 2004, the word “young” was removed from the association, and it had an extremely close relationship with the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League.
At its launch, the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League had 189 members from both chambers. The number continued to increase, and as of November 2015, there were 281 members (mostly LDP), and the members of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League were the largest force in both houses with around 40 percent of the 717 Diet members. This rightwing league was behind the launching of the three Abe cabinets. Abe was the League’s key person as party president and prime minister. In the 3rd Abe Cabinet, 16 out of the 20 (80 percent) of the ministers are members of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League.
The Nippon Kaigi, with its close ties to the Diet Members League, is now running Japanese politics. One example can be seen in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), which from 2002 has distributed, to all elementary and middle-school children, supplemental educational pamphlets called Kokoro no Nōto [Notes for the Heart] (four levels: 1st and 2nd graders, 3rd and 4th graders, 5th and 6th graders, and middle-school use). The materials promote official moral values, starting with love of country, and are aimed at controlling the minds of children.
Nippon Kaigi proposed that such materials be drafted and disseminated, and in March 2000, Upper House member Kamei Ikuo (now deceased), a Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League member, brought the subject up in the Diet. Then Education Minister Nakasone Hirofumi, also a League member, replied that he would consider the proposal, and almost immediately, it was budgeted. A week later, then Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Education Kawamura Takeo, another League member, replied in the Diet: “We will publish and distribute (the pamphlets) to schools across the nation.” In March 2001, at a general meeting on policies proposed, Nippon Kaigi touted the success of this one, stating, “Taking the opportunity of Diet interpellations on the House floor, the MEXT minister decided to draw up a moral educational material to be titled Notes for the Heart. A frightful precedent was created in which the request of a rightwing group was brought up in the Diet by lawmakers linked to it, and then was implemented as national policy.
Further, Notes for the Heart was later completely revised and distributed in April 2014 to elementary and middle schools across the country as Watashi tachi no Dōtoku [Our Moral Values.] The Education Minister Shimomura Hakubun and MEXT made use of the teaching materials mandatory. The Abe administration and MEXT in March 2015 elevated moral education to a regular classroom subject, calling it a “special subject.”
Our Moral Values for the first and second grade students of elementary schools.
And for fiscal 2018, approved textbooks will be published, fully carrying out the new policy. Even for 2015, in order to promote the policy before it is put into effect and the textbook published, the Ministry ordered that Our Moral Values be used as a “textbook” and that it be used jointly with the approved textbooks after it came out.
In addition, the author of the textbook Our Moral Values, Kaizuka Shigeki (professor at Musashino University, who is a member of MEXT’s round-table of promoting moral values as educational material, as well as a board member of the Japan Organization for Educational Reform) has been promoting the issuance of educational material on morality, asserting that the book Our Moral Values would become a model for approved textbooks. (For more detail, see Textbook 21’s booklet Sweeping Criticism! Children Being Warped by the Moral Education Textbook ‘Our Moral Values’, 2014.
Sweeping Criticism! Children Being Warped by the Moral Education Textbook ‘Our Moral Values’, Gōdō Shuppan, 2014.
Nippon Kaigi’s Development of a Grass-Roots Rightwing Movement
Nippon Kaigi is Japan’s largest rightwing unity organization. It promotes a policy aimed to make Japan a nation centered on the Emperor, a nation that can fight in wars, by revising the Constitution. It has set up headquarters in prefectures across the country and branch organizations in the regions. Its slogan is “Build a nation that has pride.” Prime Minister Abe’s slogan, “Beautiful Country Japan” [Utsukushi Kuni Nihon] , has also been used by Nippon Kaigi
In September 2001, Nippon Kaigi established as its organization for women, Nihon Jyosei no Kai [Japan Women’s Association] (then chaired by Anzai Aiko, who was vice chairperson of the Nippon Kaigi; the following chair was Onoda Machie.)11 What became the central campaign of this women’s association was the so-called “gender backlash,” that is, repeated attacks on such issues as gender equality measures, separate surnames for married couples, and gender equal education.
Currently, Nippon Kaigi is making every effort to advance constitutional revision, which Prime Minister Abe has been promoting. Targeting a female audience, it has hosted “cafes” across the country, where “women get together to chat about the Constitution.” The Japan Women’s Association is taking up that challenge.
In addition, the rightwing Nihon Seinen Kyōgikai [ Japan Youth Council], founded in 1970 by Etō Seiichi (now an assistant to Prime Minister Abe), Takahashi Shirō (board member of the Japan Education Rebuilding Organization), and former education committee chairman for Saitama Prefecture), Kabashima Yuzō, et al., has now become in effect Nippon Kaigi’s youth organization. This organization is carrying out secretariat activities for Nippon Kaigi; it is an “action squad” which carries out a “national caravan” campaign several times a year.
Nippon Kaigi is the central organization of such activities as a round-table conference of intellectuals to “reform Japanese education” by promoting amendments to the Fundamental Law of Education (Private Ad Hoc Committee on Education, established in 2003 and chaired by Nishizawa Jun’ichi, as well as “Japan and the Constitution in the 21st Century”, a group that promotes revising the Constitution, a.k.a. Private Ad Hoc Committee on the Constitution, established in 2001 and then headed by Miura Shumon. ) This group has generated a “national movement” to amend the Constitution, and every March, it holds a rally, sponsored by the Private Ad Hoc Committee on the Constitution, to call for constitutional revision.
On May 3, 2016, the Private Ad Hoc Committee on the Constitution, together with the Utsukushii Nippon no Kenpō wo Tsukuru Kokumin no Kai [National Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan” (Kokumin no Kai)], sponsored the 18th public forum on the Constitution, titled, “Calling for an Initiative to Realize Speedy Revision of the Constitution! We Propose that Each Political Party Hold Discussions on the Constitution to Respond to the Emergency Situation” (1,200 people attended according to the organizers).
In a video message, Prime Minister Abe, who was then travelling abroad, exhorted the assembly: “Do not fall into a brain-dead state of not daring to even lay a finger on the Constitution or even avoid debating it. We will create with our own hands a constitution appropriate for the times.
Let us unite to revise the Constitution.” The LDP President’s special assistant, Shimomura Hakubun, was present and asserted to the crowd: “There are many people who feel it is thanks to the presence of Article 9 in the Constitution, that Japan has not been drawn into war.” He cited as an example the Great East Japan Earthquake as a situation demanding an emergency provision in the Constitution: “Since the terms of Diet members are limited by the Constitution, we cannot legally make an exception. If an emergency situation occurs, the terms should be extended as a special case. No one would have any reason to oppose this” (as reported by Asahi Shimbun, May 4, 2016).
In a keynote address, Sakurai Yoshiko rejected constitutionalism, saying: “The notion that the Constitution is a basic set of rules that pits the state against the people and fetters the state does not suit Japan.” She continues, “We must aim at having our own Constitution that protects what is characteristic of Japan.” She proposed: “Why not make a fresh start by proposing a provision for emergency situations that one might call the biggest campaign pledge of each political party?” Many speakers insisted on the emergency powers provision, and the declaration presented asserted that “lack of provision for emergency powers is a fundamental flaw in the Constitution” and deemed the provision of emergency powers an “urgent task” that would strengthen the government’s authority in such situations. It called for “an early motion for constitutional reform, as well as a popular referendum.”
Prime Minister Abe, his administration, and the LDP share this view. Moreover, in addition to Shimomura and Sakurai, also attending were Matsubara Jin (Democratic Party, Lower House member), Eguchi Katsuhiko (adviser to the Diet members’ group Initiatives from Osaka [Osaka Ishin no Kai]), Nakayama Kyoko (head of the Nihon no Kokoro wo Taisetsu ni suru Tō [The Party for the Japanese Kokoro]), Uchida Fumihiro (secretary general of the Kokumin no Kai), Hara Masao (former mayor of Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture), Nishi Osamu (professor emeritus of Komazawa University), Aoki Shōgo (vice chairman of the Junior Chamber International Japan), Yamamoto Mizuki (student, Faculty of Law, Keio University), and Momochi Akira (professor emeritus of Nihon University).
With the return of the Abe administration presenting an ideal opportunity, Nippon Kaigi developed a “national movement” to amend the Constitution and campaigned to have local assemblies issue “position papers calling for early realization of constitutional revision.” The concrete realization of these efforts would become the Kokumin no Kai, an organization that I explain in detail below.
Nippon Kaigi, since its establishment, has set up prefectural headquarters, and at present, it has an office in every prefecture. Moreover, from 2000, it started to establish local branches. This project did not proceed well at first. However, from 2006 and 2007, the organization put its efforts into establishing branches, aiming at 300 nationwide. It began that effort in order to counter the launching of 9-jō no Kai, the Article 9 Association, and the activities of that group across the country. The Article 9 Association was established in June 2004 by nine prominent people,12 and in response to their appeals, branches were established across the country in different localities and sectors. Membership in the Article 9 Association by 2006 surpassed 5,000 people. Through a series of lectures across the nation, the Article 9 Association, as well as the activities of related local or specialized groups, public opinion toward constitutional revision greatly changed. In a public opinion poll in 2004 by the Yomiuri Shimbun, 65 percent were found to approve amending the Constitution, while 22 percent disapproved. But by 2006, the same poll showed the approval rate to have dropped to 55 percent, while the disapproval rate rose to 32 percent. Then, in the 2007 poll, approval plummeted to 46.2 percent, with the disapproval rate rising to 39.1 percent, or around three times that of 2004.
In 2007, the gap between approval and disapproval had narrowed to only seven points. (Currently, the approval and disapproval rates are about the same.) In order to compete with the Article 9 Association, Kokumin no Kai worked to establish local branches. At the end of September 2016, there were 250 branches (author’s survey), and those cities with more than 10 branches included Tokyo (19), Saitama (17), Kumamoto (17), Okayama (13), Aichi (12), Niigata (10), and Hiroshima (10). There were also prefectures, like Nagano (4), Shiga (4), and Tottori (4), where branches were few but still covered the entire prefecture.
These prefectural headquarters and branches were linked to such organizations as the Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly Members’ League [Chihō Giren], the Japan Women’s Association, and the Japan Youth Council. In each locality they developed grassroots rightwing and constitutional revision movements.
The main efforts of the movements were such activities as promoting the revision of the Constitution, adopting the school textbook published by Ikuhōsha by the Nihon Kyōiku Saisei Kikō [Japan Education Rebuilding Organization] and Kyōkasho Kaizen no Kai [the Textbook Improvement Association], as well as the one published by Jiyūsha of the Society for History Textbook Reform. Other activities included efforts to distort history by justifying Japan’s war of aggression and atrocities, and denying the system of military “comfort women” and the Nanjing Incident. They also included pressuring school boards of education to require schools to display the Hinomaru national flag and sing the Kimigayo national anthem. In addition, prefectural assemblies were pressured to display the flag, and in the schools, even homework and tests were monitored for content, leading to further pressure on school boards and schools themselves. In addition, there were activities to stir up nationalism over territorial issues.
Formation and Activities of the Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly League
Nippon Kaigi Chihō Giin Renmei (Chihō Giren) [Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly Members League], chaired by Kanagawa Prefecture assembly member Matsuda Yoshiaki, was established on November 11, 2007, under the slogan “Building a Country with Pride, Starting with Local Assemblies.” As of March 2016, it was supported by 1,633 members (author’s survey), and, breaking this figure down, there were two governors, 31 mayors, 795 assembly members, and 805 local heads. (Because this organization is an assembly members’ league, once a member becomes governor or mayor, they cease to be a member, but I included them in the list so that we can know their political stance.)
When we look at the share the league holds in prefectural assemblies, we find that they make up more than 70 percent in Yamaguchi, more than 60 percent in Yamagata, Ibaraki, and Ehime, more than 50 percent in Miyagi and Nagasaki, and over 40 percent in Akita, Gumma, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Gifu, Shizuoka, Kyoto, Okayama, Fukuoka, Miyazaki, and Kagoshima. Such an unusual situation also prevails in 19 prefectures, where Nippon Kaigi has hijacked the assemblies with over 40 percent being members. Moreover, in city assemblies, 47.7 percent of the Osaka City assembly and 43.8 percent of the Yashiro City assembly in Kumamoto Prefecture are members.
The Local Assembly Members League, by working through local assemblies, is developing such activities as promoting the adoption of textbooks published by Ikuhōsha and Jiyūsha, denouncing other textbooks, and organizing constitutional revision activities in the local area. Assembly members belonging to The Local Assembly Members League have blocked the adoption of history textbooks published by Jikkyō Shuppan during the process of selecting textbooks for high schools. Members have intervened with questions in the local assemblies, and they have pressured local school boards, aiming to block the adoption of this textbook. For example, in Saitama Prefecture, during the school textbook adoption process in 2013, the high school, as well as the Board of Education, chose the textbook published by Jikkyō Shuppan. To reverse this decision, the education committee of the prefectural assembly held two sessions when the assembly was in recess, and denounced the authors of the Jikkyō textbook, and summoned and examined the principals of the eight schools that adopted the Jikkyō textbook. The assembly then passed a resolution to reverse their choice. The Local Assembly Members League was behind this campaign. Similar cases of using the assembly to pressure for schoolbook choices occurred in Chiba Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, Yokohama City, and Kawasaki City. In all cases, The Local Assembly Members League members organized the campaign. In Osaka, the campaign was led by the assembly members of Osaka Ishin no Kai [The Osaka Restoration Association].
Branches of Nippon Kaigi linked up with the Local Assembly Members League to promote their cause. In connection with history education and textbook adoption, the Nippon Kaigi and its related organizations (members and local branches) have begun to submit petitions and appeals to the local assembly, with the Local Assembly Members League members becoming facilitators, bringing up those issues in the assemblies, and making it easier for textbooks published by Ikuhōsha and Jiyūsha to be adopted.
In 2014, the Abe administration revised the board-of-education system, making it easier for the heads of local government to intervene in the education system and textbook selection. Given this change, such organizations as the Japan Education Rebuilding Organization and the Society for History Textbook Reform, which have close ties to Nippon Kaigi, are calling on their local organizations, members and supporters to recruit assembly members who will cooperate in choosing textbooks during assembly sessions, as well as engage in joint activities to promote “education rebuilding.” In response to this, Nippon Kaigi developed activities to link up with other local assembly leagues and branches so that junior high school textbooks selected in 2015 would be those proposed by Ikuhōsha and Jiyūsha.
On the issue of the Hinomaru national flag and Kimigayo national anthem, as well, maneuvers behind the scenes are linking local assembly leagues and local branches of Nippon Kaigi across the country. For example, a petition circulated by the local branch of Nippon Kaigi in 2013 in Nakano Ward in Tokyo called on all public elementary and middle schools to display the national flag daily. Three Ward assembly members belonging to the Local Assembly Members League introduced the petition and worked to persuade other assembly members to support it. Then, at a full session, the number of approvals and disapprovals was tied. However, with the approval of the assembly leader, the petition was adopted. A similar movement toward schools and petitions on the floor of local assemblies seeking to display the national flag was promoted by cooperation between both organizations. It is expected that such activities will be increased in the future.
Kokumin no Kai’s Movement to Collect 10 Million Signatures
The task that Nippon Kaigi has put most of its efforts into has been the promotion of a grassroots campaign to revise the Constitution, a long-cherished goal that has united it with the Abe administration.
At New Year’s in 2016, an unusual scene could be seen within the grounds of Shinto shrines, crowded with people paying their first visits of the year. At Shinto shrines all over Japan, the shops and donation boxes had signs exhorting worshippers to sign a petition calling for constitutional revision. The petitions stated, “I approve of revising the Constitution.” At Nogi Shrine in Tokyo, there were banners displayed with such slogans as, “Aiming for a proud Japan,” and, “The Constitution is ours.” There was a tent holding a large framed poster of Sakurai Yoshiko. On the poster was printed, “Let us, the people, make a beautiful Japanese Constitution with our own hands”; and, “We are now collecting 10 million signatures. Please cooperate.”
The signatures to urge constitutional revision were not the work of limited number of shrines. The religious corporation Jinja Honchō, The Association of Shinto Shrines, reportedly encompasses 80,000 shrines nationwide who “aligned with the movement of the ‘National Association to Create a Beautiful Constitution for Japan (Kokumin no Kai),’ and promoted a signature campaign based on the actual situation in each shrine.” (Tokyo Shimbun, 1/23/2016) Based on a directive from the Association of Shinto Shrines, the prefectural shrine associations ordered shrines under their jurisdiction to collect signatures.
Although the signature campaign was carried out by the Kokumin no Kai, it is an organization for constitutional revision established by Nippon Kaigi on October 1, 2014.
On November 13, 2013, Nippon Kaigi held a convention of representatives from all over the country under the slogan “Bring about Constitutional Revision!” (800 participated, according to the sponsor). The body passed a resolution at the meeting calling for amending the Constitution within three years. Those attending the convention and giving speeches included Sakurai Yoshiko, who gave the keynote speech, Takaichi Sanae (then LDP Policy Affairs Research Chairperson), Hiranuma Takeo (Diet representative of the Japan Restoration Party [Nihon Ishin no Kai]), Matsubara Jin (Diet Steering Committee Chairman of the DPJ), Asao Keiichirō (Secretary General of Your Party), and Etō Seeichi (Prime Minister’s assistant).
The meeting opened with such slogans as “Bring about a national referendum to amend the Constitution, one written by the people’s own hands!” and “Pass resolutions in all prefectural assemblies and 1,742 local assemblies demanding a national referendum!” Miyoshi Toru, then chairman of Nippon Kaigi, in his remarks as the representative of the convention’s sponsor, stated: “This convention aims to bring about constitutional revision through the powerful efforts of Nippon Kaigi.” In the written resolution of the convention, it was decided to “establish headquarters for amending the Constitution in all 300 election districts in order to attain half of the national referendum votes for amending the Constitution.” It also called for planning the formation of a grand national alliance to promote a national movement to approve constitutional revision (Nihon no Ibuki, January 2014).
After a year of preparation, Kokumin no Kai emerged. It was described as a “national organization to develop at the grass-roots level a movement to promote amendment of the Constitution.” At the meeting to formally establish the organization, co-leader Sakurai Yoshiko gave a speech titled, “Breathe Life into Constitutional Revision!” It was followed by a speech by Hasegawa Michiko (professor emeritus of Saitama University and NHK board member), titled, “Conditions for an Independent State and Paragraph 2 of Article 9.” The co-leaders of Kokumin no Kai are key members of Nippon Kaigi: Takubo Tadae, chairman of the Nippon Kaigi (professor emeritus of Korin University), honorary chairman Miyoshi Tōru (former Supreme Court justice), and Sakurai Yoshiko. Listed as promoters were 40 well-known rightwing figures connected to Nippon Kaigi, and appointed as Kokumin no Kai members were 500 people representing various circles. These included The Association of Shinto Shrines’ President Tanaka Tsunekiyo, Hyakuta Naoki (Writer, Commentator and former member of the NHK Board), Hasegawa Michiko, Sugiyama Koichi (composer), Yayama Taro (critic, Representative director of the Association to Revise Textbooks, associated with the Ikuhosha Publishing Company).
Seven Topics and Explanations in the Leaflet of Kokumin no Kai
As explained above, Kokumin no Kai is conducting a campaign to collect collect 10 million signatures supporting constitutional revision. The signature form includes a space for writing in one’s name, address, and telephone number. If there is a national referendum, it is expected that 60 million would vote. The 10 million who signed their names would form the base for a predicted 30 million votes of approval.
Displayed on the front of the signature form is a color photo of four children against the backdrop of Mt. Fuji, with the following slogans: “With your cooperation, we will reach 10 million signatures of approval to bring about constitutional revision”; and, “For a beautiful Japan, for our children.” On the back of the form, there is the name of the person who is introducing the supporter, as well as the names, addresses and telephone numbers of 10 supporters. There is also a leaflet, made up of three pages of A-4 sized sheets of paper. It has the same slogans as the signature form, and on the back is a message from Sakurai Yoshiko, titled, “Rainbow of Hope for a Beautiful Japan – People’s Power to Revise the Constitution.” The contents consist of seven statements that promote constitutional revision.
The front and back pages of the signature form for the 10-million signature campaign by Kokumin no Kai.
The seven headings and explanatory notes in the leaflet are exactly the same as another educational flier on constitutional revision, titled, “Let us now begin a national debate on amending the Constitution,” which was issued by Nippon Kaigi during the national convention of representatives in November 2013, as mentioned above. At that time, Miyoshi stated, “We are raising seven themes promoting constitutional revision.” This example is proof that the Kokumin no Kai is an organization run by Nippon Kaigi.The organization, in its founding declaration, stated: “Conditions have been prepared for passing a National Referendum Law that would set in motion the process for amending the Constitution, and a national referendum to propose that the Diet amend the Constitution would then be carried out.” It went on to state, “We will begin the activities listed below, aiming at bringing about constitutional revision in two years, having gathered the number of votes needed in the Diet for adoption of the referendum measure, and then carrying out a national referendum coinciding with the next Upper House election in 2016.”
The three activities mentioned are:
Promote a signature campaign among Diet members, as well as a resolution campaign among local assemblies, seeking early realization of constitutional revision.
Establish “associations of prefectural residents” across all 47 prefectures, and promote an educational movement that will rouse public opinion to favor constitutional revision.
Promote an expanded movement of 10 million supporters for creating a Constitution for abeautiful Japan.
The organizations engaged in promoting Kokumin no Kai’s signature campaign and educating the public on the “constitutional revision” are the prefectural headquarters of Nippon Kaigi and local branches, the assembly members who belong to the Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly Members’ League, and the Japan Women’s Association. In order to carry out the activities of the Kokumin no Kai, Nippon Kaigi sponsored rallies in regional blocks (Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Hokuriku, Tokai, Kinki, Shikoku, Chugoku, and Kyushu), calling for early amendment of the Constitution. Block rallies, covering the entire country, continued until the end of December 2014 with lecturers including Kokumin no Kai coleaders Sakurai Yoshiko and Takubo Tadae.
Following the rallies, Kokumin no Kai by November 3, 2015 had established the associations of prefectural residents in all 47 prefectures aiming at creating a constitution for a beautiful Japan. It also developed in each region street-corner campaigns and signature collecting activities. Further, it introduced a system of promoters to expand the number of supporters to 10 million. The roles of each promoter (organized in committees) were to: 1) make daily efforts to build public opinion in favor of amending the Constitution; 2) to expand the number of supporters by over 30 people; and 3) once the Diet to amend the Constitution was in session, to promote an expanded movement of supporters calling for Diet approval of a national referendum.
In addition, contributions were solicited (minimum of 5,000 yen per person) for a “Constitutional Revision Movement Fund.” Such organizations as the Nippon Kaigi prefectural headquarters and branches, as well as the Japan Women’s Association, carried out the establishment of such organized activities and directed signature campaigns.
At the founding plenary of the Kokumin no Kai, the members of Nippon Kaigi Diet Members’ Association, such as Upper House representative Etō Seiichi (Prime Ministerial Assistant), Lower Hosue representative Hiranuma Takeo (The Party for Future Generations), Lower House representative Matsubara Jin (Democratic Party of Japan), Upper House representative Matsuzawa Narufumi (Your Party) attended and gave greetings. (Positions of Diet members as of November 2015.)
Prime Ministerial Assistant Etō Seiichi delivered the following important remarks, under the title, “The Final Switch”:
The time is upon us to press the final switch. The LDP, since its founding, has flown the banner of Constitutional revision, but in 2003, when the LDP fell from power, its leaders proposed that the party should remove the plank about establishing an independent Constitution from its platform. At that time, 10 young LDP members, including the late Nakagawa Shōichi and Abe Shinzō, argued heatedly against that in a party leaders’ study group of about 30 lawmakers. As a result, during the debate, arguments were made that if the LDP were going to drop its efforts to amend the Constitution, they should dissolve the party.
Accordingly, it was decided that the LDP would ‘draft a constitution that would be appropriate for the current era.’ Now, the key members at that time have formed a second Abe administration (2012 present). In other words, it is no exaggeration to say that the Abe Cabinet was founded for the ultimate purpose of amending the Constitution. (Nihon no Ibuki, November 2014)
10,000 Person Convention Held at Nippon Budōkan (Chiyoda Ku, Tokyo).
On November 15, 2015, Kokumin no Kai held a “10,000 Person Convention at Nippon Budōkan: We Must Now Revise the Constitution!” From all over the country, 11,300 people (sponsor’s number) gathered for the rally. Prime Minister Abe, as LDP president, provided a video message shown on a giant screen on stage.
At the convention, it was reported that the signature campaign to gather 10 million supporters for “creating a Constitution for a beautiful Japan” that Kokumin no Kai was promoting had reached 4,452,991 names, and that 417 members in the Diet from various parties had signed up as supporters (422 according to the website of the Nippon Kaigi Local Assembly Members’ League, that 31 prefectural assemblies had issued resolutions, and that the Kenmin no Kai (Prefectural Residents’ Association), which was collecting signatures, were established in all 47 prefectures.
Local assembly resolutions as of October 2016 had been passed in 35 prefectures and in 51 city and town assemblies. Moreover, as of the end of October 2016, 7.54 million people had signed petitions, and the targets in 24 prefectures had been reached (Miyagi, Yamagata, Gumma, Chiba, Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara, Wakayama, Okayama, Ehime, Kochi, Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Aichi, Miyazaki, and Kagoshima).
The Kokumin no Kai is showing all over the country a documentary film (DVD) on constitutional revision. It is titled, “The World Has Changed: How about Japan?” It was produced by Hyakuta Naoki, supervised by Sakurai Yoshiko and Momochi Akira, and narrated by actor Tsugawa Masahiko.
The Abe Administration and Nippon Kaigi’s Policy of Education Rebuilding [Kyōiku Saisei]
Nippon Kaigi present the Constitution, education, and defense as one set of issues, which coincides with Prime Minister Abe’s own policy approach. The Abe administration, under the rubric of “Education Rebuilding”, has sought to overturn conventional education from its very foundation. It aims to thoroughly change the classroom environment and school textbooks based on the Fundamental Law of Education of 2006. It has sought to change the original goal of education from being for the sake of children to one of being for the sake of the state, national interests, and global corporate interests. The coming version of the Gakushu Shidō Yōryō [Education Guidelines] promotes Abe’s “education rebuilding” policy.
The Abe administration has two policy aims: 1) economic policy (Abenomics), which seeks to make large companies more competitive so that they can succeed in the global market; and 2) amending Article 9 of the Constitution to make Japan into a “war-waging” country. For that second policy goal, he rammed security legislation through the Diet in September 2015 (war laws) in violation of Article 9 of the Constitution.
The Abe administration’s “education rebuilding” policy was realized with the passage of the revised Fundamental Law of Education in 2006. The policy aims to create “human resources” (jinzai) to carry out the goals of the new law. Abe’s “education rebuilding” policy aims at 1) the cultivation of human resources sought by large corporations seeking to win in global competition; and 2) education that will produce a “national army” and supporters of the same. In both aims for human resources education, there must be inculcated in the schools a sense of “patriotism” and “morality,” and in order to realize these aims, the system of education and type of textbook are essential. The Abe administration stresses that “education rebuilding is the foundation for realizing a society in which there is “dynamic engagement of all 100 million citizens” [ichioku sōkatsuyaku].
Setting up a council to carry out education rebuilding, the Abe administration moved forward at a fast pace with various “educational reforms” to nurture such human resources. The main reforms included: 1) strengthening control over the contents of education; 2) nurturing effective human resources for the sake of the large corporations; and 3) controlling school administrators and teachers.
To accomplish that, the system of screening textbooks was revised. What had been treated as a “special course” of “moral education” [dōtoku] was elevated to the status of official subject entailing evaluation, (on a par with courses such as mathematics). The education guidelines were greatly revised to make this possible.
The next version of the education guidelines comprehensively control the education system with the state setting not only the contents of what is being taught but also the instructional method used by teachers, the way schools should be run, and even the relationship between schools and the home and local community. The system has changed from one in which the dignity of children is respected and the aim is character development to one shifted 180 degree toward creating “human resources” that will serve the state, national interests, and the interests of corporate giants. (Regarding this point, please see Textbook 21’s book, Dai Mondai! Kodomo Fuzai no Shin Gakushū Shidō Yōryō: Gakkao ga Ningen wo Sodateru ba de nakunaru. [Huge Problem Ahead! The New Education Guidelines Ignore Children’s Views, Schools No Longer Will Be Places to Nurture Human Beings!] Gōdō Shuppan 2016, Japanese Only.)
Conclusion
As we have seen, Nippon Kaigi is Japan’s largest far right organization and a powerful citizens’ body supporting the Abe administration. Nippon Kaigi and Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League have strengthened their links and are promoting through a “grassroots rightwing movement” centered on such organizations as Kokumin no Kai, which is a front organization of Nippon Kaigi, the Constitutional revision advocated by the Abe administration, to result in the creation of a “war-waging” country.
The importance of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League, which penetrated the first, second, and third Abe cabinets, has grown greater than that in any other cabinet. The second cabinet reshuffle of Abe’s third term, has resulted in 16 out of 20 ministers (80 percent) being members of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League. Three of the prime minister’s assistants and two of his deputy chief cabinet secretaries are members of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members League. It might be said that the Cabinet has been hijacked by Nippon Kaigi, and that it has taken political control over Japan.
It is critical to inform the Japanese people about the actual state and nature of this organization and its Diet Members League. I think that this is also the role of the media, as well as peace groups and civic groups.
8The requirement for the use of reign era names, instead of the Western calendar years, would signify that it goes back to prewar practice, and its association with the imperial reign is particularly problematic, especially when it is required by law.
9The word, “yokusan,” used by Tawara here to explain these rightwing organization is used in the case of the pre-war Taisei Yokusan Kai, the Imperial Rule Assistance Organization.
10As of September 2017, the organization’s chairman is Nishioka Tsutomu, and Takahashi Shirō is the vice chairman.
11Currently the organization has no chairperson.
12The nine people were: writer Inoue Hisashi (deceased), philosopher Umehara Takeshi, writer Oe Kenzaburo, constitutional scholar Okudaira Yasuhiro (deceased), activist and writer Oda Makoto (deceased), critic Kato Shuichi (deceased), writer Sawachi Hisae, critic Tsurumi Shunsuke (deceased), and activist and the wife of former Prime Minister Miki, Miki Mutsuko (deceased.)
All images are from The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.
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