Global Research

I am reluctant to write about the “Israel problem” at the heart of U.S. foreign policy two weeks in a row but it seems that the story just will not go away as the usual suspects pile on the Barack Obama Administration over its alleged betrayal of America’s “best and greatest friend and ally in the whole world.”

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his gaggle of war criminals continue to foam at the mouth over the United Nations vote it is, in truth, difficult to blame Israel for what is happening. The Israelis are acting on what they see as their self interest in dominating their neighbors militarily and having a free hand to deal with the Palestinians in any way they see fit. And as for their relationship with Washington, what could be better than getting billions of dollars every year, advanced weapons and unlimited political cover in exchange for absolutely nothing?

Surely even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that the settlements are illegal under international law and are an impediment to any peaceful resolution with the Palestinians, which is what Resolution 2334 says. It has been U.S. policy to oppose them since they first starting popping up like mushrooms, but Netanyahu has encouraging their expansion in full knowledge that he is creating facts on the ground that will be irreversible. He has also pledged to his voters that he will not permit the creation of a Palestinian state, so why should anyone be confused about his intentions?

Daniel Larison over at The American Conservative summed up the situation perfectly, observing that “Calling out Israel for its ongoing illegal behavior becomes unavoidable when there is no progress in resolving the conflict, and the current Israeli government has made it very clear that there won’t be any progress… Israel isn’t actually an ally, much less a ‘vital’ one, and it certainly isn’t ‘critical’ to our security. The U.S. isn’t obliged to cater to some of the worst policies of a client government that has increasingly become a liability. The real problem with the U.S. abstention on the resolution is that it came many years after it might have done some significant good, and it comes so late because Obama wasted his entire presidency trying to ‘reassure’ a government that undermined and opposed him time and again.”

So stop blaming Israel for acting selfishly, since that is the nature of the beast, as in the fable of the frog and the scorpion. More to the point, it is the American Quislings who should be the focus of any examination of what is taking place as they are deliberately misrepresenting nearly every aspect of the discussion and flat out lying about what might actually be at stake due to Washington’s being shackled to Netanyahu’s policies. I will leave it to the reader to decide why so many U.S. politicians and media talking heads have betrayed their own country’s interests in deference to the shabby arguments being put forward on behalf of an openly apartheid theocracy, but I might suggest that access to money and power have a lot to do with it as the Israel Lobby has both in spades.

The Quislings are making two basic arguments in their defense of surrendering national sovereignty to a troublesome little client state located half a world away. First, they are claiming that any acknowledgement that the Israelis have behaved badly is counterproductive because it will encourage intransigence on the part of the Arabs and thereby diminish prospects for a viable peace agreement, which has to be negotiated between the two parties. Second, the claim is being made that the abstention on the U.N. vote violates established U.S. policy on the nature of the conflict and, in so doing, damages both Israeli and American interests. Bloomberg’s editorial board has conjoined the two arguments, adroitly claiming in an over-the-top piece entitled “Obama’s Betrayal of Israel at the U.N. Must Not Stand” that the abstention “breaks with past U.S. policy, undermines a vital ally and sets back the cause of Middle East peace.”

Citing the damaged peace talks argument, which is what the Israeli government itself has been mostly promoting, Donald Trump denounced the U.N. resolution from a purely Israeli perspective, stating that “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations. This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis.” He subsequently added “We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect,” a comment that just might be regarded as either tongue in cheek or ironic because that is precisely how Israel treats Washington. It is reported, however, that Trump does not do irony.

The pundits who most often scream the loudest in defense of Israel are often themselves Jewish, many having close ties to the Netanyahu government. They would undoubtedly argue that their ethno-religious propinquity to the problem they are discussing does not in any way influence their views, but that would be nonsense. One of those persistently shouting the loudest regarding the “peace” canard is the ubiquitous Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who has never seen anything in Israel that he dislikes. He commented that Obama had stabbed Israel in the back and had made “peace much more difficult to achieve because the Palestinians will now say ‘we can get a state through the U.N.’”

Syndicated columnist and fellow Israeli zealot Charles Krauthammer added his two cents, noting that the resolution abstention had meant that Washington had “joined the jackals at the U.N.” Observing that the U.N. building occupies “good real estate in downtown New York City…Trump ought to find a way to put his name on it and turn it into condos.” Iran-Contra’s own Elliot Abrams, who opposes Jews marrying non-Jews, meanwhile repeats the Krauthammer “jackals” meme and also brays about the “abandonment of Israel at the United Nations.”

But the prize for pandering to Jewish power and money has to go to the eminent John Bolton, writing on December 26th about “Obama’s Parting Betrayal of Israel” in The Wall Street Journal (there is a subscription wall but if you go to Google and search you can get around it). Bolton, an ex-Ambassador to the U.N under the esteemed George W. Bush, is a funny looking guy who reportedly did not get a position with the Trump administration because of his Groucho Marx moustache. He currently pontificates from the neocon American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where he is something called a senior fellow. He has written a book “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad,” which is available for 6 cents used on Amazon, plus shipping. There is another John Bolton who wrote “Marada the She-Wolf,” but they are apparently not related.

In his piece, Bolton hit on both the peace talks and the “I’m backing Israel arguments.” He uniquely starts out by claiming that Barack Obama “stabbed Israel in the front” by failing to stop Resolution 2334, which he then describes as “clearly intended to tip the peace process towards the Palestinians…abandon[ing] any pretense that the actual parties to the conflict must resolve their differences.” That’s the peace argument plus the negotiations fiction rolled together. He then goes on to argue that Obama has betrayed Israel by “essentially endors[ing] the Palestinian politico-legal narrative about territory formerly under League of Nations’ mandate.”

Bolton concedes that the damage has already been done by Obama’s complicity “in assaulting Israel” and the opening can be exploited by what he describes as the “anti-Israeli imagineers” at the United Nations. He calls on Donald Trump to work to “mitigate or reverse” such consequences and specifically “move to repeal the resolution, giving the 14 countries that supported it a chance to correct their error.” That they cheered loudly when the resolution passed apparently will have to also be somehow expunged, though Bolton does not mention that. Nations that refuse to go along with the repeal “would have their relations with Washington adjusted accordingly” while “the main perpetrators in particular should face more tangible consequences.”

Bolton is unhesitatingly placing Israeli priorities ahead of American interests by his willingness to punish actual U.S. allies like Britain, Germany and France, as well as major powers Russia and China, out of pique over their vote against the settlements. He also recommends withholding the U.S. contributions to the U.N., which amount to over 20% of the budget. Bolton then goes on to reject any Palestinian state of any kind, recommending instead that a rump version of territory where the bulk of the Palestinians will be allowed to live be transferred to Jordanian control.

As always, there is scant attention paid by any of the Israel boosters for actual American interests in continuing to perform proskynesis in front of Netanyahu and whatever reptile might succeed him. American values and needs are invisible, quite rightly, because they are of no interest to John Bolton and his fellow knee jerkers at AEI, the Hudson Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), Brookings, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the rest of the alphabet soup that depends on the generosity of pro-Israel donors to keep the lights on.

Bolton provides precisely one short sentence relating to Washington’s stake in the game being played, noting that the U.N. abstention poses “major challenges for American interests.” He never says what those interests are because there are none, or at least none that matter, apart from godfathering a viable two state solution which Israel has basically made impossible. And that is only an interest because it would lessen much of the world’s disdain for U.S. hypocrisy while mitigating the radicalization of young Muslims turned terrorists who are in part enraged by the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, blaming it correctly on American connivance. In reality having the U.S. finally vote on the side of sanity and fairness is really a good thing for Americans and hopefully will lead to severing a bizarre “special relationship” that supports a kleptocracy in Asia that has been nothing but trouble.

Victoria Nuland, the US Assistant Secretary of State, did not spend much time and energy with Christmas and New Year celebrations this year. She has another very urgent and pressing problem to solve, before leaving the State Department, and this is the “Cyprus conflict”. The way she wants to solve this conflict is by transforming a second member of the EU, after Greece, into a protectorate. As the proposed solution for Cyprus is higlhy unstable, powers outside the EU will be provided also with a bomb inside it, that is with the possibillity of provoking a Bosnian-type conflict inside, not outside EU borders.

In the same time she wants also to get Turkey admitted immediately to the EU, by the window of the “Cypriot settlement”. By virtue of the provisions of the “Cyprus settlement” under consideration now, Turkey is invested after January 12 with many of the rights and powers (and none of the obligations) of the member-states. It will also legalize in Geneva, its military presence and its right to intervene militarily inside the European Union.

Such an outcome of the Geneva conference will have enormous strategic consequences for Europe and for the Middle East, transforming the whole “Eastern Meditarranean”, a sea lane of vital importance, into a kind of “Mare Nostrum” of the “Naval Forces”, excluding from there any “foreign” strategic influence (German, Russian or Chinese) and laying one more foundation for encircling Russia from the South with a kind of “security belt” and trying to hinder its access to the “warm seas”, a centuries long dream of British imperial planners. It will constitute the deeper change of the Mediterranean strategic landscape, since the eruption of the so-called Eastern Question or, at least, since the Greek national revolution, two centuries ago.

Annan Plan – Creating a Frankestein “state” in Cyprus

The type of settlement Mrs. Nuland wants to impose on Cyprus is a new version of the Annan Plan, rejected by the overwhelming majority of Cypriots during the 2004 referendum, in spite of enormous pressure they had suffered and a real terror campaign against them, warning the day of Doom would come on the aftermath of a No vote. The Annan Plan is violating all essential provisions of European, International and Constitutional Law, including the UN Charter. In the light of its provisions, it represents the most comprehensive effort undertaken, since the defeat of Nazism, in 1945, to impose a totalitarian system in any western country.

The Annan plan is instituting a kind of Frankestein state in Cyprus, where, among other things, the rule of majority (democracy) will be formally abolished, where there will be permanent vetos of the two Cypriot communities in every level of decision making and in all branches of power (executive, legislative, judicial), and, in the very probable case that system would be brought to an impasse, foreign judges will decide everything. In reality, the new “state” will be governed by foreign judges, concentrating upon themselves, three centuries after Montesqieu, all powers.

The solution provides for imposing to the new “state” a complete disarmament status, that is forbid it from the right of self-defense and the means to exercise it (an army). And do it in a permanent terms, not as a temporary measure, as it happened with Germany and Japan after the 2kd World War. In Orwellian terms, this is called “Cyprus demilitarized”. In reality there will be many traffic problems there provoked, because of the military vehicles of Britain, Turkey, other NATO countries and Police cars from various “Christian and Muslim countries” which will be present there. Britain and Turkey will have the legal right to intervene militarily inside a territory of the European Union.

“F**k” Referendums

Mrs. Nuland does not want to wait for any referendum. She knows that she can hardly win a second referendum in Cyprus (or in any other European country these times) on such terms. She has no time, she leaves the State Department on the 20th of January and she wants to end her career with a triumph, that is succeeding where MacMillan, Johnson, Kissinger, Bush, Annan, before her, failed miserably. There are also more essential reasons she wants to solve (or to create?) now this problem. Both the Greek and the European crises may enter a new and more dramatic phase next year. As for the Middle East, adjacent to Cyprus, it is waiting now for a Big Deal or a Big War.

Mr. Anastasiades has already agreed to all that, Mr. Tsipras is under pressure also to agree. Mr. Yuncker, Mrs. May and Mr. Erdogan already agreed. There remain some serious differences still on the composition of the Conference which remain to be settled as we write this article.

And the referendum? you will probably ask. Ok, they will promiss to make two referendums, one for the Greeks and one for the Turkish Cypriots. Maybe they will do them, but only if they are sure of the result. Anyway, even if those referendums take place, they will not have much sense, as it will be impossible for the inhabitants to return to the status quo ante. The Republic of Cyprus as we know it will be dead and the Turkish military presence on the island legal. As for the voters they will be in front of the choice to accept after all what is too late to change or risk a chaotic situation, if they refuse it post factum.

Is anything of all that legal?

Is all that legal? No, nothing here is legal. (Look to the appendix 1, for the opinion of the Honorary President of the International Association of Constitutional Law, Professor Kasimatis). On the contrary they represent a coup d’ etat stricto sensu and in two ways. They constitute the most serious possible breach of the constitutional order of the Republic of Cyprus and of the Treaties of the European Union, as Cyprus is a member of this Union.

No international conference and not even the President of Cyprus himself (or, for that matter, the Greek PM) has any right to sign agreements that infringe on the sovereignty of the Cypriot state (like for instance legalizing the Turkish military presence on the island, when numerous UN resolutions ask for the immediate withdrawal of Turkish forces, which invaded the island in 1974). Even more, nobody, including the President of Cyprus, has the right to change the constitutional structure of his state, much more, abolish it altogether! If they do it, it would be a coup d’ etat, in the strict legal sense of the word, that is a serious breach of the constitutional order of the Republic of Cyprus and, as this Republic is also a full member of the European Union, of the Treaties of the EU. Such things would be probably legal, only if we were living still under a medieval regime of absolute monarchies, not in Europe in 2016.

The whole Geneva conference reminds us very much of what happened in Vichy, France, on the 10th of July 1940, when the French National Assembly invested, with an overwhelming majority, Marshal Petain with constituent powers. In spite of the fact that even it was the National Assembly itself which took this decision, everything Petain did was considered a coup d’ etat and, inspite of being a hero of the First World War, he was condemned to death after the liberation of France. Charles De Gaulle has become what he became, in the history of France and of the world, because he refused to recognize this, supposedly legal coup, by the French deputies and Petain and fought against it.

The purpose of Geneva: Destroy Cyprus as a sovereign, democratic and independent state

By the way and until some weeks ago, all Cypriot and Greek governments since 1974 refused the Turkish proposal to convene such a conference, claiming that the only thing they could discuss about Cyprus with Turkey, was the withdrawal of the Turkish troops which invaded the island and remained there in spite of UN resolutions calling for their immediate withdrawal.

But this was until December 1st. That day, Mr. Anastasiades has announced to his citizens that he is accepting the proposal without explaining much why he is doing it, what will be the purpose and the agenda of this strange conference. He did not consult with political parties in the island or the Greek government before announcing his decision. The most absolute confusion was reigning in the island, until December 27, when the leader of the Turkish Cypriots Mr. Akinci, speaking to the Turkish Cypriot media, probably to warn Anastasiades not to deviate from what they had already agreed in secret, explained a little bit what will happen in Geneva.

According to what he said the Republic of Cyprus will not be present in the Geneva conference. All documents there will be signed by the “new Cyprus federation to be constituted”. In that way he revealed the real purpose of the operation, which is no other than to abolish the existing state in Cyprus (we repeat, a member of UN and the EU) and to create a new one, without asking the opinion of the citizens, without electing a Constitutional Assembly and without any authorization from anybody to do that. In that case, we don’t speak even about an operation of regime change. We have to speak about “country change”.

A Greek Cypriot politician who is friend of Mr. Akinci answered to him explaining that he better avoid much public talk.

The citizens of the Republic themselves are now in a state of complete shock, as they cannot believe that they will live in another state by January 12, they know nothing about it! Cyprus has a tradition of invasions and coups, but it is difficult still for the citizens to grasp the new and unbelievable reality that their own President is planning to sign the death of his own state! It is very difficult, psychologically and intellectually, to stop believing that Mr. Anastasiades is not their leader (even if some they may consider his as bad, wrong, corrupted or incompetent), but he is their killer!

If the Cyprus thing succeeds it will in itself represent a colossal advancement of new political technologies. The trick is simple and genious. For a rape to be recognized as a rape, the victim has to resist and denounce the rapist. But here the rapist and the person charged with denouncing the rape is the same, the President of the Republic.

The Greek factor

Anastasiades himself is the most powerful weapon US ever had in Cyprus. But Mrs Nuland has also another very powerful weapon and this is the situation in Greece, the confusion and the dependence of Greek political forces. The cooperation of Greece to this operation is deemed absolutely necessary for political reasons.

Mr. Tsipras in Athens, is now under enormous US pressure to give his consent and in a very difficult condition otherwise. SYRIZA is characterized also by a huge confusion regarding the Cyprus conflict. The Greek economy and society are very much into a death spiral, and the PM seems to be to the absolute mercy of Creditors, including the IMF. The German government nearly declared war against Greece, when his government decided, on the eve of Christmas, to give some financial peanuts to very poor Greek pensioners in a very real danger for their life and respecting the discipline of the program imposed to Greece (against the will of its people). The Finance Minister had to send a humiliating letter, promising more pension cuts in the next year, in order to get an armistice from Scheuble. If all that was not enough, Mr. Erdogan is threatening to fluid Greece with new waves of refugees.

From Petain to Yeltsin – what is a coup d’ etat

Let us come back at this point to the term coup d’ etat we used. Maybe the readers are associating this with tanks and machine guns. Concerning the use of weapons they have to be a little patient. They will hear most probably their noise (as they heard it from Kiev), but they have first to wait until the Geneva operation succeeds and if it succeeds. But a coup d’ etat has nothing to do with the means used. It has to do with the breach of the constitutional (and European in our case) order of a given state.

Maybe the readers will also question if a head of a given state can make himself or participate in a coup d’ etat against his own state. Not only he can, he is a thousand times more effective if he chooses to do it, as the only thing he has to do is use and abuse the powers he already legally possesses and can use. For example, the legal head of the Greek state, King Constantin, has participated in a US-backed coup d’ etat against the constitutional order of his own state in 1967, by legalizing the government of the Colonels.

The same thing was done by the head of the Russian state Boris Yeltsin in 1991, when he dissolved the USSR and in October 1993, when he bombed his own Parliament, if we examine those events from the point of view of soviet and Russian constitutional order. But nobody in the West has noticed of course this legal aspect of things, as westerners liked very much what Yeltsin did. We refer to this example, because it bears great analogies to what they are trying to do now in Cyprus.

Appendix – Professor Kasimatis on the legal aspect of the Geneva Conference

We asked the top Greek specialist on Constitutional Law and Honorary President of the International Association of Constitutional Law, Professor Yiorgos Kasimatis, about what and what is not legal for this Geneva conference to do. This is his opinion:

“The Republic of Cyprus is internationally recognized as a full sovereignty state, by its admission to the United Nations and to the European Union. Nobody, including the President of Cyprus, the Greek PM or any international conference are entitled to take any decisions infringing, directly or indirectly, upon the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus or alter its constitutional structure. If they do it, it will be a very serious violation of both the Cyprus constitution and of the Treaties of the European Union. Only a constitutional assembly or the citizens themselves via a referendum, are entitled to adopt such measures. The only subject an international conference could discuss is how to apply the UN resolutions asking for the immediate withdrawal of Turkish occupation forces and the full restoration of the sovereignty of the Republic. It is not legal to connect or depend those international obligations, directly or indirectly, on any constitutional changes in the country. On the contrary, all third parties have the obligation to abstain from any actions or declarations, much more from signing any documents, which constitute a direct or indirect infringement upon the right of Cypriot citizens to decide by their own free will on the fundamentals of their state structure and on the international status of the Republic. All parties should do everything in their power to assure to the Cypriots the conditions for the free expression of their will, without any threats, blackmails, pressures, faits accmplis etc.”

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos is a journalist and writer. He worked as an advisor on East-West Relations and Arms Control in the office of Greek PM Andreas Papapndreou (1985-88) and he was the chief correspondent of the Greek news agency ANA in Moscow (1989-99). He collaborated with Michel Pablo in launching the international review for self-management Utopie Critique. He has been a member of the Central Committee and the Secretariat and of the Committee on Foreign Policy of SYRIZA. He stopped having any relations with SYRIZA in July 2015.

Many top Democrats are stoking a political firestorm. We keep hearing that Russia attacked democracy by hacking into Democratic officials’ emails and undermining Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Instead of candidly assessing key factors such as longtime fealty to Wall Street that made it impossible for her to ride a populist wave, the party line has increasingly circled around blaming Vladimir Putin for her defeat.

Of course partisan spinners aren’t big on self-examination, especially if they’re aligned with the Democratic Party’s dominant corporate wing. And the option of continually fingering the Kremlin as the main villain of a 2016 morality play is clearly too juicy for functionary Democrats to pass up — even if that means scorching civil liberties and escalating a new cold war that could turn radioactively hot.

Much of the current fuel for the blame-Russia blaze has to do with the horrifying reality that Donald Trump will soon become president. Big media outlets are blowing oxygen into the inferno. But the flames are also being fanned by people who should know better.

Consider the Boston Globe article that John Shattuck — a former Washington legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union — wrote in mid-December. “A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump,” the civil libertarian wrote. “He has brought it on himself by dismissing a bipartisan call for an investigation of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a ‘ridiculous’ political attack on the legitimacy of his election as president.”

As quickly pointed out by Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University, raising the specter of treason “is simply wrong” — and “its wrongness matters, not just because hyperbole always weakens argument, but because the carefully restricted definition of the crime of treason is essential to protecting free spech and the freedom of association.”

Is Shattuck’s piece a mere outlier? Sadly, no. Although full of gaping holes, it reflects a substantial portion of the current liberal zeitgeist. And so the argument that Shattuck made was carried forward into the new year by Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, who approvingly quoted Shattuck’s article in a Jan. 1 piece that flatly declared: “In his dalliance with Vladimir Putin, Trump’s actions are skirting treason.”

The momentum of fully justified loathing for Trump has drawn some normally level-headed people into untenable — and dangerous — positions. (The “treason” approach that Shattuck and Kuttner have embraced is particularly ironic and misplaced, given that Trump’s current course will soon make him legally deserving of impeachment due to extreme conflicts of interest that are set to violate the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.)

Among the admirable progressives who supported Bernie’s presidential campaign but have succumbed to Russia-baiting of Trump are former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Congressman Keith Ellison, who is a candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Last week, in a widely circulated post on his Facebook page, Reich wrote: “Evidence continues to mount that Trump is on Putin’s side.” But Reich’s list of “evidence” hardly made the case that Trump “is on Putin’s side,” whatever that means.

A day later, when Trump tweeted a favorable comment about Putin, Rep. Ellison quickly echoed Democratic Party orthodoxy with a tweet: “Praising a foreign leader for undermining our democracy is a slap in the face to all who have served our country.”

Some of Putin’s policies are abhorrent, and criticizing his regime should be fair game as much as criticizing any other. At the same time, “do as we say, not as we do” isn’t apt to put the United States on high moral ground. The U.S. government has used a wide repertoire of regime change tactics including direct meddling in elections, and Uncle Sam has led the world in cyberattacks.

Intervention in the election of another country is categorically wrong. It’s also true that — contrary to conventional U.S. wisdom at this point — we don’t know much about a Russian role in last year’s election. We should not forget the long history of claims from agencies such as the CIA that turned out to be misleading or downright false.

Late last week, when the Obama administration released a drum-rolled report on the alleged Russian hacking, Democratic partisans and mainline journalists took it as something akin to gospel. But the editor of ConsortiumNews.com, former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry, wrote an assessment concluding that the latest report “again failed to demonstrate that there is any proof behind U.S. allegations that Russia both hacked into Democratic emails and distributed them via WikiLeaks to the American people.”

Even if the Russian government did intervene in the U.S. election by hacking emails and publicizing them, key questions remain. Such as:

*  Do we really want to escalate a new cold war with a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons?

*  Do we really want a witch-hunting environment here at home, targeting people with views that have some overlap with Kremlin positions?

*  Can the president of Russia truly “undermine our democracy” — or aren’t the deficits of democracy in the United States overwhelmingly self-inflicted from within the U.S. borders?

It’s so much easier to fixate on Putin as a villainous plotter against our democracy instead of directly taking on our country’s racist and class biases, its structural mechanisms that relentlessly favor white and affluent voters, its subservience to obscene wealth and corporate power.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about refusing to normalize the Trump presidency. And that’s crucial. Yet we should also push back against normalizing the deflection of outrage at the U.S. political system’s chronic injustices and horrendous results — deflection that situates the crux of the problem in a foreign capital instead of our own.

We should reject the guidance of politicians and commentators who are all too willing to throw basic tenets of civil liberties overboard, while heightening the risks of brinkmanship that could end with the two biggest nuclear powers blowing up the world.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

This article is Licensed under Creative Commons

There is a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria and the “western” media ignore it.

On December 22 al-Qaeda aligned Takfiris in the Wadi Barada valley shut down the main water supply for the Syrian capital Damascus. Since then the city and some 5-6 million living in and around it have to survive on emergency water distributions by the Syrian government. That is barely enough for people to drink – no washing, no showers and no water dependent production is possible.

This shut down is part of a wider, seemingly coordinated strategy to deprive all government held areas of utility supplies. Two days ago the Islamic State shut down a major water intake for Aleppo from the Euphrates. High voltage electricity masts on lines feeding Damascus have been destroyed and repair teams, unlike before, denied access. Gas supplies to parts of Damascus are also cut. A similar tactic was used by the Zionist terrorists of the Haganah who in 1947/48 poisoned and blew up the water mains and oil pipelines to Palestinian Haifa.

Wadi Barada is a river valley some 10 miles west of Damascus at the mountain range between Lebanon and Syria. It has been in the hands of local insurgents since 2012. The area was since loosely surrounded by Syrian government forces and their allies from Hizbullah.

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Two springs in the area provide the water for Damascus which is treated locally and then pumped through pipelines into the city’s distribution network. Since the early 1990s there is a low level conflict over the water diversion of the Barada river valley to the ever growing Damascus. The drought over the last years has intensified the problems. Local agriculture of the water rich valley had to cut back for lack of water as this was pumped into the city. But many families from the valley moved themselves into the city or have relatives living there.

The local rebels had kept the water running for the city. Al-Qaeda aligned groups have been in the area for some time. A propaganda video distributed by them and taken in the area showed (pic) the choreographed mass execution of Syrian government soldiers.

After the eastern part of the city of Aleppo was liberated by Syrian government forces, the local rebels and inhabitants in the Barada river valley were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government. But the al-Qaeda Takfiris disagreed and took over. The area is since under full al-Qaeda control and thereby outside of the recent ceasefire agreement.

On December 22 the water supply to Damascus was suddenly contaminated with diesel fuel and no longer consumable. A day later Syrian government forces started an operation to regain the area and to reconstitute the water supplies.

Photos and a video on social media (since inaccessible but I saw them when they appeared) showed the water treatment facility rigged with explosives. On Dec 27th the facility was blown up and partly destroyed.

Suddenly new organized “civil” media operations of, allegedly, locals in the area spread misinformation to “western” media. “There are 100,000 civilians under siege in Wadi Barada!” In reality the whole area once had, according to the last peacetime census, some 20,000 inhabitants. The White Helmets propaganda organization now also claims to be in the area. “The government had bombed the water treatment facility,” the propaganda groups claimed.

That is a. not plausible and b. inconsistent with the pictures of the destroyed facility. These show a collapse of the main support booms of the roof but no shrapnel impact at all. A bomb breaking through the roof and exploding would surely have left pocket marks all over the place. The damage, in my judgement, occurred from well designed, controlled explosions inside the facility.

Some insurgents posted pictures of themselves proudly standing within the destroyed facility and making victory signs.

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There is more such cheer-leading by insurgents on social media. Why when they claim that the government bombed the place?

On December 29 the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued an alarm about the water crisis:

The United Nations is alarmed that four million inhabitants in Damascus and surrounding areas have been cut off from the main water supply since 22 December. Two primary sources of drinking water- Wadi Barada and Ain-el-Fijah-which provide clean and safe water for 70 percent of the population in and around Damascus are not functioning, due to deliberate targeting resulting in the damaged infrastructure.

One of the two springs, Al-Feejeh, has now been retaken by the Syrian army. 1,300 civilians from Ain AlFeejeh, the nearby town with the treatment facility, have fled to the government held areas and were taken in by the Syrian Red Cross. The other spring and the treatment facility are still in Takfiri hands. The government has said that it will need some ten days to repair the system after the Syrian army has gained control of the facilities. That will still take some time.

Western media have hardly taken notice of the water crisis in Damascus and their coverage seems to actively avoid it. A search for Barada on the Washington Post website brings up one original piece from December 30 about the freshly negotiated ceasefire. The 6th paragraph says:

Airstrikes pounded opposition-held villages and towns in the strategically-important Barada Valley outside Damascus, activists said, prompting rebels to threaten to withdraw their compliance with a nationwide truce brokered by Russia and Turkey last week.

Then follow 16 paragraphs on other issues. Only at the very end of the piece comes this (mis-)information:

The Barada Valley is the primary source of water for the capital and its surrounding region. The government assault has coincided with a severe water shortage in Damascus since Dec. 22. Images from the valley’s Media Center indicate its Ain al-Fijeh spring and water processing facility have been destroyed in airstrikes. The government says rebels spoiled the water source with diesel fuel, forcing it to cut supplies to the capital.

On December 29 a piece  by main WaPo anti-Syria propagandist Liz Sly did not mention the water crisis or the Barada valley at all.

The New York Times links a Reuters pieces about the UN alarm about the water crisis. But I find nothing in its own reporting that even mentions the water crisis. One piece on December 31 refers shortly to attacks on Wadi Baradi by government forces at its very end.

A Guardian search for Barada only comes up with a piece from today mixed from agency reports. The headlines say “Hundreds of Syrians flee as Assad’s forces bomb Barada valley rebels”. The piece itself says that they flee to the government side.  In it the Syrian Observatory (MI-6) operation in Britain confirms that al-Qaeda rules the area which “Civil society organisations on the ground” deny. Only the very last of the 12 paragraph piece mentions the capital:

The Barada valley is the primary source of water for the capital and its surrounding region. The government assault has coincided with a severe water shortage in Damascus since 22 December. The government says rebels spoiled the water source with diesel fuel, forcing it to cut supplies to the capital.

Surely a few people “fleeing” (to the government side) “as Assad’s forces bombs” are way more important than 5 million people in Damascus without access to water. That the treatment facility is destroyed seems also unimportant.

All the above papers have been extremely concerned about every scratch to any propaganda pimp who had claimed to be in then rebel held east-Aleppo. They now show no concern at all for 5 million Syrians in Damascus who have been without water for 10 days and will likely be so for the rest of the month.

Alfonso Prat Gay dijo en su momento, en una conferencia en EE.UU., que el “trabajo sucio” ya estaba hecho. Se refería a las iniciales medidas económicas del gobierno Macri: la devaluación, el levantamiento a las restricciones cambiarias (CEPO), la eliminación o reducción de retenciones a las exportaciones, el arreglo con los acreedores en conflicto con más deuda y el ajuste de tarifas de servicios públicos.

Cuando se despedía, no dudó en hablar de “éxito” de su gestión, pese a la recesión y la inflación, coronado con un anuncio de 90.000 millones de dólares exteriorizados por el blanqueo, que podría llegar a 120.000 millones de dólares hacia fines de marzo cuando se exterioricen los inmuebles no declarados. Hay que pensar en un 10% de la exteriorización como potencial recaudación por multas.

De su propia boca escuchamos al Ministro saliente aludir al trabajo sucio y al éxito de la gestión, toda una confesión, que explicita beneficiarios y perjudicados.

Entre los primeros los grandes productores y exportadores, la gran banca y los especuladores, entre ellos los acreedores externos y nuevos prestamistas de la Argentina, y en general el gran capital hegemónico, pese a la recesión y la inflación. Claro, en materia de precios, son los sectores más concentrados los que explican la escalada de precios. No cualquiera puede incrementar los precios, y si no, veamos cuanto les cuesta a los trabajadores ajustar sus ingresos, ni hablar de los jubilados y los perceptores de planes sociales.

Los perjudicados son la mayoría de la sociedad, la gran masa de trabajadoras y trabajadores y el grueso de los pequeños y medianos productores y empresarios, en general, todos asociados a la capacidad de compra y venta en el mercado interno. Todos los datos de la economía muestran reducción de ventas y producción, por baja de consumo y capacidad adquisitiva de la mayoría de la población.

Nuevos ministros

Nicolás Dujovne se hará cargo del Ministerio de Hacienda desde 2017. Ya anunció en conferencia de prensa sus objetivos concentrados en: a) bajar el déficit, b) aumentar el gasto en infraestructura, c) reducir impuestos, distorsivos dice, y d) comunicar buenas noticias a la sociedad.

El primer objetivo es contradictorio con el segundo, por lo que se supone el nivel de ajuste del gasto social será importante. Dice que no ajustará pero que estudiará a fondo todos los gastos, siempre para reducirlos, no para aumentarlos.

La línea del ajuste queda clara, mientras que los constructores se preparan para intervenir en las licitaciones de obra pública que estuvo frenada durante el 2016 para intentar frenar el déficit fiscal.

El esfuerzo por incrementar obra pública contrasta con la segura reducción del gasto social. Una muestra es el reciente conflicto en el Conicet o en el Ministerio de Educación.

La reforma tributaria suena a beneficios para los empleadores, una pista que surge del calificativo “distorsivo” para los tributos. Lo que se quiere con ese lenguaje es reducir el costo de contratación a los inversores, para mejorar la perspectiva de rentabilidad al capital.

Ni por asomo se piensa en reducir la alícuota del IVA, principal fuente de recaudación tributaria en la Argentina, un 8% del PBI, contra el 6% del impuesto a las ganancias, de los cuales, más del 2% recae en los pagos de la cuarta categoría que abonan unos 2 millones de trabajadoras/es.

Sobre la comunicación a la sociedad, la especulación se asocia a la trayectoria de comunicador liberal del columnista de La Nación y TN.

Convengamos que una cosa es comunicar como analista, de derecha o de izquierda, y otra muy distinta seguir explicando el ajuste y la regresiva reestructuración de la economía argentina en la gestión Macri.

Otra novedad es que el Ministerio se dividió en Hacienda y en Finanzas. En este último caso se ascendió a Luis Caputo de Secretario a Ministro. ¿El mérito? Haber tenido éxito en endeudar al país y hacerlo regresar al mercado de préstamos mundial, algo que se profundizará desde el mismo enero del 2017.

La nueva deuda estimada entre 2016 y 2017 será de 90.000 millones de dólares, una fuerte hipoteca para el conjunto de la sociedad argentina, la que se comunicará como un éxito, ya que supone que el país vuelve a ser sujeto de préstamos del sistema financiero mundial.

Para fundamentar el cambio de Ministros, Macri y sus funcionarios de la Jefatura de Gabinete apuntaron a mejorar el equipo, nunca a promover cambios en la política económica para beneficio social.

Realizado el trabajo sucio, se busca profundizar el ajuste y la regresiva reestructuración a favor de la ganancia.

Claro que para ello tienen que disciplinar al conflicto social. Para eso tienen al Ministro del Interior y al de Trabajo que “dialogan” y pactan con la burocracia política y la sindical respectivamente.

Saben de la tradición combativa del pueblo argentino y por eso se empeñan en controlar el conflicto y si pueden, contenerlo en la fragmentación que hace visible la protesta en la actualidad.

Nueva situación mundial

El marco internacional continua desfavorable para la aspiración de atraer inversores.

La situación mundial privilegia la orientación de capitales hacia los países capitalistas desarrollados, especialmente EE.UU.

Luego del 20 de enero, con Danald Trump en Washington y su política de recuperación de la economía estadounidense, lo previsible será que la potencia imperialista actúe como una aspiradora de fondos de inversión de todo el mundo.

Sin contar, claro, que el mapa de la geopolítica cambiará en nuevas disputas entre los principales países del sistema mundial. Además de EE.UU., habrá que contar a Europa, China y Rusia que no solo disputan destino de inversores, sino condiciones de beneficio de sus políticas nacionales.

El papel de Argentina es subordinado en esta ecuación global, y a no dudar, el destino seguirá profundizando la dependencia del capitalismo local en el sistema mundial.

Julio C. Gambina

Julio C. Gambina: Presidente de la Fundación de Investigaciones Sociales y Políticas, FISYP.

Las fuerzas que combaten el calentamiento global y luchan para fortalecer la protección del medioambiente deben prepararse para recibir fuertes daños colaterales como resultado de la victoria de Donald Trump en la elección presidencial en los Estados Unidos. A juzgar por la retórica de campaña de Trump, y por declaraciones de sus aliados republicanos, se avecina una oleada de desregulaciones e incentivos a la producción local de gas, petróleo y carbón que desvirtuarán por completo la protección medioambiental en Estados Unidos.

Los ambientalistas han comenzado a evaluar los posibles daños y elaborar estrategias para evitar una embestida de las fuerzas antisostenibilidad más extremistas que jamás hayan controlado el Congreso estadounidense. La lista de posibles víctimas es larga y deprimente. Si se hacen realidad los peores pronósticos, Estados Unidos se volverá mucho menos ecologista, y la cooperación internacional resultará seriamente afectada.

The Year Ahead 2017 Cover Image

En la reciente reunión sobre el clima (COP 22) en Marrakesh, se habló mucho de los diversos modos en que el gobierno de Trump puede matar el acuerdo climático alcanzado en la COP 21 de París el año pasado. Puede usar el asesinato: que Trump lisa y llanamente rompa el acuerdo. O el hambre: que Estados Unidos se niegue a hacer o pagar su parte. O la tortura: exigir al resto de los países hacer más.

Seguro que hay otras formas, pero no estamos obligados a contemplarlas, no necesitamos hacerlo, ni deberíamos. Por el momento, nadie sabe qué medidas reales tomará Trump tras su asunción. Algunos esperan que prevalezca cierto grado de razón, sobre todo ahora que los mercados impulsan una transición a tecnologías no contaminantes. Pero otros temen que eso no suceda.

Básicamente, no sabemos lo que hará Trump porque él tampoco lo sabe. La política medioambiental de su gobierno no está escrita en piedra, sino en agua, que siempre busca el camino más rápido para llegar al punto más bajo. Cuán bajo podrán llevar ese punto los fanáticos y los intereses de la industria del carbón depende en parte de las barreras que les pongamos los demás.

Eso implica concentrarnos en movilizar fuerzas que ayuden a defender la permanencia de Estados Unidos en la campaña mundial para la sostenibilidad medioambiental; aunque esto no convencerá a los halcones del nuevo gobierno, servirá de apoyo a los sectores más moderados.

¿Quiénes integran ese “nosotros” que debe actuar ya?

En primer lugar, “nosotros” son en Estados Unidos los gobiernos y las legislaturas de los estados, las organizaciones no gubernamentales, las comunidades locales y las corporaciones. Todos deben movilizar el apoyo de los estadounidenses a la protección de los entornos locales y la contribución a las soluciones mundiales.

En segundo lugar, “nosotros” es la comunidad internacional: los casi 200 miembros de las Naciones Unidas que en 2015 aprobaron los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible y el acuerdo climático de París. Es fundamental que todos los miembros de la ONU, sin importar su tamaño, insistan en que la acción internacional seguirá guiándose por estos acuerdos, haga lo que haga Trump.

Hay que hacerle entender al nuevo gobierno por todos los medios que el interés económico y ecológico en la agenda de la sostenibilidad seguirá impulsando a países y empresas en esa dirección. Ayuda mucho que China haya declarado que no dejará pasar las oportunidades que ofrece la transición ecológica, y que asumirá el liderazgo internacional si Estados Unidos se retira.

Y China no estará sola. Aunque muchos lamentarán la ausencia de liderazgo estadounidense o la toma de medidas contrarias por el gobierno de Trump, el peso internacional de Estados Unidos ya no es determinante. Si no participa, otros países ocuparán su lugar y cosecharán los beneficios; y eso deben dejárselo bien en claro. Nada impide al Estados Unidos de Trump bajarse del tren; pero no podrá detenerlo. El resto del mundo seguirá avanzando por el mismo camino.

Las corporaciones estadounidenses y los mercados de capitales deben reforzar ese mensaje, no como mera enunciación política, sino como advertencia: si la economía estadounidense sacrifica las oportunidades implícitas en la agenda de sostenibilidad, será menos atractiva para los inversores y, por consiguiente, menos próspera. El mes pasado, 365 grandes empresas y grupos inversores estadounidenses dieron el primer paso, al emitir un llamado público a Trump para que no abandone el acuerdo climático de París. Si Trump pretende cumplir la promesa a sus votantes de más empleo y aumento de ingresos, un modo de hacerlo es promover la agenda ecológica de la eficiencia energética y la adopción de fuentes renovables.

El cuarto integrante del “nosotros” que debe actuar son los consumidores comprometidos de todo el mundo. Pero salir a manifestarse en las calles coreando consignas contra los gobiernos no bastará para lograr cambios; organizar a los consumidores en los niveles local, nacional, regional e internacional, tal vez sí. Y el mensaje no deben enviarlo solamente los consumidores por separado, sino también organizaciones con capacidad para alentar y amplificar ese mensaje: “No compraremos productos y servicios que se opongan a la agenda de sostenibilidad; preferiremos productos y marcas de calidad que respeten y promuevan esa agenda”. Cualquiera sea su forma final, el mensaje debe ser directo y transparente, y también debe apuntar a las corporaciones estadounidenses que se aprovechen de cualquier flexibilización de las normas locales en materia de medioambiente y emisiones.

La mayoría de nosotros no votamos por Trump, y no estamos obligados a seguirlo. Al contrario: cuanto más firmemente nos organicemos para mantener el rumbo y reforzar las acciones dirigidas a detener el calentamiento global y promover la sostenibilidad, más probable será que los miembros pragmáticos de la nueva mayoría puedan minimizar los daños dentro y fuera de Estados Unidos.

Traducción: Esteban Flamini

Bo Lidegaard

Bo Lidegaard: Editor en Jefe del diario danés Politiken.

President Obama’s last weeks in office have been marked by a series of exit interviews, conversations that are often as inherently fascinating as any discussion with a man soon to quit the most powerful job on the globe must be.

Some mainstream reports indicate that Donald Trump can at least partly do it, but not easily unless he is able to convince Congress of “Putin’s good intentions”

What’s never explained in the mainstream media reports is the legal status of US imposed sanctions. Only Security Council members can impose them on countries – not individual nations against others.

All unilaterally imposed US sanctions against other nations have no legal standing. They’re illegitimate. Trump can lift them against Russia or any other country if he wishes – not, however, without potential political consequences.

The Neocons want adversarial relations maintained with Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other countries.

John McCain outrageously calls Putin “a thug, a bully and a murderer…” Likeminded congressional members express similar sentiments.

Yet most Americans may be brainwashed to believe what’s patently false, malicious and ridiculous.

Trump enters office as the most widely disliked president in US history. He’ll certainly try turning things around once in office. Whatever he does to further arouse anger will complicate his task.

He’ll likely tread lightly on issues like lifting sanctions on Russia – perhaps not doing it straightaway, later some, not all, at least during his early months in office.

Another issue is distinguishing between sanctions imposed by Obama executive orders and others by congressional action, making them US law, despite their illegitimacy.

Lifting what Obama imposed can be done with a stroke of Trump’s pen. Undoing congressional actions is another matter entirely – risking a confrontation between the executive and legislative branches if he proceeds, what he wants to avoid.

US sanctions on Russia were imposed for arms sales to Syria, Iran, North Korea and other governments Washington opposes, alleged human rights abuses, and nonexistent “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, including Crimea rejoining Russia, falsely called “annexation.”

Imposing them was entirely for political reasons, part of a long-term US strategy to isolate, contain, weaken, and marginalize Russia.

Things turned out polar opposite to what Washington intended. Yet unsuccessful policies continue. Adversarial relations with Russia, China and other nations mean lucrative contracts for war-profiteers.

Justifying bloated military spending requires enemies, Russia considered America’s top existential threat by lunatics infesting Washington and the Pentagon.

This type thinking provides a strong headwind, perhaps restraining Trump from normalizes ties with Russia and cooperating with Putin in combating terrorism – at least to the extent of what he may have in mind.

G. W. Bush and Obama were weak presidents, putty in the hands of America’s deep state, front men for their agenda.

Trump is strong-willed, likely the main factor contributing to opposition in high places, intensified by the media, continuing even though he’s president-elect, soon to succeed Obama.

His messages are mixed, wanting a more robust military, including a “greatly strengthen(ed) and expand(ed) nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes” – separately saying “(l)et their be an arms race…(w)e will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

In contrast, he said

“(w)e’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems – our airports and all the other problems we have – we would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.”

“We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East – (W)e’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away – and for what?”

“It’s not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the 4 trillion dollars or 5 trillion dollars. I wish it were spent right here in the United States on schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart!”

Ignore political posturing. Follow what politicians do in office. Their actions define them. Trump’s agenda is unknown because he has no public record. Judge him solely on how he serves once inaugurated.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

I had promised myself and my family that on this holiday I would do nothing but relax. However events have overtaken my good intentions. I find myself in the unusual position of having twice been in a position to know directly that governments were lying in globe-shaking events, firstly Iraqi WMD and now the “Russian hacks”.

Anybody who believes the latest report issued by Obama as “proof” provides anything of the sort is very easily impressed by some entirely meaningless diagrams. William Binney, who was Technical Director at the NSA and actually designed their surveillance capabilities, has advised me by email. It is plain from the report itself that the Russian groups discussed have been under targeted NSA surveillance for a period longer than the timeframe for the DNC and Podesta leaks. It is therefore inconceivable that the NSA would not have detected and traced those particular data flows and they would be saved. In other words, the NSA would have the actual hack on record, would be able to recognise the emails themselves and tell you exactly the second the transmission or transmissions took place and how they were routed. They would be able to give you date, time and IP addresses. In fact, not only do they produce no evidence of this kind, they do not even claim to have this kind of definite evidence.

Secondly, Bill points out that WikiLeaks is in itself a top priority target and any transmission to WikiLeaks or any of its major operatives would be tracked, captured and saved by NSA as a matter of routine. The exact route and date of the transmission or transmissions of the particular emails to WikiLeaks would be available. In fact, not only does the report not make this information available, it makes no claim at all to know anything about how the information was got to WikiLeaks.

Of course Russian hackers exist. They attack this blog pretty well continually – as do hackers from the USA and many other countries. Of course there have been attempted Russian hacks of the DNC. But the report gives no evidence at all of the alleged successful hack that transmitted these particular emails, nor any evidence of the connection between the hackers and the Russian government, let alone Putin.

There could be no evidence because in reality these were leaks, not hacks. The report is, frankly, a pile of complete and utter dross. To base grave accusations of election hacking on this report is ludicrous. Obama has been a severe disappointment to all progressive thinkers in virtually every possible way. He now goes out of power with absolutely no grace and in a storm of delusion and deceit.

His purpose is apparently to weaken Trump politically, but to achieve that at the expense of heightening tensions with Russia to Cold War levels, is shameful. The very pettiness of Obama’s tongue out to Putin – minor sanctions and expelling some diplomatic families – itself shows that Obama is lying about the pretext. If he really believed that Russia had “hacked the election”, surely that would require a much less feeble response. By refusing to retaliate, Russia has shown the kind of polish that eludes Obama as he takes his empty charisma and presentational skills into a no doubt lucrative future in the private sector.

Up until now, the concept of Basic Income (BI) has enjoyed a greater history of being proposed than of being implemented. We may well be approaching a period, however, when this changes. The Ontario Government is holding consultations on setting up a BI pilot project. The Legislature in another Canadian Province, Prince Edward Island, has agreed to test out a version of BI. Pilot projects are also impending in Finland, the Netherlands and Scotland.

Basic Income has been suggested in an exceptionally wide range of forms, often with completely different objectives in mind. In fact, we can draw a line between the models that are concerned with improving lives and raising living standards and those that are focused on intensifying the capacity for capitalist exploitation. Among those in the ‘progressive’ category there is considerable diversity.

There’s the ‘universal demogrant’ that provides an income to everyone and the concept of a ‘negative income tax’ involving some level of means test. BI proposals come from liberal quarters that are responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion.

The above mentioned proposal for an Ontario pilot project would be part of this camp. Then there are the models that have more radical, transformative objectives in mind. These suggest that BI could be used to take from employers the power of economic coercion itself by severing the link between work and income. Often such ideas are tied to the notion of preparing for sweeping technological displacement and a ‘workless future’ by providing secure, adequate and unconditional income. Given the vast extent to which forms of unpaid labour are performed by women in this society, it is hardly surprising that there are also feminist arguments for BI.

I have to say that the one really common thread that I see running through all of the notions of a progressive BI is that they pay great attention to explaining how nice their systems would be but give little if any thought to the concrete prospects of implementation. Before looking further at these deficiencies and proposing an alternative approach, it might be useful to consider more seriously the neoliberal version that is hanging like a sword over all our heads.

Neoliberal Version

The deeply reactionary ideas of Charles Murray have extended to some very sinister proposals for BI. There are two basic elements that shape his system. Firstly, the universal payment, after the compulsory purchase of private health insurance, is set at the dreadfully low amount of $10,000 a year. Secondly, he is utterly insistent that all other systems of provision must be dismantled as a BI is put in place. Canada’s right wing Fraser Institute, recently used its blog to stress the same points as Murray, making clear that the level of provision must not interfere with the supply of low waged workers.

If governments today, as they intensify the neoliberal agenda, are starting to consider the possibilities of BI, I see three factors at work. Firstly, there is the not unimportant issue of legitimacy. Particularly because they are being provided with a generous amount of ‘progressive’ cover, they are able to present their deliberations on BI as a responsible weighing of the common good. The Ontario Liberals stand out as international champions in this regard. Their BI pilot project consultations, have enabled them to put in place yet another round of fake dialogue, with the empty promise of a “better way” diverting attention as they push people even deeper into poverty. The World Bank and the IMF have been worrying out loud about the backlash against their austerity agenda and its devastating impacts. That IMF economists are themselves musing about BI, is perhaps significant in this regard. It advances their agenda but can be dressed up to look progressive. It may be the best thing for the institutions of global capitalism since the myth of ‘poverty reduction’.

The second element of BI that I think is of interest to the architects of neoliberalism is that it can fine tune economic coercion as they create an ever more elastic workforce based on the most precarious forms of employment. The income support systems that emerged out of the Poor Law tradition, stressed intense restrictions and moral policing. Along with horribly inadequate benefit levels, this has been very useful in driving people into low waged work to an unprecedented extent. It may, however, be time to rethink this to a degree.

If people are moving between poverty wages and poverty level benefits more frequently in a precarious job market, perhaps they can be more effectively prodded into the worst jobs with less intrusive benefit systems. A less rule bound delivery of poverty income, that gives people a chance of retaining their housing, may be needed to keep them job ready. Linked to this, of course, is the huge boost to the employers of a BI system that constitutes a form of wage top up. Provided the payment is meagre, it will not impede the flow of low paid workers but it will mean that their employers receive a subsidy that absolves them from having to pay living wages or come under pressure to increase the amount they do provide.

Thirdly, the great advantage of neoliberal BI is that the inadequate and dwindling payment it provides turns those who receive it into customers in the marketplace. In my opinion, BI would be far from the best way to strengthen the social infrastructure at any time but in the context of an intensifying agenda of austerity and privatization, it is a recipe for disaster. It’s really about the commodification of social provision. Your payment may actually be less conditional and somewhat larger but, as you shop through the privatized remains of the social infrastructure, with inadequate means and very few rights, you are dramatically worse off. That, in my view, is what is being prepared by those who will actually implement a system of BI and the hopes and wishes to the contrary of its progressive advocates don’t count for very much.

Progressive Dreams

I said previously that proposals for redistributive or transformative models of BI are generally marked by a tendency to focus on the desirability of what is being advanced while paying much less attention to actual prospects for implementation. I’ve yet to see, quite bluntly, any serious attempt to assess what stands in the way of a progressive BI and what can be done to bring it into existence. It simply isn’t enough to explain how just and fair a given model would be if it could be adopted. In order to credibly advance BI as the solution, there are some questions that must be settled.

Firstly, income support systems came into being because, while employers welcome an oversupply of labour and the desperation that comes with it as something that boosts their bargaining power, the total abandonment of the jobless creates social unrest. Some measure of income support, provided as a reluctant concession, has proved to be necessary. However, the systems of provision that have been put in place have always been as inadequate as possible so as to undermine employer strength as little as possible. A widely delivered or even universal adequate payment would greatly tilt that balance back the other way. What reason is there to think that this is likely to be implemented?

Secondly, over the last several decades, concessions made during the post war years have been taken back. Trade unions have been weakened, workers’ rights undermined and low waged work has increased considerably. The degrading of income support systems has been central to creating the climate of desperation needed to achieve this. Not only have benefits for the unemployed been attacked but other systems, especially for disabled people have been undermined so as to generate a scramble for the worst jobs. This has led to a shift in the balance of forces in society and we are fighting a largely defensive struggle. Given this very unfavourable situation, in which unions and movements are not in the ascendancy, how can it be supposed that those profiting from the present situation are likely to accept a measure of redistributive social reform that is at least as sweeping as anything put in place during the post war boom? What is the plan to make this happen?

Thirdly, as right wing governments and political parties directly linked to the most reactionary business interests consider BI and set up pilot projects that provide meagre payments and focus on how to ensure people on social benefits become low waged workers, what reason is there to imagine that a progressive BI, rather than the neoliberal variant, is being cooked up?

Regardless of these issues, it is sometimes asserted that an adequate system of provision must be put in place simply because we are moving toward a “workless future.” In such a society, it is suggested, masses of people who have been displaced will have to be provided for and the capitalists will have to think like Elon Musk, of Tesla Motors and support BI because it is the only sensible and rational solution. To imagine such responsible provision for the future is to place undue faith in a system based on the making of profit. If they won’t stop building pipelines in the face of environmental catastrophe, there’s little reason to expect them to worry too much about sensible solutions to technological displacement. There simply is no post-capitalist capitalism and no social policy innovation that is going to bring it about.

At a recent panel on Basic Income that I spoke at, the moderator posed a challenge. She accepted that BI might not be a way forward but asked, if that were so, what “bold vision” could be advanced in its place. It’s a fair question but a realistic appraisal of what we are up against is still obligatory, even if that has some sobering aspects to it. The great problem that we have is that the neoliberal years have done a lot of damage. The level of exploitation has been increased and working class movements have been weakened. While what we demand and aspire to is very important, the bigger question is what we can win. What’s disturbing about the left wing turn to BI is that is seems to think there is a social policy end run around the realities of neoliberalism and the need to resist it. There is no such thing.

British Labour Party and BI

With very good reason, there has been considerable excitement internationally around the Jeremy Corbyn leadership in the British Labour Party. His close ally, Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has been paying some attention to adopting BI, as part of a platform that would express a break with the austerity consensus. McDonnell, from a position on the left of a major social democratic party, raises the possibility of a ‘best case scenario’ for progressive BI. For that very reason, the question is posed of whether the ‘bold vision’ I spoke of should be framed around the universal payment concept or devoted to other objectives.

In my opinion, if we are to consider goals we set and demands we put forward in the face of neoliberalism, that are based on the needs of workers and communities and create the conditions for challenging capitalism itself, we sell ourselves well short if we settle for something so limited and inherently conservative as the universal payment. BI, when all is said and done, is a vision for nothing more than the means to be a customer in an unjust society that decides what is for sale. How much bolder and more meaningful to fight for free, massively expanded and fully accessible systems of healthcare and public transportation? How much better to focus on the creation of social housing and try to expand it so that, not only the poorest, but most working class people enjoy its benefits? There is universal child care and vast array of important community services to pay attention to. Moreover, we can work to wrest as much power as possible out of the hands of the mandarins of state bureaucracy and fight to increase the control working class people exercise over the public services they rely on. When it comes to existing systems of income support, we should not for a moment accept their poverty level benefits, bureaucratic intrusion and forms of moral policing steeped in racism and sexism. There is a fight to be taken forward for living income, full entitlement and programs that meet the real needs of unemployed, poor and disabled people, as opposed to the present ‘rituals of degradation’ they embody. At every point, let’s try to ensure that these expanded services are not paid for by other working class people but by forcing the corporations, banks and those who own them to pay by increasing their tax burden and imposing levies on their wealth.

The struggle to expand and improve public services would have to, of course, be linked to workers’ struggles for living wages, workplace rights and real compensation for injured workers. Beyond this, let’s challenge as much as we can the ‘business decisions’ that deplete resources, pollute and threaten us with ecological disaster.

I am suggesting that our movements need to challenge, rather than come to terms with, the neoliberal order and the capitalist system that has produced it. For all its claims to be a sweeping measure, the notion of progressive BI is a futile attempt to make peace with that system. In reality, even that compromise is not available. The model of BI that governments are working on in their social policy laboratories will not ‘end the tyranny of the labour market’ but render it more dreadful. The agenda of austerity and privatization requires a system of income support that renders people as powerless and desperate as possible in the face of exploitation and that won’t change if it is relabelled as ‘Basic Income’. •

John Clarke is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

The Louisiana coast loses a football field’s worth of land every 38 minutes. This staggering rate of land loss has been brought on by climate change and coastal erosion accelerated by human activities, including water diversion projects and damage done by the oil and gas industry. 

It is also a problem that is best seen from the sky. Thanks to the nonprofit conservation organization SouthWings, I was able to photograph the state’s troubled coast for DeSmog during a flight on November 15, 2016.

“Flying out along the Louisiana coast and seeing the tattered wetlands from above with your own eyes make the scale of the threat posed by coastal land loss feel strikingly real and immediate,” Meredith Dowling, SouthWings associate executive director, told me while discussing the group’s work.

The organization offers flights, piloted by volunteers, with the goal of expanding the public’s understanding of the biodiversity and ecosystems of the American Southeast. “To have a pilot point at a map that shows where land should be and look down and see only water, that sticks with you,” she said.

Oil and gas industry site near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

Dowling is based in New Orleans. For her, the state’s land loss is personal.

“Coastal land loss and climate change threaten the future of coastal Louisiana and all of us who call this place home,” she said. “Having independent eyes monitoring our critically important ecosystems and reporting bad actors to regulators helps protect us all from those who would illegally pollute our land and waterways.”

During my flight, I photographed active and abandoned oil and gas industry sites that have been named in lawsuits, filed by parish governments, which are making their way through the court system.

Plaquemines, Jefferson, Vermilion, Cameron, and St. Bernard Parishes have filed multiple suits against oil and gas companies which operate, or used to operate, in their parishes.

The parishes allege that the companies did not comply with rules spelled out in the permits that allowed them to work in the wetlands, or operated without permits at all, hastening coastal erosion. The permits require companies to restore the areas they impacted to the original condition when work is complete — a requirement overlooked by the industry for years. The lawsuits aim to provide some of the funds needed to repair and restore the coast.

Oil and gas industry site in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The state is losing 100 yards of coastal land to erosion every 38 minutes, with oil and gas industry practices contributing to this problem.

Oil and gas industry site near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Plaquemines Parish.

Former Republican Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration tried to squash the parish lawsuits, but current Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards’ administration supports them.

Gov. Edwards has alerted coastal parish governments that if they do not sue oil and gas companies for environmental impacts to their parishes, the state may do so on their behalf.

Aerial view of Terrebonne Parish, one of the Louisiana parishes that didn’t opt to sue the oil and gas industry for environmental damages from past practices.

The straight lines of human activity still cross the wetlands of Terrebonne Parish, where they are visible from the sky.

But despite Gov. Edwards’ attempts to hold industry accountable for the harm already caused to the coast, he is simultaneously welcoming new fossil fuel energy developments along that same coast and lavishing the industry with tax incentives.

On December 21 he announced that Venture Global LNG will be building a liquified natural gas (LNG) facility, which will also export LNG, in Plaquemines Parish. The $8.5 billion LNG complex will be able to export 20 million metric tons of LNG per year and is expected to offer 250 jobs with an average yearly salary of $70,000.

But Anne Rolfes, founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, thinks that the state should be considering more than just the LNG facility’s ability to create decent-paying jobs. Her organization advocates for the state to move away from the fossil fuel industry and instead develop sustainable energy projects.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Rolfes told TV station WDSU, “To be on the one hand grappling with coastal destruction, and the other hand preparing to build a huge facility on that very same coast.”

Similarly, the Obama administration recently gave mixed signals on climate change and fossil fuel development.

On December 22, it released a draft climate science report, which maintains that climate change is primarily caused by humans releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. On the same day, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced that the agency will offer “more than 48 million acres offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama for oil and gas exploration and development, in a lease sale that will include all available unleashed areas in the Central Planning Area.”

Rolfes isn’t counting on the state’s congressional delegation or the incoming Trump administration to protect Louisiana.

“One thing we can see in this post-election world is that people are upset and are in the streets,“ Rolfes wrote in a press release after Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. “We will harness this energy for real action on climate change, on accidents, for an end to drilling in our Gulf of Mexico ― for all the things we have to do if we want to leave our children a planet they can live on.”

The photos here are a reminder of Louisiana’s predicament: An area the size of at least three football fields vanished from the Louisiana coastline while I wrote these words.

As for the Trump administration soon taking the helm, Dowling said SouthWings remains undaunted. “We have seen politics threaten to undermine environmental protections before, and we will persevere.”

Golden Meadow, Louisiana, in Lafourche Parish, one of the coastal parishes that opted not to sue the oil and gas industry for past practices that failed to restore coastal wetlands.

A natural gas flare is visible at an oil and gas facility in Plaquemines Parish.

Infrastructure dots the waters and disappearing coastal land of Plaquemines Parish.

Industrial buildings line the fragile coast of Plaquemines Parish.

The oil and gas industry has long been building on the coastal land of Plaquemines Parish, though that activity has contributed to the disappearance of that fragile land due to coastal erosion.

Plaquemines Parish is one of the Louisiana parishes suing the oil and gas industry for failing to restore coastal wetlands affected by the industry’s practices, a requirement long overlooked.

An aerial view of Lafourche Parish reveals the disappearing remains of its coastal lands. This parish decided not to participate in the lawsuits against the oil and gas industry for failing to restore coastal wetlands, a practice which is helping shrink the remaining coastal lands.

Island Road leading from Isle de Jean Charles to Pointe au Chien, in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. 

Main Image: Golden Meadow, Louisiana, in Lafourche Parish.

The US government has begun requesting foreign travelers to submit their social media information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before traveling into the country. The practice is claimed to be part of broader efforts to identify potential “terrorist threats.”

The request is part of the online Electronic System for Travel Authorization, a visa waiver application that many visitors must complete. The choices include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, as well as additional space for applicants to volunteer other lesser-known platforms.

Privacy rights activists have pointed out that there are few guidelines about how the information could be used by CBP or shared with other agencies. In effect, the practice represents an infringement on the First and Fourth Amendments, protecting freedom of expression and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. This represents yet another development of a broader process of the erosion of democratic rights, as the US government assumes ever more increasingly the character of a police state.

While the CBP instituted the practice last week, the agency has claimed that—for now—it will not bar entry to applicants who decline to provide their social media information. The US Federal Register states that “collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide Department of Homeland Security (DHS) greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case.”

The US government approves roughly 10 million visa applications a year and had 77.5 million foreign visitors in 2015 alone. The scooping up of such a vast amount of data will in effect lead to the creation of the largest government-controlled database of its kind virtually overnight.

The ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology have cautioned that the practice could potentially provide the state with “gateways into an enormous amount of [users’] online expression and associations, which can reflect highly sensitive information about that person’s opinions, beliefs, identity and community.”

The groups also warned that government surveillance will “fall hardest on Arab and Muslim communities, whose usernames, posts, contacts and social networks will be exposed to intense scrutiny.”

The Internet Association, a group representing companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, argued the policy violates freedom of expression.

Internet privacy group Access Now pointed out that while the DHS claims the data collection is not mandatory, most applicants will not know that they have a choice at all. It is also likely to serve as a dangerous precedent upon which the government could implement further information probes.

Nathan White of Access Now stated: “The process to enter the US is confusing, and it’s likely that most visitors will fill out the card completely rather than risk additional questions from intimidating, uniformed officers—the same officers who will decide which of your jokes are funny and which ones make you a security risk.”

The DHS is believed to already have the ability to perform limited scans of social media data. The idea was first floated by the government following the San Bernardino killings in California, in which social media profiles factored into the investigations alongside a locked iPhone 5C.

Fifteen years after the bogus “War on Terror” began, the United States has curtailed basic democratic rights and conducted mass illegal surveillance on the population. What is more, in every major terrorist attack on both US and European soil, the perpetrators have been known by intelligence agencies.

Clearly, the increasing surveillance of the population has done little to prevent terrorist threats. In reality, the impetus behind authoritarian measures has far more to do with strangling social opposition.

The most notorious and far-reaching anti-democratic measures were revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who uncovered massive government spying of US citizens as well as foreigners through the illegal collection of cellphone metadata. He has been forced into exile over fear of arrest or even assassination.

The US government has already made enormous efforts to track the movements of citizens and foreigners alike. In early 2015, information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been tracking the movements of millions of Americans through a national license plate reader program.

The DEA operates a National License Plate Recognition program, started in 2008, that connects its license plate readers with other law enforcement agencies. Under the guise of the “War on Drugs,” the federal government is moving quickly to create a centralized database of all drivers’ movements throughout the country.

A report released by the ACLU in July 2013, called “You Are Being Tracked,” detailed a massive system of automatic license plate readers in use throughout the United States. Small, high-speed cameras mounted on police cars, road signs, bridges, and elsewhere capture thousands of license plates per minute.

Drivers’ information is kept for years or even indefinitely, with little to no protection for personal privacy rights. The information also can be shared with any other government agency regardless of whether or not it pertains to the “War on Drugs.”

An undated document shows the DEA has already deployed at least 100 license plate readers across the US, and that its database already held more than 343 million records. A 2010 document demonstrates that the agency had installed 41 plate reader monitoring stations in Texas, New Mexico and California alone.

The DEA uses the collected information to data mine in order to “identify travel patterns” of specific individuals “of high interest,” helping to track and even predict their movements. The report does not specify what constitutes a person of “high interest.” It goes on to describe how the system monitors drivers in real time, with the ability to notify law enforcement officers immediately when a certain plate is spotted.

With the liberation of the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, it appears that the Syrian government in Damascus is on its way to ending the highly destructive conflict now ongoing for nearly 6 years.

But to assume the Syrian conflict is on the verge of resolution is to assume the Syrian conflict was fought in a geopolitical vacuum, disconnected from regional, even global agendas.

In fact, the proxy war the West waged on Syria was considered for the years before it began, during its planning and preparation stages, as only a prerequisite for war with Iran and a greater global conflict to prevent the reemergence of Russia and the rise of China.

US Hegemony Seeks to Eliminate Rising Superpowers 

At the close of the Cold War, the US sought to establish and maintain itself as the world’s sole superpower.

US Army General Wesley Clark, in a 2007 Flora TV talk titled, “A Time to Lead,” would reveal this post-Cold War agenda by relating a conversation he had as early as 1991 with then US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, by stating (emphasis added):

I said Mr. Secretary you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm. And he said, well yeah, he said but but not really, he said because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and we didn’t. And this was just after the Shia uprising in March of 91′ which we had provoked and then we kept our troops on the side lines and didn’t intervene. And he said, but one thing we did learn, he said, we learned that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets wont stop us. He said, and we have got about five or ten years to clean up those all Soviet client regimes; Syria, Iran, Iraq, – before the next great super power comes on to challenge us. 

Revealed in General Clark’s statement is a clear, singular agenda, beginning after the Cold War, and evident with Desert Storm, the conflict in the Balkans, the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and the US invasion and occupation of Iraq as well as the overall expansion of US military power projection predicated upon the “War on Terror” following the attacks on New York City and Washington DC on September 11, 2001.

America’s “regime change” spree included not only the above mentioned wars, but also a series of so-called “color revolutions” across Eastern Europe. This includes Otpor!’s activities between 1998-2004 in Serbia, the 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, and the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.

Those involved in these US-backed regime change operations, both within the US State Department and American private industry (the corporate media and IT giants like Facebook and Google), as well as “activists” from each respective nation, would begin in 2008 to train opposition leaders from across the Arab World ahead of the 2011 US-engineered “Arab Spring.”

The US State Department itself, in a 2008 press release, would admit to organizing a “Alliance of Youth Movements Summit,” admitting:

This Alliance of Youth Movements had organic beginnings in the sense that already, youth movements from around the world that were utilizing online, mobile and digital media were interacting to discuss best practices. The State Department acted as a facilitator to help provide some structure to this trend by partnering with entities like Facebook, Howcast, Google, MTV, and Columbia Law School.

Discussed throughout the dialogue featured in the press release were the very tactics used to serve as cover for inevitably violent regime change operations from Egypt and Libya to Syria and Yemen. A look at attendance of the US State Department’s “Alliance of Youth Movement Summits” reveals many of the groups that spearheaded protests upon returning home to the Middle East including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt.

Eventually, the New York Times in an article titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” would admit:

A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The goal of both direct military intervention and US-engineered “color revolutions” was to fulfill precisely what General Clark claimed US policymakers sought since the end of the Cold War – the elimination of states operating independently that might eventually rival American global hegemony.

Syria Just Another Stop Along the Way 

The destruction of Iraq, the 2006 Israeli war on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and continuous efforts to isolate and topple the government in Tehran, were all part of this singular agenda. Throughout US policy papers stretching back for years, it was admitted that the key to ultimately toppling Iran was the destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the elimination of Syria as an Iranian ally.

In 2007, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” would reveal (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

In 2009, US corporate-financier sponsored geopolitical policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, would publish a 170 page report titled, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), in which it proposes several options, including having Israel attack Iran on Washington’s behalf. The report states (emphasis added):

…the Israelis may want U.S. help with a variety of things. Israel may be more willing to bear the risks of Iranian retaliation and international opprobrium than the United States is, but it is not invulnerable and may request certain commitments from the United States before it is ready to strike. For instance, the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus.

It is clear that no “peace deal” would be struck, and instead, the wholesale destruction of Syria would be orchestrated. Many of the proposals presented in the Brookings report in regards to triggering conflict and regime change in Iran were instead used on Syria.

En 1989, el profesor universitario Francis Fukuyama, doctor en Ciencias Políticas en Harvard, despertó la atención académica por su artículo “¿El fin de la historia?” y saltó a la fama con su libro “El fin de la historia y el último hombre” (1992), al que siguieron una serie de artículos y sus últimas obras: “Los orígenes del orden político” (2011) y “Orden político y decadencia política” (2014).

El profesor Fukuyama fue miembro del equipo de Planeamiento Político del Departamento de Estado de los EE.UU. y está vinculado, entre otras entidades, con Rand Corporation, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Inter-American Dialogue y The New America Foundation, instituciones que funcionan como “think-tanks” para la promoción de la democracia norteamericana, en estrechas relaciones con la CIA y las Fuerzas Armadas de los EE.UU. Últimamente Fukuyama se ha dedicado a los estudios sobre América Latina.

Pero las ideas de Fukuyama no son tan simples como a menudo se repite y difunde. En realidad, este profesor explícitamente es un seguidor del filósofo alemán G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) y del ruso Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968); y, por tanto, el término “fin de la historia”, que ocupa el centro de la concepción, no tiene que ver, en modo alguno, con una especie de paralización de ésta, sino con el supuesto de que la historia es un proceso que culmina en un estado superior de vida, que tampoco es el comunismo previsto por Karl. Marx.

Su visión carece de la genialidad y profundidad de Hegel, para quien la historia culmina en la conciencia y realización de la libertad alcanzada por el espíritu universal en occidente.

Fukuyama es un simple panegirista del sistema norteamericano, y su idea central es que, luego del derrumbe del bloque socialista, en el mundo no hay ninguna alternativa al régimen económico y político que ha triunfado en occidente, de modo que el “fin de la historia” y el paso a la “post-historia” se presenta con el arribo a un nuevo estado de la humanidad, en el cual la democracia, el liberalismo económico y político, y los valores de la cultura consumista (léase la globalización capitalista neoliberal) -a cuya vanguardia se ubican precisamente los EE.UU.- se imponen de manera definitiva, como un verdadero “Estado universal hegemónico”, según el concepto forjado por Kojève.

Para Fukuyama, ni las religiones militantes, ni los nacionalismos son capaces de crear alguna alternativa para este momento histórico superior y final de la humanidad, en el que únicamente será necesaria la búsqueda interminable de soluciones técnicas para la satisfacción de las exigencias de los consumidores, sostiene. Según él, tampoco se acabarán los conflictos internacionales, pues seguirán “en” y “desde” el Tercer Mundo, con países que se encuentran “empantanados” en la historia, en su prehistoria.

En otro artículo publicado en 1999 (“Pensando sobre el fin de la historia diez años después”), asegura: “nada de lo que ha sucedido en la política o la economía mundiales en los últimos diez años contradice, en mi opinión, la conclusión de que la democracia liberal y la economía de mercado son las únicas alternativas viables para la sociedad actual”.

Sin embargo, la situación se altera a raíz del triunfo de Donald Trump. En un nuevo artículo publicado por el Financial Times (11/noviembre/2016) titulado “US against the world? Trump´s America and the new global order”, Fukuyama advierte que el orden liberal está en riesgo por los “nacionalismos populistas” y las “mayorías democráticas llenas de ira y energía”.

Es evidente, asegura, que el triunfo de Trump, se debió a la América rural y pueblerina, junto a los trabajadores sindicalizados que han sido golpeados por la desindustrialización, y hasta el “voto culto” que anhela identidad nacional; un triunfo en la línea del Brexit en Gran Bretaña y que es previsible en Francia por el ascenso del Frente Nacional con Marine Le Pen.

De repente, entonces, el “fin de la historia” se ha visto afectado: Trump cuestiona el libre comercio y anuncia el retorno a la Norteamérica auténtica, blanca, interna, proteccionista, industrial; las derechas nacionalistas avanzan en Europa, resurgen China y Rusia, y despiertan aquellas clases “enojadas” contra un orden liberal que no les benefició (solo aprovechó al 1% en los EE.UU.); de modo que hay el “peligro” de que opere un cambio de la “internacional liberal” a la “internacional populista liberal”, un cambio de “era” que puede ser “tan trascendental como la caída del muro de Berlín en 1989”.

Si la historia de la humanidad está como ahora lo advierte Fukuyama, entonces nuestra América Latina ha tenido razón, y no las potencias de occidente, con EE.UU. a la cabeza; y, además, la región está en el verdadero camino de la historia humana.

A raíz del derrumbe del bloque socialista, también en América Latina parecía no haber alternativas a la globalización transnacional y neoliberal, de modo que se instalaron gobiernos que siguieron al pie de la letra el Consenso de Washington y los condicionamientos del FMI a través de las Cartas de Intención.

Pero ese camino cambió desde 1999 y prosiguió en los siguientes años con la sucesión de gobiernos progresistas y de nueva izquierda, en los cuales las masas “enojadas” encontraron la expresión de sus intereses, al punto que se hizo posible cuestionar el libre comercio y el neoliberalismo que, a partir de las décadas finales del siglo XX, convirtieron a América Latina en la región más inequitativa del mundo.

El “atentado” contra la historia (el “orden liberal”) por parte de los gobiernos progresistas, sistemáticamente ha sido enfrentado por las fuerzas opositoras a esa ruptura: el imperialismo, el capital transnacional, el empresariado de derecha, los políticos tradicionales y los medios de comunicación privados al servicio de todos estos intereses. Ninguna oposición ha sido descartada, incluyendo las estrategias de los golpes de Estado blandos.

Ahora, la “era Trump” (Fukuyama) bien podría servir para que en América Latina se refuercen las estrategias propias contra la globalización neoliberal puesta en jaque por los “nacionalismos populistas” en las grandes potencias, con EE.UU. a la cabeza.

Pero, al mismo tiempo, no desaparecen los peligros sobre la región y especialmente contra los gobiernos progresistas que aún quedan, derivados de las amenazantes posturas de Trump, que recuerdan las políticas que Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) tuvo para América Latina en su tiempo.

Así es que esa América Latina “empantanada” en su prehistoria (Fukuyama) tiene en sus poblaciones llenas de “ira, enojo y energía”, las riendas para construir otro tipo de historia, que salve a la humanidad del “fin de la historia” resumida en el orden liberal. Hasta Fukuyama es capaz de sostener: “Las élites liberales que han creado el sistema tienen que escuchar a las voces de ira fuera de las puertas y pensar en la igualdad social y la identidad como temas de primera gama que deben abordar”.

Juan J. Paz y Miño Cepeda

Juan J. Paz y Miño Cepeda: Historiador, investigador y articulista ecuatoriano.

El respaldo electoral al nuevo presidente de los Estados Unidos supone, de entrada, un desahogo social -los votos de la ira- para los damnificados por la actual globalización en aquel importante país.

Ya hace veinte años el analista y ensayista J. Rifkin relató cómo se dibujaban dos Américas. Ciudades con alta tecnología que prosperan en el nuevo entramado económico global, mientras otras áreas del mismo estado perdían sus fundiciones y plantas textiles. Estos serían los que defienden un reforzado nacionalismo norteamericano, frente a lo que perciben como rampante dumping fiscal, ambiental y laboral de lo que se ha dado en llamar Chimérica.

Es decir, la particular economía global que a un lado y otro del Pacífico convierte a China, Estados Unidos o México en un área que disuelve las fronteras (sobre todo para capitales y mercancías). Un nuevo orden mundial bajo el dominio de la economía informática (infocapitalismo) de inversores financieros, con regulaciones nacionales que inexorablemente se van igualando a la baja (sobre todo las salariales).

Como ya he escrito en estas páginas, era muy previsible que en estas circunstancias encontrase respaldo un nacionalismo que hizo la fabulosa promesa de regresar a la ciudad de la infancia, a un mundo previo a la Chimérica que han ido tejiendo las empresas multinacionales. Un mundo en el que no hay ya centro, ni debe haber fronteras, ni barreras. Por eso el regreso a la ciudad de la infancia reclamaba un gigantesco muro material entre EE.UU. y México y otro, comercial, entre EE.UU. y China. Estados Unidos contra Chimérica.

Esto es algo que ya habían anticipado en un visionario ensayo (con el título Imperio, editado por Harvard University Press, 2000) M. Hardt y A. Negri pronosticando que algunos sectores de trabajadores en los países hasta ahora dominantes llegarían a creer que sus intereses están vinculados a su identidad nacional. Como defensa ante los males de la globalización, defensa ante un nuevo Imperio global. Por eso respaldaron el nacionalismo de Donald Trump.

Ahora bien, ¿es posible desandar el camino que en las últimas décadas llevó a Estados Unidos hacia Chimérica? Aún más, ¿es posible que los grandes grupos financieros y empresariales (los enigmáticos mercados en Nueva York, París o Londres) que han ido dejando atrás a los Estados nación, a cambio de un Imperio global, acepten el regreso al pasado? ¿Es posible hacerlo en Washington de la mano de J. P. Morgan, Amazon o Exxon Mobil?

Lo dudo mucho. De entrada porque, como dijo Hillary Clinton hablando de Chimérica, según supimos por los papeles de Wikileaks: «¿Cómo negocias con mano dura con tu banquero?». Pero, sobre todo, porque cuando circula en televisión un relato corrosivo sobre la Casa Blanca como es House of Cards, creo que estamos ante un claro síntoma de que el poder que nos gobierna está ya en otros lugares, no en la Casa Blanca.

Albino Prada

Albino Prada: Doctor en Economía y ensayista.

Unos días después del acuerdo entre Rusia y Turquía que permitió acabar con la interminable batalla de Alepo, leí en un célebre semanario francés el siguiente comentario: “La permanente crisis de Oriente Medio está lejos de resolverse. Unos piensan que la solución pasa obligatoriamente por Rusia, mientras que otros creen que todo depende de Turquía. Aunque lo que queda claro ahora es que, de nuevo y definitivamente –por lo menos cabe desearlo–, Rusia tiene en sus manos los argumentos decisivos para poner punto final a esa crisis”. ¿Qué tiene de particular este comentario? Pues que se publicó en la revista parisina L’Illustration … el 10 de septiembre de 1853.

O sea, hace ciento sesenta y tres años la crisis de Oriente Medio ya era calificada de “permanente”. Y es probable que lo siga siendo… Aunque un parámetro importante cambia a partir de este 20 de enero: llega un nuevo presidente de Estados Unidos a la Casa Blanca: Donald Trump. ¿Puede esto modificar las cosas en esta turbulenta región? Sin ninguna duda, porque, desde finales de los años 1950, Estados Unidos es la potencia exterior que mayor influencia ejerce en esta área y porque, desde entonces, todos los presidentes estadounidenses, sin excepción, han intervenido en ella. Recordemos que el caos actual en esta zona es, en gran parte, la consecuencia de las intervenciones militares norteamericanas decididas, a partir de 1990, por los presidentes George H. Bush, Bill Clinton y George W. Bush, y por el (más reciente) azorado apoyo a las “primaveras árabes” estimuladas por Barack Obama (y su secretaria de Estado Hillary Clinton).

Aunque globalmente la línea que defendió el candidato republicano durante su campaña electoral fue calificada de “aislacionista”, Donald Trump ha declarado en repetidas ocasiones que la Organización del Estado Islámico (OEI o ISIS por sus siglas en inglés) es el “enemigo principal” de su país y que, por consiguiente, su primera preocupación será destruirlo militarmente. Para alcanzar ese objetivo, Trump está dispuesto a establecer una alianza táctica con Rusia, potencia militarmente presente en la región desde 2015 como aliada principal del Gobierno de Bachar el Asad. Esta decisión de Donald Trump, si se confirma, representaría un espectacular cambio de alianzas que desconcierta a los propios aliados tradicionales de Washington. En particular a Francia, por ejemplo, cuyo Gobierno socialista –por extrañas razones de amistad y negocios con Estados teocráticos ultrarreaccionarios como Arabia Saudí y Qatar– ha hecho del derrocamiento de Bachar el Asad, y por consiguiente de la hostilidad hacia el presidente ruso Vladímir Putin, el alfa y el omega de su política exterior (1).

Donald Trump tiene razón: las dos grandes batallas para derrotar definitivamente a los yihadistas del ISIS –la de Mosul en Irak y la de Raqqa en Siria– aún están por ganar. Y van a ser feroces. Una alianza militar con Rusia es, sin duda, una buena opción. Pero Moscú tiene aliados importantes en esa guerra. El principal de ellos es Irán, que participa directamente en el conflicto con hombres y armamento. E indirectamente pertrechando a las milicias de voluntarios libaneses chiíes del Hezbolá.

El problema para Trump es que también repitió, durante su campaña electoral, que el pacto con Irán y seis potencias mundiales sobre el programa nuclear iraní, que entró en vigor el 15 de julio de 2015 y al que se habían opuesto duramente los republicanos en el Congreso, era “un desastre”, “el peor acuerdo que se ha negociado”. Y anunció que otra de sus prioridades al llegar a la Casa Banca sería desmantelar ese pacto que garantiza la puesta bajo control del programa nuclear iraní durante más de diez años, a la vez que levanta la mayoría de las sanciones económicas impuestas por la ONU contra Teherán.

Romper ese pacto con Irán no será sencillo, pues se firmó con el resto de los miembros permanentes del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU (China, Francia, el Reino Unido, Rusia) y Alemania, a los que Washington tendría que enfrentarse. Pero es que, además, como se ha dicho, el aporte de Irán en la batalla contra el ISIS, tanto en Irak como en Siria, resulta fundamental. No es el momento de enemistarse de nuevo con Teherán. Moscú, que ve con buenos ojos el acercamiento de Washington, no aceptará que esto se haga a costa de su alianza estratégica con Teherán.

Uno de los primeros dilemas del presidente Donald Trump consistirá, pues, en resolver esa contradicción. No le resultará fácil. Entre otras cosas porque su propio equipo de halcones, que acaba de nombrar, parece poco flexible en lo que respecta a las relaciones con Irán (2).

Por ejemplo, el general Michael Flynn, su asesor de Seguridad Nacional (lo que Henry Kissinger fue para Ronald Reagan), está obsesionado con Irán. Sus detractores le definen como “islamófobo” porque ha publicado opiniones que muchos consideran abiertamente racistas. Como cuando escribió en su cuenta de Twitter: “El temor a los musulmanes es perfectamente racional”. Flynn participó en las campañas para desmantelar las redes insurgentes en Afganistán y en Irak. Asegura que la militancia islamista es una “amenaza existencial a escala global”. Igual que Trump, sostiene que la Organización del Estado Islámico es la “mayor amenaza” a la que se enfrenta EE.UU. Cuando fue director de la Agencia de Inteligencia para la Defensa (AID), de 2012 a 2014, dirigió la investigación sobre el asalto al consulado estadounidense de Bengasi, en Libia, el 11 de septiembre de 2012, en el que murieron varios “marines” y el embajador norteamericano Christopher Stevens. En aquella ocasión, Michael Flynn insistió en que el objetivo de su agencia, como el de la CIA, era “demostrar el papel de Irán en ese asalto” (3). Aunque jamás haya habido evidencia de que Teherán tuviera cualquier participación en ese ataque. Curiosamente, a pesar de su hostilidad hacia Irán, Michael Flynn está a favor de trabajar de manera más estrecha con Rusia. Incluso, en 2015, el general viajó a Moscú, donde fue fotografiado sentado al lado de Vladímir Putin en una cena de gala para el canal estatal de televisión Russia Today (RT), en el que ha aparecido regularmente como analista. Posteriormente, Flynn admitió que se le pagó por hacer ese viaje y defendió al canal ruso diciendo que no veía “ninguna diferencia entre RT y el canal estadounidense CNN”.

Otro antiiraní convencido es Mike Pompeo, el nuevo director de la CIA, un ex militar graduado de la Academia de West Point y miembro del ultraconservador Tea Party. Tras su formación militar fue destinado a un lugar de extrema tensión durante la Guerra Fría: patrulló el “Telón de Acero” hasta la caída del Muro de Berlín en 1989. En su carrera como político, Mike Pompeo formó parte del Comité de Inteligencia del Congreso y se destacó en una investigación que puso contra las cuerdas a la candidata demócrata Hillary Clinton por su pretendido papel durante el asalto de Bengasi. Ultraconservador, Pompeo es hostil al cierre de la base de Guantánamo (Cuba) y ha criticado a los líderes musulmanes de Estados Unidos. Es un partidario decidido de dar marcha atrás con respecto al tratado nuclear firmado con Irán, al que califica de “Estado promotor del terrorismo”.

Pero quizás el enemigo más rabioso de Irán, en el entorno de Donald Trump, es el general James Mattis, apodado “Perro Loco”, que estará a cargo del Pentágono (4), o sea, ministro de Defensa. Este general retirado de 66 años demostró su liderazgo militar al mando de un batallón de asalto durante la primera guerra del Golfo en 1991; luego dirigió una fuerza especial en el sur de Afganistán en 2001; después comandó la Primera División de la Infantería de Marina que entró en Bagdad para derrocar a Sadam Hussein en 2003; y, en 2004, lideró la toma de Faluya en Irak, bastión de la insurgencia suní. Hombre culto y lector de los clásicos griegos, es también apodado el “Monje Guerrero”, alusión a que jamás se casó ni tuvo hijos. James Mattis ha repetido infinitas veces que Irán es la “principal amenaza” para la estabilidad de Oriente Medio, por encima de organizaciones terroristas como el ISIS o Al Qaeda: “Considero al ISIS como una excusa para Irán para continuar causando daño. Irán no es un enemigo del ISIS. Teherán tiene mucho que ganar con la agitación que crea el ISIS en la región”.

En materia de geopolítica, como se ve, Donald Trump va a tener que salir pronto de esa contradicción. En el teatro de operaciones de Oriente Próximo, Washington no puede estar –a la vez– a favor de Moscú y contra Teherán. Habrá que clarificar las cosas. Con la esperanza de que se consiga un acuerdo. De lo contrario, hay que temer la entrada en escena del nuevo amo del Pentágono, James Mattis “Perro Loco”, de quien no debemos olvidar su amenaza más famosa, pronunciada durante la invasión de Irak: “Vengo en son de paz. No he traído artillería. Pero, con lágrimas en los ojos, les digo esto: si me fastidian, los mataré a todos”.

Ignacio Ramonet

Ignacio Ramonet: Periodista español establecido en Francia. 

Notas: 

(1) Aunque, como se sabe, hay elecciones el próximo mes de mayo en Francia, a las cuales el actual presidente socialista François Hollande, muy impopular, ha decidido no volverse a presentar. El candidato conservador con mayores posibilidades de ganar, François Fillon, ha declarado, por su parte, que reorientará la política exterior francesa para normalizar de nuevo las relaciones con Moscú.

(2) Léase Paul Pillar, “Will the Trump Administration Start a War with Iran?”, The National Interest , 7 de diciembre de 2016.

(3) Léase The New York Times , 3 de diciembre de 2016.

(4) James Mattis necesitará que el Congreso le conceda una excepción para esquivar la ley que exige que pasen siete años entre salir del Ejército y acceder a la jefatura del Pentágono.

Donald Trump se puso a tiro de piedra de la Casa Blanca —Comey y Putin hicieron el resto— gracias al abrumador respaldo de los votantes blancos de clase trabajadora. Estos votantes confiaron en la promesa de recuperar empleos industriales de calidad para Estados Unidos, y no se creyeron la más creíble amenaza de que les quitaría la atención sanitaria. Les espera un duro golpe. 

Pero los trabajadores blancos no son los únicos crédulos: el Estados Unidos empresarial sigue negándose a aceptar la amenaza de una guerra comercial a escala mundial, a pesar de que el proteccionismo ha sido uno de los temas fundamentales de la campaña de Trump. De hecho, las dos únicas causas por las que Trump parece verdaderamente apasionado son los tratados comerciales supuestamente injustos y la admiración por los regímenes autoritarios. Es ingenuo suponer que dejará pasar su tema político preferido.

Hablemos de medios, motivos y consecuencias. Se podría imaginar que un cambio drástico en la política comercial estadounidense exigiría la aprobación del Congreso y que los republicanos –que afirman creer en el libre mercado– le pondrían freno. Pero dada la invertebración del partido, eso es improbable.

En cualquier caso, la legislación pertinente da al ocupante de la Casa Blanca un margen extraordinario si este decidiera seguir un rumbo proteccionista. Puede restringir las importaciones si estas “amenazan con socavar la seguridad nacional”; puede imponer aranceles “para solucionar grandes y graves déficits de la balanza comercial estadounidense”; puede modificar las tarifas arancelarias cuando los Gobiernos extranjeros pongan en práctica políticas “injustificables”. ¿Quién determina cuándo se dan esas condiciones? El propio Ejecutivo.

Ahora bien, la intención de estas disposiciones no era dar a un presidente poder para trastocar décadas de política comercial estadounidense o embarcarse en venganzas personales. Pero pueden adivinar cuánto van a importarle esas sutilezas al Gobierno entrante, que ya está hablando de utilizar sus poderes. Lo que nos lleva a la cuestión del motivo.

¿Por qué iba el Gobierno de Trump a restringir las importaciones? Una respuesta son esos votantes de clase trabajadora, cuyo supuesto defensor está decidido a imponer un programa nacional radicalmente contrario a ellos. Trump tiene un claro incentivo para alardear de que está haciendo algo para cumplir sus promesas electorales. Y si eso crea un conflicto internacional, es de hecho una ventaja adicional a la hora de desviar la atención de la aniquilación del sistema sanitario y cosas por el estilo.

Aparte de esto, está claro que el comandante en jefe entrante cree realmente que el comercio internacional es un juego en el que los buenos llegan los últimos, y de que se han aprovechado de Estados Unidos. Es más, está eligiendo a asesores que lo reafirmarán en estas creencias.

Ah, y no esperen que los intentos por parte de los expertos de señalar los fallos de este punto de vista –de señalar, en concreto, que la imagen de una China depredadora, que logra enormes superávits a costa de mantener su moneda devaluada, está varios años desfasada– causen ninguna impresión. Los miembros del equipo de Trump creen que cualquier crítica a sus ideas económicas refleja una conspiración de grupos de expertos decididos a debilitarlos. Porque por supuesto que lo están.

¿Y qué pasará cuando lleguen los aranceles de Trump?

Habrá represalias, a lo grande. En lo que al comercio se refiere, Estados Unidos no es una superpotencia tan importante; China es también un actor enorme, y la Unión Europea es aún más grande. Responderán del mismo modo, atacando sectores estadounidenses vulnerables como la aeronáutica y la agricultura.

Y las represalias no lo son todo; está también la emulación. En cuanto Estados Unidos decida que las normas no rigen, el comercio mundial se convertirá en una batalla campal.

¿Provocará esto una recesión mundial? Probablemente no. Esos riesgos se exageran, en mi opinión. No, el proteccionismo no causó la Gran Depresión.

Lo que sí hará la futura guerra comercial, sin embargo, es causar mucha perturbación. La economía mundial de hoy en día se construye en torno a “cadenas de valor” que cruzan fronteras: un coche o un teléfono móvil contienen componentes que se fabrican en muchos países, y que después se montan o modifican en muchos más. Una guerra comercial provocaría un drástico acortamiento de dichas cadenas, y muchas fábricas estadounidenses acabarían siendo las grandes perdedoras, como ocurrió en el pasado, cuando se disparó el comercio mundial.

Hay un viejo chiste sobre un motorista que atropella a un peatón y después intenta solucionar el daño retrocediendo, y atropella a la víctima una segunda vez. Pues bien, los efectos de la guerra comercial trumpista para los trabajadores estadounidenses serán muy parecidos.

Con estas perspectivas, podríamos pensar que alguien convencerá al Gobierno entrante de que se replantee su beligerancia comercial. Es decir, podríamos pensarlo si no hubiésemos prestado atención al historial y a la personalidad del proteccionista en jefe. No es probable que alguien que se niega a que le den instrucciones sobre seguridad nacional porque es “bueno, una persona inteligente” y no las necesita se siente a escuchar lecciones sobre economía internacional.

No, lo más probable es que llegue una guerra comercial. Abróchense los cinturones.

Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman: Premio Nobel de Economía.

El 2016 se esfumó del “viejo” continente como un año agridulce. Mientras en el deporte la inesperada Portugal golpeó a las elitistas selecciones de fútbol al conseguir su primera Eurocopa, o la Unión Europea destacaba como número 1 en el medallero olímpico; en lo político, económico y social fue un año de retrocesos. Las aguas del Mediterráneo se llenaron de 5 mil cadáveres de refugiados, Francia mantuvo su Estado de Emergencia los 12 meses, el pueblo británico votó el Brexit bajo una campaña xenófoba de la ultraderecha y su primer ministro David Cameron dimitió, un gesto que repitió también el exprimer ministro italiano Matteo Renzi tras su derrota en el referéndum constitucional. Y en definitiva, un año más de grietas en los históricos Estados del Bienestar con la política de austeridad de la Troika (BCE, FMI, CE) y recortes en derechos sociales incrementando pobreza y desigualdad.

A malos resultados políticos de 2016 malos pronósticos en 2017 si se sigue el mismo rumbo económico. Año sin la dulzura de algún evento deportivo internacional de masas. Uno de los principales problemas que vive actualmente la UE es el crecimiento de la ultraderecha euroescéptica. En el 2016, con la huella de un Reino Unido sin un horizonte claro, una Italia caída en sus reiteradas crisis políticas con una fuerte inestabilidad económica, y que en Austria casi se impone en las Elecciones Generales la ultraderecha del Partido de la Libertad de Austria (FPÖ), se celebró también una consulta no vinculante en Holanda sobre un Acuerdo de Adhesión de Ucrania con la UE pero que el fondo de la cuestión fue medir el euroescepticismo de su población. Con el 32,2% de la participación, la línea crítica con la UE se impuso con el 61%. Este aviso simbólico en el mes de abril de 2016 espera sus frutos el próximo mes de marzo, el primer reto político de Europa en 2017.

Calendario electoral

El 15 de marzo se celebrarán las Elecciones Generales en Holanda y la fuerza de extrema derecha y euroescéptica, Partido de la Libertad (PVV), lidera las encuestas superando los liberales (VDD) y socialdemócratas (PvDA) que actualmente gobiernan en coalición. La campaña política del xenófobo líder del PVV, Geert Wilders, se enfoca en el bloqueo de las fronteras a los inmigrantes, la islamofobia de prohibir el Corán y cerrar las mezquitas, la salida de Holanda de la UE (NEXIT) y acabar con el Euro para recuperar el Florín, la antigua moneda neerlandesa.

Poco menos de dos meses después, el 7 de mayo de 2017, se realizarán las Elecciones Locales en el Reino Unido. Aunque se aprobó ya en la consulta popular agendada el 23 de junio de 2016 el BREXIT – todavía existe el debate jurídico si finalmente es la Cámara de los Comunes quien tiene la última palabra – estas elecciones pueden medir cuáles serán las negociaciones de la UE y el Reino Unido en el proceso de desconexión, que todo indica que se iniciará en marzo con una transición de dos años. Según el nivel de apoyo del pueblo británico en estas elecciones locales a los partidos euroescépticos, los actuales líderes del Partido Conservador y la UKIP, la negociación con la UE podrá ser más radical o moderada.

Solo tres días después, el 7 de mayo, se realizará lo que podríamos llamar el “juicio de la UE”. Este juicio se efectuará con la segunda vuelta de las Elecciones Presidenciales en Francia, uno de los ejes centrales de la UE junto a Alemania. Mientras cada partido y coalición prepara a su candidato o candidata mediante su respectivo proceso de primarias – la conservadora derecha francesa ya eligió al liberal y católico François Fillon o en el Partido Socialista las previsiones dan como vencedor al Primer Ministro Manuel Valls – algunos sondeos, posiblemente prematuros todavía, dan la victoria en la primera vuelta de las elecciones del 23 de abril a la euroescéptica y ultraderechista lideresa del Frente Nacional (FN) Marine Le Pen. Sondeos que repiten el resultado de las Elecciones Europeas legislativas en mayo de 2014 donde el FN fue la primera fuerza, seguida de los conservadores y quedando el PS en tercer lugar. Un pésimo lugar que posteriormente fue acompañado de la grave crisis política en el Ejecutivo francés liderado por el PS dada la dimisión en bloque del Gobierno al no aceptar la gran mayoría de ministros las políticas de austeridad de Valls y Hollande. La segunda vuelta, la del 7 de mayo, posiblemente sea una disputa entre los Conservadores y el FN, es decir, una elección vestida de referéndum sobre seguir o no seguir Francia en la Unión Europa.

Y por último, el siguiente y último evento trascendental en la agenda electoral europea de 2017 serán las Elecciones Federales en Alemania que se celebrarán entre el 27 de agosto y 22 de octubre (a definir fecha) para elegir 630 escaños, y posteriormente mediante los pactos entre partidos se llega a la investidura del o la Canciller. La actual Canciller conservadora Angela Merkel se postulará para un cuarto mandato consecutivo, después de estar gobernando los últimos 4 años (2013-2017) en coalición con el histórico rival Partido Socialdemócrata Alemán (PSD). Alemania, arquitecta de las políticas de austeridad de la UE afectando sus impactos a clases populares, que acogió los últimos dos años a más de 1 millón de refugiados (la mayoría de Siria), o sufrió atentados terroristas (o de la guerra sin llamarla guerra) como el del mercado de Navidad de Berlín el pasado 19 de diciembre, presenta un panorama político complejo. Según las encuestas, y por primera vez desde la II Guerra Mundial, un partido de extrema derecha y euroescéptico, Alternativa para Alemania (AfD), podría tener representación parlamentaria. En las elecciones regionales del estado Mecklemburgo-Antepomerania el anterior mes de septiembre AfD se convirtió en la segunda fuerza, detrás de los socialistas y haciendo “sorpasso” a la Unión Cristinodemócrata (CDU) de Merkel en su propio feudo. AfD apuesta por la desaparición del Euro y la Troika, desburocratizar la UE y dar más competencias nacionales, y el cese de las políticas de acogida de refugiados a Alemania, entre otros puntos. Este partido, creado en 2013, y que obtuvo 7 diputados en las elecciones europeas de 2014, podría revolucionar el panorama político y social alemán obteniendo por primera vez representación en el Bundestag, aunque todavía queda muy lejos de disputar el primer puesto de poder como el FN en Francia o PVV en Holanda o conseguir la hegemonía euroesceptica como en el Reino Unido.

Se prevén malos tiempos en la Unión Europa, pero estos tiempos no llegan por arte de magia. Toda tormenta política tiene sus causas, y sitúa a cada actor en la casilla del tablero. En un lugar están los conservadores y socialdemócratas rompiendo en Europa el pacto histórico del siglo XX entre Capital y Trabajo. Siguiendo hoy con sus pactos bipartidistas pero ahora mirando los intereses de la gran banca financiera y olvidando a sindicatos y a las clases populares, justificando ese giro como solución de la crisis económica de 2008. Neoliberalismo como la ruta contra el Estado del Bienestar. En otro punto se sitúa la ultraderecha aprovechando el malestar de las clases populares por los recortes sociales y criminalizando a la Unión Europea con un discurso chovinista, y además a los refugiados e inmigrantes como causa de muchos de sus problemas sociales y económicos. Mientras una vez más se olvida a la gran banca, los Tratados de Libre Comercio (TTIP-CETA-TISA), y a sus cómplices políticos del neoliberalismo como ejes principales de la destrucción de la frágil identidad europea. Y a todo esto, ¿dónde está la izquierda?

Aníbal Garzón

Aníbal Garzón: Licenciado en Estudios Internacionales sobre América Latina por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB).

The Defense for Children International (DCI) – Palestine Branch said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) killed 35 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2016.

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program Director at the Palestine section of the DCI, told the Quds Press news agency that 2016 recorded the highest number of murders committed by the IOF against Palestinian children in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 12 years, pointing out that the number of children killed in 2015 in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem had reached 26.

Abu Eqtaish said that 2016 witnessed continuous Israeli violations of the Palestinian children’s rights, especially their right to live, which caused the murder of 35 children, 32 of whom are from the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, and 3 from the Gaza Strip. He added that Israel grants immunity to the soldiers who commit these crimes in absolute disregard for the basic rights of children.

He affirmed that the Israeli judiciary system is also involved in this by announcing the acquittal of the Israeli police officers and soldiers who commit such crimes although there is evidence that the children were directly killed without posing any kind of danger to the Israeli soldiers. More crimes are thus encouraged, he added.

Abu Eqtaish said that in some cases the soldiers are charged with “unintentional murder” or “failure to follow the required conditions” in an attempt to ease the gravity of the crimes. He pointed to the execution of the child Nadeem Nawwara whose killer was charged with an accidental murder despite the presence of evidence about the deliberate crime.

The DCI said in a statement that the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA) are still holding the bodies of three children.

The last murder case reported in 2016 was against Ahmad al-Rimawi, 17, who was killed by the IOF with live bullets on 18th December during confrontations in Beit Rima village to the northwest of Ramallah province.

According to the international law, the lethal force can be used only when there is an imminent threat or a serious injury, or to prevent a crime that poses a great threat to many lives. This is only when the less violent means are inadequate to achieve these goals. Besides, the commentary on the Article III of the United Nations Code of Conduct stipulates that every possible effort must be made to avoid the use of firearms, especially against children.

Taro Yamamoto of the Liberal Party is a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He is one of the few parliamentary members defending the rights of victims of the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

The Association Nos Voisins Lointains 3-11 translated the questions of Taro Yamamoto to the Chamber of Deputies’ Special Commission on Reconstruction on 18 November 2016*.

The content of his questions reveals the inhuman situation faced by the victims in the framework of the Japanese government’s return policy .

Taro Yamamoto’s questions (video in Japanese)

See Transcript Below

● Taro Yamamoto

Thank you. I am Taro Yamamoto from the Liberal Party. I would like to ask questions as the representative of a parliamentary group.

Declared on 11 March 2011, the state of nuclear emergency has not yet been lifted to date, 5 years and 8 months after the accident at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Today, I will address a subject that is well known by the members here present.

I will start with the subject of the radioactivity controlled area. This is a demarcated area frequented by workers with professional knowledge who are exposed to the risks associated with ionizing radiation, such as an X-ray room, a research laboratory, a nuclear power plant and so on.

Here is my question. There are rules that apply to controlled areas of radioactivity, are not they? Can we eat and drink in such a controlled area?

● Government expert (Seiji Tanaka)

Here is the answer. According to the Ordinance on the Prevention of Risks from Ionizing Radiation**, eating and drinking are prohibited in workplaces where there is a risk of ingesting radioactive substances orally.

● Taro Yamamoto

Of course, it is forbidden to drink or eat there. So it’s obvious that it’s not possible to spend the night there, is it? Even adults cannot stay for more than 10 hours.

You are well aware of the existence of this Ordinance. This is a rule that must be respected in order to protect workers exposed to risks related to ionizing radiation in establishments such as hospitals, research laboratories and nuclear power plants, isn’t it?

It contains the definition of a radioactivity controlled area. This is Article 3 of the Ordinance in File No. 1. It states that if the situation corresponds to the definition described in Article 3/1 or to that specified in Article 3/2, the zone shall be considered as a controlled area and a sign shall be posted there. I will read parts 1 and 2 of this article.

1: The area in which the total effective dose due to external radiation and that due to radioactive substances in the air is likely to exceed 1.3mSv per quarter – over a period of three months! When the dose reaches 1.3mSv over a period of three months, a zone is called “controlled radioactivity zone”.

Part 3/2 refers to the surface density in the attached table.
Here is File No. 2. What will it be if we do the conversion of the density of the surface per m2?

● Government expert (Seiji Tanaka)

The conversion gives 40,000Bq/m2

● Taro Yamamoto

Thus, with 40 000Bq / m2, the zone is classified as a “controlled zone of radioactivity”. It is therefore necessary to monitor not only radioactivity in the air but also the surface contamination, ie the ground dose of radioactive substances, ie other elements in the environment, and to manage the area in order to protect workers from radiation-related risks, isn’t it?

A radioactivity controlled area is defined both by the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity and by the surface density of the radioactive substances. The point is that the risk in a situation where the radioactive substances are dispersed is quite different from that in the situation where the radiation sources are well identified and managed.

At present, the evacuation order applied to the evacuation zones following the nuclear power plant accident is lifted when the ambient radioactivity dose rate becomes less than 20mSv / year.

Here is my question. Concerning contamination, apart from the dose rate of ambient radioactivity, are there any conditions to take into account in order to lift the evacuation order? Please answer yes or no.

● Government expert (Takeo Hoshino)

Here is the answer.

Concerning the conditions necessary for the lifting of the evacuation order, as far as the radioactivity measurements are concerned, it is only the certainty that the annual cumulative dose rate of ambient radioactivity is less than 20 mSv.

● Taro Yamamoto

You did not understand. I asked you to answer yes or no. Are there any other conditions other than the dose rate of ambient radioactivity? To lift the order of evacuation below 20mSv / year, what are the conditions regarding the contamination?

The fact is that regarding contamination, there are no other conditions than the dose rate of the radioactivity in the air. This is abnormal. You, who belong to this Commission, certainly understand to what extent this situation is abnormal.

In the definition of a radioactivity controlled zone, apart from the dose rate of radioactivity in the air, account is taken of the substances dispersed and then deposited, that is to say contamination in the soil etc., which means a criterion of 40 000Bq / m2 is established for surface contamination.

However, in the return policy to return populations to territories where the annual cumulative dose rate is less than 20mSv / year, the condition of soil contamination is not considered necessary.

The latter is not an evaluation criterion, the only criterion used is the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity. Politicians and officials who consider this to be a regular situation do not deserve to receive wages paid from tax revenues.

Our job is to protect the life and property of the people. Now, you lighten those conditions. You create, at your discretion, a rule that is less stringent than that applied to workers with a professional knowledge of radioactivity. What are you doing !

Following the Chernobyl accident, laws have been established in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, measuring both the dose rate of radioactivity in the air and the contamination of the soil. Why ?

That goes without saying. This is because it is difficult to grasp the amount of irradiation suffered by the population only with measurements of ambient radioactivity. In Ukraine, with 5mSv / yr, a measure corresponding to that of the controlled radioactivity zone, the population is evacuated, and even with 1mSv / year which corresponds to the limit of the average dose rate for the public, ‘they have the right to move out. This law known as the Chernobyl law is still in force.

On the other hand, what is the situation in Japan? According to the Cabinet decision of June 2015, the evacuation order is lifted if the dose rate in the air is less than 20mSv / year. There is no problem ! For example, if you stay 24 hours in a controlled area of radioactivity, you are exposed to a dose of 5.2mSv / year.

However, the criterion for the lifting of the order and the return of the population is 20mSv / year or less. The zoning is determined by a dose 4 times that of a controlled zone of radioactivity.

Go back, live there, continue your life, rebuild, what is this! I can find no other expression than “completely twisted”.

Can we still call it the State? I think it’s better to call it the mafia. It’s so inhuman!

The government appears to have adopted dose limits of 20 to 100mSv as recommended by the ICRP*** on radiation exposure limits after an accident. However, when considering the health effects on the population, the most reasonable would be to adopt 1mSv, the lowest dose measurement for radiation limit for public health, according to the global consensus.

The right to evacuate must be granted to the population until the dose rate falls below 1mSv / year. The right to decide when to return belongs to the victims. Why do you determine zoning as you wish? The State must make every effort to reduce the dose as close as possible to 1mSv / year, maximum dose in a normal situation. Then the State, the administration should warn the people, and let them make their own decisions. That would be the fairest way. The State should behave like this.

Who is responsible for this accident? It is TEPCO. Who supported it? It is the State. It is clear who the perpetrators of the crime are. And yet, only the charges of the criminals are being relieved. If it is permissible to develop zoning and associated rights to the convenience of the criminals, this world is a hell then.

In the town of Minamisoma in the coastal region of Fukushima Prefecture, three types of evacuation zone were established after the earthquake. In July 2016, the evacuation order was lifted in the “evacuation order lifting preparation area” and in the “restriction of housing” area. There is only one home with two people remaining in the “area where the return is difficult”.

According to the State, 90% of the territories of Minamisoma are safe.

There is a group called “The Measurement of Environmental Radioactivity Around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant”**** composed mainly of residents of Minamisoma. Since 2012, its members are taking measurements of soil contamination in the vicinity of the neighborhoods of the members and in residential areas. They provided the information. Please look at File No. 3. You see a colored map ( Note from the translator: see the map here,

https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/the-minamisoma-whistleblowers-fukushima/ )

This is the map of soil measurements collected and measured in the territories where the decontamination works have been completed. The colors show the levels of contamination. The blue colored area indicates where the contamination measurements are below 40 000Bq / m2, ie below than the level of a radioactivity controlled zone. There is only one, at the right bottom. Apart from this one, at all other places, the colors show corresponding measurements above the measurements of a controlled zone of radioactivity. There is even a colored place in gray where the measurements exceed 1 000 000Bq / m2. There are people living there!

Compared to the extraordinary ambient radioactivity dose rate observed immediately after the accident, the dose rate of radioactivity in the air decreased considerably. It is not the same order of magnitude. However, according to the inhabitants, even with 0.1μSv / hr of ambient radioactivity dose rate, soil measurements may still be equivalent to those of a radioactivity-controlled zone.

It is senseless that only the dose rate of ambient radioactivity should be taken into account as a condition for lifting the evacuation order. It is so irresponsible and neglectful. It is exactly the opposite of protecting the life and property of the people. People do not live floating in the air at 1 meter above the ground*****. They sit down, lie on the ground, they stop to chat, standing or sitting. Children do not play on asphalted roads only. They can venture into the bushes. Children play freely. There are some who put soil in their mouth. Remember how you were when you were still a child. Gutters where contamination is concentrated provide one of the favorite playgrounds for children.

Mr. Masuchika Kono, a member of the above-mentioned project group, who was with the Engineering Department of Kyoto University, a specialist in nuclear engineering, a graduate of radiation manipulation, collected soil at the Minamisoma Michi-no-eki roadside (service and parking area), and passed it through a sieve of about 100 microns.

The measurements showed 11 410Bq / kg of Cs. These dust rises with the winds and the passages of the vehicles. In daily life, dust is inhaled by the people. You do not take internal radiation into account, do you? You calculate the amount of internal radiation by applying just a coefficient, but do not include internal radiation in real life.

Some people self-evacuated from areas outside the evacuation areas under evacuation order, as they consider that the State policies do not protect the children, their lives. To these persons, within the framework of the Disaster Relief and Disaster Relief Act******, dwellings – “temporary accommodation”******* – were made available.

However, in March 2017, next year, the free housing provision will be suspended. You are telling them that there is no more problem; Why then stay evacuated? That’s it, isn’t it? Those displaced from areas outside evacuation areas under evacuation order fled because their home and living environment are contaminated as a result of the TEPCO nuclear accident.

However, since their homes are located at some distance from the nuclear power plant, they were not included in the evacuation zones that the state established unilaterally. As a result, these displaced persons receive no public support except the provision of free housing. And even this aid will stop in March 2017.

It’s incredible to stop helping them. Moreover, what does it mean to stop the provision of free housing in March? It is the season when mobility is at its highest in the year. You expel them, force them to relocate at the time of the year when rents and costs become more expensive! You have no compassion. You are ruthless!

Here are some testimonies:

“I am afraid of the investigators of the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture visiting door to door. I hide under the cover for fear of hearing the ringing at the door. When I opened the door, the investigator stuck his foot into the door so that I could not close it. With a loud voice so that all the neighbors could hear, he shouted at me “you know very well that you can only live here until March”. I know, but I cannot move. “

The next person.

“The Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture demands that we move out in a fierce and haughty manner. We had to leave our home because of the accident at the nuclear power plant. I do not understand why they are expelling us again. I gave in to the pressure, and I filled up the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture housing application, but it was against my will. Psychologically, I can not accept the fact, and it causes me pain. They are forcing me to move into a prefecture owned housing where no one from Fukushima lives close by. It’s like abandoning the elderly in a mountain. “

The following testimony. It is a home where just a mother and her young children live. The other members of the family remained in Fukushima. They lead a double life. “If there is no more free housing provided, there is no resource to pay the rent. The only dream left to my child is his piano lesson. Do not take away that dream. “

The next person.

“The deadline has not arrived …”

(Note from the translator : Taro Yamamoto can no longer hold his tears) Who does something like that? I beg your pardon. Who orders such a thing? It may be admitted that the State would ask local governments to carry out polite negotiations with the displaced. No, it is nothing but expulsion. Does not the State intend to stop such a situation? I do not allow you to say that you did not know. You see the problem before you now!

“Constant phone calls, visits without notice, and they shout at me asking what my intention is. They send documents to file, and leave passing notices in the mailbox. I am completely exhausted, physically and psychologically. “ This is understandable. They continue to live like that since the explosions of the nuclear power plant, and 5 years and 8 months later they are tracked down in a similar situation. To what extent do you want to tear the hearts of the victims? It is enough for the State to take a decision. This person says that the metropolitan prefecture of Tokyo has asked him to leave the housing, because the prefecture must return that housing for civil servants in March. It is monstrous that the State asks the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture to evict the evacuees and restore the house in proper condition.

These were testimonies of displaced people.

According to my research, to date there are 9327 vacancies among the housings for civil servants in the region of Kanto, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture and 6 other prefectures. It is enough for the State to take a decision, it can solve the problem, at least partially. Why should the inhabitants be expelled? Is it because, if there are tenants, those buildings could not sold during the financial bubble of the Olympic Games? It’s too cruel.

On April 4 last year, according to the newspaper Mainichi shinbun, the state does not request reimbursement from TEPCO for the rents of dwellings “considered as temporary housings”. Commission member Iwabuchi mentioned earlier that the government will oblige TEPCO to pay for the costs of the decontamination work. Why don’t you ask TEPCO to pay the rents? These people are the victims!

Finally, I would like to ask to the Minister. I would like you to answer two questions.

1st: You said that this is what the Fukushima prefecture wants. However, you are in a position to make suggestions to the Fukushima Prefecture. Please talk it over again. This situation is really irregular.

2nd: Please listen to the voices of the displaced. I think you have almost no opportunity to hear the voices of self-evacuees coming from locations outside the evacuation areas. Until then, you were too busy. Perhaps the people around you got acquainted with their testimonies. Please listen to them yourself. Today, too, they are here. There’s a break after this session. Could you give them 5 minutes? If you give us just 5 minutes today during the break, you can talk with the self-evacuees.

I would ask you to answer these two questions.

Secretary of State (Masahiro Imamura)

As I have already said, I am willing to consult with the prefecture of Fukushima, and I would like to ensure that the people concerned are not hurt. I will see to its smooth progress.

You said that self-evacuated people are here. I also have a plenary session after and I do not have time, but I will listen to them.

President (Mitsuru Sakurai)

Mr. Yamamoto, you have exhausted your time.

Taro Yamamoto

Thank you.

Please keep your promise. Thank you very much.

Credits to Kurumi Sugita from the Nos Voisins Lointains 3.11 Association for the Japanese to French translation (http://nosvoisins311.wixsite.com/voisins311-france)

French to English translation by Hervé Courtois (Dun renard) from the Fukushima 311 Watchdogs (https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/)

* Source : Taro Yamamoto’s website

** Ordinance on Prevention of Ionizing Radiation Hazards, Ministry of Labour Ordinance No. 41 of September 30, 1972, Latest Amendments: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Ordinance No. 172 of July 16, 2001

*** International Commission on Radiological Protection

**** Fukuichi shûhen kankyôhôshasen monitoring project

***** The measurements of ambiant radioactivity are taken at 1 meter above the ground.

****** Saigai kyûjohô, Law of assistance in case of disaster , laws N°118 of octobre 18, 1947

******* Minashi kasetsu jyûtaku. Rental housing managed by private agencies inhabited by evacuees whose rent is borne by the central government or local governments.

Taro Yamamoto of the Liberal Party is a member of the Chamber of Deputies. He is one of the few parliamentary members defending the rights of victims of the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.

The Association Nos Voisins Lointains 3-11 translated the questions of Taro Yamamoto to the Chamber of Deputies’ Special Commission on Reconstruction on 18 November 2016*.

The content of his questions reveals the inhuman situation faced by the victims in the framework of the Japanese government’s return policy .

Taro Yamamoto’s questions (video in Japanese)

See Transcript Below

● Taro Yamamoto

Thank you. I am Taro Yamamoto from the Liberal Party. I would like to ask questions as the representative of a parliamentary group.

Declared on 11 March 2011, the state of nuclear emergency has not yet been lifted to date, 5 years and 8 months after the accident at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Today, I will address a subject that is well known by the members here present.

I will start with the subject of the radioactivity controlled area. This is a demarcated area frequented by workers with professional knowledge who are exposed to the risks associated with ionizing radiation, such as an X-ray room, a research laboratory, a nuclear power plant and so on.

Here is my question. There are rules that apply to controlled areas of radioactivity, are not they? Can we eat and drink in such a controlled area?

● Government expert (Seiji Tanaka)

Here is the answer. According to the Ordinance on the Prevention of Risks from Ionizing Radiation**, eating and drinking are prohibited in workplaces where there is a risk of ingesting radioactive substances orally.

● Taro Yamamoto

Of course, it is forbidden to drink or eat there. So it’s obvious that it’s not possible to spend the night there, is it? Even adults cannot stay for more than 10 hours.

You are well aware of the existence of this Ordinance. This is a rule that must be respected in order to protect workers exposed to risks related to ionizing radiation in establishments such as hospitals, research laboratories and nuclear power plants, isn’t it?

It contains the definition of a radioactivity controlled area. This is Article 3 of the Ordinance in File No. 1. It states that if the situation corresponds to the definition described in Article 3/1 or to that specified in Article 3/2, the zone shall be considered as a controlled area and a sign shall be posted there. I will read parts 1 and 2 of this article.

1: The area in which the total effective dose due to external radiation and that due to radioactive substances in the air is likely to exceed 1.3mSv per quarter – over a period of three months! When the dose reaches 1.3mSv over a period of three months, a zone is called “controlled radioactivity zone”.

Part 3/2 refers to the surface density in the attached table.
Here is File No. 2. What will it be if we do the conversion of the density of the surface per m2?

● Government expert (Seiji Tanaka)

The conversion gives 40,000Bq/m2

● Taro Yamamoto

Thus, with 40 000Bq / m2, the zone is classified as a “controlled zone of radioactivity”. It is therefore necessary to monitor not only radioactivity in the air but also the surface contamination, ie the ground dose of radioactive substances, ie other elements in the environment, and to manage the area in order to protect workers from radiation-related risks, isn’t it?

A radioactivity controlled area is defined both by the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity and by the surface density of the radioactive substances. The point is that the risk in a situation where the radioactive substances are dispersed is quite different from that in the situation where the radiation sources are well identified and managed.

At present, the evacuation order applied to the evacuation zones following the nuclear power plant accident is lifted when the ambient radioactivity dose rate becomes less than 20mSv / year.

Here is my question. Concerning contamination, apart from the dose rate of ambient radioactivity, are there any conditions to take into account in order to lift the evacuation order? Please answer yes or no.

● Government expert (Takeo Hoshino)

Here is the answer.

Concerning the conditions necessary for the lifting of the evacuation order, as far as the radioactivity measurements are concerned, it is only the certainty that the annual cumulative dose rate of ambient radioactivity is less than 20 mSv.

● Taro Yamamoto

You did not understand. I asked you to answer yes or no. Are there any other conditions other than the dose rate of ambient radioactivity? To lift the order of evacuation below 20mSv / year, what are the conditions regarding the contamination?

The fact is that regarding contamination, there are no other conditions than the dose rate of the radioactivity in the air. This is abnormal. You, who belong to this Commission, certainly understand to what extent this situation is abnormal.

In the definition of a radioactivity controlled zone, apart from the dose rate of radioactivity in the air, account is taken of the substances dispersed and then deposited, that is to say contamination in the soil etc., which means a criterion of 40 000Bq / m2 is established for surface contamination.

However, in the return policy to return populations to territories where the annual cumulative dose rate is less than 20mSv / year, the condition of soil contamination is not considered necessary.

The latter is not an evaluation criterion, the only criterion used is the dose rate of the ambient radioactivity. Politicians and officials who consider this to be a regular situation do not deserve to receive wages paid from tax revenues.

Our job is to protect the life and property of the people. Now, you lighten those conditions. You create, at your discretion, a rule that is less stringent than that applied to workers with a professional knowledge of radioactivity. What are you doing !

Following the Chernobyl accident, laws have been established in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, measuring both the dose rate of radioactivity in the air and the contamination of the soil. Why ?

That goes without saying. This is because it is difficult to grasp the amount of irradiation suffered by the population only with measurements of ambient radioactivity. In Ukraine, with 5mSv / yr, a measure corresponding to that of the controlled radioactivity zone, the population is evacuated, and even with 1mSv / year which corresponds to the limit of the average dose rate for the public, ‘they have the right to move out. This law known as the Chernobyl law is still in force.

On the other hand, what is the situation in Japan? According to the Cabinet decision of June 2015, the evacuation order is lifted if the dose rate in the air is less than 20mSv / year. There is no problem ! For example, if you stay 24 hours in a controlled area of radioactivity, you are exposed to a dose of 5.2mSv / year.

However, the criterion for the lifting of the order and the return of the population is 20mSv / year or less. The zoning is determined by a dose 4 times that of a controlled zone of radioactivity.

Go back, live there, continue your life, rebuild, what is this! I can find no other expression than “completely twisted”.

Can we still call it the State? I think it’s better to call it the mafia. It’s so inhuman!

The government appears to have adopted dose limits of 20 to 100mSv as recommended by the ICRP*** on radiation exposure limits after an accident. However, when considering the health effects on the population, the most reasonable would be to adopt 1mSv, the lowest dose measurement for radiation limit for public health, according to the global consensus.

The right to evacuate must be granted to the population until the dose rate falls below 1mSv / year. The right to decide when to return belongs to the victims. Why do you determine zoning as you wish? The State must make every effort to reduce the dose as close as possible to 1mSv / year, maximum dose in a normal situation. Then the State, the administration should warn the people, and let them make their own decisions. That would be the fairest way. The State should behave like this.

Who is responsible for this accident? It is TEPCO. Who supported it? It is the State. It is clear who the perpetrators of the crime are. And yet, only the charges of the criminals are being relieved. If it is permissible to develop zoning and associated rights to the convenience of the criminals, this world is a hell then.

In the town of Minamisoma in the coastal region of Fukushima Prefecture, three types of evacuation zone were established after the earthquake. In July 2016, the evacuation order was lifted in the “evacuation order lifting preparation area” and in the “restriction of housing” area. There is only one home with two people remaining in the “area where the return is difficult”.

According to the State, 90% of the territories of Minamisoma are safe.

There is a group called “The Measurement of Environmental Radioactivity Around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant”**** composed mainly of residents of Minamisoma. Since 2012, its members are taking measurements of soil contamination in the vicinity of the neighborhoods of the members and in residential areas. They provided the information. Please look at File No. 3. You see a colored map ( Note from the translator: see the map here,

https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/the-minamisoma-whistleblowers-fukushima/ )

This is the map of soil measurements collected and measured in the territories where the decontamination works have been completed. The colors show the levels of contamination. The blue colored area indicates where the contamination measurements are below 40 000Bq / m2, ie below than the level of a radioactivity controlled zone. There is only one, at the right bottom. Apart from this one, at all other places, the colors show corresponding measurements above the measurements of a controlled zone of radioactivity. There is even a colored place in gray where the measurements exceed 1 000 000Bq / m2. There are people living there!

Compared to the extraordinary ambient radioactivity dose rate observed immediately after the accident, the dose rate of radioactivity in the air decreased considerably. It is not the same order of magnitude. However, according to the inhabitants, even with 0.1μSv / hr of ambient radioactivity dose rate, soil measurements may still be equivalent to those of a radioactivity-controlled zone.

It is senseless that only the dose rate of ambient radioactivity should be taken into account as a condition for lifting the evacuation order. It is so irresponsible and neglectful. It is exactly the opposite of protecting the life and property of the people. People do not live floating in the air at 1 meter above the ground*****. They sit down, lie on the ground, they stop to chat, standing or sitting. Children do not play on asphalted roads only. They can venture into the bushes. Children play freely. There are some who put soil in their mouth. Remember how you were when you were still a child. Gutters where contamination is concentrated provide one of the favorite playgrounds for children.

Mr. Masuchika Kono, a member of the above-mentioned project group, who was with the Engineering Department of Kyoto University, a specialist in nuclear engineering, a graduate of radiation manipulation, collected soil at the Minamisoma Michi-no-eki roadside (service and parking area), and passed it through a sieve of about 100 microns.

The measurements showed 11 410Bq / kg of Cs. These dust rises with the winds and the passages of the vehicles. In daily life, dust is inhaled by the people. You do not take internal radiation into account, do you? You calculate the amount of internal radiation by applying just a coefficient, but do not include internal radiation in real life.

Some people self-evacuated from areas outside the evacuation areas under evacuation order, as they consider that the State policies do not protect the children, their lives. To these persons, within the framework of the Disaster Relief and Disaster Relief Act******, dwellings – “temporary accommodation”******* – were made available.

However, in March 2017, next year, the free housing provision will be suspended. You are telling them that there is no more problem; Why then stay evacuated? That’s it, isn’t it? Those displaced from areas outside evacuation areas under evacuation order fled because their home and living environment are contaminated as a result of the TEPCO nuclear accident.

However, since their homes are located at some distance from the nuclear power plant, they were not included in the evacuation zones that the state established unilaterally. As a result, these displaced persons receive no public support except the provision of free housing. And even this aid will stop in March 2017.

It’s incredible to stop helping them. Moreover, what does it mean to stop the provision of free housing in March? It is the season when mobility is at its highest in the year. You expel them, force them to relocate at the time of the year when rents and costs become more expensive! You have no compassion. You are ruthless!

Here are some testimonies:

“I am afraid of the investigators of the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture visiting door to door. I hide under the cover for fear of hearing the ringing at the door. When I opened the door, the investigator stuck his foot into the door so that I could not close it. With a loud voice so that all the neighbors could hear, he shouted at me “you know very well that you can only live here until March”. I know, but I cannot move. “

The next person.

“The Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture demands that we move out in a fierce and haughty manner. We had to leave our home because of the accident at the nuclear power plant. I do not understand why they are expelling us again. I gave in to the pressure, and I filled up the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture housing application, but it was against my will. Psychologically, I can not accept the fact, and it causes me pain. They are forcing me to move into a prefecture owned housing where no one from Fukushima lives close by. It’s like abandoning the elderly in a mountain. “

The following testimony. It is a home where just a mother and her young children live. The other members of the family remained in Fukushima. They lead a double life. “If there is no more free housing provided, there is no resource to pay the rent. The only dream left to my child is his piano lesson. Do not take away that dream. “

The next person.

“The deadline has not arrived …”

(Note from the translator : Taro Yamamoto can no longer hold his tears) Who does something like that? I beg your pardon. Who orders such a thing? It may be admitted that the State would ask local governments to carry out polite negotiations with the displaced. No, it is nothing but expulsion. Does not the State intend to stop such a situation? I do not allow you to say that you did not know. You see the problem before you now!

“Constant phone calls, visits without notice, and they shout at me asking what my intention is. They send documents to file, and leave passing notices in the mailbox. I am completely exhausted, physically and psychologically. “ This is understandable. They continue to live like that since the explosions of the nuclear power plant, and 5 years and 8 months later they are tracked down in a similar situation. To what extent do you want to tear the hearts of the victims? It is enough for the State to take a decision. This person says that the metropolitan prefecture of Tokyo has asked him to leave the housing, because the prefecture must return that housing for civil servants in March. It is monstrous that the State asks the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture to evict the evacuees and restore the house in proper condition.

These were testimonies of displaced people.

According to my research, to date there are 9327 vacancies among the housings for civil servants in the region of Kanto, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture and 6 other prefectures. It is enough for the State to take a decision, it can solve the problem, at least partially. Why should the inhabitants be expelled? Is it because, if there are tenants, those buildings could not sold during the financial bubble of the Olympic Games? It’s too cruel.

On April 4 last year, according to the newspaper Mainichi shinbun, the state does not request reimbursement from TEPCO for the rents of dwellings “considered as temporary housings”. Commission member Iwabuchi mentioned earlier that the government will oblige TEPCO to pay for the costs of the decontamination work. Why don’t you ask TEPCO to pay the rents? These people are the victims!

Finally, I would like to ask to the Minister. I would like you to answer two questions.

1st: You said that this is what the Fukushima prefecture wants. However, you are in a position to make suggestions to the Fukushima Prefecture. Please talk it over again. This situation is really irregular.

2nd: Please listen to the voices of the displaced. I think you have almost no opportunity to hear the voices of self-evacuees coming from locations outside the evacuation areas. Until then, you were too busy. Perhaps the people around you got acquainted with their testimonies. Please listen to them yourself. Today, too, they are here. There’s a break after this session. Could you give them 5 minutes? If you give us just 5 minutes today during the break, you can talk with the self-evacuees.

I would ask you to answer these two questions.

Secretary of State (Masahiro Imamura)

As I have already said, I am willing to consult with the prefecture of Fukushima, and I would like to ensure that the people concerned are not hurt. I will see to its smooth progress.

You said that self-evacuated people are here. I also have a plenary session after and I do not have time, but I will listen to them.

President (Mitsuru Sakurai)

Mr. Yamamoto, you have exhausted your time.

Taro Yamamoto

Thank you.

Please keep your promise. Thank you very much.

Credits to Kurumi Sugita from the Nos Voisins Lointains 3.11 Association for the Japanese to French translation (http://nosvoisins311.wixsite.com/voisins311-france)

French to English translation by Hervé Courtois (Dun renard) from the Fukushima 311 Watchdogs (https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/)

* Source : Taro Yamamoto’s website

** Ordinance on Prevention of Ionizing Radiation Hazards, Ministry of Labour Ordinance No. 41 of September 30, 1972, Latest Amendments: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Ordinance No. 172 of July 16, 2001

*** International Commission on Radiological Protection

**** Fukuichi shûhen kankyôhôshasen monitoring project

***** The measurements of ambiant radioactivity are taken at 1 meter above the ground.

****** Saigai kyûjohô, Law of assistance in case of disaster , laws N°118 of octobre 18, 1947

******* Minashi kasetsu jyûtaku. Rental housing managed by private agencies inhabited by evacuees whose rent is borne by the central government or local governments.

All recent claims of “Russian hacking” are either outright false or are based on “evidence” that only shows run-of-the-mill attacks by some anonymous basement hacker.

The year 2016 saw the person elected U.S. president who the Washington Post, hated most. To celebrate the end of this very bad year its writers and editors decided to put more egg on their faces.

It first published the piece promoted on the left and some three hours later the fundamentally “corrected” one on the right.

The claim in the first piece, based on anonymous “officials”, was that Russia hacked into the U.S. electricity grid through a utility company in Vermont. But then the utility companies in question, Burlington Electric, issued a statement that a recent scan of its IT systems had found only one laptop with some malware and that the laptop in questions was not connected to its networks at all. There was nothing found on any net-connected system. It had reported the find to the federal U.S. government. (Some very shortsighted “officials” immediately abused the confidential company information to miss-inform the Washington Post.) The utility company found the malware by scanning for a malware signature published in a lame recent assessment by Homeland Security and the FBI.

Dubious claims of foreign hacking of the electricity grid have already been made in 2009. Its an old trick of the Obama administration to achieve some political aims.

The Washington Post was obviously so eager to publish another of its daily “Russian hacking” fakes that it did not even ask the two Vermont utilities in question before pushing the stenographed piece out of the door.

That may well have been because the lead editorial of that day was warning of Putin hacking the U.S. electricity network and (again) hitting at Trump:

For any American leader, an attempt to subvert U.S. democracy ought to be unforgivable — even if he is the intended beneficiary. Some years ago, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor,” and the fear at the time was of a cyberattack collapsing electric grids or crashing financial markets. Now we have a real cyber-Pearl Harbor, though not one that was anticipated.

Pearl Harbor was followed by the U.S. entry into a world war. Do the editors want to repeat that when alluding to it?

The editorial also pushed a bunch of wholly invented conspiracy theories:

Why is Mr. Trump so dismissive of Russia’s dangerous behavior? Some say it is his lack of experience in foreign policy, or an oft-stated admiration for strongmen, or naivete about Russian intentions. But darker suspicions persist. Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to be transparent about his multibillion-dollar business empire. Are there loans or deals with Russian businesses or the state that were concealed during the campaign? Are there hidden communications with Mr. Putin or his representatives? We would be thrilled to see all the doubts dispelled, but Mr. Trump’s odd behavior in the face of a clear threat from Russia, matched by Mr. Putin’s evident enthusiasm for the president-elect, cannot be easily explained.

During the election campaign WaPo was the news paper with the most anti-Trump screeds on its neoconned editorial page. That actually helped Trump by making him the obvious anti-Neocon candidate. But “Pearl Harbor” comparisons and “darker suspicions” beat even the most stupid earlier pieces on him.

I suspect that the pushing of the Vermont hack was also an attempted hit against Bernie Sanders, the Senator from Vermont who was scammed out of the Democratic candidacy by the Clinton aligned Democratic National Council. He would now either have to jump on the “Russian hacking->bad Putin->bad-Trump” train or could be blamed of pro-Russian, pro-Putin and pro-Trump tendencies. All such tendencies are of course bad in the view of the pseudo-liberal Washington establishment which is busy promoting the New Red Scare.

But back to that malware. DHS and FBI had published a “report” (pdf) which again attempted to blame Russia of hacking the Democratic National Council while again providing zero actual evidence of such a hack (hint: there is none). The 13 pages include 2 with amateur graphics of a trivial hack architecture and 7 with amateur advice on how to protect a network. Of interest in it were samples and checksums of moduls of the hacking software it attributed to Russia and a list of IP addresses through which it claims the DNC hack was made. Of special interest is also what it does not say.

Several well known IT security experts have said earlier, like me, that such “reports” and claims are bullshit. A few more add to that:

Jonathon Zdziarski:

Any antivirus company doing any amount of threat intelligence would be able to come up with more solid indicators than FBI released.

John McAfee (now often nutty but right in this):

If it looks like the Russians did it I can guarantee you it wasn’t the Russians.

Matt Tait:

My money’s on this all turns out to be commodity malware and not even APT28/APT29 and everyone jumping on the bandwagon will look v silly

All, and especially Matt Tait, are right.

Wordfence, also a reputed IT security company, took a detailed look at the samples and tables in the new DHS/FBI “report” and concludes:

The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

There is your “Russian hack” the DHS and FBI claim hit the DNC servers and WaPo falsely claimed hit the U.S. electricity grid. A run-of-the-mill hack through freely available servers with old Ukrainian malware just like the hundred-thousand others that happen each day.

Pic: Device not found in Vermont

(Putin though is likely to accept the “Russian Hack” claim if the U.S. helps Russia to annex the source country of the identified malware. “If you give me Ukraine we will also call it ‘a Russian hack’. We will even take responsibility!”)

But if you, like me, believe the word of former British ambassador Craig Murray who works with Wikileaks, there was no hack at all. The DNC data came via an insider who had direct access to them. They were handed to Craig for publishing by Wikileaks.

The whole bogus “Russian hacking” and “Putin did it” claims are issued to lock the coming President Trump into an anti-Russian position. Peace with Russia means less plausible “imminent threat” claims and thereby lower budgets and management prestige for the defense and cybersecurity industry and government organizations. That again would mean lower advertisement income for the Washington Post and less money for its staff, editors and owner.

These people would rather have Word War III than to endure that.

Sound absurd? It is, part of intense Russia bashing, a political and economic assault, risking something more serious.

On New Year’s eve, the Washington Post published an updated version of its previous fake news story.

The earlier version claimed Russian hackers penetrated the US electric grid – a Big Lie. The new version says it hacked a Vermont utility, citing the usual unnamed US sources.

WaPo: “(T)he discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. And it raises fears in the US government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.”

Fact: As usual, when it comes to bashing Russia, claims aren’t backed by verifiable evidence, just fear-mongering hyperbole – media repeating it without due diligence checking for veracity.

Russia poses no threat to any country – not to America, its electricity grid, Vermont or any other state, city or federal operation.

Claiming it was fake news like all other anti-Russia accusations, not a shred of evidence supporting them.

Claiming “(a) code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility” was willful deception.

Cybersecurity specialists said the code wasn’t Russian. It was an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool. On Friday, Burlington Electric said the malware code was detected during a single laptop scan not connected to its power grid.

A company statement said “(w)e took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding.”

Our team is working with federal officials to trace this malware and prevent any other attempts to infiltrate utility systems. We have briefed state officials and will support the investigation fully.

Blaming Russia for hyped incidents is the usual knee-jerk response, part of longstanding bashing, ongoing now to pressure Trump against normalizing ties, including cooperating with Putin in combating terrorism.

A report on the Vermont incident by cybersecurity firm Wordfence said alleged originating IP addresses provided by US agencies “don’t appear to provide any association with Russia.” They’re “probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors.”

Vermonters can relax. So can Americans in the other 49 states. The Russians aren’t coming. No Russian cyber or other attacks loom.

Claims otherwise are fabricated for political reasons – not legitimate ones.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

London, England. The pile of detritus in Tooting had been growing ahead of the New Year’s Eve gatherings.

The pubs were initiating their usual trick of closure and charging for tickets in the hope of getting some ruddy cash ahead of 2017.  In parts of London, an air of dark pessimism lingered like a cold fog.  Ominously, bad weather threatened Heathrow at points with grounded flights and cancellations.

With the celebratory fireworks in London, the city’s mayor had come out with the rather feeble remark that the city was ‘open’. (For what?  Business, or perhaps defiantly open in the face of another round of renewed security threats.)

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, was even less convincing.  Another year would usher in the crude realities of a Brexit negotiation process her servants are ill-prepared for. It is a point she wishes to keep from discussion in Parliament. The Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn has even accused May of being an autocrat akin to Henry VIII.  If so, she is at best a confused one.

Across the various departments, and in the interest of austerity, the Brexit section charged with engineering Britain’s departure from the European Union has been rapacious and unrepentant in its demands.The minister overseeing that side of government business, David Davis, has not impressed his European counterparts with either his negotiating stance, or management.  German MEP Manfred Weber, chairman of the centre-right European People’s Party, wondered whether Davis and May were even on the same, confused page.

In November, Weber tut tutted any idea that Britain could stay in the single market and continue to ‘have very close cooperation in legal issues.’  Brexit, after all, meant Brexit, necessitating a pruning ‘back on our relationships.’[1]

May has entertained the British public with a vast array of inanities to soften the effects of Europe’s threatening hammer. She has proposals, so he claim, for a ‘truly global Britain’, a poor assertion suggesting that it was not global to begin with.  Her new year message was a patchwork of similar comments in an effort to claim that Britons were not as divided as thought.

‘If 2016 was the year you voted for that change, this is the year we start to make it happen.’ The referendum, however, had ‘laid bare some further divisions in our country.’  The June referendum had been ‘divisive at times.   I know, of course, that not everyone shared the same point of view or voted in the same way. But I know too that, as we face the opportunities ahead of us, our shared interests and ambitions can bring us together.’

Before the European negotiators, she has promised ample visions of jam and richness, claiming that ‘the right deal’ will be forthcoming for all – including the shell shocked remainers.  ‘This is the year we need to pull down these barriers that hold people back, securing a better deal at home for ordinary, working people.’

The ‘ordinary working people’ as a concept is, at best, a rickety one.  In the European zone, citizens have been crossing borders, inhabiting and enriching various economies with their subsidizing industrious presence.  Germany has two million Poles; France 650,000 Portuguese, and Spain over a million Romanians.

What made the British case before Brexit odd was how Europeans were made an object of swamping terror, a shift of sorts from traditional targets of racial opprobrium (Africa, the subcontinent, the Caribbean).

This was fed by the customary manipulation of the working class vote, ever vulnerable to concepts of loss and privation in a changing economy.  The British problem here is a broader one of internal organisation of a lopsided labour market rather than external one of uncontrollable borders.

Britain, after all, has shortages in health workers, not to mention areas that require such personnel as painters, carpenters, electricians and plumbers. That is not a point being made by the Davis-May team.

What The Independent envisaged was a gloomy attack on Britain’s estranged working classes if discrimination against European citizens was to go ahead.  ‘That massive blow to the material economy would be far more damaging to Britain’s working class than allowing Lithuanians to pull leeks from Lincolnshire fields in freezing weather.’[2]

As for broader sentiments of unity, very little of that liquor is available for consumption, especially with May behind the bar.  ‘This is the year’, suggested William Keegan rather grumpily in The Guardian, ‘when our politicians and the so-called “people” – all 28 percent of the population who voted to leave the European Union – will reap what they have sown.’[3]

So, as the booze inflicted headaches wear off this morning, Britain remains fractured and disillusioned, marked by a government of enormous confusion and inconsistencies.  As this continues, the biggest barker in favour Brexit, Nigel Farage, continues to draw an EU salary.  A most compromised political attack dog, if ever there was one.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Notes

 [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-david-davis-single-market-uk-no-idea-what-it-means-comments-eu-mep-a7432086.html

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-theresa-may-managed-migration-article-50-single-market-access-closing-borders-there-are-ways-a7504256.html

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/01/brexit-slow-burning-fuse-powder-keg-in-2017

The intent of Obama’s sanctions against Russia, requiring 35 Russian diplomats to leave the US within 72 hours, was to trigger retaliation on the part of the Kremlin.

The Russian president however responded with courtesy, conveying Russia’s best wishes for the New Year to both the president and people of the United States.  Below is Putin’s official response: 

We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing US administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-US relationship. This runs contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people. Considering the global security responsibilities of Russia and the United States, this is also damaging to international relations as a whole.

As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind. Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.

The diplomats who are returning to Russia will spend the New Year’s holidays with their families and friends. We will not create any problems for US diplomats. We will not expel anyone. We will not prevent their families and children from using their traditional leisure sites during the New Year’s holidays. Moreover, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited in Russia to the New Year and Christmas children’s parties in the Kremlin.

It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner. Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.

My season’s greetings also to President-elect Donald Trump and the American people.

I wish all of you happiness and prosperity.

Cryptic response from London’s Guardian:  pertaining to the children of US diplomats:

Instead of playing the Grinch, Putin had taken on the role of Ded Moroz, Russia’s answer to Father Christmas. One Russian MP on Vesti TV said Obama was Bad Santa.

It was also a subtle reminder, for those who were able to decode it, that the FSB – the KGB’s successor – has precise information about the children of US embassy personnel. Russia’s foreign ministry on Friday tartly denied reports that Moscow was to close the Anglo-American school, attended by diplomatic kids, and the offspring of bankers and oil workers.

The next 12 months will be an extension of 2016’s political earthquakes. This will come as an aftershock for some and for many others as a long-cherished opportunity to make the world a safer place through cooperation instead of confrontation. Yet nothing is written, and the scenarios for the future are as variable as ever.

It is clear that the two defining developments of 2016, measured by any yardstick, were Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. elections.

The year has produced a reverse trend to globalization and further integration into the European Union, and marked a watershed in the civil war in Syria, where the recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian government has given a peace settlement a chance.

Revolt against ‘United States of Europe’

If Charles de Gaulle were still alive, the founder of the Fifth Republic in France would have probably said that Britain has reneged on a short-term whimsical ambition to be part of Europe.

The 52 percent of the 72.2 percent of UK voters who backed Leave in the watershed referendum on 23 June constitutes a peculiar mix of characters, but have a universally robust motivation.

Free trade benefits, as the original driver of Britain’s interest in the link-up with the continent, have thinned out while its trade deficit soared, alienating domestic-market-oriented small and medium businesses.

How would Russia have voted in Brexit referendum?

Many of the affluent rural areas in the country’s southeast – crucially, not the cities, with London residents voting categorically against Brexit – as well as political figures who resent what they see as enforced subordination to “unelected” executives in Brussels joined the Leave camp.

Being part of a European family and abiding by common rules of co-existence and interaction turned out to be a disproportionate burden for some residents of the British Isles.

It has been noted that the “sleeping giant,” as Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh once called English nationalism, has awakened. “For the real sleeping giant is not Scottish nationalism, but the English version,” he wrote in one article on his website.

Basically, Brexit is a revolt against excessive EU regulations and a failure to tackle unregulated migration coupled with a fear of further concessions to the architects of the “United States of Europe,” who Leavers perceive are demanding that the UK relinquish even more national sovereignty.

Ironically, Britain, which was once at the forefront of the globalization movement, has lost the enthusiasm to climb up another level.

The risks of losing out to other nations with a competitive edge and undermining one’s national identity now outweigh the advantages of standardizing the Western world. As Lord Ashcroft’s super-poll on Brexit underlined, “The principle that decisions about the UK should be made in the UK” inspired the Leavers.

For Russia, the sudden resurgence of “national sovereignty” in the set of values accepted by part of the British political class is a welcome sign. After all, at the core of it is the Westphalian principle of respect for national diversity and abstention from forcibly reforming other nations in one’s image.

Rise of the counter-elites

The year was also marked by the mainstream media’s intimidation of counter-elites with certain political affiliations, for instance the National Front (FN) in France or Alternative for Germany (AfD).

There was plenty of labeling of such parties as “ultra-right” and “populist,” yet this oversimplification looks out of touch with reality.

Neither the NF nor the AfD can be vilified for threatening to mistreat illegal migrants, especially since the European Commission suggested in early December that individual nations – to dissuade asylum seekers from moving to northern countries (Germany, in particular) – should start sending migrants back to Greece, starting in March.

Populism has earned a negative connotation, though the Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as “political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want.”

Yet is not democracy (translated from Greek as the “rule of the people”) intended as well to give “ordinary people… what they want”?

It’s easy to agree with Jon Henley, The Guardian’s European affairs correspondent, when he claims: ”A wind of anxious, resentful, anti politics-as-usual change is blowing across Europe.”

Counter-elites are gaining in popularity in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. Time seems to be on their side.

Trumpeters of a new world order

International affairs face an overhaul after the U.S. political class has splintered, producing proponents of an introverted policy aimed at putting the “house back into order” (under the slogan “Make America great again”) and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Putin echoes Trump on foreign policy as Russia softens rhetoric

However, Trump’s much-deplored “isolationism” does not cover Russia: The conciliatory overtures from the U.S. president-elect toward Russia, backed by a telephone call and correspondence between Trump and Putin, testify to this.

“One thing is plain as the world looks toward 2017. It cannot ignore Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Peter Ford professed in the Christian Science Monitor.

The effectiveness of the combination of diplomacy and force applied by Moscow in the conflict in Syria and around has helped Russia regain its former status of a power broker and mediator. Some Western political scientists have even claimed that in 2016 Russia has finally “revised” the results of the Cold War in its favor.

Notably, “of all the 2016 presidential candidates, only Donald Trump embraced a policy prescription designed to reverse the West’s provocative eastward expansion, reduce tensions and test Russia’s true intentions,” recently wrote Robert W. Merry, contributing editor at global affairs publication The National Interest.

Yet, any “reset” on the bilateral track might come at a cost. Trump seems to have adopted classical Kissinger-style rebalancing tactics, which is expected to reverse the legacy of Ping-Pong Diplomacy between the capitalist U.S. and Communist China, begun in 1971.

Just as Nixon’s administration masterly played the Chinese card against the Soviet Union, Trump’s government will attempt to align with Moscow in its overtly bellicose stance toward Beijing.

It has already made Putin emphasize that relations between Russia with China surpass the level of a “strategic partnership,” by doing so sending a signal to Washington that this is non-negotiable.

Nevertheless, Putin’s ”red line” does not inhibit rapprochement with the United States, which the Russian president has defined as the “only superpower in the world.”

…All in all, 2017 promises no more routine easy-riding. Trump, Brexit and the rise of counter-elites in Europe will invariably challenge the old world order, if not change it altogether.

Vladimir Mikheev is a freelance commentator for Russia Beyond The Headlines. His opinion does not reflect the position of RBTH or its staff.

Introduction by Steve Rabson

Ever since the end of America’s Vietnam catastrophe, experts on both sides of the Pacific have sounded warnings about anachronistic, wasteful, and dangerously misguided U.S. military policies, seemingly perpetuated by inertia, in East Asia. Yet their recommendations are ignored and new policy initiatives thwarted. As a candidate for president in early 1975, Jimmy Carter advocated removing U.S. forces from South Korea. Of Carter’s meeting that year with researchers at the Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow Barry M. Blechman recalled, “I told Carter we should take out the nukes (nuclear weapons) right off and phase out the ground troops over four or five years. I said the most important reason was to avoid getting the U.S. involved with ground forces almost automatically in a new war which is, of course, why the South Koreans want them there.” However, Major General John K. Singlaub, U.S. Forces Korea Chief of Staff at the time, publicly criticized Carter’s proposed withdrawal and CIA Director Stansfield Turner privately expressed misgivings.¹ It was never implemented.

Retired Admiral Gene R. Laroque, Director of the Center for Defense Information, also favored U.S. troop withdrawal from South Korea. And he advocated closing U.S. bases in Okinawa as strategically unnecessary and fiscally wasteful.² Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and later Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute, has written that South Korea “is twice as populous [as North Korea], infinitely richer, and fully capable of defending itself.” ³ Johnson also explained why “defending Korea” and “defending Japan” are false rationales for perpetuating the oppressive burden of U.S. bases in Okinawa, documenting the many atrocities committed by U.S. forces there, even after its reversion from U.S. military occupation to Japanese administration in 1972.⁴

Protesters at Camp Schwab Main Gate, Okinawa

After an 18-month crisis during which North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. and the DPRK signed the Agreed Framework on October 22, 1994. It committed North Korea to freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors suspected of being part of a covert nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The agreement also committed the United States to supply North Korea with fuel oil pending construction of the reactors.⁵ In June, 2000 South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung met North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il in Pyongyang for the June, 2000 “Sunshine Summit,” That same month U.S. President Bill Clinton moved further toward rapprochement, easing long-standing sanctions against the DPRK imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Secretary of State Madelaine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in October for talks with the Kim Jung-Il government to prepare for a Clinton visit, and North Korean officials met with Clinton at the White House. According to an October 23 report in The Guardian, “South Korean officials welcomed [Albright’s] visit. . . Kim [Jung-Il] has shown surprising willingness to reciprocate Mr. Clinton’s moves to seek an accommodation between the two countries.”

Everything seemed on track for the establishment of diplomatic relations until the 2000 presidential election when a Supreme Court ruling gave George W. Bush the win over Vice President Al Gore. Clinton then got cold feet and declared he would leave the final decision on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations up to the next president. The Bush-Cheney administration promptly killed the initiative, declared North Korea and Iraq to be 2/3 of an axis of evil, and invaded Iraq two years later forcing “regime change.” In a likely response, the DPRK proceeded to manufacture nuclear weapons. Thus ended prospects for a rapprochement. As for the dangers of another war on the Korean Peninsula, Taoka Shunji argues in the article below that, if U.S. forces left Japan, North Korea would have no more reason to target them with missiles. Taoka also points out that withdrawing U.S. forces in Japan would relieve Okinawa of its disproportionate burden of bases, though his proposal to move the Marines in Okinawa to a Japan Ground Self Defense Forces base on the mainland seems unrealistic, considering the Japanese government’s insistence on keeping the Marines in Okinawa.

In mentioning the possibility of the U.S. imposing even greater costs on Japan for U.S. forces stationed there, Taoka refers to Donald Trump’s complaint during his campaign that the Japanese government doesn’t pay enough for them. In fact, judging from what Trump said, he seemed unaware of the approximately 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) Japanese taxpayers are already shelling out (so to speak) every year. This is perhaps another of his campaign assertions he will disavow as president. If not, and Trump does in fact demand more money from Japan, Taoka invites him to play his “Trump card” so Japan can let America pull out its military. SR

TRUMP’S ELECTION: AN OPPORTUNITY TOREEVALUATE U.S.–JAPAN RELATIONS

The Benefits for Japan of a U.S. Military Withdrawal

Taoka Shunji

Statements during the American election campaign by people uninformed or uninterested in foreign policy were like a mixture of bits and pieces stirred into a fruit punch. Yet there was a certain consistency of opinion that “we can no longer be the world’s policeman” and “we must fundamentally reevaluate our alliances.” With the end of the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc has disappeared. That the Western alliances remain unchanged is a historic anomaly. Reevaluation is sorely needed.

This year Japan is paying 556.6 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) for the stationing of U.S. forces here, 165.8 billion yen (1.5 billion dollars) for land-leases, and, according to last year’s figures, 8.8 billion yen (77 million dollars) to subsidize the bases. About all the U.S. pays for are the troops’ salaries. If our costs go any higher, we should consider treating the U.S. military as a mercenary force under the command of Japan’s Self Defense Forces.

The claim that the American military protects Japan is false. There is no component of U.S. forces here with the mission to directly defend Japan. For example, the 7^th Fleet is based at Sasebo and Yokosuka to maintain American naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The Marines, which are used in land warfare, ride aboard their ships. They do not defend Okinawa. The fighter aircraft at Kadena Air Base (Okinawa Prefecture) and Misawa Air Base (Aomori Prefecture) are deployed to the Middle East. All of Japan’s air space is defended by Air SDF. In Okinawa the U.S. Air Force’s ammunition depot at Kadena and the Navy’s storage facilities at White Beach have nothing to do with defending Japan. However, if U.S. forces were to return to the United States, the American government would have to pay for them. Therefore, as has been noted in Congress any number of times, it is cheaper to keep them in Japan. According to the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines, “Japan is fully responsible for the defense of its people and territory . . . supplemented by U.S. forces.” Even if American forces were to leave, there would be no gap in Japan’s defenses. Should the U.S. seek to increase Japan’s financial burden now, it would violate the host nation support agreement (“sympathy budget”) concluded late last year for a five-year term, meaning that it is o.k. anytime for the U.S. to kick around Japan.

The benefits of withdrawing U.S. forces would include (1) solving the base problem in Okinawa, (2) relieving Japan of an annual burden of close to 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars), and (3) greatly reducing the nuclear threat since, if U.S. bases in Japan were removed, North Korea would have no reason for missiles targeting them, or South Korean and U.S. bases in Korea.

Realistically speaking, America is unlikely to relinquish its position as the world’s No. 1 sea power. If the U.S. wants to maintain naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, it cannot abandon its ship maintenance and repair facilities at Yokosuka and Sasebo. The U.S. currently uses the airfield at Iwakuni (Yamaguchi Prefecture) for planes assigned to its aircraft carriers, and the bases in Okinawa for Marines on stand-by for deployments. But the Marines do not have to be in Okinawa. They could move to the Ground SDF’s Ainoura Garrison, conveniently located in Sasebo (Nagasaki Prefecture) next to the U.S. Navy Base.

Finally, if in the future Japan told the U.S. it was free to pull out its forces, the U.S. would probably want them to stay. In the meantime, in demanding Japan pay more for them, Trump would seem to have his “trump card,” but Japan would actually have the upper hand. Overcoming the myth that American forces protect Japan would give us the chance to clearly assert our true interests. The Foreign Ministry and the administration would then need to muster the courage to let President Trump play his card.

Translation by Steve Robson

Notes

¹Don Oberdorfer, “Carter’s Decision on Korea Traced Back to January, 1975,” Washington Post, December 6, 1977.

²Michael Johns, “The Admiral Who Jumped Ship: Inside the Center for Defense Information,” Policy Review, 1988.

³Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Metropolitan Books, 2000, p. 58.

⁴Ibid., pp. 40-51.

Introduction by Steve Rabson

Ever since the end of America’s Vietnam catastrophe, experts on both sides of the Pacific have sounded warnings about anachronistic, wasteful, and dangerously misguided U.S. military policies, seemingly perpetuated by inertia, in East Asia. Yet their recommendations are ignored and new policy initiatives thwarted. As a candidate for president in early 1975, Jimmy Carter advocated removing U.S. forces from South Korea. Of Carter’s meeting that year with researchers at the Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow Barry M. Blechman recalled, “I told Carter we should take out the nukes (nuclear weapons) right off and phase out the ground troops over four or five years. I said the most important reason was to avoid getting the U.S. involved with ground forces almost automatically in a new war which is, of course, why the South Koreans want them there.” However, Major General John K. Singlaub, U.S. Forces Korea Chief of Staff at the time, publicly criticized Carter’s proposed withdrawal and CIA Director Stansfield Turner privately expressed misgivings.¹ It was never implemented.

Retired Admiral Gene R. Laroque, Director of the Center for Defense Information, also favored U.S. troop withdrawal from South Korea. And he advocated closing U.S. bases in Okinawa as strategically unnecessary and fiscally wasteful.² Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and later Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute, has written that South Korea “is twice as populous [as North Korea], infinitely richer, and fully capable of defending itself.” ³ Johnson also explained why “defending Korea” and “defending Japan” are false rationales for perpetuating the oppressive burden of U.S. bases in Okinawa, documenting the many atrocities committed by U.S. forces there, even after its reversion from U.S. military occupation to Japanese administration in 1972.⁴

Protesters at Camp Schwab Main Gate, Okinawa

After an 18-month crisis during which North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. and the DPRK signed the Agreed Framework on October 22, 1994. It committed North Korea to freeze operation and construction of nuclear reactors suspected of being part of a covert nuclear weapons program in exchange for two proliferation-resistant nuclear power reactors. The agreement also committed the United States to supply North Korea with fuel oil pending construction of the reactors.⁵ In June, 2000 South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung met North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il in Pyongyang for the June, 2000 “Sunshine Summit,” That same month U.S. President Bill Clinton moved further toward rapprochement, easing long-standing sanctions against the DPRK imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Secretary of State Madelaine Albright traveled to Pyongyang in October for talks with the Kim Jung-Il government to prepare for a Clinton visit, and North Korean officials met with Clinton at the White House. According to an October 23 report in The Guardian, “South Korean officials welcomed [Albright’s] visit. . . Kim [Jung-Il] has shown surprising willingness to reciprocate Mr. Clinton’s moves to seek an accommodation between the two countries.”

Everything seemed on track for the establishment of diplomatic relations until the 2000 presidential election when a Supreme Court ruling gave George W. Bush the win over Vice President Al Gore. Clinton then got cold feet and declared he would leave the final decision on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations up to the next president. The Bush-Cheney administration promptly killed the initiative, declared North Korea and Iraq to be 2/3 of an axis of evil, and invaded Iraq two years later forcing “regime change.” In a likely response, the DPRK proceeded to manufacture nuclear weapons. Thus ended prospects for a rapprochement. As for the dangers of another war on the Korean Peninsula, Taoka Shunji argues in the article below that, if U.S. forces left Japan, North Korea would have no more reason to target them with missiles. Taoka also points out that withdrawing U.S. forces in Japan would relieve Okinawa of its disproportionate burden of bases, though his proposal to move the Marines in Okinawa to a Japan Ground Self Defense Forces base on the mainland seems unrealistic, considering the Japanese government’s insistence on keeping the Marines in Okinawa.

In mentioning the possibility of the U.S. imposing even greater costs on Japan for U.S. forces stationed there, Taoka refers to Donald Trump’s complaint during his campaign that the Japanese government doesn’t pay enough for them. In fact, judging from what Trump said, he seemed unaware of the approximately 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) Japanese taxpayers are already shelling out (so to speak) every year. This is perhaps another of his campaign assertions he will disavow as president. If not, and Trump does in fact demand more money from Japan, Taoka invites him to play his “Trump card” so Japan can let America pull out its military. SR

TRUMP’S ELECTION: AN OPPORTUNITY TOREEVALUATE U.S.–JAPAN RELATIONS

The Benefits for Japan of a U.S. Military Withdrawal

Taoka Shunji

Statements during the American election campaign by people uninformed or uninterested in foreign policy were like a mixture of bits and pieces stirred into a fruit punch. Yet there was a certain consistency of opinion that “we can no longer be the world’s policeman” and “we must fundamentally reevaluate our alliances.” With the end of the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc has disappeared. That the Western alliances remain unchanged is a historic anomaly. Reevaluation is sorely needed.

This year Japan is paying 556.6 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars) for the stationing of U.S. forces here, 165.8 billion yen (1.5 billion dollars) for land-leases, and, according to last year’s figures, 8.8 billion yen (77 million dollars) to subsidize the bases. About all the U.S. pays for are the troops’ salaries. If our costs go any higher, we should consider treating the U.S. military as a mercenary force under the command of Japan’s Self Defense Forces.

The claim that the American military protects Japan is false. There is no component of U.S. forces here with the mission to directly defend Japan. For example, the 7^th Fleet is based at Sasebo and Yokosuka to maintain American naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The Marines, which are used in land warfare, ride aboard their ships. They do not defend Okinawa. The fighter aircraft at Kadena Air Base (Okinawa Prefecture) and Misawa Air Base (Aomori Prefecture) are deployed to the Middle East. All of Japan’s air space is defended by Air SDF. In Okinawa the U.S. Air Force’s ammunition depot at Kadena and the Navy’s storage facilities at White Beach have nothing to do with defending Japan. However, if U.S. forces were to return to the United States, the American government would have to pay for them. Therefore, as has been noted in Congress any number of times, it is cheaper to keep them in Japan. According to the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines, “Japan is fully responsible for the defense of its people and territory . . . supplemented by U.S. forces.” Even if American forces were to leave, there would be no gap in Japan’s defenses. Should the U.S. seek to increase Japan’s financial burden now, it would violate the host nation support agreement (“sympathy budget”) concluded late last year for a five-year term, meaning that it is o.k. anytime for the U.S. to kick around Japan.

The benefits of withdrawing U.S. forces would include (1) solving the base problem in Okinawa, (2) relieving Japan of an annual burden of close to 557 billion yen (4.8 billion dollars), and (3) greatly reducing the nuclear threat since, if U.S. bases in Japan were removed, North Korea would have no reason for missiles targeting them, or South Korean and U.S. bases in Korea.

Realistically speaking, America is unlikely to relinquish its position as the world’s No. 1 sea power. If the U.S. wants to maintain naval supremacy in the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean, it cannot abandon its ship maintenance and repair facilities at Yokosuka and Sasebo. The U.S. currently uses the airfield at Iwakuni (Yamaguchi Prefecture) for planes assigned to its aircraft carriers, and the bases in Okinawa for Marines on stand-by for deployments. But the Marines do not have to be in Okinawa. They could move to the Ground SDF’s Ainoura Garrison, conveniently located in Sasebo (Nagasaki Prefecture) next to the U.S. Navy Base.

Finally, if in the future Japan told the U.S. it was free to pull out its forces, the U.S. would probably want them to stay. In the meantime, in demanding Japan pay more for them, Trump would seem to have his “trump card,” but Japan would actually have the upper hand. Overcoming the myth that American forces protect Japan would give us the chance to clearly assert our true interests. The Foreign Ministry and the administration would then need to muster the courage to let President Trump play his card.

Translation by Steve Robson

Notes

¹Don Oberdorfer, “Carter’s Decision on Korea Traced Back to January, 1975,” Washington Post, December 6, 1977.

²Michael Johns, “The Admiral Who Jumped Ship: Inside the Center for Defense Information,” Policy Review, 1988.

³Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Metropolitan Books, 2000, p. 58.

⁴Ibid., pp. 40-51.

German security officials previously blamed Russia for hacking secret German communications and providing them to Wikileaks (English translation). And see this.

The claim?  BBC reported:

BfV [Germany’s intelligence agency] head Hans-Georg Maassen said Germany was a perennial target of a hacker gang known as Sofacy/APT 28 that some other experts also believe has close links with the Russian state. This group is believed by security experts to be affiliated with the Pawn Storm group that has been accused of targeting the CDU party.

***

Sofacy/APT 28 is believed to have been formed in 2004 and has been blamed for a wide range of attacks on both governments and financial institutions.

The attacks on German state organisations and institutions were carried out to gather intelligence data, Mr Maassen said.

He added that his agency had been monitoring the group for years. He said some of its hack attacks on Germany had been ongoing for more than a decade.

The attack on the German parliament sought to install software that would have given the attackers permanent access to computers used by staff and MPs. Other attacks involved gathering data about critical infrastructure such as power plants and other utilities, Mr Maassen said.

Ruskie bastards! This is the same group blamed by the U.S. for the hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Case closed!

However, German officials now say that the communications were likely leaked from an insider within the German parliament, the Bundestag (English translation).

Oh, nevermind …

Similarly, when a treasure trove of secret NSA tools were revealed, Russian hackers were initially blamed.

But it turns out that it was probably a leak by an NSA insider.

So should we believe – without any evidence and based upon faith – the U.S. claim that it was Sofacy/APT 28 and a related group which hacked the DNC and Podesta emails and provided them to Wikileaks?

Especially when a group of senior former American intelligence officials – including the man who designed the NSA’s global surveillance system (Bill Binney), a 27-year CIA officials who personally delivered the daily briefing to both Democratic and Republican presidents (Ray McGovern) , and others – say that the Democratic Party emails were not hacked, but were actually leaked by insiders?

And when the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and close Wikileaks associate says that he has first-hand knowledge that the Democratic party emails were leaked by American insiders … and not hacked at all?

Postscript: I don’t know whether or not the Russians hacked the Democratic party and delivered the emails to Wikileaks.  I’m just suggesting that we need to be a little skeptical and demand evidence.

In response to Obama’s new sanctions on Russia, Trump praised how Putin handled his action, tweeting “(g)reat move on delay (by V. Putin) – I always knew he was very smart.”

A follow-up related tweet said “Russians are playing #CNN and @NBCNews for such fools…they don’t have a clue! @FoxNews totally gets it.”

Senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway called Obama’s new sanctions “a political response” at the behest of “Team Hillary,” aiming to “box in…Trump” because he favors improved relations with Russia, getting along with Putin.

Obama’s 11th hour action in the waning days of his deplorable presidency was based on fabricated claims of Russian US election hacking.

It was a thinly veiled political stunt, reflecting sour grapes for Trump’s electoral triumph, wanting him delegitimized, along with an attempt to prevent normalization of Russia/US relations after his tenure ends – favoring continued confrontation instead.

Accusations of Russian US election hacking are groundless. No evidence exists proving it. Long after America’s intelligence community claimed it, Congress has yet to be briefed.

In mid-December, Senate Homeland Security Committee chairman Ron Johnson (R. WI) said “(i)t is disappointing that the CIA would provide information on this issue to the Washington Post and NBC but will not provide information to elected members of Congress.”

The Media regurgitate what they’re told without due diligence checking. Congressional members, especially Republicans, might openly question administration claims without credible truth supporting them. None exists.

The whole sordid business was made up for reasons cited above, Obama perhaps taking a final shot at Russia before leaving office – at Trump as well by trying to delegitimize his election triumph.

So far everything tried to prevent him from becoming America’s 45th president failed. It’s unknown how he’ll govern after taking office.

Will he be a mensch like Putin or a menace like Obama? Humanity holds its breath to find out.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

THE MOST COMMON DESCRIPTION OF HEALTH INEQUALITY TRENDS AMONG AND WITHIN COUNTRIES IS THAT HEALTH INEQUALITIES ARE INCREASING: A CLEAR INFRINGEMENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHT TO HEALTH.

This text is mostly abstracted from chapter 18 of the International Panel on Social Progress, 2016

-Inequality in health is a morally significant fact in itself.

–A purely biomedical understanding of diminished health and preventable mortality misses key dimensions of social and economic issues.

1. The differences in health statistics that impinge on human rights (HR), pertain to how health outcomes are distributed (the distributive pattern), to what is being distributed (the distributive currency), and to the area in which that assessment is made (the distributive locus). The risk that non-disaggregated data carry is fostering prioritarianism. Prioritarianism puts greater weight on the health or wellbeing of those who are worse off rather than focusing specifically on the gap between them and those who are better off.

2. The emphasis must be on equality of true access to services and the health outcomes the existing inequalities brings about. Emphasis must also be on equality in the resources being made available to all.Consequently, assessing equality has to focus on the equality of fundamental social status/class, i.e., the equality in the relations among members of a population that is rarely obtainable beyond inequalities in money, in power, and, to a large extent, in health and health care. [Keep in mind that social groups are marked either by their tendency to attract advantages and disadvantages across many distributive spheres, or by their social salience and relevance].

3. Further keep in mind that the continued high incidence of infant and child deaths in some countries plays a significant role in determining how personhood is bestowed over time, sometimes at a child’s first or even fifth birthday, instead of at birth; personhood is a human right.

4. Historically, the reduction in child mortality began to slow down in 1985 and reversed direction in 1994 (-1/2%) before resuming its former downward trend beginning in 1997.(i) How do we explain this interruption of more than a decade?: Structural Adjustment. This regime had dramatic negative effects on public health, leading to its visible deterioration. Add HIV/AIDS and TRIPs to these determinants and you get pretty much the full picture. (Child deaths from HIV/AIDS peaked in 2005 and have declined thereafter, no doubt as a consequence of people-demanded greater access to anti-retroviral treatments).
(i): Furthermore, note that, in all countries of the world, child mortality is significantly lower for children of more educated women even after adjusting for the effect of income/wealth.

5. Only by the turn of the millennium did the devastating impact of the World Bank’s policies on children’s rights become impossible to ignore. Since then,the new global health actors (Gates, GAVI, GFTAM) work in close collaboration with Big Pharma and are in an important sense driven by the desire to generate a new regime for pharmaceutical innovation and a new stream of revenue flows for the pharmaceutical industry. In this way, public (not really public?) health is being resurrected as a profitable area of investment in ways that shape the kinds of health care interventions that are prioritized and this forecloses the revival of a truly public health care infrastructure. This has resulted in overwhelmingly vertical funding schemes focused on single diseases. The vertical orientation has equally brought about a new dominance of public-private initiatives and other para-statal actors over national actors.

By now we know

1. Social and environmental factors influence child development in a broad way and, through this process, also influence adult health. In a strong way, adult mortality is socially and economically differentiated in all countries.(Serious illness does not lead to bankruptcy where there is social insurance…). A lack of programs targeting both children and overall economic wealth redistribution thus has long-term consequences for adult health and survival –their right to health included.

7. To date, global health inequalities in child health do remain highly pertinent. However, health inequalities within countries are widespread too. Economic disparities are not only persistent, but in some areas widening. The economic gap between urban and rural, and the formal and informal economic sector is starkly visible in health trends and outcomes. Large disparities in health services and outcomes are not confined to economically poor countries, but can be found in countries throughout the world. In the United States of America, for instance, access to health services for children is highly unequal. Health prospects there intersect with race, gender and economic status.

8. We further note that, while some of the most celebrated global health interventions of the past few decades have targeted infants and in particular under-five year olds, the specific health risks of adolescents are still relatively neglected.

9. Within country mortality differences by income, wealth, class and level of education also persist. In many countries inequalities in adult mortality are increasing; most typically when adult mortality improves faster among the better off. Therefore, life expectancy between countries differs –and it looks like the dispersion is about the same in 1955 as in 2015 (about 35 years between the two countries with highest and lowest life expectancy).

Why do social class differences in health reappear again and again in every new generation?

Health in early life is heavily influenced by the social circumstances of the previous generation. Thereafter, life-long social circumstances have a dominant influence on people’s health and survival.

1. Child mortality in poor household is around double that of rich households in the same country. Study results show a gradient in infant mortality from income quintile 1 to income quintile 5. This is the typical pattern in any country.

11. Middle-aged white Americans have experienced increasing mortality during the 1999-2013 period. However, this trend only applies to low educated whites, not to those of middle or high education groups. Actually, since at least 1990, there is a longer trend of generally widening mortality differences between educational groups –and not only in middle-aged men and women. The mortality of white men and women with less than twelve years of schooling has been growing gradually worse over time.(ii) : Is it likely that global market forces and corporate actors now exercise a growing influence over national income distributions, labor markets, consumption patterns, taxes and welfare policies in general that are too powerful for national governments to balance?

12. Bottom line: According to the influential report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008), health inequalities and the violation of the right to health are not consistent with a ‘business as usual’ approach to tackle them.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
[email protected]

Postscript/Marginalia

The social determinants of health (SDH) are those circumstances in which individuals are born, grow, work and age.

They also pertain to all those forces and systems that affect those circumstances like the economic, social and development policies and the cultural norms. In general, also key are the political systems that regulate how wealth and power, prestige (status) and (natural) resources are distributed globally, nationally and locally.

From a more formal perspective, the social determinants of health are the structural components of a major model of causality arrived-at to specifically explain and understand (give a rational basis) to our observations and actions with regards to the health of a population at multiple levels and contexts, i.e., how these factors determine health and well-being. This new eco-epidemiological paradigm recognizes the social and historic determination of health centered around risk factors that cannot be ignored and, particularly, recognizing the distributive inequality of the opportunities to succeed in achieving good health outcomes. The SDH paradigm replaces the obsolete paradigm under which our observations about the interactions between the physical and social environments are considered ‘difficult to frame and to appropriately match’. (Oscar Mujica, PAHO)

While this article first published in April 2016 confirms the holding of parliamentary elections in Syria, the Western media in chorus describe Syria as a dictatorship. They also fail to acknowledge that the opposition “rebels”  supported by the “international community” are Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists.  

“We declare our right on this earth…to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” ~ Malcolm X

Yesterday Parliamentary elections were held in Syria. 7000 polling booths were opened across the country. 11, 341 candidates were proposed from across Syria with 250 to be elected to Parliament, including a number of female candidates.

Candidates were spread out as follows: 988 in Damascus, 817 in Damascus countryside, Aleppo 1437, in Aleppo regions 1048, In Idleb 386, in Homs 1800, Hama 700, Lattakia 1653, Tartous 634, Deir Ezzor 311, Hasaka 546, Raqqa 197, Daraa 321, Sweida 263 and in Quneitra 240

Voting centres opened at 7.30 am and were obliged to extend their sessions by five hours to accommodate the high turn out of voters.

Some of the women candidates in Syrian Parliamentary elections.

“The voting centers include over 2,000 centers in Damascus, 17 in Deir Ezzor, 1,047 in Lattakia, 661 in Homs, 347 in Sweida, 741 in Hama, 368 in Hasaka, 816 in Tartous, and 347 in Sweida are receiving voters.

It should be noted that voting centers were opened in Damascus, Damascus Countryside, Hama, Lattakia, Aleppo, Tartous, Hasaka, and Deir Ezzor to receive voters staying in these provinces who are originally from other areas, namely the provinces of Idleb, Raqqa, Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, and Daraa.” ~ SANA

Students from Damascus University queueing to vote: SANA

So contrary to spurious claims from western governments and media, efforts were made to open the voting to all Syrian civilians including those who have fled terrorists held areas. We must also bear in mind that over 90% of IDPs [Internally displaced persons] have fled to Government controlled areas, thus further discrediting claims that these elections are non representative.

For a full photo report on the Syrian elections: Peoples Assembly Elections 2016

On an equally positive note, of course ignored in the western and gulf media, 1.7 million of these internally displaced refugees have been able to return home thanks not only to the SAA liberation of whole swathes of Syrian villages and towns from US NATO terrorist occupation but also due to the Syrian Governments laudable efforts to rebuild and restore infrastructure in these areas.

Small government loans are being given to impoverished families to enable them to re-establish their lives torn apart by the illegal war of aggression that has been waged against Syria by the US, NATO, GCC and Israel for the last five years.

It is guaranteed that none of these initiatives will be reported in the mainstream media, including the Syrian Higher Committee for Relief’s efforts to facilitate the delivery of Humanitarian aid to the remaining terrorist held civilian areas in Syria.

As Professor Tim Anderson [who is in Syria to observe the elections as indeed he was in 2014] said:

“Syrian democracy needs no outside approval. Repeated outside demands that ‘Assad must go’, or that a Washington-approved executive ‘transition government’ be formed, have become meaningless, since the military tide turned in the embattled country’s favour.”

The Syrian elections proceeded according to the Syrian constitution and law. We see this being enforced in Aleppo for example where it was decided that violations of the voting process had taken place and a re-election was called for.

UNSC [Security Council] resolution 2254 stated clearly that Syria’s future is in the hands of the Syrians and the Syrians are proving that they are doing just that with little fuss but a lot of enthusiasm and determination to deny foreign intervention in their sovereign affairs.

The Syrian “Dictator” goes to Vote

Now lets have a look at the President that western governments and their media minions would have us believe to be a bloodthirsty, butchering dictator as he and his wife Asma head for the polling booths with no security in sight.

Compare this if you will, to the protests being held across Britain demanding that David Cameron aka “Dodgy Dave” resign over the Panama papers scandal, the subsequent police clamp down and the manhandling of protestors.

Perhaps even more laughable in the face of the UK Government’s own deteriorating human rights record at home and abroad, is their statement on the Syrian elections:

Britain said Damascus’ decision to go ahead with the elections in the war-torn nation, where hundreds of thousands cannot take part, shows “how divorced (the government) is from reality.” 

With homelessness and child poverty reaching Victorian levels in Britain, legal cases pending for criminal arms sales to the genocidal Saudi coalition conducting wholesale slaughter of Yemeni civilians, and recent reports on the British government clandestine assassination programmes, one would be justified in saying the British government has not only divorced itself from reality but from Humanity in every feasible way.

“Reprieve highlights the fact that Britain conspired in a US-inspired Kill List soon after 9/11. It says quite categorically that “Starting in 2002, working closely with the Americans, Britain had played a leading role in the euphemistic Joint Prioritized Effective List. As with Yemen, the JPEL Kill List was not even limited to a war zone – it spanned over into Pakistan, which was an ally, not an enemy at war.”

What this effectively means is that not only has Britain brought back the death penalty it has done so without public or parliamentary consultation, and carried out these deadly deeds regularly without even a basic trial.” ~ Britain’s Secret Assassination Programme

France takes the hippocritic oath.

France has also hit the deck with cries of illegitimacy regarding the Syrian elections.

“The idea that there could be elections is not just provocative but totally unrealistic. It would be proof that there are no negotiations or discussions [in Geneva].”~ Francois Hollande

This statement comes from the man who crossed an executioners palm with silver to secure a multi billion dollar arms deal with Qatar.

In this photo Hollande is presenting France’s most prestigious award, the Legion D’Honneur to Saudi interior minister, Muhammed Bin Nayef.  Bin Nayef is personally responsible for choosing who of the many prisoners in Saudi jails is eligible for execution or crucifixion without trial and usually on trumped up charges.

So one is once more justified to ask, which leg is Hollande standing on when he denigrates Syrian elections while commending one of the world’s most renowned terrorists on his efforts to combat…terrorism.

The award for hypocrisy goes to..

US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said that the US “would view those elections as not legitimate in the sense that they don’t represent… the will of the Syrian people.

“So, to hold parliamentary elections now, given the current circumstances, given the current conditions in the country, we believe is at best premature and not representative of the Syrian people,” Toner said.

Early last week Toner said that “a political process that reflects the desires and will of the Syrian people is what should ultimately decide the future leadership and the future government of Syria.” ~ RT

Here is the answer of the Syrian people to Mr Toner’s comments:

Mohammed Ali of Press TV reports from Damascus

Conclusions

The US, NATO, GCC and Israeli agenda has careered into the brick wall of Syrian resistance, integrity and unity.  The will of the Syrian people is being listened to by the Syrian government.

Ideologically and spiritually the Syrian people believe in their political and military victory.  The Syrian people have said “no” time and time again to foreign intervention. They have endured crippling economic sanctions, invasions by proxy terrorist armies, occupation by mass murderers funded and armed by the US and NATO alliance but their resilience will ensure their self determination against all odds.

To achieve their objectives in Syria, the US and NATO are reliant upon mercenaries, terrorists, rapists and felons who have no vested interest in victory other than lining their own pockets with drugs and oil revenue.

The US and NATO agenda in Syria has no basis in law or even sound ideology, it is based upon pure greed and power sustained by corruption and inhumanity.  It shall fail and Syria will emerge unbowed, stronger and ultimately victorious.  The Syrian people have redrawn the geopolitical map with strength of will alone.  This is the will you should be respecting Mr Toner, there is no other.

“The Syrian people are engaged in a war that has been going on for five years, through which terrorism managed to shed innocent blood and destroy much infrastructure, but it failed in achieving the primary goal it was assigned, which is destroying the principle structure in Syria, meaning the social structure of the national identity.” ~ President Bashar al Assad.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

“Voting for the lesser evil kind of slows you down as you’re circling the drain but it doesn’t give you any shot to get out!”

Bernie Sanders supporter Clea Cooper (from this week’s report.)

This Global Research News Hour special is a rebroadcast from August 2016.

It helps provide some under-reported perspectives from grassroots activists,  most notably Bernie Sanders supporters, offended by the choice of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the methods employed by the Democratic Party to thwart the democratic will of the general membership.

As an added year end feature, we include footage from Philadelphia, unaired until now. 

Please support independent journalism. Support the Global Research News Hour during host station CKUW’s February Fundrive.

https://ckuw.ca/donate

The Democratic Party may have presented themselves as a unified force to go after Republican Donald Trump in November, but such unity was not evident in the streets of Philadelphia.

Legions of people collected in the streets of Philadelphia to express their concerns as the Democratic National Convention got underway the week of July 25th.

Above and beyond the sentiments expressed by climate and social justice activists, many supporters of Bernie Sanders had arrived in the city. Not only did many of them criticize Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for policies revolving around the 2009 coup in Honduras, support for fracking, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), they blasted the former first lady and the Democratic Party over the revelation that the Democrats had rigged the race on the Democratic side in favour of Ms. Clinton.

As someone who was in the streets that week, I discovered that Bernie Sanders had broad support on the ground, while Hillary Clinton had virtually none. Sanders supporters were by and large hostile to Hillary, even declaring they would vote for (Green presidential candidate) Jill Stein.

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On this special summertime edition of the Global Research News Hour, we bring you audio from some of those Sanders supporters as well as environmental and other activists.

The audio recorded in this report contains interviews with and sound from a clean energy march, an outdoor of a Black Resistance march,  and an act of civil disobedience.  Listeners exposed to propaganda of a party united behind Clinton may wish to consult this report to get a more balanced sense of what happened that week.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

 

Length (59:00)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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This incisive analysis of  Obama’s legacy by award winning author prof. James Petras  was first published by Global Research in April 2016

Introduction 

President Obama is racing forward to establish his imperial legacy throughout Russia, Asia and Latin America.

In the last two years he has accelerated the buildup of his military nuclear arsenal on the frontiers of Russia.  The Pentagon has designed a high tech anti-missile system to undermine Russian defenses.

In Latin America, Obama has shed his shallow pretense of tolerating the center—left electoral regimes.  Instead he is has joined with rabid authoritarian neo-liberals in Argentina; met with the judges and politicians engineering the overthrow of the current Brazilian government; and encouraged the emerging far-rightwing regimes in Peru under Keiko Fujimori and Colombia under President Santos.

In Asia, Obama has clearly escalated a military build-up threatening China’s principle waterways in the South China Sea.  Obama encouraged aggressive and violent separatist groupings in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjian and Taiwan.  Obama invites Beijing billionaires to relocate a trillion dollars in assets to the ‘laundry machines’ of North America, Europe and Asia.  Meanwhile he has actively blocked China’s long-planned commercial ‘silk route’ across Myanmar and west Asia.

Distinguished author Professor James Petras (right)

In the Middle East, President Obama joined with Saudi Arabia as Riyadh escalated its brutal war and blockade in Yemen.  He directed Kenya and other African predator states to attack Somalia.  He has continued to back mercenary armies invading Syria while collaborating with the Turkish dictator, Erdogan, as Turkish troops bomb Kurdish, Syrian and Iraqi fighters who are engaged on the front lines against Islamist terrorism.

President Obama and his minions have consistently groveled before the Jewish State and its US Fifth Column, massively increasing US ‘tribute’ to Tel Aviv.  Meanwhile, Israel continues to seize thousands of acres of Palestinian land murdering and arresting thousands of Palestinians, from young children to aged grandparents.

The Obama regime is desperate to overcome the consequences of his political, military and economic failures of the past six years and establish the US as the uncontested global economic and military power.

At this stage, Obama’s supreme goal is to leave an enduring legacy, where he will have:  (1) surrounded and weakened Russia and China; (2) re-converted Latin America into an authoritarian free-trade backyard for US plunder; (3) turned the Middle East and North Africa into a bloody playpen for Arab and Jewish dictators bent on brutalizing whole nations and turning millions into refugees to flood Europe and elsewhere.

Once this ‘legacy’ is established, our ‘Historic Black President’ can boast that he has dragged our ‘great nation’ into more wars for longer periods of time, costing more diverse human lives and creating more desperate refugees than any previous US President, all the while polarizing and impoverishing the great mass of working Americans.  He will, indeed, set a ‘high bar’ for his incumbent replacement, Madame Hilary Clinton to leap over and even expand.

To examine the promise of an Obama legacy and avoid premature judgements, it is best to briefly recall the failures of his first 6 years and reflect on his current inspired quest for a ‘place in history’.

Fear, Loathing and Retreat

Obama’s shameless bailout of Wall Street contrasted sharply with the desires and sentiments of the vast majority of Americans who had elected him.  This was a historic moment of great fear and loathing where scores of millions of Americans demanded the federal government reign in the financial criminals, stop the downward spiral of household bankruptcies and home foreclosures and recovery America’s working economy.  After a brief honeymoon following his ‘historic election’, the ‘historic’ President Obama turned his back on the wishes of the people and transferred trillions of public money to ‘bailout’ the banks and financial centers on Wall Street.

Not satisfied with betraying the American workers and the beleaguered middle class, Obama reneged on his campaign promises to end the war(s) in the Middle East by increasing the US troop presence and expanding his drone-assassination warfare against Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Syria.

US troops re-invaded Afghanistan, fought and retreated in defeat.  The Taliban advanced.  The US expanded its training of the puppet Iraqi army, which collapsed on its first encounters with the Islamic State.  Washington retreated again.  Regime change in Libya, Egypt and Somalia created predator-mercenary states without any semblance of US control and dominance.

Obama had become both a master of military defeats and financial swindles.

In the Western Hemisphere, a continent of independent Latin American governments had emerged to challenge US supremacy.  The ‘Historic President’ Obama was dismissed as a clueless hack of the US Empire who lacked any rapport with governments south of the Panama Canal.  While trade and investment flourished between Latin America and Asia; Washington fell behind.  Regional political and economic agreements expanded, but Obama was left without allies.

Obama’s clumsy attempts at US-backed ‘regime change’ were defeated in Venezuela and elsewhere.  Only the small, corrupt narco-state of Honduras fell into Obama’s orbit with the Hillary Clinton-engineered overthrow of its elected populist-nationalist president.

China and Russia expanded and flourished as commodities boomed, wealth expanded and demand for Chinese manufacturers exploded.

By 2013 Obama had no legacy.

The Recovery:  Obama’s Lost Legacy

Obama began the road to establishing his ‘legacy’ with the US-financed coup in Ukraine, spearheaded by the first bona fide Nazi militia since WWII.  After celebrating the violent ‘regime change’ against Ukraine’s elected government, Obama’s new oligarch-puppet regime and its ethno-nationalist army have been a disaster, losing control of the industrialized Donbas region to ethnic Russian rebels and completely losing the strategic Crimea when the population overwhelmingly voted to re-join Russia after 50 years.  Meanwhile, the oligarch-‘president’ Poroshenko and his fellow puppets have pilfered several billion dollars in ‘aid’ from the EU…all in pursuit of the Obama legacy’.

Obama then slapped devastating economic sanctions against Russia for its role in the Crimean referendum and its support for the millions of Russian speakers in Donbas, and in the process forced the European Union to make major trade sacrifices.  For their role in creating a real “American legacy” for Mr. Obama, the Germans, French and the other twenty-eight countries have sacrificed billions of Euros in trade and investments – alienating large sectors of their own agricultural and manufacturing economy.

The Obama regime placed nuclear weapons on the Polish border with Russia, pointed at the Russian heartland. Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians joined Obama’s military exercises stationing US ships and attack aircraft in the Baltic Sea threatening Russia’s security.

Obama’s Legacy in Latin America

The Obama regime intensified its efforts to re-establish supremacy with the demise of the center-left regimes following elections in late 2013 to the present.

Obama’s ‘legacy’ in Latin America is based on the return to power of neo-liberal elites in the region.  Their successful elections were the result of several factors, including: (1) the rise of rightwing economic power in Latin America; (2) the decay and corruption of political power within the Left; 3) incapacity of the Left to develop its own independent mass media to challenge the media monopoly of the right; and (4) the failure of center-left regimes to diversify their economy and develop growth outside the boundaries defined by the dominant capitalist sectors.

The Obama regime worked closely with the political-business elite, organizing the political campaigns and controlling key economic policies even during the center-Left governments.  The Left regimes had financed, subsidized and rewarded right-wing business interests in agro-mineral industries, banking, and the media as well as in manufacturing and imports.

As long as worldwide demand for primary materials was strong, the Center-Left governments had plenty of room to adjust their social spending for workers while accommodating business interests.  When demand and prices fell, budget deficits forced the Center-Left to cut back on social spending for the masses as well as subsidies for the business elite.  In response, the business sector organized a full-scale attack on the government – in defense of elite power.  The Center-Left failed to counter the growing power and position of their business elite adversaries.

The business elite launched a full-scale propaganda war via its captive mass media – focusing on real or imagined corruption scandals discrediting Center-Left politicians.  The Left lacked its own effective mass media to answer the Right’s accusations, having failed to democratize the corporate media monopolies.

The Center-Left parties adopted the elite’s technique of financing political campaigns – namely, through bribes, contract concessions, patronage other deal making with billionaire private and state contractors.  The center-Left imagined it could compete with the free-market rightwing in financing campaigns and candidates via swindlers – and not through class struggle.  This was a game they could never master.

The Right, however, mobilized their allies within police, judicial and public institutions to prosecute and disqualify the Center-Left for committing the same crimes the Right had evaded.

The Center-Left did not mobilize the workers and employees to establish even minimal controls over the elite and assume some managerial power.  They thought they could compete with the Right on its own terms, through shady business and chicanery.

The Center-Left relied on financing its administration and policies through the commodity boom in demand for its natural resources – overlooking the fundamental instability and volatility of the global commodity market.  While the Right openly condemned the ‘weakness of the Center-Left’ – in private, it pursued policies even more dependent on overseas speculators and narrow elites.

In Argentina, as the economy declined, the leadership of the rightwing, led by Mauricio Marci, launched a successful presidential campaign involving the mass media, banks, middle class voters and agro-mining elites.   Immediately upon taking power, the Macri regime cut social services for workers and the lower middle class, slashing their living standards and lay off thousands of government employees.  Obama saw Macri as his kind of legacy savior and viewed Argentina as the new center of US power in Latin America – with plans for more regime change in Brazil, Venezuela and throughout the region.

In Brazil, the Center-Left Workers’ Party (PT) faced a massive attack on its power base by the extreme rightwing parties.  Corruption scandals rocked the entire spectrum of the political class, but the PT was most heavily implicated by massive fraud in Brazil’s huge national oil company, Petrobras. The PT regime’s troubles intensified as the country entered a recession with the drop in demand for its agro-mining exports.  Growing fiscal deficits compounded the regime’s problems.  The Brazilian hard Right mobilized its entire apparatus of elite power – the courts, judges, police and intelligence agencies – in a bid to overthrow the PT government and impose an authoritarian neo-liberal regime seizing all financial, business and productive assets

The Center-Left had never been very left, if at all.  Under Presidents Lula and Rousseff  (2003-2016), the powerful mining and agricultural elites flourished; banking, investment and multi-national enterprises prospered.  The Center-Left made some paternalistic concessions to the lowest income classes, and increased wages for labor and farm workers.  But the PT relegated labor to the background while it signed business agreements and granted tax concessions to capital.   It failed to engage Brazilian workers in class struggle.

The Right was never engaged in any struggle with a genuine leftist government pressing business for structural changes.  Nevertheless, the Right sought to eliminates even the most superficial reforms.  It would accept nothing short of total control, including:  the privatization of the major national oil company, the reduction of wages, pensions and transport subsidies and a slashing of social programs.  The Brazilian Rightwing coup – a fake impeachment organized by indicted crooks – is designed to vastly re-concentrate wealth, and re-establish the power of business, while plunging millions into poverty and repressing the principal organized mass movements.  In Brazil, the elite-controlled media, courts and politicians act as judge, jury and jailers – against a center-left regime which had never taken control over the major institutions of elite power.

Obama and the Axis of his Legacy

Political rightists join police to control the multitudes and seize power, re-establishing deep ties among Brazil, Washington and Argentina.  They will then move toward the neo-liberal re-conquest of all Latin America.  Against this new wave, it must be understood that Obama’s Latin American legacy is too recent, too hasty and too disjointed – the new Right exhibits the same or even worse features of the recently deceased Left.

Argentina’s Marci borrows $15 billion at 8% interest, when the economy is fracturing, employment is collapsing, exports and worldwide demand is declining.   At the same time, President Mauricio Marci’s cabinet is plagued by major financial scandals ‘a la Panama Papers’.  The entire political party-trade union-employed working class is profoundly disenchanted with Marci’s minority rule.

Argentina may not turn out to be Obama’s enduring Latin Legacy: While Macri may open the door for a brief Washington take-over, the results will be catastrophic and the future, given Argentina’s recent history of popular street uprisings, is uncertain.

Likewise in Brazil, the impeachment/coup will result in new and more numerous investigations with trials of post-impeachment politicians and a deepening economic crisis.  Brazil’s Vice-President, who turned against Rouseff, now faces corruption charges, as do his supporters.  The prolonged confrontation precludes any basic continuity.  The rightwing regime’s policy of slashing wages, pensions and poverty ‘baskets’ will detonate large-scale confrontations with the polarized population.  Obama’s ‘legacy’ will be a brief episode – celebrating the ouster of the Workers’ Party President followed by a long period of instability and disorder.

Rightist regimes in Venezuela, Colombia and Peru will be part of Obama’s ‘legacy’ but to what lasting end?

The Venezuelan rightwing congress – dubbed the MUD – seeks to overthrow the elected president.   It demands the release of several right-wing assassins from prison, the privatization of the oil industry, and a deep cut in social programs (health and education).  They would reduce employees’ wages and eliminate food subsidies.  The MUD has no competent plan or capacity to grow the oil economy and overcome chronic food shortages.  The MUD would merely replace the Left’s subsidized economy with massive price increases for basic commodities — reducing domestic consumption to a fraction of its current level.  In other words, the right-wing offensive may defeat the Chavista left but it will not stabilize Venezuela or develop a viable neo-liberal alternative.  Any new rightwing regime will deteriorate rapidly and the chronic problem of criminal violence will exceed the current levels.  The alliance between Washington and Venezuela’s far right will hardly support Obama’s claim to a historic legacy.  More likely, it will serve as another example of a failed right wing state unable to replace a weakening left regime.

Similar circumstances can be found among other ‘emerging’ rightist regimes.

In Colombia, the current rightwing President Santos talks to the FARC guerrillas, but also accommodates the paramilitary death squads.  His talks of peace settlements and social reform are linked to the genocidal right, led by the former President Uribe.  Meanwhile, the economy stagnates with oil and metal prices collapsing on the world market.  Colombian living standards have declined and the promise of a rightwing revival grows dim.  The US-Colombian alliance may undercut the FARC but the rightwing does not offer any prospect for modernizing the economy or stabilizing the society.

Similarly in Peru, the rightwing wins votes and embraces free markets, but growth declines, investments and profits dry up and mass disenchantment grows among the poor

promising street conflicts.

The Obama ‘legacy’ in Latin America has followed a series of brutal victories, which have no capacity to re-impose a stable ‘new order’ of free markets and free elections. The initial wave of favorable investments and lucrative concessions will fail to revive and recalibrate a new growth dynamics.

More ominously, Obama relied on mass murder to replace an elected leftist-nationalist president in Honduras and imposed a regime of terror against the poor and indigenous population.  Meanwhile, illicit offshore handouts reward speculators in Argentina.

Obama’s legacy in Latin America reflects an entire spectrum from illicit-rightwing coups to oust the elected governments in Brazil and Venezuela, to elected authoritarian presidents in Peru and Colombia with historic links to death squads and multi-million dollar overseas accounts.

Obama’s contemporary ‘Latin American legacy’ reeks of gross electoral manipulation preparing the ground for bloody class wars.

Obama’s Legacy in the Ukraine, Yemen and Syria

The Obama regime thought it could manage widespread conflicts, uprisings and wars to advance its global supremacy.

To that end, Obama spent billions of dollars in weapons and propaganda arming Neo-Nazi para-military troops to seize power in Ukraine.  A grotesque, brutal gang of oligarchs (and disgraced, foreign fugitives – like the ousted Georgian leader, Mikhail Saakashvili) served Washington in the puppet Kiev regime. Critics, journalists, jurists and citizens are being assassinated.  The economy has collapsed; prices skyrocket; incomes declined by half; unemployment tripled and millions have sought refuge abroad.  Wars raged between Russian ethnic citizen armies in the Donbas and the puppet Kiev regime.  The people of Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.  Meanwhile, economic sanctions against trade with Russia have exacerbated shortages for the people of Ukraine.

Under Obama’s stewardship the Ukraine became a world-class… basket case: so much for his European legacy.  He can rightly claim credit for imposing a thoroughly retrograde regime of Klepto-capitalism with no redeeming feature.

Obama embraced Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen – destroying the life and cities of the poorest nation in the Middle East.  Obama’s ‘legacy’ in Yemen stands for the systematic obliteration of a sovereign people:  Obama performs his tricks for billionaire Saudi despots while savaging the innocent. To the Israelis in Palestine and the Saudis in Yemen, Obama pays homage to the criminals responsible for millions of shattered lives.

What of the Obama ‘legacy’ in Syria and Libya?   How many million Africans and Arabs have been murdered or fled on rotten boats in destitution.  Only the rankest gang of corrupt media pundits in the US media can pretend this gangster President should evade a war crimes tribunal.

Conclusion

The Obama regime has pursued wars of unremitting destruction.  It has forged partnerships with terrorists and death squads as it seeks short-term imperial victories, which end in dismal failures.

The imperial legacy of this ‘historic’ president is a mirage of pillage, squalor and destruction.  The effect of his political lies has even begun register here among the American public:  Who trusts the US Congress and the President? And in Europe, who trusts Obama’s European partners as they eagerly pushed for wars in the Middle East and North Africa and now fear and loathe the millions of their victims—refugees fleeing to the cities of Europe, with the drowned corpses of uprooted communities spoiling their beaches?

Obama pushed for wars and the Europeans receive the victims – with fear and disgust.

Obama’s victories are temporary, blighted and reversed.

Obama bombed Afghanistan yesterday and now flees renewed resistance.

Obama’s allies are again plundering Latin America but face imminent ouster via popular uprisings.

Obama terrorized and fragmented Syria yesterday but lost elections the day after.

Obama threatens China’s economy while eagerly buying China’s products. 

The Obama legacy began as a failed military and economic offensive accompanying a profound social crisis.  During his final year in office, Obama tries to forge alliances with the dregs of the hard right to save his legacy.   His brief advance into this sordid world of neo-liberals, neo-Nazis and Saudi despots is a prelude to more retreat and chaos.

Obama’s public celebration of the right turn in Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East applauds the most retrograde alignment of forces in modern times: Saudis and Israelis; Egyptian generals and Libyan jihadis; neo-Ottoman Turks with Ukrainian gangster-oligarchs.  Regime changes in Argentina and Brazil encourage Obama to claim vindication of his imperial legacy.

His ‘moment’ of imperial truth is brief, all too brief.  Everywhere, we witness the rapid rise of imperial success followed by a series of debacles.

            Throughout Latin America capitalist profiteers plunge into wild financial adventures, theft and chaos.  In the Middle East, the US stands on the crumbling palaces of a moribund Saudi regime.  The much-proclaimed imperial advances are based on grand theft everywhere, from Egypt and Turkey to the Ukraine.

            Simply stated:  the US formula for a successful legacy is failing at the precise moment that it claims success!  Obama and the Right have created a world of chaos and disintegration.  Obama and his legions, the US and Europe have no future in peace or war, election or defeats.

                        There is no imperial legacy for the ‘historic’ President Obama!

Nota del Editor: Una vez concluido el año 2016, el Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización (Global Research) considera fundamental hacer un repaso de los acontecimientos más importantes que tuvieron lugar a lo largo del año que termina. Para ello, comparte la síntesis realizada por el sitio web Katehon en Español.

Katehon en Español: El año 2016 estuvo repleto de grandes acontecimientos internacionales, cuyas consecuencias van a afectar los acontecimientos futuros durante mucho tiempo.

La victoria de Donald Trump en las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos

En nuestra opinión, quizás el acontecimiento más importante de este año fue la elección de Donald Trump como Presidente de los Estados Unidos de América.

El resultado de las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos parece haber sido una conclusión inevitable. Los globalistas-neoconservadores encarnados en la candidata del Partido Demócrata, Hillary Clinton, apoyados por la actual administración del presidente Barack Obama y las élites transnacionales, hicieron todo lo posible para evitar la posibilidad de que las fuerzas conservadoras ganaran, representadas por el republicano Donald Trump.

Sin embargo, el pueblo estadounidense ha decidido lo contrario, a pesar de que la mayoría de los medios de comunicación estadounidenses y mundiales fueron de propaganda anti-Trump.

De los medios rusos sólo Katehon predijo consistentemente la victoria de Trump. Nuestros analistas no sólo habían creído en su victoria, sino que la habían predicho, de hecho, poniendo en juego su reputación política como expertos.

No hay duda de que en el nuevo año 2017 el efecto Trump se mostrará plenamente y conducirá al colapso final del mundo unipolar.

El Brexit como comienzo del fin de la Unión Europea

Otro importante acontecimiento internacional del año fue el referéndum sobre el abandono del Reino Unido de la Unión Europea, que tuvo lugar el 23 de junio de 2016.

Casi el 52% de los habitantes de Reino Unido votaron en contra de permanecer en la Unión Europea. La victoria del Brexit sorprendió a los globalistas con la guardia baja. A pesar de todos sus intentos, como el chantaje y la amenaza, los euroescépticos ganaron. El primer ministro británico David Cameron, que abogó por una mayor adhesión a la UE, después de anunciarse los resultados del referéndum, renunció inmediatamente.

Las fuerzas anti-globalización y soberanistas, no sólo en Europa sino en todo el mundo, acogieron con satisfacción la victoria del Brexit. Según el candidato presidencial electo de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, los británicos pudieron nuevamente recuperar el control de su país.

El referéndum sobre la pertenencia de Gran Bretaña a la UE fue el primer signo de la desintegración de la Unión Europea, el comienzo del fin de la Europa liberal atlántica. Después del Brexit, las fuerzas conservadoras patrióticas en otros países europeos comenzaron a hablar sobre la necesidad de celebrar un referéndum nacional similar.

Por ejemplo, en Francia, el Frente Nacional ha ganado popularidad entre la gente. Y su líder, Marine Le Pen, es hoy uno de los candidatos más viables para la presidencia en las próximas elecciones presidenciales de la primavera de 2017.

En Alemania, una alternativa al actual partido liberal liberal anti-alemán, la CDU liderada por la canciller Angela Merkel, podría provenir de la derecha conservadora de “Alternativa para Alemania”. Este partido aboga por un rumbo nacional soberano y contra la inmigración incontrolada, que de hecho ha llevado a una situación de emergencia en el país debido al aumento de los crímenes y a la alta amenaza de actos terroristas.

En Austria, el representante del Partido de la Libertad, Norbert Hofer, logró una victoria aplastante en la primera vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales del 22 de abril. Dos semanas más tarde se celebró una segunda ronda, durante la cual el choque entre Hofer y el protegido euro-atlántico, ex líder de los Verdes, Alexander Van der Bellen, no reveló al ganador final debido al número de irregularidades. Sin embargo, la batalla decisiva tuvo lugar el 4 de diciembre. Desafortunadamente, esta vez las fuerzas conservadoras representadas por Hofer fueron derrotadas.

“Austria no pudo drenar el pantano. Los austríacos dicen “sí” a Conchita Wurst”, como lamentablemente resumió los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales en el país Alexander Dugin. Sin embargo, que un hombre que representa a las fuerzas patrióticas y, por tanto, anti-liberal y anti-globalización, pudiera participar en la segunda ronda de las lecciones, muestra nuevas tendencias en la política europea, que pueden ser irreversibles en un futuro próximo.

En Italia, las fuerzas de orientación nacional de derecha, representadas por el partido “Liga Norte” de Matteo Salvini, también han tomado un rumbo de soberanía. El 4 de diciembre de 2016, el país celebró un referéndum sobre la reforma constitucional propuesto por el primer ministro Matteo Renzi, donde el 60% de los ciudadanos expresaron su decidida oposición a un nuevo gobierno por parte de los protegidos de la burocracia europea. Matteo Renzi renunció.

En 2017, se celebrarán elecciones parlamentarias en los Países Bajos y tendrán lugar las elecciones presidenciales en Francia, en las que las fuerzas soberanistas de orientación nacional tienen posibilidades de ganar.

Se observan tendencias similares en otros países de la Unión Europea. Y el efecto del Brexit y de Trump probablemente conlleven consecuencias irreversibles, negativas para los partidarios de la dominación global y positivas para la humanidad.

La crisis migratoria y los ataques terroristas en Europa

Quizás uno de los problemas más acuciantes y urgentes de la vida europea fue la afluencia de refugiados procedentes de Oriente Medio y del norte de África, una vez que los globalistas encarnados en la élite gobernante de Estados Unidos y sus satélites de la Unión Europea, llevaron la “democracia” en la forma de “revoluciones de color “e intervenciones armadas.

La afluencia de migrantes se ha convertido en el golpe más doloroso a la unidad de Europa, profesando el rumbo liberal en la política nacional con la supresión de la identidad.

Junto con el flujo de inmigrantes ilegales de Oriente, a quienes los euro-liberales abrieron cuidadosamente sus puertas en sus países, una ola de crímenes golpeó Europa, la mendicidad, las adicciones a las drogas, los asesinatos y las violaciones masivas de jóvenes, tal como en el último Año Nuevo en Colonia, terminando con los ataques con un gran número de víctimas en París, Bruselas, Niza, Berlín y otras ciudades. De hecho, ya no es un secreto que bajo la apariencia de los refugiados están en Europa miembros de los grupos terroristas más radicales, el “Estado Islámico” (ISIS, Daesh), “Al-Qaeda”, “Dzhebhat en Nusra”, etc. Estos grupos son propensos a atacar en cualquier momento.

El 22 de marzo, en el aeropuerto y en el metro de Bruselas, los terroristas ISIS realizaron una serie de ataques con bombas. Treinta y cinco personas fueron víctimas de los terroristas. Un terrible acto de terrorismo tuvo lugar el 14 de julio en Niza, Francia, donde un camión conducido por un atacante suicida inmigrante se estrelló contra una multitud de personas que celebraba la fiesta nacional, el Día de la Bastilla. Ochenta y seis personas murieron y 308 resultaron heridas. Una tragedia similar ocurrió el 19 de diciembre en el mercado de Navidad en Berlín, donde, asociado con el mismo ISIS, un nativo de Túnez se estrelló contra 12 personas, y luego desapareció en silencio de la escena del crimen. Sólo cuatro días más tarde en Milán, Italia, lograron encontrarlo y eliminarlo.

La situación catastrófica con los inmigrantes también contribuye a la popularidad de las fuerzas conservadoras derechistas, que están dispuestas a contrarrestar la corrección política y la tolerancia euro-liberal y a apoyar políticas públicas adecuadas basadas en la tradición, la soberanía y los intereses nacionales.

Restauración de las relaciones entre Rusia y Turquía

Los acontecimientos de finales de 2015 parecían haber enterrado para siempre la asociación entre Rusia y Turquía. El incidente del 24 de noviembre de 2015, cuando un F-16 de combate turco atacó un bombardero ruso Su-24 sobre los cielos de la provincia siria de Latakia. Como resultado, la muerte del piloto, el teniente coronel de las VKS rusas, Oleg Peshkov, condujo a un rápido deterioro y a la tensión en las relaciones entre los dos países.

En 2016, hubo una seria reorganización en las filas de la élite dominante turca. Comenzó el 22 de mayo cuando el presidente Recep Tayyip Erdogan destituyó al primer ministro Ahmet Davutoglu, quien reconoció haber dado personalmente la orden de destruir el avión ruso. Davutoglu fue sustituido por quien sirvió como Ministro de Transporte, Marítimo y Comunicación, Binali Yildirim.

El punto de inflexión en la normalización de las relaciones bilaterales entre Ankara y Moscú fue una carta escrita por Erdogan a Vladimir Putin el 27 de junio, en la que el presidente turco se disculpó por el avión derribado y expresó sus condolencias a la familia del piloto fallecido, Oleg Peshkov. Erdogan también prometió castigar a los responsables y hacer todo lo posible por la pronta restauración de las relaciones amistosas entre los dos países.

Ciertamente, este giro no conviene a las fuerzas interesadas en jugar contra Rusia y Turquía, en cualquier caso, para evitar el acercamiento entre estos dos países. En la noche del 15 de julio y la mañana del 16, hubo en Turquía un sangriento golpe militar, cuyo objetivo era la expulsión de Erdogan del poder. En gran parte debido a los servicios de seguridad rusos, que advirtieron al líder turco sobre la amenaza de un golpe, las fuerzas patrióticas leales a Erdogan aplastaron la rebelión. Esto fue seguido de una limpieza a gran escala de las fuerzas armadas turcas, la policía, los organismos gubernamentales, y dondequiera que los partidarios de la secta islamista Gülen (quien por cierto ahora vive en los EE.UU.) lograron afianzarse firmemente, quienes con la participación directa de la CIA, organizaron un golpe de Estado.

Evidencias suficientes acerca de la participación de la administración Obama para intentar un golpe de Estado fueron presentada por los medios de comunicación turcos. En particular, uno de los baluartes de los rebeldes es la base conjunta turco-estadounidense Incirlik, donde según algunos datos, los activistas fueron instruidos por algunos “asesores” de Washington. El comandante turco de la base aérea, y muchos de sus subordinados implicados en los acontecimientos del 15 al 16 de julio, fueron arrestados.

Los pilotos del mismo F-16 turco que derribó al Su-24 ruso, estaban entre los detenidos acusados de participar en el intento de golpe de Estado.

De una forma u otra, el golpe marcó una línea roja, después de la cual comenzó un marcado enfriamiento en las relaciones entre Ankara y Washington, y un rápido acercamiento a Moscú. El 9 de agosto de 2016 hubo una reunión entre Putin y Erdogan en San Petersburgo, durante la cual se llegó a un acuerdo sobre la abolición de las sanciones contra Turquía impuestas por Rusia, y la reanudación de la cooperación en todas las áreas, desde la lucha contra el terrorismo hasta el desarrollo del sector turístico.

Un cambio fundamental en Siria y la liberación de Alepo

La restauración de las relaciones entre Turquía y Rusia ha contribuido a un avance en la resolución del conflicto sirio. A pesar de las diferencias fundamentales en Siria, Moscú y Ankara han logrado ponerse de acuerdo sobre la oposición conjunta a los terroristas del ISIS, lo que ha cambiado el equilibrio y la alineación de fuerzas en la región. El 24 de agosto, Turquía comenzó la operación “Eufrates Shield”, que dividió las filas de las fuerzas pro-americanas, de los terroristas anti-Assad y de la llamada oposición moderada y de los grupos armados kurdos, como el GPJ. En muchos sentidos, esto contribuyó al éxito de la operación del ejército sirio, con el apoyo de las Fuerzas Armadas para la completa liberación de Alepo de los islamistas, que se celebró en la primera quincena de diciembre.

La liberación de Alepo se convirtió en una victoria estratégica para Siria y Rusia, contra la cual incluso la pérdida de Palmyra (liberada del ISIS con gran dificultad a finales de marzo) parece un revés táctico temporal.

Después de la victoria en Alepo, debe esperarse el desarrollo de la situación en la dirección de los islámicos que mantienen Idlib, Raqqa o bloquean Deirez-Zor. De una forma u otra, Alepo fue el “Stalingrado sirio” y sentó las bases para un cambio radical de la situación en el país en favor del gobierno legítimo de Bashar al-Assad. Ciertamente, hablar de la victoria total sobre los terroristas todavía está muy, muy lejos, y el camino hacia la misma no es sólo por medio de éxitos militares, sino también a través de impulsar, fuertemente, y a veces incluso sin hacer ningún progreso, el proceso diplomático.

Con respecto a este último, en Astana se ha programado una reunión entre los principales actores de la región del Oriente Medio con los líderes de Rusia, Turquía e Irán para principios de 2017. Según algunos expertos, en el futuro esta cumbre será capaz de neutralizar el proceso de negociación por parte de los actores globalistas occidentales y reemplazar el formato de Ginebra.

Todos estos éxitos no podían continuar sin una respuesta traicionera y cobarde de los organizadores del caos de Oriente Medio, que una vez más apostaron por la brecha entre Turquía y Rusia. El 19 de diciembre de 2016, en Ankara, el embajador de Rusia en Turquía Andrei Karlov fue asesinado por nueve disparos en la espalda. El asesino, un ex policía de 22 años, Mevlut Mert Altyntash, dijo que lo hizo como “venganza por Aleppo”. Sin embargo, a pesar de los cínicos cálculos de los que representaban a este criminal (y según el científico político turco Mehmet Perincek, no sin la CIA), este casus belli no sucedería.

Según Alexander Dugin, el asesinato del diplomático ruso en Ankara fue “la agonía de los globalistas”, emprendida para provocar un conflicto militar.

“Efecto de Trump” en Moldavia y Bulgaria

La victoria histórica de Donald Trump en las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos no fue el único acontecimiento importante en noviembre de 2016. En dos países de Europa del Este -el antiguo bloque soviético- las elecciones presidenciales fueron ganadas por las fuerzas soberanistas.

El 13 de noviembre de 2016 hubo elecciones presidenciales en la República de Moldavia, con una victoria aplastante del Partido de los Socialistas (MDBGS) de Igor Dodon. Muchos lo han considerado y siguen considerándolo como el candidato pro-ruso. Sin embargo, en nuestra opinión, esto no es del todo cierto. En primer lugar, Dodon es un político pro moldavo, que defiende la soberanía de la ex república soviética. Los opositores de Dodon son radicalmente liberales y demócratas pro-occidentales centrados en las transnacionales y los globalistas, y abogan por la unificación de Moldavia con Rumania, entrar en la OTAN y la UE, y convertir el país en otra base de la OTAN para atacar a Rusia. Los primeros pasos del presidente Dodon dan esperanza para un diálogo estrecho entre Chisinau y Moscú, incluyendo el arreglo del conflicto de Transnistria.

También se espera que Bulgaria cambie su rumbo político y mejore las relaciones con Rusia. El 13 de noviembre de 2016, un candidato del Partido Socialista Búlgaro (BSP), el ex Comandante de la Fuerza Aérea Rumen Radev, fue elegido como Presidente. También es considerado como rusófilo. Por otra parte, Radev ya ha abogado por la necesidad de una rápida abolición de las sanciones contra Rusia. Según los expertos de Tsargrad, su victoria demuestra la decepción de las élites pro-occidentales entre el pueblo búlgaro, las élites que arrastraron al país a la UE y la OTAN, y Rumen Radev da esperanza a la reanudación del diálogo con la Rusia fraternal. Esto es especialmente importante teniendo en cuenta el antiguo rumbo, fuertemente anti-ruso, sostenido por el presidente globalista, Rosen Plevneliev.

El golpe gubernamental en Brasil

Otro acontecimiento muy importante tuvo lugar en Iberoamérica. El 12 de mayo se realizó un golpe pro-americano en Brasil.

El Senado despidió al presidente legítimo del país, la representante del Partido de los Trabajadores, Dilma Rousseff, acusándola de abuso de poder. Como jefe interino del Estado se nombró al vicepresidente Michel Temer, quien, según la información de WikiLeaks, había sido reclutado por la CIA. El 31 de agosto se anunció la destitución final por el Senado de Rousseff, y Temer asumió el cargo de Presidente de Brasil. Los partidarios de la independencia, por desgracia, sufrieron una derrota temporal. Sin embargo, después de la victoria de Donald Trump, Temer, quien se orientó hacia Hillary Clinton, no espera nada bueno.

Katehon en Español

Los precios del petróleo permanecieron débiles en 2016, presionados por la sobreoferta de esta materia prima y una fuerte actividad especulativa, que los mantuvieron la mayor parte del año por debajo de los 50 dólares el barril.

Su cotización comenzó en enero en cerca de 38 dólares el tonel, y permaneció en ese entorno o menos en febrero y marzo para trepar a más de 45 al cierre de abril. Luego despidió mayo cercana a los 50 dólares, nivel en el que no ha podido estabilizarse debido a la gravitación sobre ella de los factores mencionados.

De acuerdo con expertos, las razones que signaron la caída de los precios desde mediados de junio de 2014 cuando rondaban los 100 dólares, fueron las mismas, en sentido general: el desequilibrio entre oferta y demanda y la indecisión de la Organización de Países Exportadores de Petróleo (OPEP) para concretar un recorte en la mayoría de los encuentros sostenidos.

También incidieron la debilidad de la economía mundial, que limita el aumento de la demanda del llamado oro negro y el fortalecimiento del dólar, gracias a las especulaciones del Reserva Federal estadounidense en torno a las tasas de interés y a un euro debilitado por las contradicciones y dificultades de la Eurozona.

Sin duda, la crisis de la deuda europea o de la Eurozona, con la posible salida de Grecia del bloque, afectó a la llamada moneda común que se fue devaluando frente al dólar.

Tal situación golpeó directamente el precio del petróleo al cotizarse éste en la divisa norteamericana. A ello contribuyó más recientemente el anuncio de Reino Unido de salir de la Unión Europea.

Durante el año, intereses favorables a la depresión de los importes y otros beneficiados en el alza de los mismos, influyeron notablemente en el curso del mercado, no ajeno a factores geopolíticos como la agudización de los conflictos en el Medio Oriente, responsables de ocasionales repuntes, y a factores climáticos como huracanes y otros fenómenos o desastres.

Otros elementos, como el incremento o la disminución del número de plataformas activas en Estados Unidos, fueron muy utilizados por la actividad especulativa a favor o en contra de los precios.

También incidieron la divulgación de datos relacionados con el creciente aumento de la producción de petróleo no convencional en la nación norteña, lo cual supuso un aumento de la sobreoferta mundial del hidrocarburo.

Los reportes semanales del Departamento de Energía sobre las reservas estadounidenses de crudo, coadyuvaron a la caída o al ascenso de los precios, según estás aumentaron o descendieron.

Para la mayoría de los analistas el factor determinante en el curso de los precios lo constituyó el rol incoherente desempeñado por la OPEP, y algunos de sus principales miembros como Arabia Saudita, Irán e Iraq, que aunque proclamaron no pocas veces el interés de estimular los precios, se contradijeron numerosas veces al anunciar incrementos de sus producciones, lo cual conspira contra la subida de las cotizaciones.

El primero de ellos con el argumento de defender su participación en el mercado, aunque esta política le originara pérdidas por los bajos precios del crudo, el segundo al invocar la posibilidad de recuperar su cuota luego de ser liberado de las sanciones de Occidente que le impidieron mayor presencia en la comercialización.

En el caso de Iraq, segundo miembro en importancia de la OPEP, este país demandó recobrar su participación en el mercado, tras lograr mayor estabilidad en su nivel extractivo, pese al conflicto bélico en que está envuelto frente a los efectivos del autodenominado Estado Islámico.

La agrupación se reunió del 26 al 28 de septiembre en Argelia, en el contexto del Foro Internacional de Energía, para tratar de materializar un posible congelamiento de la producción, pero luego algunos miembros mostraron incongruencias con llevar adelante esa medida, lo que neutralizó los repuntes alcanzados en ulteriores sesiones en los mercados.

No fue hasta el 30 de noviembre que el bloque logró concretar un recorte de 1,2 millones de barriles de su bombeo diario, a partir de las reducciones de las cuotas de sus miembros.

De inmediato este acuerdo repercutió positivamente en los precios, que treparon en más de un 13 por ciento en solo dos días, a más de 50 dólares el barril en ambos casos, lo que no lograba desde varios meses atrás.

A estas ganancias contribuyó la decisión de Rusia, no miembro de la OPEP y uno de los principales productores de oro negro a nivel mundial, de sumarse a la iniciativa con el compromiso de reducir su volumen extractivo en 300 mil barriles.

Fundado en Bagdad en agosto de 1960 por iniciativa de los gobiernos de Arabia Saudita y Venezuela, y con el objetivo de crear ‘un instrumento de defensa de los precios’, el grupo ejerce fuerte influencia en el mercado al ser responsable del 33 por ciento de la producción mundial de petróleo, del 72 de las reservas probadas y dominar el 58 por ciento de las exportaciones.

Su actitud en lo adelante será decisiva en el curso de la cotización de esta materia prima, la más comercializada y pivote de la economía mundial.

Roberto Salomón

Roberto Salomón: Periodista de la Redacción de Economía de Prensa Latina.

La última jugada del año del presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin, recuerda una partida blitz de ajedrez, de pasos rápidos, cuando en política exterior el jefe del Kremlin pareció superar a su similar estadounidense, Barack Obama.

El jefe de la Casa Blanca, como para hacerlo más incómodo y causar más daños a los nexos bilaterales y, al mismo tiempo, humillar al personal diplomático ruso, anunció la expulsión de 35 funcionarios en Washington y San Francisco, con 72 horas para salir.

Solo en boletos, los diplomáticos rusos y sus familiares deben pagar casi 220 mil dólares con el riesgo de pasar el Nuevo Año fuera de casa o en aeropuertos de terceros países.

Pero lo que asombra es el argumento. El país que ideó el sistema Prism para espiar tanto a adversarios como aliados por todo el mundo, el que cuenta como una entidad como la Usaid para interferir en cualquier territorio, acusa a Rusia de inmiscuirse en su sistema electoral.

Resulta que por encima de lo aclarado por la red Wikileaks, autora de las publicaciones sobre irregularidades en el Partido Demócrata, de que sus fuentes estaban en el interior de esa agrupación, Washington montó una campaña mediática para acusar a Rusia.

La acusación carece de prueba alguna y si se llevara a términos de un juicio, sería como condenar a Rusia sin pruebas de la fiscalía. En Estados Unidos ello resulta imposible, pero en política nada de eso se toma en cuenta.

Pero, como afirmó Putin en su reciente conferencia de prensa anual, todos estaban equivocados en los pronósticos de las presidenciales norteamericanas menos nosotros, en referencia a la victoria del multimillonario Donald Trump, quien alabó ayer al mandatario ruso.

Sin embargo, Obama fue más allá. Sobre bases infundadas aprobó un nuevo paquete de sanciones contra empresas rusas de tecnología de información y contra la jefatura de la inteligencia y seguridad de este país, al acusarlos de dirigir ciberataques contra Estados Unidos.

Ello incluyó, además, la expulsión de los diplomáticos. Pero en el tablero de ajedrez blitz, Putin contaba con dos minutos para jugar y lo hizo, como señaló el propio Trump, de forma brillante: se negó a responder con la misma medida, como ocurre siempre en la diplomacia.

Al contrario, llamó a todos los diplomáticos norteamericanos y sus familiares a asistir a la celebración con el árbol de Navidad instalado en el Kremlin y dirigió a Trump un mensaje de esperanza de mejorar los nexos con Estados Unidos.

En otras palabras, casi ignoró otra de las decisiones para empeorar los nexos tomadas por un jefe de Estado que abandona la Casa Blanca en menos de tres semanas.

Pero, de otro lado, el regalo navideño de Putin fue anunciar un acuerdo junto con Turquía e Irán para anunciar desde este viernes un cese de hostilidades en toda Siria pactado entre al menos siete agrupaciones armadas con más de 60 mil miembros.

Irán, a cargo de milicianos voluntarios del movimiento Hizbullah, Turquía de la oposición armada, y Rusia, de sus fuerzas, son los garantes del arreglo que en su base deja fuera a Estados Unidos, cuya lucha de cuatro años contra el terrorismo solo fortaleció a ese último aún más.

Claro que ese acuerdo tiene muchos obstáculos aún por vencer, pero la fórmula empleada deja desbancada a las potencias occidentales que pertrecharon a una oposición armada para derrotar a Bashar Al Assad.

Al mismo tiempo, Putin demostró en ese conflicto que puede lograr algo parecido a lo ocurrido en Chechenia, al inicio de su mandato: las tropas rusas luchan contra los terroristas y no contra un pueblo. Chechenia es hoy una república rusa, próspera y en paz.

Desde el punto de vista militar: Rusia colaboró en la liberación de la segunda ciudad más grande de Siria y mostró capacidad para formar alianzas y ayudar a la salida, sin combate, de más de 30 mil armados y sus familiares.

Al mismo tiempo, de unas relaciones bilaterales crispadas por el abatimiento de un caza ruso en Siria, en noviembre de 2015, Moscú logró situar a Ankara como socio en una alianza tripartita que vuelve a dejar fuera a Estados Unidos para acciones en Medio Oriente.

Turquía, miembro de la alianza atlántica y acusado por Damasco de entrenar, pertrechar y financiar al terrorista Estado Islámico (EI), tiene sus propios intereses en la región, pero Rusia parece apelar a la parte positiva de esa relación para lograr objetivos comunes.

El atentado contra el embajador ruso en Ankara, Andrei Karlov, lejos de empeorar nexos bilaterales, pareció catalizar acuerdos como el anunciado respecto a Siria, para acercarla un poco más a la senda de negociaciones de paz, sin dejar de luchar contra los terroristas.

La partida política de Putin y Obama se asemeja a la reciente victoria en Doha del ruso Serguei Kariajin frente al noruego Magnus Carlsen en el campeonato mundial de blitz, solo que las jugadas de Rusia y Estados Unidos continúan. Pero ese será después de Nuevo Año.

Antonio Rondón García

This article by prominent academic Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay was first published with foresight in June 2016

“The evil that men do lives after them.” — William Shakespeare (1564-1616), ‘Julius Caesar’

The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature…

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

— James Madison (1751-1836), in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1798, (and, in ‘Political Observations’, 1795)

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our [1787] Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

— Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), in a letter to William Herndon, 1848

“…War is sometimes necessary, and war at some level is an expression of human folly.”

— Barack H. Obama (1961- ), Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Dec. 2009

As a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act… today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

— Barack H. Obama (1961- ), in a speech in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5, 2009, [N.B.: On May 27, 2016, Pres. Obama repeated essentially the same commitment at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, in Japan, calling for a “world without nuclear weapons”.]

As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat…

I’ve ordered military action in seven countries. [Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia]

— Barack H. Obama (1961- ), in a speech at the American University, Aug. 5, 2015

Ever since Neocons de facto took over American foreign policy, after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, rejecting the ‘Peace Dividend’ that many had expected, the cry in Washington D.C. has been to impose an America-centered New World Order by military means.

Successive administrations, both republican and democratic, have toed the line and dutifully pursued the same policy of world domination by launching a series of direct or covert wars of aggressionaround the world, in violation of international law. This explains why the United States has over 1,400 foreign military bases in over 120 countries, and why they are being expanded.

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

First there was the Iraq war of 1991, when Saddam Hussein’s regime felt into a trap, thinking it had Washington’s tacit go ahead to integrate Kuwait, a territory that had been part of Iraq throughout the nineteenth century and up until World War I. Then there was the 1998-1999 U.S. military intervention in Yugoslavia’s ethnic conflicts, in order to undermine Russian influence. The “Pearl Harbor” type attack of 9/11, 2001, was a “god-given” event on the march to the New World Order, since it justified huge increases in the U.S. military budget and served as a justification to launch the 2001 war inAfghanistan, eventually leading to a U.S.-led “preventive war” to “liberate” Iraq, in 2003.

All this was followed by a string of covert operations to overthrow governments, elected or not, and to impose regime changes in independent countries, such as in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Honduras, Haiti, Somalia… etc.

The election of Senator Barack Obama, in 2008, was expected to stop these destructive American military vendettas around the world, most of them under the initiative of the Executive, with little input from Congress, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. After all, in 2009, President Obama accepted the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize, which carried a stipend of about $1.4 million, for his promise of creating a “new climate” in international relations and of promoting nuclear disarmament. Instead, it can be said that “Two Full Terms of War” is the legacy of his two terms in office. Mr. Obama didn’t settle any war, and he initiated many more.

In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama, referring to the more or less discredited theory of “Just War” in modern times, saidthat wars must be waged “as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.”

Note, however, that Obama was honest and lucid enough to acknowledge that there were people “more deserving” than him to receive such a peace prize, stating that his “accomplishments were slight”. —As it turned out, he was right. Antiwar candidate Obama did not rise to the high expectations placed on him in 2008: He did not bring peace to the world; he did not stop American wars of aggression around the world, he did not stop the American policy of overthrowing other independent countries’ governments, nor did he bring “nuclear disarmament”. In the latter case, he did just the reverse, as we will see below.

That is why, after a double mandate in the White House, it can be demonstrated that President Barack Obama’s legacy is indeed very slight, if not net negative. Let us look more closely, beginning with the positive side of President Obama’s legacy, and following with the severe failures of his administration.

Obamacare: A timid step in the right direction toward social justice

Before spelling out the Obama administration’s main failures, it is only fair to stress some important successes it has achieved, even though some may deplore that they have been few and far between. For one, in domestic affairs, President Obama succeeded in getting aPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, passed by Congress, in 2010. That law brought health coverage to close to some20 million Americans who previously had been left out of secured access to health services through employer-sponsored insurance. A similar attempt by Hillary Clinton in 1993 had failed.

Obamacare, a private-based health insurance program, was copied from a Republican program signed into law in Massachusetts, in 2006, by then Governor Mitt Romney. The initial objective was to adopt a universal health plan similar to the 1965 single-payerMedicare program for the elderly, but Republican opposition in Congress made that option impossible. It is estimated that slightly more than 30 million Americans are still lacking comprehensive health insurance. Nevertheless, it can be said that the Obamacare program, even though flawed, was a step in the right direction.

It is worth noting, however, that many American doctors are in favor of a Single-Payer Health system. Last May, an impressive group of 2,231 physicians called for the establishment of such a system to cover all Americans in need of medical care. The only presidential candidate, this time around, who proposes a universal single-payer health system, is Senator Bernie Sanders.

President Obama has, on occasion, stood up to pro-war pressures 

In foreign affairs, President Barack Obama has taken some initiatives, which have distanced himself from President George W. Bush, by resisting pressures to enlarge some ongoing military conflicts.

For instance, in 2013, the governments of Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, anxious to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, orchestrated what is widely believed to have been a false flag operation, in order to place the blame on the Assad government for having allegedly used chemical weapons against rebels. The objective was to provoke a hesitant Obama administration into getting involved militarily in the Syrian conflict. Such a gimmick had worked in 1986 in persuading the Reagan administration to bomb the country of Libya.

To his credit, President Obama did not fall for the plot, and resisted the “intense” pressures coming from neocons, and from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in his own administration, for a direct U.S. military involvement in Syria. He backed instead a Russian proposal to remove chemical weapons from Syria, thus avoiding the deaths of thousands of people.

The Iran deal as a triumph of diplomacy over waging destructive wars

Other neocon-inspired pressures were exerted on President Obama, coming also from the Israeli government, to have the U.S. launch military attacks against Iran, a country of 80 million people. The pretext advanced this time was that Iran was threatening Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region in allegedly developing a nuclear weapon of its own.

Even though the Iranian government asserted that its nuclear program was to produce energy and was exclusively peaceful, President Obama was under strong pressure to attack Iran “preventively” to destroy its nuclear installations. To his credit, President Barack Obama resisted the pressures to launch what would have been another illegal war of aggression, similar to the one George W. Bush initiated against Iraq in 2003.

Instead, President Obama opted to rely on diplomacy, and on July 14, 2015, six countries (China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K. and the United States) reached an Iran deal, which removed the possibility that Iran develop nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. Here again, an unnecessary war was avoided and thousands of lives were saved.

The ending of more than half a century of an American boycott of Cuba 

President Barack Obama must also be congratulated for having accepted Pope Francis’ mediation, in 2014, to end the more than half a century of hostilities between the government of the United States and the government of Cuba, two neighboring countries. The Pope had written a personal appeal to Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro and led closed-door negotiations between the delegations of both countries.

In December 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced that they would begin normalizing diplomatic relations between the two nations. On April 11, 2015, President Obama and Cuban President Castro met in Panama to finalize the new reality and declared themselves ready to “turn the page and develop a new relationship between our two countries”, in Mr. Obama’s words.

Since then, the two leaders have reopened embassies in each other’s countries and normalized exchanges. President Obama even visited Cuba in March 2016.

Therefore, President Obama’s decision put an end to a sad chapter in the history of 20^th Century American foreign policy, especially considering that the U.S. government has established full diplomatic relations with countries such as China and Vietnam.

The list of favorable actions by the Obama administration is not very long. There is, however, a longer list of policies that belie many of Barak Obama’s promises and the expectations he created when he ran for president in 2008.

President Obama enlarged the powers of the White House to launch imperial wars with no temporal or geographical limits

As the quote above by James Madison indicates, the U.S. Founding Fathers were well aware of the danger of giving a king or dictator the right to launch wars on his own. They feared that this would bring tyranny and oppression to their nation.

President George W. Bush, in power from 2001 to 2009, behaved in a way the U.S. Founding Fathers would have strongly disapproved, since he vied with the Congress to concentrate the power to wage war in his own hands, using Congress as a rubber stamp.

One would have thought that newly elected President Barack Obama, in a democratic spirit, would have attempted to reverse this dangerous move toward turning the U.S. presidency into an initiator of foreign wars. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama did the reverse, increasing rather than reducing the president’s discretionary powers to wage wars.

Indeed, Nobel Peace Laureate Obama didn’t waste any time in arguing that he had, as U.S. president, the authority to wage war in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, or elsewhere, without U.S. Congress’s approval, contending that previous so-called ‘use of force congressional authorizations’ remain in effect indefinitely. Indeed, President Obama claimed, just as President George W. Bush had done before him, that the broad ‘Authorization for use of Military Force’ on terror (AUMF) passed by Congress after Sept. 11, 2001, and the 2002 ‘Authorization to use Military Force’ in Iraq had, in fact, no expiration date and that they authorize an American president to act like an emperor or a king, and to unilaterally use military force or wage war of his own volition.

This is a very serious matter, because if this theory were to be confirmed and entrenched in practice, without a formal constitutional amendment, the precedent would mean that the U.S. Constitution hasde facto been pushed aside and the United States has become less of a republic, and more of an empire. [This would tend to confirm the title of my book ‘The New American Empire’]

What is more, President Obama has acted aggressively according to his theory of presidential war powers. He has launched eight times as many drone strikes in other countries as did President George W. Bush; and, according to his own boasting, he has “ordered military action in seven countries”. This is not a legacy he should be proud of.

The destruction of the independent nations of Iraq, Libya and Syria and the worsening of the chaos in the Middle East

As far as U.S. involvements in the Middle East are concerned, President Barak Obama did not substantially break away from the neocon-inspired imperial policies of the George W. Bush administration.

It is sometimes argued that president Obama’s decision to withdraw American troops from Iraq, in 2011, marked a break with the previous administration. In fact, the Bush-Cheney administration had already decided on such a withdrawal in 2008, when the Iraqi government refused to grant legal immunity to American troops in that country.

In supervising the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the Obama administration was simply implementing a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which had previously been signed between the U.S. government and the Iraqi government to that effect. According to the agreement, U.S. combat troops had to be out of Iraq by December 31, 2011.

With one or two exceptions mentioned above (the Iran deal and the normalizing of relations with Cuba), President Obama has not failed to embrace a military solution to serve the neocons’ many narratives in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In fact, if it can be said that President George W. Bush destroyed the country of Iraq, President Barack Obama, through his policies and actions, most of the time without the support of Congress, destroyed two other Middle East countries, i.e. Libya and Syria, while extending the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, and while supporting an embarrassing ally, Saudi Arabia, in destroying Yemen.

These countries were no threat to the United States. Even though President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize, he was no peace president, by a long shot. With his administration, it was really more of the same and a far cry from his campaign promises to “change things in Washington D.C.”

Under the cover of fighting terrorism, and to destabilize, divide and provoke “regime changes” in Libya and in Syria, for example, the United States—but also European countries such as France and the U.K., leading members of NATO—has relied on covert operations to support foreign mercenaries and Islamist groups of terrorists in these countries, giving them arms and logistics support, and inciting them to overthrow the established governments.

Thanks to the financial assistance given these terrorist groups, especially the self-proclaimed Sunni Islamist State (ISIS), by Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Turkey, the pro-Israeli neocons, who wanted to redraw the Middle East according to their mad theory of “constructive chaos”, have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, with a devastating international refugee crisis as an extra. Ironically, European countries are, for now, the main victims of the waves of refugees resulting from the politics of chaos.

As the de facto head of NATO, President Barack Obama and his neocon advisers, with the latter’s Manichean view of the world, must bear a large part of the responsibility for these disastrous results. The chaos in the Middle East is a huge failure for him, even though the neocons in his administration would deem such a manufactured chaos, a success!

Indeed, the countries of Iraq, Libya and Syria were considered, to different degrees, to be regional rivals of Israel, besides having large reserves of oil. Moreover, the latter countries have been on top of the list of seven countries discovered by General Wesley Clark, in late September 2001, as being the very countries the Pentagon planned to attack and destroy.

The destruction of Iraq can be attributed to the Bush-Cheney administration, since they are the politicians who used different subterfuges to launch an illegal war of aggression against that country, on March 20, 2003. However, what is most amazing is the fact that the Obama administration decided to follow the same policy in Libya and in Syria. Sooner or later, Mr. Barack Obama will have to explain why.

President Obama has sided with Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries in their efforts to spread Wahhabi extremism around the world 

The free world, and especially Western Europe, is under the threat of the most virulent brand of Islamism, i.e. Wahhabi extremism, a theo-fascist ideology, which is promoted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, and which is, to a large extent, behind global Islamic terrorism. Instead of denouncing that curse of the 21st Century, President Obama has gone out of his way to be subservient and even to bow to the leaders of Saudi Arabia during multiple trips to that country. The question has been often raised: Why has President Obama been so cozy with the Saudi Royal Family, even when the lattersnubbed him publicly?

There is no country in the world that violates more openly basichuman rights than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. One would think the United States would be at the forefront to denounce such violations. The Wahhabi, either from Saudi Arabia or other Islamic countries, have used hundreds of billions of petro-dollars to build madrassas andhuge mosques in Western countries, including in the United States, to promote their corrosive ideology. The Obama administration did not raise any objection when the largest mosque in the United States was built, in Lanham, Maryland. It is worth noting that, in 2010, Norwaydid refuse the construction of mosques in that country with foreign money.

The Obama administration has extended the neocon-inspired politics of chaos to Ukraine and Russia, and it has rekindled a Cold War II with Russia 

Why has the Obama administration been so anxious to start a New Cold War with Russia? We see here another contradiction between what President Barack Obama says, and what he does. For a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, are an aggressive military encirclement of a country and the sending of military forces to its borders acts of peace or acts of war? Why is Obama doing precisely that to Russia? Why is he risking a nuclear confrontation with Russia? That defies logic.

The only stretch of logic to explain such warmongering is that it is an attempt by the U.S. government to sabotage any economic and political cooperation between Russia and European countries, in order to keep Europe under some sort of an American protectorate.

Why is President Obama following the neocon plan? Why did he choose Ashton Carter as Secretary of Defense, a known warmonger and the Pentagon’s former chief weapons buyer, who is on record as wanting a military confrontation with Russia?

These are important questions that should be addressed to Mr. Obama, and all the more so since Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has indicated she would push in the same direction, if she were elected president.

Let us keep in mind that in February 2014, the Obama administration eagerly jumped at the opportunity to support a coup in Ukraine to overthrow that country’s elected government. It also armed the putchists, and encouraged them to commit atrocities against Ukraine’s ethnic Russian population. Such interference in the affairs of another nation is part of a larger neocon-inspired policy of militarizing Eastern Europe under the cover of NATO.

President Obama’s personal contribution to the nuclear arms race and to the threat of nuclear war

Even though president Barack Obama promised a nuclear-free world, and pledged, in a speech delivered in Prague, on April 5, 2009, “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy”, and again in Hiroshima, on Friday May 27, 2016, his words have not been followed by concrete steps in that direction. Instead, Mr. Obama seemed satisfied to passively pursue the same nuclear “modernization” program that involved the development of a new set of American nuclear weapons, initiated under the previous George W. Bush administration.

On September 30, 2004, then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, in a debate with President George W. Bush, complained that the Bush administration was “spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn’t make sense. You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, ‘You can’t have nuclear weapons,’ but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.”

In a Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010, the Obama administration seemed to echo Mr. Kerry and stated that the United States would “not develop new nuclear warheads or pursue new military missions or new capabilities for nuclear weapons.”

However, President Barack Obama wasted no time in violating his promise of not “developing new nuclear warheads” and of “reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy”. Instead, he seemingly embarked on the same nuclear program, which had apparently not been stopped at all, to develop an array of new nuclear weapons that made contemplation of their use more acceptable (smaller, more accurate, less lethal), just as the Bush II administration had done before. In other words, Mr. Obama has prepared the United States to get engaged in “small nuclear wars” in the future. This is quite a “legacy”!

The new American nuclear weapon is, as the New York Times has reported, the B61 Model 12, a nuclear bomb tested in Nevada in 2015. This is the first of five new nuclear warhead types planned as part of an American atomic revitalization program budgeted at a cost estimated at $1 trillion over three decades. So much for “a world without nuclear weapons”!

Domestically, income and wealth inequalities have continued to rise to high levels and poverty to increase under the Obama administration

On Jan. 20, 2014, a Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans were dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are distributed in the U.S. —People are therefore vaguely aware that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the economic system works, and they are right to think that the economy is rigged against the interests of the majority and in favor of special interests.

According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of public data, the American middle class is shrinking, its proportion among U.S. households falling from 55 percent in 2000 to 51 percent in 2014. [N.B.: An American middle class family of two adults and two children, in 2014, is one earning a minimum of $48,083]. This shift has produced a wave of discontent throughout the United States.

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, on opposite sides of the electoral spectrum, reflect this deep dissatisfaction and even the anger at the economic, financial and taxation policies pursued by the U.S. government and the establishment, over the last thirty years.

Indeed, for the last fifteen years, from 1999 to 2014, the median income of American households globally has declined by 8 percent.

-The median incomes of lower-income families fell by 10 percent during the same period, from $26,373 to $23,811.

– The median income of middle-income households decreased by 6 percent, from $77,898 to $72,919.

– And, reflecting the large inequalities even among upper-income households, the median income in that group also fell by 7 percent, even though, as a group, the relative importance of this segment of American households went from 17 to 20 percent. The group’s median income fell from $186,424 in 1999 to $173,207 in 2014.

In fact, the only segment of the U.S. population that has benefited from the economic, financial and taxation policies of the last three administrations (Clinton-Bush-Obama), and from technological changes that have occurred during the period, is the top echelon of the upper-income class.

The super rich have raked in the most, while profiting the most from various tax loopholes, which have lowered their average tax rate from 27 percent in 1992 to less than 17 percent in 2012. In fact, America’s super rich get richer and they are laughing their way to tax havens!

There is something fundamentally wrong and corrupt going on in the U.S. economy, and obviously, the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to address the problem.

Official government statistics tend to underestimate real unemployment and real inflation

All those wars waged abroad and the trillions of dollars spent on them have enriched some super wealthy Americans, but not ordinary Americans. Instead, they have impoverished them. Ordinary Americans are falling behind because their incomes are stagnant or falling, and because real unemployment rates and inflation rates are higher than reported.

According to official statistics, the annual rates of unemployment and of inflation (the consumer price index) would seem to be under control. For the first quarter of 2016, the U.S. unemployment rate hovers around 5.0 percent, while the inflation rate is just above 1.0 percent, pushed down by the decline in oil prices and by a relatively strong U.S dollar.

The problem with official statistics, however, is that the method to measure them has changed over time. This doesn’t mean that the new measures are willfully misleading. It only means that the old measures may be a better indicator of how unemployment and inflation impact certain sectors of the population.

In fact, some economists prefer to rely on the old methods of calculating unemployment and inflation to get a more realistic picture of what ordinary people are going through. For example, U.S. economist Walter J. Williams calculates so-called “alternate” statistics of unemployment and inflation.

For unemployment, certain categories of unemployed people have been excluded from the published official statistics. For instance, long-term and short-term discouraged workers, not actively searching for work, were excluded from the new official measure of unemployment rates, in 1994. Neither do official statistics count part-time workers who are forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.

As a consequence, when labor force participation rates drop because of the above, official unemployment figures indicate a decline in unemployment, even though this is not really exact. According to some estimates, if unemployment and underemployment were taken into consideration, the alternate rate of unemployment, in April 2016, would have been 22.9 percent, not the narrow official measure of 5.0 percent.

Similarly, official measures of inflation were changed in 1980 and in 1990, as a way to reduce the annual cost-of-living-adjustments for retirement benefits. For instance, when the price of certain items increases, they are replaced in the basket of consumer goods by other items, which cost less. Similarly, even if the price of some goods increases, such increase is reduced by a factor reflecting the higher quality of the goods available. If the old method of calculating inflation had been used, in April 2016, the alternate annual inflation rate would not have been 1.13 percent, as the official CPI measurements indicated, but would have been close to 5.0 percent, according to one measure, and even close to 9.0 percent according to another measure.

All this is to say that when people see their rents, condo fees, taxes, grocery purchases, etc., increase in price, and they experience a drop in their standard of living because of their stagnant or declining incomes, they are not necessarily hallucinating.

The Obama administration has allowed corporations and megabanks to offshore jobs and profits

A major feature of our times is that corporate profits are way up, while wages are stagnant, and corporate taxes are way down.

Indeed, a partial answer to the many issues raised above is the fact that the Obama administration has been guilty of pursuing and even intensifying the move toward lower taxes for corporations, and more profits for large corporations and megabanks on two accounts.

First, the Obama administration has initiated two mammoth international “trade deals”. Those trade “deals” were mostly kept secret because one of their main objectives is to guarantee legal protection to world corporations and megabanks against elected national governments and give them immunity from national prosecution.

The most recent examples of such “deals” are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe and the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TTP) with countries in Asia.

It must be understood by all that these so called “free trade” agreements are really not genuine free trade agreements for the unhampered movement of goods between countries, based on comparative national advantages, but are really instead corporate and banking agreements to protect corporations and megabanks against national governments, their taxation and their regulations.

Such agreements, negotiated in near complete secrecy, pursue geopolitical objectives. They are an attempt to build a worldwide economic and financial order that supersedes national states and they represent also an effort to protect the corporate and banking elites—the establishment 1%—against national governments. In the case of the TTIP, its geopolitical objective is to prevent European countries from developing comprehensive trade agreements with Russia. In the case of TTP, the objective is to isolate China. In the eyes of Washington D.C. neocon planners, they are part of ongoing economic warfare.

Second, the Obama administration has not taken the necessary steps to stop rich individuals and profitable corporations and banks from using tax havens and industrial inversion schemes to avoid paying taxes at home.

The Obama administration, and even more so the entire U.S. Congress, are under the influence of those interests whose objective is to build a worldwide economic and financial system that shields the 1% establishment’s wealth and power against any encroachment by national governments, at least from those governments the international elite does not yet fully control. We are talking here about an unelected world economic and financial empire with no frontiers, unencumbered by normal democratic rules.

This may be a big factor in explaining why the economy is languishing. Indeed, when corporate profits are not reinvested in the economy, but are hoarded and stashed away in tax havens, they do not increase domestic demand. U.S. corporations have about $1,400 billion ($1.4 trillion) sleeping in foreign tax havens. If all that money were repatriated, not only would the government have a lower deficit, but also the economy would greatly benefit from increased investments.

This is a somewhat scandalous situation the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress have done very little about. On the contrary, both have been slow in putting a stop to so-called corporate “inversions”, which have allowed companies to find a foreign suitor and switch their headquarters abroad to dodge taxes. Both have also extended patent protection to already entrenched corporations at the expense of startup companies. And it is only recently that they have moved to block so-called megamergers—all developments that have reduced competition, created oligopolies, increased corporations’ market power and raised prices.

This maybe the most glaring example of a lack of economic leadership on the part of the Obama administration, second only perhaps to the imperial wars it has initiated and encouraged. It is true that Mr. Obama has himself little competence or experience in economics and in finance, and that may explain why the above issues have not received all the attention they deserve.

President Barack Obama let neocons infiltrate his administration at the highest levels 

After President Obama began making appointments to senior positions in his new administration, in late 2008, a leading neocon, Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board under President George W. Bush and a leading architect of the Iraq war, expressed his contentment in these words: “I’m quite pleased… There’s not going to be as much change as we were led to believe.”

Therefore, it can be said that President Obama’s betrayal of his promises to enact change began very early in his administration. For instance, he kept George W. Bush’s Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, in his post, as an indication he wanted continuity and not a break with the previous administration.

Then, he went on paying his electoral debts. First, he named Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff, a neocon member of the House of Representatives, and also a former assistant to President Bill Clinton and a supporter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Then, in a move that brought glee to the ranks of neoconservatives, he appointed belligerent and neocon-supported Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. The neoconservative Weekly Standard applauded her nomination, calling her a “Warrior Queen”! Even Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney declared to be “impressed” with her nomination. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough branded her, Hillary Clinton is a “neocon’s neocon”, because “there’s hardly been a military engagement that Hillary hasn’t been for in the past twenty years.”

President Barack Obama went on to appoint a long list of other neocons to senior positions in his administration, not the least being the nomination of Ms. Victoria Nuland, a Dick Cheney adviser, as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, in May 2013. From then on, the die was cast as to what kind of administration President Obama would lead. Real change would have to wait.

President Obama had zero influence in solving the secular Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (1948- ) 

For nearly three quarters of a century now, the rotten Palestinian-Israeli conflict has endured for two main reasons: the intransigence of the Israeli government in closing the door to any new settlements, and the active pro-Israel veto of the U.S. government at the United Nations.

In 2008, one of presidential candidate Barack Obama pledges was to actively pursue a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. He had, as he said, a two-fold strategy: restoring America’s tarnished image among Muslims and persuading the Israeli government to stop settlement expansion on Palestinian lands. On both accounts, he failed. As it has been the case with Mr. Obama’s other promises, there was less substance behind the rhetoric than met the eye. For example, he did not set up a special task force to implement the policy he professed to wish to put forward.

Consequently, President Barack Obama has had no observable influence in stopping the far-right Netanyahu Israeli government from pursuing its illegal settlements in Palestinian territory. He did not get any success either in persuading the government of Israel to enter into serious peace talks to solve the festering conflict and end the occupation of Palestine. And the reason is obvious: President Obama did not dare withdraw the U.S. veto protecting the state of Israel at the United Nations, even though there were some rumblings to that effect.

Worse maybe, is the fact that President Obama let himself be publicly snubbed and humiliated by Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in early 2015, when the latter disregarded a non-invitation by the Obama administration and nevertheless entered the United States and addressed the U.S. Congress. This created a weird occurrence, because this was a violation of basic diplomatic rules. It was a public display of the Israeli government’s contempt for the American President.

In 2001, Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that he knew “what America is. —America is a thing that you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” What Netanyahu meant, of course, is that the pro-Israel lobby in the United States is so financially and politically powerful that an Israeli leader can publicly insult the American president, with no consequences, and even with the enthusiastic approval of an obliging U.S. Congress. President Barack Obama never looked so weak and so despondent as during this awkward and unreal situation.

President Obama did not release elements of proof linking Saudi Arabia to the 9/11 terrorists

A last point is also worthy of mention. Despite numerous requests, President Obama has refused to inform adequately the American people on the extent of Saudi Arabia’s involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. The families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and scores of others have called on Mr. Obama to release the classified 28-page portion of a special House-Senate congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, produced in 2002, and purportedly identifying individuals at the highest levels of the Saudi government as the financing agents of some of the 9/11 terrorists. In mid-April, President Obama even said that a decision to release the information was “imminent”.

After his trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last April, it seems that the “imminence” of the release was postponed sine die. Rather, President Obama went even further and promised to refuse to sign into law a bill that would have made the kingdom of Saudi Arabia liable for damages stemming from the September 11 terror attacks. However, he did not extend the same privilege to the Government of Iran, which is being sued by Americans for alleged damages.

Even though president Barack Obama promised, on January 29, 2009, “a new era of transparent and open Government”, this seemingly did not apply to the rights of Americans to know who was behind the 9/11 attacks that resulted in 3,000 horrific American deaths. This has led some observers to call his administration “the least transparent in history”. This is another example of Mr. Obama saying one thing and doing the opposite. It seems to be a pattern in hismodus operandi.

General conclusion

Why has there been such a contrast between President Obama’s words and his deeds? After all, he promised “to end the mindset that got us into war”.

There are three possible explanations. First, as a politician, Barack Obama may not have been completely sincere when he said he wanted to change the mentality in Washington D.C. He may have though that these were only words to be soon forgotten. —Politicians are ambitious opportunists and Mr. Obama was not different. Second, those who wrote his speeches may not have been the same ones making the policies. Thus, the gulf observed between the flowery speeches and the actual policies. Third, there is possibly a less generous explanation: Mr. Obama may have been a convenientfigurehead used by those who really control the U.S. government in the shadows. —It could be a mixture of all these explanations.

One can surely argue that the Obama administration, on the whole, was ‘less bad’ than the previous Bush-Cheney administration, both domestically and internationally. However, because elected presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived at the White House without any administrative experience and without having his own brain trust, and seemingly, without having a clear plan on how to implement his lofty promises, he had to submit himself to the same neocon advisers and warmongering interventionists who were omnipresent in the previous administration. He ended up reacting rather than acting; following rather than leading.

That is why the Obama administration’s policies, especially foreign policy, with a few notable exceptions, did not diverge appreciably from those imperial policies pursued by the previous Bush-Cheney administrations. President Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has failed to live up to the promises he made and the hopes he raised.

Both neocon-inspired administrations ended up creating an enduring mess in the world that future governments, and even future generations, will have to deal with.

Economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, Please visit the book site at: http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/ and his blog at: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm 

To write to the author: [email protected]

Desde España se ha reivindicado la tradicional influencia en América Latina como un valor de peso a la hora de promover la cooperación con países terceros. Esa triangulación, no obstante, de uso frecuente en la interlocución con China, acaba de recibir un significativo varapalo. Según se desprende de la nueva política del gigante asiático hacia América Latina y el Caribe (ALC), en adelante, los proyectos orientados a la región y concertados con países u organizaciones internacionales extra regionales deberán ser “presentados, consentidos y patrocinados” por los países latinoamericanos y caribeños.

El desplazamiento del vértice de referencia de dicha triangulación si bien no impide que esta siga celebrándose, atribuye un reconocimiento privilegiado a la voluntad y decisión de los países de América Latina y el Caribe, supeditándola a su conformidad lo que, sin duda, le confiere una posición de mayor fuerza. Aunque “no apunta contra nadie ni se excluye a ninguna tercera parte”, el énfasis chino en la dimensión bilateral de la relación y su profundización gana consistencia frente a cualquier otra variable complementaria.

Por otra parte, en este documento, el segundo de su tipo desde 2008, China no solo hace balance de lo actuado sino que introduce elementos de corrección sustanciales de su política, objeto en estos años de no pocas críticas (concentración en las materias primas, desprecio a los impactos ambientales, consecuencias laborales negativas, objetivos estratégicos oblicuos, etc.). En este sentido, el modelo de cooperación ahora propuesto sugiere pasar página del binomio exportación de materias primas-importación de productos elaborados para integrar más factores a fin de complejizar y ensanchar la relación.

Una comunidad de destino común

El desarrollo y la soberanía son las dos claves que vertebran la nueva hoja de ruta. China asume compromisos en orden al fomento del progreso en asuntos esenciales de la región como la industrialización, las infraestructuras, el intercambio tecnológico o la cooperación financiera, e incluso la justicia social, el intercambio cultural y humanístico, entre otros. Igualmente, la apuesta por la integración regional dirige su mirada a la CELAC, si bien persistirá la vía bilateral como un complemento destacado. La nueva estrategia apunta a un salto cualitativo que rubrica la disposición de China a participar de forma activa en la transformación de la región sumando no solo oportunidades de desarrollo sino también sellando una alianza para catapultar su proyección política global.

La triangulación en el aire

La primacía del enfoque regional sugiere que China considera llegado el momento de corresponder a las demandas transmitidas fundamentalmente por los gobiernos progresistas de ALC de un trato adulto y directo, sin más intermediaciones que no sean las libremente consentidas y con prioridad para los intereses de la región. De todo ello se debiera tomar buena nota. Esa supeditación exige también de España repensar su enfoque trazando una política que tenga en cuenta la nueva realidad sin esperar a que el simple paso del tiempo confirme el supuesto cambio de ciclo que asoma en la política latinoamericana. Incluso con gobiernos ideológicamente más próximos, las cosas tendrán que cambiar.

Xulio Ríos

Xulio Ríos: Director del Observatorio de la Política China.

IMAGEN: Marie-Hélène Caillol, presidenta del ‘think tank’ europeo LEAP.

En el universo de los think tanks , el LEAP (Laboratoire Européen d’Anticipation Politique) es una rara avis: es independiente. De ahí su heterodoxia e interés. En 1998 adelantó el regreso al viejo continente de los “nietos de Hitler, Franco, Mussolini y Petain”, en 2006 predijo la crisis de las subprimes y desde hace muchos años predice el fracaso de la Unión Europea si no se democratiza. Fundado en 1997 por el desaparecido politólogo europeísta Franck Biancheri (1961-2012), el LEAP está establecido en París. Marie-Hélène Caillol es su presidenta.

 La actual crisis de la Unión Europea es múltiple y total; La integración de la Europa del Este ha sido un fracaso, en la Europa del Sur toda la “magia” del sueño europeo también ha desparecido: la UE ya no significa más democracia y prosperidad, sino al contrario, austeridad e imposición. El eje franco-alemán es un matrimonio en divorcio no reconocido. Además ha tenido lugar el Brexit y el referéndum italiano, mientras que en el norte se sueña con una “Kerneuropa” de matriz luterana sin los meridionales… Todo eso configura una situación inaudita.

¿Esta UE es reparable, o hay que demolerla para reconstruirla?

No hay que demolerla porque ya lo está. Treinta años de completo desvío del proyecto original de construcción europea en beneficio de una serie de intereses esencialmente económicos y desconectados de los ciudadanos, han conducido al Brexit que marca la muerte de la UE tal como la conocíamos. Es una ironía de la historia que hayan sido los británicos quienes hayan acabado con la Europa que deseaban, pues, efectivamente, las derivas a las que me he referido están esencialmente vinculadas a la visión de la Europa económica propugnada por el Reino Unido y su patrón americano.

Hace muchos años que ustedes advirtieron contra la transformación de la Comunidad en Unión, y dicen que el enredo de la crisis europea comienza en 1992, ¿podría explicarlo?

En 1992 el tratado de Maastricht aumentó considerablemente el presupuesto y los ámbitos de competencias de Europa. Tendría que haber impuesto un cambio completo del método de gobernanza fundado sobre la afirmación de los principios de transparencia, eficacia y democratización (lo que Franck Biancheri llamaba TED en los años 90). En eso fracasó. Junto con ese incremento de responsabilidades se hizo el cambio de nombre: de la “Comunidad Europea” a “Unión Europea”. Piense en Unión Soviética, Estados Unidos, Reino Unido… y comprenderá por qué Biancheri advertía desde 1992 contra los riesgos de deriva en relación años principios de los padres fundadores, a saber: puesta en común de riquezas -carbón y acero puestos en común en el cuadro de la CECA, después abandonado-, respeto de la diversidad, especialmente lingüística -las instituciones europeas desconectadas de los ciudadanos solo hablan inglés-, y equilibrio y complementariedad entre el nivel supranacional y los estados miembros, en lugar de esta guerra a los estados miembros librada por la UE en asociación con los neoliberales, guerra perdida de antemano porque los estados siguen estando en la cumbre de la pirámide democrática y son, por tanto, dueños de los pueblos europeos, como se ve actualmente.

Las señales a ese respecto son contradictorias. Es verdad que los neoliberales defienden con uñas y dientes sus “logros” y que están bien situados para ello, pues tienen en sus manos las riendas europeas. Al mismo tiempo, no puede negarse que la tendencia de fondo apunta en realidad hacia su debilitamiento: incluso si las políticas de regulación no han sido todo lo ambiciosas que debieran, han tenido lugar. La City ya no es ni la sombra de lo que era hace diez años. Los bancos ponen mala cara, pero son obligados a obedecer los principios de capitalización y regulación que se han puesto en marcha.

En primer lugar hay una enorme incertidumbre sobre lo que Trump ha dicho o ha dado a entender y lo que hará. En cuanto fue elegido dijo que abandonaría el TPP, pero del TTIP se cuidó mucho en no decir nada. Sobre la OTAN lo que quiere, más que dejarnos ir, es que los europeos paguen por el “servicio de defensa de Estados Unidos”. Así que, en cierto modo la pelota está en el campo europeo. Está claro que estas intenciones liberan potentes impulsos de aceleración del proyecto de defensa europeo, ¿pero están los europeos verdaderamente preparados para ello? No estamos seguros. Nos arriesgamos a no tener más remedio que pagar y fortalecer nuestra implicación en la OTAN, invirtiendo la tendencia de desconexión de las últimas décadas, por lo menos hasta la crisis euro-rusa de 2014. Pero si los europeos pagan más, también podrían ganar en influencia, pues ya hay proyectos que quieren construir la Europa de la defensa a partir de la OTAN, separando cada vez más los mandos europeos y americanos… En conclusión, nosotros identificamos tres periodos: desde ahora hasta mediados de 2017, una gran movilización alrededor del proyecto de la Europa de la defensa; de 2017 a 2018-2020, un fortalecimiento del vínculo estratégico transatlántico, a falta de otra cosa mejor (esperamos grandes riesgos en ese periodo); luego, a partir de 2018-2020, finalización del proyecto de independencia estratégica de Europa. En definitiva: Trump abre la vía hacia esa independencia, pero el camino será seguramente sinuoso.

Michel Moore que pronosticó muy bien la victoria de Trump dice que éste no terminará su mandato. ¿Puede entrar USA en un periodo serio de turbulencias internas? En tal caso, ¿qué efectos podríamos anticipar para Europa?

Nosotros habíamos anticipado riesgos de turbulencias en el caso de una victoria de Clinton, incluyendo un riesgo de guerra civil vinculado a la toma de armas por parte del electorado de Trump desengañado. No olvidemos que Trump representa a esa franja de la población que está armada hasta los dientes. En cuanto a la victoria de Trump, ciertamente podría desencadenar movimientos de calle pero con un régimen duro esas protestas serán puestas en cintura, de la misma forma que la esfera internet será puesta bajo estrecha vigilancia, tendencia considerablemente iniciada ya, y no solo en Estados Unidos. Los negros, hispanos y liberales en la calle son mucho menos peligrosos que las milicias del Mid-West, de ahí que el establishment de EE.UU tuviera miedo de las consecuencias de una victoria de Clinton. Recordemos que solo un 25% del censo electoral votó por Trump, lo que no es una opción democrática. Las tendencias que hemos descrito en materia de endurecimiento del control de las poblaciones en Estados Unidos, tendrán su reflejo en Europa.

Fillon ha tenido verdadero coraje al reclamar alto y fuerte un acercamiento a Rusia, y sus declaraciones a favor de una actitud más firme hacia Estados Unidos evocan los principios de independencia de un De Gaulle. Sobre la cuestión rusa no hemos dejado de decir que Europa debía retomar la relación, por más que somos conscientes de que tal posición es igualmente característica de la extrema derecha. ¿A qué campo pertenece verdaderamente Fillon desde ese punto de vista? Es una buena pregunta.

Creemos que por lo menos todavía cinco años. Y eso solo porque Fillon le ha robado protagonismo. Hace tiempo que analizamos que el riesgo en Europa es menos la victoria de candidatos populistas que la integración de las agendas populistas en los gobiernos. En Inglaterra, el UKIP ha ganado el referéndum pero es la derecha de los muy respetables Tories la que toma el poder. En Francia nuestro establishment ha inventado el impecable republicano Fillon. Los anticuerpos europeos contra las dictaduras son potentes pero la capacidad de las elites de traicionar a sus pueblos sigue siendo muy eficaz. Mientras la comunidad de los pueblos europeos no encuentre el medio de hacer sentir su voz directamente, es la era de los Petain, más que de los Hitler, la que comienza en Europa.

La Vanguardia

Si bien es cierto que los primeros pasos de Trump parecen estar desconcertando a buena parte de sus correligionarios, lo cierto es que su margen de maniobra es relativamente pequeño para proceder a cambios verdaderamente significativos. Con todo, su elección constituye un síntoma evidente de la magnitud de la crisis de la globalización neoliberal.

I

La reciente elección de Donald Trump, el Brexit, el incremento de los votos fascistas en Europa, pero también y aún más, la victoria electoral de Syriza y el crecimiento de Podemos, son manifestaciones de la profundidad de la crisis del sistema neoliberal globalizado. Este sistema, que siempre he considerado insostenible, implosiona ante nuestros ojos en su mismo corazón. Todos los intentos para salvar el sistema –para evitar lo peor, dicen– mediante ajustes menores están condenados al fracaso.

Pero la implosión del sistema no es sinónimo de avances en el camino hacia la construcción de una alternativa favorable para los pueblos: el otoño del capitalismo no coincide automáticamente con una primavera de los pueblos. Los separa una brecha que da a nuestra época una tonalidad dramática, reveladora de los peligros más graves. No obstante, esta implosión –que es inevitable– debe entenderse precisamente como una oportunidad histórica que se ofrece a los pueblos, pues desbroza el camino para avances posibles hacia la construcción de una alternativa que tiene dos componentes inseparables: (I) planes nacionales para el abandono de las reglas fundamentales de la gestión económica liberal, en beneficio de proyectos soberanos populares que pongan en primer lugar los avances sociales; (II) en el plano internacional la construcción de un sistema negociado de globalización policéntrica.

Avances paralelos en estos dos planos serán posibles sólo si las fuerzas políticas de la izquierda radical conciben una estrategia para ello y logran movilizar a las clases populares para progresar en la consecución de los objetivos. Este no es el caso aún, como lo demuestran los retrocesos de Syriza, las ambigüedades y confusiones de los votantes británicos y estadounidenses, y la extrema timidez de los herederos del eurocomunismo.

II

El sistema vigente en los países de la tríada imperialista (Estados Unidos, Europa Occidental, Japón) se basa en el ejercicio de un poder absoluto por parte de las oligarquías financieras nacionales. Sólo ellas gestionan el conjunto de los sistemas productivos nacionales, logrando reducir a la condición de subcontratistas a casi todas las pequeñas y medianas empresas en la agricultura, la industria y los servicios, en beneficio exclusivo del capital financiero. Estas oligarquías gestionan los sistemas políticos herederos de la democracia burguesa electoral y representativa, habiendo llegado a domesticar a los partidos políticos electorales de derecha e izquierda, obviamente al precio de erosionar la legitimidad de la práctica democrática. Estas oligarquías controlan también los aparatos de propaganda, habiendo reducido los patrones de información a la condición de coro mediático a su exclusivo servicio. Ninguno de estos aspectos de la dictadura de la oligarquía está siendo cuestionado seriamente por los movimientos sociales y políticos en el seno de la tríada, especialmente en los EE.UU.

Las oligarquías de la tríada pretenden extender su poder a todo el planeta, imponiendo una forma particular de globalización, la del liberalismo mundializado. Pero se enfrentan aquí a resistencias más consistentes de lo que lo son en las sociedades de la tríada, herederas y beneficiarias de las “ventajas” de la dominación imperialista. Porque si los estragos sociales del liberalismo son visibles en Occidente, son diez veces mayores en las periferias del sistema. Hasta el punto de que pocos regímenes políticos pueden seguir aparentando ser legítimos a los ojos de su pueblo. Fragilizadas al extremo las clases, y los Estados compradore que constituyen las correas de transmisión de la dominación del imperialismo colectivo de la tríada son, de hecho, considerados con razón por las oligarquías del centro como aliados no del todo seguros. La lógica del sistema requiere así la militarización y el derecho que se otorga a sí mismo el imperialismo para intervenir –incluyendo la guerra– en los países del sur y el este. Todas las oligarquías de la tríada son “halcones”; la OTAN, un instrumento de agresión permanente, se ha convertido de hecho en la más importante de las instituciones del imperialismo contemporáneo.

La prueba de que se ha elegido esta opción agresiva fue dada por el tono de las palabras del presidente Obama durante su última gira europea (noviembre de 2016), tranquilizando a los vasallos europeos sobre el compromiso de los Estados Unidos dentro de la OTAN. Es evidente que la organización no se presenta como un instrumento de agresión –lo cual realmente es– sino como un medio de asegurar la “defensa” de Europa. ¿Amenazada por quién?

Pues para empezar por Rusia, como nos repite el coro mediático de rigor. La realidad es diferente; lo que se le reprocha a Putin es no aceptar el golpe de estado euro-nazi de Kiev, ni el poder de los políticos mafiosos en Georgia. Hay que contenerla, más allá de las sanciones económicas, por amenazas de guerra como las proferidas por Hilary Clinton.

Luego, se nos dice, está la amenaza terrorista planteada por el yihadismo islámico. Una vez más, la opinión pública está perfectamente manipulada. Porque el yihadismo es el producto inevitable del apoyo que la tríada sigue otorgando al Islam político reaccionario inspirado y financiado por el wahabismo del Golfo. El ejercicio de este supuesto poder islámico es la mejor garantía para la destrucción total de la capacidad de las sociedades de la región de resistir el diktat de la globalización neoliberal. También ofrece la mejor excusa para dar apariencia de legitimidad a las intervenciones de la OTAN. En este sentido, la prensa de los Estados Unidos reconoció que la acusación realizada por D. Trump de que Hilary había apoyado activamente el establecimiento del Daesh estaba bien fundada.

Añadamos que el discurso que vincula la participación en las misiones de la OTAN con la defensa de la democracia se revela una farsa cuando es confrontado con la realidad.

III

La derrota de Hillary Clinton –más que el triunfo de Donald Trump– es una buena noticia. Tal vez aleje la amenaza del clan de los halcones más agresivos, dirigido por Obama y Hillary Clinton.

Digo “tal vez”, porque no está dicho que Trump no introducirá a su país en un camino diferente.

En primer lugar, ni la opinión de la mayoría que lo apoya ni la de la minoría que se manifiesta en su contra le obligan a ello. El debate se ha establecido únicamente sobre algunos de los problemas sociales de los EE.UU. (particularmente antifeminismo y racismo). No pone en cuestión los fundamentos económicos del sistema, origen del deterioro de las condiciones sociales de amplios sectores. El carácter sagrado de la propiedad privada, incluido el de los monopolios, se mantiene intacto; que el propio Trump sea un multimillonario ha sido un activo, no un obstáculo para su elección.

Pero además el debate nunca ha versado sobre la agresiva política exterior de Washington. Nos hubiera gustado ver a los manifestantes contra Trump de hoy protestar ayer contra las agresivas propuestas de Hilary Clinton. Obviamente, esto no sucedió; los ciudadanos de los EE.UU. nunca han condenado la intervención militar en el exterior y los crímenes contra la humanidad que acompañan a esa intervención.

La campaña electoral de Sanders había despertado muchas esperanzas. Atreviéndose a introducir en el debate una perspectiva socialista, Sanders iniciaba una saludable politización de la opinión pública, que no es más imposible en los EE.UU. que en otros lugares. Uno solo puede deplorar, en estas condiciones, la capitulación de Sanders y su posterior apoyo a Clinton.

Aún más importante que el peso de la “opinión pública” es el hecho de que la clase dirigente de los Estados Unidos no concibe otra política internacional que la actual, y eso desde la creación de la OTAN hace 70 años –garantía de su dominio sobre todo el planeta.

Habría, se nos dice, “palomas” y “halcones” en los dos campos, republicanos y demócratas, que dominan el Congreso y el Senado. El primero de estos calificativos es, sin duda, exagerado; se trata de halcones que reflexionan un poco más antes de embarcarse en una nueva aventura. Trump y algunos en su entorno están quizás entre ellos. Si es así, mucho mejor. Pero hay que evitar hacerse demasiadas ilusiones al respecto, aunque también explotar esa pequeña grieta en el edificio estadounidense para fortalecer la construcción de una globalización diferente, un poco más respetuosa con el derecho de los pueblos y las exigencias de la paz. Algo que los vasallos europeos de Washington temen más que nada.

Por otra parte, las palabras de D. Trump sobre la política internacional de los Estados Unidos son contradictorias. Por un lado parece estar dispuesto a entender la legitimidad de los temores de Rusia ante a los planes agresivos de la OTAN en relación con Ucrania y Georgia, mientras Moscú mantiene en Siria el combate contra el terrorismo yihadista. Pero luego dijo que quería dar por terminado el acuerdo nuclear con Irán. Y no se sabe todavía si está decidido a continuar con la política de apoyo incondicional de Obama a Israel o si va a matizar este apoyo.

IV

Por lo tanto, es preciso situar la victoria electoral de D. Trump en el marco más amplio de las manifestaciones de la implosión del sistema. Todas estas manifestaciones, hasta hoy ambiguas, pueden conducir a mejores situaciones, pero también a detestables derivas.

Algunos de los cambios vinculados a estos acontecimientos en modo alguno cuestionan el poder de la clase dominante oligárquica. Este es el caso de Brexit, la elección de Trump, los proyectos de los fascistas europeos.

Ciertamente, la campaña a favor del Brexit recurrió a argumentos nauseabundos. Para empezar, el proyecto de separación no cuestiona la opción fundamental capitalismo/imperialismo de Gran Bretaña. Solo sugiere que en la conducción de su política exterior, Londres puede tener una flexibilidad que le permita tratar directamente con sus socios, los Estados Unidos, en primera línea. Pero detrás de esta opción se dibuja igualmente lo que ya deberíamos saber: que el Reino Unido no acepta la Europa alemana. Esta dimensión del Brexit es sin duda positiva.

Los fascismos europeos –que marchan viento en popa– se sitúan en la extrema derecha; es decir, no cuestionan el poder de las oligarquías en sus respectivos países. Solo desean ser elegidos por ellas para poner el poder a su servicio. Al mismo tiempo, por supuesto, apelan a nauseabundos argumentos racistas, lo que les evita tener que responder a los verdaderos desafíos a los que se enfrentan sus pueblos.

El discurso de D. Trump se sitúa en esta categoría de las falsas críticas de la globalización liberal. Su tono “nacionalista” tiene como objetivo reforzar el control por parte de Washington de sus aliados subalternos, no el concederles una independencia que tampoco exigen. Trump podría, en esta perspectiva, tomar algunas modestas medidas proteccionistas; es lo que por otra parte las administraciones estadounidenses siempre han hecho, sin decirlo, imponiéndolas a sus aliados subalternos a los que no se les ha permitido defenderse. Aquí se perfila una analogía que la Gran Bretaña del Brexit podría querer establecer.

Trump ha dejado entender que las medidas proteccionistas en las que piensa tienen principalmente como objetivo a China. Antes, Obama y Hillary habían ya, a causa de su decisión de desplazar el centro de gravedad de sus fuerzas armadas desde el Oriente Medio a Asia Oriental, designado a China como el rival a batir. Esta estrategia agresiva, económica y militar, en flagrante contradicción con los principios del liberalismo del que Washington presume ser el campeón, podría ser derrotada invitando a China a avanzar en una saludable evolución hacia el fortalecimiento de su mercado popular interno y en la búsqueda de otros socios entre los países del Sur.

¿Derogará Trump el Tratado de Libre Comercio? Si lo hiciera rendiría un gran servicio a la gente de México y Canadá liberándolos de su condición de vasallos impotentes y por tanto animándolos a involucrarse en nuevos caminos basados en la autonomía de proyectos soberanos populares. Por desgracia hay muy pocas posibilidades de que la mayoría de los representantes republicanos y demócratas en el Congreso y el Senado, todos ellos incondicionalmente vinculados a los intereses de las oligarquías estadounidenses, permitan a Trump ir en ese sentido muy lejos.

Las consecuencias de la hostilidad de Trump contra la Cumbre contra el cambio climático, COP 21, son menos graves de lo que dejan entender sus protagonistas europeos, pues lamentablemente se sabe –o se debería saber– que en cualquier caso el Tratado será letra muerta, pues los países ricos no tienen la intención de mantener sus promesas financieras en esta área.

Por el contrario, algunos efectos de la implosión de la globalización neoliberal pueden asociarse con un progreso social, más o menos débil.

En Europa, la victoria electoral de Syriza y el ascenso de Podemos se inscriben en ese marco. Sin embargo, los proyectos apoyados por estas nuevas fuerzas son contradictorios: rechazo de la austeridad impuesta, pero ilusión por la posibilidad de una reforma europea. La historia se encarga ya de demostrar este error de apreciación en relación con una reforma imposible.

En América Latina los avances realizados durante la primera década del siglo están hoy siendo cuestionados. Los movimientos que llevaron a cabo estos avances sin duda subestimaron el carácter reaccionario de las clases medias de sus países, en particular en Brasil y Venezuela, donde se niegan a compartir con las clases populares los beneficios de un desarrollo digno de este nombre.

La emergencia de otros proyectos –especialmente China y Rusia– también sigue siendo ambigua: ¿es su objetivo “atrapar” por medios capitalistas y en el marco de la globalización capitalista, que están obligados a aceptar ? O, conscientes de que este proyecto es imposible, ¿los poderes relevantes de las sociedades emergentes se orientarán preferentemente en la dirección de instaurar proyectos soberanos populares?

Samir Amin

Samir Amin: Economista egipcio, es uno de los principales exponentes del neomarxismo.

Majority Are Still Falling for Fake News

A new poll from YouGov shows that most Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the start of the Iraq war:

That’s stunning, given that President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, the CIA, SecDef Rumsfeld, SecState Powell, National Security Advisor Rice, Bush’s chief strategist Rove, “Curveball” (the alias of the name of the unreliable WMD information) and other top officials have all publicly admitted that Iraq had no WMDs.

Corporate Media Pushed Fake News

The mainstream media has confessed that they pushed the fake WMD claims.

For example, the New York Times pushed fabricated evidence in the run up to the Iraq war.   A year later, the newspaper apologized for its inaccurate, one-sided coverage.

The Washington Post also apologized for hyping the non-existent WMD threat.

CNN’s Howard Kurtz wrote:

Major news organizations aided and abetted the Bush administration’s march to war on what turned out to be faulty premises. All too often, skepticism was checked at the door, and the shaky claims of top officials and unnamed sources were trumpeted as fact.

***

The low level of public confidence in the media has many causes, but one of them stems from what happened back in 2003.

Government Officials Pushed Fake News

We in the alternative media have reported over and over and over and over and over and over that all of the insiders knew that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). And see this.

Catastrophic Consequences of Fake News

We were told that the Iraq war would make us safer.  We were told that it would be quick, and would virtually pay for itself. (We were also told that it would be a “cakewalk”, and that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers.)

In reality, the Iraq war was a total disaster.

The war cost up to $6 trillion dollars, which – even in a country as big as the U.S. – is a lot of money.

The war made us less secure than before.  Remember, Al Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country. And the Iraq war directly led to the creation of ISIS.

Indeed, the leaders of America and the UK were warned that the Iraq war would increase terrorism … before they pulled the trigger.

That’s “fake news” …

The Granai Clan was like many Italian immigrant families settling in Barre at the end of the 19th century. By 1912 Cornelius, one of 18 children, was working as a stone cutter for the Jones Brother Company. His parents were ex-followers of Guiseppe Garibaldi, peasant leader and soldier in the wars of Italian unification.

Decades later, in an interview with a friend, oral historian Roby Colodny, for Vermont’s Untold History, Granai recalled hearing stories about more than a dozen members of one Garibaldi expeditionary force that settled in Barre. Others immigrants called themselves Republicani, followers of Mazzini, elder statesman of the Italian Republic. Whatever their previous affiliations, most considered themselves socialists. And many joined the two main unions for those who cut stone, the Quarry Workers and the Granite Cutters International Association.

Eugene Debs, three-time Socialist candidate for president, visited Barre, as did his successor Norman Thomas in the early 1930s. Fred Suitor, secretary-treasurer of the local Quarry Workers from 1911 to 1930, ran for governor as the Socialist Party candidate in 1912, and was later elected mayor of Barre on the Citizens ticket. According to Granai, everyone knew he was a Socialist.

So much has changed. Barre was Vermont’s third largest city by 1900, right behind Burlington and Rutland. Although a single industry had fueled its growth, no one family or company dominated the local economy or culture. And its population represented a diverse ethnic mix, from French Canadians to immigrants from Italy, Spain and Scotland.

During the historic 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, organized by the Industrial Workers of the World, at least 200 children of the strikers were sent to the central Vermont city. On February 17, musical bands from Barre, Bethel and Waterbury greeted the kids as they arrived at the train station. They were “divied out” at a crowded Socialist Hall on Granite Street as people sang “son qui” (here I am), the famous duet from Tosca, Puccini’s opera about Italy’s struggle for independence.

Even Yankee farmers from the countryside took children in.

In the 1920s the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti captured broad local sympathy, especially in the immigrant neighborhoods. The two self-professed anarchists had been convicted of murder and armed robbery after a controversial trial in which the judge consistently denied defense motions. As new evidence emerged, more people decided that it was a frame-up, part of the red scare that began during the war. Sacco and Vanzetti became a cause célèbre, and attracted worldwide attention and support.

“Barre was never so stirred up,” Granai recalled. “They were seen as victims of their beliefs…victimized by circumstances.” When a play about the two immigrant martyrs was performed at the old Barre Opera House, a thousand tickets were sold for 300 seats. But unlike the Lawrence Strike a decade earlier, there was no victory this time. Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted shortly after midnight on August 23, 1927.

The ideas and sympathies of the newcomers sounded “radical” to many of their Yankee neighbors. But their agenda was a campaign for bread and butter, a decent home and education for their children. Like many urban areas in the U.S., Barre witnessed frequent agitation for shorter hours, higher wages and improved working conditions, from “squat sheds” and provocations to lockouts and strikes. Silicosis-producing dust sent many granite workers to the sanitarium on Blakely Hill. Accidents due to drilling and dynamite blasting were common.

A 40-hour workweek, with Saturday afternoon off, was instituted in 1914. Two years later Robert Gordon became Barre’s first Socialist Mayor, winning by 100 votes over the editor of the Barre Daily Times. But the political dynamics were fragile. After war was declared against Germany in 1917 it quickly became a battle against militant labor as well, especially the IWW. Most of its top leadership was rounded up and put on trial. As the Red Scare and deportation of suspected foreign radicals began the city’s socialist movement faded.

A teenager during the war years, John Lawson attended local socialist meetings with his dad. He and his family had reached Barre from Scotland in 1911, and Lawson took it upon himself to revive the Party after the war. It was a lonely task. Most IWW members – called Wobblies – were either in jail or struggling to hold onto union support. Many businesses were tired of dealing with labor demands.

Based on Diego Rivera mural, Rockefeller Center, 1936

By the early 1920s, although the unions were still strong, the socialist movement was in decline and a new slogan was creeping into use – The American Plan. Cloaked in patriotism, the Plan was a business strategy designed to deny recognition, even to well-established unions, and tar almost any demand for better wages or working conditions as “bolshevism.”

“The owners were represented by the Quarry Owners Association and the Barre Granite Association,” Lawson recalled. “Both were backed up by a common Board of Control which sat in Boston.” Through the intransigence of its President James Boutwell, the Board strove to preserve a “united front,” especially during a lockout that ran for months in 1922 and 1923. The Quarry Workers and Granite Cutters held out and some of the smaller companies eventually signed union contracts.

But the “united front” strategy was a partial success. Four months after the strike began scabs were brought in from sheds and quarries in Canada and Massachusetts. Some companies even promised them higher wages than the union was demanding. Once they arrived, however, the wages dropped.

By the time the strike ended, open shop working conditions had taken hold. The Rock of Ages Company was launched soon afterward, a rebranding of the older Boutwell, Milne and Varnum Granite Company, and actively promoted the American Plan. By purchasing other smaller companies – a strategy known as growth-by-acquisition – it became the best-known name in the granite industry. Rock of Ages wasn’t unionized until 1941.

Organizing in Hard Times

IN THE YEARS after World War I, migration to larger Vermont communities accelerated, prompting a building boom in regional centers like Burlington. Milk production was on the rise, although the number of farms was dropping rapidly. Fruit production was also high, at least for a few years, but less butter, hay and other grains were being produced. Both manufacturing and agricultural diversity declined as tourism took a firmer hold on the economy.

At its peak, a trolley system carried over 16 million passengers around Southern Vermont – until the flood of November 1927. But that historic disaster, which hurt rail travel and reduced trolley passengers to less than 2 million, ended up helping the summer home and winter sports sectors of the recreation industry by spurring highway spending and the building of airports. In the early 1930s half of the state’s $12 million annual budget was devoted annually to highway construction. During the same period only $1 million was spent yearly on education and health.

Increased specialization of labor, along with the growth of services industries and transportation systems, drew Vermont more deeply into the national money and credit network. In 1929 that structure collapsed. Unemployment skyrocketed as the standard of living dropped.

In Barre, a two-month strike by granite workers became a “straight out union fight for survival,” recalled Lawson. The strike officially began on April 1, 1933, shutting down six major companies within a week. The only exception was E. L. Smith, which paid above union scale and used workers from Canada. Lawson was president of the Graniteville local, while Granai consulted closely with the strike committee as a lawyer.

The union asked the sheriff and his deputies to let the strikers police themselves. “A police force was established by the wearing of white arm bands,” according to Granai. But at that point agent provocateurs rode in and workers fought back. In some cases the latter brandished shotguns for self-defense. Some strikers were jailed by anti-union judges. The protest was losing ground.

Shortly after the strike began, the sheriff had assisted in the use of 150 strikebreakers. But local residents backed the union, tradesmen and farmers distributed free food, and a federal arbitration board sought a compromise. On April 29, the Quarry Workers union rejected extension of the old contract for a second time. But the Granite Cutters accepted binding arbitration and the strike was almost settled by May 5.

Interpretations of why the National Guard was called in vary. As Granai remembered it, Governor Stanley C. Wilson didn’t issue the order. Rather, people connected with the Granite Cutters made the request “to get rid of agent provocateurs.” Lawson and others recall the situation differently. “Protests against the Guard were lodged by farmers, churchmen, the ACLU, the Vermont federation of labor, and a committee of Barre businessmen,” he insisted.

Whatever the reason, the Guard’s arrival created easier access for strikebreakers. Soon most quarries were back to business as usual. The workers had been demanding union recognition in the open shop quarries, but the presence of the Guard, combined with the action of the Granite Cutters union, left many people high and dry.

Members of both unions returned to work on June 1 and agreed to 1932 wages. But the hearings dragged on until August and many lost their jobs. Two of the three quarries now had open shops. One of the only compensations was that the federal government began to clean up the sheds. Suction machines designed to remove silica dust were in use before the end of the decade

French Canadian workers played a role in this and other strikes, often as scab labor. They had been coming to the state for mill jobs since the Canadian rebellion of 1837, when reformers rejected the political repression of Britain’s parliament. Vermont also provided better farming prospects, and a chance to work in lumbering or on railroad crews. Often called the “Chinese of the Eastern States,” these immigrants worked cheap and asked few questions. But their exploitation as strikebreakers hurt their relations with the Irish.

When mills began to close in the 1930s, many Canadians turned to farming in Franklin, Orleans and Essex Counties at the state’s northern end. Others stayed in the Burlington area but avoided union work. By then the church in Quebec had declared unions atheistic.
History’s long march rarely moves in a straight line.

There was obviously much more to this story. After all, grandpa Bruno became a clothing manufacturer and philanthropist, influential enough to merit an audience with President Truman.   And Lorenzo ultimately became mayor of his hometown. Not bad for a troublemaker.

Whatever the reasons, evidence suggests that Lorenzo had returned to Calabria by 1919, early enough to fight for Italy in World War I. After the war, he became (or remained) a hard-line Socialist, a “maximalist” who wanted a full-throated social revolution. By 1923, he was criticizing political faddism and the rise of fascism.

“People wake up anarchist in the morning, have a stroll, and become socialist,” he wrote in an article, “at noon comes De Cardona (a political priest), and we all are Popular; in the afternoon, after some drinks, from populist to ’Democratic-Liberal,’ then’fighters’; at night we all dress in black shirts and we are fascist. Without ceremonies!”

When he returned from exile, rather than being intimidated by the time he had spent in prison, Lorenzo continued the struggle for social justice and freedom that characterized his life. As head of the local peasants and laborers organization, he helped to liberate land from the remmaining baronies and fought “agrarian reform” that was being used against peasants and in favor of landowners. He “actively fought fascism with all his might and with the means at his disposal,” one local history noted.
In the first free elections after the fall of the fascist regime, uncle Lorenzo was elected Mayor in 1945, a position he held for the next thirty years, supervising community affairs with rigor, prudence and democratic principles. Unfortunately, due to a political split in the family, we never had the opportunity to meet.

Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire, Big Lies, and The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. He edited Vermont’s Untold History in 1976. 

Estimado lector:  sabemos que es 31 y estará pensando más en la cena de esta noche y recordando algo que le faltó comprar, que en la reflexión que aquí le vamos a proponer. Pero si logro captar su atención por un momento piense lo siguiente: seamos justos, a Alfonso Prat Gay habrá que reconocerle que efectivamente tenía un costado progresista que tan difícil era de advertir. Ese flanco “progre” está dado porque, al “dar un paso al costado”, le dejó al gobierno de Mauricio Macri una bomba muy difícil de desactivar. Pero antes de que salga corriendo a confundirse en un abrazo con Prat Gay, como el que se diera este último con su ahora medio sucesor Luis Caputo, cuando juntos festejaron en Nueva York la victoria de Paul Singer contra Argentina (va la foto para recordarlo), deje que le explique en qué consiste ese terreno resbaladizo y en pendiente por el que deberá transitar el gobierno durante este complejo 2017.

¿En qué condiciones dejó la economía Prat Gay y cómo sigue el gobierno a partir de ahora? La fotografía del momento admite distintas miradas, según desde dónde se pare el observador y en qué aspectos haga foco. Una mirada posible es la siguiente. Un año completo de gestión que arrancó con una fuerte devaluación, levantamiento de regulaciones en el mercado cambiario y en el comercio exterior, eliminación de retenciones y facilidades al libre movimiento de los capitales, sobre todo de salida. Bajo esas condiciones, se prometió una rápida reactivación de la economía, un aluvión de inversiones externas (¿alguien recuerda la promesa de los veinte mil millones de dólares que estaban comprometidos a ingresar “apenas se levantara el cepo”, que repetían Macri y Prat Gay?) y un mercado ávido por productos argentinos que, por fin, iban a poder a salir a ofrecerse al mundo, ese mundo del que Argentina se había alejado. El año de gestión terminó, en cambio, con un deterioro alarmante del mercado interno por caída del poder adquisitivo de la población (con fuerte traslado a precios de la megacorrección cambiaria), un déficit brutal del 6,8 por ciento del producto bruto (contabilizando también el pago de intereses, que el gobierno maquilla hablando de “déficit primario” con lo que baja en un par de puntos el desequilibrio), caída del PBI cercana al tres por ciento con la casi plenitud de ramas industriales en baja (sólo quedan con números a favor los derivados del complejo cerealero y oleaginoso: molienda, aceites y biocombustibles), desempleo en alza, cierre de empresas, suspensiones masivas de actividad durante el verano, retroceso de la inversión y una geométrica suba del endeudamiento externo.

Prat Gay pagó con su salida el costo de los platos rotos, de los que en realidad no es el único responsable. Pero si esas son las condiciones en que quedó la economía a su salida, ahora hay que ver cuál es la respuesta, la reacción del gobierno ante ese cuadro. La designación de Nicolás Dujovne en Hacienda y Luis Caputo en Finanzas, ex JP Morgan y hombre de absoluta confianza de Prat Gay, da una señal al respecto, así como las primeras palabras en funciones que pronunció el primero. El recién llegado definió la reducción del déficit  fiscal como su objetivo inmediato, pero también planteó metas de reformas estructurales, tanto en términos impositivos (una reforma que haga menos pesada la carga tributaria) como en el esquema de gastos e ingresos de las provincias (que las hagan menos demandantes de los recursos del Estado nacional).

La reacción que provocaron estos nombramientos en el frente industrial no es buena. Ven un gobierno preocupado por bajar el déficit fiscal antes que por la recuperación del empleo y la producción. Según algunos voceros industriales, “estos funcionarios no entienden a la industria”. Para otros, como Guillermo Moretti, “es un problema ideológico, estamos frente a un neoliberalismo que no se ha aggiornado, no ve ni entiende el mundo que lo rodea, que ya no crece en función del comercio exterior sino cuidando su mercado interno, y en cambio aquí se pone el eje en lo fiscal y en lo financiero y se deja en segundo plano la producción y el empleo”.

La palabra de Moretti, titular de la Federación Industrial de Santa Fe, es una de las más interesantes para escuchar dentro del espectro empresario que participa de la conducción de la UIA. Fue de los primeros en advertir sobre las graves consecuencias que tendría la apertura importadora de bienes manufacturados, y ayer fue una de las primeras reacciones que el autor de esta nota pudo recoger tras la primera intervención pública de Dujovne ya como ministro designado. “Si el nuevo ministro ya nos habla en contra del empleo público es que estamos en un problema; hay un gobierno, pero también un establishment, que son las empresas concentradas, los grandes medios, que creen en el camino del ajuste como salida. Yo creo que el interior está viviendo la plenitud de una crisis que en los centros urbanos, como la Capital Federal, todavía no se ve, pero que por este camino les va a llegar en pocos meses más”.

En pocos meses más, el país estará transitando la previa a las elecciones de medio término, programadas para octubre de este 2017. Seguramente la preocupación por no llegar a esas instancias en medio de una crisis económica haya apurado la salida de Prat Gay, cuando ya era palpable que su última promesa, la de los brotes verdes del segundo semestre, pasaba a ser una más de sus fallidas performances de profeta. Mauricio Macri, y quienes lo aconsejan, no creen que el problema sea el modelo, sino el desacople entre sus partes. Saben, porque ya han recibido señales desde el exterior, que una economía que entró en recesión masivamente, con desempleo y descontento social creciente, y desequilibrios en su balanza de pagos (más salida que entrada de dólares, aun con un resultado exitoso en el blanqueo, pero “por única vez”), y que ya durante 2016 se endeudó con el exterior en 45 mil millones de dólares, no es una plaza confiable. Máxime cuando los vientos en la plaza financiera internacional soplan en contra de las economías emergentes. Macri y los suyos creen que, una vez más, hay que dar “señales de confianza a los mercados”. Y esta señal, intuyen, es mostrar que son capaces de bajar el déficit.

Esta es la economía que deja Prat Gay cuando da su “paso al costado”. Una economía en crisis, fuertemente endeudada, y que en ocho meses dilapidó la “confianza” que había logrado devaluando, retirando controles de los mercados y firmándole un cheque en blanco a los buitres para que el juez Griesa le pusiera la cifra. El camino que le deja al gobierno, a partir de aquí, es resbaladizo y en pendiente porque ya casi no queda tiempo. Con las elecciones tan cercanas en el horizonte, ¿de qué forma se logra achicar el déficit sin pagar un enorme costo político por las consecuencias sociales que provoque?. Dujovne ya dejó entrever cuál es su repuesta: no es aumentar impuestos, al contrario. Por lo tanto, el ajuste va a venir por el lado de reducción del gasto y de las transferencias, tanto a provincias como a sectores sociales que reciben subsidios.

Dujovne y Caputo serán los brazos de un mismo cuerpo, encargado de obtener los recursos para que este modelo neoliberal siga funcionando. Es decir, pueda seguir recibiendo crédito del exterior mientras no salga de la crisis interna. Las propias fuentes oficiales hablan de una necesidad de financiamiento de 60 mil millones de dólares del exterior para 2017. Los que tienen algún acceso a los mercados financieros globales aseguran que, en las actuales condiciones, Argentina no podrá repetir ni siquiera el financiamiento de 45 mil millones que obtuvo en el año que culmina, incluso pagando mayor tasa. El gobierno cree tener la llave: si baja el déficit, se le abrirán las puertas del crédito otra vez en forma irrestricta. Pero, ¿a qué costo social y político? Este ya no es un problema de Alfonso Prat Gay. Es, apenas, la pesada herencia que le dejó al gobierno al partir.

Raúl Dellatorre

Raúl Dellatorre: Economista y periodista argentino.

Yemeni sources say a Turkish plane transporting scores of Daesh Takfiri terrorists has landed in the Aden International Airport in southern Yemen.

Yemen’s al-Masirah news website reported that the plane carried 150 terrorists who were evacuated from Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo after Syrian government forces fully retook control of the city.

On December 22, the Syrian army said Aleppo had completely returned to government control after the last batch of civilians and militants were evacuated.

Yemeni security sources said the terrorists landed in the airport that is under the supervision of Emirati forces, who are taking part in the Saudi military campaign against Yemen, the report added.

Uganda is a country that many people seem to have heard of, but barely anyone except the locals knows anything about.

Nestled near the divided but resource-rich Central African region, yet still technically part of the integrating and market-focused East African one, Uganda could serve as a critical bridgehead in linking together two dynamic areas of the continent, but as of now it presently functions as a solid buffer in preventing the former’s militant problems from undermining the latter’s economic growth.

China wants to change all of that by turning Uganda into the ultimate infrastructure juncture, building upon its mighty military sway to turn the “African Prussia” into the “African Kazakhstan”, or in other words, a transregional land bridge of unparalleled geostrategic significance.

This commendable vision isn’t without its obvious shortcomings, however, since Hybrid War tension has been continuously building under the surface in Uganda for the past twenty years or so. The threat of a ‘conventional’ Color Revolution or a EuroMaidan-like outbreak of urban terrorism is ever-present in the country, and this asymmetrical danger is perhaps the security services’ most pressing challenge. Aside from that, however, are other less-recognized risks that could prove to be equally challenging for the Ugandan leadership, such as the potential for a manufactured “Clash of Civilizations” and Identity (“Kingdom”) Federalism. Upon closer examination, Uganda’s strategic situation isn’t as clear-cut as one might initially think that it was, and despite President Museveni’s legacy dream of guiding his East African Community peers towards an EU-like federation, it might ironically turn out that his country is the one that the US uses to undermine the entire project.

The Infrastructure Juncture In The Jungle

All (Rail) Roads To The Northern Congo Run Through Kampala:

Uganda is uniquely positioned by virtue of its geography to serve as the connecting platform for linking together the East African Community (EAC) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to say nothing of the broader role that this would have in facilitating bicoastal trade between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. China is helping to finance the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), which begins at the Kenyan Indian Ocean port of Mombasa but will extend to Uganda en route to potentially connecting with the DRC’s northeastern river port of Kisangani, from where the Congo River smoothly flows to the twin capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, after which a short rail ride circumventing the riparian rapids leads to the Atlantic Ocean.

As can be seen from this description, Uganda is the geographic middleman in actualizing this vision, thereby making it an indispensable partner in China’s transoceanic infrastructure plans for Africa. That’s not all, though, since Uganda is also poised to connect the SGR to South Sudan, thus facilitating international market access for Africa’s newest country and complementing the LAPSSET Corridor. Due to its location, Uganda is also the object of Tanzania’s rival Chinese-financed Central Corridor project as well, which in a typically Chinese fashion could play the role of a well-thought-out backup plan in reaching the DRC and the Atlantic Ocean just in case a Hybrid War disruption sabotages Kenya’s SGR.

This given initiative aims to spearhead a southeast-to-northwest rail corridor across the East African country that would eventually link up with Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda, with the Kigali apparently having foregone its original choice of the SGR in favor of the Central Corridor in May 2016 (though it later walked back its statement). In this proposed construction, both Uganda and Rwanda would serve as components of China’s “geo-infrastructure insurance policy” in accessing the northern DRC via Tanzania’s Central Corridor, thus cushioning Beijing from some of the disruptive shocks that could occur if Kenya descends into American-induced chaos.

Balancer Or Disruptor?:

Taking stock of the strategic situation whereby China is simultaneously financing two rival rail routes in the EAC, it’s salient to note that both of these projects intersect in Uganda a lot more realistically than they would in Rwanda, which thus gives Kampala an impressive importance in regional affairs. If Uganda was ambitious enough (and such a quality surely isn’t lacking when it comes to Museveni), then it might try to position itself as the balancing force that keeps the competition between Kenya and Tanzania at a civil and friendly level, since neither neighboring power has an interest in upsetting the status quo there to the point where they both lose out on accessing the gateway to the northern DRC.

While Uganda does seem to be presently tilting towards Tanzania ever since it decided to redirect its prospective oil pipeline route from Kenya’s Lamu port to Tanzania’s Tanga one (or in other words, export its resources along the Central Corridor instead of the SGR), and the SGR plans through the country have stalled in the past few years, it would be a major geopolitical mistake if Kampala turned its back on Kenya, which is its largest export destination and fourth-largest import source.

Museveni thankfully doesn’t seem to have these sorts of calculations, with his Minister of Works and Transport refuting allegations that the SGR had been delayed and the government finally stating that it is ready to sign a loan with China for financing its portion of the project, but that doesn’t mean that a successor government led by a fully pro-American “opposition” candidate couldn’t change the country’s course. If Uganda abandons its balancing role between Kenya and Tanzania in favor of publicly rejecting the former to the full benefit of the latter, then it could generate a security dilemma between the two that would play right into the US’ hands by sowing the seeds of deep-seated mistrust between the EAC’s two most fundamental and only maritime-accessing economies, likely sabotaging the entire integration project for everybody before it ever has a chance to ripen and bear its multipolar fruit.

Museveni’s Legacy Planning:

Analyzed from this angle, Uganda is a key component in ensuring EAC unity in the coming years, as not only would a destabilization here disrupt the strategic intra-organizational balance/rivalry between Kenya and Tanzania, but it would also abandon any hopes that their projects would link together in the country and thus deepen the complex interdependence between all three of these important players. From the reverse perspective, a stable and multipolar Uganda – such as the one that China is banking on — would glue together its two larger neighbors by strengthening the trust between them and interlocking their economies through the shared focal point of interest that each of them would have in Uganda’s stability and consequent forthright access to the northern DRC (which is in their self-interests just as much as it is in China’s).

To return to what was said earlier, Museveni is staking his entire legacy on guiding the EAC along its previously stated federalization plans, which happens to perfectly align with China’s desire to see its regional partners integrate more closely with one another in order to streamline six multilateral interactions into a much more efficient bilateral one between Beijing and the forthcoming federalized bloc. The means through which Museveni aims to substantially achieve this goal is through having his country function as the infrastructure juncture between China’s complementarily competing Kenyan and Tanzanian projects, which would give the two largest economies a common ground for enhanced cooperation and allow Uganda the opportunity to leverage its balancing position with the hope of possibly emerging as the East African Federation’s de-facto ‘compromise’ leader.

The Ugandan President might also have a more cynical reason for wanting to foster the federalized integration of the EAC other than the pursuit of win-win geopolitical goals, since if the East African Federation ends up being a success, then it might “whitewash” Museveni’s controversial history of foreign interventionism by redirecting focus away from his divisive military decisions and towards his peaceful parting gift of infrastructural and institutional connectivity.

The “African Prussia”

When speaking about Uganda’s militant past, it’s important to understand that every foreign war that the country has fought in aside from the failed 1978-79 one against Tanzania was ordered by Museveni. His supporters claim that Uganda’s involvement in each conflict was predicated on enhancing the country’s regional position and safeguarding its national interests, but his detractors allege that they were aggressive and unnecessary interventions that caused much more harm than good. No matter how one normatively assesses the wisdom of Museveni’s foreign military calculus, it’s irrefutable that one of the consequences has been that the Ugandan Armed Forces have flexed their muscles before the eyes of the world and solidified their country’s reputation as a regional military power (for better or for worse) in a manner that’s somewhat reminiscent of late 19^th-century Prussia.

Regional Reach:

In spite of Uganda’s geographically limited size and status as a landlocked country, Kampala has impressively managed to exert military influence across a broad and varied continental space, stretching from the northeastern corner of the DRC (and prior, during the First Congo War, all the way up to Kinshasa), the eastern Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, and even Somalia. To map everything out as a means of putting it into a larger perspective, it’s evident that Uganda’s military reach punches well above its assumed geographic weight, underpinning just how pivotal of an institution the military has been in shaping the country’s international image and relations with some of its neighbors:

DRC: First and Second Congo Wars in the 1990s, 2009 anti-Kony intervention

Somalia: 2007-present participation in the African Union Mission In Somalia (AMISOM) and contribution of 6000/22000 total soldiers

CAR: 2009 anti-Kony intervention, 2012-present African Union-participating anti-Kony force

South Sudan: active participation in the decades-long Cold War-era Sudanese Civil War, 2012-present African Union-participating anti-Kony force, unilateral deployment from 2013-2015 in the South Sudanese Civil War, suspected 2016 redeployment

Reshaping The Neighborhood:

Congo

Uganda’s interventions in the First and Second Congo Wars were carried out unilaterally, although in close collaboration with allied Rwandan forces. The intention was to install a proxy leader in the neighboring country who would allow Uganda unhindered access to the DRC’s rare earth minerals along the Great Lakes border region, but this plan miserably backfired when a hodgepodge of anti-Kampala militias took advantage of the Congo’s chaos in order to entrench themselves in the area and set up bases of operations. Instead of a safe buffer region through which to indefinitely exert strategic influence, Uganda ended up with an enduring security vulnerability that continues to plague the state to this day.

Somalia

Following the early-2000s withdrawal of Ugandan troops from the DRC, Kampala’s next military adventure was in Somalia, although this time it was carried out under a multilateral aegis organized by the African Union. Museveni’s interest in this non-neighboring and extra-regional country in the Horn of Africa was to demonstrate his commitment to his US ally’s “War on Terror”, make ‘positive’ and ‘reputation-repairing’ use of his military abroad, and portray Uganda as an active anti-terrorist state that deserves multilateral normative support for its own struggle against Islamist militants, the DRC-based “Allied Democratic Forces” (which will be expanded on later). Due to its leading frontline role in AMISOM, Kampala fell victim to a series of bombings by Al Shabaab in July 2010 that were the deadliest terrorist attacks in the region since the 1998 dual Al Qaeda attacks on American diplomatic targets in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

Central African Republic

In 2009, Uganda ordered its military forces to chase Kony through the northeastern DRC and eastern CAR in an operation that would foreshadow the much more highly publicized “Kony 2012” social media-intelligence agency campaign that prompted an Ugandan-led multilateral African Union and US mission in the same area. From Museveni’s perspective, not only did the African Union mission lend his government critical global support in its international operations against the rebel/terrorist group, but the emotional pull of the operation’s marketing was a convenient ruse for distracting from the soft attempt at symbolically reimposing Ugandan military leadership (however quantitatively limited) over the largely hitherto under-policed area. The Ugandan President’s problem, though, was that just like before, his country was unable to translate its military presence and perceived strategic gains into tangible results that could sustainably promote his vision.

South Sudan

Perhaps because of his relative failings at expanding Uganda’s physical influence in northeastern DRC and eastern CAR, Museveni invested a lot of effort into his country’s military deployment in South Sudan on behalf of embattled President Salva Kiir. Uganda’s strategic design in this conflict is to position itself as the predominant foreign player in South Sudan’s affairs, which would thus give Kampala indirect control over the country’s natural resources and market potential. Whereas Museveni ceded control (whether direct or indirect) over the northeastern DRC and never really had much sway in the eastern CAR to begin with, South Sudan provides infinitely more chances for Uganda to finally lay claim to some tangible examples of regional influence outside of its characteristic military sphere. Its decades-long involvement in the Sudanese Civil War on behalf of the southern rebels and now its defense of Kiir’s government have provided a groundswell of institutional support for Uganda in Juba’s halls of power, though all of this could theoretically be reversed if the implementation of Identity Federalism in South Sudan leads to a geographic containment of Kampala’s influence in the country.

Rethinking Militarism:

In light of Uganda’s consistent failure at using its military forces to generate sizeable strategic gains abroad, Museveni appears to have finally wised up to some of the shortcomings of his decades-long militant policies and has recently ordered that the Uganda People’s Defence Force withdraw from South Sudan and the CAR, with the former having officially occurred by the end of 2015 (despite rumors of a secret redeployment in May 2016) and the latter being planned for the end of 2016. As for Somalia, while Uganda did declare in late-June 2016 that it would pull out by the end of the year, Museveni clarified at the beginning of July that this would be conditional on whether the African Union provides serious support to the (re-)formation of the Somalian Armed Forces, meaning that his country’s soldiers would stay in the country if progress was made in this regard or would leave if none was observed after their 9-year deployment.

Taken together, this series of pullback announcements represents a dramatic rethinking of Museveni’s foreign policy calculus, in that he seems to have resigned himself to accepting that Uganda cannot rely on pure military force alone in advancing its national interests. It’s not to suggest that the Ugandan military is incapable of doing its job, it’s just that the pursuit of military objectives and the utilization of related instruments are only part of the statecraft toolkit available at Museveni’s disposal, and however impressive or ‘prestigious’ he might believe that it is to employ such means, they don’t represent the only solution to advancing Uganda’s interests. As such, they must typically be paired with other measures in order to be enduringly effective. It could be that Museveni truly believes that Uganda’s military mission is completed in these given theaters, or that he’s simply calculating on a strategic withdrawal in order to return to fight under more opportune conditions in the future, but it would be best if he impartially took stock of the policies that he promulgated and came to the conclusion that they need to be fundamentally rethought.

The final explanation for Uganda’s decision to withdraw its forces from CAR, South Sudan, and possibly even Somalia is that they could be much more effectively used at home in deterring or dealing with an expected intensification of Hybrid War challenges. Be it in quelling Color Revolution crowds, responding to terrorist attacks, or putting down a rebellious regional-kingdom uprising in favor of Identify Federalism, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force might be much better attuned to promoting the state’s interests inside the country than outside of it. Furthermore, while it’ll later be explained how and why external players have an interest in destabilizing Uganda, it can’t be discounted that some of the country’s domestic discontent lays squarely at the foot of the government, with Museveni having previously concentrated too much time on external affairs as opposed to pragmatically (key word) dealing with internal issues. Last but not least, there’s also the possibility that the President is now contemplating his lasting legacy and has a personal interest in cultivating a ‘peaceful’ persona for which he can be remembered, which would also align with his invigorated focus on federalizing the EAC.

No Longer An Ally, But Not Yet An Adversary

The US’ attitude towards Uganda has been conditional on its relations with its leader, Museveni, so ties between the two states have accordingly ebbed and flowed throughout the decades as a result. 1998 was a high point in the bilateral relationship with Bill Clinton included Museveni in his exclusive list of the “next generation of African leaders”, likely in a bid to boost his partner’s ego in preparation of fully co-opting him into the US’ unipolar world order and allowing Washington to capitalize off of his country’s stunning military gains in the Congo.

Second Thoughts:

When Uganda couldn’t translate its prior military successes into tangible strategic results and ended up withdrawing from the Congo “empty handed” in 2003, American support for Museveni began to slightly lessen and it was no longer publicly paraded around like it used to be.

It’s not entirely clear what the US’ intentions were in implicitly stepping back from promoting Museveni as part of the “next generation of African leaders”. One partially attributable reason could be that it had a desire to distance itself from Uganda’s controversial activities in the Congo amidst the US’ sincere disappointment in Museveni for failing to capitalize off of his on-the-ground military successes and become the US’ “Lead From Behind” proxy in Eastern and Central Africa.

This approach is unlike the one that the US takes towards Museveni’s former Rwandan protégé Paul Kagame, and is likely explained by the Tutsi leader prevailing in the careful cultivation of a far-reaching “guilt” complex, though one that’s steadily losing its potency. It’s important that the reader understand that the US’ strategy in this part of the continent isn’t fully dependent on Uganda, and that Washington could still flexibly adapt its policies in the event that an executive decision was made to overthrow Museveni and/or spread unrest throughout his country.

NGO Registration Act And AMISOM Deployment:

As a response to the blatancy with which the US exploited “NGOs” to engineer regime change scenarios in the Color Revolution-victimized states of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, Uganda took the brave step of enacting the 2006 NGO Registration Act as a means of partially defending against this new form of asymmetrical warfare. Museveni should be commended for undertaking proactive steps in countering this post-modern scourge, and it’s very likely that he came under tremendous American pressure as a result. Whether as a reaction to unspecific threats from the US as a response to this legislation or as a means of promoting his country’s own interests against the “Allied Democratic Forces” and other terrorist groups, Uganda announced that it would be joining the African Union Mission In Somalia (AMISOM) in 2007, thereby carrying out the US’ ‘outsourced’ military interests in the Horn of Africa and having the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces de-facto function as the Pentagon’s personal ‘contract army’.

In a clear demonstration of cause and effect, this palpable demonstration of pro-American loyalty (no matter what ‘national security interests’ were relied on in explaining it to the Ugandan people) served to restore Museveni’s strategic relevance to the US and once more portrayed him as an indispensable partner for advancing Washington’s regional vision. As a result, despite whatever misgivings the US may have had about Museveni personally and the differences in outlook that they held about his NGO policy, the Ugandan President prevailed in his mission to neutralize whatever regime change plots the US might have begun contemplating during that time. Although having failed to construct a regional sphere of influence after his two Congo interventions, and falling behind his former Rwandan protégé in terms of his importance to American grand strategy in this part of Africa, Museveni would soon make a second bold attempt at hegemonic leadership by experimenting with the convenient casus belli of “chasing transnational terrorists” like Kony and his “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA).

Chasing Kony:

In December 2008, Uganda launched a cross-border military operation against the DRC under the pretenses of eliminating the LRA. The operation failed in its stated objective of destroying he group and the Ugandan military soon withdrew after only a couple of months, but the allure of abusing the Kony narrative of chasing an ‘international bogeyman’ as a means of pursuing ulterior geostrategic regional motives would soon prove too tempting for the US to ignore. Not only is the LRA suspected of operating in the under-governed border region between the DRC, CAR, South Sudan, and Uganda, but the group’s alleged stomping grounds are far from the prying eyes of independent journalists who could monitor the on-the-ground military activity for signs that it was advancing unstated goals other than the ones that were publicly proclaimed. Although Uganda failed to reap any strategic dividends from its brief military adventure, the US identified the scenario template of a cross-border campaign against Kony as being an ideal situation that they could exploit sometime in the future, provided of course that there was a reason to do so and the public could be preconditioned into accepting such a far-flung deployment of American military personnel.

These two situational imperatives were soon met with a set of tangible ‘solutions’. Regarding the motivation for limited American military intervention, it soon became abundantly clear that CAR President Bozize was rapidly accelerating his mineral– and energy-rich country’s relations with China, and seeing as how this policy trajectory could have predictably led to Beijing establishing a strategic foothold in the heart of the African continent, the US intelligence services felt an impetus to stop it at all costs. The complicating factor was that the US did not have any special forces units deployed in the nearby countries from where they could train anti-government insurgents, nor did any regional government have the stomach for allowing this to happen on its territory even in the event that they did allow some sort of covert American military presence within their borders (albeit for different purposes, of course). Therefore, the only feasible workaround that would allow the US the cover for deploying insurgent-training special forces units for this purpose was to exploit the international mystique around Kony and his LRA in order to engineer the circumstances whereby American forces would be allowed to directly operate within the CAR’s own borders.

Key to manufacturing the ‘plausible’ context needed for ‘justifying’ this deployment was the “Kony 2012” social media campaign that was ‘coincidentally’ kicked off by the American government–linked “NGO” “Invisible Children”. Having assembled the ‘viral’ pretext for ‘legitimizing’ its anti-Chinese proxy mission in the African Heartland, and working hand-in-hand with its more-than-willing Ugandan allies, the US committed 100 special forces troops to “advise and train” the soldiers searching for Kony in the quad-state region between the CAR, DRC, South Sudan, and Uganda. Although no direct evidence can be procured, it persuasively appears in hindsight that these units were also training the Muslim Seleka rebels in the eastern CAR who fortuitously just so happened to be based in the same overlapping area of operations as the American troops. Within almost exactly one year after the introduction of US military personnel to the region,  this hitherto little-known umbrella group previously composed of ragtag militiamen and undisciplined mercenaries somehow managed to centralize all of the rebels’ previously disparate military operations under a centralized authority and suddenly sweep across the entire jungled country and overthrow the Chinese-friendly president, setting off a chain reaction of civil war that turned the CAR into the failed state that it remains today.

Uganda’s role in all of this was in providing the (witting or inadvertent) cover for inviting the US troop deployment under the shared aegis of killing the “human rights terrorist” Kony. Whether Museveni was aware of the US’ true intentions to spark chaos in the CAR, or he thought that the US was solidly behind him in helping Uganda stamp out one of its last remaining anti-government enemies, the Ugandan President cooperated with the US out of the belief that Washington would help his country finally carve out its cherished sphere of influence in the region. Museveni seems to have misread the US, though, since it didn’t enthusiastically share his vision enough to the point of providing the non-military assistance that would have been essential to actualizing it. The Pentagon was content with giving its Ugandan counterparts weapons, intelligence, and training, but the rest of the American establishment wasn’t on board with Kampala becoming the regional champion and thus eschewed providing the informational, material, and other forms of support that would have brought Museveni’s dreams to life. Instead, it can be said in retrospect that the US preferred to maintain the fragile and unstable status quo in the region so as to disrupt it at a more opportune forthcoming time, whether to harness ‘creative chaos’ like it tried to do in the Mideast or support an aspiring hegemon (be it Uganda or Rwanda) as its Lead From Behind (trans-regional consolidation?) partner.

Museveni’s Traditional Value Mutiny:

Unlike most American partners that contently accept whatever unsolicited “values-based” ‘advice’ (demands) that Western NGOs present to them, Museveni’s differentiating characteristic when compared to many of his American-cooperating peers is that he stoutly refused to bow down before the homosexual lobby. Instead of turning a blind eye to the active promotion of homosexual activity throughout his traditionally conservative country, he reacted by pushing back against this agenda and throwing his support behind a controversial bill that was passed in early 2014 and which made “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by life in prison (as opposed to the original death sentence that was decreed prior to the law’s amendment). Suffice to say, Uganda’s Western donors promptly cut off or redirected their aid to the government and began conducting an intense anti-government information campaign meant at portraying the authorities as African puppets for “extreme Christian fundamentalists” from the West.

Even though the Supreme Court later annulled the law and Museveni himself said that replacement legislation was “not necessary”, the political damage of the President’s defiance to American social liberalism was already done. The promotion of traditional sexual relations and pro-family legislation, no matter how comparatively extreme its iteration may be, is absolutely anathema to the American agenda and instantly galvanizes the US establishment against whatever state it may be that’s sticking up for these conservative principles. Granted, geostrategically important states such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Kingdoms admittedly have much more room for maneuverability because of the entrenched investment that the US has in their stability, but smaller countries like The Gambia and Uganda are unable to stand up to the US without reaping some sort of destabilizing consequence such as the failed ‘mercenary’ coup attempt in Gambia at the tail end of 2014. Museveni’s resistance to the US’ homosexuality-promoting interests was predicated on the preservation of traditional values, but also as an indirect way of signaling his discontent with the US’ reluctance to fully back his regional leadership vision, though he epically misjudged the US yet again if he thought that openly opposing homosexuality in as dramatic of a form as he did could allow him to ‘blackmail’ geopolitical support from the US.

Color Revolution Threats, NGO Crackdown, and Multipolar Outreach:

Faced with a wayward ‘ally’ (proxy) that had begun to reassert its independence, the US decided to apply low-intensity Color Revolution pressure against Museveni in the hopes that he’d tweak his attitude accordingly and fall back into line with American dictates. The US’ stance is that if one of its foreign policy underlings (or ‘partners’, in its official parlance) starts a resistance campaign against an element of American policy, especially one as globally high-profile as Museveni commenced with the anti-homosexuality legislation, then it’s much more likely that they’ll oppose the US in other fields as well, possibly even culminating in a full-fledge geopolitical pivot towards the multipolar world if the ‘rebellious’ behavior wasn’t ‘corrected’ in time.

With that in mind, the American information services and their subservient global allies ran a negative campaign against Museveni’s bid for a fifth term in February, reminding their audience that the strongman had been in office since 1986 and strongly inferring that he’s done so against the people’s will. Having learned from the lessons of the “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions and the urban terrorism of EuroMaidan, Museveni also signed into law new restrictions against “NGOs” in the weeks preceding the election, thereby ensuring that the vote would be held in as peaceful of circumstances as possible. There were a few minor disruptions before, during, and after election day, and authorities ended up temporarily detaining “opposition” candidate Kizze Besigya as a precautionary measure to prevent him from stirring up disorder before the results were announced, but for the most part, no large-scale unrest was unleashed. Besigya did try to make a last-ditch effort at throwing the country into uncertainty by publicly declaring himself President right before Museveni’s inauguration, but his Color Revolution stunt only succeeded in getting him thrown into jail.

At this point, it’s not clear exactly how committed the US was to overthrowing Museveni during this latest electoral round, and even though it clearly applied some low-level Color Revolution technologies during this time, it may not have intended to carry them out to their typical regime change ends. What the US might have been aiming to achieve was to provoke enough “bottom-up” pressure against Museveni that it would get him to partake in ‘regime tweaking’, or in other words, the enactment of pro-American political concessions by a targeted state in exchange for the US allowing its incumbent leadership to remain to power. This time, though, it was the US that severely misjudged Museveni and not the other way around. Instead of ‘getting the message’ after Besigya’s ill-fated Color Revolution attempt (which was meant to fail all along, whether the “opposition” leader knew it or not), Museveni became even more openly defiant of the US, inviting ICC-wanted Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir to his inauguration and consequently prompting an organized walk-out by the outraged Western dignitaries that were in attendance.

Moreover, Museveni’s follow-up remarks after his formal inauguration speech was completed included a firm condemnation of the ICC and praise for Russia and China. Referring to the former, which was represented by Russian Special Representative for Middle East and Africa Mikhail Bogdan, the Ugandan President said that “Those Russians sell to us those spears you have seen (referring to guns and fighter jets) without conditionalities and arrogance. You know we already rejected arrogance. Let everyone rule over his house. Therefore those people (Russians) are our genuine friends”, while in regards to the latter, he proclaimed that “Those people are also our genuine friends. They have no arrogance. If a man has his own house and he goes in another man’s house … what type of fool are you?”

For some useful background information into Uganda’s relationship with the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership and the balancing act that Museveni is playing between the East and West, the reader is urged to refer to Frederic Musisi’s June 2016 analysis about “Why Museveni Is Courting the East”. In short, the President’s recent dissatisfaction with his Western ‘friends’ is due to disputes over development aid and military funding, which in turn is prompting him to rethink Uganda’s foreign policy priorities and balance his previous overdependence on the West with countervailing outreaches to the East. While it’s still possible for Uganda and the US to patch up their differences before they become irreconcilable, Museveni would have to renounce his freshly independent streak and fall back to towing the unipolar line – a self-depreciating decision that he doesn’t seem at all interested in taking now that he has access to China’s no-strings-attached development aid and is such a pivotal transit partner along Beijing’s Northern Transoceanic African Route in connecting the continent’s Indian and Atlantic coasts.

His strident rejection of American “liberal values” (i.e. the aggressively rampant and public promotion of homosexuality) in combination with his latest multipolar outreaches and infrastructure partnership with China have made it easy for the US intelligence establishment to portray Museveni as an unreliable ‘ally’ (proxy) in need of being taught a ‘good lesson’. To put it more plainly, Uganda’s embrace of the multipolar world (China) at the expense of the unipolar one’s (the US’) former influence over the country’s foreign policy has prompted the US to consider various scenarios for destabilizing the government, whether to squeeze concessions out of it, provoke regime change, or federally reformat the state. The Color Revolution template in and of itself isn’t anything too novel and carries with it many of the same tactical commonalities as its predecessors, but it’s the Hybrid War iterations of American intrigue in Uganda such as an artificially generated “Clash of Civilizations” or Identity (“Kingdom”) Federalism that are dangerously unique and worthy of closer study. On account of these prospective threats, it makes more sense why Museveni would be interested in withdrawing the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces from abroad and returning them back to the country to defend the home front.

The “Clash Of Civilizations”

Ugandan society is very cosmopolitan, being composed of a wide range of ethnic-tribal groups and regional identities. These factors are more relevant when discussing the second scenario of Identity (“Kingdom”) Federalism, but what’s also important to note about the country’s composition is that it’s around 84% Christian and 12% Muslim. By itself, this indicator is meaningless in prognosticating about a “Clash of Civilizations”, but after investigating the country’s recent history and casting light on two of the most notorious “rebel”/terrorist groups fighting against the government, it becomes abundantly clear that the potential exists for foreign actors to exploit these insurgents in promoting this sort of outcome.

The “Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA):

The LRA was mentioned a few times before in the research when speaking about Joseph Kony, its renegade leader who’s thought to be hiding out somewhere in the borderland region between the DRC, CAR, South Sudan, and Uganda, and whose capture was the objective of two separate international interventions by Kampala. To speak a bit more about this group, it’s actually a fundamentalist “Christian” terrorist organization that wants to introduce a strict interpretation of the Ten Commandments as the law of the land. The LRA has been operating since the last years of the Cold War, though its influence has ebbed and flowed throughout the decades.

Pushed Out But Bouncing Back?

Pushed out of Uganda in the early 2000s, it now mostly operates abroad in the DRC, where it occasionally carries out brutal killings against local civilians that from time to time rightfully earn it harsh global condemnation. Precisely because of the highly publicized war crimes that it repeatedly commits, the LRA has been exploited by the Ugandan and American authorities to ‘legitimize’ their foreign interventions in the region, the strategic underpinning of which was discussed in the last section. Nowadays there’s a broad consensus that the LRA has more of a phantom presence than an actual one, having been devastated by military losses and defections so that it only numbers an estimated 400 or so militants.

Even with its low number of recruits, the LRA still manages to make it into the news every now and then because of the audacity of its anti-civilian attacks, such as the abduction of 29 people in the CAR in mid-June. With Uganda withdrawing all of its troops from the CAR by the end of the year, there’s already foreign media talk that the LRA is “rising again”, which can be interpreted in one of two ways. The first analysis represents the “conventional” and “mainstream” approach to the topic, which is that the Ugandan forces are making a huge mistake in withdrawing at precisely the time that the LRA is picking up their attacks, with the inference being that the situation will markedly depreciate once the troops have been removed.

Hidden Support

Accordingly, these media hints suggest that the LRA might actually be on the upswing and could return as a force to be reckoned with, but this doesn’t take into account that its historical Sudanese patron is no longer at sharp odds with Uganda and that the group is mostly incapable of wielding any significant military influence without an external backer. Sudan and Uganda finally sorted out their differences in the wake of South Sudanese independence and have proven themselves ready to enter into a new era of relations, which was seen most symbolically by Museveni flouting the ICC by inviting indicted Sudanese President Al Bashir to Kampala for his inauguration in May. Considering this, it’s improbable to believe that Khartoum would abruptly reverse course and abandon this new state partnership in favor of supporting a handful of jungled insurgents, so this strongly indicates that another foreign backer might have taken the LRA under its wing, which therein leads to the second alternative analysis about why the group has suddenly returned to the spotlight.

Underhanded Motives

Bearing in mind the up-and-down rollercoaster of American relations with Uganda, and recounting that they’re presently at their lowest comparable point since Museveni entered office three decades ago, it’s worthwhile to contemplate the US’ strategic interests in directly or indirectly using the LRA as an instrument of pressure against Museveni, whether to press him to enact domestic and/or international political concessions (“democracy”, loosening NGO restrictions, curtailing Chinese influence, etc.) or to destabilize Uganda enough to the point where he can be unseated through a Hybrid War or military coup. If this sounds too “conspiratorial” to be true, then the reader would do well to remind themselves of how the US is now collaborating with Kony’s “former bodyguards”, which is possibly a front for openly cooperating with the group. In a broader sense, what the US might be doing with the LRA wouldn’t be much different than what it does with Daesh, which is exploits for similar proxy purposes against Syrian President Assad. Despite not having direct control over all members of the terrorist organization, the US nevertheless endeavors to direct it towards areas of shared interest (e.g. generating unrest in the Syrian Arab Republic that could be used to promote concessions or regime change against the government) and “accidentally” airdrops it weapons and other supplies from time to time.

Even though the US publicly reiterated its commitment to destroying the LRA, it’s also done the same in regards to Daesh, but that doesn’t mean that it was being forthcoming in either of these cases and doesn’t seek to use them to its own advantage before later destroying them. The American strategic interest in an LRA resurgence is that it could force Museveni to rethink his earlier decision to withdrawal the Ugandan forces and thereby keep him distracted by external events at precisely the moment that Washington works to generate domestic disturbances against his government. Additionally, even if Museveni follows through with his withdrawal commitment, the possible outgrowth of renewed LRA attacks from the eastern CAR to the northeastern DRC could soon recreate the late-2008 circumstances whereby Uganda was pressed into a cross-border intervention. Again, this would fulfill the same objective as keeping the troops abroad, which is to divide Museveni’s attention between international and domestic crises in the hopes that these situational pressures will lead to the expected political concessions (be they policy tweaking or regime change).

Christian-Muslim Clashes

Most relevant to the “Clash of Civilizations” template which the author suggests the US might try to engineer, cross-border LRA terrorist attacks from the northeastern DRC against Uganda could incite panic within the targeted state and generate large amounts of (internal) refugee flows, which could then be transformed into Weapons of Mass Migration for undermining the government’s stability. Even more alarming, however, would be if the LRA regained a foothold in its traditional area of operations in the West Nile sub-region and “Acholi Land”, both of which are grouped in a larger official government designation as the Northern Region and lay within close proximity to Uganda’s newly accessed oil deposits. The identity separateness that this part of the country exhibits as compared to its more populous and influential southern counterparts will be examined in the final scenario study about Identity (“Kingdom”) Federalism, but what’s salient to understand right now is that this is an area that’s already somewhat predisposed to anti-government sentiment and could correspondingly be inspired to once more rise up against the state if the locals came under the impression that the LRA was advancing at the military’s expense.

Although it’s impossible to accurately speculate on the further course of events that could unfold, it can be generally predicted that the overall population of Uganda is not in favor of living under a fundamentalist Christian dictatorship and would rise up against the LRA if it approached Kampala. Moreover, despite the LRA’s alliance with the Islamist ADF, the complete opposite visions that each of these groups have for a post-Museveni Uganda likely indicates that they’ll fall out almost immediately after the government is toppled, leading to sectarian warfare along the same template as the American-provoked one in the CAR after the fall of Bozize. Therefore, it’s most probable that the LRA isn’t seen by the US as an instrument of regime change and subsequent regime replacement against Museveni, but instead as a semi-controllable and comparatively easily influenced on-the-ground tool for stirring unrest around the DRC-Ugandan borderland and inside of the country itself, though that assessment could of course change if its revealed that the US might have made the more nefarious decision to plunge the country into the depths of destructive identity conflict as the ultimate means of sabotaging China’s Northern Transoceanic African Route.

The “Allied Democratic Forces” (ADF):

The other potential “civilizational disruptor” that will be looked at in the research is the ADF, an Islamist anti-government terrorist group with suspected links to both Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab. Now based in the DRC and thought to currently be comprised more of that country’s citizens than its neighbor’s, it started off in Uganda as a Sudanese-supported insurgent force against Museveni before being pushed across the border and becoming entrenched in the lawless northeastern corner of the DRC. The ADF has been in the DRC for so long, and has established such deep roots there in terms of its communal influence and recruit base, that it’s presently considered to be just as Congolese as it is Ugandan. In fact, the amount of local recruits that it has garnered is thought to have diluted the Islamist influence that its founder Jamil Mukulu had sought to imbibe it with. Additionally, this mastermind was apprehended in Tanzania last year and extradited back to Uganda, thus dealing a severe blow to the organization by undermining its leadership.

Setbacks And Successes

Complementary to that, while it’s not known whether Sudan has fully cut off its ties with the group as part of its détente with Uganda, it can be reasonably inferred that even if some low-level covert contacts still remain, that Khartoum would take efforts to make sure that the group’s focus wouldn’t be directed against Sudan’s new partners in Kampala. Nevertheless, the ADF curiously appears to be unfazed by all of the recent setbacks against it, continuing to carry out its machete attacks and other acts of terrorism such as crucifying civilians. Just like with the LRA, it would appear as though another foreign backer has joined the mix and is replacing the previous support that Sudan is no longer providing, again raising the legitimate question about whether this is the US or not.

The only direct evidence that could be procured of non-Sudanese outside support to the ADF is circumstantial, but it deals with northeastern Congolese locals accusing renegade Tanzanian UN troops of providing supplies to the insurgents, after which the DRC military attacked them in an internationally controversial engagement. Although this doesn’t necessarily implicate the US in any convincing way, the same strategic reasoning that was earlier explained in relation to the LRA also holds true for the ADF, namely that the group’s revived presence and active offensives could serve as geostrategically convenient agents of chaos in further upsetting the already fragile regional state of affairs and distracting Museveni’s attention away from possibly forthcoming domestic difficulties. In another clear alignment with the US’ potential strategy towards the LRA, the ADF’s cross-border attacks against the Ugandan state could either provoke another international intervention into the DRC or seriously jeopardize the stability of internal borderland areas like the restive Rwenzururu region, which could serve as a catalyst for further Identity Federalist tension.

The Pattern Of Attack

A structural pattern is now becoming apparent, whereby the LRA and ADF (both of which are allies) have the unique opportunity to destabilize different parts of Uganda with their cross-border activity. The LRA has some sympathy in the Northern Region (particularly in the West Nile sub-region and “Acholi Land”), whereas the ADF is most likely to be operational in the Western Region (specifically near Rwenzururu). What’s interesting is that while the LRA’s inroads in the Northern Region are mostly due to a shared identity and religious outlook, the ADF’s in the Western Region are largely opportunistic and have nothing to do with its Islamist goals. Actually, the 12% of Muslims that inhabit Uganda live mostly in the Eastern Region and as far away as possible from any prospective area of hostilities along the DRC border, though just like with a possible LRA offensive in the Northern Region, an ADF one in the Western Region (whether unilaterally enacted or done in conjunction with its LRA in the north) could instantly inspire panic and produce internal Weapons of Mass Migration.

To an extent even more pronounced than with the fundamentalist Christian LRA, the perception (not necessarily reality) of a fundamentalist Muslim ADF advance could provoke “civilizational conflict” by encouraging fearful Christian groups to take up arms against the supposed invaders or carry out ‘reprisal’ killings against the supposedly ‘untrustworthy’ Muslim community, such as what happened with the Christian “anti-Balaka” militia in the CAR after the advance of the Muslim Seleka.  It’s by no means the author’s intention to suggest that this happen – not at all – but just that when looking at the pattern of regional conflict across the past two decades, sometimes all that it takes for a society to unravel is a carefully directed spark that sets civil relations aflame with identity hatred.

“Narrative Control” And Border Security

The perceived (key word) advance of fundamentalist Muslim insurgents (possibly even hand-in-hand with extreme Christian ones from the LRA) could be the trigger that sets off this destructive chain of events, ergo why it’s absolutely pivotal for the authorities to exercise “narrative control” (restrictions over conventional and social media) hand in hand with military prowess in hedging against this scenario. To add to that, the cross-border dangers that the DRC-inhabiting LRA and ADF pose to Uganda add extra urgency to the need to secure the shared frontier and prevent terrorist infiltration. Ironically, the DRC has become the same type of launching pad for anti-Ugandan activities as Uganda was vis-à-vis the DRC during the First and Second Congo Wars, thus representing the most pressing external threat to the country’s security, though one which pure military force alone has repeatedly proven insufficient in resolving.

From A Unitary Republic To A Federation Of Kingdoms?

Establishing that the greatest external risks to Uganda’s security come from the DRC-based LRA and ADF, it’s finally time to turn towards the country’s domestic front in analyzing how certain trends could be weaponized against the state. Other than the anti-government sentiment that’s already been discussed in the context of Color Revolution technology, the main issue that could serve to destabilize Uganda is the exploitation of the federalism movement by foreign intelligence agencies, chiefly the CIA in this case. In order to get to the point where all of this makes sense to an uninitiated observer, it’s appropriate to begin by describing the present situation with “Kingdoms” in the country and then explain how this relates to the Identity Federalism movement.

The Kingdoms:

The 1995 Constitution of Uganda recognizes the presence of traditional cultural institutions within the country, which in practice became known as “Kingdoms”, and a 2005 amendment clarifies the role of their leaders.  The author purposely includes the word kingdom in quotation marks in order to denote that it’s not necessarily the type of monarchy that an unaware outside might think that it is, but is instead more of an apolitical symbolic institution than a tangible element of the state. Still, the “Kingdoms” do have a specific territorial delineation that could be form the basis of future federal boundaries between the various entities, though it must be emphasized that all of Northern Uganda and part of Eastern Uganda lack this institution:

Additionally, the map above does not denote the Rwenzururu Kingdom’s boundaries in the western part of Toro Kingdom, as this entity was only recently created in 2008 and still remains controversial to this day. Also, the mentioning of “Acholi Land” should not be meant to signify that this is a separate Kingdom, but rather an area which some locals believe should have its own separate historical-cultural status on par with the existing recognized Kingdoms. It’s from this part of the country that Kony and his LRA originally hail, and they initially received communal support because of their “Acholi Nationalist” advocacy, which was opposed by Museveni in the years immediately after he came to power. The Acholi affair is actually more complex than it might seem, though the present research doesn’t intend to dive deeper into this topic. Nonetheless, it’s important for interested scholars to be aware that there’s actually a lot more to this issue than is being described in the current text just in case they’d like to carry out their own research.

The North-South And Intraregional Triggers:

Staying relevant to the topic of Hybrid Wars and exploring how Identity (“Kingdom”) Federalism factors in to this stratagem, it can be pointed out that Uganda could be broadly categorized into northern and southern halves based on the “Kingdom” criteria (though exempting the tiny southwestern sliver of the country that doesn’t have one). There are veritably an abundance of socio-political differences within each of these halves which prove that they are far from a uniform bloc, but for the purpose of the scenario investigation, it’s worthwhile to structurally view the country through this simplified perspective. The value in undertaking this exercise is to demonstrate how the country could be split into two separate political categories which coincidentally happen to neatly align along a north-south geographic axis. This in and of itself may or may not be of relevance depending upon how the federalization scenario develops, but it’s still of pertinence to political scientists who might find this overlap to be curious and could be inspired to study it further.

One intriguing set of facts that they might uncover is that the Uganda was ruled exclusively by northerners in the post-independence period before Museveni came to power, with former Presidents Obote and Amin being from that part of the country. Correspondingly, it could be extrapolated that northerners presided over the state for 24 years while the only southerner to hold power so far has been in office for 30. The conclusion that can be reached from this is that the south has been more instrumental than the north in shaping over half of Uganda’s post-independence history, a fact which could be employed by related interest groups in explaining the origins of their regional grievances and galvanizing the support of northerners to their cause.

To continue along with some additional analysis about each of these (almost) clear-cut geopolitical halves, and already accounting for the heterogeneous identity diversity inside of them, what notably stands out are the main trigger points of conflict that each of them have. “Acholi Land” in the North and Rwenzururu in the South are both susceptible to externally influenced destabilization attempts via the LRA and ADF, respectively, to say nothing of the preexisting problems that could “organically” set off unrest there. In regards to the northern trigger, this could take the form of ethnic-tribal (identity) warfare against the state, just as it previously did, while the southern one could see Rwenzururu’s supporters clashing with those from Toro who believe that the former was unfairly separated from the latter and has no historical right to exist. This particular conflict could have even more far-reaching destabilization consequences than the Acholi one, mostly because of the potential that it has for turning some of the cultural-historic “Kingdoms’” boundaries into political-military frontiers, starting with the Toro-Rwenzururu one and possibly setting off an immediate ‘security dilemma’ chain reaction among the rest that in turn leads to an unexpected crisis between the central government and these traditional institutions.

Buganda’s Anti-Central Balancing And The Periphery’s Balancing Against Buganda:

Out of all of the territorial formations in Uganda, whether official political ones such as the regions or unofficial historical-traditional ones such as the “Kingdoms”, the most influential entity apart from the central government is the “Kingdom” of Buganda. This part of the country is home to a significant amount of the population, but most importantly, it also contains the capital of Kampala and a strong share of the country’s economy, thereby giving it substantial prestige in the national framework. This hasn’t been lost on its representatives, who advocate from time to time for their informal unit to have more political-administrative rights. They remember the brief post-independence period from 1962-1967 when Uganda was a federal government, during which time their respective unit was granted considerable autonomy.

It’s this ‘golden age’ of ‘self-determination’ that Buganda’s federal supporters would like to see return, feeling as though they could more properly manage their regional affairs without the interference of the central government, which some believe is just siphoning off the territory’s resources in order to redistribute them to the peripheral regions. If historically compared to other similarly positioned sub-state entities, Buganda would most closely resemble the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), in that the attitudes that were just described above are very reminiscent of those that were shared by Russians during the late Soviet period. The author is not implying that this necessarily means that the Republic of Uganda is in the last days of its existence, but that there are undeniable similarities between Buganda’s autonomy/federalization quest and the RSFSR’s one for more sovereignty beyond the existing federal privileges that it already had, and that the same fate that ultimately befell that USSR after the RSFSR pursued more independence could also repeat itself with Uganda if Buganda attempts something similar.

Likewise, just as much as the Bugandan elite and their supporters acknowledge their “Kingdom’s” unofficial prominence in national affairs and the role that it could exercise over the country at large, so too is the rest of the population aware of this as well. Even though pro-federalization sentiment isn’t as strong in other parts of the country as it is in Buganda, it’s not something to be blindly discounted. There’s a certain demagogic attractiveness that could be exploited in advocating that the peripheral areas band together against Buganda as a balancing measure, though it’s extremely unlikely that this train of thought would gather any traction unless tangible pro-federalization steps were taken by Buganda first. In any case, it’s very likely that any strong strides towards federalization by either side (Buganda or the periphery, whether only the “Kingdoms” or all of the country) would create a ‘federal security dilemma’ whereby each side races to secure its own interests amid what they believe to be a zero-sum game of domestic reformation at everyone else’s expense.

Museveni’s Calculations In Recognizing The “Kingdoms”:

The conclusions that are being made so far in the research point to the fact that the “Kingdoms” could serve as a trigger for the federalization of the state and possibly thereafter its dissolution, which thus begs the question as to why Museveni permitted the government to legally recognize their existence in the first place. To strategically conjecture about why this might be, and putting aside the possible explanation that it was an ‘unforeseen oversight’ and/or a glaring ‘mistake’, it’s possible that the President thought that he was masterfully mitigating some of the peripheral anti-Bugandan and Bugandan pro-federal sentiments through symbolic decentralization.

While being accused by some of his opponents of supporting “tribalism” in using this constitutional move to supposedly engineer a Machiavellian divide-and-rule structure, these two alleged imperatives are actually contradictory to Museveni’s desire to solidly centralize the state under his control and also clash with his own warnings against the dangers of “tribalism”.

It’s identity separatism as practiced through tribal/”kingdom” affiliations and not patriotic inclusive consolidation as Ugandans that dually threatens Museveni’s rule and risks sacrificing the country’s territorial integrity. Accepting this assessment as valid, then Museveni’s support for the 1995 Constitution’s recognition of the “Kingdoms” can be analyzed as a shrewd proactive gesture designed to placate proponents of anti-Bugandan and pro-federal policies before their demands got out of control and the demagogues began saying public opinion to their side, which could easily have been manipulated in order to incite their followers to carry out violent anti-government activity.

Foreign Interests In A Federal Uganda:

In principle, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a strategic decentralization or devolution of powers that aims to make the state more effective, so long as it’s agreed to by most of the citizens and is a completely domestic process that’s free from foreign influence. Once an outside state develops an interest in this process and begins to advance it within the targeted country, then it’s very probable that the envisioned political reformation from a unitary to a (semi-)federal will encounter some serious internal resistance, sometimes with the foreign actor’s purposeful intention of using the political polarization of this issue to provoke a civil conflict. Even in theoretically ‘pure’ situations where the entire process is endemic to the examined state, the move to decentralize or devolve the country could produce a sharp whiplash of public opposition, especially if it’s perceived as sacrificing the (oftentimes geographically central) majority’s material and/or political benefits for the sake of the (typically geographically peripheral) minority.

Federalization usually entails much more than just political-economic redistribution, as it could also lead to the creation of separate military forces within each newly federalized statelet. In the Ugandan case, no matter how perceptively or normatively equitable it may seem to be in terms of how some proponents might interpret this policy, the commensurate effect would be to fracture the Ugandan state along identity lines, weaken the composite strength of the erstwhile unitary whole (especially in military terms), and dangerously make all of the successor sub-state entities much more vulnerable to foreign divide-and-rule intrigue, to say nothing of the effect that this would have in initiating copy-cat processes all across the region. Just as the US sought to geostrategically transform the entire North African-Mideast region through the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions, so too might it have a plan to do something structurally comparable in Central Africa-East Africa through theater-wide Identity Federalism movements in order to prolong its unipolar hegemony.

Concluding Thoughts

Uganda has the exciting potential to link together China’s enterprising plans for spearheading an intermodal Northern Transoceanic African Route, which would connect the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and be the highlight of Beijing’s One Belt One Road policy towards the continent. For this reason, the US has a strategic interest in deepening its sway over Uganda in order to disrupt, control, or influence this multipolar megaproject, but President Museveni has been behaving quite independently lately and appears reluctant to return his country back to the unipolar fold. His chummy relations with Russia and China stand in stark opposition to the his scathing rebuke of the American-controlled ICC and other pillars of the global Washington Consensus, indicating that the decades-serving leader might be serious in finally pivoting Uganda away from its traditional geopolitical allies and rebalancing his country’s relations with multipolar states instead.

After a series of contentious regional military interventions, all of which other than the South Sudanese one have failed to establish a sustainable sphere of influence for Uganda (and by extent, its American ‘partner’), the country is now on the verge of drawing back nearly all of its foreign-deployed military forces to the homeland. While this might be due to apolitical considerations, it still can’t be blindly dismissed that the timing of this move is somehow related to Uganda’s decisive shift towards the multipolar world and its leadership’s proactive defense strategy in offsetting any punitive American intrigue that might result from it. Kampala might be calculating that the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces are better suited to defending the homeland from LRA and ADF cross-border infiltrative attacks if they focused more on internal border security than its external counterpart, having learned the lesson that foreign military might alone is not sufficient in stopping neighboring terrorist threats.

In all fairness, Museveni as a military man is inherently predisposed to an overreliance on military force in dealing with all manner of state challenges, but it seems like even he (belatedly) realized that his country’s western foreign deployments failed to achieve their stated objectives and that a serious strategic rethinking is in order. Time’s not necessarily on his side though, since it’s expected that the US will resort to some sort of destabilization practices in seeking to influence his pro-multipolar pivot and get him to reconsider the ‘benefits’ of his country’s traditional American ‘partnership’ (patronage). Whether it’s through the indirect exploitation of terrorist groups such as the LRA and ADF (in a similar manner as the US is doing with Daesh) or the cultivation of another Color Revolution movement, it seems pretty certain that the US will find an asymmetrical way of responding to China’s relative strategic advances in both the country and the region as a whole.

Concurrent with this, the ultimate move that the US could make would be to throw its full covert support behind the federalization movement in Uganda, knowing full well that its ‘success’ could easily initiate a destructive chain reaction of ‘Balkanized’ fragmentation all across the Central and East African space, making it ripe for a new age of divide-and-rule policies against the “tribalized” successor statelets.

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentator currently working for the Sputnik agency. He is the author of the monograph “Hybrid Wars: The Indirect Adaptive Approach To Regime Change” (2015). This text will be included into his forthcoming book on the theory of Hybrid Warfare.

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS:

Hybrid Wars 1. The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid Wars 2. Testing the Theory – Syria & Ukraine

Hybrid Wars 3. Predicting Next Hybrid Wars

Hybrid Wars 4. In the Greater Heartland

Hybrid Wars 5. Breaking the Balkans

Hybrid Wars 6. Trick To Containing China

Hybrid Wars 7. How The US Could Manufacture A Mess In Myanma

With three weeks left in office, Obama apparently intends continued US-led naked aggression on Syria, supporting ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorist groups – adding more war crimes to his blood-drenched legacy.

Days earlier, RT reported Damascus was without water for five days. US-supported terrorists poisoned the Ein al Fija reservoir with diesel fuel and other toxins.

The supply had to be shut off to avoid a potential city-wide catastrophe. Residents able to obtain uncontaminated well water weren’t affected. Others are dependent on Water Authority distributed supplies or exorbitantly priced private sources.

Government help prevented disaster. After having no safe water for five days, one city resident said things now are easier.

On December 30, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the following:

ISIS terrorists cut off water for Aleppo from its main source which is the treatment centers on the Euphrates River.

Director of Aleppo Water Company Fakher al-Hamdo said that at 6 AM on Friday, ISIS terrorists cut off water supplies to Aleppo city from the main source which is the Euphrates and al-Khafsa stations on the Euphrates River.

He said that Aleppo Governorate and the Water Company, in coordination with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and civil sides, are working to address the situation and resume pumping water to the city as soon as possible.

CIA operatives and their counterparts from NATO, Israel and other regional rogue states have been active on the ground throughout years of conflict – aiding ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorist groups.

Are America and/or its rogue allies responsible for poisoning Damascus’ water supply and cutting it off for Aleppo?

Despite Putin’s announced ceasefire, conflict resolution has miles to go before any hope of achieving it. Much depends on Trump’s geopolitical agenda once in office.

If he’s against regime change and allies with Putin in combating terrorism, Syria’s liberation will be virtually certain. It’ll just take time.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

El sombrío 2016 se despide dejando su huella como el año en que las fuerzas conservadoras finalmente recuperaron la hegemonía en la disputa de proyectos en América Latina, consolidando una tendencia que inició en 2014 marcada por el retroceso de los gobiernos progresistas y populares y una nueva reconfiguración del escenario regional después de al menos una década.

Poco suma sumergirse en debates superfluos sobre la gastada muletilla del “fin de ciclo”, tan sabrosa para la intelectualidad del establishment que suele decretar el ocaso de todo lo que aborrece (primero fue el “fin de las ideologías”, luego el “fin de la historia”). El juego sigue abierto. Pero lo cierto es que el paulatino -y ahora consolidado- cambio en la correlación de fuerzas abre un nuevo tiempo en el continente que obliga a reformular estrategias, buscar nuevas preguntas y, sobre todo, entrarle de una vez y sin anestesia a la postergada autocrítica sobre los errores cometidos y los límites alcanzados.

La tristeza no es sólo brasileña

El hecho político más destacado de 2016 fue lo que terminó por torcer la balanza regional. La conspiración político-judicial-mediática de la élite brasileña, devenida en un sainete parlamentario vergonzosamente fraudulento, demostró cómo la derecha sigue utilizando “la combinación de todas las formas de lucha”, incluidas las antidemocráticas. El golpe institucional logró reinstaurar el proyecto neoliberal derrotado en las últimas cuatro elecciones.

Un golpe de alto impacto para toda América Latina. Y no sólo por la descomunal influencia del gigante del Sur como primera economía regional; su giro en política exterior trastocó el tablero en el escenario diplomático y abonó el terreno para la letal ofensiva contra Venezuela en el Mercosur.

El organismo suramericano se erigió en el segundo semestre en el principal teatro de operaciones de la batalla continental y en el más nítido reflejo de esta reconfiguración geopolítica. La suspensión a Venezuela busca sacarse de encima al socio incómodo (y acorralar a la revolución bolivariana como parte de una estrategia más amplia) para poder “flexibilizar” el bloque y avanzar con los TLC y la convergencia con la Alianza del Pacífico. En síntesis, restaurar el paradigma del “libre comercio”, revivir el espíritu del ALCA.

El culebrón del Mercosur, protagonizado por la triada conservadora (Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay) y un actor de reparto (Uruguay) que terminó cediendo a las presiones y soltándole la mano a Venezuela, marcó también el síntoma más preocupante de la época: el desbande del proceso de integración parido en este siglo. Una parálisis que también envuelve a los demás organismos: el ALBA, la Celac y, en menor medida, la Unasur.

Crónica de una debacle ¿anunciada?

Al margen de los golpes en Honduras en 2009 y Paraguay en 2012, fue en febrero de 2014 cuando se sintió el primer indicio de reflujo para los gobiernos posneoliberales. Las municipales en Ecuador significaron la primera caída en las urnas del oficialista Alianza PAIS luego de nueve victorias electorales. La derecha conquistó las alcaldías de Quito y Cuenca y retuvo la de Guayaquil, las tres principales ciudades.

Luego vinieron, en el último tramo de 2015, las derrotas del kirchnerismo en Argentina y del gobierno venezolano en las legislativas. Poco después, en febrero de 2016, Evo Morales perdía el referendo para reformar la Constitución y poder repostularse a un cuarto mandato. El derrotero electoral tuvo otra parada en Perú, donde si bien la gestión de Ollanta Humala había seguido los lineamientos neoliberales, el arribo de Pedro Pablo Kuczynski sumó un nuevo jugador al club de los presidentes-empresarios.

¿Qué más deja el 2016?

Sin dudas, otra marca imborrable es el viaje de Fidel Castro hacia la inmortalidad. Los múltiples homenajes en cada rincón de la región (y de todo el mundo) ratificaron que la historia no sólo lo absolvió sino que lo consolidó como uno de los líderes de mayor influencia global, condensando en su figura todas las resistencias contra la dominación capitalista.

Por abajo y a la izquierda, se destaca la reactivación de la movilización de calle en Argentina y Brasil, obligada por las circunstancias. Papel digno jugó el movimiento popular brasileño, que debió “competir” con las grandes marchas pro-golpe y todo su aparato mediático, aunque sin lograr revertir el avance conservador ni mantenerse activo en el tiempo. Argentina tuvo un año de protestas casi cotidianas, muchas de ellas masivas, contra la brutal arremetida del gobierno macrista en todos los campos. Sin embargo, todavía se impone una lógica de fragmentación y autoconstrucción que limita las ilusiones para la edificación de un proyecto popular.

Otro aporte novedoso en este año llegó desde el zapatismo, que luego de 22 años de una construcción reticente a toda disputa institucional anunció su apoyo a la candidatura de una mujer indígena para las elecciones de 2018, aunque aclararon que no será una integrante del EZLN sino que “el Congreso Nacional Indígena es quien va a decidir si participa o no con una delegada propia, y, dado el caso, contará con el apoyo del zapatismo”.

Pero sin duda la vanguardia de la resistencia continental ha sido el movimiento de mujeres, que impulsó multitudinarias acciones contra la violencia machista en toda Latinoamérica. Con altas dosis de coraje, creatividad y, sobre todo, capacidad para caminar en unidad, el movimiento feminista logró interpelar a las mayorías e instalar la problemática en la agenda pública de la región.

También queda como saldo positivo el avance hacia el fin del conflicto armado en Colombia después de más de medio siglo. A pesar del traspié en el plebiscito, que demostró la permanencia del poder uribista, el acuerdo de paz entre el gobierno y las Farc logró reencarrilarse y camina a su implementación. Aún resta que se destrabe la mesa con el ELN y que el cambio de escenario también abra las puertas a la participación política con garantías para la izquierda colombiana, lo que implicará, entre otras cosas, el desmonte del paramilitarismo que sólo en 2016 asesinó a más de 100 líderes sociales.

El juego sigue abierto

La próxima gran batalla será en febrero en Ecuador, cuando el oficialismo afronte su primer desafío presidencial sin Rafael Correa. Su candidato Lenin Moreno tendrá un casi seguro mano a mano con el empresario y banquero Guillermo Lasso, ex funcionario en los gobiernos de Jamil Mahuad y Lucio Gutiérrez.

Y Venezuela, obviamente, seguirá siendo en todo el 2017 el principal terreno de disputa. Como mayor bastión de impulso para el sueño de la Patria Grande, será clave para el futuro de la región, entonces, la capacidad que muestre la revolución bolivariana para seguir resistiendo al asedio permanente, reconfigurar su esquema económico-productivo y no quedar atrapada en sus propias contradicciones.

Como sea, el devenir de Nuestra América se dirimirá en las calles. En palabras del sociólogo y ex ministro venezolano Reinaldo Iturriza, “la principal incógnita que hay que despejar en América Latina hoy es la siguiente: ¿cuánto tiempo, y a qué precio, lograrán las oligarquías contener la fuerza popular movilizada contra las medidas anti-populares que, inevitable e invariablemente, ya ejecutan allí donde han recuperado el poder, y ejecutarán en aquellos países donde logren formar gobierno?”.

Gerardo Szalkowicz

Nota del Editor: El Centro de Investigación sobre la Globalización (Global Research) reproduce los aspectos clave de la actualización de la imposiciones de sanciones económicas impuestas a Moscú de parte del Gobierno de Barack Obama, publicados por la cadena RT en Español.

La Oficina de Prensa de la Casa Blanca anunció este jueves la decisión del presidente Barack Obama de emitir sanciones a una serie de personas y organismos que estarían supuestamente implicados en llevar a cabo ciberataques para influir en las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses:

• Dos agencias de inteligencia rusas, el Servicio Federal de Seguridad (FSB) y el Departamento Central de Inteligencia (GRU).
• Cuatro funcionarios del GRU.
• Tres empresas rusas “que suministraron apoyo material a las operaciones cibernéticas del GRU”.
• 35 diplomáticos rusos, que han sido declarados ‘persona non grata’ y deben abandonar el país en 72 horas.
• Dos supuestos complejos de inteligencia rusos —en Maryland y Nueva York—,que se habrían utilizado para el ciberespionaje a favor del FSB y el GRU, han sido cerrados.

Las reacciones a la decisión de EE.UU. 

Rusia respondió a la decisión del presidente estadounidense a través de los representantes oficiales de su diplomacia:

La Embajada de Rusia en Londres (Reino Unido) a través de su cuenta de Twitter llamó a esta decisión del presidente Obama como “un ‘déjà vu’ de la Guerra Fría” , asegurando que “todos, incluido el pueblo estadounidense, estaremos encantados de ver lo último de esta desafortunada Administración”.

• María Zajárova, portavoz de la Cancillería rusa, dedicó unas duras líneas a la Administración de Obama a través de las redes sociales. “Los inquilinos de la Casa Blanca durante estos 8 años no son una Administración, sino un grupo de perdedores en política exterior, resentidos y mediocres. En el día de hoy, Obama lo ha reconocido oficialmente”, publicó la funcionaria en su cuenta de Facebook. Aseguró que “el premio Nobel se las ingenió para poner una mancha mugrienta en vez de un punto final elegante”, a su mandato.
• Dmitri Medvédev, primer ministro de Rusia, publicó en su cuenta de Twitter que “es triste que la Administración de Obama, que empezó su mandato restableciendo la cooperación [con Rusia], termine con una agonía antirrusa. D.E.P.”.
• Serguéi Lavrov, ministro de Exteriores ruso, propuso al presidente Vladímir Putin declarar ‘persona non grata’ a 31 diplomáticos de la embajada estadounidense en Moscú y a 4 empleados del consulado de San Petersburgo. ” No podemos dejar estas tretas sin respuesta. La reciprocidad es la ley de la diplomacia y de las relaciones internacionales”, aseguró Lavrov.

Asimismo, Kellyanne Conway, consejera del presidente electo de EE.UU., aseguró que las nuevas sanciones contra Rusia podrían ir destinadas a “arrinconar” a Trump. “Las transiciones pacíficas no funcionan así en esta democracia”, lamentó Conway, que aseguró que “todo lo que hemos estado oyendo durante las elecciones fue: ‘Rusia, Rusia, Rusia'”. 

La decisión del presidente ruso 

Vladímir Putin dio a conocer su decisión respecto al tema. En declaraciones brindadas este viernes, aseguró: “no vamos a rebajarnos a una diplomacia ‘de cocina’ e irresponsable” y añadió que “las acciones de EE.UU. no solo afectan a nuestras relaciones bilaterales, sino al mundo entero”.

Aseguró que Rusia no va a expulsar a ningún diplomático estadounidense. “No vamos a expulsar a nadie. No vamos a prohibir a sus familiares e hijos que vayan a sus lugares favoritos para descansar en estas fiestas de fin de año”, declaró el presidente, que incluso invitó a los hijos de los diplomáticos acreditados en Rusia a celebrar las fiestas en la ceremonia especial que se celebra todos los años en el Kremlin.

El presidente ruso Vladímir Putin y su homólogo estadounidense Barack Obama comparten un brindis durante la Asamblea General de la ONU. 28 de septiembre de 2015.Mikhail Metzel/RIA NovostiReuters
Finalmente, lamentó que la Administración de Obama “concluya de esta forma su mandato”, pero deseó un feliz año al presidente estadounidense y a toda su familia, al igual que a su sucesor en el cargo, Donald Trump, con quien asegura que trabajará para restablecer las relaciones ruso-estadounidenses en el futuro próximo.

El fondo de la acusación

En octubre pasado, la CIA presentó un informe en el que acusaba a Rusia de intervenir con ayuda de piratas informáticos en las elecciones presidenciales del país norteamericano, una supuesta ayuda que permitió al candidato republicano Donald Trump obtener la victoria. La CIA aseguró que fueron ‘hackers’ rusos los que vulneraron las cuentas de correo electrónico de varios miembros del Partido Demócrata y del Republicano.

La información que los piratas informáticos obtuvieron tras vulnerar los correos del Partido Demócrata estadounidense fue publicada por WikiLeaks, cuyo fundador ha negado en diversas ocasiones que la fuente de la filtración fuera Rusia.

Estos correos sacaron a la luz asuntos como las maniobras de varios miembros del Partido Demócrata para favorecer la candidatura de Clinton en las primarias en detrimento de Bernie Sanders [lo que llevó a la renuncia de la presidenta Nacional del Comité Demócrata, Debbie Wasserman], las conexiones del partido con importantes agentes de Wall Street o las donaciones de varios países extranjeros a la campaña demócrata.

Al respecto de estas acusaciones, el presidente Putin ha negado reiteradamente que su Gobierno estuviera detrás del robo informático, pero destacó durante su rueda de prensa anual que el fondo de toda esta polémica era desviar la atención sobre el verdadero problema que salió a la luz: “¿La jefa del Comité Nacional Demócrata renunció tras la publicación de lo que descubrieron los ‘hackers’? ¡Entonces los ‘hackers’ dijeron la verdad!”. 

Russia Today

Legions of people will protest Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Democratic rank and file “are anxious about racism, immigration, Islamophobia, judicial appointees and voter suppression,” but their leaders have a different agenda.

War Democrats and Republicans care only about maintaining imperialism — through lies and repression. The bipartisan War Party is desperate to continue its regime change policies and foil improved relations with Russia.

Blaming Russia continues the propaganda war against a country that will not knuckle under and accept American hegemony.

It is no coincidence that anti-Russian propaganda is being ramped up at the same moment the Syrian government is poised to retake its country from terrorists. Barack Obama and the rest of the war party are left to sputter nonsensical statements because their grand plan to realize the neocon Project for a New American Century is in very big trouble.

The American corporate media ignored the suffering of Syrians in the city of Aleppo until their captivity was broken by the Syrian Arab Army. Ever since 2012 ISIS and other terrorist groups sponsored by the United States, NATO, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have held thousands of people hostage there. Turks picked the region apart, raiding Syrian factories and transporting them piece by piece back to their country.

Now that the Syrians are retaking the city with the help of their Russian and Hezbollah allies, there is a steady stream of news about the Aleppo. All of it is meant to pull at the heart strings of uninformed people as the human rights industrial complex reliably goes about its dirty work. Human Rights Watch and other groups who work to promote United States foreign policy speak endlessly about war crimes. They didn’t say much when America’s allies were terrorizing Syrians but now they suddenly point fingers and always at the people who run afoul of regime change plans.

The human rights industrial complex reliably goes about its dirty work.

The five year-long effort to destroy the Syrian state has produced many victims in that country and it always threatened to spark a larger international conflict. The assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey could be such a moment. The gunman’s last words and obviously his actions were a call to jihad. Even one hundred years later the 1914 assassination in Sarajevo is not far from memory.

But the United States is the principal actor in this drama. None of the other nations involved in this crime would have acted absent American direction. All of the casualties, the sieges, the hunger and the frantic search for refuge can be placed at America’s feet. So too the death of the Russian ambassador. This international tangle is covered with American finger prints.

The Syrian government is determined to take back its country and the Americans and their allies are equally determined to thwart it. The recent successes of the Syrian army explain part of the desperation coming from Obama, the Democratic Party and corporate media. Blaming Russia kills several birds with one stone. It continues the propaganda war against a country that will not knuckle under and accept American hegemony. The hyper Russophobia was also an attempt to make the unpalatable and incompetent Hillary Clinton more appealing. And its continuation is being used by Democrats and Republicans to stop the incoming president from having any chance to improve relations with that country or curtail the regime change doctrine. The war party never sleeps.

Barack Obama’s last press conference was replete with lies and insults aimed at Russia and Vladimir Putin. He should have been embarrassed to say that Russia was “smaller,” “weaker” and “doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms.” He completed his bizarre rant by saying that Putin was “the former head of the KGB.” He was no such thing and of course Obama knows that. It isn’t clear if he expected anyone to believe him or if facing his failure carried him away to heights of rhetorical foolishness.

All of the casualties, the sieges, the hunger and the frantic search for refuge can be placed at America’s feet.

Obama thought that Hillary Clinton would win and complete his regime change plans. Not only did she lose and deprive him of his third term but the hollowness of his legacy is clear. Obviously “hope and change” was a marketing tag line meant to hide his commitment to the world wide neoliberal project.

Donald Trump will be president of the United States in just four weeks. That is a short period of time in which to pull off a soft coup. He will be inaugurated but team Obama want to make sure he cannot upend the status quo they work so hard to uphold.

While the Democratic Party rank and file are anxious about racism, immigration, Islamophobia, judicial appointees and voter suppression their leaders only care about maintaining imperialism. Obama and the rest of the democratic party are unworthy of the loyalty they engender. On January 20^th thousands of people will head to Washington to protest Trump while the Democrats will be making last ditch efforts to help jihadists destroy Syria.

Some of the protesters ought to target their ire at Obama and the Democrats and not just because of their electoral failure. They ought to pledge an end to support for warmongering Democrats altogether. If it is true that Trump is a fascist he won’t be the first one in the White House. His predecessor fits that description just as well. But events may have spun out of his control. The fate of Syria may not be in American hands any longer. And that is why the desperation is so evident.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.

On more than one occasion, U.S. President Barack Obama overrode agreements that his Secretary of State John Kerry had reached with Russia. Unlike Obama’s consistent support of his prior Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s, initiatives (such as her backing of the coup that on 28 June 2009 had overthrown the progressive democratically elected President of Honduras and replaced him with a fascist regime), Secretary of State Kerry has repeatedly suffered humiliations from his boss’s (Obama’s) reversals of agreements that Kerry had reached with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The latest such incident was headlined at the «Moon of Alabama» blog on December 21st, “How The Military Excluded The White House From International Syria Negotiations», where the anonymous blogger arbitrarily blamed «the military» (instead of Kerry’s boss, Obama) for having sabotaged «the White House» (instead of sabotaged the Kerry-Lavrov agreement) — the agreement that Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had reached on 17 May 2016 for a «comprehensive ceasefire» between the U.S. and Russia regarding Syria (and which the White House then sabotaged).

Obama never condemned nor fired any general, nor anyone else, for having perpetrated the U.S. bombing of Syrian government forces at Deir Zor, on 17 September 2016 — the sabotaging-event, which naturally caused Putin to instruct Lavrov to terminate all discussions with Kerry, because it displayed Obama’s unwavering determination to defeat Russia. (That sabotaging-event then motivated the meeting, on December 20th, when Russia, Turkey, and Iran, met together and agreed in their joint «Moscow Declaration», to complete, on their own, their war against the West’s jihadists who were trying to overthrow Assad; and so, the jihadists in Aleppo simply surrendered to Assad’s government — and the U.S. government and its propaganda ‘press’ howled that this was a victory for the ‘brutal’ Assad against ‘the civilians’, and against ‘the rebels’ — the latter being actually the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-backed jihadists.)

Kerry had failed because Obama wanted a military settlement of the U.S.-backed jihadist invasion of Syria; he didn’t want a diplomatic end to it — at least not a diplomatic end that wasn’t a surrender by the Syrian government forces: the replacement of Assad by the jihadists (who were backed not only by Obama, but by King Saud who owns Saudi Arabia, and by Emir Thani who owns Qatar).

And this sabotage, by Obama, actually repeated Obama’s earlier refusal to accept the deal that Kerry had negotiated with Lavrov to settle the conflict in Ukraine. As I had headlined on 7 June 2015, «Obama Sidelines Kerry on Ukraine Policy». Kerry had told the U.S.-installed regime in Ukraine to cease promising to conquer the two breakaway regions that had refused to accept rule by America’s puppets after Obama’s coup overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian President, for whom both of those regions, Crimea and Donbass, had overwhelmingly voted. Crimea rejoined Russia, of which it had been a part for hundreds of years before the Soviet dictator had transferred it to Ukraine in 1954, but on 17 September 2014 Putin declined the urgings of Donbass to become a part of Russia, and so Donbass became instead an independent country, for the time being.

Though Kerry told Obama’s puppet-President of Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk agreements, Kerry’s nominal subordinate, Hillary Clinton’s friend Victoria Nuland, told this puppet to ignore Kerry’s statement, and Obama backed Nuland against her nominal superior, Kerry. If Kerry had been working under a decent President, he would have been a great Secretary of State, and Kerry cannot reasonably be blamed for his misfortune — and the world’s — that his ‘superior’ (the U.S. President under whom he served) was Obama.

Former FAU Professor James Tracy, who was terminated from his tenured faculty position in January 2016 in retaliation for his personal blogging, has amended his federal lawsuit following a federal court ruling dismissing part of his lawsuit, including his due process claims and state law claims against FAU faculty union representatives.

Professor Tracy’s amended complaint now consists of only five federal counts against the Defendant University and one count for breach of contract. Two of Professor Tracy’s remaining federal counts under Section 1983 are also levied against three senior FAU officials, in their personal capacities, including FAU’s President John Kelly, Vice Provost Diane Alperin, and Dean Heather Coltman. One count for conspiracy to interfere with Professor Tracy’s civil rights remains against the Defendants United Faculty of Florida (“UFF”) and Florida Education Association (“FEA”), and Professor Tracy’s faculty union representatives, UFF-FAU President Robert Zoeller, Jr. and UFF/FEA Service Unit Director Michael Moats.

The amended lawsuit adds several new exhibits, including e-mail communications and internal notes recorded by senior FAU officials and representatives, showing the conspiracy to violate Professor Tracy’s civil rights. It can be viewed here.

Dr. James Tracy is an award-winning American academic with expertise in communications, media and conspiracy studies, who was awarded lifetime tenure by Florida Atlantic University in 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in mass communications and taught courses at FAU in Communications, including a course entitled Culture of Conspiracy.

The lawsuit seeks Tracy’s reinstatement other forms of equitable and monetary relief.

Inquiries may be directed to [email protected].

Obama’s Sanctions against Moscow “Intended to Box In Donald Trump”. Evidence that Hacking of DNC Accusations are Fake

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 30 2016

The sanctions on Russia constitute “an assertive act by President Obama to punish Russia before he leaves office.” The unspoken truth, however, is that the punishment was intended for Trump, to undermine his foreign policy stance in relation to Moscow.

What The Russian Hacking Report DOESN’T Say

By Washington’s Blog, December 29 2016

Today, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI released a report alleging Russian hacking. It’s important to note what the report does NOT say …

Details Still Lacking on Russian ‘Hack’

By Robert Parry, December 30 2016

Amid more promises of real evidence to come, the Obama administration released a report that again failed to demonstrate that there is any proof behind U.S. allegations that Russia both hacked into Democratic emails and distributed them via WikiLeaks to the American people.

America’s Secret Planned Conquest of Russia

By Eric Zuesse, December 30 2016

The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.

“It’s A Plot, The Russians Are Coming”: Obama Illegally Sanctions Russia for Nonexistent US Election Hacking

By Stephen Lendman, December 30 2016

Menacing Russian hordes don’t exist. Nor does claiming its government hacked America’s election hold up to scrutiny. Despite repeated claims, echoed by the corporate media ad nauseam, most Americans don’t believe it because no evidence was presented proving it.

Obama Escalates Anti-Russian Campaign with New Sanctions and Threats

By Patrick Martin, December 30 2016

In an executive order accompanied by a series of official statements, US President Barack Obama has sharply escalated the campaign against Russia, based on unsubstantiated claims of Russian government hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Hillary Clinton campaign in the presidential election.

Obama has announced new sanctions on Russia based on unsubstantiated charges by the CIA that the Russian government influenced the outcome of the US presidential election with “malicious cyber-enabled activities.” 

The report is a description of:

“tools and infrastructure used by Russian intelligence services to compromise and exploit networks and infrastructure associated with the recent U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. government, political and private sector entities.”

The report does not provide any evidence that the tools and infrastructure were used to influence the outcome of the US presidential election.  The report is simply a description of what is said to be Russian capabilities.

Moreover, the report begins with this disclaimer:

“DISCLAIMER: This report is provided ‘as is’ for informational purposes only. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not provide any warranties of any kind regarding any information contained within.”

Thus the DHS report makes it completely clear that the Obama regime has no evidential basis for its allegations on the basis of which it has imposed more  sanctions on Russia.

What is going on here?

First there is the question of the legality of the sanctions even if there were evidence. I am not certain, but I think that sanctions require the action of a body, such as the UN Security Council, and cannot legally be imposed unilaterally by one country. Additionally, it is unclear why Obama is calling the expulsion of Russian diplomats “sanctions.” No other country has to do likewise.  During the Cold War when diplomats were expelled for spying, it was not called “sanctions.”  Sanctions imply more than unilateral or bilateral expulsions of diplomats.

Second, it is clear that Obama, the CIA, and the New York Times are fully aware that the allegation is false.  It is also clear that if the CIA actually believes the allegation, the intelligence agency is totally incompetent and cannot be believed on any subject.

Third, President Trump can rescind the sanctions in 21 days, a third reason that the sanctions are ridiculous.

So why are President Obama, the CIA, and the New York Times making charges that they know are false and for which they have not produced a shred of evidence?

One obvious answer is that the neoconized Obama regime is desperate to ruin US-Russian relations past the point that Trump can repair them.

As the New York Times puts it,

“Mr. Obama’s actions clearly create a problem for Mr. Trump.”

The question the New York Times says, is whether Trump “stands with his democratic allies on Capitol Hill or his authoritarian friend in the Kremlin.”

Can Trump’s foreign policy be controlled by false allegations?

According to the New York Times, Trump has relented and agreed to being briefed by the CIA about the Russian hacking now that Republicans such as Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham have lined up with Obama and the CIA in accepting charges for which no evidence has been presented. However, a briefing without evidence would seem simply to further discredit the CIA in Trump’s eyes.

As I have emphasized in my columns, facts no longer have a role in the United States and its empire. Allegations alone suffice, whether in court cases, interrogation centers, foreign and domestic policies, or classrooms.

The US even bases its military invasions on false allegations—“weapons of mass destruction.” Indeed, the entirely of US foreign policy since the Clinton regime has been based on nothing but false allegations.

The Russian government should have learned by now, but perhaps Moscow still thinks that facts matter in Washington’s decisions.

Possibly we should consider that more is going on than meets the eye.  Perhaps the propaganda about the Russian cyber threat to democracy is being used to prepare American and/or European populations for an incident.

The CIA has morphed into a “deep state” that uses disinformation and propaganda to align decisions of Congress, the executive branch, and foreign governments  with secret behind-the-scenes agendas.  Many books, such as Stephen Kinzer’s The Brothers and Douglas Valentine’s CIA As Organized Crime have described some of these secret agendas.

In order to deter Trump from restoring normal relations with Russia, an incident would have to be severe and irreversible.  Rather than accept defeat for their agenda of US world hegemony, the neoconservatives are prepared to take high risks.  The willingness to take risks is demonstrated by the public effort of the CIA Director to discredit the president-elect.

As expected, Putin’s response to the latest provocation is low key as the “sanctions” appear to be meaningless on the surface.

Larandia, Tres Esquinas, Arauca, Puerto Leguízamo, Leticia y Florencia, bases militares de Estados Unidos en Colombia, trabajan en la formación de un “arco estratégico” enfocado a una potencial intervención en territorio venezolano.

Según afirma el Semanario Voz, el objetivo sería intervenir militarmente en Venezuela, derrocar al presidente Nicolás Maduro y frustrar la Revolución Bolivariana y los cambios sociales que ella entraña.

Agrega Voz que el anillo militar estaría integrado además por tropas de asalto norteamericanas acantonadas en las bases de “control y monitoreo” Reina Sofía, de Aruba, y Hato Rey, de Curazao, y el centro de operaciones tendría asiento en la base de Palmerola, en Honduras, la mayor instalación extrajera de esa naturaleza en territorio latinoamericano.

El semanario añade que la denuncia en ese sentido fue hecha el domingo pasado por la agencia Anncol, la cual aseguró que el plan operativo de intervención contra Venezuela está contenido en un extenso documento del Comando Sur de los Estados Unidos,
denominado “Operación Venezuela Freedom-2”, suscrito por su comandante, el almirante Kurt Tidd.

Precisa que ese texto del Comando Sur contiene 12 tareas tácticas y estratégicas orientadas a buscar las condiciones políticas, económicas y militares para la aplicación de la “Carta Democrática” de la OEA y legitimar de esta manera la intervención militar norteamericana en la vecina nación.

Recuerda, asimismo, que el anterior jefe del Comando Sur de los Estados Unidos, en unas declaraciones a la televisora CNN en octubre de 2015, reconoció que Washington está dispuesto a intervenir en el país bolivariano si la OEA o la ONU lo solicitan. Y es obligatorio recordar que a la República de Colombia sólo le quedan 5 años de reservas de petróleo.

Es un tema delicado que requiere de manera urgente ser tratado con estrategias basadas en soberanía e Integración Latinoamericana. Estamos hablando de la violación de los acuerdos de Paz de todo un continente.

Resumen Latinoamericano

La economía rusa fue capaz de hacer frente, con confianza, a la feroz guerra económica realizada por las potencias imperialistas marítimas geopolíticamente atlantistas en 2014 después de que las naciones occidentales impusieran una serie de sanciones económicas contra Rusia para debilitar el mercado ruso y privarlo de la tecnología necesaria y los factores necesarios en el ciclo económico. Esto también fue hecho al abrir el frente de los precios del petróleo contra Moscú e incrementar el suministro de petróleo, que es una fuente importante de ingresos para las arcas rusas. Los precios del petróleo cayeron por debajo del nivel normal.

Los países occidentales impusieron un paquete de sanciones contra Rusia en 2014 después de que la crisis ucraniana fuera levantada, Crimea regresara a Rusia, y debido a la posición rusa en la crisis siria y su apoyo al ejército sirio. No obstante, el acuerdo prudente y equilibrado llevado a cabo por Rusia con estas sanciones y con la guerra del precio del petróleo llevó a la absorción de la conmoción por el impacto negativo de los procedimientos anti-rusos, y transformó el descenso del valor de la moneda (rublo) en un impacto positivo en algunos puntos, tal como conducir a un descenso en el coste relativo de los productos rusos, de ese modo incrementándose la demanda doméstica y quebrando la recesión económica. También, el descenso en las importaciones desde el extranjero ha jugado un papel marcado en el freno del éxodo de moneda extranjera desde el mercado ruso.

Rusia está considerada como un país industrial avanzado que tiene cierta tecnología que puede capacitarla para lograr estabilidad no solamente en el proceso de producción, sino también en la exportación de diferentes productos industriales.

Esta fuerte potencia tecnológica rusa está respaldada por la fuerte posición militar y geopolítica de Rusia en la arena internacional. Esta posición contribuyó a repeler el ataque económico por las potencias transatlánticas contra Rusia, que ha recalcado que no puede haber ninguna dominación de imperialismo en el mercado internacional.

El presidente ruso, Vladimir Putin, declaró en su reciente discurso el pasado septiembre [2016] durante la sesión de apertura de la cumbre del G-20, que Rusia ha mantenido el tamaño de sus reservas con una disminución en las fugas de capital por cinco veces este año comparado con el pasado año. Destacó en su discurso que “muchos de los líderes mundiales subrayaron los problemas y dificultades a los que se está enfrentando el mundo. Sin embargo, se apuntó que a día de hoy el crecimiento económico es lento, pero positivo”. Putin dijo: “La inflación ha caído dos veces… el déficit del presupuesto es del 2,6%… hemos mantenido una baja tasa del desempleo hasta el nivel del 5,7%… hemos mantenido un bajo nivel de deuda externa al 12% solamente”.

Añadió que Rusia ahora está realizando algunas reformas y hay crecimiento en la esfera de la producción industrial y otros indicadores.

Durante el fórum de negocios entre Rusia y Singapur, el primer viceministro ruso, Igor Shuvalov, declaró el 25 de noviembre que la economía rusa había superado su calvario. Shuvalov dijo: “Estamos seguros de que el escenario de mayor dificultad en la economía rusa está ahora detrás de nosotros… hemos pasado un tiempo dificultoso desde el primer trimestre de 2015, o podemos decir desde el último trimestre de 2014”.

El ministro ruso de agricultura dijo durante un comité del Consejo de la Federación Rusa de Agricultura el martes 15 de noviembre: “La estructura de exportaciones e importaciones a día de hoy es la siguiente: Importamos productos en 2016 por valor de unos 15.000 millones de dólares frente a 40.000 millones de dólares hace tres años, mientras que las exportaciones ascendieron a 10.000 millones de dólares. Postulo que para fin de año, las exportaciones alcanzarán los 15.000 millones de dólares, comparadas a unas importaciones de 20.000 millones de dólares”. Tkachov añadió que las exportaciones de grano en el año actual ascenderán a 35-40 millones de toneladas. Las exportaciones del sector de exportación de grano se han disparado durante los dos últimos años gracias al descenso en el ratio de cambio monetario de Rusia frente al dólar, que se añade a su competitividad en el mercado global.

Rusia no es un país únicamente dependiente del petróleo y el gas. Rusia es conocida por sus industrias pesadas que manejan una infraestructura enorme y avanzada.

Rusia, de manera significativa, ha sofisticado y ha hecho prosperar las industrias militar y aeroespacial además de la industria de trenes, ferrocarriles, y maquinaria.

Moscú está considerado como uno de los centros financieros más importantes en el mundo. También, Rusia tiene diversidad agrícola. En 2016 y por segundo año, Rusia está encabezando la lista de los exportadores globales de trigo, sobrepasando a Canadá y los Estados Unidos. Egipto y Turquía están considerados como los compradores principales del trigo ruso.

Si Rusia continúa persiguiendo su política de reforma económica que apunta a lograr la ventaja competitiva y la producción masiva, además de beneficiarse de la energía tecnológica y la experiencia potencial, y se aprovecha del cambio actual en las circunstancias internacionales en favor del pivote euroasiático y la formación de la alianza económica BRICS, entonces podemos ser testigos en los años venideros, no solamente de la multipolaridad geopolítica global, sino también de la “multipolaridad económica global”.

Ahmad Khaddour

Ahmad Khaddour: Analista político del centro de análisis internacional Katehon.