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Puerto Rico Declares Bankruptcy

By Stephen Lendman

Puerto Rico faces a long, painful struggle ahead. Stephen Lendman elaborates on how it has come to this and what could the future hold for its citizens.

 

Colonised and exploited by America since 1898, its people, governor and other officials are powerless – ruled by US administrations and Congress.

Islanders have no control over their lives, welfare and destiny, no say over foreign relations, commerce, trade, air space, land and offshore waters, immigration and emigration, nationality and citizenship, currency, maritime laws, military service, US bases on its territory, constitutionality of its laws, jurisdictions and legal procedures, treaties, radio and television, communications, agriculture, natural resources and more.

For nearly 120 years, it’s been victimised by US imperial rapaciousness. Things finally came to head financially. Puerto Rico is bankrupt, though can’t declare it under US law.

Islanders are US citizens without enfranchisement on the mainland. They pay federal taxes, getting back pathetically little in return.

It’s a wasteland of high unemployment, poverty and deprivation. Force-fed austerity exacerbates dire economic conditions. Islanders are US citizens without enfranchisement on the mainland. They pay federal taxes, getting back pathetically little in return. They suffer from mismanagement, political greed, widespread corruption, deplorable social services, and monied interests exploiting them, enforced by police state harshness.

Debt-entrapped, it’s been forced to pay bankers and other large creditors at the expense of responsibly serving its residents. Its debt is crushing, unrepayable at around $123 billion – $74 billion owed creditors, another $49 billion in unfunded pension obligations.

Historically Puerto Rico was barred from declaring bankruptcy. Legislation enacted last year allows bankruptcy-like proceedings. Creditors were unwilling to grant concessions. Now they’ll be forced to take big haircuts. Government pensioners and workers nearing retirement may lose out altogether.

Mass exodus to the mainland, including the island’s best and brightest, complicated things further. Puerto Rico is a zombie economy, unable to function without help – not forthcoming after Congress refused bailout help. So did Trump, saying no “bailout” for Puerto Rico, just generous handouts he wants for Wall Street, war-profiteers, other corporate predators, and America’s super-rich.

An 11th hour effort to avoid bankruptcy failed. Creditors refused a restructuring deal to take a 23% haircut on their general obligation bonds, and a 42% loss on their Cofina sales tax-backed debt, according to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board web site. Now they’ll incur bigger hits.

Last summer, Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), giving a federally appointed committee control over the island’s finances, along with creating a Title III bankruptcy process. 

PROMESA gives the federal committee authority to consolidate island agencies, privatise government assets, fire public workers, restructure Puerto Rico’s balance sheet, and retroactively stay bondholder lawsuits.

Puerto Rico faces a long, painful struggle ahead, debt-entrapped by creditors, ill-served by uncaring Washington, mismanaged by corrupt officials, a deplorable situation, affecting its poor and most vulnerable hardest.

A Supreme Court-appointed judge will handle proceedings, bankruptcy without formally declaring it. Unlike US counties, cities and other municipalities, states and US territories can’t declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy, allowing them to restructure debt.

Puerto Rico faces a long, painful struggle ahead, debt-entrapped by creditors, ill-served by uncaring Washington, mismanaged by corrupt officials, a deplorable situation, affecting its poor and most vulnerable hardest.

The article was originally posted at SteveLendmanBlog on May 7, 2017 at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2017/05/puerto-rico-declares-bankruptcy.html.

Featured Image: The makeshift shelter of a homeless person in downtown Ponce, a city on Puerto Rico’s southern coast © Alvin Baez/Reuters.

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About the Author

Stephen Lendman received a BA from Harvard University in 1956. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a Marketing Research Analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. His new book as Editor and Contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” 

From State of Exception to Anti-Coup Dictatorship in Erdoğan’s Turkey  

By Volga Can Ozben and Richard Westra

Volga Can Ozben and Richard Westra maintain Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a poster case for the modern state of exception. This is a condition where constitutional and legal provisions in democracies, designed to temporarily empower rulers with absolute authority to defend the state in the face of perceived threats against it, are paradoxically deployed in perpetuity to abrogate both constitutionality and the rule of law in a drive to impose dictatorship beyond law itself.

 

It was the political theorist Carl Schmitt in his examination of conditions such as those which enabled Hitler’s instituting of Nazi totalitarianism in the ostensibly democratic German Weimar Republic who first touched on the notion of a state of exception. At the time of his writing, when constitutional government and the rule of law were at a nascent stage of development even within the European heartland of democracy, Schmitt essentially conceived of constitutionality as something “decided” by sovereign power which could also decide the “exceptions” to it.1 For Schmitt, democracy was thus saddled with an intractable ambivalence and his own personal turn to support Nazism demonstrated how he believed that problem is best resolved.

With the consolidation of constitutional democracy across Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War and the impetus to the spread of democracy throughout the “free world” this engendered, Schmitt’s ideas were largely relegated to specialised debate among a narrow coterie of academic experts in political philosophy. But, following the much dramatised events of 9/11, when a band composed mostly of Saudi Arabian national’s crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre in New York,2 Schmitt’s thinking about democracy would work itself back into the forefront of policy circles. To be sure, significant segments of the global elite in Western democracies had never been completely committed to constitutionality and due process of law and had supported piecemeal legislation promulgated under the political radar to chip away at it. However 9/11 would open the floodgates for what effectively constitutes a “war on liberty” within what ostensibly were the world’s staunchest democracies.3

Quite simply, invoking the state of exception within even those states where constitutional government and the rule of law are perceived to be most entrenched follows not upon any overt imposition of dictatorial power such as occurs with a military coup. Rather, the state of exception resembles, in form, circumstances such as foreign attacks launched against sovereign states, civil war, armed insurrection against the state, and so forth, in response to which democratic constitutions enable executive power in the hands of prime ministers, presidents or chancellors to bypass legislatures, judiciaries and the rule of law itself to meet the “emergency”.4 Crucially, it was always understood to be a cornerstone of constitutionality that to the extent “exceptional” powers are concentrated in the hands of executive authority this would be of limited duration to deal with the immediate “threat”.

Bush’s words effectively sanctioned the position that the world as a whole, led by the United States, had entered a long emergency justifying extraordinary measures where democratic citizens would give up their constitutional protections to preserve “freedom” and brutal authoritarian and apartheid regimes that joined the “war on terrorism” were automatically pencilled onto the roster of the “good”.

But, as exemplified by his address to the nation just two months following 9/11, President George W. Bush of the United States set a new, foreboding tone which would be imbibed with great fervour throughout the democratic world. Bush claimed America and the “freedom” cherishing world were pushed into a new “war to save civilisation”. It was a war against those who “commit evil” waged by the “good”; a “different war” fought on “many fronts”; a “war against terrorists who operate in more than 60 countries”.5 With few critical voices heard amidst the patriotic din, Bush’s words effectively sanctioned the position that the world as a whole, led by the United States, had entered a long emergency justifying extraordinary measures where democratic citizens would give up their constitutional protections to preserve “freedom” and brutal authoritarian and apartheid regimes that joined the “war on terrorism” were automatically pencilled onto the roster of the “good”. This process in turn saw all manner of political opposition groups across the globe “criminalised” and marked as “terrorist organisations”.6

Yet, most insidious in all this, is the way the state of exception invoked within even democratic stalwarts forged a new “paradigm of government”. Therein, the state of exception fastens itself onto the rule of law and constitutionality in order, paradoxically, to suspend both. Through its justifications for infinite detention, rendition of “evil doers” to secret torture sites, denial of habeas corpus, unlimited surveillance of citizenry, secret Star Chamber-like courts, the law is appealed to in order to effectively create “spaces” within democratic societies devoid of law. And, with a “war” and subsequent emergency of unlimited duration and geospatial scope, the constitutionally mandated “exception” becomes the rule which abrogates both constitutionality and the rule of law over wider areas of the erstwhile democratic order.7

 

Erdoğan and the Gezi Park Exception

In 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ascended to power in Turkey, a constitutional democracy which had a “mixed” political system with prime minister as head of government and president as head of state. Initially, his seemingly moderate Islamist stance and supportive approach towards democracy was lauded by the European Union and United States, while his neoliberal economic policies facilitated short-term economic growth notwithstanding the economic crisis he inherited. Though his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) party handily won re-election in 2007, Erdoğan began to show his authoritarian hand against Kemalist military officials and intellectuals who were critical of his creeping Islamist agenda.

Yet the sort of emergency that would allow Erdoğan to curtail constitutionality and the rule of law in furtherance of his aims proved elusive until the advent of Gezi Park protests in May 2013. It all began rather innocuously with the attempted night time removal of trees in the park to make way for reconstruction of Topçu Kışlası (a landmark historical building from Ottoman era of great importance to Islamists) as a residence and shopping mall under the rubric of urban transformation. The few activists that had gotten wind of this and camped within the perimeter of the park to prevent further removal of trees were violently ejected by police. Incensed, thousands of people soon marched on Taksim Square near the park. AKP’s subsequent branding of the protest as a threat to national security only further galvanised countrywide anti-government resistance.8

Gezi Park, instructively, tapped into the mounting discontent of citizens feeling increasingly oppressed under Erdoğan’s “new Turkey” distinguished by culturally conservative infringement upon daily life (ban on certain media, internet, alcohol, abortion, and so forth). In response to this “threat”, police were vested with arbitrary powers freeing them to use disproportionate violence on protesters, engage in long term extra-legal detention of protesters, conduct “pre-emptive” raids on those suspected of protest sympathies, and so on.9 Such provisional measures were soon bolstered by legal changes authorising mass surveillance, phone taps without court authorisation, arbitrary identity checks and endowing police with powers previously reserved for the judiciary.10 Vigilante squads, operating outside of the constitutional order, were even mobilised to assist and support the police.11

Deploying the classic state of exception playbook Erdoğan invoked the language of “terrorism” to legitimise the coercive measures and violence that was undertaken at Gezi. Protestors were stigmatised as “çapulcu” (looters), “vandals” and “terrorists” which effectively converted them into enemies of the state. Erdoğan, however, did not stop here. New, hitherto unknown internal and external “enemies” were conjured up. “Faiz lobisi” (interest lobby) was blamed for negative economic outcomes. “Dış mihraklar” (foreign forces) were alleged to be responsible for infiltrating and influencing domestic political affairs.12 Erdoğan in effect fostered an “empire of fear” where anyone could be blamed for government failings and labelled a “terrorist” for any reason.13

 

The Exception of the 2015 General Elections and the Failed Coup Attempt

Having served two constitutionally mandated terms as Prime Minister, Erdoğan stood for election and won the presidency position as head of state in 2014. However, in the general elections of June 7th 2015, a new left-wing Kurdish party called Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP), mobilised festering discontent over Gezi to end thirteen years of AKP majority in parliament. Soon after, Suruç, a prominently Kurdish town, was bombed by a suicide attacker affiliated with so-called Islamic State (IS). Though the bombing was carried out by IS, Erdoğan now marshalling the previously ceremonial presidential role in an executive capacity used the attack as a ruse to halt peace and reconciliation talks with the Kurdish minority. Simultaneously, Erdoğan ramped up air assaults and interventions in Syria. Yet his efforts here not only failed to deal with the supposed “enemy” of IS, but further antagonised the Kurds in a monumental policy mess.14

Erdoğan’s security apparatus had its eye trained on dissenting journalists and academics critical of the way Turkey was actually dealing with IS when it suited Erdoğan’s interests.

Erdoğan’s disastrous Syria policy was followed by a surge in actual IS terrorist activities across Turkey which spread paranoia throughout society. Surprisingly, though police and intelligence agencies had been endowed with extraordinary powers of citizen monitoring and surveillance, they proved incompetent in the face of real terrorist threats. Rather, Erdoğan’s security apparatus had its eye trained on dissenting journalists and academics critical of the way Turkey was actually dealing with IS when it suited Erdoğan’s interests. Again, the language of the “war on terror” was turned toward competing political voices in Turkey, this time against the head of the HDP party Selahattin Demirtaş who was portrayed as a supporter of terrorism for his critique of government policy relating to the Suruç attack.15 Mayors of major Kurdish towns were then arbitrarily removed from power and replaced by lackeys assigned by the government and vested with extralegal executive powers. A state of emergency was then imposed on the predominately Kurdish towns which effectively abrogated constitutionality and the rule of law for eight months.16

The penultimate step in Erdoğan’s imposition of a permanent state of exception in Turkey was the failed coup attempt of July 15th 2016. The plotters were allegedly Gülenists (FETO) who had infiltrated the high ranks of the army and bureaucracy from 1980’s. A legal basis was provided by the coup attempt for invocation of the Turkish state of emergency law which contained provision for renewal on reasoned grounds every three months. On the basis of the law the government set about issuing decrees on a daily basis with no parliamentary discussion. Ostensibly, the target of the emergency law was Gülenist coup supporters, yet the whole process devolved into a mass “purge” of political opposition.17 Virtually anyone was subject to arbitrary arrest according to the decrees and marked as a terrorist or Gülenist. The Economist puts it starkly: “Roughly 50,000 people have been arrested; 100,000 more have been sacked. Only a fraction of them were involved in the coup. Anyone Mr. Erdoğan sees as a threat is vulnerable: ordinary folk who went to a Gülenist school or saved with a Gülenist bank; academics, journalists and politicians who betray any sympathy for the Kurdish cause; anybody, including children, who mocks the president on social media”.18 Further, newspapers, television stations and radio programmes were summarily shut down with 90 percent of the remaining media spectrum ultimately falling under direct or indirect government control.19

 

Presidential Referendum Where the Exception Becomes the Rule

On April 16th 2017, Turkish citizens were called to the ballot boxes under the darkening cloud of the emergency law to vote in a referendum for seismic transformation of the political system from its “mixed” parliamentary form with prime minister as head of government to a “Turkish style presidential system” that ensures Recep Tayyip Erdoğan permanent, untrammelled executive power. Multifarious questions have been raised over the referendum ranging from those pointing to it taking place under a state of emergency which essentially banned opposition, to the aforementioned government control of the media, even to outright voting fraud. Yet, the characterising of the referendum as the “use of democracy to end democracy” through de jure institutionalising of single-person dictatorial rule captures what the state of exception is all about.20

Yet, the characterising of the referendum as the “use of democracy to end democracy” through de jure institutionalising of single-person dictatorial rule captures what the state of exception is all about.

Just as unfolded in the 1933 German Weimar Republic, Erdoğan’s dictatorial ambitions were not realised through a coup. Ironically, indeed, the final exorcising of democracy occurred as a response to a coup. However, the new presidency institutionalises single-person rule by gathering legislative, judicial and executive branches in a single hand. The presidency maintains power to both “dissolve” parliament at will or “bypass” it to issue decrees with no legislative oversight.21 Such, however, is precisely how the state of exception builds from the state rendering law and democratic constitutionality the condition of its own suspension. Turkey, here offers a cautionary tale to the world mesmerised by the false comfort that relinquishing freedoms in democratic societies in the face of real and manufactured “threats” is necessary to save it. 

Featured Image: Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey © Getty Images

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About the Authors

Volga Can Ozben is Master’s candidate in the Leading Graduate Schools Program in Law and Political Science, Nagoya University, Japan. He will begin his PhD studies September 2017 in the Department of Political Science, Carleton University, Canada.

 

Richard Westra is Designated Professor in the Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan. His most recent books are Unleashing Usury: How Finance Opened the Door to Capitalism Then Swallowed It Whole (Clarity Press, 2016); Exit from Globalization (Routledge, 2015); and The Political Economy of Emerging Markets: Varieties of BRICS in the Age of Global Crises and Austerity (ed.) (Routledge, 2017) https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Economy-of-Emerging-Markets-Varieties-of-BRICS-in-the-Age/Westra/p/book/9781138121225

 

References

1. Schmitt, C. Political Theology, University of Chicago Press, 2006, pp 10-13.
2. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11th-hijackers-fast-facts/index.html
3. Paye, J-C. Global War on Liberty, Telos Press, 2007, pp. 1-3.
4. Agamben, G. State of Exception, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 2.
5. https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rm/2001/5998.htm.
6. Paye, Global War on Liberty, pp. 3ff.
7. Agamben, State of Exception, pp. 2-5, 50-1.
8. Oğuz, Ş. Yeni Türkiye’nin Siyasal Rejimi, p. 97
9. Milliyet, “İstanbul’da Gezi baskını: 30 kişi gözaltında”, http://www.milliyet.com.tr/istanbul-da-gezi-baskini-30 kisi/gundem/detay/1737418/default.htm
10. T24, “İşte tartışılan ‘iç güvenlik paketi’nin’ tam metni”, http://t24.com.tr/haberler/iste-tartisilan-ic-guvenlik-paketinin-tam-metni,287681
11. Cnnturk.com, “Erdoğan: Esnaf gerektiğinde asker, polis ve hakimdir”, www.cnnturk.com/haber/turkiye/erdogan-esnaf-gerektiginde-asker-polis-ve-hakimdir
12. NTV, “Erdoğan: Faiz lobisinin neferi oldular”, http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/erdogan-faiz-lobisinin-neferi-oldular,hRBnD9YIYkehfPQCWqTF4g
13. Kongar E. and Küçükkaya A. Gezi Direnişi: Türkiye’yi Sarsan Otuz Gün Artık Hiçbirşey Eskisi Gibi Olmayacak, Cumhuriyet, pp. 22-23
14. Kazim H., Popp M. and Shafy S. “The Rise and Fall of Erdogan’s Turkey”, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/turkeyundererdoganisbecomingpoliticallyrivena1054359.html
15. NTV, Selahattın Demirtaş’tan Suruç Açıklaması, http://www.ntv.com.tr/turkiye/selahattin-demirtastan-suruc-aciklamasi,goDSajMioE2qv9RfIHjlGw.
16. TIHV, 16 Ağustos 2015-16 Ağustos 2016 Tarihleri Arasında Sokağa Çıkma Yasakları ve Yaşamını Yitiren Siviller Bilgi Notu, http://tihv.org.tr/16-agustos-2015-16-agustos-2016-tarihleri-arasinda-sokaga-cikma-yasaklari-ve-yasamini-yitiren-siviller-bilgi-notu/.
17. Filkins D. “The Purge Begins in Turkey”, http://www.newyorker.com/news/newsdesk/thepurgebeginsinturkey
18. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21720590-recep-tayyip-erdogan-carrying-out-harshest-crackdown-decades-west-must-not-abandon.
19. Cruciati C., “Turkey holds half of the journalists arrested in the world”, https://global.ilmanifesto.it/turkeyholdshalfofthejournalistsarrestedintheworld/
20. Gumus T. “Turkey is about to use democracy to end its democracy”, https://qz.com/950313/turkeyispreparingtovoteonaconstitutionalreferendumthatgivespresidentreceptayyiperdoganunprecedentedpower/
21. Ibid.

French Election Fraud?

By Peter Koenig

Peter Koenig delivers us a bold analysis on the recently held French elections. Now that Macron holds the French presidency, Koenig reminds us that the game is not over – with the two rounds of legislative elections coming this June, what will the youngest French president do with the possibility of a government deadlock?

 

The final tally is Emmanuel Macron 66% against 34% of Marine Le Pen, a historic landslide never seen in France’s recent past. Many have voted for Macron because it meant a vote against Le Pen. They were scared. The massive fear-mongering propaganda against her was successful. The choice was clearly between the Devil and Lucifer, and the vast majority voted for Lucifer. He is slyer. He is killing slowly with a smile, vs. Le Pen’s outspoken, confrontational approach. He does it by continuously administering small doses of poison. Taking over the economy from the 99% for the 1%. It’s the old salami tactic, in new clothes. It’s a fascist economy. People don’t notice until it’s too late.

Voter participation has drastically declined since the two previous times, with 65% compared to 72% in 2012 and 75% in 2007. It shows that many disenchanted French have abstained. Intentional abstentions and non-voters accounted for 35%, a record in over 50 years. With 66% of actual voters casting their ballot for Macron, he has actually obtained just slightly above 40% of the eligible voters’ approval, not discounting all those whose vote was a vote against Le Pen. Some estimates conclude it could be as high as 15% – which would leave Macron with a mere 25% of real votes, as compared to the total of eligible French voters. If that’s the making of a President in a key European country, then we are headed for deep dark trouble.

Some estimates conclude it could be as high as 15% – which would leave Macron with a mere 25% of real votes, as compared to the total of eligible French voters. If that’s the making of a President in a key European country, then we are headed for deep dark trouble.

One of the key phrases Macron voiced in his victory speech was that France will be first in line in fighting “terrorism” – in clear text, the militarisation of France and by extension of Europe, will continue.

This will bode well with the semi-clandestine effort underway by Germany’s Bundeswehr to train German and NATO troops for war-like offensives against western cities. The project, largely unreported, has been going on since at least 2012. It involves building in Germany’s north-eastern federal state of Saxony-Anhalt an entire ghost town, where German and NATO troops will train to fight and suppress possible social upheavals in western European cities. The camp, budgeted at several hundred million euros, is expected to be ready for training by 2018. The idea is not new. It’s a copy of what’s already going on for years in the US. Clandestine military hubs around “vulnerable” cities, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles – and more, are in full swing.

Election fraud is difficult to prove. But circumstantial evidence clearly points to electoral “irregularities”. First, the traditional two-party system was purposefully eviscerated and the country was divided into four groups. There were the old-style Republicans and Socialists, represented by François Fillon and Benoît Hamon. Until a few weeks ago, Marine Le Pen from the extreme right-wing National Front was leading all polls. Mr. Fillon came in second. Then a suddenly floated scandal about his wife’s cashing in huge amounts of public money in the form of remunerations for work she had not done, decimated his popularity. Was this part of the game plan?

Both candidates, Fillon and Le Pen, had politically similar positions, except that Le Pen, whom the media called demeaningly a populist, campaigned for FREXIT, exit from the euro and from NATO. All very popular ideas. Let’s face it, 80% of the French want a referendum on FREXIT. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of “France insoumise”, had and has a terrific programme for a socially and politically independent France, regaining sovereignty from Brussels and exiting NATO, and a France with a direct Democracy. He calls it the 6th Republic. He consistently ran on the left, but didn’t break ground in 2012. In the last few months, his quick wit and modern campaign technology (hologram speeches at several locations simultaneously) suddenly attracted a lot of followers, especially among the young and students, as well as those disenchanted with the socialist party. He ascended quickly to the top, outranking François Fillon, second only to Le Pen. But a run-off Mélenchon – Le Pen was unthinkable for the powers in Washington and Brussels. The dangers of a Mélenchon win were real.

Then came the meteoric rise out of nowhere by the youthful, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, with his non-party political movement “En Marche” (On the Move). The former Rothschild investment banker, never held any elected office, was catapulted in 2014 into the post of Minister of Economy, where he pushed through the controversial and unpopular “Macron Law”, largely a deregulation of industry and service sectors against the interests of labour. Mr. Macron, despite his self-given label of a “centrist”, represents the interests of the banksters and of Big Business. He is also a staunch friend of Washington and Brussels, defending the un-defendable euro and European Union. That’s what the elite, the world’s Deep State, wants.

Going into the first round of elections on 23 April, the country was divided into four voter segments, with the front runners Le Pen, Macron, Mélenchon and Fillon clustered closely together. This reminds of the 2015 / 2016 Spanish elections – “divide to conquer” – a division from an essentially two-party system into four parties. The Spanish “election” eventually ended up in a parliamentary coup to make sure Mariano Rajoy, the neoliberal right-winger, would continue the Spanish austerity oppression of the working class, despite a vast majority of Spaniards, with a 23% unemployment rate, being against Rajoy – see http://www.globalresearch.ca/spain-the-dice-are-cast-another-parliamentary-coup-instigated-from-outside/5553699.

To avoid a similar fiasco, the French election had to be “decided” in the first round, in as much as Fillon and Mélenchon needed to be discarded from the second round, to make sure Macron would confront Le Pen. This was the easiest gamble to have Macron win.

And so it happened. With a massive and well targeted media campaign, very likely using the Cambridge Analytica model of mind manipulation, as was applied to make Trump President – see http://www.globalresearch.ca/mind-manipulations-to-influence-election-results/5566894 – and to bring about Brexit, Macron became a front runner, barely outranking Le Pen in the first round, with Fillon and Mélenchon coming in third and fourth on 23 April. That Mélenchon after the first round ended up fourth, with a paper-thin margin behind the scandal-plagued Fillon, is not an accident. Ballot fraud is very likely and has, in fact, been detected by Mélenchon’s people. Had he come in as third, he might have contested the thin margin between him and Macron and asked for a recount. So, he had to be “pushed” back to number four. As such, a recount was not likely.

Macron has now 5 years to continue – and speed up – the work of his predecessor, Hollande: more austerity for the average French, more tax breaks for the Corporate Lords and the rich, more militarisation of France and Europe – and especially keep following Brussels’ and Washington’s dictates.

Whoever would like to understand how elections are made these days, not only in developing countries, but also in our wester so-called democracies should read this – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?CMP=share_btn_tw. It provides a deep look into who is running the world and with what intent. There is not a shred left of DEMOCRACY. It’s mind control and mind manipulation to the extreme. It is very likely that France did not escape this soft, but super-sharp behind the scene technology.

Macron has now 5 years to continue – and speed up – the work of his predecessor, Hollande: more austerity for the average French, more tax breaks for the Corporate Lords and the rich, more militarisation of France and Europe – and especially keep following Brussels’ and Washington’s dictates.

Without arbitrating whether Macron or Le Pen should have won the elections – is this massive media – and Silicone Valley – manipulation for the candidate that clearly defends Big Business, the corrupt EU Brussels construct and the unsustainable, fraudulent European currency, the euro – and membership in NATO – ethically correct? All of it serves the interests of giant corporations and the war mongering on Russia’s borders, against the interests of the people. With today’s neoliberal laws that defy any moral standards as long as they benefit the rich and powerful, it is difficult to say whether the method is legal. Is it legitimate to lie and use mind control tactics to attain a socially indefensible and unjust objective? Or is it an outright criminal act? Let our conscience be the judge.

However, the game is not over yet. There will be two rounds of legislative elections in June. At this point, Mr. Macron will have a hard time forming a government. His movement (not a party), “En Marche”, is new and not established well-enough to gain necessarily enough parliamentary seats to govern. Therefore, a coalition, or as the French call it, a “Cohabitation”, is a possibility. With whom? With Le Pen’s Front National, with Fillon’s traditional right wing Republicans? – Or with Mélenchon’s “France insoumise”? Le Pen and Mélenchon will likely increase their seats in Parliament. A three-way fairly even split – Macron-Mélenchon-Le Pen – has been suggested by several analysts.

With whom Macron will “cohabitate” is anybody’s guess. The three-way split scenario might leave Macron in a deadlock, unable to form a government. Would that bring about new elections à la Spain? – And if mind control doesn’t work well-enough, end up in a Parliamentary coup, where votes and alliances may be traded, not to say “bought” – to eventually propel the Luciferian Deep State’s darling, Macron, into the Presidency?

Image courtesy of Allili Mourad / SIPA

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About the Author

koenig-webPeter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Emmanuel Macron Victory and the Fragility of the European Union

En Marche Candidate Prevails with Support of World Financial System

By Abayomi Azikiwe

French politics has captured the eyes of the world for the past months. Now that conclusions have been made, Abayomi Azikiwe tackles what Macron’s victory brings and its implications to the European Union and the global economy.

 

Leading European Union (EU) politicians expressed their jubilation in the wake of the substantial victory of Emmanuel Macron over National Front candidate Marine Le Pen.

This episode in French politics was hailed as a major defeat of “populism” in Europe and the Western capitalist world where in the last year right-wing parties and political initiatives have made headway.

There was the vote to leave the EU by the British voters in June 2016. Later in the November presidential elections in the United States billionaire right-wing demagogue Donald J. Trump landed in the White House through a sweeping Electoral College victory over Democratic Party stalwart Hillary Clinton.

This episode in French politics was hailed as a major defeat of “populism” in Europe and the Western capitalist world where in the last year right-wing parties and political initiatives have made headway.

Macron, an investment banker and former minister of economic planning in the Socialist government of departing President Francois Hollande, was favoured by the corporate media and the European banking institutions.

Official results say that Macron won 66.1 percent of the vote to 33.9 for Le Pen. However, 33 percent, one-third, of the electorate either stayed at home or turned in ballots that were uncountable indicating a strong rejection of both of the dominant tendencies in French politics. Neither party projected any viable solutions to the high unemployment rate and increasing poverty inside the country. 

The British Independent newspaper said of the results: “Mr. Macron earned over 20.8 million votes in the election, while Ms. Le Pen gained a record 10.6 million votes for Front National.

But while France had 47.5 million registered voters, a near-record 25 per cent abstained from casting their ballot in this year’s election. A further 8.6 per cent of people who did vote spoiled their ballot or left it blank. The number of people who abstained from voting totalled 12.1 million, already outnumbering the amount of people who chose to vote for Ms. Le Pen.”

Although the En Marche candidate was portrayed as a voice of reason and tolerance the programme advanced by the president-elect calls for the elimination of guarantees for working people. Similar reforms in previous years appeared to be aimed at transforming labour relations in France to more closely mirror the US.

The EU welcomed the results of the vote as an indication of the stability of the regional system of governance and economic restructuring. Le Pen had suggested that under her presidency a referendum on the future of French membership in the continental body along with the Eurozone would be put before the electorate. This could have continued the disintegration of the European monetary zone and parliament which largely serves as a barometer of what constitutes stability in the region.

Both the Conservative (Les Republicains) and Socialist parties which have dominated the French parliamentary and presidential system for the last six decades did not win enough votes in the first round to qualify for run off status on May 7. An alienation from mainstream political parties in Europe has created a huge electoral vacuum where ultra-right wing parties have made gains.

In a state election overshadowed by the events in France, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won a decisive victory in the northern Schleswig-Holstein gaining 33 percent of the electorate.

Results of the elections in France will provide some relief for the German political system where Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing re-election later in the year. In a state election overshadowed by the events in France, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won a decisive victory in the northern Schleswig-Holstein gaining 33 percent of the electorate.

The CDU performed better than what was projected in the opinion polls which indicated a greater margin of the vote going to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the far right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD won only 26 percent of the vote which will prevent it from leading the state government in Schleswig-Holstein.

Moreover, the status of the AfD continued to deteriorate with the party barely gaining enough votes to earn seats in the Schleswig-Holstein state government. AfD won 5.5 percent just above the necessary 5 percent threshold to enable its presence in the state legislative body.

At present with the weakening of the SPD and AfD, Merkel could very well win an unprecedented fourth term in office as German Chancellor. Her approval rating had declined during 2016 amid the escalating tensions over the huge influx of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia fleeing the wars initiated by the US and NATO and the economic downturn due in part to instability fuelled by conflict and the decline in commodity prices particularly in the energy sector.

 

France to Maintain Globalist Model of Development

Although the electorate did reject the far right political programme of Le Pen which advocated the drastic curbing of immigration from non-European states, the erecting of trade tariffs to ostensibly enhance local production, the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone and the demonisation of Islam, many of those who cast their ballots in favour of Macron did so in order to prevent the National Front from winning the presidency.

The political platform of En Marche is a classic neo-liberal approach to the modern-day capitalist crisis. Macron wants to limit the guarantees of employment benefits for French workers, the scaling back of the pension system and large-scale tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

These programmes have been tried in numerous western capitalist states leaving a trail on joblessness, increasing poverty, national debt and massive bailouts of the financial institutions to prevent total economic collapse as was the situation throughout Western Europe and the US beginning in 2007. Workers are less secure in their employment prospects while real wages have been in decline for decades.

Reuters press agency reported on a survey of voters which demonstrated the lack of enthusiasm for the Macron emphasising that: “A poll of nearly 7,000 voters on Sunday by Harris Interactive found that 59 percent of Macron’s voters had chosen him primarily to stop Le Pen becoming president, reflecting the distaste that still clings to a party long considered a pariah in France for its xenophobic associations. The poll, for M6 television, also found Le Pen’s supporters to be far more convinced by their candidate’s policies and qualities: 56 percent of Le Pen voters found that she spoke to their concerns, while only 21 percent of Macron voters said the same of him.” (May 8)

Trade unions demonstrated under the banner of the “Social Front” on May 8 just one day after the presidential elections against the proposed neo-liberal and pro-banker reforms advocated by Macron. Workers are saying that the government should not be administered as if it were a corporation evoking the background of Macron as a banker and economy minister with close ties to finance capital. Similar protests occurred even prior to the elections on May Day where workers objected to the candidates of both En Marche and the National Front.

According to an article published by Local France, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), a left-leaning union which is one of the largest in the country, led the demonstrations. The media group noted that these actions involving thousands of workers took place “not long after the news was announced on Sunday night (May 7) that the pro-free market, pro-globalisation candidate Emmanuel Macron had been elected France’s president with 66 percent of the vote.

Organisers had urged people “to take part in the first social mobilisation of Macron’s term in office”. (May 8)

Although the traditional dominant parties did not do well in the presidential races, they are hoping to play a more prominent role in the upcoming two-stage parliamentary contest on June 11 and 18. Pro-Macron candidates will change their name to La Republique en Marche for the lower house elections in an effort to appeal to the both the centre-left and centre-right constituencies.

One survey indicated that En Marche could win as many as many as 250 of the 290 seats in the overall 577-member chamber of the National Assembly. Any candidate gaining 12.5 percent of the vote will be eligible to continue to the runoff election.

Image courtesy of Yoan Valat, EPA

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About The Author

Abayomi Azikiwe is the Editor of the Pan-African News Wire, an electronic press agency that was founded in 1998. He has worked for decades in solidarity with the liberation movements and progressive governments on the African continent and the Caribbean. Azikiwe is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science/Public Administration and Educational and Administrative Studies.

Who are the World’s Biggest Military Spenders, Really?

By Dan Steinbock                            

The conventional narrative is that the world is threatened by the assertive China and Russia. The inconvenient narrative is that China is modernising, while US priorities are misguided, Dan Steinbock says.

 

When China recently launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier, New York Times saw it as “a milestone in President Xi Jinping’s drive to extend China’s military reach far beyond its shores”. First reports surfaced in early 2016, when Washington Post headlined, “By 2030, South China Sea will be “virtually a Chinese lake”.”

The US Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier in 1922. Today, it has 19 of the 36 such ships plying waters around the world. The same goes for overseas military bases. While China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti has been portrayed as a world threat, the US has almost 40 “named bases” around the world, military deployments in more than 150 countries, and over 300,000 of its personnel abroad.

What about military expenditures?

 

Conventional Narrative

The conventional narrative is that China has become assertive, while the West is ignoring its defence needs. This view is backed with the newly-released SIPRI report, which suggests that in the past decade military spending in China and Russia increased 118 percent and 87 percent, respectively. America remains the greatest military spender, but US spending plunged almost 5 percent in the past decade.

In reality, defence spending increased from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. Then, expenditures plateaued, due to secular stagnation in advanced economies and the fall of oil prices in oil-exporting countries, many of which are major military spenders.

Yet, realities are more nuanced. After the end of the Cold War, many observers expected a “peace premium” and a significant plunge of military expenditures. In reality, defence spending increased from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s. Then, expenditures plateaued, due to secular stagnation in advanced economies and the fall of oil prices in oil-exporting countries, many of which are major military spenders.

The new list of top-10 military spenders includes the US ($611 billion), China ($215 billion), Russia ($69 billion), Saudi Arabia, India, the core EU economies, Japan and South Korea. Together, they account for three-fourths of the total. Yet, Washington spends more dollars a year on its military than the next seven biggest spenders combined – which penalises living standards in America and stability abroad.

Moreover, the US defence system is still the most innovative in the world, but that leadership is in danger of failing, due to erosion, as I argued in a major US report, The Challenges for America’s Defense Innovation (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, November 2014).

Inconvenient Truths

Furthermore, the biggest aggregate military spenders are almost by default the most populous or largest economies, or both. Consequently, the intensity of military spending should also be assessed in per capita terms. In this narrative, Saudi Arabia and the US lead, with $2,000 and $1,900 per person, respectively. The two are followed by Europeans, South Korea, Russia and Japan. In contrast, China and India come last (with just 8% and 2% of the US level, respectively)(Figure 1).

 

(a) Aggregate Military Spending ($ Billion)

(b) Military Spending Per Capita ($ )

 

Figure 1: Aggregate and Per Capita Military Expenditures, 2017

 

But perhaps this story reflects recent realities? Maybe a longer-term view would produce a different picture? Actually, that’s precisely not the case.

If the past decade’s increases in military budgets are viewed in per capita terms, the big spender is Saudi Arabia (40%). In contrast, defence expenditures have climbed slower in China and India (less than 15% each); and even less in Russia (6%).

These relative increases of the military expenditures should be compared gains in per capita incomes. If per capita incomes rise fast, then relative increases in military budgets are to be expected, and vice versa. In the past decade, per capita incomes in China and India increased strongly (10.8% and 8%, respectively). In both, military spending has increased even faster but after a very low starting point(Figure 2).

 

 

(a) Aggregate Military Spending (%) 

(a) GDP Per Capita (%)

* Change as compound annual growth rate (CAGR)

Figure 2: Change in Expenditures, 2007-16*

 

However, in the Middle East, the gap between military spending and per capita income is steep. In the past decade, increases in Saudi defense spending have been almost 40 times faster than growth in per capita incomes.

 

Gap Between Fact and Fiction

Usually, military assertiveness as national priority is reflected by the share of defence spending as percentage of GDP. In these terms, the great spender is Saudi Arabia (10% of GDP), which invests 5 times more than China in defence.

In the past decade, Chinese defence spending as share of GDP has been 1.9 percent, lower than in India (2.3-2.5%) or Australia (2%) and at par with the UK. Historically, it is about the same as America’s in the 1920s – before US rearmament and World War II.

In turn, Russia’s relative defence spending as share of GDP has risen by almost a half, which US neoconservatives see as evidence of assertive expansionism, along with Moscow’s conduct in Georgia and Ukraine. Nevertheless, Russia’s defence spending can also be seen as belated modernisation and as a logical result of US-led NATO expansion to Russia’s regional neighbourhood.

In the past decade, US defence spending as share of GDP decreased to 3.3 percent (0.3%), due to the Great Recession, and the Obama defence sequestration. In the postwar era, that is an exception, not the rule. In fact, the Trump administration is planning a massive Reagan-style rearmament and requesting $54 billion for the next year – an almost 10 percent increase in a single year.

If the first casualty of war is truth, then the first victim of peacetime rearmament are flawed narratives that support entrenched military interests.

To summarise, there is a deep gap between current realities and perceptions of military spending. If the first casualty of war is truth, then the first victim of peacetime rearmament are flawed narratives that support entrenched military interests.

Perhaps that’s why, when China launches a new carrier, it is typically reported as the “latest display of Beijing’s growing naval power” but when US carriers dominate regional waters and exercise their hegemony internationally, it is seen as non-news.

The original version was published by South China Morning Post on May 1, 2017

Featured Image: Image courtesy of Scout.com

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About the Author

Dan Steinbock is the Founder of Difference Group and has served as Research Director of International Business at the India China and America Institute (US) and a Visiting Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see http://www.differencegroup.net

 

Slavehood 2017

By Peter Koenig

We thought slavehood has been abolished a long time ago. Peter Koenig begs to disagree as he describes how we live in an oppressive depressive western civilisation, which we still call “democracy”.
When in the 18th and 19th Century African slaves did not “behave”, they were cruelly beaten sometimes to death as a deterrent for others. They were deprived of food for their families. Their women were raped. They were traded to even harsher white masters. Their lives were worth only what their labour could produce. They were treated as subjects, devoid of human warmth.

Today we have become all slaves; slaves to the powers of mafia banksters of finance; slaves to the western lie-propaganda; to the lobbies and their giant all dominating corporations – to the war-industry, because we happily believe what we are told about ever-increasing terrorism that needs to be fought with eternal wars; slaves to the environment-destructive hydrocarbon industry; to the pharma-industry; to the Monsanto-ised agroindustry; to senseless consumerism – and foremost – and summing it all up: to greed, endless greed that drives endless growth, nurturing endless competition fomenting adversity, destroying solidarity, instead of amical cooperation for a harmonious human cohabitation.

As people of western nations, we are enslaved to an all-engulfing neoliberal fascism – to a predatory economy. Corporate lie propaganda drip-feds our brains. We haven’t even noticed it. We are enslaved to so-called “leaders”, put in office by obscure foreign masters of deceit – the ever-stronger corporate controlled propaganda machine – the six all controlling Zion-Anglo media, whom we believe whatever lie they vomit – because it is more comfortable to believe a lie than to confront the truth – that’s self-imposed slavehood.

That’s how far we have gone. Because we are clearly on an almost irreversible downward track – sliding and running towards our own demise – into darkness – the darkness of chaos and bloody wars, endless wars against self-invented terrorism; wars that keeps our western economy running – and our armchair politics alive. Wars that kill and slaughter millions and millions – but all in “far-away” lands. We are told we are protected. Our police and military watch over us. The new gods – money and military.

The Market lets us live and strive and eat and dream of more. It feeds our greed as if there was no end. Slavehood to Nirvana or Neverland.

To prevent this endless terror chaos happening in our western spheres, once “proudly” called Europe or United States of America, Canada, Australia, Japan – and whatever other country has surmised to the western slaughter machine – we call for police and military protection in our own lands, we give them power to enslave us further to the Dark State – those Zionist – Illuminati – Masonic – Satanic forces that slyly command a worldwide slave trade, called The Market – the all commandeering Market. We adore The Market. We want to be integrated into it. The Market lets us live and strive and eat and dream of more. It feeds our greed as if there was no end. Slavehood to Nirvana or Neverland.

Although “pride” was never an appropriate term to integrate our soul and minds, as we the western powers – have for centuries enslaved, raped, exploited and slaughtered the indigenous people, those who have for millennia, for history of mankind survived and passed on our human genes from one murderous civilisation to another, always in the hope that the new one would see the light.

We can only hope that the patience of these native people, the survivors, our saviours – will prevail, that before we disappear in darkness, in the void of a manmade blackhole, we will awake, open our eyes and seek the light – become finally human, the term we have fraudulently applied to ourselves – the western civilisation.

Beware – anybody who contradicts this truth and course of events, is labelled a conspiracy theorist, defamed and out-laughed, stigmatised. We have to de-metricise. Abandon our western established parameters, they are made to enslave us – so that an ever-smaller elite satanic class that produces and manages the Clintons, Trumps, Obamas, Bushes, Blairs, Merkels, Abes, Hollandes – and soon probably Macrons – and many more of the same kind – may continue their feast.

We are called to vote for these abject people, called politicians, most of them brain-and-mindless, who have been preselected by the Masters who control the globe, in the belief we are actually choosing people who represent our society, defend our needs, freedom, justice and equality. Every four or five years we fall for the same rituals and believe things will change. We never dig deep down to find the reasons why all stays the same ­– and gets worse, despite our unhappiness and despite our “democratic” votes. We are blind. Slavehood makes blind. We are more comfortable as blind slaves than as seeing humans. So, we keep falling for illusions.

We are living in an oppressive depressive western civilisation which we still call “democracy” – because our twisted, manipulated comfort-loving minds do not want to admit – that we are enslaved.

Our lives are grey-white like a foggy sky, no sun. The sun and its enchanting wonderful brightness has been eviscerated from our enslaved minds. We are living in an oppressive depressive western civilisation which we still call “democracy” – because our twisted, manipulated comfort-loving minds do not want to admit – that we are enslaved. That democracy has been a pipedream of some Greek Philosophers 2500 years ago. Nothing more. We stole the term from history as a pretext to wage wars, rape, exploit and – to enslave.

Slavehood of 2017 – and maybe many more years to come – if we do not wake up soon – has gone global, very global. It’s the epitome of globalisation. We are being uniformed into colourless cubicles. Culture is massacred, language is synthesised into Anglo-Saxon slogans – we are all supposed to think in globally recognised clichés; clichés repeated and perpetuated at nauseatum by Hollywood, the notorious mass-media; by the western education system, schools from primary to universities – private or state-run, are indoctrinating our kids with neoliberal dogmas that keep enslaving them.

Independent thinking has become a crime, as it impedes the advancement of slavehood. Education is designed to kill individual thinking and the wide range of inventiveness – because it’s dangerous – for those who enslave and control us. “New-speak” education has to make us thinking what the system wants us to think. That’s what western education has become in the last 50 years – a farce to keep us as non-thinking idiots.

Independent thinking has become a crime, as it impedes the advancement of slavehood.

Idiots are easily enslaved and exploited and sent to wars – to steal foreign resources to satisfy the greed of a few. We love to be cannon fodder, as we were told – enslaved – to believe that good patriots love to die for their country. We are blinded and avoid seeing that we are dying fighting to satisfy puppet leaders’ greed for power and money – whose power is nothing more than that allowed them by the Masters who control the world and who pull the strings on their marionettes.

Wakeup from slavehood 2017! – Make 2017 the last slave year!

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About the Author

koenig-webPeter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

New World Disorder – The Next 20 Years: Hope or Despair?

By Graham Vanbergen

There is no doubt that the world is facing a wave of unprecedented uncertainties from political and civil unrest, conflict and terrorism to seemingly never-ending financial turmoil, climate change, the struggle for resources and disruptive technologies. Like it or not, no matter where we are, we are living in a new world disorder.

But the big question is how will the world fare over the next twenty years or so amid a global environment that is changing and developing at an unrelenting pace. The greatest immediate tests are emerging from the transition of a disintegrating post-war political system that fostered a massively increased trade and cultural exchange system that is now driving change and increased tensions on the geo-political chessboard. At the same time we are distracted from the demise of our home planet, ravaged by the decades long effects of greed driven globalisation, the consequences yet to fully unfold.

Strategic Forecasting predicts that the European Union will not so much collapse but splinter into four distinct groups; Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the British islands as relations break down and they become increasingly estranged from each other. It predicts that China will face political chaos as economic growth declines, that Russia will fall apart as it struggles to keep control of the worlds largest federation and that the U.S. will take a more isolationist stance.

I’ve spoken with some of the world’s foremost commentators as they reflect on the past and look forward on the current trajectory of political and economic fortunes for the next 20 years in the regions where they live or work in the Middle-East, America, Europe and Asia more widely and the results are more complex than Strategic Forecasting predicts.

First up is award winning British journalist Jonathan Cook  located in Nazareth, Israel. Known for his de-coding of official propaganda and outstanding analysis of events often obfuscated in the mainstream, which has made him one of the most reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East:

“Our increasingly globalised world means it is difficult – and probably unrealistic – to disentangle geo-strategic problems. Can the Palestinians’ hopes of living in dignity really be separated from what happens in Syria, Washington, Europe and Iran?

Two conflicting global trends will intensify over the next 20 years, and the fates of Israelis and Palestinians – and the rest of us – will hinge on how they play out.

The first is what might be termed the evolution of the “fortress state”, or the “homeland security” syndrome.

The elites in the most powerful states are moving into survival mode: externally against rival states as key resources deplete, and internally as resource shortages and climate change risk turning their own publics against them.

This requires a mix of outward belligerence and inward repression in which Israel already excels. State elites are likely to look to Israel for solutions based on its long experience of destabilising neighbours and using Palestinian areas as laboratories for experimenting in methods of subjugation, surveillance and control. This expertise could, in the words of Israeli analyst Jeff Halper, make Israel “indispensable” and provide it with continuing diplomatic and financial cover.

A second trend cannot be discounted, however. A globalised, interconnected world is one where information is much harder to control or suppress. The evident power of social media to bypass traditional media gatekeepers is already worrying these same elites. They are reacting, claiming that new media – rather than corporate and state media – are the purveyors of “fake news”.

The democratising role of social media is awakening larger sections of the population, especially the young, to the neo-imperial role of the US and its allies, to the inability of capitalism to address its own internal contradictions, and to key injustices, such as the case of the Palestinians. This trend will be hard to stop without overt censorship and repression.

The fate of the Palestinians will depend on the outcome of this wider clash: of the elites v’s the people. We see the first signs of this coming confrontation in the rapid growth of the international grassroots BDS movement – boycott, divestment and sanctions – and the backlash from western governments. They have quickly jettisoned their supposed commitment to free speech (remember Charlie Hebdo?) in favour of measures to suppress support for boycotts of Israel. The polarisation between leaders and led will intensify.

Despite all the evidence, I remain optimistic – both because that is my nature, and because history, however fickle, has a habit of eventually favouring those with justice on their side.”

Next is felicity Arbuthnot, a British freelance journalist who has visited, written and broadcast widely on Iraq, one of the few journalists to cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions and reported on the devastating effects that took place prior to America’s attack that killed over one million civilians:

“It is impossible, given the level of heartbreak and destruction wrought on the Middle East, not to be beyond all shame and mired in pessimism. From the religious zealots in Europe who launched eight major invasions, the Crusades, in the region, between 1095 and 1291 to “liberate” the Holy Land from the majority Muslim inhabitants, to the religious zealots led by George W. Bush and Tony Blair, in a second declared “Crusade” in 2003. It seems the lands of such an eye watering history of humanity, beliefs and wonders are never to be left to flourish amid the beauty and culture.

Fast forward to Winston Churchill who said of the Kurds and the inhabitants of Northern Iraq: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare…. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” (War Office minute, 12th May 1919.)

Lawrence of Arabia meddled in the region on behalf of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Gertrude Bell, British spy amongst other things, it is forgotten, was busy creating the “New Iraq” after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. In August 1921 she wrote with supreme patronisation: “We have finally crowned our little King.” He was not, of course, an Iraqi. Sykes-Picot redrew the borders, severing families and ancients bonds.

Oil was discovered and fast forwarding again, the Project for the New American Century and all the indescribable horrors that have befallen the region since, with further threatened, based on lie after lie, with the UN either ignored or near mute.

But in spite of all, there is perhaps still hope in a region of towering pride, culture, spirit and ingenuity. It was Paul William Roberts who wrote of Iraq after the 1991 decimation, a haunting tribute that equally applies from Tehran in the East to Palestine’s Jerusalem in the West:

“But for all the horrors, illegality, destruction, shame on the invaders and collective shame shared by so many, there is something Iraq will never lose”… the old people with resignation stamped across their foreheads, who can’t go on yet will go on; the young married couples who still hope for a better life yet don’t hope too hard lest it break their hearts, the countless unremembered acts of kindness and of love that fill desolate days, and I realise I would far prefer to be here than in any house where this war is justified. For it cannot be justified. But this region has always led to somewhere worth going. Baghdad is just as glorious in its ruin as it was in its glory, for something noble crawls from the rubble to spread golden wings in the light of dawn. The Gate of God opens wider.”

John B. Cobb, Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist described as one of the two most important North American theologians of the twentieth century:

Currently the threat of war between the United States and Russia is high.  Fortunately, the recognition of Mutual Assured Destruction may hold both powers back from the use of nuclear weapons unless one side thinks that some kind of first strike could prevent a response.  From time to time, continuous U.S. provocations of North Korea could start a nuclear war there that would be hard to contain.  These are the most immediate threats to human survival.

 I find myself assuming, without much justification, that our species will avoid this ultimate insanity, and concentrating on the threats that follow from the now well-known fact that our collective behaviour on the planet is unsustainable. 

That means that if we continue in the deep ruts we are now in, our current global civilisations will collapse, if not in war, then by famine and disease.  We are poisoning the ocean, the land, and the atmosphere.  We are exhausting or destroying the sources of fresh water. 

The battle of biochemistry against the evolution of new plant and animal diseases will not always be won.  Much of the best farmland will be lost to rising sea levels and spreading deserts.  Rising temperatures will make large parts of the planet uninhabitable. We will be more and more dependent on technology that will be more and more vulnerable.  Meanwhile the middle class is already disappearing, and the rich and powerful will exploit the poor more and more ruthlessly.  The poor will be less passive than in the past.  Their struggle to survive will include violent resistance to the violence of the powerful.  Population will plummet.  The remnant will fight over what is left.  The technology available for this fighting grows more and more comprehensively destructive.  Since we collectively have shown little willingness to change our ways radically, this seems to be the most probable scenario.

Accordingly, if I must choose between pessimism and optimism, I am a pessimist.  But I stand in a tradition that calls for us to trump pessimism with what we call “theological virtues.”  These are faith, hope, and love.  I live in hope.  Hope discerns hopeful developments here and there, new departures that, if pursued, could pull the world back from the brink.  It delights in the emergence, now and again, of leaders who, if followed, would bring about the needed changes.  It sees that history is unpredictable, full of surprises.  To love in the context of hope is to care deeply about the whole and do what we can to participate in promising breakthroughs.  It is also to generate what joy is possible in the here and now in acting for the flourishing of the whole.

Andre Vltchek is a political analyst, journalist, author and a filmmaker. He has reported and filmed armed conflicts in every corner of the world, served as a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute and is interviewed by major news and TV outlets across Asia for his incisive personal accounts:

Where do we go from here? The world seems to be heading towards the final showdown between the reactionary forces of the Western imperialism and those countries/nations that are determined to defend their rights to maintain their independent course, to protect their cultures and preserve interests of their people.

In a long term I remain very optimistic. In a short term, the confrontation may be inevitable, even brutal, but for more than five centuries, the world has been shouting in horror and pain, tormented by the Western colonialism and neo-colonialism. Most of the victims used to be invisible; they were suffering “somewhere there”, far away, where they “belonged”. Now people are refusing to suffer and to die in silence. They’d rather die standing, struggling, than to live in permanent agony and on their knees.

Powerful new media outlets, in Russia, Latin America, the Middle East and China are now confronting all orthodox Western mass media channels, challenging with determination and courage all official imperialist propaganda dogmas, while unveiling the devastation and killings caused by the Western imperialism in all corners of the globe.

Resistance is growing and the new coalitions are being constantly forged. It is definitely not good news for the West and for its collaborators. But it gives new hope to the rest of the world. I strongly believe that if left alone, the rest of the world would easily and quickly find the way to coexist peacefully, even to find solutions to many urgent ecological problems.

Without imperialism and savage capitalism, we would be already, for many decades, living in much gentler, peaceful and optimistic world.

There may have to be one more battle – a battle for survival of our human race. I only hope that if there has to be one, it would be the very last one: decisive and brief, with as little casualties as possible.

Jeff J. Brown lives in China, he has been a speaker at TEDx, the Bookworm and Capital M Literary Festivals, the Hutong, as well as being featured in an 18-part series of interviews on Radio Beijing AM774, with former BBC journalist, Bruce Connolly:

China’s long march to postwar prominence began with communist liberation in 1949. Previously, life expectancy was only 35 years and literacy was 20%. It was brutally colonised, exploited and addicted to opium, principally by Britain and America. By the end of the Mao Era in 1978, life expectancy for one-fourth of humanity skyrocketed to +65 years and literacy to +70%. The CPC had melded China into a formidable agricultural, industrial, technological and military powerhouse to be respected, in spite of inhumane, Cuba-esque sanctions.

While the economy grew over 6%/year, the population doubled, so per capita, China was still consumer poor. Deng’s 1978 reforms were designed to keep China on its path of socialism, while profiting from market methods, to create the wealth needed to eventually transition into being a rich communist country.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics has breathtakingly shattered almost every socioeconomic and trade record in the history of civilization. Over 90% of the world’s people brought out of poverty in the last 40 years are Chinese.

China is Earth’s biggest (PPP) economy, creditor, manufacturer, exporter and trader. There is no end in sight, as the CPC is on track to meet its 2049 centennial goal to be the rich, communist society the country’s constitution promises to deliver to its citizens. Unlike the West, China has done all this without occupying, colonizing and destroying other countries.

For 5,000 years, the Chinese have shown to have zero global imperialism in their DNA. For the sake of Earth’s survival into the 21 st century, we need to jettison 500 years of Western tyranny, war and genocide, for responsible and visionary global leadership. China’s proven record of win-win cooperation and social justice is a global model we can all benefit from. Time to jump aboard!

Nozomi Hayase Ph.D., is a former WikiLeaks Central contributing writer who has been covering issues of freedom of speech, transparency and the vital role of whistleblowers and cryptocurrencies.  She is also a member of the editorial board of The Indicter:

I am optimistic about the next 20 years, because we live in a world where now there is true investigative journalism. WikiLeaks opened a door for a future that can be envisioned by everyday people. This whistleblowing site that rose to prominence in 2010 with the release of the Collateral Murder video, provided an avenue for those with conscience inside institutions to come forward and reveal fraud and abuse of the powerful without fear of political retaliation. Through the method of transparency, WikiLeaks brought a new form of scientific journalism. By employing cryptography and creating a technical infrastructure that is decentralized, they innovated journalism in the age of the Internet and became a global 4th estate resilient to censorship.

For so long, the press, purported watchdogs for power has been co-opted through media consolidation and acting as gatekeepers. In the last 10 years WikiLeaks, with its perfect record of document authentication, liberated free speech from institutions that failed to protect it. When people are informed about real actions of governments, they can withdraw consent and chart a path for self-determination.

Those in power work in secrecy, manipulating perception to engineer people’s consent. From Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond to Edward Snowden, we have seen waves of contagious courage. Despite coordinated attacks, WikiLeaks stays strong and keeps publishing. I see tremendous hope in this growing network of people who have begun taking the reins of their own destiny.

Graham Vanbergen – TruePublica Editor:

The transition from the evidently disintegrating post-war rules based system to a more complicated and international system that America and the West insist on leading will be messy – dangerous even in the years ahead. 

To date, the most powerful advocates and institutions to this system have made some disastrous decisions leading to increased tensions in almost every region of the world. The power brokers of the West are now facing an unprecedented challenge, particularly as rising discontent is gathering at an unstoppable pace within their own territories from disaffected but re-engaged citizens, much to the alarm of the ruling elite. Brexit, Trump, the elimination of the traditional establishment in the French elections and the rise of non establishment political  parties is evidence of the rapidly changing political environment we now face.

The globalisation project is facing off against nationalism and protectionism headed up by populist movements, whilst traditional political power is being replaced by transnational social movements who increasingly dominate global politics – all of which adds considerable pressure to an already weakened structure. 

The worry is that America and its Western allies could do the unthinkable in a desperate attempt to regain economic and political control and attack its perceived opponents in a typically aggressive show of force with catastrophic consequences.

The big problem is that the American policed security order and European inspired legal order have both fractured at the same time with no real candidates to replace them, thereby, creating a void that could be filled with dangerous ideologies pushed by dangerous individuals.

As Antonio Gramsci wrote from his Roman prison cell just before the last world war: “Disorder, war and even disease can flood into the vacuum that forms when the old is dying and the new cannot be born” – these words are truly relevant today.

The next 20 years will be more than just challenging but from this new world disorder, as we peer over the precipice, we may see the birth of new human collaboration and collective participation as technology combined with a more enlightened generation strive for global peace – an ideology not tried before.

Peoples across the world are trying to wrangle free of globalisation, colonialism, imperialism and the inequality it delivers. From the aforementioned collective commentary it is clear that the immediate future may well be confrontational and certainly testing, be it from political strife, conflict, famine, poverty, climate change and the like but there is considerable optimism that from the very edge, humanity may just come to its senses, and as Nozomi Hayase rightly observes that there is “tremendous hope in this growing network of people who have begun taking the reins of their own destiny”.

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About the Author

graham-webGraham Vanbergen is the contributing editor of TruePublica.org.uk. He is also a featured permanent columnist for The European Financial Review and more recently The World Financial Review and regularly contributes to internationally recognised organisations such as; Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization in Canada, Dissident Voice in the USA and expat driven Russia Insider, to name a few.

He specialises in explaining the failing and damaging systems that seeks to dismantle real democracy and capitalism. He is motivated by challenging extreme neoliberal thinking that is causing a wave of disruption as western countries move from one political, social, geopolitical and economic crisis to another and is inspired by the writing styles of such luminaries as Chris Hedges and John Pilger who are award winning authors and activists.

Previously, Graham worked within the residential investment industry for over two decades at senior executive and board level for some of the worlds biggest financial, property and insurance institutions such as Nationwide Building Society, General Accident Insurance, Hambros Bank and Countrywide plc.

 

Buying American, Losing America

By Dan Steinbock

Recently, President Trump signed his “Buy American, Hire American” executive order. Ironically, while the stated goal is to put “America First”, the White House may actually subsidise old industries and undermine innovation.

 

Recently, President Trump travelled to Wisconsin to sign the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order, which seeks to crack down on fraud and abuse of the skilled worker (H-1B) visa program.

Then, he travelled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to sign the second part of the order, which calls for US government agencies to give preference to domestically produced products and for a 220-day study of US trade agreements that grant foreign companies the right to be treated as domestic companies.

The ceremony took place at the headquarters of Snap-on, a tool company. With applause from its employees, Trump said that his executive order would “minimise the use of waivers and maximise made-in-America content in all federal projects. In particular, the administration would crack down on “companies that used dumped steel to take work away from workers like you”.

But the order was also about domestic politics and the White House’s internal strife. And questions linger about its economic implications.

 

The Politics of “Buy American, Hire American”

When Trump arrived in the White House, some 45 percent of Americans approved the way he was handling his job as president, and another 45 percent disapproved. Today, almost 55 percent disapprove his performance, according to Gallup.

Moreover, some polls in the swing states, such as Wisconsin, indicated his approval ratings were under water. Clearly, it was high time for Trump to be seen as delivering his campaign pledges to American people.

There is also an internal White House angle to the story. Kenosha is a swing county that just happens to be the hometown of Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC). Through the spring, the Trump loyalists have been dismayed by Priebus’s influence and alleged that his loyalties are to the RNC, and not to the president.

Trump could have picked many locations to showcase his executive order. Yet, the fact that he signed it in Kenosha, Wisconsin, suggests that he needs the RNC and a unified Republican Party to eventually undermine the ObamaCare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), to launch the impending “massive tax cuts” and several other stated reforms.

 

The Economics of “Buy American, Hire American”

Soon as Trump signed his executive order, it was criticised by Silicon Valley behemoths whose global success is predicated on high-skill foreign employees in America.

The US should not “close the door on high-skilled workers from around the world who can contribute to American businesses’ growth and expansion,” they argue.

It also divided the US Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbyists, who believe that the H-1B needs changes, but should not be scrapped. The US should not “close the door on high-skilled workers from around the world who can contribute to American businesses’ growth and expansion”, they argue.

In economic terms, the “Buy American, Hire American” executive order is very much in line with the interests of the US steel industry, which has been a great beneficiary of “Buy American” legislation for decades.

It was also much supported by Trump’s trade adviser Dan DiMicco, former CEO of US steel giant Nucor, and Director of his National Trade Council Peter Navarro, a longtime supporter of US steel interests.

Indeed, the executive order can be seen as an effort to subsidise US steel industry as Chinese imports account for 25 percent of the US market. In this view, Trump’s proposed $1 trillion infrastructure initiative will boost steel and iron – which the White House would like to benefit mainly US interests, even against international agreements.

 

Jobs and Value Matter

According to US government data, in 2014, the iron and steel industry employed some 150,000 people generating some $113 billion in value. In turn, US high-tech industries employed some 17 million workers (12% of total employment) but contributed $7.1 trillion in terms of output (23% of total).

In modern history, advanced economies specialise in value-added industries, which require greater knowledge and productivity, while less-advanced countries seek catch-up growth through low-margin, low-value industries. The US is no exception, as evidenced by data from steel and knowledge industries.

Government policies that promote less-advanced sectors in the US economy may rally US steel stocks but risk harming America’s advanced industries, while alienating major US trade partners

Ironically, government policies that promote less-advanced sectors in the US economy may rally US steel stocks but risk harming America’s advanced industries, while alienating major US trade partners. Despite “America First” pledges, they may leave America second across attractive industries over time.

The original, slightly shorter commentary was released by China Daily on April 26, 2017

Featured Image: President Donald Trump at a meeting with business leaders at the White House on January 23 © Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

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About the Author

Dan Steinbock is the Founder of Difference Group and has served as Research Director of International Business at the India China and America Institute (US) and a Visiting Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see http://www.differencegroup.net

 

The Philippine Peso Squeeze      

By Dan Steinbock

In the first quarter, the Philippine peso depreciated against the US dollar. Internationally, this was attributed to President Duterte’s policies. In reality, it has a lot to do with the expected US rate hikes. But there is a reason why misguided geopolitics now overshadows Philippines.

 

In the recent quarter, the Philippine peso depreciated by 0.88 percent against the US dollar. It was the only currency in Asia to do so. For the first time since 2009, the peso drifted to 50 per US dollar.

Much of international media attributed the fall to President Duterte and his “unlawful” policies. The number of such reports has increased since last fall and escalated through the spring, particularly in US-based media, including some of the largest global financial news hubs.

At best, these reports reflect an odd discrepancy between the fundamentals of the Philippine economy and the way it is portrayed internationally. At worst, they illustrate a gross misrepresentation of those fundamentals.

 

The Geopolitical Peso Story

As the peso peaked at 50.40 in early March, international media saw the real culprit in President Duterte, who is “involved in unlawful killings and corruption”, as Bloomberg’s Ditas B. Lopez put it. The headline told the story: “Asia’s ugly duckling of the year is the Philippine peso, thanks to Duterte”.

Actually, this narrative did not start in early 2017 when the Philippine currency began to weaken against the US dollar. It did not reflect news; it proactively shaped news. It began already in September 2016 when peso was still 46 against the dollar. From January 2017 back to September 2016, the Bloomberg author’s Philippine stories included “Southeast Asia’s Worst-Performing Currency Is in for Another Tough Year”, “Philippine Peso Completes Worst Month in 16 Years”, “Duterte’s Peso Rout Runs Counter to the Booming Philippine Economy”, “Philippine Officials Seek to Soothe Investors Spooked by Duterte”.

Bloomberg was not alone. In the Barron’s (March 22, 2017), William Pesek’s headline tells the story: “Philippine peso’s troubles just beginning. The peso is down 8% and investors are dumping stocks amid doubts about Duterte’s economic agenda.” Here the peso is seen “buckling under the weight of a chaotic and distracted administration”, and “lots of body bags, more than 8,000 and counting”. The peso’s fall is attributed to “impeachment talk” (about Duterte). In the past investors, were “clamoring for peso assets thanks to predecessor President Aquino’s structural upgrade drive”.

Like many others, Barron’s mistook Aquino’s stated economic goals with his actual achievements. No questions are posed about the dramatic rise of the drug trade under Aquino’s watch, the complicity of public officials, and media silence about the drugs. Instead, marginal figures (Gary Alejano) with an anti-democratic mutineer record are presented as “opposition politicians”. Flawed drug wars statistics is quoted as accurate. Senator Leila de Lima is portrayed as a figure of integrity, despite her gross abuse of public office and funds, and cooperation with drug lords. And Vice President Robredo’s UN speech, which penalised her credibility, is presented as testimony of courage.

Most distressingly, most of these accounts are quiet about the alleged Goldberg plan – that is, the alleged regime change plan by the former US Philippines ambassador to replace Duterte – which advocated exploiting the Philippine public and private sector, along with international NGOs and international media, exactly in the way that these reports have done.

Peso among Southeast Asian Currencies

As the peso has depreciated against the US dollar, the Bangko Sentral (BSP) has put a positive spin to the story. In this narrative, the relative strength of the peso in the past plus lower inflation explains the currency stability.

The story is largely true. Between 2009 and 2013, the peso strengthened against the US dollar from 49 to 41. In the past quarter, it weakened to 50.

In international media, the fall was compared with the alleged strength of the Japanese yen, Korean won and other currencies. Yet, comparing apples and oranges may not be useful. The peso is an emerging-economy currency; yen and won are advanced-economy currencies. In the latter, per capita incomes are five times higher than in the Philippines.

In Vietnam and Myanmar, per capita incomes are closer to those in the Philippines. In the past years, their currencies have also experienced strong depreciation. In contrast to the peso’s 25% fall, the Vietnamese dong has weakened over 35% since 2009 and Myanmar kyat 55% since 2012.

There is still another problem with the international media accounts about the peso’s fall. It did not happen under Duterte’s watch. Instead, it began in the middle of the Aquino era, with the Fed’s exit from quantitative easing and the first rate hike around 2013 and 2016. That’s when the peso fell from 41 to 48 per dollar. 

Last year, the Philippine current account did shrink to 1%, while the trade deficit soared to a record $25 billion, and the peso depreciated accordingly. Nevertheless, Philippine exports are expected to recover while remittances and business process outsourcing revenues should remain robust.

The stability of the peso has not disappeared. In fact, in early April, when all Asian currencies took hits, the peso bucked the trend by rising on strong net inflows to the Philippines equity market. What this suggests is that investors are looking past the international media narrative and are instead focusing on the probable gains of the Duterte economic agenda.

 

Strengthening Dollar, Weakening Peso

As the Fed has exited QE and initiated tightening, US dollar hit its 14-year high last fall. It has been fuelled by rising government bond yields and the Fed’s anticipated hikes and expectations of Trump’s fiscal expansion via infrastructure stimulus.

What makes the peso trajectory harder to project vis-à-vis the US dollar is the uncertainty associated with the dollar. As the US must borrow ever more to finance its trade deficit, rising debt is pushing America deeper into the red. In the last quarter of 2016, foreign ownership of US debt outpaced US claims on foreigners by $8.4 trillion, which means a deficit that’s almost half of US GDP.

In contrast, the Philippines continues to enjoy significant long-term economic potential, even though – after months of misguided stories about the Philippine economy – international investors have been spooked by their own media.

As international focus lingers on political controversies associated with Manila’s regional rebalancing, the economic promise of the Duterte policies has been ignored. However, that’s not about economic fundamentals but about geopolitics.

The original version of this commentary was published by The Manila Times on April 17, 2017

Featured Image: TALKING ECONOMIC POLICY. President Duterte hosts a dinner for businessmen on December 12, 2016 (Rappler)

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About the Author

Dan Steinbock is the Founder of Difference Group and has served as Research Director of International Business at the India China and America Institute (US) and a Visiting Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Centre (Singapore). For more, see http://www.differencegroup.net

 

 

Syria – Trump may just have started WWIII

By Peter Koenig

The conflict in Syria continues to haunt not only the media but also the minds and hearts of people who have witnessed the horrendous effects of the recent chemical attack on Syrian ground. Peter Koenig bravely calls to the world, “People wake up! – If you don’t, you may be next.”

 

President Trump just ordered a US attack of at least 59 Tomahawk missiles from US warships in the Mediterranean Sea on Syria’s al-Shayrat airbase near Homs. Mr. Talal Barazi, governor of Homs province, reports several deaths but at this time does not offer further details. This Tomahawk assault was supposedly in response to Bachar al-Assad’s alleged nerve gas attack on 4 April, targeting the civilian population in Idlib Province that killed in excess of 60 people, among them many children.

It reeks all over of False Flag – Gladio 2 – level “world”. But nobody smells it, nobody wants to see it, nobody wants to hear it – and especially, nobody wants to talk about it. The truth cannot be spoken. The attack has to be launched immediately, before any investigation could reveal the truth. That’s the way it’s always been. Kill the witnesses. That’s what Washington and its Zionist masters know best.

The Pentagon says Moscow was informed about the attack. There was no reaction from the Russian Government yet.

Earlier Mr. Putin stated that “it was unacceptable to bring accusations against anyone until a thorough and impartial international investigation was conducted”.

Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, says that “military and intelligence personnel”, “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham”. 

This is a classical case of a false flag, instigated by the CIA and carried out by Saudi-Turkish planes to blame Assad. Western presstitute media propagated and hammered into westerners indoctrinated brains the same lie as in 2013, when the East Ghouta Chemical attacks were killing children to justify US “Humanitarian” Military intervention. Then as today, the Washington assault was to follow quickly before the lie could be discovered, but Mr. Putin intervened by warning Washington not to attack – or else – and insisting on an investigation. Russian naval facility in Tartus and airbase in Khmeimim, Syria, were ready to counter a US attack.

Later it was proven beyond any doubt that the attack did not come from Syria’s army, nor was it ordered by Mr. Assad, that it was indeed, once more, a false flag carried out by the Syrian opposition, the so-called rebels, but in truth the western paid terrorists, with the purpose to blame Mr. Assad and to justify the “regime change” – planned since 2009, since well before the CIA instigated start of the 2011 “civil war”.1

It is depressing to see how the world – the corrupted-to-the-bone western world – swallows these lies and actually openly calls for war against Syria, for the removal of Mr. Assad, Syria’s only legitimate and sovereign President, elected by the Syrians and still enjoying more than 80% support of the people.  Renown socialists’, so-called peace seekers’ eyes are blurred by the western corporate lie-machine. It is sad to see. They believe the western criminal media. It is too hard even for them to admit to themselves that they have been duped, perhaps all their lives, and that they must now seek out and see reality. They can’t. But instead to look inside themselves – to ask themselves, what interest would Mr. Assad have to kill his own people, the children of his nation, the future of Syria – and God help Syria to have a future again – these shabby “progressives” are too noble to admit to reality – and instead they join the blinded and call for “regime change”. That’s exactly what Washington – and the Zionist murderers behind that foul inner-beltway monument of assassins, called the White House, want.

It is depressing to see how the world – the corrupted-to-the-bone western world – swallows these lies and actually openly calls for war against Syria, for the removal of Mr. Assad, Syria’s only legitimate and sovereign President, elected by the Syrians and still enjoying more than 80% support of the people. 

We are living a higher level of “Operation Gladio” again – where evil reigns, where the most horrendous of what was once called human beings are in power, killing mercilessly innocent people for their BIG PURPOSE, for world hegemony. This Judo-Christian “civilisation” (sic-sic) has a history of more than 1000 years of Crusade killings, followed by colonial killing and raping and exploitation of countries and their people around the globe, from Asia to Africa to Latin America – and there is no end. Our western “culture” is sold to Lucifer and his banking clan – continuing killing for greed and power.

People wake up! – If you don’t, you may be next.

We all have this little spark left somewhere in our brains – that tells you that something is not right – that those who call the shots are liars, that the world’s justice is not with evil – that justice is seeking peace not subjugation, power and material gains, but solidarity and harmony among us, brothers and sisters of the human kind.

We are living a higher level of “Operation Gladio” again – where evil reigns, where the most horrendous of what was once called human beings are in power, killing mercilessly innocent people for their BIG PURPOSE, for world hegemony.

But also, be aware that this monstrous beast knows no scruples. It has one goal – Full Spectrum Dominance – and will not let go, under no circumstances, until this goal is fully achieved or itself, the monster, the exceptional nation, is subjugated and disabled.

People stand up and become disabler of the empire!

Syria is a mere square on this murderous chess board, as was Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many more to come. The purpose is not “winning a war” – that would be too simple. The purpose is creating and leaving behind chaos, eternal chaos. In the case of Syria a balkanisation of the country, what Clinton did to Yugoslavia. The old “divide to conquer” – it still works after hundreds of years. People are still blinded to these oldest and most rudimentary of war strategies. They still fall for it; don’t notice; swallow the lies.

Syria is a mere square on this murderous chess board, as was Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and many more to come.

In Syria, the stakes are high. In addition to the insane profits of the war and weapons industry – there is the little talked about Qatar-Turkey-Syria pipeline that was to bring oil and gas from the Gulf to Europe to demolish the Russian gas market in Europe – and to make trillions for US petro-giants; a pipeline Mr. Assad rejected in 2009. Instead he approved and promoted the Iran pipeline through Syria to Europe. Iranian hydrocarbons would complement, rather than compete with, gas and oil from Russia for Europe. That’s when Obama decided that Bachar al-Assad had to go. It also fitted the bigger picture – a balkanised Middle East, with steady conflicts fuelling the war industry – but eventually leading to a Greater Israel, stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, absorbing, parts of Saudi Arabi, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.  

“It’s barbarism. I see it coming masqueraded under lawless alliances and predetermined enslavements. It may not be about Hitler’s furnaces, but about the methodical and quasi-scientific subjugation of Man. His absolute humiliation. His disgrace.” – Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet, in a press conference on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize (1979).

Featured Image: Musa, a 25-year-old Kurdish sniper, on top of a building in the destroyed town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, in Syria in January 2015.

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About the Author

koenig-webPeter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media, TeleSUR, TruePublica, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Reference
1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-ghouta-chemical-attacks-us-backed-false-flag-killing-children-to-justify-a-humanitarian-military-intervention/5351363

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