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Berlin – Another False Flag, the Government’s Complicity is Remorseless

By Peter Koenig

Random killing by the western secret services – 12 dead, about 40 injured, is the result of the latest false flag attack in Berlin, when on 19 December, a truck plowed into a Christmas market at Berlin’s Bretscheideplatz, near the lush Kurfuerstendamm. It’s a ‘déjà-vu’ of not even half a year ago, when in Nice, France, on 14th July a truck mowed down hordes of people celebrating Bastille Day.

In Berlin, the first “culprit” was a Pakistani who apparently “escaped”. When later he turned up and explained with proof his innocence, they had to let him go. In the cabin of the truck they also found a dead man of Polish origin. He couldn’t be accused, since he was dead. Then the chase was stalled, until miraculously, about a day later, they found in the truck identity papers of a Mr. Anis Amri (24) of Tunisian citizenship. As is usual with these terrorists, they like to leave their identity behind. It seems to be part of their strategy to be caught and killed. Now, there was again a “suspect”, who could be chased, throughout Europe.

At three in the morning of December 23, again miraculously, Anis Amri turned up on a plaza in Milan, got allegedly into a confrontation with two policemen, who claimed he pulled a gun, when one of them shot and killed him. No witness, no proof. Two Italian policemen killed a young man, whom – they say – they didn’t even have a clue who he might be. They became heroes, literally overnight. Italy’s new PM, Paolo Gentiloni, thanked and congratulated them; and so did Mme. Merkel and her Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.

That’s what the west knows best – denigrating and discriminating, accusing innocents, to serve their purpose, sanctions for those who do not submit. In a few words: The west is a highly criminal civilization, led by murderers.

The same pattern all over again. DEAD MAN CAN’T TALK. It’s Paris (Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan); Nice; Brussels; Munich; Orlando, Florida; San Bernardino, California… all over again and again – and again. The “plowing-through-a-celebrating-crowd” idea, looks like a “winner”, a carbon copy from the 14th July massacre in Nice. At the end the designated “Muslim” terrorist is killed. No more witness.

People wake up! Your own western governments are killing you. They are using their secret services, the core of which are CIA, Mossad and MI6, with the collaboration of their homologues and elite police forces of the respective countries, where the false flag is to be perpetrated. You are the peons they need to reach their goal; you are cannon-fodder for their greed. Don’t believe one minute that your respective governments didn’t and don’t know what’s going on. They are intimate parts of these mass murders. The alleged killers – with strong emphasis on “alleged” – may be framed as Muslims, but the real perpetrators ARE NOT MUSLIMS, they are your own spineless puppet governments. They obey orders to demonise the Muslim faith and society.

That’s what the west knows best – denigrating and discriminating, accusing innocents, to serve their purpose, sanctions for those who do not submit. In a few words: The west is a highly criminal civilisation, led by murderers. In reality, no change for the last 800-some years, colonising, exploiting, raping, murdering the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Today’s “leaders” are the descendants of those rapists and killers of times past, the children of the aggressive Judo-Christian greed culture. They form the core of our western killer civilisation.

These western ‘leaders’ are mere puppets, because they have been put in “power” by the invisible but bloody hands of the elusive elite, also called the Deep State – the Deep State gone global. Democracy is dead. It’s become a useless defunct slogan. No so-called election over the past decade or so, in the western world has been democratic. They were all scams and manipulations of peoples’ minds and wills. And if they didn’t conform to what the Washington masters and their supreme masters needed, Plan B of “regime change” kicked in. They have become experts of semi-clandestine “regime change” through parliamentary coups – i.e. Paraguay, Ukraine, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Spain and many others. If these eventually “elected” western leaders (sic-sic), from Obama, to Merkel, Hollande, May, Gentiloni – and the entire EU / OECD clan, don’t behave, they are “cooked”, are risking their lives. That’s the extent of impunity which drives this hegemonic criminal super force towards the New World Order, or the One World Order, led by the One Zionist-Anglo empire, which is synonymous of the global finance and war industry.

Today’s “leaders” are the descendants of those rapists and killers of times past, the children of the aggressive Judo-Christian greed culture. They form the core of our western killer civilisation. These western “leaders” are mere puppets, because they have been put in “power” by the invisible but bloody hands of the elusive elite, also called the Deep State – the Deep State gone global.

The finance clan, the lords of money, the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, Soros’es et al, the FED, BIS (Bank for International Settlements, the secretive central bank of all central banks) and Goldman Sachs, have to act fast; otherwise they might lose the key instrument of their power – the sham dollar pyramid economy – may fall apart, before they have actually reached their goal – a world under constant chaos, never-ending conflicts and wars. A world under which a small elite, enslaves the 99.99% of “Us, the People” – under ever worsening life conditions, unemployment, misery, disease, privatised social services, all contributing to a steady decline in life expectancy.

Among their instruments is permanent chaos, enhanced by an increase of new and old diseases and epidemics. They are being tested and applied by some uncounted CIA, Mossad, MI6 and other secret services and military laboratories around the world (some estimates range from 70 to way more than 100). The “out-of-the-blue” Ebola outbreak (2013-2016) in West Africa, was just one of the trial cases. Other implanted killing calamities may include famine through food speculation and GMOs, as well as long-term debilitating genetic diseases ‘inoculated’ through (forced) vaccinations against flu and other real or fabricated diseases, as well as genetically engineered food.

Open borders forced by trade lobbies and WTO (World Trade Organization) will wipe out small farmers and manufacturers in developing countries, thus eventually handing monopolies to large, mostly US corporations, to the detriment of already impoverished nations, whose vulnerability will be further abused to extract their natural resources for a pittance, so they may repay their IMF / World Bank imposed and leveraged debt.

Among their instruments is permanent chaos, enhanced by an increase of new and old diseases and epidemics. They are being tested and applied by some uncounted CIA, Mossad, MI6 and other secret services and military laboratories around the world (some estimates range from 70 to way more than 100).

Floods of refugees from war zones to industrialised wealthy countries, currently happening from the war-torn Middle East to Europe, will disrupt the labour market, push down wages, create massive unemployment. These are all tools towards enslavement of populations. People who have to fend and fight for daily food and often for sheer survival, have no energy or time to take to the streets and protest. That’s the plan; already being enacted. Just look at Greece.

What does all that have to do with the Berlin massacre? – Everything. Berlin, like Paris, Brussels, Munich, Orlando… is just a cog in the wheel of the monster’s drive towards full world hegemony. Unexpected, haphazard carnage and terror acts are spreading misery, poverty and fear. People who are afraid will call for more police and military protection. They will voluntarily give up their human and civil rights for what they hope will be more “protection”, being totally oblivious to the fact that the very governments from whom they are seeking more protection are those that commit these acts of treason and terror, those who are behind the killings. The Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled presstitute MSM is in permanent brainwashing mode. Unless you search the news and information for yourself on alternative media, they will never tell you the truth, but their lies, after lies, after more of the same lies will fabricate the public truth.

Peoples’ fear and absence of civil rights are easy steps towards increased militarisation of the west, already happening – look at France – President (sic) Hollande was just able to extend the State of Emergency through July 2017. The goal is to include it into the French Constitution, basically putting the French people under permanent actual or threat of Martial Law. Others might follow – Germany, Italy – all those whose constituents are ever warier of the EU and their “monopoly money”, the euro, and who may seek EUREXIT. This would break the camel’s back, so to speak, or at least put a wrench in the boundless onslaught of the hegemon.

Peoples’ fear may also re-strengthen the faltering justification of NATO. The fall of NATO must be halted. NATO is the Deep State’s warrior flagship, the military fear- and war monger vis-à-vis Russia and eventually China – the last vestiges to be conquered by the self-styled almighty empire, the invisible elite that pretends to rule the globe. Fortunately, they cannot stand up to the Russia-China chess duo which is gradually outsmarting the west’s ostentatious killer exploits.

In the case of Berlin, the German government is intimately complicit in disrupting the year-end Holidays with a killing-spree, blaming Muslims, finding a pre-identified victim, Mr. Anis Amri, who most likely had no clue that he was framed.

Imagine, your own spineless governments, following orders of the globalised Deep State – in Berlin, Munich, Nice, Paris, Brussels, Orlando, and an almost endless list of false flags – are randomly slaughtering hundreds of people, creating endless pain and human suffering. How can we respect our so-called leaders? They have zero esteem for us, who are their bread-earners. They kill us, no hesitation, if it pleases them and serves their purpose – and their greed.

In the case of Berlin, the German government is intimately complicit in disrupting the year-end Holidays with a killing-spree, blaming Muslims, finding a pre-identified victim, Mr. Anis Amri, who most likely had no clue that he was framed. In Italy, the police catches him (or somebody who has been given the pre-identified Tunisian victim’s name), they kill him – and, bingo – case closed. Another fear-inflicting false flag was born and concluded, advancing the bulldozer of empire’s destruction a notch closer to Full Spectrum Dominance.

The MSM will do the rest – until the next fake exploit. Be prepared. But this can happen only if we let our governments get away with murder; if we close our eyes to reality; if we keep believing the presstitute media. And if we keep buckling down for fear. Yes, it is horrendous, what they are doing; wreaking human misery, suffering, atrocious pain on their citizens – all in the name of absolute power, not even for them, but for their masters who command them. These vassals expect eventually to be rewarded. Yet, since thousands of years, empires have worked through proxies, whom they nurtured and spoiled – just to neutralise them at the end, when they have reached their goal and the vassals are becoming a nuisance. The 21st Century is no different. – Sounds like conspiracy theory? – Believe me, it isn’t. Think about it.

People wake up! – Boycott the MSM. Take the time to seek the truth elsewhere, for example, on RT, TeleSur, Global Research, ICH, New Eastern Outlook (NEO), CounterPunch, The Saker, Voltairenet — and many more. The Deep State cannot win without your participation.

 

Featured image courtesy: Andreas Trojak

 

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About the Author

Peter Koenig is an Economist and Geopolitical Analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He 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.

 

 

Trump Tariffs Threaten To Undermine World Trade In 2017

By Dan Steinbock

As world trade and investment have plateaued, globalisation has ground to a halt. The timing could not be worse for the Trump tariffs.

 

In the recent Central Economic Work Conference, stability became the common denominator for China’s economic planning in 2017. And next year, the new central committee will is likely to speed up the reform push toward the late 2010s.

Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump chose Peter Navarro, a long-standing China basher, to head the newly-created National Trade Council. Concurrently, the Trump team proposed a 10% import tariff, which is likely to trigger a trade conflict between US and China – and many other nations.

Starting in January, the US-Chinese goals will diverge in a way that has not been seen since the 1970s.

 

Massive monetary stimulus, but no pickup in trade and investment

At the peak of globalisation, the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) was often used as a barometer of international commodity trade. The index soared to a record high in May 2008 reaching 11,793 points. But as the financial crisis spread in the advanced West, the BDI plunged by 94% to 663 points.

As China and other large emerging economies chose to support the ailing advanced economies through G20 cooperation, the US, the EU and Japan pledged they would accelerate reforms in global governance. At the same time, they launched massive fiscal stimulus and monetary easing. So the BDI soared to 4,661 in 2009.

The indicators of global investment and trade herald even gloomier prospects.

However, as promises of reforms were ignored and stimulus policies expired, the BDI bottomed out at 1043 in early 2011, amid the European sovereign debt crisis.

During the past half a decade, advanced economies have sustained a semblance of stability by relying on historically ultra-low interest rates and massive injections of quantitative easing. Yet, these huge shifts have not been reflected by the BDI, which continues to stagnate, as do the advanced economies.

Indeed, last February, the Index reached a historical low of 290 but rose to almost 1,260 in the fall, fuelled by the globalisation efforts of China-led G20. However, after Trump’s protectionist moves, the index has plunged again – almost 25% in less than a month.

The indicators of global investment and trade herald even gloomier prospects.

 

Eclipse of Globalization

By the 1870s, capital and trade flows rapidly became substantial, driven by falling transport costs. However, this first wave of globalisation was reversed by the retreat of the US and Europe into nationalism and protectionism between 1914 and 1945.

After World War II, trade barriers came down, and transport costs continued to fall. As foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade returned to the pre-1914 levels, globalisation was fuelled by Western Europe followed by the rise of Japan. This second wave of globalisation benefited mainly the advanced economies.

After 1980 many developing countries broke into world markets for manufactured goods and services, while they were also able to attract foreign capital. This era of globalisation peaked between China’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the global recession in 2008. Indeed, during the Great Recession, large emerging economies led by China fuelled the international economy, which was spared from a global depression.

In 2017, the Trump tariffs will pave way to greater protectionism, which is likely to be supported by several key elections in Europe. As a result, the supportive effect of world trade and investment could deteriorate further – particularly as tit-for-tat retaliation scenarios will materialise.

But as the G20 cooperation dimmed, so did global growth prospects, too. Before the global crisis, world investment soared to almost $2 trillion. In the current year, global FDI will decline. The state of world trade is worse. World export volumes reached a plateau already some two years ago. World trade has stopped growing.

At the same time, the third leg of globalisation, global migration, is plunging in developed economies and stagnating in developing countries. The 21st century has started with more than 65 million people displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution. It is the greatest global forced displacement since 1945.

In 2017, the Trump tariffs will pave way to greater protectionism, which is likely to be supported by several key elections in Europe. As a result, the supportive effect of world trade and investment could deteriorate further – particularly as tit-for-tat retaliation scenarios will materialise.

We are about to witness a major clash between Washington and Beijing. But it is not just a clash between the Chinese quest for stability and Trump’s “First America.” It is a clash between America and the rest of the world – particularly the emerging economies which today fuel global growth prospects.

The world economy will pay the bill.

 

The original, slightly shorter version was published by Shanghai Daily on December 28, 2016.

Featured image courtesy: Carlo Allegri / Reuters

 

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About the Author

Dr Dan Steinbock is the Founder of Difference Group and has served as Research Director at the India, China and America Institute (USA) and visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see http://www.differencegroup.net/

 

 

The Revolution of the Victims of Globalisation and Neo-Nationalism

By Takis Fotopoulos

The victory of Brexit and the election of Trump drastically affected the New World Order by explicitly questioning globalisation. The reason in both cases is the strong popular resistance lurking in the background working towards economic and national sovereignty as the necessary condition for self-determination and radical social change.

 

Despite the mass campaign by the elites against the Brexit revolution and the corresponding revolution in the USA, their dreams of reversing both seem to be in serious difficulty, as the electors’ vote in USA showed, and, also, corresponding developments in Britain where the legalistic attempts to reverse Brexit seem to be foundering. The reason in both cases is the strong popular resistance lurking in the background. This is because contrary to the disorienting myths of the globalist “Left”, (i.e. the “Left” which is fully integrated into the New World Order of neoliberal globalisation that emerged following the collapse of “actually existing socialism” and the massive expansion of multinationals) both revolutions represent in fact the victory of the victims of globalisation against the beneficiaries from it. It is in fact the abysmal failure of this “Left” to recognise this radical development, which has led to its political demise, with most of its ex-supporters in the working class presently moving en masse to the rising neo-nationalist movements.

 Trump’s victory in the Presidential Election simply confirmed the fact, recognised even by systemic writers, that the movement for Brexit in Britain, as well as the movement for Trump in the United States and similar movements all over Europe, are in fact all parts of a rising new anti-globalisation movement which began in Europe in the last few years and has spread all over the world. It is the same new anti-globalisation movement, which led, a couple of weeks ago, to the defeat of the pro-EU plebiscite in Italy, which in fact aimed to increase the powers of the local executive organs of the Transnational Elites (mainly based in the G7 countries) to impose the dictates of the New World Order. This new movement is a global movement of the victims of globalisation – who constitute the vast majority of the world population – for economic and national sovereignty, as the necessary condition for self-determination and radical social change.

However, most of the Left, which traditionally had fought for the liberation of the victims of the capitalist system, particularly the working class, today, has been fully integrated into the NWO of neoliberal globalisation, which is, the latest version of this system, and cannot even think of questioning globalisation and its institutions — the EU, WTO, IMF, WB, NATO etc. – as well as the multinationals and the elites running it. Instead, this globalist “Left” simply criticises what it considers to be the system’s “excesses” (i.e. systemic symptoms, like “austerity”) and sides fully with the beneficiaries of globalisation – that is, the upper classes and that part of the middle classes which has not been pauperised during globalisation – in expressing their desire to improve the present NWO rather than overthrow it.

At the same time, in the absence of any Left political expression for the rising “from below” strong anti-globalisation movement, the victims of globalisation, including the remnants of the old working class, inevitably, moved to the emerging neo-nationalist parties, which of course, are not anti-capitalist parties but at least fight against globalisation in a consistent way, adopting in the process, particularly in cases like Le Pen’s FN in France, many of the traditional demands of the Left. As it is well known, the old working class in advanced capitalist countries rapidly diminished during the de-industrialisation of the last four decades or so, when a new phenomenon characterising the globalisation era emerged: the multinational corporation.

This new movement is a global movement of the victims of globalisation – who constitute the vast majority of the world population – for economic and national sovereignty, as the necessary condition for self-determination and radical social change.

The neo-nationalist parties that emerged in the globalisation era usually have little relation to the old nationalist parties that usually appeared at the time when nation-states were being created, often with the explicit aim to help the building of such nation-states. As such, the old nationalist movements were aggressive movements against other peoples. In contrast, neo-nationalist movements are in effect defensive movements fighting for the restoration of economic and national sovereignty, which is brutally phased out by the transnational elites in the globalisation era.[1]

In other words, in the NWO, the peoples’ need for self-determination had no other outlet but the nation-state. Particularly so, as up to a few years ago the world was dominated by nation-states, within which communities with a common culture, language, customs etc. could express themselves. Therefore, the nation-state became today, yet again, a means for national liberation as it used to be in the early 20th century, a means of self-determination for peoples under colonial rule struggling for their national liberation. The difference is that the struggle for the nation-state today, and generally the struggle for national and therefore economic sovereignty, is seen today not as an end in itself, as in the past, but as the necessary condition (though obviously not the sufficient one as well) for social liberation. This is also why, unlike old nationalism, neo-nationalism raises also demands that in the past were an essential part of the Left agenda, such as the demand for greater equality (within the nation-state and between nation-states), the demand to restore social services, the demand to minimise the power of the elites and even anti-war demands.

At the same time, the politically correct globalist “Left” (i.e. the “Left” which, directly or indirectly, has adopted the ideology of globalisation) supported all wars of the Transnational elites during the globalisation era (from Yugoslavia up to Libya and Syria) and in the USA supported even one of the leading players in these criminal wars – as the “least evil”: Hillary Clinton! No wonder this kind of “Left” is utterly discredited to the eyes of the victims of globalisation and is theoretically and politically bankrupt. Not surprisingly, also, the same globalist “Left” presently attacks those among the victims of globalisation, who used to be its supporters (unemployed ex-workers and so on), as nationalists, if not as racists and fascists. Having said this, it is hardly surprising, given the political origin of many neo-nationalist parties and their supporters, that elements of the old nationalist ideology had penetrated them, (e.g. various Islamophobic and anti-immigration trends), which then provide the excuse to the elites and the media to dismiss these movements in toto as “far right”, anti-immigrant, racist etc. However, it can easily be shown that the refugee problem itself is also part and parcel of globalisation and of the “4 freedoms” (capital, labour, goods and services) that its ideology preaches. In other words, the anti-immigrant nature of several neo-nationalist movements arises out of the economic consequences of globalisation rather than out of any racist or anti-immigrant beliefs of their supporters.

All this means that neither Trump, nor his likes in Europe (Farage, Le Pen, Grillo and so on) can be credited for the creation of the mass popular anti-globalisation movement itself, which is flourishing today all over Europe and beyond. In fact, all these politicians simply tried to exploit, for electoral reasons, the rising world-wide movement against globalisation, while at the same time diverting it to a parallel movement they promote: neo-nationalism. It is therefore only to the extent that these politicians express the real demands of the new anti-globalisation movement that the victims of globalisation support them.

The victory of Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the USA drastically affected the NWO by explicitly questioning globalisation.

Another by-product of the above analysis is that to simply characterise Trump as a protectionist betrays, at best, an ignorance of the fundamental differences between protectionism and old nationalism (which were both phenomena of the nation-states era) and neo-nationalism, which is basically a movement that arose out of the economic and cultural effects of globalisation, particularly the liberalisation of labour markets, so that labour could become more competitive. The victory of Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the USA drastically affected the NWO by explicitly questioning globalisation. Both phenomena also constitute major social revolutions from below, against the concerted attack of the transnational elites (political, economic, cultural, academic and media) to complete the globalisation process and lead to the creation of a system of global governance.

Of course, the differences between Hillary and Trump are much deeper than just free trade. In fact, as it was rightly pointed out, the hard difference between Hillary who “has done nothing but advocate or agree to endless US-led war crimes without any life gain but only mass murder, social ruin and terror which she ignores” and Trump – which is also the difference between him and his Republican predecessors – is “Trump’s denunciation of NAFTA and willingness to have peace with other nations not bowing to Uncle Sam”.[2] This difference, plus – I would add – Trump’s determination to neutralise, if not abolish, TPP and TTIP, are defining the main aim of the counter-revolution against Trump. Needless to add that the globalist “Left” simply ignores these crucial differences and sides with his haters who, as Prof. John McMurtry also stressed, “cannot say this [as] they stick to the politically correct repudiations, and call him ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, ‘bigot’ and so on, even if the conclusion does follow from what he says or does. Selected instances are the ruling fallacy here.”[3]

There is no doubt therefore that the election of Trump, as well as the vote for Brexit, represented a kind of popular revolution, as each signaled the peoples’ revolt against globalisation and the elites’ plans for global governance. Below is a first-hand description (in the conservative Times) of how working class people (who, effectively, have given up voting long ago, both in Britain and the USA, having concluded that elections cannot change anything), decided to try the election process and they won against all the odds! That is, against the combined forces of all parties (even the Republican Party turned against its own candidate!), against all media, against most academics (including “Left” Nobel prize winners), against Hollywood and the entire culture industry and, of course, against the middle classes, apart from that part which became a victim of globalisation:

The Trump effect is more than, as the man himself put it, “Brexit plus plus plus”. It is nothing less than a revolution, not just in American and global politics, but in the way we see politics and in the way we do politics. I saw first-hand in Mississippi how Donald Trump had rallied thousands and thousands of people to his banner; a forgotten generation of voters who had given up on elections long ago after being trodden down by the inexorable march of globalisation, but bursting with patriotism and enthusiasm now that they had found a candidate who would speak for them. Mr Trump reached these people by breaking the mould. The legacy media wanted no part of him, and American broadcasting rules allowed them to be even more obviously biased against his campaign than they were against Brexit in the UK.[4]

In fact, this is far from an isolated incident and every honest journalist who attended similar gatherings in both the UK and US reported exactly the same picture of a revolutionary atmosphere prevailing among the victims of globalisation. John Harris, for instance, in the flagship of globalist “Left”, who visited the Brexit areas as well as the areas who voted for Trump had drawn the same conclusion in an article subtitled “Workers I met in Indiana were as much victims of globalisation as those in Stoke or Merthyr Tydfil”.[5]

Of course, this was not a revolution of the kind we saw in the last three centuries or so, as part of the revolutionary era that began in the 17th century and probably ended in the last century. It is clear that, following the collapse of “actually existing socialism”, this kind of revolution is not possible any more, at least in any country fully integrated into the NWO of neoliberal globalisation with a relatively strong middle class. Yet, this does not rule out insurrections, or even electoral “revolutions”, such as Brexit or “Trumpism”, where the electorates turn against the entire establishment, rejecting any kind of elites (political, economic, cultural, media etc.) The fact that both Brexit and Trumpism signal a new era, as every revolution has done in the past, was well summarised by another analyst who is also the founder of Leave.UK:

No more NΑΤΟ massing troops on Russia’s borders to stir up the tensions which justify its existence. No more casual acceptance of mass immigration, persistent low-level terrorism and the erosion of national identity as “the normal” in the West. We’re on the cusp of a new era, and we’ll know soon if the crest of the Trump wave is about to break on Paris and Berlin, too.[6]

Clearly, therefore, this process has nothing to do with what the British government, or the new US Administration, for that matter, will do, or will not do, in the future. Neither Farage nor Trump nor Le Pen are leaders of this global movement. This is obviously a leaderless global movement expressing concrete demands for national and economic sovereignty, which is exactly the form that the struggle for self-determination takes in the globalisation era.

 

This article is based on the author’s new book under the title The New World Order in Action: Globalization, The Brexit Revolution and the “Left”, (Progressive Press, November 2016) which has just been published in a second edition (December 2016) with a new chapter on the Brexit Revolution in the USA. The book is available on Amazon (UK and US)

 

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About the Author

Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher and economist who founded the inclusive democracy movement. He is noted for his synthesis of the classical democracy with the libertarian socialism and the radical currents in the new social movements in Towards An Inclusive Democracy (London & New York: Cassell, 1997). He is the editor of The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy (which succeeded Democracy & Nature). He was previously (1969 1989) Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of North London.

References
1. see ch 3, “The phasing out of national sovereignty in the NWO and the rise of neo-nationalism”
2. Prof. John McMurtry, “President Trump: Big Liar Going to Washington or Tribune of the People?”, Global Research, 10/11/2016 http://www.globalresearch.ca/president-trump-big-liar-going-to-washington-or-tribune-of-the-people/5556141
3. ibid.
4. Arron Banks, “We’re on the cusp of a new era”, The Times, 10/11/2016
5. John Harris, “The reasons for Trump are also the reasons for Brexit”, The Guardian, 11/11/2016
6. Arron Banks, “We’re on the cusp of a new era”, op.cit.

 

Unbridled Global Capitalism: People Wake Up! Time is Running Out!

By Peter Koenig

Washington has shown us again on 8 November that they offer only the choice between risking nuclear annihilation of humanity and total corporate privatisation of our lives and our live services that we, the people, have created. The latter means impoverishment and enslavement to corporations for the majority of the population. It is a choice between the Satan and Lucifer. Here are just a few examples of what the establishment gets away with and nobody protests.

 

The UN Human Rights Commission Expels Russia

On 28 October 2016, the UN kicked Russia out of the UN Human Rights Commission, but keeps Saudi Arabia and of course the US in the HRC – both of which are the largest, most audacious human rights abusers of our planet.

 

 

This is the first time in HRC’s history that a member of the Security Council was voted out. The reasons given by the western vassals was Russia’s involvement in Syria, “bombing hospitals and civilians, and supporting the atrocities of the Assad regime”, when exactly the contrary is true.

There is ample evidence that the US/NATO supported ISIS forces and the US / NATO / France / UK themselves are responsible for these deadly bombing raids on Aleppo, executed so that they can blame Russia. It is a ridiculous farce.

 

Image Saudi King Salman

 

By now the world knows that the US, NATO and Washington’s Gulf puppets are responsible for devastating the entire Middle East – but nobody objects. The empire – alias the Deep State behind the empire – calls the shots based on flagrant lies. The Deep State, some call it the Illuminati, others the “elusive super elite”, is a semi-secretive clan of a few obscenely rich and powerful Zionist-dominated families that since several hundred years have gradually taken over the world which today is at the verge of falling – or has already fallen – under the aegis of the New World Order (NWO).

Baron Nathan Rothschild said already around the year 1700,

“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”

These words are today as true as they were 320 years ago.

The President of the United States literally boasts about international capital crimes he commits and which nobody condemns – the extra-judiciary drone killings which he personally approves have killed at least 4,700 innocent people, according to official Washington statistics. The real number is at least triple or quadruple that amount. He is wiping out children, women, men, entire families, and nobody beeps.

All those bought western US puppet-UN members, who were compelled to vote against Russia, of course know the truth; they know in their innermost selves – which they are denying – that Russia is actually the only country seriously attempting to bring stability to the Middle East, that the real culprits for the three decades of bloodshed in the Middle East (including the first Gulf War, the Iran-Iraq war, the destabilisation of Somalia, the destruction of South Sudan and the West Sudan Region of Darfur – and counting) are the United States and her corrupted vassals, the Saudis, Turkey, Qatar and other Gulf States that are at the mercy of the empire. By now they also know that the CIA created the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) from Saddam Hussein’s elite forces, that they were trained, funded and armed by the US, Israeli, NATO, French and British secret services. They all obey the orders of the Empire for FEAR, are afraid of sanctions, of bombs and invasions and regime change; they fear of being deprived of Washington’s favours. Fear is the weapon of cowards and against cowards.

The world just looks on, as Russia, one of the few defenders of peace, justice and stability in the Middle East, is expelled from the Human Rights Commission, while the United States is allowed to remain; the country currently involved in seven wars and counting – which has the record in extra-judiciary drone killings (this is a MUST read: “I don’t know how many people I have killed”,1 says a US drone pilot – and which is responsible for 10 to 12 million people killed in wars and conflicts directly initiated by Washington, or by proxies, in the last 15 years.

 

Crisis in Crimea

On 15 November 2016, a UN special committee approved a resolution condemning Russia’s “temporary occupation of Crimea and reaffirming the United Nations’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty over the Black Sea peninsula.” The resolution was approved by 73 to 23 with 76 abstentions. The resolution will most likely be adopted by the 193-member assembly. Most leaders of the world know the truth, but don’t protest against the lies, for fear – what else? – Another horrendous farce!

The US instigated in February 2014 the coup d’état in Ukraine – which prompted the Maidan massacre, actually directed from the US Embassy in Kiev, followed by an atrocious civil war, supported and nurtured by Washington, the European Union and NATO. The autonomous authorities of Crimea, of which more than three quarters of the population are Russians, decided they didn’t want to remain part of the newly western implanted Nazi regime in Kiev. They launched on 16 March 2014 a referendum to rejoin Russia. It was approved by over 95% of Crimean. The Duma (Parliament) of the Russian Federation accepted integrating Crimea into the Russian Federation. Crimea was not annexed, as the western propaganda apparatus likes its audience to believe. The Crimea peninsula was reintegrated at her own request.

Do not just accept what the mainstream media tells you! – Get the news from alternative media, on internet, if the national communication authorities prevent you from acceding alternative broadcasting stations.

In 1783, through an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, Russia took over Crimea. In 1942 Crimea was briefly occupied by Nazi Germany, but soon retaken by the Soviet Union. In 1954, President Nikita Khrushchev, who had Ukrainian roots, for no apparent reason, transferred Crimea to Ukraine. However, the Soviet Union and later Russia under a 1997 agreement between Ukraine and Russia continued to station part of its Black Sea fleet in Sebastopol, the Crimean Black Sea port. This agreement has since been extended until at least 2042. These legitimate Russian troops in Crimea are called by the presstitute MSM, “Russian occupation troops”; a complete lie.

The UN now wants to send a team of human rights inspectors to Crimea to report on Russian occupation and Russian human rights abuses. This is nothing more than a shabby show of propaganda, to make believe that human rights are being abused. For the western brainwashed public, its sufficient that the UN says it sends observers. The public doesn’t even care whether the observers are actually sent, or if they are, what the result is. The sheer fact that the UN is “suspicious”, is already an indication of Russian guilt. – Who is the UN anyway? – Lamentably it has become a mere instrument of the US and its western vassals to manipulate public opinion, to bully whoever doesn’t want to bend to the demands of Washington, and to facilitate provocations of conflicts and wars – and lend them legitimacy. There is no Russian occupation and there are no human rights abuses. It’s the typical Russia / Putin bashing propaganda.

 

Media Propaganda

Do not just accept what the mainstream media tells you! – Get the news from alternative media, on internet, if the national communication authorities prevent you from acceding alternative broadcasting stations, such as RT (Russia Today – English, French, Spanish, German), TeleSur (broadcast in Spanish and English), Chinese CCTV (broadcast in many, including European languages), PressTV, Iran (English, French, Spanish); and websites and journals, like Global Research (English and French), Information Clearing House (ICH), Voltaire Net (many languages), CounterPunch, NEO (New Eastern Outlook), KenFM (German); and many more. Be informed, before it is too late. Tomorrow maybe you are trying to flee from war zones, just to find out that there is nowhere to go. The planet is demolished into smouldering ashes from wars and conflicts everywhere – which We, the People, allowed to happen.

 

Unbridled Capitalism

In the neoliberal world, where unbridled capitalism reigns, syndicates throughout the west, report that the private sector in general and especially the construction industry (a key economic indicator) is massively firing long-term workers and employees, just to rehire them the next day as part-time workers, with none or drastically reduced social benefits. Corporations increase their profit margins and transfer more public and social capital from the people, the workers, to an ever-smaller elite. The pressure of massive unemployment, the result of western imposed austerity (FED, IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank – ECB), deprives the workers of their dignity and power to resist. They have to fight for their and their families’ sheer survival and are thus, vulnerable for exploitation and abuse. It is western colonisation of their own people. No scruples, no moral, no conscience – and foremost, no solidarity. Ever increasing unemployment is what Marx called the capitalists’ cushion on which wages can be suppressed to a minimum for mere survival.

 

Cartoon David Simonds

 

“If you are not happy with working for less, no problem, we’ll outsource your jobs to cheap labor countries. There are plenty.” So, the blackmail goes. And so, oppression is swallowed. And so, the caviar left is whining (and dining) over what can be done to soften the blow, but in no case will they cause any significant risk to the established order, lest they might be next in line for falling between the cracks.

And don’t be fooled, the decaying US infrastructure President-elect Trump wants to rebuild, will be rebuilt by the typical public-private partnership farce – the capital comes from the state – your taxes – and the private sector will take over its exploitation, i.e. you pay twice – first the capital, then the private operator’s profit in the form of fees he will levy on the reconstructed bridges, roads and railways. Another transfer from the poor to the rich.

People, wake up! There is no longer a “left”, since it has been decimated by the CIA led operation GLADIO (an elaborate series of false flags) of the 1960s and 1970s throughout Europe.

Left and right are long-gone concepts our conditioned minds still try to hang on to. They are old fixtures from our “democratic” past, and now they have become part of our delusionary existence. They have long ago yielded to globalised neoliberalism that makes no distinction between left and right, but uses these defunct terms to confuse the public into believing that their vote still means what they believed it once did.

Just look at Greece – where the “leftist” elite allows that their “socialist” Syriza government ruins the lives of 90% of their citizens and compatriots. What they are doing is facilitating crime after crime after crime, as in successive “rescue packages”, i.e. debt, and steadily increasing and suffocating austerity. With a declining GDP – (yes, austerity does this to the economy) and an ever-increasing debt, now reaching close to 300% of GDP, it is obvious that Greece can never pay back its debt. Never. Most economists see eye to eye on this. Even the IMF does, if asked off the record, but they too are a mere tool of the Rothschild-led banking establishment, of the world’s Deep State – that has decided that Greece must go the path of no return, as a warning to others who may be intent to no longer bend to the master’s demands. And this is helped because the Greek elite is in connivance with them. They don’t want to leave the Eurozone, as their accumulated (and stolen) wealth is lodged in European banks. They know as well as internationally renowned economists do, that the only rescue for Greece and their compatriots in dire misery is to do a GREXIT, leaving the euro and leaving the EU.

 

 

On 16 September 2016, the Greek Parliament rush-approved a Brussels made legislation, written in English (not translated into Greek!), of 7,500 pages. The Parliament was unable to read it, for time and language; and even if they would have read it, they were obliged to sign off on it fast and without squabble. The legislation essentially transferred all public assets to the “European Stability Mechanism” (ESM), and this for 99 years, including infrastructure, sea and airports, public beaches, natural resources – you name it. The ESM, a supranational undemocratic entity will sell off these assets to private people or corporations, as they see fit. Greece has no saying. The ESM does not report to any elected parliament. With this 7,500-page legislation, the Greek Parliament also abrogated its own authority to pass any sovereign Greek fiscal legislation, transferring it quietly to Brussels and signing away Greek sovereignty. The last time a similar event happened was in 1933, when the German Reichstag (Parliament) transferred its legislative authority to Hitler.

How many Greek are aware of this? And nobody is screaming. This is equal to murder of a nation.

People wake up! – What’s happening to Greece can happen tomorrow to anyone of the European countries, starting with the southern Mediterranean nations.

It has already happened in a “softer form”, as a parliamentary coup to Spain.2 And nobody seems to have noticed.

Parliamentary coups coupled with election fraud appear to become the weapon of choice for “regime change”, or “regime continuation” (Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain – to name just a few), as best suits the empire. Remarkably, shortly after Obama’s farewell visit to Berlin, where he had intense talks with Madame Merkel and named her the new leader of Europe, Angela Merkel declared on 21 November that she will run for a fourth term during the elections in the Fall of 2017. It will be interesting to see, what Obama promised her on how to “convince” and trick a majority of Germans who are opposed to Mme. Merkel into voting for her anyway. Sputnik reports that two thirds of Germans, according to a YouGov poll, do no longer support her.

 

Return to National Currencies.

There is nothing that can be done, short of abolishing the system altogether, short of accelerating the dismantling of the European (non-)Union, the fall of the Euro, disengagement from NATO – and finally, but most importantly, short of detaching from the fraudulent dollar based pyramid monetary system. For those who are afraid of what might happen when the euro bites the dust – no worries. First, European countries have happily (and better) lived without the euro and with their own currencies until only 15 years ago; and second, it may take only a few months to maximum a year for a country to prepare and revert to her own national currency.

 

A Looming Banking Collapse.

After the election of Donald Trump and perhaps in response to his critique of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve (image right) has announced that it may increase the target range from 0.25%-0.50% to 0.50%-0.75%. This, after it was increased last December for the first time in nearly a decade.

 

 

With much of the banking sector – especially the TBTF (too-big-to-fail) banks overstretched and over-speculated to the brink, the slightest interest hike could trigger an avalanche that makes the 2008 crisis look like a walk in the park.

Don’t just swallow another manufactured crisis that transfers the money from your savings, your pension funds, your homes, to the elusive elite behind the banksters and corporations.

 

GMO Food: We Are Subject To Food Monopolies.

A handful of food corporations control more than two thirds of the food we consume.

 

Image: GMO chemicals

 

Be sure, they don’t work for your health, they work for their profit which means cutting costs on farming and production processes – and inserting GMOs everywhere. Genetically modified food can be engineered to reduce fertility (already happened as a Monsanto trial with poor farmer families in India in the 1990s), or to carry long-gestation germs of debilitating or deadly diseases, so that when years after ingestion they evolve into epidemies, they may be untraceable to GMOs.

Yet, they serve their purpose, helping massive population reduction, so that a small elite may maintain their lush lifestyle longer with the finite resources of Mother Earth. Population reduction is the key dictum of the Rockefeller-led Bilderberg Society. Henry Kissinger, a Bilderberger “scholar”, infamously said already in the seventies, “who controls the food, control the people”.

The machinery moves relentlessly forward on all fronts towards our civilisation’s demise. And we don’t even notice it.

 

People Wake Up! Humanity’s Intrinsic Values

We need a change, as in redesigning our society according to humanity’s intrinsic values of justice and solidarity. May we follow the little spark of consciousness with which we were all born. It remains in all of our minds, despite the neo-fascist doctrine we are made to live day-in and day-out on an increasing intensity for the last 30-some years. If we do not wake up to this innermost call of conscience, we, as a society, may simply extinct ourselves. And like in times past, the wisdom of indigenous people may survive and carry our human genes forward for a new civilisation to emerge – with a new conscience, perhaps increased by a tiny nudge – perhaps.

This article was first published on Global Research on 23 November 2016.

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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 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.

 

References
1. http://www.defenddemocracy.press/national-bird-dont-know-many-people-ive-killed-says-us-drone-pilot/
2. http://www.globalresearch.ca/unbridled-global-capitalism-people-wake-up-time-is-running-out/%28http://www.globalresearch.ca/spain-the-dice-are-cast-another-parliamentary-coup-instigated-from-outside/5553699

 

Business As Usual

From the Editors

In January 2017 a new president will be sworn in who will continue with President Obama’s South East Asia pivot policy with the objective of confronting China. That a US and NATO war with China is inevitable is evidenced by the over 400 US bases surrounding China which, as Pilger points out, are supposed to act as a noose around China, presumably designed to choke China’s regional aspirations.

Mr Trump, has already demonstrated to the world that he intends to continue President Obama’s brand of invidious international relations that employs the most refined rhetorical ethic to disarm perceived opponents in global international relations. His call with President Tsai of Taiwan was intended to give a clear signal to China that it’s business as usual, and President Xi should not expect any improvement in tensions over the South China Sea.

President Tsai was elected with the support of US and European NGOs whose agenda was to help elect a pro-United States leader in Taiwan. The Taiwan government is obviously aware that there will never be any hope of the creation of any independent state that is recognised by the main land. China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province. China and the Taiwanese regime both know that China will not invade and Taiwan will not declare independence.

A government in Taiwan led by President Tsai that is willing to work within the parameters of United States foreign policy and enrich Taiwan’s pro-independence elites whilst offering itself as a willing pawn to the United States bid to retain hegemony in the South China Sea is a policy that may rapidly denude President Tsai’s power base, because it will further impel China to cultivate powerful friends within Taiwan who want regional peace and who will be better funded than President Tsai was during the last Taiwan presidential elections by the United States and other NATO actors and their favoured NGOs who act as the United State’s agents of discontent and change.

China simply has more money to invest in its own political agenda and more at stake in Taiwan than any other non-regional player. The bottom line is that China will not invade Taiwan. Should China ever decide to go ahead and invade Taiwan the United States will do nothing. You can bet on it.

 

Featured image courtesy of: CNN.com

The Coming War on China

By John Pilger

 

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.

I have spent two years making a documentary film, The Coming War on China, in which the evidence and witnesses warn that nuclear war is no longer a shadow, but a contingency. The greatest build-up of American-led military forces since the Second World War is well under way. They are in the northern hemisphere, on the western borders of Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, confronting China.

The great danger this beckons is not news, or it is buried and distorted: a drumbeat of mainstream fake news that echoes the psychopathic fear embedded in public consciousness during much of the 20th century.

Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs.

To counter this, in 2011 President Obama announced a “pivot to Asia”, which meant that almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020. Today, more than 400 American military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, “the perfect noose”.

A study by the RAND Corporation – which, since Vietnam, has planned America’s wars – is entitled, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable. Commissioned by the US Army, the authors evoke the cold war when RAND made notorious the catch cry of its chief strategist, Herman Kahn — “thinking the unthinkable”. Kahn’s book, On Thermonuclear War, elaborated a plan for a “winnable” nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

 

Today, his apocalyptic view is shared by those holding real power in the United States: the militarists and neo-conservatives in the executive, the Pentagon, the intelligence and “national security” establishment and Congress.

The current Secretary of Defense, Ashley Carter, a verbose provocateur, says US policy is to confront those “who see America’s dominance and want to take that away from us”.

For all the attempts to detect a departure in foreign policy, this is almost certainly the view of Donald Trump, whose abuse of China during the election campaign included that of “rapist” of the American economy. On 2 December, in a direct provocation of China, President-elect Trump spoke to the President of Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province of the mainland. Armed with American missiles, Taiwan is an enduring flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

Like the renewal of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China as an economic power is declared an “existential threat” to the divine right of the United States to rule and dominate human affairs.

“The United States,” wrote Amitai Etzioni, professor of international Affairs at George Washington University, “is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.” This war would begin with a “blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers… satellite and anti-satellite weapons”.

The incalculable risk is that “deep inland strikes could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into ‘a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma’ [that would] lead to nuclear war.”

In 2015, the Pentagon released its Law of War Manual. “The United States,” it says, “has not accepted a treaty rule that prohibits the use of nuclear weapons per se, and thus nuclear weapons are lawful weapons for the United States.”

In China, a strategist told me, “We are not your enemy, but if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.” China’s military and arsenal are small compared to America’s. However, “for the first time,” wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “China is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack … This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy … Indeed, the nuclear weapon policies of the United States are the most prominent external factor influencing Chinese advocates for raising the alert level of China’s nuclear forces.”

Professor Ted Postol was scientific adviser to the head of US naval operations. An authority on nuclear weapons, he told me, “Everybody here wants to look like they’re tough. See I got to be tough … I’m not afraid of doing anything military, I’m not afraid of threatening; I’m a hairy-chested gorilla. And we have gotten into a state, the United States has gotten into a situation where there’s a lot of sabre-rattling, and it’s really being orchestrated from the top.”

I said, “This seems incredibly dangerous.”

“That’s an understatement.”

In 2015, in considerable secrecy, the US staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War. This was Talisman Sabre; an armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an “Air-Sea Battle Concept for China” – ASB — blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China’s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.

It is such a provocation, and the fear of a US Navy blockade, that has seen China feverishly building strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Last July, the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China’s claim of sovereignty over these islands. Although the action was brought by the Philippines, it was presented by leading American and British lawyers and could be traced to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, Clinton flew to Manila. She demanded that America’s former colony reopen the US military bases closed down in the 1990s following a popular campaign against the violence they generated, especially against Filipino women. She declared China’s claim on the Spratly Islands – which lie more than 7,500 miles from the United States – a threat to US “national security” and to “freedom of navigation”.

Handed millions of dollars in arms and military equipment, the then government of President Benigno Aquino broke off bilateral talks with China and signed a secretive Enhanced Defense Co-operation Agreement with the US. This established five rotating US bases and restored a hated colonial provision that American forces and contractors were immune from Philippine law.

The election of Rodrigo Duterte in April has unnerved Washington. Calling himself a socialist, he declared, “In our relations with the world, the Philippines will pursue an independent foreign policy” and noted that the United States had not apologised for its colonial atrocities. “I will break up with America,” he said, and promised to expel US troops. But the US remains in the Philippines; and joint military exercises continue.

In 2014, under the rubric of “information dominance” – the jargon for media manipulation, or fake news, on which the Pentagon spends more than $4 billion – the Obama administration launched a propaganda campaign that cast China, the world’s greatest trading nation, as a threat to “freedom of navigation”.

In 2014, under the rubric of “information dominance” – the jargon for media manipulation, or fake news, on which the Pentagon spends more than $4 billion – the Obama administration launched a propaganda campaign that cast China, the world’s greatest trading nation, as a threat to “freedom of navigation”.

CNN led the way, its “national security reporter” reporting excitedly from on board a US Navy surveillance flight over the Spratlys. The BBC persuaded frightened Filipino pilots to fly a single-engine Cessna over the disputed islands “to see how the Chinese would react”. None of these reporters questioned why the Chinese were building airstrips off their own coastline, or why American military forces were massing on China’s doorstep.

The designated chief propagandist is Admiral Harry Harris, the US military commander in Asia and the Pacific. “My responsibilities,” he told the New York Times, “cover Bollywood to Hollywood, from polar bears to penguins.” Never was imperial domination described as pithily.

Harris is one of a brace of Pentagon admirals and generals briefing selected, malleable journalists and broadcasters, with the aim of justifying a threat as specious as that with which George W Bush and Tony Blair justified the destruction of Iraq and much of the Middle East.

In Los Angeles in September, Harris declared he was “ready to confront a revanchist Russia and an assertive China …If we have to fight tonight, I don’t want it to be a fair fight. If it’s a knife fight, I want to bring a gun. If it’s a gun fight, I want to bring in the artillery … and all our partners with their artillery.”

These “partners” include South Korea, the launch pad for the Pentagon’s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, known as THAAD, ostensibly aimed at North Korea. As Professor Postol points out, it targets China.

In Sydney, Australia, Harris called on China to “tear down its Great Wall in the South China Sea”. The imagery was front page news. Australia is America’s most obsequious “partner”; its political elite, military, intelligence agencies and the media are integrated into what is known as the “alliance”. Closing the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the motorcade of a visiting American government “dignitary” is not uncommon. The war criminal Dick Cheney was afforded this honour.

Although China is Australia’s biggest trader, on which much of the national economy relies, “confronting China” is the diktat from Washington. The few political dissenters in Canberra risk McCarthyite smears in the Murdoch press. “You in Australia are with us come what may,” said one of the architects of the Vietnam war, McGeorge Bundy. One of the most important US bases is Pine Gap near Alice Springs. Founded by the CIA, it spies on China and all of Asia, and is a vital contributor to Washington’s murderous war by drone in the Middle East.

In October, Richard Marles, the defence spokesman of the main Australian opposition party, the Labor Party, demanded that “operational decisions” in provocative acts against China be left to military commanders in the South China Sea. In other words, a decision that could mean war with a nuclear power should not be taken by an elected leader or a parliament but by an admiral or a general.

This is the Pentagon line, a historic departure for any state calling itself a democracy. The ascendancy of the Pentagon in Washington – which Daniel Ellsberg has called a silent coup — is reflected in the record $5 trillion America has spent on aggressive wars since 9/11, according to a study by Brown University. The million dead in Iraq and the flight of 12 million refugees from at least four countries are the consequence.

The Japanese island of Okinawa has 32 military installations, from which Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq have been attacked by the United States. Today, the principal target is China, with whom Okinawans have close cultural and trade ties.

There are military aircraft constantly in the sky over Okinawa; they sometimes crash into homes and schools. People cannot sleep, teachers cannot teach. Wherever they go in their own country, they are fenced in and told to keep out.

A popular Okinawan anti-base movement has been growing since a 12-year-old girl was gang-raped by US troops in 1995. It was one of hundreds of such crimes, many of them never prosecuted. Barely acknowledged in the wider world, the resistance has seen the election of Japan’s first anti-base governor, Takeshi Onaga, and presented an unfamiliar hurdle to the Tokyo government and the ultra-nationalist prime minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to repeal Japan’s “peace constitution”.

The resistance includes Fumiko Shimabukuro, aged 87, a survivor of the Second World War when a quarter of Okinawans died in the American invasion. Fumiko and hundreds of others took refuge in beautiful Henoko Bay, which she is now fighting to save. The US wants to destroy the bay in order to extend runways for its bombers. “We have a choice,” she said, “silence or life.” As we gathered peacefully outside the US base, Camp Schwab, giant Sea Stallion helicopters hovered over us for no reason other than to intimidate.

Across the East China Sea lies the Korean island of Jeju, a semi- tropical sanctuary and World Heritage Site declared “an island of world peace”. On this island of world peace has been built one of the most provocative military bases in the world, less than 400 miles from Shanghai. The fishing village of Gangjeong is dominated by a South Korean naval base purpose-built for US aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and destroyers equipped with the Aegis missile system, aimed at China.

A people’s resistance to these war preparations has been a presence on Jeju for almost a decade. Every day, often twice a day, villagers, Catholic priests and supporters from all over the world stage a religious mass that blocks the gates of the base. In a country where political demonstrations are often banned, unlike powerful religions, the tactic has produced an inspiring spectacle.

One of the leaders, Father Mun Jeong-hyeon, told me, “I sing four songs every day at the base, regardless of the weather. I sing in typhoons — no exception. To build this base, they destroyed the environment, and the life of the villagers, and we should be a witness to that. They want to rule the Pacific. They want to make China isolated in the world. They want to be emperor of the world.”

I flew from Jeju to Shanghai for the first time in more than a generation. When I was last in China, the loudest noise I remember was the tinkling of bicycle bells; Mao Zedong had recently died, and the cities seemed dark places, in which foreboding and expectation competed. Within a few years, Deng Xiopeng, the “man who changed China”, was the “paramount leader”. Nothing prepared me for the astonishing changes today.

China presents exquisite ironies, not least the house in Shanghai where Mao and his comrades secretly founded the Communist Party of China in 1921. Today, it stands in the heart of a very capitalist shipping district; you walk out of this communist shrine with your Little Red Book and your plastic bust of Mao into the embrace of Starbucks, Apple, Cartier, Prada.

Would Mao be shocked? I doubt it. Five years before his great revolution in 1949, he sent this secret message to Washington. “China must industrialise.” he wrote, “This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict.”

The world is inexorably shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West.

Mao offered to meet Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, and his successor Harry Truman, and his successor Dwight Eisenhower. He was rebuffed, or willfully ignored. The opportunity that might have changed contemporary history, prevented wars in Asia and saved countless lives was lost because the truth of these overtures was denied in 1950s Washington “when the catatonic Cold War trance,” wrote the critic James Naremore, “held our country in its rigid grip”.

The fake mainstream news that once again presents China as a threat is of the same mentality.

The world is inexorably shifting east; but the astonishing vision of Eurasia from China is barely understood in the West. The “New Silk Road” is a ribbon of trade, ports, pipelines and high-speed trains all the way to Europe. The world’s leader in rail technology, China is negotiating with 28 countries for routes on which trains will reach up to 400 kms an hour. This opening to the world has the approval of much of humanity and, along the way, is uniting China and Russia.

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” said Barack Obama, evoking the fetishism of the 1930s. This modern cult of superiority is Americanism, the world’s dominant predator. Under the liberal Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, nuclear warhead spending has risen higher than under any president since the end of the Cold War. A mini nuclear weapon is planned. Known as the B61 Model 12, it will mean, says General James Cartwright, former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that “going smaller [makes its use] more thinkable”.

In September, the Atlantic Council, a mainstream US geopolitical thinktank, published a report that predicted a Hobbesian world “marked by the breakdown of order, violent extremism [and] an era of perpetual war”. The new enemies were a “resurgent” Russia and an “increasingly aggressive” China. Only heroic America can save us.

There is a demented quality about this war mongering. It is as if the “American Century” — proclaimed in 1941 by the American imperialist Henry Luce, owner of Time magazine — has ended without notice and no one has had the courage to tell the emperor to take his guns and go home.

 

This article was first published on counterpunch on 2 December 2016.

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About the Author

johnpilger-webJohn Pilger has been a war correspondent, author and documentary film-maker. He is one of only two to win British journalism’s highest award twice, for his work all over the world. He received the United Nations Association Peace Prize and Gold Medal, and the prestigious Sophie Prize for ‘thirty years of exposing deception and improving human rights’.

For his documentary films, he has won an American television academy award, an Emmy, and a British Academy Award, a BAFTA, and the Royal Television Society Award for documentary films.

His 1979 documentary, the epic Cambodia Year Zero is credited with alerting the world to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime. Year Zero is ranked by the BFI as among the ten most important documentaries of the 20th century. His Death of a Nation, about East Timor, had a similar impact in 1994. He has made 58 documentary films. He is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Heroes and A Secret Country, The New Rulers of the World and Hidden Agendas.

“John Pilger unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth and tells it as it is” – Harold Pinter.

“John Pilger’s work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration.” – Noam Chomsky.

 

The South China Sea and Philippine National Interest and Security

By Roland Simbulan

The ideal strategic goal is for the Philippines to enjoy the friendship of the US, Japan and China and not be a pawn in their inevitable conflicts – such as how the South China Sea dispute is being used as the US’ disguised pivot in Asia.

 

Like China, we are an Asian country, which is rich in natural resources. But compared to China we are just a small country, and an archipelagic country endowed with rich resources, being the object of big powers fighting each other in order to gain control of our land and its natural wealth. We have been under the Spanish empire as a colony for almost four centuries. The Dutch, and the British wanted to oust the Spaniards and incorporate us in their own empires. Then came the Americans who offered to help our Revolutionary fathers in freeing us from the Spanish yoke, only to betray the proffered “friendship”, fought our Revolutionary Army for Independence, and annexed us to the emerging American Empire. General Gregorio del Pilar, in whose honour Fort del Pilar, home of the Philippine Military Academy in Baguio City was named, fought and died fighting the new American colonialists, perhaps the first US Visiting Forces in this part of the world. The first US “visiting forces”– 126,000 US troops according to American historians – invaded and defeated our Army of the First Republic of the Philippines led by General Emilio Aguinaldo.

Today, we are still the “bone of contention” of Big Powers, such as the United States and Japan including China, an emerging world power challenging US hegemony in this part of the world.

There are many dimensions to the South China Sea issue, but again the most important dimension to understand is to see it first of all through the security prism of the various stakeholder countries. For the US, the Philippines and Japan, altering the US-dominated status quo in the South China Sea threatens their conservative perception of “national security”. For China, NOT altering the status quo will potentially threaten China’s security in terms of its trading routes and key arteries for its supplies of energy and raw materials, as these will always be at the mercy of the ballistic submarines of the US Navy.

For the long future, there can only be more competition for resources and the question is whether it can be kept peaceful. We know that the great powers of the past achieved their aims through direct colonialism, wars of conquest, and inter-imperialist wars. China has propounded “peaceful development”, or “peaceful rise”, and “new type of great-power relationship” – to use their words precisely because, subjectively, it wants to avoid the old pattern of great-power conflicts and wars. To this day, unlike US and NATO, China’s diplomacy has tended to avoid overseas military conflicts or military intervention in other countries, and engages mostly in economic competition, using its accumulated financial clout to successfully win its bids for mining concessions in Afghanistan, or oil contracts in Iraq, for example. China’s leaders are certainly aware of the costly lessons of colonialism and wars, of which China itself is a victim. Hopefully, China can exercise more effective leadership so that its army of corporations and entrepreneurs expanding overseas will be guided by best practices (though there have been complaints in Africa as well as in the Philippines, as in the tainted NBN-ZTE contract during the former Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration).

 

China’s dependence on economic competition and not on military muscle is good for peaceful global competition.

Overall, the entry of China into the global market for resources is good for the resources-owning countries. China’s dependence on economic competition and not on military muscle is good for peaceful global competition. Whether other great-powers will allow China to rise peacefully or to control a greater share of the world’s resources, is something China alone cannot answer. The laws of international politics exist, and China itself will continue to build its national defence to redress the military imbalance with other powers and protect its economic lifelines when the need arises. That China itself was long a victim of Western imperialism and never, even at the height of its power in the past, engaged in territorial conquest beyond its historical domain, seems to provide a basis for optimism, but we can never really tell, because any government or party can change its colour. The lesson of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, bears this out.

 

China’s Interest in the South China Sea

The South China Sea has oil and other resources, which are certainly important, but even more important is that it is a strategic zone of defence for China. China’s military planners will not lightly give it up. By and large, China is maintaining the status quo. They have the superior force to take over the disputed islets if they want to, while in the case of Scarborough Shoal, they probably believe we were the disruptive “revisionist” force with our first use of a military vessel to intimidate their fishermen. But they will maintain their sovereignty claims because they are important legal and political grounds for opposing the use of the sea lanes “within their jurisdiction” (within their Exclusive Economic Zone) for military threats against China. They support freedom of navigation but I think they want a say on military passage through their “claimed” seas – the Hainan spy plane incident and subsequent skirmishes with US Navy ships approaching sensitive Chinese areas need to be reviewed.

China’s strategy of handling disputes with the Philippines will be a function of its overall strategy of dealing with the United States. China is already suspicious that the disputes with the Philippines have heated up simultaneous with the US pivot in Asia. But in handling the Philippines, China will strike a balance between not unnecessarily provoking the US, but also trying to send a firm message to the US. This reminds me of the example of the Netherlands’ sale of a submarine to Taiwan, which led China to severing of diplomatic relations with the Netherlands – I think relations were downgraded because of this. But a more massive US arms sale to Taiwan did not provoke a similar retaliation. The point here is that China is capable of “teaching a lesson” to a lesser power as a way of transmitting their message to the master, the US, without provoking the US, that it might be in our interest to avoid being in a position of such a “lesser power.”

 

Engaging China on our Territorial and Maritime Disputes

There is increasing perception in the Philippines that China’s unilateral claim in South East Asia through its 9 dash line covering the Spratlys, Baja de Masinloc, Ayungin, and reclamation activities which has now been rejected by the UNCLOS Hague Arbitration Tribunal are all manifestations of China’s big power aggression. Some say it is establishing its own hegemonic “sphere of influence” especially among its immediate neighbours in South East Asia. Provocation breeds counter provocation. There is the US Asia Pivot, and Japan is also reacting because its major trade routes for its vital imports such as oil and gas are on the Sea Lanes in the South China Sea. China is flexing its muscles through what is perceived as aggressive behaviour in the South East Asian waters and in the Pacific, which may be a prelude to future confrontation and conflicts.

The South China Sea being, above all, a security issue, China will react to Philippine actuations according to whether they threaten or enhance its security. China had increasing perception that the Philippines is actively aligned with the US and Japan to confront China militarily, enhanced by the US’ Asian pivot.

 

Foreign Relations and our National Interest

Now, where should we stand in these big-power quarrels? We must, in accordance to our 1987 Constitution, defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity from all big powers seeking hegemony and control over the West Philippine Sea (US, China and Japan). We have the following options:

Being a junior partner/follower of one of the competing powers will make our country a possible target of attack in a future conflict;

We can embark on an independent, patriotic posture. This means not allowing ourselves to be employed or used as a pawn in this big power struggle for resources in the region.

Our country is small compared to the US and China, but we also have strong points. China and the US are economically and militarily strong but they also have their weak points. Our strongest point is the God-given gift that we are strategically located in the region embraced on the western side by the South China Sea.

How then, should we take advantage and not squander our strong point? I argue that the best answer is an INDEPENDENT FOREIGN POLICY, a policy that swears friendship to all and enmity to none, a policy that gives primacy to our national interests independent of the conflict between Big Powers, a policy that above all, refocuses our effort on the most urgent issue, which is accelerated economic growth, on which all other sources of national strength depend. Our South East Asian neighbours – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, etc., though some of them also have territorial and maritime disputes with China, are focusing on economic growth and have good experience in this regard. But we can do better.

I know that the Chinese are trying to win us over to their side in their strategic competition, struggle and quarrel with the United States for a dominant position in the world. But, let us ask, why have we already surrendered our sovereignty to the other dominant big power, which supplies and arms us with already obsolete ships and aircraft – instead of state of the art for our external defence capability – to ostensibly “modernise” our armed forces?

But we must assert and assert our sovereign rights and our independence, not a witting or unwitting pawn of either Big Power. We can study well and learn from the experience of our smaller neighbour, Vietnam, in dealing both with China and the Soviet Union who were at odds with each other, to gain and to uphold their country’s independence and higher interests. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with whom China shares land borders, taught China and all big power bullies a lesson. That smallness in size of economic and military strength is not necessarily an invitation to be pushed around. We must develop and have our own capability to defend what is ours.

What President Duterte is really breaking is the unequal Philippine-US relations, it does not mean severing ties, but in fact, improving relations through mutuality and more respect with traditional allies.

The ideal strategic goal is for the Philippines to enjoy the friendship of the US, Japan and China and not be a pawn in their inevitable conflicts. If China can be made to realise that we mean genuine friendship, that our relations with the US, Japan or other powers are not directed against China, then the conditions will be improved for the eventual resolution of our disputes. For China’s leaders, the most important starting point is strategic trust and friendship. Once that is established, the nitty-gritty of legal, technical, and other detailed negotiations will eventually fall into place. Even China’s foreign policy scholars in their think tanks realise that if China continues to take a very hard line position with the Philippines on the South China Sea issue, it will only push the Philippines further to the United States which will complete the transformation of the Philippines into an American aircraft carrier directed against China under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

For especially with a “good neighbour” policy with China, we will have to deal with it in trade negotiations, economic negotiations, and in other bilateral relations that will lead to shared prosperity in the region. The potential for cooperation is still there now under the new administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, and it should grow.

For the Philippines, bilateral talks will produce urgently needed economic boosts without giving up on sovereign or maritime claims that will no doubt take time to resolve (i.e. Vietnam-China took 30 years to sort out land border disputes, China-Russia took 40 years). Highly productive economic engagements will help bridge our domestic public opinions and build the mutual trust necessary for the final resolution of disputes.

For China, bilateral talks will enhance their security because negotiations will immediately lower the political temperature, reduce the level of threat, and maybe reduce the rationale for the US military pivot, the US military presence in the Philippines and even the EDCA which is easier to scrap because it is a mere Executive Agreement that was never ratified by the Philippine Senate.

The time for real diplomacy and direct negotiation has indeed arrived, with the recent high level state visit of Philippine President Duterte to China last Oct. 18-21, 2016. The Duterte administration is most qualified to handle the job in a manner that has prevented escalation of the dispute into war.

All signals point to early economic harvests for the Philippines as a result of the recent Duterte state visit. A bilateral commission can immediately negotiate/launch provisional joint development projects. Another bilateral commission can handle maritime disputes. All these are now possible.

The discussion of provisional arrangements of economic cooperation is good while more ticklish issues can be resolved later. Talks can start with concrete development projects in immediate time frames pending the final resolution of disputes and without prejudice to our sovereign rights or national interests.

The Hague ruling is both a challenge and an opportunity, but it will also test our maturity as a nation, and that if we handle the challenge well with a sense of urgency, we will achieve a situation where the Philippines enjoys good relations with China, while maintaining traditional and close friendship with the US, Japan and other partners. What President Duterte is really breaking is the unequal Philippine-US relations, it does not mean severing ties, but in fact, improving relations through mutuality and more respect with traditional allies. We will improve terms in agreements so that we really benefit and have more advantages and reciprocity. To break the pattern of what I call shameless negotiated subservience! This message is not just for the US, but for China as well.

Our vision for the Philippines is to become a respected independent nation in the region, politically and economically, but if we play by the old rules of alliances and confrontation, then the opportunity will be lost, and no benefit in terms of genuine security nor economic prosperity will be gained.

 

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About the Author

simbulan-webRoland G. Simbulan is Professor in Development Studies and Public Management at the University of the Philippines. He is author of 8 books on Philippine-US security relations and Philippine foreig policy, and was Senior Political Consultant at the Philippine Senate. He is currently Vice Chair of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPeg), a public policy think tank in the Philippines.

 

The Rise and Crash of Hillary Clinton

By Tunde Olupitan

Hillary’s journey has been fuelled by a blind ambition for power. And while efforts were made by her propaganda machine to imbue her campaign with some passion, some humanity, women’s issues, black lives matter, Hillary Clinton herself could not deliver.

 

During the course of the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton confirmed what people had suspected for a long time, she is all ambition, blind ambition and no passion.

Hillary’s journey has been fuelled by a blind ambition for power. It is impossible to find anything that one can say Hillary is passionate about, except of course her relentless pursuit of power. And while efforts were made by her propaganda machine to imbue her campaign with some passion, some humanity, women’s issues, black lives matter, Hillary Clinton herself could not deliver. Nothing rang true. Her so called passion for women’s issues is under cut by her hostile stance towards the women who accused her husband of improprieties in the 1990’s. Her so called passion for black people is undermined by her support for, campaigning and lobbying for her husband’s crime and social security reform acts in the 1990s. Her promise that she wants to be the president of all of America does not extend to those she has put in a “basket of deplorables”. She did not care for them, she forgot that her husband’s deregulation of the financial markets, contributed to homelessness, joblessness, loss of pension, and the deplorable state in which swaths of American voters now find themselves. They are in deplorable states because the new Democratic Party abdicated its own mission to take care of the poor. She and her husband fashioned a new Democratic Party, which had no conscience, no passion and no loyalty to the poor, the deplorables as she described them. Apologies are not enough to right those wrongs.

Hillary’s problem started a long time ago, her wagon was hitched from start to finish to that of her husband, Bill Clinton. She was not a passive, stay-at-home, bake cookies, host tea party type of first lady. She was one of his biggest supporters, she lent her voice to many of his laws and policies. In return the Clinton connection brought her many rewards too, a Senate seat in New York City, a bid for the presidency in 2008, a Secretary of State slot under the Obama administration and another shot at the presidency in 2016. And not just that, her friends in high places are the ones that benefited from her husband’s largess, the bankers, the big corporations and the media conglomerates who threw their weight behind her campaign and propped her up throughout the whole journey.

This is 2016, and the mood has changed. The MSM no longer monopolise the news. The Internet is all pervasive.

In preparation for her second bid for the White House she embarked on a revisionist agenda with the help of her husband who hit the campaign trail apologising for the excesses of his regime and trying to distance her from those excesses. Her email debacle and FBI investigations, her misadventures in Libya and Iraq, made her the most unsafe candidate in the running for the Democratic ticket. These and the fact that she is one of the most disliked candidates in recent times did not deter her from believing that she could win this thing. With the mainstream media behind her, they believed they could make all these go away. They gave her a whole lift up and went about a character assassination of anyone who stood in her way. Her main message in the end was the Trump tapes which were released by her media partners during the Presidential debates. But she could not keep the skeletons in her cupboard jangling louder and louder.

She could not see beyond what she wanted. This is 2016, and the mood has changed. The MSM no longer monopolise the news. The Internet is all pervasive. Wikileaks is still leaking. The poor people also have eyes and ears and they can read too. Poor people are fed up. After many years of recession, robbed of their homes and livelihood, they felt left out, they wanted change. They recall that the Clintons did not do anything for them, and apologies were simply not going to do it this time around.

Hillary was blind to all these, standing opposite Donald Trump, she believed that the presidency was hers to take. She was wrong. In the words of Niccolo Machiavelli, “He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must fall with the greatest loss.” Hillary Clinton came crashing down. She lost to an opponent less qualified than her, who throughout this campaign had been ridiculed by the media as inept, racist, sexist you name it. Hillary Clinton would have done better if she had retired to that glorified place giving succour to the poor and abused women, she would have been a welcome champion. Let’s hope she will accept the message from the American people with grace – they said it once, they have said it again, they just don’t want President Hillary.

 

Featured image courtesy of: Getty Images

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About the Author

Tunde Olupitan is the Managing Editor Europe & Americas for The European Financial Review, The European Business Review and The European Law Review.

“Taming Trump”, Key Republican Appointments: What a Trump Presidency Might Look Like

By Jack Rasmus

In the weeks since the November 8 US presidential election, the dim outlines of what a Trump presidency might look like are beginning to appear. Trump continues to retreat on several fronts from his campaign “right populist” positions, while doubling-down on other radical positions he previously proposed during the campaign. How to make sense of his apparent evolving policy divergence?

 

One the one hand, Trump appears to moving closer to traditional Republican party elite positions on big reductions of taxes on corporate-investor elites and on delivering long standing elite demands to deregulate business; at the same time he appears to be moderating his position with regard to that third top priority of the US neoliberal elite – i.e. free trade – as he back-peddles rapidly from his campaign attacks on trade and free trade agreements.

Trump appears to moving closer to traditional Republican party elite positions

At the same time Trump appears to be doubling down on his campaign’s radical social policy issues like immigration (promising to immediately deport or jail 3 million), taking a harder line position on law and order and civil liberties (declaring those who burn the flag should lose their US citizenship or go to jail), reaffirming his intent to privatise education services (by appointing a hard liner as Education Secretary who strongly favours charter schools and school vouchers), attacking environmental programs and protestors (calling for restoration of the Keystone pipeline), while showing early signs of moving closer toward Congressional Republican elite leaders, like Paul Ryan, and Ryan’s radical proposal to replace current Medicare with a federal ‘voucher’ system that would freeze the amount Medicare would pay doctors and hospitals as health care costs continued to escalate.

 

Areas Still Vague: Infrastructure Spending and Foreign Policy

Less clear than Trump’s above policy bifurcation are what policy positions he will take on fiscal and monetary matters.

Trump campaign promises of more government spending on “infrastructure” still remain too vague. Will that mean more oil and gas pipelines and coal mining? More tax cuts to construction companies? More direct subsidies to businesses? And how much “spending” is involved? Early indications are the infrastructure program may be mostly tax credits for businesses – and in addition to his massive corporate-investor tax cuts also planned.

Trump in the past has called for $1 trillion. (Clinton had called for a $250 billion program over five years. That $50 billion was just about the amount the US now provides in subsidies to agribusiness). And so far as infrastructure spending’s impact on the US economy, $50 billion a year is insignificant. $1 trillion and $100 billion a year over ten years, Trump’s campaign proposal, might have some effect on US GDP. But GDP growth does not necessarily translate into benefits in income to all – as the last eight years has clearly shown as 97% of all GDP-income gains under Obama have gone to the wealthiest 1% households. Nor will infrastructure spending likely translate much into job creation – and could especially result in little positive impact on jobs if infrastructure spending is composed mostly of tax cuts, business subsidies, and high capital-intensive projects that may take years to realise. It is highly unlikely Trump is talking about a 1930s-like “public works program”. It’s more likely to be the federal government writing checks to big construction companies, pocketing nice profit margins in the process.

Trump’s influence over monetary policy in general—and interest rates in particular—will be even more minimal.

The US elites will strongly oppose any Trump attempts, as promised during the election, to “reform” the US central bank, the Federal Reserve.

And the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike cat is already out of the bag. Long term rates have been already rising rapidly and will continue to do so, as will the US dollar in turn, as the two – rates and the dollar – are highly correlated. And the Federal Reserve is clearly on track to raise short term rates soon.

The question is whether the rise in interest rates – short and long term – will discourage investment, thus hiring and job creation, in those industries not directly affected by infrastructure spending? Will the negative effect of rate rises on investment and job creation be greater than the positive effect of infrastructure spending? Will those negative effects emerge sooner than the positive from infrastructure investment? And will the rising dollar associated with the rate hikes further reduce manufacturing exports and jobs in that sector? The dollar rise has already stagnated manufacturing output and employment. Further increases will almost certainly result in a contraction of manufacturing exports and jobs.

“Yes” is probably the answer to all the above, which means Trump job creation net effects during his first two years in office may not materialise. Moderate at best job creation from delayed infrastructure spending could be more than offset by job loss from rising rates and the US dollar.

The other major Trump policy area that still remains vague is foreign policy. It is not clear as yet what Trump’s true positions will be on NATO and China. But the US elite are intent on bringing him around to their positions and will exert extreme pressure on Trump in order to do so. They have already begun to do so. They will not let up on the pressure.

Trump’s intent is to become more militarily aggressive against ISIS in the middle east, and possibly “partnering” with Russia to do so. That latter possibility is currently causing fits with US elites behind the scene. Backing off from NATO military deployment provocations in eastern Europe, the US-NATO current policy, while looking favourably on Europe’s backing off of economic sanctions against Russia, may also become Trump policy.

 

Trump’s Big Three Cabinet Appointments

Whether that foreign policy redirection occurs under Trump is now playing out in backroom manoeuvrings within the Trump administration with regard to key Trump cabinet appointments involving departments of State, Defense, and remaining national security positions. The elite want Romney. Populist right forces in the Trump camp do not. And behind the appointment issue is whether a Secretary of State position under Trump becomes a mere figurehead to Trump foreign policy decided in the White House by Trump and his close aides like General Flynn and others.

The US elite want Romney and they want their Secretary of State to have independence. Should Romney get the appointment here, it will signal they have prevailed. The result will be a bifurcation on foreign policy directions in the Trump administration which will ultimately break down at some point.

Obama’s recent “tour” of NATO countries should be viewed as an effort by US elites to try to ensure NATO allies that Trump’s campaign proposals targeting NATO will not be the final position of the Trump regime. The Obama tour was in part at least to hold NATO allies’ hands and ask them to be patient—i.e. the elite will bring Trump around to reality. Be patient. We will eventually ‘tame’ Trump is no doubt the message. After Europe, Obama scurried back to Asia, attending the APEC economic summit, and providing no doubt similar assurances to US allies there that Trump would ‘come to his senses’ as cooler elite heads advised him.

Trump appears to have just appointed General (nicknamed “mad dog”) Mattis. Petraeus, a more establishment figure under consideration is out; or maybe Petraeus decided himself that hitching a ride on a Trump administration was not the greatest career restoration move. But the Mattis appointment still leaves the direction of a Trump administration’s policies on NATO, Russia, or Asia up in the air.

The third key cabinet appointment is Secretary of the Treasury. Here Trump’s transition team initially appeared to favour the CEO of the biggest US bank, Chase’s Jaime Dimon. Treasury secretaries in recent decades, under US Neoliberalism since Reagan, have always been heads of some big financial institution. And in recent decades, the Treasury Secretaries have repeatedly been alumni of the big investment bank, Goldman Sachs. And so too is Mnuchin, continuing the trend of the wheeling-dealing ‘shadow banking’ sector still dominating the Treasury.

Together with Wilbur Ross, appointed to Commerce Secretary, also a “shadow banker” and former Private Equity Firm owner, the Mnuchin-Ross team will determine banking and economic policy in the Trump administration. Their initial target will no doubt be dismantling what’s left of the skeleton of the Dodd-Frank banking regulation bill.

 

Trump “Free Trade” Policy

Trade as a policy has both foreign policy and economic dimensions. The US elite is now facing a major challenge, having temporarily lost the TPP and with the Europe TTIP in trouble, given a year of intense political instability on the horizon in Europe. They will focus on just keeping the prospects alive temporarily. In the meantime, the thrust is to prevent the deterioration of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other bilateral free trade deals signed under Bush and Obama. The objective will be to stop Trump from making any changes in NAFTA in the short term, and ensuring whatever changes after is cosmetic and token in the longer term.

Taming Trump may prove more difficult with regard to Free Trade, however, compared to getting Trump to implement US elite objectives on matters of tax cuts and deregulation. Trump’s positions during the election were strongly anti-Trade. It played a key role in his election victory, and clearly in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It will be more difficult for him to renege and about-face on the trade issue. Taming Trump will prove more difficult.

But here’s how it nonetheless may develop:

Reversing the worst effects of NAFTA cannot be done in the short term. The elites have many ways to slow and block his efforts. Some token renegotiation of NAFTA will eventually take place, resulting in minor adjustments. In the meantime, however, Trump can gain publicity and placate his base on this issue by achieving ‘victories’ discouraging specific companies to abandon plans to relocate to Mexico or abroad. Recent events involving Ford Autos and the Carrier company are examples of what may be the Trump short term policy direction with regard to trade.

As for other multilateral free trade treaties, Trump has declared he would stop the TPP, Transpacific Partnership Asia-US free trade deal. But that was already dead in Congress. And the US-Europe counterpart to the TPP, the TTIP, is impossible in 2017 with the accelerating upheaval in European politics and coming unraveling of the Eurozone after next week elections in Italy and Austria, and with elections in France, Netherlands and Germany on the agenda in 2017.
What will Trump’s longer term free trade policy look like? It is important to understand that Trump is not against free trade. He opposed multilateral programs, which were at the centre of US neoliberal elite objectives.

Trump’s free trade policy will be to negotiate country-by-country free trade deals. Renegotiating free trade will make it appear as if he’s dismantling it. But the process will take a longer time, certainly not in the first year or two. The US elite can probably live with that. Their task in ‘taming Trump’ is to ensure he does not take precipitative action against current free trade deals, that he puts off such action, and settles into a longer term bilateral renegotiating policy. In the meantime, it will be more highly visible personal actions like the Ford and Carrier deals, to make it appear he is doing something on the matter.

What that all means is that except for token company examples like Ford and Carrier, free trade deals will continue. The US elite will get to continue their Neoliberal policy priority of free trade, just in another form that emphasises slow, token changes to existing agreements and bilateral new free trade agreements. But free trade bilaterally is still free trade. And job losses and wage compression, the two major consequences of free trade deals, will continue. It’s just free trade in another form.

Trump is betting that the lack of job creation, from a retreat from is promises to ‘bring back jobs’ lost to trade, will be offset by job creation from infrastructure spending. Meanwhile, he can and will claim he is saving jobs by talking down Ford, Carrier, and other companies. Alongside this, bilateral free trade deals will go forward.

 

Massive Tax Cuts and Business Deregulation

The other two major priorities of the US elite are big corporate-investor tax cuts and deregulation. Here Trump has signalled he is in full agreement with the elite. No need to ‘tame’ Trump here. These policies will be forthcoming almost immediately in the new Trump regime.

Trump has proposed to cut corporate taxes even more than the Ryan-Republican Party faction in Congress. From the current 35% corporate rate, Trump proposed reducing it to 15% while Ryan and friends to 20%. Both are in agreement to reduce the top income tax rate for their wealthy friends, from current 39.6% to 33%. The Capital gains tax, now 23.8%, is scheduled for a cut to 20% by Trump and 16.5% by Congress. Both Trump and Ryan plan to abolish the Estate Tax, reducing taxation on estates worth $7 million (now the threshold) altogether. Both are strong proponents of allowing big US multinational corporations in Tech, Pharma, Banking and others to ‘repatriate’ $2.5 trillion in taxes they have been hoarding in profits offshore to avoid paying the US 35% rate to a low of 10%. The 4.8% surtax on the wealthiest to help fund Obamacare will also certainly disappear. Also notable is that net taxes on the middle class will rise under both plans, and the countless loopholes for investors will continue.

It should be noted that this massive tax cut package amounts to $4.3 trillion, according to Trump. But according to the Tax Policy Center research group, it will reduce federal revenues by $6.2 trillion. The wealthiest 1% would realise a 13.5% cut in their taxes, while the rest of all households would have a 4.1 % rise in their taxes.

This $4.3 or $6.2 trillion follows a $5 trillion tax cut agreed to by Obama, Democrats and Republicans in Congress that took place in early 2013 as part of the then phony ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis. That followed a $800 billion tax cut pushed by Obama at the end of 2010, in which Obama continued the previous Bush tax cuts for another two years and then some. That followed a preceding $300 billion tax cut in Obama’s 2009 initial recovery program. And all that came after George W. Bush’s estimated $3.4 trillion in tax cuts in 2001-04, 80% of which accrued the wealthiest households and businesses. So under Bush-Obama, taxes for the rich and their corporations totaled approximately $9.5 trillion, and now Trump-Ryan propose another $4.3-$6.2 trillion minimum, running the total up to more than $15 trillion.

And corporations and their lobbyists won’t wait for the tax cut legislation. They are already pressing for a Trump reversal of Obama administration measures over the past year to slow the rampant ‘tax inversion’ scams by big multinational tech, pharma and banks, that have been avoiding taxes by shifting their company headquarters offshore on paper. Corporations have avoided paying hundreds of billions of dollars in US taxes in just the past three years by means of ‘inversion’ scams. Trump doesn’t have to wait for Congress, for him to open the floodgates allowing massive corporate tax avoidance through unlimited ‘inversions’ once again. Big business lobbying arms, like the Business Roundtable, American Bankers Association, and National Association of Manufacturers are reportedly already demanding Trump lift all restrictions on ‘inversions’.

Trump and Ryan-Congress are no less in synch on the third policy priority of US elites – deregulation. Like corporate-investor tax cutting, Trump and the US elite are on the same page when it comes to deregulation. High on this agenda will be slicing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Trump will not need to repeal it and won’t. It will be given a “death by a thousand cuts” and allowed to collapse. Already in big trouble as a program unable to control health insurance costs or prescription drug price gouging, ACA provisions like mandatory insurance purchases and the 4.8% surtax on the wealth to help pay for the subsidies are likely to go quickly. A similar major deregulation will be the Dodd-Frank banking regulation act, which has already had much of its provisions defanged since its passage in 2010. A main target will be the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

To gain public awareness of his pledges to deregulate, Trump will immediately in 2017 repeal, however, as many Obama Executive Orders as possible. Receiving the brunt of this will be immigration provisions, like the Dream Act, and numerous Environmental regulations. Trump’s EPA head will no doubt immediately reverse the regulations involving the industrial plant pollution proposals not yet or just recently proposed. In Labour matters, overtime pay rules and private pension rules are targets as well. Trump will immediately in 2017 reverse all the regulations he possibly can by Executive Order. That includes the Dream Act for youth of immigrants in the first 100 days, and new Executive Orders giving new powers of detention and arrest to border and police officials. Efforts by cities and universities to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants will result in immediate harsh financial and other actions against those same. Recent minimal rulings by the National Labor Relations Board favouring union workers and institutions will be quickly reversed as well.

The US elite, in Congress and beyond, will tolerate much of this deregulation, as well as a significant assault on immigration, law and order, policy repression of ethnic communities, deportations, limits on civil liberties, cuts in social programs, and privatisation proposals across the board involving education, Medicare, and healthcare. Their priority is passage of policy in the areas of tax cuts, deregulation, and delaying any potential actions that might endanger existing free trade agreements.

Getting Trump to back off his campaign promises—i.e. his right wing populism—in areas of foreign policy and trade redirection are also elite priority issues. Trump has never needed ‘taming’ on tax and deregulation issues.

And he will be allowed to proceed with elements of his right wing populism that involve attacks on environment, law and order, civil liberties, and immigration—so long as the latter involves low paid undocumented immigration from Latin America and does not interfere with the 500,000 high paid tech jobs legally given to Chinese and Indian immigrants on H1-B and L-1/2 visas. And so long as he doesn’t proceed so fast that it precipitates excessive social unrest. Go slow, he will be told. Nothing too extreme. And ensure that taxes, deregulation, trade and foreign policy are priority and are concluded first.

The US elite will abandon Trump if he doesn’t play ball on taxes, deregulation, going slow on Trade, and if he upsets long-standing foreign policy directions too radically. They will let him run amuck on issues of immigration, civil liberties, law and order, environment, and privatising of social programs. So how might that elite ‘tame trump’ if and when necessary? The preparations just in case are already underway. They include the following:

 

How To Tame Trump

There are at least six ways by which they can, and are now preparing, to control him.

1. Trump Business Conflicts

Trump has 111 businesses in 18 countries. It is not possible to even put these in a blind trust, as previous presidents have done with their business interests. The elite will gather all the incriminating evidence they can to reveal his conflicts of interests, if necessary, at some point. They will threaten Trump quietly first to reveal and proceed against him and, if he doesn’t respond in their favour on some issue or policy, start the process of undermining his reputation and credibility in the media and with public opinion. Keeping the heat on will be mainstream media like the New York Times, Washington Post, and major broadcast TV sources. It won’t be difficult to dig up the dirt.

2. Trump Foundation

Like the Clinton Foundation, as with foundations of many of the super wealthy, the Trump Foundation is a source of potential major scandal. Incriminating or even insinuating investigations will be undertaken quietly, and then publicly if necessary.

3. Nepotism Charges

Trump has already shown a preference for family member involvement in his administration. That opens him to criticism of nepotism. That becomes the nexus for alleging Trump using the presidency to enrich himself indirectly through his family connections.

4. Trump’s Tax Returns

Trump may not have released his returns during the campaign, and probably for good reason. Few in the wheeling-dealing commercial real estate sector are squeaky clean when it comes to tax avoidance and even fraud. The worse of his tax matters will be quietly passed on to the New York Times and other media. They can be revealed at the appropriate juncture, if Trump doesn’t ‘play ball’ with the elite on matter of policy the latter consider strategic.

5. Attacks on Trump Appointees and Family

Trump can be damaged and undermined by attacking his appointments and family members. Favourite targets will be radicals like Steve Bannon of Breitbart who has been brought into the Trump White House as advisor. Trump’s son-in-law may prove another favourite target. So might even be his appointed national security adviser, General Flynn. Already major feature pieces on Bannon have appeared in the Times and media. The media continues to keep alive Flynn’s alleged pro-Russia views and contacts. Meanwhile, talking heads experts continue to appear on the mainstream press TV shows like CNN, MSNBC, CBS and others continuing the press the election themes of Trump’s character limits and dangerous personal traits. The elite will keep these issues of Trump judgment and volatility before the public, until Trump comes around and adopts US elite policies, especially on foreign policy, trade, and other matters.

6. Violations of Law

Trump’s proclivity to engage in tweets may yet get him in serious legal trouble. So too may any precipitous incitement of radical elements and actions that result from his public statements. Or any premature over-reaching Executive Orders.

 

From “Faux Left” to “Faux Right” Populism

In 2008 Barack Obama ran for president based on a program that in some ways was clearly populism. Entering the president primary race late, in early 2008, Obama’s advisers vaulted him to the nomination six months later by employing a strategy that consistently was to the left of the other Democrat candidates, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama appeared the popular left candidate. Many voters were sufficiently misled. Immediately after elected, however, Obama proceeded to appoint advisers and cabinet members who were clearly representatives of the banking industry and business interests in general. Neoliberal policies were given a “left cover”, as Obama then ruled from the “centre-right” on key matters of economic policy of primary interest to the elite – i.e. bailing out the banks, rescuing big businesses from bankruptcy, ensuring the stock and bond markets boomed, pressing for free trade deals, going slow and minimalising banking regulation, ensuring healthcare reform did not include the ‘public option’ or even consider Medicare expansion, and turning over US jobs and trade policy to figures like Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric. Mortgage companies were given preference over bailing out homeowners facing foreclosure and ‘negative equity’. Latinos were deported in record numbers, students allowed to accumulate more than $1 trillion in debt, job creation involved mostly low paid, contingent service work, pensions were allowed to collapse, senior citizens’ savings evaporate while investors enjoyed eight years of near zero interest rates, and progressive labor legislation was quickly shelved.

What started as a hope of a resurrected left populism quickly and progressively decayed into a comprehensive program that delivered 97% of all income gains to the wealthiest 1% households.

Voters chose a black president in 2008 because they wanted change. They didn’t care about his race. They didn’t get it. In 2016 they now voted again – for change. Those voters did not become racist in the past eight years, even though the candidate they just voted for indicated in many ways he himself was racist and misogynist, to name but a few of his apparent character faults. Those voters who in 2008 chose a “left populism” that turned out to be false, chose in 2016 a “right populism”. But what they will get is not populism but another disappointment.

Like the Obama regime, the Trump regime will retreat to a neoliberal US elite regime. It will be a “Neoliberalism 2.0”. An evolved new form of Neoliberalism based on the continuation of pro-investor, pro-corporate, pro-wealthy elite economic policies – with an overlay of even more repressive social policies involving immigration, law and order, privatisations, cuts in social programs, more police repressions of ethnic communities, environmental retreat, limits on civil liberties, more insecurity and more fear. This is the new form of Neoliberalism, necessary to continue its economic dimensions by intensifying its forms of social repression and control.

We predict Trump will concede to elite neoliberal policies on Trade and Foreign Policy eventually, as he already is about to do with regard to elite policy preferences on taxation and deregulation. If he does not, elite interests are waiting in the wings, gathering the evidence and ammunition to attack Trump more directly if necessary, should he not comply. So long as he plays ball with them, they’ll just hold their ammunition at the ready. They will lock and load, and cock the hammer, taking aim and give a warning.

Trump will respond. He will come around to their demands. After all, he has more personally to even lose than did Obama. Faux left is replaced by faux right in American politics.

 

This article was first published on JacRasmus.com 1 December 2016 and Global Research 02 December 2016

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About the Author

jack_rasmus-webJack Rasmus is the author of Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, by Clarity Press, 2016, Looting Greece: An Emerging New Financial Imperialism, by Clarity Press, October 2016, and the forthcoming Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes, Clarity Press, March 2017. He blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is jackrasmusproductions.com. His twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

 

Abe’s Political Restoration Belies Economic and Geostrategic Challenges

By Craig Mark

Despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s political success in Japanese politics, Japan’s economy remains to be stagnant. This article discusses the impact of Abe’s political comeback in restoring Japan’s economic growth and overcoming its geostrategic challenges.

 

Introduction

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to another decisive victory in the Upper House elections held last July, making him one of the most politically successful leaders of the democratic world in recent times. In office since December 2012, the LDP (with its ruling coalition partner the Komeito Party, and aligned independents) can now effectively command a two-thirds majority vote in both Houses of the Diet, Japan’s parliament. The win in the Upper House of Councillors was a particular vindication for Abe, since he was driven to step down from his first term as Prime Minister in 2007, after barely a year in office, when the scandal-ridden LDP suffered a harsh Upper House election defeat. But despite Abe’s latest political success, the stagnant Japanese economy remains a stubborn obstacle that defies the efforts of the government’s policy approach, marketed as “Abenomics”.

 

Abenomics Redux

Following the July election, Abe announced a ¥28 trillion (US$270 billion) stimulus package in August, based around infrastructure spending, and more targeted welfare spending, in the latest series of ongoing efforts to boost economic growth and reverse deflationary stagnation. The package also includes record defence spending, which has been raised in every year of Abe’s government, to reach ¥5.16 trillion for FY2017.1 While this further deepens Japan’s public debt, now approaching 230% of GDP, the effect of continuous stimulus spending has at least recently kept the economy out of recession, as Abenomics rejects the failed path of austerity. Growth for the June 2016 quarter was only 0.2%, with the annualised growth rate at 0.7%. The CPI fell -0.5% for August, the sixth monthly decline in a row, showing the danger of the return of entrenched deflation.2

Abenomics can do little to solve Japan’s structural demographic problem of an aging and declining population. Abe’s government has expressed its aim to increase the prominence of women in the workforce, but they continue to face chauvinistic cultural barriers in many areas of employment. The proportion of women returning to work after having their first child has only just now exceeded 50% for the first time, while only 2.65% of men took paternity leave in FY2015. Income inequality in Japan continues to worsen, as around one in six Japanese children live in poverty, particularly in families headed by single mothers.3

Tax credits for families and plans for more child care places are part of the Abe government’s strategy to lift the fertility rate from 1.4 to 1.8 by 2025, but this is overly ambitious, as are the inflation and economic growth rate targets of 2% each by 2020. The negative interest rates implemented by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) since January shows the desperation of its monetary policy. Its Quantitative Easing (QE) of around ¥80 trillion per annum may expand yet again, to try and reduce the yen. The BoJ has so far bought up to ¥450 trillion worth of assets, particularly government bonds.4

 

Karōshi and Other Failures of Corporate Japan

Corporate Japan bears considerable responsibility for the sluggish state of the economy, by sitting on huge cash reserves. Utilising these massive cash deposits to raise base wage rates, and offer permanent, full-time jobs is key to restoring sustainable growth and inflation, as this would give workers more security and higher spending capacity, and so boost aggregate demand. Abe has been urging companies to do so, most recently in his policy speech opening the autumn session of the Diet. He called for a minimum raise of 25 yen per hour in the upcoming spring wage negotiations with labour unions, but large corporations have generally been reluctant to grant even such a minuscule increase. It will require vigorous reform of labour laws to impel businesses to improve wages, conditions and overall job security for workers; the first Cabinet white paper on karōshi, death from overwork, considered a fifth of Japanese workers are at risk. The unemployment rate was 3.1% in August, but this fairly low level is mainly due to the shrinking pool of available labour in the smaller and older populace, rather than due to any robust economic activity.5

If QE fails to prevent the yen’s value going much beyond parity with the US dollar, such a hit to the competitiveness of Japanese exports would threaten another recession. Japan has recently enjoyed record tourist numbers, especially from China, but a rising yen could threaten this current boom. The electronics industry in particular has recently faced a series of accounting scandals and foreign takeovers, continuing its relative decline, with increased competition from Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese firms. The agricultural sector also faces greater competition, and will be hoping the multilateral Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement does not go ahead. Legislation to ratify the TPP is due to be introduced in the upcoming Diet session, but this could be moot, if the TPP is blocked in the US Congress. Abe still strongly backs the TPP, if for no other reason than its aim to strengthen America’s geopolitical position in the Pacific to contain a rising China increasing its economic and military strength.

Abe will also continue to press for conclusion of preferential trade agreements with the US and the EU by the end of 2016, although these deadlines could also very well slip by. Japan was at least able to complete an economic partnership agreement with Australia in 2014. The automobile industry remains one of its strongest sectors, and innovations in the IT industry, in areas such as robotics and biomedicine, also have great future potential. However, corporate Japan, with its aging and overwhelmingly male management, still badly needs invigoration overall from younger and more diverse leadership.

The Abe government is also determined to restart Japan’s nuclear reactors, despite widespread public opposition in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Abe has been accused by his previous mentor, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, of lying about the safety of the ongoing clean-up of the wrecked and contaminated Fukushima Daiichi power plant, following the massive Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Abe has been accused of being in the thrall of the nuclear power industry, traditionally one of the influential core corporate support bases for the LDP. This is despite the immense potential of Japan’s renewable energy industry, particularly in wind and thermal power.

 

Abe Abroad

In support of the export of nuclear technology overseas, amongst other industries, Abe has been one of Japan’s most travelled Prime Ministers. In his visits to Europe, America, and Australia, he has particularly promoted Japanese exports, investment and development aid to emerging markets in Central Asia,6 the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and South East Asia. There have been some notable setbacks though. Japan failed to secure tenders to build a high-speed rail in Indonesia, losing out to China; and submarines in Australia, losing to France.

In support of the export of nuclear technology overseas, amongst other industries, Abe has been one of Japan’s most travelled Prime Ministers.

Abe’s active foreign policy feeds into his desire for a more assertive defence policy posture, largely aimed at deterring China. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are increasing their tempo of training exercises with the US and Australian military, including naval patrols in the contested South China Sea. Japan is supplying patrol boats to Vietnam and the Philippines, and SDF jet fighters are frequently scrambled to intercept both Chinese and Russian military aircraft encroaching on Japanese airspace.7 SDF missile defences are also often alerted against potential nuclear missile tests by North Korea. The territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands (claimed as the Daioyus by China), administered by Japan in the East China Sea, remains a potentially dangerous flashpoint, as China continues to send fishing and patrol vessels into its surrounding waters.

In September 2015, the Abe government passed controversial legislation to reinterpret Article 9 of the constitution, to allow the SDF to exercise collective self-defence. More robust rules of engagement for SDF peacekeeping forces in South Sudan are now being implemented, with troops for the next deployment training for a potential combat role, to protect civilians or UN personnel if they come under attack. A new cross-ministry intelligence service is also being expanded. Abe is using the Diet session following the July Upper House election to debate and pursue legislation for even greater constitutional change. Abe and the LDP are determined to press ahead with discussion of its 2012 draft revised constitution in the Diet’s constitutional commissions. They face criticism from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and human rights lawyers and academics, that the draft pares back individual civil rights, and grants the government excessive emergency powers. The government will also consider special legislation which would permit Emperor Akihito to abdicate, allowing the frail 84-year old monarch to fulfil his carefully expressed desire to step down from his duties before his death.

 

The Rise of Renho

The recently elected new leader of the DP, Renho Murata (universally known just as Renho), has sworn to defend the constitution from the Abe government’s proposed amendments. As well as confronting gender bias, being the first female leader of the DP, Renho has also battled prejudice over her parentage, with her father being Taiwanese. Renho and the DP will repeat the strategy attempted in the July Upper House election of coordinating their election campaigning with the smaller opposition parties, particularly the JCP, despite the previous lack of success of such tactics.

In her first major speech to the Diet as Opposition Leader, Renho aggressively attacked Abe’s administration, accusing it of mere sloganeering, while the policies of Abenomics have failed to end deflation and restore growth. She also criticised the performance of the Government Pension Investment Fund, which has suffered a loss of ¥10 trillion over the past fiscal year. Despite such bold beginnings, Renho faces a formidable challenge in rebuilding the demoralised DP into an alternative governing party which can successfully market its appeal to the public with a credible policy agenda. It remains to be seen if she can make any inroads against the prodigious majorities the LDP luxuriously enjoys in both Houses of the Diet.

Renho’s struggle against Abe may last longer than expected. Abe was originally scheduled to step down as Prime Minister by September 2018, when his second three-year term as LDP president expires. However, the LDP’s Headquarters for Party and Political System Reform Implementation has already begun the process of extending terms for the party leadership, which will allow Abe to remain in office beyond 2018. The likely options being discussed by the LDP’s reform committee are either to allow renewal for an extra third term, or remove presidential term limits altogether.8 The LDP hierarchy is aiming to finalise a decision by the end of the year, to be confirmed at the 2017 party conference in March, in time for the scheduled 2018 Lower House election. Such developments will severely annoy and disappoint various LDP faction leaders, who have already been positioning themselves as potential successors to Abe, such as Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, and Population and Regional Revitalisation Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The hawkish Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, a prominent member of the ultranationalist Shinto organisation Nippon Kaigi (as is Abe and most of his Cabinet), has openly supported the term extension proposal, hoping to eventually succeed Abe as Japan’s first female Prime Minister.

 

Conclusion

Going early in 2017 would allow Abe to preside over the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (and the preceding 2019 Rugby World Cup), as the next Lower House elections would then be due by 2021, at the latest. When Abe said “See you in Tokyo!” at the closing ceremony for the Rio Olympics, it seems he really meant it.

However, speculation has already emerged among LDP circles over whether Abe will call an early snap election for the Lower House as soon as January 2017, despite the LDP’s ruling coalition already enjoying a two-thirds majority. Abe may thus yet again deploy his favoured strategy of going to an early election, as he did in December 2014, to take advantage of a still weak and unready opposition, under its new untested leader Renho. Going early in 2017 would allow Abe to preside over the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (and the preceding 2019 Rugby World Cup), as the next Lower House elections would then be due by 2021, at the latest. When Abe said “See you in Tokyo!” at the closing ceremony for the Rio Olympics, it seems he really meant it.

 

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About the Author

portrait-photoDr. Craig Mark is Assistant Professor at the School of Information Environment, Tokyo Denki University. He has also taught Politics and International Relations at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, and Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of The Abe Restoration: Contemporary Japanese Politics and Reformation.

 

References

1. Cabinet Public Relations Office, ‘Press Conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’, Wednesday, August 3, 2016, Speeches and Statements by the Prime Minister, Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, at: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201608/1218775_11013.html
2. Bank of Japan, ‘Financial and Economic Statistics Monthly’, September 23, 2016, at: https://www.boj.or.jp/statistics/pub/sk/data/sk4.pdf
3. The Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training, “Recent Statistical Survey Reports”, July 2016, at: http://www.jil.go.jp/english/estatis/esaikin/2016/documents/e201607.pdf
4. Bank of Japan, ‘Introduction of “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easting with a Negative Interest Rate” ‘, January 29, 2016, at: https://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2016/k160129a.pdf
5. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, ‘Labour Force Survey, Monthly Results’ August 2016, at: http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/results/month/
6. Cabinet Public Relations Office, ‘Diplomatic Relations’, Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, at: http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/diplomatic/index.html
7. Ministry of Defense, ‘Statistics on Scrambles during the First Quarter of FY2016’, Joint Staff Press Release, July 5, 2016, at: http://www.mod.go.jp/js/Press/press2016/press_pdf/p20160705_02.pdf
8. Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, ‘Rules for election of President’, at: https://www.jimin.jp/english/the-president/rules/index.html

 

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