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India – Crime of the Century – Financial Genocide

By Peter Koenig

On 8 November, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, brutally declared all 500 (US$ 7) and 1,000 rupee-notes invalid. The final goal is speedy global demonetisation. Electronic money, instead of cash, allows the hegemon to control the entire western world, all those who are enslaved to the dollar monetary system.

 

A Financial genocide, if there was ever one. Death by demonetisation, probably killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, through famine, disease, even desperation and suicide – because most of India’s money was declared invalid. The official weak reason for this purposefully manufactured human disaster is fighting counterfeiting. What a flagrant lie! The real cause is of course – you guessed it – an order from Washington.

On 8 November, Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, brutally declared all 500 (US$ 7) and 1,000 rupee-notes invalid, unless exchanged or deposited in a bank or post office account until 31 December 2016. After this date, all unexchanged “old” money is invalid – lost. Barely half of Indians have bank accounts.

The final goal is speedy global demonetisation. India is a test case – a huge one, covering 1.3 billion people. If it works in India, it works throughout the developing world. That’s the evil thought behind it. “Tests” are already running in Europe.

The Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, are moving rapidly towards cashless societies. Electronic money, instead of cash, allows the hegemon to control the entire western world, all those who are enslaved to the dollar monetary system. Meaning literally everybody outside the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that includes, China, Russia, most of Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and – yes, India is an apparent candidate to join the SCO alliance.

Electronic money, instead of cash, allows the hegemon to control the entire western world, all those who are enslaved to the dollar monetary system.

There was no limit set in rupee amounts that were allowed to be deposited in bank or postal accounts. But exchanges or withdrawals were limited the first two days to 2,000 rupees, later to 4,000 rupees, with promises to further increases “later on”. The restrictions have to do with limited new bank notes available. The new money is issued in denominations of 500 and 2,000 rupee-notes.

On 9 November, none of the country’s ATM machines were functioning. Withdrawing money was possible only from banks. Queues behind bank counters were endless – lasting hours and in some cases days. Often times, once at the teller, the bank was out of cash. Imagine the millions, perhaps billions of labor hours – production time and wages – lost – lost mostly by the poor.

The banned bank notes constitute about 85% in value of all cash in circulation. India is a cash society. About 97% of all transactions are carried out in cash. Only slightly more than half the Indian population has bank accounts; and only about half of them have been used in the last three months. Credit or debit cards are extremely scarce – basically limited to the “creditworthy” elite.

In rural areas, where most of the poor live, banks are scarce or none existent. The poor and poorest of the poor, again – as usual – are those who suffer most. Hundreds of thousands of them have lost almost all they have and will be unable to fend for their families, buying food and medication.

The poor and poorest of the poor, again – as usual – are those who suffer most. Hundreds of thousands of them have lost almost all they have and will be unable to fend for their families, buying food and medication.

According to most media reports, Modi’s demonetisation was an arbitrary decision. Be sure, there is nothing arbitrary behind this decision. As reported on 1 January 2017 by German investigative business journalist, Norbert Haering, in his blog, “Money and More”, this move was well prepared and financed by Washington through USAID (http://norberthaering.de/en/home/27-german/news/745-washington-s-role-in-india). Mr. Modi didn’t even bother presenting the idea to the Parliament for debate.

In November 2010 President Obama declared with then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Strategic Partnership with India. It was to become one of his foreign policy priorities which was renewed during Obama’s visit to India in January 2015 with the current PM Modi. The purpose of this partnership was not just to pull one of the most populous BRICS countries out of the Russia-China orbit, but also to use it as a test case for global demonetisation. Mind you, the orders came from way above Obama, from the omni-potent, but hardly visible Rothschild-Rockefeller – Morgan – et al, all-domineering bankster cartel.

This horrendous crime that may cost millions of lives, was the dictate of Washington. A cooperation agreement, also called an “anti-cash partnership”, between the US development agency (sic), USAID, with the Indian Ministry of Finance, was worked out. One of their declared “common objectives” was gradually eliminating the use of cash by replacing it with digital or virtual money.

It takes two to tango. The PM of the second largest nation in the world, one would expect, would have a say in the extent to which a foreign country may interfere in India’s sovereign internal affairs, i.e. her monetary policies – especially a foreign country that is known to seek only Full Spectrum Dominance of the globe, its resources and its people. The head of India, a prominent BRICS country (BRICS = Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), one would expect, could have sent the naked emperor to climb a tree – and say NO to this horrendous criminal request. But Modi did not.

Is India with PM Modi still a viable BRICS country? Or more importantly, India is currently poised to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Is India under Modi worthy of being admitted into this powerful Asian economic and military block, the only authoritative counterbalance to the west? – At this point, putting hundreds of millions of his countrymen at peril by obeying Washington’s nefarious dictate, Modi looks more like a miserable traitor than a partner of the New East.

USAID calls this operation “Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership”. Its purpose is “effecting a quantum leap in cashless payment in India” – and of course, eventually around the globe. According to the Indian Economic Times, this program had been stealthily financed by USAID over the past three years. Funding amounts are kept secret. Who knows, where else in the world Catalyst is quietly funding and preparing other human financial disasters.

All fits into the Big Scheme of things: Reducing the world population, so less resources are needed to maintain 7.4 billion people – and growing – many of them finite resources that can be used by a small elite, supported by a few million slaves. This is the world according to still ticking war criminal numero UNO, Henry Kissinger. Forcefully reducing the world population is his one big objective since just after WWII, when he became a key member of the Rockefeller sponsored Bilderberg Society.

Some of the same people are currently spreading neo-fascist mantras around the world, at the infamous WEF (World Economic Forum) in Davos, Switzerland (17-20 January 2017). WEF attendees (by invitation only) are a mixed bag of elitist “private” billionaires, corporate CEOs (only corporations registering at least US$ 5 billion in sales), high-flying politicians, Hollywood’s cream of the crop, and more of the kind. Pretty much the same definition applies to the Bilderbergers.

Like with the Bilderbergers, the key topics discussed at the WEF, those themes that are supposed to guide the world further and faster towards the New (One) World Order, are discussed behind closed doors and will hardly surface into the mainstream. It is, however, highly likely that the “Cashless India” decision – a trial for the rest of the world – had previously been discussed and “ratified” by the WEF, as well as the Bilderbergers. None of this is known to the common people, and least to the Indians.

All-out efforts are under way to maintain highly lucrative disaster capitalism, or at least to slow down its decline – because its end is in sight. It’s just a question of time. Hence, the term Catalyst (accelerator) for the USAID program is well chosen. Time is running out. One of the best ways of controlling populations and unbending politicians is through financial strangleholds. That’s what a cashless society is all about.

All-out efforts are under way to maintain highly lucrative disaster capitalism, or at least to slow down its decline – because its end is in sight.

According to Badal Malick, former Vice President of India’s most important online marketplace Snapdeal, later appointed as CEO of Catalyst: “Catalyst’s mission is to solve multiple coordination problems that have blocked the penetration of digital payments among merchants and low-income consumers. We look forward to creating a sustainable and replicable model. (…) While there has been (…) a concerted push for digital payments by the government, there is still a last mile gap when it comes to merchant acceptance and coordination issues. We want to bring a holistic ecosystem approach to these problems.“

This is further supported by Jonathan Addleton, USAID Mission Director to India: “India is at the forefront of global efforts to digitize economies and create new economic opportunities that extend to hard-to-reach populations. Catalyst will support these efforts by focusing on the challenge of making everyday purchases cashless.”

What an outright heap of bovine manure!

Those who are supporting the Catalyst idea in India – and presumably elsewhere in the world, are, as per an USAID Beyond-Cash report, more than 35 Indian, American and international organisations (http://cashlesscatalyst.org/), mostly IT and payment service providers, including the Better Than Cash Alliance, the Gates Foundation (Microsoft), Omidyar Network (eBay), the Dell Foundation Mastercard, Visa, Metlife Foundation. All of them want to make money from digital payments – another transfer from the poor to the rich – another catalyst for widening the rich-poor gab – worldwide.

Interestingly, the USAID – Indian partnership to temporarily banning most cash coincides with Raghuram Rajan as President of the Reserve Bank of India (September 2013 – September 2016). Mr. Rajan has also been chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, and there is talk that he may be poised as Mme. Lagard’s successor at the helm of the IMF. It is clear that the IMF, and by association the World Bank, is fully aboard with this project to transform western society into slavehood of digital money – with emphasis on wester society, because the East, the Russia-China-Iran-SCO axis, where the future lays, has already largely detached itself from the dollar based western – and fraudulent – monetary scheme.

Mr. Raghuram Rajan is an influential but also highly controversial figure. He is also a member of the so-called Group of Thirty, “a rather shady organization, where high ranking representatives of the world’s major commercial financial institutions share their thoughts and plans with the presidents of the most important central banks, behind closed doors and with no minutes taken. It becomes increasingly clear that the Group of Thirty is one of the major coordination centres of the worldwide war on cash. Its membership includes other key warriors like Rogoff, Larry Summers and others” (N.Häring, 1.1.2017). On the other hand, Rajan is extremely disliked by the Indian business society, mostly because of his tight monetary policy as head of the Indian Central Bank (go figure!). Under pressure, he did not renew his term as India’s central bank governor in 2016.

The Group of Thirty sounds akin to the highly secretive Board of Directors of the infamous Basle-based BIS (Bank for International Settlement), also considered the central bank of all central banks, which meets once a month in secret (during a weekend for lesser visibility) and no minutes taken. The BIS is a Rothschild controlled private bank, close associate of the FED, also privately owned. It is clear, with the FED, BIS and IMF in connivance, the dice are cast for a cashless (western) society.

Washington’s interest in a cashless society goes far beyond the business interests of IT, credit card and other financial institutions. More importantly is the surveillance power that goes with digital payments. As with electronic communications today – every one of them read, listened to and spied on throughout the world – some 7 to 10 billion electronic messages per day – every digital payment and transfer will be controlled and checked worldwide by the Masters of the dollar-based hegemony. Every transfer will be registered and monitored by an American-Zionist control mechanism. This is the only way (totally illegal) sanctions can be dished out to governments that refuse the dictate of Washington and its western European lackeys. Cases in point are Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria – the list is endless. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) recently reported that Employees of a German manufacturing firm doing completely legal business with Iran were put on a US terror list, which meant that they were shut off from most of the financial system and even some logistics companies would not transport their furniture any more.

Every transfer will be registered and monitored by an American-Zionist control mechanism.
Norbert Häring concludes, “Every internationally active bank can be blackmailed by the US government into following their orders, since revoking their license to do business in the US or in dollars, basically amounts to shutting them down. Deutsche Bank had to negotiate [in September 2016] with the US treasury for months whether they would have to pay a fine of 14 billion dollars and most likely go broke, or get away with seven billion and survive. If you have the power to bankrupt the largest banks even of large countries, you have power over their governments, too. This power through dominance over the financial system and the associated data is already there. The less cash there is in use, the more extensive and secure it is, as the use of cash is a major avenue for evading this power.”

Back to India. It is not difficult to imagine what the implications of such a massive demonetisation operation might have in a country like India, where hundreds of millions live in or near poverty, with a large rural population, where almost all transactions are carried out in cash – and where cash is everything for survival. This is death by financial strangulation.

No blood, no traces – no media coverage. It is a clandestine wilful mass-murder, carried out by the Indian government on its own people, while instigated by the chief assassins, operating from within the Washington Beltway killer farms, no scruples, no morals, no ethics – what Washington knows best to achieve its purpose.

This no-holds-barred strategy is accelerating, as time runs out. The ship is slowly but surely turning towards another dimension, another world view – one of in which humanity may gain back its status of a solidary being. These atrocities around the globe may go some ways – but I doubt they will go all the way. There is a spiritual limit on how far evil can go.

Featured Photo courtesy: Monito

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About the Author

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

 

The Audacity of Obama’s Farewell Address

By Jack Rasmus

President Barack Obama’s farewell address to the nation last night was a strange and disappointing attempt that failed to replicate the hope, energy, and optimism of his first 2008 address to the nation.

 

Instead of celebrating the unity of all those who joined to put him in office, the mood was downbeat, with Obama warning listeners that the country had become more divided than ever during his intervening years in office, that democracy was threatened on many fronts – cultural, legal, and economic – and that the people to whom he was speaking, and throughout the United States, now had the task to take up the fight to protect what’s left and restore it, for clearly, he had not been able to do so.

At times the fire of hope, dominant in his 2008 victory speech, briefly returned. Obama declared, referring to 2008 and 2012, that “maybe you still can’t believe we pulled this whole thing off”. But what exactly was pulled off? What was accomplished that was so great is hard to know. But he apparently thinks something was.

During the speech he listed a series of accomplishments that represent, in his view, the high marks of his presidency: As he put it, he “reversed the Great Recession, rebooted the auto industry, generated the longest job creation period in US economic history, got 20 million people health insurance coverage, halved US dependency on foreign oil, negotiated the Iran nuclear proliferation deal, killed Osama Bin Laden, prevented foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland, ended torture, passed laws to protect citizens from surveillance, and worked to close GITMO.”

Sounds good, unless one considers the facts behind the “hurrah for me” claims.

The auto industry was rescued, true, but auto workers wages and benefits are less today than in 2008 and jobs in the industry are still below 2008 levels. So, too, are higher paid construction jobs. Half of the jobs created since 2008 include those lost in 2008-2010, and the rest of the net gains in new jobs since 2010 have been low-paid, no benefits, part-time, temp/“gig” service jobs that leave no fewer than 40 percent of young workers under 30 today forced to live at home with parents. More people are working two and three part-time jobs than ever before. Five million have left the workforce altogether, which doesn’t get counted in the official employment and unemployment rate figures. If one counts part-time workers, temps and those who’ve left the labor force or not entered altogether, the jobless rate is not today’s official 4.9 percent but 10 percent of the workforce. That’s 15 million or more still, and after eight years. Meanwhile, those who do have jobs are victims of the great “job churn”, from high to lower wage, from a few, if any, benefits to none at all.

As for ending the Great Recession, the question raised is for whom it ended and what constitutes an end. The US economy grew after 2009, but at the slowest rate of growth historically, post-recession, since the 1930s.

But he did end the great recession for the wealthy and their corporations. Corporations have distributed more than US$5 trillion in stock buybacks and dividends to their shareholders since 2010, as corporate profits more than doubled, as stock and bond markets tripled in value, and as more than US$6 trillion in new tax cuts for corporations and investors (beyond the US$3.5 trillion George W. Bush provided) were passed on Obama’s watch. Not to be outdone by Obama and the Democrats, Trump and the Republican Congress are now about to pass another US$6.2 trillion for investors and businesses, to be paid for in large part by tax hikes for the rest of us and the slashing of education spending, Medicare, Medicaid, health care, housing, and what’s left of the U.S. social safety net.

In foreign policy, he noted he signed the Iran deal, but left out mentioning that during his administration the US set the entire Middle East aflame with failed policy responses to the Arab Spring.

In his farewell address, Obama also cited how the country “halved its dependency on foreign oil”. True enough, at the cost of environmental disasters from Texas to the Dakotas to Pennsylvania, as oil fracking replaced Saudi sources, in the process generating irreversible water and air contamination in the U.S. In foreign policy, he noted he signed the Iran deal, but left out mentioning that during his administration the U.S. set the entire Middle East aflame with failed policy responses to the Arab Spring, with Hillary’s coup in Libya, to support of various terrorist groups (including al-Qaida) in Syria and to the arming of the Saudis to attack Yemen.

Looking farther east, Obama’s foreign policy outcomes are no better. The US is still fighting in Afghanistan 16 years later – the longest war in US history – as the Afghan government now collapses again in a cesspool of corruption and graft. And the US is still engaged in Iraq. A related consequence of the failed U.S. Middle East policy has been the destabilisation of Europe with mass refugee migrations that have been only temporarily suspended by equally massive payoffs to Turkey’s proto-fascist Erdogan government (which also blames the U.S. for the recent failed coup there, by the way).

Other failures on the Obama foreign policy front must include the US militarisation of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe following Obama’s inability to rein in Hillary’s US State Department neocons in 2013-14, who made a mess out of their US-financed coup in the Ukraine in 2014. That debacle has driven the US and Russia further toward confrontation, which perhaps Hillary and the neocons may have wanted in the first place (along with a US land invasion of Syria at the time which, in this case, Obama to his credit resisted).

 

And what about Obama’s much-heralded “pivot to China”? On his watch, China’s currency achieved global reserve status, that country launched a major trade expansion, and a government-established pan-Asian investment bank. The collapse of the US-sponsored Trans-Pacific Partnership will also mean a China-Southeast Asia TPP-style trade agreement, which was already well underway.

On the domestic front, Obama’s legacies must include the most massive deportation of Latinos in US history on his watch, nothing but words spoken from the comfort of the White House about police and gun violence and Black lives murdered on the streets of the US and the rollback of voting rights across the country. And let’s not forget about Barack the great promoter of free trade, signing bilateral deals from the very beginning of his administration, and then the TPP – all of which gave Trump one of his biggest weapons during the recent election.

The media and press incessantly refer to the 2010 Obamacare Act and the 2010 bank regulating Dodd-Frank Act as two of his prime achievements. But Obamacare is about to implode because it failed to control health care costs, which now amount to more than US$3 trillion of the US total GDP of US$19 trillion – the highest in the developed world at nearly 18 percent of GDP (compared to Europe and elsewhere, which spend on average 10 percent of their GDP on health care). The 8 percent difference, more than a trillion per year, goes to the pockets of middle-men and paper pushers like insurance companies, who provide not one iota of health care services.

In his address, Obama touted the fact that on his watch, 20 of the 50 million uninsured got health insurance coverage, half of them covered by Medicaid which provides well less than even “bare bones”, provided one can even find a doctor willing to provide medical services. The rest covered by Obamacare mostly got high deductible insurance, often at an out-of-pocket cost of US$2,000-$4,000 per year. Thus, ten million got minimal coverage while the health insurance industry got US$900 billion a year, which is what the program costs. No wonder the health insurance companies did not oppose such a windfall. Obamacare is best described therefore as a “health insurance industry subsidy act”, not a health care reform act.

Obama will be remembered for scuttling his own program in 2010 by unilaterally caving in to the insurance companies and withdrawing the “public option” while his party refused to even allow a discussion about expanding Medicare to all – the only solution to the continuing US health care crisis. In the wake of Obamacare’s passage, big pharmaceutical companies have also been allowed to price gouge at will, driving up not only private health insurance premiums but Medicare costs as well, and softening up the latter program for coming Republican-Trump attacks.

As for Dodd-Frank, that’s been known as a joke for some time, providing no real controls on greedy bankers and investors who were given five years after its passage in 2010 to lobby and pick it apart, which they’ve done. The one provision in Dodd-Frank worth anything – the Consumer Protection Agency – is about to disappear under Trump. And for the first time in US economic history, no banker or investor responsible for the 2008 crash went to jail on Obama’s watch.

So much for Obamacare and banking reform as his most notable “legacies”.

The true legacies that will be remembered long term will be the accelerating rate of income inequality, the real basis for the growing divisions in America, and the near collapse of the Democratic Party itself.

Under Obama, the wealthiest 1 percent accrued no less than 97 percent of all the net national income gains since 2008, as stock markets tripled, bond markets and corporate profits doubled, and US$5 trillion was passed through to investors as US$6 trillion more in their taxes were cut. Under George Bush, the wealthiest 1 percent of households accrued 65 percent of net national gains. Under Clinton 48 percent. So the rate accelerated rapidly during Obama’s term. Apart from talking about it, Obama did nothing during the last 8 years to abate, let alone reverse, the trend.

The true legacies that will be remembered long term will be the accelerating rate of income inequality, the real basis for the growing divisions in America, and the near collapse of the Democratic Party itself.

The other true legacy will be the virtual implosion of the Democratic Party itself during his administration. As the leader of a party, one would think ensuring its success in the future would be a priority. But it wasn’t. On his watch, nearly two-thirds of all state legislatures and governorships – and countless court positions – have been captured by the Republicans. To be fair, the Democratic Party has been in decline for decades. It has won at the presidential level only when the Republicans split their vote, as in 1992 when Ross Perot challenged George H.W. Bush, and when George W. crashed the entire US, and much of the global, economy in 2008.

Obama and the Democrats had a historic opportunity to turn the country in a progressive direction for a decade or more, as Roosevelt did in 1932 and then 1934 by bailing out Main St. with another New Deal. But Obama chose to double down in 2010 on bailing out Wall Street and the big corporations with another US$800 billion tax cut, leaving Main Street behind. Unlike FDR in 1934, who swept the midterm elections that year, gaining a Congress that would pass the New Deal in 1935, Obama doubled down on more for investors, corporations and the 1 percent. He paid dearly for that in 2010, losing control of Congress. US voters gave him one more chance in 2012, but he again failed to deliver. The result is a Democratic Party “debacle 2.0” in 2016, leaving a Democratic Party in shambles. That, too, will be remembered as his longer-term legacy.

Returning to his farewell address, the affair was a poorly rehearsed caricature of his 2008 inaugural, during which so many had so much hope for change, but ended up with so little in the end. Like a touring theatre troupe putting on its last performance blandly, eager to change into street clothes and get out of town. True, the Republicans played hardball and blocked many of his initiatives, but Obama did little to fight back in kind. If he was a community organiser, he was from the most timid in that genre. He kept extending a hand to the Republican dog that kept biting it at every overture. He wanted everyone to unite and pull together. But in politics, winning is not achieved by reasoning with the better nature of one’s opponents. That’s considered weakness, and the biting thereafter is ever more vicious.

But perhaps Obama’s greater political error was he never went to the American people to mobilise support, instead sitting comfortably within the Oval Office of the White House and enjoying the elite circus that is “inside the beltway” Washington. He never put anything personal or physical on the line. And that does not an organiser make. He repeatedly talked the talk, but never walked it. The results were predictable, as the Republican hard-ballers – McConnell, Ryan and crew – threw him beanballs every time he came up to bat. He struck out, time and again, calmly walking back to his White House dugout every time.

So farewell, Barack. Your speech was a nostalgic call to your hometown fans in Chicago to go out and organise for US democracy because it’s now in deep “doo-doo”. Take up where I left off, your message? Fair enough. Do what I failed to accomplish, you say? OK. See you at the country club, buddy, after your lunch with Penny Pritzker, the Chicago Hilton Hotels billionaires, who put you in office back in 2008.

And now the United States changes one real estate wheeler-dealer for another, this time one who takes the direct reins of government. And he’s Obama’s legacy as well.

 

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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.

 

An Unsettling New Normal for India-Pakistan Relations

By Michael Kugelman and Vandana Seth

In the coming months, all-out war between the two nuclear-armed rivals is unlikely. However, prolonged tensions are ensured while limited conflict is highly possible, if not inevitable. Even cultural safe spaces for bilateral cooperation have been poisoned by politics – an ominous indication of the troubled relationship’s dangerous direction.

 

To say that 2016 was a rough year for India-Pakistan relations might be an understatement.

It began with a brazen assault on an Indian military base in the town of Pathankot. New Delhi blamed Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Pakistani terror group with links to Pakistani intelligence, for the raid. Seven soldiers died.

In March, Pakistan claimed to have arrested an Indian spy in Baluchistan, a province plagued by a separatist insurgency that Pakistan has long accused India of helping stoke.

As Indian security forces reacted to the unrest with brutal tactics, including shooting children with pellet guns, Pakistan denounced what it described as an Indian “reign of terror” in Kashmir.

The summer months brought an uprising in Jammu and Kashmir. This is the Muslim-majority, India-administered state that Pakistan has long claimed as its own and has triggered multiple wars between the nuclear-armed rivals. As Indian security forces reacted to the unrest with brutal tactics, including shooting children with pellet guns, Pakistan denounced what it described as an Indian “reign of terror” in Kashmir.[1] Islamabad also accused India of meddling in and destabilising Pakistan. India responded to this intensifying rhetorical tit-for-tat by lambasting Pakistan for its military’s abusive actions in Baluchistan.

And then came September.

On the 18th of that month, terrorists assaulted an Indian Army base in the Kashmiri town of Uri, killing nearly 20 soldiers in the deadliest single attack on the Indian military in decades. India again blamed JeM.

 

Both sides beat the war drums vociferously amid a backbeat of bombastic and bellicose rhetoric. Then, on the 29th, New Delhi claimed to have carried out what it called a “surgical strike” along the Line of Control (LoC), the disputed border that divides India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The operation, according to India, killed multiple Pakistani militants planning to stage more attacks in India.

Pakistan, for its part, denied the attack happened at all.

Also in September, India announced a campaign to isolate Pakistan diplomatically until Islamabad takes more robust action against terrorists on its soil. New Delhi prevailed on several member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to join India in boycotting the group’s planned meeting for November in Islamabad, prompting an embarrassed Pakistan to cancel the event. In December, India used another regional summit, the Heart of Asia conference, as a forum to excoriate Pakistan for its failure to curb terror.

Then, in 2016’s final weeks, cross-border firing along the LoC rose to levels of intensity arguably not seen in years.

Fortunately, India and Pakistan didn’t go to war. And they’re unlikely to go to war anytime soon, thanks in great part to the deterrent of nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan refuses to adopt a no-first-use policy, it can hypothetically respond to any Indian use of conventional military force with a nuclear strike. The three major wars fought by India and Pakistan all occurred before 1998, when both became declared nuclear weapons states.

 

Anxious Months Ahead

This isn’t to say that tensions on the Subcontinent are about to ease. Rather, bilateral ties will remain on tenterhooks, and limited conflict is highly possible if not inevitable.

The current political dynamics of India-Pakistan relations forestall any immediate prospects for de-escalation. To be sure, temperatures may cool enough on each side to allow for a resumption of high-level diplomacy. A sustained period of détente, however, is unlikely. India’s Hindu nationalist government has taken a hard line on Pakistan after earlier efforts to extend an olive branch failed to achieve what India wants most – Pakistani crackdowns against anti-India terrorists on Pakistani soil. Instead, Indian outreach may have prompted the opposite effect. The Pathankot attack came just days after a surprise Christmas Day visit to Pakistan by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India has likely concluded that formal dialogue with Pakistan simply makes little sense. Over the last two years, the powerful Pakistani military – which is more hostile to India than is the Pakistani government – has cut an increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif down to size. The premier has been weakened by anti-government protests and revelations in the Panama Papers about his children’s offshore assets. Sharif’s policy space has shrunk significantly, and the military enjoys full control over the policy of India

In November, Pakistan’s military experienced a leadership transition when Qamar Javed Bajwa replaced Raheel Sharif as army chief. Bajwa’s arrival is unlikely to change the military’s staunch anti-India position. Indeed, in one of his first speeches, Bajwa vowed that any Indian provocation along the LoC “must be responded to with full force.”[2]

The new normal of India-Pakistan relations is likely to be one of prolonged tensions, but also one of limited and covert hostilities. India, emboldened by the “surgical strike” it claims to have carried out in September, could launch limited, lightning counter-terror strikes (or even strikes on military targets) on Pakistani territory, most likely in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In retaliation, Pakistan could encourage JeM and other anti-India terror groups to stage attacks in India. This covert war would fall short of nuclear red lines, and it would give each side plausible deniability.

It’s unlikely this form of conflict would lead to a hot war. Still, several potential triggers could prompt troop mobilisations along the LoC or other escalatory moves. These include an Indian air strike on a major Pakistani military target; a catastrophic terrorist attack in India on the scale of the 2008 Mumbai tragedy, which killed 166 people; or a rapid succession of terrorist assaults in India that renders limited responses politically untenable for New Delhi. In these circumstances, unsettling questions about the strength of the nuclear deterrent – and how much force could be used before running up against nuclear red lines – would loom large.

 

Economic Implications

It’s worth examining not just the security ramifications of a prolonged bilateral stalemate, but also the economic consequences.

Consider the impact of extended tensions on stock markets and investor perceptions. The good news is that stock markets in India have historically not been deleteriously affected by India-Pakistan tensions. They’ve weathered terror attacks quite well – I ncluding catastrophic ones. In a 2016 Investopedia assessment, Elvis Picardo notes that after multiple blasts in the city of Mumbai killed more than 250 people on March 12, 1993 (a Friday), the city “reopened for business as usual on Monday” and there was “little impact” on financial markets and the Indian economy. Additionally, Picardo points out that when Mumbai was hit again in November 2008, India’s Sensex stock market index “hardly registered a blip” on the day of the attack. While it experienced declines in the succeeding days, the Sensex year-end position was higher than on the day before the attack.

The conclusion? “Investors treat terror attacks as one-off events,” Picardo writes, and “their negative effect tends to only be temporary.”[3] Similarly, investment analysts contend that one-off acts of limited conflict – such as India’s “surgical strike” – inflict little damage on markets.[4]

This is reassuring. However, markets may react quite differently if India were to suffer a series of attacks – say several within the same month. This could shift investor perceptions and cause them to believe that these strikes no long represent one-offs. Another factor driving investor perceptions is the location of attacks. Over the last two years, most major terror strikes in India have occurred in relatively remote regions of Kashmir or in small towns or cities in nearby Punjab state. However, a rapid-fire series of strikes in a single major city could spook investors in a big way, given that many would regard large urban spaces as their preferred locations to do business. To be sure, an actual shooting war between India and Pakistan would also be damaging for markets and would be extremely worrisome for investors.

Another economic consideration about extended India-Pakistan tensions is the impact on trade. Historically, the two countries have often continued to engage in bilateral commerce even when relations are strained. In the early 1950s, India was Pakistan’s largest trading partner despite a wilting of political relations. In 1965, a year when the two countries went to war, nine branches of six Indian banks were operating in Pakistan.[5] Consider as well that total annual bilateral trade volumes expanded from $345 million in 2003-04 to $2.3 billion in 2014-15 – a period often fraught with tension.

Significantly, however, trade has stalled during the most recent crisis in relations. After reaching $2.7 billion in 2013-14, it fell to $2.6 billion in 2015-16.[6]

Because Pakistan refuses to adopt a no-first-use policy, it can hypothetically respond to any Indian use of conventional military force with a nuclear strike.

Curtailed trade is bad news because it generates harmful economic consequences. When formal bilateral trade languishes, informal trade flourishes. Indeed, decreased formal trade volumes suggest intensified levels of informal trade. This means reduced financial windfalls for each government, given that informal trade doesn’t generate revenue for governments in the form of taxes, tariffs, and so on. With informal trade, this revenue all accrues to private buyers and sellers, as well as intermediaries and smugglers.

Already, India-Pakistan informal trade exceeds formal trade. Recent projections contend that informal trade is twice that of formal trade.[7] These high informal trade tallies underscore the strong potential for more formal trade, but current political tensions constrain efforts to capitalise on these opportunities.

More broadly, India-Pakistan tensions threaten commercial cooperation. This includes the Pakistan-India Joint Business Forum, an initiative established by each country’s commerce ministry in 2012. Comprised of top business leaders from each nation, it meets periodically to discuss how to facilitate trade normalisation. Despite the crisis in bilateral ties, the group still held a meeting in New Delhi last May.[8] Each side vowed “to create a level playing field” for investors.

That pledge came just a few months after India announced new business visa measures for Pakistani entrepreneurs. They allow visiting Pakistani businesspeople to travel to more Indian cities on the same visa than was permitted previously, and they’re no longer obligated to check in at Indian police stations. At the same time, these new policies stipulate that visa applicants must run an enterprise worth at least 10 million Indian rupees (about $150,000) – a regulation that rules out less wealthy Pakistani businesspeople.[9]

 

Safe Spaces Under Threat

The new normal of India-Pakistan relations is likely to be tense and tumultuous, thereby accentuating the importance of protecting remaining safe spaces for bilateral cooperation. Many of these safe spaces are found outside official, government-to-government channels. They’re found in the realm of trade, but also in the cultural sphere. Ominously, these spaces are increasingly getting poisoned by politics. An Indian cricket star recently called for an end to matches between the two countries, while Pakistan has sought to ban Indian television programming.[10]

The denial of cultural safe space for bilateral exchanges is disappointing, demoralising, and – given the extent of the entrenched enmity between India and Pakistan – dangerously destabilising.

 

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About the Authors

Michael Kugelman is the Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

 

Vandana Seth is a research scholar based in India. She was recently in the United States on a Legislative Fellows Program sponsored by the US State Department.

 

References
1. “Uri Attack: India Diverting Attention from ‘Reign of Terror’ in Kashmir,” Says Pakistan,” Firstpost, September 19, 2016, http://www.firstpost.com/world/uri-attack-india-diverting-attention-from-reign-of-terror-in-kashmir-says-pakistan-3010504.html.
2. Pakistani Troops Will Respond With ‘Full Force’ To Indian Ceasefire Violations: COAS Gen Bajwa,” Dawn, December 2, 2016, http://www.dawn.com/news/1300046.
3. Elvis Picardo, “Don’t Hide from the Reality of How Terrorism Affects the Economy,” Investopedia, March 24, 2016, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030215/how-terrorism-affects-markets-and-economy.asp. Research shows Pakistan’s Karachi Stock Exchange—in a nation that has suffered more terror assaults than India—bouncing back quickly from attacks as well. See Faheem Aslam and Hyoung-Goo Kang, “How Different Terror Attacks Affect Stock Markets, “ Defense and Peace Economics 26(6): 634-648.
4. Kartik Goyal and Rajhkumar K Shaaw, “India Markets React After Surgical Terror Strikes in Pakistan,” Bloomberg, September 29, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/india-markets-slump-as-nation-attacked-terror-camps-in-pakistan.
5. Michael Kugelman, “The Pakistan-India Trade Relationship: Prospects, Profits, and Pitfalls,” in Pakistan-India Trade: What Needs To Be Done? What Does It Matter? Eds. Michael Kugelman and Robert M. Hathaway (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2013), 3.
6. Nisha Taneja, Samridhi Bimal, and Varsha Sivaram, “Recent Trends in India-Pakistan Trade,” ICRIER Data Sheet, http://indiapakistantrade.org/pdf/Data%20Sheet_India_Pakistan_2015.pdf.
7. Dipti Jain, “The Dynamics of India-Pakistan Trade,” Livemint, July 21, 2016, http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/JGc3VFdP0JDeU8UdyyNCXM/Delhi-to-Lahore-via-Dubai-The-dynamics-of-IndiaPakistan-t.html.
8. Nayanima Basu, “India, Pak Business Forum Vows to Augment Trade Ties,” The Hindu, May 4, 2016, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/india-pak-business-forum-vows-to-augment-trade-ties/article8557195.ece.
9. “India Toughens Business Visa Rules for Pakistani Entrepreneurs with ‘Rs10 Million Rule,’” Express Tribune, February 3, 2016, http://tribune.com.pk/story/1039385/pakistanis-to-get-india-business-card-if-they-run-inr10-million-business/.
10. “Cut All Ties with Pak. Till Terrorism Ends: Gambhir,” The Hindu, October 18, 2016, http://www.thehindu.com/sport/cricket/Cut-all-ties-with-Pak.-till-terrorism-ends-Gambhir/article16074864.ece and Syed Raza Hassan, “Pakistan To Block Indian Content on TV, Radio as Tension Simmers,” Reuters, October 21, 2016, http://in.reuters.com/article/pakistan-india-media-idINKCN12K0P6.

 

Colombia – Inviting NATO to Fight “Organized Crime” – A Menace for Latin America

By Peter Koenig 

NATO in Colombia would be like a training ground for guerilla warfare, something the transatlantic forces are not used to – but will have to become familiar with in order to fulfil Washington’s plan to gradually proliferate throughout South America, preventing any attempts of left-wing uprisings.

 

Imagine, Mr. Manuel Santos, President of Colombia, Nobel Peace Laureate 2016, for achieving a Peace Agreement with the FARC “rebels” (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) – this same peace-loving Mr. Santos is inviting NATO to his country to help fight “organised crime”. As TeleSUR reports, this could jeopardise the recently signed (the ink is not yet dry) Peace Agreement between the Government and FARC.

Within the last few days, at least two leaders of “campesinos” (peasant farmers) were found killed. “False flag”, as usual, with real people casualties? Provoking FARC to retaliate? – Which would be the end of the peace agreement.

Frankly, I never believed that the government was serious in negotiating peace, ending one of the longest civil conflicts’, with the longest peace negotiations in recent Latin American history. A four-year peace process was supposed to end 52 years of the leftist FARC militia fighting in defence of the rural poor, countering an elite of the rich, mostly urban dweller and latifundios, against government forces with support of the US military stationed in Colombia (Colombia: The Peace Farce, If There Ever Was One http://www.globalresearch.ca/colombia-the-peace-farce-if-there-ever-was-one/5550004).

Like the Europeans, the Colombian Government is a sheer puppet of Washington’s. Both Santos and his predecessor, Uribe, are CIA handlers. Having peace with FARC would be against the interests of the United States. So – what is the agreement all about? – It’s propaganda, lie-propaganda. Giving war-wearied people an illusion, false hope, that there is light at the end of the endless tunnel of assassinations and abuse – enhanced by the politically highly astute Swedish / Norwegian Nobel Committee. At the first sign of a FARC uprising, for example in protest of the (false flag) campesino killings, the agreement will be broken, and peace is what it was from the very beginning – a farce – a travesty to induce a new strategy for Latin America – bringing in NATO.

To disguise Washington’s role, President Santos is calling on NATO for help. Everybody knows that NATO represents basically the US Pentagon with some token input from Washington’s European stooges. But NATO’s involvement in Colombia would have far wider implication than just fighting FARC, or as Santos calls it euphemistically, “fighting organised crime” which is a reference to fighting drug cartels and linking the “fight” to the infamous and controversial US Plan Colombia, the direct cost of which has exceeded 10 billion dollars since 2000, when it began. The total cost, including the destruction of infrastructure, housing and livelihoods, as well as the lives of at least 220 000 Colombians and close to six million people displaced, with the related hardship and suffering, is uncountable.

Earlier this year, The Guardian reported, “Plan Colombia has become a catch-all phrase for several different strategies. It is most widely understood as a US aid package to Colombia which has totalled about $10 billion since 2000. More broadly, it was a joint US-Colombian strategy to strengthen the military, state institutions and the economy.”

Despite the Plan, coca production is higher today than in 2000, at the beginning of the Plan and Colombia remains the world’s top coca and cocaine producer.

“There is this idea that it is some vast orchestrated project, but Plan Colombia doesn’t exist as such,” says Winifred Tate, author of “Drugs, Thugs and Diplomats”, a study of US policymaking in Colombia. “Rather, it has been a series of programs whose emphasis has expanded and recalibrated over the years”, she says.

In fact, former Colombia President Andres Pastrana, under whom Plan Colombia started, admitted to The Guardian that the strategy was a turning point in the country’s decades-old war [against FARC]. “Before the Plan, security forces were on the defensive and on the verge of military defeat [by FARC guerrillas].”

Despite the Plan, coca production is higher today than in 2000, at the beginning of the Plan and Colombia remains the world’s top coca and cocaine producer. So, Plan Colombia has not worked. A “Strategy Change” is in order. In comes NATO, a multi-country military force, per se, to fight crime, kill farmers who do not “obey” – continuing the fight against FARC “rebels” who defend the peasants – and therefore break the highly deceptive Peace Agreement. A condition for the Peace Agreement was complete disarmament of FARC. In a new war, FARC would be extremely disadvantaged, risking to be easily eviscerated by NATO.

What is NATO? – NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a US led military force stationed in Europe. It was created in 1949 by the United States and included Canada and several European countries. Its main official purpose was to defend Europe from the imaginary enemy, the communist Soviet Union. Implicitly it also meant that Europe wouldn’t need to build up its own defence. Big Brother would take care of it with – yes, NATO. The only European leader with foresight and who saw through the sham, was General De Gaulle. In 1966 he kicked NATO out of France. In 2009, 43 years later, French President Sarkozy, also a known CIA agent, reintegrated France into all structures of NATO.

At the foundation of NATO, as today, the US had and has a phobia against anything that has anything to do with socialism, let alone communism – which was a major justification for the arms race that enhanced the Cold War from the late 1950’s to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Cold War was mostly a propaganda hype to make believe the Soviet Union, which historically never had expansionist ambitions, was a threat to European sovereignty. The Cold War justified an arms race that sustained a highly profitable war industry.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the justification for NATO effectively died. It had then 12 bases in Europe. The unilateral promise by the allied forces, expressed by then German Foreign Minister Genscher, was that NATO would not expand one meter to the east. Today NATO has 28 members and more than 30 bases throughout Europe, most of them clustering around the Russian borders, a threat to Moscow. That shows the honesty of western promises. This prolific character is typical for US-led military operations, in particular NATO. With this historic background, NATO in Colombia would be a real and present danger for all of Latin America. NATO, an alliance of Atlantists, has no business in Colombia, let alone in Latin America.

NATO in Colombia had an earlier beginning. President Juan Manuel Santos initiated the Colombia-NATO cooperation. Negotiations between the former Colombian defence Minister, Juan Carlos Pinzón, and NATO’s General Philip Breedlove, then NATO Commander in Europe, started in 2013 with the “benign” purpose for Colombia to gain access to NATO’s “best practices in professional standards, integrity and transparency, as well as humanitarian operations”. Against obvious protests from Venezuela to having NATO infiltrated in her neighbouring country, President Santos signed a “Cooperation Agreement” with NATO on 6 June 2013 in Brussels.

The Cold War justified an arms race that sustained a highly profitable war industry.

This was the beginning of a covert alliance between a key Latin American ally of Washington and NATO. Almost nobody noticed. Bringing NATO troops to Colombia would not only be a first in Latin America, it might wreak havoc among the non-aligned UNASUR nations, especially among Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

NATO in Colombia would be like a training ground for guerilla warfare, something the transatlantic forces are not used to – but will have to become familiar with in order to fulfil Washington’s plan to gradually proliferate throughout South America, preventing any attempts of left-wing uprisings. Once in strategically located Colombia, NATO would spread like brush fire throughout the Sub-Continent, being allowed by the neoliberal Latin American Governments now being implanted by Washington to build countless military bases. They would henceforth be called NATO bases. The unpopular term, US bases, would be a thing of the past.

Latin America, be aware and alert. Obama’s condescendingly calling Latin America “Washington’s Backyard”, could become quickly a reality with NATO in Colombia. As the famous late Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, wisely said, “Once American troops are in your country, you will never get rid of them.”

 

This article was first published on The Saker on 29 December 2016.

Featured image courtesy of: AP Fi

 

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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.

Philippines 2017 or the Year of Living Dangerously 

By Dan Steinbock         

As President Duterte is rebalancing the Philippines’ economic and strategic policies, Washington is preparing plans for regime change. What the country needs is economic development, says Dan Steinbock – not Cold War.

 

After the election triumph of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines has initiated a series of economic reforms to accelerate development, decentralise governance and a tough but controversial struggle against corruption and drugs.

The early economic signals are promising. Recently, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III announced that the government is set to sustain growth at close to 7% in 2017, despite “political noise”, by banking on higher infrastructure spending, tax and other reforms, improved peace and order.

With his keen interest in history, particularly colonial history, Duterte knows only too well that, while the US is a powerful regional ally, American security state, including systematic torture and even waterboarding, originate historically from the Philippines. He never had any illusions that the US would sit idle as he begins to rebalance Philippine domestic and foreign policies, which have been subject to Washington’s regional designs since the end of the 19th century.

But perhaps even Duterte did not expect the US State Department to respond as palpably as it reportedly has done.

 

Alleged Regime Change Plan

After the controversial US Ambassador Philip Goldberg left the Philippines, he wrote a “blueprint to undermine Duterte within 18 months”. According to the document, which was recently leaked to The Manila Times, Goldberg advocates fostering public discontent with Duterte by isolating the Philippines through military assistance and economic “blackmail” relative to other ASEAN member countries. The pro-US opposition would be reinforced through aids and grants.

While Goldberg thinks that “(deposing Duterte) would be a challenge for the opposition”, his goal is imperial “rule and divide” among Philippine congressmen and senators, the ASEAN states, and international multilateral organisations. Moreover, the pro-US opposition should be strengthened through aids and grants. The plan calls on Washington to deploy economic, political and military strategies against Duterte “to bring him to his knees and eventually remove him from office”.

According to Daniel Russel, State Department’s assistance secretary for East Asian affairs, the allegations of a blueprint are false. Nevertheless, Russel himself is a key figure in the US pivot towards Asia.

US-based sources have tried to discredit the blueprint as coming from China’s Philippine Ambassador Zhao, which the executive editor of The Manila Times Dr. Dante Ang calls a “fantasy”.

In geopolitics, human rights and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have only too often been used as geopolitical weapons.

It is not the first time Goldberg is associated with regime change efforts. In 2008 President Evo Morales and the Bolivian government gave him 3 days to leave the country after declaring him persona non grata – following efforts to fund the opposition leaders, separatists and think-tanks with millions of dollars.

Yet, President Obama rewarded Goldberg by appointing him assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research; one of the 16 elements of the US Intelligence Community (IC). That made Goldberg the middleman between US intelligence and US diplomacy. Thereafter he was sent to the Philippines, which he left in less than three years after efforts to intervene with the election outcome.

 

Human Rights and NGOs amid Geopolitics

In geopolitics, human rights and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have only too often been used as geopolitical weapons. The Philippines is no exception.

In the Benigno Aquino III era until mid-2016, complacency with drug lords and narco politicians went hand in hand with the rise of some 3.7 million addicts; most of them in poor regions. Yet, international media was relatively quiet about both. But when Duterte started his war against drugs and corruption, which has cost over 6,000 lives, international “concern” has escalated.

In the public debate, the point person has been Senator Leila de Lima, Aquino’s former Secretary of Justice, who chaired a senate inquiry into the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects. She has been glorified by the BBC as “the woman who dares to defy Philippine president Duterte” and she is characterised as an outspoken advocate of “justice without fear or favour”. It is for the same reason that de Lima was invited to and awarded in the US last month as one of the “leading 100 global thinkers” by the influential Democratic Foreign Policy.

In the Philippines, many see de Lima’s awards as perversions of justice, however. In August, she was found to have a 7-year affair – that is, through the Aquino era – with her lucratively-rewarded driver Ronnie Dayan who served as her money collector for drug protection and campaign financing. When de Lima was still Justice Secretary, the Discovery Channel presented an unsettling documentary Inside the Gangster’s code, on ruthless prison gangs exerting control over the notorious New Bilibid Prisons, while being coddled by incumbent political leaders.

Last September, de Lima was removed from the Senate committee. Oddly enough, her international accolades have ensued after the disclosure of her activities.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also play a role in US-Philippines geopolitics, along with a handful wealthy US Filipinos linked with the Aquino circles, such as Loida Nicolas-Lewis, the widow of billionaire businessman Reginald Lewis and the sister of Imelda Nicolas, the head of the overseas Filipinos’ commission during the Aquino administration. From Duterte’s standpoint, a more influential source of funds is billionaire George Soros, who he says has bankrolled local NGOs against him as he has been portrayed as a “mass murderer” in the West. In turn, international media has relied on these NGOs and think-tanks in their demonisation of Duterte.

A few weeks ago, the US-based Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) did not renew its $430 million aid grant to the Philippines. While the Duterte administration’s criticism about “aid conditions” was reported as “tirades against America” in the West, the MCC is hardly independent. It is chaired by State Secretary John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. Critics say it deploys indicators that precondition aid on imposed neoliberal policies.

Furthermore, the MCC debacle is overshadowed by the economic implications of US-Philippine military ties. Until 2010, the country’s military expenditures decreased two decades from 1.6% to 0.8% of GDP. During the Aquino era, which coincides with the US pivot to Asia, these expenditures soared to almost 1.4%, according to SIPRI research – which in dollar terms is over five times the proposed aid package in just one year.

 

Taking Advantage of Political Opposition

The regime plan ensued after election last May, when President Aquino’s designated successor – former interior minister Manuel “Mar” Roxas, an ex-investment banker and Liberal Party leader – failed to deliver a democratic victory. Known as “Mr. Palengke” (Mr. Market) in the Philippines, Roxas appealed to elites but Duterte got almost 40% of the national vote, almost twice as much as Roxas.

The MCC debacle is overshadowed by the economic implications of US-Philippine military ties.

After elections, there have also been questions about the rise of narco state and its cooperation with military leaders during the watch of Roxas as interior minister. Duterte ordered the investigation of five former and incumbent police generals led by retired PNP deputy director general Marcelo Garbo Jr. for their involvement in illegal drugs. Garbo, who was tagged as a “protector of drug syndicates”, was also a vocal supporter of Roxas who has vehemently denied any connections with “drugs generals” but whose name has now become associated with them.

In order to set public perceptions aside, Goldberg’s plan argues that the political opposition “would need all the political weapons in their arsenal to replace Duterte… Opposition actors across the political spectrum look at us (the US) for cues and signals.” Indeed, the role of political opposition is vital to Goldberg because the regime change must seem to be “democratic”. Consequently, the plan advises “restraint in expressing public support for former President Fidel Valdez Ramos and Vice President Leni Robredo, and other opposition leaders “so as not to alarm the Duterte administration of an impending destabilisation or a coup”.

These plans rely on the centre-right Philippine Liberal party, which is known for its market-friendly neoliberal policies and firm support of the US pivot to Asia. Fidel Ramos’s ties with the US go back to his training at West Point in 1960. In the 1980s, he was in President Marcos’s inner circle of national police and military. Following the fall of Marcos, he served as President Corazon Aquino’s key military chief. But after assisting as Duterte’s early emissary to China, he has criticised the administration’s efforts to reduce US military ties.

In turn, Leni Robredo is a lawyer and social activist, who the Duterte administration sees more loyal to Aquino’s Liberal coalition. Her relationship with the Cabinet fell apart a few weeks ago. On December 4, 2016, Robredo was informed by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. “to desist from attending all Cabinet meetings”. Officially, the reasons involved “major differences” with Duterte, while Robredo suggested that there were clandestine plans to replace her. In turn, the Duterte administration was uneasy about her intimate ties with the Liberal Party.

Robredo won vice-presidency with a narrow margin to former senator Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, former President Marcos’s son. In his electoral protest, Marcos alleged that Aquino’s Liberal Party rigged the May 2016 elections in favour of Robredo. In the case, a key role belongs to Supreme Court Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, who succeeded de Lima as Aquino’s Secretary of Justice and is also Aquino’s long-time friend.

“I don’t believe that there is a blueprint for Oust Duterte plot”, says Robredo. Nonetheless, while Duterte might prefer to govern with Marcos, Goldberg and the Liberal Party would prioritise Robredo – alone.

 

Toward Scenario X

If a Ramos-Robredo scenario were to fail, Golberg advises exploiting possible rifts “among Duterte supporters”, or assisting “Robredo led opposition groups” coupled with the Catholic Church, business sector and NGOs. Yet, Duterte’s net rating remains solidly 63%, whereas the ratings of major opposition figures plunged in the fall – including Robredo’s (-12% decline).

Despite the media war against Duterte’s drugs war, his support is highest in the lower-income classes.

Furthermore, these ratings tend to under-estimate Duterte’s real support. As the surveys seek to represent all Filipino socioeconomic classes, they do not always appropriately reflect real views of the majority. After all, the high-income classes represent only 1% of the families in the population, whereas 60% are lower- to middle-income and every third Filipino lives in poverty. Despite the media war against Duterte’s drugs war, his support remains relatively highest in the lower-income classes.

Today stability in the Philippines is also supported by Beijing. Amid the news about the “ouster plot”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China was confident on Duterte’s leadership and would continue to support his policies.

After January, President Trump’s administration must reassess Goldberg’s regime-change scenarios in light of his own pledge to redefine “America First” policies in Asia and China. In the Philippines, that means more uncertainty in the short-term.

What is certain is that, in the coming months, any US-led regime change effort in the Philippines would face firm domestic, regional and international opposition. It would also undermine Asia’s growth promise for years to come.

Only the Philippines can determine its own future. Unipolar regime change plans should have no role in the multipolar 21st century – especially in Asia which is critical to global growth prospects.

 

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About the Author

dan-steinbock-webDan Steinbock is the founder of the Difference Group and has served as the research director at the India, China, and America Institute (USA) and a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more information, see http://www.differencegroup.net/

 

The Great Divide

I am pain. I am grief. I’m the things you fear
I’m the lie whispered in your ear
I’m the great Leviathan. I’m dominance and greed
You imagined me, so I was conceived.
– Meshuggah, “I Am Colossus”

 

Now that the election is over, massive amounts of citizens are finally beginning to understand the dangerous and growing divisions, the serious sickness in our society. The mainstream media makes it appear that the battle between those on the right and left will be fought mainly on issues of identity politics and the wider “culture wars”. This is nonsense, of course. While he is an ignorant bigot, soon-to-be President Trump’s real prerogative most likely isn’t antagonising minorities; rather, he is committed to propping up the neoliberal order at the expense of the entire world, just like Clinton.

The real fault line lies between those brave and imaginative enough to join hands and build new forms of peaceful, sustainable, non-coercive societies, and those flailing souls stuck believing in the obsolete, failed models of the past, victims of centuries’ worth of indoctrination. There are those who wish to remain slaves to capitalism, to bigotry and warfare, and those yearning to break free.

As Alvin Toffler observed:

“Our political parties, as obsolete in structure as in ideology, seem so much like blurry mirror images of each other… All of them, while jockeying for power within it, are basically committed to preserving the dying industrial order.”¹

Basic logic, common decency, and journalistic integrity have vanished from mainstream news. The End of History has already occurred for them: there is nothing left to do but promote neoliberalism and praise Pax Americana: they simply cannot be bothered with those pesky things called facts. They are the public avatars of institutional stupidity, the journalistic epitomes of Why America Failed.

Are things really so bad? Is our industrial civilisation really at risk of collapsing? The answers have been in for some time now. Check out Limits to Growth, for starters. Here’s what another expert, the legendary Barry Commoner, had to say in 1971:

“My own judgment, based on the evidence now at hand, is that the present course of environmental degradation… represents a challenge to essential ecological systems that is so serious that, if continued, it will destroy the capability of the environment to support a reasonably civilised human society.”²

Therefore, the major divide in our culture is not between Democrats and Republicans: it is between those who understand our society must be reconstructed from the bottom-up, versus those who are content with the status quo, oblivious of the impending catastrophes to come.

There are more points in common with those who watch MSNBC and Fox News than differences. Both programs are slavishly devoted to globalisation, consumerism, to a culture of fear, to an ecocidal economic system, to endless war, to worldwide surveillance, towards structural racism, and ignore rising inequality as well as the international crimes of our leaders. There is more overlap between those who read Huffington Post and the New York Times, and those who read Breitbart and Drudge Report, than either side is comfortable acknowledging. The Anderson Coopers and Rachel Maddows, and the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the world are all far removed from any normative sense of morality, any depth of emotion, any compassion.

Basic logic, common decency, and journalistic integrity have vanished from mainstream news. The End of History has already occurred for them: there is nothing left to do but promote neoliberalism and praise Pax Americana: they simply cannot be bothered with those pesky things called facts. They are the public avatars of institutional stupidity, the journalistic epitomes of Why America Failed.

Both liberals and conservatives, citizens and elites alike, who are blinded by ideology, and who embrace this two party charade without criticism, are hopeless. Both mainstream Democrats and Republicans have been so propagandised and hypnotised by the six media conglomerates which control 90% of all outlets, that they are unaware of the true depths of their ignorance.

While watching the third presidential debate with family, I was rendered dumbstruck, shell-shocked. My mind wandered, flickered, buzzed, and I was reminded of Henry Miller’s words:

“Here all boundaries fade away and the world reveals itself for the mad slaughterhouse it is…the air is chill and stagnant, the language apocalyptic. Not an exit sign anywhere; no issue save death.”³

It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only US elections that were rigged: rigged in the sense of coercing the public into choosing the incompetent, criminal nominees Clinton and Trump. Instead, our whole economic system is rigged. That sucking sound you hear is the oligarchy and their sycophants, the globalisation gurus ensconced inside the Beltway, at the World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc., vacuuming up all profits in our country, and exploiting developing nations, using privatisations and austerity programs to rob whole continents for pennies on the dollar.

Both liberals and conservatives, citizens and elites alike, who are blinded by ideology, and who embrace this two party charade without criticism, are hopeless. Both mainstream Democrats and Republicans have been so propagandised and hypnotised by the six media conglomerates which control 90% of all outlets, that they are unaware of the true depths of their ignorance.

Moments of silence and reflection, of critical thought, of doubt and remorse, are hard to come by for global elites when busy frittering away hours at country clubs, on yachts, jet-setting to charity galas and government conferences which change nothing, hiding in mansions, cocooned and insulated in gated communities, with private security goons for added protection from the unwashed masses.

Not surprisingly, the information divide regarding US-approved planetary-scale special operations and proxy warfare, and the neoliberal assault on the poor and the Earth is shaping up along international lines. The line between fact and fiction is purposely blurred in US media, but worldwide, citizens have awoken and are fed up with the war-mongering and sanctimonious bullshit the US preaches about human rights and democracy.

Like the brave souls at Standing Rock, citizens across the globe will have to form progressive social movements on the ground using direct action. Grassroots solidarity with all nations and liberation from predatory capitalism and uneven globalisation must be at the centre of the agenda. Public initiatives for adult education in civics and the destructive nature of our neoliberal economic system should be encouraged.

Donald Trump is our president-elect and soon to be 45th president. Let that sink in. We’re in for a bumpy ride. Trump will not solve the structural problems in the domestic economy or in the realm of foreign policy. He won’t confront the deep state: his candidates for the Cabinet and his National Security team are already known as DC insiders, a veritable den of vipers. We have a spoiled, narcissistic, thin-skinned, sociopathic billionaire who can’t utter one coherent sentence, yet uses the media like putty in his hands.  His ultra-privileged WASP worldview, slavishly devoted to capitalism and personal fame, is a remnant of the dying world order.

We certainly live in interesting times. We would all do well to remember Gramsci’s warning: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

 

This article was first published in Counterpunch on November 11, 2016

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About the Author

hawes-webWilliam Hawes is a Writer specialising in politics and environmental issues. His articles have appeared online at Global Research, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch, The World Financial Review, Gods & Radicals, and Countercurrents.org. He is author of the e-book Planetary Vision: Essays on Freedom and Empire. You can reach him at [email protected]

 

References
1. Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow. 1980. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. p. 437.
2. Commoner, Barry. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology. 1971. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. p. 215.
3. Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. New York: Grove Press, 1961. p. 182.

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

 

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