The Calm Before the Coming Global Storm

Pepe Escobar

Major turbulence seems to be the name of the game in 2016. Yet the current turbulence may be interpreted as the calm before the next, devastating geopolitical/financial storm. Let’s review the current state of play via the dilemmas afflicting the House of Saud, the EU and BRICS members Russia, Brazil and China.

Oil and the House of Saud

Not many people are familiar with the Baltic Dry Index. Yet the Index is key to track commodity demand. Two months ago, it was trading to all-time lows. Since then, it has increased over 130%. Precious metals prices have all moved higher in virtually all currencies. Why is this important? Because it tells us that faith in fiat currencies – the US dollar especially – is sharply declining.

The Baltic Index rise portends a rise in oil demand in Asia – especially China. Falling supply and rising demand for oil will likely drive up the price of the barrel of oil in the second half of 2016.

That does not mean that the House of Saud will win back the trust of both the US and Russia. Deep sources keep confirming that as far as Washington and Moscow are concerned, the House of Saud is expendable. Both are really energy independent (should the US want to be). Powerful Washington factions blatantly accuse Riyadh of “terror” – well, it’s way more complicated – while Moscow regards the House of Saud as following US orders to destroy Russia in an oil price war.

Ailing – on the way to dementia – King Salman and young Warrior Prince Mohammed would be finished if those famous 28 pages about 9/11 were released and the Saudi connection is incontrovertible. What next? Regime change. A CIA coup. A “trusted” Saudi military CIA asset elevated to power.

What’s left for the House of Saud is to play for time. High up in Riyadh the feeling is that relations with Washington won’t improve while Obama is president; the next president – whether Hillary or The Donald – will be a much better deal. So Plan A for now is to keep posing as essential to Washington in the “war on terra”; that means King Salman falling back on Mohammed bin Nayef, the Crown Prince, way more adept at it than the Warrior Prince, the conductor of the disastrous war on Yemen.

In parallel, Turkey’s Sultan Erdogan keeps advancing his play to take over oil in Iraqi Kurdistan, eventually diverting the whole supply to make Turkey energy independent – and thus a regional superpower. Moreover, in Pipelineistan terms, Erdogan absolutely also needs the Qatar gas pipeline through Saudi Arabia and Syria to gain energy independence from Russia. That also happens to be a major US goal. And that also portends perennial trouble for the Syria peace process.

Erdogan already has the German superpower at his feet in the shape of a groveling, begging Chancellor Merkel. Were Turkey on its way to become an energy power, Merkel would prostrate herself on that Ankara palace golden ground non-stop. The CIA intimates as much, when it analyzes how Turkey will keep “expanding its influence” in Iraq through the militias they support, at the expense of Iraq’s security and political unity.

Andrew Bacevich’s America’s War for the Greater Middle East examines how Washington ruled that “military preponderance” across the Middle East should be the strategic objective in a war against the USSR – that was when Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski reigned as geopolitical supremo. This was always supposed to be an endless war – now encompassing the “Greater Middle East” the neocons are so fond of.

Russia, Brazil and Hybrid War

Russia’s largest commodity exchange is actively courting international oil traders to join its emerging futures market. The goals are crystal clear; to disconnect the price-setting mechanism from the Brent oil benchmark and, crucially, to move away from the petrodollar. That also happens to be a key condition imposed by Beijing to the House of Saud for continuing to buy their oil.

It’s easy to forget that it was only 20 years ago that Moscow wanted to join the West as Christians, and was treated like trash. Russia was perceived in the Beltway to be weak under Yeltsin, who let in looters who ate up Russia as locusts, collapsing Russia’s GDP by 40% as they drew out natural resources, absconding with at least a trillion US dollars.

Now Exceptionalistan keeps updating every trick in the book to destroy or at least undermine Russia with Maidan in Ukraine, an oil price war, attacks on the ruble, Syrian pipelines. Hybrid, unconventional warfare rules – and these will only get nastier. The BRICS as a whole are under siege. The Brazilian http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-constitutional-coup-color-revolutiontwo-step-regime-change-in-brazil/5521883 color revolution, set up as a soft regime change process, is just the first stage in a new, sophisticated Hybrid War strategy bound to be studied in academia for decades.

As oil demand soars and supply contracts, Hybrid War practitioners across the spectrum will have to create a recession to keep the chaos going. A possible scenario is to let the embattled Italian banking system go down; that’s the next frontier in the EU.

Walking Dead Europe, meanwhile, subcontracted and/or externalized a policy of refugee repression, thus unleashing the largest mass deportation since WWII, complete with camps financed by EU taxpayers and managed by the Great Democrat Erdogan. The missing link is now in the open; everything is proceeding under control of  NATO-linked think tanks.

As appalling as it may be, this is hardly new. It was already inbuilt in agreements that the EU imposes on African nations, “upgrading” their status to border Cerberuses. That’s the key mission of the Frontex agency, which is progressively delocalizing the external borders of the EU – to the east and to the south – to better repel migrants. Not a dot connected to NATO’s neo-imperial wars of choice, of course.

No wonder Noam Chomsky has noted that support for formal democracy in the West is dwindling, because they are not real democracies. All major decisions affecting the EU are taken by unelected eurocrats in Brussels. In a groundbreaking book published in Spain, Mercado-Estado-Carcel en la Democracia Neoliberal Espanola (Anthropos), Daniel Jimenez, doctor in Juridical Sociology at the University of Zaragoza, details how the new institutional local order is about de-democratization, denationalization and dependency; NATO, IMF, World Bank, the Paris club, BCE, the European Commission, the Fed, they are part of a global web of institutions, private but self-described as public or public but managed by private interests (such as the Fed). Michael Hudson, among others, has detailed how the EU never developed sustained mechanisms of transfer of capital from the wealthier economies towards poorer members.

I’m a mess without my China fix

Sophisticated Hybrid War-derived techniques may have been deployed full blast against Russia and Brazil. But against China, everything fizzles.

Exceptionalistan’s spin is that China is not as economically secure as it seems. So global public opinion is bombarded by the usual litany of “convulsions in its financial markets”, “investor risk aversion”, “volatility”, or an inevitable crash.

Nonsense. The leadership in Beijing has its strategic imperatives fully delineated in the latest Five-Year-Plan. It will pump whatever amount of credit into the system whenever it takes. It won’t depreciate the yuan – no matter how loud Washington/New York complain. A yuan devaluation would sink an array of Chinese firms loaded up on US dollar debt. Moreover, Beijing is tweaking its system, a carefully calibrated transition from an export-driven model to one geared toward consumption by the internal market. A strong yuan preserves the purchasing power of tens of millions of members of the New Chinese Middle Class – all of them upwardly mobile, and all of them asset owners.

According to the US Treasury, only about $1.2 trillion in liquid securities is in Chinese hands. And that will keep diminishing, fast – as China keeps buying gold. And to top it off, China has already turned its economy around. That brings us back to that dramatic increase in the Baltic Index. Oil prices are rising. And China is buying the whole lot.

Beijing is advancing on all fronts; spreading influence/commercial deals all across Eurasia, which the New Silk Roads will shape into a mass emporium; modernizing its military; buying strategic foreign assets; building up global trust in the yuan as a stable reserve currency; allowing Chinese elites to diversify their enormous wealth by buying foreign assets, from vineyards in Bordeaux to the odd football giant, such as AC Milan.

No wonder the astonishing spread of Chinese economic power has left assorted Exceptionalists – from neocons to neoliberalcons – totally deranged. Washington has absolutely nothing to offer to nations across Asia, Africa and Latin America – to the whole Global South for that matter. They have all seen how Beijing is not in the market demanding Mob-style compound interest on sovereign debt; “support” for neo-imperial moves by NATO or the UN; one more extra-territorial hub for the US Empire of Bases; or total domination of their central banks.

On the other hand, they have seen what Washington does offer; endless war; the progressive smashing of the nation state; democracy blasted to smithereens; and technocratic governance by the 0.00001%.

Yet all this is just the calm before the storm. The Empire is already striking back. There’s serious blood on the tracks ahead.

Washington Brings Regime Change To Venezuela

Paul Craig Roberts

According to President Obama, the world’s only superpower, the unipower, the exceptional country is threatened by small Venezuela in South America !

In an executive order last year, renewed this year, President Obama declared Venezuela to be an “unusual and extraordrinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and declared a “national emergency” to counter the “Venezuelan threat”
( http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2016/03/03/obama-extends-order-declaring-venezuela-national-security-threat/ ).

This manufactured “extraordinary threat” serves as the Obama regime’s excuse for overthrowing President Maduro in Venezuela. It is a Washington tradition to overthrow elected Latin American governments that try to represent the interest of the people, and not the interest of US corporations and banks.

I wrote about Washington’s attack on Latin American reformers on April 11 (http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/11/washington-continues-to-destroy-latin-american-reformers-paul-craig-roberts/) and on April 22
(http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/04/22/washington-launches-its-attack-against-brics-paul-craig-roberts/).

Decades ago US Marine General Smedley Butler confessed that he was “a gangster for capitalism,” imposing the will of New York Banks and the United Fruit Company on Latin American countries by force of arms.

In his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins reports the 1981 assassinations of Panama President Omar Torrijos and Ecuador President Jaime Roldos, both of whom got in the way of US corporate interests.

After being duly demonized by the US media, in 2009 Honduras President Manuel Zelaya, who thought that Honduras should be for Hondurans and not for the United Fruit Company, was overthrown in a military coup greenlighted by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The president chosen by the people was replaced with Roberto Micheletti, a tool of US corporations, chosen by Washington.

Washington has been conducting economic warfare against Venezuela in order to undermine
President Maduro’s public support. The media is controlled by the elite and blames Maduro for the economic problems caused by Washington.

Washington has succeeded in having its agents among the elite regain control of Venezuela’s National Assembly. A recall attempt is underway against Maduro. It is possible that confused Venezuelans will cut their own throats by returning to power the elite that has traditionally oppressed them.

Washington tried to destabilize Iran with the Washington-funded “Green Revolution,” but it
did not work. Both Russia and China open themselves to destabilization by hosting Washington-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), participating in Western economic institutions, and permitting foreign investment.

Washington has had success in entangling Russia and China in Western economic institutions and economic ways of thinking that put the two countries’ independence at risk.

Considering the control freak character of Washington, Russian President Putin should be on his guard against assassination. In the neoconservative drive for US world hegemony, no means are impermissible.

Deflation spreads to Australia

Mike Head

The annual federal budget to be delivered by the Australian government tonight will seek to paper over the deteriorating economic situation, globally and in Australia, until after the extraordinary “double dissolution” of both houses of parliament, set to be called for July 2.

Regardless of whether Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition or the opposition Labor Party forms the next government, it will soon bring forward deep cuts to social spending and other austerity measures to impose the full burden of the slump on the working class.

A clear indicator of the recessionary forces overtaking the Australian economy was last week’s official cost-of-living statistics, showing the emergence of deflation for the first time since the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Falling clothing, food and gasoline prices pushed the consumer price index down 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2016, taking the annual inflation rate to just 1.3 percent, its weakest result in 17 years.

Deflation, which has already been experienced for some time in Japan and Europe, is a warning sign of recession. It reflects weakening demand, associated with declining investment and real wages. It can also lead to a further downward spiral if companies and consumers delay spending, expecting falling prices.

Some economic commentators downplayed the deflation figures, attributing them primarily to lower global oil and commodity prices. But those lower prices are themselves the product of the global slump that is hitting Australia, together with other commodity-export dependent countries like Canada and Brazil.

Even the so-called “core” annual inflation rate, which removes volatile items such as fuel, dropped to just 1.55 percent, well below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA’s) target range of 2 to 3 percent and corporate economists’ projections for 2 percent. This result—which came despite healthcare and secondary education costs both rising by more than 4 percent—signals domestic deflationary tendencies.

The marked slowdown in China, Australia’s largest export market, which is bound up with the stagnation in Europe and North America, is continuing to feed into the unravelling of the two-decade mining boom. Except for a speculative housing bubble in Australia’s two main finance centres, Sydney and Melbourne, the economy would already be contracting.

The most recent official producer price figures, released last Friday, showed that domestic final demand (excluding exports) fell by 0.2 percent in the March quarter with an annual growth in overall demand of just 0.8 percent—a level usually associated with recessions.

Significantly, deflation has emerged despite the RBA maintaining official interest rates for nearly a year at a record low 2 percent in an unsuccessful bid to stimulate borrowing and spending. Today, the central bank cut its rate to 1.75 percent.

Market economist Warren Hogan warned: “There is clear evidence that global economic fragilities are putting deflationary pressures into the economy … Even if the RBA cuts rates substantially over the next 18 months, these latest figures highlight that Australia is unlikely to escape the global realities of weak nominal economic growth and low investment returns. This of course, has important implications for the Budget and fiscal policy.”

Half-year profit results released yesterday and today by two of Australia’s four big banks provided further signs of the impact of mining-related collapses and rising bad debts.

ANZ bank’s cash profit for the second half of 2015 fell 24 per cent to $2.8 billion, with the largest reversals occurring in Asian and domestic business lending. Institutional business—which covers companies and other large institutions—posted a 41 percent plunge in profits to $632 million.

According to the bank, margins are under pressure from intense competition, costs associated with regulation and technology, lower trade volumes and reduced credit quality. ANZ said total provisions for bad and doubtful debts were $918 million.

Mark Whelan, an ANZ executive wrote on BlueNotes, the company’s news site: “It is a very disappointing result, that is the only way to look at it. But these are probably the toughest conditions I have seen in the institutional market in 25 years in banking—it is almost like the perfect storm.”

Westpac unveiled a six-month profit of $3.9 billion, up a bare 3 percent and well down on financial market expectations, largely due to significant corporate bankruptcies.

Earnings in Westpac’s institutional business dropped 21 percent to $517 million, with a $252 million jump in provisions for bad loans, believed to include failed steelmaker Arrium, bankrupt miner Peabody Energy, law firm Slater & Gordon and transport company McAleese.

Any bursting of the over-heated housing market—where the major four banks draw their most lucrative profits—could quickly expose them to great difficulties. Despite being touted as among the strongest banks in the world, they are extremely vulnerable to an international funding freeze, as they were in 2008 before being propped up by a government guarantee of their borrowings.

The major banks, which between them employed the equivalent of more than 170,000 people full-time during 2015, have begun cutting their workforces. ANZ said its number of full-time equivalent staff fell by about 1,200 in the second half of 2015, to 48,896.

According to official jobless statistics, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for March dropped 0.1 percentage points to 5.7 percent. But that headline figure masked a further growth in part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs. Part-time jobs grew by 34,900, while full-time employment declined by 9,000.

Working hours actually fell. Seasonally adjusted monthly hours worked in all jobs decreased 17.5 million hours (1.1 percent) to 1,632.3 million hours.

Unemployment data produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics seriously underestimate the actual jobless toll. An alternative survey by Roy Morgan Research showed the unemployment rate rose from 10.0 percent to 11.0 percent in March. Another 7.8 percent of the workforce was under-employed, that is, seeking more work. A total of more than 2.4 million workers were unemployed or under-employed.

During April, another 2,000 job cuts were announced by five companies alone—Royal Dutch Shell, telecommunications provider Optus, Perth-based Engineering group RCR Tomlinson, West Australian state-owned corporation Western Power and retail chain Target.

For electoral reasons, tonight’s federal budget will avoid savage spending reductions. Nevertheless, it will assume that the next government can push through parliament 25 outstanding bills containing cuts worth $13 billion over four years. These were not passed by the Senate from the 2014 and 2015 budgets, because of the public hostility toward the measures.

These include Family Tax Benefit cutbacks of $6.3 billion, maternity leave cuts of $1.3 billion and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme reductions of $1.2 billion. Other provisions include reductions in unemployment entitlements and Medicare payments and lifting the retirement pension age to 70.

Once the election is over, even more sweeping cuts will be brought forward to meet the demands of the corporate elite for slashing social programs and cutting business taxes to boost profits. Today’s Australian editorial set the tone, declaring: “With the dramatic double-dissolution timetable bearing down on him, Mr Morrison [the Treasurer] can be forgiven for being wary of unpopular measures, but he must not abandon meaningful reform.”

Forty thousand public sector workers strike against Costa Rican government

Andrea Lobo

An estimated 40,000 Costa Rican state workers and students staged a two-day strike on April 26 and 27 to oppose policies of the government of President Luis Guillermo Solís Solis, which is attacking workers’ incomes, public education, health care, and the right to water.

Thousands marched in San José last Tuesday

The central government estimated that 50 percent of all public health and 70 percent of public education workers participated in the strike. The unions said the strike affected 80 percent of the health services and 95 percent of the country’s educational institutions.

Union officials had threatened to extend the strike indefinitely, but sent the workers back to work once the ministers of health and labor agreed to meet last Thursday for negotiations. On Thursday, the different unions were split over their demands and the talks came to a halt. Meetings continued on Friday.

The public sector union association BUSSCO and the teachers’ union ANDE convoked the strikes primarily to oppose plans to reduce public workers’ incomes, including the single salary or Public Employment Law, which is directed at drastically reducing workers’ wages.

On the eve of the walkout, President Solís stated that there was “no justification” for the strikes since “not a single point in their demands is not already present, or could be incorporated, into current negotiations.”

Workers who participated in a mass demonstration Tuesday, however, expressed their concerns and anger over the government’s counter-reforms and voiced their willingness to fight back against the government and the business elite.

“The single salary [proposal], more than anything else, is what worries us. It would take away approximately 40 to 50 percent of our net income,” said Gabriel, a math high-school teacher.

He added, “I have two small children who depend on me. If this law gets through, I would have to quit and do something else. I don’t know what.”

School teachers and principals

Asked whether he perceived any results from previous strikes, Gabriel answered: “Other times we haven’t felt any, but we hope this time will be different. … We want a permanent strike until the government gets rid of these proposed bills!”

The strikers were also protesting against public hospital “death lists,” with an estimated 500,000 patients waiting for surgery and thousands more waiting for examinations.

The government is seeking to dismantle and privatize the public health sector, a process demonstrated by the state’s poor clinical infrastructure, expired drugs, salary bonuses to high functionaries, a massive debt built on poor investments, the shortage of medical specialists and the absence of efforts to reduce waiting lists.

Under International Monetary Fund (IMF) orders, the government is threatening to revoke collective bargaining agreements and slash retirement benefits, while raising the minimum age. Among other reactionary measures, it intends to limit unemployment benefits to eight years, reduce medical and family leaves, slash yearly raises from 5.5 percent to 2.54 percent and add tougher performance evaluations to approve them.

The unions also oppose the new tax bill, which would turn the current 13 percent sales tax into a 15 percent regressive value-added tax, covering a wider scope of services.

Public health workers were under direct orders from their unions not to speak to interviewers and to direct all questions to union leaders. However, a nurse, who decided not to give her name, said that she has three sons and “would not be able to afford taking care of them if the reforms pass.”

Miguel, “Water is not a commodity, No to privatization”

Miguel, a “retiree from ANEP, another one of the traitor unions in this country,” as he put it, also hoped that, “if the government doesn’t heed it, this demonstration today will be extended indefinitely.”

With the support of the pseudo-left Frente Amplio, the unions betrayed the workers by decentralizing the protest, calling the strike a “rehearsal,” and falsely promising bigger actions in the future. The unions, along with Frente Amplio and the ruling PAC party, did exactly the same thing in 2005 and 2006 with the anti-CAFTA protests, including calling them “rehearsals.”

These demoralizing tactics by the unions and the pseudo-left parties have become essential tools for the political and business elite to continue imposing austerity measures and privatizations.

Miguel said that he was mainly protesting against a recent water law. In 2009, he was part of the efforts to collect 150,000 signatures to propose a law declaring water a human right. “But the parliament manipulated the bill so much that it became an commodity,” he concluded, “it got privatized.”

In another significant betrayal, Frente Amplio and Patria Justa supported the approval of the Labor Process Reform, which limits public sector strikes and gives private sector employers the final decision on whether a planned strike “fulfills the requirements” to make it legal.

Perhaps more importantly, it “prohibits a union in a specific trade supporting or demonstrating in favor of other sectors that are not of their concern.”

Franklin, a sociologist and member of the Workers Association of the Labor Ministry, said: “Our focus today is on tax evasion and pay cuts against public employees. It’s on our backs that the government is placing the tax deficit, knowing that tax evasion is 8.2 percent of GDP.” In comparison, Costa Rica spends 7 percent of its GDP on education each year.

He criticized the government for attacking workers’ rights to negotiate and protest in order to cut salaries and employment and concluded, “the solution is to make the rich pay like rich, and the poor pay like poor.”

Income inequality within the government is comparable and in some cases greater than that in the private sector. The Ministry of Planning calculated that the highest state salary is 55 times the lowest. For an average employee, 15 annuities amount to $1,440 in yearly wages, compared to $24,400 for a state manager, about 17 times greater.

Oxfam reported in 2015 that there are about 100 Costa Ricans who individually own more than $30 million in assets and collectively own as much as four times what is spent on education yearly.

When asked whether there are any parties that represent working class interests, Franklin answered. “We might have some sympathies and compatibility with Frente Amplio, but we don’t coincide in other things. We believe that, with these proposed bills, our ally will be Frente Amplio.”

A school principal and member of ANDE, protesting with a group of colleagues. spoke to the WSWS. She is particularly concerned about the changes in the education system, but said that, “We have a long list of measures that we could take to exert pressure on the government. For instance, we could simply stop taking yearly census data, for which they pay us as unskilled cheap labor.”

The dual education reform plans to institutionalize the existing gap in school completion rates and education quality that exists between technical and academic high schools. It plans to oblige students in technical schools to virtually become free labor for companies in order to get certified.

The structural schooling disparity, which would get consolidated with dual education, leaves an entire sector of the population with little or no opportunity to complete or advance their education. Within low-education households, only 15 percent of those between the ages of 18 to 24 continue to study, compared to 79 percent of those in households with an average of post-secondary education.

The school principal added, “We can’t be afraid, just like previous generations, we are defending our rights.”

The government is also planning to collect the retirement savings of all 1.4 million public workers in order to more easily invest them within the government and in speculative markets. It will gradually make the workers themselves pay more for the fund’s sustainability by imposing regressive taxes and reducing pension benefits.

According to Oxfam, partial and complete social security privatizations in Latin America have led to more unequal coverage. In Costa Rica, there already is a 44 percent gap in access to health care and 28 percent gap in pension enrollment between the top and poorest quintiles.

British government refuses asylum for refugee children

Jean Shaoul

The Conservative government defeated a cross-party amendment to its Immigration Bill calling for the UK to accept just 600 unaccompanied refugee minors a year for a five-year period. The children are mostly from Syria, now stranded in mainland Europe.

Last week’s vote means that Britain is open to homeless dogs and cats being brought in from Europe, but not refugee children.

Home Office minister James Brokenshire opposed the amendment, arguing cynically that the government could not support a policy that would “inadvertently create a situation in which families see an advantage in sending children alone, ahead and in the hands of traffickers, putting their lives at risk by attempting treacherous sea crossings to Europe which would be the worst of all outcomes.”

The Home Office claimed that it was doing enough to help child refugees in Syria and neighbouring countries by providing humanitarian aid. In January Prime Minister David Cameron said 3,000 vulnerable and refugee “children at risk” currently in refugee camps in the Middle East would be allowed into Britain, but not those in Europe. This would be in addition to the paltry 20,000 over five years that the UK agreed to accept from camps on Syria’s borders in the aftermath of the international outrage over the death of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was washed up on a Turkish beach.

Given that barely a handful of the 20,000 have as yet actually been allowed to enter Britain, such promises are no more than a cynical public relations exercise.

The amendment was tabled in the House of Lords by Labour Party member Lord Alf Dubs, himself a beneficiary of the British government’s agreement to the Kindertransport (Children’s Transport) that admitted temporarily unaccompanied Jewish children following Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, in Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938. This grudging agreement was made only because relief agencies promised to fund the operation and find homes for the children at no cost to the state. They were even forced to pledge to finance the children’s eventual repatriation back to Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig—although the outbreak of war made that impossible. While no limit on the number was ever announced, less than 10,000 children came to Britain under the program.

Under new rules established by the Immigration Bill, those deemed “illegal immigrants” will face up to six months in prison for working in the UK. Takeaways and off-licenses (food and alcohol vendors) are to be closed if employers are caught using undocumented foreign workers, while employers could have their businesses closed, have their licenses removed, or face prosecution if they fail to report foreign workers. UK border officials are to be given powers to temporarily close businesses that break the law.

After its defeat in the Commons, ministers buried the amendment via a parliamentary manoeuvre, attaching a label of “financial privilege” and making it impossible for it to be referred back to the House of Lords, which does not have the power to override legislation with cost implications.

The government’s refusal to accept even a few hundred children follows its attempts to use the courts to prevent unaccompanied minors trapped in Calais, France from being re-united with their families in Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron infamously branded the refugees in Calais a “bunch of migrants,” while earlier he said there was a “swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean” to seek a better life in Britain.

So far, the Home Office has let in just 20 unaccompanied children under the 2014 Dublin agreement allowing children with relatives in the UK to seek asylum. This is despite a court ruling last January that paved the way for family reunification, which the government sought to overturn. At the same time, it has deported 740 people since the Dublin III regulations came into force. According to lawyers, there are 157 children in Calais legally entitled to be reunited with their families in Britain.

Conditions for the thousands of refugees from war-torn countries in Europe are heartbreaking. Children of all ages have trekked for hundreds of miles through the Balkan route, with just the clothes they were wearing, exhausted, in need of food, water and medical care.

It is estimated at least 95,000 unaccompanied child refugees applied for asylum in Europe last year. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who contacted 29 governments for statistics, this was four times the number for 2014.

Sweden registered the most asylum applications by lone children in 2015—35,369. This was followed by Germany with 14,439, Austria 9,331 and Hungary 8,804. The UK registered just 3,043.

The real number of children seeking asylum will be even higher. As the Bureau noted, “It is the first time any concrete figure has been reported for the actual scale of migration among unaccompanied minors during last year’s refugee crisis.” It added, “Only 17 of the 29 countries we approached provided any data. Spain refused to cooperate with us, while France said we must wait for publication of official data later this year.”

Eurostat, the official European Union (EU) data agency, has still not compiled any figures on this human tragedy.

Many of these children live in terrible conditions and are subject to abuse. In January, Europol, the EU’s criminal intelligence agency, estimated that 10,000 children had gone missing after arriving in Europe, and warned that many had been taken by criminal gangs for sexual exploitation and slavery.

In March, the 28 EU heads of government reached a sordid agreement with Turkey aimed at hermetically sealing off Europe’s borders to the millions of refugees fleeing war zones in the Middle East and North Africa. Refugees arriving on the Greek islands by crossing the Aegean Sea have been returned to Turkey, following a farcical asylum review procedure in Greece.

The price of subcontracting to Turkey the task of keeping asylum seekers out of Europe was the acceptance of one Syrian refugee for every Syrian sent back to Turkey from Greece and €3 billion by 2018 in addition to the €3 billion already offered to Ankara thus far. Turkey was also offered the prospect of visa-free travel within the EU and the opening of a new chapter in negotiations over Turkish EU membership.

The deal effectively means the EU’s abrogation of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the protection of refugees, and the abandonment of any commitment to the right to asylum. The Convention sought to make concrete the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees a “right to seek and enjoy asylum.” This is generally interpreted to mean that someone has the right to apply for humanitarian protection. Governments are also banned from returning migrants to a country where their lives would be in danger, a process known as “refoulement.”

The callous indifference on the part of the European powers is inseparably linked to the growth of militarism, nationalism and great power conflict, fuelled by the deepening economic breakdown of world capitalism. Just as in the 1930s, governments everywhere are promoting anti-immigrant racism and national chauvinism to intimidate and disorient public opinion and overcome broad anti-war sentiment, as part of the preparation for a new world war.

German labour minister cuts social assistance to EU immigrants

Martin Kreickenbaum

New legislation seeks to deny social assistance and Hartz IV benefits to European immigrants who enter Germany to look for work. Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Andrea Nahles (Social Democratic Party/SPD) presented the draft legislation to the chancellor’s office on Thursday to be put to a vote.

The law is directed above all against immigrants from the poorer EU countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. It encourages chauvinism and racism and constitutes a massive attack on the social rights of all workers in Europe.

According to Nahles’ plan, people from other EU countries “will be excluded on principle from services such as social assistance and basic income for those searching for work,” says a press release from the ministry. Only after five years of continuous residence in Germany would they be eligible for all social assistance.

Since it is scarcely possible to survive during such a long period of time without any social safeguards, the law is really about forcing immigrants who are searching for work to leave the country.

Nahles wants to provide affected individuals with a kind of “emergency assistance,” for four weeks, which will cover the “immediate need for food, shelter, personal hygiene, and medical treatment.” Once the four weeks have ended, the only assistance provided would be a loan to pay for a return trip to the country of origin.

Nahles claimed on Thursday that the draft legislation only represented a “clarification” of existing rules, and that this had become necessary in order “to provide disincentives.” The new regulations contain “no undermining of existing law.”

This is a bald faced lie. The cancellation of social benefits for five years ignores a judgment of the German Federal Social Court in Kassel. In December, the court decided that benefits should be provided after a residence of only six months.

The decision was prompted by a legal dispute between the Job Centre in Berlin-Neukölln and Nazifa Alimanovic, who fled from the war in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1990 and came to Germany with her children. She later moved to Sweden, where she received Swedish citizenship. When she returned to Germany, the Job Centre in Neukölln denied her all social assistance.

The case then went all the way to the European court, which agreed in principle with the arguments of the Job Centre and ruled that job seekers who have not found work for six months will lose all claim on social assistance.

The European court referred the case back to the German social courts. The Federal Social Court in Kassel then decided that job seekers should not be left without any social assistance after six months. It explicitly referred to Article 1 of the Basic Law, according to which human dignity is inviolable, and argued that a basic social income is anchored in constitutional law.

However, Andrea Nahles brushed these constitutional law considerations aside with her argument that the affected persons could apply for social assistance in their countries of origin. According to Nahles, there is no right in the EU countries “to freely choose the location of social assistance payments.”

This view of the matter is no different from the demands that have been raised by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for some time. Its president, Bavarian Minister President Horst Seehofer, already said more than a year ago that Germany is “not the social welfare office of the world.” He said he would defend himself “with the last bullet” against “immigration into the social system.”

Nahles herself had to concede that there was “currently no mass storming” from citizens of EU states on social benefits in Germany. She could only refer to 43,000 people from EU countries, whose source of income is not known to the authorities. The law is therefore “a preventative measure to close a loophole that is potentially available if one takes the judgment of the Federal Social Court as a basis.”

A situation in which payments are imposed on municipalities instead of at the federal level must be prevented, the minister claimed. Cities and communities are responsible for social assistance. Supposedly they were threatened with additional burdens of €600 million.

The deputy managing director of the Association of German Cities and Towns, Helmut Dedy, welcomed the draft legislation, explaining that it was necessary “to provide disincentives to immigrants from other European member states.” Neither Dedy nor Nahles can provide concrete numbers of EU immigrants in need of assistance.

However, Nahles’ primary aim is not to solve a problem that does not exist. Her efforts enjoy the support of both Chancellor Angela Merkel and the employers association, and are aimed above all at restricting the freedom of movement of workers within the European Union.

Her draft legislation takes up and even goes beyond the demand of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has made denying social benefits to immigrants from other EU member states for a period of four years a condition for Great Britain remaining in the EU.

The media has praised the minister for her legislation, further encouraging chauvinism with its propaganda. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, said, “Europe’s poverty problems will not be solved by allowing the poor to chase after social assistance. It is therefore correct that Social Minister Andrea Nahles is now making it clear that social assistance cannot be provided to new immigrants without work.”

The right to choose freely where one lives and works within the European Union has proven to be a chimera. It serves as a symbol for the supposed integration of Europe, but, in reality, the project of the European Union has only led to the dominance of the strongest nations and corporations, which set the tone for the entire EU. The social and national contradictions within the EU are assuming ever more drastic forms.

The per capita gross domestic product of Bulgaria is just one-fifth of the EU average of €27,400. In Germany, GDP is €37,100, almost seven times higher than in Bulgaria. The average monthly wage of a worker in Bulgaria, as Andrea Nahles herself reported, is €187, while in Denmark it is more than €4,000. But the difference between rich and poor is continuously increasing within the individual countries as well.

In order to prevent major class struggles, the ruling elite is trying to divide the European working class and to channel conflicts in a right-wing direction. The effort to turn immigrants and refugees into scapegoats for the social crisis and brand them as “economic refugees” who are guilty of “social abuse” is grist to the mill of right-wing extremist parties such as the “Alternative for Germany.” The Labour Ministry is thereby making itself into the standard bearer of the right wing.

The 9/11 cover-up continues

Andre Damon

Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” talk show, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan categorically denied the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the September 11 terror attacks, while demanding that documents pointing to its complicity remain hidden from the American people.

Brennan was referring to 28 pages of the joint congressional inquiry report on the attacks, completed in 2002. The section on Saudi involvement has been kept secret for 14 years, despite calls from some sections of the US political establishment for their release.

The statements of Brennan, who wields enormous power as the head of the Obama administration’s CIA and is personally implicated in countless crimes of the state, are intended to intimidate and threaten anyone who questions the official cover-up of the 9/11 attacks. The White House itself has also opposed legislation that would mandate the release of the documents.

Brennan sought to paint the section of the report on Saudi Arabia as “inaccurate,” declaring without substantiation that subsequent investigations found that there is “no evidence that indicated that the Saudi government as an institution, or Saudi officials individually, had provided financial support for the 9/11 attacks.”

While acknowledging that the documents “point to Saudi involvement,” he nevertheless claimed that the reports were “uncorroborated, un-vetted, and basically just a collation of this information that came out of FBI files.”

He added, “I think some people may seize upon” this information to conclude that Saudi Arabia was involved, “which I think would be very, very inaccurate.” At the same time, he argued that the documents were being kept hidden because of the “sensitive methods” and “investigative action” used in collecting them.

These self-contradictory statements reek of a cover-up, and are refuted by what is already publicly known about the extent of Saudi Arabia’s involvement.

The evidence of Saudi involvement includes the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals and several of them received financing from Saudi officials. Moreover, Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted of participation in the plot to hijack airplanes and fly them into the World Trade Center and other US targets, has testified in court that he worked as a courier between Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, including Prince Salman, who is today the King of Saudi Arabia.

Moussaoui also asserted that high-level Saudi officials and members of the Saudi royal family, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the long-time Saudi ambassador to Washington, directly financed Al Qaeda.

Democratic Senator Robert Graham, co-chair of the Joint Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said earlier this year that there is “a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, by all of the agencies of the federal government, which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.”

At issue is not only the role of Saudi Arabia, but of sections of the US state. Brennan’s statements are clearly dictated by fears that exposure of Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the hijackers would shed light on the involvement of US intelligence agencies themselves in the events of 9/11. After all, the CIA has had long-standing and close ties with its counterparts in Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 hijackers, despite being under surveillance, were able to freely travel in and out of the country and attend flight schools, despite repeated warnings from other countries and from individuals within US intelligence.

“We have a very strong relationship with Saudi Arabia,” including “intelligence,” Brennan said in his interview, adding, “I have very close relations with my Saudi counterparts.” In addition to being the largest customer of the US military-industrial complex, having purchased over $100 billion in weapons from the US, Saudi Arabia has been the nexus for every clandestine and criminal alliance between the United States and Islamist forces for nearly four decades.

Under the CIA’s Operation Cyclone, conducted between 1979 and 1989, the United States and Saudi Arabia provided $40 billion worth of financial aid and weapons to the mujahedeen “freedom fighters” waging war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, an operation in which then-US ally Osama bin Laden played a key role. The proxy war in Afghanistan was pivotal in the later creation of Al Qaeda.

More recently, Saudi Arabia has been a key player, along with Turkey and Qatar, in funneling US money and weapons to Islamic fundamentalist groups in Syria beginning in 2011 as part of the civil war targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The entire narrative of the “war on terror,” rests on the claim that the September 11 attacks were masterminded by a single man, Osama bin Laden, and the policy of the state—under first Bush and then Obama—has been guided by the overriding aim of preventing another attack.

The truth about what happened on September 11 cannot be told because it would expose as a lie the official account of an event that has been used as the catch-all pretext by the American ruling class at home and abroad. On the basis of the events of that day—and subsequent attacks that have followed a similar pattern—the US and other imperialist countries have waged a series of wars that have killed millions, while erecting the framework of a police state.

Fifteen years after the beginning of the war on terror, the American people still do not know the truth about what actually happened on 9/11. The tragic event, which directly cost the lives of nearly 3,000 people, remains shrouded in secrets and lies.

Into the Green Zone: Iraq’s Disintegrating Political System

Patrick Cockburn

The storming of the parliament building in Baghdad by protesters chanting the name of populist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is a sign that the political system built up since the US invasion in 2003 is disintegrating. The Iraqi security forces stood back and did nothing as the protesters burst into the Green Zone, graphically illustrating the weakness of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and of state institutions generally.

The eruption by Sadrist supporters into the heavily fortified Green Zone, the heart of government power in Iraq, came minutes after Mr Sadr ended a press conference in the Shia holy city of Najaf during which he condemned politicians for refusing to end the political stalemate. He has been demanding that Mr Abadi appoint a non-sectarian government of technocrats that would end corruption and other abuses. Since early in the year, he and his followers have been holding mass rallies but he has previously restrained them from invading the Green Zone, though it was always likely that the security forces there would not stop them.

It is unlikely that Mr Sadr wanted the invasion of parliament because it will lead to further weakening of the government rather than its reform. In the past, he has alternated between making moderate demands, but at the same time threatening that the anger of the people could not be contained. He himself, symbolically, entered the Green Zone a month ago, but instructed his followers not to follow him.

Mr Sadr comes from a family of Shia clerics that owes its iconic and almost semi-divine status in Iraq to its long resistance to Saddam Hussein and the Baathist regime. He was 25 in 1999 when his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, and his two brothers were assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s gunmen. They had led a populist religious movement drawing support from the poor as well as many tribes that had become visibly hostile to the regime in Baghdad.

Muqtada al-Sadr remained under house arrest in Najaf until 2003 when he emerged as the leader of a movement that opposed the US occupation and fought against it in 2004.

The Mahdi Army, that battled the US army in Najaf, later played a leading role in the sectarian war in Baghdad in 2006-7 in which tens of thousands died. Mr Sadr later disavowed many of his followers who carried out sectarian killings and retired to Iran to carry out religious studies. But on his return to Iraq, he continued to lead a political, powerful and well organised movement that elected an important group to the Iraqi parliament and held several ministerial posts.

There were reports of protesters leaving the Green Zone, but they may not all go and what has happened once can happen again. Foreign embassies may pack up and go because they fear they will be targeted next time round for political reasons or simply as places to loot. The other danger is that there may be units in the Iraqi army such as the elite Golden Brigade – that might shoot down demonstrators. The other main Shia political factions are also capable of mobilising their own militias to defend their interests, which they see as being threatened by the Sadrists. This may lead to battles between the different armed groups.

Dubai Transit

Louis Yako

In May 2014 I had a four-hour transit at the Dubai International Airport on my way to the research field in Jordan. This was the first time for me to reconnect—not reconcile—with the Middle East after nine years of living in exile, since I left occupied Iraq in 2005. The flight from the U.S. to Dubai; the transit time I spent at the Dubai Airport; and the connection flight to my final destination were all experiences that captured so much of our world’s shallow and hypocritical reality of “diversity”, “marketing and consumerism”, and “multiculturalism”, which I would like to share with you today.

Let us begin with the U.S. flight coming from Washington, DC, to Dubai. The flight attendants were obviously selected according to the phony American-style of “diversity” and “cultural representation”. They were: a white woman, an Asian woman, an Indian woman, and an Arab man. This phony style of diversity is seen in almost every American work place, including universities. What is noticeably shocking about it is the fact that such employees that presumably represent “diversity” almost always work in hideously underpaid jobs, simply assisting those running the show behind the scenes. The former always act as marketing faces to support the latter in the job of exploiting the world while at the same time giving the unobservant and unvigilant viewer the false impression of “diversity”. What we see in every corporate transaction is always a “diverse” face doing the dirty work on behalf of the almost exclusively homogenous masters constantly preaching a shallow form of diversity and multiculturalism in trainings and workshops. Whenever you protest an unjust and inhumane rule or a racist policy, the “diverse” employee will always helplessly—and sometimes coldly—tell you, “Sorry, I am just doing my job.” In a sense, this selection of “diverse” people is so similar to Hollywood productions where everything is made to look so shiny and harmonious on the surface, to display the “merits” of the diverse American culture to the world, which are expected to be copied and even emulated by everyone else around the world.

The people on the flight consisted mainly of Arabic-speaking, Hindi-speaking, and English-speaking passengers. Thus, every single announcement was made in all these three languages. Looking at the passengers’ faces and listening to them speak, it was apparent that the largest number of them were Arabic-speaking, followed by speakers from southern Asia. The smallest number was of the English-speaking passengers, perhaps “expats” on their way to do “business” in the UAE. Yet the announcements were made in the reverse order of these languages to reflect the place of each group on the global map of power relations rather than proportionately and fairly represent the demographic reality of the passengers.

As the plane landed in Dubai, I felt as though I had just landed in a hot, dusty U.S. city. Every logo, from construction companies working inside the airport to each and every brand displayed outside the shops, was of American or European corporations. The very first logos I noticed were of FedEx, DHL, HSBC, and many others. As we entered the airport, the shops included Subway, McDonald’s, KFC, and other “chain” stores that have managed to enchain as many consumers as possible worldwide. Looking at the specific items inside the shops at the “duty-free” area, most items were made in the U.S. or in European countries: deodorants, perfumes, gels, creams, body lotions, shampoos, conditioners, and countless other consumer goods. European chocolate and alcohol were also displayed on some shelves. The questions that immediately came to my mind upon seeing these products were: why is it that even simple things like creams, shampoos and lotions have to be imported to the Middle East from locations that are thousands of miles away? What and who imposed this reality on the region? To whose benefit this is? Is this reality even being interrogated, questioned, or resisted by people, or are most people falling for this culture of consumption that is turning them into sedated consumers who simply take it for granted? Would any Middle Eastern countries willing to produce at least their shampoos and body lotions—not to say build their own airports and fly their own planes—even be allowed to exist on the neocolonial  geopolitical map of the world, or will they immediately be added to the “axis of evil” list?

The Western-manufactured consumer goods had Arabic translations of the exact same English, French or German text of each product. Most translations on the products were poorly done. They were actually transliterations rather than translations. They sounded awkward and foreign even to those for whom Arabic is a second language. Indeed, these transliterations were alarming, because they clearly show how even the different languages around the world are being held hostages by those who insist on spreading the cancer of capitalism worldwide. These literal translations show that even our colorful and diverse languages around the globe are at stake. Instead of being diverse mediums of thinking, sensing, and writing differently, different languages are being turned into one corporate language that enables you to click on this agreement or that; to login, logout, or accept the “terms and conditions of use” of this service or that blindly. Sometimes you can use a corporate service in a language that you don’t speak simply because it is a carbon copy of one which you had previously encountered on a different product or service in your own language. In other words, languages are saying one and the same thing: be a good and obedient customer to the masters! Indeed, the Internet is being run by few moguls that monopolize the online world which is, like the physical world, becoming owned by few actors. In brief, the virtual world is owned by the same few actors who are trying to control and suffocate the physical one, which means that its usefulness as a tool should not be exaggerated or evaluated without taking this factor into serious consideration.

While waiting in the “duty-free” area, I decided to sit at a small table in a quiet corner at an open space, just across from KFC and McDonald’s. As I sat, I looked at some Arabs in traditional dresses eating greasy fried chicken, burgers, and fries with their hands; talking about prayer times and the location of the chapel at the airport. The looks, the dresses, the language, the friendly faces were all familiar. The only unfamiliar thing was what was going in their mouths—junk foods loaded with grease and unhealthy ingredients. I was struck by the disharmony and disconnect between the people and the foods they were eating.

As always, all these shocking observations took me back to the Iraqi reality and made me wonder whether all the turmoil, destruction, and death Iraqis have been put through will only be considered a “success story” when Iraqis, too, are turned into sedated, blinded consumers who cannot even manufacture their own body lotions and shampoos. Iraqis will only be considered a “success story” when they are disciplined by all means possible, including violence, until they learn the skill of ordering the right KFC meal, the right burger from Burger King, the right coffee from Starbucks, or buy the right Western-manufactured body lotion for their skins that have been burning for decades with the fires of Western bombs and missiles. One of my friends once asked me why is it that I go back to the Iraq war even when I write about other topics. My response to that is because Iraq is one of the best contemporary wounds that captures how the global struggle for genuine dignity and freedom are at stake. Iraq is the most important contemporary example that proves that the entire world is neither free nor democratic, because if it was, such a large scale of death and destruction would not have been allowed to happen. It is a big mistake to think that the Iraq war was ever over. The war in Iraq and elsewhere will never be over so long as the causes that lead to these wars still exist, and so long as the criminals who plot and wage these wars are still not held accountable for their actions. If we buy the illusion that it is over, we are simply sleeping on pillows stuffed with fake hopes of peace, only to wake up one day to the sounds of bullets, mortars, and missiles in most cities and villages in the Middle East and in many parts around the world.

The connection flight from Dubai to my final destination was with one of UAE’s airlines. After nearly thirteen hours of sleep deprivation (add to that the time difference between the U.S. and the Middle East), I was unable to shut my eyes on this flight, because the lights were kept on the entire time as one announcement followed another asking people to buy food, “duty-free” goods, and gifts for the “loved ones”. It was as though the only way to prove our love for the loved ones is by buying them duty-free gifts on a Dubai flight. I was reminded of a phrase my mom used to repeat when I was a child: “A love fed with gifts only will forever suffer from malnutrition!” Of course, at the end of the flight, they sincerely thanked passengers for flying with them. To say that I am terrified of this reality is an understatement. All I can hope for is that humanity is currently, as I was then at the Dubai Airport, simply in-transit, and that people will rise up soon to say “no!” to all this; that we will create and make our own dreams as we see fit for our struggles, future, and the well-being of our planet and humanity. I hope that humanity is soon going to scream in the faces of the merciless, corporate mafias trying to paint our world with one color, to revise and rewrite its history as well as turn its present into one agreed upon lie. Isn’t it time for us to say it loud and clear: Give us our dreams back and to hell with your junk foods, iPhones, iPads, shampoos, perfumes, and body lotions?