Putin’s “Threats” to the Baltics: a Myth to Promote NATO Unity

Gary Leupp

In his book 2017: War with Russia published a few months ago, former deputy commander of NATO Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff predicts that to prevent NATO expansion Russia will annex eastern Ukraine and invade the Baltic state of Latvia in May 2017. Most dismiss the book as sensationalist fantasy, but it draws attention to the fact that NATO is in fact aggressively expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.

Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.

The argument begins with the assertion that Vladimir Putin (conflated with Russia itself, as though he were an absolute leader, a second Stalin) wants to revive the Soviet Union. His occasional comment that the collapse of the USSR was a “catastrophe” is repeatedly cited, totally out of context, as proof of this expansionist impulse. It continues with the observation that there has been tension between Russia and the Baltic states since their independence in 1991. And while Russia has never threatened the Baltic states with invasion or re-incorporation, the fear mongers like to conjure up Sir Richard’s World War III scenario.

So it’s not difficult to understand why NATO, in its largest war games since the end of the Cold War, would choose Poland, which borders both Russia (the Kaliningrad enclave) and Lithuania, as their setting. Dubbed Anaconda-2016, the ten-day exercise involves 31,000 troops from 24 countries including non-NATO members Kosovo, Macedonia and Finland. Germany, whose foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has actually criticized the exercise as “saber-rattling and warmongering,” has sent 400 military engineers but no combat troops.

This follows the June announcement that NATO would deploy four multinational battalions (about 4000 troops) in the Baltic states and Poland to “bolster their defenses against Russia.” The idea is that Russian actions in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014 show that Russia poses a grave threat to European security.

It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s.  It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”

But since the Baltics have become the focus of (supposed) NATO-Russian contestation, let’s look at what the problem is all about.

The three states were part of the Russian Empire under the tsars from the 18^th century up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. While most of the component parts of that empire soon became Soviet Socialist Republics (such as Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc.), others, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states gained their independence at that time.

But in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there remained large ethnic Russian, and Russian-speaking minorities, as there are today. In 1940 the Soviet army invaded these countries and incorporated them into the USSR. This was part of a strategy to avoid German invasion through the signing of the “Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact” that also meant the temporary division of Poland. (We can criticize this, as I surely do, but that’s the history.) A year later the Nazis invaded the Baltic republics and the Soviet Union as a whole. But the Soviets won the war, and the Baltics remained Soviet up to 1991.

The Baltic states, never truly happy campers in the Soviet Union, initiated the breakup of the country when, from June 1987, protests in Latvia and Estonia led to demands for secession, which the USSR recognized in September 1991.  These demands for independence were generally supported by ethnic Russians in the republics. They no doubt expected that they would retain their longstanding linguistic rights.

(This issue of language rights is a huge problem in the former Soviet republics, including especially Ukraine. But it is little understood nor appreciated by U.S.opinion-makers, especially U.S. State Department officials and their media echo chamber.)

Today the Baltic republics have a population of a little over six million, including about one million ethnic Russians. The Russian figure has declined by about one-third since 1991. It is currently lowest in Lithuania (6 to 14%), and 24-30% in the other states.

The restoration of independence produced a wave of nationalist sentiment that included an attack on existing rights of ethnic Russians, distinguished from the others less by looks than by language. As recently as May 2016 a survey co-conducted by the Estonian and Latvian governments found that 89% of ethnic Latvians and 84% of ethnic Estonians are unhappy with this presence and want the Russians to “move back to Russia,” although many are from families who have lived in these countries for centuries.

In Latvia, the State Language Law (passed in 2000) requires that documents to local and national government, and to local and national state public enterprises, be submitted in Latvian only, as the sole national language. (Earlier they could be submitted in Russian, or even English or German.) Aside from being perceived by the minority as an attack on their own culture and identity, this requirement imposes hardships especially for older citizens who have never mastered the “national” language. A similar situation pertains in Estonia. Protests not only by Russia but by other countries have resulted in rulings against Latvia by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Moscow sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians from Ukraine to the Baltics. This should not be so hard to understand. But that does not mean that Moscow—however annoyed it is by NATO expansion to its borders—has plans to invade its neighbors and spark a general conflagration. NATO in 2013 had 3,370,000 service members in 2013, to Russia’s 766,000 troops. NATO expenditures in 2015 were $892 billion on defense in 2015, compared to Russia’s $70 billion.

The idea that Russia poses a threat to any NATO nation is as plausible as the notion that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. Or that Libya’s Gadhafy was preparing a genocidal campaign against his own people. Or that Iran plans to use nukes to wipe Israel off the map. These are all examples of the Big Lie.

Wait, some will ask, what about Georgia? Didn’t Russia invade and divide that country? Yes, it did, in defense of South Ossetia, which had resisted inclusion in the Republic of Georgia formed in 1991, fearing its ultranationalist leadership. South Ossetia, inhabited by an Iranian people, had been included as an autonomous oblast in the Georgian Soviet Republic but as the Soviet Union dissolve sought unity with Russia. So did Abkhazia. These two “breakaway republics” had been involved in a “frozen conflict” with Georgia until real war broke out in August 2008, producing a Russian invasion of Georgia and Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia as independent states.

One can see this as tit-for-tat for the U.S. dismemberment of Serbia in 1999 and subsequent recognition of Kosovo as an independent state in February 2008. This act in plain violation of international law, condemned by U.S. allies such as Greece, Romania and Spain, was explained by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a sui generiscase. Well then, that 1999 NATO war on Serbia has led to more sui generis cases, hasn’t it?

And what about Ukraine? The limited moves Russia has taken there have been in direct response of the U.S.-led effort to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, most notably in backing the pro-NATO (and neo-fascist) forces who pulled off the coup of February 22, 2014.  Any support Russia has offered to ethnic Russians in the Donbass opposed to the ultranationalist (and dysfunctional) new regime in Kiev hardly constitute an “invasion.”

It’s all about NATO. Unfortunately, the U.S. masses don’t even know what NATO is, or how it’s expanding. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press; its existence is never problematized, or discussed in U.S. political debates (except when Trump says the U.S.’s NATO allies are getting a “free ride”); the fact that its dissolution is not subject to questioning is all very depressing.

But wait, I must correct myself. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, got an op-ed published in the Boston Globe a few days ago, entitled “Is NATO Necessary?” Without calling for its outright abolition, he declares, “We need less NATO, not more.”

But the next day the newspaper website included (as if by way of apology) an op-ed by Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the George W. Bush administration and now professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s entitled, “Why NATO is vital for American interests.”

Burns adduces four reasons for NATO’s continuing necessity.

“The first is Vladimir Putin’s aggression — his division of Georgia and Ukraine, his annexation of Crimea, his threats to the Baltic states, and his military’s harassment of US forces in international airspace and international waters.” (In other words, Russia’s restrained response to NATO’s provocations is reasons for NATO to continue, as a provocateur. And what “threats” of Putin can Burns cite? There have been none.)

“The second challenge is a dramatically weakening and potentially fractured European Union, now exacerbated by the possible departure of the United Kingdom.” (In other words, as the contradictions within European capitalism intensify, the U.S. must keep its camp together as—if nothing else—an anti-Russian alliance. What logic is this, other than fascist logic?)

“The third is the tsunami of violence spreading from the Levant and North Africa into Europe itself.” (In other words, when NATO actions result in so much pain in Libya and Afghanistan, and U.S.-led wars to so much chaos in Iraq and Syria that a million people flood into Europe, destabilizing European unity on the question of migration policy, the U.S. needs to be there somehow using the military alliance to hold it all together.)

“The fourth is uncertain and sometimes seemingly unconfident European and American leadership in the face of these combined challenges.”

(In other words, the U.S. needs to instill confidence by taking such actions as the invasion of Iraq that Burns supported as a State Department official, and the Libya slaughter he supported as a Boston Globe op-ed writer.)

Strength. Power. Confidence.

Burns and Gen. Jim Jones (former National Security Advisor for Pres. Obama) “believe NATO should station military forces “on a permanent basis in Poland, the Baltic states, the Black Sea region, and the Arctic,” and that the “US should extend lethal military assistance to Ukraine so that it can defend itself.” As though it has been attacked.

His final point is “that our most complex challenge may come from within the NATO countries themselves. Our strongest link is that we are all democracies. But, many of us, including the United States, are confronting a wave of isolationist sentiment and ugly extremism in our domestic political debates. NATO will need strong, unflinching American leadership to cope with these challenges.”

This conclusion is of course a reference to Donald Trump and his “extremism” in daring to—-among his many inchoate and clueless pronouncements—opine that the U.S. is protecting Europe for NATO, but spending too much money on it, and Germany should do more for Ukraine. It seems a statement in favor of that Iron Lady Hillary, who was so unflinching in her support of the Iraq War, and the Libya regime change, and who is hot to trot to bomb government buildings in Damascus.

Without Due Process: From Mass Incarceration To Assassination

Maya Evans

VCNV organised a 150 mile peace walk between 28th May to 10th June, from downtown Chicago to Thomson Prison, a new supermax federal facility due to open next summer with 1,900 solitary confinement cells.

The U.S. currently incarcerates 2.3 million people, that’s 10% of the population, or 25% of world prisoners. Nationally, Blacks and Latinos are 5 times more likely to be incarcerated than Whites, and in Illinois it’s 15 times more likely.

Our walk started in downtown Chicago outside the Metropolitan Correctional Centre on Van Buren and State. By coincidence the full brunt of the Memorial Day Parades started to decamp along our street, a mass of young people congregated to rest, unknowingly, in the shade of an ominous urban concrete prison. Some 6,000 teenagers in military uniform, many brandishing model artillery, others marching in blocks and a lucky few in drum and brass bands. Looking across the sea of young and promising faces it was revealing to note that the majority of the teenagers were black or Latino. It was as if these kids were marching straight out of the parade and into the military or prison.

47% percent of 20- to 24-year-old black men in Chicago, and 44% in Illinois, were out of school and out of work in 2014, compared with 20 percent of Hispanic men and 10 percent of White men in the same age group, the national average is 32%.

The walk traced a roughly westerly direction out of Chicago, across a semi rural corn belt, through some obscure towns and into Thomson which has a population of 600.

When we walked the predominantly Black area of West Chicago people immediately understood the purpose of our walk and the placard messages such as “Education not Incarceration”, children cheered, some folks stopped us to say they agreed or to thank us. One of our key messages was that money spent on prisons should be allocated to community projects which stops the root causes of crime; instead of locking people up with lengthy sentences, cementing that individual within a sector of crime and poverty. A day later we were walking through White middle class suburbs with perfect lawns and picket fences, where mass incarceration is a far away danger for ‘other people’; segregation is stark, Westside Chicago may as well be another country.

In the town of De Kalb we met members of a Black congregation who told us their personal stories. One woman said her main worry in life was keeping her three Black grandsons out of prison. The eldest one had already been picked up twice for the ‘scent of marijuana’ in his car. He had been hauled into police custody and remanded on bail without a crumb of evidence. Raising the $1200 bail was a massive toll on family finances, as well as continued involvement with police.

95% of prisoners in the U.S. never receive a trial, the vast majority plea guilty in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence.

Some of the older members of the congregation reflected on how the situation for black people in the U.S. had actually worsened in the last few decades, a direct result of the 1994 Crime Bill, the ‘tough on crime’ policy started by Reagan and accelerated under Bill Clinton where incarceration rates jumped by 673,000 inmates within just two terms.

An older Black father in the congregation reflected that having a Black President was good for young Africa American aspirations, but in terms of noticeable improvements for Black civil rights, there haven’t been any noticeable gains.

It’s now commonly documented by academics and activists that the U.S. system of mass incarceration is the modern day form of slavery for Blacks and Latinos. Prisons are being likened to slave ships with cells densely stacked on top of one another: police officers like slave overseers, legally endorsed to operate freely within black communities, shooting and terrorising people without being held to account, without scrutiny.

58% of all prisoners in the US are Black or Latino, yet they make up only 1/4 of the national population.

Within privately owned penitentiaries inmates are put to work with jobs that range from making military equipment, blue jeans and baseball caps to fighting fires, clearing trees and harvesting corn, soybeans and cotton (sometimes on former slave plantation lands). Manual labour on average can earn a prisoner between 70 cents and $1.70 per day. Personal overheads for a prisoner include things like making phone calls. A prison phone contract is leased out to a private company which can charge up to 50 cents a minute, just a small part of the prison industrial complex which is now a multi billion dollar industry.

When you look at how the US treats its own citizens, it’s less surprising that it is now the central power which terrorises other nations with war and weaponised drones. Using the same demographics to incarcerate Blacks and Brown people, the U.S. military uses skin colour, clothing, age, gender and area to assassinate individuals with drones – without due process (evidence or trail), but with the vague justification of being an “imminent threat” to the security of the U.S. My thoughts turn to Tamir Rice, the innocent 12 year old boy in Cleveland, Ohio, shot dead within seconds of police arriving at the scene.

Young Black men in the U.S. are 9 times more likely to be shot by police, there were 1,134 police shootings of Black men in 2015.

Solitary confinement consists of being locked in a cell 23 out of 24 hours, without human contact, without a TV. Inmates who are illiterate are deprived of the only available form of escapism – books. During the walk we were joined by Brian Nelson who had spent 23 years in solitary confinement. He said the only thing which kept him going was receiving books from his mother and becoming a ‘jailhouse lawyer’. Brian now works with a prisoner support organisation but struggles everyday with anxiety and depression. Public transport is impossible, as are crowded spaces and driving can bring on panic attacks. Prior to entering solitary confinement he had no mental health issues, within 9 months he was on medication to cope with depression.

Today he’s still trying to get an answer as to why he was actually placed in solitary. “I went from an open prison in New Mexico to being strapped to a stretcher and transported to a supermax. My lawyers can’t get an answer”. The desire to continue living is a struggle, he’s still on medication and needs to see a psychiatrist every week. Brian now prefers to spend time alone: “I first went into solitary when I was 14. They said it was for my own ‘protection’ as I was little. Now it’s like my social skills stopped developing at that age. Socially I’m still 14”.

Nobody knows how many people are currently in solitary confinement. With the massive scale of privately run prisons, the government is unable to keep a track on who’s actually in solitary and where. However it’s been estimated that upwards of 80 thousand are in some sort of segregated incarceration. The statement I repeatedly heard was, “You might not have mental health issues when you enter solitary, but by the time you get out you will”.

The UN has classified solitary confinement for more than 10 days as torture. Human rights activists are currently pushing for House Bill 5417 which proposes to limit the use of solitary confinement to 5 days.

The closing of Guantanamo was one of Obama’s key election promises when he came to office. Two terms later and he’s still struggling to make good on the promise. At one point Thomson prison was considered a likely facility to transfer the remaining 91 detainees, many of them have been incarcerated and tortured for 14 years, without trial and without substantial evidence to justify their continued imprisonment. In total 779 people have been kept at Guantanamo, 23 of which were juveniles, detained indefinitely in a blackspot, immune from international laws, devoid of human rights.  It’s unlikely their state will improve if transferred to Thomson where they will almost definitely be classified as an “imminent threat to national security” and therefore deprived the rights of other U.S. prisoners. They would have to also cope with solitary confinement, one of the few things Guantanamo doesn’t impose as a long term condition.

During the walk we invited Senator Dick Durbin and President Obama to spend a week in solitary confinement, by way of a small qualification required before having the power to incarcerate other individuals. Our invitation went unanswered, though we did receive police surveillance and a massive presence (18 police cars) when our group of 15 walkers arrived in Thomson. Perhaps coincidentally there was also a police helicopter circling overhead, and Thomson locals had been informed that “a riot from Chicago was heading into town”.

The U.S. has now dispensed with due process, whether you be a Brown skinned person in the Middle East or in Afghanistan and Pakistan, targeted by a Predator drone; a young African American man shot on the streets by police; or part of the 95% of U.S. prisoners incarcerated without trial. This is reinforced by U.S. policy abroad, the CIA’s extraordinary rendition and detention program, symbolised internationally by notorious black site secret prisons and 14 years of  Guantanamo, this has left the global image of the U.S. extremely tarnished. At the time of writing, within just two days, there have been separate incidents where U.S. police shot dead 2 black US citizens, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

Never mind guilty before charged, the current status quo is assassination without evidence, charge or trial. Guilt is decided by the colour of your skin.

Zero Days: Vulnerability Of Humanity

Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Subsequent to the chilling account written by a known investigative journalist, Kim Zetter, towards the end of 2014, the new documentary film has been just released to the public domain and started screening as of July 08.

This is indeed shocking! How are we going to deal with this? Is this going to outline the next world war? We are just a few miles from total destruction, is what one could imagine when one watches the film.

Zero Days, directed by Alex Gibney has attempted to reveal the harsh and exigent realities of the cyber warfare while focusing on the first Cyber Weapon allegedly developed and launched by the Secret Intelligence communities of the United States of America and Israel as part of their covert operations targeting the largest Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz, Isfahan Province, Iran.

The documentary has detailed the ‘Stuxnet, a piece of self-replicating computer malware (known as a “worm” for its ability to burrow from computer to computer on its own)’, and how the entire mission was sabotaged by intolerant behavior on the part of Israel’s intelligence MOSSAD resulting in the software ultimately ending up in the hands of Russians. Then the tit for tat attacks by the Iranian computer hackers started attacking the largest oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and several banks in the USA. Later this scenario led President Obama and his counterpart for USA to sign a deal with Iran.

‘Zero Days’ has taken us into virtual reality of cyber warfare and it shows the vulnerability of us – the ordinary men and women. We feel the urge to deal with something which is more urgent than anything else. This is all about the safety of human life, which can be eliminated in a moment if technology ended up in the wrong hands or even a single mistake by those who have custody of these facilities in the name of “legitimacy”.

While talking ‘freely’, one of the CIA agents, described the covert operation and how it was boomeranged to those who developed the “worm”, Stuxnet. The most, alarming revelation made by her at the end of the documentary was that the ongoing covert operations targeted nations in which operations Stuxnet was a very small project in a much larger mission.

“You see phrases like “Title 10 CNO”, Title 10 means operations for the US military, and “CNO” means Computer Networking Operation. This is strong evidence that Stuxnet was just the opening wedge of what is much broader US government effort now to develop an entirely new class of weapons” ( quoted- Zero Days).

It shows the threat is increasing, although some of the state parties are “diplomatically” talking, gathering, assessing and assuring the safety of the world. But, one small USB flash drive is more than enough to destroy all networked infrastructure facilities. Small code file can manipulate the nuclear facilities anywhere in the world. One sophisticated hacker could take control of all the nuclear facilities in one moment and it could cause millions of death.

The tricky part of this real threat is, not a single person who is working on this issue is allowed to talk to and inform the public. When President Barack Obama came to power there was high expectation that he would lead the most transparent and ethical administration that the United States of America has ever had. The first black African-American President was expected to transform US politics and lead it back on ethical track with using true democratic principles and values, was the dream of not only Americans but many Global communities.

Nonetheless, the balance sheet of the Obama administration shows a picture of how America hunted those who leaked classified information in the name of safety of humanity. Those who revealed the truth of unethical practice were put behind bars after being named and shamed as traitors. In other words, hunting the messenger rather than annulling the unethical practice is revealing the degree of hypocrisy.

In ‘Zero Days’, almost everyone, from the retired General Michael Hayden who was headed both NSA and the CIA, to an anonymous CIA agent are not willing to talk beyond the certain point, on an issue which is extremely serious to human safety. That does not mean that they don’t want to elaborate but the practical situation and the obligations are not allowing them to educate the public.

Are we going to rely on the doctrine of, ‘do as we say and not as we do’ when the alarming situation becomes a reality at our doorstep? Where is the accountability for the immunity exercised by the espionage community? Who is responsible for whom? The bottom line is that, talking about democratic values, human rights, civil liberty and privacy are nothing but a farce with an impressive surface.

One can find nothing more suitable here, to appreciate this plight of mankind, than the prophetic words of Benjamin Franklin, ” those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ‘Zero Days’ documentary film has demonstrated this true message shockingly and urges us towards precautions against excesses.

Militarization And Police Violence

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Hardly a day goes by without news of a police killing.  And each time we hear from scholars and observers that the police is too militarized.   No doubt!

In 2014, I was flattered to have been approached by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Shasta Chapter to be their keynote speaker to address Government Secrecy, Drones, and Militarization. After each police involved death, I would revisit my notes and wonder why I never published them.   After watching this video clip on my FB page on July 10, 2016, I decided to share an excerpt from the ACLU address of April 13, 2014.

(Of note, at the time of the talk, “Black Lives Matter” had not appeared on the national stage, nor had the training of police in Israel been fully exposed; as such, these very important factors were not included in the talk/excerpt below.  The following is simply talking points stringed together and lacks the flow and flare of academic writing.)

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Historians and political scientists have warned us about  dangerous war fever sweeping the United States. Today we have gone beyond that.

The “Global War on Terror”, a war indefinite in duration, against an ill-defined and shifting enemy, al-Qaeda,[ISIS did not exist in the official narrative at the time] is now being armed in Syria [“moderates”] without a clear explanation of American strategy or a specific definition of victory, or even a way to measure progress in the struggle has taken its toll on civil liberty.  The problem of militarization poses a danger to the very character of American government and society.

In his first public interview after retiring from active duty in 2003, General Tommy Franks identified the single most dangerous possibility offered by an endless war on terrorism: An attack with weapons of mass destruction “just to create casualties … to terrify” could lead “the western world, the free world” to forfeit its “freedom and liberty,” to lose its democracy, and “begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty event, … to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.”

Over half a century ago,  Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson concluded that  “by giving way to the passion, intolerance and suspicions of wartime, it is easy to reduce our liberties to a shadow, often in answer to exaggerated claims of security.”.

That day is here.  Not only are we under constant surveillance, but  take for example the kill list.  A list which began under the Bush administration as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the United States was not at war has become Obama’s kill list and the scope of the list has been expanded to include the execution, without due process of law, of U.S. citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism. And this is accepted by the people. No protests.

The Framers of the Constitution recognized such dangers when they carefully subordinated the military to civilian authority and attempted to limit the power of the President to initiate war.

Gregory Foster, a former Army officer and West Point graduate who now teaches national security studies at the National Defense University in Washington said that principle of civilian control of the military—an early building block of American democracy-  has become the  civilian subjugation to the military.

Today, the degree to which  society’s institutions, policies, behavior, thought, and values are devoted to military power and shaped by war are alarming.

The incursion of military recruiters and teachings into the public school system is well known.  Presidents favor speaking to captive audiences at military bases, defense bases, and on aircraft carriers.  Lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending.   TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” demonstrate that Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas

Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged publicly in an October 24, 2003, interview in the Washington Times: “We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror. Ideas are important, and they need to be marshaled, and they need to be communicated in ways that are persuasive to the listeners.”

This was part of his Information Operations Roadmap.   As part of the plan,  public affairs officers were given the task of briefing journalists.  In 2005 it came to light that the Pentagon paid the Lincoln Group (a private company) to plant ‘hundreds of stories’ in Iraqi papers in support of U.S. Policies

But now, we see that this war has been internalized, whether you look at drones, kill list, or militarization of the police force.

During the Clinton administration, Congress passed what’s now known as the “1033 Program,” which formalized  Reagan administration’s directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local cops—SWAT teams and others—including machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, etc.

The Pentagon’s 1033 program has exploded under Obama.

Bill Clinton also created the “Troops to Cops” program which offered grants to police departments who hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the militarization of the police force.

In a 2005 PBS documentary, David Grossman, a retired US Army Lt. Colonel spoke of training law enforcement groups worldwise to kill: “most of what I do is I train military and law enforcement in what I call the bulletproof mind.” “Prior preparation is that one variable in the equation that we can control ahead of time, and one of the key things is embracing the responsibility to kill.  So when I teach, one of the things I believe we need to do is embrace this word “kill.””

Is it any wonder that [Mayor] Bloomberg proudly bragged of “hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD” and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors?

And what of “to protect and to serve”?

Undoing The Ideology Of Growth

Matthias Schmelzer

Degrowth aims at undoing growth. Undoing growth both at the level of social structures and social imaginaries. Although the focus is very often on the latter, i.e. the “decolonization of imaginaries” as put by Serge Latouche, the degrowth perspective still seems to lack a comprehensive understanding of the role of ideology, the path dependencies and the power that shape these imaginations. Degrowth and related transition ideas sometimes appear as a rather naïvely idealistic perspectives, in which “we” simply have to understand, reflect and overcome our “mental infrastructures” and our personal addictions to consumerism and material expansion. This, the powerful narrative goes, will enable us to change our ways of seeing the world, to change our personal behaviour, and thus to overcome societies´ dependence on fossil capitalism and economic expansion.

My recently published book The Hegemony of Growth. The OECD and the Making of the Growth Paradigm is an attempt to give more historical and social depth to our understanding of what the undoing of growth would actually entail. Without falling in the opposite trap of entirely disregarding the role of knowledge and collective imaginaries in favor of economic and social structures, I propose to understand the growth paradigm as a historically constructed and powerfully hegemonic ideology. What do I mean by this and what are the key arguments of the book?

Economic growth has become and largely remains what scholars from various fields, including renowned historians, have described as a “fetish” (John R. McNeill) or “obsession” (Barry Eichengreen, Elmar Altvater), an “ideology” (Alan Milward, Charles S. Maier), a “social imaginary” (Cornelius Castoriadis, Serge Latouche), or an “axiomatic necessity” (Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen). However, while growth is at the center of both public and academic debates, the question of how economic growth actually attained its status as an overarching priority in the first place has not received much attention by historians, nor by researchers in other disciplines. Even more striking is the absence of any historical perspective in the various current efforts to overcome the focus on growth. Both the search for new statistical measures “Beyond GDP” and the lively debates about political alternatives to the growth fetish – postgrowth or degrowth – are fundamentally a-historical in that they largely ignore and underestimate the long-term historical roots, path dependencies, and power relations of statistical standards and the growth paradigm more generally.

Why focus on history and the OECD?

I took up this challenge by asking the simple question: How did economic growth come to be almost universally seen as a self-evident goal of economic policy-making and how was this constantly reproduced in changing circumstances? In order to answer this question in a transnational context and grounded in historical and institutional developments, I focused on the emergence and evolution of knowledge about economic growth within the OECD and its predecessor, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), one of the least researched international organizations. I researched the archives of this organization and of some of its key member countries, read texts by key protagonists on growth theory, growth debates and the critique of economic growth, and discussed my arguments with colleagues and fellow activists. Digging deep into history and analyzing growth-thinking at the transnational level and the interface of academia, national bureaucracies, and international organizations reveals the complex and contested history and politics behind the emergence, functioning, and evolution of what I describe as the “economic growth paradigm.”

The resulting book is both profoundly historical – retelling in detail the making and remaking of the growth paradigm in the second half of the twentieth century – and topical for current discussions around inequality, climate change and the end of growth. It argues that the pursuit of economic growth is not a self-evident goal of industrialized countries’ policies, but rather the result of a very specific ensemble of discourses, economic theory, and statistical standards that came to dominate policy-making in industrialized countries under certain social and historical conditions in the second half of the twentieth century. Thus, I aim at analyzing the idea of economic growth in its historical genesis in a similar way as this has been done with regard to the idea of “development” by cultural anthropologists of the so-called Post-Development school, focusing on the close nexus of power and knowledge. It rests on the thesis that the exceptional position of economic growth as a core policy goal is based on the hegemony of the growth paradigm and cannot be adequately understood without taking into account the complex structure and historical evolution of this paradigm.

The growth paradigm in the history of capitalism

The making of this core feature of the religion of capitalism has to be situated within longer-term developments that reach back to the onset of intensified capitalist industrialization in the early eighteenth century or even further, to colonial expansions. At that time, a secularized conception of economic progress and a first generation of classical growth theories emerged which, however, fell into oblivion with the rise of econometrics and neoclassical economics in the later nineteenth century. Building on statistical developments in the early twentieth century, it was only in the context of the Great Depression that a renewed interest in macroeconomic questions gave rise to the modern conception of “the economy” and to interventionist economic policies geared toward stability and employment. Yet it was not before the late 1940s and early 1950s that in the context of World War II, European reconstruction and Cold War competition, economic expansion became a key policy goal throughout the world.

The growth paradigm emerged as part of what has been called “high modernism,” a system of beliefs and practices aimed at increasing the power of the state in line with what was believed to be scientific ideas in order to reshape societies by maximizing production to improve the human lot. Four unquestioned allegations were specifically relevant in reinforcing the hegemony of growth and collectively rationalized, universalized, and naturalized the growth paradigm. These assumed that GDP, with all its inscribed reductions, assumptions, and exclusions, adequately measures economic activity; that growth is a panacea for a multitude of (often changing) socioeconomic challenges; that growth is essentially unlimited, provided the correct governmental and inter-governmental policies were pursued; and that GDP-growth is practically the same as or a necessary means to achieve essential societal goals such as progress, well-being, or national power.

Growth as ideology – an “imaginary resolution of real contradictions”

The growth paradigm became hegemonic in the sense of justifying and sustaining a particular perspective – the allegations mentioned above – and the underlying social and power relations as natural, inevitable, and timeless. Growth came to be presented as the common good, thus justifying the particular interests of those who benefited most from the expansion of market transactions as beneficial for all. The hegemony of growth depoliticized key societal debates about what societies value, how they interpret their current position historically and within the globalized economy, and how they conceptualize the good life and future developments. Growth turned difficult political conflicts over distribution and the goals of policy-making into technical, non-political management questions of how to collectively increase the economic output of the nation state. By transforming class and other social antagonisms into apparent win-win situations, it provided what could be called an “imaginary resolution of real contradictions” (Terry Eeagleton).

Economic growth and the superiority of economists

Moreover, by transforming contested and changing societal goals into technical economic problems, growth discourses have deeply colonized our imaginaries: they not only reinforced the dominance of economic thinking and arguments by turning political or social questions into economic problems (what could be called “economism”), but they also strengthened the privileged positions of economic technocrats within modern societies and underpinned the primacy of the economy over politics. Growthmanship was mutually reinforced along with the increasing importance of economic knowledge production as a key justificatory basis for policy-making within the modern state. The economists’ ability to measure, model, and steer growth made them increasingly indispensable for managing modern societies based on growth and thus reinforced the “superiority of economists” just as the expansion of economic approaches also strengthened the growth paradigm. Even though the mid-twentieth century saw the proliferation of growing armies of experts, ranging from international relations theorists to demographers, anthropologists, sociologists to agronomists, economists were the only ones who managed to claim the mastery over what had become a fetish throughout the world: economic growth.

These arguments – and others – are weaved into the various case studies discussed in the chapters of the book. These focus on issues such as the international standardization of national income accounting, the transnational harmonization of growth policies, the development of  growth into a universal yardstick, the replication of growth policies in the context of decolonization and the ‘development of others,’ the OECD-Club of Rome nexus, the birth of environmental politics and social indicators, as well as the more recent turn to neoliberal growthmanship.

To conclude, overcoming the ideology of growth – or what’s recently been called the “growthocene” – demands a thorough understanding of what we are up against. The degrowth movement set out to dismantle a paradigm that has deep historical roots and is embedded in and thus supported by powerful institutions and structures such as the nation state, capitalism, established understandings of “the economy”, or the power of economists in societies. Most importantly, however, growth has arguably become one of the key justificatory ideologies of capitalism. Not only large scale inequalities – as recently publicized by Thomas Piketty – and the divergence of uneven development between rich and poor nations are justified as of a temporary nature, to be overcome by more growth in the future, but similarly societal cleavages along the lines of class, race and gender. With climate change, resource limits, and secular stagnation, this make-believe “resolution of real contradictions” reveals itself as clearly “imaginary.” Consequently, in order to dismantle the hegemony of growth, degrowth has to develop a profound and critical understanding of the real societal contradictions, hierarchies and power dynamics shaping capitalism and transform them in new ways.

International Tribunal Rejects Chinese Claim On South China Sea, What Next?

Vivek Kumar Srivastava

The unanimous award of Hague International Tribunal on the South China Sea arbitration is historical, overpowering and decisive in the sense that Chinese claim on the disputed sea area has been rejected by the International Tribunal while giving decision on the petition filed by The Republic of the Philippines against The People Republic of China. As was expected the Chinese reaction was full of negativities, rejecting the decision and calling it as null and void.

The decision has established that the area, which has become a bone of contention particularly after the start of the last decade between the US and China, and China- the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Brunei, is a free sea area with no exclusive control of China. The decision may bring some solace to adjoining small states of South China Sea.

The sea area as the verdict states was used by Chinese people as fishermen and other way but to say that the area was exclusively belonged to China was not historically correct, thus the ‘historical control’ argument did not find any merit with the tribunal.

This is a decisive verdict in the sense that now the geopolitics of the region and the adjoining countries will take a change. There is possibility that conflict may conflagrate as China known for its illogical behavior on several issues including suppression of the people, violation of human rights, unfair political dealings with the people of Hong Kong, suppression of the religious freedom etc. will not accept it even for a while and similar message has come. Its Xinhua official news agency has stated that “ it neither accepts nor recognizes the award of an arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea arbitration established at the request of the Philippines. ‘The award is null and void and has no binding force,’ the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement. China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards. China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards, according to the statement.” Moreover Chinese government has issued the statement saying that “China’s Nanhai Zhudao (the South China Sea Islands) consist of Dongsha Qundao (the Dongsha Islands), Xisha Qundao (the Xisha Islands), Zhongsha Qundao (the Zhongsha Islands) and Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands). The activities of the Chinese people in the South China Sea date back to over 2,000 years ago. China is the first to have discovered, named, and explored and exploited Nanhai Zhudao and relevant waters, and the first to have exercised sovereignty and jurisdiction over them continuously, peacefully and effectively, thus establishing territorial sovereignty and relevant rights and interests in the South China Sea.” These statements show that China has completely rejected the verdict.

In fact China had projected the issue of South China Sea as the symbol of its national power. It was an attempt to contain the smaller states in the region and to exploit the huge natural resources of the sea. It even threatened big powers. It did not spare even the USA and India on the issue but it was well known that legally Chinese claim on this sea area was incorrect and based on flimsy and weak grounds. The verdict has proved it.

The another outcome will be that the tension in the region will spike due to Chinese role as well the more penetrating behavior of USA.USA will now redraw its policies for the region where it has formulated a policy of collaborating the likeminded countries against China which include mainly Japan, South Korea; India is also being approached though independent foreign policy stand of India if survives as it has been in the past then India will be able to remain away from the collaborative group otherwise US may make use of it.

Thus there are now two clear groups which will stay opposed to each other. The smaller sates will have to deal China at their individual level if they come closer to USA then problem of another sort may take place. The region may turn up as a theatre of lethal conflict.

China also needs to learn that there is no need to show the bullying in the International Politics; moreover it should not behave unethically and as a power of suppression. Its global behavior is well known. It has been responsible to allow North Korea and Pakistan to proliferate the nuclear technology. Its activities are highly suppressive in the sense that common people in the country are not in a position to enjoy the basic liberties. The fundamental human rights are nonexistent in the country. The political dictatorship in the name of perverted communist ideology does not hold water when the common people are at loss in any respect.

The decision on South China Sea with this perspective is landmark because it limits the power aspiration of China. It also shows that global politics in which the impact of international law is of least value as the nation states are not compelled to follow the laws; but after the verdict at least the basic rights of the smaller states in the power politics governed international order have been recognized.

It is expected that new power configurations will appear and new form of behaviour of nation states will come into fore. Big to small powers will use the verdict according to their national interests.

Hence the decision has several aspects which will unfold in the time to come but one point is explicit that China is involved in putting illegal pressure on the world community on South China Sea. This fact has much bearing on the International Politics. As after the terrorism, it is the big power politics and rivalry which threaten the global peace; for which these nation states need to be controlled. International law may do something though its control system is quite weak; but a start even at primary level is need of the hour. China should learn to respect the International laws and related verdicts.

With Washington’s blessing, Boeing signs mega-deal with Iran

Roger Jordan

With strong backing from the Obama administration, US aircraft manufacturer Boeing has reached an agreement in principle with Iran on a mega-deal, worth in excess of $20 billion, to supply the country with 109 commercial aircraft.

Announced last month, the aircraft deal is far and away the largest business transaction between a US company and Tehran since the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah and his blood-soaked regime.

Its implementation will require that Washington waive sanctions on US-dollar trade with Iran—unilateral US sanctions that remain despite the coming into force last January of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOPA) between Iran and the P-6 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany).

Under the JCOPA, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its civilian nuclear program and to the most intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections regime ever-devised. In return, the P-6 lifted punishing economic sanctions that had more than halved Iran’s oil exports and otherwise roiled its economy.

The deal calls for Boeing to sell at least 80 commercial aircraft to Iran Air for an estimated $17.6 billion and to lease the Iranian government-owned airline a further 29. Delivery of the planes is to commence in 2017.

Without the support and encouragement of the Obama administration, Boeing would never have moved forward with the deal with Iran. It could nonetheless still collapse, due to strong opposition within the US Congress from those who opposed the Iran nuclear deal and want Washington to resume an overt campaign for regime change in Tehran.

With a view to concluding a sale along the lines of that now reached, Washington agreed under the JCPOA to remove all its sanctions on the sale of commercial aircraft and parts. Recently the Obama administration repealed its designation of Iran Air as a “supporter of terrorism.” It had made this designation in 2011 as it was ratcheting up sanctions against Tehran, based on the claim that Iran Air planes had been used to transport weaponry and fighters to support the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah.

Speaking at the recently concluded Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, US Secretary of State John Kerry strongly supported the Boeing sale for both economic and strategic reasons.

Pointing to the $27 billion deal Iran Air has already sealed with European aircraft producer Airbus, Kerry voiced concern that the US could lose out to its European rivals in the race to take advantage of the profit-making opportunities offered by Iran’s newly-opened economy. He argued it “doesn’t make a lot of sense” to allow sanctions to be lifted, then sit by while “other countries like France are rushing in to sell Airbus to the cost of Washington State and Boeing and our workers in the United States.”

He also pitched the Boeing sale, much as he and Obama previously promoted the nuclear deal, as a means of promoting “transformation” in Iran—that is in harnessing Iran’s bourgeois regime to the strategic interests of US imperialism. “Doing business,” said Kerry, “is one of the best ways to create interests and vested purpose, if you will, in furthering transformation.”

Such comments reflect the calculation in US ruling circles that through a combination of continuing military pressure and inducements, including expanding commercial ties, the current regime in Tehran can be remolded into a US client. Or, failing that, “engagement” with Iran will enable Washington to leverage the longstanding fissures within Iran’s ruling elite so as to bring about regime change. President Hassan Rouhani is part of a faction of the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite that has been pressing for a rapprochement with US imperialism since the late 1980s.

The Obama administration’s “opening” to Iran has been bitterly contested within the US political and military-security establishments. But under conditions where the US is pursuing confrontation with more substantial rivals, nuclear-armed China and Russia, and its wars have caused havoc and chaos across the Mideast, the most powerful sections of the US elite favor, at least for the moment, “exploring” if they can do “business” with Tehran.

Iran has long been considered a “strategic prize” by US imperialist strategists. Not only does it have massive oil and natural gas reserves and bestraddle the Middle East and Central Asia, two of the world’s most important oil-exporting regions. Its location at the intersection of three continents makes it pivotal to US imperialism’s plans to consolidate American domination of the Eurasia.

The Obama administration also hopes that it can secure Iranian support in resolving the ongoing conflicts in the region, above all in Syria and Iraq. Significantly, Kerry held discussions with his Iranian counterpart Mohammed Zarif in Oslo on the Syrian civil war a day after the official announcement of the Boeing deal. At the Aspen festival two weeks later, Kerry acknowledged the two countries are tacitly allied in Iraq, with Tehran offering military assistance to the US-sponsored, Shia-dominated regime in Baghdad. “Iran in Iraq has been in certain ways helpful, and they clearly are focused on ISIL-Daesh, and so we have a common interest, actually,” said the US Secretary of State.

None of this means that the Boeing sale is a done deal or that the current thaw in US-Iranian relations will continue in the months and years ahead.

Obama and other government officials repeatedly noted in the wake of last year’s nuclear deal that the only alternative for US imperialism to the diplomatic rapprochement with Tehran would be war. This possibility remains, with the sanctions that Washington lifted under the JCPOA capable of being immediately snapped back into force if it deems Tehran is not in compliance.

Syria could well prove a flash point, as there is a growing clamor within the US military-security establishment and among both the Republican and Democratic Party leaderships for the US to intervene still more aggressively against Assad, Tehran’s only governmental ally in the region.

Efforts are being made, predominantly by Republican politicians, to scuttle the Boeing deal. On July 7, the House of Representatives amended a spending bill to block Boeing’s sale of aircraft to Tehran. “To give these types of planes to the Iranian regime, which still is the world's largest state sponsor of terror, is to give them a product that can be used for a military purpose,” Illinois Republican Peter Roskam, who sponsored the legislation, hypocritically claimed.

The Obama administration has indicated it will veto any legislation which undermines the nuclear agreement with Iran, including legislation that would torpedo the Boeing deal.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also attacked his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, over the Boeing sale. “Clinton’s disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal” is helping Iran, the “world’s largest state sponsor of terror,” claimed the presumptive Republican nominee. Previously Trump had attacked the Iran deal for failing to secure enough business for US companies, while opening the door to their European competitors.

Meanwhile, the US and its allies continue to attack Tehran over its ballistic missile program, accusing Iran of “aggressive” intentions, although it is the US that has invaded and occupied its neighbours, Afghanistan and Iraq, is supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and continues to arm Israel to the teeth. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last week charged that Iran’s ballistic missile program is inconsistent with UN Security Council resolutions. In response, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization Ali Akbar Salehi suggested a new campaign of bullying and threats against Iran may be under preparation. “A conspiracy is underway,” Salehi told the semi-offical Fars news agency. “Otherwise there is no reason for Mr. Ban and Ms. Merkel to make such an outcry. I sense that they are in the process of laying groundwork and concocting.”

Hungarian government cracks down on refugees

Martin Kreickenbaum

This week, the Hungarian parliament in Budapest approved a further tightening of asylum laws and authorized the country’s security forces to deport refugees to Serbia and Croatia without due process.

Refugees caught within an eight-kilometer-wide strip along the border will now be summarily deported. In addition, border security is being massively strengthened. The number of soldiers and border guards will be increased from 4,000 to 10,000, and they will be equipped with additional vehicles, thermal imaging cameras and other devices.

The number of refugees registered on the Balkan route is plunged. Barely more than 250 refugees a day are able to traverse the closed borders along the Balkan route with the help of people smugglers.

The EU in Brussels has largely looked on approvingly at Hungary’s brutal actions, despite the fact that expulsions without an asylum hearing, expedited asylum proceedings and the detention of refugees and deprivation of their rights represent massive violations of international refugee protections and violate EU law.

The victims of this brutal policy of deterrence are refugees who have already endured weeks in overcrowded makeshift camps outside the transit zones. After fleeing from wars in Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq, they are now camped out in small tents or in the open air, in the dust and dirt in front of towering barbed-wire fences. Three mobile toilets were only recently installed, but there are no showers, no medical care, and only one water tap. Many people are ill, especially children. Once a day, Hungarian police officers bring tiny food parcels containing bread and canned fish.

There is virtually no escape from these miserable camps. The Hungarian security forces allow only 15 to 20 people into the transit zone daily to apply for asylum there. Refugees have to place their names on a list and then wait for weeks before they are allowed to pass through the gate in the border fence.

Aid organizations fear that the new regulations will catastrophically worsen the situation in the camps. Since the beginning of the year, the Hungarian security authorities have captured some 17,500 refugees who are accused of illegal entry. Previously, they had been taken to reception centers in Hungary. Now they will be brought back to the border fence, leading to a rapid increase in the size of the camp there, which will assume the proportions of the Idomeni camp in Greece. Already in the first days since the new rules have been in force, almost 150 refugees have been deported each day from Hungary.

“Refugees on Hungarian territory are escorted back to the border, without the possibility of lodging an asylum claim and without being provided any documentation, where they have to endure for an arbitrarily long time under inhumane conditions in order to apply for asylum,” Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki committee, told Spiegel online .

The Hungarian government claims that this does not constitute deportation. Although the transit zones and about a two-foot-wide strip in front of the border fence are not part of Hungarian territory, they also do not belong to any other state.

Since August 2015 the Hungarian government has defined neighboring Serbia, from which nearly all the refugees have entered, as a “safe third country.” As a result, of the 199,000 asylum applications made in Hungary last year, just 264 have been approved.

Hungary has steadily increased the repressive measures against refugees over the last twelve months. Following the classification of Serbia as a “safe third country”, and the complete closure of its borders with Serbia and Croatia, border fences and fortifications were built, soldiers have employed tear gas and batons against protesting refugees. In September last year, “illegal entry” was declared a crime and thousands of refugees dragged before the courts.

According to György Bakondi, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s security advisor, 4,942 refugees have been prosecuted for damage to the border fence. In general, the punishment has been immediate deportation and a re-entry ban. According to Bakondis, 300 refugees sit in Hungarian prisons.

However, the deportations are often not carried out, as Serbia and Croatia will not take back the refugees. Since there are no accommodation facilities for refugees in Hungary, apart from the detention centers—even for recognized asylum seekers—many refugees end up homeless on the street, where they are again exposed to state repression, since being homeless is also a crime.

Single male refugees who have been deported to Hungary from other EU member states following the Dublin procedures are imprisoned there on the spurious grounds that they might otherwise try to emigrate again.

In addition to this massive criminalization of refugees, a show trial has been launched in the Hungarian town of Szeged against eleven refugees for their alleged involvement in mass protests at the border fence in September 2015. One of them was even indicted for terrorism because he supposedly used a megaphone to incite the crowd that tried to storm the border fence.

The accused, who were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to three years, included a blind old woman and a wheelchair-bound man. To date, however, there has been no investigation of the brutal police action, in which refugees were shot at with tear gas and driven back using water cannons and truncheons.

The incident was used by the Hungarian government to construe a direct link between refugees, illegal immigration, violence and terrorism. This is also the purpose of a referendum scheduled for October on the question of whether Hungary should participate in the distribution of refugees as agreed by the EU. The date was announced by President Janos Ader this week in Budapest.

This process has already failed for all practical purposes, since, of the 160,000 eligible refugees who are to be taken from Italy and Greece to other EU countries, only 2,800 asylum seekers have so far been redistributed. Moreover, the Hungarian government, which under the EU Commission’s plan would only have to accommodate 1,300 refugees, is seeking to cement its anti-refugee position by means of the referendum.