US and Japan attack plans for post-Brexit Britain

Julie Hyland

En route to the G20 summit in China, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May stressed her priority was to show that Britain is “open for business.”

The G20 is May’s first meeting with international leaders since June’s shock Leave vote in the referendum on UK membership of the European Union (EU), which led to the resignation of her predecessor, David Cameron.

Her boast was immediately undermined by statements from the US and Japan. In the lead-up to the referendum, President Barack Obama made plain Washington’s opposition to the UK leaving the EU, especially the implications for NATO’s escalating military and political provocations against Russia and China. He even threatened that Britain would go to the “back of the queue” on trade deals with the US if it voted to leave.

At May’s first bilateral meeting with Obama in China, the US president reiterated his position. While praising the “very special relationship” between the US and Britain, he said American priorities were “figuring out what Brexit means with respect to Europe.” Asked if he stood by his warnings on trade deals, Obama stressed that the UK took second place to existing negotiations with “big blocs of countries.” The “first task is making sure we go forward on TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] negotiations in which we have already invested a lot of time and effort.”

Obama’s statements were followed by an unprecedented 15-page warning from Japan that the UK could see an exodus by major corporations unless it maintained access to the EU single market. Almost half of Japanese investment in the EU goes to the UK through leading firms such as Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan. The report stated bluntly, “Japanese businesses with their European headquarters in the UK may decide to transfer their head-office function to continental Europe if EU laws cease to be applicable in the UK after its withdrawal.”

The US and Japanese responses highlight increasingly fraught international relations, which the Brexit vote was both a manifestation of and which it has exacerbated.

A meeting between May and Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled today. May praised a “golden era” in UK/Chinese relations and said the talks would concern the development of this “strategic partnership.” But British/Chinese relations are already tested by May’s decision to place on hold the £18 billion deal with French energy giant EDF, supported by China General Nuclear Power, to build a nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, Essex.

No official reason has been given for her decision, although “national security” concerns over potential Chinese leverage over the UK’s energy supply is thought to be the primary factor. It follows Washington’s indictment of China General Nuclear Power in April for allegedly conspiring to produce nuclear material with US experts without required Energy Department approval.

Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador, warned that any further delay could jeopardise further investment into the UK, which has already received more than Germany, France and Italy combined.

Wednesday, May’s new Cabinet met for the first time to draw up plans for Brexit. There will be no second referendum or an early general election, and the decision to trigger Article 50, which formally begins two years of negotiations with the EU on withdrawal, would not be subject to parliamentary approval, she stated. Nor will the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have any say on the timetable or content of negotiations.

“Brexit means Brexit,” she reiterated, with restrictions on the freedom of movement for EU citizens the “red line” in negotiations with the EU, which she indicated would begin early next year.

EU leaders have made plain that the UK cannot have access to the single market while restricting freedom of movement. May’s statement indicated that she had accepted this was the case, and was looking for a free trade agreement modelled along the lines of the EU-Canada agreement.

The most euro-sceptic elements of May’s party welcomed her stance. They were crowing over suggestions by leading ministers in France and Germany that EU negotiations with the US on TTIP should be suspended, if not killed off altogether, enabling the UK to step into the trading breach.

The UK’s financial elite was also rubbing its hands over the EU’s decision last week to issue Apple with an £11 billion tax bill over its tax avoidance deal with Ireland.

With the Irish government joining forces with Apple to protest the ruling, the right-wing Spectator magazine gloated that it presented a “clear opportunity for Britain.” With Ireland’s low tax initiative hamstrung by the EU, the UK was now in a position to attract transnational corporations that could flee from Dublin, especially if Chancellor Philip Hammond now cut “corporation tax to 15 percent.”

Their perspective was summed up by Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher. Writing in the Financial Times, he proclaimed, “Brexit gives us the chance to finish the Thatcher revolution.”

This “revolution”—more appropriately, this counter-revolution—he wrote was achieved by a “thoroughgoing programme of supply side reform, of which judicious deregulation was a critically important part.”

Withdrawal from the EU could now “make the UK the most dynamic and freest country in the whole of Europe: in a word, to finish the job that Margaret Thatcher started.”

US and Japanese responses at the G20 will not only anger the Leave factions of the bourgeoisie. It will increase concerns among the substantial section of the ruling elite that campaigned against UK withdrawal from the EU and who are now trying to prevent it.

The official Remain campaign group has now reformed as the cross-party “Open Britain” to press for a “soft” Brexit. Today parliament will debate a 4-million strong petition demanding a second referendum, and next month the first of several legal challenges to Brexit will be heard in the High Court.

These are part of concerted efforts to overturn the Leave vote, central to which is the ongoing attempted putsch against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Initiated by the Blairite wing of the party, the right-wing coup plotters hope to refashion Labour as the political vehicle for opposing or limiting Brexit.

This has nothing to do with protecting the social conditions of the working class against the rapacious demands of those like Lawson. As their hostility to Corbyn’s stated opposition to austerity and militarism makes clear, they want to ensure the continued domination of the City of London in the EU and maintain British imperialism’s role in NATO.

Speaking in France last week, former Prime Minister Tony Blair repeated his stance that the British public were entitled to change their minds on Brexit and that this could take a number of forms: either a second referendum on the final terms of any withdrawal deal, a de facto referendum through a general election, or a parliamentary vote to abort the Article 50 process before it is concluded.

Meanwhile concerns are growing at the perilous state of the economy. The Brexit faction has celebrated recent data showing an increase in consumer spending and a slight revival in manufacturing as proof of the vitality of British capital. But this is only because of the pound losing one-tenth of its value (down by 16 percent on the dollar over the last year, and 18 percent against the euro), and intervention to pump money into the economy by the Bank of England.

This caused an uptick in overseas tourism and a stampede by US asset funds to snap up cheaper UK stocks. But the Economist noted that input-price inflation has risen to a five-year high, growth in business credit has “markedly slowed” and unemployment looks to be higher than before June.

Writing in the FT, Rupert Pennant-Rea, former governor of the Bank of England, warned, “The sharp costs of Brexit will be felt soon enough... The mechanism by which Britons will get poorer is through prices rising more than wages—in other words, a real-wage cut.”

Hopes for “a devaluation-powered improvement in Britain’s trade will be even harder to achieve if Brexit is reducing access to the EU’s single market and no alternative export markets have opened up to make good the difference… The British have become poorer than they were before the votes were counted on June 23, and that reality will become clearer as the months go by.”

Rising global tensions surface at G20 summit

Nick Beams

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the G20 group of countries, covering 85 percent of the world economy, became the main international economic forum. It was launched with the stated aim of co-ordinating economic policies to promote global growth and prevent a slide into protectionism in the midst of the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It is symptomatic of the state of the world economy that eight years on, the two-day summit meeting of G20 leaders, which concludes in Hangzhou today, will put forward no coordinated measures to boost the world economy, expected to record one of the lowest growth levels since the official end of the recession, and that protectionist measures are on the rise as tensions between the major powers increase.

One of the main areas of conflict is the question of so-called overcapacity in the steel industry, with the United States, Europe and Japan insisting that excess Chinese steel is flooding world markets, leading to job cuts and closures, and that action must be taken to cut back production.

The position of the Chinese government, on the other hand, is that while agreeing to cuts of between 100 and 150 million tonnes, or around 13 percent of capacity by 2020, the main problem is weak global demand.

The issue of steel was on the agenda at a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama on Saturday before the start of official proceedings. According to a Chinese summary of the discussion, China and the US recognised “structural problems,” including “excess capacity in some industries, exacerbated by a weak global economic recovery and depressed market demand.” Both countries also recognised that “excess capacity in steel and other industries is a global issue which requires a global response.” A similar form of words was also used in regard to the electrolytic aluminium industry.

The insistence that China bow to demands that it cut steel production was pushed even more strongly by the European Union. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the G20 had to “urgently find a solution” and that Beijing had to accept an international monitoring mechanism over its industry. “This is a global problem, but with a specific Chinese dimension we have to address,” he said.

In the discussions over the drafting of the final communiqué, the US, European Union and Japan demanded a reference to steel overproduction, with EU officials warning that unless this were done it could affect China’s efforts to win “market economy status” within the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This status, which will come up for decision towards the end of the year, is being eagerly sought by Beijing because it limits the ability of other countries to take action over its trade policies.

In a manner which recalled nothing so much as the days of imperialist overlordship of colonies, the initial proposal was that monitoring would be conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. But after India raised a number of objections, pointing that neither it nor China were OECD members, the proposal was modified to call for the establishment of a “global forum on steel excess capacity, to be facilitated by the OECD” and to report in 2017.

It is a sure sign of the deepening malaise of the global profit system that, under conditions where all the steel that can be produced could be utilised for much-needed infrastructure projects world-wide, “overcapacity” was at the very centre of the summit’s economic agenda.

Moreover, the tensions were not confined to steel or to relations between China and other major powers.

Responding to US criticisms of the EU decision to issue a $13 billion tax order against Apple, Juncker rejected suggestions that the company was targeted because it was American, saying previous tax orders had affected European companies. “This is not a decision against the United States of America,” he said.

The Apple tax order came in the midst of statements from both Germany and France that negotiations over the free trade agreement between the EU and the US, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), have little chance of being concluded. In a major television interview last week, German Economics Minister and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said negotiations “de facto failed because we as Europeans naturally cannot submit to American demands.”

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, but which excludes China, has been agreed in principle but faces opposition in the US Congress. This prompted warnings last week from the Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of the consequences of any failure to secure passage of the TPP which the Obama administration has made clear is the economic arm of its anti-China pivot to Asia.

He said the Japanese government had made politically difficult concessions on the TPP and would be impacted by any failure. Directly linking the issue of trade to war, he said: “The Japanese, living in an uncertain world, depending on an American nuclear umbrella, will have to say on trade: ‘The Americans could not follow through.’” While it may not be said publicly, he continued, failure of the TPP would mean that Japan began calculations about who it could depend on.

Signs of a more assertive Japanese foreign policy were in evidence on Saturday on the eve of the G20 summit. At an economic conference in Vladivostok, aimed at promoting Russian investment in its under-developed Far East, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a direct appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin for the two countries to work towards the signing of a peace treaty and end the stand-off that has prevailed since the end of World War II because of disputed territories.

Abe offered to hold annual summits and promote investment in line with Russian needs in an initiative which, as the Financial Times noted, “stands out among leaders of G7 nations, the majority of whom have shunned Mr Putin since imposing sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis in 2014.”

In conditions of a marked slowing in world trade—the WTO estimates that it will record just 2.8 percent growth this year, the fifth year in a row it has been below 3 percent, and less than half the growth experienced for two decades prior to 2008—the issue of protectionism loomed large over the meeting.

Xi opened the summit with a call for the major powers to resist pressures to raise trade barriers, more innovation to promote economic growth and for increased co-operation to “improve the ability of the world economy to resist risks.”

Speaking on the eve of the summit, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said world leaders had to push back against a tide of “protectionism running rampant” whether in the form of Brexit or “protectionist rhetoric in election campaigns.”

“There is a sense that forward march of progress has stalled,” he told a business forum in Hangzhou.

Since the financial meltdown of 2008, all world leaders and global economic organisations have denounced the beggar-thy-neighbour policies of the 1930s that played no small role in creating the conditions for war, insisting that the lessons of that decade have been learned.

But the tide continues. In a report published in June, the WTO noted that trade restrictions imposed by G20 members—mainly the most advanced economies—had reached their highest monthly level since the financial crisis.

At the same time, the dangers of war are becoming ever more apparent. On his final visit to Asia as president, Obama issued one of his most bellicose statements yet against China. Significantly, it included not only a reference to disputes in the South China Sea but extended to the economy.

Insisting that China had to abide by the international order, that is, the interests of the US, he said: “Where we see them violating international rules and norms, as we have seen in some cases in the South China Sea or in some of their behaviour when it comes to economic policy, we’ve been very firm. And we’ve indicated to them that there will be consequences.”

United Nations 2017 International Law Fellowship for African Scholars

Brief description: The United Nations is offering Regional Course in International Law open to academia and professionals from intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and similar institutions engaged in international law activities in Africa.

Application Deadline:  14th October 2016.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: African countries (see list below) 

To be taken at (country): Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Fields of Study: The Regional Courses may include seminars on the following topics: Introduction to international law, Treaty law, State responsibility, International peace and security, Peaceful settlement of international disputes, Diplomatic and consular law, International organizations, United Nations institutions and law making, The Work of the International Law Commission, African Union law and institutions, Organization of American States law and institutions, International human rights law, Movements of persons, International humanitarian law, International criminal law, International environmental law, International watercourses, Law of the sea, International trade law, International investment law, Legal research, Legal drafting

About the Award: The 2017 United Nations Regional Course in International Law for Africa will be organized by the Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs in cooperation with Ethiopia, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Union. The Regional Course will be conducted in English.

The Regional Courses provide high-quality training by leading scholars and practitioners on a broad range of core subjects of international law, as well as specific subjects of particular interest to the countries in a given region. In addition, the interactive nature of the training allows the participants to share experiences and exchange ideas, which promotes greater understanding and cooperation on legal matters in the region.

The Regional Courses are intended to enable qualified professionals, in particular government officials and teachers of international law from developing countries and countries with emerging economies, to deepen their knowledge of international law and of the legal work of the United Nations and its associated bodies.

Type: Short course, Fellowship

Eligibility: To qualify for the Regional Course, candidates

• must have a legal background with professional experience in the field of international law.
• are required to submit a medical certificate of good health and to certify that they are able to attend the entire course period.
• Fluency in spoken and written English is also required.

Selection Criteria: When selecting participants for the Regional Courses:

• due consideration is given to the candidates’ qualifications, to the scope of their professional duties, to the relevance of the training to their professional duties and to gender balance.
• Applications from female candidates are strongly encouraged.
• Due consideration is also given to those candidates who are already present in Addis Ababa.

Number of Awardees: The course will accommodate up to 30 participants.

Value of Programme: The fellowships cover the fellowship recipient’s travel in economy class, accommodation, meals, medical insurance, participation in the Regional Course and the training materials. In accordance with the policies and procedures governing the administration of United Nations fellowships, participants will also receive a stipend to cover other living expenses.

Qualified candidates may also apply for self-funded positions. Self-funded participants bear all costs associated with their participation (travel, accommodation and living expenses). Training materials and lunches during the weekdays are provided to all participants.

Duration of Programme: The Regional Course will be held at the facilities of the ECA in Addis Ababa, from 6 February to 3 March 2017.

Eligible countries: The Regional Course is open to candidates from the following countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

How to Apply: Download and fill the Application Form at the right hand corner

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: United Nations

Canadian Media Bias

Yves Engler

An elitist, nationalist, bias dominates all areas of Canada’s paper of record.

On the front of last weekend’s Style section the Globe and Mail profiled Sonja Bata on turning 90. Business partner and wife of the deceased Thomas Bata, the Globe lauded Sonja for the “many contributions she has made to Canada”, including the Bata Shoe Museum and various other establishment “cultural, environmental and social causes.” The article touched on the shoemaker’s early history and described how she “traveled the world building a shoe empire – between 1946 and 1960, 25 new factories were built and 1700 Bata stores opened.”

While the three-page spread included an undated photo of Sonja and her husband on the “African continent”, it ignored how the Toronto-based shoe company took advantage of European rule to set up across the continent. By the end of the colonial era Bata had production or retail facilities in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, Senegal, Congo, Tanzania, Rhodesia and elsewhere. In the 1940s and 50s, notes Shoemaker with a Mission, “the organization’s expansion was especially great in francophone Africa. As Mr. Bata himself noted, there was no country in that part of the world where his company was not established as the number-one supplier of footwear.” While “Mr. Bata” may not be the most objective source on the shoemaker, a government study just after independence found the company controlled 70% of the footwear market in British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania).

In a 1974 Saturday Night article titled “Canadians Too, Can Act like Economic Imperialists”, Steve Langdon describes the company’s operations in Kenya: “Bata seems to be undercutting decentralized rural development in Kenya, to be blocking African advance in other areas, and to be throwing its weight around politically — all at a handsome profit.” In a bid to subvert the establishment of a domestic competitor, the Toronto-based multinational wrote its overseas suppliers to discourage sales to its challenger and asked Kenyan government officials to intervene on its behalf.

Bata’s mechanized production methods squeezed out indigenous footwear producers all the while increasing imports of plastics and machinery, which came at the expense of local materials (leather) and employment. In the 1975 article Canada’s Relations with Africa Robert Matthews notes that Bata drained “money and opportunity from poor rural areas” to the benefit of a small group of locals and the Toronto head office.

When the post-independence Tanzanian government announced that it would acquire a 60 percent share of a multitude of major foreign firms Bata was the only hold out. The Toronto firm attempted to sabotage Tanzania’s push to acquire a controlling interest in the local company’s operations. In Underdevelopment and Nationalization: Banking in Tanzania James H. Mittelman explains: “Bata Shoes (a Canadian-based concern), for example, ran down stocks, removed machinery, supplied imperfect items, and later withdrew all staff, supposedly closing down for annual repairs! The Company refused to relinquish more than 49 per cent of its controlling interests, tried to set up a new wholesaling operation dependent on its firm in Kenya, and urged other foreign investors to fight.”

Bata’s aggressive reaction to Tanzania’s efforts aimed to dissuade other newly independent African countries from following a similar path. The shoemaker no doubt feared for its significant operations across the continent.

Bata received Canadian government support as well. In mid-1973 the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi visited Uganda to ask Idi Amin if he would attend the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Ottawa. But, the primary objective of the high commissioner’s meeting was to convince Amin to reverse his nationalization of Bata. A cable published by WikiLeaks read: “CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER OLIVIER MET WITH PRESIDENT AMIN JUNE 29 TO DISCUSS GOU TAKE-OVER OF BATA SHOE FIRM. AMIN REVERSED EARLIER DECISION AND ORDERED THAT A NEW PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENT (51 PERCENT BATA, 49 PERCENT GOU) BE WORKED OUT.”

Through the 1970s Bata worked under the white regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It broke sanctions against Rhodesia by exporting goods manufactured there to South Africa. Even more controversial, it operated in apartheid South Africa until the late 1980s. The company broke unions and blocked black workers from semiskilled, skilled and executive positions. Listed among the “hardline defenders of investment in South Africa” in Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney years, Bata faced an international boycott campaign. During this period Sonja Bata was quoted in the Canadian media justifying the company’s South African policy and Thomas Bata proclaimed “we expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”

The Globe and Mail is exposing its elitist, nationalist, bias in ignoring Bata’s unsavory history.

Apple and Ireland: Partners in Crime

Aidan O’Brien

Dublin, Ireland.

Underneath the sleek design there’s nothing but sleaze. And behind the blarney there’s sinister bullshit. No wonder they understand each other and have been working harmoniously together since 1991. Despite the ultramodern technology and the trendy little economy – Apple and Ireland are nothing but pirates attempting to pillage as much as they can from the global community.

All was revealed in Brussels on Tuesday when the EU Competition Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, nailed the corporation and the country to the wall of shame. After investigating Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland Vestager concluded that Dublin is breaking EU rules by giving state aid to Apple – one of the richest corporations in the world (it’s value is not far off a trillion dollars).

The state aid in question is a tax arrangement that allows Apple to avoid paying international tax. The trick is the use of a shell company that is based in Ireland but which is officially “stateless”. By directing all the money it makes outside the US into it’s “Irish” shell company Apple – thanks to the Irish government – walks away with a tax rate of “0.005%”. That is: apart from the token amount it pays to the Irish government at the usual 12.5% rate – Apple walks away with everything it can get it’s hands on. But since this special tax package is offered “only” to Apple the EU judged it to be a breach of it’s competition rules.

Ireland in other words has been “subsidising” Apple’s international profits (in October 2015 it recorded an annual profit of $53.4 billion). By offering a phantom address and turning the other way Ireland is facilitating a world wide tax dodge. And what does Ireland get in return for this “service”? Six thousand Apple jobs. And what can the EU do about it? It is attacking the shell company and demanding that it pay the “Irish” taxes it has been avoiding all these years. It calculates an unpaid Apple tax bill of $14.6 billion plus interest (a world record penalty). And Ireland’s response? It claims innocence and doesn’t want any money from Apple!

That’s right. The Irish state which is up to it’s neck in debt (it owes $232 billion) refuses in the face of it’s EU masters to “tax” the richest corporation on the planet (Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash worth $231 billion). The asymmetry is perfect. And is a true reflection of globalisation. For the sake of the corporation – the nation state is impoverished. And for the sake of the corporation – the nation state impoverishes other nation states. You would think that Ireland learned it’s lesson after it bailed out it’s banks. But no: it continues to carry water for the corporation. And sees nothing wrong with this – even when it is dying of thirst. It is obvious therefore that “dignity” is excluded from the official Irish lexicon. And justice – at home and abroad? That’s a foreign language in the corridors of Irish power.

The irony is that Ireland – a victim of the EU’s extreme financial capitalism – is making the EU look good. Neoliberal Ireland is being called to order by Neoliberal Europe. And Ireland dares to protest even though it has been caught red handed cheating Europe and the world. In the name of competition Europe wants justice. And in the name of globalisation Ireland rejects justice. It’s a right wing joke. It’s a neoliberal farce. But it’s deadly serious too.

The issue is taxation. And in the age of austerity this is an explosive subject. And it looks like the EU understands this while Ireland has it’s head buried in the sand. It is no surprise that the EU is coming after Apple and Ireland because the OECD has been openly targeting tax havens since 2014 (see the OECD’s Beps project). When Western governments are bailing out every bank in the Western world – tax avoidance becomes a real issue. The significance of Tuesday’s ruling against Ireland and Apple is that it has set a strong precedent. The EU intends to hit Europe’s tax havens hard. Luxembourg and Holland beware!

And the USA? The USA is angry. Because it’s corporations have been caught red handed. And because it’s government is controlled by it’s corporations. The likes of Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks and McDonalds have lodged themselves into the dark corners of Ireland, Luxembourg and Holland. And are walking away with staggering amounts of untaxed profits. The US government fears that it will now have to pay for the sins of it’s corporations. But that will be the case only if it is spineless. The USA can fight it’s tax dodging corporations if it wants to. However that would mean ultimately a break with Wall Street. Is that possible?

In any case sit back for the moment and enjoy seeing the Atlantic establishment fight each other over the issue of taxation. The fragmentation of the Atlanticist Agenda is for the benefit of us all because it is a Corporate Agenda. If the neoliberal fanatics – the competitive hardliners – in the EU are the source of this current concern for justice: who cares? We welcome justice whenever it comes along. And isn’t history after all dialectical? Contradictions in the system will transform it. And who knows this current discord may even block the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Perfect!

And Apple? Surely it will have to change it’s smug wording on the back of it’s products. Not only is it “Designed in California” and “Assembled in China”. It is also “Dodging tax in Ireland”. Taxpayers of the world unite!

Love & Terror: Sex as a Weapon

David Rosen

Sexual relations – along with giving birth and death – are probably the most profound physical acts that human being’s engage in.  In the act of making love, each person lives out the deepest, most primal truth of the human condition, that people are creatures of nature.

However intimate or casual, sex between humans, like that between other animals, serves primarily one purpose, to reproduce — and perpetuate — the species.  Everything else – from the pyramids to the atomic bomb and to the latest presidential election – are mere sideshows, what we call civilization.

But humans are sophisticated creatures of nature that can, like bonobo apes, enjoy sex for both procreation and pleasure.  And pleasure comes in every conceivable form.  Sadly, the same human desire for intimacy can drive sex into an act of rage ending in abuse, violence and terror.  Such sexual terror can be experienced personally (e.g., self-mutilation, suicide), inter-personally (e.g., rape, pedophilia) or socially (e.g., prison rape, war crimes).  The complexity of such relations is a testament to the still deeper complexity of sexual desire.

A recent New Yorker review by music critic Alex Ross, “The Sound of Hate,” analyzes the role that music and, more generally, sound plays as a weapon of war.  Summarizing a fairly large body of scholarly writings, Ross reports that music was a feature at the Auschwitz death camp, noting, “the Nazis were pioneers of musical sadism.”  Like Auschwitz, today’s prison camps are among the gravest environments for audio terrorism.

Ross details how the U.S. military and domestic police forcers use music and other sounds as weapons of terror.  They were used in the effort to capture former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, in the assault on the Branch Davidian cult, in the prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo, and against the popular protesters at Occupy Wall Street and in Ferguson, MO.  Ross concludes, “To admit that music can become an instrument of evil is to take it seriously as a form of human expression.”

Sadly, much the same can be said about sex.

* * *

In Western society, sex is a first sin.  This belief was born out of an early Judeo-Christian culture that identified the original sin engaged in by Adam and Eve as involving two shameful activities – the knowledge of each other’s nakedness and the sexual coupling that generated the human race.

The Old Testament is more ambivalent about rape.  In “Deuteronomy,” rape has a double meaning; one involving what might be called “love,” the other “terror.”  Together, they frame the way that much of Western society has viewed sexuality:

If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.

Deuteronomy 22:28-29.

As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace.  If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor.  But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town.  When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town.  But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder.  You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.

Deuteronomy 20:10-14.

Since Biblical times, many (men) in power saw sexual pleasure as a necessary — if immoral – indulgence.  Privately, sex was tempting, a hidden indulgence; publicly (especially for women, minorities, homosexuals and the poor), it was a shameful act.  Those caught or suspected of engaging in unacceptable sexual practices were often punished, expelled and killed.  Nevertheless, rape – as an intimate,defining, aspect of gender relations — shaped Western society.

Today, two millennia later, sexuality has become the lubricant of what the Situationist’s called the commodity spectacle.  Advanced capitalism’s consumer revolution integrated sexual pleasure into the marketplace, consecrating new forms of social tyranny.  Sexual pleasure is both mediated through the body’s physicality and the human imagination.  In the U.S. and much of the secular, postmodern West, all sex is acceptable as long as it’s between age-appropriate and consenting people.

In the U.S. today, consensual commercial sex is a $50 billion industry, protected by the First Amendment and a radical change in the nation’s moral order.  Sexuality flowered in the 1960s-‘70s, shrunk during the AIDS terror of the ‘80s and now has become the new normal.  Americans are, sexually speaking, “freer” than any time in U.S. history.  Most remarkably, two-thirds (60%-65%) of “sex toy” purchases are by women.

* * *

Sadly, in an era when apparent sexual “freedom,” has never been greater and sexual taboos have significantly receded, adult sexual violence persists. (Sexual violence against children and youths, especially committed by adults, is a grave crime, but not considered in this article.)  A thumbnail outline of sexual violence in the U.S. is deeply disturbing:

* One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives.

* Nearly half (46.4%) of lesbians, three-fourths (74.9%) of bisexual women and two-fifths (43.3%) of heterosexual women reported sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes.

* Two-fifths (40.2%) of gay men, half (47.4%) of bisexual men and a fifth (20.8) of heterosexual men reported suffering sexual violence other than rape during their lifetimes.

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center is even more pessimistic.  In a recent report, it finds that one in 10 women (91%) have been raped or suffered sexual assault; in eight out of 10 cases of rape, the victim knew the assailant, often an intimate partner.  The forms of rape vary, including forced penetration, attempted forced penetration and alcohol/drug-facilitated completed penetration.

Sigmund Freud sought, in one of his earliest essays, “The Aetiology of Hysteria,” published in 1896, to identify the cause(s) of the neuroses suffered by some of his female patients.  Carefully analyzing these women, he found that many had suffered sexual violence as children.  He speculated that these acts of childhood sexual terror contributed to the patient’s mental illness later in life.

Today, we take Freud’s insight as common knowledge.  The sexual terror inflicting on a female (and male) child will have long lasting consequences, shaping her (or him) as an adult.  A century-plus after Freud, old fashion sexual terror finds a variety of new forms of expressions.  “Intimate partner violence” (IPV) is one example of the new-speak.  The CDC defines IPV as “physical violence, sexual violence, stalking and psychological aggression (including coercive acts) by a current or former intimate partner.”

Rape is one form of IPV and includes attempted or completed, forced or alcohol/drug-facilitated unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal penetration.  It is one of the widespread, most barbaric forms of sexual engagement, of humiliation and terror.  Rape is impotence masquerading as power; it is a most traumatic invasion that one person (male) inflicts on another (female).  It is a forceful, painful, physical engagement, often involving abrasions of the genitals, vagina, anus and other body parts.  Most disturbing, rape is neither necessarily sensually pleasurable nor an erotic turn on – except if the (male) perpetrator get’s off on rape as a psychopathological indulgence.  Rape is terrorized violence masquerading as sexual passion, lust; masculine impotence masquerading as power

Rape is more than the neutered pseudo-scientific n addition to being a form of IPV. Rape can occur when (almost) any two (or more) people mingle, intentionally or not; it can be a social act, whether committed as a crime (whether with a loved one or anonymously), a gang initiation ritual, prison rape or an act of war.

Prison literature and biographical reflections, from Dickens, Solzhenitsyn or Foucault, Malcolm X or Mumia Abu-Jamal, are testaments to the courage of truth telling in the face of the barbaric culture of prison life.  And one aspect of this culture is sex behind bars.  Some sex can be consensual, even in prison; people fall in love under the weirdest conditions.  But male rape of men — like their rape of females — serves to harm the victim, both to physically terrorize and to psychologically shame.  Male rape of another male asserters the darkest dimension of masculinity under patriarchy.

In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) requiring the Bureau of Justice Statistics to collect data and report on the incidence and effects of sexual victimization in correctional facilities.  Its most recent findings, released in 2015, paint a pretty grim picture:

* The number of allegations of sexual victimization has increased by 39 percent since 2005 from 4,791 allegations to 6,660 in 2011; BJS notes that this was “due to increases in prisons.”

* In 2011, substantiated incidents of sexual victimization between inmates and those involving staff with inmates were nearly evenly split – between inmates as 52 percent and between staff and inmates as 48 percent.

* Among the estimated 1,390 youth who reported victimization by staff, nearly nine-out-of-ten (89.1%) were males reporting sexual activity with female staff, and 3 percent were males reporting sexual activity with both male and female staff.

Prison is a sexual hellhole.

* * *

William Tecumseh Sherman, the legendary Civil War general, pioneered the strategy of total war during his infamous “march to the sea” in 1864.  He believed that war should be “total,” that it should extend from a conflict between recognized combatants to a conflict involving an enemy’s entire society, including its natural resources, farming and food supply, utilities and its civilian population.  He also sanctioned rape and sexual terror.

Since the Civil War, rape has been increasingly integrated into what is known as total warfare.  Women, girls and some boys have been singled out for systematic sexual abuse during civil conflicts and military campaigns.  In the summer of 2007, Pres. George Bush issued a secret executive order permitting U.S. intelligence operatives to circumvent restrictions on the use of humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques.  The order permitted U.S. operatives to effectively sidestep the legal and moral restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court and Congress (and formally approved by Bush) as well as Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Much attention has been paid to waterboarding as an immoral — if not illegal — technique employed in the so-called War of Terror.  However, little attention has been paid to the equally physically harmful and likely more long-term consequential technique of sexual humiliation and terror. In April 2008, Mark Mazzetti, writing in New York Times, posed an intriguing question:  “That [executive] order specifies some conduct that it says would be prohibited in any interrogation, including forcing an individual to perform sexual acts, or threatening an individual with sexual humiliation.  But it does not say which techniques could still be permitted.”  Male prisoner rape appears to have been only limitedly employed against adult male captives detained in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo or CIA black sites around the world.

One gains insight into the moral immorality of high-ranking government officials in a revealing comment made by Major General Antonio Taguba to Seymour Hersh in a New Yorker article.  He described a meeting about Taguba’s report with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other high-ranking Defense Department officials.  According to Taguba, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Making matters even more sadistic, the festive, if not chaotic, conditions at the prison led male soldiers to engage in “consensual” sexual liaisons with female prisoners and even record their trysts for posterity.  According to the Taguba report, “a male MP guard [was] having sex with a female detainee.”

* * *

Sex and music share one important feature, the ability to invoke extra-corporality, that humans are at once their physical beings – and something more.  These pleasures remind people that they are living, human beings at once the human-all-too-human that Nietzsche mused about and the beings that Freud analyzed, at once a natural, individuated creature yet fully defined by culture and civilization, two very distinct yet intimate processes.

For centuries, and very much like a psychotic disorder, Western society has increasingly focused on the primacy of the individual.  In the postmodern capitalist order, s/he is the primary decision maker, the person who determines how the family’s economy is lived out.  Amidst the ever-increasing multitude of choices offered by the commodity society and the enormously complex globalized civilization now in formation, what is the place of the isolated, individualized person?  Sex, like the vote and the paycheck, gives people fictitious hope.

For millennial, the sexual pleasures of romantic love, like classical music, has been celebrated as the truest expression of what it means to be human, civilized.  Words, music, dance and art have ritualized the sublime experiences of erotic expression.  Sadly, for all the postmodern pleasures we indulge in, pleasures earlier Americans would have found shameful, sexual terror persists.

A Children’s Story in Syria

Franklin Lamb

Children’s Orthopedics Ward, Al-Mouwasat Hospital, Damascus

It was about 11 in the morning on Tuesday August 2, 2016 when two sisters, ten year-old Ghina and her eight year-old younger sister Nagham were walking a short distance from their home in the town of Madaya to its “field hospital” in order to acquire serum for their anemic mother Sahar whose body was very deficient in calcium because of 18 months existence with very little food. Sahar explained to this observer a couple of days ago that she and her four babies, lived at times with nothing more than a watery soup made of grass, or sometimes black peppers, but most often made from the pink and white flowers of thistle plants she gather from a nearby field.

For more than a year, after having fled from their own Sunni village of Zabadani due to fighting, the family has been living in surrounded Madaya, a mountain town of 40,000, now with four times its pre-war population, about 30 minutes northwest of Damascus. Military forces encircled Madaya in July of 2015 as part of a broader offensive to recapture the nearby Qalmoun Mountain villages and the town of Zabadani, held by rebels since 2012. Residents of Madaya have been trapped ever since.

Having made their medicine purchase, the girls started their short 60 yard walk home. A claimed eye-witness says that a sniper near al-Asali checkpoint took aim and fired at the youngsters. One explode-on-impact bullet entered Ghina’s upper-left thigh, shattering her leg bone and thigh.

For an instant, not realizing what had happened, Ghina’s younger sister 8 year old Nagham, noticing that Ghina had dropped the small plastic medicine bag to be given to their mother at home, instinctively picked it up and began to scold her big sister for dropping it. The little heroine, by now instantly covered in her sister’s blood, tried to pull badly bleeding and screaming Ghina off the road to a secure location- the roadside ditch. The sniper took aim a second time. This time, shrapnel from the bullet struck Nagham’s right arm and hand. The two young girls lay on the side of the road until minutes later passersby were able to pull them out of the line of fire and transport them to the towns nearby “field hospital”.

Over the past year, snipers have killed seven people in Madaya, according to a report published on 7/13/2016 by Physicians for Human Rights, a US-based organization that has provided medical assistance to thousands in Syria since the civil war erupted in March of 2011. The PHR findings were confirmed in a separate Report from the Madaya Medical Commission published on 7/23/2016. The following week, snipers shot and wounded three more people, a Madaya resident reported last week by telephone to a relative of the girl’s family.

The sniping of civilians continues until today in Madaya as some try to escape the siege imposed on their town. So also do deaths mount from the approximately 6,000 additional landmines recently placed around the southern and eastern sides of the town, by militia in order to further imprison residents inside.

Such indiscriminate use of landmines in a populated civilian area violates international humanitarian law and, as with sniping civilians, constitutes a punishable war crime once the conflict ends and hopefully the global community insists on full accountability under the law for all who have targeted the people of Syria.

Several dozen people have also died from starvation in Madaya, despite surrendering in exchange for relief from the siege. With almost nothing and no one allowed in or out, the town continues slowly dying from the inside.

At Malaya’s “field hospital” whose medical staff consists of two heroic dental students and an animal veterinarian, Ghina was diagnosed with a displaced fracture, a badly shattered leg bone and a severed nerve in her upper left thigh.

Before long, Ghina’s leg and thigh became badly infected and a tentative decision was taken to amputate it. As one of the MDs reported at the time via “What’sUP” to medical colleagues abroad, Madaya’s health workers today are only able to perform emergency surgery, mainly amputations. As Dr. Darwish, a dentistry student and one of three health professional still in Madaya insisted, they did not have the equipment or the training to repair the damage to Ghina’s leg and thigh or most other serious injuries brought to the “Field Hospital.” However, amputation of Ghina’s leg was something they could perform. Time was running out for Ghina shown below shortly after she was evacuated from Madaya to Al-Mouwasat Hospital, Damascus

Madaya’s severely wounded, like Ghina, have only one way to get out of the besieged town and thru the 65 checkpoints, countless landmines and snipers, and to receive the lifesaving treatment they need. It is through a painstakingly negotiated reciprocal agreement between rebel and regime forces, brokered by Iran and the United Nations last year. In theory it provides for the evacuation of some wounded people from Sunni Madaya in exchange for a parallel evacuation from two Idlib Shia towns of Foah, and Kafraya, besieged by rebel forces.

Unfortunately, there are a number of additional bureaucratic hurdles which result in very few in need of urgent medical aid being allowed to leave Madaya through one of the 65 checkpoints which also surround adjacent Zabadani. A major one being that snipers regularly shoot residents if they approach Madaya’s periphery from any direction.

Fortunately in Ghina’s case, as with the case of the conjoined twins from the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta, Nawas and Moaz (the subjects of Part II of this article) a social media campaign led by Amnesty International pressurized the powers that be to allow the Syrian Red Crescent Society (SACRS) to enter Madaya at night, so as not to attract the attention of many other families with severely injured members who surely would demand evacuation for their loved ones in critical condition, and rescue the girls and move them for urgent emergency medical intervention.

(Photo: fplamb 8/27/2016)

The metal rods must remain deep inside Ghina’s leg and thigh for three months and she must stay in a hospital bed for two months. The sniper bullets were designed to explode on impact and they did much nerve and muscle damage.

Until the past few days, there has also been great concern about the risk that Ghina’s muscles in the left leg will be permanently shortened, causing walking abnormalities. That erstwhile grim likelihood is now largely discounted.

Today Ghina and Nagham are recovering at Al-Mouwasat Hospital in Damascus and eating plenty of nutritious food including three pieces of fresh fruit daily for which Syria is blessed and famous, on specific instructions from their new American “uncle”, their mother Sahar and their new “big sisters”, Rima and Raraf, both from Damascus. And the girls can have each have two pieces a day (maximum!) from their growing supply of admittedly less nutritious treats arranged by their new friends. This morning this observer was advised by the girls Dr. that Nagham’s hand and arm stitches can be removed in five days. And then the little one will for sure head to the fine swimming pool at my hotel.

(Photo by Rima Karwan, the new “big sister” of these beauties. 8/282016)

On Sunday (the first of the week end) September 18, 2016, the public schools across Syria will open for the next academic year. Arrangements have been made by MSRCL, which also helps specific cases in Syria itself, for 7 year old Nagham, who her mother explained has been an average student last year in Madaya-when classes could even be held- to begin classes. She was lectured today by her American uncle that is was important to start off the school year well, to sit in the first two rows of her classroom (to be separated from the “antics and distractions of the boys in the back of the class!”) and to make eye contact with her teacher and not to be shy about asking questions if there is something she does not understand.

With respect to Ghina, her proud mother Sahar explained today that she is an excellent student but cannot attend school this year for at least two or three months. Arrangements were made today for Ghina to receive home schooling by tutors Alaa and Nadine until she can join the new school year.

MSRCL is still working to get permission to bring Sahar’s two other babies, Manal age 3 and Mohamad-Kamal out of Madaya. The little ones were unfortunately not allowed to leave as part of Ghina’s evacuation. Again, for bureaucratic reasons.

Ghina and Nagham were very lucky to survive the sniper’s bullets last month and are today out of harm’s way. But this is not the case for the 40,000 entrapped residents of Madaya who remain imprisoned by the war in Syria, as do nearly one million other besieged civilians across Syria today.

To provide a meal to a Syrian refugee child in Lebanon: Please visit:

http://mealsforsyrianrefugeechildrenlebanon.com