Obesity and Children’s Health

Cesar Chelala

In many cultures and in older times obesity in children was a sign of good health. This is not the case any longer. According to a U.S. National Institute of Health study, and because of its serious effects on their health, the global rise in childhood obesity has become an “epidemic”. “It is an exploding nightmare in the developing world,” says Peter Gluckman, co-chair of the Ending Childhood Obesity (ECHO) Commission.

Some studies carried out in Middle East countries show that childhood obesity is a serious problem in the region. The rapid pace of economic development in the region has been accompanied by decreasing levels of physical activity and increased caloric consumption, particularly of “junk food”. These are important factors in child and adolescent obesity.

Children who are obese are likely to remain obese as adults, and are at risks for several serious health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, asthma and heart failure. In addition, obesity in children can hinder their educational attainment. It is important therefore that public health and school officials develop a series of measures aimed at increasing the level of physical activity among children both inside and outside school, and conduct educational campaigns showing the risks of consuming high calories foods and drinks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) alerts that the rise in childhood obesity in low and middle-income countries is an alarming trend that demands a “high level action”. About half of the world’s obese children, 48 percent, live in Asia. Although many countries in Southeast Asia have achieved impressive economic gains in recent times, there has been, at the same time, a rise in conditions such as over and under nutrition, where some children are overweight while their peers may suffer from stunting and wasting.

This “double burden” of malnutrition is happening now in middle income countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Christiane Rudert, Regional Nutrition Adviser for UNICEF East Asia and Pacific stated in a recent press release, “Asian children are now at risk of malnutrition from both ends of the spectrum”.

In China, a 29-year survey of 28,000 children aged between seven and 18 was carried out in eastern Shandong province. The study, published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology, found that 17 percent of boys and nine percent of girls were obese in 2014. This showed a significant increase from under one percent for both genders in 1985. The study also showed that the increase was particularly more notable in children aged seven to 12 than in adolescents.

There is not one factor that explains the high rates of obesity among Chinese children, although there are several contributing factors with varying importance in different settings and circumstances. For example, many formerly poor families are over feeding their children, particularly when the grandparents are in charge of their care.

Although Japan hasn’t totally solved the problem of childhood obesity, it has made significant advances in its control. One of the strategies used in Japan involved a redesigning of school lunches that are increasingly planned by nutritionists, and include a variety of foods such as fresh ingredients and locally grown vegetables.

Increasingly, children worldwide are being raised in obesogenic environments (the obesogenic environment refers to an environment that helps, or contributes to, obesity).
One of the most important contributing factors for obesity is the high consumption of foods rich in carbohydrates and high consumption of sugary drinks. “Children are exposed to ultra-processed, energy dense, nutrient-poor foods, which are cheap and readily available,” says the WHO.

Physical inactivity is another important contributing factor, often associated with a significant increment in television viewing. It has been proven that each hour watching television is associated with a 1-2 percent increase in the prevalence of obesity among urban children.

Obesity in children can have significant economic costs. Obesity, which affects about 10.4% of children between 2 and 5 years of age and more than 23 million children and teens in total in the U.S., cost the nation $117 billion per year in direct medical expenses and indirect costs, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

It is important to educate parents before and during pregnancy for early prevention, and to work with governments to provide weight management resources for children who are battling obesity. As stated by Peter Gluckman, “WHO needs to work with governments to implement a wide range of measures that address the environmental causes of obesity, and help give children the healthy start to life they deserve”.

French Citizens Complicit in the Israeli Occupation

Thomas Vescovi

The French provide some of the most important contingents of volunteers in the Israeli army. If until now the French state seems to have closed it eyes on this affair, the admission of Palestine to the International Court of Justice is likely to be a game-changer.

On 4 January 2017, the Franco-Israeli Elor Azaria, sergeant in the Israeli army (IDF), was convicted by a military tribunal of voluntary manslaughter. On 24 March 2016, he had been filmed while killing, with one shot to the head, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a 21 year-old Palestinian involved in a knife attacked against Israeli soldiers, near the settlement of Tel Rumeida around Hebron. This judgment has rekindled debate on the engagement of French citizens in the IDF.

‘Give up some of your time for Tsahal’

There are five volunteer programs for foreign citizens who wish to get involved with the IDF. The only condition is to be recognized as a ‘jew’ according to the criteria laid down by the state of Israel. These programs include a course of Hebrew, physical training and lessons in the history of Israel and of Zionism.

The Sar’El program recruits unpaid 16 year-olds to work in a military base for up to three weeks. The tasks are diverse – prepare meals for soldiers and first aid kits, clean military equipment, etc. For its part, Marva recruits 18 to 24 year-old volunteers who wish ‘to experience and try out life on a military base’.

Three other programs involve wearing a uniform and carrying arms.

Created in May 2010, Mahal recruits 18 to 23 year-old males and 18 to 20 year-old females for a military engagement of 14 to 18 months. The principal ambition of this program is to accompany ‘lone soldiers’, volunteers who have no relative in Israel nor Israeli nationality. On its site, Mahal claims to have already involved more than 350 youngsters from around the world, including French citizens. The allocation varies depending on each person’s medical profile and physical capacities. They have access to all the regular IDF units, outside of elite units.

Anyone fearful of such direct engagement on his/her own can join Garin Tsabar, a program of staged enrolment, beginning with residence in a kibbutz before being allocated to a unit.

The last program is directed at students. Atouda permits them to pursue studies in an Israeli school, doing their basic military training during their holidays. The army absorbs university expenses of up to €2,080 per annum. At the completion of their studies, these students commit themselves to complete their three year military service, for both men and women.

Among advantages offered, these young volunteers benefit from pay equivalent to other military personnel, but tax-free. In addition, several organizations offer assistance with lodgment and food.

France tops the volunteer list

Several reports have already drawn attention to the presence of French citizens in the IDF. According to Le Nouvel Obs, The Mahal program included almost 500 French people at the time of the Israeli attack on the Gaza strip during summer 2014. One of them, Jordan Bensemhoun, was killed in Gaza’s Shuja’ivya quarter. The Deputies Jean-Jacques Candelier (Parti Communiste) and Pouria Amirshahi (ex-Parti Socialiste) had immediately questioned the government on possible judicial proceedings against them and on the activities of these young people who “fuel tension between the communities and import into France … a conflict that endangers national unity”.

But the examples accumulate. On 30 October 2015, it is a Franco-Israeli soldier, Alison Bresson, who executes, at a checkpoint on the Nablus road, Qasem Saba’aneh, 19 years-old, and seriously wounds Fares Al Na’asane, 17 years-old. In 2016, she [AB] was invited to light one of the twelve torches traditionally featured in the ceremony of the Israeli national day, Yom Ha’atzmaout.

The French Defense Minister relies on a convention, signed 30 June 1959, gazetted in the Journal Officiel on 19 December 1961, establishing an accord between Israel and the French authorities on the terms of authorization of military service for those with dual nationality. However, the volunteer soldiers do not have Israeli citizenship. They are French, and are not covered by this convention.

Moreover, article 2 of an administrative arrangement of 20 March 1963, gazetted in the Journal Officiel, highlights that, to be recognized as a ‘permanent resident’ in Israel, it is necessary to reside in territory under which Israeli law applies. Premonitory of post-1967, this arrangement does not recognize the right of French citizens possessing Israeli nationality to fulfill military service in Israel if they reside in the Occupied Territories. If martial law applies in these territories, the Occupation nonetheless remains illegal according to international law.

It seems impossible to obtain precise figures. France is regularly mentioned as one of the countries providing the most volunteers. According to Israeli broadcaster i24 News, in 2014 the IDF included 3,384 foreign volunteers, 70 per cent being males. One quarter were of American origin, and the rest were distributed amongst different countries including France.

However, according to the Franco-Israeli blog Coolamnews, the French now count as the first nationality involved: in 2015, 43 per cent of the total came from France against 38 per cent from the US. Moreover, 90 per cent of volunteers were serving in combatant units.

Other issues implicating France in Israeli politics deserve exposure. In 2016, the number of French people living in Israel has been estimated at 150,000. Among them, between 15,000 and 20,000 live in illegal West Bank settlements, participating with total impunity in the spoliation of Palestinian land.

On 10 March 2016, Nathalie Goulet, UDI [Union des Démocrates et Indépendants] Senator from the Orne, wrote to the Secretary of State for the Budget, Christian Eckert, a propos a tax dodge permitting French citizens to make tax-free donations to the IDF. She subsequently received death threats via social media, but no response from the Government.

A genuine feeling of insecurity

Between the Ilan Halimi affair [2006], the attack by Mohamed Merah against a Jewish school in Toulouse [2012] and that by Amedy Coulibaly against a kosher supermarket on the eastern perimeter of Paris [2015], those signing up for these Israeli programs experience a genuine feeling of insecurity in France, fostering a sectarian withdrawal.

The French Jewish community seems to be caught in a vice between several dynamics. On the one hand, although significant proportion of French Jews do not feel strongly linked to the Middle East, the political atmosphere at home perennially draws their attention to the situation there. Given that the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF) supports unconditionally the Netanyahu Government, its officials reinforce in the minds of the most susceptible the idea of a link between the Israeli polity and French citizens of Jewish faith.

Certain events reinforce this reductive mentality, such as the information session for potential volunteer recruits organized at the Grande synagogue de la Victoire, in Paris’ 9^th arrondissement on 26 May 2013. For the more undecided, the official present offered individual meetings at the Israeli Embassy.

Since the 1990s, the Israeli Right has demanded that the Great Powers recognize Israel as ‘the state of the Jewish people’. Already in 1985, the Knesset had debated an amendment aiming to define Israel as ‘the state of the Jewish people and of some Arab citizens’. At the time, a majority of the Knesset Deputies strongly rejected this wording, considering that the concept of citizenship refers to a juridical statute which confers rights and duties and establishes a nation of equals on a territory where all have an equal share in the exercise of sovereign rights.

In fact, the state is not able on the one hand to bequeath membership to some individuals who are not citizens whereas others who are citizens but not Jews could be considered as excluded from membership of this state. Nevertheless, the Netanyahu Government uses and abuses this rhetoric [of the Jewish state], profiting from all attacks against Jews globally to call them to emigrate to Israel.

This language in effect serves Israeli political interests in creating the impression of a similarity between anti-Semitic acts in France and events in Israel/Palestine. In other words, the unbalanced individual who justifies attacks against Jews on French soil in the name of the Palestinian people reinforces in the mind of one part of the Jewish community the idea that it faces the same threat as Israeli Jews.

Moreover, this mentality operates to erase the strictly nationalist aspirations of Palestinian militants. Thus, colonization, occupation, imprisonment of children, all these injustices perpetrated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian population are perceived at best as a ‘lesser evil’ for the security of the Jewish people, at worst as the affirmation by force of the inalienable rights of this people to the ‘Promised Land’.

What about international law?

The colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the military occupation and all that it implies in terms of arbitrary arrests and humiliation, the erection of a 8-metre high wall over hundreds of kilometres, the blockade of the Gaza strip – all these acts are unambiguously condemned by international law. Amnesty International had denounced the occurrence of ‘war crimes’ during the Israeli military operation of summer 2014. On Friday 23 December 2016, the UN Security Council condemned Israeli ongoing settlement creation in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In this context, no-one doubts that each individual enlisted in the IDF renders themselves indubitably complicit with these injustices. In other words, such individuals find themselves outside international law.

On 1 April 2015, Palestine became the 123^rd member of the International Court of Justice. The prospect of an inquest on and prosecution of Israeli colonization or of crimes of occupation is conceivable. Besides the necessity of taking political decisions in France on these violations of law by Israel and the involvement of French citizens, a condemnation of Israel before the ICJ could reinforce the imperatives of prosecution against the latter.

Trump’s Immigration Policy: a New “Fugitive Slave Act?”

L. Michael Hager

Like escaped slaves from the pre-Civil War South, immigrants in America today are experiencing the imminent threat of unjust law and cruel enforcement.

The just-released Homeland Security implementation memos tell how the Trump administration will dramatically expand the apprehension, detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.

Planned actions include the expeditious hiring of 10,000 new ICE (Immigration Control and Enforcement) agents and officers; establishment of more detention centers; expanded use of “expedited removals;” and greater reliance on local law enforcement “to investigate, identify, apprehend, arrest, detain, transport and conduct searches.”

Bowing to anti-immigrant/anti-refugee sentiments, President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have launched what promises to be a massive countrywide manhunt for undocumented immigrants.  Their actions and the heightened fears and anxiety they have engendered in the targeted immigrant communities recall the notorious “Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.”

Like today, the Act was a product of a deeply divided nation.

It compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves and denied jury trial to captured slaves. It imposed heavy penalties on those who interfered with the rendition process.  Nevertheless, determined resistance by abolitionists in the Northern states stifled enforcement, often through “personal liberty laws” that mandated a jury trial.  Congress repealed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1864, near the end of the Civil War.

Although immigrants, not slaves, are Trump’s targets, the President’s new immigration policy is similar to the Fugitive Slave Act in several key respects.  Its bloodhound tactics, its application across state lines, its deputizing of local police and its limited channels for legal recourse mirror the 1850 Act.

Under the Act, slaves were hunted down and returned to their masters.  Under the administration’s new immigration enforcement policy, suspected immigrants are to be searched out, apprehended, detained and expeditiously deported.  Immigrant families who have lawfully resided in the United States for years or even decades can be deported without judicial proceedings, even if charged with a minor traffic violation.

The New York Times on February 21 cited the case of Kristina (not her real name) who was alarmed to learn that she would be a prime target for deportation under the new policy. She was quoted as saying: “We have our whole lives here; our children are citizens. Now I don’t know if I can go out, if I should drive.”

Never mind that the harsh enforcement can forcibly separate family members, removing a breadwinner.  Never mind that immigrant families all over the countries are put in terror.  Never mind that immigrants with citizenship, permanent resident status or official visas will be harassed through inevitable racial stereotyping.  Other minorities may soon wonder: “Are we next?”

Like pre-Civil War abolitionists, members of faith communities and political activists are uniting in towns and cities across America to express their strong opposition to the harsh enforcement of immigration laws.

They point out that Mr. Trump’s enforcement policies fail to distinguish between immigrants who have entered the country illegally (a misdemeanor, not a felony) and the majority who have simply overstayed a visa (a civil, not a criminal offense).  Other misdemeanors are normally punished by no more than a year in jail—hardly the equivalent of sudden deportation.

Critics argue that policies that deputize local officials to perform ICE duties will impair the healthy relationship of trust required for community policing, the reporting of crimes and recourse to 911 emergency calls.

Despite the administration’s threat to cut off federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities,” increasing numbers of towns and cities are enacting local laws to prevent their police officers from being used to enforce immigration laws.  A “Safe Communities Act” now before the Massachusetts legislature has gained some 80 co-sponsors.

An immigration enforcement policy that snatches and speedily deports immigrants from a community is unwise economic policy, for it causes that community to lose needed workers and tax revenues.

An immigration enforcement policy that substitutes criminal searches for a sensible immigration law in the name of national security ignores the fact that more terrorist acts in the U.S. have been committed by citizens than by immigrants.

The challenge now is for “modern-day abolitionists” to protect law- abiding immigrants and other people of color in their communities from immigration enforcement that violates American values of justice, fairness and human rights.

Descendants of Slaves, Forerunners of Justice: American Muslims Must Stop Apologizing

Ramzy Baroud

I had recently been asked to give a talk about “being an American Muslim in the United States.” Although wary of the uses and abuses of the term, I obliged.

Islam is a religion propelled by values, not race nor, theoretically, by blind tribal allegiances, I explained.

The ‘American Muslim’ identity which has been under constant investigation in US media, politics and society is completely different from what American Muslims associate themselves with.

The media’s ‘American Muslim’ is a suspect, a fifth column, potentially dangerous and more receptive to violence than every other collective identity in the US. While this contrasts sharply with real Islam, facts hardly matter in the age of American nationalism, predicated on cultural and religious identification and ‘alternative facts’.

Caught within this brutal, baseless logic, some American Muslims no longer define themselves around their own political priorities, nor do they mobilize themselves alongside their natural allies – those who come from historically oppressed communities. Instead, they have taken to apologizing for their ‘Muslim-ness’, rather than demand an apology, justice and equality.

Many Muslims find themselves, as a collective, being forced to demonstrate their humanity, defend their religion and distance themselves from every act of violence, even if only allegedly committed by a Muslim anywhere in the world.

Long before the Trump Administration’s ‘Muslim Ban’ – banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days – Muslims in the US have always, to varied degrees, been embattled, collectively demonized, racially profiled by government agencies and targeted in numerous hate-crimes by fellow Americans.

In reality, hatred of Muslims goes back even before 9/11, and the US war in Iraq in 1990-91 – a hatred based solely on media fear-mongering and Hollywood stereotyping.

There is also an odd ‘discovery’ by various liberal groups that American Muslims are mistreated in their own country.

In truth, the cause of the ‘defenseless Muslim’ is used as a political tool, with Democrats and others attempting to undermine the actions of their Republican rivals.

The administrations of Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, both had horrific legacies of violence and discrimination against Muslim countries.

In a landmark study released in March 2015, the Washington-based group, Physicians for Social Responsibly, showed that the US self-styled ‘war on terror’ had killed anywhere between 1.3 million to 2 million Muslims in the first ten years since the September 11 attacks.

Award-winning investigative journalist, Nafeez Ahmed, concluded that at least 4 million Muslims have been killed by the US since 1990.

This excludes killings that have taken place in the last two years, or the countless civilians who perished during the US-sanctions on Iraq, starting 1991, which were enforced throughout the Clinton Administrations.

Yet, all this is meant to be ignored and seen merely as the issue of an obnoxious president and that the pinnacle of the American violence against Muslims can be reduced to a 90-day travel ban on selected countries.

Subscribing to this mischaracterization reflects both ignorance and also complete disregard for the millions of innocent lives that have been lost, in order for the US to preserve its vastly dwindling empire.

At the Democratic Party National Convention (DNC) last July, former President Bill Clinton took the stage to articulate a retort to the Republican party convention’s hate-fest of Muslims, Blacks, Latinos and everyone else who did not subscribe to their skewed view of the world.

But Clinton’s words were a mere liberal spin on the same chauvinistic, racist and exclusionist culture that often drives the political discourse of the Right.

“If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together, we want you,” Clinton said before a large audience, which roared in applause.

For Muslims, feeling that their inclusion, citizenship and humanity are conditioned by a set of condescending rules, articulated by a White, Christian elite, is utterly dehumanizing.

What Clinton has wished to forget is that an estimated third of the slaves who built his country were, in fact, Muslims – shackled and dragged against their will to assemble the United States, field by field and brick by brick. It is the slaves that mainly brought Islam to America, and it is Islam that armed them with the virtue of patience and strength of character in order to survive one of the most ghastly genocides in human history.

Precisely for this reason, the identity of the American Muslim is, at its heart, a political one, concerned with human rights, justice and equality, with Black Muslims playing a tremendous role in confronting, challenging and clashing with the ruling White elitist order that controlled the US from the beginning.

It is the Martin-Luther King Jr.-Malcolm X-type movements – backed by millions of Black people throughout the country – that helped define the modern character of the Black American. They led the Civil Rights Movement, exacting basic human rights at a heavy price and against terrible odds.

It is important that American Muslim youth understand this well, and that their fight for equality and human rights in their country is not a manifestation of some Democratic Party’s political game.

Those aspiring to be the ‘good Muslim’, the Uncle Tom, the ‘not-all- Muslims- are- terrorists’ type, can only hope for a second-class status. But those who aspire for true equality and justice ought to remember the words of American revolutionary, Assata Shakur: “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who were oppressing them.”

The oppressors constantly try to redefine the nature of the struggle of those whom they oppress. For Bill Clinton, the issue is solely Islamic terrorism, never the terror inflicted upon Muslim nations by his and other administrations through a series of unjust wars and sanctions, killing millions.

The colonizer, oppressor, invader is always blind to his crimes. He sees only the violent reaction – however minuscule – of the people whom he subjugates.

According to the New America Foundation, alleged ‘Jihadists’ killed 94 people in the US from 2005-2015, during which time the US also killed nearly 2 million Muslims in their own countries.

Yet, the government media-driven, fear-mongering, anti-Muslim and anti-Islam discourse (for which both liberals and conservatives are equally responsible) has made terrorism the leading fear among Americans, according to a major national survey in 2016.

In his book, Wretched of the Earth, one of the 20th century most powerful revolutionary voices, Frantz Fanon, wrote, “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”

For this generation of American Muslims, this is their moment – to discover and fulfill their mission, to define and assert who they are as the descendants of slaves, immigrants and refugees – the three main building blocs of America.

Why We Shouldn’t Feel Too Optimistic If ISIS is Driven From Mosul

Patrick Cockburn

After Isis captured Mosul in June 2014, people in Baghdad waited in terror to see if its fighters would go on to storm the capital. There was very little to stop them as the Iraqi army in northern Iraq broke up and fled south. Many government ministers and MPs rushed to the airport and took refuge in Jordan. When an American military delegation arrived to review the defences of Baghdad, they were told by a senior Iraq official “to look to see which ministers had put fresh sandbags around their ministries. Those that have done so like myself will stay and fight; where you see old sandbags it means the minister doesn’t care because he is intending to run.”

Two and a half years later, it is Isis fighters who are battling street-to-street to hold onto west Mosul, their last big stronghold in Iraq, in the face of multiple assaults by a revived Iraqi army backed by US airpower. The last road out of the city to the west was cut by Iraqi government forces on 1 March and they have also captured one of the half-ruined bridges over the Tigris River that bisects Mosul, which they are planning to repair using US-supplied pontoons. Iraqi military units backed by some 50 US airstrikes a day are getting close to the complex of buildings that used to house the government headquarters in the centre of the city.

Iraqi officials and officers announce only advances and victories, reports that often turn out to be premature or untrue. But there is no doubt that the Iraqi security services are winning the struggle for Mosul, though fighting could go on for a long time amid the close-packed buildings and narrow, twisting alleyways. Already shelling and airstrikes are causing heavy casualties among families sheltering in cellars or beneath the stairs in their houses.

The battle will probably continue for a long time, but the capture of Mosul looks inevitable and will be a calamitous defeat for Isis. When its few thousand fighters seized the city and defeated a government garrison of 60,000 in 2014, it portrayed its victory as a sign that God was on its side. But the same logic works in reverse and today all Isis can offer its followers is a series of hard-fought defeats and withdrawals.

The crucial question concerns whether or not the fall of Mosul means the effective end of the caliphate declared by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The caliphate’s significance was that at one time it ruled territory with a population of five or six million people in Iraq and Syria, where it sought to establish a truly Islamic State. It is this dream – or nightmare – that is now being shattered. Isis may still control some territory in Iraq and more in Syria, but it has nothing like the human and material resources it enjoyed at the height of its power when it controlled territory stretching from the Iranian border almost to the Mediterranean coast.

Isis still has some strengths, including experienced and skilful commanders leading a core of fanatical fighters numbering as many as 4,000 in west Mosul alone. They have already killed 500 and wounded 3,000 of the Iraqi security service’s best soldiers in the struggle for east Mosul, which was meant to last a few weeks and instead took three months. There is a no reason the same thing should not happen in the west of the city where the warren of streets gives the defence an advantage. Foreign fighters know they cannot blend into the population and escape, so they have no choice but to fight to the death.

Other factors work in favour of Isis: it is fighting a vast array of enemies forced into an unwilling coalition against Isis because they fear and hate it just a little bit more than they hate and fear each other. As Isis weakens and becomes less of a threat, the edgy détente between different anti-Isis forces, such as the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurds, will begin to fray. People in Baghdad recall that the Kurds took advantage of the defeat of the Iraqi army in 2014 to grab extensive lands long disputed between themselves and the Arabs. Once freed of the menace of Isis, non-Kurdish Iraqis will want these territories back.

In Syria, there is an even more complicated three-cornered fight between the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Kurds and Turkey for the areas from which Isis is retreating. Turkish troops and their local proxies have just taken al-Bab, northeast of Aleppo, from Isis after a hard fought siege, and have started attacking the town of Manbij nearby, which was taken from Isis after a long battle late last year by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Mobilisation Units (YPG) and its Arab allies. As Isis is driven out, the YPG and Turkish-backed forces are left facing each other in what might be the beginning of a new Kurdish-Turkish war waged across northern Syria.

Even those familiar with the complexities and shifting alliances of the Syrian civil war are baffled by the likely outcome as the different players in Syria position themselves to take advantage of a likely attack on Raqqa, the de facto Syrian capital of Isis. Will the US continue to use the devastating firepower of its air force to support a YPG-led ground offensive? Or could the US administration under Trump take a more pro-Turkish stance and, if it did so, would the Syrian Kurds look for an alternative military alliance with Assad and his Russian backers?

The answers to such questions will decide if we are really getting towards the end of the terrible wars in Iraq and Syria that have ravaged the region since 2003 or if we are only seeing an end to a phase in the conflict. In Iraq, the government has survived the disasters of 2014 and is about to defeat Isis in Mosul, though the Baghdad administration remains spectacularly corrupt, sectarian and dysfunctional. Assad in Syria has already won a crucial victory by capturing east Aleppo, the last big urban stronghold of the armed opposition in Syria, and is evidently intending to win back the whole country.

These successes give an exaggerated idea of the real power of the Iraqi army, which owes the reversal in the military tide to the support of foreign powers and, above all, to US airpower. The same is true of the Syrian army in its reliance on Russia and Russian airstrikes. So far, the mix of cooperation and rivalry between the US and Russia in Syria that developed under President Obama has not changed much under Donald Trump.

Yet the war is not quite over. Isis has a tradition of responding to defeats on the battlefield by carrying out terrorist attacks in the region, Europe, Turkey or other parts of the world. Some spectacular atrocities would enable it once again to dominate the news agenda and show it is not beaten.

Isis may want to test the Trump administration and see if it can provoke it into an overreaction by some act of terror, just as al-Qaeda was able to do at the time of 9/11.

Discontent and political volatility dominate Western Australian election

Mike Head

A state election in Western Australia (WA) on March 11 could become a political disaster for the federal Liberal-National government, with media polls predicting likely defeat for the ruling Liberal Party of Premier Colin Barnett.

Conditions in the former mining boom state illustrate the economic and social reversal faced by many workers across the country since the boom started to unravel in 2012. In some suburbs of Perth, the state capital, official jobless rates exceed 20 percent and many more workers have been pushed into low-paid and casualised employment.

Over the past five years, WA has gone from being the fastest growing state to the most recessionary. The economy has shrunk almost 11 percent, led by a near-40 percent drop in business investment. Once heavily-dependent on iron ore royalties, the state budget has a $3 billion annual deficit and, according to the state treasury, is heading for debt of $41 billion.

The opposition Labor Party is committed to slashing spending to reduce the deficit and has failed to gain much ground. Bitter memories also remain of the last Labor government, from 2001 to 2008, which starved basic services of funds while using enormous mining royalties to cut taxes for the wealthy.

More fundamentally, the Labor Party at every level of Australian politics has functioned for decades as a ruthless instrument of big business, working with the unions to impose sweeping corporate restructuring and austerity measures.

Under these conditions, the WA election has become a testing ground for the aspirations of Senator Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation party, assisted by prominent media promotion, to exploit the social discontent and political disaffection.

Hanson is trying to emulate US President Donald Trump, posturing as “anti-elite” outsider and adopting his slogan of “drain the swamp.” Like the American billionaire, she is seeking to divert widespread anger at the political establishment into reactionary nationalist and protectionist directions by witch-hunting Muslims and scapegoating overseas workers.

Hanson will spend the next week campaigning in WA. Currently polling at between 8 and 13 percent, her party hopes to win enough seats in the upper house to hold the “balance of power”—a Liberal or Labor government would need its votes to push legislation through parliament.

In a bid to survive, and to make a pitch in Hanson’s extreme right-wing direction, the Liberal Party struck a preference vote swap deal with One Nation. The pact was not simply a WA initiative—the negotiations with One Nation involved key figures in the federal Coalition government, including Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.

There are indications, however, that the deal may have backfired, further haemorrhaging support for the Liberals. The agreement preferenced One Nation above the rural-based Nationals, who hold ministries in Barnett’s government, exacerbating rifts in the national Liberal-National Coalition. The Nationals retaliated by directing preferences in some electorates to the Greens, endangering Liberal Party seats.

Barnett also outraged working people by vehemently supporting the recent federal Fair Work Commission ruling to slash the Sunday penalty wage rates on which many workers and young people depend to live. He called on the WA Industrial Relations Commission to match the decision for state-based awards, under which about 15 percent of West Australians are employed.

According to a February 3 Newspoll, Barnett’s satisfaction ratings remained the lowest ever recorded by a state leader at only 32 percent. Yet, the Labor Party has been unable to capitalise on the hostility because of its own pro-business policies. Likewise, the support for the Greens, a pro-capitalist party appealing to well-off sections of the middle class, remained on just 9 percent support.

Cynically, Labor Party leader Mark McGowan, an ex-naval officer, is posturing as an opponent of the government’s plans to sell-off a 51 percent stake in WA’s electricity network, Western Power, a move that inevitably will eliminate thousands of jobs and push up household power prices. The Liberals hope to raise $11 billion from the privatisation to meet the debt reduction demands of the financial markets, which stripped WA of its AAA credit rating in 2013.

Labor’s stance is a fraud. Labor governments in other states have privatised electricity and other assets to satisfy the corporate elite, an offensive that was accelerated by the last federal Labor government from 2007 to 2013. Moreover, as McGowan told a gathering of business leaders last December, Labor intends to meet their budget-slashing demands by cutting public sector jobs and services.

McGowan unveiled a plan to reduce the number of senior public servants by 20 percent and introduce 20 new key performance indicators for government service delivery. He said Labor’s policies represented “a revolution in how government is conducted.”

Shadow treasurer Ben Wyatt recently said Labor had identified recurrent spending cuts worth about $200 million, and would initiate a “service priority review” to target further savings. To reduce the state debt would “take years of consistent strong budgeting that WA Labor delivered under [former premier Geoff] Gallop.”

Such cuts will deepen the assault on health, education, welfare and other social programs that began under the previous WA Labor governments, and which were then intensified by the Liberals once the mining tax revenues collapsed.

WA already has the country’s worst public school student-teacher ratio—15.7. In 2013, the Barnett government eliminated about 500 teaching jobs and more than 400 education assistant positions. Labor has promised to restore only 120 teaching jobs and 300 education assistants and is being supported by the education unions, which were instrumental in blocking opposition to the job cuts.

In public hospital emergency departments, the percentage of patients waiting four hours or less dropped from around 80 percent to 75 percent between 2011–12 and 2015–16, far below the national target of 90 percent.

Since 2012–13, the number of social housing units has declined from 42,496 to 39,969, while the level of need has soared. According to welfare agencies, almost 10,000 people are now homeless in WA, and in 2016 one charity, St Vincent de Paul, turned away 17,000 requests for assistance.

In the state’s north, mining towns have been decimated by job losses and property price collapses, forcing many residents to leave. Thousands of workers who once worked on mining projects, often on a fly-in, fly-out basis, generating super-profits for the mining conglomerates, have been thrown on the scrapheap.

Perth’s suburbs have some of the worst unemployment rates nationally: to the south Armadale 18.0 percent and Mandurah 23.8 percent, to the north: Balga-Mirrabooka 22.0 percent and Girrawheen 21.5 percent.

Hanson falsely claims to represent the interests of ordinary working people. She has professed to oppose the electricity privatisation, while calling for further cuts to government spending. One Nation has already assisted the federal Coalition government to push through welfare cutbacks.

Above all, Hanson has sought to split the working class, fomenting divisive, anti-Muslim sentiment. One Nation’s nationalist and protectionist policies also echo the efforts of the trade unions to divert workers’ discontent down anti-Chinese and anti-foreign worker channels.

Hanson denounces welfare recipients, effectively blaming unemployed youth and workers, as well as foreign workers, for the relentless destruction of jobs and conditions by Australian corporations.

No matter which party heads the next WA government, with or without One Nation’s help, the assault on the working class will intensify. As the West Australian reported last month, Barnett and McGowan “have been put on notice by WA Treasury that the state’s finances are in crisis, with debt and deficit blowing out.”

Crisis of right-wing Croatian government deepens over coalition

Markus Salzmann

After just four months in office, tensions inside the Croatian government coalition are mounting. Although the conservative Democratic Union (HDZ) and the right-wing liberal Most (Bridges) party are agreed on a right-wing programme, the government of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is in deep crisis.

The conflict was triggered by a meeting of Plenković with the honorary president of the liberal Croatian People’s Party (HNS), Vesna Pusic. This fuelled rumours that the HDZ might quit the coalition with Most and form a government with the HNS, which currently has nine seats in the Croatian parliament.

And so the permanent crisis in this Balkan state continues. In September last year, elections were held after the government coalition—also an alliance of the HDZ and Most, under the independent pharmaceutical manager Tihomir Oreskovic—broke apart in June after just four months.

The HDZ emerged as the winner in the subsequent elections. With 61 parliamentary deputies, it is just ahead of the Social Democrats (SDP), with 54. In third place is Most, with 13 deputies. With the votes of some independent deputies and representatives of the smaller parties, the HDZ and Most have secured a fragile government majority.

Ever since, the HDZ, which is based on right-wing nationalists, sections of the military and the Church, has been in constant conflict with Most. Most represents better-off middle class layers and sections of big business, which are demanding aggressive reforms to satisfy the interests of the corporate elite. Many observers assume that the government could collapse following the regional elections in May.

The background of the crisis is the complete alienation of the political parties from the population. The government programme on which the HDZ and Most have agreed is a declaration of war on the working class.

Most has insisted on the establishment of an “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ) with neighbouring countries, which is supposed to transform the region into a paradise for cheap labour and low taxes. To this end, the government is planning a tax reform that will massively benefit corporations. These would be largely exempt from regulations in the areas of environmental protection and workers’ rights.

The coalition partners have also agreed a restructuring of public finances. The budget deficit is to be reduced with the aim of obtaining a much better credit rating. The two parties also consider a reform of the education system necessary, meaning the abolition of free education.

These social attacks are accompanied by a massive militarization of Croatia. Conscription, which was abolished in 2008, is to be gradually reintroduced. This would comprise several weeks of compulsory basic training. The aim is to “make the armed forces popular among young people,” Plenković said of the plan to introduce conscription in 2019. The armed forces, which currently consist of about 21,000 men, are to be made more attractive for the generations “which can no longer remember the times of the Great Patriotic War.”

Plenković stands in the tradition of the right-wing nationalists, who, with US and German support, ensured the breakup of Yugoslavia in a series of fratricidal wars. Civil rights groups are warning of the “militarisation” of society.

In January, it was announced that Croatia wants to replace its arsenal, comprising mainly Soviet-era materiel, with new NATO equipment. Defence Minister Damir Krsticevic said there were also plans for the purchase of fighter jets, which was confirmed by President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic in December. The acquisition is to be made by the end of 2017.

In recent months, verbal confrontations with Serbia have also increased. It is significant that four months after taking office, Plenković has still not visited the neighbouring country. Croatia vehemently rejects the inclusion of Serbia in the European Union.

Journalist Norbert Mappes-Niediek remarked recently on broadcaster Deutsche Welle: “Europe is a powder keg. But the Balkans is the fuse. The conflicts are the most dangerous. They cannot be isolated. And precisely in the present situation, in which the world has become so unstable and there is no longer any predominant power, it is much easier for the conflicting parties in the Balkans to seek allies among the greater powers. This is a situation like 1914. This, most of all, should give grounds for fear.”

In this climate, right-wing and openly fascist groups are gaining impetus. Recently, several hundred neo-fascists from the A-HSP demonstrated in the Croatian capital Zagreb. Dressed in black, the participants shouted slogans from the fascist Ustashe movement. They waved a flag of the neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD) and welcomed the election of Donald Trump in the US. Attacks on refugees, members of the Serb minority in Croatia and homosexuals are becoming increasingly more frequent.

The ruling HDZ has close links with these ultra-right forces. This became clear recently, when veterans of the 1990s civil war erected a plaque near the former Jasenovac concentration camp. This was the site where the Ustasha regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany, murdered tens of thousands of Serbs, Croats, Jews and Roma between 1941 and 1945.

The plaque commemorated the fallen fascists with the Ustasha salute “Za Dom Spremni!” (At the ready for the homeland!), which corresponds to the German “Heil Hitler.” When this resulted in fierce criticism, Plenković said the plaque had nothing to do with the world war. They were honouring the dead of the war of independence.

Canadian military preparing for new role in Syria, extension of Ukraine mission

Roger Jordan

Canada’s Liberal government is set to unveil the extension and possible expansion of two of its foreign military deployments. Announcements are expected in coming days on extending the Canadian Armed Forces’ mission in Ukraine, where 200 soldiers are training Ukrainian Army units to fight pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, and on continuing Canada’s role in the Mideast war and possibly expanding it into Syria.

The latter move would be made in conjunction with an anticipated decision by US President Donald Trump to drastically increase the US military presence in Syria and Iraq.

According to the National Post ’s Matthew Fisher, a veteran correspondent with close connections to the upper echelons of the military and Defence Department, the Canadian military is discussing various options for a mission to Syria. Canada was previously involved directly in the Syria war with CF-18 fighter jets, but these were withdrawn last spring by Trudeau, at the same time as his government extended and expanded Canada’s military intervention in the Middle East.

Eight hundred Canadian troops are currently involved in the war in Iraq and Syria, including a contingent of some 200 Special Forces troops who have provided training and frontline direction to the Kurdish Peshmerga. Some of the Canadian Special Forces are active on the Iraq-Syria border alongside Kurdish forces, attempting to block ISIS fighters from leaving Mosul. Canadian reconnaissance and refueling aircraft also still operate in the region in support of the US-led coalition’s air war.

Fisher suggested in his February 27 piece that one potential option could see Canada being asked to contribute “boots on the ground” to defend so-called “safe zones” in Syria. Trump has indicated his support for such an option, which would necessitate the deployment of a substantial number of soldiers to the country and amount to a dramatic escalation of the US war for regime change against the Assad government in Damascus.

It would place Canadian troops on an increasingly fractious front line as a growing number of regional and major powers compete for influence. The potential for this conflict to spiral into a much wider war was underscored earlier this week when Washington accused Russia of bombing one of its Syrian proxies, with US embedded troops only two miles away.

Since coming to power in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made clear that his main foreign policy goal is to deepen military-strategic and economic ties with the United States, so as to shore up North America’s global dominance and enable Ottawa to intervene more aggressively around the world to uphold Canadian imperialist interests.

When Trudeau met Trump in their first face-to-face meeting at the White House last month, he renewed Canada’s pledge to enhance military and security cooperation with Washington and signaled Ottawa will support Trump’s efforts to create a more aggressive North American trade bloc, whether through a renegotiated NAFTA or a new pact. The joint statement issued by the two leaders at the conclusion of their February 13 meeting proclaimed the Canada-US partnership to be an “indispensable alliance in the defense of North America and other parts of the world, through NATO and other multilateral efforts.”

Trudeau and Trump also committed to expanding NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command), which was created during the early stages of the Cold War and continues to be largely aimed at Russia, including in the Arctic.

Over the past week, Canadian Armed Forces troops and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) special forces have been carrying out “sovereignty exercises” in the Arctic, aimed at asserting Canada’s territorial claims in the Far North. Operation Nunalivut began February 23 and runs until March 10. Around 200 armed forces personnel are involved in the exercises, which have included underwater dives by demolition and reconnaissance experts.

A recent article published by the McDonald Laurier Institute under the provocative title “Why is Russia getting ready for war in the Arctic?” urged Canada to step up its activity in the Far North and make preparations for a potential clash with Moscow.

Canada has been in the forefront of NATO’s anti-Russia offensive in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. News reports say that the government will formally announce an extension of the Ukraine training mission next week. Trudeau’s Liberals have maintained the virulently anti-Russian stance adopted by the Harper Conservatives, continuing Canada’s role as one of Ukraine’s most important international allies. The Trudeau government has also committed to lead a NATO battalion in Latvia, one of four NATO “forward deployed” battalions in the Baltic States and Poland designed to menace and encircle Russia. This will involve 450 Canadian troops being stationed in Latvia indefinitely.

In a further indication of the Liberals’ determination to stick to a firmly anti-Russian line, Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister in January. Freeland is on a Kremlin blacklist that prevents her from traveling to Russia because of her outspoken support for the ultra-nationalist regime that came to power in Kiev as a result of the February 2014, US-orchestrated, fascist-led coup against the country’s elected, pro-Russian President, Victor Yanukovych.

Speaking to the Globe and Mail, an anonymous senior government official left no doubt about the deployment’s extension. “Canada understands that Ukraine, and everybody who is a stakeholder and supporter, really wants mission renewal,” the official said.

Ruling circles in Canada have seized on pronouncements by Trump and other top US officials demanding that NATO member-states hike their military spending to the equivalent of at least 2 percent of GDP to intensify pressure on the Liberals to increase military spending. An ongoing Defence Policy Review is considering a wide range of options for the military, including Canada’s participation in the US anti-ballistic missile defence shield.

On Friday, the National Post reported that its sources had revealed that a recommendation Canada join the defence shield was sent to cabinet this week. Contrary to its name, the shield is aimed at developing the capacity to wage a “winnable” nuclear war.

After attending a NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels last month, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan sent the strongest signal yet that major spending increases will be implemented at the conclusion of the policy review. “We knew that spending by the previous government was low and the defence policy review allowed us to do a thorough analysis of what was required,” he stated. “Yes, this will require defence investments.”

The Liberal parliamentary secretary for defence, John McKay, indicated that the hike in defence spending could come as early as the 2017-18 budget, which is to be tabled in the next few weeks. At present there is a built-in $600 million annual increase in Canada’s military spending.

Because of their determination to forge close ties with the Trump administration, Trudeau and his Liberals have delayed implementing a planned deployment of 600 soldiers to Africa as part of a UN-managed “peace operation.” In truth, such a mission would be anything but peaceful or altruistic. As is openly admitted by the military, it would involve Canadian forces in an Afghan-style counterinsurgency war. And it would be aimed at securing Ottawa greater geopolitical influence and at protecting Canadian imperialism’s substantial economic and business interests on the African continent.

However, the Trump administration’s lack of enthusiasm for UN operations, coupled with the prospect of increased demands from Washington for greater military commitments from Canada elsewhere, have resulted in the Liberals postponing the deployment. The most likely candidates for such an intervention are Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo—countries where Canadian mining companies have extensive investments.

EU’s post-Brexit plans foresee growing conflict

Alex Lantier

The March 1 White Paper on Europe issued by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was billed as the most significant global policy response by the executive of the European Union (EU) to Britain's unprecedented vote to leave the EU last year.

The Brexit vote last June was the first in a series of political blows dealt to the EU. Italian voters turned down a pro-EU constitutional referendum last autumn, and voters are going to the polls this spring in Dutch and French elections dominated by the rise of far-right, anti-EU parties exploiting deep popular anger at the EU's austerity policies. Should France's neo-fascist National Front (FN) take power on its anti-euro and anti-EU program, the prospect of a collapse of the EU and of its central Franco-German axis is very real.

Above all, the election of Donald Trump as US president, and his denunciation of the EU as a tool of Germany to strangle other European countries, showed that the main historic driver of attempts to unify European capitalism—US imperialism—is divided over the EU. During the election campaign, as the Obama administration and the EU stoked conflicts with Russia over Syria and Ukraine, Trump explicitly raised the possible use of nuclear weapons in Europe.

Juncker's document shows that the leaders of the EU executive, which is especially close to Berlin, have nothing to propose to address the ongoing social collapse and drive to war. While it tries to put the best possible face on the situation, it paints a devastating, deeply pessimistic picture of the EU. The five scenarios that it forecasts, in broad and vague lines, each foresee escalating divisions and political disunity inside the EU's existing borders, and advocates trying to paper them over with calls for rearmament.

“For generations, Europe was always the future,” the document begins, having noted in its foreword that on March 25, EU leaders will meet in Rome to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1957 Treaty of Rome that launched attempts to integrate capitalist Europe. Today, however, the EU is unmistakably the past: as the White Paper admits, its population faces a prospect of war and relentless social decline.

The document warns of vast foreign dangers, including both “wars and terrorism in the Middle East and Africa” and the ongoing “build-up of troops on our eastern borders.” It does not add that the leading EU powers participated from within the NATO alliance in creating these dangers—through a decades-long campaign of wars for regime change in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and beyond, and since the 2014 NATO-backed putsch against a pro-Russian government in Ukraine, after which they launched a vast military build-up on Russia's borders.

In line with multi-billion-euro military spending increases by Germany, France, and beyond, as well as the recent return to the military draft in Sweden, it bluntly calls for massive rearmament and war preparations. It writes, “Europe cannot be naïve and has to take care of its own security. Being a 'soft power' is no longer powerful enough when force can prevail over rules.”

This drive to war goes hand-in-hand with escalating fears of a new global economic break-down rooted in a collapse of free trade. Noting “doubts over the future of international trade and multilateralism,” the document foresees that “standing up for free and progressive trade and shaping globalisation so that it benefits all will be a growing crisis.”

One of the main causes of the growing discrediting of international capitalism and trade, the White Paper admits, is the social collapse left behind by the aftershocks of the 2008 economic crash. “Addressing the legacy of the crisis, from long-term unemployment to high levels of public and private debt in many parts of Europe, remains an urgent priority. The challenge is particularly acute for the younger generation,” it states. “For the first time since the Second World War, there is a real risk that the generation of today's young adults ends up less well-off than their parents.”

The White Paper forecasts a constant relative decline of Europe's demographic and economic weight: its share of world population is expected to pass from 25 percent in 1900 to 4 percent in 2060, and its share of the global economy from 26 percent in 2004 to under 20 percent by 2030.

The White Paper outlines five vaguely defined strategies for how the remaining 27 EU member states could try to remain together: “carrying on”, “nothing but the single market”, “those who want more do more”, “doing less more efficiently” and “doing much more together”.

The fact that “carrying on” with the agreements signed before and just after Brexit is only one of five options—and one that would not prevent the EU's unity from being “tested in the event of major disputes,” the White Paper asserts—underscores the enormous fragility of the EU. The White Paper foresees the distinct possibility that the EU might collapse into just a “single market” free-trade zone.

The press and political commentators pointed out that the appeal to continue uniting only those “who want more” would lead to the formation of a “core” EU and the de facto relegation to second class status or outright of countries who do not “want more” of the EU.

Hungarian Economy Minister Mihaly Varga explicitly denounced this possibility, warning that “strong actors” could try to sideline others, producing “social unrest” in states left behind. “There's a real threat that [those] who favour a two-speed Europe will say that those who're in the euro area are in, and those who are out of the euro are out,” he declared.

At the same time, there are increasing indications that key euro zone member states could decide to abandon the euro currency. Besides the possibility of a FN presidential victory in France, the Dutch parliament has commissioned a report evaluating the pros and cons of the euro for the Netherlands, and Italian bank Mediobanca published a report in January claiming that Italian public debt servicing would not be harmed by Italy's exit from the euro.

Amid the crisis of European capitalism, institutions built over decades, ostensibly to avert a new war between the European powers like the two world wars of the last century, are collapsing. The great contradictions of capitalism that the great Marxists explained would provoke international revolutionary struggles a century ago, at the time of World War I and the 1917 revolution—above all, between global economy and the nation state system—have returned.

Reacting to the White Paper, the press pointed to deep divisions and electoral crises in Europe, concluding that they kept Juncker from proposing anything more definite or ambitious for the EU.

With the White Paper, Le Monde wrote, Juncker is hoping to “take back control of a ship that has been navigating heavy waters for several months. The federalist is constrained and forced to become a realist.”

Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy said, “Juncker’s proposals aren’t going to be particularly ambitious. Germany and France disagree about what to do with the Eurozone, and states in Central and Eastern Europe want more powers to return from Brussels following Brexit. That sets clear limits on what Juncker’s plan can achieve.”

The Financial Times of London cited a report by Italian consulting firm MacroGeo, titled “Europe in the Brexit and Trump Era: Disintegration and Regrouping.”

The report, the FT wrote, “asserts that the EU in its present form is most likely going to decompose, even if pro-integrationists such as Emmanuel Macron, the French independent centrist, and Martin Schulz, the German Social Democrat, win this year’s elections. 'By the 2021-22 electoral cycle, the EU might be entering the last five years of its ‘real’ existence,' the report says.”