Enemy of Reason: Behind the Mask of Pro-GMO Neoliberal Ideology

Colin Todhunter

Professor Shanthu Shantharam recently wrote a response to Viva Kermani’s well thought out article about injecting some honesty into the debate about genetically modified (GM) food and crops. Both pieces appeared the Indian publication Swarajya.

Shantharam’s response is typical of what we have come to expect from him: a mixture of abuse, personal attacks and gross misrepresentation of both issues and facts.

He says of Kermani’s piece:

“The article seems to be borrowed from the manifesto of the global anti-GM propaganda machinery that has been in vogue for as long as the GM crops have been around.”

It is highly convenient that he chooses to ignore the agritech cartel’s substantial army of public relations agencies, politicians, scientists and media figures who engage in pseudo-science to promote GM, misrepresent scientific findings, carry out well-planned strategies to attack scientists whose findings are not to the liking of the industry and who produce smear-pieces on prominent figures. The industry has rolled-out what has become a very transparent playbook to depict those who express concern about GM as ideologues, ignorant and anti-science.

At the same time, it tries to portray critics as being authoritarian, elitist and undemocratic. This from an industry run by privileged multi-millionaire white men who belong to Fortune 500 companies. A taxpayer-subsidised industry driven by self-interest, profit and personal gain. An industry that uses well-paid figures and career scientists (like Shantharam who makes a living outside of India in a prestigious US university) to do its bidding in the media. And an industry that hides its corporate science behind the guise of proprietary and intellectual knowledge, while setting out to undermine democratic processes.

Whether it is the Science Media Centre in the UK, Jon Entine, Kevin Folta, Tony Trewavas, Bruce Chassey or any other number of individuals or institutions, the façade of independence has been peeled away and their links to the GMO agritech sector and/or fundamentalist right-wing neoliberal lobby groups exposed.

Shantharam claims that GMOs are safe as determined by all regulatory agencies in charge of assessing the safety of food. He says the safety of GMOs have also been vouched for by leading scientific organisations. The implication being that there is an overwhelming consensus on GM among respected scientific bodies.

A September 2014 report by Food & Water Watch goes to great lengths to show the backing that Shantharam claims exists only in his mind. He should read the report, which concludes there is no consensus on safety among institutions and independent scientists, nor within the scientific literature.

Moreover, Shantharam seems to assume supposedly independent, evidence-based, public watch dogs are actually doing their job to protect the public. He has nothing to say on how the agritech/agribusiness cartel has written the rules on intellectual property rights and trade rules, has been the guiding hand behind the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture in India and has co-opted, colluded with and infiltrated public bodies across the globe, from the UK, India and the EU to the US and the WTO.

Like all good neoliberal/agritech business apologists, he talks much about democracy and choice while saying nothing about how agritech corporations have subverted both, including the restriction of cotton seed options in India and Monsanto’s illegal entry into the Indian market.

The ‘free’ market and choice exist only in the warped delusions of neoliberal ideologues like Shantharam.

More specifically, in trying to promote the myth that GMOs are equivalent to conventional breeding, Shantharam says:

“Kermani must realise that in the 10,000 year history of human effort to grow food, people have artificially modified all that was growing wildly to adapt them to their needs. Therefore, there is nothing natural about agriculture.”

Again, this is another industry myth designed to be repeated at every available opportunity in the hope that if said often enough it will become accepted public ‘knowledge’. There is enough evidence (see this as well) to show that GMOs are not substantially equivalent to conventionally bred crops or food derived from them. Substantial equivalence was an industry ploy designed to avoid proper testing and regulation of GM.

According to Shantharam, GM crops are specially tested in accordance with international food safety standards prescribed by the Codex Alimentarius commission where global scientific experts meet to develop global standards for food safety testing. This is simply not true.

Steven Druker has demonstrated that such claims are false:

“It’s evident that the system for regulating GE foods has been, and remains, markedly defective worldwide and that a large number of these products have entered the market absent the kind of safety testing that has been called for by the experts… .”

Despite saying, “Scientific literature is awash with thousands of high-class, peer-reviewed literature that testifies to the fact that GM crops are substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts, and therefore, they do not present any new unique safety concerns,” Shantharam cites no sources. Or perhaps he is relying on big list studies like Nicolia, which show nothing of the sort in terms of saftey.

He also argues that GM crops are being cultivated in almost 30 countries for the past 20 years without a single proven instance of any harm to any human or animal being. Where is his evidence? Can he show the data from any studies to support this claim?  It is nothing but PR. And bad PR at that. (see section three of this report).

Shantharam says:

“Kermani must read the scientific opinions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to ascertain the safety of all GM crops that it has reviewed, and also two gigantic reports of GM safety research funded by the EU for more than 25 years. It is the politics of GM crops in the EU that completely ignores its own funded research reports.”

Of course, we cannot say for sure to which reports he refers to as, again, he cites no sources. Perhaps he means the discredited ‘A decade of EU-funded GMO Research‘ or maybe GRACE, which is also seriously wanting.

He then says:

“That the agricultural industry has saved more lives than all pharma industries put together can be asserted by a simple fact that the green revolution saved millions from starvation and death in the middle of the last century. GM crops are being cultivated in almost 30 countries for the past 20 years without a single proven instance of any harm to any human or animal being. How much more proof does one need of its safety?”

Again, where is the data to support his claims? Perhaps he should read Raj Patel’s piece before making baseless claims about the green revolution. And maybe he should work his way through Rosemary Mason’s fully-referenced work to understand how agrochemicals are a major contributor to spiralling rates of illness and disease.

And when he is finished there, he might want to look at how the green revolution he cherishes so much and the geo-politicised, globalised system of food production it is wedded to is leading to the worldwide eradication of the small farm (the bedrock of complex cropping systems and sustainable, nutritional food production), bad food, poor health, rigged trade, environmental devastation, mono-cropping and diminished food and diet diversity, the destruction of rural communities, ecocide, degraded soil, water scarcity and drought, destructive and inappropriate models of development and farmers who live a knife-edge existence and for whom debt has become a fact of life.

Shantharam attacks Kermani for advocating organic farming, something he says has led and would lead again to food scarcity and starvation. Perhaps it is too much to expect Shantharam – who is after all only a microbiologist – to grasp historical and more recent contexts that have led to starvation, food deficit areas and food insecurity. He promotes the myth that a lack of food productivity led to famines or has led to present-day food insecurity. Maybe Shantharam should read academics who actually specialise in this area, which he does not.

While he might think a science PhD qualifies him to speak authoritatively on issues beyond his limited realm of expertise, Shantharam is not an economist, political scientist, trade policy analyst or historian, nor does he possess expertise in any other number of disciplines that would help him to develop a deeper understanding of development issues, history, hunger, malnutrition, poverty and sustainable, productive farming. His only concern is to lobby relentlessly on behalf of his corporate masters for a bogus GM techo-fix.

We just have to look at the outcome of GM technology since GM crops were commercialised over 20 years ago. Has it reduced pesticides use? No. Has it increased yields? No. Have companies who control the technology and its associated proprietary inputs (e.g. Roundup/glyphosate) made a financial killing? Yes (see this and this).

Despite Shantharms’s propaganda about the successes of Bt cotton in India, he might also want to look at how when his cherry-picked data and analysis of the story of GM cotton in India is put to one side, Bt cotton has been a failure and is a major contributory factor in farmer distress and suicide.

Monsanto has sucked over $900 million from Indian farmers for a failed technology and has done so illegally. By way of contrast, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant brought in $13.4 million in 2014 alone, according to Bloomberg. Yet, Shantharam still tries to spin the message of GM cotton success while poor farmers in India are under pressure from seed company agents and a pay a high financial and social cost.

While lobbying for GM he seeks to denigrate not only critics but genuine solutions. And regardless of Shantharam implying that GM will not be the only route to feeding the world, the very logic of capitalism is to capture markets and destroy competition (by any foul mean possible ) and to impose a certain model of agriculture on the world.

It is a capitalism and a system of agriculture propped up by the blood money of militarism (Ukraine and Iraq), ‘structural adjustment’ and strings-attached loans (Africa) or slanted trade deals (India), whereby transnational agribusiness drives a global agenda to suit its interests and eradicate impediments to profit. And it doesn’t matter how much devastation ensues or how unsustainable their model is, ‘crisis management’ and ‘innovation’ fuel the corporate-controlled treadmill it seeks to impose.

Of course, much of this is being aided and forced through by directives from the likes of the World Bank with its ‘grow’ campaign or ‘enabling the business of agriculture’.

As a microbiologist, Shantharam seems oblivious to the reality of how the world actually functions. In his desperation, he resorts to smears and personal insults. Those who express valid concerns about GM are not to be so easily dismissed as ’ignoramuses’, ‘leftists’ or ‘anti-GM’. They are pro-democracy, pro-transparency and anti-corruption. People are demanding transparency, genuine independent testing and genuine independent evaluations of the health, social, economic and environmental impacts of GM. They also require fair and open debate.

Instead, what we get from Shantharam is industry-inspired dogma and spin underpinned by his usual pomposity that reaches its zenith by labelling anyone who questions his pseudo-facts, corporate science and PR clichés as “ignoramuses.”

When you are part of a problem and fuel and benefit from it, you will do your best to attack and denigrate anything or anyone that challenges your interests. It’s the usual case of a pro-GMO scientist-cum-lobbyist being blinded by technology and wedded to ideology.

The Empire’s Fifth Column in Africa: Morocco

Aidan O’Brien

Dublin.

In 1984 Morocco turned it’s back on Africa because the Organisation of African Unity refused to support it’s 1975 conquest of Western Sahara. For the next few decades Morocco followed the example of apartheid Israel and looked only towards Europe and America. Morocco, for example, applied (and failed) to join the European Economic Community in 1987. While today (since 2008) it is considered an “advanced” EU neighbour. And militarily it became a NATO partner in 1994 and a major non-NATO US ally in 2004.

Morocco in other words did everything it could to be an honorary white man: it shamelessly raped part of Africa and looked down on the black man. And the white man rewarded it by investing in it.

A few weeks ago however (January 31, 2017) Morocco suddenly rejoined Africa. In Addis Ababa the African Union decided to accept Morocco as a member, even though Western Sahara remains in Moroccan hands. Why the sudden change of policy in Morocco and in the African Union? In a word: the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

The present scramble for Africa is the overall reason. But Gaddafi was the last pan African barrier to Western imperialism 2.0 in Africa. His removal opened the floodgates to 21st century Western power in Africa. The French are now back in Mali. AFRICOM (the US military) is all over the place. And now Morocco wants to be African again.

Morocco’s new found interest in Africa complements NATO’s attack on Africa. The Dubai based Al Arabia website reported as much a month before the killing of Gaddafi (October 2011).

“…..When Libyan rebels announced their victory towards the end of August [2011], Morocco was one of the first countries to send its foreign minister, Taeib Fassi Fihri, to Benghazi to express support for the new regime.

“….In this context, NATO’s intervention in Libya and the active role of France in the collapse of Qaddafi’s regime could change the regional situation. It may lead the international community to press for a rapid solution to the Western Sahara conflict.

“The cards will be reshuffled, and in terms of the requests the countries of the south could make on the north, Morocco could include the Western Sahara,” said Khadija Mohsen-Finan, a researcher at Paris-VIII University

“Now, a new partner [for Morocco] has come out of the woods: NATO,” Finan, a specialist in north African affairs, added….”

Today, six years later, the “reshuffled” deck of cards is being played. With the support of NATO quietly behind it, Morocco is confidently presenting itself as a born again believer in African unity. This despite the fact that it’s colonisation of Western Sahara continues.

And the African Union’s ability to resist Morocco’s deviant arrogance – after the killing of Gaddafi – is minimal. Gaddafi gave the African Union (AU) a backbone. The AU today however is under siege by the West. And without Gaddafi it has no vision of a way out. In the words of TIME:

“….Gaddafi’s vision for Africa crystallized in a proposal for a United States of Africa, complete with a single currency, a united military and one common passport. That call for African unity was also the theme of his time as chair of the African Union in 2009…”

NATO’s destruction of Libya completely humiliated the African Union. It tore the heart out of an alternative African future. And left Africa seriously exposed once again to the Western imperial virus: a virus contemporary Morocco carries.

The proof of Morocco’s contaminated status is to be found in Yemen. In this war torn land Morocco is part of the royalist invasion led by Saudi Arabia. The fact is that Morocco isn’t just a NATO partner but is also a partner of the GCC (the Gulf Cooperation Council) which is tearing Yemen apart. Of course NATO and the GCC are themselves strategic partners. And caught in the middle – a plaything of both – is Morocco.

Further evidence of Morocco’s duplicitous identity is the part it played in the infamous “Safari Club” in the 1970s. This secret “club” was a CIA inspired organisation that aimed to “protect” Africa from communism. Morocco’s “partners” that time included the usual suspects Saudi Arabia, Israel and France. Plus ça change.

Morocco’s body may be in Africa but it’s mind is in the North Atlantic and the Persian Gulf. In the scramble for Africa it is a significant bridgehead for imperial investors and invaders. From the brand new giant port in Tangier to the plan for pipelines connecting Marrakesh to the Sahara and the recent deals made with Rwanda: Morocco and it’s “partners” are ready to plunder. The rape of Western Sahara is just a foretaste.

The Morocco we speak of however is just one man: it’s billionaire king – Mohammed VI (and before him it was his father Hassan II). Moroccan power rotates around him. And he rotates around Paris and Riyadh. The Moroccan people, in truth, are as voiceless as those in Western Sahara – the Sahrawi. Poverty is their prison while the king plays.

The Moroccans though can learn from the Sahrawi (a people Gaddafi aided). Their resistance to colonialism is a model for resistance to royalism. Indeed – as Chomsky says – it was the protests of the Sahrawi in October and November 2010 which started the Arab Spring.

In fact the great Moroccan people themselves have already produced the answer to their jailers: Mohammed VI and Western imperialism. That answer is Ben Barka. This Moroccan (perhaps the greatest of them all) was as important as Patrice Lumumba. In the 1960s Barka was so close to Cuba that it was he who organised the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana. But Barka was murdered before seeing his vision materialise: Third World Solidarity. In 1965 he was “disappeared” in Paris.

The Empire and it’s kings can kill and bribe as many Africans as it wants. But Africa and the Third World will win. Time and truth is theirs. The Empire and it’s kings can wear an African mask. But their skull and bones are clearly visible. Their neoliberal lies have been exposed. For these reasons: there is no alternative to the visions of the Sahrawi, Gaddafi and Ben Barka.

Russia, Ukraine, and the ICJ: Opening Arguments at The Hague

Binoy Kampmark 

Matters have been far from plain sailing for the parties in the Ukrainian conflict, and Kiev was determined to remind international audiences about matters in taking Russia to the International Court of Justice.

This action is one of several fronts the Ukrainian government has been using against the persistent Russian bogey.  In addition to making good its January 2016 promise to bring a claim against Russia under the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the state has also made moves in the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.

Those scrutinising the case see these points as minor, and here, international relations assumes that of a show enacted in a court of law.  “The issues pertaining to terrorism financing and racial discrimination,” argues Iryna Marchuk, “are largely peripheral to the major issue at stake.” (The same issue arose in the ICJ case of Georgia v Russia.)

The real issue, argues Marchuk, lies in the use of force, lawful or otherwise.  But here, Ukraine and Russia are disputants sailing by in the troubled night, with no actual treaty that generates the true jurisdictional nature to address grievances.  The Terrorism Financing Convention and CERD (specifically on the issue of banning the Majlis of the Crimean Tartar people) are, to that end, hooks by which to bring Moscow into the room.  Russia also accepts the jurisdiction of the ICJ.

Article 22 of the CERD suggests that any dispute between two or more State Parties with respect to the interpretation or application of that convention “shall be referred to the International Court of Justice for decision, unless the disputants agree to another mode of settlement.”

What interested the conventional networks covering the opening of the ICJ case was the surprise registered at the display by the British advocate representing the Russian case.  London lawyer Samuel Wordsworth QC tiptoed with balletic grace around the issue of intention in perpetrating various acts of alleged terror.

This is where the bone of contention is both vigorously contested and problematic: was there a link of intention running through the Russian command that led to the shooting down of MH17? Countries such as Australia were already prematurely adjudicating that case ahead of any inquiry findings.

The reaction from certain news outlets at the display of British counsel was one of disbelief.  “An extraordinary thing happened in The Hague this week,” sparkled a disbelieving Steve Cannane for the ABC.  Russia’s lawyer, it was said, had “gone off script” in not issuing a standard denial about any role in the downing of MH17.

Cannane referenced Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenko’s gruff remarks in response to the Dutch-led joint investigation team findings that a Buk missile brought across the Ukrainian-Russian border from Russia had found its way into a pro-Russian separatist village, and used to shoot down the ill-fated airliner. “Russian missile defence systems, including ‘BUK’, have never crossed the Russian-Ukraine border.”

This, it was said, did not quite match the slick presentation.  “There is no evidence before the court, plausible or otherwise, that Russia provided weaponry to any party with the intent or knowledge that such weaponry be used to shoot down civilian aircraft, as would of course be required under Article 2.1 [of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism].”

Any remotely engaged spectator would have to appreciate the difficulty of trying to impute crystal clear awareness to any actor caught in the unnerving fog of war. Death and desperation flounder in a confused dance, idiocy is enthroned, and mistakes rule. The idea of coherent battle plans and clear methods of war is a generally hard one to entertain, and even more so in the scrap that is the mess in eastern Ukraine. Not even Germanic precision or the doctrinaire approach of Clausewitz could ever dispel the notion that war is not only nasty, but nigh impossible to predict.

For that reason, bringing war into the court room, one messily charged with non-state actors, or supposedly sponsored ones, is problematic. The layers of control and accountability blur, and in some cases, diminish. The idea of constructive responsibility remains difficult to saddle and pad down. While the laws of war and humanitarian conflict stretch for volumes, the reality of their effect on the ground remains contested.

With predictable certainly, sides will present their positions with moral superiority and clarity. The Ukrainian government insists that Russia is a sponsor of state terrorism, a position that paves over the complex nationalist concerns in the east of the country.  The Russian position on this has always been that such support does not exist; in any case, the Ukrainians made a meal of it in ignoring separatist and pro-Russian tendencies to begin with.

It is now left to the judges on the bench of the ICJ to deliberate over the distinctly untidy situation it faces.  Success is likely to measured, less in leaps and bounds than tactical moves of a symbolic nature.  As former ICJ judge Bruno Simma explained, one such “success” could be an interim injunction, followed by a determination on jurisdiction a year later. The blood of the conflict may still be moist by then.

Why Trump Should Stay Out of Yemen

Patrick Cockburn

The Trump administration is making its first radical policy change in the Middle East by escalating American involvement in the civil war in Yemen. Wrecked by years of conflict, the unfortunate country will supposedly be the place where the US will start to confront and roll back Iranian influence in the region as a whole.

To this end, the US is to increase military support for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and local Yemeni allies in a bid to overthrow the Houthis – a militarised Shia movement strong in northern Yemen – fighting alongside much of the Yemeni army, which remains loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

If ever there was a complicated and unwinnable war to keep out of, it is this one.

Despite Saudi allegations, there is little evidence that the Houthis get more than rhetorical support from Iran and this is far less than Saudi Arabia gets from the US and Britain. There is no sign that the Saudi-led air bombardment, which has been going on for two years, will decisively break the military stalemate. All that Saudi intervention has achieved so far is to bring Yemen close to all out famine. “Seven million Yemenis are ever closer to starvation,” said Jamie McGoldrick, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen in an appeal for more aid this week.

But at the very moment that the UN is warning about the calamity facing Yemen, the US State Department has given permission for a resumption of the supply of precision guided weapons to Saudi Arabia. These sales were suspended last October by President Obama after Saudi aircraft bombed a funeral in the capital Sana’a, killing more than 100 mourners. Ever since Saudi Arabia started its bombing campaign in March 2015, the US has been refuelling its aircraft and has advisors in the Saudi operational headquarters. For the weapons sales to go ahead all that is needed is White House permission.

A bizarre element in Trump’s decision to take the offensive against Iran in Yemen is that the Iranians provide very little financial and military aid to the Houthis. Saudi propaganda, often echoed by the international media, speaks of the Houthis as “Iran-backed”, but Yemen is almost entirely cut off from the outside world by Saudi ground, air and sea forces.

Even food imports, on which Yemenis are wholly reliant, are more and more difficult to bring in through the half-wrecked port of Hodeida on the western coast.

The resumption of the supply of precision-guided munitions is not the first indication that the Trump administration sees Yemen as a good place to put into operation a more hawkish strategy in the region. On 29 January, days after he took office, Trump sent some 30 members of US Navy Seal Team 6, backed by helicopters, to attack an impoverished village called al Ghayil in al-Bayda province in southern Yemen. The purpose of the raid, according to the Pentagon, was intelligence-gathering – though it may well have been a failed attempt to kill or capture Qassim al Rimi, the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Whatever the aim of the attack, it swiftly turned into a bloody fiasco, with as many 29 civilians in al Ghayil killed along with one Seal, Chief Petty Officer William Owens. The Pentagon’s explanation of what happened sounds very much like similar attempts to explain away civilian killed and wounded over the past half century in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The head of the US military’s central command, General Joseph Votel, told a Senate hearing that between four and 12 civilians might have died in the raid, adding that an “exhaustive after-action review” had not found incompetence, poor decision making or bad judgement.

For its part, the Trump administration tried to shut down any investigation into what had really happened at al Ghayil by saying that an inquiry would be an affront into the legacy of the fallen Seal, William Owens. This stance was swiftly criticised by the father of the dead man, Bill Owens, who said the government owed his son an inquiry. “Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation,” he said.

In the event, the White House and the Pentagon have so far hidden fairly successfully from any real examination of the destruction of this remote Yemeni village, perhaps calculating that no independent journalist could make the dangerous journey to the site of the attack. But a lengthy on-the-spot report by Iona Craig, entitled “Death in al Ghayil” and appearing in the online investigative magazine The Intercept, convincingly rebuts the official version of events, little of which appears to be true.

Craig quotes surviving villagers as saying that the Seal team came under heavy fire from the beginning and attack helicopters were sent in. She writes: “In what seemed to be blind panic, the gunships bombarded the entire village, striking more than a dozen buildings, razing stone dwellings where families slept, and wiping out more than 120 goats, sheep and donkeys.” At least six women and 10 children were killed in their houses as projectiles tore through the straw and timber roofs or were mown down as they ran into the open.

The Trump administration says this was a “highly successful operation” and there had been an assault on a fortified compound – except that there are no such compounds in the village. Trump claimed that a “large amount of vital intelligence” had been obtained and the Pentagon released video footage seized in al Ghayil only to later admit that the footage had been around for 10 years and contained nothing new.

Ironically, the villagers who fought back against the Seal team actually belonged to the forces opposing the Houthis and the pro-Saleh forces and, on the night of the assault, “local armed tribesmen assumed the Houthis had arrived to capture their village”. It was only when they saw coloured laser lights coming from the weapons of the attacking force that they realised that they were fighting Americans. As the Seals retreated, with one dead and two seriously wounded, the MV-22 Osprey that was to extract them crash-landed and had to be destroyed by other US aircraft.

The Trump administration’s first counter-terrorism operation was a failure for the US and much worse for the Yemeni villagers who are dead, wounded, homeless and have seen their livestock, on which they depended for their livelihoods, all killed. But when Senator John McCain, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the raid has been a failure he was promptly denounced by Trump who said that Owens “had died on a winning mission” and to debate its outcome would “only embolden the enemy”.

International media coverage tends to focus on the wars in Syria and Iraq, but in those countries Trump and the Pentagon are largely following the policies and plans of Obama.

It is in Yemen that new policies are beginning to emerge as the Trump administration carries out its first counter-terrorism operation against al Qaeda – if that was what it was – leading to the slaughter of civilians and a botched cover-up. Yemen may soon join Afghanistan and Iraq as wars in which the US wishes it had never got involved.

Malaysia And The Question Of North Korea

Chandra Muzaffar

The Malaysian government has done the right thing in keeping the channels of communication with the North Korean Government open. It wants an amicable resolution of the friction arising from the murder of Kim Jong-Nam, the elder brother of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) 2 on the 13th of February 2017. Prime Minister Najib Razak has made it very clear that Malaysia has no intention of severing diplomatic ties with North Korea.

The North Korean government has also adopted a positive stance. It has given a firm assurance to its Malaysian counterpart that the nine Malaysians who are still at the Malaysian Embassy in Pyongyang are safe and are allowed to carry on with their daily routine. However, they are barred from leaving North Korea.The Malaysian government has reciprocated by reiterating that North Koreans in Malaysia who are prohibited from leaving the country will not be harmed in any way.

These positive vibes from both sides should encourage the two governments to begin serious negotiations on a variety of issues pertaining to the current crisis. It is quite conceivable that the talking has already commenced. If a facilitator is required, the Chinese government would be the best candidate. It remains — in spite of its disillusionment with Pyongyang — North Korea’s only real ally. At the same time, China and Malaysia are close friends.

Apart from lifting the bans on nationals from each other’s country that Pyongyang and Putrajaya have imposed, the two governments will have to address the central question of Kim Jong-Nam’s murder and the investigations being conducted by the Malaysian authorities.  North Korea will have to concede that Malaysia has been rational and professional in its approach. It has adhered to international law and established norms in the handling of cases of this sort. For these reasons Pyongyang should extend its fullest cooperation to Putrajaya.

Going on the basis of North Korea’s past record, it will not be easy to persuade its leadership to uphold the principles of international law. As a case in point, in spite of six sets of UN Security Council resolutions aimed at stopping North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, it continues to conduct such tests. The latest was its firing of two powerful Musudon medium-range missiles on the 1st of March 2017 one of which flew 400 kilometres into the Sea of Japan.

North Korea has often argued that it conducts these tests because the United States of America and South Korea continue to hold annual military war-games in its vicinity. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has proposed that North Korea suspend its nuclear and missile tests while the US and South Korea halt their military exercises. A quid pro quo approach he hopes can bring the three parties to the negotiating table.

Once negotiations begin other outstanding issues can also be addressed. The recent deployment of the US’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea has undoubtedly exacerbated relations between South and North Korea and between South Korea, on the one hand, and China and Russia, on the other. China and Russia perceive THAAD as a system that alters significantly the balance of power within the region. THAAD, and the larger question of the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula should be discussed among all concerned parties.

In fact, denuclearisation was the focus of a six-party discussion from 2003 to 2008. North Korea, China and Russia, together with South Korea, Japan and the United States constituted the six parties and they met in Malaysia. Though the talks did not achieve their desired goal, there is no reason why an attempt should not be made to revive it. Immediate concerns such as missiles and THAAD rather than denuclearisation should be the main items on the agenda this time.

Poaching In Europe’s Suburbs

Binoy Kampmark

“There has never been a case like this in a zoo in Europe, an assault of such violence, evidently for this stupid trafficking of rhinoceros horns.”

Thierry Duguet, head of Parc Zoologique de Thoiry

It was a matter of time. The war of poachers against those attempting to conserve species, and the animals themselves, took a gruesome turn this week.  At the Parc Zoologique de Thoiry outside Paris, a white southern white rhinoceros named Vince was shot three times, with one horn sawn by attackers keen to bring the predations of the ivory market to Europe. (The second horn was only partially sawn.)

The gruesome and bloody scene is worth noting on several levels. It brought the dynamically vicious struggle of an environmental war to Europe, and to zoos in particular. It was a statement on vulnerability (that of the security in place) and sheer daring – five members of the zoological staff resided on site, with the usual complement of surveillance cameras.

Whatever the problems in terms of conservation regarding these institutions (confined, caged animals generate their own set of moral debates), was a stark attack of profit and finance. Ivory fetches a good sum on the market, feeding a voracious demand based on quack medical assumptions.

Museums have also borne witness to such attacks.  The desperation and the skill of such individuals varies, but here, desire, one heavy with a monetary quest (Vince’s horn could fetch up to £35,000), is unquestioned.  Even specimens long petrified, gazing mutely at spectators for decades are potential targets of the ivory vultures.  The instinct here is endemic of that same breed of human who believes that plunder is sacred and conservation a disgrace.

The question, then, is security. Will the zoos become garrisoned redoubts of layered security, fashioned for the next modern conflict on conservation, securing funding, not merely for conservation but for actual paramilitary security?  The purse strings on that score will have to be loosened even as sacred rhinos are treated as golden geese.

Police in Britain, by way of example, are already speaking of urgent security checks to protect the 111 rhinos in the country.  The description by a spokesman for the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) supplies a reminder about the gloomy prospects ahead, more reminiscent of a future battle than a case of mere security: “These animals are kept in secure enclosures guarded by full-time security teams, who also conduct regular patrols across the zoo.”

Then comes the very idea that the rhinoceros horn trade be legalised in an attempt to make the industry less rapacious.  These might take the form of harvesting horns – the removal of the horn without hurting the rhino; or the sale of confiscated stockpiles.

These effects would be felt from parkland to zoos.  “The rationale,” claims South African conservationist economist Michael’t Sas-Rolfes, “is to bring the price down to a manageable level through constant legal supply.”

The income created from such a normalised market could then be used to re-invest in conservation efforts.  “It has become expensive to protect rhinos, and conservation organizations simply don’t have sufficient funds to invest in the level of field protection that is needed to sustain the number of rhinos we have.”

Critics feel that such sober, analytical assessments are misplaced to the point of miscalculation. Conservationists such as Dex Kotze argue that demand would be all too great, stripping supply.  Then comes the issue of where the proceeds would actually find their way.  “We are afraid,” noted Kotze in 2014, “that the money would be going to the wrong pockets.”

The shock of this recent incident has shaded previous cases where attackers have braved supposedly secure facilities to capture their sacred quarry, often dead ones. The ivory trade is one that took a man with a chainsaw to Paris’ Museum of Natural history in 2013 in an effort to remove the tusk of a 325-year old elephant skeleton that had belonged to King Louis XIV.

Police received calls about “a strange sawing sound at around 3am”. On arriving, they witnessed a desperate thief in his 20s fleeing over a wall labouring with the ungainly booty. The chainsaw had been abandoned near the elephant skeleton.  The thief, in turn, fractured his ankle in the botched attempt.

The poacher, as his own species, is highly innovative and flexible.  Money markets and demand tend to create their own sophisticated pedigree of criminal.  Traditional assumptions about a war on the plains, and in the environment where such animals gather, will have to be reconsidered.  Money may not have smell, but it certainly has traction.

The Pig Industry And The Usage Of Antibiotics In Denmark

Holger Oster Mortensen

WHO claims that as many as 20 million people will die within 20 – 25 years every year because of infections and resistant bacteria. Penicillin and different antibiotics simply will not work anymore. Medicins Sans Frontier claims, that 700, 000 people die every year because antibiotics is not working any more.

The problem seems to be worldwide. And we have to start to fight against it NOW.

In Denmark we have a very large production of pork. The small country with 5 million people, raise about 25 million pigs every year. No other country has as many pigs per capita in the world, and Denmark has the most intensive concentration of pigs in the world. Also 60 percent of our land is farmed. Another world record!

All these pigs are raised in pig farms or industrial ‘pig-factories’, and to keep the pigs healthy, the pig farmers use a lot of antibiotics. Also zinc and copper are used in animal feed. This will create antibiotic resistant bacteria. 10 years ago no pigs in Denmark would carry MRSACC398- staphylococcus. Today almost 90 percent of all pig farms have the dangerous and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Even the pig farms for breeding has it.  And the pig farmers seem to do nothing about it. Most workers in the pig farms carry this bacteria. Danish farmers use 120 tons antibiotics every year – 90 ton in the pig industry alone. In Danish hospitals and healthcare we use only 55 tons.

The Danish government decided to follow up on MRSA – according to the EU-authorities, EFSA, but so far Denmark does not bring out data about MRSA to EU. We did agree to participate in this MRSA-program led by EFSA, but did nothing ever since 2009.

In Norway and Sweden they did something to get rid of this pig-bacteria. In these two countries very few pigs has MRSACC398.

In Danish hospitals the doctors are very afraid that they and the patients may be infected by MRSA. It´s very difficult to fight these infections – and it is very expensive. A MRSA-patient cost double up. Every year 400 people die from staphylococcus – but so far very few from MRSACC398 (the pig-MRSA).

Denmark should be able to do a lot more to fight these antibiotic resistant bacteria. Alexander Fleming would be turning in his grave if he knew about penicillin usage  these days.

The Dance of Death

Chris Hedges

The ruling corporate elites no longer seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism. Wars and military “virtues” are celebrated. Intelligence, empathy and the common good are banished. Culture is degraded to patriotic kitsch. Education is designed only to instill technical proficiency to serve the poisonous engine of corporate capitalism. Historical amnesia shuts us off from the past, the present and the future. Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages. State repression is indiscriminant and brutal. And, presiding over the tawdry Grand Guignol is a deranged ringmaster tweeting absurdities from the White House.

The graveyard of world empires—Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian—followed the same trajectory of moral and physical collapse. Those who rule at the end of empire are psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants, the equivalents of the depraved Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, Tiberius and Commodus. The ecosystem that sustains the empire is degraded and exhausted. Economic growth, concentrated in the hands of corrupt elites, is dependent on a crippling debt peonage imposed on the population. The bloated ruling class of oligarchs, priests, courtiers, mandarins, eunuchs, professional warriors, financial speculators and corporate managers sucks the marrow out of society.

The elites’ myopic response to the looming collapse of the natural world and the civilization is to make subservient populations work harder for less, squander capital in grandiose projects such as pyramids, palaces, border walls and fracking, and wage war. President Trump’s decision to increase military spending by $54 billion and take the needed funds out of the flesh of domestic programs typifies the behavior of terminally ill civilizations. When the Roman Empire fell, it was trying to sustain an army of half a million soldiers that had become a parasitic drain on state resources.

“The death instinct, called Thanatos by post-Freudians, is driven by fear, hatred and violence.”

The complex bureaucratic mechanisms that are created by all civilizations ultimately doom them. The difference now, as Joseph Tainter points out in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” is that “collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole.”

Civilizations in decline, despite the palpable signs of decay around them, remain fixated on restoring their “greatness.” Their illusions condemn them. They cannot see that the forces that gave rise to modern civilization, namely technology, industrial violence and fossil fuels, are the same forces that are extinguishing it. Their leaders are trained only to serve the system, slavishly worshipping the old gods long after these gods begin to demand millions of sacrificial victims.

“Hope drives us to invent new fixes for old messes, which in turn create even more dangerous messes,” Ronald Wright writes in “A Short History of Progress.” “Hope elects the politician with the biggest empty promise; and as any stockbroker or lottery seller knows, most of us will take a slim hope over prudent and predictable frugality. Hope, like greed, fuels the engine of capitalism.”

The Trump appointees—Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Steve Mnuchin, Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross, Rick Perry, Alex Acosta and others—do not advocate innovation or reform. They are Pavlovian dogs that salivate before piles of money. They are hard-wired to steal from the poor and loot federal budgets. Their single-minded obsession with personal enrichment drives them to dismantle any institution or abolish any law or regulation that gets in the way of their greed. Capitalism, Karl Marx wrote, is “a machine for demolishing limits.” There is no internal sense of proportion or scale. Once all external impediments are lifted, global capitalism ruthlessly commodifies human beings and the natural world to extract profit until exhaustion or collapse. And when the last moments of a civilization arrive, the degenerate edifices of power appear to crumble overnight.

Sigmund Freud wrote that societies, along with individuals, are driven by two primary instincts. One is the instinct for life, Eros, the quest to love, nurture, protect and preserve. The second is the death instinct. The death instinct, called Thanatos by post-Freudians, is driven by fear, hatred and violence. It seeks the dissolution of all living things, including our own beings. One of these two forces, Freud wrote, is always ascendant. Societies in decline enthusiastically embrace the death instinct, as Freud observed in “Civilization and Its Discontents,” written on the eve of the rise of European fascism and World War II.

“It is in sadism, where the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense and yet at the same time fully satisfies the erotic urge, that we succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into its nature and its relation to Eros,” Freud wrote. “But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinary high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfillment of the latter’s old wishes for omnipotence.”

The lust for death, as Freud understood, is not, at first, morbid. It is exciting and seductive. I saw this in the wars I covered. A god-like power and adrenaline-driven fury, even euphoria, sweep over armed units and ethnic or religious groups given the license to destroy anything and anyone around them. Ernst Juenger captured this “monstrous desire for annihilation” in his World War I memoir, “Storm of Steel.”

A population alienated and beset by despair and hopelessness finds empowerment and pleasure in an orgy of annihilation that soon morphs into self-annihilation. It has no interest in nurturing a world that has betrayed it and thwarted its dreams. It seeks to eradicate this world and replace it with a mythical landscape. It turns against institutions, as well as ethnic and religious groups, that are scapegoated for its misery. It plunders diminishing natural resources with abandon. It is seduced by the fantastic promises of demagogues and the magical solutions characteristic of the Christian right or what anthropologists call “crisis cults.”

Norman Cohn, in “The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements,” draws a link between that turbulent period and our own. Millennial movements are a peculiar, collective psychological response to profound societal despair. They recur throughout human history. We are not immune.

“These movements have varied in tone from the most violent aggressiveness to the mildest pacifism and in aim from the most ethereal spirituality to the most earth-bound materialism; there is no counting the possible ways of imagining the Millennium and the route to it,” Cohen wrote. “But similarities can present themselves as well as differences; and the more carefully one compares the outbreaks of militant social chiliasm during the later Middle Ages with modern totalitarian movements the more remarkable the similarities appear. The old symbols and the old slogans have indeed disappeared, to be replaced by new ones; but the structure of the basic phantasies seems to have changed scarcely at all.”

These movements, Cohen wrote, offered “a coherent social myth which was capable of taking entire possession of those who believed in it. It explained their suffering, it promised them recompense, it held their anxieties at bay, it gave them an illusion of security—even while it drove them, held together by a common enthusiasm, on a quest which was always vain and often suicidal.

“So it came about that multitudes of people acted out with fierce energy a shared phantasy which though delusional yet brought them such intense emotional relief that they could live only through it and were perfectly willing to die for it. It is a phenomenon which was to recur many times between the eleventh century and the sixteenth century, now in one area, now in another, and which, despite the obvious differences in cultural context and in scale, is not irrelevant to the growth of totalitarian movements, with their messianic leaders, their millennial mirages and their demon-scapegoats, in the present century.”

The severance of a society from reality, as ours has been severed from collective recognition of the severity of climate change and the fatal consequences of empire and deindustrialization, leaves it without the intellectual and institutional mechanisms to confront its impending mortality. It exists in a state of self-induced hypnosis and self-delusion. It seeks momentary euphoria and meaning in tawdry entertainment and acts of violence and destruction, including against people who are demonized and blamed for society’s demise. It hastens its self-immolation while holding up the supposed inevitability of a glorious national resurgence. Idiots and charlatans, the handmaidens of death, lure us into the abyss.

Huge anti-government swing in Western Australian election

Mike Head

At last Saturday’s state election, intense hostility toward the political establishment, at both state and federal levels, has produced the largest ever swing in Western Australia (WA) against a sitting government. The Liberal Party government suffered a near-16 percentage point swing—losing a third of its vote—reducing the Liberals to around 12 seats in the 59-seat lower house of state parliament.

The defeat for Premier Colin Barnett’s government was far worse than media polls predicted. Up to six government ministers have lost their seats. In some Perth suburban and regional electorates the swings were as high as 22 percent.

Far from being simply a WA issue, the political earthquake there indicates an intensification of the volatility that has ousted one government after another around the country over the past decade. The implosion of the mining boom has made the iron ore- and gas-rich state one of the sharpest expressions of the deep social discontent produced by the destruction of full-time jobs, the cutting of workers’ wages and conditions and the gutting of public services, compounded in WA by the collapse in house prices.

The immediate beneficiary of the rout was the Labor Party, which picked up a swing of around 9.7 percent to give it an overwhelming majority of at least 40 seats in the 59-seat chamber. However, as with previous elections, the outcome will only deepen the ongoing assault on the working class. The incoming Labor government will be a vicious pro-business administration, committed to slashing public spending to meet the demands of global financial markets and backed to the hilt by the trade unions, which will seek to systematically suppress workers’ opposition.

The WA vote has obvious national implications. It was the first electoral test for the political establishment since Prime Minister Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition government narrowly survived last July’s federal election, clinging to a mere one-seat majority. Six months on, the future of his unstable government seems more perilous than ever. If the WA result were reproduced in a federal election, Turnbull’s government would be swept from office, just on the vote in the state of WA alone.

In the last WA election in 2013, the Liberal Party won 47 percent of the primary vote, recording a swing of 8.8 percentage points. The Labor Party was decimated, largely due to hostility among ordinary working people toward former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s then federal Labor government. Gillard was replaced three months later by Kevin Rudd, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a sweeping defeat at the 2013 federal election.

Turnbull tried to dismiss Saturday’s Liberal Party debacle as a product of “state issues.” In reality, the political disaffection generated by the social crisis in WA is mirrored throughout the country, where entire regions are in recession. Moreover, key federal decisions—particularly support for the slashing of penalty wage rates for low-paid workers and for swapping second preference votes with Senator Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation party—only inflamed widespread discontent.

Labor and the unions cynically seized upon the declarations of support by Turnbull and Barnett for the wage-cutting ruling by the Fair Work Commission (FWC). This was doubly hypocritical. The previous Gillard government, and its industrial relations minister, current Labor leader Bill Shorten, ordered the FWC review of penalty rates. For their part, the unions, led by Shorten and others, have already struck enterprise agreements with major retail, fast food and other employers to scrap penalty rates for hundreds of thousands of workers.

The vote-swapping deal with One Nation backfired on both participants. It alienated sections of the Liberals’ electoral and business base concerned that the rise of right-wing populists like Hanson could fracture the political system. The WA Liberal Party’s decision to preference One Nation above the rural-based Nationals, who are part of the federal Coalition, also fuelled rifts in Turnbull’s government. Yesterday, Turnbull and Finance Minister Matthias Cormann, who was centrally involved in the One Nation deal, continued to defend it, against criticism by Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, the Nationals leader.

At the same time, Hanson’s effort to prop up the Barnett government tore to shreds her “anti-establishment” credentials. Hanson had already demonstrated her support for the corporate, financial and political establishment’s austerity offensive by backing 90 percent of the Turnbull government’s legislation since last July. She underscored her backing for big business by endorsing push for the penalty rate cut.

Hanson’s One Nation polled 4.7 percent last Saturday, far less than the 13 percent forecast by media polls at the start of the election campaign. The vote demonstrated that her electoral appeal rests largely on voters seeking to lodge a protest against the two-party pro-business consensus of Labor and the Liberals. Nevertheless, Hanson’s efforts to divert seething alienation in nationalist and xenophobic directions had some success in the most economically and socially devastated areas. In those seats where One Nation fielded candidates, it secured around 8 percent of the vote, ranging up to around 12 percent in Mandurah, on Perth’s southern outskirts and Kalgoorlie, a mining region.

Despite the record anti-government swing, the Greens, with 8.6 percent of the vote, failed to increase their 2013 result, when they lost a third of their support. Having propped up Gillard’s minority government from 2010 to 2013, the Greens are widely regarded as part of the ruling establishment. Yesterday, they declared their intention to work closely with the state Labor government and help push its measures through the upper house, where they may retain their two seats. Greens WA campaign manager Andrew Beaton said the party intended to play a “constructive” role.

Labor garnered votes by opposing the Liberals’ plan to privatise Western Power, the state’s electricity grid, which would axe thousands of jobs and send household bills soaring. But the record shows that Labor governments have been in the forefront of privatisations, ever since the Hawke-Keating federal government sold off the Commonwealth Bank during the 1990s.

Headed by former naval officer Mark McGowan, the Labor government has pledged to the corporate elite to eliminate the annual $3 billion state budget deficit by cutting social spending and public sector jobs. Working hand-in-glove with the unions, McGowan peddled a pro-business, nationalist and protectionist line, paralleling the anti-foreigner rhetoric of One Nation.

“As premier, I will deliver more local jobs, always putting WA jobs first,” he declared. WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Deidre Willmott said employers looked forward to working with the government on “local content” legislation to ensure that WA companies were awarded government and military contracts.

On election eve, McGowan reassured the Australian Financial Review: “I’m very business friendly.” Media magnate Kerry Stokes’ West Australian newspaper called for a Labor victory, citing the disarray in the Liberal-National alliance and Labor’s commitment to “local jobs.”

Trade union bureaucrats likewise hailed Labor’s win. At least half of McGowan’s 20 shadow ministers are former union bosses. The unions’ readiness to suppress workers’ resistance to Labor’s pro-business program was demonstrated by the recent 13-year agreement struck by the Maritime Union of Australia to stifle industrial action on offshore gas projects in return for a commitment to preference “Australian” workers for jobs.

Labor is also committed to US-led militarism. In his election night victory speech, McGowan paid tribute to his long-time mentor, former Labor Party federal leader and Australian ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, who is one of the most vehement defenders of Australian imperialism’s strategic and military alliance with the US.

Threat of war increases in the western Balkans

Markus Salzmann

The political and social crisis in the Balkans is exacerbating conflicts between the successor states of Yugoslavia, heightening the threat of another war in the region.

The entire region has been in a state of acute crisis ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which was fuelled by the United States and Germany. Hardly any country in the region has a stable government. Corruption and crime are endemic and the largest part of the population lives in catastrophic conditions.

Journalist Norbert Mappes-Niediek, a Balkan specialist, remarked recently on broadcaster Deutsche Welle: “Europe is the powder keg. But the Balkans are the fuse. The conflicts are what is 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 all the more easy 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.”

According to the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research (HIIK), 18 conflicts can be observed currently in the region.

Dusan Reljic, head of the Brussels office of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said on broadcaster Deutschlandradio Kultur: “Relations between the Yugoslav successor states in the Balkans have not been as bad for over two decades. In the Balkans—in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo—leading politicians are thinking about how to redraw the borders again, and even talk of the danger of a new war.” According to Reljic, nationalism in the Balkans does not have “a life of its own,” but is an expression of social and economic conditions.

Florian Bieber from the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Graz said, “The idea of a liberal democratic consensus no longer exists.” The crisis of democracy in southeast Europe was visible to everyone.

Kosovo is one of the clearest examples. Formerly part of Yugoslavia, and independent since 2008, Kosovo is an economic and social disaster area. Basically, Kosovo produces little. Over 90 percent of all necessary goods are imported. For years, the amount of cash coming into the country from Kosovans working abroad is higher than that generated in Kosovo itself. Unemployment stands at nearly 50 percent; among young people it is over 70 percent.

The perspective for joining the EU, as promised by Brussels a few years ago, lies in the distant future. Last spring, a half-hearted Association Agreement was negotiated, which is totally unrealistic in view of the conditions necessary for its fulfilment.

A precondition is that Kosovo makes measurable progress in the fight against corruption and organized crime. Since the government, big business and the security forces are deeply involved in these activities, every attempt has been doomed to failure. At the same time, there are influential forces, such as the strongest opposition party in Pristina, urging the union of Kosovo with Albania. The political situation in Kosovo is extremely acute. Last year, there were violent clashes between the government and opposition in parliament. Head of state Hashim Thaci is seeking to channel internal conflicts through an aggressive stance towards Serbia. Last Tuesday, he submitted a bill to increase the size of the army to 5,000 and 2,500 reservists.

This produced such violent reactions in Serbia that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was obliged to intervene. He urged Thaci to establish “direct contact” with Serbia. Kosovo is a de facto protectorate of the Western powers, in which KFOR soldiers are stationed.

Serbia is also witnessing growing nationalism as the social crisis in the country deepens. Serbia has been negotiating accession to the EU since 2014, and has already implemented some of the “reforms” demanded by Brussels. However, given the general crisis of the EU, most member states are increasingly distancing themselves from an actual accession. Brussels has noted Moscow’s influence on Serbia with concern. While Belgrade receives $10 million in aid a year from Moscow, it gets over $190 million from the EU.

The United States and almost all EU member states favour a rapid recognition of Kosovo by the United Nations, but Moscow has used its veto in the Security Council to stop the country joining the UN.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has even threatened to personally march into Kosovo at the head of the army, because the Albanian majority there is allegedly planning war against the Serb minority.

In Serbia too, the collapse of the economy is the reason for the rise of aggressive nationalism. In this context, the SWP warns against leaving six western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) to their economic fate. “Calculations by the World Bank say that even if these countries had six percent growth a year, they would only reach the EU average in 2035—provided that the EU countries had no growth.”

Bosnia, which declared independence 25 years ago, is now commonly referred to as “failed state.” As in Kosovo, poverty, crime and corruption are all pervasive. A country with 3.5 million inhabitants has 150 ministers and 600 parliamentarians who are consciously stoking up conflicts between three ethnic groups.

Bosnia applied for EU membership in February 2016, but its prospects are considered poor. Some 600 EUFOR soldiers are still stationed in the country to prevent outbreaks of social or ethnic tensions.

Macedonia is on the verge of civil war. The political elites have been fighting amongst themselves for months. “In normal times,” the Economist recently wrote, “the world tends to ignore Macedonia and its 2m people, a quarter of them ethnic Albanian. But the world is not ignoring Macedonia now. Western politicians are rushing to Skopje, Russia is issuing warnings and Serbian newspapers proclaim that war is coming. ‘Geopolitical relevance is returning to the Balkans,’ laments Veton Latifi, an analyst.”

In February, followers of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski protested; although the right-wing politician had won the parliamentary elections in December, he has not been able to form a government majority.

Last week, President Gjorge Ivanov refused to give the social democrats a mandate to form a government, although they can form a majority in parliament along with three Albanian parties. He could not agree with this coalition, Ivanov said. It pursues a programme that was devised abroad and endangered the country’s unity, he said. In this way, he is stoking up nationalistic sentiment against the Albanian minority in the country.

The extreme tensions in Macedonia and neighbouring Albania, and the possible interference of Russia, means European and American representatives are reacting nervously. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and representatives of NATO and the US State Department urged Ivanov to reverse his decision.