Ayad al-Jumaili And Islamic State’s Command Structure

Nauman Sadiq

Islamic State’s second-in-command, Ayad al-Jumaili, has been killed in an airstrike in al-Qaim region on Iraq’s border with Syria. The most important fact to note in al-Jumaili’s biography is that was the head of the terror group’s internal security unit and that he had previously served as an intelligence officer in Iraq’s Baathist army until 2003.

Excluding al-Baghdadi who was radicalized in Camp Bucca, the rest of Islamic State’s top leadership is comprised of Saddam era military and intelligence officials. According to an informative Associated Press report, hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top and mid-tier command structure of the Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct its military strategy.

The only feature that differentiates Islamic State from all other insurgent groups is its command structure which is comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that has been provided to all the Sunni Arab militant outfits that are fighting in Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf states.

Moreover, it is an indisputable fact that morale and ideology plays an important role in battle, and well informed readers must also be aware that the Takfiri brand of most jihadists these days has directly been inspired by the puritanical Wahhabi-Salafi ideology of Saudi Arabia, but ideology alone is not sufficient to succeed in battle.

Looking at the Islamic State’s astounding gains in Syria and Iraq in 2014, a question arises that where does its recruits get all the training and state-of-the-art weapons that are imperative not only for hit-and-run guerrilla warfare but also for capturing and holding large swathes of territory?

The Syria experts of foreign policy think tanks also seem to be quite “worried” these days that where do the Islamic State’s jihadists get all the sophisticated weapons and especially those fancy Toyota pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns at the back, colloquially known as “the Technicals” among jihadists?

I think I might have serendipitously discovered the answer to this riddle in an unusual December 2013 news report from a website affiliated with the UAE government which supports the Syrian opposition: it is clearly mentioned that along with AK-47s, RPGs and other military gear, the Saudi regime also provides machine gun-mounted Toyota pick-up trucks to every batch of five jihadists who have completed their training in the training camps located at the border regions of Jordan. Once those militants cross over to Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria from the Jordan-Syria border, then those Toyota pick-up trucks can easily travel all the way to Raqqa and Deir al-Zor and thence to Mosul in Iraq.

Apart from training and arms which have been provided to the militants in the training camps located on the Turkish and Jordanian border regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor which has contributed to the stellar success of the Islamic State is that its top cadres are comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers from the Saddam era, as I have already described.

However, a number of Islamic State affiliates have recently sprung up all over the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia regions that have no organizational and operational association, whatsoever, with Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq, such as the Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan, Libya and even Boko Haram in Nigeria now falls under the rubric of the Islamic State.

It is understandable for laymen to conflate such local militant outfits for Islamic State proper, but how come the policy analysts of think tanks and the corporate media’s terrorism experts, who are fully aware of this not-so-subtle distinction, have fallen for such a ruse? Can we classify any ragtag militant outfit as the Islamic State merely on the basis of ideological affinity and “a letter of accreditation” from Abu Bakr al Baghdadi without the Islamic State’s Baathist command structure and superior weaponry that has been bankrolled by the Gulf’s petro-dollars?

To further elucidate this farce by way of an analogy, if a local fast food chain names itself McDonald’s or KFC without the latter’s food recipes and quality control, would the corporate media recognize such bogus fast food chains as the official branches of McDonald’s and KFC? Similarly, if a regional NGO names itself as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch without any organizational control of the latter, would the mainstream media acknowledge such phony NGOs as the official franchises of AI and HRW?

The Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, deliberately and knowingly fall for such stratagems because it serves the scaremongering agenda of vested interests. Before acknowledging the Islamic State’s affiliates in the region, the Western mainstream media also similarly and “naively” acknowledged al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region, too, merely on the basis of ideological affinity without any organizational and operational association with al Qaeda Central, such as al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb.

Unlike al Qaeda which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-West rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of Sunni Arab militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Although the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Recently, the Islamic State’s purported “terror franchises” in Afghanistan and Pakistan have claimed a spate of bombings against the Shi’a and Barelvi Muslims who are regarded as heretics by Takfiris. But to declare that the Islamic State is responsible for suicide blasts in Pakistan and Afghanistan is to contend that Taliban are responsible for anarchy and militancy in Syria and Iraq.

Both are localized militant outfits and the Islamic State without its Baathist command structure and superior weaponry is just another ragtag, regional militant outfit. The distinction between Taliban and the Islamic State lies in the fact that Taliban follow Deobandi sect of Sunni Islam which is native to South Asia and the jihadists of the Islamic State mostly belong to Wahhabi denomination.

Secondly, and more importantly, the insurgency in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan is a Pashtun uprising which is an ethnic group native to Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, while the bulk of the Islamic State’s jihadists is comprised of Sunni Arabs of Syria and Iraq.

Conflating the Islamic State either with al Qaeda or Taliban or with myriads of ragtag, local militant groups is a deliberate deception intended to mislead public opinion in order to exaggerate the threat posed by the Islamic State which serves the scaremongering agenda of security establishments.

America’s Fraudulent Government

Eric Zuesse

Lee Fang at The Intercept revealed on March 31st, that the Republican Party were defrauding the American people with assertions that their Party has an alternative to Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — and that they’ll pass it if and when they come to power. His headline summarized the considerable evidence for this, “GOP Lawmakers Now Admit Years of Obamacare Repeal Votes Were a Sham”, and his article made clear that the Republican Party has no desire to serve the public, in public office, but are total fraudsters, whose sole real goal is to gain power in order to do what their big billionaire donors want done.

This mirrors what the Democratic Party does regarding its Obamacare fraud. As I documented at great length on 3 March 2013, headlining “Why Obama Will Probably Be Low-Rated By Historians”, Obama designed his Obamacare so as to please the medical industries that donate heavily to politics, and he had no real intention of fulfilling his campaign promises, such as that it would include a “public option” which, according to the Congressional Budget Office study — as Jon Walker reported the CBO study — “would on average have premiums 11 percent cheaper than private insurance and the public option would end up also making private insurance cheaper.” And, as my article reported that study, the CBO had actually found that, “It would cost ‘18-percent lower that the average for private health plans,’ so ‘Premiums for the public health insurance option are estimated to be 11 percent lower than those for private plans on the Exchange.’ This would be due to ‘10 percent lower administrative and margin costs’ and other factors.” Also, as my article pointed out:

Obama had always said that the public insurance option would “help keep the insurers honest,” or words to that effect: it would “keep them honest” by making available to every American a public option competing against the private insurers’ offerings, which needed to pay dividends and capital gains to stockholders, not just medical care to insureds. For example, on 11 June 2009 Obama had told a town hall in Green Bay, “If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down.” 

Obama knew the same dynamics that the CBO study ended up confirming; but Obama didn’t care about truth or the public’s welfare, he wanted to build the public’s support for his plan, even while, in the back rooms (of U.S. Senator Max Baucus’s office, which Obama chose to write the legislation), Obama (his White House aide Nancy-Ann DeParle) never pushed at all, for inclusion of a public option. Her boss, Obama, actually didn’t want it in the plan.

Also, Obama constantly promised that his plan would be “universal,” which actually already exists in all other industrialized nations except the U.S., and it means 100% of the population having insurance for preventative and other basic healthcare expenses. At the time when Obama came into office, 14.6% of Americans were uninsured. By the time he left office, 10.9% were. He had raised the existing 85.4% of insured Americans, to 89.1% insured. He increased the insured percentage by 3.7%, to 89.1% — and that’s not 100%; it’s not “universal.” Not even close.

Another example of our government’s fraudulence is headlined in Britain’s Daily Mail on March 31st, “Latest WikiLeaks release shows how the CIA uses computer code to hide the origins of its hacking attacks and ‘disguise them as Russian or Chinese activity’” which reports that the latest from wikileaks “says the CIA disguised its own hacking attacks to make it appear those responsible were Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean.” The CIA’s ‘finding’ that Russia was behind the wikileaked Hillary Clinton campaign information, is based upon a CIA program to misattribute to Russia (and to other countries the CIA wants to overthrow) things (such as ‘Trump-Putin-gate’) which the CIA itself is actually behind. It’s a U.S. government disinformation campaign designed to promote U.S. coups and invasions.

The CIA was heavy into disinformation when ‘verifying’ the “Saddam has WMD” lies that George W. Bush was pushing.

Jimmy Carter was correct to say that the reality today about the American government is that “Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members.” It’s one “oligarchy” represented by two Parties, sustaining the myth that it’s still a ‘democracy’. The public are trapped between two styles of actually the same oligarchy.

How Fair Is The Media?

Moin Qazi

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
-Walter Lippmann

In an ideal world, journalism is a profession of incredible integrity. Good journalists are amongst the most dexterous and skilled people in the world—and also the most respected. We have all benefited from the work of indefatigable journalists who put life, limb, family and even sanity on the line for   truth. There is no sane, decent, and democratic polity possible without journalists who challenge power, relentlessly pursue and disseminate   truth.

In recent times, the noble values of this equally noble profession have suffered considerable and irreparable damage. Some of the desperately ambitious, and  those ideologically rooted in a particular conviction, have taken a dangerously wrong turn, all in the allurement of more web traffic. This is best summed up by the unwritten mantra of many digital newsrooms: ”We might get it wrong, but we’re not wrong for long.”  There is no disputing that, like politics, journalism   is the fastest ladder to name, fame and fortune -the last being true in several, but not all, cases.

Good journalism requires attentive listening to diverse sources, dogged examination of data and other records, and close observation of policies and institutions. It takes time and skill, and requires   support of editors and other news leaders who live in the community and care about it. It does not necessarily guarantee publishers a return in eye-popping   audience numbers.

We must not forget the commonsense lesson that objectivity has been the hallmark of al quality journalism.  Facts are journalism’s foundation; the pursuit of them, without fear   or favor, is its main objective. Exaggerating facts, presenting just one side of the argument or sensationalizing stories is ugly and detestable journalism   As CP Scott, the founder editor of The Guardian has emphasized: “Comment is free but facts are sacred”.

There are a number of ways that a journalist can hold people and organizations accountable for their actions without taking a position. To start with, journalists working on a story must be determined to stay objective, throughout the period of research and investigation. To avoid taking a position, both or multiple sides of the story must be presented. If people or organizations are involved in wrongdoings, then their view as well as the views of those facing the repercussions of their actions must be made clear. It is not up to the journalist to help shape the reader’s perspective, especially, while reporting a story or doing a feature, therefore, one should avoid taking a stand. Sometimes, simply pursuing a story, because personal interests could be at stake, amounts to taking a position.

In journalism, like in law, facts can be presented to support or disprove an incident, an action or a decision. Being aware of this, can help journalists understand that facts have to be presented not as one would like them to be read to fit a notion or a brief, but as they have occurred.

Readers and viewers are now immediately taking comments from their peers, seeing additional points of view on the blogosphere, and even hearing directly from companies and sources that may be the subject of a story. No longer do reader letters take days or weeks to publish–and that was only after they’d been edited down to bite-sized, consumable blip–after a story’s news cycle has already passed

While it is vital for journalists to keep a healthy distance from the subjects they cover and the source material they call upon, the good news is that we’ve arrived at a point where content is ubiquitous, and the very participation of multiple parties has resulted in a much more dynamic, energized and exciting form of journalism. That means the current generation of news consumers are the beneficiaries of a rich conversation that occurs among sources, the press and the public–which, in the end, churns out sometimes  really   marvelous content.

Liberalization   has ushered in so many news channels and newspapers that it has become a tough challenge for newsmen to differentiate themselves from the flock. While lauding investigative journalism and judicial activism, the Supreme Court had cautioned about the possible abuses that could creep in. Activism can have its dangers. Poorly calibrated, it can make bad problems worse.

The real challenge for today’s journalists is that what journalists value and what their audiences value are often frustratingly misaligned. In an environment where trust is no longer the default — where reading your daily newspaper in the morning and watching a news broadcast at night have moved from standard to niche behavior — doing great journalistic work isn’t enough.

In the pursuit of truth and fairness, no price is too high to pay. One should make that extra call, take that extra trip, visit that additional source – then do it all over again until one is truly convinced that the story is as accurate, as fair and as thorough as humanly possible.

Let us not forget that there was a generation of journalists in whose hands a mystic transference took place with each clack of the typewriter imprinting a journalistic legacy on the next generation. Stamped indelibly on our formative minds when we were training for journalism was the line; ”every time a grand editor puts a finger to a typewriter, he sits back to hear the crash of falling governments.”

The  primary mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained. The public expects that of us as the least reciprocation of their trust. If we fail to pursue the truth and to tell it unflinchingly—because we’re fearful that we’ll be unpopular, or because powerful interests will assail us, or because we worry about financial repercussions to advertising or subscriptions—the public will not forgive us.

For this to happen, the media will have to walk that extra mile. As John Pilger advises in his book Hidden Agendas, “It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.”

I remember a young journalist who was desperate to make to the big media during the farm crisis in central India which was marked by an epidemic of farmer suicides .He was always on the hunt for a story that would catapult him to the national league. He coldly hunted stories for a page-one byline. And he landed on one.  Within hours of reaching the destination, which happened to be a small village, his story was ready – a villainous moneylender killed by long-suffering villagers. But the young inquisitive journalist had also unearthed a disconcerting fact: the moneylender was a kind-hearted, generous man whose death was being used to intimidate other moneylenders. In case of genuine problems, outstanding loans of penniless families were      written off by the moneylender, but the politically well-connected and dangerous moneylenders planned a brutal retribution. The young journalist hates the half-truth he reports, but covets the byline it gets him?’

Trump In Outer Space: The NASA Bill

Binoy Kampmark

“You could send Congress to space.”

Senator Ted Cruz, Mar 21, 2017

The NASA authorisation bill was another Trump huff and puff show, brimming with the usual air of minted if misplaced confidence.  “My fellow Americans, this week in the company of astronauts I was honoured to sign the NASA Transition Authorization Act right into law.”

The bill was meant to “renew our national commitment to NASA’s mission of exploration and discovery, and we continue a tradition that is as old as mankind.  We look to the heavens with wonder and curiosity.”  Ever hackneyed, always banal, and fastidiously clichéd – Trump’s touch of the reality show cannot be faulted on that level. The heavens may be gazed at, but what matters in Trumpland are earthbound desires fuelled by conventional concerns for finance and what sells.

Packaging is all in such promotional endeavours, even if it supposedly entails the same gift that has been provided for years.  “The bill will make sure that NASA’s most important and effective programs are sustained and orders NASA to continue… transitioning activities to the commercial sector where we have seen great progress.”

Delivered over YouTube, the video featured the Apollo 11 moon landing and that interplanetary conquistador, Neil Armstrong, taking his “one small step” for a US-led mankind.  Naturally, celebrations subsequent to gracing the lunar crust were also incorporated.

The Trump bonanza also reflected in his words on the Hubble Space Telescope. “In that tiny patch of sky, the Hubble Deep Field showed thousands of lights.  Each brilliant spot represented not a single star but an entire galaxy.  The discovery was absolutely incredible.”

The theme of annexation and conquest, ever natural to the Trump instinct, is to push the US juggernaut into a messianic gear, driving exploration (or conquest?) further. The sense here is that Mars is up for grabs, a patch of real estate to be acquired sooner rather than later.  Commerce is there to be embraced, and national space agencies such as NASA are the front running agents.

The mission here is less one for humanity as one for US business, though much of this direction will become evident with the role of the National Space Council, which has made another appearance. “So many people and so many companies are so into exactly what NASA stands for.  So the commercial and the private sector will get to use these facilities, and I hope they’re going to be paying us a lot of money, because they’re going to make great progress.”

Very terrestrial, is Trump, and the organisation is hardly going to be getting funds to be scientific so much as aspiringly entrepreneurial.  For that reason, he sees sense in encouraging NASA’s Commercial Crew program, an agency initiative involving sending astronauts to and from the International Space Station using commercial spacecraft.

In a structural sense, the astronaut fraternity are at odds about the usefulness of a re-established Space Council.  Without backing from other White House offices, argues Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com, it would merely be “a waste of resources” (Space.com, Dec 29, 2016).  Having been tried from 1958 to 1973, and again from 1989 to 1993, disposition to such a body has been fickle at best, seen often as more of a political instrument than a holistically dedicated one.

Much of that sentiment is driven by bureaucratic friction, the sort of fractiousness that instils adversarial dispositions rather than cooperative ones.  To get to space in a coordinated fashion is a difficult business, given the range of commercial, civilian and military ingredients that make up the policy.

The report card on that subject drawn up by James Vedda, senior policy analyst at The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy in Arlington, Virginia, is far from glowing. Mistakes are bound to be repeated “if the administration establishes a space advisory mechanism that is too cumbersome, too far removed from senior decision makers, or poorly staffed.”

Scrapping over the budget pie and available resources tends to encourage that sort of sentiment.  In the words of Apollo astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, such a council, chaired by the Vice President, “might add clear White House support for the program, but it also would add another layer of bureaucracy on top of the [Office of Management and Budget].”

Buzz Aldrin, the second member of humanity to take steps on the moon, slants it differently, seeing such a body as “absolutely critical in ensuring that the president’s space priorities are clearly articulated, and effectively executed.”

Senator Ted Cruz may have been teasing with his remark to Trump about sending Congress to space. But Trump is exactly the sort of person who would approve.  He might even approve keeping them in astral isolation and deaf to the world, whatever the actual scientific merits of NASA’s next grand mission.  Things on the ground are ugly, and there are going to get more acrimonious.  No agency is going to spared bruising in the era of Trump.

East coast of Australia hit by catastrophic floods

Oscar Grenfell 

Large swathes of northern New South Wales (NSW) and south-eastern Queensland have been hit by catastrophic floods in the aftermath of tropical Cyclone Debbie, which made landfall last Tuesday.

The flooding followed the transformation of the cyclone into an intense system of storm clouds, leading to massive rainfalls. Areas near Queensland’s Gold Coast hinterland registered up to 900 millimetres of rain in 48 hours last week, well over the average annual rainfall in some of the country’s major cities, such as Melbourne.

Five people have perished in the floods and at least three people are missing in Queensland, prompting fears that the death toll will continue to rise over the coming days. Thousands of homes have been inundated by floodwaters, with many rendered uninhabitable. Five areas in northern NSW were officially declared disaster zones on Friday.

Thousands of people are still unable to return to their homes and thousands more are without electricity and other essential services.

While waters have begun to recede in parts of northern NSW, the flood crisis is far from over. Rockhampton, a regional city in central Queensland with a population of around 80,000, is set to be hit today by its worst floods since 1954. At least 5,400 homes and businesses in low-lying areas are threatened with inundation.

The city of Lismore in northern NSW, and neighboring towns, including Murwillumbah and Chinderah, were among the worst affected when waters struck the area late last week, in the worst flood disaster since 1974.

Lismore residents have begun returning to the city and surveying the damage. Naomi Tarrant, from the Lismore Environment Centre told the ABC last night, “It’s a disaster zone, it really is. Just mud and debris and concerned people everywhere—people cleaning out their businesses... It’s so inconceivable what’s been lost down town here.”

Pictures posted online from Lismore show houses and businesses gutted by flood waters and front lawns strewn with damaged household objects.

Residents have told of harrowing experiences when Lismore’s central business district (CBD) was completely submerged by floodwaters on Friday, after a number of suburbs had been engulfed over the previous days.

One man was rescued from the wall of a church as floodwaters swirled around him. Others sought refuge on the roofs of their homes. Some reported seeing people clinging to trees to survive. In Murwillumbah, 45 people were trapped in an art gallery on Thursday, and were not able to move to higher ground until Saturday.

A 36-year-old woman died in flood waters at a property 20 kilometres south of Murwillumbah. A 46-year old man died after his home, near the town, was flooded. A 47-year-old man was killed south of the town when his caravan was struck by flood waters. A 64-year-old woman perished on Thursday after her car was swept off a causeway at Gungal, in the Hunter Valley region.

In Queensland, a 77-year-old man died in the town of Eagleby after he was caught in rapidly rising waters on Friday.

Questions have emerged over the severity of the Lismore floods. The city centre was rapidly engulfed on Friday after floodwaters breached a flood levee. Constructed in 2005, the levee was designed to withstand only a one-in-ten-year flood, meaning that it was not built to cope with floods of last week’s magnitude.

Over the weekend, the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian denounced people in the area who “did not follow instructions” to evacuate. She claimed that the seriousness of the floods was not anticipated because forecasts underestimated rainfalls.

A number of residents around Lismore, however, have said that they had little chance to escape the flood. Phillip Roberts, from Wyralla, a town near Lismore, told the Sydney Morning Herald, “They tell everyone in the towns what’s going on but further downstream, you’re sort of in the dark until that knock on the door from police. We got told, ‘This is a 100-year flood, you need to go.’ But we had nowhere to go.”

There are also fears that a number of the city’s small businesses will be forced to close. Many face the prospect of weeks without trading. Numbers of businesses and homes in the city were not insured as a result of exorbitant premiums, with some insurers reportedly charging up to $50,000 a year for businesses in the flood-prone CBD.

In Queensland, clean-up efforts are still underway after Cyclone Debbie hit last week. At least 270 houses on the south-east coast have been rendered uninhabitable while another 1,000 have undergone damage assessments.

Tourists and residents in some of the worst affected areas have complained of being virtually abandoned by government authorities. Last Thursday, several days after the disaster, people in the Whitsunday region were being told not to drink tap water.

Food shortages have also been reported, with one woman telling the Townsville Bulletin that she had nothing to eat but tins of baked beans and bread after the unit she was staying at on Hamilton Island lost its roof during the cyclone.

She said that residents were at the mercy of travel agents and shops charging exorbitant prices for basic necessities. “We’ve had no one tell us about food or water, we only know the store is selling stuff which we cannot buy as they’re only accepting cash payment but there’s no way to get money out,” she commented.

Anger has also emerged over claims that not enough water was released from Kinchant Dam, 30 kilometres west of Mackay in eastern Queensland, prior to Cyclone Debbie. The dam was reportedly at 98 percent capacity before the cyclone struck.

Residents of Eton, a town south of Mackay, say that their homes were inundated on Wednesday, after water was released from the dam. They received virtually no warning and were trapped without power or phone coverage.

As in previous disasters, the government response to the cyclone and its aftermath has been manifestly inadequate. Queensland residents who have lost everything are eligible for immediate hardship relief of just $180 per person. Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has called for volunteers to clean up the aftermath of the cyclone and flood, in effect demanding that ordinary people fill the breach left by insufficient government preparation and disaster resources.

In 2011, floods in Queensland killed 35 people and inundated 29,000 homes and businesses. The disaster revealed that emergency services were unequipped and unprepared to respond to a crisis of that magnitude and that virtually no flood mitigation measures had been put in place. Six years on, the initial indications are that successive Labor and Liberal-National governments have done little or nothing to rectify the situation.

Australian opposition parties block extradition treaty with China

James Cogan

The Liberal-National coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced last week to renege on undertakings given to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that Australia would implement a long-delayed extradition treaty with Beijing.

Senator Cory Bernardi, a right-wing renegade who split from the government in February, led the campaign against the treaty, backed by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott within the governing parties. Ensuring the total humiliation of Turnbull, the Labor opposition joined with the Greens, Bernardi and other right-wing senators, to declare it would block any agreement in the parliament.

Capping off the debacle, Turnbull appears to have told Labor leader Bill Shorten that the legislation would not be introduced before speaking with his own cabinet and foreign minister, Julie Bishop. Shorten exploited the government’s disarray by rushing to call a press conference last Tuesday morning and publicly announced the decision himself.

The proposed extradition treaty was first signed between China and Australia in 2007, in the final months of the Coalition government headed by John Howard. The Labor governments that followed―under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Rudd once again―used their lack of a majority in the upper house of parliament to justify not introducing legislation to ratify the agreement. While Abbott was prime minister from September 2013 to September 2015, the Coalition government also delayed ratification.

Last week, the furore around the extradition treaty coincided with the ongoing debate in Australian foreign policy circles about the implications of the Trump administration and its “America First” agenda for US-Australian relations. Explicit calls have been made by former politicians and diplomats for Canberra to distance itself from Washington and to instead forge closer ties with China on the grounds it is Australia’s largest trading partner and will supplant American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.

In response, the pro-US constituency has argued that the Australian government must align with the Trump administration’s confrontational stance against China, partly to try and gain exemptions for Australian corporate interests from Trump’s threats to pursue protectionist policies.

Turnbull’s decision to proceed with the treaty was almost certainly a concession offered to China during Li Keqiang’s visit to Australia from March 22 to March 26. China made a range of economic overtures to Australian business, as part of a broader diplomatic effort by Beijing to strengthen the wing of the Australian establishment that is arguing for a shift away from Washington.

The extradition issue was seized upon by the pro-US wing to strike back. With shameless cynicism, the US and Australia are held up by the propagandists of this layer as examples of “democracies” based on “liberal values,” whereas China is labelled both a totalitarian state and a threat to the US-dominated “global rules-based order.”

Cory Bernardi, who has declared his intention to build a political movement in Australia modelled on the policies of the Trump administration, conducted his campaign to block the treaty on an openly anti-Chinese and pro-US basis. He railed against China’s human rights record and its judicial system, highlighting the fact that guilty verdicts were brought down in 99.9 percent of cases heard by Chinese courts in 2015. He particularly denounced any treaty on the grounds that none of Australia’s “Five Eyes” partners―the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand―has extradition arrangements with China.

As American whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed, the “Five Eyes” group collaborate to carry out the pervasive spying of global communications, including those of their own citizens.

Tony Abbott likewise denounced the proposed ratification of the treaty on human rights grounds, declaring last Tuesday that “China’s legal system has to evolve further before the Australian government and people could be confident that those before it would receive justice according to law.” Within the Coalition, Abbott is considered one of the ardent advocates of the closest strategic and military ties with Washington. The prospect was even raised in the media that he could have crossed the floor of parliament to vote against legislation.

The initial statements by Labor’s Shorten suggested that there were differences within the Labor leadership over whether to support or oppose the legislation. Shorten declared last Monday: “We’re currently considering this matter very carefully. It is a matter of great importance. It goes to questions of our relationship with China. It goes though, of course, to human rights, and it goes to questions of law.”

After a meeting of the entire Labor parliamentary caucus last Tuesday morning, the decision was taken to side with Bernardi and Abbott.

The human rights rhetoric from conservative and Labor politicians alike is transparent hypocrisy, to conceal the underlying strategic calculations as to whether to deliver a diplomatic rebuff to the Chinese regime. The Australian ruling class has not the slightest concern for the democratic and social rights of the Chinese people. The political repression by the Chinese regime is precisely what enforces the appalling wages and working conditions from which Australian companies, along with other transnational corporations, reap vast profits. The Australian establishment has no qualms about maintaining extradition treaties with the Gulf state monarchies—among the most dictatorial regimes on earth.

Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian and one of the more vocal pro-Washington media commentators, could not restrain his delight over the collapse of Turnbull’s extradition agreement, hailing it as a “great day for democracy.”

He declared: “No country other than China makes a remotely comparable effort to manipulate, coerce and control the political activities of its diaspora population in Australia as China does. And no other country has China’s ability to pressure an Australian government. This appalling treaty would institutionalise that manipulation and invite that pressure.”

The portrayal of Chinese-Australians as a potential fifth column on Beijing’s behalf has become a ubiquitous theme in the demands within the ruling elite that Australia remain in the closest alignment with Washington.

Historically, the country with the greatest ability to pressure an Australian government, is the United States. As recently as June 2010, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was ousted in an overnight inner-Labor Party coup in large part because of Washington’s dissatisfaction with his foreign policy orientation. Continuous pressure has been applied to every government since to fully back the US anti-China “pivot to Asia” under the Obama administration, the expansion of US bases and operations in Australia, the further integration of the American and Australian militaries and the deployment of Australian troops back to the Middle East. Under Trump, the pressure for assistance from Canberra remains relentless.

The Chinese regime’s response to the Australian government’s reneging on the extradition treaty has been muted. Instead of issuing a formal criticism of the human rights rhetoric in Canberra, it allowed Chinese-born Australian permanent resident Chonygi Feng, who it had blocked from leaving China, to return to Sydney. Just days out from what is expected to be a tense first meeting between Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, Beijing more than likely does not want to add another possible cause of controversy.

Angry protests against the Berlin senate’s refugee policies

Verena Nees 

The governing coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Left Party and Greens in the Berlin Senate has only been in office three months but anger with its right-wing policies is already growing. Last Monday, the construction of a camp using shipping containers to house refugees at the former Tempelhof airport led to fierce protests at a town hall meeting.

Elke Breitenbach, Left Party Senator (state minister) for Social Affairs, responsible for refugee accommodation, held a public meeting in Berlin Neukölln to answer questions and justify the construction of the camp on the edge of the former airport.

Accommodation in metal containers, euphemistically called “Temp Homes”, was “better than in gymnasiums and airport hangars,” Breitenbach said in her introductory remarks. Here, at least, there was some “privacy”.

Local residents, refugees and their supporters who flocked into the hall saw this quite differently. The slogan “New Senate—Same old Politics!?” was printed on numerous placards that met the Senator for Social Affairs, and in the hall there was a banner emblazoned, “Integration instead of ghettos.”

Since the beginning of February, the contractor has been busy unloading shipping containers on a large fenced area next to the tarmac of the former Tempelhof airport. A total of 976 containers for four to six people have been placed there. Starting this summer, up to 1,140 refugees are to be moved there, including around 550 people who currently still live in airport hangars. According to Breitenbach, the containers were “just temporary” accommodation for a period of up to three years.

Now the first rows of containers have been installed and resemble nothing less than military-style barracks. There are no trees to provide shade for the metal shacks, which in summer will face merciless heat from the sun, and icy winds in winter.

“How can we heat them in winter”, a woman who had fled from Afghanistan asked, one of those who has had to live in the airport hangar for a year and who came to the meeting with other women refugees. “How can a family fit into such a small space? Are we allowed to receive visitors? And why is there a fence? People will stare at our kids like caged animals in the zoo.” The women were not convinced that the temporary sheds represent any improvement over the hangars.

With the construction of the refugee ghetto at Tempelhof, the so-called “Red-Red-Green” coalition in the Berlin state assembly, which the Left Party had touted as a turn towards a more humane refugee policy, is continuing the policies of the outgoing grand coalition of the SPD and Christian Democrats. The Left Party is now itself directly responsible for the treatment of refugees.

Breitenbach justified her actions saying, “A ghetto yes, there are fences—for forensic reasons”. She admitted that, “Nicer accommodation looks different,” but the hangars and the ICC exhibition hall were worse ghettos.

There was no other choice, Breitenbach insisted, as she was repeatedly interrupted by catcalls and angry heckling. One must temporarily fall back on “Temp Homes”, even if one did not want to do this, and it was very expensive, she said. Nevertheless, she noted that well over ten thousand refugees were currently living in “precarious conditions”, in gymnasiums and other makeshift shelters.

Claiming that the Left Party preferred to accommodate them in regular apartments Breitenbach insisted that these were not so easy to find. She wisely chose not to mention the policies of the previous SPD-Left Party Senate, which sold off thousands of public housing units to speculators and thus intensified the housing shortage in Berlin.

In the previous SPD-Left Party coalition in the Berlin senate, Breitenbach learned how to recast social oppression as something progressive. From 2002 to 2003, she was the personal assistant to the then Social Affiars Senator Heidi Knake-Werner, a member of the Party of Democratic Socialism, the predecessor of the Left Party, who was responsible for implementing the Schröder government's Hartz IV welfare cuts against the unemployed.

The attempts of the Left Party Senator for Social Affairs and the other representatives on the panel, including the district mayor Angelika Schöttler (SPD) and Monika Herrmann (Green Party), to place the shipping container ghetto in a favourable light was met with resentment and jeers. The applause of a few Left Party cheerleaders scattered around the hall sounded pathetic.

State Secretary Dr. Sudhof (SPD), who was also on the podium, highlighted the “precarious” housing situation of refugees in Berlin. Sudhof presented a graph which showed there were still 15,900 people housed in emergency shelters in Berlin in February 2017, while in the rest of Germany the figure was just 4,100.

The numbers speak for themselves. Sudhof, who had already served as Finance Senator under Dieter Glietsch, could not have emphasized more graphically the impact of the catastrophic refugee policy in Berlin, for which the SPD has been responsible for years at the head of the Berlin Senate. Glietsch was formerly chief of police of the Red-Red coalition and was hired by the grand coalition that followed under the same mayor Michael Müller (SPD) as a refugee manager.

The arguments used by Glietsch to justify the quartering of refugees in the Tempelhof hangars at the town meeting in early 2016 still resound: In an emergency, one must “push down” one’s own minimum standards, but this was only temporary. The words of the Red-Red-Green Senate representatives regarding the Temp Homes sound just the same.

The greatest expressions of anger at last Monday’s meeting were directed against the Left Party, which had announced a change in social policy and the better integration of refugees following the election.

Some participants engaged in a heated argument with those on the podium regarding the location of the containers away from the airport hangars. They expressed the suspicion that the Senate had other plans for the tarmac and was starting the redevelopment of Tempelhof Field by the back door.

“I voted for you, because last September, the Left Party, Greens and Pirate Party had promised they would not change the Tempelhof law,” one woman shouted angrily. “And now the Left Party is sitting up there and implementing the policies of the SPD! For me, this is a clear indication that there is something else at stake here than a serious solution to the refugee crisis.”

Given the volatile mood in the hall, the spokesman of the Left Party from Neukölln, Moritz Wittler, decided to speak. Wittler is a supporter of the pseudo-left Marx21 group, the German satellite of the British Socialist Workers Party, and which has a base in the Left Party's Neukölln district association.

As is typical of the pseudo left, to some cheers, he directed radical-sounding criticism at the “comrade” Social Senator. “It is impossible, comrade, the way you are dealing with the citizens here, how you are sticking up for the false policies of the SPD?” and, “I demand and expect from our government that it stands up to the mighty of the city.”

Wittler demonstrates the key role Marx21 plays in the current situation, like other pseudo-left groups. They serve as a lightning rod and criticize the policies of the Left Party only to subordinate the growing opposition to the Red-Red-Green coalition. This is the duplicitous game they played after the last election.

The Neukölln delegates submitted a resolution to the Left Party special conference, which rejected the coalition negotiations with the SPD and Greens—only to explain in the next breath that if, as they expected, they did not succeed, they would “critically” support the new state executive.

The atmosphere in the hall became even more heated when, finally, the new leader of the Left Party in Berlin, Katina Schubert, stood up and came to the rescue of Social Senator Breitenbach. She cynically called the audience stupid. They had probably never heard before that one must make compromises in a coalition.

When participants angrily shouted that “compromise” meant locking refugees in an enclosed ghetto, Schubert went on to declare, “Neukölln is a stronghold of the extreme right. We must protect the refugees from attacks.”

Breitenbach, visibly nervous, joined in the chorus asserting that it was necessary to fence off and guard the containers, to know who was staying on the premises. “And for those here who hurl abuse at me, I can dish it back”, she attacked her critics.

The Left Party is showing its true colours on the refugee question. It does not support such a ghetto because there were no better options; on the contrary, integration through housing refugees in apartments in the midst of Berlin’s population is undesired. In line with the federal government’s new asylum and deportation policy, the Red-Red-Green coalition in Berlin aims to deport masses of refugees through so-called “voluntary return measures.”

The meeting confirmed that workers and youth will only be able to organize the defence of refugees independently of the Left Party and their pseudo-left supporters.

Behind the Guardian’s “Laundromat” money laundering exposure

Jean Shaoul 

Last week, the Guardian, posturing as the champion of democracy and good governance, carried a long feature item headlined “The Laundromat.” This lambasted Russia for a “vast money-laundering operation run by Russian criminals with links to the Russian government and the KGB,” via London banks.

The series of articles, authored by Luke Harding and other Guardian journalists, claimed that Britain’s high street banks HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Barclays, Coutts and 13 other UK-based banks took part in a money laundering operation worth at least $20 billion, but possibly as much as $80 billion. Harding claimed the money was laundered for 500 people, including Russia’s oligarchs, Moscow bankers and personnel connected to the FSB, Russia’s secret service agency. The FSB was the successor to the KGB, which ceased to exist in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but Harding deliberately refers to the KGB in the present tense.

The scheme, operational between 2010 and 2014, enabled its perpetrators to evade Russian taxes and customs duties. In an apparent attempt to tar Russian President Vladimir Putin with financial skulduggery, the article claims that one of Putin’s cousins, Igor Putin, sat on the board of one of the Moscow banks with accounts involved in the fraud.

However, while the article implies that Kremlin insiders and hangers-on used the scheme to move their ill-gotten gains abroad, no one is actually named. As it acknowledges, the real owners of the money remain hidden because the cash, allegedly looted or gained illicitly, belongs to companies—often fictitious—registered in Britain that channel it into the global financial system and off-shore tax havens.

The trouble with this breathless account, labelled the “Global Laundromat,” is that it cites no evidence, just anonymous sources, and is full of inferences: “could have,” “potentially,” “could be” and the like, about what purports to be a news story. But it is old news. It first came to light three years ago in 2014 and the scheme was closed soon after, not by the British, but by the Russian authorities. The latest revelations come from investigations carried out by the Latvian and Moldovan authorities.

Much coverage was given to the lavish life style made possible by the Russians’ “dirty money,” including jewellery, furs, clothing, furniture, homeware and expensive private school fees. The theft of state assets that accompanied the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union undoubtedly produced a layer of oligarchs and nouveau riche, but the ultimate beneficiaries of this process are to be found in Wall Street and the City of London.

It is noteworthy that the newspaper of what passes for Britain’s “liberal left” is not overly concerned that UK authorities have done little, if anything, to root out complicity with criminal activities. The Guardian simply said, without comment, that the scale of the operations, involving some $738.1 million, “staggered law enforcement officials.”

The Guardian noted that none of the banks challenged the data, simply reporting the fatuous catechisms recited by all the leading banks about having rigorous anti-money laundering policies in place. The newspaper accepted as good coin their claim that the volume of payments made it impossible to carry out the necessary checks. In that case, how and why was the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)—who made public the documents behind the Guardian’s articles—able to establish that the official owners of many of the banks’ accounts were fictitious or “‘nominee directors,’ based in the Ukraine”? The Guardian does not deign to ask, let alone answer the question.

No UK agency, including the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency, the Bank of England, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), appears to have carried out any serious investigation into the banks’ complicity with money laundering and tax evasion. Yet the numerous scandals involving such criminality on the part of British-based banks have given the City of London the well-deserved moniker of the “money-laundering capital of the world.”

This is in the face of last year’s declaration by the National Crime Agency that, “We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

In so far as the banks have had to pay any penalties for their criminal activities, this has largely been to the US authorities. For example, in 2012, the US Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder oversaw a “deferred prosecution” sweetheart deal with HSBC that required the bank pay just $1.9 billion in penalties for laundering billions of dollars for Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

Last year, the UK tax authority, HMRC, abandoned a criminal investigation into HSBC over claims that it had turned a blind eye to alleged illegal activities of wealthy individuals—including arms dealers that were brought to light by none other than the Guardian and other news outlets around the world. HMRC gave an amnesty to hundreds of the 3,600 UK customers it had identified as potentially hiding money in Switzerland. Likewise, the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, refused to take any action.

Despite this record, the focus of the Guardian ’s article was on Russia and its malfeasance, although it was forced to acknowledge that there had been several Russian attempts to control the illegal movement of money, including taking foreign companies to court, parliamentary enquiries and arrests. In 2014-15, the Russian authorities stripped Alexander Grigoriev, who ran the Russian Land Bank, of his banking licences, and later arrested him. He is still in jail. Furthermore, they shut many of the banks involved in Laundromat.

All this is in marked contrast to the British authorities that noticed nothing suspicious or if they did, turned a blind eye. Yet the Guardian has the gall to comment, “The Russian investigation into Laundromat has been cursory.”

Such a disparity between the Russian and British authorities’ investigations and surveillance points to the real reason why Russia’s “dirty money” was channelled through the City of London. This is due to Britain’s infamous “light touch regulation,” that tolerates financial swindling, the criminal mis-selling of financial instruments, money laundering, interest rate and foreign exchange-rate manipulation and tax evasion. In contrast to Russia, Britain has not jailed, fined or otherwise sanctioned a single top banker.

So where is this hyped-up story coming from, and who is behind it? As the Guardian explained, all the papers relating to the “Global Laundromat” were obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which is part owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

The OCCRP, set up in 2006, is a consortium of investigative centres, media organisations and journalists operating in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Central America. It specialises in investigations into organized crime and corruption. The OCCRP receives funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the United States Department of State, the Swiss Confederation, Google Ideas, and the Open Society Foundation (OSF). The OSF was established by business magnate George Soros in 1993 to support “open government” and civil society groups around the world.

Since 2012, the OCCRP has cynically dedicated its Person of the Year award to “the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption” [emphasis added]. Previous winners have included Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in 2012, the Romanian parliament in 2013; Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014, Montenegro Prime Minister Milo Đukanović in 2015 and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2016. The presidents of the Philippines, Syria, Cuba and Russia, all of whom are anathema to the US, were named on the 2016 roll call.

In other words, the OCCRP is one of a number of US-sponsored NGOs that focuses on corruption as a means of targeting and undermining governments perceived as hostile to Washington’s geostrategic interests. Such propaganda networks are no aberration. In 2014—following the US-orchestrated demonstrations by fascistic forces that toppled the elected, pro-Russian regime of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—US State Department official Victoria Nuland boasted that Washington had spent $5 billion building up opposition, “pro-democracy” groups in Ukraine since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

The Laundromat articles are “journalism” at its basest, in the service of US and British geo-strategic interests. The Guardian is playing a central role in this, having for years proselytised for the western imperialist powers in an anti-Russian campaign. Harding, the lead author of the Laundromat “exclusives,” was formerly the Guardian’s correspondent in Moscow. The newspaper supported the western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, employing allegations of Russian aggression to press for punitive sanctions against Moscow. Harding gave the fascistic forces who led the coup in Ukraine a clean bill of health in a March 2014 article headlined, “Ukraine uprising was no neo-Nazi power-grab.” Since then, the Guardian has only become more hysterical in churning out anti-Russian propaganda that is McCarthyite in character.

Trump administration plans economic and military offensive against Africa

Thomas Gaist 

The near-total silence of the Trump administration over its plans for the African continent has become something of a cliche among commenters on African politics. Indeed, the US government is maintaining military-style secrecy over its foreign political activities not only in Africa, but in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the globe.

Despite the relative secrecy, the general outlines of Trump’s Africa policy can nevertheless be deduced from his administration’s opening moves on the continent, when these are understood as the outgrowth of the crisis of American imperialism and the worldwide militarist offensive it has waged since the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than a quarter century ago.

From the outset, the selection of key leadership positions overseeing various US operations on the continent has underscored the hardline corporatist and militarist character of Trump’s agenda in Africa.

Trump has chosen retired US Air Force Colonel Rudolph Atallah to serve as Africa director on the National Security Council (NSC). Attalah was previously director of the US Special Operations Command Sub-Saharan Africa Orientation Course, which prepares US soldiers and government officials for deployment to the region. Trump’s leading choices to head the State Department’s Africa Bureau include Jeff Krill, the former vice president of Kosmos Energy, a company with substantial financial interests throughout West Africa, and retired US Army intelligence officer Charles Snyder.

Its initial military moves have made clear the Trump regime’s determination to intensify the neocolonial African policies of the previous four administrations, pursuing nothing less than the unconditional subordination of the continent’s economies, resources and working masses to the profit-drive of the American ruling class.

During his first three months in office, Trump approved major expansions of the US Africa Command’s (AFRICOM) interventions in Somalia, Libya, Nigeria, and several other unnamed Central and West African countries.

Trump reportedly favors giving US commanders in Africa wide latitude to wage war in complete secrecy, and without direct authorization from the civilian government. The White House has granted American ground forces expanded powers to call in airstrikes against large areas of Somalia, which were officially declared “areas of active hostilities” subject to “war-zone targeting rules” by the Trump White House on Thursday.

The new president is casting aside the pretense, upheld by Obama, that the ever-growing US war operations in Africa are aimed at enabling mutually beneficial economic development. The shape which US-Africa business relations will take under Trump was highlighted in mid-March, when the White House declined to give exemptions from its travel ban to some 100 African business leaders seeking to enter the United States to attend the 2017 African Global Economic and Development Summit.

By contrast, more than 50 African military officials will meet with leaders of AFRICOM at the US military commands headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany in April.

Expressing his enthusiasm at the opportunity to cultivate collaborators among Africa’s national elite, US AFRICOM Commander General Thomas D. Waldhauser gushed: “We’re very interested in listening to our African partners, what some of their concerns are, what they would like from AFRICOM…We’re very, very excited about that.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country which has been the site of some of the worst crimes of imperialism against the African continent, has emerged at the center of the Trump administration’s counterrevolutionary social and economic agenda for Africa.

In February, the Trump administration struck down minimal restrictions on the collaboration of American corporations with mercenaries in Congo’s war-torn eastern provinces. The leaking of the executive order on the “conflict mineral rule,” the only substantive Africa policy document to so far emerge from the White House, has the appearance of a calculated political signal. It sends an unmistakable message of “open season” to American corporations, and to their militarist collaborators on the continent. The order also signals the US government’s commitment to the violent breakup, if necessary, of Congo’s government and the all-out looting of its natural wealth.

The post-Soviet history of the Congo expresses all the essential features of American foreign policy as it has developed during the past 25 years. Over the past quarter century, Washington has smashed apart the political and social order of much of the semi-colonial and colonial world, breaking up the very political order that underpinned US world rule since 1945 on behalf of short-term economic aims sought by dominant sections of US capital. In Congo, just as in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, the US government has toppled governments and established new forms of colonial-style rule, administered by stooge governments, mercenaries, extremists and warlords, backed up by US air support, Special Forces “advisers,” and CIA paramilitaries.

Congo, believed to have the most valuable natural resources deposits of any country worldwide, has borne the worst of Washington’s predations. During the 1990s, while bourgeois ideologists celebrated the “End of History,” the American state orchestrated a proxy war that led to the deaths of some 5.5 million Congolese.

Militias, recruited from Uganda and Rwanda and trained by American commandos, were striking deals with American firms even prior to launching the Second Congo War in 1998. Relations became so close that one mercenary commander was loaned the private Lear jet of a US mining firm.

The “rebel” mercenary forces empowered by the US proxy war have remained in direct control of the minerals ever since. Backed by Washington and the US puppet regimes in Rwanda and Uganda, they function as local rentiers, security forces and slave labor contractors on behalf of American capital.

The incessant struggles between the ever-growing number of militias has devastated the civilian population. Over 70 armed groups are presently active in eastern Congo, including fighting groups affiliated with the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces, Burundian National Liberation Forces, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the March 23 Movement and members of the Rwandan military who organized the brutal genocide in 1994.

Even as the US government stokes wars and corporate plunder across the continent, fueling mass starvation and transforming millions into refugees, the White House has announced billions of dollars’ worth of cuts to famine and disease prevention programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Trump administration has proposed to slash the overall US aid budget by one third. Issued in the teeth of historic famine warnings, with 20 million lives threatened between Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan, and Yemen, the cuts are an especially vicious attack against the most oppressed and vulnerable members of society.

Announcing the cuts, Trump vowed to “reduce or end funding for international organizations whose missions do not substantially advance US foreign policy interests.” Any “savings” generated by these cuts will be wiped out several times over by Trump’s commitment of $54 billion in new military spending.

US foreign aid cuts will fall especially hard on the Congo, whose UN mission is among the leading recipients of US foreign aid worldwide. Rather than financial considerations, the cuts are political measures, aimed at ratcheting up pressure on the government of President Joseph Kabila, under conditions where the Congo is already plunging into ever deeper chaos.

Last week, protests in Kinshasa against the Kabila government led to clashes between demonstrators and state forces. Fighters with the Kamwina Nsapu militia killed and decapitated dozens of Congolese security forces in an ambush in Lulua province. UN investigators have reported discovery of 23 mass graves in eastern Congo this week.

The political purposes of the foreign aid cuts are suggested by the simultaneous demands of the Trump White House for a huge reduction in the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the Congo.

Amid heated rhetorical attacks against the central government by US ambassador Nikki Haley, the UN voted this week to scale down its Congo peacekeeping mission by 20 percent. Haley, who had pressed for a much larger reduction, from 19,000 to 3,000, denounced Kabila’s government in the strongest terms, as “corrupt,” and for “preying on its citizens.”

“The UN is aiding a government that is inflicting predatory behavior against its own people. We should have the decency and common sense to end this,” Haley said on March 29.

Congo’s government served, from 1965 to 1991, as the most important ally of Washington’s anti-Soviet campaigns in Africa. The fact that the American ruling class now demands the total humiliation of the Congo, not long ago a mainstay of the US-postwar order in Africa, is a powerful indicator of the changes that have occurred in the strategic orientation of US imperialism.

In Africa and worldwide, Trump’s policies mark the decisive transformation of Washington into the most destabilizing factor in world politics.

Former South Korean president arrested

Ben McGrath

Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye was detained Friday after a judge granted the prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant at a hearing the previous day. She has been charged with bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets, the same allegations that led to her impeachment and removal from office on March 10. A formal indictment is expected by mid-April. If convicted, Park could face between 10 years to life behind bars.

In approving the prosecutors’ request, Judge Gang Bu-yeong stated, “The need for her arrest is acknowledged because there is probable cause to charge her and a concern of evidence being destroyed.” Park was taken to a detention center where other high-profile figures in the scandal have been held, including her friend Choi Soon-sil with whom she is alleged to have conspired to collect bribes from major conglomerates or chaebol. It is also claimed that Choi had access to state documents and took part in decision-making despite holding no formal government office.

The charges assert that Park and Choi set up two non-profit bodies—K-Sports and Mir—to funnel a total of 77.4 billion won ($70 million) into their pockets in exchange for favors. Lee Jae-yong, the de facto head of Samsung, was arrested in February for handing over 43.4 billion won to gain approval for a merger between Samsung affiliates that gave him control over the conglomerate.

Park is the third South Korean president to be arrested in the tumultuous history of the country’s politics. Two generals—Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Noh Tae-woo—led the country from 1979 to 1993, but were arrested in 1995 for their roles in the coup that brought Chun to power, for the massacre in Gwangju that killed hundreds in 1980, and for corruption. Both were convicted with Chun receiving a death sentencebut President Kim Young-sam pardoned both, supposedly on the grounds of national reconciliation.

The Park scandal led to massive, weekly protests in South Korea beginning in October, during which hundreds of thousands of workers and students denounced not only Park but the chaebols as well. However, Park was not removed simply for being corrupt. Her opponents worked to prevent the movement from developing beyond the control of the existing political establishment. Furthermore, her attempts to build a closer relationship with China led her to fall from favor with the United States, which did not oppose her removal.

The likely Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate and current front-runner for the May 9 presidential election, Moon Jae-in, has benefited the most from Park’s removal and widespread anti-Park sentiment. Moon recently stated after winning the second of four rounds in the DPK primaries, “We need an overwhelming victory in the presidential election if we are to properly reform the country and create a brand new nation following a change of power.”

However, the conservatives were only able to return to power in 2008 under Lee Myung-bak, and then in 2013 under Park precisely because the Democrats were widely discredited in the eyes of the working class.

From 1998 to 2008, Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Noh Moo-hyun enforced the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis. Both presidents carried out mass job cuts and repression against striking workers with the aid of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. The Democrats also deployed troops to Afghanistan and Iraq in alliance with US imperialism. Moon served as chief of staff during Noh’s administration and has attempted to alleviate concerns in Washington, telling the New York Times for example, that he was “America’s friend.”

At the same time, the Democrats are tapping into anti-war sentiment by posturing as opponents of the US deployment of a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-ballistic missile battery in South Korea. They submitted a resolution to the National Assembly on Tuesday calling on the government to seek parliamentary consent for the system while also criticizing China for its economic retaliation against South Korea for allowing THAAD on its territory. This anti-China rhetoric helps legitimize Washington’s war drive against China and North Korea.

The other major parties are also in the process of selecting their candidates. Yu Seung-min of the Bareun Party has already clinched the nomination, but with public support hovering around 2 percent, it is likely he will form an electoral alliance. His party supported Park’s impeachment, splitting with the Saenuri Party, now known as the Liberty Korea Party (LKP). Yu stated he is willing to join forces with the LKP so long as its candidate is anti-Park.

The Bareun Party, which backs even stronger ties with Washington, is clearly concerned over what a Moon presidency would mean. Its policy chief, Lee Jong-gu, stated, “It will be paradoxical to expect a strong alliance with the US if Moon is elected president considering he first protested against THAAD and demanded a decision be left up to the next government, while the US wanted to deploy it quickly.”

The LPK on Friday chose South Gyeongsang Province Governor Hong Jun-pyo as its candidate. Hong has kept his distance from Park while also calling for a broad alliance against Moon, which could mean uniting with the likely People’s Party candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, who has publicly remained cool to the idea.

The People’s Party was formed last year in a split from the Democrats, moving further to the right. This makes an electoral alliance between Ahn and dissatisfied members of the Democrats another possibility. Former DPK interim leader Kim Jong-in left the party in early March, saying he would help play a role in forging an electoral alliance to defeat Moon. His close aide, Choi Myeong-gil also left the DPK on March 29, stating, “I believe Kim will play a pivotal role, and that his role will create a great, successful outcome. And that will make people happy.”

None of these politicians or political parties is capable of solving the crisis of capitalism in South Korea or halting the drive to war. Should Moon win, he will enforce the demands of big business and Washington just as readily as the other candidates. Workers and students should place no faith in him, the DPK, or any organization that calls for supporting this capitalist party.