7 Apr 2017

Turkey’s Dangerous Referendum

Conn Hallinan

At first glance, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive to create an executive presidency with almost unlimited power through a nationwide referendum looks like a slam-dunk.
The man has not lost an election since 1994, and he has loaded the dice and stacked the deck for the April 15 vote. Using last summer’s failed coup as a shield, he has declared a state of emergency, fired 130,000 government employees, jailed 45,000 people—including opposition members of parliament—and closed down 176 media outlets. The opposition Republican People’s Party says it has been harassed by death threats from referendum supporters and arrests by the police.
He has deliberately picked fights with Germany, Austria and the Netherlands to help whip up a storm of nationalism, and he charges that his opponents are “acting in concert with terrorists.” Selahattin Demirtas, a Member of Parliament and co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated People’s Democratic Party, the third largest political formation in Turkey, is under arrest and faces 143 years in prison. Over 70 Kurdish mayors are behind bars.
So why is the man so nervous?
He has reason to be. The juggernaut that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) put together to dismantle Turkey’s current political system and replace it with a highly centralized executive that will have the power to dismiss parliament, control the judiciary and rule by decree has developed a bit of a wobble.
First, the nationalists—in particular the rightwing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—are deeply split. The leadership of the MHP supports a “yes” vote on the referendum, but as much as 65 percent of the rank and file are preparing to vote “no.”
Second, there is increasing concern over the economy, formerly the AKP’s strong suit. Erdogan won the 2002 election on a pledge to raise living standards—especially for small businesses and among Turks who live in the country’s interior—and he largely delivered on those promises. Under the AKP’s stewardship, the Turkish economy grew, but with a built-in flaw.
The 2000s were a period of rapid growth for emerging economies like China, Russia and Turkey. China did it by building a high-power manufacturing base and exporting its goods to the global market. Russia raised its economy through commodities sales, particularly oil and gas. Turkey’s huge spurt, however, was built around domestic consumption, in particular real estate and construction. Indeed, Turkey’s historical strength in manufacturing has languished.
Much of the construction boom was financed through foreign loans, and as long as investors were comfortable with the internal situation in Turkey—and money was cheap—real estate was Erdogan’s Anatolian tiger. But when the U.S. tightened up its monetary policies in 2013, those loans either dried up or got more expensive.
Turkey was not the only victim of U.S. tight money policies. Washington’s monetary shift also badly damaged the economies of Brazil, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. But the effect on Ankara has been to increase the debt burden and fuel a growing trade imbalance. Growth fell from 6.1 percent in 2015 to 1.5 percent in 2016.
The fall of the Turkish lira means imports cost more at a time when Turkey’s private sector has accrued a foreign exchange deficit of $210 billion. Consumer inflation will almost certainly reach 11 or 12 percent this year and the jobless rate is over 12 percent. Among young Turks, age 15-24, that figure is over 25 percent. Almost four million people are out of work and many Turks now spend 50 percent of their income on food, housing and rent.
To add to these woes, the credit agencies Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch recently designated Turkey’s status as “non-investment” and its economic outlook from “stable” to “negative.” Part of the downgrade was based on politics, not the economy. Fitch pointed out that if Erdogan’s referendum passed, it “would entrench a system in which checks and balances have been eroded.”
Businesses are generally not bothered by authoritarian regimes, but they are uncomfortable with instability and a cavalier approach to the rule of law. Erdogan’s erratic foreign policies and the government’s seizures of private businesses whose owners choose to oppose him do not create an atmosphere conducive to investor confidence.
There is growing nervousness about Erdogan’s internal and external policies. Turkey once had a policy of “no trouble with neighbors,” but Ankara is suddenly fighting with everyone. Erdogan strongly supported efforts to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He put troops in Northern Iraq aimed at keeping the Kurds down. He started a war with his own Kurds and bullies and intimidates any domestic opposition.
A case in point is the lucrative tourist industry that normally contributes about 5 percent of Turkey’s GNP. Turkey is the sixth most visited country in the world, but the industry was down 36 percent in 2016, a loss of $10 billion. Formerly, large numbers of tourists visited from Russia and Iran. But Erdogan alienated the Russians when he shot down one of their bombers in 2015 and angered Iran when he went to Saudi Arabia and denounced the Iranians for trying to spread their Shiite ideology and “Persian nationalism” throughout the Middle East. As a result, tourism from both countries largely dried up, hitting Istanbul and coastal cities like Antalya particularly hard.
Iranians and Russians are not the only nationalities looking elsewhere for fun and relaxation. Erdogan’s sturm und drang rhetoric directed at the European countries that refused to let him campaign for his referendum among their Turkish populations—“Nazis” and “fascists” were his favored epithets to describe Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria—has tourists from the West looking to vacation in Greece, Spain and Italy instead.
To label Erdogan’s foreign policy “schizophrenic” is an understatement.
On one hand, he has backed off from the demand that Syrian President Assad must go and is working with the Russians and Iranians—and Egyptians—to find a negotiated settlement to the horrendous civil war.
On the other, he is wooing Saudi Arabia, the major backer of al-Qaeda associated groups in Syria who have made it clear that they are not interested in negotiations or a political settlement. He is also clashing with Russia and the U.S. over those countries support for Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
In one rather bizarre example of schizoid foreign policy, Turkey sponsored a Mar. 14 meeting of 50 Syrian tribal leaders to form an “Army of the Jezeera and Euphrates Tribes” to fight Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria. Beating up on the Kurds is standard Erdogan politics, but how he squares attacking Russia and Iran while professing to support a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war is not clear.
His political calculations keep backfiring. For instance, when Iran signed the nuclear agreement and sanctions were lifted, Turkish businesses were eager to ramp up trade with Teheran. Erdogan’s searing attack on Iran largely scotched that, however, and the Turkish president has very little to show for it. Erdogan calculated that embracing Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies would more than offset alienating Iran, but that has not happened.
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar have a combined overseas investment portfolio of $262 billion, but only $8.7 billion of that went to Turkey. Europe makes up the great bulk of foreign investments in Turkey, distantly followed by the U.S. and Russia.
In part this is because the Gulf monarchies have their own financial difficulties, given low oil prices and the grinding war they are fighting in Yemen. But one suspects that Saudi Arabia is wary of Erdogan’s AKP, which is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis consider the Brotherhood their main enemy after Iran, and they strongly supported the 2013 military coup against the Egyptian Brotherhood government. The recent thaw in relations between Turkey and Egypt has resulted in a chilling of ties between Riyadh and Cairo.
The Islamic State has recently targeted Turkey, in large part as blowback from the Syrian civil war. Ankara formerly turned a blind eye to the Islamic State’s supply lines into Syria because Erdogan wanted to overthrow the Assad government, and replace it with a Muslim Brotherhood friendly regime. Now that policy has backfired on Turkey, much as U.S. support for the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan led to the formation of al-Qaeda and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.
The Kurds have also engaged in a bombing campaign, but that is a response to Erdogan’s attacks on Kurdish cities in southeastern Turkey.
It is not clear how widespread the “no” vote sentiment is, although it supposedly includes up to 100 AKP parliament members worried about concentrating too much power in the President’s hands. Pollsters say a significant number of voters are unwilling to say how they will vote. In the current atmosphere of intimidation, it could mean those “refuse to say’ will turn to “no.” Certainly Erdogan’s prediction of a 60 percent approval has gone a glimmering.
What happens if people do vote “no”? And would Erdogan accept any outcome that wasn’t “yes”?
One disturbing development is the formation of a paramilitary group called “Stay as Brothers, Turkey.” Organized by Orhan Uzuner, whose daughter is married to Erdogan’s son, Bital, the group claims up to 500 members. The opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet calls the group “Erdogan’s militia,” and some members of the National Movement Party say the “Brothers” are sponsoring weapons training and encouraging members to arm themselves. With the military firmly under control following last year’s attempted coup, even a small group like the “Brothers” could play a major role if Erdogan decides he is finished with the democratic process.
Certainly the President is in a bind. He needs foreign investments and tourism to get the economy back on track, but he is alienating one ally after another.
He could tighten Turkey’s monetary policies to staunch the outflow of capital, but that would slow the economy and increase unemployment. He could lower interest rates to stimulate the economy, but that would further weaken the lira.
His strategy at this point is to double down on getting a “yes” vote. If he fails, things could get dangerous.

From Syria to Monsanto: A Moribund System of Deceit and Destruction

Colin Todhunter

Today, as the dominant global power, the US roles out its brand of unfettered capitalism across the world. US citizens constitute just five percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of global energy. Consider the consequences of a US-style model of ‘development’ if it were to be aspired to and copied throughout the world (which it is in places like India and China). The model is unsustainable and based on the premise of endless GDP growth and endless supplies of (finite) fossil fuels to fuel it.
Empire and oil
The US derives its prosperity from oil. It is able to consume goods and resources at such a high level because the dollar serves as the world reserve currency. Demand for it is guaranteed as most international trade (especially oil) is carried out using the dollar. US global hegemony depends on Washington maintaining the dollar’s leading role.
The international monetary system that emerged near the end of the Second World War was based on the US being the dominant economic power (after it watched and let its rivals destroy one another and become indebted as a result of their war efforts) and the main creditor nation, with institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund eventually being created to primarily serve its interests.
By the 1960s, countries like Germany, France and Japan had become industrial competitors and the Vietnam War was bankrupting the US. Not having enough gold to support the dollar, rather than devalue the currency, Henry Kissinger’s ‘diplomacy’ engineered an ‘oil crisis’ to boost the price of oil and Washington since then has been able to run up a huge balance of payments deficit by using the paper dollar as security in itself and engaging in petro-dollar recycling and treasury-bond super-imperialism.
If the transformation of the US into a global superpower was fuelled by its access to oil, the continuation of US global supremacy in the 1970s and beyond has been achieved on the back of oil.
More generally, with its control and manipulation of the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the US has been able to lever the trade and the financial system to its advantage by various means (for example, see this analysis of Saudi Arabia’s oil money in relation to African debt). Washington will not allow its global hegemony and the role of the dollar to be challenged.
The end of the age of oil
Unfortunately for humanity and all life on the planet, Washington deems it necessary to attempt to prolong the age of oil, which is not too surprising given what has just been outlined. This is despite the fact that the decline in oil production will break economies.
In the article ‘And you thought Greece had a problem’ by Norman Pagett, the importance of oil to the modern era is stressed along with some of the consequences of the ‘end of oil’. Its main thrust is that countries like Greece are experiencing energy bankruptcy (not financial bankruptcy), which manifests as financial indebtedness, and that oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia are living on borrowed time.
In the timespan of human existence, the article notes that the ascendance of modern industrialised man, thanks to oil, has been a short flash of light that has briefly lifted us out of the mire of the middle ages. But the trappings of civilisation have not altered the one rule of existence: if you don’t produce food from the earth on a personal basis, your life depends on someone converting sunlight into food on your behalf.
Destroy agriculture, or the resources to produce food sustainably (water resources, seeds, soil fertility, etc.), which is what we are doing (see this analysis of India and the Green Revolution), and, according to Pagett, most people would starve. What we call modern civilisation in the age of oil is fragile. Pagett argues the only reason we became so wealthy in the last 100 years or so is because of the consumption of oil and the consumer products derived from it.
However, oil is running out and becoming more expensive.
In the coming years, we will thus need to place greater emphasis on reconnecting with nature, as we did previously, to produce our own food again and engage in meaningful production and social relations rooted in our connections with the land, seeds, the seasons, harvests and so on (see ‘Monsanto’s Violence in India: The Sacred and the Profane’ to appreciate how these relations have been fractured or destroyed to suit the bottom line of corporate profit).
Pagett notes that for the millions of homeless people living on the streets in our ‘civilized’ cities, civilization is over. With declining oil and higher oil prices, for them there is little hope of a return to prosperity. He also argues that Arabia’s gleaming cities in the desert are built on its oil. It sells oil for food. When the oil is gone, its increasing population will starve as it will no longer be able to buy in essential needs.
On the other hand, Greece is bankrupt. It can’t afford oil imports (like so many other countries whose debt is spiralling as a result). But it has arable land and water. It could have a future beyond oil.
Then there is the UK, which has to import 40 percent of its food, and much of the rest depends on oil to produce it, which also has to be imported. Pagett says it is the end of the UK’s oil age, but few admit to it being the end of a food age as well. It has been argued that the UK has only 100 harvests left because of the degradation of its soils due to intensive industrial farming.
Pagett also looks at China’s cities, the emptying of the countryside and its unsustainable GDP growth, largely based on a real estate boom to build its ghost cities. The more real estate that is built, the higher the GDP figures, the greater the mirage of ‘growth’. It has become a self-sustaining illusion.
What happens when oil runs out or becomes unbearably scarce and expensive? What happens when you have placed all your eggs in oil-based consumerism and productive activities and have destroyed the very basis of traditional agrarian production, as is happening in India, which sustains life and is the genuine generator of employment? What will become India’s 1.2 billion people with no prospects of making a living (see ‘India’s New Rulers Are the World Bank, IMF, WTO and Monsanto’)?
Without oil, we could survive – but not by continuing to pursue the ‘growth’ model China or India are pursuing or the US has pursued.
Without sustainable agriculture, however, we will not survive. And unsustainable agriculture based on chemical-intensive, oil-based inputs goes hand in hand with the ‘age of oil’ model of ‘development’ we see in India and China.
If the film ‘How Big Oil Conquered the World’ shows how a handful of powerful oil interests uprooted traditional beliefs, practices and societies to recast the modern world in their own image – as profound as those changes were – the end of oil could have even greater repercussions that humanity may not recover from.
What is required is a different way of thinking from what we currently have:
“The root problem is the fact that our economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption. Our politicians tell us that we need to keep the global economy growing at more than 3% each year – the minimum necessary for large firms to make aggregate profits. That means every 20 years we need to double the size of the global economy – double the cars, double the fishing, double the mining, double the McFlurries and double the iPads. And then double them again over the next 20 years from their already doubled state.” – Jason Hickel, writing in The Guardian.
US Strategic Objectives and Agribusiness
How can we try to avoid these potential catastrophic consequences, not to mention what appears to be an increasingly likely nuclear conflict with competing imperial powers such as Russia (or China)?
We must move away from militarism and resource-gabbing conflicts by reorganising economies so that nations live within their environmental means. As Jason Hickel advocates, we must maximise human well-being while actively shrinking out consumption levels and ecological footprint. Indeed, Gandhi foresaw this need and described modern societies as being based on a ‘nine-day wonder’ that could not be sustained given the rate of resource depletion.
Key to this involves recognising the key role of agriculture: but not the kind of agriculture being imposed by transnational agribusiness corporations. We need a major shift away from the chemical-intensive industrial model of agriculture and food production, not only because ultimately we will have no choice, but because it has led to bad food, poor health and environmental degradation. The model is unsustainable and has been underpinned by a resource-grabbing, food-deficit producing US foreign policy agenda for many decades, assisted by the WTO, World Bank, IMF and ‘aid’. For instance, see ‘Sowing the Seeds of Famine in Ethiopia’ by Michel Chossudovsky and ‘Destroying African Agriculture’ by Walden Bello.
US agribusiness is a tentacle of Washington’s geopolitical objectives and is essential for colonising indigenous agriculture. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of the oil-rich interests, and poorer nations adopted agribusiness’s chemical-dependent agriculture that required loans for inputs and infrastructure development. It entailed trapping nations into a globalised system of debt bondage, rigged trade relations and the hollowing out and destruction of national and local economies.
Whether it is Bill Gates facilitating the plunder of African agriculture for corporate interests, the World Economic Forum ‘Grow’ strategy or the World Bank ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’ strategy, the aim is to further restructure agriculture across the globe to serve the needs of Western agribusiness companies.
What we see is the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources. And we also see the transnational corporate commercialisation and displacement of localised productive systems.
The current economic system and model of globalisation and development serves the interests of Western oil companies and financial institutions, global agribusiness and the major arms companies. These interlocking, self-serving interests have managed to institute a globalized system of war, poverty and food insecurity and have acted to devastate economies.
How many more Syrias?
Instead of rebuilding highly productive rural infrastructures based on small farms at the local level, the drive is to destroy indigenous agriculture and local economies and accelerate the treadmill towards disaster. We must contend not only with the lies and deceit of companies like Monsanto who claim to be serving humanity’s interests, but we are also bombarded with the more wide-ranging propaganda that fuels the system of ‘globalisation’ which companies like Monsanto are tied to and fuel.
Monsanto’s whole business model is based on conquest (epitomising the ethos of capitalism). It captures markets and key institutions, destroys competition and relies on the US government to maintain its profits and access to regions of the world. It, like ‘corporate America’ in general, relies on the US state to keep the neoliberal agenda on track by facilitating corporate imperialism (aka globalisation) and Washington’s hegemony.
We now have the situation in Syria where deception once again trumps reality as the US seeks to gain support for broadening its military campaign to balkanise Syria and redraw the map of the Middle East. Unfounded claims about Assad using chemical weapons are front page news, mirroring similar baseless claims that occurred a few years back and mirroring the lie of WMD in Iraq. Millions are dead in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan as the US and its allies play out a continuation of a modern-day ‘Great Game’.
We have Western politicians and the media parroting unfounded claims about the Assad government using chemical weapons and lying to the public about it as well as ‘Russian aggression’. All for what? Pipelines, oil and gas. The ‘war on terror’ is a war for resources. It is a war for the benefit of Western capital. It is a war to prolong a dying age of oil, advanced capitalism and easy profits. And these wars and conflicts and the lies to justify them will only get worse as demand across the world for resources grows against a backdrop of depletion.
Whether it is the US, India or China, the need of the hour is to recognise the bankruptcy of imperial endeavours to fuel a moribund system. It has already led to two major world wars. There will be no recovering from a third.
The world is in the grip of a structural war against people, land, economies and ecosystems. It is being waged by organised, institutional criminal interests bent on monopolizing energy, food and violence across the globe. From farmer suicides and failed Bt cotton in India and the impacts of glyphosate in Argentina to war in Syria and beyond, theirs is a neoliberal doctrine of death and destruction.

Radio Free Congo

Martin Billheimer

In Petna Ndaliko Katondolo’s film Mabele na Biso (Our Land) we meet a radio transmitter which has been rigged to run on Palm Oil.  This is extraordinary to be sure, but there is much more to the story. And recall: Africans are necessarily ingenious, while Europeans are brilliant.
The transmitter is part of a larger foreign and local aid initiative undertaken by several organizations in the Isangi territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: France Expertise International (FEI); Radio France International (RFI) Monde, and the regional Groupement des Organizations Villageoises pour l’Auto-Développement (GOVA). The film documents this partnership and also gives a very subtle critique of it. The filmmakers’ uncertainty arises from the nature of foreign aid in general, especially when it comes from countries such as Belgium and France whose prior gifts were ultra-rightist coups and outright genocide. How will these agencies dictate the use of funds? What price will be paid for their guilt or their nostalgia? Which projects will be junked because they aren’t as trendy or ‘clever’ as the transmitter project?
In IMF and the World Bank loans, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are an integral part of aid packages to countries such as Congo and Haiti. These ‘adjustments’ are really the shifting of debt onto a population ravaged more and more by the destruction of social services and other forms of austerity mandated by the creditor in order to ‘balance’ what is essentially a phantom budget. The target country is then forced to sell off its national resources in order to pay off foreign bondholders or face total collapse, with the attendant threat of civil war, coups d’état etc. In many cases the cash never gets there in the first place, but the debt never fails to arrive.
This is hardly just Africa: swarthy nations like Latvia and Greece are also the recipients of this kind of full fiscal dominance. Nations who accept this ‘aid’, by hook or by crook, are forced to return again and again to the Brussels-Paris protection racket that put out the debt leverage hit in the first place. If for some reason a true nationalist or socialist gets into power, there’s always the CIA or NATO to correct the situation. Development and good old hard work… after all, we’re not only good liberals but also good Calvinists.
Aside from the transmitter, GOVA has instituted less modish but even more far-reaching programs: a communal college trust, management of village funds and a plebiscite on their use (details and balance sheets are broadcast live on air, name and amount, to ensure transparency), health care projects which also train local people to become medical practitioners.
The really ‘ingenious’ (brilliant) part of the film is how GOVA manages to work the situation. I wouldn’t doubt the sincerity of at least some of the foreign aid workers involved. Perhaps they are all utterly sincere, but even saints are subject to unintended consequences and the kismet of company portfolios. The same is true of Congolese social workers from the cities, who are often out of touch with the rest of the country and marked by an uneasy relation to the state, like all social workers. GOVA has created a system of communication between the intellectuals and the masses, town and country, agency and subject, which concerns ways of doing as much as it does ways of spending. One of the many fascinating things in the film is how this actually works in practice and how GOVA manages to dance among systems of finance, social custom, and DRC central power.
At the end of Chérie Rivers Ndaliko’s penetrating account of the making of the film and its inherent problems, she raises the possibility of continuing the story in another film as well as the lack of funds to do so. I’d say they’ll figure out a way, after watching this initial installment. She imagines a sequel as a criticism of the original, a pretty fascinating idea for an anti-film as partial remake, a sort of ‘comedy’. The Académie française might even chip in if Alkebu suggested the late Alain Robbe-Grillet at the helm, but probably not.
At any rate, after watching Mabele na Biso, it is obvious that the United States and Europe could use some Congolese aid. Maybe we too could navigate the crowd of sociologists and ‘experts’ who manage only to increase poverty by their scrutiny, all intentions aside.

Pope Francis Meets 4 Imams To Open A Christian-Muslim Dialogue

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Pope Francis Wednesday (April 5) held a private audience with a delegation of four Imams from England who were accompanied by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster. 
Pope Francis told the imams that listening to each other was essential for the common future of humanity as we walk together in our shared lives.
“What we should do to make the human nature better, it’s the work of the ear, the work of listening. To listen to one another amongst us. To listen to one another without making any haste to give a response. To listen to the voice of a brother or a sister and think about it before we give a response. But the most important thing is the capacity to listen.”
Moulana Muhammad Shahid Raza,  Chairman, British Muslim Forum, told the Pope: “Today we are making history. We bring you on behalf, the message of peace and understanding and cooperation.”
Earlier, Cardinal Nichols greeted the pope, thanking him for receiving the audience. The cardinal said: “I also hope that this moment will help the voice of authentic Islam to be heard clearly. We look forward to our continuing promotion of collaboration at a local level at the service of all in society.”
The Rome Reports News Agency quoted Card Nichols as saying: “I think at this time that Christian-Muslim dialogue is particularly important and in a strange way, Catholic-Muslim dialogue in Britain is very important, because the history of the Catholic community in Britain is one of being a minority and of having lived with 400 years of anti-Catholic prejudice.”
The Agency said the goal of the visit was to engage in inter-religious dialogue with the Muslim community, allowing both religions to not only speak, but be heard by the neighboring party, both on the part of the Imams, and Pope Francis and Card. Nichols.
The Rome Reports pointed out that the acceptance of others by Pope Francis is also practiced by Card. Nichols who believes that there is a pathway to be walked toward tolerance of religions in the UK and right now, Catholics want to share their story with the Muslim world.
Cardinal Nichols was also quoted by the Rome Reports as saying that in the UK, Catholicism was originally a banned faith, then persecuted against, reluctantly given space, and now finally is an accepted faith and a major contributor to society.
History has been made at the Vatican and there are many more opportunities for this to continue as the pope has trips to Egypt and Bangladesh planned this year, to carry on this dialogue with the Muslim community at large, says Rome Reports.
It may be recalled that  Pope Francis received in audience in the Vatican on May 23, 2016,  the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed Muhammad Al-Tayyib.  The Director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi said that the Pope and Grand Imam noted “the great significance of this new meeting in the framework of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam.”
Later this month Pope Francis will travel to Cairo and will visit the Al Azhar University.
Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Francis Christian-Muslim dialogue is juxtaposition to his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI who in October 2007 rebuffed a massive outreach effort by 138 Muslim religious leaders and scholars who sent him a letter to in an attempt to improve Christian-Muslim relations.
The letter, titled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” which was also addressed to Christianity’s other most powerful leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, sought to recognize similarities between Islam and Christianity as a way of fostering mutual understanding and respect between the two religions.
It compared texts from the Bible and the Quran to argue that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Both believe in “the primacy of total love and devotion to God,” and both value love of neighbor and a peaceful world.
In a response to the letter, Pope Benedict’s spokesman, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, said that a real theological debate with Muslims was difficult as they saw the Quran as the literal word of God. “Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith.”
Another reading of his comments suggests that the Vatican does not want a dialogue with Muslims unless they change their belief in Quran as a revealed book. Like most Christian theologians, the Muslims have to believe that sacred scriptures are the work of divinely inspired humans.
Tellingly, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran’s comments echoed Pope Benedict’s earlier statement when the Pope hit out at Islam and its concept of holy war during a theological lecture on Sept. 12, 2006 to the staff and students at the University of Regensburg, where Pope Benedict taught theology in the 1970s.
Using the words, “jihad” and “holy war”, the Pope quoted criticisms of the prophet Mohammed by a 14th century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II, during a debate with a learned Persian. “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” Benedict quoted the emperor as saying. “The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable,” the Pope said and added: “Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.”
Manuel II (1350-1425) was the second-to-last emperor of the East-Roman (Byzantine) Empire. As a boy, he had been held prisoner by the Turks, and his dialogues took place as his inheritance lay in jeopardy to the Ottoman empire, and his capital under siege. Only 28 years after his death, Constantinople, the capital of Byzantine empire fell to the Ottomans under Sultan Mehmed II.

Empire’s Aggression On Syria

Farooque Chowdhury

With the pounding of 59 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles on Shayrat airbase in Syria the Empire has widened its aggression in the strategically crucial country. The sounds of destruction announce imperialism’s and aggression, interference and intervention. This is the sound of “peace” imperialism likes to impose on peoples of other countries.
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Donald Trump, the US president, branded Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, a “dictator”, and called on “all civilized nations to join” the US “in seeking to end this slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types.” He said “as long as America stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail.”
But  who  has given the President of America the right to define “dictator”, “civilized nations”, “justice”, “peace” and “harmony”? Is it the “peace and justice”, which have been showered on the Afghan people? Is it the “peace and harmony”, which have been handed out to the Libyan people? Is it not the “civilized nations” – the imperial powers –that carried on acts of armed intervention in Iraq and Libya? The “civilized nations” formulation of arguments is now exposed. None forget the “arguments” formulated by the “civilized nations” prior to their Iraq aggression. Now, the missiles launched from the USS Porter and USS Ross is having their “arguments and logic” in Syria: defending a “vital national security interest”, as Trump has said. It’s the “vital national security interest” of the Empire, not of other countries; and “civilized nations” “should” step forward to defend that “vital national interest”. The Empire is the final investigator and judge as Trump said: “There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons”. Hence, there remains “no” space for multi-national investigations and further arguments. This is imperialist verdict; none to differ!
“Arguments and logic” imperialism relies on and inner-equations that determine imperialism’s path of aggression are also spelled by the missiles-attack on Syria launched from destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean. Recent developments in Syria and its surrounding region, and within the Empire are evidences of the imperialist logic.
What the other facts and arguments tell?
[1] Following a chemical weapon attack in East Ghouta in Syria in 2013, the Syrian authorities agreed to transfer its chemical weapons to international control for destruction so that these weapons don’t fall into the hands of militants operating in the country. Syria also joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons following the chemical weapon attack. The Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in January 2016 that all chemical weapons in Syria had been destroyed. Those were destroyed on board a US vessel, and were destroyed under UN supervision.
[2] Following US vice-president’s recent claims on chemical weapons in Syria the Russian foreign ministry reminded US that all chemical weapons were taken out of Syria by mid-2014 with US assistance. So, there are “no grounds to claim that the 2013 Russia-US deal did not work out”. Russian foreign ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department Director said: The main burden fell on Damascus and Russia. But the US also made important contribution.
[3] Walid Muallem, Syrian foreign minister, said Thursday: The accusations against the Syrian army using chemical weapons make no sense since Damascus has been succeeding in fighting on all fronts. He questioned: In such a context, would it be logical for us to use chemical weapons?
[4] Who shall be the beneficiary of the chemical weapons attack? It’s the opponents of Assad. Shall Assad engage in such act that benefits his opponents?
Doesn’t fairness demand that there should be a multi-national, full-fledged investigation of the reported chemical weapons attack in the vicinity of the Khan Shaykhun settlement in the Idlib province on April 4? The OPCW is in the process of gathering and analyzing information from all available sources. In this context isn’t the US missile attack an imperialist intervention?
The sources of available information on reported chemical weapon attack are the Syrian Observatory and the White Helmets. The Observatory’s capacity to monitor incidents within Syria is questionable. Questions are also being raised about the legitimacy of The White Helmets.
But, it seems, the Empire is always right whatever the source of information are. The Empire is always correct despite its past records false of claims about Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction”. Moreover, has the world forgotten the Gulf of Tonkin incident?
Other twists are there in the Syria-missile-attack-development.
Only days ago, the White House told “the Syrian people should choose their destiny” and “Assad must go”-policy is over. Similar opinions were expressed by other US senior leaders. What has happened within days that led to the missile attack on the basis of unverified reports?
After the missile attack, it was told that the US had given an advanced warning to Russia about the missile strike. But, later, Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, said in a statement: The US did not communicate with Russia either before or after it conducted a missile strike in Syria.
Does this signify anything?
Is there push and pulls by factions within the Empire?
The developments in Syria demand attention as many countries face threat of imperialist intervention. There’s no reason to imagine that country “x” or country “y” is immune from imperialist intervention. Market size, resources to be plundered, geographical location, relations with the world bosses act as factors for imperialist intervention. Imperialist role is forgotten by many while raising voices of opposition.

Rohingya killings expose fraud of Burmese “democracy”

John Roberts

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva last month adopted a resolution setting up an investigation into serious crimes committed by the Burmese (Myanmar) security forces and nationalist thugs against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh.
UN reports dating back to early February document accounts of mass killings, rapes and the burning of whole villages in military “clearance” operations. These atrocities began last October after attacks on Burmese border posts, allegedly by Rohingya militants, killed nine security force members. Since then over 70,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh taking the total number of refugees there to over 300,000, in addition to 140,000 internally displaced inside Burma.
UN reports indicate the commission of crimes on a mass scale. UN officials have estimated that at least 1,000 people have been killed and unknown numbers, particularly of males aged 17–45, are missing. Over 200 refugees were interviewed in eight separate Bangladesh refugee camps. The destruction of villages has been confirmed by satellite images.
The extent of the operation indicates that a systematic pogrom organised by the military, with the complicity of the government, is underway and ultimately designed to drive all of the one million Rohingya out of Burma.
The resolution was a rotten compromise worked out among the 47 nations on the UNHRC. Calls by the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights in Burma, Yanghee Lee, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, as well as 13 international human rights groups, for a Commission of Inquiry (COI), the UN’s highest level of investigation, were rejected.
Instead the UNHRC adopted a proposal from European Union diplomats for a fact-finding mission, including forensic and sexual violence experts to “urgently” establish facts “with a view to ensuring full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims.” The resolution is premised on cooperation from the hybrid military-National League for Democracy (NLD) government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the West’s “democratic icon.” The “urgent” investigation will submit an initial report in September and a full report next year.
In her submission of February 24, UN Rapporteur Lee had called for an inquiry to also examine similar military operations in 2012 and 2014, which were largely passed over until the anti-Rohingya drive reached its current intensity.
The aim of the EU diplomats is to cover up the role of Suu Kyi. Lee told journalists last month that the EU leaders wanted to give Suu Kyi more time before a full-scale investigation was launched and initially opposed any inquiry that did not fully involve Burma’s own investigators.
The NLD shares power with the military that exercised a brutal dictatorship over the country for half a century. It took over from military’s United Solidarity and Development Party government last April but key security ministries remain in the hands of the generals.
Both the NLD and the armed forces are steeped in the anti-Rohingya chauvinism that permeates the entire Buddhist Burmese political establishment. The Rohingya, most of whom have been in Burma for generations and have been terrorised and denied citizenship, are officially described as “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh.
The response of the Burmese ruling elite to the March 24 UNHRC resolution has been uniform.
Burma’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, U Htin Lynn, a representative of the foreign ministry that is under Suu Kyi’s direct control denounced the resolution prior to its adoption saying: “We will do what needs to be done.”
The day after the resolution was passed the foreign affairs ministry stated that Burma “dissociated itself from the resolution as whole” and added “an international fact-finding mission would do more to inflame, rather than resolve the issues at this time.”
Suu Kyi, who has previously maintained a stony silence on the Rohingya massacres, explicitly backed the actions of the military in comments to the BBC yesterday. She denied that there was “ethnic cleansing” in Rakhine, and underscored her government's support for the army's operations, stating, “They are free to go in and fight. And of course, that is in the constitution ... Military matters are to be left to the army.”

Suu Kyi’s comments were in line with those of senior military figures in the government. Army strongman General Min Aung Hlaing, who directly controls the ministries of home affairs, defence and border security, condemned any UN intervention into Burma, stating that the Rohingya were “Bengalis” not one of Burma’s nationalities and therefore had no right to remain in Burma.
The arguments at the UNHRC over what type of investigation should take place were not based on any concern for the democratic rights of the Rohingya or any other section of the population. The differences reflected conflicting economic and geo-political interests in Burma.
The installation of the NLD government in April last year was the culmination of a Faustian deal with the generals, sealed in 2011. It was fostered and overseen by Washington under the Obama administration.
The junta needed to get out from under Western sanctions and its economic over-dependence on China. After years of repression, Suu Kyi and the NLD, representing sections of the Burmese elite seeking closer ties and investment from the West, accepted the role of junior partner to the military and provide a “democratic” façade for the hybrid regime.
The arrangement opened up economic opportunities for both sides as Burma was converted into a cheap labour platform and mineral exporter to the West. The Obama administration prised Burma from dependence on Beijing and established ties with the military as part of its strategy of encircling China.
The EU moved quickly to lift economic sanctions after the deal was sealed, forcing a much faster pace of engagement with the NLD regime than many in Washington planned. International finance circles gushed about Burma being a “new frontier” where abundant untapped natural resources and cheap labour offered big profits.
Burma received $US9.4 billion in foreign direct investment in 2015–2016 with EU members Britain, the Netherlands and France high on the list, and the US well back at 35th.
China’s economic preponderance remains. In 2015–16, Singapore was the greatest contributor with $4.3 billion but China was second with $3.3 billion and still Burma’s largest trading partner. Burmese and Chinese officials announced this week that they expect a 771-kilometre oil pipeline from Burma’s Maday Island to southern China to begin operation in May.
The US and its EU allies cynically exploit concerns over “human rights” in Burma and elsewhere to advance their geo-political interests. The inquiry into the military’s atrocities against the Rohingya minority, while limited at present, is a means of exerting pressure on the regime if it fails to toe the line.

Papua New Guinea government intensifies military operations at ExxonMobil plant

John Braddock

The Papua New Guinea government of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill is moving to intensify its massive police and military operation against villagers in Hela province, where the $US19 billion ExxonMobil liquefied natural gas (LNG) is based.
In January, the government deployed 150 troops and police near the ExxonMobil site in response to what it claimed was a spike in tribal violence that had left dozens of people dead. Security forces were ordered to seize and destroy illegal weapons after police raised concerns about a build-up of high-powered guns.
Police Commissioner Gari Baki proposed last month that the government recruit 500 retired ex-servicemen to help enforce “law and order” in Hela. Baki said the former police, soldiers and warders would be on a six-year contract to train new police officers. Baki announced the plan while overseeing the destruction of over 500 firearms, mostly home-made, surrendered by locals during an amnesty that started in January.
Hela Governor Francis Potape admitted that the amnesty, which was extended twice into March, was largely unsuccessful. Police commander Samson Kua told the media on March 7 that hundreds of weapons still remain unaccounted for. Security forces would be ordered to take “tough measures” to recoup the guns and arrest the owners, Kua declared.
The actual purpose of the police-military buildup, which will involve 300 people, including public servants from the law and justice sector, is to protect the giant LNG project, which has been subjected to protests and blockades by traditional landowners.
Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari said securing the LNG site was a “critical” aim of the operation. “We’ve got a very important project that is located there,” he said. “It supports the economy, employs thousands of Papua New Guineans, so we’ve got to restore law and order.”
Construction of the ExxonMobil operation was originally bankrolled by the US Export-Import Bank. The project is viewed as economically vital by the major Wall Street shareholders that have backed it.
In February, the Singapore-based InterOil Corporation announced a $US2.5 billion deal approving ExxonMobil’s acquisition of the company. It includes interests in six licenses covering four million acres of the PNG highlands. One undeveloped gas field, Elk-Antelope, is among Asia’s largest and will be used to vastly expand ExxonMobil’s footprint.
Landowners in Hela are meanwhile still waiting for royalties, development levies and dividends from the project to be paid. In February, more than 1,000 protesters from four villages gathered at the ExxonMobil site to demand the payments, estimated at over 1 billion PNG kina ($A400 million). A spokesman said the government had promised to pay royalties but never kept its promises. It was the second major protest affecting the LNG project. In August 2016, landowners blockaded the entrance to the plant and disrupted gas supplies over the lack of payments.
Michael Main, a PhD student at the Australian National University, told ABC Radio on March 10 that “after four years of operation and windfall profits for the project’s joint venture partners,” the project had “delivered almost nothing of benefit to landowners.”
“In fact,” Main declared, “it has, in important ways, made life worse for the majority of people living in the project area.”
Under the LNG Project Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreement, signed in 2009, ExxonMobil agreed to pay 700 Kina (US$216) per hectare per year for land occupied by the project. The government promised specific additional development programs, such as road sealing and township development. Landowners were told they could expect, according to Main, “the project to deliver tangible improvements to their lives and to the lives of their children.”
However, during the seven months Main conducted fieldwork in the province, he witnessed “a life of immense frustration, disappointment and palpable anger at the absence of benefits.” “What I encountered was abject poverty situated alongside one of the largest natural gas extraction operations in the world,” he explained.
Rampant corruption is a major issue. Main cited the township of Komo, near the LNG plant, which contained a newly built hospital that stood empty with no beds, no staff and no fuel for its generator. This was one of several “white elephants” built at inflated prices by companies owned by PNG’s politicians. “Promised developments, including road sealing, power supply and schools, had all failed to materialise,” Main said.
The complex clan-based society of the highlands region, with a history of disputes over land and possessions that can be traced back over many generations, has been made worse, according to Main, “by the frustrations of a population hammered by the broken promises of the nation’s largest resource development project.” He described constant outbreaks of fighting by “heavily armed clans, young men gunned down by military assault rifles, and many dozens of houses shot through with holes and razed to the ground.”
Main noted that since the beginning of the ExxonMobil project, PNG’s ranking on the UN’s Human Development Index has fallen by two places to 158, having been overtaken by Zimbabwe and Cameroon. “Far from enhancing development indicators, the largest development project in PNG’s history, has coincided with an unprecedented downgrade in the country’s development status,” he concluded.
PNG still has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the region. Real GDP growth has dropped from 11.8 percent in 2015 to a forecast 2.8 percent in 2017. Government revenue has fallen sharply due to the precipitous decline in global commodity prices. LNG prices are less than half what they were in early 2014. The price in 2016 dropped as low as $US6.45 per million British thermal units (Btu) from a peak of $19.70 in 2014. Asia’s LNG market fared worse than slumping oil markets, plummeting by 67 percent.
The O’Neill government has responded by slashing spending, targeting health and education, by up to 40 percent. Austerity is fueling explosive social antagonisms and anti-establishment sentiment. Sections of the working class are becoming more restive over the government’s vicious attacks on jobs, living standards and basic rights. Early last month, National Civil Registry office workers in Port Moresby stopped work and locked the premises, demanding overdue wages. Workers alleged that they had not been paid for over two years.
The government is increasingly mobilising the police and armed forces to suppress deepening unrest. On March 28, armed police intervened to disperse a large crowd outside the provincial assembly in the East Sepik capital Wewak as Governor Michael Somare, PNG’s first prime minister under formal independence in 1975, was preparing to retire from official politics. The crowd had gathered to demand payments for various projects, activities and past “loyalty” to Somare.

Canada’s Conservatives join with far-right in opposing “anti-Islamophobia” motion

Laurent Lafrance

Canada’s House of Commons adopted late last month a Liberal government-backed motion condemning “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”
The motion, M-103, is a pro-forma, non-binding statement of opposition to discrimination and violent attacks targeting Muslims, under conditions where there has been a surge of such attacks, including the Jan. 29 assault on a Quebec City mosque that killed six Muslims.
The Liberals’ decision to champion the motion was a cynical maneuver, aimed at covering up their agenda of militarism, austerity, and hostility to refugees, and, most immediately, their burgeoning alliance with the Trump administration.
The virulent, right-wing campaign against the motion—it passed by a vote of 201 to 91—must, however, serve as a warning. As in the US and Europe, important sections of the ruling class and political establishment are whipping up chauvinism and xenophobia, and allying with extreme-right, fascistic elements, so as to push politics still further right and split the working class.
The Official Opposition Conservatives voted almost en bloc against M-103 and trotted out a series of reactionary and spurious pretexts to justify their opposition. M-103, they claimed, attacks free speech and gives Islam a more privileged status than other religions. Some even said that it represents the first step toward the “Islamization” of Canada.
Hours before the final vote on M-103, dozens of protesters gathered on Parliament Hill. Among them were members of the “Soldiers of Odin”—an anti-refugee group linked to neo-Nazis in Europe. In Canada, as in Europe, the group is known for organizing so-called “street patrols” and for physically assaulting immigrants.
Last Saturday, members of the Soldiers of Odin clashed with counter-demonstrators in downtown Toronto. The far-right group baldly defended its role in a Facebook post, declaring that it had been called upon to provide security for a demonstration by the Canadian Coalition for Concerned Citizens (CCCC), a right-wing, anti-Muslim group, modeled on Pegida, which mounted nationwide protests against M-103 in early March.
While all New Democratic Party and nearly all Liberal MPs supported the motion, 95 out of 97 Conservative MPs voted against it or were absent.
All MPs of the pro-Quebec independence Bloc Québécois (BQ) also opposed M-103. The BQ’s interim leader, Rhéal Fortin, said he couldn’t support the motion because he doesn’t agree with “the idea that there exists a climate of fear and hate” against Muslims. The BQ, like its provincial sister party, the Parti Québécois (PQ), and the Quebec sovereigntist or independence movement as a whole has long promoted anti-immigrant, and particularly anti-Muslim, sentiment.
First proposed by Liberal backbencher Iqra Khalid last December, M-103 was initially debated in parliament in February and subsequently endorsed by the Liberals’ parliamentary caucus. Khalid based her motion on an online “anti-Islamophobia” petition that received some 70,000 signatures. She has reported that she has received numerous death threats, and thousands of sexist and Islamophobic comments since introducing her motion.
The Liberals only decided to champion Khalid’s motion after the Quebec mosque massacre, which was carried out by a 27-year-old Quebec nationalist and self-avowed admirer of Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. The massacre came in the midst of a worldwide outcry over Trump’s travel ban targeting people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In its wake, the Liberals seized on M-103 as a hypocritical maneuver to conceal their growing alliance with the Trump administration and their own anti-immigrant policies, including their refusal to cancel the “Safe Third Country” agreement with the US, which has forced hundreds of asylum seekers to risk their lives by crossing the border “illegally” into Canada.
In Quebec, the political establishment responded to the mosque shooting with hypocritical calls for “unity” and by suggesting that the decade-long, reactionary campaign against “excessive accommodations” to immigrants and religious minorities be toned down. But it didn’t take long for the most chauvinistic section of the elite associated with the Coalition Avenir Québec and the Quebec sovereigntist movement—including the pseudo-left party Québec Solidaire—to renew this campaign. They joined together to denounce a reactionary Quebec Liberal government bill that would ban Muslim women wearing the burqa or niqab from receiving public services, including health care and education, claiming it did not go far enough in restricting minority rights.
The Conservatives’ refusal to oppose Islamophobia, even in such vague and superficial terms as those contained in M-103, was a deliberate appeal to the most chauvinistic and right-wing factions of the ruling class, as well as backward middle class elements.
Conservative MPs legitimized and amplified the arguments of the far right, going so far as to absurdly claim that M-103 would open the door to the introduction of Sharia Law in Canada. Conservative MP and defence critic James Bezan sponsored an e-petition demanding Sharia Law “never have a place in the Canadian Justice System”.
The ongoing Conservative Party leadership contest has accelerated the shift to the right of the Canadian ruling elite’s alternate party of government. Kellie Leitch, a former Harper government minister, has echoed Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim appeals with calls for all immigrants and visitors to Canada to be screened for “Canadian values.” Late last month, she took the Conservatives’ opposition to M-103 to its logical conclusion by appearing at a meeting alongside members of the far-right Rise Canada group. Rise Canada rails against the “Islamization” of Canada and “Sharia creep.” Its web site noted that its members had talked with Leitch about “her position on various issues.”
Maxime Bernier, another leadership contender, recently declared that he would deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to prevent refugees crossing the US-Canada border “illegally.”
The Liberal government has no intention of countering the rise of the far right; its policies are, in fact, playing directly into its hands. Prime Minister Trudeau’s support for M-103, along with his “refugee-friendly” posturing, seeks to cover up the Liberal Party’s own responsibility for disseminating anti-Muslim bigotry, including as part of the “war on terror” narrative following 9/11. Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government justified the Canadian participation in the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the clampdown on basic democratic rights within Canada by invoking Islamist terrorism as an ever-present threat to Canadians’ security.
Trudeau adopted a phony pro-refugee pose during the 2015 election campaign, capping it off with a visit to the airport to greet the first plane-load of Syrian refugees to arrive after he took office. But after accepting a mere 40,000 refugees during their first year in office, a significant number of whom were privately sponsored, the Liberals’ true indifference and hostility to towards those fleeing imperialist war and social breakdown has been exposed by their determination to consummate a close working partnership with the Trump administration, the most right-wing in American history. With the backing of the overwhelming majority of the ruling class, Trudeau avoided making any criticism of Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants and his discriminatory travel bans during his February 13 trip to the White House.
This polite silence was aimed at ensuring the maintenance of the Canadian ruling elite’s vast economic ties and military-security partnership with the US, both of which are pivotal to the wealth and global geostrategic reach of Canadian imperialism.
Despite growing concerns among legal scholars and refugee advocacy organizations, the Liberals have refused to scrap the reactionary Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement, which strips most asylum-seekers who enter Canada from the US at an official border checkpoint of the right to even make a refugee claim.
Citing a survey that claimed 97 per cent of asylum-seekers who crossed into Manitoba in recent weeks had spent less than two months in the United States before heading north, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently declared that the wave of migrants crossing into Canada is not linked to Trump’s cruel anti-immigrant policies.
Hussen reiterated that the Trudeau government will not suspend the Third Country agreement and would continue to reinforce the border. “If we eliminate that agreement or suspend that agreement, we will have disorder,” said Hussen.