Human Rights and the Arrogance of Power

Brian Cloughley

International policy statements sometimes attract attention because they deal with serious matters, such as human rights, concerning which an important speech was made to the UN Security Council on April 18 by US Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Ambassador Haley declared that “When a state begins to systematically violate human rights, it is a sign, it is a red flag, it’s a blaring siren – one of the clearest possible indicators that instability and violence may follow and spill across borders.” She singled out Burma, Cuba, Burundi, Iran, North Korea and Syria for censure and urged the nations of the world to adopt a policy of “standing for human rights before the absence of human rights forces us to react.”

So it seems that the United States wishes to lead the world in penalizing countries judged guilty of violating human rights, which is a principled and admirable stance.

It is appalling that so many countries have no “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion” as laid down in the UN Charter and quoted poignantly by Ambassador Haley. And one most effective action that human rights-abiding governments could take to ensure that offending countries would cease their hideous abuses against their citizens would be to end all cooperation with them because, as she observed, “It’s past time that we dedicate ourselves to promoting peace, security, and human rights.”

We must agree with Ambassador Haley, because it is indeed “past time” that the United States dedicated itself to promoting peace. Perhaps it has been recognized that the United States failed to do that by invading Iraq, blitzing Libya, and engaging in its longest-ever war, still being waged in Afghanistan.  In addition to killing many thousands of innocent people these conflicts created millions of refugees, while radicalizing citizens of all strata and resulting in expansion of Islamic State terrorism.

Then Ambassador Haley rightly warned that “if this Council fails to take human rights violations and abuses seriously, they can escalate into real threats to international peace and security,” and we must hope that this message struck home around the world.

Many countries are guilty of human rights violations, as documented in the US State Department’s Human Rights Report of March 3, but it was intriguing that, contrary to long-established custom, the Secretary of State, Mr Rex Tillerson, did not present the report in person in spite of Ambassador Haley’s emphasis on the importance of “standing for human rights” and his declaration that “our values are our interests when it comes to human rights.”

But when the Report is examined in detail it is obvious why Secretary Tillerson was reluctant to enthuse about his Department’s findings, because some of them don’t fit in with public pronouncements concerning the essentiality of human rights in all countries.

One inconsistency concerns Turkey whose President Erdogan recently won a referendum granting him almost total power. The first head of state to congratulate him was President Trump “shortly after international monitors delivered a harsh verdict on the referendum on constitutional changes. They found that the opposition campaign had been restricted and media coverage was imbalanced, and that the electoral authority had unfairly changed the rules after polls had opened.”  Further, Mr Trump’s State Department reported that “multiple articles in the penal code directly restrict press freedom and free speech” while “the government continued to prosecute at least one judge and four prosecutors involved in pursuing charges in connection with a major corruption scandal in 2013 that involved then prime minister Erdogan, his children, and close political advisors and business associates.”

Other than Mr Trump, not many heads of state congratulated Erdogan, but one who did was King Salman of Saudi Arabia where violations of human rights include “citizens’ lack of the ability and legal means to choose their government; restrictions on universal rights, such as freedom of expression, including on the internet, and the freedoms of assembly, association, movement, and religion; and pervasive gender discrimination and lack of equal rights that affected most aspects of women’s lives.” This oppressive dictatorship is valued by Washington for “playing an important leadership role in working toward a peaceful and prosperous future for the region,” while being “the United States’ largest foreign military sales customer, with nearly $100 billion in active cases.”

Saudi Arabia enjoys “close friendship and cooperation” with the United States although it is recorded by the State Department that “civil law does not protect human rights, including freedom of speech and the press,” while Ambassador Haley declares that “When a state begins to systematically violate human rights, it is a sign, it is a red flag, it’s a blaring siren . . . ”

Then there is another valued ally of the United States, Bahrain, whose king is also an autocrat with “the power to amend the constitution and to propose, ratify, and promulgate laws.” His penal code specifies penalties of “no less than one year and no more than seven years in prison, plus a fine, for anyone who ‘offends the monarch of the Kingdom of Bahrain’.”   His country “plays a key role in regional security architecture and is a vital US partner in defence initiatives” as the base for the US Navy’s nuclear-armed Fifth Fleet which demonstrates US military power in the Persian Gulf.

The State Department records reports of “torture, abuse, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” in Bahrain, while “societal discrimination continued against the Shia population, as did other forms of discrimination based on gender, religion, and nationality.”  These are exactly the sort of tyrannical human rights’ abuses denounced so vehemently by Ambassador Haley who described the United States as “the moral conscience of the world.”

There are complications, however, in ordering Bahrain’s ruler to cease torture and other inhuman punishment because, as Bloomberg reported, there were two related developments on March 29. First, the commander US Central Command, General Joseph Votel, told a Congressional Committee that “foreign arms sales to allies shouldn’t be burdened with preconditions tied to human rights because they could damage military-to-military ties” and singled out Bahrain as an example.  Then “the State Department told Congress it backs the sale of 19 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters to Bahrain [for $2.7 billion] without preconditions on improved human rights previously demanded by the Obama administration.”

And suddenly the country with “the moral conscience of the world” looks a trifle off-balance, because you (as an individual, a nation or an international organization) can’t have it both ways.  Either you condemn human rights abuses totally and unconditionally, or you accept them in like manner.  It is a moral travesty to accept a little bit of torture or a morsel of gender discrimination.  For example, how much torture is permissible?

Two shrieks or three?

It should be heart-warming to hear the ambassador of the United States to the United Nations  delivering ethical lectures in the Security Council about how other countries should behave in regard to human rights. But it isn’t much good preaching about human rights and then embracing a policy conveying the message that if a country has “strong military ties” with the United States then it is of no consequence if it persists in “torture, abuse, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” of its citizens. It is bizarre that that any such country can continue to enjoy “close friendship and cooperation” with the United States

This is an in-your-face example of the arrogance of power. And the likes of General Votel, who declares that “foreign arms sales to allies shouldn’t be burdened with preconditions tied to human rights because they could damage military-to-military ties,” personify that swaggering vanity.  He and his ilk will prosper, while the country with “the moral conscience of the world” makes money and extends its power by supporting dictators who exercise “discrimination based on gender, religion, and nationality.”  Spare us the humbug.

In Yemen, Shocked to His Bones

KATHY KELLY

The ruins carpeted the city market, rippling outwards in waves of destruction. Broken beams, collapsed roofs, exploded metal shutters and fossilized merchandise crumbled underfoot.

In one of the burnt-out shells of the shops where raisins, nuts, fabrics, incense and stone pots were traded for hundreds of years, all that was to be found was a box of coke bottles, a sofa and a child nailing wooden sticks together.

This is Sa’ada, ground zero of the 20-month Saudi campaign in Yemen, a largely forgotten conflict that has killed more than 10,000, uprooted 3 million and left more than half the country short of food, many on the brink of starvation.

— Gaith Abdul-Ahad in The Guardian, 12/9/16

Yemen stands as the worst-threatened of four countries where impending famine conditions have been said to comprise the single-worst humanitarian crisis since the founding of the U.N.  On May 2^nd, 2017, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a grim infographic detailing conditions in Yemen where 17 million Yemenis — or around 60 percent of the population — are unable to access food.  The U.S. and its allies continue to bomb Yemen.

Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), says that seven million Yemeni people are on the brink of famine. “I am shocked to my bones,” said Egeland, following a five day visit to Yemen. “The world is letting some 7 million men, women and children slowly but surely be engulfed…” Egeland blames this catastrophe on “men with guns and power in regional and international capitals who undermine every effort to avert an entirely preventable famine, as well as the collapse of health and educational services for millions of children.” Egeland and the NRC call on all parties to the conflict, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, the U.S. and the U.K. to negotiate a cease fire.

This weekend, the situation stands poised to become dramatically worse with the apparently imminent bombing, by Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’ closest allies, of the aid lifeline which is the port of Hodeida.

Egeland stresses the vital importance of keeping humanitarian aid flowing through Hodeida, a port which stands mere days or hours from destruction. “The Saudi-led, Western-backed military coalition has threatened to attack the port,” said Egeland, “which would likely destroy it and cut supplies to millions of hungry civilians.”  U.S. congress people demanding a stay on destruction of the port have as yet won no concessions from the Saudi or U.S governments.

The U.S. Government has as yet sounded no note of particular urgency about ending or suspending the conflict, nor has its close ally in the Saudi dictatorship.  Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently gave “a positive view of the war in Yemen.” (New York Times, May 2, 2017). He believes that Saudi forces could quickly uproot the Houthi rebels, but rather than endanger Saudi troops he says “the coalition is waiting for the rebels to tire out.”

“Time is in our favor,” he added.

Even if Hodeida is spared, reduced import levels of food and fuel from the Saudi-imposed naval blockade puts the price of desperately needed essentials beyond the reach of the poorest. Meanwhile prolonged conflict, dragged out by a regime that feels “time is on its side” and punctuated by deadly airstrikes, has displaced the needy to those areas where food insecurity is the highest.

Refugees from three North African countries where conflict is also threatening to impose terrible famine have Yemen on their route to escaping the continent, so they have fled conflict and famine only to be trapped in the worst of this dreadful year’s arriving tragedies.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describes the present situation, two years since Saudi airstrikes escalated the conflict:

“The violent deaths of refugees fleeing yet another war, of fishermen, of families in marketplaces – this is what the conflict in Yemen looks like two years after it began…utterly terrible, with little apparent regard for civilian lives and infrastructure.

“The fighting in Hodeida has left thousands of civilians trapped – as was the case in Al Mokha in February – and has already compromised badly-needed deliveries of humanitarian assistance. Two years of wanton violence and bloodshed, thousands of deaths and millions of people desperate for their basic rights to food, water, health and security – enough is enough. I urge all parties to the conflict, and those with influence, to work urgently towards a full ceasefire to bring this disastrous conflict to an end, and to facilitate rather than block the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

Time is on no-one’s side as regards the crisis in Yemen. As nightmare visions of living skeletons with bloated bellies and pleading eyes once more appear on the planet’s TV screens, we in the U.S. will have missed a vital chance to avert a world in which untold millions are to be shocked to their bones.

The Pope and I

Andre Vltchek

In Cairo, Pope Francis, once again, did what he usually does best: he snapped at the state of immorality and selfishness, which is governing the world, particularly in the West. The message to Egypt’s priests could actually be directed at the population of the European and North American cities:

“The first temptation is to letting ourselves to be led, rather than to lead… The second temptation is complaining constantly… The third temptation is gossip and envy… The fourth temptation is comparing us with those better off… The fifth temptation is individualism, ‘me, and after me the flood’… the final temptation is ‘keep walking without direction or destination…”

Pope Francis gave speeches, and met the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El Sisi. He appealed to Egypt to “Save the world from famine of love”. The Egyptian Gazette, an official English language newspaper, carried a headline with a photograph of Pope Francis and the President (and ex-general El Sisi), smiling at each other, as if this odd couple could truly become the entity capable of returning both love and passion to the world.

“Although the Pope’s speeches were good, I have a big problem with anyone meeting the murderer El Sisi,” one of my friends wrote to me from exile in Paris, one of the ‘revolutionary doctors’, a man who used to be imprisoned and tortured here in Egypt.

And El Sisi he did meet, and they grinned at each other for the camera lenses.

***

There is one point that is hardly made in the local and international media: the Christians in Egypt fully embraced the military coup of July 2013, during and after which allegedly thousands of people were massacred (some in the poorest slums of Cairo), tens of thousands tortured, and more than a million imprisoned.

In 2012 and 2013 I was filming in Egypt for Telesur, directing and producing a documentary film about the end of the Arab Spring and the crashing of all hopes for a better, socialist Egypt. After witnessing the horrors of El Sisi’s crackdown on Morsi’s supporters, as well as on the Egyptian left, I went to the famous ‘Hanging Church’ in Coptic Cairo and asked the believers about the coup. They refused to even use the word ‘coup’, and expressed their unconditional support for the military junta.

Today, almost 4 years later, I went back to the same church, and confronted two leading Orthodox Christian clerics of Egypt, Father Jacoub and Father Samuel (they claim that in their mind there is “no difference between the Catholics and Orthodox Christians).

“Now that Egypt is bleeding and people are pushed to the edge, do Christians still support the military government?” I asked point-blank.

First, Father Samuel replied:

“Yes, now it is the same unwavering support as before. The church was behind the President, El Sisi from the very beginning, and it is with him now.”

Then Father Jacoub joined the litany:

“El Sisi protected us; he saved our country.”

Then Father Samuel again:

“President Sisi came to power during the difficult time for Egypt. He’s doing well, changing the country.”

“Isn’t it all sectarian, religious?” I wanted to know. “ Aren’t you supporting El Sisi because he attacked the Muslim Brotherhood?”

Another honest answer followed:

“Yes it is religious… Yes, it is one of the reasons for our support.”

***

I spoke to people in slums and on the street. Almost all of them were desperate. Food prices were skyrocketing and periodically, there have been shortages, even of some basic food.

A person with whom I used to work before, during the ‘days of hope’, was subdued, frustrated, and angry:

“Now people are really furious. Everything is getting more and more expensive. But currently, people don’t even dare to protest: the police and the army closely monitor everything. You dare to go to the streets, and they disappear you; you get immediately arrested. There are some 2 million people in our prisons, now… Perhaps one or two more years and things will explode again. It really cannot continue like this, forever.”

Egyptian people are well informed, but frightened and fragmented. They clearly comprehend what is taking place, but they are waiting for the right moment to return to the streets. I personally know those who were imprisoned and tortured in Egypt, after the coup. Every trip back here reminds me of extremely close calls, when I could have been killed myself, be it in Port Said, in Alexandria, and in Cairo. But Egypt is ‘addictive’: once you begin writing about it, it is extremely difficult to leave, forever.

“The military is everywhere,” I’m told inside the monumental Citadel built by the great Sultan Saladin, who fought against the European crusaders, defending vast areas between Egypt, Syria and Iraq:

“The military and the police; they are paid by the West, particularly by the United States. For decades, they were corrupted; they control Egyptian businesses, from A to Z. It would be suicidal to criticize them openly. And they love the West. Many of our people also have no choice but to ‘love the West’, because the economy of this enormous country has already collapsed. You are either miserably poor, or you are part of the armed forces, or in the tourist industry, or the few other services which are all somehow intertwined with the West.”

The same pattern as in Afghanistan, I realize. Endemic corruption mostly injected from outside, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of treasonous families, the elites, who produce nothing tangible but live well from selling their own country to the imperialist Western rulers. And then there are of course the army, the police, and dozens of their branches with complicated and proud names.

And countries are going to the dogs, while the Western mass media is busy demonizing Syria, Venezuela, the Philippines and North Korea.

***

This is an S.O.S. written to me a few months ago by one of the left-wing “revolutionary doctors”, with whom I was working on my Egypt film:

“The counter revolution has triumphed… Sisi dictatorship strengthened… All opposition parties and organizations squashed… thousands of revolutionaries imprisoned… Hundreds executed by court orders or liquidated by the police… Media suppressed and directly controlled by the regime… The military economic investment in the country has soared… Neoliberalism is taking hold… People are suffering.”

Is the Pope blind? Or is there perhaps some other, more complex game, which is being played?

Pope Francis is, after all, from Argentina, and his own country is deeply divided about his role during the military dictatorship there.

“POPE OF PEACE, IN EGYPT OF PEACE” one reads from the thousands of posters hanging on the electric poles of Cairo.

Really? Egypt of peace…

“The famine of love!” He and the General (currently President), together, are now ready to tackle it, heroically, hand in hand, while millions are rotting in prisons, and the country is gradually collapsing.

A Victory for Theresa May Will See Britain Dragged Further Towards War With Russia

Colin Todhunter

British Prime Minister Theresa May has been warned by various political leaders in Britain not to rush to attack Syrian government forces if she wins the general election in June. The Guardian reported that she might hold a vote on military action this summer. If this is the case, it would imply that she wants to press ahead without UN backing.

May appears to want the support of parliament to have the freedom to join US in airstrikes against Syria in the event of another chemical attack. This is despite the fact there is no concrete evidence that Syrian forces carried out such a recent attack, just as there was no evidence to support similar claims in 2013 when David Cameron tried but failed to get parliamentary approval to bomb Syria.

Taking about the chemical attack that occurred on 4 April in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said:

“We think it would be constructive for the UN Security Council to accept a resolution that would not only investigate the incident but the accusations against Damascus. We have different facts, we don’t want to impose them but we stand for objective, impartial, honest investigation.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has cautioned May against unilateral military action in Syria:

“We don’t need unilateral action. We need to work through the UN but, above all, we need to bend ourselves totally to getting a political settlement in Syria.”

As with Iraq in 2003, the clear danger is that ‘evidence’ is being cooked up to fit a preconceived policy; in this case, the removal of Assad from power which was planned as far back as at least 2009: Syria is essentially a ‘war for energy, capital and empire‘.

The demonisation of Putin and Russia

Since Russia intervened at the behest of the Syrian government, the Syrian conflict has swung away from the opposition (terrorist) groups which the US has been supporting to defeat Assad, an ‘unspoken truth’ in the mainstream media (see ‘The Dirty War on Syria‘). However, the US seems increasingly desperate to intensify its military intervention to bring its plan for Syria and the wider Middle East region to fruition. This does not just mean attacking Syrian government forces. It also involves putting pressure on Russia to step aside.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin was told by the UK ambassador to the United Nations Matthew Rycroft that he is on the “wrong side of history” because of his support for the “barbaric” Syrian leader Bashar Assad. Rycroft added that supporting the Assad regime would result in “shame” and “humiliation” for Russia.

Rycroft said the Security Council had been “held to ransom by Russia’s shameless support for the Assad regime.” He added that Russia’s credibility and reputation across the world have been poisoned by its toxic association with Assad.

It might appear to some that Rycroft resides in an alternative universe. Where is the credibility and reputation of the US given its destruction of Panama, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria (see ‘Five Invasion Plots, Three Continents, Identical Lies‘)? Where does its reputation lie when much of the world beyond the bubble Rycroft exists in recognises that the US has supported terror groups to destroy Syria?

Rycroft continued discussing Russia:

“They have chosen to side with a murderous, barbaric criminal, rather than with their international peers. They have chosen the wrong side of history.”

What he means by “international peers” is the often-used term “international community” which in turn means the US, NATO and its allies. This tirade against Russia and Assad is intended for the consumption of a Western public courtesy of the mainstream corporate media that peddles the narrative of the US and NATO being civilising forces in a barbaric world.

In response to Rycroft’s statements, Russia’s UN representative, Vladimir Safronkov, responded:

“Stop putting forward these unprofessional arguments and accusations against my country. These are not diplomatic. These are lies. Don’t even try to get into fights in the Arab world. Nothing will work and nothing will be achieved. All Arab countries recall your colonial hypocrisy.”

The anti-Russia rhetoric has been incessant in recent years. Following the US-instigated coup in Ukraine and with no hint of irony intended, British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said that NATO must be ready for Russian aggression in “whatever form it takes.” He added that Russia is a “real and present danger.”

Former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Admiral James Stavridis deems Russian aggression a greater threat than terrorism. He depicts Putin as someone capable of disregarding international law and seizing situations to his advantage. This from someone who represents a country that has flagrantly disregarded international law to carry out illegal wars, torture, drone assassinations and mass murder as and when it deems necessary.

Jim Comey, director of the FBI, recently branded Russia the “greatest threat of any nation,” while answering questions at a Senate hearing on Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Again, no proper evidence has been offered to support this allegation and Comey failed to providence any.

Lies for perpetual war

In the UK, over the last 18 months, we have also seen Jeremy Corbyn ridiculed and attacked relentlessly. Corbyn has been described by prominent figures in the Conservative government as a threat to security and as a threat to Britain. He has been demonised in a similar to Putin. Corbyn was always going to be a target for the Establishment because he swims against the Washington consensus of neoliberal capitalism, war and imperialism.

Following Corbyn being elected as leader of the Labour Party in Britain, Michael Fallon stated:

“Labour are now a serious risk to our nation’s security, our economy’s security and your family’s security.”

If anything is a threat to Britain and the world, it is the underhand destabilisations and wars it participates in as it stands shoulder to shoulder with Washington and its agenda. Former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has called the UK a danger to the world.

Murray has stated:

“I’ve seen things from the inside and the UK’s foreign interventions are almost always about resources. It is every bit as corrupt as others have indicated. It is not an academic construct, the system stinks.”

As far as Iraq is concerned, Murray said that he knew for certain that key British officials were fully aware that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction. He said that invading Iraq wasn’t a mistake, it was a lie.

It was a lie just like the ongoing demonisation of Putin and Russia is based on a series of lies. 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 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’.

The US thinks it and it alone has the right to act as it deems fit to protect its interests and to maintain global dominance. No other power will be allowed to rise to challenge the US.

The US has over a period of decades created a long list of bogeymen and bogus reasons to remove leaders and destroy sovereign states that have stood in the way of its geostrategic agenda. In terms of a massive military budget, worldwide military bases, illegal wars and destabilisations, it is not Russia but the US which poses the greater threat to humanity, that much is clear.

Trajectory towards nuclear war

This is a recipe for perpetual war. It is a recipe that is leading humanity towards nuclear conflict as the US seeks to destroy Russia as a functioning state or at least replace Putin with a compliant puppet. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has pressed ahead both in a technological sense and a strategic sense to the point where it believes it can win a nuclear war with preemptive strike against Russia.

Since when did Russia become an ‘adversary’, we might ask. The answer is when Washington decided to break prior agreements with Moscow and then encircle it with troops and missiles. Eric Zeusse writes:

“The expectation and demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more “aggression by Russia.” Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a “pre-emptive” attack against Russia by NATO.”

There are well over a million dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as a result of direct military intervention or covert actions by the Western powers and their allies (the death count for Iraq alone between 1990 and 2012 could be 3.3 million as a result of Western economic sanctions and illegal wars). But the ultimate price for everyone – both rich and poor – will be a world war fought with nuclear weapons.

The machinations of empire alongside a crisis of capitalism and an increasing reliance on militarism in a futile to deal with it has placed the US (and the whole of humanity) on an accelerating trajectory towards conflict with Russia (and China) that it might find impossible to escape from.

Matthew Rycroft, Theresa May and Michael Fallon all read from the same script handed to them by the neoconservatives in Washington. As they play chicken with Russia and gamble with all our lives, it is they who are on the wrong side of history.

Unfortunately, there will be no one left to prove that once they have reduced us all to ashes.

Greater Albania And The Balkan Problem

Binoy Kampmark

The Balkans has always been cursed by a recurring theme: that each entity within it can, at some point, become greater and more consuming in territory than the next neighbour. Each nation has, and in some instances continues, to nurse dreams of enlargement, pecking away at borders and assuming that few will notice.

Strategies of expansion tend to have one problem: they are hard to evaluate in the way of conventional agreement, contract or conspiracy.  For decades, historians of various shades would attribute to Imperial Germany a conscious, global goal of conquest, mistaking the plans of contingent invasion with actual policy.

In the Albanian context, the gnawing phenomenon, one of a terrier insistent on chewing away at the sinews of a larger opponent, has been taking place since Yugoslavia imploded in spectacularly bloody fashion in the early 1990s.

A cementing aspect of the old project of unity, one that saw the creation of Tito’s Yugoslavia, was Kosovo; central to the current Albanian project of consolidation and security is the increasing influence of figures within southern Serbia and Macedonia, generally Albanian nationalists of various colours of severity who dare to dream. With Serbia the tainted bogeyman of Europe, their chances are better than ever.

The writing is already being scribbled on the wall – with feverish enthusiasm.  Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama had expressed the view that an Albanian-Kosovo union would be very much on the cards if the EU were to make admission more challenging.  Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaçi was even blunter, his words having the effect of a threateningly deployed mallet: “all Albanians in the region will live in a single, united country so that the integration into the European family may continue”.

The fear to Serbia’s north, in Belgrade, is amply reflected by Serbian cabinet minister Aleksandar Vulin: “Pristina and Tirana have clearly said what their goal is, it is a ‘Greater Albania’ and unification of all Albanians, regardless of where they live, into a single ethnic area.”  Accordingly, this could “only be accomplished through a great Balkan war, and Brussels (EU) must be clear on all of this.” Given the current obsession with the unravelling of the EU, best indicated by the groans of Brexit, it is unlikely whether any eyes are being peeled on that score.

Members of a nation, as opposed to the idea of a state, remain the great problem international relations after the First World War.  No better illustration of this was offered than the nationalist gymnastics that unfolded in the aftermath of a destroyed Europe.

Demography has become central in these latest disputes.  In southern Serbia, where the breath of Greater Albania blows, ethnic Serbs are in demographic retreat before their more virile Albanian neighbours. This situation seems calm, but is actually electric, a surface energy that  may well only resolve itself by the power of the gun.

In its broader theatre, Albanian leaders are cunningly playing the pro-Western card to keep western powers on side.  This is to be expected, given the shrewdness that resourcefulness entails.  As the Albanian foreign minister Ditmir Bushati explained in his April visit to Washington, his country provided an appropriate, stern bastion against Russian influence in the Balkans.

These broader ambitions are not to be taken lightly. Technically, it could see Serbia amputated as far as Niš.  This point is perceived as another territorial reassertion, given the expulsion of Albanians from the area during the Serbian campaigns of the 1870s.

Municipalities in southern Serbia have griped and groaned over the nationalist issue, centred upon Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac.  Hot heads, from time to time, reach for their flags with heart.  Editorials of irritation, barely tempered, are written.

The issue of secessionist violence is far from a moot point, given the insurgency in the Prešovo Valley from 1999 to 2001 mounted by the Liberal Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac.  The violence reached such levels that the then Yugoslav President Vojislav Koštunica urged the NATO-led KFOR to intervene, given the handbrake that had been applied to Serbian freedom of action.

In Macedonia, a country with a strong Albanian voice, similar issues are on the march.  A vigorous Albanian push (some argue putsch) remains a persistent reality for the Macedonian majority.  The fraying began last December with the opposition Social Democrats achieving a parliamentary majority by going into coalition with parties representing ethnic-Albanian interests.

The long standing VMRO-DPMNE government, backed by President Gjorge Ivanov, refused to budge, fearing the new power arrangements.  Matters duly got violent with a coalition attempt to elect a new parliamentary speaker.

The deputy leader of the Social Democrats, Radmila Šekerinska, deemed by Balkan Insight to be “Brussels’ favourite Macedonian”, was duly assaulted when Parliament was stormed by 200 protestors on April 27.  Social Democratic Union leader Zoran Zaev and lawmaker Ziadin Sela, leader of the Albanian Alliance, were also injured.

The government beef was an ethnic one. It was claimed by such figures as Ivanov that too much was in the offing by way of concessions to Macedonia’s Albanians, who were exerting a natural gravitational pull on the Social Democrats.

Šekerinska insists that that issue is tactical, designed to obscure the need to create “a new reform-oriented government” that would hold various politicians accountable for criminal theft and corruption. Prime Minister Nikola Guevski and his associates, claims Jove Kekenovski, “are ready to do anything, including ethnic conflict, to escape jail.”

Some of that is bound to be true, though blood tends to be thicker than reform in Balkan politics.  A resort to the gun over the boardroom; this is the Balkan vice, tainted by active or cynical indifference from outside powers.

‘Butcher of Kabul’ Returns To Kabul In An Afghan Peace Deal

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Lord Palmerston, the 19th century British Prime Minister, has famously said: “The Great Britain has no friends, no enemies, but only interests.” It was rephrased by Henry Kissinger as “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.” This applies to current Afghan politics where Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former anti-Soviet “mujahideen” commander, arrived in the capital on Thursday (May 4) under a peace deal with the US/EU-client Afghan government.

According to Anadolu News Agency of Turkey, Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-e-Islami party, drove all the way from eastern Nangarhar province and entered the city in a heavily-armed convoy of armored vehicles and pick-up trucks packed with his top commanders and fighters.

Later, President Ashraf Ghani warmly embraced him at a special ceremony in the presidential palace and hailed the peace deal. “The talks proved that the Afghan people have no problem with each other, but because of outside hands, have occasionally witnessed conflict,” the president said in his address at the ceremony. “Afghans are victim of international terrorism,” President Ashraf Ghani said.

On his part, Hekmatyar vowed to fully support the government in Kabul in its efforts to bring peace and stability in the country. He also urged Afghan tribes to unite for the sake of defense of their areas against the enemy.

Hekmatyar also offered to act as a mediator between the Taliban and the government. “I call the Taliban ‘my brother’, good and bad people are among them. Taliban are Afghans. “Let’s end the war, live together as brothers and then ask foreigners to leave our country,” he said.

The Afghan government had released at least 55 prisoners associated with his party before the war veteran arrived in the capital in line with the September 2016 peace deal.

The peace deal

The peace deal between Hekmatyar and the Afghan government has been widely hailed by the West.

In a statement on Thursday, the European Union and Norway said they back the peace deal.

“We hope that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s arrival in Kabul encourages the wider public belief that peace in Afghanistan is possible. This signifies the moment for others to move from conflict to constitutional politics. Hence, the EU, its member states in Afghanistan and Norway call upon all armed opposition groups to come forward, commit to an equitable peace and renounce terrorism,” the EU’s Special Representative, Ambassador Franz-Michael Mellbin, said.

In September last year, the Guardian reported the peace deal under the title: ‘Butcher of Kabul’ pardoned in Afghan peace deal. The British daily report said:

“The Afghan government has pardoned one of the country’s most notorious warlords for past offences including terrorist attacks and alleged war crimes as part of a peace deal with his militant group, Hezb-i-Islami. The agreement, signed after months of negotiations, paves the way for a return to public and possibly political life for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who holds an almost unparalleled record of human rights abuses. These include indiscriminate shelling of civilians, targeted assassinations of intellectuals and disappearances of political opponents. Hekmatyar’s followers are accused of throwing acid at women and of running an underground torture prison in Pakistan. The accord also allows for the release of Hezb-i-Islami prisoners, and obligates the Afghan government to pay for security in two or three locations inside Afghanistan where the group can choose to settle its leadership.”

Not surprisingly, Human Rights Watch called the deal “an affront to victims of grave abuses”. The HRW, in a statement said: “Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan’s most notorious war crimes suspects, who as prime minister in 1992 shelled his own capital, is coming home after decades in exile, thanks to a peace deal with the national unity government. His return will compound the culture of impunity that the Afghan government and its foreign donors have fostered by not pursuing accountability for the many victims of forces commanded by Hekmatyar and other warlords that laid waste to much of the country in the 1990s.”

Others see the inclusion of the armed opposition as a necessary step towards peace.

According to the Global Security, “this was the first peace agreement in the 15-year Afghan war the Taliban launched after it was ousted by a United States-led military coalition in 2001. Led by former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the insurgent group Hizb-e-Islami is the second largest after the Taliban. While the Hizb-e-Islami faction fought alongside the Taliban against NATO coalition forces, it had been a rival to the Taliban while it was in power. The Global Security added:

“He was designated a terrorist by the U.S. in February 2003 for his past support to al Qaeda. On 19 February 2003 it was announced that the US Government had information indicating that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has participated in and supported terrorist acts committed by al-Qa’ida and the Taliban. Because of his terrorist activity, the United States designated Hekmatyar as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under the authority of Executive Order 13224. At the same time, the United States requested that the UN 1267 Sanctions Committee include Hekmatyar on its consolidated list of entities and individuals associated with Usama bin Laden, al-Qa’ida, and the Taliban, which would obligate all Member States to impose sanctions, including assets freezes, under UN Security Council Resolutions 1267, 1390, and 1455.”

Tellingly, the U.N. Security Council’s Sanctions Committee removed sanctions against Hekmatyar on February 3, 2017.

The return of the former ‘Mujahedeen” commander return to Kabul after almost 20 years affirms that the world we live in has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

Media pundits, pseudo-left back Sri Lankan president’s call for authoritarian rule

K. Ratnayake

Last week, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Rajitha Senaratne informed a press conference that President Maithripala Sirisena was proposing that former army commander Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka should “take responsibility for disciplining the country” for a period of two years. Sirisena’s extraordinary proposition was made in the context of growing strikes and protests throughout the country against the government’s attacks on living conditions and on social and democratic rights.

This is no small matter. Fonseka is notorious for having presided over war crimes, particularly during the final years of the government’s military offensives against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). During that period, thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. Fonseka was also allegedly involved in attacking any journalists who made even the slightest criticism of the war, and branding as traitors workers and others engaged in protests to defend their democratic rights. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse considered Fonseka as sufficiently ruthless to implement their repressive measures, until he was deemed their political enemy.

Some ministers, nervous about the impact on ordinary working people of Sirisena’s proposal for a police state, tried to dismiss it as a passing remark. One minister claimed it was a “joke,” while another said that the proposal, “made lightly,” had been exaggerated out of all proportion.

Replying to a question raised in the parliament, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe denied that the government had decided to set up a special army unit. In the same breath, however, he admitted that “the government’s attention was only focused on how to maintain essential services without interruption or disruption” but refused to reveal what was discussed at the cabinet meeting.

Nevertheless, the campaign for anti-democratic measures, along with threats against working class strikes and protests, is proceeding. The Minister of Megapolis Champika Ranawaka insisted during his speech at a May Day meeting that a small group of people would not be allowed to rule the country. “Only the government has a people’s mandate for that,” he said.

More sinister is the role being played by the upper middle class layers—the so-called “civil society,” the media and the fake left—who helped Sirisena and Wickremesinghe come to power. They are now providing cynical justifications for authoritarian rule and police-state measures against striking workers and students, by branding them as political operators who are seeking to overthrow the government.

One such person is media pundit Ranga Jayasuriya, who has shamelessly argued that Fonseka is an “ideal candidate” to “head an emergency mechanism” to confront strikes. Jayasuriya wrote a column in a Colombo-based newspaper, the Daily Mirro r, titled “Why is SF [Sarath Fonseka] good enough to confront strikes?”

Jayasuriya was an acting editor of the now defunct Colombo weekly, Lakbimanews. He is currently a regular columnist for the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka’s main privately-owned English-language daily. He was among the milieu that rallied behind the US-orchestrated regime-change operation in the January 2015 presidential election to replace Rajapakse with Sirisena. The fraternity of pseudo-left, media and NGOs worked to cover up Washington’s role in exploiting the mass opposition to Rajapakse’s rule to bring Sirisena to power.

Ten days after the change of government, Jayasuriya showered praises on Sirisena, claiming that “under his presidency, Sri Lanka may be experiencing a democratic spring.” He highlighted various cosmetic changes and called on the population to rally to him on the basis that Sirisena’s presidency risked being overturned by Rajapakse.

In defence of Sirisena’s anti-democratic agenda, Jayasuriya makes a series of desperate arguments in his recent column. He notes that “apparently” Sirisena’s proposal “is tantamount to reversing the democratic reforms upon which he has embarked,” but, in fact, this is not the case. Sometimes, he writes, one has to stifle democracy by introducing authoritarian measures, in order to defend it.

He ridiculously tries to compare Muhammadu Buhari, a Nigerian military dictator who ousted another military ruler during the 1980s, and Sirisena coming to power in Sri Lanka. He says that Buhari took power to “discipline the country,” but that it paved the way for dictatorship and counter coups.

Jayasuriya makes this comparison, not because it has any historical validity, but to argue that Sirisena came to power in order to dismantle Rajapakse’s dictatorial rule. The “strongman’s [Rajapakse’s] rule was dismantled” and now it is “patently clear” that the government is “handicapped by the relative freedom it ushered in.” He laments that “it has not led to social stability.”

Jayasuriya’s claim about Sirisena’s “dismantling of the strongman’s rule” and the establishment of “relative freedom” is bogus. Sirisena made a few minor changes, such as introducing the 19th Amendment to the constitution, which limited the powers of the Executive Presidency and set up “independent commissions” to appoint top bureaucrats and judicial officers. Jayasuriya failed to mention, however, that Sirisena has not kept his limited promise to abolish the widely hated executive presidency. His government has maintained the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act and is now preparing to replace it with harsher legislation.

Jayasuriya also fails to mention the unleashing of military, police and repressive laws against protesting workers, students and the poor. The government suppressed a strike, for example, by contract workers at the Hambantota Port, who were demanding job permanency. Naval soldiers were deployed against them last December, while protests by workers, farmers and students in Colombo are frequently met with riot police, tear gas and baton charges.

Jayasuriya tries to justify these attacks, by branding them as “acts of groups with vested interests, exploiting the limited state power and political will of the current administration” to advance the most minimum interests. According to him, “these are not protests, but blackmail.”

Ironically, in the guise of criticising the Rajapakse government’s police-state measures, Jayasuriya is, in fact, praising them. He claims that a telephone call from then Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse was enough to stop a protest of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). Villagers’ protests were also stopped and Colombo slum dwellers moved to alternative houses after just a nominal protest, out of fear of Gotabhaya Rajapakse. Similarly, university student protests were not continued.

Jayasuriya has pointed out how former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the late Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayawardene crushed working class struggles and implemented ruthless and exploitative measures. His entire argument is aimed at legitimising the use of such methods against workers, youth and the poor in Sri Lanka, in order to maintain capitalist rule. He is frustrated about the government’s “failure to confront the rising wave of protests.”

He advises: “The bottom line of state power, in any state, be it democratic or authoritarian, lies in its ability and willingness to use coercive means to achieve legitimate ends, when a negotiated solution is not forthcoming.

“Sarath Fonseka’s legitimacy derives from his role as the war-winning army chief,” Jayasuriya argues, adding that he should act as Gotabhaya Rajapakse did to suppress the class struggle. If such coercive rule were not established, “the alternative to this is the gradual breakdown of governance, which to put it bluntly, for a country at our economic and social level, is more dangerous than the breakdown of democracy.”

The real fear expressed by Jayasuriya is that, if the growing struggles are not suppressed, they will transform into a social upheaval, creating a revolutionary crisis. “The government should do something to fix this mess. If it doesn’t, it will not last much longer in office.”

The popular protests are not just “outbursts of pent-up emotions,” accumulated during the Rajapakse regime, he writes. It was precisely their deep concerns about the developing social opposition that drove the upper middle class groups, including elements such as Jayasuriya, to vigorously intervene to bring to power the pro-US Sirisena regime in Colombo, while hailing it as an attempt to establish “good governance.”

Jayasuriya is not alone. Those who assisted Sirisena’s ascension to the presidency, including the pseudo-left Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), the Citizens’ Power group, and the Ravaya newspaper, are now leading the attacks on workers and students protests against the government, branding them as the means for Rajapakse to return to power.

Last Thursday, NSSP leader Karunaratne attacked a strike called by the GMOA and several trade unions as a “fascist attempt to overthrow the government.” The strike was called by the unions in order to deflect mass opposition to the government’s attacks on public education, health and privatisation.

Last month, when people in and around Colombo protested against an environmental disaster and the threat to their lives from a major garbage problem, Karunaratne demanded that they should be suppressed by the police, in the same way that students were.

These upper middle class layers are deeply hostile to the working class and the poor. They sense that the growing economic crisis and political instability throughout the country is driving the development of mass social upheavals, which threaten their own selfish class interests and those of the capitalist class as a whole. They are now assisting right-wing forces to bring to power a dictatorial regime to save capitalist rule.

Death toll rises to 37 amid continuing clashes in Venezuela

Bill Van Auken 

The death toll rose to at least 37 Thursday in the nationwide protests and street clashes that have gripped Venezuela over the past month.

The identity of the latest victims reflects the violent and provocative character of the campaign being waged by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, as well as the increasingly repressive crackdown being carried out by the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Parallel to this political confrontation playing out in the streets of Caracas and other major cities, the country’s desperate economic crisis has unleashed a growing wave of looting by sections of the oppressed, driven to desperation over the lack of food and declining real incomes.

Hecder Lugo Perez, 22, died Friday after being hit in the head by a projectile in the northwestern city of Valencia, a center of Venezuela’s moribund auto industry and other manufacturing plants that have seen mass layoffs. The city of 1.8 million has been one of the major flash points in the looting that has swept the country, with some 70 stores sacked on Tuesday.

Killed on Thursday was Juan Lopez Manjares, 33, the student federation president at the Instituto Universitario Tecnologico Jose Antonio Anzoategui in the northeastern city of El Tigre. The student leader, a supporter of the government, was gunned down after leading a student assembly, with his assassin fleeing on a motorcycle.

Also reported Thursday was the death of a policeman, Gerardo Barrera, 38, who died from gunshot wounds suffered the day before in a confrontation with demonstrators in the northwestern town of San Joaquin.

The wave of demonstrations was touched off on April 1 after Venezuela’s Supreme Court issued a ruling abrogating the legislative powers of the country’s opposition-controlled National Assembly. The move was part of the attempt by the Maduro government to consolidate power under conditions in which the president and his policies have become deeply unpopular, not only among the well-heeled constituency of the political right, but among far wider layers of working people.

The government was compelled to reverse the measure after coming under significant criticism from within its own ranks, including by the country’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega Diaz, a government loyalist who is married to a legislator of the ruling PSUV. Symptomatic of the continuing internal crises of the Maduro government, and calculations among some of its leading figures that regime change may be near, Ortega intensified her criticisms in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, declaring, “It’s time to hold talks and to negotiate. It means one has to yield on decisions for the good of the country.” She also departed from the government’s blaming of all the violence on demonstrators, stating, “We can’t demand peaceful and legal behavior from citizens if the state takes decisions that don’t accord with the law.”

Demonstrations have intensified after Maduro’s announcement that he is calling a “constituent assembly” to make changes to the constitution instituted in 1999 by his predecessor as president, the late Hugo Chavez.

The government has given no clear indication of what it intends to change in the existing constitution, but has made it clear that it intends to pack the body with its own supporters, drawing 50 percent of its members from “social movements,” which are state-controlled, and 50 percent from regional elections.

Maduro has vaguely described the assembly as a path to “peace” and “national dialogue.” The right-wing opposition has charged that it is aimed at circumventing a 2018 presidential election that he would likely lose.

In a May 1 speech, Maduro claimed that the revisions to the constitution would include measures to support the “post-petroleum economy,” an oblique reference to the failure of 18 years of chavista rule to alter Venezuela’s fatal semi-colonial dependence on a single commodity, oil. It is entirely possible that the government aims to invite foreign investors to bid on parts of the state-owned oil industry, PDVSA. Late last year, the government opened up 112,000 square kilometers to open-pit mining in a $4.5 billion dollar deal with transnational mining companies.

Like the attempted suspension of the right wing-led National Assembly, there is nothing progressive about the convening of such an assembly, which will reflect not the will or aspirations of the masses of Venezuelan working people, but rather the political exigencies of the Maduro government and its principal constituencies: the military, functionaries within the state apparatus and ruling party and the boliburguesia, the layer of capitalist investors, contractors and speculators who have enriched themselves under the rule of so-called “Bolivarian Socialism.”

Under Chavez—and thanks to oil prices that topped $100 a barrel—these layers were able to pursue their interests while still providing minimal social assistance programs that reduced poverty and provided housing, health care and improved education to the more oppressed sections of the population. Chavez’s death in 2013, however, was quickly followed by the plummeting of the price of oil, the commodity that accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings. Since then, the economy has contracted by 27 percent, while the inflation rate, the highest in the world, is set to reach 720 percent this year, according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

With vastly reduced export earnings, the government has slashed imports of foreign food, medicine and other basic necessities in order to divert dwindling reserves to meet foreign debt payments to international finance capital.

Venezuelan working people have borne the terrible burden of paying off Wall Street. Four out of five people now live in poverty, and masses are facing hunger. Recent surveys have found that nearly a third of the population now eats two or fewer meals a day—compared to 12.5 percent in 2015—and three out of four Venezuelans had lost on average 19 pounds last year.

In the face of the right-wing campaign to topple his government, on the one hand, and growing social unrest and class tensions, on the other, Maduro has turned increasingly to the military, which has always served as the principal pillar of the movement founded by Hugo Chavez, himself a former paratrooper colonel who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992.

Military officers now head up a third of the government’s ministries and make up half of the country’s governors. Key areas of the economy, including those where the most money is to be made off of corruption, have been placed under military control, including ports, food distribution and the control of foreign exchange.

Under a decree known as Plan Zamora, the Maduro government has essentially arrogated to itself the power to impose martial law, while bringing the police under the control of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). On Thursday it was announced that “70 vandals” arrested during a wave of looting in the state of Carabobo will be brought before military tribunals to face charges of looting and “rebellion.”

The right-wing opposition is appealing increasingly to the military to overthrow Maduro in a coup under the pretext of defending the constitution. Venezuelan right-wing opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who has demanded that the military “intervene,” claimed on his Twitter feed Friday that “85 officers of our FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces)” had been arrested for “having manifested their discontent.”

The New York Times, which openly supported the CIA-backed abortive coup against Chavez in 2002, published an opinion piece this week by a Venezuelan journalist, who assessed that “the possibility of a negotiated transition satisfactory to the opposition is negligible,” adding that “the alternative would be a military intervention to install a national unity government.”

Meanwhile, one of the biggest holders of Venezuelan bonds has made it clear that his firm is betting on and supporting “regime change.”

“Like most Venezuelans, we would welcome, and ultimately expect a change in regime,” Mike Conelius, who manages the $6.5 billion T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Bond Fund, wrote investors in an email reported by Bloomberg News. The firm has posted huge profits as Venezuela has repeatedly made interest payments by slashing imports and the living conditions of masses of Venezuelan workers. It expects even richer dividends in the event of a coup against Maduro. “The cathartic moment of regime change will be quickly repriced in the market,” Conelius wrote.

Attempting to place US imperialism’s thumb more firmly on the scale, a bipartisan group of US Senators has urged President Donald Trump to intervene more aggressively against Venezuela. The Senators, who include Democrats like Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate Tim Kaine of Virginia, introduced on Wednesday the “Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act of 2017” to ratchet up sanctions against Venezuela and pressure on its government.

In particular, the legislation calls attention to investments by the Russian energy giant Rosneft in Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA petroleum company, describing the ties as a “significant risk to U.S. national security and energy security.”

The pursuit of a more aggressive policy against Venezuela, linked to the military buildup against Russia, would be entrusted in large measure to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is the former CEO of ExxonMobil, whose predecessor company, Standard Oil, controlled Venezuelan oil production for half a century until Caracas nationalized the industry in 1976.