Surging Corruption in Afghanistan

Brian Cloughley

Associated Press reported that on April 24 “a senior US military official speaking on condition of anonymity said in Kabul that Russia was giving machineguns and other medium  weight weapons to the [Taliban].”  No evidence was offered, and there was no confirmation from anywhere else concerning the allegation.  And nobody pointed out that neither the Taliban nor any other militant group — including the private armies of CIA-supported warlords — have any need of extra weapons, as they have plenty of their own that they have obtained by various means over the years.

A 2014 analysis titled Actions Needed to Improve Weapons Accountability by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) warned that “The scheduled reduction in Afghan security forces personnel to 228,500 by 2017 is likely to result in an even greater number of excess weapons. Yet [the US] DOD continues to provide the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) with weapons based on the ANSF force strength of 352,000 and has no plans to stop providing weapons. Given the Afghan government’s limited ability to account for or properly dispose of these weapons, there is a real potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of insurgents, which will pose additional risks to US personnel, the ANSF, and Afghan civilians.”

On the same day as the anonymous (as always) “senior US military official” told the media that Russia was providing guns to the Taliban the US defense secretary, General Mattis, visited Afghanistan. It was illuminating that his visit was not announced before he arrived, because,  after sixteen years of war and expenditure of 770 billion dollars of US taxpayers’ money on one of the most corrupt countries in the world (169 out of 176, according to Transparency International), it was unsafe to the point of hazarding his life to let anyone know he was coming — even people at the highest levels of what passes for government in Kabul.

And his media conference was illuminating as well because, according to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, General John Nicholson, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said he “wouldn’t dispute that Russia’s involvement in the Afghan war includes Moscow providing weapons to the Taliban.”  In similar style, CBS news reported that when a reporter asked Nicholson “So you are not refuting that they are sending weapons?” he replied “Oh, no, I am not refuting that.”

Then the Washington Post told us that “Russia is sending weapons to Taliban, top US general confirms” and backed up its statement by saying that “The general in charge of US forces in Afghanistan appeared to confirm that Russia is sending weapons to the Taliban . . . General John Nicholson did not dispute claims that the Taliban is receiving weapons and other supplies from the Russians. ‘We continue to get reports of this assistance,’ Nicholson said.”

Who provides these reports?  More anonymous officials?

It is noteworthy that Mattis did not echo “not refute/dispute”, but confined himself to observing, as accurately stated by Al Jazeera, that “any weapons being funnelled here from a foreign country would be a violation of international law” which, although an almost unbelievably stupid comment, especially in the light of proven US arms supplies to Syrian rebel forces, reported by IHS Jane’s  and listed in Business Insider, does not go as far as to give credibility to the unsubstantiated allegations that Russia is supplying arms to the Taliban.  Even the New York Times acknowledged that “weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market,” which doesn’t say much for Washington’s adherence to international law — or its control of all the weapons it sprays around the world.

Why would Russia want to send weapons to the Taliban?  What possible advantage might there be in that for Moscow?  The Taliban have already got plenty of weapons from many sources, the main one being the United States, via the Afghan army and police. The European Union ambassador to Kabul, Franz-Michael Mellbin, said in February that “corruption is huge in the police force and it is a tragedy that weapons and ammunition go from police to the enemies of the state [i.e., the Taliban]. I had a discussion this morning with the Support Mission about this and on the international side there is no doubt that we find this to be a scandal which has to end.”

There is no chance of it ending, because as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction emphasized in September 2016, “while corruption in Afghanistan pre-dates 2001 [when the Taliban government was toppled by militias who were bribed and armed by the CIA, a practice that continued], it has become far more serious and widespread since then.”  His reports, he said, detail “how the United States collaborated with abusive and corrupt warlords, militias, and other powerbrokers. These men gained positions of authority in the Afghan government, which further enabled them to dip their hands into the streams of cash pouring into a small and fragile economy.”

On April 25 the United Nations published a paper titled Afghanistan’s Fight against Corruption: The Other Battlefield which is a travesty, because, as pointed out by Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper, it “does not extend to security forces, undermined by nepotism, favoritism and ghost soldiers, who exist only on paper and whose pay is diverted.”  There’s nothing in the UN document about weapons being stolen or otherwise going missing, but the New York Times is more realistic in its long report about ‘How Many Guns Did the US Lose Track of in Iraq and Afghanistan? Hundreds of Thousands.’  It records that “the United States has handed out a vast but persistently uncountable quantity of military firearms to its many battlefield partners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today the Pentagon has only a partial idea of how many weapons it issued, much less where these weapons are.”

Some of the NYT analysis is based on research by Iain Overton, director of the London-based Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), who discovered that “overall, the US DoD found 484,680 small arms recorded, compared to the 503,328 AOAV researchers found” — and this figure does not include weapons provided to warlords and others by the CIA.  One conclusion is that the discrepancies in figures of weapons provided to the Afghan armed forces is evidence of “the lack of accountability, transparency and joined up data that exists at the very heart of the US government’s weapon procurement and distribution systems.”

It is far from surprising that weapons have been easily acquired by the Taliban and any other armed group in Afghanistan that wants them.  There is no need for them to go out on the world market and seek arms from anywhere else — it’s much simpler to stay at home and let the weapons roll in, either as a result of attacks on Afghan military bases or the simpler method of handing over a bit of cash to corrupt government officials and military officers who are supposed to account for them.

And then, muddying the waters and attempting to shift the blame for the corruption caused by this disastrous 16-year war away from the Pentagon and its NATO sub-office in Brussels to anyone else who might be easy to blame, it is attractive for “a senior US military official . . . on condition of anonymity” to tell reporters that Russia is giving the Taliban “machine guns and other medium-weight weapons” and for the US commander in Afghanistan to declare that “we continue to get reports of this assistance.”

On April 26 came news of two more US soldiers having been killed in Eastern Afghanistan, bring the number of US dead in that useless war to 2396.  The Washington Post noted that “the deaths mark the third time this year that a member of the US military has died in combat in Afghanistan. On April 8, Army Staff Sergeant Mark R De Alencar was killed by small-arms fire, also in Nangarhar Province.”

Who provided the weapons to the insurgents who killed these young soldiers?  And is it right that they should have died to support such a corrupt country?

On May 8 the Washington Post reported that “President Trump’s most senior military and foreign policy advisers have proposed a major shift in strategy in Afghanistan that would effectively put the United States back on a war footing with the Taliban.”  It is difficult to see how there could be more of a war footing than currently exists, with the drone assassinations, the sky black with ground attack aircraft, the killing of young American soldiers and the absurd use of the Monkey Of All Bombs, but the warniks in the US-NATO military alliance are raring to go with another surge that will be aimed at something or other they’ll think up between now and the US-NATO summit to be held on May 25 at the Pentagon’s sub-office in Brussels.

The surge they should be taking aim at is the all-penetrating corruption that has almost destroyed Afghanistan.  Sending more troops into the quagmire didn’t work in 2009, and it won’t work this time.  American soldiers ​are being killed, and it’s time that Mr Trump asked if the place is worth the life of a single American Ranger.

New Charter: Should Hamas Rewrite the Past?

Ramzy Baroud

Now that the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Hamas, has officially changed its Charter, one should not immediately assume that the decision is, in itself, an act of political maturity.

Undoubtedly, Hamas’ first Charter, which was released to the public in August 1988, reflected a degree of great intellectual dearth and political naïveté.

“Allah is great, Allah is greater than their army, Allah is greater than their airplanes and their weapons,” the original Charter partly read.

It called on Palestinians to take on the Israeli occupation army, seeking “martyrdom, or victory”, and derided Arab rulers and armies: “Has your national zealousness died and your pride run out while the Jews daily perpetrate grave and base crimes against the people and the children?”

This may seem foolishly worded now. But back then, the context was rather different.

The document was released a few months after the formation of Hamas, itself created as an outcome of the Palestinian Uprising of December 1987, which saw the killing of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children.

At the time, the Hamas leadership was a grassroots composition, consisting of school teachers and local imams and almost entirely made up of Palestinian refugees.

While Hamas founders openly attributed their ideology to the Muslim Brotherhood Movement, their politics was, in fact, formulated inside Palestinian refugee camps and Israeli prisons.

Despite their desire to see their movement as a component of a larger regional dynamics, it was mostly the outcome of a unique Palestinian experience.

True, the language of their Charter, at the time, reflected serious political immaturity, lack of true vision and an underestimation of their future appeal.

However, it also reflected a degree of sincerity, as it accurately depicted a rising popular tide in Palestine that was fed up with Fatah’s domination of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Fatah, along with other PLO factions, became increasingly disengaged from Palestinian reality after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The invasion of Lebanon saw the dispersal of the Palestinian national movement abroad among various Arab countries, headquartered mostly in Tunisia. In Tunis, Palestinian leaders grew wealthy, but offered nothing new, except for tired clichés of a bygone era.

The 1987 Intifada was a reflection of popular frustration, not only with the Israeli military occupation, but the failure, corruption and irrelevance of the PLO.

Thus, the formation of Hamas in that specific period of Palestinian history cannot be understood separate from the Intifada, which introduced a new generation of Palestinian movements, leaders and grassroots organizations.

Due to its emphasis on Islamic (vs. national) identity, Hamas developed in parallel, but rarely converged with other national groups in the West Bank and Gaza.

The national movements operated under the umbrella group, the United National Front for the Intifada, representing PLO’s affiliates inside Palestine. Hamas operated largely alone.

Towards the end of the Intifada, the factions clashed, and directed much of their violence against fellow Palestinians. Thanks to internal divisions, the Intifada was exhausted from within, as much as it was mercilessly beaten by Israeli occupation soldiers from without.

Yet Hamas continued to grow in popularity.

Part of that was due to the fact that Hamas was the reinvention of an older Islamic movement in Gaza, and parts of the West Bank.

The moment Islamic groups were rebranded as Hamas, the new movement immediately mobilized all of its constituency, its mosques, community and youth centers and large social networks to echo the call of the Intifada, defining it largely as an ‘Islamic awaking’.

Hamas extended its influence to reach the West Bank through its student movements in West Bank universities, among other outlets.

The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, but especially the failure of the accords and the so-called ‘peace process’ to meet the minimum expectations of the Palestinian people, gave Hamas another impetus.

Since the period of ‘peace’ saw the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements, the doubling of the number of illegal settlers and the loss of more Palestinian land, Hamas’ popularity continued to rise.

Meanwhile, the PLO was sidelined to make room for the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Established in 1994, the PA was a direct outcome of Oslo. Its leaders were not leaders of the Intifada, but mostly wealthy Fatah returnees, who were once based in Tunis and other Arab capitals.

It was only a matter of months before the PA turned against Palestinians, and Hamas activists, in particular.

The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, understood well the need to maintain a semblance of balance in his treatment of Palestinian opposition forces.  Although he was under tremendous Israel-US pressure to crack down on the ‘infrastructure of terrorism’, he understood that cracking harshly on Hamas and others could hasten his party’s eroding popularity.

A year or so after his passing, local Palestinian elections – in which Hamas participated for the first time – changed the political power dynamics in Palestine for the first time in decades. Hamas won the majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

Hamas’ election victory in 2006 prompted a western boycott, massive Israeli crackdown on the movement and clashes between Hamas and Fatah.  Ultimately, Gaza was placed under siege, and several Israeli wars killed thousands of Palestinians.

During the last ten years Hamas has been forced to seek alternatives. It was forced out of the trenches to govern and economically manage one of the most impoverished regions on earth.

The siege became the status quo. Attempts by some European powers to talk to Hamas were always met by strong Israeli-American-PA rejection.

Hamas’ old Charter was often used to silence voices that called for ending Hamas’ isolation, along with the Gaza siege.  Taken out of its historical context (a popular uprising), Hamas’ Charter read like an archaic treatise, devoid of any political wisdom.

On May 1, Hamas introduced a new Charter, entitled: “A Document of General Principles and Policies.”

The new Charter makes no reference to the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, it realigns Hamas’ political outlook to fit somewhere between national and Islamic sentiments.

It consents to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state per the June 1967 border, although insists on the Palestinian people’s legal and moral claim to all of historic Palestine.

It rejects the Oslo agreements, but speaks of the Palestinian Authority as a fact of life; it supports all forms of resistance, but insists on armed resistance as a right of any occupied nation.

Expectedly, it does not recognize Israel.

Hamas’ new Charter seems like a scrupulously cautious attempt at finding political balances within extremely tight political margins.

The outcome is a document that is – although it can be understood in the region’s new political context – a frenzied departure from the past.

Hamas of 1988 may have seemed unrefined and lacking savvy, but its creation was a direct expression of a real, existing sentiment of many Palestinians.

Hamas of 2017 is much more stately and careful in both words and actions, yet it is adrift in new space that is governed by Arab money, regional and international politics and the pressure of ten years under siege and war.

Indeed, the future of the movement, and its brand of politics and resistance will be determined by the outcome of this dialectics.

The Russian Hacking Fiasco

MIKE WHITNEY

There’s no proof that Russia hacked the US elections.

There’s no proof that Russian officials or Russian agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign.

There’s no proof that Russia provided material support of any kind for the Trump campaign or that Russian agents hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails or that Russian officials provided Wikileaks with emails that were intended to sabotage Hillary’s chances to win the election.

So far, no one in any of the 17 US intelligence agencies has stepped forward and verified the claims of Russian meddling or produced a scintilla of hard evidence that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 elections.

No proof means no proof.  It means that the people and organizations that are making these uncorroborated claims have no basis for legal action, no presumption of wrongdoing, and no grounds for prosecution. They have nothing. Zilch.  Their claims, charges and accusations are like the soap bubbles we give to our children and grandchildren. The brightly-colored bubbles wobble across the sky for a minute or two and then, Poof, they vanish into the ether. The claims of Russia hacking are like these bubbles. They are empty, unsubstantiated rumors completely devoid of substance. Poof.

It has been eight months since the inception of this unprecedentedly-pathetic and infinitely-irritating propaganda campaign, and in those eight months neither the media nor the politicos nor the Intel agents who claim to be certain that Russia meddled in US elections, have produced anything that even remotely resembles evidence. Instead, they have trotted out the same lie over and over again ad nauseam from every newspaper, every tabloid and every televised news program in the country. Over and over and over again. The media’s persistence is nearly as impressive as its cynicism, which is the one quality that they seem to have mastered. The coverage has been relentless, ubiquitous, pernicious and mendacious. The only problem is that there’s not a grain of truth to any of it. It is all 100 percent, unalloyed baloney.

So it doesn’t matter how many Democratic senators and congressmen disgrace themselves by lighting their hair on fire and howling about “evil Putin” or the imaginary “threats to our precious democracy”. Nor does it matter how many hyperbolic articles appear in media alleging sinister activities and espionage by diabolical Moscow Central.  It doesn’t matter because there is have absolutely zero solid evidence to support their ludicrous and entirely politically-based claims.

Whether Russia was involved in the US elections or not, is a matter of pure speculation. But speculation is not sufficient grounds for appointing a special prosecutor, nor are the lies and misinformation that appear daily in our leading newspapers, like the dissembling New York Times, the dissemblingWashington Post and the dissembling Wall Street Journal. The call for a special prosecutor is not based on evidence, it is based on politics, the politics of personal destruction. The Democrats and the media want this tool so they can rummage through whatever private information or paperwork anyone in the Trump administration might possess. So while they might not dig up anything relevant to the Russia hacking investigation, they will certainly gather enough sordid or suspicious information to annihilate the people in their crosshairs. And that’s precisely what the special prosecutor provision is designed to do; it provides the  administration’s rivals with the weapons they need to conduct a massive fishing expedition aimed at character assassination and, ultimately, impeachment.

But, why?

Because Donald Trump had the audacity to win an election that was earmarked for establishment favorite and globalist warmonger-in-chief, Hillary Clinton. That’s what this witch hunt is all about, sour grapes.

But why has Russia been chosen as the target in this deep state-media scam? What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?

That’s easy. Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world. It’s the Great Game all over again, only this time-around, Uncle Sam is in the drivers seat not the Queen of England.

But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan.

Russia.

Russia has stopped Washington’s murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off.  US elites aren’t used to obstacles.

For the last quarter of a century– since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union– the world had been Washington’s oyster. If the president of the United States  wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him?

Nobody.  Because Washington owns this fu**ing planet and everyone else is just a visitor.

Capisce?

But now all that’s changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington’s landbridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.

The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way.  It’s that simple. Their global strategy is in a shambles because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.

So now Russia must pay. Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian. And, most of all, Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun, including the firing of a completely worthless sack of sh** FBI Director, James Comey, who– at various times in his career– “approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration….including  torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.” (ACLU)

This is the low-down, good-for-nothing scalawag that the Democrats are now defending tooth in nail.

It’s pathetic.

Russia has become the all-purpose punching bag because Washington’s plans for global domination have gone up in smoke.

The truth is,  Putin’s done us all a big favor.

Lebanon: Hedonism And War

Andre Vltchek

Palestinian refugee camps are up in flames, across the country, a result of the disputes between the rival factions, but also of ‘unsavory’ influences from abroad. As everyone knows here, there are, for instance,the Al Qaida-affiliated militants hiding in the South.

There are Israeli incursions into Lebanon, both by land and by water. There are also drones, flying habitually from Israel into and through the Lebanese airspace.

There is great tension between Israel and Hezbollah, over Syria, but not only.

Lebanese forces are fighting DAESH, mainly in the Northeast of Lebanon, on the mountainous border with Syria. Hezbollah is fighting DAESH, too, but ‘independently’.

In the 7th year into the war in Syria, there are still more than 1 million Syrian refugees living on Lebanese territory, some in awful conditions and many with extremely uncertain future. The exact number is unknown (UNHCR stopped the registration of all new arrivals approximately 2 years ago), but is believed to fluctuate between 1 and 2 million.

There is mounting tension between the Syrian and the Lebanese communities, as they are now competing for already sparse jobs and public services (including such basic utilities like water), while Palestinian refugees have been stranded in Lebanon already for decades, with very little social, political and economic rights.

There is a drug epidemic, from its production (mainly in the Bekaa Valley), to its unbridled consumption in Beirut.

A new government has finally been formed in December 2016, after more than 2.5 years of absence of any functioning administration. However, the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim, Saad Hariri, who is openly hostile to Syria and has directlyexpressed support for the recent US attacks against the neighboring country. Mr. Hariri has long been accusing Hezbollah and Syria of assassinating his father, Rafik Hariri, in February 2005. Mr. Hariri has dual citizenship, that of Lebanon and also of Saudi Arabia where he was born (in Riyadh). On the other hand, the President of Lebanon is now a Maronite Christian, 83-years old Michel Aoun, who came to power thanks to the unfailing support given to him by Hezbollah, the fact that puts him at odds with the Prime Minister.

There is an ongoing struggle, even deadlock, amongst the ‘political parties’ (in Lebanon often synonymous with sectarian divisions), over such varied issues as the electoral law, waste management, international political alliances, foreign military funding, gender-based discrimination, employment as well as all basic social services (or acute lack of them).

*

Lebanon is literally surrounded by perpetual conflicts. Syria, the country in great agony is right ‘next door’, north and east of tiny Lebanon, while mighty and aggressive Israel is threatening the country from the south. The United Nations troops are patrolling the so-called “UN 2000 Blue Line” or the de facto border between Lebanon and Israel. In fact, UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) has for years been ‘covering’ a large part of the country’s territory. It all feels like a war zone.

In fact the region consists of a series of temporarily dormant conflicts that are ready to explode again, at any moment, with destructive, murderous force.

The occupied and devastated Golan Heights is just across the borderline, too. Officially, The Golans are still part of Syria, but the Israelis have already purged most of its population, resettling it with their own citizens. During my visit, some 4 years ago, the situation was already dire, the area scarred by barbed wires, with Israeli military posts and vehicles everywhere.Many local houses were destroyed, as ‘punishment’. If you drive to the geographical extreme, you can see the Golan Heights from Lebanon. You can also see Israel, while Syria is ‘always there’, right behind the majestic and bare mountains.

The UN peacekeepers come from all parts of the world, including South Korea, Indonesia and Europe. Right before the Coastal Highway ends, near the city of Tyre, the motorists pass through the last Lebanese checkpoint. The UNIFIL protected area begins, with armored vehicles, sandbags and watchtowers. It reads, on the concrete blocks intended to slow down the traffic: “Peace to Lebanon, Glory to Korea!”

Palestinian refugee camps are overflowing. Syrian refugees (some in awful conditions) are working like slaves in the Bekaa Valley, begging for money in Sidon and Beirut, or if they are wealthy, renting lavish seafront condominiums on the Corniche of the capital city.

*

Hezbollah flag over Israeli border

Despite all the bravado, Lebanon is scared; it is petrified.

Everybody knows that Israel could hit at any moment, again. It is said that Israelis are already stealing Lebanese oil from the sea bed, but the weak and almost totally defenseless country can do almost nothing against one of the mightiest military forces on Earth.

All over the country, there are ‘dormant cells’ of ISIS (DAESH) and of other extremist militant groups, overflowing from war-torn Syria. The ISIS is dreaming about a ‘caliphate and the access to the sea’.Lebanon is right there, a ‘perfect location’.

Both Russia and China are keeping a relatively low profile here, not too interested in operating in this divided and uncertain political climate. In Lebanon, there are very few permanent loyalties left;allegiances are often shifting andare frequently dependent on outside ‘funding’.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are always present here, and so is the West. Hezbollah (on several ‘lists’ of the terrorist organizations of the West) is the only pan-Lebanese force capable and willing to provide at least some basic social services for the poor, as well as determined military and ideological defense against Israel.

Many political analysts are predicting that Lebanon will collapse, totally, and soon. But it is still here, determined and defiant. How, nobody knows. For how long, is a total mystery!

Patrolled by the UN, overflowing with refugees, Lebanon is shining into the night. Its Ferraris are roaming through its streets, without mufflers, until early morning hours. Its nightclubs are seducing hedonist visitors from the Gulf. Its art cinemas are as good or even better than those in Paris. At the AUB Medical Center, the best Middle Eastern surgeons are treating the most horrid war injuries from the area.

Here, war and self-indulgence are living side by side. Some say it is nothing else other than a bare cynicism. Others would argue: “No, it is life! Life of the 21st century world; exposed, brought to the extreme, but in a way honest.”

Veterans Affairs to close more than 1,110 facilities

Kevin Martinez

Last week Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin told the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations that his department is considering closing more than 1,110 facilities in an effort to privatize veteran health care.

The VA said it found more than 430 vacant and 735 underutilized building that cost the federal government about $25 million every year. Instead of building new and improved medical centers, Shulkin told the committee he is only interested in working with private for-profit hospitals.

According to an internal agency document obtained by the Associated Press, the VA noted that about 57 percent of all its facilities were more than 50 years old. Of the 431 facilities it said were vacant, most were built 90 or more years ago.

Shulkin told legislators that the VA would work with Congress to prioritize which buildings will be closed and was considering whether to allow the Pentagon to use a process called Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) to shut down its underused military bases.

He told the House committee, “Whether BRAC is a model that we should take a look, we're beginning that discussion with members of Congress,” adding, “We want to stop supporting our use of maintenance of buildings we don’t need, and we want to reinvest that in buildings we know have capital needs.”

Shulkin is a holdover from the Obama Administration and was the only Trump cabinet member to be endorsed unanimously by both Democrats and Republicans. He is a supporter of the so-called Veterans Choice program, authored by Senators Bernie Sanders (Democrat, Vermont) and John McCain (Republican, Arizona), in which veterans who live 40 miles or more from a VA center can seek alternate care at a private facility.

President Trump extended the program last month and Shulkin told the Committee he supports its continuation and is working on a broader proposal to expand the program. According to a government report, privatizing VA health care would cost up to $100 billion a year.

The program began in 2014 after a widely publicized scandal broke out at a VA hospital in Arizona where delays in treatments led to at least 40 preventable deaths. The news followed revelations that a VA benefits center in Philadelphia manipulated old disability claims to appear new. It is not uncommon for veterans, many of whom suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to be forced to wait for months at a time before receiving medical help.

The political furor that erupted over the VA scandal did not lead to more health care or government assistance for veterans, but the opposite. It provided justification for privatizing the VA entirely. Early February saw a report by the department’s inspector general that found that the 2014 “Veterans Choice and Accountability Act”, which set aside $16 billion to hire more doctors and staff and fund private health care, did not cut wait times. The report found that the approval process for private care was so poor that the average wait time for a veteran to see a doctor was still 45 days.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump called the VA a “disaster” and “the most corrupt agency in the United States.” At a news conference last May he declared his support for expanding private care for veterans saying in his typically ignorant manner, “What it has to be is when somebody is online and they say it’s a seven-day wait, that person’s going to walk across the street to a private doctor, be taken care of, we’re going to pay the bill.”

Shulkin, undoubtedly aware of popular hostility to Trump proposals, was forced to say at his confirmation hearing, “The Department of Veterans Affairs will not be privatized under my watch.” It should be noted that before taking his current position as head of the VA, Shulkin headed several private health companies, including the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Speaking on CBS’ “This Morning,” Shulkin again declared last week, “In no way are we seeking to privatize the VA.” While the Trump administration has pledged a six percent increase in VA funding, Shulkin made it known that the agency, the government’s second largest with 370,000 employees, will have to operate more efficiently and that budget increases will not be guaranteed in the future.

The VA recently announced a hiring restriction on roughly 4,000 positions, despite the lifting of the federal hiring freeze, and also left open the possibility of “near-term” and “long-term workforce reductions.”

The government’s plans to close 1,100 “underused” facilities and eventually privatize the rest are a slap in the face to veterans. While the political and media establishment heap praise on veterans, their real attitude toward vets is demonstrated by the neglect and mistreatment they receive once their terms of service are completed. Forced to kill or be killed in neo-colonial wars of aggression in the Middle East, Central Asia and elsewhere, many working class veterans bear deep psychological scars. Once home they face a future of unemployment or low wage jobs, driving many into drug abuse or even suicide.

According to recent data from the VA, roughly 20 veterans commit suicide every day. In 2014, more than 7,400 veterans took their own lives, accounting for 18 percent of all suicides in the United States despite the fact that veterans comprise only nine percent of the US population.

Trump’s budget for the VA will total $180 billion for fiscal year 2018 while the budget for the Pentagon will total $603 billion. The new budget will leave more money for expanded wars overseas leaving less money for health care for veterans and other vital services.

Worldwide ransomware attack linked to hacked NSA cyberwarfare arsenal

Kevin Reed 

A massive global cyberattack—likely caused by the spread of malware developed by the US National Security Agency as part of its cyberwarfare arsenal—hit computers around the world on Friday and rendered them inoperable. The malicious ransomware attacked computers in 99 countries and locked down their files while demanding that system administrators pay a fee of between $300 and $600 within six hours in exchange for regained access.

The malware, known as “WannaCry” or “WanaCrypt,” rapidly infected computers of organizations internationally such as the National Health Service in the UK, the Spanish telecom firm Telefonica and the US-based delivery service FedEx. Some news outlets reported that the bulk of the cyberattack on Friday took place in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan. It was also reported that the malware disrupted the functioning of banks, transportation systems and other mission-critical operations around the world.

According to cybersecurity experts, the malware is targeting computers running Microsoft Windows. When downloading or clicking on an infected file or application, the malware exploits a security flaw in the operating system and proceeds to encrypt the files of the target system and then demands a payment in bitcoin (electronic currency) by a specified date in exchange for restoring access.

The ransomware is also a “worm,” which means that it is engineered for self-replication as far and wide as possible and aimed at being transferred to all computers connected with the host system.

Although Microsoft released a patch to fix the OS security vulnerability in March 2017, many users had not updated their systems in time and remained vulnerable to the ransomware. Meanwhile, those users that paid the demanded ransom are reporting that—rather than having file access restored—the malware demands a greater sum of money and threatens to delete all files on the system.

The outbreak of the viral ransomware is connected to the public release in April by the hacking group calling itself Shadow Brokers of a trove of NSA and CIA cyberwarfare documents and computer code. The group published what it described as documents stolen from an NSA server housing the complete arsenal of US cyberwarfare weapons that had been left poorly protected.

In March, the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released documents related to the malware theft in an effort to alert the cybersecurity community and the public that the software was being circulated in the black market and posed a significant threat. WikiLeak’s Julian Assange called the theft of the cyberwarfare arsenal by hackers, “a historic act of devastating incompetence” by the US intelligence establishment.

Additionally, Assange and WikiLeaks exposed the fact that the US government was well aware that their inventory of malware, spyware, netbots, viruses and “Trojan horses”—the product of decades of CIA and NSA cyberwarfare preparations—had been stolen and did nothing to work with the computer industry or to notify the public about the theft of these items from their servers.

At that time, the corporate media around the globe also refused to warn about the dangers posed by the circulation of the malware code among hacker groups and others on the periphery of the US military-intelligence community. Rather than demand emergency action to protect the public from what is now unfolding, the subservient media continued its vilification of WikiLeaks and asserted false claims that the exposure of the criminal activity of the US government threatened national security and endangered the lives of security personnel.

Germany resurrects conscription

Johannes Stern

German politicians and the media have responded to the exposure of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell in the army (Bundeswehr) by calling for a reintroduction of military conscription.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary deputy Patrick Sensburg told the newspapers of the Funke media group Thursday that the citizen in uniform was “a reliable early warning system for the recognition of extremism from both left and right.” The reintroduction of conscription was therefore not only necessary due to security grounds, but the civilian population is “also the immune system against hostility to democracy.”

Historian Michael Wolffsohn declared at the beginning of May in an interview with Tagesspiegel that the main cause of the scandal in the army was “the abolition of general conscription.” This political decision was “responsible for the army now lacking the very normal citizens.” It had “opened the gates for the inflow of extremist personnel, who want to gain easy access to weapons and military training. Poets don’t join the army voluntarily.”

The arguments from Sensburg and Wolffsohn, both of whom have close ties to the military, are cynical and wrong. German history shows that conscription has absolutely nothing to do with the struggle for democracy and against extremism. On the contrary, the reintroduction of conscription prior to World War II in the law on the construction of the Wehrmacht adopted on March 16, 1935, marked a turning point in the rearming of German imperialism under Hitler.

A comment in the weekly magazine Stern headlined “Reintroduce conscription” shows that the ruling class is pursuing the same goals now as then. What is involved is the massive rearmament of the army and the recruiting of cannon fodder for new and major wars.

“But we cannot trust our security to a force which must take those who come forward and cannot rely on those who they really need,” Stern wrote. “Germany’s security doctrine is currently changing radically, not least because Putin’s Russia is pursuing an aggressive great power policy. The defence budget is being increased, army units are being expanded once again, tank units and artillery, which for some time were considered obsolete, have to be rebuilt. This cannot be achieved with a fully voluntary force.”

The attempt to celebrate conscription as an instrument for democracy or a way to guarantee the cleaning out of neo-Nazis from the army was a lie from the outset. At its founding on November 12, 1955, the Bundeswehr was called “New Wehrmacht” (it was officially renamed Bundeswehr only in 1956), and its original name, in spite of conscription, was its programme from the beginning.

Here are some facts and figures. The 44 generals and admirals appointed prior to 1957 were all drawn from Hitler’s Wehrmacht, overwhelmingly from the army’s general staff. In the officers corps in 1959, 12,350 former Wehrmacht officers were to be found among the 14,900 professional soldiers, 300 of whom came from the leading bodies of the SS.

Historian Wolfram Wette wrote in a study titled “Militarism in Germany: History of a warrior culture,” “This continuity of personnel represented a severe burden for the army’s internal life.” Wette added, “For a long time within the officer corps of the army of the Federal Republic, the predominant, if not pervasive, tendency was to orient towards the pre-1945 traditions.”

With Germany’s reunification 25 years ago, this “predominant tendency” was further strengthened. The systematic restructuring of the army into an intervention force capable of waging war, which would defend German imperialist interests around the world, necessitated the revival of the old militarist traditions from the Reichswehr, the army under the Kaiser, and Wehrmacht in the Bundeswehr.

As early as 1991, prior to the first foreign intervention by the army, a general stated, “Everything must be directed towards ensuring the army’s capability for war, training, equipment and structure. Ethos, education and motivation must be included.”

In 2004, prior to assuming the position of inspector of the army, Lieutenant General Hans-Otto Budde appealed for a new, or more accurately old, type of soldier, “The citizen in uniform has served his time … we need the archaic fighter, and those who can wage hi-tech war.”

Since former German President Joachim Gauck and the government officially announced the return of German militarism at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, contributions regularly appear in official volumes on German foreign policy calling for war and violence in the typical tradition of the Wehrmacht.

In a volume titled “Germany’s new responsibility,” which contained articles from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (both CDU), and leading Green and Left Party politicians, it was noted with frustration that in Germany “the neurotic desire to remain ‘morally clean’” pervades almost all debates on domestic and foreign policy.

“Whoever goes to war must in general be responsible for the deaths of people. That includes the deaths of non-participants and innocents,” it stated. Precisely “in times of new strategic uncertainty,” it was necessary “to emphasise [again] the military, not only because it demands such stern tests of societies, but because it ultimately remains the most consequential, and therefore the most demanding, perhaps even the crowning discipline of foreign policy.”

It went on to note that in the years to come, Germany would “have to offer significantly more politically and militarily” and confront “foreign and security policy questions … of which the country has not even yet dared to dream. Perhaps even not in its nightmares.”

With the neo-Nazi conspiracy in the army and the call for the return of military service, these “nightmares” are taking on a threatening form. They can only be banished by the construction of an international anti-war movement. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) fights in Germany to provide the widespread opposition to the return of militarism with a revolutionary and socialist programme, and to stop the ruling class offensive for fascism and war.

Australian budget: Drug-testing intensifies war on welfare

Mike Head 

A key feature of this week’s Australian federal budget is a brutal assault on jobless workers, including an unprecedented plan to potentially cut off welfare payments to those who fail tests for certain types of illicit drug use.

As well as being targeted for invasive drug tests, the country’s nearly 800,000 unemployed workers and youth will be forced to spend many more hours per week fruitlessly looking for work and will have their benefits arbitrarily suspended for missing official interviews.

With nearly 20 jobless workers for every employment vacancy—because of the ongoing destruction of full-time jobs—these measures are blatantly aimed at humiliating, vilifying and punishing the jobless, and stripping them of basic legal and democratic rights.

The government and employers want to increasingly force the unemployed into low-paid jobs on insecure, super-exploitative conditions. This will further drive down wage levels, which are already falling in real terms, while slashing social spending in order to cut taxes for big business and wealthy individuals.

In a two-year trial, some 5,000 people receiving below-poverty line Jobseeker Payments or Youth Allowances will be subjected to testing for cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy use. Saliva, hair follicle and urine testing will be administered by a private contractor, during Department of Human Services interviews.

This sets a far-reaching precedent. What will be next? Drug-testing for access to the government’s Medicare healthcare system? Or for other fundamental civil and political rights, such as the right to vote?

Despite the government claiming that jobseekers will be picked randomly for testing at three unnamed locations, they will be selected using a “profiling tool” designed to target those known to suffer from addiction and related health problems.

According to a press release by Social Services Minister Christian Porter, the program will feature “a data-driven profiling tool developed for the trial to identify relevant characteristics that indicate a higher risk of substance abuse issues.”

Health and welfare workers criticised the tests for targeting marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamines—cheaper drugs used commonly by people from lower socio-economic backgrounds—while not detecting alcohol, or cocaine, heroin or other drugs that are more expensive.

Drug use and mental health experts also pointed out that treatment and rehabilitation facilities for drug dependence are notoriously scarce and, where they do exist, either inadequate or expensive. People cut-off their benefits, mostly suffering from addiction, are likely to be thrown into destitution, homelessness and petty crime.

Yvonne Wilson, CEO of Griffith-based welfare support agency, the Linking Communities Network, asked: “What’s going to happen to those people? Are they going to be left without an income? How are they going to pay their rent? How are they going to buy their food? How are they even going to get to the rehab centre, if that’s what they want to do to turn their life around?”

People who fail a first test will be placed on “cashless” welfare cards and have their welfare quarantined from buying drugs or alcohol. Those who test positive twice will be referred to a doctor for substance abuse treatment, as a condition for retaining access to payments. If they fail to adhere to a treatment program, they will be subjected to payment suspensions and ultimately cancellations.

In addition, so-called alcohol or drug abusers will no longer receive exemptions from “mutual obligation” requirements, such as turning up for appointments or looking for work, because of their dependency issues. Those receiving slightly higher Disability Support Pensions on the basis of their addiction problems will be cut-off or thrown onto the lower Jobseeker Payments.

Similar programs imposed in the US, Britain and New Zealand in recent years have been used to drive people off welfare and into marginalised existences, not decent jobs.

Knowing this, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended the plan in the face of widespread outrage on the day after the budget was delivered. He declared: “The lesson is don’t do drugs. The bottom line is if you’re on welfare, what you’ve got to do is get off welfare and into a job.”

Jobseeker Payment recipients will also have to spend much more time looking for work or toiling on “work for the dole” programs. Around 270,000 people aged between 30 and 49 years of age will be forced to spend 50 hours a fortnight—20 hours more than they do currently.

Those aged 55 to 59 will no longer be able to volunteer for selected charities or services to meet their 30 hours of “mutual obligation” requirements, with some possible exemptions. The jobless over 60 will have to do 10 hours of activity, with volunteering still included.

In addition, a “three strikes and you’re out” policy will be imposed on those who fail to meet these onerous requirements or miss appointments. After one failure, they will lose half of their welfare payment for a fortnight. After another, they will be stripped of the entire payment for a fortnight. If they fail a third time, their payments will be cancelled entirely and they will have to wait a month to apply again.

To further compel the jobless to accept low pay and poor conditions, anyone who turns down a “suitable” job will have their welfare cut for at least a month, and will need to reapply to reactivate their payments.

Social Services Minister Porter was asked on Thursday what he thought constituted a “suitable job” and whether, for example, aeronautical engineers would need to take jobs in cafes to avoid punishment.

Porter said that any job was better than welfare. “This notion that there’s a perfect, or better or worse job, is not one that we accept,” he said. His reply was revealing. It provided a glimpse of the reality, in which highly qualified university graduates are being forced to take cheap labour jobs.

Taken together, these “compliance” measures are forecast to cut welfare spending by $632 million over five years.

Trials of the government’s “cashless” welfare cards, first inflicted on indigenous people, will be extended to June 2018 and spread to two more locations. A related “income management scheme”—also dictating what welfare payments can purchase—will be extended for three years in 14 targeted working class areas.

Another $84 million will be cut by merging seven types of welfare benefits, including Newstart jobless payments, sickness benefits, widow pensions and partner allowances, into one Jobseeker Payment. It has been set at the Newstart level, which has been frozen in real terms by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments since 1994.

As well, the Department of Human Services, which includes the Centrelink payment agency, will shed 1,188 jobs next financial year, having already suffered 5,000 job cuts since 2014. This will add to the pressures on welfare recipients, as well as the department’s workers. No less than 36 million phone calls to the department’s agencies went unanswered last year.

In a display of ongoing bipartisan support for the deepening war on welfare, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten backed ratcheting up the “mutual obligation” compliance measures, and refused to rule out voting for the drug-testing legislation. “Yes to mutual obligation, but just to be demonising one group of the population, let’s just wait and see,” he said.

Thousands evacuated following floods in Quebec and Ontario

Laurent Lafrance

Almost 2,000 people have been evacuated from their homes this week following intense floods that hit more than 170 municipalities, mainly in Quebec, but also in Ontario and in New Brunswick. About 3,000 homes have been flooded across Quebec, from the border of Ontario to the Gaspé Peninsula.

Ten cities have declared a state of emergency, including Montreal, and have extended it for five days in the most affected boroughs and kept a number of schools, roads and bridges closed. While authorities said the situation is now stabilized in the lakes and tributaries of the St. Lawrence River, water levels remain extremely high and the extent of the damage will be revealed only when the floodwaters fully recede. Government officials admitted that it would take weeks if not months before affected people’s lives return to normal.

A naval frigate was sent to the port of Trois-Riveres to assist with the construction of flood defences, as more heavy rain is anticipated over the coming days.

The flooding has been linked to at least one death, that of Mike Gagnon, a 37-year-old man from Gaspé region whose car was swept into the water by a strong current on Monday. A two-year-old girl who was also in the car has not yet been found.

Meteorologists and experts all agree that the latest floods are the result of unusually persistent rainfall, melting snow, and global warming. Normally in April the rainfall average is around 80 millimetres, but this year twice that amount fell in Quebec. The first week of May alone saw the quantity of rain that would usually fall during the entire month. This comes on top of all the melting snow from March snowstorms that hit eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

A Concordia University professor and climatologist, Jeannine St-Jacques, explained that with climate change, not only Canada but the entire globe will see more of such phenomena. “We have what we call 100-year floods and 1,000-year floods,” said St-Jacques. “It’s the sort of the worst flood you’d expect in 100 years. In a lot of places worldwide, we’re exceeding our 100-year floods, our 1,000-year floods, our 2,000-year floods. As things become more extreme, we will be seeing more.”

The floods in Quebec have exposed the gap between the courage and generosity of ordinary people and the utter indifference and hypocrisy of the ruling class. The Federal government deployed about 2,250 members of the Canadian Armed Forces to assist overwhelmed responders, but flooded residents are largely left alone, forced to rely on themselves, neighbours, volunteers and the Red Cross.

The provincial government announced it would contribute $500,000 to a relief fund, while the City of Montreal is to give $250,000 and the City of Laval, $50,000. This is a drop in the ocean, however, considering the extent of the damage.

This is in addition to the fact that many flooded people, impacted both economically and psychologically, could lose their houses and personal belongings. Insurance experts explained that most people (about 90 percent) are not covered for floods in Quebec. Following the 2013 floods in Toronto and Alberta, insurance companies created a new insurance product in relation to floods, which they see as a new source of profit. Individuals have to buy the product separately, but are apparently often not informed of its existence.

The media has published interviews with people affected by the floods who expressed strong criticism of the insufficient aid provided by provincial as well as local and federal governments. While abnormal levels of water have been observed for weeks in certain regions, the federal government only intervened when the situation got out of control and hundreds of houses were flooded.

Montreal’s West Island residents explained they have been requesting sandbags for weeks to protect their homes from rising floods, but they came too late. Those who received sandbags had to fill them all themselves.

CBC reported on Raymond Stelmashuk, who had to fill 600 sandbags during a sleepless week to try to save his 93-year-old grandmother’s house, but to no avail. “There’s not a city person around, nobody’s around. They keep coming and going, but they’re not helping anybody,” he said, adding, “this shouldn’t be happening and the city should be way more organized.”

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made their pro forma visits to flooded areas and helped fill sandbags before the cameras. As always, such hypocritical gestures only serve to cover the fact that the extent of the catastrophe is in large part due to government policies.

Concordia professor St-Jacques declared that budget cuts were an important cause behind the extent of the flood damage. “In the early 2000s, a lot of watershed management got delegated down to municipalities, and municipalities just don’t have the expertise—they’re not set up to deal with it,” she explained.

This occurred during the massive budget and tax cuts made by the federal Chrétien-Martin Liberal government and the Parti Québécois provincial government of Lucien Bouchard in the 1990s. These cuts, which were in response to growing demands by big business for a massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, have created a deep public health crisis, and also affected transport, health care and infrastructure.

This has had consequences not only in Quebec. Last year, residents of Fort McMurray, Alberta, were largely left to fend for themselves as a wildfire raged through the city. The disaster, which was entirely predictable due to the effects of climate change, was exacerbated by the disorganized and inadequate preparations and responses by the federal Liberal and provincial New Democratic Party government.

While the media gave widespread coverage to the Fort McMurray fire, as it is now doing for the floods in Quebec and Ontario, this will rapidly subside. The empty promises of politicians will never materialize and the governments will pursue their agenda of spending cuts to fund wars abroad and the enrichment of the ruling elite at home.

The extent of the flood damage and the inaction of governments at all levels have once again exposed the bankruptcy of capitalism, a system based on private profits and the domination of a thin layer of super-rich over every aspect of social life.

While heavy rains result from natural forces, the catastrophe in Quebec, predictable as it was, could have been prevented, and hundreds of people would still have their homes today.

What is currently and immediately needed in Quebec, Ontario and in other flooded regions across the country are billions of dollars and the mobilization of all available resources to help people affected by the flood as part of a massive program of infrastructure investment.

But such efforts are incompatible with the capitalist profit system, which seeks at every level to slash public spending for social services so as to boost the profits of the corporations and the financial elite. A planned response to the floods in Ontario and Quebec, and to other natural disasters around the world, is conceivable only as part of a socialist program which places the social needs of the vast majority above the profit interests of the super-rich.