Regime Change Fails: Is A Military Coup or Invasion Of Venezuela Next?

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Speaking at his alma mater, the University of Texas, on February 1, Secretary of State Tillerson suggested a potential military coup in Venezuela.  Tillerson then visited allied Latin American countries urging regime change and more economic sanctions on Venezuela. Tillerson is considering banning the processing or sale of Venezuelan oil in the United States and is discouraging other countries from buying Venezuelan oil. Further, the US is laying the groundwork for war against Venezuela.

In a series of tweets, Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican from Florida, where many Venezuelan oligarchs live, called for a military coup in Venezueala.

 https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/961969524630347776

How absurd — remove an elected president with a military coup to restore democracy? Does that pass the straight face test? This refrain of Rubio and Tillerson seems to be the nonsensical public position of US policy.

The US has been seeking regime change in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Trump joined Presidents Obama and Bush before him in continuing efforts to change the government and put in place a US-friendly oligarch government.

They came closest in 2002 when a military coup removed Chavez. The Commander-in-Chief of the Venezuelan military announced Chavez had resigned and Pedro Carmona, of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, became interim president. Carmona dissolved the National Assembly and Supreme Court and declared the Constitution void. The people surrounded the presidential palace and seized television stations, Carmona resigned and fled to Colombia. Within 47 hours, civilians and the military restored Chavez to the presidency. The coup was a turning point that strengthened the Bolivarian Revolution, showed people could defeat a coup and exposed the US and oligarchs.

US Regime Change Tactics Have Failed In Venezuela

The US and oligarchs continue their efforts to reverse the Bolivarian Revolution. The US has a long history of regime change around the world and has tried all of its regime change tools in Venezuela. So far they have failed.

Economic War
Destroying the Venezuelan economy has been an ongoing campaign by the US and oligarchs. It is reminiscent of the US coup in Chile which ended the presidency of Salvador Allende. To create the environment for the Chilean coup, President Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream.”

Henry Kissinger devised the coup noting a billion dollars of investment were at stake. He also feared the “the insidious model effect” of the example of Chile leading to other countries breaking from the United States and capitalism. Kissinger’s top deputy at the National Security Council, Viron Vaky, opposed the coup saying, “What we propose is patently a violation of our own principles and policy tenets .… If these principles have any meaning, we normally depart from them only to meet the gravest threat . . . our survival.”

These objections hold true regarding recent US coups, including in Venezuela and Honduras, Ukraine and Brazil, among others. Allende died in the coup and wrote his last words to the people of Chile, especially the workers, “Long live the people! Long live the workers!” He was replaced by Augusto Pinochet, a brutal and violent dictator.

For decades the US has been fighting an economic war, “making the economy scream,” in Venezuela. Wealthy Venezuelans have been conducting economic sabotage aided by the US with sanctions and other tactics. This includes hoarding food, supplies and other necessities in warehouses or in Colombia while Venezuelan markets are bare. The scarcity is used to fuel protests, e.g. “The March of the Empty Pots,” a carbon copy of marches in Chile before the September 11, 1973 coup. Economic warfare has escalated through Obama and under Trump, with Tillerson now urging economic sanctions on oil.

President Maduro recognized the economic hardship but also said sanctions open up the opportunity for a new era of independence and “begins the stage of post-domination by the United States, with Venezuela again at the center of this struggle for dignity and liberation.” The second-in-command of the Socialist Party, Diosdado Cabello, said, “[if they] apply sanctions, we will apply elections.”

Opposition Protests
Another common US regime change tool is supporting opposition protests. The Trump administration renewed regime change operations in Venezuela and the anti-Maduro protests, which began under Obama, grew more violent. The opposition protests included barricades, snipers and murders as well as widespread injuries. When police arrested those using violence, the US claimed Venezuela opposed free speech and protests.

The opposition tried to use the crack down against violence to achieve the US tactic of  dividing the military. The US and western media ignored opposition violence and blamed the Venezuelan government instead. Violence became so extreme it looked like the opposition was pushing Venezuela into a Syrian-type civil war. Instead, opposition violence backfired on them.

Violent protests are part of US regime change repertoire. This was demonstrated in the US coup in Ukraine, where the US spent $5 billion to organize government opposition including US and EU funding violent protesters. This tactic was used in early US coups like the 1953 Iran coup of Prime Minister Mossadegh. The US has admitted organizing this coup that ended Iran’s brief experience with democracy. Like Venezuela, a key reason for the Iran coup was control of the nation’s oil.

Funding Opposition
There has been massive US investment in creating opposition to the Venezuelan government. Tens of millions of dollars have been openly spent through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and other related US regime change agencies. It is unknown how much the CIA has spent from its secret budget, but the CIA has also been involved in Venezuela. Current CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said he is “hopeful there can be a transition in Venezuela.”

The United States has also educated leaders of opposition movements, e.g. Leopoldo López was educated at private schools in the US, including the CIA-associated Kenyon College. He was groomed at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and made repeated visits to the regime change agency, the National Republican Institute.

Elections
While the US calls Venezuela a dictatorship, it is in fact a strong democracy with an excellent voting system. Election observers monitor every election.

In 2016, the economic crisis led to the opposition winning a majority in the National Assembly. One of their first acts was to pass an amnesty law. The law described 17 years of crimes including violent felonies and terrorism committed by the opposition. It was an admission of crimes back to the 2002 coup and through 2016. The law demonstrated violent treason against Venezuela. One month later, the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled the amnesty law was unconstitutional. US media, regime change advocates and anti-Venezuela human rights groups attacked the Supreme Court decision, showing their alliance with the admitted criminals.

Years of violent protests and regime change attempts, and then admitting their crimes in an amnesty bill, have caused those opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution to lose power and become unpopular.  In three recent elections Maduro’s party won regional, local and the Constituent Assembly elections.

The electoral commission announced the presidential election will be held on April 22. Maduro will run for re-election with the United Socialist Party. Opposition leaders such as Henry Ramos and Henri Falcon have expressed interest in running, but the opposition has not decided whether to participate. Henrique Capriles, who narrowly lost to Maduro in the last election, was banned from running for office because of irregularities in his campaign, including taking foreign donations. Capriles has been a leader of the violent protests. When his ban was announced he called for protests to remove Maduro from office. Also banned was Leopoldo Lopez, another leader of the violent protests who is under house arrest serving a thirteen year sentence for inciting violence.

Now, the United States says it will not recognize the presidential election and urges a military coup. For two years, the opposition demanded presidential elections, but now it is unclear whether they will participate. They know they are unpopular and Maduro is likely to be re-elected.

Is War Against Venezuela Coming?

A military coup faces challenges in Venezuela as the people, including the military, are well educated about US imperialism. Tillerson openly urging a military coup makes it more difficult.

The government and opposition recently negotiated a peace settlement entitled “Democratic Coexistence Agreement for Venezuela.” They agreed on all of the issues including ending economic sanctions, scheduling elections and more. They agreed on the date of the next presidential election. It was originally planned for March, but in a concession to the opposition, it was  rescheduled for the end of April. Maduro signed the agreement even though the opposition did not attend the signing ceremony. They backed out after Colombian President Santos, who was meeting with Secretary Tillerson, called and told them not to sign. Maduro will now make the agreement a public issue by allowing the people of Venezuela to sign it.

Not recognizing elections and urging a military coup are bad enough, but more disconcerting is that Admiral Kurt Tidd, head of Southcom, held a closed door meeting in Colombia after Tillerson’s visit. The topic was “regional destabilization” and Venezuela was a focus.

A military attack on Venezuela from its Colombian and Brazilian borders is not far fetched. In January, the NY Times asked, “Should the US military invade Venezuela?” President Trump said the US is considering US military force against Venezuela. His chief of staff, John Kelly, was formerly the general in charge of Southcom. Tidd has claimed the crisis, created in large part by the economic war against Venezuela, requires military action for humanitarian reasons.

War preparations are already underway in Colombia, which plays the role of Israel for the US in Latin America. The coup government in Brazil, increased its military budget 36 percent, and participated in Operation: America United, the largest joint military exercise in Latin American history. It was one of four military exercises by the US with Brazil, Colombia and Peru in Latin America in 2017. The US Congress ordered the Pentagon to develop military contingencies for Venezuela in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

While there is opposition to US military bases, James Patrick Jordan explains, on our radio show, the US has military bases in Colombia and the Caribbean and military agreements with countries in the region; and therefore, Venezuela is already surrounded.

The United States is targeting Venezuela because the Bolivarian Revolution provides an example against US imperialism. An invasion of Venezuela will become another war-quagmire that kills innocent Venezuelans, US soldiers and others over control of oil. People in the United States who support the self-determination of countries should show solidarity with Venezuelans, expose the US agenda and publicly denounce regime change. We need to educate people about what is really happening in Venezuela to overcome the false media coverage.

Share this article and the interview we did on Clearing The FOG about Venezuela and the US’ role in Latin America.  The fate of Venezuela is critical for millions of Latin Americans struggling under the domination of US Empire.

Domestic Violence: A Heinous Human Rights Violation in Private Space

Ashish Kumar Singh & Shirin Shabana Khan

Domestic violence in simple terms can be defined as any kind of abusive behavior by the husband or male partner or their relatives (includes male and female relatives). It need not be physical abuse. It could also be verbal, emotional, sexual or economic abuse.

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 (PWDVA) differs from the provision of the Penal Code – section 498A of the Indian Penal Code – in that it provides a broader definition of domestic violence.  Domestic violence is defined by Section 3 of the Act as “any act, omission or commission or conduct of the respondent shall constitute domestic violence in case it:

1. harms or injures or endangers the health, safety, life, limb or well-being, whether mental or physical, of the aggrieved person or tends to do so and includes causing physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse and economic abuse; or
2. harasses, harms, injures or endangers the aggrieved person with a view to coerce her  or any other person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any dowry or other property or valuable security; or
3. has the effect of threatening the aggrieved person or any person related to her by any conduct mentioned in clause (a) or clause (b); or otherwise injures or causes harm, whether physical or mental, to the aggrieved person.”

Domestic violence (DV) is a pervasive social issue characterized by the perpetration of physical, sexual, and/or psychological harm by a current or former intimate partner. In more than ten years since the PWDVA was passed, over 1,000,000 cases have been filed across the country under sections pertaining to “cruelty by husband” and dowry, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show. Cases registered under the abetment of suicide of women, collected by the NCRB since 2014, increased by 34%, from 3034 in 2014 to 4060 in 2015, data show. For a decade from 2005 to 2015, 88,467 women, or an average of 22, died each day in dowryrelated cases. In 2015 alone, 7,634 women were killed over dowry.

The NCRB report reveals cruelty by husband and relatives, in 2015, accounted for 34% of cases, rising 6% over the last four years, from 106,527 cases, in 2012, to 113,403, in 2015. As per the state and union territory-wise data, Uttar Pradesh has seen the highest number of women rights violation cases so far, in this financial year at 6,110 1 . The effect of DV is not only physical, psychological or emotional but also impacts upon physical, social, interpersonal and financial domains. The survivors are compelled to live poor quality of life and they have to financially become dependent on their mayeke (parental home). They also have less societal interaction due to the social shame of the poor relationship. Due to which they develop many psychological symptoms such as anxiety, fear of going out, lack of self-esteem, confidence, isolation, lack of confidence and self-blame.

Though the protection under domestic violence act law was enacted in 2005, the NCRB only started collecting data under the law in 2014.  Today, data under PWDVA, as collected by the NCRB, includes only criminal violations of court orders under PWDVA, such as the violation of a protection order passed by the court while the case is ongoing. Cases registered under the violation of the PWDVA increased by 8%, from 426 in 2014 to 461 in 2015, according to NCRB data. This does not include actual incidents of domestic violence which are recorded under three sections of the Indian Penal Code–section 498 A for cruelty by husband and his relatives, section 304 B for Dowry deaths and section 306 for abetment of suicide. Further, cases dealing with protection from husband and relatives, and maintenance in cases of domestic violence, are registered directly with the court, under the PWDVA, a civil law, and are not recorded by the NCRB. This data on court cases has remained inaccessible after repeated attempts by women’s rights groups.

In her article, Chachra gives a detailed analysis related to the problems of data on Domestic Violence in India. Even in cases recorded by the NCRB, there is high pendency. As many as 35,260 (83%) out of 42,410 cases filed under dowry deaths in 2015 and left over from 2014 were pending at the end of 2015, as were 11,319 (99.9%) of 11,320 cases recorded under abetment of suicide, 44,4367 (83%) of 534,431 cases filed under cruelty by husbands and his relatives, and 846 (99.8%) of 847 cases filed under the PWDVA, according to data from the NCRB. Crime numbers might not reflect actual status of domestic violence. In 2015, over 113,000 cases were filed under the section called “cruelty by husband and relatives” by the NCRB, up 80% from 2006 when about 63,000 cases were filed, data show. The increase in number of cases could be because of an actual increase in crime or because of a rise in reporting off such cases, as awareness of the law grows, and more women are empowered to report abuse to the police, rather than an increase in the number of crimes. Trends differ from state to state. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, cases under “cruelty by husbands and relatives” decreased from 9,164 to 6,121, a 33% fall between 2006 and 2015, while dowry deaths decreased 66% from 519 in 2006 to 174 in 2015. Cases under “cruelty by husbands and relatives” increased by over 171% in West Bengal from 7414 in 2006 to 20,163.

It is unclear whether data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows actual trends in

domestic violence. Almost 30% of married Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 years reported experiencing spousal violence at least once, according to the National Family Health Survey-4, conducted over 2015-2016. This proportion has reduced from 27.2% of women who reported violence by spouses in 2005-2006.

Domestic violence is a pervasive social issue characterized by the perpetration of physical, sexual, and/or psychological harm by a current or former intimate partner. The NCRB report reveals cruelty by husband and relatives, in 2015, accounted for 34% of cases, rising 6% over the last four years, from 106,527 cases, in 2012, to 113,403, in 2015. As per the state and union territory-wise data, Uttar Pradesh has seen the highest number of women rights violation cases so far, in this financial year at 6,110 1. These cases are not only related to the dowry, physical and mental violence but many cases are of sexual violence, branding daughter in law as witch and violence for giving birth to female child.

People Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR) in many of its activities found that one of the main causes why domestic violence prevails and continues is the lack of alternatives among the victims due to patriarchy. Due to which Women and children are economically dependent on abusers. In almost all cases they generally feel, it is better to suffer in silence than to be separated from loved ones. They keep hoping for improvement, but it is normally observed that, without help, violence gets worse. The effect of DV is not limited to physical, psychological or emotional but also it affects financially as well. The survivors are compelled to live poor quality of life and they have to financially become dependent on their mayeke (parental home). They also have less societal interaction due to the social shame of the poor relationship. Due to which they develop many psychological symptoms such as anxiety, fear of going out, lack of self-esteem, confidence, isolation, lack of confidence and self-blame. “I feel so bad that do not want to go to anyone or any place. Never feel like attending marriage or any other function. I feel like repenting in a corner of the house, as I fear what will happen to me and my four year old daughter,” says 23 years old Jyoti. The survivors do not disclose abuse or seek social support because they may feel stigmatized if others know of their abuse, they may see violence in the home as a private matter, or they may fear retaliation from their partners if they disclose the abuse. Even if abused women seek social support, they may not receive the support they need because potential support providers may blame the victim or feel uncomfortable discussing this sensitive topic.

PVCHR had provided psycho- social support to 236 survivors of Domestic violence. PVCHR received the everyday two to three cases of the domestic violence in their office. The testimonial therapy (TT) is a short psychological approach to trauma that utilises the testimony method. The testimony is the truth telling and emotion pain sharing of the survivors with which truth is an important aspect of the process of justice. The testimony is viewed within the broad framework of social construction and provides valid information of human rights violations, without humiliating the witness. More often than not, it resulted in the survivors overcoming of depressive symptoms and cope with a difficult situation. Survivors rediscover self-worth and dignity. They regain self-esteem through the recording of their stories in a human rights context, as such private pain is reframed with a political meaning. In the Indian context, it has acquired the psycho-legal form that emphasizes denunciation of human rights violation and initiates advocacy for justice. It has three elements:

1. Private: Psychological rehabilitation of the survivor leads to a certain degree of restoration of the physical and mental state. This opens the possibility of his/her participation in a community movement and ultimately becoming a human rights defender.

2. Legal: The testimonies provide a lot of subjective information about the plight of the victim, which help the court to take into account when the bail application of the victim is considered. The human sufferings are never recorded in the court proceedings. However, these references of human sufferings often go in favour of the victim in front of the well prepared.
3. Political: Within testimonial therapy, public ceremonies are organised to honour the survivors of torture. These ceremonies provide an opportunity to bring back the survivor to the same community/society that has isolated him/her for being tortured. The testimonies are read out in the presence of the villagers, invited guests, local politicians, elected representatives, and local media creating debate and discussion at the local level because it contains human sufferings, institutional malpractices, and failure of constitutional guarantees.

Testimonies can be used as urgent appeals and for advocacy work. The ceremonies honouring the survivors after the process of testimonial therapy was such an empowering and endearing moment and milestone in the lives of the survivors. It was a real recognition of the integrity of the survivors as human beings that they possess value in every community and in society and they have right to be honoured in his/her community. The society provides acknowledgment and understanding of the survivors’ suffering and the necessity for healing and reparation. This was a celebration of their breaking of silence towards achieving empowerment, such as ‘The Kajari Mahotsav’ was able to facilitate the elimination of the caste feeling as both the upper and lower caste are able to participate together in said festival. With the Right to Information also discussed in their folk school, the leaders are well utilising it for their purpose. During the festival of Kajari Mahotsav, Dalit women have provided solidarity to the upper caste women, who was facing domestic violence.

Measures: The following measures were used for the pre- to post intervention outcome comparisons-

1. The World Health Organization Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5): WHO-5 consists of five self-report items, which measure emotional well-being, including mood and general interest in daily life activities. The P-scale measures restrictions in social participation due to social stigma and physical disability.
2. Pain and Anger Analogues: The Pain Analogue measures persistent physical pain in the body or head caused by the traumatic event. Similarly, the Anger Analogue measures the intensity of emotional anger about the torture experience. Survivors are asked to rate the level of his/her pain and anger respectively on a 6 point Likert Scale from 0 to 5, where 5 is the highest intensity of pain/ anger. The Pain and Anger analogues were developed by PVCHR to indicate the emotional state of mind of the survivor. The Pain and Anger Analogues are iterations of the Numeric Rating Scale for Pain, which has commonly been used in various iterations for people with chronic pain. At the end of the second session, an assessment of the trauma was undertaken; registering type of injuries, violations, psychological symptoms and the identity of the perpetrators, as well as other interventions that had been received in addition to TT, e.g. medical treatment or legal redress.

The psychological symptoms that were registered during the trauma assessment were: Nightmares, flashback memories, fear of going out, self-isolation, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and sleeping problems. Furthermore, survivors were asked whether they were members of, or worked for a political party, or a human rights organization, and if they believed in human rights. These questions were posed in order to investigate whether the intervention had helped the survivor gain a sense of justice and personal dignity and confidence, acknowledging the principle of human rights, and feeling empowered to help others.

PVCHR also provided the legal remedies under the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 and psycho – social support through testimonial therapy and it is used for the Intervention to the concerned authorities and medical treatment. Being in a continuously violent relationship the survivors faced many psychological effects s incredibly isolating, anxiety and low esteem. Due to which survivors seek for the fast remedy in the case or look of the immediate settlement in the matter and punishment to the abuser. The survivors faced apathy from the various concerned authorities and police due to the patriarchal understanding. Their attitudes towards such crimes are a “private matter” is most plain with regard to police treatment of criminal offenses involving domestic violence, for which police are empowered to make an arrest without a warrant.

Due to poor implementation of the law, women face imminent and life-threatening violence and most of the times they remain almost solely reliant on police aid. In most of the cases due to the lengthy justice process and no economic and social protection to survivors result extra – legal comprise involving few people from both side as witness. Poor and helpless women who don’t have money to travel to the district office to file complain or do follow up of the case. Even in District Probation office, they have to pay bribe each time to get the new dates and even also during the time of the mediation of the both parties. Survivors are again sent to their husbands’ house as the matter to test the relationship– as abuse/violence will not revise again.

It is a model of psycho – social support that covers the three significant pillars of work, that of healing and rehabilitation, achieving and having access to justice and prevention so that the practice and phenomenon of domestic violence should be eliminated. PVCHR is making the survivors of domestic violence economically empowered and Self- reliant through helping them to get job and getting the higher education.

The Boomerang Effect: How Netanyahu Made Israel an American Issue, and Lost

Ramzy Baroud

Despite massive sums of money spent to channel public opinion in the United States in favor of Israel, unmistakable trends in opinion polls are attesting to the changing dynamics of Israel’s support among ordinary Americans.

Not only is Israel losing its support and overall appeal among large sections of American society, but among young American Jews, as well – a particularity worrying phenomena for the Israeli government.

The trend promises to be a lasting one, since it has been in the making for years, starting some time after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

It was on that date that the affinity between Israel and the US purportedly grew to unprecedented levels, since both countries claimed to be fighting “Islamic terror.” In reality, the attacks, the ensuing media discourse and subsequent wars have all coagulated the support of Christian Evangelists behind Israel, as they saw the widening conflict in the Middle East as part of a long-awaited prophecy.

It was precisely then that the support of Israel by American Liberals, especially those identifying with the Democratic Party, began to weaken.

With time, supporting or not supporting Israel became a partisan issue, which is, itself, unprecedented.

While the Israeli government under Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, exploited every opportunity to maximize support for Israel in order to achieve objectives deemed important by the Israeli rightwing, ultra-right and religious parties, Netanyahu’s conceited and confrontational style has alienated many Americans, especially Democrats.

Worse, Netanyahu’s policies of entrenching the Occupation, blocking any peace efforts and expanding illegal Jewish settlements, also began to shift the kind of support that Israel has historically taken for granted, that of American Jews.

A comprehensive Pew poll published in October 2013 indicated that a growing number of US Jews question the sincerity of the Israeli government in its alleged efforts to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Palestine. Only 38% thought Tel Aviv was sincere, and only 17% agreed that the illegal Jewish settlements are conducive to Israel’s security. 44% thought otherwise.

The Israeli government, aware of the generational gap within the US Jewish communities, seemed more fixated on maximizing the unprecedented trend of support it was receiving from US Republicans and religious conservatives, especially Christian Evangelists.

Fast forward to January 2018 and Israel’s ratings among American Jews has plummeted even further.

According to a recent Brand Israel Group study, “support for Israel among Jewish college students in the United States has dropped 32% between 2010 and 2016,” reported the Israeli newspaper ‘Haaretz’.

The report was accompanied by stern warnings from the CEO and director-general of the influential Jewish Agency, Alan Hoffman, who described the findings as “extremely worrisome.”

However, no contingency plan is likely to reverse these numbers any time soon, since they are consistent with the overall perception of Israel among the US population.

The assumption that the US Jews is an insulated group which lends support to Israel, irrespective of political trends in the country as a whole, no longer suffices.

US Jewish communities are changing, and so is the entire country:

The number of those identifying as ‘liberal’ in the US has leaped from 27% to 41% between 2000 and 2015, respectively.

This change was accompanied by rising sympathy towards Palestinians by that same group as indicated by a May 2016 Pew poll. More liberal Democrats said they sympathized with Palestinians than with Israel, in a ratio of 40% vs. 33%, respectively.

At the time, it was prematurely concluded by various media analyst that the growing disenchantment with Israel had much to do with the feud between Netanyahu and then US President Barack Obama. Netanyahu had repeatedly challenged – and often humiliated – popular Democratic President, Obama, on various issues, notable amongst them is the expansion of the illegal settlements and the Iran nuclear deal.

The trend, however, continued, simply because once an issue falls in the realm of Washington’s partisan politics, it immediately becomes a polarizing one.

For decades, Israel was considered the only issue that united all Americans regardless of their political and ideological affiliations. That is no longer valid, and Netanyahu has played a major role in this.

The trend among Liberal Democrats was countered with another trend among Republicans, who have adopted the cause of Israel as their own. According to Pew, 79% of conservative Republicans support Israel, while 65% among liberal Republicans share their views.

While Christian Evangelists succeeded in making the unconditional support for Israel the litmus test for any candidate who seeks their vote, the Israeli cause is no longer a rally cry for Democrats.

Pew concluded that “the share of liberal Democrats who side more with the Palestinians than with Israel has nearly doubled since 2014 (from 21% to 40%) and is higher than at any point dating back to 2001.”

More studies by Pew were conducted in January 2017 and January 2018, all confirming that the trend is a lasting one.

Of all Democrats, only 33% sympathized with Israel according to Pew’s January 2017 poll. It was the “first time ever” that the Democratic Party “was split in nearly half between the support for Israel and the support for Palestinians.”

And as support for Palestinians grew among Democrats, so did the margin between the two major parties as the most recent January 2018 Pew research indicates.

While support for Israel among Republicans has remained high, a whopping 79%, support for Israel among Democrats has sunk even further, to 27%.

True, Netanyahu’s strategy in courting US conservatives has proved a success. However, the price of that success is that the relationship between Israel and the American public has fundamentally changed.

Netanyahu has shoved Israel into the heart of polarizing American politics, and although he has achieved his short-term goals (for example, obtaining US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel) he has irrevocably damaged the decades-long consensus on Israel among Americans, and in that there is a great source of hope.

Agriculture and Autonomy in the Middle East

Sean Keller

In Rojava, a region in Syria also known as North Kurdistan, a groundbreaking experiment in communal living, social justice, and ecological vitality is taking place. Devastated by civil war, Syria is a place where a cessation of hostilities often seems like the most that can be hoped for. But Rojava has set its sights much higher. What started as a movement for political autonomy in the city of Kobane has blossomed into an attempt to build a radical pluralist democracy on the principles of communal solidarity — with food security, equality for women, and a localized, anti-capitalist economy at its core.

The Mesopotamian Ecology Movement (MEM) has been at the heart of Rojava’s democratic revolution since its inception. The Movement grew out of single-issue campaigns against dam construction, climate change, and deforestation, and in 2015 went from being a small collection of local ecological groups to a full-fledged network of “ecology councils” that are active in every canton of Rojava, and in neighboring Turkey as well. Its mission, as one of its most prominent founding members, Ercan Ayboğa, says, is to “strengthen the ecological character of the Kurdish freedom movement [and] the Kurdish women’s movement”.

It’s not an easy process. Neoliberal policies, war, and climate change have made for an impressive roster of challenges. Crop diversity has been undermined due to longstanding subsidies for monocultures. Stocks of native seeds are declining. The region has been hit by trade embargoes from Turkey, Iraq, and the central Syrian government, and villages have been subject to forced displacement and depopulation. Groundwater reserves are diminishing, and climate change is reducing rainfall. Many wells and farms were destroyed by the self-described Islamic State (ISIS), and many farmers have been killed by mines. Much of the region is without electricity. And there has been an influx of refugees from the rest of Syria, fleeing civil war.

As MEM sees it, the solutions to these overlapping problems must be holistic and systemic. Ercan gives an impressive rundown of MEM’s priorities: Decreasing Rojava’s dependence on imports, returning to traditional water-conserving cultivation techniques, advocating for ecological policy-making at the municipal level, promoting local crops and livestock and traditional construction methods, organizing educational activities, working against destructive and exploitative “investment” and infrastructure projects such as dams and mines — in short, “the mobilization of an ecological resistance” towards anything guilty of “commercializing the waters, commodifying the land, controlling nature and people, and promoting the consumption of fossil fuels”.

In 2016, MEM published a declaration of its social and ecological aims, and it is a thing of beauty. “We must defend,” it says, “the democratic nation against the nation-state; the communal economy against capitalism, with its quick-profit-seeking logic and monopolism and large industries; organic agriculture, ecological villages and cities, ecological industry, and alternative energy and technology against the agricultural and energy policies imposed by capitalist modernity.”

Getting children involved in all of this is critical. Schools in Rojava teach ecology as a fundamental principle. In 2016, with the support of Slow Food International and the Rojava Ministry of Water and Agriculture, MEM helped build a series of school gardens in villages around the city of Kobane, in order to provide a ‘laboratory’ for children to learn about the region’s biodiversity and how to care for it. These gardens are growing fruit trees, figs, and pomegranates, instead of corn and wheat monocultures. Some have been planted on land that was once virtually destroyed by ISIS. In Rojava, even cultivation comes inherently infused with a spirit of resistance. “We grew up on this land and we haven’t abandoned it,” says Mustafa, a teacher whose school was one of those to receive a new garden in 2016. “As a people of farmers and livestock breeders, we have always tended the crops using our own techniques, which are thousands of years old.” As the MEM declaration says, “Bringing ecological consciousness and sensibility to the organized social sphere and to educational institutions is as vital as organizing our own assemblies.”

The spirit of resistance is as alive in the realm of society and economics as it is on the land. The cooperative economy in Rojava is booming. Michel Knapp, a longtime activist in the Kurdish freedom movement and co-author of the book Revolution in Rojava, observes that most cooperatives in Rojava are “small, with some five to ten members producing textiles, agricultural products and groceries, but there are some bigger cooperatives too, like a cooperative near Amûde that guarantees most of the subsistence for over 2,000 households and is even able to sell on the market.”

The government of Rojava is democratic and decentralized, with residential communes and local councils giving people autonomy and control over decisions that affect their lives. Municipal-level government bodies are systematically integrated into the operations of MEM, in a one-of-a-kind partnership between the public and nonprofit spheres. And the prison system is being radically reformed, with local ‘peace committees’ paying attention to the social and political dimensions of crime in passing judgment. Most cities contain no more than one or two dozen prisoners, according to Ercan.

And to top it all, women have taken a leading role in every facet of the revolution. Women’s cooperatives are a common sight in Rojava, as are women’s councils, women’s committees, and women’s security forces. Women’s ecovillages have been built both in Rojava and across the border in Turkish Kurdistan, aimed at helping victims of domestic violence and trauma. Patriarchy is just one more aspect of the neoliberal program being cast aside in Rojava, on the road towards building what MEM describes as “a radical democratic, communal, ecological, women-liberated society.”

Cyclone Gita leaves thousands homeless in Tonga

Tom Peters 

Tonga, an impoverished Pacific island nation with a population of 107,000, was devastated by Cyclone Gita on Monday night, leaving thousands of people homeless. The cyclone also caused significant damage to Samoa and American Samoa last weekend.

The system headed away from Tonga and last night intensified to a category five storm before hitting Fiji’s isolated southern Lau group of islands. Communications to the islands, home to 2,500 people, were cut off and extensive damage is expected. With storm surges up to 7 metres high predicted, residents were told to evacuate to higher ground.

Gita was the worst cyclone to hit Tonga in decades. The main island of Tongatapu and neighbouring ’Eua experienced wind gusts of 230 kilometres per hour. Emergency workers estimated that 40 percent of houses on Tongatapu lost their roofs. Many homes were flooded. On Monday night 5,700 people fled to evacuation centres.

There is extensive damage to schools, churches and other buildings and infrastructure in the capital, Nuku’alofa. The parliament building was flattened. The meteorological service lost its roof, rendering it incapable of updating the cyclone’s progress. Power lines came down and Tongatapu and ’Eua remain almost entirely without electricity. Water has been cut off. Many roads are still impassable and no full assessment of the damage has been carried out.

Graham Kenna of Tonga’s National Emergency Management Office told the New Zealand Herald: “It’s the worst situation I have been in. A lot of the old heritage buildings, some that have stood for over 100 years, have been destroyed.”

Rural areas, where the majority of the population lives, are largely cut off. Red Cross volunteer Vanessa Heleta told Radio NZ crops and fruit trees on the eastern part of Tongatapu were flattened, leaving many people desperate. Most Tongans rely on subsistence farming for food.

There have been two confirmed deaths. On Tuesday night a 72-year-old man died of a heart attack after being rushed to hospital. An elderly woman was killed when her house blew apart while she was inside. More than 30 people have sustained injuries.

Samoa and American Samoa also reported widespread flooding and damage to residential buildings and businesses. While the damage is apparently less severe than in Tonga, Radio NZ reported that 200 people in Samoa needed emergency shelter and 800 in American Samoa were still in evacuation centres yesterday.

Aid agencies have warned of the danger of infectious diseases spread by contaminated water and flooding. Tonga, Fiji and Samoa are already experiencing an outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue fever. Radio NZ reported that the Ministry of Health confirmed 53 cases on Tongatapu this summer. The disease is sometimes fatal without proper treatment. A 12-year-old New Zealand girl died last month after contracting dengue in Tonga.

The cost of Cyclone Gita has not yet been estimated, but undoubtedly amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. The imperialist powers in the Pacific have so far allocated a pittance in aid. The Australian government has sent an Air Force plane with just $AU350,000 worth of aid to Tonga.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern mouthed sympathy for Tonga on Radio NZ yesterday, saying “we see ourselves as having a huge responsibility here... [to] meet the need.” Her Labour Party-led government, falsely promoted as progressive by the media and pseudo-left groups, has deployed an Air Force Hercules to Tonga with a mere $NZ750,000 worth of assistance. Wellington has sent just $50,000 to Samoa.

In fact, New Zealand’s record demonstrates the utterly callous attitude of its ruling class toward Pacific people following natural disasters.

Cyclone Ian, which hit Tonga’s Ha’apai group of islands in January 2014, caused an estimated $US50 million in damage and economic losses. That storm destroyed crops and about 450 houses. Reconstruction was plagued by delays and a lack of funds. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank pledged around $US16 million in grants and loans, while the New Zealand government gave around $US4 million.

One year later, the Tongan Red Cross reported that only 50 houses in Ha’apai had been rebuilt and most people were still living in tents. In August 2017, three years after the cyclone, Radio NZ reported that 75 homes were still to be rebuilt.

Across the Pacific, the impact of natural disasters such as Gita is exacerbated by poverty and run-down housing and infrastructure, the products of more than a century of colonial domination. Thousands of people in Tonga, Samoa and Fiji live in poorly constructed shacks, incapable of withstanding hurricanes and cyclones.

All three countries are heavily exploited by Australia and New Zealand as a source of cheap migrant labour, particularly seasonal agricultural work. Samoa was ruled ruthlessly by New Zealand until it became officially independent in 1962.

Any aid or military intervention by the imperialist powers is dictated not by humanitarian motivations, but geostrategic interests. The US, Australia and New Zealand regard the growing Chinese and Russian economic influence in the Pacific as a threat to their own hegemony in the region.

Following Cyclone Winston, which destroyed villages in Fiji in 2016 and killed 29 people, New Zealand and Australia utilised the disaster to deploy hundreds of military personnel to the former British colony.

The operation, New Zealand’s largest non-combat mobilisation in the Pacific since World War II, amounted to a military exercise and show of force, particularly directed against China, which had established significant ties with the Fijian government.

Japan’s ruling party pushing to end constraints on military

Ben McGrath

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is preparing a draft revision of Article 9 of the constitution, which currently binds Japan to renouncing war, by the end of the month so as to have a finalized proposal for its convention on March 25.

While Article 9 has not prevented Japan from building a military, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is working to remove all legal and constitutional barriers to using the so-called Self Defense Forces to pursue the strategic and economic interests of Japanese imperialism. Abe’s push takes places amid heightened tensions in Asia, generated above all by the US-led confrontation with North Korea and more broadly China and Russia.

On February 7, Hiroyuki Hosoda, chairman of the LDP’s Constitutional Reform Promotion Headquarters, issued a directive to party lawmakers to submit within 10 days their own proposals for revising Article 9. “The most important aspect will be to gain public understanding and receive approval from a wide segment of the population,” he stated.

Article 9, adopted after World War II, contains two paragraphs. The first says “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.” The second declares that “war potential will never be maintained” and the “right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

While there is consensus within the LDP for changes, disputes remain over the extent of the revisions. Abe has stated he intends to leave the existing two paragraphs intact while adding a third paragraph that explicitly legalizes the SDF, the formal name of Japan’s military.

Shigeru Ishiba, a former LDP secretary general and defense minister, has called for the party to stick to the LDP’s 2012 draft constitution, which deleted the second paragraph. It also added two new paragraphs that would establish a National Defense Force, with the prime minister as commander-in-chief, legalize its involvement in “peacekeeping” operations abroad, and allow the military to be deployed domestically to put down public unrest.

Ishiba has called for Japan to have the “right to belligerence,” on the pretext that military aggression would be used defensively. This is essentially the same argument Japanese imperialism used to invade and colonize its neighbors in the past and mirrors the rationale Washington used to justify illegal wars in the Middle East in the name of combatting “terrorism.”

A third proposal calls for keeping the current two paragraphs while adding a third that formally recognizes “collective self-defense,” a euphemism for allowing the SDF to go to war, so long as it is done alongside an ally, namely the United States. This would legitimize legislation, passed by the Abe government in 2016, deemed by many lawyers as unconstitutional.

The caution with which Abe and some LDP lawmakers are proceeding reflects the deep anti-war sentiment among the Japanese working class and youth. Any changes to the constitution must not only be approved by a two-thirds majority of both houses of the Diet (parliament), but also by a majority in a national referendum. A Kyodo news agency poll last month showed 55 percent of voters opposed revising Article 9.

The prime minister is attempting to win over opposition lawmakers who will in turn try to sell the revisions to their constituents. In his first policy speech of the year on January 22, Abe stated in the Diet: “I hope all political parties will bring to the Diet a concrete proposal for the constitution and deepen discussions at the commissions on the constitution.”

In a Diet session on January 30, the prime minister tried to gloss over the potential for going to war, claiming Article 9’s revision would not allow the SDF to act unrestrained while overseas.

Even if the public rejects constitutional changes at a referendum, Abe said last week: “The government has consistently maintained that the SDF is constitutional. This will not change, even if the idea to stipulate the existence of the SDF is voted down in a national referendum.” In other words, the government will simply ignore a no vote.

The official opposition parties, such as the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and its allies, the Japanese Communist Party and Social Democratic Party, are not opposed to the government’s accelerating drive to remilitarize. Their posturing against constitutional change is aimed at confining widespread anti-war sentiment within the dead-end of parliamentary politics, by claiming a new parliamentary vote or Abe’s removal from office would somehow halt the drive to war.

These opposition parties have not organized any significant protests, let alone a campaign, against constitutional revision or war, even as the government acquires offensive weaponry explicitly banned by Article 9. As the Abe government is making clear, Article 9 is no real barrier to the preparations of Japanese imperialism for new wars of aggression.

In December, Abe’s cabinet approved the largest military budget ever to cover the costs of purchasing cruise missiles, amid discussion over the legality of launching a preemptive attack on North Korea. Tokyo also will purchase two Aegis Ashore missile batteries from the US, which Russia and China fear could be turned from ostensibly defensive into offensive weaponry.

Last May, the Maritime SDF vessel Izumo escorted a US naval supply ship through the Sea of Japan in a test of the 2015 military legislation. The Izumo and its sister ship, the Kaga, are helicopter carriers and the largest vessels in Japan’s navy. In December, government sources told the media that the military is considering converting them into fully-fledged aircraft carriers capable of transporting F-35B fighter jets. While no concrete plans have emerged, if the ships were converted, they would be the first aircraft carriers in Japan’s fleet since World War II.

Amid jockeying over Maldives, Washington presses for closer ties with India

Rohantha De Silva

As India continues to weigh the risks and advantages of a military intervention in the Maldives, a strategic Indian Ocean archipelago where China has dramatically expanded its influence in recent years, US President Donald Trump has made a public show of reaching out for closer military-security cooperation between Washington and New Delhi.

Last Thursday, the White House let it be known that Trump had telephoned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed with him the current political crisis in the Maldives, as well as developments in Myanmar, Afghanistan and North Korea. It also boasted that plans had been finalized for a new 2+2 dialogue that will bring together the countries’ respective foreign and defence ministers.

According to the White House “readout” of their conversation, the fascistic-minded Trump and the arch-Hindu communalist Modi “expressed concern about the political crisis in the Maldives and the importance of respect for democratic institutions and rule of law.”

Claims that either leader or their governments are concerned about democracy on the Maldives are transparent lies.

US imperialism has supported, armed and sustained in office brutal right-wing regimes the world over.

For decades, India backstopped an authoritarian government in the Maldives, led by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the half-brother of the current president, Abdulla Yameen, and it continues to view Maldives as part of its sphere of regional dominance.

But Yameen, the Maldives president since a contested election in 2013, has raised New Delhi’s hackles by developing close ties to China, which did not even have an embassy in Malle until 2011. Maldives is participating in China’s One Belt, One Road (OBPR) infrastructure-building initiative, signed a free trade agreement with Beijing in December, and earlier last year received three Chinese warships.

The Maldives has a population of less than half a million. But they are considered a strategic prize, because they are close to Indian Ocean shipping lanes through which much of the oil that powers the economies of India, China, Japan and other East Asian states passes, as well as much of their trade with Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

That New Delhi (and for that matter Washington) covets the Maldives for its strategic value and “democracy” is at most a flimsy pretext for a possible military intervention is readily admitted in the Indian press.

“Security concerns deserve primacy,” writes S.D. Pradhan, a former chairman of India’s Joint Intelligence Committee. “Whether democracy prevails in the Maldives or not, it is not India’s primary aim. India cannot allow developments that go against its security and geo-political interests in its backyard.”

Exiled opposition leader and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has been openly agitating for an Indian military intervention, citing Yameen’s imposition of a state of emergency and arrest of two Supreme Court justices in response to a Supreme Court ruling February 1 overturning the criminal convictions of Nasheed and eight other opposition politicians and restoring a dozen opposition legislators to their parliamentary seats.

Yameen, who has increasingly resorted to authoritarian measures to retain power, subsequently prevailed on the remaining Supreme Court justices to overturn the Feb. 1 verdict.

Nasheed has long been seeking to win the backing of India and the western powers, including with accusations that China is engaged in a “land grab” in Maldives and denunciations of the OBOR.

He has repeatedly contrasted a reputedly benevolent India, glossing over its long support for Gayoom and efforts to impose itself as the regional hegemon, with China, which he claims is intent on reducing the Maldives to a colony.

Nasheed’s charges have been trumpeted and amplified by the Indian and western press, with many reports claiming that should the Maldives continue to be drawn into China’s orbit, Beijing will establish military facilities there.

The reality is that everything they accuse Beijing of doing, Washington and New Delhi have done, are doing, and/or want to do, with the aim of expanding their control over the Indian Ocean so as to be able to strangle China economically and militarily.

In 2013, the US was pressing the Maldives to sign a Status of Forces Agreement, which would have allowed the Pentagon to use the country’s ports and airbases, granted US military personnel deployed to the Maldives exemptions and immunities equal to diplomatic status, and opened the door to the building of US military facilities on the archipelago.

Last month India signed an agreement to expand its military presence in the Seychelles, where it already has a naval base. New Delhi is in the process of negotiating an agreement with Paris giving it access to France’s substantial Indian Ocean military facilities and it recently signed an agreement allowing the Indian navy to use Singapore for repair and resupply. The latter agreement will greatly facilitate India’s pledge to routinely patrol the strategic Malacca Strait.

Moreover India and the US collaborated in mounting a “regime change” operation in Sri Lanka. They orchestrated the defection of Maithripala Sirisena from the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was deemed too close to China, and his emergence as “common opposition” candidate in the 2015 presidential election.

Thus far, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party government have said little publicly about the Maldives developments, other than to condemn Yameen’s actions and refuse to meet with an envoy from his government who was tasked with explaining the purpose of its state of emergency and plans for moving forward.

However, the Indian military has let it be known that it is ready for any eventuality and the government has pointedly not ruled out a military intervention. In 1988, Indian troops intervened in the Maldives to thwart an attempted coup against Gayoom.

New Delhi did not issue any statement on last week’s Modi-Trump discussion about the Maldives. But in not-for-attribution comments, the Modi government admits it is coordinating its response with “allies,” i.e. the US, Britain, and other western powers. “We are working with our close partners,” one Indian official told the Financial Times. “Whatever we do has to be done together.”

While Washington is eager to demonstrably harness India ever more tightly to its military-strategic offensive against China, New Delhi still finds it politic to maintain some pretense of “strategic autonomy” from Washington.

However, the range of issues Trump and Modi discussed underscored the extent to which India has become integrated into American imperialist strategy in the so-call “Indo-Pacific region.”

Just in the past six months, India has: agreed to take on a greater role in supporting the US war in Afghanistan; actualized an agreement allowing the Pentagon to use Indian air and naval bases; lined up behind the US war threats against North Korea, including by participating in a conference in Vancouver that brought together the states that waged the Korean War under US command; and joined the so-called Quad, a strategic dialogue bringing together the US, India and Washington’s closest Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

Now Modi and Trump are plotting how to counter Chinese influence in the Maldives, including through a possible Indian invasion of the archipelago.

China, meanwhile, has called on the “international community” to “respect the sovereignty and independence of the Maldives” and has expressed the hope that the Maldives doesn’t become another “flashpoint” in Indo-Chinese relations.

South Africa’s ANC votes to remove President Jacob Zuma

Eddie Haywood 

The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa founded by Nelson Mandela, and currently led by multi-millionaire former union boss Cyril Ramaphosa, have targeted President Jacob Zuma for removal, amid dimming prospects for the ANC ahead of elections to be held in April 2019. The party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) convened for a 13-hour meeting on Monday that lasted into the early morning hours on Tuesday and reached a unanimous decision to seek Zuma’s immediate removal.

Just before midnight on Monday Ramaphosa and ANC General Secretary Ace Magashule traveled to Zuma’s home to request the president’s resignation within 48 hours. Zuma refused, reportedly telling the two that he could not do so under such short notice. However, the president agreed to step down, and told the two he would do so in three to six months.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) party have attempted to seize political advantage of the reversing fortunes of the Zuma government and the ANC as the ruling party has suffered a sharp fall in popularity. The ANC-dominated Parliament had scheduled a ‘no confidence’ vote on February 22 regarding President Zuma, but various members have indicated that they wish to move the vote forward to this week.

Magashule dismissed notions that the party was influenced by growing corruption charges and inquiries against Zuma, and instead attempted to portray the measures undertaken to remove him as without malice or any political consideration.

Taking power in 2009, the Zuma government has been characterized by corruption and nepotism while presiding over a sharp decline in the nation’s economy, conditions which have made international capitalists nervous about investing in South Africa. The ANC is seeking to undo any further damage by Zuma by overseeing his immediate removal and replacement with Ramphosa.

However, the convention of the NEC by the party’s leadership to seek the removal of a sitting president is a measure of the protracted crisis seizing not only the ANC, but the entire South African bourgeoisie.

A palpable fear of a social explosion is on the minds of the South African ruling elite and is prompting them to act. This fear is fueled by increasing worker unrest manifested by the sharp increase in strike activity across the country, the rise in unemployment and increase in poverty, and recently, the severe water shortage wracking Cape Town.

Magashule underlined the measure of crisis gripping the ruling party, telling the media that the NEC was unanimous in its agreement that Zuma’s removal is to be “treated with urgency.” Ominously, he added, “When we recall our deployee, we expect our deployee to do as asked.”

Telling reporters the ANC’s plans for Ramaphosa to replace Zuma, whom the ANC elected as party leader in December, Magashule said, “The NEC has noted South Africa is going through a period of uncertainty and anxiety as a result of unresolved matter of transition. It is obvious we want Comrade Ramaphosa to come in as the president of South Africa.”

The ruling elite is nervous that the party of Nelson Mandela, who fought and defeated the racist regime of apartheid, has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the South African population. These fears are not without foundation: Since coming to power in 1994, the ANC cemented a relationship with the white South African capitalist elite to continue capitalist relations. In return, this wealthy class agreed on the creation of a wealthy black elite, a political arrangement significantly benefitting Zuma and Ramaphosa. Since coming to power, the political elite of the ANC have amassed great fortunes at the expense of the South African population.

The ANC from the outset was an anti-working class organization, the fact made clear by Mandela in 1956, speaking of the ANC’s aims to promote “black capitalism”: “For the first time in the history of this country, the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own in their own name and right mills and factories, and trade and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before.”

This tiny wealthy layer of black elites has presided over an increasing social decline among the working class, and the ANC, once looked upon as a progressive political organization by the black population, is now widely despised. Since the ANC took power, South Africa has become one the most socially polarized countries in the world, with an unemployment rate of 28 percent.

The ruling elite have expressed concern over the series of corruption scandals that have beset the Zuma government, the latest of which occurred in 2016 and involved Zuma using $23 million in public funds to renovate his private home.

Previously, during Zuma’s term as deputy president, his financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, was convicted in 1999 of bribery and fraud for a $30 billion weapons deal with various European companies the two brokered on behalf of South Africa. In 2007, Zuma was charged for his role in the affair, but prosecutors later dropped the charges. Then President Thabo Mbeki dismissed Zuma as deputy president.

The election in December of Ramaphosa to lead the ANC was an attempt to give a facelift to the party’s flagging fortunes. After years of the corrupt Zuma regime, the South African economy has taken a dive. With the selection of Ramaphosa, the ruling class cynically expects that the election of a union leader will be greeted by the population with enthusiasm.

As leader of South Africa’s largest union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), he sought to tie black South African workers behind the ANC’s aims of “black economic empowerment.” In 1991 he was elected General Secretary of the ANC and played a significant role in the multiparty negotiations that led to the end of apartheid by assuring that capitalist relations would remain intact.

Adding to the ANC’s anti-working-class character was Ramaphosa’s role as a member of the board of directors of Lonmin during the 2012 Marikana massacre, in which striking mineworkers were shot to death. Ramaphosa utilised his position in the ANC to pressure authorities to take action against the “plainly dastardly criminal acts” of the strikers. Taking his cue, the security forces then shot and killed 34 striking workers, and wounded dozens of others.

As the WSWS reported, the history and political odyssey of the ANC serves as a devastating indictment against “black economic empowerment” and its programme of pro-capitalist and anti-working class politics. This makes clear that the economic interests represented by the ANC are diametrically opposed to those of the South African working class.

Corporate giant Unilever demands crackdown on oppositional Internet content

Will Morrow

The drive to censor the Internet took another step this week with a public statement by Keith Weed, the chief marketing officer for the London-based multinational Unilever, threatening to withdraw advertising from social media platforms if they fail to suppress “toxic content.”

Weed reportedly told an annual leadership meeting of the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Palm Desert, California that the company “will not invest in platforms or environments” that “create divisions in society, and promote anger or hate.” He added, “We will prioritize investing only in responsible platforms that are committed to creating a positive impact in society.”

Excerpts of Weed’s remarks—the most explicit of their kind from a major corporate executive—were leaked to several media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. They were immediately featured on NBC News and other major American news outlets on Sunday. The Journal’s report was accompanied by an interview with Weed.

The coordinated release was designed to escalate the propaganda offensive by the Democratic Party and US intelligence agencies, together with the corporate media, for Internet censorship. The fraudulent premise for this assault on freedom of speech, both in the US and across Europe, is the claim that political opposition and social tensions are the product not of poverty, inequality and policies of austerity and militarism, but of “fake news” spread by Russia through social media.

Weed’s statements preceded yesterday’s US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, which witnessed a series of hysterical denunciations of Russia by politicians and intelligence agents. The Democratic vice-chairman of the committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, declared that Russia “utilized our social media platforms to push and spread misinformation at an unprecedented scale.”

Facebook responded to Weed’s threats by declaring, “[W]e fully support Unilever’s commitments and are working closely with them.” The Journalstated that Unilever “has already held discussions” with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snap and Amazon “to share ideas about what each can do to improve.”

Weed absurdly framed his demand for censorship, made on behalf of a multibillion-dollar global corporation, as the expression of popular anger over the supposed spread of “fake news.” He referred to research showing a decline in trust in social media and a “perceived lack of focus” in the form of “illegal, unethical and extremist behavior and material on” social media platforms. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed to be articulating the concerns of consumers over “fake news” and “Russians influencing the US election.”

In reality, the intervention by Unilever—a consumer products behemoth with a market capitalization of $157 billion and annual revenues of $65 billion, more than the gross domestic product of many countries—only highlights the economic and political forces driving the censorship campaign: an alliance of the military/intelligence apparatus, giant technology firms and the corporate-financial oligarchy.

Unilever’s annual marketing outlays of nearly $9 billion place it in the top five companies in that category globally. It owns dozens of brands used by some 2.5 billion people around the world, including Dove soap, Rexona deodorant and food products Cornetto, Magnum and Lipton. Weed’s statements amount to a declaration that Unilever will use this economic power to filter what the world’s population can and cannot read online.

This is in line with a long and reactionary tradition. Large advertisers played a significant role in enforcing the McCarthyite witch hunt of socialist and left-wing figures in the US during the late 1940s and 1950s. General Motors, DuPont, Reynolds Tobacco and other major companies were backers of the notorious anticommunist periodical Counterattack, which published names of suspected communist sympathizers and forced the removal of targeted performers and critical content from programs they sponsored.

In one of many such cases, the blacklisted Jean Muir was dropped from the television show “The Aldrich Family” after General Foods, the program’s sponsor, told NBC it would not sponsor programs featuring “controversial persons.”

In another development, Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet), told a Code Media conference in Los Angeles that Facebook “should get back to baby pictures and sharing.” The statement is a reference to Facebook’s announcement last month that it is deprioritizing news content on its News Feed in favor of “personal moments.” The change is one of a number of recent measures to prevent Facebook users from accessing news and analysis outside of officially sanctioned corporate outlets.

UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Tuesday released a government-developed application that uses machine-learning algorithms to automatically detect ISIS-related content in videos so that it can be censored.

The BBC wrote that the tool was seen by the government as a way to demonstrate that its “demand for a clampdown on extremist activity was not unreasonable.” Rudd stated, “The technology is there. There are tools out there that can do exactly what we’re asking for,” i.e., identifying and censoring video content. The new application will be provided free of charge to smaller video hosting companies, and the government will consider making its use legally mandatory.

The Washington Post, which along with the New York Times has been at the forefront of the censorship campaign, linked the UK government’s announcement to the intervention of Unilever, writing that it came “amid mounting pressure on social media companies to do more to remove extremist content from their platforms.”