Is there a place for ethics in Smart Cities?

Jaspal Kaur Sadhu Singh

It is difficult to win a debate on ethics when you are pitted against a crowd of tech-acolytes. I was taking the position that a more vital consideration in developing cities are ethical ones rather than the smartness of the technology utilised in the infrastructure and running of facilities or services in cities. The organisers of the Maxis Innovation Dialogue invited me to debate the motion that building Ethical Cities is far more important than Smart Cities (held on 30 September 2019 at Found8, KL Sentral).

The ethicists were pitted against the techists at polarized ends. External to the debate setting, the most prudent position to take is the middle ground which suggests that we can build Smart Cities that have altruistic outcomes and serve the communities that reside in them. The concern here lies in the question as to whether we are being too hasty in turning to technology to resolve all the problems that plague city-dwellers. Phrases such as “Smart Cities” seem to appeal to the modern sensibilities of progressiveness, especially in raising our quality of life, but are we saying that urban problems can only be resolved with technology and therefore the responsibility to develop Smart Cities to a certain extent is to be placed on the shoulders of tech companies?

Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad alerted us to the stumbling blocks in developing Smart Cities which lies in involved parties working in silos. At the launch of the Malaysia Smart City Framework on 23 September, Tun alluded to the need for cooperation between various tiers of government and the private sector as well as reminding us that whilst developing Smart Cities may integrate our cities with technological solutions, the prosperity and well-being of the rakyat was the ultimate goal (The Star, Smart city players working in silos hindering development as a whole, says Dr M, 23 September 2019). Hence, it cannot be a case of using technology for technology sake.

In re-calibrating our debate of Smart Cities vs Ethical Cities, I referenced the contents of an astute opinion written by Badrul Hisham Ismail (The Star, Smart city dumb people?, 29 September 2019) in making my case. The author raises a multitude of concerns that perambulate the building of Smart Cities. One of these concerns is that vulnerable sections of communities may be further marginalised where technological solutions may be inaccessible, such as in the case of adopting cashless payment systems. When adopting such systems, one has to bear in mind sections of our society who have no information or access to connectivity, devices or base knowledge and skills to handle the technology.

Ethical Cities can incorporate “smart” initiatives where use of technology is absolutely essential such as waste management through artificial sensors, reusing grey water, alleviating traffic congestion, and efficient use of resources such as electricity to illuminate community spaces. However, in most cities that require attention, poverty is the greatest concern. Cities are not effectively dealing with rising property prices, the lack of public transportation that is affordable and intelligently connected, congestion, pollution, lack of accessible healthcare, quality education, and most importantly, safe spaces for our children to grow and become well-developed adults.

With everything else, we tend to be convinced with the use of gimmickry and gadgetry pandered to us by tech companies without real qualification or substantial justification. One example that has faced much resistance is the development of the waterfront in Toronto, Canada – a disused part of the Quayside area – by Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Alphabet (the company that owns Google). The project has just obtained its initial approval in October, subject to conditions and restrictions, for instance, data collected will be treated as a public asset. It faced a barrage of criticisms and questions, in particular the motives of big tech giants becoming involved in urban development. One expert critique called the initiative as “surveillance capitalism”. Other questioned the experience of the tech giant’s experience in urban planning. Are residents within these Smart Cities to end up being subjects of a larger experiment controlled by algorithms and AI tools cloaked as magic potions which are miraculously able to resolve the ailments of our cities?

There exists a need to ensure that our Smart Cities are indeed Ethical Cities. We have to ask the right questions to elicit the answers that will allow us to make well informed decisions. There must be public consultation where details of the development which is open to scrutiny in town hall meetings with residents. At every phase of the development, there must be continued monitoring by city council officials as they are accountable to the residents who pay their assessment taxes. There must be an altruistic end to any integration of innovation, clearly researched and rationalised as a vital need or resolution to the problems that blights a city. Planning experts, environmentalists, social scientists, educators, and experts from any sector for that matter who deliver services to the community, must be engaged. There must be clear compliance of procurement laws. There must be a clear framework of how any use of AI which harvest’s rich data from residents and users of the city’s facilities is managed. Finally, there must be an independent panel of experts representing all parties, but mostly the community, must be established as part of the monitoring system.

Cities need to be sustainable, resilient, economically vibrant, inclusive and democratic. Keeping in mind that technology is the mere scaffolding that lifts the structures of our society, cities cannot be built from technology up; they are built from the needs of the humans who reside within them.

Curfew Panda

Binoy Kampmark

It seems a tall, ambitious and very authoritarian order: imposing bans on persons under the age of 18 from playing online games between 22:00 and 08:00; rationing gaming on weekdays to 90 minutes and three hours on holidays and weekends.  This is the response of the People’s Republic of China to fears that video game addiction must be combated, less with modest treatment regimes than the curfew method.  Perhaps more importantly, the aim here, as with other systems of state surveillance, is to create a system of verification matching a user’s identity with government data.

The guidelines also seek to restrict the money minors can spend on online games – those between 8 and 16 are permitted additions of $29 in digital gaming outlay each month.  Those between 16 and 18 can add $57.  Teachers, parents and the good authorities are also encouraged to influence the gaming habits of the young.  Onward principled instructors.

Video gaming, with its virtual communities, has created worlds of isolation.  As John Lanchester would observe in 2009, “There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience.”  When the video-gamer has made an appearance in cultural discourses, it has usually been as a spectacular horror story, violence on screen begetting violence off screen. This nexus remains forced but no less convincing for the morally concerned.

The concern now is less that minors will rush off and gun down their peers than dissipate themselves in cerebral sludge and apathy.  In November 1982, the US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared his personal war on video games, which offered “nothing constructive” and consumed the “body and soul” of their users.  While having no evidence at the time about the effect of such games on children, he, according to the New York Times, “predicted statistical evidence would be forthcoming soon from the health care fields.”

The current literature is peppered with warnings that the Internet has ceased being the rosy frontier of freedom and very much the hostage taker of controls and desires.  Freedom has become vegetate and dulled; users have become narcotised.  In 2012, Daria J. Kuss and Mark D. Griffiths in Brain Sciences observed that, over “the past decade, research has accumulated suggesting that excessive Internet use can lead to the development of a behavioural addiction.”  Such an addiction “had been considered a serious threat to mental health and the excessive use of the Internet has been linked to a variety of negative psychosocial consequences.”

The review of 18 studies by Kuss and Griffiths makes for despairing reading.  Neural circuitry is adjusted via internet and gaming addiction (“neuroadaptation and structural changes”); behaviourally, gaming addicts suggest constriction “with regards to their cognitive functioning in various domains.”  But as with everything else such studies on claimed influence and corruption face the usual sceptical rebukes; research is criticised, if not ignored altogether, for being heavy with biases and distortions.

We are left with such non-committal observations as those of Pete Etchells, who makes the rather dull point in Lost in a Good Game that, “There are as yet no universal or conclusive truths about what researches do or do not know about the effects that video games have on us.”  Etchells certainly does his best in underscoring the good effects, claiming that “video game play is one of the most fundamentally important activities we can take part in”.  Consider, for instance, escapism when facing the death of a parent.

Such views have not impressed the World Health Organisation, which has come down firmly on the side of the anti-gaming puritans. The body has added its voice to the debate, describing such addiction rather discouragingly as “gaming disorder”.  It is “defined in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behaviour (‘digital-gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’) characterised by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.”

Such a view was bound to cause a flutter of irritation in the gaming industry.  As Ferris Jabr noted last month in The New York Times Magazine, the word addiction is an uncomfortable combine involving religious scolding, scientific disapproval, and colloquial use describing “almost any fixation.”

With such opinions circulating, state regulators have decided to come out swinging.  In 2018, a game-obsessed China, with the then world’s largest market, unearthed a new gaming regulator: the State Administration of Press and Publications, operating under the auspices of the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party.  The GAPP, as outlined in a document published on the website of the education ministry, would “implement controls on the total number of online video games, control the number of new video games operated online, explore an age-appropriate reminder system in line with China’s national conditions, and take measures to limit the amount of time minors [spend on games].”

But the rationale for having such a body is not exactly one of enlightenment.  Fine to wean the young off their addictive devices and platforms, encouraging healthier living, but supplanting it with the guidance of the all-powerful President Xi Jinping?  Much equivalent is this to the idea of replacing a symptom with a cult, a questionable solution at best.

Video game companies have made modest efforts to rein in times of use for those of certain age.  The world’s largest gaming company, Tencent, took the plunge by limiting game time to one hour a day for those under the age of 12, and two for those between 12 and 18.  Such moves seem ineffectual given the sheer variety of games users can expect to sample.

Having such regulators, whatever the noble purpose, is an incitement to capriciousness.  Times of use can be adjusted in accordance with whim. The genres of games can be pulled from the market at any given moment for stretched political and social reasons.  The Chinese case is rich with examples, including the designation that mah-jong and poker be removed the approval list over concerns regarding illegal gambling.

The effort to restrict those of a certain age from immersing themselves in virtual reality for fear of contaminating the world of flesh and feeling remains current and, in many circles, popular.  The Chinese experiment is bound to be catching, but going behind the regulations, weaknesses are evident.  The PRC gaming restrictions do not, for instance, cover offline experiences or single-player forms.  The addict need merely modify the habit.  The true purpose of such moves remain conventional and oppressive: the assertion of state power and surveillance over individual choice.

Neoliberalism’s children rise up to demand justice in Chile and the world

Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J S Davies

Uprisings against the corrupt, generation-long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping country after country all over the world.

In this Autumn of Discontent, people from Chile, Haiti and Honduras to Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon are rising up against neoliberalism, which has in many cases been imposed on them by U.S. invasions, coups and other brutal uses of force. The repression against activists has been savage, with more than 250 protesters killed in Iraq in October alone, but the protests have continued and grown. Some movements, such as in Algeria and Sudan, have already forced the downfall of long-entrenched, corrupt governments.

A country that is emblematic of the uprisings against neoliberalism is Chile. On October 25, 2019, a million Chileans–out of a population of about 18 million–took to the streets across the country, unbowed by government repression that has killed at least 20 of them and injured hundreds more. Two days later, Chile’s billionaire president Sebastian Piñera fired his entire cabinet and declared, “We are in a new reality. Chile is different from what it was a week ago.”

The people of Chile appear to have validated Erica Chenoweth’s research on non-violent protest movements, in which she found that once over 3.5% of a population rise up to non-violently demand political and economic change, no government can resist their demands. It remains to be seen whether Piñera’s response will be enough to save his own job, or whether he will be the next casualty of the 3.5% rule.

It is entirely fitting that Chile should be in the vanguard of the protests sweeping the world in this Autumn of Discontent, since Chile served as the laboratory for the neoliberal transformation of economics and politics that has swept the world since the 1970s.

When Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende was elected in 1970, after a 6-year-long covert CIA operation to prevent his election, President Nixon ordered U.S. sanctions to “make the economy scream.”

In his first year in office, Allende’s progressive economic policies led to a 22% increase in real wages, as work began on 120,000 new housing units and he started to nationalize copper mines and other major industries. But growth slowed in 1972 and 1973 under the pressure of brutal U.S. sanctions, as in Venezuela and Iran today. U.S. sabotage of the new government intensified, and on September 11th, 1973, Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The new leader, General Augusto Pinochet, executed or disappeared at least 3,200 people, held 80,000 political prisoners in his jails and ruled Chile as a brutal dictator until 1990, with the full support of the U.S. and other Western governments.

Under Pinochet, Chile’s economy was submitted to radical “free market” restructuring by the “Chicago Boys,” a team of Chilean economics students trained at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Milton Friedman for the express purpose of conducting this brutal experiment on their country. U.S. sanctions were lifted and Pinochet sold off Chile’s public assets to U.S. corporations and wealthy investors. Their program of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, together with privatization and cuts in pensions, healthcare, education and other public services, has since been duplicated across the world.

The Chicago Boys pointed to rising economic growth rates in Chile as evidence of the success of their neoliberal program, but by 1988, 48% of Chileans were living below the poverty line. Chile was and still is the wealthiest country in Latin America, but it is also the country with the largest gulf between rich and poor.

The governments elected after Pinochet stepped down in 1990 have followed the neoliberal model of alternating pro-corporate “center-right” and “center-left” governments, as in the U.S. and other developed countries. Neither respond to the needs of the poor or working class, who pay higher taxes than their tax-evading bosses, on top of ever-rising living costs, stagnant wages and limited access to voucherized education and a stratified public-private healthcare system. Indigenous communities are at the very bottom of this corrupt social and economic order. Voter turnout has predictably declined from 95% in 1989 to 47% in the most recent presidential election in 2017.

If Chenoweth is right and the million Chileans in the street have breached the tipping point for successful non-violent popular democracy, Chile may be leading the way to a global political and economic revolution.

Did Iran Conduct the Abqaiq Attack with Russia’s Blessings?

Nauman Sadiq

Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the September 14 complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and they have UAV-X drones having a range of 1,500 kilometers, Washington dismissed the possibility.

Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the attack from Iran’s territory which is unlikely because Tehran would never leave behind smoking gun evidence because the Persian Gulf is monitored round the clock by American satellites and surveillance aircraft. The most likely suspects were Iran-backed militias in Iraq because 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles were launched from the north.

Quoting Iraqi intelligence officials, David Hearst reported for the Middle East Eye a day after the September 14 attack that the attack was mounted by the Hashed al-Shabi militias from its bases in southern Iraq. What lends credence to the report is the fact that in the weeks preceding the attack, Washington had accused the Hashed al-Shabi militias of mounting another attack in eastern Saudi Arabia claimed by the Houthi rebels because the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is nearer the Iraq border than to the Houthi stronghold in Saada, Yemen.

Moreover, weeks before the attack, the Iran-backed militias blamed the US and Israel in August for airstrikes on their bases in Iraq targeting the missile storage facilities. The missiles were recently provided to the militias by Iran. It’s worth noting that 5,000 American troops and numerous aircraft are still deployed in Iraq, therefore the likely culprit targeting the Iran-backed militias in Iraq was Washington.

Besides planting limpet mines on the UAE’s oil tankers and shooting down an American Global Hawk surveillance drone, the September 14 attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was the third major attack against the US interests in the Persian Gulf. That the UAE had forewarning about imminent attacks is proved by the fact that weeks before the attacks, it had recalled forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels and redeployed them to man the UAE’s borders.

Nevertheless, a puerile prank like planting limpet mines on oil tankers can be overlooked but major provocations like downing a $200-million surveillance aircraft and mounting a drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for weeks can have serious repercussions. Unless Iran got the green light to go ahead with the attacks from a major power that equals Washington’s military might, such confrontation would amount to a suicidal approach.

Therefore, the recent acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf should be assessed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun after the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on Russian entities.

The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015 when the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Assad government.

With the help of the Russian air power, the Shia-led government has since liberated most of Syria’s territory from the Sunni insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed jihadists and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its militant proxies.

Several momentous events have taken place in the Syrian theater of proxy wars and on the global stage that have further exacerbated the New Cold War between Moscow and Washington:

On February 7, 2018, the US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre, and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost throughout its more than two-year-long military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January to March 2018.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.

A month after the massacre of Russian military contractors in Syria, on March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A few months later, in July last year, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.

In the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted assassination and the British government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, Novichok.

Sergei Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May last year.

Nevertheless, besides the killings of Russian contractors in Syria, another factor that might have prompted the Vladimir Putin government to escalate the conflict with the Western powers was that the Russian presidential elections were slated for March 18, 2018, which Putin was poised to win anyway but he won a resounding electoral victory with 77% vote by whipping up chauvinism of the Russian electorate in the aftermath of the war of words with the Western powers.

After the Salisbury poisonings in March last year, the US, UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian diplomats and the Trump administration ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number of American, British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of American consulate in Saint Petersburg. The relations between Moscow and Western powers reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.

Then, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile strike in Syria on April 14 last year in collaboration with the Theresa May government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes were nothing more than a show of force.

It bears mentioning that the American air and missile strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order strikes against the Syrian government targets without the approval of the US Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.

The Intercept reported last year that the Trump administration derived the authority to strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away even with the pretense of accountability and checks and balances.

The fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed in the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircrafts demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia in the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in the UK a month earlier.

Finally, over the years, Israel has not only provided medical aid and material support to the militant groups battling Damascus – particularly to various factions of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate al-Nusra Front in Daraa and Quneitra bordering the Israel-occupied Golan Heights – but Israel’s air force has virtually played the role of the air force of Syrian militants and conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria during the eight-year conflict.

In an interview to New York Times in January, Israel’s outgoing Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confessed that the Netanyahu government approved his shift in strategy in January 2017 to step up airstrikes in Syria. Consequently, more than 200 Israeli airstrikes were launched against the Syrian targets in 2017 and 2018, as revealed by the Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz in September last year.

In 2018 alone, Israel’s air force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria. The purpose of Israeli airstrikes in Syria has been to degrade Iran’s guided missile technology provided to Damascus and its Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to Israel’s regional security.

Taking cover of the Israeli airstrikes, however, Washington has conducted several of its own airstrikes on targets in Syria and Iraq and blamed them on Israel. Besides the airstrikes on the missile storage facilities of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, it is suspected that the US could be behind a recent airstrike at the newly built Imam Ali military base in eastern Syria at al-Bukamal-Qaim border crossing alleged to be hosting the Iranian Quds Force operatives.

Though after Russia provided S-300 missile system to the Syrian military after a Russian surveillance aircraft was shot down during an Israeli incursion into the Syrian airspace, on September 18 last year, killing 15 Russians onboard, and then after the recent subversive events in the Persian Gulf threatening the global oil supply, the Israeli and American airstrikes in Syria have been significantly scaled down. In fact, the main objective of the attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was to send a clear signal to Washington and its regional clients that any further confrontation in the region will be met with befitting reprisals.

Lurking Fears of Tamils After Presidential Election on November 16, 2019

Thambu Kanagasabai

The Presidential election on November 16, 2019 will usher in a new President, either Gotabaya Rajapaksha or Sajith Premadasa. Intensive campaign with promises suiting the locations and people are pouring from candidates to woo the voters, particularly Tamils by Sajith Premadasa. The promises thrown before Tamils will have a short life span as their deaths will be a certainty once a President is sworn in for the office, as the implementation of promises lies in the hands of MAHA SANGA and other radicals.

Presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapakshe is waging a campaign solely relying on his role as Defence Secretary after conducting the genocidal war with success on May 2009, There is a bitter tug-of-war going between Gotabaya Rajapakshe and Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka as to the ownership of the victory in the war, with neither of them owning responsibility for the killings of more than 70,000 civilians as per UN’s investigation, and accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity etc.  The recent statements of Gotabaya Rajapakshe in his election meetings have confirmed his rejection and contempt for the basic universally recognized norms of accountability and justice, laid out in United Nations Charter and various Conventions.

In his first public meeting in Anuradapura, he stated that “Military was given the due respect only after 2005, when his brother Mahinda Rajapaksha became the President. This situation completely changed after 2015”.“Military Intelligence Officers have been arrested and locked up in jails accused of fabricated offences, once I became the President on November 16, 2019 my first action on November 17th is to release all these military officers from prisons”, apparently with no conditions or any charges or any prosecution. This purported release will include those convicted and serving jail terms, for committing murders, robberies, abductions, torture, drug smuggling, sexual violence etc. This sweeping and contemptuous statement of Gotabaya Rajapakshe has sent chills and shivers and have shattered the hopes of victims and causing concern of United Nations and the International Community. These statements of Gotabaya Rajapakshe undoubtedly are nothing but pure disrespect, insult and contempt hurled against the Sri Lankan judiciary, besides dealing  a deadly blow to the existence of a democratic system of government in Sri Lanka. The dreadful consequences that could follow from these deplorable and derogatory actions will be sending shivers and fears to the ordinary law abiding citizens even among Sinhalese people if and when Gotabaya Rajapakshe becomes President who could also kill the independent functioning of state institutions with one stroke.

Above all, Gotabaya Rajapakshe is not a politician who has held any political office. He is purely a military officer immersed with military mindset and thinking which makes him politically unfit to hold a political office and rule a nation which is mired with plethora of social, political and human rights problems for the last seventy years.

Gotabaya Rajapakshe has purely targeted the Sinhala/Buddhist voters taking up the evils of Sri Lankan politics, Buddhism, Sinhala chauvinism and communalism. He appears to be targeting to gain the votes of Security Forces and their family members to pursue the politics of militarization.

The possible scenario in the event of Gotabaya Rajapakshe becoming the President can be visualized as follows:

1. Being a military mindset person, one can expect rigorous enforcement of obedience and behaviour from everyone, disregarding rule of law and fundamental rights of a citizen.
2. Political foes and traitors will face correctional punishment even possible elimination depending on the severity of their roles and harms.
3. The purported release of all convicted military officials will usher in a reign of terror and fear among all citizens, as the security forces would be emboldened to commit crimes without any fear of prosecution, almost a free run being granted and licence to the security officials and government officials to break the laws of the land with impunity even resorting to personal vengeances and vendetta.
4. The military presence in the North and East will substantially increase accompanied with intimidation, threats and even extra-judicial killings for dissenters with white van abductions including enforced disappearances and sexual violence. A climate of fear and insecurity will prevail in the Tamil areas. Even dissents and political enemies among the Sinhalese will not be spared. It is to be recalled that present President Msaithiripala Sirisena was staying in an unknown location until the election results were out in January 2015 fearing Mahinda Rajapakshe return to power.

Gotabaya Rajapakse’s rejection of thirteen demands put forwarded by the five Tamil parties is not surprising as he being accused of war crimes by United Nations and UNHRC and to expect accountability and justice is like the dog barking at the moon for a bite as Sri Lanka has been dubbed as an island of impunity by civic groups and human rights activists like Madam Jasmin Sooka of International Truth and Justice Project – Sri Lanka. Under Gotabaya Rajapakshe’s Presidency, United Nations, UNHRC Resolutions and their Recommendations will remain worthless and in-fact gathering dust. It is to be noted that Sri Lankan Government has already rejected its own sponsored HRC Resolution 30/1 and its Recommendations.

Above all, Sri Lanka will hold the unique distinction and honour to have an accused war criminal as President of a democratic country paying scant respect to accountability and justice, while brushing aside all United Nations Conventions which call for observance by the signatory states including Sri Lanka.

It will be interesting to watch how the United Nations, International Community and particularly democratic countries and the co-sponsors of UNHRC Resolution 30/1 and 40/1 will react, and treat a United Nations accused war criminal holding the office of Presidency. Will they live up to enforce the observance of commitments and undertakings or Sri Lanka or lay a Red Carpet welcome giving priority to geo-political, economic and military considerations involving Sri Lanka.

One has to keep the fingers crossed whether United Nations, UNHRC, International Community and the co-sponsors of the UNHRC Resolutions 30/1 and 40/1 will adopt proper sanctions against the Government under Gotabaya Rajapaksha in pursuance of accountability under

COMMAND RESPONSIBILITY?

In conclusion, Gotabaya Rajapakshe as a President will most probably ignore and neglect the ethnic issues and political problems facing the  Tamils, not to mention any just political settlement as he has completely omitted in his election manifesto any mention of Tamil’s problem or any political proposals, not even any discussion or consultation with Tamil parties or their leaders. As such, one can surely start counting the date of state terrorism and strangle hold of military in the North and East while Tamil civilians can expect to continue their lives of surveillance and state terrorism.

However, Gotabaya Rajapakshe’s control of government may prove to be a double-edged sword and a blessing in disguise for the Tamils forcing the United Nations/UNHRC/The co-sponsors of the UNHRC Resolutions 30/1 and 40/1 to carve out separate state for them [as existed before 1816 before the British rule] to ensure their existence through the right of self-determination as stipulated in the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Article 01 of 1966.

Qatar: Education As A Weapon

Andre Vltchek

There seems to be no limit to Qataris tossing around their wealth. This tiny kingdom with 2.6 million inhabitantsis full of ridiculously lavish gold-plated palaces, most of them built with terrible taste. It is overflowing with Lamborghini racing cars and Rolls Royce limousines, and now, even with ludicrously wasteful air-conditioned sidewalks (cold air blows from below, into the 35C heat).

Ruled by the House of Thani, the State of Qatar is truly a strange place: according to the latest count conducted in early 2017, its total population was 2.6 million, of which 313,000 were Qatari citizens and 2.3 million ‘expatriates’, both the low-wage migrant workers, and the lavishly remunerated Western professionals.

Foreigners are doing everything; sweeping the floors, cleaning garbage, cooking, taking care of babies, flying Qatar Airways planes, performing medical surgeries and building office towers. Manual laborers are discriminated against; beaten, cheated, humiliated. Many migrant workers have been dying under “mysterious circumstances”. But they are still coming, mainly because Qatar, withits GDP per capita of $128,702, is the richest country on earth, and because there is huge demand for hundreds of different professions. Never mind that the perks are for the ‘natives’ only, while the minimum wage for foreigners is only around $200 per month.

Jet from al Udeid base

Locked in a bitter dispute with its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar is moving closer and closer to its best allies – the United States and United Kingdom. The Al Udeid Air Base hosts over 100 aircraft of the United States Air Force, Royal Air Force, and other Gulf War Coalition partners. It accommodates the forward headquarters of United States Central Command, No. 83 Expeditionary Air Group RAF, and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the USAF. Presently, at least 11,000 U.S. servicemen are permanently located here. Al Udeid Air Base is considered the most important military airport in the region, used for operations in countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.

Qatar has been playing an extremely important role in destabilizing Syria, and other countries in the Middle East. It has been spreading fundamentalist religious dogmas, as well as extreme capitalist creeds.

*

Qatar has plenty of money, and it uses some of its funds for various ‘educational programs’, which are closely linked to the Western, particularly US and British but also Wahhabi propaganda apparatus.International experts hired from the West have been promoting such extreme concepts as the privatization of schools, keeping the governments away from developing curricula, and spreading pro-Western and pro-market doctrines throughout the region and beyond.

Under the cover of ‘saving children’, Qatari foundations and programs are promoting Muslim fundamentalism, as well as the commercialization of education. And that is not just in Qatar itself, but also as far away as Somalia, South Sudan and Kenya.

While at Qatar University, I noticed that even the libraries are segregated (predictably, I was told by a UN staff member based in Qatar, that the so-called “Men’s Library” is incomparably better supplied than women’s), Qatar wants to present itself as a regional leader in higher education, by spreading around regressive philosophy and mindsets.

Naturally, the main goal is to maintain the status quo in the region.

In terms of quality education, things don’t work in Qatar itself, either. With all those huge budgets burnt, or more precisely wasted, Qatar has very little to be proud of. According to the OECD:

“In 2012, Qatar was ranked third from the bottom of the 65 OECD countries participating in the PISA test of math, reading and skills for 15- and 16-year-olds, comparable to Colombia or Albania, despite having the highest per capita income in the world.”

Since then, things have not improved much, although statistics on the subject are suddenly not too widely available.

*

At the c onference

At the end of October 2019, I found myself attending a conference, organized by the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, hosted by the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Except one highly qualified UN expert (who had been working, for years, on the ground, in Syria and other places destroyed by the West and its Gulf allies), the panel of speakers consisted of individuals based in and pampered by Qatar.

The line that was tugged here was predictable:

Professor Frank Hardman basically explained how the states in the region “became weak”, and how the private sector should be taking and pushing for the education reforms.

But the most astonishing discourse came from Prof. Maleiha Malik, Executive Director, of the Protection of Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC), Education Above All Foundation. She spoke about the importance of protecting vulnerable schools as well as children, in conflict zones, and about the international legal mechanisms “which are now in place”, designed to bring those who are destroying schools and pupils to justice.

In brief, a typical mainstream “development” and NGO talk.

Qatar is far from being a place where one could be free to speak up his or her mind.

But I had no patience left. I have worked in countless war and conflict zones, all over the world. And what I was witnessing at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies was nothing short of an indoctrination process of both the participants of the conference, as well as the students.

I demanded they let me speak. When the microphone was passed on to me, I said that I needed an exact answer:

“Professor Malik, I have a question for you. I have been covering dozens, perhaps hundreds of conflicts and wars, all over the world. I saw hundreds of schools burning. I saw hundreds of children dead. Most of these atrocities were triggered by the United States, by Europe, or both. It all began long before I was born, of course, it is going on until now”.

I saw the horror on the faces of the organizers. They were devouring me with their eyes, they were begging me to stop. Most likely, this has never happened here, before. Everything was being filmed, recorded. But I was not ready to stop.

The students in aula did not react. They were clearly conditioned not to get excited by speeches delivered by ‘elements’ hostile to the regime.

I continued:

“Professor Malik, I am asking you, I demand to know, whether there was one single case when the United States, United Kingdom, France, Australia or any other Western country, was put on trial and condemned, by those international mechanisms that you mentioned earlier… Condemned for murdering millions of children, or for carpet-bombing thousands of schools in such places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and later in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria? For, right now, trying to starve children in Venezuela? For keeping people, including children, from having access to medicine…”

Then I turned to Frank Hardman:

“Professor Hardman, aren’t those states that you mention and defined as ‘weak’, in such a situation, because they are being antagonized, attacked and terrorized by the West; by historically imperialist countries?”

Total silence.

Then, I concluded:

“Wouldn’t it be the most effective way to protect schools and children, if we’d make sure that the West and its allies, would finally stop destroying dozens of countries all over the world?”

The Chair of the conference, Prof. Sultan Barakat, went to work, immediately, trying to contain the damage:

“Professor Malik, obviously, the question is about what is happening in Palestine…”

But Professor Malik was a tough warrior, like myself, only from the opposite side. She knew precisely that it was all beyond Israel and Palestine. Israel and Palestine were part of it, but they were not the only issue here. She brushed off Sultan Barakat and went straight after my throat:

“It is not about the West! It is not about one group of countries. All members of the UN Security Council are responsible! Look at Russia, committing atrocities in Syria…”

And the shouting match began. Our personal “Doha debate”.

“Which atrocities?” I shouted at her. “Prove it.”

“We have proof.”

“You?” I wondered. “You went to Syria? Or is it that you were given so-called proof by your handlers? You put Russia, a country which is saving Syria and Venezuela, on the same level as the countries that are murdering hundreds of millions of people in all corners of the world?”

I recalled, how many times during this ‘conference’, USAID was mentioned. All references were Western.Here, people from the Arab countries were speaking and thinking like the IMF, or The Economist.

I sat down. I had nothing else to add.

The controlled discussion somehow resumed. The faces of the students remained unmoved.

At night, I met for dinner a comrade with whom I used to work with in Afghanistan. Doha is a strange place. A place of unexpected encounters.

*

Qatar is doing to the arts what it is doing to education.

The next day I tried to visit several museums which the country is bragging about online and through its advertisements. All were closed, except the Museum of Islamic Art, which used to be free to the public, but is now charging a $15 entry fee.

The monstrously fragmented state and its individuals are now investing billions of dollars, purchasing art works from all over the world. Bragging about it. Manipulating content. As it is manipulating, what is being produced in its ‘international’ film studios.

Departing from Doha to Beirut on Qatar Airways, I realized that there was not one Qatari citizen working onboard. The pilots were from the UK and Australia, while the flight attendants were recruited in the Philippines, India and Africa.

A few minutes after take-off, an aggressive advertisement began promoting Educate a Child (EAC), which is a program of the Education Above All Foundation.

In Qatar, everything seems to be inter-connected. Deadly US military bases, ‘foreign policy’, the arts, and yes, even education and charity.

Measles epidemic spreads from New Zealand to Pacific Islands

John Braddock

Nearly 3,000 people across the southwestern Pacific, where poverty and poor health are endemic, have so far fallen victim to an outbreak of measles, a highly contagious and life-threatening disease.

New Zealand is in the midst of its worst outbreak in 20 years, with 2,014 notified cases from January until November 8. Of these, 1,631 are in the Auckland region, with over two-thirds in the economically-deprived suburbs of South Auckland. Some babies admitted to hospital have almost died and two pregnant women lost their unborn children due to complications related to the disease.

In late September, children were reportedly being turned away from pop-up clinics and GP (general practioner) offices due to a shortage of vaccines. Papakura GP Jacqueline Allan criticised health officials on Radio NZ for poor planning, saying many practices could not meet vaccination targets because of a nurse shortage. As an emergency measure, the Labour-led government has now authorised 450 pharmacies nationwide to administer the vaccine.

With New Zealand’s population just five million, the measles outbreak ranks among the worst in the developed world. As of September, the measles infection rates were the second-highest in the western Pacific at 152.4 per million, with only the Philippines higher at 612.1 per million. New Zealand’s total has surpassed the 1,250 cases in the US from January to October 3, 2019 as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an unimmunised population the infection spreads rapidly. A single case can infect a further 12 to 18 others. The only way to prevent that is to have at least 95 percent of the population immunised. Measles also does ongoing damage to the immune system, with children particularly vulnerable to consequent infections and severe illnesses.

In September, the New Zealand ministry of health warned that the “most vulnerable” were missing out on vaccinations. These included children under 4 years of age, those aged 15–29 years, and Pacific Islanders in NZ. While previous outbreaks saw hospitalisation rates of 10 percent they are currently up to 40 percent. More than half of children aged 4 and under with measles have been hospitalised.

Some hospital staff are catching measles at work, with at least 20 people working at five District Health Boards (DHBs) infected. At one point, the virus was being transmitted inside Christchurch Hospital. Seven Counties Manukau staff in south Auckland have been infected.

The outbreak is another indictment of the Labour-NZ First-Green Party government, which has amassed a budget surplus of $ NZ7.5 billion while starving essential public services of funds. In August, a budget blow-out across the 20 DHBs left all but one in the red with a total deficit set to top $508 million. According to the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, an extra $2.5 billion is urgently needed to restore the value of funding to that of 2009.

The measles crisis was entirely preventable. The Immunisation Advisory Centre emphasised that scientists had been predicting outbreaks “for years” but requests for a campaign to plug immunisation gaps were ignored. The National Verification Committee for Measles and Rubella Elimination warned in mid-2018 that without “a systematic, programmatic approach,” immunity gaps would not close and the risk of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) remained high. Yet funding for immunisation awareness initiatives was reduced between 2012 and 2019.

The Ministry of Health warned in August that “the current situation in New Zealand could become a threat for other countries in the Pacific region.” This has proved to be the case. Dr Helen Petousis-Harris, an immunologist at Auckland University, told Radio NZ on November 1 she was furious that New Zealand had “exported” measles to Samoa.

Samoa’s government declared a measles epidemic in mid-October. As of November 7, the number of suspected cases had reached 513 and was expected to keep rising. Three babies and an adult are now thought to have died from the disease. Seven people were hospitalised from the recent batch of cases. An early case is understood to have resulted from contact with an Aucklander attending a church conference in Samoa, not realising he had the illness.

Last month Samoa’s health ministry urged New Zealand to control the rampant outbreak before it made things worse. Petousis-Harris said given New Zealand’s direct responsibility for the 1918 influenza epidemic reaching Samoa, which wiped out 22 percent of the population, the country should have done more to protect Samoa. “It was inevitable that we would export this to Samoa… [It] is well known that they have very low levels of immunity there,” she said.

Successive New Zealand governments had failed their closest neighbour, Petousis-Harris added. “We’ve had 20 years to do something about this. This is something we could have done a lot better on.” Her comments underscore the total indifference and contempt with which the local imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, treat the impoverished populations of the Pacific. Samoa was an NZ colony from 1914–1962.

Samoans are flocking to hospitals and clinics for vaccination. Following last year’s MMR vaccine crisis, in which two infants died, immunity levels have plummeted to 30 percent. Two senior nurses were sentenced in August to five years imprisonment after pleading guilty to negligence causing manslaughter. They administered doses of vaccine incorrectly mixed with another substance. Prosecutors had not sought prison terms for the nurses, an indication they were likely scapegoated.

The Samoa head of public health, Robert Thomsen, said New Zealand had been asked for medical supplies and for nurses who were competent to vaccinate and had experience caring for children. The government has closed all pre-schools as a precaution while primary and high schools will be closed this month after exams.

Tonga now has a measles outbreak after 13 high school rugby players contracted the virus on a trip to Auckland. The tiny kingdom has 107 suspected cases as of the beginning of this month, but the government claims the outbreak has peaked. Three people have been hospitalised. The outbreak spread to Tonga even though the country previously achieved immunity to measles with over 95 percent vaccination rates.

On November 7, the Fiji ministry of health declared a measles outbreak in the Serua and Namosi areas. Authorities said there were two confirmed cases and two suspected cases at the Wailali Settlement in Wainadoi. One person was in hospital. The outbreak occurred despite an earlier decision to make measles vaccines free.

The Solomon Islands health ministry is moving to vaccinate 90,000 children. Vaccination posts will be set up in towns and villages, with parents encouraged to bring children aged between six months and five years for injections. The Solomons are highly vulnerable, with an outbreak in 2009 killing nine people and affecting more than 4,000.

Authorities in New Caledonia are also on alert after a member of the Tongan futsal team was diagnosed with measles during a tournament in New Zealand. The remainder of the team was travelling on to New Caledonia from Auckland.

UNICEF Pacific warned in late October that while island governments were being “aggressive” in their attempts to limit the virus’s impact, the outbreaks were not yet under control. A representative for the UN children’s agency, Sheldon Yett, said the spread of measles across the region was a “very dynamic” situation. “Diseases don’t know borders,” Yett noted.

Macron warns Economist magazine of world war, collapse of NATO alliance

Alex Lantier

Intractable divisions between the imperialist powers that twice in the 20th century exploded into world war are again undermining international alliances key to the affairs of world capitalism. This was the content of a long, deeply pessimistic interview French President Emmanuel Macron granted to Britain’s Economist, declaring the NATO alliance between America and Europe to be dead. The interview contained statements virtually unprecedented for a French president in living memory.

Macron first expressed his bewilderment at the world situation and his frustration at US policy. “I’m trying to be lucid, but look at what is happening around the world,” he said. “It would have been unthinkable five years ago. Exhausting ourselves with Brexit this way, Europe having so much difficulty advancing, an American ally that turns its back on us so quickly on strategic issues—no one would have thought it possible.”

Stressing the danger of world war, Macron indicated that he sees US policy on a broad range of topics from the Middle East, to Russia, China, and global finance as threats to vital French interests. He attacked Trump’s pull-out of US troops from Syria, green-lighting a Turkish attack on Kurdish militias that were serving as proxies for the NATO war in Syria.

“What we are seeing, I think, is that NATO is brain dead,” Macron said. He indicated his concern that Article 5 on collective NATO self-defense could drag France into a war launched by its nominal NATO ally, Turkey, against Syria and Syria’s main ally, Russia: “What does Article 5 mean tomorrow? If (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad’s regime decides to counterattack against Turkey, will we commit ourselves militarily? … From a strategic and political standpoint, what has happened is an enormous problem for NATO.”

Macron also attacked US policy towards Russia, a major nuclear-armed power: “When the United States is very harsh with Russia, it is a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria.”

Macron stressed that US policy could provoke all-out war with Russia, calling instead to develop an alliance with Moscow: “If we want to build peace in Europe and rebuild European strategic autonomy, we must reconsider our position towards Russia.” He added that France can “talk to everyone and so build relations to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration.”

Macron also warned of “the emergence, in the last 15 years, of a Chinese power that raises a danger of bipolarization and clearly marginalizes Europe. The danger of a US-China ‘G2’ is added to that of the return of authoritarian powers near Europe,” such as Russia and Turkey. Just back from a trip to China, where he signed $15 billion in contracts and denounced US trade war tariffs against China and Europe, Macron said he was “neutral” on Huawei, a company Washington has tried to keep from setting up European and global internet architecture.

Macron highlighted the bitter struggles over markets among the leading capitalist states. Pointing to fears of a US financial collapse dragging Europe down with it, he attacked US trade war policies, declaring: “Europe is a continent with a lot of savings. Much of these savings goes to buy US debt. So our savings finance the future of the United States, and we are exposed to its fragility. This is absurd.”

Stressing that he views US trade war policies as unacceptable, Macron added: “Trump … poses the question of NATO as a trade issue. For him, it’s a plan where the United States provide a kind of geopolitical coverage, but in exchange, there is an exclusive commercial relationship. It is a reason to buy American. But France did not sign up for such an alliance.”

Macron repeatedly stressed that he and other European heads of state are drawing far-reaching conclusions on the viability not only of ties to Trump, but the 70-year NATO alliance with America.

Citing Trump’s dismissals of his concerns over the Middle East with private remarks that “This is your neighborhood, not mine,” Macron added: “When the President of the United States says that, to act responsibly we cannot fail to draw conclusions from it, or in any case to start to reflect, even if we do not want to. … Some alliances or the reliability of certain ties are in question. I believe many of our partners have seen this, and that things are starting to move on this issue.”

Though the Economist hid its English translation of Macron’s interview behind a pay wall, it caused consternation among NATO officials. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in Europe for the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, replied to Macron: “I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically one of the most critical, strategic partnerships in all of recorded history.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Macron’s remarks “drastic words,” adding: “I don’t think such sweeping judgments are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together.”

In fact, however, broad sections of the European bourgeoisie agree with Macron. In a column titled “Macron is right,” Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine wrote: “The French president has declared NATO brain-dead, and there is much outrage. But essentially, Macron’s analysis is correct.”

It continued, “The body of a brain-dead person seems to live, but in fact he is dead and any form of therapy is meaningless. This is what France’s president thinks of NATO.” Dismissing Merkel’s criticism of Macron’s “sweeping judgment” on NATO, Der Spiegel declared: “In reality, this is a quite tepid defense of NATO. It is clear also to Merkel that the patient really does find himself in such a situation.”

Discussion in ruling circles of the collapse of a 70-year alliance between imperialist powers that twice in the 20th century plunged into world war points to a very dangerous crisis. The capitalist system is again threatening humanity with a global conflagration, this time fought with nuclear arms. Significantly, Macron himself stressed that what is emerging is not a passing spat inside NATO, but a deep-going breakdown of international relations prepared over decades of imperialist wars since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) explained that the liquidation of the Soviet Union was not the product of the bankruptcy of Marxism, but of the nationalist, autarkic and anti-Trotskyist economic program of Stalinism. The Stalinist regimes were overtaken by capitalist states able to directly engage with the world market’s resources, thanks to capitalist globalization. Faced with growing working class militancy in the 1980s, the Stalinist bureaucracy restored capitalist property and established close ties with imperialism.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the ICFI opposed bourgeois propagandists like Francis Fukuyama who claimed this spelled the “End of History,” the death of Marxism and the final triumph of capitalist democracy. In fact, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one reflection of an intensifying crisis of the nation-state system in which capitalism is rooted. This crisis was also undermining the capitalist states, however, particularly amid the wave of NATO imperialist wars across the Middle East and Africa.

Macron the banker-president is undoubtedly a ferocious opponent of socialism, but this analysis is clearly discussed inside his government. He told the Economist: “There was a pervasive conception that developed in the 1990s and 2000s around the idea of the End of History, an endless expansion of democracy, that the Western camp had won and would universalize itself. It was the history we were living in until the 2000s, when a series of crises showed that it was not true.”

Macron admitted, “Sometimes we committed mistakes by trying to impose our values and change regimes without getting popular support. It is what we saw in Iraq or Libya … and maybe what was planned for Syria, but that failed. It is an element of the Western approach, I would say in generic terms, that has been an error since the beginning of this century, perhaps a fateful one, due to the convergence of two tendencies: the right of foreign intervention and neo-conservatism. The two meshed, with dramatic results.”

Macron is admitting that the policies of the major NATO governments over the last 30 years were all politically criminal. Macron did not recall it, but Trump stated in a tweet that America alone spent “8 trillion dollars” on wars in which “millions have died,” and “based on a false and disproven premise.” As for Macron, he himself is deeply implicated, as a former minister in the French government that pushed to bomb Syria in 2013.

Macron’s statements are an indication of the urgent necessity of building an anti-war movement in the international working class based on a revolutionary, socialist perspective. The capitalist system is not only bankrupt and criminal. Its escalating conflicts over markets and strategic advantage are, by the admission of leading capitalist officials themselves, placing the world on the brink of an all-out conflagration.

The reactionary perspective Macron outlined to address this situation—namely, stepped-up international collaboration between the spy agencies against Islamist terrorism—will not resolve the underlying inter-imperialist conflicts over markets and strategic advantage. Indeed, it is quite obvious that the solution that Macron proposes on a capitalist basis will only intensify the conflicts.

“We must clearly re-think the strategic relation … how to reconstruct what I have called an architecture of confidence and security,” Macron said, adding: “We will make our intelligence agencies work together, share a vision of the threat, intervene maybe in a more coordinate manner against Islamist terrorism in our entire neighborhood.”

Contrasting Islamism with “our model built in the 18th century with the European Enlightenment,” Macron called Islamism the “worst enemy of European humanist values that rest on free and reasoning individuals, equality between women and men, and emancipation.”

This is absurd. Macron is not a defender of the Enlightenment, but a right-wing banker and politician who, as part of his police crackdown on mounting opposition to his policies of austerity and social inequality, has bemoaned the French revolution and declared that France needs a king. As for his canned invocation of “humanist values,” they are belied by his constant appeals to neo-fascistic hatred of Islam, which is rife and growing in the French security forces.

What Macron is proposing is a policy not to halt the drive to war, but to further build up the agencies of state repression that would be mobilized against an anti-war movement.