NATO imperialism and the Libya flood catastrophe

Alex Lantier

A general view of the city of Derna as seen on Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Jamal Alkomaty]

More than 6,000 people are confirmed dead in the flooding across eastern Libya caused by Storm Daniel, which burst two dams and destroyed large parts of the port city of Derna. Many thousands are still missing and the confirmed death toll is expected to at least double as the remains of victims the flood swept out to sea wash back ashore.

This horrific catastrophe is not only the product of severe weather, intensified by climate change. It flows from the war NATO waged against Libya in 2011, which shattered the country and plunged it into civil war. Those who launched the NATO war in Libya or applauded it as a “humanitarian” intervention, and who today are backing a NATO war against Russia in Ukraine on similar grounds, bear direct political and moral responsibility for the Derna catastrophe.

Last year, hydrologist Abdelwanees Ashoor wrote articles warning that Derna’s dams were in poor condition, and that a major flood would be “likely to cause one of the two dams to collapse.” Ashoor continued, “If a huge flood happens, the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city.”

No repairs were done, however, because of the civil war that has raged between rival governments in eastern and western Libya since NATO destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in the 2011 war. International Crisis Group official Claudia Gazzini told France24: “In 10 years since the fall of the Gaddafi regime—in the following 10 years of wars, policy rivalry and isolation—both governments have completely neglected the infrastructure.”

What is systematically covered up, however, is the NATO powers’ role in instigating the civil war that created the conditions for the flood. Top NATO officials launched the 2011 war in Libya, relying on the professional liars in the major media, the academic establishment and the middle-class pseudo-left parties to sell the war as a crusade for democracy and human rights. These forces all have blood on their hands.

This includes then-US President Barack Obama, then-UK Prime Minister David Cameron and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose governments pressed the hardest for the 2011 war in Libya. Also complicit are the major media outlets such as the New York Times and CNN, which peddle CIA-dictated propaganda, as well as legions of cowardly and conformist academics like Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan and pseudo-left political operatives like Professor Gilbert Achcar of France’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). They backed the war in Libya then, as they back NATO’s Ukraine war now.

NATO launched the war in Libya in February 2011, claiming that only its intervention could keep Gaddafi from killing protesters in eastern Libya, the same region now devastated by floods. To topple Gaddafi, NATO armed a collection of rival Islamist and tribal militias, led by figures such as Libyan Islamic Fighting Group leader Abdelhakim Bekhadj, CIA asset Khalifa Haftar, and leaders of the Misrata Brigades. It then provided its proxy forces with air support, bombing Libyan army forces that fought the NATO-backed insurgent militias.

The war ended after seven months of fighting that claimed an estimated 25,000 lives, as NATO bombed Tripoli and Sirte, Gaddafi’s home city. On October 20, 2011, a gang of militiamen that included French intelligence agents captured, tortured and murdered Gaddafi in the ruins of Sirte. Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated on the day of Gaddafi’s death, laughing and telling reporters: “We came, we saw, he died.”

The World Socialist Web Site exposed the imperialist interests motivating the war on oil-rich Libya and exposed the lies used to justify the war. Examining the case of professor and Middle East blogger Juan Cole, David North pointed to the pro-imperialist political amnesia that afflicted a broad layer of petty-bourgeois supporters of the war. North wrote:

Those who are hailing the attack on Libya as a triumph for the cause of human rights seem to have no recollection at all of the monstrous role played by the United States in attacking and subverting countries that interfered, in one way or another, with its strategic political and economic interests. It is not only the past that is forgotten (Vietnam, the savage war of the “Contras” in Nicaragua, the fomenting of civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, the overthrow and murder of Lumumba in the Congo, the longstanding support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, the invasion of Iraq); the present is all but ignored. The pro-war “left” assigns to the United States the task of removing Gaddafi for firing on his people, even as Predator drones rain missiles down upon Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing people every day.

As the war began, Cole attacked left-wing opposition to it, declaring that the left “should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo,” and adding, “To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions.” To underscore his enthusiastic support for the US and NATO, he said, “If NATO needs me, I’m there.”

Similarly, Achcar, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and member of the Pabloite NPA, who functions as an adviser to the British army, admitted that the war aimed to plunder Libya’s oil resources, but backed NATO anyway.

“The Western response, of course, smacks of oil,” Achcar said in 2011. However, he argued, this was not a reason to oppose the war:

Here is a case where a population is truly in danger, and where there is no plausible alternative that could protect it. The attack by Gaddafi’s forces was hours or at most days away. You can’t in the name of anti-imperialist principles oppose an action that will prevent the massacre of civilians.

And once the Gaddafi regime had been toppled, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof traveled to Libya and boasted that the NATO war had turned him into a hero in Tripoli. In a column titled “Thank You America!”, Kristof wrote:

Americans are not often heroes in the Arab world, but as nonstop celebrations unfold here in the Libyan capital, I keep running into ordinary people who learn where I’m from and then fervently repeat variants of the same phrase: “Thank you America!”

In reality, the NATO victory in Libya resulted in a human tragedy. The country again plunged into civil war in 2012, after oil-rich eastern Libya tried to secede and cut its own deals with the major NATO oil corporations. Along with the escalation of civil war over the ensuing decade, there have been tens of thousands more deaths. Economic production has fallen by half, from $92 billion in 2012 to $46 billion last year, while gross domestic product per capita—roughly speaking, average personal income—has fallen from $15,765 to $6,716.

All the officials and professors who argued that the NATO conquest of Libya would produce peace, prosperity and democracy bear responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths and incalculable human misery that have resulted from the war they backed and actively promoted. Cole claimed he supported the war because it created the prospect of “allowing Libyans to have a normal life.” But the war supposedly waged for democracy and normality devastated Libya and led to the reintroduction of slavery in the country.

In 2017, citing multiple reports in world media, Amnesty International concluded that in camps the European Union (EU) set up in Libya to detain refugees trying to flee to Europe, prisoners are beaten, raped, murdered and sold at auction into slavery.

Today, what do the war propagandists have to say about the catastrophe in Derna and the role their support for war has played? Cole and Achcar, on their blogs, have said nothing. They have left the disaster they helped create in Libya behind. Achcar has moved on to advocating support for the latest NATO war—this time, against Russia.

The war against Russia in Ukraine flows directly out of the spiral of military escalation launched by NATO. After the war in Libya, the NATO powers soon mobilized the Islamist networks they had used against Gaddafi as proxy forces to wage war in Syria. In September 2013, Russian warships based at Sevastopol intervened to block NATO ships from bombing Syria. Less than five months later, Washington and Berlin backed the February 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine and demanded that Russia hand over Sevastopol and the entire Crimean Peninsula to the newly installed pro-NATO regime in Kiev.

The decisive task facing workers and youth around the world is to build an international movement against imperialism to halt this spiral of military escalation, which is setting into motion an ever-greater chain of catastrophes. As the NATO imperialist powers escalate the war in Ukraine and conspire to divide up Russia and grab its natural resources, they again present themselves as defenders of “democracy” and “freedom”—this time, against Russian President Vladimir Putin. In reality, the rape of Libya and the catastrophe in Derna are imperishable warnings on the disastrous consequences of NATO victory in its wars of plunder.

Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to strike Crimea

Andre Damon

Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev speaks on a mobile phone as smoke and flames rise from a burning Sevastopol shipyard in Crimea. (Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhaev telegram channel via AP) [AP Photo]

Ukraine carried out the largest strike on the Russian port of Sevastopol on the Russian-claimed Crimean Peninsula since the start of the war Wednesday, severely damaging a warship and submarine in a combined strike using long-range missiles and remotely-piloted suicide boats.

Citing an unnamed Ukrainian official, Sky News reported that the strike used Storm Shadow long-range missiles provided by the UK. “It was Storm Shadow,” Sky News quoted one of its sources as saying. Earlier this year, the UK and France provided Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, with a range of over 150 miles.

Coming after pledges early in the war by the US and its NATO allies that their weapons would not be used to strike Russian territory, the latest attack demonstrates the extent to which the NATO powers are abandoning many of their prior limitations on their involvement in the war.

Unlike previous strikes on military installations on Crimea, Ukrainian officials openly admitted their responsibility and boasted about the damage that had been inflicted.

“On the morning of Sept. 13 the Ukrainian armed forces conducted successful strikes on naval assets and port infrastructure of the occupiers at the docks of temporarily occupied Sevastopol,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Telegram.

Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk, the head of the Ukrainian Air Force, posted an image of a burning Russian warship on Telegram, adding the caption “And while the occupiers are ‘storming’ and they are still recovering from the [explosions] in Sevastopol, thank you to the pilots of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for their excellent combat work!”

“We confirm a large landing vessel and submarine were hit,” Andriy Yusov, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, told Reuters.

In a subsequent statement to Ukrainian national television, Yusov added, “Those are significant damages. We can now say that with a high probability they are not subject to restoration.”

Mikhail Razvozhaev, the governor of Sevastopol, wrote on Telegram that 24 people were injured in the strike. The destroyed vessels had been identified by military analysts as a Project 636.3 diesel submarine and a Project 775 Ropucha-class large landing ship. Both ships were in dry dock undergoing repairs at the time. It was the first known successful attack on a Russian submarine of the war so far.

Last year, Ukraine destroyed the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

In recent months, Ukrainian forces have regularly carried out attacks hundreds of miles behind Russian lines, including multiple attacks on the Russian capital city of Moscow.

The Financial Times quoted Ukrainian Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, boasting about the consistent strikes inside Russia. “It has a sobering effect,” he said. “We see some slight moves—panic moves—for example, Russian insurance companies providing insurance against civilian attacks.”

He continued, “As a result, much more money is being traded between insurance companies and airlines. These problems will mount up and affect people—we hope there will be kitchen conversations about that.”

In May, two drones exploded over the official residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the Kremlin called an assassination attempt.

At the time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked whether the US would disavow attempted assassinations of Russian officials, Blinken refused to do so, declaring, “These are decisions for Ukraine to make about how it’s going to defend itself, how it’s going to get its territory back, how it’s going to restore its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.”

That same month, the Ukrainian military carried out a suicide drone attack on the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland.

In July of this year, Ukrainian suicide drones attacked Moscow’s central business district, damaging the facades of two office buildings. 

In February, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a public green light for Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. “Those are legitimate targets,”  Nuland said, referring to Ukrainian strikes on Crimea. “Ukraine is hitting them. We are supporting that.” Last year, the US gave private authorization for strikes inside Russian territory, according to The Times of London.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the United States is preparing to approve the sending of long-range ATACMS missiles, capable of striking hundreds of miles behind Russian lines and putting the capital city at risk of attack.

These moves follow what was widely seen as an embarrassing setback for the United States at the G20 Summit in India, which failed to adopt language demanded by the US and its allies condemning Russia for the Ukraine war.

This took place in the context of the failure of Ukraine’s “Spring offensive” which, despite the loss of tens of thousands of lives, has made no significant progress in recapturing Russian-held territory.

Under conditions in which the extent of Ukraine’s military debacle is becoming clear, the US and its NATO allies are increasingly removing whatever restrictions on Kiev’s military actions remain and more and more openly encouraging it to use long-range Western weapons to strike inside Russia.

Thousands dead and 10,000 missing in Libyan floods

Thomas Scripps

More than 5,000 people are dead and 10,000 missing in floods in the coastal region of north-east Libya. Storm Daniel, which has already deluged Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, brought so much rain in such a short period that a usually dry riverbed—a wadi with depths of up to 400 metres—flooded and burst two catchment dams near the city of Derna.

The eastern cities of Al-Bayda, Al-Marj, Tobruk, Takenis, Al-Bayada, Battah and Benghazi—150 miles to the west of Derna—have also been affected.

A general view of the city of Derna is seen on Tuesday, Sept. 12., 2023. Mediterranean storm Daniel caused devastating floods in Libya that broke dams and swept away entire neighborhoods in multiple coastal towns, the destruction appeared greatest in Derna city. [AP Photo/Jamal Alkomaty]

Tamer Ramadan, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Libya, confirmed the figure of 10,000 people missing so far and told the media, “The death toll is huge.” The interior ministry of Libya’s eastern-based administration announced 5,000 deaths late Tuesday evening. The toll already exceeds that of the worst North African flood of the last century, in Algeria in 1927.

A Derna resident told the Al-Hurra news channel, “When the dam collapsed, the water was released like an atomic bomb, and eight bridges and residential buildings collapsed completely.” Others described the water hitting like a “tsunami”, reaching as high as 10 feet. Photos of the aftermath show scenes resembling a warzone.

Reports say one quarter of Derna, home to well over 100,000 people, has been totally swept away. Roughly 700 dead have already been taken to a local cemetery to be identified. Many will never be found. A spokesperson for the Libyan National Army which controls the area said, “The flowing water carried away entire neighbourhoods, eventually depositing them into the sea.”

Minister of Civil Aviation Hichem Chkiouat told Reuters, “Bodies are lying everywhere—in the sea, in the valleys, under the buildings.”

Survivors are caught in a humanitarian disaster. CNN reported the comments of ambulance and emergency spokesperson Osama Aly hours after the event that “hospitals in Derna are no longer operable and the morgues are full.”

A doctor at the scene told the network, “There are no first-hand emergency services. People are working at the moment to collect the rotting bodies.” An ambulance worker said similarly in an interview with Libyan TV station Al-Masar, “We have nothing to save people... no machines... we are asking for urgent help.”

Phone lines and internet access are down, and access to the city heavily obstructed by the damage and debris.

Warnings had been made that the dams were poorly maintained and needed reconstructing. Just last year, hydrologist Abdelwanees A. R. Ashoor of Libya’s Omar Al-Mukhtar University cited five floods in the region since 1949, predicting flooding on a similar scale to that seen in 1959 would be “likely to cause one of the two dams to collapse.”

He concluded, “If a huge flood happens the result will be catastrophic for the people of the wadi and the city.”

Aly told CNN, “The weather conditions were not studied well, the seawater levels and rainfall [were not studied], the wind speeds, there was no evacuation of families that could be in the path of the storm and in valleys.”

The Guardian notes “conflicting reports as to whether requests had been made to evacuate the city at the weekend, and if so why the plan was rejected.”

But primary responsibility for the disaster lies with the NATO imperialist powers whose 2011 war for resources and geostrategic position against the government of Muammar Gaddafi obliterated the country.

One of the richest and most developed countries in Africa in 2010, a third of Libya’s population now lives below the poverty line. Its GDP per capita is half what it was on the eve of the war. Critical infrastructure was left in ruins. Out of a population of 6.7 million, nearly 900,000 are now in need of humanitarian assistance.

Besides dropping over 7,000 bombs and missiles, NATO’s intervention relied on proxy Islamist forces. The social and political chaos created by their toppling of the government, and lynch murder of Gaddafi, has left Libya a fractured, dysfunctional state.

The west of the country is ruled from Tripoli by the Government of National Unity under Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, while the east is ruled from Sirte by the rival Government of National Stability under Prime Minister Osama Hammad, backed by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army. The two power blocs, and the various factions within them, are variously courted and manipulated by foreign powers.

Practically nothing has been provided to rebuild Libya. A report by digital news organisation Middle East Eye in 2015 drew attention to the fact that Britain had spent £320 million bombing the country, versus £15 million on humanitarian aid in the four years afterwards. The European powers treat Libya as a wild west frontier, hiring vicious gangs of “coastguards” to intercept refugees and prevent their entry to “Fortress Europe”.

What money goes into the country is spent in pursuit of its vast oil and gas wealth. Last November, Libya’s National Oil Corporation granted British Petroleum and Italian firm Eni the right to drill in the west of the country and off its north-east shore, close to the flooded area—an $8 billion project.

The crimes of US imperialism and its allies have left the working class and rural poor in Libya especially exposed to the global climate change crisis.

Vast quantities of water fell over Sunday and Monday: 16 inches in 24 hours in Bayda, which receives just over 21 inches in an average year. The central driving force behind the storm was the warming of the Mediterranean Sea, fueling higher windspeeds and heavier rainfall in a storm known as a “medicane”, or Mediterranean hurricane.

“The warmer water does not only fuel those storms in terms of rainfall intensity,” said Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at Leipzig University in Germany, “it also makes them more ferocious.”

Suzanne Gray from the meteorology department at Britain’s University of Reading noted, “There is consistent evidence that the frequency of medicanes decreases with climate warming, but the strongest medicanes become stronger.”

An additional factor in this case is an “omega block” pattern of pressure over Europe, with a region of high pressure and temperatures centered on the UK and north-western Europe sandwiched between two cut-off areas of low pressure over Spain and south-eastern Europe, Turkey and north-east Africa—associated with heavy rainfall. The phenomenon has been caused by the jet stream weakening and shifting a long way north, also associated with the impacts of climate change.

Libya’s floods come just days after the United Nations released its “global stock-take” report—the most extensive existing analysis of climate action undertaken by the world’s capitalist governments.

In the usual muted scientific language, the report details a runaway catastrophe. On the current trajectory, the world economy will produce roughly 22 billion tons more carbon dioxide in 2030 than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—equivalent to the combined output of the world’s top five polluters, China, US, India, Russia and Japan.

The many unprecedented environmental disasters of the last year have taken place in the context of 1.18 degrees Celsius of warming.

While the report’s authors insist on the need for “phasing out all unabated fossil fuels,” a record $7 trillion was spent on fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund. This is roughly 12 times the estimated amount needed to fund climate adaptation measures in Africa over the next decade.

Military junta accuses France of preparing invasion of Niger

Athiyan Silva

A month and a half after a coup toppled the French-backed regime of President Mohamed Bazoum in Niger, tensions are mounting between Paris and the junta. Amid mass protests demanding the withdrawal of French troops, the Nigerien junta is accusing France of preparing to invade Niger.

French soldiers disembark from a U.S. Air Force C130 cargo plane at Niamey, Niger base, on June 9, 2021. [AP Photo]

On Saturday, the spokesman for the military junta, Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane, accused France of deploying troops and military equipment to the West African countries of Benin, Ivory Coast and Senegal to prepare to invade Niger. He said, “France continues to deploy its forces in several ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] countries as part of preparations for an aggression against Niger, which it is considering in collaboration with this organization.”

He added that “that two A400M type military transport aircraft and a Dornier 328 were deployed as reinforcements in Côte d'Ivoire. And two Super Puma type multirole helicopters and around forty armored vehicles were deployed in Kandi and Malanville in Benin. On September 7, 2023, a French military ship docked in Cotonou [Benin] with personnel and military assets on board. The generals in power also report around a hundred rotations of military cargo planes having made it possible to land significant quantities of war material and equipment in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin, to name but a few.”

The goal of the French military build-up, the spokesman said, is “to achieve a successful military intervention against our country.”

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron issued a belligerent statement refusing to recognize the authority of the Nigerien junta or the legitimacy of demands for a withdrawal of French troops from Niger. “We do not recognize any legitimacy in the statements of the junta in Niger,” he said during a press conference at the G20 summit in Delhi.

Macron’s remarks effectively amounted to repeating his threat to organize a French-backed intervention into Niger carried out with ECOWAS troops. He claimed that the Bazoum regime and the French military presence in Niger is legitimate, despite mass protests against French troops in Niger and across the region.

Macron said, “France, French forces were set up on Niger soil at the request of Niger. And we are here to fight against terrorism at the request of Niger and its democratically elected authorities, namely President Bazoum, his government, and his Parliament. A coup d'état since last July has held a democratically elected president hostage. France has a simple position: We condemn it. We demand the release of President Bazoum and the restoration of constitutional order.”

Macron’s attempts to dress up his neocolonial policy and plans for wars of plunder as a defense of democracy is a cynical fraud. Since the formal independence of France’s sub-Saharan African colonies in the 1960s, Paris has backed countless military coups in what the French press refers to as its “backyard.” After its bloody 2013-2022 war in Mali, that then spread across most of the Sahel, masses of workers and youth in the region legitimately want French troops out.

French troops withdrawn from Mali in 2022 were initially stationed in Chad and in Niger, which hosts 1,500 French troops.

Every day for over a week, thousands of people have been demonstrating in the capital of Niger, Niamey, outside the base where French and NATO troops are stationed, demanding their departure. Washington, which has 1,100 troops in Niger, has begun moving them from Base 101 in Niamey to Base 201 in Agadez, in central Niger. The trip to Agadez from Niamey is around 920 kilometers by road.

So far, Niger’s military junta has not demanded that US, Italian, or German troops stationed alongside their French counterparts leave the country. The junta leaders’ behind-the-scenes negotiations with Washington expose the junta’s anti-imperialist pretensions.

At a Pentagon news conference, Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh indicated that despite the decision to move US troops, Washington still hopes to work with the Niger junta. She said, “There is no threat to American troops and no threat of violence on the ground, this is simply a precautionary measure. We’re hopeful that there can be some diplomatic way to resolve what’s happening.”

Nonetheless, there is a growing danger that the imperialist powers will provoke a major escalation of the war in response to mounting opposition among African workers and youth. This is particularly the case since the conflict between France and the other imperialist powers with the juntas in the Sahel is becoming caught up in the global conflict between NATO and Russia centered in the war in Ukraine.

After the July 26 military coup in Niger, ECOWAS countries put their armies on alert along their borders, with the support of France. There has been open discussion in the ruling elites of Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Togo of possibly launching a war against Niger. Moscow has responded by making limited offers of support to the juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that are demanding the departure of French troops.

On August 15, in a statement on its ties to the Malian junta, the Kremlin announced: “At the initiative of the Malian side, Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the Transitional Period of the Republic of Mali Assimi Goita.” Its statement further reported that Putin and Goita had discussed the situation in Niger. The Kremlin said this was a “continuation of Russian-Mali high-level talks” held at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.

Putin also discussed the crisis in the Sahel while speaking that same day in a pre-recorded message to the Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS). He said: “The countries of the Sahara-Sahel region, such as the Central African Republic and Mali, were under direct attack from numerous terrorist groups after the US and its allies unleashed aggression against Libya, which led to the collapse of the Libyan state.”

On August 24, the Nigerian, Malian and Burkinabè juntas established “an agreement for matters of mutual security in matters of security and defense in case of aggression or terrorist attack,” the junta in Niger announced.

After a decade of bloody French military operations in the Sahel and over a half-century of neocolonial domination of the region since formal independence, French imperialism faces explosive opposition among African workers and youth. In this context, condemnations of Russian actions in Africa by Paris and its NATO allies are correctly dismissed in Africa as a hypocritical fraud.

Nonetheless, the perspective advanced by the juntas in the impoverished Sahel countries is not a way forward for the working class. They aim to rely on Russian protection and their own military strength to discourage France from intervening directly and to work out a deal with the NATO powers behind the scenes. But the NATO powers themselves are currently and recklessly escalating their war with Russia that now threatens to explode across Africa, as well.

Moreover, the Russian post-Soviet oligarchy led by Putin sees the Sahel mainly as a bargaining chip in dealing with the NATO imperialist powers amid the war in Ukraine. Should Moscow believe itself to be in a position to work out a deal with the major NATO powers at the expense of its allies in Africa, it would do so.

Speaker McCarthy announces House impeachment probe of President Biden

Kevin Reed

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday the opening of an official impeachment inquiry into President Biden and the corrupt business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

Announcing the probe outside his office on Capitol Hill, McCarthy said, “These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption. They warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives. That’s why today I am directing our House (committees) to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”

By launching the probe without a vote in the House, McCarthy accepted demands by the fascist supporters of Donald Trump in the House Freedom Caucus to unilaterally begin the impeachment of Biden or face a move to oust him as Speaker.

President Joe Biden meets with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California in Washington, May 2023. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The members of the Freedom Caucus—such as Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Lauren Boebert of Colorado—have seized upon the corrupt practices of the Biden family to advance their extreme right-wing political agenda.

The impeachment campaign is also aimed at generating fuel for Donald Trump and his fascist campaign for the Republican Party nomination in the 2024 presidential elections.

That Hunter Biden engaged in corrupt activities and traded on the role of his father when he was US vice president, gaining lucrative business agreements worth tens of millions of dollars, is well-documented.

Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings included his role in as a founding board member of the Chinese private equity firm Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) which purchased a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016 for $3.8 billion.

Additionally, the younger Biden has admitted to committing multiple federal offenses. In June, a plea deal had been worked out with federal prosecutors in which he agreed to plead guilty to “willful failure to pay federal income tax” and to enter a pretrial diversion agreement on one count of illegal possession of a weapon.

However, the plea deal was blocked unexpectedly in July by a Delaware judge, setting the stage for a resumption of the campaign of the Trump-supporting Freedom Caucus for an impeachment inquiry based on Hunter Biden’s criminal activities.

In his Tuesday announcement, McCarthy claimed that House Republicans “have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct. Taken together, these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”

Essentially acknowledging that no hard evidence has been produced so far to implicate Joe Biden in his son’s activities, McCarthy said Republicans “are committed to getting the answers for the American public.”

Responding to the impeachment, White House spokesman Ian Sams said the GOP has been investigating Biden for nine months and, “they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing.” Sams added, “His own GOP members have said so. He (McCarthy) vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip-flopped because he doesn’t have support.”

Republicans who are not supporting the impeachment drive are in favor of an investigation into the Bidens without going straight to impeachment. For example, right-wing Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado said, “I still want to look at the evidence. I’m going to get a briefing later in the week on what evidence links President—at the time vice president—Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s activities. I haven’t seen that link yet, and so I am reluctant to agree with Speaker McCarthy.”

The launching of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden deepens the crisis of the entire US political system. It intersects with the conflict in Washington D.C. over the budget and the discussions between Biden and the Republicans over a continuing resolution which must be passed by September 30 to prevent a government shutdown.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to launch incendiary measures against his Republican challengers and stoke the impeachment drive against Biden as revenge for being impeached twice as well as the numerous indictments he is facing in US and state courts prior to the 2024 presidential elections.

The impeachment crisis highlights significant conflicts building up within the capitalist ruling establishment. While the Pentagon and financial elite are demanding uninterrupted government funding for war and debt repayment, the relatively small group of Freedom Caucus Republicans are threatening to force a shutdown if a continuing resolution does not include budget cuts and anti-immigrant measures at the southern border.

Growing vulnerabilities in US Treasury market

Nick Beams

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the $22 trillion US Treasury market, where US government debt is bought and sold, froze. It threatened to set off a global crisis potentially worse than the financial market meltdown of 2008.

Stability was only restored to the world’s most important financial market through a massive intervention by the US Federal Reserve which pumped in around $4 trillion, essentially becoming the backstop for the entire financial system.

Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]

In the period since then, despite various reports and investigations, none of the problems that set off the crisis has been resolved and there are warnings the conditions that produced it are building up again.

Writing in the Financial Times last week, columnist Gillian Tett pointed to a report by the US Federal Reserve which indicated that conditions in the Treasury market were beginning to resemble those that preceded and helped spark the March 2020 crisis.

The immediate cause of that crisis was the movement of interest rates in such a way that hedge funds were forced to exit the highly leveraged bets they had made based on US Treasuries. The sell-off set in motion a stampede for the exits, such that at one point there were no buyers for US government debt, supposedly the safest financial asset in the world.

The hedge funds relied heavily in their operations on repurchase agreements (repos) in which bonds are exchanged for cash which is then used to finance further bets. Now those conditions are returning.

According to the Fed report, economists had noted that “hedge fund repo borrowing rose by $120 billion between October 4, 2022, and May 9 2023, and was higher as of May 9 2023 than it was at its previous peak in 2019.”

Tett continued: “Yes, you read right: positioning is apparently more extreme today than before the pandemic debacle. And this, they note, ‘presents a financial stability vulnerability because the trade is highly leveraged [dependent on borrowed funds] and is exposed to both changes in futures and changes in repo spreads.’”

That is, as Tett noted, the market is highly vulnerable to sharp shifts in interest rates.

A report by the Financial Stability Board, a global watchdog comprised of top finance ministers and regulators, prepared for the G20 Summit last weekend, also points to sources of instability.

A letter sent to the Summit by FSB chairman Klaas Knot, president of the Dutch central bank, offered reassurances that mechanisms put in place by the G20 after 2008 had largely held up.

The report itself, however, indicated a number of sources of instability, particularly the use of “synthetic leverage” where debt arrangements are based not on an actual asset but on a derivative, the value of which depends on an underlying asset.

It also indicated, as have many other reports, that there are large areas of the financial system, mostly those involving non-banking financial intermediaries (NBFIs) such as hedge funds, of which regulators and financial authorities have little or no knowledge.

The FSB report noted that some hedge funds had “very high levels of synthetic leverage” using complex financial instruments to create debt which frequently does not show up on balance sheets.

“Several recent market events,” the report said, “such as the March 2020 turmoil as well as the failure of Archegos Capital Management and strains in commodities and bond markets, underscore the need to strengthen the resilience of non-bank financial intermediation.”

However, to strengthen the resilience of the system it is necessary to know what is going on. And here there are major problems, which the report revealed.

It identified “a number of data gaps which have made it difficult to fully assess the vulnerabilities associated with NBFI leverage. Family offices [Archegos Capital was one such], for example, may be taking on leverage, but little public and regulatory data are available to measure the nature, the size and concentration of those positions.”

“Similarly,” the report continued, “pension funds’ leverage is difficult to assess without more information on their investments.”

Pension funds, which might have once been viewed as conservative institutions far removed from the kind of speculative activities associated with hedge funds, came sharply into view in Britain a year ago.

Financial investments they had made were hit by a rapid rise in interest rates. A major crisis was only averted through the intervention of the Bank of England into the bond market.

In her comment on Treasury market vulnerabilities, Tett noted one of the reasons why the FSB was sounding the alarm: “2020 demonstrated how shockwaves from NBFI trades could spread. And what is particularly unnerving right now is that the structural vulnerabilities in the Treasuries market that exacerbated the Treasuries basis shock not only remain in place—they could actually be getting worse.”

This only raises the question of why the US Treasury market, supposedly the most liquid and safe in the world and one of the central foundations of the global financial system, has increasingly come to resemble a giant gambling casino in which major losses can be incurred.

One of the reasons is the trillions of dollars pumped into the system by the Fed and other central banks have gone, under the quantitative easing program, into financial markets that have financed speculation.

Another factor is the regulatory changes introduced after the crisis of 2008 aimed to increase the stability of banks, especially those deemed “too big to fail.”

As often happens when a reform is introduced to try and maintain a rotting system, it creates problems elsewhere. In this case, in order to comply with the new requirements, the banks stepped back from the Treasury market where their role as primary dealers had a stabilising effect.

This has meant that hedge funds, often engaged in speculative ventures funded with borrowed money, have come to play a more significant role.

According to a paper by Darell Duffie, a Stanford professor, one measure of the decline in traditional sources is that “since 2007, the total size of primary dealer balance sheets per dollar of Treasuries outstanding has shrunk by a factor of nearly four and could go even lower.”

Tett described it as “one of the most startling statistics I have recently seen.”

And for good reason. Together with other data and the open admission by authorities that they have no real knowledge of the system over which they are supposed to preside leads to an obvious conclusion. Despite public assurances that the financial system is “sound and resilient,” it is on the road to another crisis.

Margaret McNamara Educational Grants MMEG Scholarships 2024

Application Deadline: 15th January 2024 (Opening 15th Sept)

Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Fields of Study: Any field of study

To be taken at (country): United States (US) & Canada

About the MMEG Scholarships: The Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG) provides grants to women from developing countries to help further their education and strengthen their leadership skills to improve the lives of women and children in developing countries. About $15,000 Education grants are awarded to women from developing and middle-income countries who, upon obtainment of their degree, intend to return to or remain in their countries, or other developing countries, and work to improve the lives of women and/or children.

Offered Since: 1981

Type: Masters

Who is qualified to apply for MMEG Scholarships? Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be at least 25 years old at time of application deadline (see specific regional program application below);
• Be a national of a country listed on the MMEG Country Eligibility List (listed below);
• Be enrolled at an accredited academic institution when submitting application; and plan to be enrolled for a full academic term after award of the grant by the Board;
• Not be related to a World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund or Inter-American Development Bank staff member or spouse;

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

MMEG Scholarships Benefits: Approximately $15,000 per scholarship recipient

Duration: The grant is a onetime award to last for the duration of study

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt , Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Other Countries:

Afghanistan, Ecuador , Macedonia, FYR of , Albania, Arab Rep., Serbia, El Salvador, Seychelles, Malaysia, Antigua and Barbuda, Eritrea, Maldives, Solomon Islands, Argentina, Armenia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , St. Kitts and Nevis, Belarus, Georgia, Mexico, St. Lucia, Belize, Micronesia, Fed. Sts , St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, Bhutan, Guatemala, Moldova, Suriname, Bolivia, Mongolia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Syrian Arab Rep., Guyana, Tajikistan, Brazil, Haiti, Bulgaria, Honduras, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Iran, Islamic Rep. of, Nicaragua,Tonga, Iraq, Trinidad and Tobago, Cape Verde, Jamaica, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Palau, Turkmenistan, Chile, China, Kiribatii, Panama, Colombia, Korea, Republic of, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine, Comoros, Kosovo, Paraguay, Uruguay, Kyrgyz Rep, Peru, Uzbekistan, Lao PDR, Philippines, Vanuatu, Costa Rica, Latvia, Poland, Venezuela, RB, Lebanon, Romania, Vietnam, Croatia, Russian Federation, West Bank & Gaza, Yemen, Rep, Dominica, Samoa, Dominican Republic, São Tomé and Principe

How to Apply For MMEG Scholarships: Apply via Scholarship Webpage link below.

Remember to read the Application Checklist & FAQs before applying, and when applying (after signing up), select “US-Canada program” in the first question of the application. If the programme name does not appear, the programme may be closed to new applications.

Visit Scholarship webpage for details

Important Notes: Please make sure to submit ALL documents

Brewing Anger in Thailand as the Establishment Unites to Foil Change

Kheetanat Synth Wannaboworn & Walden Bello

Pita Limjaroenrat 4 days before the 1st prime ministership election in the National Assembly, 9 July 2023. Photograph Source: Supanut Arunoprayote – CC BY 4.0

After over three months of Thailand being put on hold as the country’s political adversaries tried to figure a way out of the surprising results of the May elections, a solution was finally reached among contending parties in the third week of August. It was a victory for the establishment, a modus vivendi among its different factions.

Seasoned observers say the elements of the deal were the following: Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled former prime minister, would be allowed to return to Thailand with a promise of kid’s glove treatment for his alleged offenses; the Pheu Thai Party, Thaksin’s personal political vehicle, would lead a governing coalition that would include two defeated parties associated with the powerful military; and the Move Forward Party, which had won the most seats in the May parliamentary elections, would be frozen out of the governing coalition.

The deal that united Thaksin with his former enemies—the military and the conservative establishment—generated anger, consternation, and confusion throughout the country. Former Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, a Thaksin foe and former Democrat Party leader who has also become a severe critic of the military and the lese majeste law on penalizing people accused of defaming the royalty, summed up the situation tongue-in-cheek:

“The reality is that this government is composed of personalities from the conservative establishment side. Arch-enemies, Thaksin and the generals are now together as one to put up a stand (maybe the last one) against the forces of change. We must be reminded that Thaksin has all along been part of the establishment. But he wanted to monopolize and was opposed by the rest. Now various elements of the establishment have rejoined one another. The Thai political arena is now a struggle between the established elites and the masses. More dramas will surely come to delight and bewilder all of us.”

On the other hand, spokespeople for the Pheu Thai party said that the deal, which would make real estate mogul Srettha Thavisin prime minister, was necessary to end over three months of political uncertainty owing to the absence of a ruling parliamentary coalition.

Move Forward’s Challenge

The country’s latest crisis erupted when the Move Forward Party unexpectedly won the most votes in the parliamentary elections of May 14, 2023. It won 151 seats, besting its coalition partner, the Pheu Thai party, the Thaksin family’s populist vehicle that raked in 141 seats. Left in the dust were the parties controlled by the ruling military regime that gathered a measly 76 seats.

Move Forward’s rise was nothing short of mercurial. Founded just five years ago, in 2018, its first incarnation as Future Forward came in third in the parliamentary elections of 2019. Then, coming in first in 2023, it won 14 million votes, or 40 percent of votes cast, up from 13 percent in 2019. It frustrated the legal maneuvers that the military-controlled Constitutional Court threw at it. The Court dissolved Future Forward in February 2020, only to see it resurrected as Move Forward a month later, with a new leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, who declared that “Move Forward is the new chapter of Future Forward.”

To be prime minister, Pita had to get 376 votes from the 750 members of the bicameral National Assembly. He already had the votes of the eight-party opposition coalition but, going into July 13, he needed to secure more, and this had to come either from the rest of the lower house or from the Senate, or both. Parliament concluded a two-hour voting session with Pita securing 324 votes in his favor, 182 votes against, and 199 abstentions in the first round, falling short of the 376 votes needed to become premier by 52 votes.

The most decisive force that shaped the outcome of July 13 were the 250 senators—all appointed by the military, which considers itself the “guardians of the Kingdom’s three pillars” of Nation, Religion, and the King. Pita hardly picked up any votes from this solid bloc.

The Parliament reconvened on July 19, but Pita’s opponents refused to have a second renomination on the grounds that he had already been rejected a week earlier. As the debate ensued, the Constitutional Court separately announced that Pita had been suspended as a lawmaker over an allegation that he violated election rules by holding shares in a private firm.

Thaksin’s Party Abandons Move Forward

At this point, it became very clear that under no circumstances would the establishment allow Move Forward to lead the government or even be part of a governing coalition—not even if it were to give up its plan to reform Article 112 of the criminal code, the royal defamation law. Pheu Thai then stepped in to lead the process of establishing a new government and, during a month-long period of intense negotiations, it junked Move Forward and moved to an accommodation with other parties, including the two defeated parties connected with the generals that had ruled the country for the last nine years.

Thaksin’s return to Thailand to face lenient treatment is said to be the deal that opened the way to a governing alliance among former foes. Hours after his return on August 20, Parliament elected his man Srettha as prime minister, with 482 votes from the 727 politicians. The only significant party to vote against Srettha in the parliament election was Move Forward.

The royal palace promptly signed off on the deal.

Srettha will lead a fragile coalition of 11 parties. According to press reports, Pheu Thai announced that it would control eight cabinet posts and nine deputy cabinet posts. It also disclosed that the parties of the military—Palang Pracharath and United Thai Nation—will receive two cabinet posts and two deputy posts each. Pheu Thai further revealed that the coalition had agreed to “support” Pheu Thai’s platform of boosting the economy, increasing the minimum wage, ending mandatory military service, supporting the continued legalization of medical marijuana, and amending the constitution to make the country “more democratic,” while leaving untouched the royal defamation law. This statement has been received with great skepticism by the public.

The deal has largely unsettled and angered most of the electorate, which saw the May election’s results as a clear mandate for fundamental change. Will what some have termed the “Back from the Future Coalition” or the “Fast Backward Alliance” be able to defuse the smoldering anger that is the overwhelming response to its formation?

Overreach?

Some observers are of the opinion that this time, the establishment has overreached. Although people are not yet out in the streets in protest, according to this argument, they will come out eventually, leading to another round of intense street battles, like the ones that led to the military coup in 2014.

Others do not see the governing coalition lasting very long, expecting the infighting among former bitter enemies to resume in short order, especially since there is really no agreement on a common program except to form a government. Behind the scenes, the formidable Thaksin and the equally formidable military-backed conservative establishment will be calling the shots, and it’s unlikely they’ll find common ground if they are not to disappoint their constituencies. The mass base of Thaksin, the so-called Redshirts, are expecting his populist agenda to resume after being frozen for almost a decade, while the elite is determined to make no concessions on the social and economic front.

Coming out of the deal, Thaksin and Pheu Thai, some say, are likely to be the big losers, being seen by a significant bloc of former supporters as having betrayed the popular mandate in order to promote the interests of the party and the Thaksin family. Thaksin is seen by many former sympathizers as a has-been. Move Forward has captured their political imagination, the way Thaksin did two decades ago.

What Will Happen Now?

Move Forward, ironically, is the one force that has come out of the whole messy affair untarnished. It never gave up on its promise to reform the lese majeste law. It escaped the dirty wheeling-and-dealing that it would have had to engage in to gain enough support from the forces of the old order to form a new ruling coalition. It will now be able to engage in uncompromising opposition politics, which is in synch with the dark, angry, resentful mood of the majority of the citizenry.

An indication of what lies ahead is the #CONFORALL signature campaign. Determined to have a new constitution that truly reflects the will of the citizens, the People’s Constitution Drafting Group—a network of CSOs and activist groups—is calling for a referendum on having a new charter drafted by a 100-percent elected committee. Three days ahead of the deadline set by the Election Commission to receive the people’s petition before the first Cabinet meeting in early September, organizers were told by the Commission that most of the 113,912 names that had been collected so far from offline and online gatherings were invalid since only signatures on paper documents would be recognized.

In the next three days, 205,739 signatures on paper were delivered to the campaign’s head office—four times larger than the 50,000 threshold required by law. One elated observer said that this reminded her of the time the slogan “You messed with the Wrong Generation!” became the battle cry of the 2020 youth uprising. “The battle lines are being drawn,” she said.