German defence minister on the offensive in the Middle East

Johannes Stern

German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is currently on tour in the Middle East. The central goal of the trip is the strengthening of Germany’s political, economic and military influence in this resource-rich and geo-strategically critical region.

Von der Leyen’s first stop was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where she was met Wednesday evening at the King Salman Air Base in Riyadh by Saudi deputy defence minister General Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Ayesh, German ambassador Dieter Walter Haller and defence attaché Colonel Thomas Schneider.

On Thursday, the defence minister visited the headquarters of the so-called Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition and asserted in an official press release that Saudi Arabia was a country which “decisively combats terrorism and is aware it has a special role in combatting Muslim-Arabic terrorism in the Islamic world.”

This is patently absurd. Hardly anything could more clearly expose the German government’s empty phrases about human rights and propaganda about the “war on terror” than the close military and political collaboration between the Western powers and Saudi Arabia.

The reactionary and Islamist character of the Saudi regime is so obvious that even the German media could not avoid raising some issues. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, there were “throughout last year … more than 150 executions. There are also frequent public floggings, [and] the rights of women and minorities are massively curtailed.”

About the impact of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen, the Süddeutsche Zeitung noted: “The bombardments have destroyed the infrastructure of the Arab world’s poorest country and repeatedly kill civilians. According to investigations by human rights activists, one in three attacks strike civilian targets.” According to the UN, “the more than 10,000 victims of the war include more than 4,000 civilians––many die from bombs from the air which frequently strike hospitals.”

And, according to public broadcaster ARD, “Saudi Arabia is … a strict Islamic governed monarchy, in which––much like the Islamic State (IS)––political opponents are beheaded and women stoned if they end a marriage.”

In Syria, Saudi Arabia is among the chief sponsors of Islamist militias with close ties to al-Qaeda and which are officially designated as terrorist organisations by the German government. The Ahrar al-Sham militia, backed financially and politically by Saudi Arabia, is a “foreign terrorist organisation,” according to the German attorney general, and “one of the largest and most influential Salafist-Jihadi organisations in the Syrian uprising movement.” It pursues the goal of “toppling the regime of Syrian ruler [Bashar al-] Assad and establish a theocratic state based entirely on Sharia law.”

None of this has prevented the German government and defence minister from intensifying military cooperation with Saudi Arabia. According to reports, Von der Leyen pledged to train Saudi soldiers in Germany. The training of “several young officers and contractors with the Saudi Arabian military” will begin in Germany in the coming year, the German ambassador announced Thursday.

In addition, further arms exports to the Gulf monarchy are planned. Recently the Federal Security Council, meeting in secret, approved the shipment of 41,644 shells to Saudi Arabia, even though Germany’s official export guidelines prohibit the supplying of arms to states “engaged in armed conflicts.” According to government sources, weapons exports totaling more than €484 million [$US 511 million] were approved to Saudi Arabia in the first half of the year, including helicopters and components for fighter jets.

With its massive rearmament of the Saudi monarchy, Berlin is pursuing two main goals. First, Riyadh is to be placed in a better position to violently suppress social unrest on the Arabian Peninsula. In early 2011, a few weeks after the revolutionary upsurges in Tunisia and Egypt, Saudi troops and tanks intervened in Bahrain with brutal violence to suppress mass protests taking place there. In addition, the German government views the heavily armed Arab monarchies as important allies in the imposition of German imperialist interests in the region.

After her stay in Riyadh, Von der Leyen travelled directly to Bahrain. She participated in the Manama dialogue, the most important security conference in the Middle East. Several heads of state and government, ministers, military personnel and representatives from security agencies attended the event organised by the influential International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank to discuss the wars and conflicts in the region.

Von der Leyen’s last destination is Jordan, where she will symbolically hand over 24 “Marder”–type armoured vehicles.

Von der Leyen spoke in Bahrain in 2015, announcing greater German engagement in the Middle East. At the time, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung enthused in an opinion piece, “Germany is no longer indifferent. Germany has managed to expand its foreign policy weight. At the Manama Dialogue, Defence Minister Von der Leyen can point out that the Federal Republic is no longer holding back.”

The “fundamental German interest” in the region was already summarised in a strategy paper by the CDU-aligned Konrad Adenauer Foundation in 2001, “It is directed primarily towards a stabilisation of those states and societies to prevent dangers to its own security and that of its European partner states, to secure a seamless supply of raw materials and to create export opportunities for German business.”

The study, entitled “Germany and the Middle East: standpoint and recommendations for action,” emphasised the importance of the “export markets in the region’s core states (Egypt, Turkey, Iran), but above all the wealthy Gulf states” for German exports. Here it was necessary to “make a contribution to securing sales markets, obtain the broadest possible access to these markets and compete with the US, the Eastern European countries and also the East Asian industrial countries.”

Request to extradite Roman Polanski to US rejected by Polish Supreme Court

Dorota Niemitz

“The game’s over, at least in Poland,” commented Jan Olszewski, one of Roman Polanski’s defendants, last Tuesday when Poland’s Supreme Court issued its final ruling rejecting the effort by Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro to have Polanski extradited to the US.

The veteran film director (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist), now 83, pleaded guilty in 1977 in California to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He fled the US in February 1978 after the judge in the case threatened to renege on a plea agreement and sentence him to 50 years in jail.

In 2014 the US authorities requested that Polanski, a dual Polish and French citizen, who spends part of his time in Poland, be extradited to America. The request was rejected in October 2015 by the Regional Court in Krakow, which was highly critical of the conduct of the judge and the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office back in the 1970s.

Last May, Ziobro, a minister in the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government, which took office a year ago, announced his intention to review the decision and ultimately appealed it, stating he wanted to “avoid double standards.”

“Mr. Polanski’s case was viewed by many Poles as a litmus test as to whether everyone is equal before the law regardless of their social status,” Ziobro told Poland’s PAP news agency.

Ziobro, an ultra-right-winger notorious for criminalizing and spying on members of Poland’s political opposition, declared earlier that Polanski should not be treated as if he were above the law. Absurdly, he compared the artist’s case to that of the 97-year-old SS officer extradited to Germany in 2015 as an accessory to 300,000 murders at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.

“It’s about principles. The criminal code does not allow for any differentiation,” said Ziobro. “If Mr. Polanski were not a celebrity, a famous filmmaker, but was an average Joe, this case would have been over long ago, and nobody would have ever heard of it.”

In his appeal, Ziobro argued that the lower court’s ruling was “incomprehensible” and a “serious breach” of the extradition agreement between Poland and the United States. In this week’s decision, Supreme Court judge Michał Laskowski rejected that contention, ruling that the Regional Court’s verdict was not––as the appeal claimed––a “flagrant violation of the law,” but that “the court had considered and verified all evidence exceptionally carefully.”

“I have an impression that the minister does not know the case, because the court’s role was not to examine the question of guilt and punishment since these were not challenged. The case before the court was to determine admissibility of extradition,” Olszewski commented. Under Polish law, the fact that the crime was committed 40 years ago bars it from being pursued.

The decision is a blow to Ziobro, who now holds the position of Prosecutor General and minister of justice and is considered to be one of the most powerful politicians in Poland, as it undermines his pretensions to be a legal expert.

Ziobro’s appeal was clearly politically motivated. The authoritarian, clerical-nationalistic PiS is on a crusade to revive “Christian values” and purge the country of “demoralized liberal elites.” Polanski apparently fell into the latter category.In 2014 the US authorities requested that Polanski, a dual Polish and French citizen, who spends part of his time in Poland, be extradited to America.

It is known that several high-ranking members of the opposition party, the Civic Platform (PO), now under attack from PiS, were personally involved in putting a good word in for the accused artist during his case. Those coming to his defense included many celebrities, but also former president Bronisław Komorowski, former justice minister Borys Budka and former minister of foreign affairs Radek Sikorski.

The Polanski case became part of the hypocritical, demagogic maneuvers of the PiS, who claim to be fighting for “equal treatment” under the law. Their scapegoating of the filmmaker is an element of their authoritarian attacks on all political opposition.

Ziobro’s conduct was especially disgusting in the light of the fact that Polanski, whose father was Jewish and mother half-Jewish, half-Catholic, suffered the traumas of the Holocaust as a child in Poland. The pursuit of a former victim of war and genocide (Polanski’s mother died at Auschwitz) for a crime committed four decades ago was vindictive and appalling.

The government’s witch-hunt, with its denunciations of “liberal elites,” also had obvious anti-Semitic overtones. The court procedures delayed the production of the director’s new movie, An Officer and a Spy, initially filmed in Warsaw. The film’s production had to be moved to Paris where Polanski could work without fear of being arrested. The film is based on the story of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish artillery officer wrongly convicted in 1894 of espionage and treason. His case became a symbol of injustice and anti-Semitism.

The same prosecutor’s office has been involved in a witch-hunt against Jan Tomasz Gross, the Polish-born American author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001), about the massacre of Jews by Poles during World War II. Gross’ father was Jewish and his mother Christian, and a member of the Polish resistance during World War II.

Gross’ statement that “although they [Poles] were rightfully proud of their society’s resistance to the Nazis, they actually killed more Jews than Germans during the war” has earned him a charge of “publicly insulting the Polish Nation,” an offence punishable by three years in prison according to the recently amended Penal Code, article 133, a new law introduced by Ziobro last August.

Ziobro reacted sharply to Gross’s statement and asserted that it could have been inspired by people around Gazeta Wyborcza. The liberal daily’s Chief Editor Adam Michnik, also of Jewish origin, has recently been under vicious attack from the PiS for political reasons.

As for Polanski, he told an interviewer from TVN24 just after the Superior Court decision was announced, “It is good to hear I will finally be able to feel safe in my own country.” The director did not attend the trial for psychological reasons. He also could not attend the funeral of his friend, film director Andrzej Wajda, who died October 9, from fear of being taunted by Ziobro’s henchmen.

UK: Voter turnout collapses by half in “Brexit” by-election

Julie Hyland

The ruling Conservative Party held the seat of Sleaford & North Hykeham in Lincolnshire, England in Thursday’s by-election, on a much reduced majority and in a turn-out that collapsed.

The by-election was the second in a week caused by the resignation of sitting Conservative MPs. Sleaford MP Stephen Phillips quit the government in protest at Prime Minister Theresa May’s insistence that she will press for a “hard Brexit”—exit from the European Union, even if this means losing access to the Single Market—following June’s referendum vote in favour of leaving the bloc.

The previous by-election was in Richmond, London on December 1, triggered by the resignation of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith. Although Goldsmith’s resignation had nothing to do with Brexit, and was in protest at the building of a third runway at Heathrow airport, the by-election was turned into a ballot on the outcome of the referendum.

The Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) did not contest the Richmond by-election, backing Goldsmith who was a Leave supporter. The Green Party threw its support behind the Liberal Democrats, who have recast themselves as the leading proponents of a so-called Progressive Alliance in opposition to Brexit. In a constituency that voted overwhelmingly to Remain, this saw Goldsmith trounced, as the Liberal Democrats overturned his 23,000-vote majority to win the seat. The Labour Party, which has said it will not oppose Brexit but argues that the UK should seek to remain in the Single Market, lost its deposit.

The Sleaford by-election was also dominated by the issue of for or against Brexit, as two bitterly opposed camps within ruling circles seek to reshape British politics on the basis of a pro- or anti-EU programme.

The ballot took place against the backdrop of the four-day hearing before the Supreme Court, at which the government is challenging last month’s decision by the High Court that the prime minister cannot bypass Parliament and use Royal Prerogative powers to trigger Article 50.

The rural market town, which is surrounded by prosperous villages, is considered one of the safest Tory seats in the country. Unlike Richmond, however, 62 percent of voters in Sleaford backed Leave in the June 23 referendum.

The most significant aspect of the result is the fact that two-thirds of those eligible to vote choose not to do so. Turnout was just 37 percent, down by 33 percent on the 2015 General Election.

The government claimed its 17,570 votes to be a victory for its hard-line position on Brexit. However, its vote share was down by nearly 3 percent and its majority slashed by half. That two by-elections have been forced by defections within the government speaks to a gathering crisis within its own ranks. While the majority of the party and its MPs favour Brexit, a small number are opposed.

Given that the government commands a narrow 13-seat majority, this is politically significant. Only the day before the election, May had been forced to accept a Labour motion—with several amendments—demanding the government publish its plans for leaving the EU before beginning formal negotiations over the UK’s exit, after up to 40 Tory MPs threatened to back it.

UKIP took second place, but trailed way behind. Its vote (4,426) was also down by just over 2 percent. The party had suggested it might win a shock victory as a result of its campaign accusing the Tories of being “Brexit backsliders.” But May’s government has largely stolen UKIP’s clothes as regards the EU and its anti-immigrant propaganda, and the far-right party failed to make any real headway.

The Liberal Democrats came in third, increasing their vote share by 5.3 percent. The party has pledged to vote against any move by May to trigger Article 50, if Parliament is eventually able to vote on the issue, and its campaign was targeted at the 40 percent of voters in Sleaford that backed Remain. Even so, its 3,606 votes was an increase of just 106 on its 2015 result.

To the extent that UKIP and the Liberal Democrats can claim any success, it is the result of Labour’s own collapse. The party ended in fourth place, from second in the 2015 General Election, and its vote fell by 7 percent to just 3,363. Its ambiguous and divided stance on the referendum and its aftermath meant that it was completely incapable of distinguishing itself from the other parties.

Once again, the Green Party failed to contest the by-election, backing an Independent candidate campaigning in opposition to the closure of the Accident and Emergency unit at the local hospital, who came in at sixth place.

More fundamental to Labour’s decline is the growing disillusionment with Jeremy Corbyn who won the party leadership—with the overwhelming majority in two ballots—by presenting himself as a left-wing alternative to New Labour and the political establishment. Instead, he has capitulated entirely to the right-wing, as underscored by his decision last week not to back a parliamentary motion calling for an investigation into former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s lies justifying the illegal war against Iraq.

Corbyn has become the invisible man. Following on from his cowardly absence from the vote on Blair, the Labour leader did not speak at all in Wednesday’s debate on the parliamentary motion on Brexit tabled by his own party. And he was a marginal figure in the Sleaford campaign.

Labour’s right-wing will undoubtedly utilise the result to step up their moves against Corbyn. Labour MP David Winnick said the result was “appalling,” while others condemned Corbyn’s leadership. But the reality is that the new Labour leader has made not one iota of difference to the party’s rightward course. His “left” rhetoric has simply provided a cover for it.

UK Supreme Court completes hearing on Brexit procedure

Robert Stevens

On Thursday, the UK’s Supreme Court concluded its four-day hearing on whether Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May has the power to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty—initiating Britain’s departure from the European Union—without consulting Parliament. May wants to use the archaic power of the Royal Prerogative to start the process of Brexit by the end of March 2017.

A ruling by the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, is expected in January.

The government appealed to the Supreme Court to challenge last month’s High Court decision that Parliament alone has the right to begin Britain’s exit following June’s referendum vote to leave the EU. The High Court case was brought by a pro-EU group of claimants led by Gina Miller, a London-based investment manager.

Miller won the support of all three High Court judges by submitting that when the UK passed the 1972 European Communities Act paving the way for Britain to join the EU’s predecessor, the European Economic Community, rights were conferred on citizens via that act of Parliament. It was therefore not within the realm of Royal Prerogative to take away those rights.

There was a surreal element to the proceedings at the Supreme Court, as everyone concerned knew there was far more at stake than how Brexit is triggered.

On the last day, the government’s leading advocate, James Eadie QC, summarised his case by arguing that the rights incurred due to EU membership were created and taken away “on the international plane” rather than by domestic legislation. Therefore, a new act of Parliament was not required for Brexit, as foreign policy is covered by Royal Prerogative.

He was able to add to his argument against the need for parliamentary sanction to initiate Brexit the fact that the House of Commons had on Wednesday passed a “highly significant” motion supporting the timetable of the government to invoke Article 50 by March 31. Parliament “indicated its view and has done so clearly,” said Eadie, adding that the motion might not be “legally binding, but this does not mean it is not legally relevant.”

Westminster MPs voted 461 to 89 in favour of a motion moved first by the Labour Party and then amended by the government, with an additional 56 Labour MPs absenting themselves or abstaining. The motion agrees that the Conservative government publish its plans for leaving the EU before beginning formal negotiations over the UK’s exit. In return, however, Labour and other opposition parties must accept that Article 50 should be invoked by the end of March, that the result of the referendum should be accepted, and that the publication of the plan should not undermine the government’s stance in the negotiations.

Given these facts, it may be difficult to understand why the Supreme Court hearing is considered the most significant in modern times and why for the first time since the Law Lords were created in 1876 all 11 Supreme Court judges have been assembled to hear a case. However, the issue under dispute is not the triggering of Article 50. Only a handful of Liberal Democrat MPs and Blairites in the Labour Party are ready at this point to openly oppose the referendum result.

What is really at stake is the possible setting of a precedent whereby Parliament will have the right to ratify any Brexit deal that is eventually reached between the UK and the EU. If the deal threatens Britain’s access to the Single Market, the rebellion against the government will be far bigger than the 145 MPs who either voted “no” or did not vote on Wednesday. In that case, the opposition to the government’s position will likely comprise a majority of MPs.

Though this is widely understood, speaking for the court, its president, Lord Neuberger, insisted, “We are not being asked to overturn the result of the EU referendum. The ultimate question in this case concerns the process by which that result can lawfully be brought into effect.”

The same line is echoed by virtually all those in the pro-EU “Remain” camp of the ruling elite, even as they denounce Brexit for threatening continued access to the Single Market. In 2015, fully 44 percent of the UK’s goods and services were exported to the EU, while 53 percent of imports came to the UK from the EU.

There is little indication that access to the Single Market or any other concessions will be on offer from the EU, which is itself mired in deepening economic, political and social crises. As the Supreme Court case was being heard, relatively little coverage in the British media was given to the comments Tuesday of Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator in talks with Britain.

Barnier said his team would “preserve the unity and interests of the EU-27,” and that the UK would have to accept an inferior trade deal to that of EU members. To have access to the Single Market, countries had to agree to accept that the “four fundamental freedoms” of the EU—free movement of goods, services, capital and people—“were indivisible.”

The last two days of the hearing included a submission from James Wolfe QC on behalf of the Scottish National Party (SNP)-devolved government in Edinburgh. The Scottish population, unlike England and Wales, voted by a majority to remain in the EU. The SNP is committed to Scotland continuing to have access to the Single Market. The result was the extraordinary spectacle at the Supreme Court of the Scottish nationalists, who are seeking eventual independence from the UK, insisting on the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament.

No less ironic are the legal arguments of the pro-Brexit forces, comprising a substantial section of the Conservatives’ parliamentary party and the party’s wider base. Having insisted in the referendum campaign that Westminster had to “take back control” from Brussels, they now demand that a government edict take precedent over Parliament.

Whatever verdict the Supreme Court hands down, it can only deepen the schism in ruling circles.

Everything that has happened since the June 23 referendum is an extraordinary confirmation of the political stand taken by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in its statement calling for an active boycott of the referendum.

The SEP opposed both the Remain and Leave camps, explaining that they represented the interests of vying factions of the ruling class. The statement defined a policy “that upholds the interests of workers not only in Britain, but in Europe as a whole and throughout the world.” It explained, “The SEP is irreconcilably hostile to the European Union, but our opposition is from the left, not the right.”

On this basis, the statement continued, “No support can be extended to the Remain campaign,” which “has the backing of much of Britain’s corporate elite, who regard EU membership as essential to their ability to compete internationally—not least through a continued offensive against the living standards of the working class throughout the continent.”

However, it insisted, “None of this imparts a progressive character to the Leave campaign, or justifies lending even the most critical support to it. Its claim that the British parliament and its parties are any less instruments for imposing the wishes of finance capital than the EU is a transparent fraud.”

The SEP explained, “British workers cannot find a way out of the current economic and political impasse on the basis of a nationalist programme.”

It stated that in opposition to the “national chauvinism and xenophobia promoted by both sides in the referendum campaign, the working class must advance its own internationalist programme to unify the struggles of workers throughout Europe in defence of living standards and democratic rights. The alternative for workers to the Europe of the transnational corporations is the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.”

South Korean President Park impeached

Ben McGrath & Peter Symonds

South Korea’s National Assembly yesterday voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye, the first step in her removal from office. The vote of 234 to 56 in the 300-member Assembly was well over the necessary two-thirds required and indicated that significant sections of Park’s own right-wing Saenuri Party supported the impeachment.

The impeachment follows weeks of massive protests involving millions of people demanding Park resign over a scandal involving her close personal confidante, Choi Soon-sil. Although she holds no official position in the government, Choi allegedly influenced its decisions, was privy to classified documents and used her ties with Park to solicit donations from South Korean companies.

The protests—the largest in South Korea’s history—reflect widespread hostility and anger towards Park over broader issues: the deepening gulf between rich and poor as well as her administration’s anti-democratic methods in silencing critics, disbanding an opposition party and suppressing strikes.

After the vote, Park apologised once again for the “grave national turmoil” that her “carelessness and shortcomings” had produced, but gave no indication that she would resign. Park has been named as a criminal suspect in legal proceedings involving the Choi scandal but she cannot be indicted while in office.

Following yesterday’s Assembly vote, presidential authority and duties have been transferred to Prime Minister Hwang Gyo-an who becomes acting president. The impeachment case now goes to the Constitutional Court which has six months to decide if the charges against Park warrant her removal from power.

Six of the nine justices must support Park’s dismissal which would be followed by a fresh presidential election within two months. Six of the judges were appointed by Park and her immediate predecessor Lee Myung-bak, also from the Saenuri Party. However, a court decision to keep Park in office would likely reignite the protest movement and plunge the country into even deeper crisis.

Park’s impeachment reflects deep divisions within the South Korean ruling elite as well as intense public alienation from the entire political establishment. Yonsei University professor Moon Chung-in told the Financial Times last month: “South Korea is in a state of total crisis. We have intertwined political, geo-political and economic crises… and no leadership to mend the fractures or drive society.”

Park, like other Asian leaders, has attempted to balance between China, which is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and the US, which is a long-time military ally. South Korea hosts key American military bases and currently nearly 30,000 US troops. Park, who came to office in 2013, sought to improve relations with China and earned US displeasure when she appeared last year at a military parade in Beijing alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Significantly the Obama administration offered no support to the embattled Park. The US embassy even signaled sympathy for the protests in Seoul by turning its lights off along with other nearby buildings at a time fixed by protest leaders. State Department spokesman Mark Toner declared yesterday that the United States “is there with Korea as it undergoes this political change and transition”—thereby tacitly accepting that Park would be removed.

At the same time, under pressure from Washington, the Park administration agreed in July to the US deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to South Korea, angering Beijing. While nominally directed against North Korea, the THAAD installation on the Korean Peninsula is part of the US military build-up throughout Asia in preparation for war against China.

The election of Donald Trump as US president has further heightened the dilemmas confronting the South Korean ruling elites. According to the Financial Times, financial officials in Seoul in the wake of Trump’s election win “directed banks to prepare for external shocks, while the Blue House [presidential residence] convened a national security council session.”

Although Trump told Park following his election win that he agreed “100 percent” with the US-South Korea alliance, he threatened, in the course of his campaign, to withdraw from the alliance if South Korea did not pay more towards US military bases. Despite Trump’s reassurance, he has placed a question mark over the alliance that can only compound uncertainty in Seoul and exacerbate divisions within the ruling elites over South Korea’s strategic orientation.

Trump’s extreme economic nationalism is also destabilising South Korean politics. He has declared that he will tear up the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and threatened trade war measures against China that would heavily impact on the South Korean economy. While South Korea is not part of the TPP, Trump has also criticised South Korea’s free trade agreement with the US as unfair on American businesses.

Trump’s stance is encouraging opposition parties—the Minjoo (Democratic) Party, People’s Party and Justice Party—to ramp up their calls for protectionism. The Democrats strongly opposed the free trade agreement with the US and, along with other opposition parties, have been seeking to channel popular opposition in an economic nationalist direction. Trade unions and farmers groups have taken part in the anti-Park protests to demand trade restrictions and government subsidies for products such as rice.

The South Korean economy is stagnating with the latest OECD forecast putting growth for 2017 at just 2.6 percent. Exports, which comprise about 45 percent of the country’s GDP, shrank by 3.2 percent year-on-year in October after a 5.9 percent drop in September. Hanjin Shipping, which was once South Korea’s largest shipping company, declared bankruptcy in August. Household debt exploded to a record $1.15 trillion by mid-year—the eighth highest in the world.

Rising levels of poverty and unemployment, particularly among young people, are fuelling social discontent which the opposition parties are seeking to exploit. None of them, however, can offer any solutions to the social crisis. In fact, the Democrat presidents—Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun—made deep inroads in the living conditions of the working class by breaking up the life-long employment system and opening the door for the mass casualisation of the workforce.

An article in Bloomberg on Thursday likened the protests calling for Park’s resignation to political upheavals around the world, stating: “The wave of populism that fueled Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and the fall of Italian leader Matteo Renzi has reached South Korea, where street protesters see Friday’s parliamentary vote to impeach President Park Geun-hye as a step towards toppling the establishment she symbolises.”

The opposition parties are also seeking to capitalise on growing fears of war. The Minjoo Party criticised but did not oppose the installation of the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system which makes South Korea a target in any war between the US and China. The People’s Party and Justice Party opposed the move on economic grounds, reflecting fears in business circles of economic retaliation by China.

The political turmoil in Seoul is raising fears in Washington that Park’s removal could result in a win by an opposition presidential candidate who would adopt a more moderate stance towards North Korea and China. Such an administration might limit US military involvement in South Korea and could adopt protectionist measures.

European Central Bank rejects request by Italy for more time to rescue ailing lender

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has rejected a request to delay the deadline on a private-sector-led deal to rescue the Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) bank, Italy’s third largest, making more likely a government bailout that would impose major losses on small investors and bondholders.

MPS had sent a request to the ECB’s supervisory board to extend the deadline on the deal to January 20 to allow more time for the €5 billion rescue operation to be put in place.

The deal, which hinged on an injection of funds from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund of up to €2 billion and a series of complex debt for equity swaps, was to have been settled this week. But the overwhelming “No” vote in the Italian referendum last Sunday and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi threw the rescue plan into disarray with the Qatari fund saying it would not make an investment until it received clarity on the formation of a new government.

According to a report in Reuters and subsequent reports in the Financial Times and the Guardian, the board of the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism, charged with European banking regulation, turned down the request for a delay at a meeting yesterday.

The ECB and the Italian Treasury have so far refused to comment but trading in MPS shares was suspended, after losing a further 10 percent of their value. According to the Italian media, MPS held an emergency board meeting and will be engaged in talks with the government over the weekend.

Citing “people briefed on the deliberations,” the Financial Times said the supervisory board had turned down the request fearing that “if MPS’s troubles were left unresolved, it could lead to a systemic crisis across Italy’s banking system.”

The ECB decision makes it almost certain that the government will have to organise a bailout in some form. However, under European Union rules, which came into force this year, any injection of state funds would have to be preceded by the imposition of losses on creditors, in particular small retail investors and households.

Such a move will be politically explosive. Small investors, who often hold deposits, account for a large share of junior bond holders. It is estimated that there are some 40,000 households which own €2 billion worth of bonds in MPS. They were lured into making such investments following the European banking crisis of 2011 with the assurance that their investments were as safe as deposits.

A “bail-in” of such bondholders in four small banks which went broke late last year caused a political uproar, with one small investor taking his own life. Any such operation involving MPS, taking place on a much larger scale, would become a major campaign issue in Italian elections following the fall of the Renzi government and could lead to a movement to quit the EU.

A statement issued by Members of the European Parliament belonging to the right-wing populist Five Star Movement, issued on the blog of the organisation’s founder Beppe Grillo, said MPS could only be saved by state aid in order to avoid bail in-rules that hurt smaller savers as happened a year ago.

“This is not the time to fear the European Union and a possible infraction procedure. The consequences of a disordered bail-in would be disastrous to say the least. Almost apocalyptic if one considers the size of MPS.”

The statement, which was reported in the Guardian, said it was “time to slam our fists at the table in Brussels … while not giving a damn about the deficit.”

The talks between MPS and the government may result in a last-ditch effort to come up with a rescue plan, but the political uncertainty about the composition of the new government and its policies make its achievement unlikely.

Mujtaba Rahman, head of European issues for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, told the Financial Times that European institutions had always been “sceptical” about the private-sector plan. “Not only does it imply a less ambitious restructuring plan but the ability to secure an anchor investor has become much less likely in light of Renzi’s resignation and the ongoing political instability in Rome,” he said.

It appears that the ECB decisions may be part of a wider plan to force the Italian government and the country’s financial authorities to impose a restructuring of the country’s entire banking system, which is weighed down by an estimated €360 billion worth of bad loans.

Reuters reported that ECB officials had expressed the hope that the “precautionary recapitalisation” of MPS by the Italian state—that is, a recapitalisation of an institution still considered to be solvent—would pave the way for similar injections of government funds into other Italian banks plagued by bad loans.

According to one anonymous ECB official, cited by the news agency, there was a consensus that MPS needed a recapitalisation. “Once that is done, it could serve as a template for other banks.”

But as the Reuters report noted, such a state intervention became a “political taboo” this year when new EU rules stipulated that it could only be carried out after all private investors, including small holders, took losses first.

Whatever the outcome of the talks and negotiations over the next few days, it will have far-reaching implications for the entire Italian banking system. The next potential crisis centres on UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank, and its only significant global banking institution.

UniCredit is set to announce a plan to raise €13 billion in capital next Tuesday as part of an effort to stabilise its financial position. But if the government does decide to undertake a bailout of MPS under the terms dictated by the ECB, those plans could be jeopardised. According to the Financial Times, senior bankers said they were fearful that a “precautionary recapitalisation” of MPS could jeopardise efforts to raise capital by UniCredit.

So far, European financial markets have remained stable in the face of the MPS crisis. But there is potential for so-called “contagion” because of the interconnections in the banking system. For example, UniCredit owns Hypovereinsbank, which is Germany’s fourth largest bank, while Banca Nazionale del Lavro, Italy’s eighth largest lender, is owned by BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, and Cariparma, Italy’s eleventh largest lender, is owned by Credit Agricole, a major French bank.

India & Pakistan: the Unthinkable

Conn Hallinan

President-elect Donald Trump’s off the cuff, chaotic approach to foreign policy had at least one thing going for it, even though it was more the feel of a blind pig rooting for acorns than a thought out international initiative. In speaking with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Trump said he wanted “to address and find solutions to the county’s [Pakistan’s] problems.”

Whether Trump understands exactly how dangerous the current tensions between Pakistan and India are, or if anything will come from the Nov. 30 exchange between the two leaders, is anyone’s guess, but it is more than the Obama administration has done over the past eight years, in spite of a 2008 election promise to address the on-going crisis in Kashmir.

And right now that troubled land is the single most dangerous spot on the globe.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the disputed province in the past six decades and came within a hair’s breathe of a nuclear exchange in 1999. Both countries are on a crash program to produce nuclear weapons, and between them they have enough explosive power to not only kill more than 20 million of their own people, but to devastate the world’s ozone layer and throw the Northern Hemisphere into a nuclear winter with a catastrophic impact on agriculture worldwide.

According to studies done at Rutgers, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California Los Angeles, if both countries detonated 100 Hiroshima size bombs, it would generate between 1 and 5 million tons of smoke that within 10 days would drive temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere down to levels too cold for wheat production in much of Canada and Russia. The resulting 10 percent drop in rainfall—particularly hard hit would be the Asian monsoon—would exhaust worldwide food supplies, leading to the starvation of up to 100 million plus people.

Aside from the food crisis, a nuclear war in South Asia would destroy between 25 to 70 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s ozone layer, resulting in a massive increase in dangerous ultraviolent radiation.

Lest anyone think that the chances of such a war are slight, consider two recent developments.

One, a decision by Pakistan to deploy low-yield tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons and to give permission for local commanders to decide when to use them.

In an interview with the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, Gregory Koblentz of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that if a “commander of a forward-deployed nuclear armed unit finds himself in a ‘use it or lose it’ situation and about to be overrun, he might decided to launch his weapons.”

Pakistan’s current Defense Minister, Muhammad Asif, told Geo TV, “If anyone steps on our soil and if anyone’s designs are a threat to our security, we will not hesitate to use those [nuclear] weapons for our defense.”

Every few years the Pentagon “war games” a clash between Pakistan and India over Kashmir: every game ends in a nuclear war.

The second dangerous development is the “Cold Start” strategy by India that would send Indian troops across the border to a depth of 30 kilometers in the advent of a terrorist attack like the 1999 Kargill incident in Kashmir, the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, or the 2008 attack on Mumbai that killed 166 people.

Since the Indian army is more than twice the size of Pakistan’s, there would be little that Pakistanis could do to stop such an invasion other than using battlefield nukes. India would then be faced with either accepting defeat or responding.

India does not currently have any tactical nukes, but only high yield strategic weapons—many aimed at China—whose primary value is to destroy cities. Hence a decision by a Pakistani commander to use a tactical warhead would almost surely lead to a strategic response by India, setting off a full-scale nuclear exchange and the nightmare that would follow in its wake.

With so much at stake, why is no one but a twitter-addicted foreign policy apprentice saying anything? What happened to President Obama’s follow through to his 2008 statement that the tensions over Kashmir “won’t be easy” to solve, but that doing so “is important”?

The initial strategy of pulling India into an alliance against China was dreamed up during the administration of George W. Bush, but it was Obama’s “Asia Pivot” that signed and sealed the deal. With it went a quid pro quo: if India would abandon its traditional neutrality, the Americans would turn a blind eye to Kashmir.

As a sweetener, the U.S. agreed to bypass the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement and allow India to buy uranium on the world market, something New Delhi had been banned from doing since it detonated a nuclear bomb in 1974 using fuel it had cribbed from U.S.-supplied nuclear reactors. In any case, because neither India nor Pakistan have signed the Agreement, both should be barred from buying uranium. In India’s case, the U.S. has waived that restriction.

The so-called 1-2-3 Agreement requires India to use any nuclear fuel it purchases in its civilian reactors, but frees it up to use its meager domestic supplies on its nuclear weapons program. India has since built two enormous nuclear production sites at Challakere and near Mysore, where, rumor has it, it is producing a hydrogen bomb. Both sites are off limits to international inspectors.

In 2008, when the Obama administration indicated it was interested in pursuing the 1-2-3 Agreement, then Pakistani Foreign minister Khurshid Kusuni warned that the deal would undermine the non-proliferation treaty and lead to a nuclear arms race in Asia. That is exactly what has come to pass. The only countries currently adding to their nuclear arsenals are Pakistan, India, China and North Korea.

While Pakistan is still frozen out of buying uranium on the world market, it has sufficient domestic supplies to fuel an accelerated program to raise its warhead production. Pakistan is estimated to have between 110 and 130 warheads and is projected to have 200 by 2020, surpassing Great Britain. India has between 110 and 120 nuclear weapons. Both countries have short, medium and long-range missiles, submarine ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles, plus nuclear-capable aircraft that can target each other’s major urban areas.

One problem in the current crisis is that both countries are essentially talking past one another.

Pakistan does have legitimate security concerns. It has fought and lost three wars with India over Kashmir since 1947, and it is deeply paranoid about the size of the Indian army.

But India has been the victim of several major terrorist attacks that have Pakistan’s fingerprints all over them. The 1999 Kargill invasion lasted a month and killed hundreds of soldiers on both sides. Reportedly the Pakistanis were considering arming their missiles with nuclear warheads until the Clinton administration convinced them to stand down.

Pakistan’s military has long denied that it has any control over terrorist organizations based in Pakistan, but virtually all intelligence agencies agree that, with the exception of the country’s home-grown Taliban, that is not the case. The Pakistani army certainly knew about a recent attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir that killed 19 soldiers.

In the past, India responded to such attacks with quiet counterattacks of its own, but this time around the right-wing nationalist government of Narendra Modi announced that the Indian military had crossed the border and killed more than 30 militants. It was the first time that India publically acknowledged a cross-border assault.

The Indian press has whipped up a nationalist fervor that has seen sports events between the two countries cancelled and a ban on using Pakistani actors in Indian films. The Pakistani press has been no less jingoistic.

In the meantime, the situation in Kashmir has gone from bad to worse. Early in the summer Indian security forces killed Buhan Wani, a popular leader of the Kashmir independence movement. Since then the province has essentially been paralyzed, with schools closed and massive demonstrations. Thousands of residents have been arrested, close to 100 killed, and hundreds of demonstrators wounded and blinded by the widespread use of birdshot by Indian security forces.

Indian rule in Kashmir has been singularly brutal. Between 50,000 and 80,000 people have died over the past six decades, and thousands of others have been “disappeared” by security forces. While in the past the Pakistani army aided the infiltration of terrorist groups to attack the Indian army, this time around the uprising is homegrown. Kashmiris are simply tired of military rule and a law which gives Indian security forces essentially carte blanc to terrorize the population.

Called the Special Powers Act—originally created in 1925 for the supression of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and widely used by the Israelis in the Occupied Territories—the law allows Indian authorities to arrest and imprison people without charge and gives immunity to Indian security forces.

As complex as the situation in Kashmir is, there are avenues to resolve it. A good start would be to suspend the Special Powers Act and send the Indian Army back to the barracks.

The crisis in Kashmir began when the Hindu ruler of the mostly Muslim region opted to join India when the countries were divided in 1947. At the time, the residents were promised that a UN-sponsored referendum would allow residents to choose India, Pakistan or independence. That referendum has never been held.

Certainly the current situation cannot continue. Kashmir has almost 12 million people and no army or security force—even one as large as India’s—can maintain a permanent occupation if the residents don’t want it.  Instead of resorting to force, India should ratchet down its security forces and negotiate with Kashmiris for an interim increase in local autonomy.

But in the long run, the Kashmiris should have their referendum and India and Pakistan will have to accept the results.

What the world cannot afford is for the current tensions to spiral down into a military confrontation that could easily get out of hand. The U.S., through its aid to Pakistan—$860 million this year—has some leverage, but it cannot play a role if its ultimate goal is an alliance to contain China, a close ally of Pakistan.

Neither country would survive a nuclear war, and neither country should be spending its money on an arms race. Almost 30 percent of India’s population is below the poverty line, as are 22 percent of Pakistan’s. The $51 billion Indian defense budget and the $7 billion Pakistan spends could be put to far better use.

American Nazis and the Fight for US History

Erin McCarley

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” Richard B. Spencer yelled in front of more than 200 attendees at his annual conference on November 19^th, in the nation’s capitol. Several of his supporters then raised their right arms to give the Nazi salute. This video, taken by a reporter for The Atlantic, features Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white-nationalist think-tank in Washington D.C. Spencer is known for having created the term “alt-right.” He is also known for advocating for “a peaceful ethnic cleansing” of the United States.

“America was, until this past generation, a white country designed for ourselves and for our posterity. It is our creation. It is our inheritance. And it belongs to us,” Spencer declared during his speech.

When I first watched Richard Spencer at his NPI annual conference, like many, I was horrified by Spencer’s intentional references to Nazi language, imagery and ideology. In this political moment, as President-Elect Trump appoints to his cabinet, a crew of known white supremacists: Stephen Bannon as Chief Strategist; Jeff Sessions(Attorney General); and Michael Flynn (National Security Adviser), Spencer’s Neo-Nazi D.C. conference takes on a whole new, chilling power—not of a fringe, right-wing hate group, but of a mainstream, right-wing hate group.

After absorbing the initial shock of his fascist message, what disturbed me next about Spencer’s speech caught me somewhat off guard. The philosophy he was espousing didn’t sound totally foreign. In fact, something about it felt sickeningly familiar, like a relic from childhood.

I grew up in one of the most right-wing states in the country: Oklahoma. Formerly Indian Territory, Oklahoma was first created by the US government as an official dumping grounds for indigenous nations that were standing in the way of “white progress.” Under the doctrines of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, the US government removed at gunpoint, dozens of indigenous nations from all over North America. They were sent in death marches, on foot and by boat, to Indian Territory, an area the US government viewed as a wasteland, a place where no one should survive. US Explorer Stephen Long referred to this area as the “Great American Desert.”

In total, 64 nations were forcibly removed to Indian Territory between 1831-1878. After the Removals, these nations, having survived near genocide, then endured POW camps, rotten food rations, smallpox, massacres, multiple invasions, multiple land sequestrations, the Boarding School era, the Dawes Act, the Allotment era, the Curtis Act, the Land Run era, commercial oil discoveries on their lands, and finally, the complete annihilation of reservation land that remained, when Oklahoma became a state. The fact that many of these tribal nations are still here today, after all of this history, is an incredible testament to their strength, determination, spirituality and cultural resilience. These nations have been decimated since European settlers set sight on their lands over 500 years ago. And Oklahoma Native tribes have continued to survive and thrive, no thanks to the US government, who broke every single one of the more than 500 treaties it made with sovereign nations.

Today, the Oklahoma tourism industry brags about the fact that Oklahoma is currently home 39 federally recognized tribes. But how those 39 tribes got to Oklahoma is still a giant mystery for many non-Native Oklahomans, whose public school textbooks were ethnically cleansed of non-white histories a few generations ago.

Instead, the state history we were taught as kids was much more in line with the Doctrine of Discovery, Oklahoma style. We were taught that white settlers “discovered” vast open prairies when they came to settle this (presumably) uninhabited area in the late 1800s. These vacant lands were then “opened up” for (white) settlement in a series of Land Runs and Land Lotteries, which schoolchildren in Oklahoma still proudly re-enact to this day, during Western Heritage Week. The US government was giving away “free land,” our teachers said. People traveled from all over the country to grab 160 acres and “stake their claim.” We were never taught, as kids, that this land was somebody else’s. We were never taught that this land was treaty-protected Indian Territory. Nor were we taught the concept of “settler colonialism,” a distinct type of imperialism practiced in many parts of the world, where settler societies invade and replace indigenous populations.

No, we didn’t learn any of this. Instead, we were taught to embody, celebrate and emulate a “white cultural mythology” designed to elevate European colonial history above all other histories. This narrative–based on Manifest Destiny, Westward Expansion, and the Doctrine of Discovery–placed European Americans at the very center of every story, as the primary actors, agents, and engines of Western civilization, development and progress. If any non-white histories were presented at all, they were peripheral to European history and not explored in any depth.

Our public education therefore served its primary function of patriotic indoctrination, creating an inflated sense of self-importance about European American history and white culture. For young white students, US history was served up as a myopic, self-congratulating, historical fantasy.

Without any kind of outside interference, I believe this one-sided view of history, projected some 10 or 15 years out, could easily manifest itself into a deeply-rooted sense of white superiority– a cultural mythology that goes something like this:

“America was, until this past generation, a white country designed for ourselves and for our posterity. It is our creation. It is our inheritance. And it belongs to us.”

These are, again, the words of Herbert Spencer– the white supremacist, Nazi-saluting president of the National Policy Institute, and poster child for the “alt-right” movement. The fact that I recognize his origin story as the same one I was taught at a young age, is a fact that I find terrifying.

Spencer’s rhetoric, unfortunately, is not (just) the lunatic ravings of a sociopathic madman. No, this is a man who believes he has integrity, a man who bases his (fascist) conclusions on a core set of values and beliefs that he has likely embraced throughout his life, beliefs that have been supported in some large way by his community, his education, and his culture, without any major interruption. His rhetoric is also the logical result of a US history narrative that has, for generations, boldly lied about how this country was formed.

Had we all been taught in public schools that our country was founded on genocide (which is ongoing), and built on slavery (which is still legal in some states), as US schoolchildren, we might have evolved very differently, with a much more humble and critical perspective on our nation’s history of white supremacist violence, and a realistic vision for a more peaceful and just future–starting with a national truth and reconciliation process.

Imagine the possibilities for national healing, if most Americans could agree on some universal truths about our nation’s origin story—a story that recognizes the many atrocities of its founding; a story that embraces at its core human rights for all people: indigenous peoples, Africans, poor people, and immigrants from every nationality, every faith/religion, from all over the world.

This kind of democratic history education is perhaps most famously demonstrated by Howard Zinn in his seminal work, A People’s History of the United States. If a history book like this were required reading in US public schools, it would have a profound national impact. For example, it would render absolutely false any cultural narratives about white people’s entitlement to land and its fortunes. And the racist notion of all non-whites as “foreigners” and “illegal immigrants” would also be unlikely, given that we would have a shared understanding of the many thriving, non-European societies that were productively living on this continent long before Columbus, and long before US boundaries were ever formed.

There are international educational models that can guide us in an effort to address the atrocities of our nation’s history. Germany, for example, has made great strides in integrating holocaust history into its national curriculum. South Africa created, in 2000, an Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR), with came out of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Process. The IJR “works with education officials and teachers, exploring two aspects – the impact of the past on teaching and teachers, as well as on how to teach a challenging ‘past’ in classrooms.” The US could learn a lot from these efforts. But without this kind of national process, we will continue to live in a country with extreme political factionalism and ideological polarization.

Furthermore, with a rapidly changing US demographic that will soon place European Americans in the minority population, the emerging fear for many white supremacists of losing racial power and privilege is already manifesting itself in a violent death grip. “A dying mule always kicks the hardest,” and so we see that white supremacist ideology is on the rise. We cannot censor Breitbart news, Fox news, and the National Policy Institute, but we can insist on dismantling white supremacist history. And we must.

In this moment, there’s little support for progressive history education on a national level. Even under Democratic administrations, the United States has long lacked the political will to institute a national Truth and Reconciliation Process for genocide or slavery. It has failed to acknowledge, let alone apologize, for these atrocities. And given the current direction of an incoming Trump administration, this kind of national healing is not even on the horizon.

And so we must take these fights to state and local levels. Our work is cut out for us. And one thing is painfully clear: Until we stop teaching history through a lens of white supremacy, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and white supremacists like Richard Spencer will have a socially-sanctioned platform for a kind of fascism that should never be possible in a country that would dare to call itself a democracy.