Trump prepares to slash federal budget by $10.5 trillion over next decade

Niles Niemuth

The Trump transition team is developing a federal budget based on a blueprint drawn up by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that will slash $10.5 trillion from government spending over the next decade, according to a report Thursday in the Hill.

The main budget priorities of the Trump administration are to be published within 45 days of the inauguration and the full budget proposal is expected sometime in April.

According to the Hill, the Trump administration’s budget proposal is being drawn up by Russ Vought and John Gray, former Heritage Foundation employees and one-time aides to Vice President Mike Pence. Vought was also the executive direction of the Republican Study Group, which has proposed similar cuts in recent years, while Gray served as an aide to Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan when he led the House Budget Committee.

The implementation of the reported budget cuts would mark a massive escalation in the social counterrevolution and attack on the living standards of the working class carried out by the Democrats and the Obama administration over the last eight years.

Among the “dramatic” reductions that are being prepared are significant cuts to funding for the Commerce Department and the Department of Energy, with programs currently under their jurisdiction either eliminated entirely or transferred to other departments.

Other federal departments that will reportedly be significantly impacted by cuts and program elimination include the Department of Transportation, Justice Department and State Department.

Under the Heritage Foundation plan, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which oversees the operations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), would be entirely privatized. While the CPB still relies on the federal government for a portion of its funding, it has increasingly relied on donations from large corporate sponsors and from the wealthy.

The Heritage Foundation’s budget blueprint is a litany of attacks on benefits and social programs which benefit the poor, as well as an assault on scientific research.

Under the guise of “reducing fraud,” the foundation calls for new restrictions on the Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefits millions of single mothers and low-wage workers. Other reactionary measures under consideration are new work requirements for adult Food Stamp recipients and eliminating Social Security payments for disabled children.

Federal funding for the arts and humanities research would be totally phased out with the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Scientific research carried out across multiple departments, including in the Department of Energy, will be completely or partially defunded.

The savagery of the reported budget proposals is yet another expression of the fundamental class character of the incoming Trump administration, in which billionaire oligarchs are taking direct control of the federal government, rather than pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

Reports of the incoming administration’s budget plans came as the Senate held cabinet hearings Thursday for multimillionaire corporate raider and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin, nominated to serve as the Treasury Secretary, and former Texas governor Rick Perry for head of the Department of Energy, an agency which Perry called to eliminate in 2012.

Mnuchin, if confirmed, would join a cabinet comprised of billionaires, multimillionaires and former generals. While Mnuchin has an estimated net worth of $400 million, that puts him well behind Trump’s picks for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos ($5.1 billion), Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross ($2.5 billion), and the Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon ($1.35 billion).

During his testimony Thursday, Mnuchin defended his time as the head of California-based IndyMac Bank, renamed OneWest, where he made massive profits aggressively pursuing foreclosures against homeowners during the height of the foreclosure crisis.

Mnuchin sought in his remarks to present himself as a savior moved by the plight of homeowners who was hindered in his efforts to help by too many government regulations. “If we had not bought IndyMac,” he said, “the bank would likely have been broken up and sold in pieces to private investors, where the outcome for consumers could have been much bleaker.” (And Mnuchin just happened to make millions in the process!)

He promised that if confirmed as Treasury Secretary, he would work to eliminate financial regulations that had kept him from becoming even wealthier. Mnuchin will also be taking the lead in formulating Trump’s tax plan, which is to include cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to only 15 percent.

Demonstrating the practically nonexistent character of the vetting process for Trump’s ultra-wealthy nominees, the Washington Post reported Thursday that Mnuchin had failed to report his corporate interests in the Cayman Islands as well as more than $100 million in real estate and art holdings in an initial submission to the Senate panel reviewing his nomination. Though this lapse drew some flak from committee Democrats, it did little to hurt the former Goldman Sachs executive’s chances of confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate.

While some of Trump’s nominees may take their time to get through the confirmation process, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday that a deal had been reached to approve retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Pentagon chief and retired Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly as head of the Department of Homeland Security shortly after Trump’s inauguration today.

“I looked at their records...and I think they’d be very good,” Schumer noted approvingly. He also indicated that Republican Representative Mike Pompeo would be confirmed as CIA director either today or on Monday.

Joint Russian, Turkish bombing campaign in Syria deepens NATO crisis

Bill Van Auken

The launching of coordinated air strikes by Russian and Turkish warplanes against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in northern Syria Wednesday has further exposed the crisis gripping Washington’s intervention in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country, as well as the deepening contradictions plaguing the NATO alliance on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president.

The bombing campaign struck targets around the Syrian town of al-Bab, the scene of bloody fighting between Turkish troops and ISIS militants over the past several weeks.

From a political standpoint, the joint action by Russia and Turkey, a member of the NATO alliance for the past 65 years, is unprecedented. It stands in stark contradiction to the anti-Moscow campaign being waged by Washington and its principal NATO allies, which has seen the cutting off of military-to-military ties, the imposition of sanctions, and the increasingly provocative deployment of thousands of US and other NATO troops on Russia’s western borders. Just last week, the US sent 3,000 soldiers into Poland, backed by tanks and artillery, while hundreds more US Marines have been dispatched to Norway.

Turkey’s collaboration with Russia represents a further challenge to the US-led alliance under conditions in which Trump has severely rattled its European members with recent statements describing NATO as “obsolete” and charging its members with not “taking care of terror” and not “paying what they’re supposed to pay.”

The joint air attack was carried out under the terms of a memorandum reached between the Russian and Turkish militaries the previous week, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The document, signed on January 12, was designed to prevent “incidents” between Turkish and Russian warplanes, as well as to prepare “joint operations ... in Syria to destroy international terrorist groups,” Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudoskoy said in a statement.

Russian-Turkish relations reached their nadir in November 2015 when Turkish fighter jets ambushed and shot down a Russian warplane carrying out airstrikes against Islamist fighters near the border between Turkey and Syria. The incident brought Turkey, and with it NATO, to the brink of war with nuclear-armed Russia. At that point, Turkey was serving as the main conduit for foreign fighters, weapons and other resources being poured into Syria to wage the US-orchestrated war for regime change, while Russia was intervening to prop up its principal Middle East ally, the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In June of last year, Ankara sought to mend it relations with Moscow, which had retaliated for the shoot-down with economic sanctions. Relations grew closer in the wake of the abortive July 2016 military coup, which the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed on the US and its allies.

The turning point in bilateral relations between Turkey and Russia came at the end of last year, with the Russian-backed Syrian army’s routing of the Western-backed, Al Qaeda-linked militias in their last urban stronghold of eastern Aleppo. Turkey joined with Russia in brokering a withdrawal of the last “rebels” from the area and a nationwide ceasefire, which continues to prevail in much of the country.

Washington was pointedly excluded from the negotiations surrounding both Aleppo and the ceasefire. Only at the last moment has Moscow invited the incoming Trump administration—over the objection of Syria’s other major ally, Iran—to participate in talks aimed at reaching a political settlement over the six-year-old war that are to convene in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, next week.

The joint Russian-Turkish airstrikes around al-Bab came in the wake of bitter protests by the Turkish government over the refusal of the US military to provide similar air support for Ankara’s troops in the area. The Pentagon’s reluctance stemmed from the conflicting aims pursued by Turkey, which sent its troops into Syria last August in what the Erdogan government dubbed “Operation Euphrates Shield.”

Ostensibly directed against ISIS, Ankara’s primary target was really the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People’s Protection Unit (YPG). The Turkish government views these groups as affiliates of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), against which it has waged a protracted counterinsurgency campaign within Turkey itself. The offensive against ISIS-controlled al-Bab is aimed principally at preventing it from falling to the YPG and at blocking the linking up of eastern and western Kurdish enclaves along Turkey’s border.

For its part, Washington has utilized the YPG as its principal proxy ground force in the US attack on ISIS, sending in US special forces troops to arm, train and direct these Kurdish fighters.

The US refusal to back Turkish forces around al-Bab with airstrikes led to angry denunciations of Washington by the Turkish president, who charged that the US was supporting “terrorists” instead of its NATO ally. Ankara also began delaying approval for US flights out of the strategic Incirlik air base in southern Turkey and threatened to deny Washington and its allies access to the base altogether.

It was likely these threats, combined with the Turkish-Russian agreement to conduct joint strikes, that led the Pentagon to reverse its previous refusal to support Turkish forces and launch limited bombing runs around al-Bab as well this week.

This crowded and geostrategically tense battlefield is likely to grow even more dangerous following Trump’s ascension to the White House.

Trump has reportedly called for the Pentagon to come up with proposals to deal a decisive defeat to ISIS in Syria and Iraq within 90 days. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday that he would “present options to accelerate the campaign” against ISIS to retired general James Mattis, Trump’s incoming defense secretary.

Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, CNN reports that “The Defense Department is prepared to provide the new administration with military options to accelerate the war against ISIS in Syria that could send additional US troops into direct combat.”

“One option would put hundreds, if not thousands, of additional US troops into a combat role as part of the fight to take Raqqa,” the Islamic State’s Syrian “capital,” according to the television news network. “... in the coming months, the Pentagon could put several US brigade-sized combat teams on the ground, each team perhaps as many as 4,000 troops.”

Plans are also reportedly being drawn up to escalate military provocations against Iran, which Mattis, in testimony before the Senate, described as the “biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East,” adding that the Trump administration must “checkmate Iran’s goal for regional hegemony.”

There is every indication, Trump’s rhetoric about improving relations with Moscow notwithstanding, that US imperialism is preparing for another eruption of militarism in the Middle East that will pose an ever greater threat of spilling over into a new world war.

British Council Young Critics Programme for Nigerian Writers and Journalists 2017

Application Deadline: 26th January 2017

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): Lagos, Nigeria

About the Award: The 20 participants trained will subsequently be inducted into IATC.

The 2017 workshop will hold from 1 – 4 March 2017 alongside Lagos Theatre Festival. The workshop will include classroom teaching from IATC members from Europe and Nigeria and fieldwork in the form of review writing by the participants during the festival with mentoring from the IATC facilitators. The training will be certified by IATC.

Reviews produced by the participants will be published online by Guardian Newspapers and syndicated by other media platforms.

Guardian Newspapers Nigeria will also publish a selection of the reviews by project participants in print.

The workshop is free of charge to all participants.

Type: Training

Eligibility: Selected participants will

• Have demonstrated interest in the performing arts or have experience working as a journalist
• Be aged between 18 – 35 years of age
• Reside in Nigeria or any country in West Africa
• Preference shall be given to applicants with some experience in theatre criticism or journalism

Selected applicants will be notified by 1 February 2017

Number of Awardees:  In 2017, the programme will train and mentor twenty (20) young writers and journalists (aged 18 -35) in theatre criticism. The 20 participants trained will subsequently be inducted into IATC.

Value of Training: 

• Participants within Lagos will get a daily transport stipend of N2, 500 per day; participants from outside Lagos will be put in accommodation provided by British Council and transported to the workshop venue each day.
• Lunch and dinner will be provided for all participants from 1- 4 March.

Duration of Training: 1 – 4 March 2017

Apply Here

Visit Training Webpage for details

Award Provider: British Council

PhD Research Fellowships for Developing & Emerging Countries in Switzerland 2017/2018

Application Deadline:

• 1st of October 2016 for Residence in the Spring Semester (mid-February to the end of May)
• 1st of March 2017 for Residence in the Fall Semester (mid-September to the end of January)

Offered annually? Yes

Brief description: PhD Research Fellowship Programme for outstanding young professors from universities from developing and emerging countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland-2017 (Fall Semester)

Subject Areas: International and development studies (anthropology, history, law, politics and political science, and economics)

About Scholarship: The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland offers fellowship programme, open to outstanding young professors from universities from developing and emerging countries in Africa, Asia, or Latin America, pursuing advanced research in areas bridging the fields of international and development studies, broadly defined, and working in disciplines such as anthropology, history, law, politics and political science, and economics.

Selection Criteria

The selection will be based on the quality of research. Quality being equal, selection may be guided by an interest in promoting gender and regional diversity. Candidates should demonstrate how their research stay will contribute to their academic career and their home institution.

Eligibility

• Candidates must hold a PhD and have a full time tenure-track or tenured position in an academic institution in Africa, Asia, or Latin America.
• Candidates should demonstrate how their research stay will contribute to their academic career and their home institution.

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

Benefits

• Scholars will spend one semester at the Institute to :
  • Update and strengthen the curriculum of their course ;
  • Further a personal research project ;
  • Participate in teaching courses ;
  • Interact with the international community of the Institute and Geneva area.
  • Scholars receive a contribution towards living expenses. The Institute will cover costs of travel and visas for participants as well accommodation costs;
  • It will ensure a monthly stipend to compensate in the case of the loss of income* in the institution of origin and to cover subsistence costs in Geneva; upon presentation of a certificate
  • Participants will be provided with a work space, and access to the Institute’s library and IT facilities.

Eligible Countries

Scholarship is open for candidates from developing and emerging countries including Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

To be taken at (country): Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

How to Apply

Application should include:

• A letter of motivation stating the reasons for the application, the preferred semester, the Institute’s discipline or area of expertise in which the candidate is interested, 2 courses the candidate would be interested to attend while at the Institute;
• A work plan detailing the proposed activities to be completed during the candidate’s time at the Institute (update of teaching curriculum, research project, etc.);
• A curriculum vitae and a list of publications
• Two letters of recommendation

Application must be sent preferably by e-mail at in-residence[at]graduateinstitute.ch (see link below)

Visit Scholarship Webpage

Sponsors: Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

Call for Proposals: Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) Grants 2017

Application Deadline: 30th May 2017

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country):

Fields of Proposal: OSIWA seeks proposals aimed at achieving the following specific themes:

• Economic Governance and Advancement
• Justice Reform and Rule of Law
• Journalism
• Equality and Anti-Discrimination
• Democratic Practice

About the Award: The Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) is a grant making and advocacy foundation that is part of the global Open Society Foundations Network. OSIWA works to support the creation of open societies in West Africa marked by functioning democracy, good governance, the rule of law, basic freedoms, and widespread civic participation. Its headquarters is in Dakar and it has offices in Abuja, Monrovia, Freetown and Conakry.

Type: Grants

Eligibility: OSIWA primarily awards grants to local organizations based in West Africa. In rare and limited circumstances, it provides support to West Africa-based international organizations with a strong commitment to transfer knowledge to local groups they partner with. It provides grants to government institutions as well as regional and sub-regional organizations working in its core priority areas. OSIWA requires all organizations seeking funding to submit a complete proposal, budget, and other relevant documents including leadership information (list of Board members, trustees and management staff who will be involved in the project), proof of registration and banking details.

Applications that are not submitted with all the relevant documentation may be delayed.

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria and process applications are evaluated on the extent to which the organization possesses the vision, drive, experience and skills required to create and sustain a project that will advance OSIWA’s objectives.

Value of Program: There is no set maximum amount for OSIWA funding. OSIWA operates a limited budget for the ten countries it covers and its regional program. In the event that OSIWA cannot fund the entire project budget, it may choose to fund part of it and request the grant seeker to source for the outstanding balance.

How to Apply: Proposals should be sent directly to: proposals@osiwa.org. Only proposals sent to this email address will be considered. Proposals will be accepted until May 30th 2017. OSIWA encourages the early submission of proposals. Submitted proposals will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA)

International Parliamentary Scholarship Program for Young Arab Professionals 2017

Application Deadline: 31st January 2017

To be taken at (country): Berlin, Germany

About the Award: The German Bundestag invites you to spend four weeks in Berlin in September 2017. The programme is intended for talented Arab people who are interested in politics and who are keen to play an active role in promoting core democratic values in their home countries. The German Bundestag is offering you the opportunity to get to know the German parliamentary system during an intensive programme.

In light of the Bundestag elections taking place in 2017, you will have the opportunity during a one-week internship in a Member’s constituency to experience the work carried out there and to come into contact with political decision-makers. Successful candidates will be chosen by the German Bundestag’s independent selection panel.

Type: Training

Eligibility: 

• Citizenship of an Arab country
• Under the age of 35 at the start of the scholarship
• University degree
• Very good knowledge of German
• An interest in politics, and social/political commitment

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Participants will receive a monthly scholarship of 500 euros. In addition, accommodation in an apartment complex will be provided free of charge, and the costs of travel to and from Berlin will be covered, as well as the costs of health, accident and personal liability insurance

Duration of Scholarship: The programme will take place from 1 – 30 September 2017 in Berlin.

How to Apply: Please visit www.bundestag.de/ips_arabisch for details of how to apply. Application forms can also be found there.

Send your completed application documents by email as a PDF-file to the German mission in your home country; the PDF-file name should consist of your surname, followed by your given name (i.e. “surname-first name”).

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: German Bundestag

Goethe-Institut Literary Exchange Program for Cameroon and Nigerian Writers 2017

Application Deadline: 15th February 2017

Eligible Countries: Nigeria and Cameroon

To be taken at (country): Nigeria and Cameroon

About the Award: Though  Cameroon  and  Nigeria  are  neighbors  and  share a  lot  of  similar  cultural values,  this  potential has  not  been  exploited for  the  collaborative knowledge and advancement of  either country.  Consequently,  though   they   share a  border,  they know  little  or nothing  about  each  other and  hardly  engage  in literary collaborations that  could benefit both  countries.

Type: Training

Eligibility: 

• Applications not  following  the  rules  will automatically be  disqualified.
• The working  language of the workshop is English.

Selection: Applicants   will  be   selected  by a  jury   appointed  by Goethe-Institut Lagos  and Yaounde. The jury’s decision  will be final and non-appealable.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Program: The  workshop  will  feature  different  stages  of  exchange  in  both   Cameroon  and Nigeria at no expense to the applicant.

Duration of Program: 10th-16th May 2017

How to Apply: The body of the e-mail should contain following:

1. Your Name
2. A short  bio not  more  than  200  words  with  relevant publishing history stating whether you are applying from Nigeria or Cameroon.
3. An unpublished writing sample  of not more  than  700  words  written in English and submitted twice  in .doc format.  One sample  submitted with your  name  on it and the other without.
4. Your availability to  travel between 10th-16th May 2017  and  other dates after being given prior  notice.

Your  sample  of work  must  be  included  as  an  attachment in your  mail.

To apply  send  an e-mail  to  libo@lagos.goethe.org. Your email  subject  should  read:

“Application for Literary Exchange 2017”.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Award Provider: Goethe Institut

Resisting the Lynching of Haitian Liberty!

Malaika H Kambon

It should be obvious by now that the U.S./UN, EU, OAS, and various hired paramilitary police have engineered a second fraudulent election in as many years in Haiti.

This latest attempt to kill Haiti’s freedom by aborting her dreams of democracy via the electoral process was designed to prevent landslide victories by Fanmi Lavalas, reminiscent of the presidential victories of Jean Bertrand Aristide. The U.S. and UN do not want to see this.

But people have turned out in force, as protests continue against the blatant sabotage of the November 20, 2016 elections, where Dr. Maryse Narcisse and Fanmi Lavalas again sought to reclaim Haiti’s freedom, only to be met – again – by a U.S. elite intent upon electoral sabotage.

But the fraudulent elections have ignited the country. Daily protests have been held for over a month. For the 35^th consecutive day, tens of thousands are in the streets, who see in the candidacy of Dr. Narcisse the fruition of their dreams: freedom, dignity and sovereignty via a political party of the people that knows what it wants to achieve.

The international press is busily trying to shore up the fraudulent “win” of PHTK (or bald head party) candidate Jovenel Moise. But even in an electoral process that was blatantly manipulated, Moise, “the banana man,” controls nothing in Haiti but his mouth, and that not very well.

And the U.S. government, reminiscent of the cryptic simplicity of Langston Hughes’ poem, “Christ in Alabama,” taunts and tries to snatch Haitian freedom with its entrenched racism.

But Haiti is rising up, and she is fighting back! With the swiftness of a Muhammad Ali strike, Haiti reminds us that we have not ever been n****rs, and that we always define our tree of liberty, and our “place” as being free.

A Haitian artist’s depiction of the killing of Haiti’s democracy. 

Haitian grassroots people are battling the attempted electoral coup d’etat, and are now into thirty-five consecutive days of peaceful yet forceful demonstrations against the fraud. This has got the resident oligarchies so worried that they have escalated their military and political attacks.

Corrupt judges and the PHTK party of Michel Martelly are trying to force international observers and parties contesting the fraudulent November 20 elections to quit the fraud probe. Attacks by militarized police against peaceful demonstrators are growing in number and strength. The entire electoral process is broken, worse than in the U.S.

On December 24, 2016 at about 2:00 pm Haitian time (5 pm PST) in an escalating show of force, militarized police armed to the teeth, shot indiscriminately into a crowd of thousands. Many demonstrators were wounded on Martin Luther King Avenue, in the city of Port au Prince, in Haiti.

Members of Fanmi Lavalas were especially targeted. A sitting member of parliament had his car shot up by police. According to witnesses a policeman took his automatic weapon and smashed out the back window of the car owned by a Fanmi Lavalas candidate for the Senate. A journalist from Radio Timoun, the people’s radio station, was also injured by police gunfire and was taken to the hospital.  The people announced that demonstrations would continue on December 25, 2016, day 34. They will not stop.

Fascism sends its Seasons Greetings full of repression from UN occupied Haiti.

A critical question people should be asking themselves is why do a bunch of fascist, billionaire whites; their international quislings; and the internal puppet leadership of Haiti; want so badly to maintain an apartheid regime, and the occupation and ownership of a sovereign Afrikan country they describe as “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere?”

Recall that Haiti was forced to pay the blood sucking World Bank and its IMF vampire siblings more than a million dollars per week to satisfy debts incurred by the 29 year Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier family regimes, and other Duvalierist tyrants who succeeded them. The most recent example of these is the highway robbery of the treasury by Hillary Clinton’s puppet, Michel Martelly.

Round and round and round they go, with the World Bank lying and saying it is eradicating poverty, while Haitians eat mud cookies in order to repay a debt caused by white theft and to be considered deserving of “help” from blood sucking multilateral financial institutions.

Such thieves include the Clinton Foundation, which claimed magnanimity in their dealings with Haiti, as billions of dollars of earthquake relief money under their control remained unaccounted for.

The people of Haiti are left even more impoverished.

This continual interference in Haiti’s democratic process keeps happening because:

(1) Haiti overthrew chattel enslavement of Afrikan people over 200 years ago by slapping down the combined military might of France, England, and Spain; thus establishing its independence, and turning the myth of white supremacy on its head. ”We are the first Black independent country in the world,” asserts its first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide.

(2) Even though the same “civilized” Euro-American and Canadian regimes instigated two coups d’etat against the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide; the people haven’t ever stopped resisting tyranny;

(3) Haitian resistance keeps getting stronger, despite U.S.-UN occupation of the country. In collusion with the U.S. government, in 2004 the United Nations brought its un-peacekeeping, cholera spreading, brutal force of 10,000 MINUSTAH troops into Haiti. Along with the reconstituted Haitian army headed by drug runners wanted by the DEA, these combined forces exist to “keep the natives in their place.” This is with the full support of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU).

(4) President Jean Bertrand Aristide fought for and continues to fight for Haitian dignity, sovereignty, and independence. When he was in office, he refused to be a sellout president and kept all of the Haitian assets for the Haitian people. In 2003, he demanded that over $22 billion dollars in money extorted from Haiti by 19^th century France be restored. Haiti was originally forced to pay this money starting in 1826, to former slave owning French plantation owners.

(5) Drs. Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Maryse Narcisse both defy the evil of entrenched tyranny. Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the 2016 Fanmi Lavalas presidential candidate is in the streets daily with the people fighting for Haiti’s independence.

(6) President Aristide fought for fair trade for Haiti, in defiance of the Clinton regime policies that collapsed Haiti’s economy.

(7) Haiti’s geographic location boasts huge oil, gold, and other reserves of wealth. She is also strategically located in relationship to Cuba.

(8) President Aristide attacked and threatened the hegemony and corruption of Haiti’s 1% ruling elite by enforcing labor and taxation legislation laws.

The U.S. attitude toward Haiti has always been one of keeping Afrikans “in their place,” as described by white supremacy.

U.S. 19th century government didn’t want a free Afrikan state dismantling its brutal slave economy. So enslaver U.S. president Thomas Jefferson gave Napoleon $40,000.00 to re-enslave Haiti. He also put the word out that an Afrikan person was only worth three fifths of a white person. Napoleon got his butt kicked, Jefferson lost a lot of money but acquired the Louisiana Purchase for a song, and Haiti was free.

Fast-forward to 1915 and U.S. president Woodrow Wilson of Birth of a Nation-reinstitute-the-KKK-filmmaking fame. His Secretary of State, William Byron Jennings “disapproved” of “Niggers, speaking French!” in Haiti. Wilson sent in the Marines to occupy and rob Haiti from 1915-1934.

Fast-forward again to 2004.

Haitians kept deciding that their “place” was to be free, so the IRI, Colin Powell – another lying Sec of State, the CIA, and USAID kidnapped President Aristide and his family by transporting them as “cargo” to the Central Afrikan Republic, in a US plane designed for the program of “extraordinary rendition.”

Well, that didn’t work either because Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Trans-Africa founder Randall Robinson and others snatched them back from the brink of captivity and they went into exile, first in Jamaica then in South Africa until the power of the Haitian people brought them back home to Haiti.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, odious Euro-U.S. debt designed to kill people by the dollar, Duvalier Papa and Baby Doc, the U.S. government and the U.S. puppet’s thefts of Haitian resources, DEA drug runners, entrenched racism, foreign domination, onerous rapes, pre-dawn UN and paramilitary attacks, strip mining, cholera, odious rapacious Secretaries of State from William Byron Jennings to Hillary Rodham Clinton, terrorist Tonton Macoutes, starvation, murders, kidnappings, and disappearances of children, freedom fighters, and pro-democracy activists Lovinsky Pierre Antoine, Father Gérard-Jean Juste, to name but two; mud cookies for food…

In spite of all of these horrible things and more, the Afrikan people of Haiti keep fighting to be free.  Haitian resistance to entrenched U.S. interference in her government has not ceased for over 200 years. It will not stop. It is about to be 2017, right now.

The Haitian Revolution, from 1791-1804…It is happening again. The people of Haiti will be free.

Is Europe Heading for a “Lexit”?

Conn Hallinan

When European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg this past September, he told them the organization was facing an “existential crisis.” In part, he blamed “national governments so weakened by the forces of populism” that they were “paralyzed by the risk of defeat in the next election.”

Indeed, it’s been a bad year for the huge trading group. There was Brexit, or the United Kingdom’s vote to withdraw. And Rome’s referendum to amend Italy’s constitution was trounced, leaving several Italian banks in deep trouble.

Meanwhile, the austerity policies of the EU have kept most of its members’ economies either anemic or dead in the water. Even those showing growth, like Ireland and Spain, have yet to return to where they were before the 2008 economic meltdown. Between 2007 and 2016, purchasing power fell 8 percent in Spain and 11 percent in Italy,

It’s also true that number of national governments — in particular those in Germany and France — are looking nervously over their shoulders at parties to their right.

But the crisis of the EU doesn’t spring from “populism.”

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

That term often obscures more than it reveals, lumping together neo-fascist parties, like France’s National Front and Germany’s Alternative for Germany, with left parties, like Spain’s Podemos. Populism, as Juncker uses it, has a vaguely atavistic odor to it: ignorant peasants with torches and pitchforks storming the citadels of civilization.

But the barbarians at the EU’s gate didn’t just appear out of Europe’s dark forests, like the Goths and Vandals of old. They were raised up by the profoundly flawed way that the Union was established in the first place, flaws that didn’t reveal themselves until an economic crisis took center stage.

That the crisis is existential, there is little doubt. In fact, the odds are pretty good that the EU will not be here in its current form a decade from now — and possibly considerably sooner.

But Juncker’s solutions include a modest spending program aimed at business, closer military ties among the 28 — soon to be 27 — members of the organization, and the creation of a “European Solidarity Corps” of young volunteers to help out in cases of disasters, like earthquakes. But he offered nothing to address the horrendous unemployment rate among young Europeans.

In short, he’s proposed rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs while the ice looms up to starboard.

But what’s to be done isn’t obvious, nor is how one goes about reforming or dismantling an organization that currently produces a third of the world’s wealth. The complexity of the task has entangled Europe’s left in a sharp debate, the outcome of which will go a long way toward determining whether the EU — now a house divided between wealthy countries and debt-ridden ones — can survive.

It is not that the European left is strong, but it’s the only player with a possible strategy to break the cycle of debt and low growth.

The politics of racism, hatred of immigrants, and reactionary nationalism espoused by the National Front, the Alternative For Germany, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Denmark’s People’s Party, and Austria’s Freedom Party will not generate economic growth — not any more than Donald Trump will bring back jobs for U.S. steelworkers and coal miners and “make America great again.”

Indeed, if the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany Party gets its way, that country will be in deep trouble. German deaths currently outnumber births by 200,000 a year, a figure that’s only accelerating. According to the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, to have a sufficient working-age population that can support a stable pension system, the country will require an influx of 500,000 immigrants a year for the next 35 years.

Many other European countries are in the same boat.

Withdraw or Reform?

There are several currents among the European left, ranging from those who call for a full withdrawal, or “Lexit,” to reforms that would democratize the organization.

There is certainly a democracy deficit in the EU. The elected European Parliament has little power, with most key decisions made by the unelected “troika” — the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. The troika’s rigid debt policies mean members have lost the ability to manage their own economies or challenge the mantra that debt requires austerity, even though that formula has clearly been a failure.

As economists Markus Brunnermeier, Harold James, and Jean-Pierre Landau point out in their book The Euro and the Battle of Ideas, growth is impossible when consumers, corporations, and governments all stop spending. The only outcome for that formula is misery and more debt. Even the IMF has begun to question austerity.

But would a little more democracy really resolve this problem?

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, a long-time critic of austerity, argues that while the EU does indeed need to be democratized, a major problem is the common currency. The euro is used by 19 of the EU’s 28 members that constitute the Eurozone.

Stiglitz argues that the euro locked everyone into the German economic model of modest wages coupled with a high-power export economy. But one size does not fit all, and when the economic crisis hit in 2008, that became painfully obvious. Those EU members that used a common currency were unable to devalue their currency — a standard economic strategy to deal with debt.

There’s also no way to transfer wealth within the EU, unlike in the United States. Powerful economies like California and New York have long paid the bills for poorer states like Louisiana and Mississippi. As Stiglitz points out, “a lack of shared fiscal policy” in the EU made it “impossible to transfer wealth (via tax receipts) from richer states to poorer ones, ensuring growing inequality between the core and the periphery of Europe.”

Stiglitz proposes a series of reforms, including economic stimulus, creating a “flexible” euro, and removing the rigid requirement that no country can carry a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP.

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, however, argues that the Union “is not suffering from a democratic deficit that can be fixed with a ‘little more democracy’ and a few reforms here and there.” The EU, he says, “was constructed intentionally as a democracy-free zone” to keep people out of decision-making process and to put business and finance in charge.

Is the machine so flawed that it ought to be dismantled? That’s the opinion of the British writer and journalist Tariq Ali and King’s College Reader in politics Stathis Kouvelakis, both of whom supported the Brexit and are urging a campaign to hold similar referenda in other EU member countries.

Another Way: Civil Disobedience

But since that that position is already occupied by the xenophobic right, how does the left argue for Lexit without entangling itself with racist neo-Nazis?

Varoufakis, a leading member of the pan-European left formation DiEM25, asks whether “such a campaign is consistent with the Left’s fundamental principles” of internationalism. He also argues that a Lexit would destroy the EU’s common environmental policy and the free movement of members, both of which find strong support among young people.

Is re-establishing borders and fences really what the left stands for? And wouldn’t re-nationalizing the fossil fuel industry simply turn environmental policies over to the multi-national energy giants? “Under the Lexit banner, in my estimation,” says Varoufakis, “the Left is heading for monumental defeats on both fronts.”

DiEM25 proposes a third way to challenge the disastrous policies of the EU, while avoiding a return to borders and “every country for itself” environmental policies. What is needed, according to Varoufakis, is “a pan-European movement of civil and governmental disobedience” to create a “democratic opposition to the way European elites do business at the local, national and EU levels.”

The idea is to avoid the kind of trap that Greece’s left party, Syriza, has found itself in: running against austerity only to find itself instituting the very policies it ran against.

What DiEM25 is proposing is simply to refuse to institute EU austerity rules, a strategy that will only work if the resistance is EU-wide. When Greece tried to resist the troika, the European Central Bank threatened to destroy the country’s economy, and Syriza folded. But if resistance is widespread enough, that will not be so easy to do. In any case, he says, “the debt-deflationary spiral that drives masses of Europeans into hopelessness and places them under the spell of bigotry” is not acceptable.

DiEM25 also calls for a universal basic income, a proposal that’s supported by 68 percent of the EU’s members.

Portugal’s left has had the most success with trying to roll back the austerity measures that caused widespread misery throughout the country. The center-left Socialist Party formed a coalition with the Left Bloc, and the Communist-Green Alliance put aside their differences, and together they restored public sector wages and state pensions to pre-crisis levels. The economy only grew 1.2 percent in 2016 (slightly less than the EU as a whole), but it was enough to drop unemployment from 12.6 percent to 10 percent. The deficit has also declined.

Spain’s Podemos and Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labor Party have hailed the Portuguese left coalition as a model for an anti-austerity alliance across the continent.

Rebel Cities and Continental Solidarity

Debt is the 800-pound gorilla in the living room.

Most of the debt for countries like Spain, Portugal, and Ireland wasn’t the result of spendthrift ways. All three countries had positive balances until the real estate bubble pumped up by private speculators and banks burst in 2008, and taxpayers were forced to pick up the pieces. The “bailouts” from the troika came with onerous austerity measures attached, and most of the money went straight to the banks that had set off the crisis in the first place.

For small or underdeveloped countries, it will be impossible to pay off those debts. When Germany found itself in a similar position after World War II, other countries agreed to cut its debt in half, lower interest rates, and spread out payments. The 1952 London Debt Conference led to an industrial boom that turned Germany into the biggest economy in Europe.

There’s no little irony in the fact that the current Berlin government is insisting on applying economic policies to debt-ridden countries that would have strangled that German post-war recovery had they not been modified.

It’s possible that the EU cannot be reformed, but it seems early in the process to conclude that. In any case, DiEM25’s proposal to practice union-wide civil disobedience hasn’t really been tried, and it certainly has potential as an organizing tool. It’s already being implemented in several “rebel” cities like Barcelona, Naples, Berlin, Bristol, Krakow, Warsaw, and Porto, where local mayors and city councils are digging in their heels and fighting back.

For that to be successful throughout the EU, however, the left will have to sideline some of the disputes that divide it and reach out to new constituencies. If it doesn’t, the right has a dangerous narrative waiting in the wings.