Maldives president mobilises military and police against opposition MPs

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Maldives President Abdulla Yameen deployed Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) officers and police on July 24 to stop opposition MPs entering the parliament.

The unprecedented move was to prevent a no-confidence motion by the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) against parliamentary speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed, an ally of the president. MDP chairman Hassan Latheef told Reuters: “We were dragged, pepper-sprayed, and tear-gassed by the police and brutally stopped from entering the parliament.”

Last Monday’s events are the latest chapter in the ongoing, and increasingly bitter faction fight within the country’s ruling elite. The Maldives, an archipelago of 1,192 islands with a population of just under 400,000, is strategically located astride major sea-lanes across the Indian Ocean.

The MDP-led opposition has been planning for months to oust the speaker. MDP leader and former president Mohammed Nasheed opposes Yameen’s close relations with China and has openly declared that he is ready to serve US and Indian geo-political interests in the region. Nasheed and his supporters want to remove a law that bans anyone convicted on so-called terrorism charges from running in presidential elections.

Yameen introduced this anti-democratic law in 2015 to sideline Nasheed, who was convicted of terrorism charges after ordering the arrest and detention of former chief justice Abdulla Mohamed in 2012. Nasheed was sentenced to 13 years’ jail but was later released under pressure from the US and Britain.

Last April, the MDP, together with Jamhooree Party, Adhaalath Party and supporters of former Maldives dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, attempted to remove the parliamentary speaker from the 85-member parliament. This failed after 10 MPs from Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) refused to support a no-confidence motion.

The pro-US Yameen-led opposition over the recent months, however, has secured support from 45 MPs, including PPM members, for another no-confidence resolution, which was scheduled for July 24.

Although Yameen failed to persuade the 10 PPM defectors to support this vote, he reportedly used other tactics. The Maldives police claim that opposition MP Faris Maumoon bribed some members of parliament to win their backing. He denied the allegation but was arrested and taken into custody on July 18. Another opposition supporter has also been accused of bribery.

Yameen has secured a Supreme Court ruling that any MP who changed their political party affiliations would be unseated. He claimed that four government MPs had lost their seats. The parliament secretary responded by declaring that the July 24 vote would not be allowed.

The MDP and its opposition allies attempted to hold protest rallies following last Monday’s police and military blockade of the parliament. On Wednesday night seven journalists from two television stations were arrested while covering a protest outside a MDP meeting in Malé, the national capital. The journalists were accused of obstructing police attempts to disperse an “unlawful gathering.” They were released later.

The Maldives is an important focal point in Washington’s “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific region to confront China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Malé in September 2014 during Yameen’s presidency. Yameen declared that the Maldives would join Xi’s Maritime Silk Route, a key element in China’s “One Belt and One Road” initiative. India, which is a key partner in the US military buildup against China, is hostile to Yameen’s relations with Beijing.

While MDP leader Nasheed was jailed on terrorism charges, the Maldives government, under pressure from the US and Britain, allowed him to leave the country under the pretext of taking medical treatments in London.

Nasheed, who has been in exile for the past two years, told the Indian Expresson July 21 that he would “terminate all the Chinese projects” if elected president in next year’s elections. “What is in Maldives’ interest very much depends on what is in India’s interest,” he said, adding, “If India feels that its security and safety is compromised in the Indian Ocean, and then we must be mindful of that.”

According to the Indian Express, Nasheed said that the Maldives “was in danger of becoming another Sri Lanka,” a reference to the Chinese infrastructure loans taken out by former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse. Nasheed accused Yameen of “selling Maldives’ national interest to the Chinese.”

US, British, German and French embassies and EU representatives covering the Maldives but located in Sri Lanka issued a joint statement last week opposing Yameen’s attempts to muzzle the opposition. It declared that it was “alarmed by the recent actions of the government of Maldives which seriously damage and undermines democracy” and the country’s “international human rights obligations.”

The statement also condemned the forcible closure of the parliament to opposition MPs and their harassment and arrest, and demanded that the parliamentarians be allowed “to conduct their rightful duties.”

The “concerns” of these imperialist powers about democratic rights in the Maldives are a fraud. All these powers, within their own countries and internationally, readily violate democratic rights and commit war crimes in pursuit of their economic and geopolitical interests. The increasingly violent political instability in the Maldives is a direct result of the US-led war drive against China.

Pakistan plunges deeper into crisis as prime minister ousted on corruption charges

Sampath Perera 

Nawaz Sharif stepped down as Pakistan’s prime minister Friday after the country’s highest court found him “not honest” in a corruption investigation and ordered his ouster.

Sharif is expected to ask the Supreme Court to review its verdict, but it is under no compulsion to do so. Meanwhile, the country’s ostensible anti-corruption watchdog, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), has been ordered by the court to file criminal charges against Sharif, several family members, and Sharif’s finance minister, Ishaq Dar.

In Friday’s ruling, the court also ordered that Dar, who had served as Sharif’s accountant, be expelled from parliament.

The political turmoil in Islamabad is taking place amid an escalating geo-political crisis. Washington, which over the past decade has made India its principal South Asia ally, is threatening to further downgrade its relations with Pakistan, even declare it a “terrorist state,” if it does not target the Haqqani network. India, seeking to exploit its new status as Major (US) Defense Partner, has, for its part, adopted an ever more belligerent stance against Pakistan. For the past 10 months, Indo-Pakistani relations have been on the boil with almost daily cross-border artillery barrages in disputed Kashmir.

Sharif’s disqualification from parliament, which made him constitutionally ineligible to be prime minister, was based on his failure to declare income from the United Arab Emirates-based Capital FZE, when he filed his nomination papers for the 2013 general election. However, the investigation into Sharif’s finances was triggered by the publication in April 2016 of the so-called Panama Papers, which exposed his family’s connections to offshore tax-havens.

Amid calls from the principal opposition parties for the next general election to be advanced from August 2018, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain has summoned parliament into session today to elect an interim prime minister.

It goes without saying that Sharif, who began his political career in the 1980s as a protégé of the dictator General Zia-ul Haq, has exploited his political ties to expand the family fortune. Corruption is endemic in Pakistan’s ruling elite, including in the ranks of the military, which has directly ruled the country for almost half of its 70 years of existence. Yet the latter has repeatedly manipulated corruption charges to settle scores with rivals in the political elite and assert its authority.

The NAB was formed by military strongman General Pervez Musharraf to intimidate the politicians, shortly after he led a 1999 military coup that ousted Sharif in a previous term as Pakistan’s prime minister.

Sharif loyalists charge that the Supreme Court has shown a double standard in its treatment of the charges against the now defrocked prime minster and boss of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). While the court has moved expeditiously in the Panama Paper case, it has let cases against other government officials and politicians languish for years.

There is no doubt the immediate beneficiary of Sharif’s ouster and the weakening of the PML (N) government is the military.

On assuming office in June 2013, Sharif sought to augment civilian control over the military. But the military, with tacit US support, successfully pushed back, maintaining effective control over the country’s foreign and national security policies and forcing Sharif to renounce his plans for a rapprochement with India.

Commenting on US “national security interests” in Pakistan, the New York Times said the current political crisis in Islamabad has “raised eyebrows at the State Department and the Pentagon, but little else.”

“The Pakistani military is largely viewed as the real source of power in Islamabad, and that is not going to change with a new prime minister,” said the Times.

Vikram J. Singh, a former US deputy assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, told the Times, “[Sharif’s ouster] means even more power in the military’s hands because the military is truly the only institution in Pakistan that’s not in turmoil.”

Other press reports observe that the military’s hands are all over Friday’s court verdict.

The Supreme Court acted on evidence compiled by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) it appointed last April, when it was split over whether there was enough evidence from the Panama Papers to disqualify Sharif. Extraordinarily, the court ordered that Military Intelligence and the notorious Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) agency each have a representative on the six-member JIT.

The JIT report found “significant disparity” in the Sharif family’s wealth and the declared sources of its income. The London-based Financial Times says the outcome of the JIT investigation “is believed to have relied heavily on military intelligence gathering.”

The campaign against Sharif over the Panama Papers has been led by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which some accuse of acting as a stalking horse for the military.

The PTI refused to accept the results of the 2013 election, claiming that Sharif and his PML (N) had engaged in ballot-rigging. In August 2014, PTI supporters occupied central Islamabad, provoking a political crisis that the military-intelligence apparatus, at the very least, leveraged to win greater power. Soon after Sharif greatly expanded the military’s reach. This included giving the military police powers where it had been deployed to fight “terrorism,” sanctioning secret military-run courts that can try civilians on “terrorism” charges, and lifting a moratorium on executions.

When the Panama Papers implicated Sharif family members, the PTI launched a similar campaign. But it failed to gain traction after the government declared the protests illegal. Khan than called off the agitation on the pretext that the Supreme Court would hear the case against the Sharifs.

Khan and sections of the Pakistani media are touting Friday’s court verdict as a victory for democracy. This is absurd. Democracy in Pakistan—a state founded on an expressly communal basis through the 1947 partition of the subcontinent—is a sham. While a tiny elite wallows in luxury, paying little or no taxes, the vast majority lives in poverty and squalor, with much of the state budget squandered on the military and the Pakistani elite’s reactionary strategic rivalry with India.

Sharif’s removal conforms to the rule. No elected Pakistani prime minister has ever served a full five-year term without a military coup or the judiciary intervening to oust them from office.

During Sharif’s years in office, the military has expanded its “anti-terrorism” operations to virtually the entire country. Paramilitary Rangers occupy the country’s largest city, Karachi. In Balochistan the military has been waging a counterinsurgency war against ethno-nationalist separatists for over a decade. In 2014, after Sharif repudiated his “peace” overtures to the Pakistani Taliban, the military launched a scorched-earth offensive in North Waziristan which has since been expanded into other tribal areas. In March 2016, when the military launched an “antiterrorism” offensive in Punjab, the powerbase of PML-N, overriding the opposition of the provincial government, Sharif meekly submitted, issuing a statement that claimed his government had given prior approval to the military’s actions.

According to the Justice Project Pakistan, which analysed the data of 465 prisoners sent to the gallows since December 2014, executions are being “used as a political tool” and in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism. In June, a man was given capital punishment by an anti-terrorism court under medieval blasphemy laws for a Facebook comment.

The “anti-terrorism” laws are frequently used against workers coming into struggle against the severe austerity policies that successive governments have implemented under the diktats of the International Monetary Fund. In one incident on July 22, 14 Pakistan Railway workers were arrested on government orders when train drivers launched a strike demanding a pay hike.

While the ruling elite is united in fleecing and repressing the working class and toilers, it is bitterly divided over which faction will control the state’s purse strings. A further source of conflict is the “pivot” in the country’s foreign policy. For decades the Pakistani elite was more than happy to serve as a satrap for US imperialism, but with the US now aligned with its arch-enemy India, Islamabad has tightened its military-security partnership with China. With Washington’s encouragement, some sections of the ruling elite are questioning this policy. At the same time, a bitter fight has erupted as to who will glean the profits from the $50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The Supreme Court has ordered the NAB to file criminal charges within six weeks against Sharif, three of his six children, Dar, and others. A Supreme Court judge will oversee the entire proceeding until its completion.

Sharif is expected to elevate his brother and current Chief Minister of Punjab’s provincial government Shahbaz Sharif to head the government. However, he has to first win the by-election to be held for the National Assembly seat left vacant after Sharif’s disqualification. Until then, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a close ally of Sharif, is expected to serve as interim prime minister.

At least for now, the PML-N is expected to be able to enforce its will in parliament using its majority. However, cracks in its ranks were exposed when Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan announced last Friday that he is quitting politics. Previously there had been suggestions Khan might step in as prime minister if Sharif was ousted.

Sharif’s favored political heir is said to be his daughter Maryam. But because of her deep embroilment in the corruption scandal, including the unexplained ownership of luxury flats in an exclusive London neighborhood, she has been effectively sidelined.

German politicians call for quicker deportations after attacks in Hamburg and Konstanz

Justus Leicht 

The blood of the victims in Hamburg and Konstanz has barely had time to dry and the background to both attacks remains unclear, but politicians from all of the major parties are already seeking to outdo each other with right-wing demagogy.

In the Hamburg district of Barmbek, Ahmad A., a 26-year-old Palestinian born in the United Arab Emirates, began stabbing the people around him without warning in a supermarket on Friday afternoon, killing one and injuring five before passers-by restrained him and he was detained by the police. He had travelled to Germany in 2015 and filed an application for asylum that was rejected. Since then, he has been legally obliged to leave the country.

Two days later, at 4:20 a.m. on Sunday morning, a 34-year-old Iraqi man armed with an automatic weapon managed to gain entry to “Grey,” a large nightclub in an industrial district of Konstanz. The Iraqi Kurd, whose asylum had been recognised, shot one of the security personnel and fired further shots at the entrance. Three guests and employees of the security firm were injured. Police commandos were rapidly on the scene and engaged him in a firefight, severely injuring him. He died in hospital.

Little is known thus far about both incidents, including what the motives were.

Ahmad A., after leaving behind the misery of the Palestinian occupied territories, reportedly endured a long odyssey: travelling through Egypt, Norway, Sweden and Spain. He was questioned last November by members of the Hamburg state intelligence agency because they had received information from the police that his behaviour had been flagged. According to police, religion allegedly suddenly began to play a major role in Ahmad A.’s life; he was citing Koran verses, no longer drinking alcohol and becoming withdrawn.

Such behaviour is now sufficient to be placed under suspicion by the police and intelligence agencies. The agents apparently concluded he was not dangerous, but rather mentally unstable and insecure. Although he stated he was religious, he was close to his father and feared returning to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

After the discussion, agents labelled him a suspected Islamist, but not a jihadi or “threat.” There have to date been no indications that he had ties to Islamic State (ISIS) or other Islamist groups. He took no legal action following the rejection of his asylum application and allegedly did not resist his departure, but complied the best he could. He wanted to return home to his father in Gaza and had repeatedly inquired if his travel documents were available.

Although the intelligence agencies recommended that Ahmad A. receive an assessment from social and psychiatric services, this never took place.

Ahmad A. lived in a container at an accommodation centre for refugees. His fellow residents told the media he “was strange in the head.” However, there is no evidence that the man, who has no criminal record, was ever given psychotherapeutic treatment.

Information available thus far suggests that the attack occurred as follows: The man bought items at the supermarket, left, returned shortly afterwards, seized a kitchen knife that was for sale, ripped it out of its packaging, and began attacking people indiscriminately, first in the supermarket, and then on the street outside. A 50-year-old man died and others were injured.

Passers-by armed themselves with chairs and anything else they could carry, and sought to detain the attacker. Someone allegedly spoke to Ahmad A. in Arabic, after he had shouted, “Allahu Akhbar,” and sought to reason with him, but without success. After continuing to stab people, he was injured by paving stones thrown at him and arrested by the police. He apparently described himself as a terrorist to the police. However, no organisation has yet claimed responsibility for his attack.

The facts known thus far at least suggest that a traumatised and fragile young person, who had experienced nothing but uncertainty and opposition from the states where he had found himself during his odyssey over recent years, and had been ignored by everybody apart from the police, intelligence agencies and officials who organised his deportation, simply snapped.

In the case of the Konstanz shooting, the attacker had lived in the area for 15 years. He reportedly always voiced criticism of ISIS on social media. His motives, as well as the events during the attack, are still under investigation. It was reported that the man moved among the violent circles of drug dealers and doormen.

Media reports said the attacker was the brother-in-law of the nightclub’s owner. Prior to the attack, he reportedly argued with workers in the club and subsequently left. Later, he returned with an M16 machine gun and shot one of the doormen.

While all indications in Konstanz point to gang crime and Ahmad A. appears to have been badly traumatised, politicians of the governing parties rushed to cynically exploit the attacks to argue for mass deportations and detention prior to deportation.

“The vicious circle of technical processes in deportations must be ended,” Christian Social Union General Secretary Andreas Scheuer told Bild am Sonntag. “If radicalisation is identified, we must take such people out of the line and detain them before they commit crimes.”

SPD politician Burkhard Lischka also raised the prospect of deportation detention for Ahmad A. “Even though the concrete circumstances remain unclear, the question of why the man was not in deportation detention is raised,” said Lischka to the Heilbronner Stimme. “Federal lawmakers expanded the possibilities for this just weeks ago.”

While this option is applicable to so-called “threats,” as elastic as this term is, the authorities did not even consider Ahmad A. to meet this definition. In addition, he apparently did not resist his deportation, but sought to leave Germany. Lischka apparently wants to put everyone legally obliged to leave the country in preventive detention.

Election of constituent assembly in Venezuela takes place amid intensified violence and US threats

Andrea Lobo 

President Nicolás Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) carried through the election of a 545-member constituent assembly yesterday by deploying 230,000 Bolivarian soldiers and militia reservists across the country amid widespread violence, the assassination of both pro- and anti-government supporters, and increased threats from the US.

Initial press reports show a low turnout, even in poorer neighborhoods less affected by protests that once were the PSUV government’s main base of support. A poll published by Datanálisis Friday showed that 75 percent of Venezuelans do not believe a new constitution is necessary, while over 80 percent oppose the Maduro administration.

The chief goal of the elections is to isolate and potentially dissolve the opposition-controlled congress. According to the pro-Maduro National Electoral Commission, the constituent assembly will have “total power to change any existing constitution and create a new legal order.” Once the results are made public, the new legislative body will assemble in the first week of August.

The prelude to Sunday’s vote involved four months of escalating efforts by the PSUV government and the US-backed, right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) to sideline each other and gain greater control over the state. The fight between the two sections of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie takes place in the face of immense social opposition among the working class and poor. Hunger, hyperinflation, and unemployment are widespread and most workers lack basic services. Both the PSUV and MUD fear a mass uprising that they will not be able to control.

The broad opposition against the government notwithstanding, the MUD has not gained any consistent support outside of upper middle class and student sectors due to its nakedly pro-imperialist and pro-corporate program. Since it gained a majority in Congress in 2015, it has appealed to sectors of the armed forces as well as Washington to undermine the Maduro government.

The MUD issued a call to boycott the elections, did not present any candidates, and called on its supporters to block streets and disrupt the vote. The Trump administration and other governments including Mexico, Colombia, and Panama have also announced that they will not recognize the assembly.

Hoping to install a government that will allow US corporations an unrestrained exploitation of Venezuela’s oil resources, which already account for 10 percent of US oil imports, Vice President Mike Pence called the far-right MUD leader Leopoldo Lopez Friday to promise “strong and swift economic actions” if Sunday’s vote went ahead. Sections of the US foreign policy establishment are demanding the Trump administration impose sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports.

European Union top diplomat Federica Mogherini called for “urgent measures” to restart dialogue with the opposition, warning that a Constituent Assembly could “polarize the conflict more and increase the danger of confrontation.”

On Sunday morning, the Venezuelan military launched a violent crackdown, mostly in the MUD-controlled areas of the country. The day started with 20 percent of electoral centers “inaccessible” due to opposition blockades, but ended with less than 5 percent, as the armed forces violently cleared roadblocks and occupied buildings.

The Maduro government gave the Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) operating control of the federal and municipal police starting on Thursday to oversee the electoral process and enforce a ban of “all meetings, public demonstrations, gatherings, and any act that can disrupt the elections.” Such measures and militarized deployments are aimed at intimidating all social opposition, including that of the working class, and disproves Maduro’s pledge that the constituent assembly will bring “peace and democracy.”

PSUV Vice President Diosdado Cabello, who traveled across the country to campaign, is expected to be elected as the president of the Constituent Assembly. An ex-captain of the Army, Cabello is a loyal member of the military leadership that brought Chávez into power and became part of the boliburguesía (Bolivarian bourgeoisie) that enriched itself tremendously through outright corruption and the administration of oil and infrastructure contracts. Cabello has insisted on a hardline program of “liquidating the enemy” and strengthening the power of the military.

The conflict between the two factions is reaching a breaking point. The opposition has sought to establish parallel governing structures, using the Congress to swear in a “shadow” 33-member Supreme Court in opposition to the Maduro government, which responded by arresting three of the magistrates. Moreover, the MUD mayor of the Iribarren municipality, Alfredo Ramos, was arrested Friday night by the Bolivarian Intelligence Agency SEBIN and sentenced by the Supreme Court to 15 months in jail after he allowed barricades to be set up in his jurisdiction.

On Sunday morning, PSUV leaders announced a “victory” against the attempts to undermine the elections. However, given the continued tensions and censorship by the mass Venezuelan media, Vice President Tareck El Aissami insisted that “we need to continue isolating these sectors of the opposition who have precluded any public debate.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a total of eight people died in clashes during a “48-hour general strike” supported by the MUD-aligned business chambers and trade unions. This was followed by “Takeover Venezuela” protests Friday and Saturday, limited to scattered roadblocks and described by the Spanish Público as there being “more photographers than those throwing rocks.”

Saturday night, PSUV constituent assembly candidate José Félix Pineda was shot and killed in his home, while the MUD claimed at least three of its supporters died during Sunday’s protests, including the youth secretary of the opposition Democratic Action (AD) party, Ricardo Campos. If confirmed, this would bring the number of dead in the wave of protests since April to over 115.

The reactionary character of the opposition was on display Monday in an interview on Venevisión where MUD leader Freddy Guevara was asked whether the current situation assimilated the 1958 Puntofijo pact in which the conflicting political parties representing the land oligarchy and the liberal bourgeoisie agreed to hold democratic elections. He replied: “There are some themes here that imply more the Chilean arrangement with what happened to Allende and Chile’s reconstruction afterwards.”

Guevara was referring to the September 11, 1973 coup organized by the CIA and military intelligence agencies in connivance with sectors of the military led by Allende’s commander of the armed forces, Augusto Pinochet. The fascist dictatorship which arose in the aftermath of the coup tortured and murdered tens of thousands of workers and carried out sweeping social attacks to impose privatizations and other free-market policies.

It is such a perspective that is in the mind of the ruling class sectors behind the MUD who are seeking to impose pro-imperialist policies under a US-backed, fascist dictatorship that quells all social opposition. On Saturday, Guevara announced: “Starting on Monday we will have new actions, tactics, and strategies to fit the new reality we will be living in.”

“We must re-affirm that we are in the last moments of this dictatorship,” he continued. However, reflecting the cynical psychology that dominates the MUD, he added, “We are going to get them out without turning into what they are.”

Australian government implements far-reaching restructure of intelligence agencies

Mike Head

Over the past fortnight, the Liberal-National government has unveiled the most far-reaching revamping of the country’s “security” apparatus since the political convulsions of the 1960s and 1970s.

First, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, surrounded by masked Special Forces commandos, announced expedited measures to call out the military to suppress any outbreaks of “domestic violence.”

Next, he outlined plans for a Home Affairs super-ministry to take command of seven surveillance and enforcement agencies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Australian Border Force (ABF) and the Immigration and Border Protection Department.

Then, Turnbull announced that a new US-style Office of National Intelligence (ONI), headed by a Director-General of National Intelligence, will be created in the prime minister’s office. The ONI will establish centralised control over all the internal and external spy agencies that constitute the “National Intelligence Community.”

This network already has about 7,000 personnel and an annual budget approaching $2 billion. Most of its key agencies have roughly trebled in size under the cover of the “war on terrorism” since 2001. Now it is to be vastly expanded and handed a range of new powers, in particular to monitor the political activities of Australians both at home and overseas.

By making his series of “security” pronouncements, Turnbull obviously had his government’s own immediate concerns in mind. The increasingly unpopular and divided Liberal-National Coalition government has been hanging by a thread since last July’s “double dissolution” election left it with a bare one seat majority in parliament’s lower house. No government has lasted a full three-year term since 2007 because of widespread opposition to the bipartisan program of austerity, war preparations and boosting the powers of the police, intelligence and military agencies.

The political fears and strategic calculations in ruling circles go far deeper, however. They are driven by the global turmoil and uncertainties produced by the Trump administration, the decline in the hegemony of the United States—to which the fortunes of Australian capitalism have been tied since World War II—and the rise of seething discontent in every country, including Australia, generated by ever-greater social inequality.

Some light was shed on those underlying concerns by the release of an unclassified version of an intelligence review report prepared at Turnbull’s request over the past six months. The government has accepted all the recommendations of the review, which include the establishment of the ONI.

The report was drafted by former intelligence and foreign affairs chiefs Michael L’Estrange and Stephen Merchant, and Sir Iain Lobban, ex-director of Britain’s intelligence control centre, the Government Communications Headquarters. The public version bluntly states that Australia’s “national security environment” is being re-shaped by the ongoing decline in the global influence of the US, intensifying conflicts between the major powers, and the rise of domestic economic and political disaffection.

“The trend in the global balance of wealth and power is favouring China and India,” the report warns. “The Western ascendancy in international institutions and values that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, and the early years of the twenty-first century, is eroding.”

Clearly, the prospect of war is growing. “The geopolitical consequences of economic globalization are creating new centres of power and encouraging new strategic ambitions among many states. There are increasing complexities, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, generated by enhanced economic interdependence and rising geopolitical rivalry.”

Above all, “the global strategic influence of the United States has declined in relative terms and that trajectory is set to continue.”

The report warns that “these profound changes” have “far-reaching implications, not only internationally but also domestically.” Without elaborating, the report says the shifts are “challenging aspects of Australia’s comparative advantages.”

There are potentially dire economic consequences for the Australian corporate elite in any conflict between the US, which remains by far the largest source of investment in Australia, and China, the country’s biggest export market.

Among the “heightened tensions and instabilities,” the report highlights “enhanced nationalism, populism and economic parochialism in many countries” and notes: “This is exacerbating a growing sense of insecurity and alienation.”

These comments have gone unreported in the capitalist media. They expose the fraud of Turnbull’s assertions, echoed throughout the media, that his government’s only concern is to “keep Australians safe” from terrorism and “cyber-attacks.”

Far from protecting the Australian population, those in ruling circles are preoccupied with suppressing widespread opposition to their plans for war and to the deepening attacks on the jobs, wages and social conditions of working class people.

As recommended by the review, the Director-General of National Intelligence will head an office with double the number of analysts in the existing Office of National Assessments, and provide daily briefings to the prime minister. Headed by the director-general, the new ONI will direct and coordinate the activities of an extensive network of agencies.

These include the domestic spy agency ASIO, the overseas spy service, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the electronic surveillance operation, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and the military’s Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO).

Also in the sprawling network are the satellite mapping agency, the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO), the police-linked Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), and the financial tracking agency, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC). In addition, there is the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the intelligence arms of the Federal Police, Border Force and immigration department.

Significantly, to these will be added a National Intelligence Community Innovation Hub to involve other government officials, corporate chiefs and academics to “address capability needs” and “create new linkages.”

To boost funding across the network, a Joint Capability Fund will be established, pouring an estimated $370 million extra into “shared capabilities” over the next five years.

New powers will be handed to the agencies, including streamlined ministerial authorisations for operations against entire “classes” of Australians. ASIS agents will be armed and trained to use lethal weapons. There will be a “comprehensive review” of all existing legislation to enhance intelligence powers and data-sharing.

Great attention is being paid to camouflaging the “security” buildup because of mounting hostility toward the surveillance agencies, particularly since the false intelligence claims used to invade Iraq in 2003 and the disclosures of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks revealed some of the atrocities and war crimes being committed by the US and its allies, including Australia. Snowden exposed the electronic spying conducted by the US National Security Agency and its partners on millions of people around the world.

The report notes that “following the WikiLeaks and Snowden unauthorized disclosures and growing interest in the broader community in perceived failures of intelligence,” it was “critically important” to provide public reassurance and “build trust” with the population.

For that purpose, the report recommended slightly expanded roles for two cosmetic oversight mechanisms, describing their contributions to the “intelligence community” as “value adding.” They are the Inspector-General of Intelligence, a small agency of security-vetted officials in the prime minister’s department, and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which consists of 11 Liberal-National and Labor MPs handpicked by the prime minister and the opposition leader.

The document noted that “the Reviewers also held discussions with key interlocutors from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.” Together with Australia, these countries are part of the global US-led “Five Eyes” surveillance network.

The establishment of the new over-arching ONI will bring the intelligence services into line with their counterparts in the US and UK, where similar centralised apparatuses have been created during the past 16 years.

Opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten has guaranteed bipartisan support for the restructure, having been briefed by Turnbull in advance. Labor has backed, or initiated, every bolstering of the state apparatus for decades.

This is the greatest overhauling of the security apparatus since the late 1970s, following the global political upheavals of 1968 to 1975, which saw the toppling of governments in many countries. In 1978, the Fraser government used the still officially-unsolved detonation of a bomb outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel to declare that the “age of terrorism” had arrived, deploy troops on the streets, establish the AFP and hand immense powers to the intelligence agencies.

Today, the entire state apparatus is being prepared to deal with even more intense social and political disaffection under conditions of deepening social inequality, austerity and an intensifying drive to war.

Terrorist plot allegedly prevented in Australia

James Cogan 

Australian authorities are claiming that the detention of four men on Saturday disrupted a plot to place an “improvised explosive device” on an international flight. Throughout Sunday and into today, airports around the country were plunged into turmoil by ramped-up security and luggage inspection. Heavily-armed police have been deployed at other prominent locations.

Police raids were carried out on five homes—four in Sydney’s working-class southwestern suburbs of Punchbowl, Wiley Park and Lakemba, and one in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills. In Lakemba, an entire apartment complex was locked down.

The detained men are reported to be a father and son from two related families of Lebanese background. At least one of the families migrated to Australia in the 1970s. Despite no charges being laid, the four have already been named in the media. One man, reportedly aged in his 50s, suffered head injuries during the raids. Another, in his 30s, was hauled away wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

The raids were initiated after Australian intelligence allegedly received information from an unspecified international counterpart.

Conflicting reports have asserted both that the men were “totally unknown” to police, and that they had come under scrutiny during previous “anti-terror” operations. Since 2014 alone, 31 such police operations have taken place across Australia, resulting in 70 people being charged with various offences under the country’s sweeping terrorism legislation.

Police applied in court on Sunday to invoke one of the draconian special powers that they have been given in the supposed “war on terrorism”—to detain the accused without charges for 24 hours for interrogation. By Sunday night, another court had reportedly extended the detention to seven days.

Police commanders have indicated they expect more people to be detained for questioning—without charges.

The political establishment and mass media is presenting the guilt of the four men as beyond question. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared before a press conference on Sunday morning that there was “plot to bring down a plane.” He asserted the detentions of the men was “an example of the way in which terrorist plots are uncovered and disrupted due to the extraordinary intelligence services we have and their fine cooperation they have with our police and security agencies.”

Rupert Murdoch-owned publications have already labelled the men as “jihadists” and presented them as linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Al Qaeda. Media outlets are alternatively claiming that the plot involved inserting a bomb in a metal meat grinder and trying to bring it onto an aircraft as carry-on luggage, or fabricating a device that would release a “toxic, sulfur-based gas” and kill all on board.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph is now reporting, as further evidence of a plot, that a sticky note was found in a bin upon which someone had written down the flight number of an international flight between Sydney and Jakarta, Indonesia.

In the face of murky and some seemingly fanciful allegations, it is necessary for people to keep a grip on their critical faculties and their adherence to the fundamental democratic principle: innocent until proven guilty.

Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin admitted to journalists yesterday: “We don’t have a great deal of information on the specific attack—the location, the date or time. However, we are investigating information indicating the aviation industry was potentially a target of that attack.”

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has reported only being told by police that “items” had been found in Surry Hills, which “could” have been used to manufacture a bomb. Beyond a conventional kitchen meat grinder and a mincer to make sausages, no such “items” have been identified.

Time and again, both in Australia and internationally, purported terrorist conspiracies have been revealed to have involved a significant degree of state provocation, entrapment and exaggeration.

In one of the most dramatic cases in Australia—a purported plan in 2009 to attack a military barracks in Sydney—an undercover police agent played the critical role in encouraging a group of men to talk about committing such an act. No actual preparations had been made to carry it out.

Similarly, in 2008, a police agent provided Muslim cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika with ammonium nitrate and showed him how to cause it to detonate. Again, there was no actual plan to carry out a terrorist action. Benbrika and six others were nevertheless convicted to lengthy prison terms.

Even earlier, in 2004, a police agent posing as a journalist offered Zeky “Zak” Mallah, a troubled 18-year-old, $5,000 to record a video threatening to carry out a suicide attack. The video provided the evidence he was planning an act of terrorism. A jury eventually refused to convict him on the most serious charges.

The political context in which the alleged terrorist plot has been exposed provides even more reason to submit every claim by the authorities to the most critical scrutiny.

Under conditions of immense hostility toward the establishment over social inequality and falling living standards, the Turnbull government is seeking to shore up support by posturing as a “strongman” on national security, and distract the population with fear-mongering over the danger of terrorism.

In just the past three weeks, Turnbull has flagged or announced a series of draconian policies.

* He has asserted his government will seek to enact legislation that compels internet companies such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook and Google to give Australian agencies the necessary means to decrypt encrypted information they carry.

* His government has announced legislation to revamp the “military call-out” powers, lifting restrictions on the use of the armed forces against civilians.

* On July 18, Turnbull declared the establishment of a new “Home Affairs” super-ministry on the pretext it would assist combat terrorist threats. It will have overall control of the federal police and intelligence forces, the immigration department and “border protection” force.

* He then announced a new US-style Office of National Intelligence, headed by a Director-General of National Intelligence, is being created in the prime minister’s office to take control of an expanded network of internal and external surveillance agencies.

The alleged airline plot is already being used to justify these policies and denounce criticism of them. The Australian, the flagship publication of the Murdoch media, published an opinion piece today entitled “Clear and present danger.” It was authored by Jacinta Carroll, the head of the Counter Terrorism Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Carroll argues the latest incident proves that the inability of the police to read encrypted communications “must stop.” She declares that it demonstrates the need for a “Home Affairs portfolio and reshaping of the national intelligence community.” She suggests that further “legislative development”—that is, even more draconian laws and police powers—may be necessary in the future.

Such assertions underscore that the need for the utmost vigilance in defence of democratic rights has never been greater.

White House shakeup: A further step toward authoritarian rule

Patrick Martin

Friday’s announcement by President Trump removing White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and replacing him with retired Gen. John F. Kelly marks a further stage in the emergence of the military brass as the decisive political power in the Trump administration.

With General Kelly as White House chief of staff, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, an active duty officer, as national security adviser, and retired Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, military men hold three of the top four appointed positions in the executive branch.

Press coverage of the White House transition has focused almost entirely on the Twitter antics by Trump and the vulgar ranting by his new communications director, former hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci. A sober assessment of the actual political implications of the White House reshuffle reveals, however, that the events of the past week mark a major turning point for the Trump administration and the crisis-ridden US political system as a whole.

Trump fired Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, whom he chose as chief of staff to act as a conduit to the Republican congressional leadership and the party establishment. He has replaced him with a retired Marine general with no political record and an avowed and well-publicized contempt for civilian oversight of the military—one, moreover, who, as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has overseen the administration’s program of mass arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The president coupled the removal of Priebus with a public blast against Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, over their failure last week to enact any version of a repeal of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.

Trump responded with a series of tweets saying Senate Republicans “look like fools” and demanding that McConnell trample on minority rights in the Senate and proceed immediately to push through White House proposals for slashing taxes on the wealthy and gutting social programs such as Medicaid.

Trump presents himself more and more as a ruler above the two capitalist political parties, while seeking to surround himself with uniformed audiences. He addressed 40,000 Boy Scouts assembled at a jamboree in West Virginia, then gave a speech Friday to police on Long Island in which he endorsed “rough” treatment for immigrants and others under arrest, touching off chants of “USA, USA” from the assembled cops.

While inciting police violence, Trump made direct appeals to ultra-right bigotry with a tweet calling for the expulsion of transgendered people from the military and new legal steps by the Justice Department directed against the democratic rights of homosexuals.

Added to this is the rancid atmosphere of palace intrigue in the White House. It is widely reported that Trump family members played a key role in the firing of Priebus, with son-in-law Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka Trump and First Lady Melania Trump all weighing in.

In all of this there is the stench of dictatorship. Trump is pursuing a definite political strategy. He is seeking to carve out for himself, as the representative of the financial oligarchy, a position of power independent of the apparatuses of the establishment political parties and the traditional institutions of bourgeois rule such as Congress, the courts and the so-called mainstream media.

Like all would-be Bonapartist autocrats, he seeks to establish a personalist regime based on the military and police. His use of Twitter is an essential component of this effort. He bypasses the establishment media and makes his appeal directly to the military and police while seeking to whip up national chauvinism and all forms of social and political backwardness. He seeks in this way to establish a base he can mobilize independently of the political parties.

But Trump is not some aberration or accident, an interloper into the otherwise pristine precincts of American democracy. He is the product of decades of uninterrupted war, reaction and decay of political culture within the ruling class and all official institutions, including academia—a process that has been presided over by both big-business parties. This has coincided with the rise of a criminal financial oligarchy and a staggering growth of social inequality to levels incompatible with democratic norms.

The Democratic Party for its part welcomes the appointment of Kelly. Its opposition to Trump continues to be centered on demands for an escalation of the confrontation with Russia. It welcomes any sign that this is being done, such as the White House’s announcement that Trump will sign the bill passed last week with virtual bipartisan unanimity imposing new sanctions on Russia, as well as Iran and North Korea.

It fears no less than the Republicans the growth of social opposition and anticapitalist sentiment in the working class and supports the domination of the military over the political system as insurance against the threat of social revolution.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi praised General Kelly during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, while expressing the hope that he would improve the functioning of the Trump White House. “I will be speaking with him today and look forward to working with him,” she said.

On another Sunday interview program, CNN’s “State of the Union,” Democratic Representative Barbara Lee was grilled for remarking that by putting General Kelly in charge, “President Trump is militarizing the White House and putting our executive branch in the hands of an extremist.” Lee backpedaled from the suggestion that she was antimilitary, declaring, “Let me first say, I have come from a military family… And so I respect and honor the military and recognize the sacrifices that all of our military men and women make as well as General Kelly and his history and his sacrifices.”

Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on the same program and did not even make reference to the White House shakeup.

The concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny financial oligarchy, personified by social criminals like Trump and Scaramucci, is completely incompatible with democratic rights. The defense of democratic rights falls to the working class, as a central element in its struggle for the abolition of the profit system and the socialist reorganization of society.

Handling J&K: What is Right and What More Needs To Be Done?

Syed Ata Hasnain

As the Kashmir Valley stabilises just a bit, there is the lurking fear that the next big negative event may not be very far in the future. In such an environment, it may be good to take stock of trends that may contribute to further improvement and be aware of faults that need to be focused upon and rectified. 

The first of the positives is the obvious resilience being displayed by the J&K Police in the face of serious intimidation of its rank and file ever since mid-2016. Kashmiri police personnel have suffered from a strident campaign brought against them with vengeance. From the killing of SHO Achabal and his team of comrades to the lynching of DSP Ayub Pandith, targeting of unarmed traffic policemen and even policemen on leave the J&K Police personnel of the Valley have borne immense pressure both while performing duties and off duty hours. In the face of this intimidation and the sanctioned threats endorsed by the Separatists there were times when some police families had to virtually beg forgiveness from Separatists. 

There is something very correct about the training of J&K policemen and the ethos with which they serve. However, this loyalty should not remain unrecognised. The Army, one of the biggest benefactors of police loyalty and effectiveness, must continue to respect it and strive to work together at different levels. Incidents like the one at Gund police station in Ganderbal district work against the joint effectiveness of the two strongest Indian institutions.

For all these years we have known exactly what role finance and networks play in the sustenance of violence and anti-national activities in Kashmir. Somehow there appeared to be tremendous reluctance to act against these. In fact there was official addition to the coffers of the Separatists through legitimate payments for travel, medical and other assistance. A media house’s sting operation has become the trigger for revelation of details of conduits that make up these networks. In Iraq, the effectiveness of the Islamic State (IS) reduced very largely once the oil finance networks and the money from the looted treasury began to dwindle. The National Investigation Agency's serious investigation is already leading to loss of Separatist effectiveness. Sustained efforts at making financing almost impossible will prevent the supply of military withdrawal, draw away potential stone throwers, compromise the rising strength of vigilantes in rural mosques and force LoC infiltration guides out of business. A possible fifty per cent reduction in overall anti-social activity will be possible over the next few months but sustainability is the key.

Linked to the financial conduits is the issue of trans-LoC trade. In the 10 years of its existence since 2008, there has been little concern towards formalising this trade and taking it to the next level with barter giving way to an institutionalised banking system. J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) party had invested much in this initiative but has been unable to convince the Centre to go beyond. As one of the avenues of illegal movement of money, drugs and sim cards, the trade is now under threat and could become a bone of contention between the coalition partners.

The missing link is the diffused, leadership which apparently holds more power than the largely discredited Hurriyat leadership. Now that the latter is under the scanner for a range of anti-social activities, its usefulness to the establishment being questionable, the time is ripe to ascertain and identify the source that sustains the rabble rousing. There is no doubt that the infrastructure for anti-social activity remains the one set up and nourished by the Hurriyat. While identifying the new leadership the Indian security establishment must turn focus on this infrastructure and neutralise it leaving little scope for revival. 

The handling of the Amarnath Yatra tragedy involving the unfortunate death of seven pilgrims in a terror attack should give the existing coalition government more confidence. The after effects being comparatively much lower due to public and political maturity should have a telling psychological effect on the sponsors of proxy war and the public. It motivated the chief minister to send a strong message to her party members that disconnect from the people of South Kashmir, once their bastion, cannot continue on the pretext of the adverse security situation. However, if the chief minister has to walk this talk it will need the support of one organisation which can make all the difference, the Army; it has the deployment, reach, contact with people and the robust ability to secure a grand engagement plan. It cannot be a creeping plan. It just has to be bold with transformational approach. All the talk about not talking will vanish once the government, the politician and security forces are speaking with the people and not the leadership. It is not difficult but needs imagination and a positive mindset.

Lastly, soon the Yatra will end and the special additional forces would have done their job. For the Army, no return to base for these units is strongly recommended. More troops will help in denying the terrorists space and through the next three to four months, will ensure that operations in South Kashmir can be more proactive.

With change of government in Pakistan one should expect more unpredictability. The form in which it will manifest is something for us to ponder.

Jim Ellert MBA Scholarships for Students from Africa, Europe and Asia 2018/2019 – IMD, Switzerland

Application Deadline: 30th September, 2017

Offered Annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in Africa, Central & Eastern Europe and the South-Eastern Asian Peninsula.

To Be Taken At (Country): IMD Switzerland

About the Award: IMD offers a variety of merit and need-based MBA scholarships. Applicants may apply to several simultaneously, however, only one scholarship can be awarded per candidate. Scholarships are granted subject to nomination by the scholarship selection committee, acceptance into the program and confirmation of your intention to participate in the program by paying the advance deposit

Type: MBA

Eligibility: Interested candidates must have already applied to the full-time IMD MBA program and also demonstrate high quality in the admission application.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: CHF 20,000

Duration of Program: Duration of MBA program

How to Apply: Submit a 500-word essay on: Why I would like to do an MBA at IMD? 

n order to apply please ensure that you:

• Use the IMD MBA Scholarship template (See in Program Webpage Link below) to write your essays
• Complete the MBA Financial aid application form (except for Future Leaders applications) and submit your full application to mbafinance@imd.org

All essays should reflect your personal point of view expressed in your own words if necessary supported by proper citation.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: IMD

CUNY Resilience Journalism Fellowship for Journalists Worldwide 2017. Fully-funded to New York, USA

Application Deadline: 31st August 2017

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Journalism.

About the Award: The program will focus on the science of climate change and resilience — defined as a system’s capacity to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. Our Fellows won’t just spend the week sitting in a classroom. Fellows will be kayaking in Jamaica Bay, riding bicycles on city streets, and searching across New York for solutions to some of the world’s most difficult environmental problems.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• The Resilience Fellowship is designed for mid-career journalists who have some background reporting on environmental issues as a staff reporter, producer, editor, or freelancer.
•  Applicants should have at least five years of full-time professional experience. In special cases, less experienced applicants who have demonstrated outstanding journalistic achievement will be considered.
• CUNY Resilience Journalism Fellowship is looking for journalists interested in improving both the quality and quantity of their coverage of climate resilience issues. Journalists will need to be active throughout the Fellowship and be willing to take on the challenges we present.
• Applications which fall into either of the following categories will be considered:
  • – Journalists who are employed by a news organization or freelance full-time as writers, producers, editors, photographers, or multimedia reporters.
  • – Journalism innovators whose ideas have potential to alter the journalism landscape in a fundamental way.
• Applications from international journalists who are proficient in speaking and writing English are encouraged.

Number of Awards: 15

Value of Award: The Fellowship grant covers lodging, tuition and reasonable travel costs, along with most meals.

Duration of Program: Oct. 22-27

How to Apply: APPLY FOR THE RESILIENCE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: The Rockefeller Foundation.