Catalonia: The Revolt of the Rich?

Boris Kagarlitsky

Conflict between the government of Spain and the leadership of the Catalan Autonomy became the main international news event in the beginning of October. Nationalist parties forming the government in Barcelona declare independence. Madrid does not make concessions, and sends its police units to Catalonia. Regional authorities hold an independence referendum. The central government does not recognize it and makes attempts to sabotage it. Local authorities respond with a call for a general strike and announce that the province will separate from Spain and become an independent republic.

This is a short summary of the sequence of the events, but, what is the big picture behind these facts? What are the true interests and motives of the parties in this conflict?

Catalonia is often compared to Kosovo, Donbass, or even Crimea (where, as we know, the authorities separated from Ukraine, before they engineered the accession to Russia). A more correct comparison would be to Scotland, where nationalists also came to power and organized a referendum, which ended in a victory of the supporters of the unity with Great Britain. Finally, many recall Antonov-Ovseenko’s analogy. During his time in 1930s in Spain engulfed in civil war he called Catalonia “Spanish Ukraine”.

The situations of Catalonia and Scotland are, in fact, similar in two respects. To begin with, in both places we are dealing with the revolt of the rich against the poor. More developed regions with a high standard of living do not want to give up their resources to support less prosperous and backward provinces. ”We don’t want to feed Andalusia anymore”, they say in Barcelona. “We don’t want to feed Belfast anymore”, they say in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The local bureaucracy dreams of having an exclusive control over the financial flows. The reluctance to share with the neighbors is being justified by cultural and racial claims. “We are the real Europeans, not provincial islanders, like the English”, they say in Glasgow. “We are the real Europeans, descendants of Goths, not dirty descendants of the Arabs, like the Spaniards”, they say in Barcelona. The Catalan-language press is full of racist delirium about dirty and lazy Spaniards trying to live at the expense of the hard-working Catalonia. We read all this in a relatively “decent” mainstream publications. The fact that significant, if not the major part of Catalonia products is produced by the migrants from Andalusia working in the factories and maintaining the infrastructure of Barcelona is not taken into account. The displacement of the Spanish language from the spheres of culture and education has begun 10 years ago, and proceeds according to the painfully familiar scenario. Bureaucratic positions in the autonomy are occupied exclusively by representatives of the “titular nation”, regardless of the level of competence. Barcelona, a cosmopolitan cultural center of the Spanish world is turning into a dull province.

The unexpected aspirations of Scotland and Catalonia for independence have one more, less public, though no less significant underlying reason. For many years, both regions have been implementing European Union programs aimed at creation of a new system of institutions, separated from the regional state and directly tied to the Brussels bureaucracy. This is the essence of the program entitled “Europe of the Regions”. Every Scottish county has a program financed by the EU, while England or Northern Ireland do not get help on a comparable scale. Brussels was consistently and consciously created the “Scottish factor” as a counterbalance to Britain, which traditionally opposed the Eurocrats.

Of course, like any nationalism of a small nation, the ideology of Scottish and Catalan independence appeals to various injustices of the past, representing its nation or territory solely as a victim. For Scotland this does not work very well, since the last serious oppression of the Scots happened in the middle of the XVIII century. The main oppressors were not the English, but the Scots themselves, the inhabitants of the lowlands, who were settling scores with the inhabitants of the mountains, who, previously had been robbing them. Now, in the process of enclosure these were the inhabitants of highlands, who were ruined so much that they had only two options – to sign up with the royal army or brew a local moonshine that became known throughout the world as Scotch whiskey. In the next two centuries, the Scots became the most privileged population of the British Empire, constituting a disproportionately large part of its military and civilian elite, forming key cadres of the colonial administration in India and Africa.

In Catalonia the appeals to victimhood work better because the outrages of the Franco regime after the defeat of the Spanish Republic are still in the memory.  The Catalan language was essentially banned back then; the national culture was systematically eradicated. This, however, did not prevent Barcelona from successful development, so it remained one of the most important economic centers of the country. However, during the Civil War, Catalonia was by no means nationalistic or separatist. On the contrary, red Barcelona was the most important center of the all-Spanish republican movement. The struggle that unfolded there between the Francoists and the leftists had nothing in common with what is happening here today. It is telling that the ideology of independence began to spread seriously not immediately after the fall of Francoism, but three decades later, after the successive left and right wing governments in Madrid did their best to make amends to the Catalans, granting them all kinds of rights and privileges. It is significant that in the 1970s and 90s, while the problems of overcoming Frankoism were still serious, the demand for independence was put forward not by the Catalans, but by the Basques,  who now clearly have tempered their national claims (exactly the same situation as in Northern Ireland, where the question of independence has clearly faded into the background).

The transformation of national discrimination from real experience into a political myth is the most important factor conducive to the rise of nationalism. Those who are discriminated against are fighting for the abolition of discrimination, whereas the nationalists turn the grievances of the past into symbolic capital to justify their ambitions.

Here, however, the similarity of the Scottish and Catalan histories ends. For London still went ahead with holding a referendum, which the supporters of unity won – primarily thanks to the position of the local Labor Party, which even sacrificed some of its popularity due to their consistent opposition to nationalism. If Madrid mobilized the Hispanic majority in the region instead of prohibitions and threats against Barcelona, it would have achieved similar result. However, the extremely conservative, reactionary government of Spain clearly did not want mobilization of the working class of Catalonia. It chose to resort to police violence, demoralizing the Catalonian proponents of unity with Spain, who do not support this violence at all.

Alas, all these circumstances, for the most part, shy away from the attention of left publicists, who admiringly watch the clashes of protesting Catalan nationalists with the Spanish police.

Catalonian rebellion, like Scottish separatism is the uprising of the rich against the poor, the protest of a liberal society against the remnants of a redistributive social state. The middle class in the central regions of Barcelona, ​​rattling pans, is not the same as the population of poor workers’ neighborhoods, where they do not know the Catalan language and do not associate any of their prospects with independence. It is significant that the “general strike” declared by the nationalist parties did not affect industry at all. The working class did not support the revolt of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. Moreover, they realize that the main target of this revolt is not the Spanish monarchy, as some naive leftists believe, but rather the principles of social solidarity, and the remnants of the social state.

But who needs to take into account Spanish-speaking workers? They are the “invaders”! If we look for comparisons, what is happening is similar to the time of the collapse of the USSR, and Catalonia is dominated by the same monstrous illusions that were sown by nationalists at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, what is happening now has a deeper basis in the sphere of political economy. This is not an accident that the triumph of neo-liberalism was accompanied everywhere by the crisis of national states and federations, the emergence and flourishing of all sorts of separatism, including exotic ones. In this sense, there is no difference between the ruling circles of Madrid and Barcelona. They represent the same class interests, only each represents them at a different level. Disintegration of federations and crisis of state institutions, which are currently happening everywhere are closely linked to the austerity policies pursued by both Madrid and Barcelona. ​​This is a continuation of the general logic of de-solidarisation, privatization and fragmentation characteristic of neoliberalism. It was this political economic logic that underlay the collapse of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.  This logic assumes not only rejection of solidarity based on class and rejection of common humanistic values, but also substitution of the national values by the ethnic ones. It is ethnic nationalism that proves to be an ideal “substitute” for class or civic solidarity. It preserves the necessary sense of “community” for people, while narrowing it down to the size of an imaginary large family.

Similar dynamics could be observed in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Rosa Luxemburg cautioned other leftists of the dangers of flirting with the petty-bourgeois nationalism of small nations. Reactionary and semi-fascist regimes were established in most of the new states formed in place of the disintegrating empires. The only lucky exception was Czechoslovakia, which was soon happily torn to pieces by neighbors such as Germany with a help from Poland and Hungary. It would seem that the lessons of the first half of the twentieth century should be enough to draw the necessary conclusions. Alas, the modern European left, which developed in the context of deindustrialization and decline of class solidarity, is itself a product of neoliberalism and is completely imbued with the spirit of petty-bourgeois romanticism. Therefore, the left does not dare to openly say that the nationalism of minorities in no less damaging for the working class cause than any other nationalism.

There is a good news, nevertheless. The success of Jeremy Corbin and his renewed Labor Party in Scotland returns class agenda to the region once considered the backbone of the labor movement. Nationalist demagogy quickly loses appeal among the masses whenever a real, substantial left alternative appears.  The development of small-town nationalism (as, indeed, of other types of nationalism) is inversely proportional to the strength and influence of the left. Whenever supporters of social transformations fail, their place is immediately occupied by preachers of national exclusiveness. Conversely, the rise of the left forces inevitably leads to the decline of nationalist organizations.

This does not mean that the national issues do not matter, and regional interests should not be taken into account. The leftists and nationalists, however, suggest incompatible, diametrically opposed approaches to solving these problems. The former rely on an equitable union of peoples, and the latter on dividing and pitting people against each other. The former understand that the large, integrated economy based on redistribution of resources in the interests of the majority creates the best prospects for successful and democratic development, while others require freedom solely for “their own”, denying not only the principle of equality, but also the objective goals of socio-economic progress.

Unfortunately, the Spanish and Catalonian left does not dare to speak openly about it, even if they realize what a deadly danger is the growth of nationalism for them. Political correctness blocks consciousness and eliminates a meaningful discussion. However, we will have to admit, sooner or later, that if we want any progressive changes in Catalonia, we must not rally for its separation from Spain. We should fight for progressive changes throughout the country, instead.

Power Corrupts: a Culture of Compliance Breeds Despots and Predators

John W. Whitehead

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

― Frank Herbert

Power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and a school and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.

For instance, 20 years ago, I took up a sexual harassment lawsuit on behalf of a young woman—a state employee—who claimed that her boss, a politically powerful man, had arranged for her to meet him in a hotel room, where he then allegedly dropped his pants, propositioned her and invited her to perform oral sex on him.

Despite the fact that this man had a well-known reputation for womanizing and this woman was merely one in a long line of women who had accused the man of groping, propositioning, and pressuring them for sexual favors in the workplace, she was denounced as white trash and subjected to a massive smear campaign by the man’s wife, friends and colleagues (including the leading women’s rights organizations of the day), while he was given lucrative book deals and paid lavish sums for speaking engagements.

William Jefferson Clinton eventually agreed to settle the case and pay Paula Jones $850,000.

Here we are 20 years later and not much has changed.

We’re still shocked by sexual harassment in the workplace, the victims of these sexual predators are still being harassed and smeared, and those who stand to gain the most by overlooking wrongdoing (all across the political spectrum) are still turning a blind eye to misconduct when it’s politically expedient to do so.

This time, it’s Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein—longtime Clinton associate and a powerhouse when it comes to raising money for Democrats—who is being accused of decades of sexual assaults, aggressively sexual overtures and harassment.

I won’t go into the nauseating details here. You can read them for yourself at the New York Times and the New Yorker.

Suffice it to say that it’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.

From what I’ve read, this was Hollywood’s worst-kept secret.

In other words, everyone who was anyone knew about it. They were either complicit in allowing the abuses to take place, turning a blind eye to them, or helping to cover them up.

It’s not just happening in Hollywood, however.

And it’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.

For every Harvey Weinstein (or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.

The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it. Case in point: The Justice Department will no longer attempt to police the police when it comes to official misconduct. Instead, it plans to give police agencies more money and authority to “fight” crime.

The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex. Case in point: Rather than scaling back on America’s endless wars, President Trump—like his predecessors—has continued to expand America’s military empire and its attempts to police the globe.

The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers. Case in point: The USA Liberty Act, proposed as a way to “fix” all that’s wrong with domestic surveillance, will instead legitimize the government’s snooping powers.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield.

Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.

As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”

After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical. They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”

Power corrupts.

And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.

As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”

That sense of entitlement and immunity from charges of wrongdoing dovetails with Richard Nixon’s belief that “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

For too long now, America has played politics with its principles and allowed the president and his colleagues to act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

Americans have allowed Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with our freedoms. They have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.

This culture of compliance must stop.

The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.

For starters, let’s go back to the basics: the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Let’s recommit to abiding by the rule of law.

Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

Let’s demand scrutiny and transparency at all levels of government, which in turn will lead to accountability.

We need to stop being victimized by these predators.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, I’m not just talking about the political predators in office, but the ones who are running the show behind the scenes—the shadow government—comprised of unelected government bureaucrats whose powers are unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and beyond the reach of the law.

There is no way to erase the scars left by the government’s greed for money and power, its disregard for human life, its corruption and graft, its pollution of the environment, its reliance on excessive force in order to ensure compliance, its covert activities, its illegal surveillance, and its blatant disdain for the rule of law.

“We the people”—men and women alike— have been victims of the police state for so long that not many Americans even remember what it is to be truly free anymore. Worse, few want to shoulder the responsibility that goes along with maintaining freedom.

Still, we must try.

The Other “Spirit” of the Iran Nuclear Deal

Kevin L. Schwartz

Among the favored talking points of those arguing for a US withdrawal, renegotiation, or “decertification” of the Iran nuclear deal is that Iran has violated the deal’s “spirit” by pursuing non-nuclear related activity, ranging from ballistic missile testing to destabilizing regional activity. Critics of the deal continue to offer this argument despite the fact the US maintains the country is in compliance with the “technical” aspects of the agreement’s “letter,” as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently noted.

President Trump now appears likely to not certify the deal in the coming days, noting in a recent dinner with US military leaders that Iran has “not lived up to the spirit of their agreement.”A US dismissal of the deal on the pretext of a violation of its “spirit” would confirm a long-held truth undergirding Iranian foreign policy, only recently bracketed by the country’s diplomatic leap of faith to sign the nuclear deal in the first place: the United States is an unreliable actor whose innate opposition to the Islamic Republic is unrelenting and enduring. For an Iranian side confronting the reality that the “letter” of the agreement may crumble, this is now the “spirit” hovering over the deal.

Since the 1979 Revolution, few countries have been more invested in pointing out the contradiction between US words and actions than Iran. Iran offers its rhetoric and behavior as a mirror to reflect the contradiction between U.S. words and policies and expose what it views as a “do as I say, not as I do” policy.” Much of this attitude grew out of historical experience of course, namely, the CIA-led coup of 1953 against Muhammad Mossadegh and continued US support for the authoritarian rule of the Shah until the 1979 Revolution. The coup de grace in both instances was their initiation by a country committed to spreading freedom and democracy. The lesson drawn from these experiences by those attaining power in the future Islamic Republic is that the US selectively applies its ideals abroad when it suits her best interests, making her a hypocritical power at best and a diabolical one at worst.

For the Islamic Republic the ultimate expression of the United States’ selective application of the rules pertained to the treatment of its nuclear program under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). While aspects of Iran’s nuclear program were clandestine, though ultimately revealed in 2002 and 2009, the main thrust of the country’s approach was always one anchored in the legal realm. While other countries’ paths remained defined by concealment (Syria), defiance (North Korea), or capitulation (Libya), Iran continued to press its case by arguing that it was abiding by the legal parameters as established by the NPT. Neither the IAEA or the UN Security Council, it bears remembering, ever found Iran in violation of the NPT, even if they argued Iran at times concealed elements of its program and didn’t enact the proper safeguards.

Should the US choose to not certify the deal by deeming Iran in violation of its “spirit” then it demonstrates precisely what the Islamic Republic has been clamoring all these years: the US simply holds Iran to an unfair standard. It is worth noting that several Iranian parliamentarians offered this exact argument in voicing their opposition when the deal was being debated in the majlis (parliament). Rather than arguing Iran should not ratify the deal in order to pursue an unhindered nuclear program, they argued against the deal on the grounds that the US is simply incapable of treating their country fairly. It is of little surprise that the conservative Iranian press has referred to the US obsession over the deal’s “spirit” as a “new American conspiracy” and a way of shrouding American deceit.

While much of the talk following the nuclear deal’s consummation was whether it was merely a transactional agreement or could in fact yield a transformation in US-Iran relations, less attention focused on how Iran gained from the process of negotiations itself. As much as abiding by the “letter” of the signed agreement demonstrates Iran’s ability to adhere to established rules and display normalized behavior, the procedural reality that the agreement was enacted with United States, alongside other Great Powers, in itself stands testament to a recognition of Iran as an equal party of engagement. Not certifying the deal would undercut this achievement.

It is for this reason that President Hasan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have made it absolutely clear they will not renegotiate the deal. To do so would simply eliminate any notion that Iran can justifiably maintain the position of engaging with the US on equal footing without being strong-armed into succumbing to any US political whim. Any belief that a non-certification of the deal, or outright withdrawal from it, could serve as a pathway to renegotiate a “better” one vastly misunderstands this crucial Iranian perception of the US as a global power. Members of Congress, who must decide whether to follow through with the President’s potential non-certification and reimpose nuclear related sanctions, should bear this simple truth in mind.

If the nuclear deal falters then it may very well come to be another historical data point- alongside the 1953 coup and US support for the Shah- signaling the US inability to engage Iranian in any fair and objective manner. More disturbingly, it may come to confirm the US penchant for broken promises when dealing with Iran, not just for an older generation who lived through those watershed moments, but a younger generation of Iranians too, to say nothing of what may result from a newly invigorated nuclear program ungoverned by an internationally sanctioned agreement meant to monitor it.

Syria And The Moral Crisis Of The West

Wissam Hojaiban

It all started with the spiky, outlandish Christian Louboutin shoes. According to the “Assad emails” published by the western press, Asma El Assad, the Syrian president’s wife, had bought them from Amazon. This was in 2012, the very beginning of what would later become a full-fledge war.

My first thought was: “You go, girl !”. My second thought was: “Oops, Amazon doesn’t even deliver to Lebanon, where I live, how could it even ship products to Syria ? ”. Of course, the shoe story, as well as most of the supposedly leaked “Assad emails”, turned out to be a fabrication.

Little did I know, in 2012, that the Louboutin story was only the tip of the iceberg of the anti-Assad and anti-Syrian propaganda which would flood the mainstream western news for years to come. This propaganda and distorted reporting not only accompanied the NATO-led offensive on Syria, it also shattered all the respect and appreciation I had had for some of my western friends and colleagues, and reminded me yet again of the double morals of a certain “west”.

In 2012, I joined the media department of a European country’s diplomatic mission in Lebanon. Since my colleagues and I only dealt with hard facts, the distorted and inflammatory reports of western and Gulf region-funded media about the war in Syria were rather transparent to us.

It would take too long to list all the misreporting of the war on Syria, perpetrated by the likes of the BBC, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Al Jazeera and other mainstream western and Gulf Arab media. Beginning with the Assad blame game:  Blame Assad For Everything. At times, it seems as though, should it start raining, that too would be blamed on Assad.

Here are some of the gems.

From the very start, the most basic fact concerning the Syrian war was completely ignored by these media outlets: meaning the legality of NATO and its allies’ so-called intervention in Syria, through the arming of proxy militias. Just as none of them mentioned the plan to topple Assad which, according to former French Foreign Affairs minister Roland Dumas, was being prepared well before the start of the war, at a conference in London in 2009. Ignored was Lebanese journalist Sami Kleib’s 2015 book, where he published verbatim accounts of secret talks between the Syrian President and western and Turkish officials which took place shortly before the war. Judging by those accounts, the war on Syria is a direct consequence of Assad’s not bowing to pressure from Turkey and the US.

Equally ignored was the audio recording of former US Secretary of State John Kerry admitting to backing Daesh.

The tragedy of western mainstream reporting on Syrian war is that it often takes its readership for fifth-graders, or less. Shedding crocodile tears for the civilian victims of Eastern Aleppo in December 2016, like many of her colleagues (where are their tears when children are killed by US strikes on Mossul or Yemen ?), Newsweek Middle East editor Janine di Giovanni writes : “The war in Syria is not simply a war against terrorists – Isis and al-Nusra, […] – although this is the narrative the Russian Federation and its allies want us to believe. It started as a peaceful insurrection in 2011, […], which turned to arms”.

How did it turn to arms, would ask the fifth-grader ? Isn’t it precisely because Assad’s opponents were heavily armed by the US, the UK, France, Turkey and Gulf Arab countries ? Naturally, Ms. Di Giovanni will avoid telling us that.

What she will not tell us either is : Where is that non-terrorist fighting force (referred to by some as “moderate” ) she seems to be hinting at ? Even fifth-graders know by now that it is akin to the Loch Ness monster, which many talk about but nobody was ever able to spot. As for the peaceful demonstrators of the beginnings, it has been documented that they had been infiltrated by agents provocateurs, most probably CIA and MI6 operatives.

Truly peaceful, wise demonstrators who were shot at by Syrian security forces should have gone back home and devised better plans, the very moment they discovered that it was not a simple coup which was being prepared, but something much more deadly and destructive. This idea was suggested by German researcher Reinhard Merkel who, in 2013, wrote a rather exceptional, well-detailed article for the mainstream Frankfurter Allgemeine. An article, which, strangely enough, disappeared from the newspaper’s website for months, before suddenly reappearing.

As events unfolded in Syria, and despite the scarce messages of wisdom from the likes of Reinhard Merkel, I grew more and more disillusioned, even nauseated, by the attitude of most of my western friends and colleagues. Watching an Oscar being awarded to a film white-washing the White Helmets, whose ties to Blackwater/Academi and Al-Qaida have been well documented; hearing that George Clooney is preparing another propaganda film about the White Helmets; that his glamorous wife Amal Clooney is planning to sue the Assad government for human rights breaches (would she ever dare to sue the much less democratic Saudi monarchy ?), all reminded me of Marilyn Manson’s famous song “The Beautiful People” and the moral schizophrenia that the west has reached.

I looked around me, trying to understand. When it came to the western European diplomats I met at work, it wasn’t difficult to see the motivation behind their lies: They were being paid well enough to keep them sound asleep at night. Some of them were critical of their government’s official position, but did not dare say it aloud.

I turned to my other acquaintances from western, enlightened countries. One German History student living in Beirut justified his support for the “rebels” in Syria by saying that Bashar Al Assad is a dictator. Besides the fact that dealing with many a German in everyday situations can amount to psychological torture next to which any dictator’s dungeons would pale in comparison – as I learned at my own expenses -, the assertion that Assad is a dictator is the most ridiculous, absurd argument ever used in justifying the war on Syria.

Compared to most political leaders in Lebanon, the Arab world and beyond, Assad can almost seem like a Nelson Mandela. Can the Turkish or Saudi governments give any lessons in human rights to Assad ? Or even the EU, which is backing armed militias and imposing sanctions, all of which are leading to the destruction of Syria and the death of innocent civilians?

“The regime in Damascus staged bombings in civilian areas, in order to accuse and repress its opponents”, told me one European correspondent in Beirut. “Please stick to the point”, I wanted to answer, but didn’t. The people in power in Damascus are no actual saints, and we’ve known this since 1970, but how would that justify in any way the destruction of a whole country through the arming of fanatical killers? “Well, it is an uprising after all, you know”, was his reply. I was shocked that he would still speak of an “uprising” when the armed groups that his European government are funding are systematically destroying property and killing innocent civilians ? Can someone choosing the language of killing instead of peaceful means ever be called a “moderate”, regardless of their proclaimed ideology ?

By pointing out isolated misdeeds of the “Assad forces”, as they call them (would any of them ever dare say “Erdoğan forces”, for instance ?), through choosing to highlight certain facts and not others, these misguided and misguiding analysts certainly confirm Confucius’ famous words : ”When the wise man points at the moon, the idiot looks at the finger”. They act as if the war on Syria was a football match of sorts, where you have to choose sides, and where they are called upon to count the points. Through doing this, they shift their audience away from the wider geopolitical picture.

I turned yet again to a British journalist with a certain experience in Middle East issues, desperately searching for a hint of lucidity, of detachment from the hysterical anti-Assad campaign which is leading to so much destruction. I asked him about his opinion on the British mainstream press’ obviously biased anti-Assad campaign. He cast his eyes down and abruptly changed the conversation.

Another British journalist who writes about the Middle East assured me that it was the Syrian government forces who were behind the chemical attacks in Ghouta in 2013 and Khan Sheikhoun earlier this year. “Why is that ?“, I enquired. “Well, this is what the US, French and UK intelligence services asserted”. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was as if Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction travesty had never happened.

How can such well-educated, seemingly intelligent people utter such nonsense ?, I asked myself. Are they just trying to deceive their audience or are they also deluding themselves ? And how could they, whether explicitly or implicitly, support one of the most destructive, deadly wars of our times and call it an “uprising” ?  I suddenly remembered George Orwell’s famous unpublished preface to Animal Farms, in which he condemns war propaganda perpetrated by “well-educated” journalists and editors. By “well-educated”, he meant of course “well-programmed”.

These well-educated westerners accept for poorer countries things that they would never accept for their own. I personally happen to think that Theresa May’s multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries is an utter disgrace and a crime, because these weapons end up killing innocent people in Syria and Yemen. I also think that the mass state surveillance system installed in the UK makes the former Soviet and STASI surveillance systems seem amateurish. Based on this, would I support the arming of “rebel” groups in the UK (say, some hooligans, or UKIP members), which would turn the whole country into ashes in order to topple the May regime ? Certainly not. A simple coup would probably do.

I finally realized something I had always suspected, especially after having been treated in a colonialist fashion at that same European diplomatic mission I was working in. The fact that, for many people living in rich western countries, civilians dying from wars initiated by these same western powers is business as usual, a banality engrained in their minds ever since childhood. I realized that western governments find no contradiction at all in defending women’s or gay rights with heated arguments, all the while supporting Islamists like Mohammad Allouche, who represented the “moderate rebels” at the Geneva talks, after having, according to the well-informed Reseauvoltaire website, personally pushed men “accused” of being gay from the rooftops of the Damascus suburbs.

I realized that the British find no contradiction in treating a man who was having a loud argument with his girlfriend in the London metro like a criminal, pushing him to the ground and placing a spit hood on his head, all the while arming fanatical killers in Syria and calling them “moderates”.

And that the French find no contradiction in promoting style, fashion, spiky shoes and sophisticated cuisine around the world, all the while their government arms and trains the so-called “Free Syrian Army”, a member of which once infamously ripped out the heart of a Syrian soldier and ate it on camera (would that inspire the French for a new dish?, I wondered).

Could this be what Noam Chomsky recently termed “the moral crisis of the west” ?

As for westerners living in those poor, war-afflicted countries, they know very well that, push comes to shove, they would be the first to be evacuated to their secure home countries and treated like royalty, while the locals can enjoy the rest of the football game. Having lived my own childhood in a Beirut torn by its civil war, I watched rich Lebanese families, some of them warlords, rush to the safety of their Paris or London apartments. My family could not do the same. For those rich families, the war was little more than a game whose strings they were pulling.

At times I found myself wishing that these arrogant, irresponsible westerners and rich GCC countries experience the same chaos and havoc they are inflicting on others –“maybe that would teach them”- , only to remember that this would not be a solution, that violence breeds more violence, that it is a snake that bites its own tail …

Instead, I found my inspiration in the wise words of Marie Seurat, a filmmaker and novelist from Aleppo, whose husband, French researcher Michel Seurat, was tortured and killed in 1986, most probably by power circles in Damascus. Despite this fact, and despite having her own apartment in Paris, Marie chooses peace over strife in this moving scene of her 2012 documentary “Damas, au péril du souvenir”. Addressing her deceased husband, she tells him that, as much as she hates the people in power in Damascus for what they did to him, she prefers having Assad stay in power rather than seeing her beautiful country reduced to rubble.

Indian economy in a downward spiral

Kranti Kumara

There are growing concerns, even among the domestic and international cheerleaders of Narendra Modi and his hard-right, Hindu communalist BJP government, that the Indian economy is heading for a serious and sustained downturn, possibly even an economic crash.

Modi has boasted that his government has restored India to the 8-percent plus growth it experienced during much of the first decade of this century, but the growth rate has fallen in each of the past 6 quarters. In the first (April-June) quarter of the current, 2017-18, fiscal year, it fell to a mere 5.7 percent, down from 7.9 percent in the corresponding quarter in 2016-17.

Yesterday, the IMF slashed is growth estimates for India, lowering its projection for 2017 by 0.5 percent to 6.7 percent and for 2018 by 0.3 percent to 7.4 percent.

Private capital formation, a key indicator of future growth, has fallen to levels not seen since the first years of the 21st Century. According to estimates from the private Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), CapEx (Capital Expenditure) project-completion will be the worst this year since Modi and his BJP came to power in May 2014, and at US $62 billion will be down a third from the previous two years.

The corporate media is now full of alarmed commentary and increasingly trenchant criticism of the government, much of it for not pushing through pro-investor measures, like privatization and the gutting of labor law protections against plant closures and layoffs, fast enough.

Modi long maintained a stony silence in the face of such criticism, but finally felt compelled to comment after Yashwant Sinha, who served as Finance Minister under a previous BJP-led government, published a comment late last month in which he warned of a “hard landing” for the Indian economy. Resorting to his standard vacuous bombast, Modi dismissed the claims of mounting crisis, then thundered, “Decisions of the government will take the country to the next level.”

The more perceptive critics have raised the specter of social unrest. Even before the drop in the growth rate, job creation under the Modi government was miniscule, with the economy creating at best only a small fraction of the 10-12 million jobs it needs to create annually to absorb the country’s rapidly expanding labour force.

While the Indian economy was already facing severe headwinds last year due to heavy corporate indebtedness and a steep fall in demand for products both domestically and internationally, the Modi government delivered further shocks in the form of demonetisation and the imposition of the regressive nationwide GST (Goods and Services Tax), in November 2016 and July of this year, respectively see “India imposes regressive nationwide sales tax”).

The former not only paralyzed single-worker “businesses”—economic activities that numerous poor families undertake to eke out a living and which, according to official statistics, comprise some 41.97 million out of the country’s 52.85 million “enterprises.” Demonetisation also resulted in tens millions of workers in small businesses being thrown out of work, at least temporarily, since cash transactions are the mainstay of their commerce and indeed the Indian economy as a whole.

The GST resulted in chaos across the economy by severely contracting the working capital of small and medium enterprises. Most of these are not receiving timely payments for the goods and services they have supplied big corporations, because the two parties cannot reconcile their mutual tax obligations.

During the 2014 general election campaign, the BJP lambasted the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for “10-years of jobless growth” and promised jobs and development if given the people’s mandate.

However, according to the reports released by India’s Ministry of Labor and Employment, in the eight major economic sectors that it monitors the total number of new jobs created from June 2014 to December 2016, was just 624,000.

Even if one also includes the entirely fraudulent “job creation through setting up of new self-employment ventures/projects/micro enterprises” under the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), the total number of jobs created, according to a report in the Hindustan Times (HT), comes to a mere 1.51 million. This, as the HT report points out, represents a 39 percent decline from the 2.47 million jobs created during the previous three years.

The precarious conditions facing India’s workers and toilers, and that are now being exacerbated by the economic slowdown, were spelled out in a damning report released by the Indian brokerage firm Ambit Capital. It noted that while India’s annual per capita income is a miserable $1,850. For the poorest half of the population, some 660 million people, it is just $400. By contrast, the top 1 percent, amounting to 13 million persons, has an annual income of $53,700.

What is even more shocking is that in India, a country repeatedly touted by the world corporate press as an emerging economic giant, the per capita income of the poorest 50 percent is substantially lower than the per capita income of Afghanistan ($561), a country devastated by decades of US imperialist fomented wars, including the current 16-year American occupation.

A report released last month by India’s largest bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), bluntly warned that the sustained economic downturn is “technically not short-term in nature or even transient”—i.e., is not simply due to demonetisation and the GST, as Modi government spokespersons keep insisting in public.

The report called upon the government to boost economic activity through government spending such as by investing in infrastructure projects or by making cheaper credit available to small and medium-sized businesses.

“This situation demands that the government steps in and uses the fiscal policy as a tool to rev up the economy,” said the SBI report.

However, the Indian government’s financial capacity even under the best of circumstances is paltry, since at least 25 percent of the annual budget is from borrowed funds. In the current fiscal year, out of a budgeted expenditure of Rs. 21.5 trillion ($330 billion), borrowing comes to Rs. 5.5 trillion ($85 billion).

Alarmed by the dismal conditions facing the Indian economy, the Modi government, which has hitherto been praised for its pro-business orientation, is coming under severe criticism even from its big business supporters.

Particularly significant was the scathing opinion column Yashwant Sinha penned for the Indian Express. It accused Modi and his Finance Minister Arun Jaitley of having mismanaged the Indian economy: “A hard landing appears inevitable. Bluff and bluster is fine for the hustings, it evaporates in the face of reality.” Concluding, Sinha stated: “The prime minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working overtime to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters.”

Jaitley tartly dismissed Sinha’s criticism, calling him “a job applicant at 80 who has forgotten his own record.” He then noted that the “so-called economic slowdown” has not impacted direct tax collection, which he claimed has increased by 15.7 percent.

But Jaitley’s claims are contradicted by the heavy pressure the Modi government and big business, especially manufacturers, are exerting on the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), the country’s central bank, to cut the “Repo-rate”, which determines the interest rates on bank loans. By lowering the cost of business loans and mortgages, interest cuts would stimulate economic growth, they argue.

But the RBI at its latest Monetary Policy meeting last week, held the rate steady, citing a surge in consumer inflation and concern that an already sinking rupee would be hammered further, thus exacerbating the trade deficit and corporate dollar-denominated loan burden.

Indian businesses, including many of its largest enterprises, are already burdened by heavy debts and that is a major reason they have severely cut back on new investment. In addition, the whole banking sector faces a severe crisis due to more than $150 billion in “stressed assets,” that is non-performing and restructured loans.

British Clinical Commissioning Group to slash health services in Dorset

Ajanta Silva

Disregarding the wider opposition to slashing of health services in the southern English county of Dorset, the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has announced adamantly it will implement its initial proposals with only a few changes.

The heads of Dorset CCG took their decision at a meeting in Dorchester last month, as angry protesters demonstrated outside.

The CCG claim that their aim is to deliver sustainable and affordable “care closer to home.” The truth is that their main aim in attacking services is cutting a deficit which would amount to £158 million by 2021 and to encourage the private sector to step into the massive gaps in patient care created by slashing existing services in the county.

All three major hospitals in the county have already set up private patient care units and are encouraging those who have money and insurance to jump queues and access private treatment.

Earlier this year, under a Clinical Service Review (CSR), Dorset CCG unveiled their plans to overhaul National Health Service (NHS) facilities in the county. As part of this, they held a bogus, but obligatory, consultation.

This process is part of the Conservative government’s strategy to squeeze another £26 billion of “efficiency” savings from the NHS budget under their Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP). The STPs divide England health services into 44 regions to achieve this target and accelerate the privatisation of the NHS at the expense of patient care services.

As a result of the plan, Dorset’s population of 765,680 will lose St. Leonards, Alderney and Westhaven community hospitals and the Accident and Emergency unit and maternity unit in Poole General Hospital.

The Royal Bournemouth Hospital, situated in east Dorset, is to become the Major Emergency Hospital while Poole General Hospital will be turned into a major planned care hospital. The changes mean that many people in the Poole conurbation will face increased travel times to reach the emergency unit in Bournemouth.

The CCG claims that increased travel times are safe, without any evidence to substantiate their claim.

Many community hospitals, which function as patient rehabilitation units, and act as a buffer for the ongoing available beds crisis in acute hospitals, will be turned into hubs with or without beds. The consequences of the closure of community beds are enormous, as Tory-led fund cuts to local authorities are already having a crippling effect on social care.

The Kingfisher children care unit and the Accident and Emergency unit in Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, which faced being downsizing by the CSR proposal, have been reprieved. However, the CCG governing body is seeking to merge maternity and paediatric services in the hospital with the Yeovil District Hospital which operates under Somerset CCG.

Yet again, a fraudulent consultation—with evidence showing that any opposition to their unpopular plans will be disregarded—is being organised by Dorset CCG. It stated that the “proposed changes to services in either hospital would be subject to further local public consultation by both Dorset and Somerset CCGs as appropriate.”

Dorset CCG has decided to maintain a community hub with beds in Shaftesbury Hospital, which was earmarked for closure in the CSR. However, this is only “until a sustainable model for future services based on the health and care needs of this locality is established, possibly at a different site to the existing hospital.”

It proclaimed, “before making final decisions, the Governing Body considered recommendations and feedback from clinicians, the public and local organisations.”

This is a barefaced lie.

More than 75,000 people signed petitions against the CSR, with many thousands across the county participating in protest marches, meetings and gatherings held in Dorchester, Poole and Bournemouth. Many health workers, including clinicians, took part in the protests. Only a handful of well-paid or CCG-hired clinicians worked as mouthpieces of the CSR.

Many emergency consultants, acute medicine consultants, obstetricians and gynaecologists, gynaecological oncologists, senior midwives and consultant anaesthetists opposed the proposals.

In a written submission to the CCG consultation, emergency consultants and consultants in Acute Medicine at Poole Hospital pointed out that a single site model for emergency care “will create an emergency workload of patients that cannot be managed safely or efficiently.” They proposed to have the “two emergency departments in east Dorset [Poole and Bournemouth]” until the community services and primary care can reduce admissions by 25 percent.

During the public consultation held between December 2016 and February 2017, more than 18,500 people gave their views. The majority raised concerns about lengthy travel times between hospitals if they were to lose nearby hospitals.

The CCG’s slogan of delivering “care closer to home” is a fraud.

In January, the CCG disbanded the Bournemouth’s community palliative care services and redeployed the staff in busy district nursing services. In March, they withdrew the funds for community rehabilitation assistants employed by Bournemouth Borough Council, and who worked for Bournemouth Intermediate Care Service (BICS). This was run by the Dorset Health Care University NHS Foundation Trust.

From last month, functioning daytime hours of Intermediate Care Services were reduced by 1-2 hours, with the aim of cutting down enhancement payments of workers without increasing night services. Many vulnerable patients in the community who relied on the support from intermediate care services to go to bed, to prepare their evening meals or to have their medicines taken are left without care as a result. These services play a vital role in the community in avoiding hospital admissions, rehabilitation and in facilitating discharges from acute hospitals.

Even more attacks are being readied. In its separate Primary Care Commissioning Strategy, the Dorset CCG has devised a draconian plan to shut down two dozen GP surgeries across the county.

What is happening in Dorset is replicated nationally.

The combined deficit of NHS trusts in England has reached more than £2.5 billion as result of the lowest ever funding increase for the NHS over the last seven years. Many STPs are setting up their own plans to cut deficits at the expense of patient care and vital services. There are numerous reports on rationing of vital services by the CCGs across the country.

The scale of attacks on the NHS being imposed is highly detrimental to patient care and safety.

One in six of the UK’s 175 A&E (Accident and Emergency) units face closure or downgrade in the next four years.

Over the last period, 66 Accident and Emergency/Maternity units and 14,966 NHS beds have already closed. Nineteen more hospitals and 51 more NHS walk-in centres are to close.

Larger STPs are now turning themselves to Accountable Care Systems (ACS), which would allow commissioners and providers to bypass tendering and competition rules.

ACS or ACO (Accountable Care Organisations) are vehicles for accelerating the privatisation and introduction of an insurance-based system like in the US. Dorset is one of the first eight ACSs launched.

NHS England announced that “national bodies will provide these areas with more freedom to make decisions over how the health system in their area operates.”

Nottinghamshire and Nottingham STP, that aims to save £628 million by 2021, has already handed over a £2.7 million contract to private firm Capita to develop them into an ACS. Centene UK, which is part of the major US private healthcare insurer, Centene Corporation, has been given large part of the contract by Capita to draw up the plan for ACS.

This summer, NHS England chief Simon Stevens cynically claimed that ACSs would provide “better joined up services in place of what has often been a fragmented system that passes people from pillar to post.” But he did not explain how the NHS, which was named as the best value for money health system in the developed world by the Common Wealth Forum a few years ago, became fragmented.

NHS was deliberately starved of funds and fragmented as a critical means to achieve the ultimate aim of the ruling elite: to privatise the NHS and turn it into a profitmaking business.