China denies establishing military base in Afghanistan

Peter Symonds

An article in the South China Morning Post last week suggesting that China was establishing a military base in north-eastern Afghanistan provoked a flurry of articles in the US and international press inflating the Chinese military role. While the report was quickly denied by Kabul and Beijing, it is clear that Afghanistan is another key arena for intensifying geo-political rivalry between the major powers.

The article claimed that around 500 Chinese troops would be sent to a base in Afghanistan’s strategic Wakhan Corridor—a narrow sliver of inhospitable land between Tajikistan and Pakistan that also borders China. A source told the newspaper: “Construction on the base has started, and China will send at least one battalion of troops, along with weapons and equipment, to be stationed there and provide training to their Afghan counterparts.”

Beijing is seeking to crack down on Uyghur separatists from the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that reportedly have bases in Afghanistan, as well as Tajikistan, and prevent them crossing into China’s western Xinjiang region. Within Xinjiang, the Chinese regime is engaged in widespread repression against any expression of separatism among the Muslim Uyghur minority.

The article also noted a report in January by the Russian-based Ferghana News that China would finance a new military base in Badakhshan, which includes the Wakhan Corridor, after the Afghan and Chinese defence ministers agreed last year to collaborate in fighting terrorism.

The Afghanistan embassy in Beijing sent a fax to the South China Morning Post declaring that “there will be no Chinese military personnel of any kind on Afghan soil at any time.” It noted that China was assisting Afghanistan to set up a mountain brigade as part of counter-terrorism efforts in the country’s north. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also dismissed the report as “not true.”

Both Beijing and Kabul are well aware that the stationing of Chinese troops in Afghanistan, even on a limited basis, would provoke opposition from Washington and its allies, which have been engaged in a bloody military occupation of the country since 2001. Far from “fighting terrorism,” the US has sought to transform Afghanistan into a base of operations in Central Asia aimed against Russia and China.

A Chinese military base would also be opposed by India, which, under the aegis of its strategic partnership with the US, has sought to expand its influence in South Asia, including in Afghanistan. India regards Afghanistan as vital to strengthening its strategic position against regional rival Pakistan which has long borders with both India and Afghanistan. New Delhi also regards Beijing as a major adversary, as recent acute military tensions in the Dokham Plateau border area between the two countries have underscored.

Significantly, Andrew Cordesman, a US strategist closely tied to the military-intelligence apparatus, downplayed reports of a Chinese military base, saying only that “China does seem to have some role in a training facility or small base in the Wakhan Corridor.” His comment entitled “Are Russia and China sabotaging American policy in Afghanistan?” concluded that “Russian and Chinese roles in Afghanistan are much more driven by self-interest than hostility [to the US].”

China and Russia have both sought to find a way to end the protracted conflict in Afghanistan, concerned that it will destabilise Central Asia which they regard as their strategic backyard. A planned peace conference organised by Russia for September 4 was postponed at the last minute on a request by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

China is part of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States which is part of stalled efforts to end fighting in Afghanistan. The Financial Times reported today that China has met secretly with Afghan Taliban leaders several times over the past year in a bid to broker a peace.

China and Russia have also sought to involve Afghanistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation established in 2001 to counter US influence in Central Asia. Members include some of the Central Asian Republics as well as Pakistan and India since last year. Afghanistan has attended meetings of the organisation as an observer since 2012.

China has significantly boosted its ties with Afghanistan especially since 2012 as the US was winding back its troop numbers. Beijing feared not only greater instability in Afghanistan, but also in neighbouring Pakistan where China is engaged in the $67 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project linking China to the Pakistani port of Gwadar. It is a centrepiece of Beijing’s broader Belt and Road Initiative aimed at connecting the Eurasian landmass by sea and land.

A Diplomat article in June entitled “Is China bringing peace to Afghanistan?” explained: “In the 2002–13 period Beijing provided just $240 million in aid to Afghanistan. In 2014 alone China gave it $80 million in aid and pledged an additional $240 million over the next three years. In September 2017, China extended $90 million towards development projects in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province alone.

“China is Afghanistan’s biggest foreign investor now. It is interested mainly in resource extraction and infrastructure building. It has started extracting oil from the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan. In the telecommunications sector, China’s role has grown from supplying Afghanistan with telecom equipment in 2007 to the construction of fibre-optic links in 2017.”

Afghanistan has large mineral deposits that China needs for its huge manufacturing industries. In significant areas, however, investment plans have stalled. Chinese companies won a $3 billion contract to extract copper from the Mes Aynak mines in 2008, but little progress has been made due to continuing instability in the area.

The US, which retains some 15,000 troops in Afghanistan, certainly has no intention of securing Chinese investment in the country or encouraging a greater presence. The media reaction to an unsubstantiated report that China is establishing a small base in northern Afghanistan highlights the fact that Washington is determined retain its grip over the strategically-located country.

The hype about Chinese military expansion is being used as the pretext for the US to boost its presence throughout the Indo-Pacific region. China earlier this year opened its first external military base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa capable of hosting up to an estimated 10,000 troops. By contrast, the US has a world-wide network of hundreds of bases and basing agreements with well over 200,000 military personnel backed by warplanes, warships, armour and missile systems.

Mounting turmoil in emerging markets

Nick Beams

There are now clear indications that the plunge in the value of the Argentine peso and the Turkish lira in recent weeks is the most graphic expression of a developing “emerging markets” crisis with global implications.

Argentina remains in the eye of the storm as emergency measures, including the lifting of the bank rate to 60 percent, intervention by the International Monetary Fund and commitments to begin further austerity measures, have failed to halt the flight of capital.

The social consequences are immediately apparent. A major university study has reported that the already depleted buying power of the country’s retirees has fallen by at least 30 percent since President Mauricio Macri took power at the end of 2015, and is now down to where it was at the time of the collapse of the country’s economy in 2001. Further attacks are now being directed at ever-wider sections of the population in response to the latest collapse.

The fall in the Turkish lira has abated somewhat in the last few days. But it could resume at any time if the central bank does not take action to lift interest rates at its meeting next Thursday.

The currency turmoil is now spreading across the spectrum of emerging markets, with an index of equity markets for these countries down by more than 20 percent since January and entering bear market territory.

Yesterday, the Indonesian rupiah fell to close it its lowest level since the Asian financial crisis in 1998. The country’s share market suffered its worst day in two years, falling by 3.8 percent, while yields on government bonds rose to 8.49 percent, the highest since January 2016. Indonesia, which has been described as the nearest thing to Argentina and Turkey in the Asian region, has come under financial pressure because of its dollar indebtedness and its current account deficit.

In the Philippines, the peso fell to a 12-year low against the US dollar amid concerns over inflation and the impact of a strengthening US dollar.

The South African rand has fallen to its lowest level in two years following the release of data showing that the country had experienced two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the first half of the year. Output in sub-Saharan Africa’s most industrialised nation fell by 0.7 percent in the second quarter, following a 2.6 drop in the first three months of this year.

The Mexican peso has also come under pressure, not least because of uncertainty about the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

While there are particular issues in each of these countries, the currency falls are a product of the strengthening US dollar and the increase in interest rates, which is starting to suck capital back into American markets, creating dollar liquidity problems.

This is combined with the growth of uncertainty, especially for commodity-exporting countries, resulting from the escalation of trade war measures by the United States against China. The administration is set to announce plans for levying tariffs on a further $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, on top of the tariffs already imposed on $50 billion worth, possibly as early as this week.

As the Financial Times reported this week, analysts from the French financial firm Société Générale commented: “Can emerging markets turn the page and find their feet after the assault of August? Expectations are low, and more worryingly, if one looks at currencies like [the Australian dollar] or at European stocks, cracks are starting to appear in the G10 as concerns over trade and growth from tightening conditions in EM take their toll.”

This week, Bloomberg published a significant report by well-known financial analyst Satyajit Das warning of what he called a “textbook emerging market crisis,” in which large debts combine with a domestic credit bubble, uneconomic projects, financial speculation, the reliance on commodity exports and inadequate currency reserves.

Based on these criteria, he noted, “the number of emerging markets at risk extends well beyond Turkey and Argentina.”

The most striking indication of a developing crisis cited in his report was the escalation of debt. Total emerging market debt increased from $21 trillion (145 percent of gross domestic product) in 2007 to $63 trillion (210 percent of GDP) in 2017. The foreign currency debt of these countries has doubled in the same period to around $9 trillion, with China, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and some eastern European countries saddled with foreign currency debt between 20 and 50 percent of GDP.

He noted that EM borrowers in total needed to repay or refinance $1.5 trillion of foreign debt in 2019 and the same amount in 2020 and “many are not earning enough to meet those commitments.”

Combined with tightening global liquidity, resulting from interest rate rises in the US and tensions arising from trade conflicts, “weaknesses in the real economy and the financial system feed each other in a vicious cycle.”

While the situation is commonly described as an “emerging markets crisis,” this is something of a misnomer because its origins lie in the heart of the financial system not in its extremities.

In the years following the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, the US Federal Reserve, after bailing out the banks and finance houses, pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets, making available ultra-cheap money that facilitated the continuation of the speculation that had caused the crisis.

With interest rates in the US and other major economies at historic lows, money from banks and investment funds poured into emerging markets, where rates were higher. Now this money is being pulled back into the US as interest rates there start to rise.

This takes place under conditions where the potential volatility of the global financial system has risen to new heights in the ten years since the financial crisis as a result of the rapid increase in the use of computer trading, accelerating the speed with which massive funds can move in an out of markets.

The business channel CNBC this week reported an analysis conducted by Marko Kolanovic, one of JPMorgan Chase’s leading financial analysts, warning that a new financial crisis could take the form of “flash crashes” such as the 1,600-point intraday drop on Wall Street in February.

So far, such turmoil has occurred under conditions of economic expansion in the US, but the “new market” has not been tested amid a recession. Under such conditions, there could be a rush to sell, removing liquidity and leading to a cascading decline in prices.

“Suddenly, every pension fund in the US is severely underfunded, retail investors panic and sell, while individuals stop spending,” he said.

Pointing to the social and political consequences, he concluded: “The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968.”

The turmoil in emerging markets and its connection to the major banks and investment houses is a sure indication that none of the contradictions of the global financial system that exploded in 2008 has been overcome. In fact, the policies of the major capitalist government and central banks have only created a new series of financial power kegs.

TÜBİTAK International Fellowships for Graduate Research in Turkey 2019

Application Deadline: 5th October, 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Recognized Universities in Turkey

Eligible Fields of Study: Natural Sciences, Engineering and Technological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities

About the Award: The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) grants fellowships for international highly qualified PhD students and young post-doctoral researchers to pursue their research in Turkey in the fields above. The program aims to promote Turkey’s scientific and technological collaboration with countries of the prospective researchers. Preference will be given to candidates who demonstrate the potential to contribute significantly to Turkey’s goal of international cooperation in scientific and technological development.

Type: Fellowship, Research

Eligibility: 

1. Candidates should be non-Turkish citizens. Applicants who hold dual citizenship with Turkey are   not eligible to apply.
2. Candidates should have an invitation from the universities or research institutes in Turkey.
3. Candidates should certify that they have sufficient command of language to perform their research.
4. Candidates must be 35 years old or younger.
5. Candidates should be enrolled in a program in abroad for PhD students.
6. Candidates who hold a PhD degree in Turkey should have a GPA minimum of 3.50/4.00 in PhD program.

Selection Criteria: All successfully submitted applications are listed and prepared for scientific evaluation after the prior selection. The proposal will be evaluated according to the following 4 evaluation criteria:

1. Research potential of the fellow
2. Scientific and technological quality of the research proposal
3. Impact of the proposed fellowship to the applicant’s training and career development to  the hosting institution and to Turkey
4. Implementation of the proposed research

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: The scholarship will consist of a monthly stipend, tuition fee, travel costs and health insurance.

Duration of Fellowship: Maximum duration for the fellowship is 12 months.

How to Apply: All applications must be submitted electronically via TÜBİTAK scholarship application portal by 5th October, 2018
It is important to visit the Fellowshsip webpage (see link below) to access the online application form and for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Turkey Government

Mankind Must Know: The UNO and Global Leaders are a Menace to Peace and Problem-Solving

Mahboob A. Khawaja

“….Human nature is at least in part wicked and in part foolish, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly? ….Men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. They think on occasion that it is necessary and wise and honourable, for war is not the work of bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but of good men passionately convinced that they are right.” (C.E.M Joad. Guide to Modern Wickedness, 1936).

To Understand the Failure of Global Organizations and Leadership

The global humanity is continuously oppressed, manipulated and victimized by the weapons of mass destruction – from thoughts to all kind of weaponry.  Global peace, conflict management and security are neglected by those who were responsible for its protection and maintenance. Everything thinkable appears to be falling into dereliction and much wanton destruction to be reported as non-living statistic. The UNO Secretary General and most global leaders are entrapped lacking reasoned persuasion and activism to make peace and usher global harmony. They operate in a vicious circle of making statements, tweets and speculative wishful overtures as if the whole mankind was inept and inattentive to the catastrophic challenges of the day.

Good judgments seek honesty of purpose, courage and rational thinking. When the leaders talk about the emerging conflicts and human tragedies, they pretend as if none had ever happened before. As if they never opened the pages of history. History offers lessons to all generations all the time. Human perpetuated tyranny according to late Professor Howard Zenn is “tyranny.” Insanity has no alternative rationale. Look how the UNO leadership and most global politicians witness transgression, forcible displacement and killings of millions and millions across Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Libya, Myanmar (Burma) and now Yemen but do nothing except the fake UN-SC resolutions and dubious statements of crimes against humanity. The victimized mankind shares a sense of disarray and loss of being part of the global humanity. A view from afar only asserts conspicuous example of inhumanity flourishing everywhere and seeing the proliferation of anarchy, violations of basic human rights and dignity and use of chemical weapons, and civilian massacres but nobody questions why this now after the Two World Wars? Typical “Right Men” of the 21st century are unchallenged for torture, killing of the innocents, war crimes and genocide. The UNO Fact-finding Mission released the findings after 700,000 Rohingas were forcibly evicted from their homes; 20,000 men, women and children massacred and 10,000 women raped by the Myanmar armies. Would the Myanmar Generals be prosecuted during the lifetime of the victims? Almost 3 million civilians were killed by the US-British forces in Iraq. Nobody called it genocide by Bush and Blair. Both are free and enjoying life. Several Millions have been displaced and killed in Syria – who will punish the authoritarian tyranny and insanity?

The UNO, global leaders and related organizations are all international as the humanity fast transforming to One World reality living on One Planet with inseparable identities and relationship to the Nature of Things. The organizations and leaders should have been vigilant to “safeguard the mankind from the scourge of war.” The global political affairs are not managed by rational people, with rational thinking, doing the rational practices for the interests of global citizenry. The 1% global elite – men of king operate the international institutions – the perverted insanity lacking basic understanding of the Human Nature and of the working of the splendid Universe in which we enjoy coherent co-existence.  The mankind continues to be run down by the cancerous ego and cruelty of the few Western leaders and institutions like NATO and NORAD. Most global leaders represent cruel mindset incapable to see the human side of the living conscience. Madness of the perpetuated war on terrorism and its triggered insanity knows no bound across the global spectrum. Under the false pretext of terrorism, Western allies along with Arab leaders bombed and destroyed the ancient culture and people of the Arab world. Animals do not commit massacre of their kind and species, nor set-up rape camps for the war victims, the Western led wars against the humanity have and continue to do so at an unparallel  global scale without being challenged by any global organizations or leaders. Torture and massacres of innocent civilians are convenient fun games to be defined as “collateral damage” and a statistic. Perhaps, they view humanity just in digits and numbers, not as the living entities with social, moral, spiritual and intellectual values and progressive agendas for change and development. Einstein (“The World as I see it”), made it known that he was against military campaigns, killings and destruction of the natural environment: “This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!.”

Lesson of History cannot be Ignored

In his internationally acclaimed classic work, Professor John W. Drapper (A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, NY Harper Brothers, 1864), of the University of New York portrayed the human development process as “man is being treated as an individual” and not an embodiment of collective transformation leading past immersion into making of the present – and the present unfolding the future.   Global humanity is a helpless victim in a world divided for socio-economic and political hegemonic controls by the few egoistic political entities.  There are no conscientious leaders accountable to the interests of the global mankind. Ironically, with time and opportunities on their side, politically recognized leading powers at the UN Security Council forum failed to usher a new era of change and peaceful co-existence. If the human developmental progress is viewed in an historical mirror, Professor Drapper makes a candid observation: “that it is a history of the progress of ideas and opinions from a point of view heretofore almost entirely neglected.” All political actors claim to be working for the mankind. Yet, few could relate themselves to the people if a reality check is applied by critical analysts. One cannot glorify the insanity of the past – the Two World Wars which consumed untold planned bloodbath and countless pains and sufferings of the global mankind.  The question is how to eject from the sadistic past unto a promising future?

Mankind Looks to People of New  Ideas, Visions and Responsible Leadership

Mankind is constantly victimized by the willful deceit of triumphalism of the few who used extreme rhetoric of peace and harmony but deliver nothing except self-serving fantasies and neglect of prevalent truth. They embrace dishonesty of purpose by wasting time and opportunities that could have been used for positive developments to change the distorted scene of the global politics. Reason makes no difference to their immature mindset and their human conscience is filled with follies of political manipulation and exploitation of the humanity.  The essence of global peace and harmony lies in collective thinking and unity of the global mankind.

Bombs and wars kill people – the living human beings, destroy humanity by enforcing barbarism and cruelty, practically denying all prospects of peace and co-existence. Traditional wars were aimed at annihilation of political and economic enemies but the 21st century conflicts are ready-made recipes not only to eliminate the mankind but also the environment in which human beings survive and the Planet Earth that sustains life. Wars appear to be the outcome of sinister minds, devilish individual plans and monstrous scheme of things against the very humanity of which these people are a living part. Like always, few cynical and mentally imbalanced people plan and wage wars against others, not mindful of the dreadful end results of their intrigues and conspiracies against life, human rights and dignity and futuristic possibilities of human survival on the planet.

Global Warlords are haunting the mankind because wars are a racketeering enterprise. Most superpowers are engaged in selling weaponry to the Middle East dictators and warlords. History will judge them by their actions, not by their claims. You cannot change a society with law and order dictum. When a problem is misunderstood, its diagnostic approach will be wrong. An out of the official box approach to understand the problem is urgently needed. The major news media corporations in North America and Western Europe are aligned to the establishments and tainted with biased coverage as they get paid via ads and secret dealings. None of this is helpful to foster change and societal advancement for a peaceful future.  The mankind looks for change in strategic thinking and actions. “In the name of “System Change, Not Climate Change”, points out Paul Street (“For Intelligent Civilizations on Earth”) “we can rescue and preserve humanity and livable ecology through mass resistance and a revolutionary transformation that takes us beyond the world’s unelected and interrelated dictatorships of money, profit, empire, and eco-cide.”

Aggressive thinking is propagated, echo of peace is silenced. Global peace requires Men of New Ideas, new Thinking and New Visions. In a political culture much charged by conscious intransigence of the few, America and European are fearful of the unknown and have no vision for peace and co-existence either in the region or in a global context. NATO will go anywhere anytime under fair or foul pretexts. It has no accountability to anybody anywhere. Peace and security are not one sided pursuits nor can be experimented in a lab. There are many who could do a better and more productive leadership in the current global affairs. The Western leaders must embrace Russia on equal terms to envisage a new world of peace and harmony.  Russia is no longer a former USSR but a changing landscape of reason and responsibility and gradually moving forward for a representative system of public governance. If that was not the case, how could Trump and Putin have met and strike an accord. Accords are based on mutual respect and understanding. America and Russia both need to change their policies and practices for a coherent future. Both desperately need to be proactive, culturally conscientious and intellectual unbiased leaders who should see the bigger picture of futuristic world – a different world of tomorrow of peace and co-existence rather than perpetuated animosity and extreme naïve belligerent behaviors, leaders who will serve the people and could learn to make a navigational change and adaptability to the making of a promising future for all the mankind. Mankind needs morally, spiritually and intellectually responsible leadership. All absolute rulers and leaders tried to run down the mankind as if it was a number- a digit and non-living statistic. But all of them fell in disgrace destroying their own nations and empires.

Iran, sanctions and moral authority

Ron Forthofer

For over two decades, US neo-cons have been pushing for an attack on Iran on the pretext that it was developing nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been a key player in this effort, exerting as much pressure as he and the Israeli lobby can for an US attack. Netanyahu also often threatens that Israel might attack Iran. Note these are the same people who pushed for the illegal US attack on Iraq based on the bogus claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Fortunately, the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program. This finding undercut President George W. Bush’s campaign for an attack. Furthermore, this NIE conclusion opened the door for diplomacy.

In 2015, President Obama, despite intense opposition by Netanyahu and many of his ardent supporters in Congress, committed the US to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This deal among Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US was designed to prevent the creation of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Key to achieving this goal was the intrusive monitoring of Iranian facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even many former Israeli military and intelligence officials supported this agreement. All the nations involved in the JCPOA, including the US, agree with the IAEA that Iran is fully complying with the accord.

However, in May 2018 President Trump violated the agreement by withdrawing the US and re-implementing harsh US sanctions against Iran. This violation did tremendous damage to US credibility and made future negotiations more difficult since the US clearly cannot be trusted to honor its commitments.

Following Trump’s decision, the other participants initially said they would still honor their word. However, since then, the US has been attempting to coerce Britain, France and Germany as well as other nations to go along with the sanctions by threatening them with the choice between trade with Iran or with the US. The goals of these sanctions, economic warfare, seem to be the destruction of the Iranian economy that will inflict sufficient hardship on the Iranian people and lead to the overthrow of their government. Dream on.

In addition, Secretary of State Pompeo recently announced the formation of the Iran Action Group to coordinate US policy towards Iran. Its focus is on the 12 unrealistic demands Pompeo made of Iran in his speech in May. That speech was not diplomacy but, essentially, a demand for Iran to surrender its sovereignty. If these sanctions, economic warfare, don’t work, there’s always the military option.

It appears as if the Trump administration did not learn anything from the disaster President George W. Bush created in Iraq and it subsequently spread to the entire Middle East. Trump is following the same script that the Bush administration used and is risking creating an even larger catastrophe than Iraq possibly leading to a confrontation with Russia.

Unfortunately, the US has a long record of imposing sanction on other nations. It claims that it uses sanctions to support democracy and human rights or in fighting terrorism. These stated reasons are often simply a palliative cover for advancing the interests of US banks and other corporations. Despite what a propagandized US public believes, an examination of the US record of human rights violations and war crimes shows that the US lacks the moral legitimacy to judge any other nation.

For example, the US was founded based on two original sins – the genocide of American Indians and slavery of Blacks. Both these groups were and still are denied fair and just treatment. In the international arena, the US has overthrown or supported the overthrow of governments in this hemisphere and elsewhere. A few better known examples of the many, many US staged or supported coups are Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, and Ukraine in 2014. Two major US war crimes can be included — millions killed in and the devastation of Vietnam and Iraq.

In addition, the US is the country: 1) most widely viewed as a threat to world peace in 2013; 2) that besides using torture carries out assassinations by drones; and 3) that is a long-term violator of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That the US thinks it has the moral credibility to judge other nations demonstrates its incredible hubris. Shamefully other Western nations go along with this insanity.

Pornography is America’s misguided ghoul

Saad Mohammad

The conjugal act—the act of sexual intercourse—bring humanity into existence and sets in motion the next generations of society. Healthy societies maintain their stability by channeling the sexual energies of young adults into marriage, an institution that legitimizes sexual intercourse, protects the children that are the fruit of intercourse, and channels the giving and receiving of sexual pleasure in a way that builds up rather than tears down society.

After the introduction of internet, the Porn industry had a very ill effect on the sex life, marriage and relationships among people, especially youth. Today, it is believed the online porn sector is worth $15 billion, and it reaches more people, younger people, every year. In 2016 the analytical repot of just one site, PornHub, revealed that its videos were watched 92 billion times last year, by 64 million daily visitors. It works out at 12.5 videos for every person on the planet, and if you tried watch all of them consecutively – don’t – you’d be busy for 524,641 years.

Society at large is not immune to the effect of pornography. Men who habitually look at pornography have a higher tolerance for abnormal sexual behaviors, sexual aggression, promiscuity, and even rape. In addition, men begin to view women and even children as “sex objects,” commodities or instruments for their pleasure, not as persons with their own inherent dignity. The addictive aspect of pornography has a biological substrate, with dopamine hormone release acting as one of the mechanisms for forming the transmission pathway to pleasure centers of the brain. It is traditionally characterized by an uncontrolled urge, often resulting in loss of control. Children and teen are capable of developing compulsive sexual behaviors, which can lead to sexual addiction. Failure to resist the urge to view pornographic images, despite the negative effects the behavior has on social or recreational functioning, is a sign of impairment.In 2014, a Cambridge University study found that pornography triggers brain activity in sex addicts in the same way drugs trigger drug addicts.Also, the increased sexual permissiveness engendered by pornography increases the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease or of being an unwitting parent in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The aggression and violence towards women found in much of today’s popular porn can teach boys and young men that it is socially acceptable to behave aggressively towards and demean women. It also portrays people and sexual relationships that do not accurately reflect how real people look and act in intimate relationships.

Pornography also affects people’s emotional lives. Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their marital sexual relations and less emotionally attached to their wives.Husbands report loving their spouses less after long periods of looking at (and desiring) women depicted in pornography.Women married to men with a pornography addiction report feelings of betrayal, mistrust, and anger.The distress level in wives may be so high as to require clinical treatment for trauma, not mere discomfort. These men assign increased importance to sexual relations without emotional involvement, and consequently, wives experience decreased intimacy from their husbands.Heavy exposure to pornography leads men to judge their mates as sexually less attractive, resulting in less satisfaction with their affection, physical appearance, and sexual behavior.The need for more intense sexual stimulation brought on by pornography can lead to boredom in normal relationships and a greater likelihood of seeking sexual pleasure outside of marriage. Pornography use leads to marital dissatisfaction, infidelity, separation, and divorce. In the best study to date (a very rudimentary opportunity study of reports by divorce lawyers on the most salient factors present in the divorce cases they handled), 68 percent of divorce cases involved one party meeting a new paramour over the Internet, 56 percent involved “one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites,” 47 percent involved “spending excessive time on the computer,” and 33 percent involved spending excessive time in chat rooms (a commonly sexualized forum).

Pornography leads to distorted perceptions of social reality: an exaggerated perception of the level of sexual activity in the general population, an inflated estimate of the incidence of premarital and extramarital sexual activity, as well as increased assessment of male and female promiscuity, an overestimation of almost all sexual activities performed by sexually active adults and an overestimation of the general prevalence of perversions such as group sex, bestiality, and sadomasochistic activity, sexual contact with animals, engaging in anal intercourse, and trivializing nonviolent forms of the sexual abuse of children.In the site’s ranking of the most popular search terms, ‘lesbian’ once again conquered all, while ‘step mom’ gained the second spot from ‘MILF’ and ‘teen’ for the first time.

Since male use pornography much more frequently than females, exposure to sexual and even semi-sexual material from the Internet, magazines, and television is associated with stronger notions that women are sex objects or sexual commodities. Men thus exposed are more likely to describe women in overtly sexual terms, rather than by other personal attributes.Pornographic films also degrade women through “rape myth acceptance” scenes, which depict women being raped and ultimately enjoying the experience. These scenes foster the belief that women really “want” to be raped. Women who watch pornography regularly unwillingly engage in a form of self-degradation: they develop a negative body image about themselves because they do not measure up to the depictions in the pornographic materials. They compare their own bodies to those of the women in porn.

“An entire generation is growing up believingthat what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex,” — Cindy Gallop, said in her 2009 TED talk on the matter. “Because the porn industry is driven by men, funded by men, managed by men, directed by men and targeted at men, porn tends to present one world view: that is the way it is.”

Pornography viewing and sexual offense is inextricably linked. One study of convicted Internet sexual offenders reported that they spent more than eleven hours per week viewing pornographic images of children on the Internet. Another study compared two groups of offenders: those convicted of Internet collection and distribution of child pornography images, and those who commit real life child sex abuse. The results showed that a majority of those who were convicted of only Internet-based offenses also had committed real life sexual abuse of children. Moreover the study also found that real life offenders had committed an average of over thirteen different child sex abuse offenses, irrespective of whether they had formally been convicted of any real life incident.Another study examined the beliefs of three groups: real life, “contact-only” child sex offenders, Internet-only child sex offenders, and mixed offenders (contact and Internet). While all groups were more likely to minimize the gravity of their offense, the Internet-only group was more likely than the contact-only group to think that children could make their own decisions on sexual involvement and to believe that some children wanted, even eagerly,wanted sexual activity with an adult.

In 2016, NHS experts noted an increase in erectile dysfunction in otherwise healthy young men, and thought excessive porn use was the most likely factor to play. “These young men do not have organic disease [so] one of the first assessment question I’d always ask now is about pornography and masturbatory habit, because that can be the cause of their issues about maintaining an erection with a partner,” psychosexual therapist Angela Gregory told the BBC.

Conclusion
Contemporary society is alarmingly sexualized, and the traditional sexual taboos of a well-functioning society have broken down. Society benefits when it fosters a healthy sexuality.Human beings are healthiest and happiest when they are monogamous (only one sexual partner in a lifetime), and that happiness is directly related to monogamy’s long-term stability and exclusivity. The cultural censure of disordered sexuality that enables stable family life has faded with the proliferation of Internet pornography.

The key to militating against these damaging patterns and to protecting against the effects of pornography is to foster relationships of affection and attachment in family. The first and most important relationship is between the father and the mother. The second is engaged parents who love their children. In today’s technological society, this means limiting, monitoring, and directing their children’s Internet use. This, in turn, provides an invaluable shield against Internet pornography, and allows room for a healthy sexuality to unfold in a natural and socially supported way. In our over-sexualized culture, with a longer pre-marriage period, children need the capacity for abstinence if their sexuality is to be channeled into stable marriage, procreation, and healthy family life for their children. Strong families remain the best defense against the negative effects of pornography.

Finally, the fundamental role of government (including the courts) is to protect innocent citizens, most especially children and adolescents, and to protect the sound functioning of the basic institutions of family, school, marketplace, and government. They are all interdependent. Pornography, clearly, undermines both marriage and the family, and has a host of ill effects. It is time for government to reassess its laissez-faire attitude towards the proliferation of pornography, especially on the Internet.Our present and future families need protection from this insidious enemy of love, affection, and of family and social stability.

What Lies Beneath: The US-Israeli Plot to ‘Save’ Gaza

Ramzy Baroud

Israel wants to change the rules of the game entirely. With unconditional support from the Trump Administration, Tel Aviv sees a golden opportunity to redefine what has, for decades, constituted the legal and political foundation for the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’

While US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has, thus far, been erratic and unpredictable, his administration’s ‘vision’ in Israel and Palestine is systematic and unswerving. This consistency seems to be part of a larger vision aimed at liberating the ‘conflict’ from the confines of international law and even the old US-sponsored ‘peace process.’  

Indeed, the new strategy has, so far, targeted the status of East Jerusalem as an Occupied Palestinian city, and the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees. It aims to create a new reality in which Israel achieves its strategic goals while the rights of Palestinians are limited to mere humanitarian issues.

Unsurprisingly, Israel and the US are using the division between Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, to their advantage. Fatah dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah while Hamas controls besieged Gaza.

A carrot and a stick scenario is being applied in earnest. While, for years, Fatah received numerous financial and political perks from Washington, Hamas subsisted in isolation under a permanent siege and protracted state of war. It seems that the Trump Administration – under the auspices of Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner – are turning the tables.

The reason that the PA is no longer the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership it used to be in Washington’s ever self-serving agenda is that Mahmoud Abbas has decided to boycott Washington in response to the latter’s recognition of all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. True, Abbas’ subservience has been successfully tested in the past but, under the new administration, the US demands complete ‘respect’, thus total obedience.

Hamas, which is locked in Gaza between sealed borders from every direction, has been engaging Israel indirectly through Egyptian and Qatari mediation. That engagement has, so far, resulted in a short-term truce, while a long-term truce is still being discussed.

The latest development on that front was the visit by Kushner, accompanied with Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, to Qatar on August 22. There, Gaza was the main topic on the agenda.

So, why is Gaza, which has been isolated (even by the PA itself) suddenly the new gate through which top US, Israeli and regional officials are using to reactivate Middle East diplomacy?

Ironically, Gaza is being particularly suffocated these days. The entire Gaza Strip is sinking deeper in its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, with August being one of the most grueling months.

A series of US financial aid cuts has targeted the very socio-economic infrastructure that allowed Gaza to carry on, despite extreme poverty and the ongoing economic blockade.

On August 31, Foreign Policy magazine reported that the US administration is in the process of denying the UN Palestinian refugees agency, UNRWA – which has already suffered massive US cuts since January – of all funds. Now the organization’s future is in serious peril.

The worrying news came only one week after another announcement, in which the US decided to cut nearly all aid allocated to Palestinians this year – $200 million, mostly funds spent on development projects in the West Bank and humanitarian aid to Gaza.

So why would the US manufacture a major humanitarian crisis in Gaza – which suits the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu well – while, simultaneously, engaging in discussions regarding the urgent need to end Gaza’s humanitarian woes?  

The answer lies in the need for the US to manipulate aid to Palestinians in order to exact political concessions for Israel’s sake.

Months before rounds of Egyptian-sponsored indirect talks began between Israel and Hamas, there has been an unmistakable shift in Israeli and U.S. attitudes regarding the future of Gaza:

On January 31, Israel presented to a high-level conference in Brussels ‘humanitarian assistance plans’ for Gaza at a proposed cost of $1 billion. The plan focuses mostly on water distillation, electricity, gas infrastructure and upgrading the joint industrial zone at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. In essence, the Israeli plan is now the core discussion pertaining to the proposed long-term ceasefire.

The meeting was attended by Greenblatt, along with Kushner who is entrusted with implementing Trump’s unclear vision, inappropriately termed ‘the deal of the century.’

Two months later, Kushner hosted top officials from 19 countries to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Clearly, there is a common thread between all of these activities.

Since the US decided to defy international law and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last December, it has been in search of a new strategy that will circumvent the PA in Ramallah.

PA President, Abbas, whose political apparatus is largely reliant on ‘security coordination’ with Israel, US political validation and financial handouts, has little with which to bargain.

Hamas has relatively greater political capital – as it has operated with less dependency on the Israeli-US-western camp. But years of relentless siege, interrupted by massive deadly Israeli wars, have propelled Gaza into a permanent humanitarian crisis.

While a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian groups in Gaza went into effect on August 15, a long-term truce is still being negotiated. According to the Israeli daily ‘Haaretz’, citing Israeli officials, the truce would include a comprehensive ceasefire, opening all border crossings, expansion of the permitted fishing area off the Gaza coast, and the overhauling of Gaza’s destroyed economic infrastructure – among other stipulations.

Concurrently, Palestinian officials in Ramallah are fuming. ‘Chief negotiator,’ Saeb Erekat, accused Hamas of trying to “destroy the Palestinian national project,” by negotiating a separate agreement with Israel. The irony is that the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA have done just that for over 25 years.

However, delinking the future of Gaza from the future of all Palestinians can, indeed, lead to dangerous consequences.

Regardless of whether a permanent truce is achieved between Israel and the Hamas-led Gaza factions, the sad truth is that, whatever grand illusion is harbored by Washington and Tel Aviv at the moment, is almost entirely based on exploiting Palestinian divisions, for which the Palestinian leadership is to be wholly blamed.

Severe drought hits large regions of Australia

Frank Gaglioti

Last month the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) declared the entire state in drought or drought-affected. The prolonged dry period is enhancing bushfire risk considerably, and will prolong the fire season to an unprecedented extent. Government indifference has exacerbated the plight of many farmers and rural communities that are reeling under the dry conditions.

The DPI announcement stated that the entire state of NSW, consisting of 810 thousand square kilometres, is suffering the drought, which extends into parts of Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. NSW is the worst affected, with outback communities such as Coonabarabran, Broken Hill, Orange and Dubbo experiencing the driest 18-month period since 1900, when records began.

NSW authorities estimate that 23 percent of the state is experiencing “intense drought,” 38.2 percent is in “drought” and 38.7 percent is drought-affected. Last month some districts had no rain at all, or as little as 10 millimetres, following a dry autumnal season and the failure of winter rains.

Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) meteorologist Jane Golding said that every part of NSW usually received rain through the winter months of June, July and August. However, she added, “this year we haven’t really seen either of those, and last year as well we didn’t really see too much of either of those rain bearing systems making their way into NSW. It is unusually dry and also unusually warm, which exacerbates the problems, so the warm temperatures dry out the soils even more.”

The impact in rural areas is particularly severe, with some communities in danger of completely running out of water.

Ian Woodcock, the mayor of Walgett Shire in the far north of NSW, said: “This area has always been good cropping country… But right now it’s the driest it’s ever been. Roads are like talcum powder.”

Farmers are being forced to reduce their stocking of sheep and cattle, as local fodder supplies are drying up and interstate carted fodder is becoming prohibitively expensive.

“I’d say it’s (fodder) as close to exhausted as I ever want to see,” said the managing director of Feed Central,Tim Ford. He also said that feed prices had “skyrocketed” and would be “all but spent” in the next few weeks.

Farmers cannot afford to pay workers, causing severe hardship in rural towns.

“The farmers are struggling. But their workers are also struggling. If the farms aren’t getting crops in and off, they’re not having the money to pay their workers,” school principal Vivienne Fouracre from Bellata in north central NSW, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The severe conditions facing farmers will have a devastating impact on mental health. A study Drought-related stress among farmers: findings from the Australian Rural Health Study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia in July, analysed data during 2007 to 2013, including the Millennium Drought of 1997 to 2010. Considered the worst in recorded history, this drought was particularly severe in the country’s south east and south west, where most of the population lives.

The study stated that an “association between suicide in rural areas and drought, socio-economic hardship, and financial strain among farmers have been reported.”

“Young people in rural communities are a vulnerable group with regard to mental health. It has been reported that unemployed young people in rural and remote NSW were 12 times as likely to experience distress as employed people of the same age,” it reported.

Margo Wollaston, the wife of a cattle farmer from Condobolin said: “I find droughts a little bit like cancer. It sort of eats away at you, and it gets drier and drier and more severe and more severe, and impacting on your life a lot worse. I do try to keep the house and the garden clean and green because that keeps your head in the right space at night time.”

In Sydney, the NSW state capital, and home to 4 million, water catchments have water levels already lower than during the millennial drought. The situation is likely to worsen, as the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts continued dry conditions for the next three months.

The initial response of the NSW Liberal government was to downplay the seriousness of the drought. It issued drought maps in July, showing severely affected areas as “in drought onset” and only modified the maps after angry criticism from farmers on drought ravished properties.

At the end of July, the NSW government announced an extra $500 million, doubling the drought relief package, which includes freight subsidies for fodder. Such subsidies, however, usually increase the costs of both freight and fodder. Government taxes are being waived and a $150 million NSW’s Farm Innovation Fund will be used to help farmers become more “drought efficient.” Such subsidies do little for struggling farmers who are spending increasing amounts trying to keep their stock alive.

The former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull toured drought areas in August, promising to fast track $1 billion in low interest loans over the next four years. However, this included only $250 million of new money. Such loans will drive farmers further into debt and towards bankruptcy.

Limited additional payments were made available through the Farm Household Allowance—the equivalent of an unemployment allowance. According to the ABC, the government pledged a further $12,000 for couples, after the outcry from farmers at the pitiful amounts available.

Once again, a military figure has been brought in to run the civilian disaster relief. The government appointed Major General Stephen Day, who was involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as national drought coordinator.

On August 27, new Prime Minister Scott Morrison toured drought-ravaged south west Queensland, just days after he was installed in an inner party coup. The trip was a cynical bid to raise his political profile and shore up support for the government.

The increasingly dry conditions and relatively high temperatures have exacerbated the risk of bushfires, even though winter has just ended. At the end of July, there were 525 bushfires burning across Australia, forcing authorities to bring forward the start of the bushfire season to the beginning of August instead of October.

“We’ve had next to no rain in some parts of the state for quite a long time. It means we could be in for a very, very bad summer,” a spokesperson for the NSW Rural Fire Service, James Morris, said.

Australia is an extremely dry continent and has been historically prone to drought. Complex factors causing drought, such as El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, involve warming ocean temperatures, that indicate reduced rainfall in Australia. Climate scientists are forecasting they are moving in the spring towards a drying pattern.

A report Climate Change and Drought, published by the Climate Council in June, highlighted the relationship of global warming to drought conditions. It stated that “since the 1970s late autumn and early winter rainfall has decreased by 15 percent in southeast Australia, and Western Australia’s southwest has experienced a 15 percent decline in cool season rainfall.”

The report predicts that rainfall will reduce considerably and temperatures will increase if “greenhouse gas emissions are not cut deeply and rapidly.”

Successive governments, Labour and Liberal, have done nothing to cut greenhouse gases. Over the past three years, carbon emissions have increased, with 2017 reaching a new record high.

The lack of any significant steps towards reducing emissions, like the failure to provide adequate support for drought affected communities, is the product of capitalism, in which profit is the overriding priority, rather than pressing social needs.

Argentine government announces “emergency” measures to face deepening recession and growing unrest

Andrea Lobo

As the interlaced economic, political and social crises in Argentina deepen amid fears of “social upheavals,” President Mauricio Macri announced “emergency” measures and negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to halt seemingly unstoppable capital flight.

In a televised address to the nation Monday, he appealed to “the world to support us” and sought to wash his hands of all responsibility by pinning the blame on the ongoing drought, the policies of the last government and the trade war between the US and China.

Macri lamented that “for two years the market had also supported us” and threatened that “poverty will increase.” He then blamed all “Argentines…not capable of showing unity of compromise in implementing the structural reforms”—that is, workers for actively opposing hundreds of thousands of layoffs and draconian social austerity.

Macri promised to cut to zero the 2019 primary deficit from a previous target of 1.3 percent of GDP by accelerating the previously adopted austerity package, while axing half of his cabinet, the equivalent of 10 full ministries, including Labor and Health, and imposing a new tax of four pesos per dollar on agricultural exports.

The Argentine peso fell 4.3 percent against the dollar after Macri’s speech and further on Tuesday, surpassing a 30 percent drop during the last month. The raising of the interest rate from 45 to 60 percent last week and the promise of barebones austerity Monday have not halted the precipitous decline.

This week, Argentine Finance Minister Nicolás Dujovne is holding meetings with IMF chief Christine Lagarde. The economy is in such a brittle state that the Central Bank president, Luis Caputo, decided to cancel his trip to Washington, D.C., to monitor the peso from Buenos Aires. On Tuesday, Macri spoke on the phone with US President Donald Trump to discuss the IMF negotiations, with Trump claiming to “strongly encourage and support his engagement.”

The context of the talks with the IMF was summarized by Bloomberg on Monday: “Macri is in a pinch to please investors by cutting spending, while ensuring that the belt-tightening austerity doesn’t cause social upheaval ahead of next year’s election.”

For six years, the administrations of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri have faced the deepening global economic crisis—and a public-sector debt accumulated since the 1980s—through austerity, ballooning interest rates to attract financial capital at the expense of industry and cuts in social spending. Since late April, these conditions have burst into a hemophilic loss of capital and a precipitous fall in the value of the peso, with all accumulated consequences being placed on the shoulders of the working class.

There are parallels with the 1998-2001 crisis, when investments virtually ran out for the IMF regime of privatizations and social austerity imposed by the Peronist administration of Carlos Menem largely due to the Brazilian and Russian financial crises. Subsequent pro-finance policies under Kirchner and Macri have turned Argentina into the tip of the iceberg of a vast economic and political nightmare for ruling elites all across Latin America, where the external debt has increased more than 80 percent since 2009, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

With well over a third of Argentines living below the poverty line and a decrepit state of health care, education and social infrastructure, the country has also boasted the fastest growing cohort of US-dollar millionaires. The US, European and Argentine financial oligarchies fear that Argentina could become the Western Hemisphere’s Tunisia and trigger an “American Spring” of popular unrest that could spread across the continent and beyond.

Such fears and the desperate gestures of the Macri administration have alienated financial investors, who are demanding greater guarantees that social opposition to parasitism and austerity will be decidedly crushed.

An important example is Ukraine, where sharp austerity by the far-right Poroshenko regime has not satisfied the banks, and the IMF has refused to grant more than $8.7 billion of a $17.5 billion potential loan. In Argentina, the IMF has only given $15 billion from a $50 billion package agreed to in June. Media reports indicate that Macri’s team is requesting that Lagarde release another $29 billion disbursement this week.

The Ministry of Economy announced Monday that it expects a 42 percent inflation rate—the highest since 1990—and a 2.4 percent economic decline for 2018, along with 25 percent inflation and no growth next year. Meanwhile, the government has set a wage increase limit of 20 to 25 percent, condemning workers to intolerable pressures.

Looting of supermarkets has spread across the country this week. A few hours after Macri’s speech, a 13-year-old boy was shot dead as squads of heavily armed police sought to disperse a group of rock-throwing youth attempting to sack a store in the northeastern city of Sáenz Peña. Several other children were seriously injured, heralding a bloody escalation in the state efforts to repress social unrest after the government approved in July a plan to deploy the army for domestic operations.

In neighborhoods throughout Buenos Aires, Córdoba and other cities, workers and youth organized Monday night on social media to take to the streets and bang pots and chant against the Macri administration. The last two years have seen intermittent, regional walk-outs, massive marches of teachers and other workers, three national strikes, and university and factory occupations as workers and students struggle to find a way to oppose Macri’s attacks.

Facing this seething anger, the government has relied on the Peronist-led trade unions to suppress social opposition with symbolic strikes and empty appeals for wage negotiations or paritarias. The pseudo-left Left Front (FIT), which claims to be “anti-capitalist,” leads an increasing number of trade unions, and includes several legislators at the local and federal levels, has in turn played a key role channeling mounting opposition behind the pro-capitalist and anti-worker trade unions and Peronism.

Macri concluded his speech arguing that Argentina deserves more than “a collection of scandalous notebooks,” referring to the corruption case known as “Notebook-gate,” which has become the front line of the government’s political offensive against ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is leading the polls ahead of the 2019 elections.

Kirchner’s vice-president, Amado Boudou, was sentenced last month to six years in prison in a different corruption case, while the “Notebook-gate” scandal that began on August 1 has already involved 26 arrests, 17 plea bargains, 70 raids and 52 subpoenas. Kirchner has herself appeared twice in court and has had her apartments searched. This case is based on eight diaries written by a chauffeur of a former top official under Kirchner’s Ministry of Federal Planning, including details on numerous pick-ups and deliveries of bags with millions of dollars in alleged kickbacks, even to the residences of the Kirchners.

The enormous corruption network revealed is increasingly weighing down on the political and economic crisis of the Macri administration. The stock prices of major companies connected to the scandal have fallen, while Macri’s cousin and other figures who have continued doing business with the current government and the Macri family are among the alleged bribers.

This has pushed the Peronist factions led by Senator Miguel Angel Pichetto and former presidential candidate Sergio Massa further away from Kirchnerism. However, Fernández de Kirchner has responded by approaching Hugo and Pablo Moyano, who lead the Truckers’ Union, as well as a large faction of the main trade-union central CGT, and the Multisector F21 movement (MF21). The Moyanos have described these talks “as a first step after many years of distance from Cristina to explore the possibility of unifying Peronism to come back to power.”

The MF21 has won the support of large sectors of the CGT and CTA confederations and constitutes a cynical effort to give a progressive face to Kirchnerism in order to regain control over the trade union bureaucracy and win the 2019 presidential elections. Their “National program,” approved on August 16, demands freezing all sackings, increasing real salaries for public employees, cutting the working day without reducing wages, “taxing the capitalists,” “reviewing the debt” while not adopting austerity policies, subjecting all new loans to popular referendums, and nationalizing all commodity trade and the banks.

In an interview after Macri’s speech, the former FIT presidential candidate of the Morenoite Socialist Workers Party (PTS), Nicolás del Caño, repeated a set of almost identical populist demands, while promoting the illusion that the right-wing Peronist bureaucrats would fight for them.