American Dream, Revisited

Pepe Escobar

Will Trump pull a Brexit times ten? What would it take, beyond WikiLeaks, to bring the Clinton (cash) machine down? Will Hillary win and then declare WWIII against her Russia/Iran/Syria “axis of evil”? Will the Middle East totally explode? Will the pivot to Asia totally implode? Will China be ruling the world by 2025?

Amidst so many frenetic fragments of geopolitical reality precariously shored against our ruins, the temptation is irresistible to hark back to the late, great, deconstructionist master Jean Baudrillard. During the post-mod 1980s it was hip to be Baudrillardian to the core; his America, originally published in France in 1986, should still be read today as the definitive metaphysical/geological/cultural Instagram of Exceptionalistan.

By the late 1990s, at the end of the millennium, two years before 9/11 – that seminal “before and after” event – Baudrillard was already stressing how we live in a black market maze. Now, it’s a black market paroxysm.

Global multitudes are subjected to a black market of work – as in the deregulation of the official market; a black market of unemployment; a black market of financial speculation; a black market of misery and poverty; a black market of sex (as in prostitution); a black market of information (as in espionage and shadow wars); a black market of weapons; and even a black market of thinking.

Way beyond the late 20th century, in the 2010s what the West praises as “liberal democracy” – actually a neoliberal diktat – has virtually absorbed every ideological divergence, while leaving behind a heap of differences floating in some sort of trompe l’oeil effect. What’s left is a widespread, noxious condition; the pre-emptive prohibition of any critical thought, which has no way to express itself other than becoming clandestine (or finding the right internet niche).

Baudrillard already knew that the concept of “alter” – killed by conviviality – does not exist in the official market. So an “alter” black market also sprung up, co-opted by traffickers; that’s, for instance, the realm of racism, nativism and other forms of exclusion. Baudrillard already identified how a “contraband alter”, expressed by sects and every form of nationalism (nowadays, think about the spectrum between jihadism and extreme-right wing political parties) was bound to become more virulent in a society that is desperately intolerant, obsessed with regimentation, and totally homogenized.

There could be so much exhilaration inbuilt in life lived in a bewildering chimera cocktail of cultures, signs, differences and “values”; but then came the coupling of thinking with its exact IT replica – artificial intelligence, playing with the line of demarcation between human and non-human in the domain of thought.

The result, previewed by Baudrillard, was the secretion of a parapolitical society – with a sort of mafia controlling this secret form of generalized corruption (think the financial Masters of the Universe). Power is unable to fight this mafia – and that would be, on top of it, hypocritical, because the mafia itself emanates from power.

The end result is that what really matters today, anywhere, mostly tends to happen outside all official circuits; like in a social black market.

Is there any information “truth”?

Baudrillard showed how political economy is a massive machine, producing value, producing signs of wealth, but not wealth itself. The whole media/information system – still ruled by America – is a massive machine producing events as signs; exchangeable value in the universal market of ideology, the star system and catastrophism.

This abstraction of information works as in the economy – disgorging a coded material, deciphered in advance, and negotiable in terms of models, as much as the economy disgorges products negotiable in terms of price and value.

Since all merchandise, thanks to this abstraction of value, is exchangeable, then every event (or non-event) is also exchangeable, all replacing one another in the cultural market of information.

And that takes us to where we live now; Trans-History, and Trans-Politics – where events have really not happened, as they get lost in the vacuum of information (as much as the economy gets lost in the vacuum of speculation).

Thus this quintessential Baudrillard insight; if we consider History as a movie – and that’s what it is now – then the “truth” of information is no more than post-production synch, dubbing and subtitles.

Still, as we all keep an intense desire for devouring events, there is immense disappointment as well, because the content of information is desperately inferior to the means of broadcasting them. Call it a pathetic, universal contagion; people don’t know what to do about their sadness or enthusiasm – in parallel to our societies becoming theaters of the absurd where nothing has consequences.

No acts, deeds, crimes (the 2008 financial crisis), political events (the WikiLeaks emails showing virtually no distinction between the “nonprofit” Clinton cash machine, what’s private and what’s public, the obsessive pursuit of personal wealth, and the affairs of the state)
seem to have real consequences.

Immunity, impunity, corruption, speculation – we veer towards a state of zero responsibility (think Goldman Sachs). So, automatically, we yearn for an event of maximum consequence, a “fatal” event to repair that scandalous non-equivalence. Like a symbolic re-equilibrium of the scales of destiny.

So we dream of an amazing event – Trump winning the election? Hillary declaring WWIII? – that would free us from the tyranny of meaning and the constraint of always searching for the equivalence between effects and causes.

Shadowing the world

Just like Baudrillard, I got to see “deep” America in the 1980s and 1990s by driving across America.

So sooner or later one develops a metaphysical relationship with that ubiquitous warning, “Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear.”

But what if they may also be further than they appear?

The contemporary instant event/celebrity culture deluge of images upon us; does it get us closer to a so-called “real” world that is in fact very far away from us? Or does it in fact keep the world at a distance – creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence of objects and the virtual danger they represent?

In parallel, we keep slouching towards a single future language – the language of algorithms, as designed across the Wall Street/Silicon Valley axis – that would represent a real anthropological catastrophe, just like the globalist/New World Order dream of One Thought and One Culture.

Languages are multiple and singular – by definition. If there were a single language, words would become univocal, regulating themselves in an autopilot of meaning. There would be no interplay – as in artificial languages there’s no interplay. Language would be just the meek appendix of a unified reality – the negative destiny of a languidly unified human species.

That’s where the American “dream” seems to be heading. It’s time to take the next exit ramp.

The US Threatens Irish Neutrality

Conn Hallinan

“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”

–Proclamation of Easter Week 1916

Controlling their own destiny has always been a bit of a preoccupation for the Irish, in large part because for 735 years someone else was in charge. From the Norman invasion in 1169 to the establishment of the Free State in 1922, Ireland’s political and economic life was not its own to determine. Its young men were shipped off to fight England’s colonial battles half a world away, at Isandlwana, Dum Dum, Omdurman and Kut. Almost 50,000 died in World War I, choking on gas at Ypres, clinging desperately to a beachhead at Gallipoli, or marching into German machine guns at the Somme.

When the Irish finally cast off their colonial yoke, they pledged never again to be cannon fodder in other nation’s wars, a pledge that has now been undermined by the U.S. Once again, a powerful nation—with the acquiescence of the Dublin government—has put the Irish in harm’s way.

The flashpoint for this is Shannon Airport, located in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast. Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on Washington and New York, some 2.5 million U.S. troops have passed through the airport on their way to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The Shannon hub has become so important to the U.S. that it hosts a permanent U.S. staff officer to direct traffic. It is, in the words of the peace organization Shannonwatch, “a US forward operating base.”

The airport has also been tied to dozens of CIA “rendition” flights, where prisoners seized in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were shipped to various “black sites” in Europe, Asia, and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Irish peace activists and members of the Irish parliament, or Oireachtas Elreann, charge that an agreement between the Irish government and Washington to allow the transiting of troops and aircraft through Shannon not only violates Irish neutrality it violates international law.

“The logistical support for the U.S. military and CIA at Shannon is a contravention of Ireland’s neutrality,” says John Lannon of the peace group Shannonwatch, and has “contributed to death, torture, starvation, forced displacement and a range of other human rights abuses.”

Ireland is not a member of NATO, and it is considered officially neutral. But “neutral” in Ireland can be a slippery term. The government claims that Ireland is “militarily neutral”—it doesn’t belong to any military alliances—but not “politically neutral.”

But the term militarily neutral “does not exist in international law,” says Karen Devine, an expert on neutrality at the City of Dublin’s School of Law & Government. “The decision to aid belligerents in war is…incompatible with Article 2 of the Fifth Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land.” Devine argues that “the Irish government’s decision to permit the transit of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers through Shannon Airport on their way to the Iraq War in 2003 violated international law on neutrality and set it apart from European neutrals who refused such permission.”

Article 2 of the Convention states, “Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or convoys of either munitions or war supplies across the territory of a neutral power.”

Ireland has not ratified the Hague Convention but according to British international law expert Iain Scobbie, the country is still bound by international law because Article 29 of the Irish Constitution states, “Ireland accepts the generally recognized principle of international law as its rule of conduct in relations with other states.”

The UN Security Council did not endorse the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, making both conflicts technically illegal. Then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said that the invasions “were not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter’s point of view,” the invasions were “illegal.”

Shannonwatch’s Lannon says the agreement also violates the 1952 Air Navigation Foreign Military Aircraft Order that requires that “aircraft must be unarmed, carry no arms, ammunition and explosives, and must not engage in intelligence gathering and that the flights in question must not form part of a military exercises or operations.”

The Dublin government claims all US aircraft adhere to the 1952 order, although it refuses to inspect aircraft or allow any independent inspection. According to retired Irish Army Captain Tom Clonan, the Irish Times security analyst, the soldiers are armed but leave their weapons on board the transports—generally Hercules C-130s—while they stretch their legs after the long cross Atlantic flight. Airport employees have also seen soldiers with their weapons.

The Irish government also says that it has been assured that no rendition flights have flown through Shannon, but Shannonwatch activists have tracked flights in and out of the airport. As for “assurances,” Washington “assured” the British government that no rendition flights used British airports, but in 2008 then Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament that such flights did use the United Kingdom controlled island of Diego Garcia.

Investigative journalist’s Mark Danner’s book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War chronicles the grotesque nature of some of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques inflicted on those prisoners. The rendition program violated the 1987 UN Convention Against Torture, which Ireland is a party to.

Roslyn Fuller, Dublin-based scholar and author of Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning And Lost Its Way, says terror suspects were taken to sites where “in an appalling re-run of the Spanish Inquisition tactics, [they were] routinely tortured and mistreated in an attempt to obtain confessions and other information.”

Fuller points out that Article 11 of the Hague Convention requires that troops belonging to a “belligerent” army must be interned. “In other words, any country that would like to call itself neutral is obligated to prevent warring parties from moving troops though its territory and to gently scoop up anyone attempting to contravene this principle.”

Besides violating international law, Ireland is harvesting “the bitter fruits of the Iraq and Afghan wars” and NATO’s military intervention in Libya, charges MP Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit Party and chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement. “The grotesque images of children and families washed up on Europe’s shores, desperate refugees, risking and losing their lives,” he says, “are the direct result of disastrous wars waged by the US, the UK and other major western powers over the last 12 years.”

The Irish government, says Barrett, has “colluded with war crimes and actions for which we are now witnessing the most terrible consequences.”

The government has waived all traffic control costs on military flights, costing Dublin about $45 million from 2003 to 2015. Ireland is currently running one of the highest per capita debts in Europe and has applied austerity measures that have reduced pensions and severely cut social services, health programs and education. Other neutral European countries, like Finland, Austria and Switzerland charge the US military fees for using their airspace.

Shannon might also make Ireland collateral damage in the war on terror, according to the Irish Times’ Clonan. Irish citizens are now seen as a “hostile party,” and British Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary has named Shannon a “legitimate target,” according to Irish journalist Danielle Ryan.

The Dublin government has generally avoided open discussion of the issue, and when it comes up, ministers tend to get evasive. In response to the charge that Shannon hosted rendition flights, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said, “If anyone has evidence of any of these flights please give me a call and I will have it investigated.” But even though Amnesty International produced flights logs for 50 rendition landings at Shannon, the government did nothing. Investigations by the Council on Europe and European Parliament also confirmed rendition flights through Shannon.

Peace activists charge that attempts to raise the issue in the Irish parliament have met with a combination of stonewalling and half-truths. Apparently kissing the Blarney Stone is not just for tourists.

The government’s position finds little support among the electorate. Depending on how the questions are asked, polls indicate that between 55 and 58 percent of the Irish oppose allowing US transports to land at Shannon, and between 57 to 76 percent want to add a neutrality clause to the constitution.

The “forward base” status of Shannon puts the west of Ireland in the crosshairs in the event of a war with Russia. While that might seem far-fetched, in 2015 NATO held 14 military maneuvers directed at Russia, and relations between NATO, the US and Moscow are at their lowest point since the height of the Cold War.

Of course Ireland is not alone in putting itself in harm’s way. The US has more than 800 bases worldwide, bases that might well be targeted in a nuclear war with China or Russia. Local populations have little say over the construction of these bases, but they would be the first casualties in a conflict.

For centuries Ireland was colonialism’s laboratory. The policies used to enchain its people—religious division and ethnic hatred— were tested out and then shipped off to India, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Guyana, and Irish soldiers populate colonial graveyards on all four continents, now, once again, Ireland has been drawn into a conflict that is has no stake in.

Not that the Irish have taken this lying down. Scores of activists have invaded Shannon to block military flights and, on occasion, to attack aircraft with axes and hammers. “Pit stop of death” was one slogan peace demonstrators painted on a hanger at the airport.

That resistance harkens back to the 1916 Easter Rebellion’s proclamation that ends with the words that ring as true today as they did a century ago: “In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valor and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.”

How Putin Derailed the West

Mike Whitney

“Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

— Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era”, 1971

“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria….not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”

— Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Third Presidential Debate

Why is Hillary Clinton so eager to intensify US involvement in Syria when US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have all gone so terribly wrong?

The answer to this question is simple. It’s because Clinton doesn’t think that these interventions went wrong. And neither do any of the other members of the US foreign policy establishment. (aka–The Borg). In fact, in their eyes these wars have been a rousing success. Sure, a few have been critical of the public relations backlash from the nonexistent WMD in Iraq, (or the logistical errors, like disbanding the Iraqi Army) but–for the most part– the foreign policy establishment is satisfied with its efforts to destabilize the region and remove leaders that refuse to follow Washington’s diktats.

This is hard for ordinary people to understand. They can’t grasp why elite powerbrokers would want to transform functioning, stable countries into uninhabitable wastelands overrun by armed extremists, sectarian death squads and foreign-born terrorists. Nor can they understand what has been gained by Washington’s 15 year-long rampage across the Middle East and Central Asia that has turned a vast swathe of strategic territory into a terrorist breeding grounds? What is the purpose of all this?

First, we have to acknowledge that the decimation and de facto balkanization of these countries is part of a plan. If it wasn’t part of a plan, than the decision-makers would change the policy. But they haven’t changed the policy. The policy is the same. The fact that the US is using foreign-born jihadists to pursue regime change in Syria as opposed to US troops in Iraq, is not a fundamental change in the policy. The ultimate goal is still the decimation of the state and the elimination of the existing government. This same rule applies to Libya and Afghanistan both of which have been plunged into chaos by Washington’s actions.

But why? What is gained by destroying these countries and generating so much suffering and death?

Here’s what I think:  I think Washington is involved in a grand project to remake the world in a way that better meets the needs of its elite constituents, the international banks and multinational corporations. Brzezinski not only refers to this in the opening quote, he also explains what is taking place: The nation-state is being jettisoned as the foundation upon which the global order rests. Instead, Washington is  erasing borders, liquidating states, and removing strong, secular leaders that can mount resistance to its machinations in order to impose an entirely new model on the region, a new world order. The people who run these elite institutions want to create an interconnected-global free trade zone overseen by the proconsuls of Big Capital, in other words, a global Eurozone that precludes the required state institutions (like a centralized treasury, mutual debt, federal transfers) that would allow the borderless entity to function properly.

Deep state powerbrokers who set policy behind the smokescreen of our bought-and-paid-for congress think that one world government is an achievable goal provided they control the world’s energy supplies, the world’s reserve currency and become the dominant player in this century’s most populous and prosperous region, Asia. This is essentially what Hillary’s “pivot” to Asia is all about.

The basic problem with Washington’s NWO plan is that a growing number of powerful countries are still attached to the old world order and are now prepared to defend it. This is what’s really going on in Syria, the improbable alliance of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have stopped the US military juggernaut dead in its tracks. The unstoppable force has hit the immovable object and the immovable object has prevailed…so far.

Naturally, the foreign policy establishment is upset about these new developments, and for good reason. The US has run the world for quite a while now, so the rolling back of US policy in Syria is as much a surprise as it is a threat. The Russian Airforce deployed to Syria a full year ago in September, but only recently has Washington shown that it’s prepared to respond by increasing its support of its jihadists agents on the ground and by mounting an attack on ISIS in the eastern part of the country, Raqqa. But the real escalation is expected to take place when Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017. That’s when the US will directly engage Russia militarily, assuming that their tit-for-tat encounters will be contained within Syria’s borders.  It’s a risky plan, but it’s the next logical step in this bloody fiasco. Neither party wants a nuclear war, but Washington believes that doing nothing is tantamount to backing down, therefore, Hillary and her neocon advisors can be counted on to up the ante. “No-fly zone”, anyone?

The assumption is that eventually, and with enough pressure, Putin will throw in the towel. But this is another miscalculation. Putin is not in Syria because he wants to be nor is he there because he values his friendship with Syrian President Bashar al Assad. That’s not it at all. Putin is in Syria because he has no choice. Russia’s national security is at stake. If Washington’s strategy of deploying terrorists to topple Assad succeeds, then the same ploy will be attempted in Iran and Russia. Putin knows this, just like he knows that the scourge of foreign-backed terrorism can decimate entire regions like Chechnya. He knows that it’s better for him to kill these extremists in Aleppo than it will be in Moscow. So he can’t back down, that’s not an option.

But, by the same token, he can compromise, in other words, his goals and the goals of Assad do not perfectly coincide. For example, he could very well make territorial concessions to the US for the sake of peace that Assad might not support.

But why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he continue to fight until every inch of Syria’s sovereign territory is recovered?

Because it’s not in Russia’s national interest to do so, that’s why. Putin has never tried to conceal the fact that he’s in Syria to protect Russia’s national security. That’s his main objective.  But he’s not an idealist, he’s a pragmatist who’ll do whatever he has to to end the war ASAP. That means compromise.

This doesn’t matter to the Washington warlords….yet. But it will eventually. Eventually there will be an accommodation of some sort. No one is going to get everything they want, that much is certain. For example, it’s impossible to imagine that Putin would launch a war on Turkey to recover the territory that Turkish troops now occupy in N Syria. In fact, Putin may have already conceded as much to Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan in their recent meetings. But that doesn’t mean that Putin doesn’t have his red lines. He does.  Aleppo is a red line. Turkish troops will not be allowed to enter Aleppo.

The western corridor, the industrial and population centers are all red lines. On these, there will be no compromise. Putin will help Assad remain in power and keep the country largely intact. But will Turkey control sections in the north, and will the US control sections in the east?

Probably. This will have to be worked out in negotiations, but its unlikely that the country’s borders will be the same as they were before the war broke out. Putin will undoubtedly settle for a halfloaf provided the fighting ends and security is restored. In any event, he’s not going to hang around until the last dog is hung.

Unfortunately, we’re a long way from any settlement in Syria, mainly because Washington is nowhere near accepting the fact that its project to rule the world has been derailed. That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? The bigshots who run the country are still in denial. It hasn’t sunk in yet that the war is lost and that their nutty jihadist-militia plan has failed.

It’s going to take a long time before Washington gets the message that the world is no longer its oyster. The sooner they figure it out, the better it’ll be for everyone.

The Danger Of War From A Declining Hegemon

Chandra Muzaffar

Is a war in the making — a third world war?

If there is much talk about such a possibility, it is mainly because of the tensions between the United States and Russia. Tensions between the two most powerful nuclear states in the world have never been this high since the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.

There are at least two flash points, one more dangerous than the other. In Eastern Ukraine, Russian backed rebels will not surrender to the US supported regime in Kiev because they see US control over Ukraine as part of a much larger agenda to expand NATO power to the very borders of Russia. This has been happening for some years now.

But it is the Washington-Moscow confrontation in Alepo, Syria which portends to a huge conflagration. The US is protective of major militant groups such as Al-Nusra which has besieged Eastern Allepo  and is seeking to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. Washington has also set its sight on ‘regime change’ in Damascus ever since the latter’s determined resistance to Israeli occupation of the strategic Golan Heights in Syria from 1967 onwards. The drive for regime change intensified with the US-Israeli quest for a “new Middle East” following the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. It became more pronounced in 2009 when Bashar al-Assad rejected a proposal to allow a gas pipe-line from Qatar to Europe to pass through his country, a pipe-line which would have reduced Europe’s dependence upon Russia for gas. Russia of course has been a long-standing ally of Syria. Together with Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, it is helping the Syrian government to break the siege of Eastern Allepo and to defeat militants in other parts of Syria.

It is obvious that in both instances, in Ukraine and Syria, the US has not been able to achieve what it wants. The US has also been stymied in Southeast Asia where its attempt to re-assert its power through its 2010 ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy has suffered a serious setback as a result of the decision of the new president  of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to pursue an independent foreign policy that no longer adheres blindly to US interests. At the same time, China continues to expand and enhance its economic strength in Asia and the world through its One Belt One Road (OBOR) projects and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and via its leadership of BRICS. China’s regional and global economic role is leading to its pronounced presence in security and military matters. As a result of all this, the US’s imperial power has clearly diminished. It is a hegemon in decline.

It is because it is not prepared to accept its decline that some US generals are threatening to demonstrate US’s military might.If a hegemon is a danger to humankind when it is at its pinnacle, it becomes an even greater threat to peace when its power is diminishing. Like a wounded tiger, it becomes even more furious and ferocious. A new US president may be inclined to give vent to this frustration through an arrogant display of military power.

How can we check such wanton arrogance?  There will be elements in the elite stratum of US society itself who would be opposed to the US going to war. We saw a bit of this in 2013 when those who were itching to launch military strikes against Syria based upon dubious “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons were thwarted by others with a saner view of the consequences of war. It is also important to observe that none of the US’s major allies in Europe wants a war. Burdened by severe challenges related to the economy and migration, the governments know that their citizens will reject any move towards war either on the borders of Russia or in Syria and West Asia.

This also suggests that a self-absorbed European citizenry may not have the enthusiasm to mobilise against an imminent war. Let us not forget that it was in European cities from London to Berlin that the biggest demonstrations against the war in Iraq took place in 2003. Anti-war protests will have to be initiated elsewhere this time.

Governments in Moscow and Beijing, in Tehran and Jakarta, in Pretoria and La Paz, should come out openly against war. They should encourage other governments in the Global South and the Global North to denounce any move towards a war that will engulf the whole of humanity. Citizens all over the world should condemn war through a variety of strategies ranging from signature campaigns and letters to the media to public rallies and street demonstrations.

In this campaign against an imminent war, the media, both conventional and alternative, will have a huge role to play. It is unfortunate that well-known media outlets in the West have supported war in the past. It is time that they atone for their sins!

Australian poultry firm Baiada to close Victorian plant

Will Morrow

Australian poultry giant Baiada announced on October 17 that it will end production at its Laverton plant in Melbourne on March 13, destroying more than 100 jobs. Half the workforce is to be laid off two months before the shutdown.

Baiada’s managing director, Simon Camilleri, the multi-millionaire grandson of Celestino Baiada, who founded the company during World War II, declared that “market conditions” meant “we could no longer viably operate the Laverton processing facility.” Baiada will concentrate processing at its three New South Wales plants in Beresfield, Tamworth and Hanwood.

The National Union of Workers (NUW), which covers processing and distribution employees, is collaborating with Baiada to try to ensure an “orderly closure” by suppressing any struggle against the restructuring. Camilleri said Baiada will “work closely” with the union, which was evidently forewarned of the restructure, to supposedly help the workers find other employment.

The NUW announced it would do nothing to oppose the shutdown. Spokesman Alex Snowball said the decision was “absolutely devastating” and “really sad news,” according to an October 25 article by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Snowball promoted Baiada’s worthless pledge to help laid-off workers find new jobs, claiming “there is time to do something to assist these workers.”

In reality, many employees are migrants from Africa and Southeast Asia who speak limited English. A number of them have worked at the factory for decades. They will have difficulty finding any new work under conditions of a wholesale destruction of jobs throughout the auto and other manufacturing industries.

Baiada’s restructure is aimed at boosting profits in response to intense competition, in line with the demands of finance capital for ever-greater exploitation of the working class.

The poultry market, which generates around $7 billion annually, is dominated by the duopoly of Baiada and rival Inghams, who respectively contribute 33 and 40 percent of chicken meat nationally. Their business models are “vertically integrated,” extending from hatcheries all the way to final meat processing and packaging.

Inghams was purchased by private equity firm TPG for $880 million in 2013. Last August, TPG approached investors with plans to list on the Australian stock exchange. Banks and hedge funds behind the float include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Bank and UBS. TPG simultaneously announced “Project Accelerate,” a restructuring program to slash the conditions of its more than 9,000 employees in Australia and New Zealand, saving up to $200 million.

Excerpts published by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) on August 29 stated that “under-utilised facilities” would be “rationalised,” and “labour savings” found via “automation of manual processes in primary and further processing plants.” Labour contracts would be re-negotiated with “a rebalancing mix of full-time, part-time and casual employees to increase flexibility.” On June 8, Inghams announced it would shut its plant in Cardiff, New South Wales, wiping out 199 full-time jobs and 160 casual positions.

Explaining its market evaluation for Inghams, Macquarie Bank cited “strong volume growth and benefits from Ingham’s cost cut and efficiency program (Project Accelerate)” as “key drivers.”

Baiada, which, according to its web site, employs 2,200 workers nationally and generated revenue of around $1.5 billion in 2014, has responded with its own restructuring program. The Laverton closure has been planned for months. Last July, Baiada applied for local council approval to develop its Hanwood facility, in order to double production to 2.8 million chickens per week. The company also operates plants at Osborne Park, in Perth, Western Australia, at Mareeba and Ipswich in Queensland, and in Adelaide.

In assisting the restructure, the NUW is continuing its role as a labour police force, tasked with suppressing opposition among workers to conditions of exploitation that recall scenes from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle.

In 2011, workers at Baiada’s Laverton plant conducted a courageous 13-day strike for improved conditions. More than 40 percent of the 430 workers then employed were casuals or employed indirectly through a maze of subcontractors. Many were international students with limited English, who reported being paid $10 an hour, cash-in-hand. A year earlier, Indian student Sarel Singh was decapitated by a fast-moving poultry line that he was ordered to clean. His co-workers later said they were told to take down Singh’s corpse and restart the line within two hours.

The strikers faced brutal attacks from the company and the state. Police escorted strike-breakers into the plant and assaulted picketers, with one worker hospitalised.

The NUW isolated and wore down the strikers, refusing to mobilise any support from the thousands of meatworkers across Victoria and nationally. Instead, the union organised bogus “community pickets,” involving a handful of union officials and joined by members of a host of pseudo-left parties, including Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity.

Within two weeks, the NUW shut down the strike, signing an “in-principle” agreement for a miserly 4 percent wage rise over three years—approximately the level of inflation. The NUW lied by telling workers it won a guarantee that contractors employed for six months would be hired permanently. In fact, the same clause was in the previous agreement and was simply treated as a dead letter. The NUW’s sole concern was to gain access to membership dues from the hundreds of contract workers. The agreement included a new clause giving the union access to contract workers’ contact details, increasing its potential dues base.

One worker still at Laverton told the World Socialist Web Site that after the strike Baiada carried out several waves of layoffs totalling hundreds of job cuts over three years. The sackings have brought the number employed at the plant to just over 100 today. The NUW worked with Baiada to stifle any opposition among workers to the layoffs.

The union relied on the services of the pseudo-left parties, which hailed the betrayal in 2011 as a “victory” and an example of a supposed resurgence of militant trade unionism. Socialist Alternative wrote on July 8, 2015, that the strike showed “the kind of fight that is needed.”

Far from being an aberration, similarly appalling conditions have been documented across Baiada’s operations nationally. Following a “Four Corners” ABC report in 2013, a government report into conditions at Baiada’s three New South Wales plants found thousands of immigrant workers, mainly from Taiwan and Hong Kong, employed through a web of sham contracting arrangements, paid less than the minimum wage and working shifts of up to 19 hours. Workers reported being forced to live in company houses, with rent deducted from their pay by labour hire contractors. One house in Beresfield was being used to accommodate 21 Baiada workers.

To oppose the latest restructuring drive, Baiada workers require new organisations of struggle, including rank-and-file factory committees, entirely independent of the trade unions, to carry forward an industrial and political fight. These committees should appeal for support from other Baiada workers nationally, and from processing workers at Inghams and elsewhere who face similar attacks.

Such a struggle must be based on an understanding of the political forces that workers confront. The demands of the global financial firms underscore that in every industry, workers face not just a single employer, but an entire economic system—capitalism—which is driving to eliminate what little remains of the social gains won by workers in struggle throughout the 20th century.

The defence of the most basic conditions for the working class today requires a political struggle for a workers’ government, which would place the major industrial and financial firms under public ownership, and reorganise economic life on the basis of social need, rather than private profit. We urge workers who agree with the need for such a fight to contact the Socialist Equality Party.

New Zealand pseudo-lefts hold protests to denounce Russia

John Braddock

New Zealand’s three main pseudo-left groups—Socialist Aotearoa (SA), Fightback and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO)—held protests in Auckland and Wellington last Saturday to denounce the actions of Russia in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The rallies, which included representatives from the Unite union, Amnesty International, the Green Party, Peace Action Wellington and several refugee groups, numbered about 40 people in each city.

The protests were organised in conjunction with Syrian Solidarity NZ, a group that is vociferously opposed to the Assad regime and its ally Russia, blaming them—not the United States—for the destruction and carnage in Syria. Syrian Solidarity has repeatedly demanded military intervention by the UN and the US in support of anti-Assad militias.

Syrian Solidarity alleged in a press release that “8 out of 9 civilian deaths have been caused by Russian Bombings.” It claimed that Russia is “clearly in contravention of international law” and demanded an end to Moscow’s support for Assad. The group explicitly condemned a “wave of uncritical anti-Americanism,” adding that the “Syrian cause would have been much better served if the US did not create the perception that they support the popular uprising.”

In fact, the war is a direct product of US interventions in the region, utilising Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias, first in Libya and then in Syria, as proxy forces in wars for regime change. Behind the demonisation of Russia over Aleppo, Washington is preparing a major escalation, not only of the US-led intervention in Syria, but of its reckless confrontation with Russia.

The protests were a calculated attempt by the pseudo-left outfits to whip up support for Washington’s agenda. They were held just two days after NATO defence ministers finalised plans to deploy 4,000 combat troops adjacent to Russia’s border in Eastern Europe, the largest such military escalation since the height of the Cold War.

The Wellington protest was held outside the Russian embassy, echoing a call made by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for demonstrations at the Russian embassy in London. A protest has been organised in London by the ‘Syria Solidarity Campaign’ for next weekend.

The New Zealand protests sought to downplay and deny the crimes of US imperialism. While chanting “Putin, Putin, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!” the protests made no mention of the offensive launched a day earlier by US-backed Islamist rebels, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas in government-controlled parts of Aleppo. Nor was there any condemnation of the brutal American onslaught on Mosul, in which US warplanes, rocket launchers and heavy artillery are pounding the Iraqi city of over a million inhabitants.

In Wellington, Fightback member Ian Anderson denounced the “common conspiracy theory” that anti-government rebels “are a US proxy, that CIA money got involved and generated the Syrian revolution.” He asserted “this is crap,” without offering any evidence. “It started with the Arab Spring and with the democratic uprising across the region.” According to Anderson, “the rebels had to defend themselves and then they called for any support they could get.”

The depiction of the anti-Assad forces as a popular “revolution” is entirely false. The so-called Syrian “rebels,” including the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, and the Free Syrian Army, have received billions of dollars in aid and weapons from the US and its allies Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) grew due to the support it received from US allies to wage war against Assad. Washington has exploited the rise of ISIS and its conquest of large parts of Syria and Iraq as a pretext for further intervention in both countries.

The objective of the American ruling elite is to establish permanent control over the entire oil-rich region. In line with the US agenda, the pseudo-lefts are demanding an escalation of imperialist intervention. Anderson endorsed the call for a no-fly zone over Syria, a policy promoted by US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the most bellicose sections of Washington’s foreign policy and military establishment.

Central to this right-wing perspective is the depiction of Russia as “imperialist.” A speaker from the ISO claimed that Assad’s “unrelenting crackdown,” backed by “Russian imperialist forces,” had killed 400,000 people—which is in fact the total killed by all sides in the war. According to the ISO, the blame lies with “Assad, Iran, and Russia.”

In Auckland, Socialist Aotearoa leader Joe Carolan denounced the “Stalinist Left,” declaring: “How dare you talk about bombs being dropped in Mosul, if you don’t come here in solidarity with the Syrian people … You’re not socialists, you’re not left-wing, you’re f….ng Russian imperialists!” The speaker claimed: “I stand with the people in Aleppo just as we did stand with the people of Budapest 60 years ago against Russian tanks.”

The statement is false on all counts. Socialist Aotearoa, which Carolan heads, does not stand with the people of Aleppo but with the proxy forces of US imperialism and its allies. It is also worth noting that the organisations that gave rise to Socialist Aotearoa include the Stalinist Communist Party of NZ (CPNZ), which defended all the crimes of the Soviet regime, including the brutal suppression of the 1956 working class uprising in Hungary.

While declaring they are in favour of “neither Washington nor Moscow,” the pseudo-lefts identify “rising Russian imperialism” as the primary aggressor in Syria. In 2011, SA similarly denounced China as “imperialist” and called for workers to form a bloc with US imperialism against Beijing. This arbitrary and ahistorical designation of Russia and China as “imperialist” serves to cover up US aggression and to facilitate the integration of the pseudo-lefts into its war plans.

While opposing Washington’s war in the Middle East, the WSWS in no way supports the Moscow regime, which has intervened in Syria to try to shore up the Middle Eastern interests of the ultra-rich oligarchs that it represents. Russia’s actions only heighten the danger of war between nuclear armed powers.

The pseudo-left organisations, which speak for affluent sections of the upper middle-class, are meanwhile aligning themselves with their own government in the escalating drive to war. The Guardian newspaper reported last week that New Zealand SAS troops are active in a combat role in Iraq, a war that the National government and “opposition” Labour Party justify on the basis of combating “terrorism.” None of the pseudo-lefts has opposed this military intervention.

India-Pakistan cross-border barrages heighten South Asia’s war crisis

Keith Jones

India and Pakistan have intensified cross-border artillery and gunfire in recent days, causing mounting casualties among soldiers and villagers on both sides and bringing South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states still closer to all-out war.

Indian authorities said that an Indian soldier and a female civilian were killed yesterday afternoon when Pakistani troops fired waves of mortar shells across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir.

According to Indian sources, the latest deaths bring to seven the number of Indian security personnel killed in Kashmir during the past 10 days. Most of the deaths were due to cross-border firing, but two were the result of confrontations with anti-Indian Islamist insurgents whom New Delhi charges were infiltrating across the LoC under cover of Pakistani artillery barrages.

Several dozen other Indians, most of them civilians, have been injured in the repeated bursts of intense cross-border artillery and machine-gun fire.

The Indian military, meanwhile, is boasting that it has killed and bloodied large numbers of Pakistani security forces.

On Sunday, its Northern Command issued a statement claiming it had inflicted “heavy casualties” the previous evening when it destroyed four Pakistani army posts in the “Keran sector” in Pakistan-held Kashmir in “a massive fire assault.”

The statement said Saturday’s mortar, rocket and machine-gun barrage was in retaliation for Friday’s beheading of an Indian soldier by terrorist infiltrators. India’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the military, and corporate media have been trumpeting lurid descriptions of the alleged beheading in order to further incite animosity toward Pakistan.

Earlier last week, India’s Border Security Forces boasted that they had killed at least 15 Pakistan Rangers in recent days in cross-border firing.

The Pakistani military has denied this claim. But the Dawn, the country’s most influential English-language daily, did carry a report that “at least two people” had been killed Thursday and eleven injured by Indian firing into Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

In a statement issued Friday, Pakistan’s top brass called India’s boasts of “any” fatalities in its ranks “absolutely baseless and untrue.” “India’s claim,” declared the Inter-Services Public Relations bureau, was aimed at hiding its own losses at the Line of Control and diverting “world attention from the Kashmir issue.”

Both sides are lying systematically about the more than 60 separate incidents of sustained cross-border firing in the past month—lying about which side initiated which exchange and lying about their deadly impact.

What is incontrovertible is that the two countries continue to teeter on the precipice of war. India’s BJP government calculates that by increasing pressure on Pakistan it can strengthen its hand with an increasingly diplomatically isolated Islamabad, while exploiting the war crisis to stoke reaction and rally popular support at home.

Indian government and military officials have repeatedly vowed that they are intent on forcing Pakistan to end any and all support to the anti-Indian insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, and that if needed they will order further military strikes inside Pakistan, even if the ultimate result is all-out war.

Late last month the BJP government revealed that Indian Special Forces troops had conducted raids, so-called “surgical strikes,” inside Pakistan inflicting “heavy casualties” on Islamist terrorists and their “protectors.”

For more than four decades, India had not publicly acknowledged carrying out military action inside Pakistan for fear that it would precipitate a dynamic of strikes and counter-strikes that could rapidly result in all-out war. Yet the government, opposition, and corporate media have all celebrated the strikes as the throwing off of India’s purported policy of “strategic restraint” vis a vis Pakistan.

New Delhi has taken several steps in recent days to demonstrate it is actively preparing for war. These include ordering the fast-tracking of the acquisition of munitions, including artillery shells, rockets, and tank ammunition and rifles, so as to ensure that India’s military has sufficient reserves for 40 days of “intense fighting.”

India has also greatly expanded a Navy drill in the Arabian Sea south of Pakistan that is set to begin today and last through November 14. Over 40 warships and submarines, as well as maritime fighter jets and patrol aircraft, are slated to take part in the exercise.

New Delhi is also continuing it campaign of diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. Having rallied other South Asian states to boycott the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) conference that was to be held in Pakistan later this month, New Delhi is now openly exploring the possibility of developing a rival association of regional states from which Islamabad would be excluded.

Last Thursday New Delhi announced that it was expelling a Pakistani diplomat whom it accused of running a spy ring. Islamabad immediately responded by ordering an Indian diplomat out of the country, saying he had violated “the Vienna Convention” on diplomatic relations and “established diplomatic norms.”

The BJP government has been greatly encouraged in its belligerence by the endorsement of its “surgical strikes” by the major powers, especially the US.

For decades Pakistan was Washington’s principal ally in South Asia. But over the past decade the US has forged a “global strategic partnership” with India, with the aim of transforming it into a “frontline” state in its military-strategic offensive against China. Under Modi, India has greatly increased its integration into the US’ anti-China “pivot to Asia,” including throwing open Indian military bases to routine use by US warplanes and battleships for resupply, repair and relaxation. Washington has reciprocated by declaring India a “Major Defense Partner,” giving it access to the most advanced Pentagon weaponry.

Islamabad has repeatedly objected to Washington’s lavishing of strategic favours on New Delhi, warning that they have overturned the balance of power in South Asia and encouraged India to be more aggressive in its dealings with Pakistan. But all to no avail.

Aided and abetted by the media, Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi and his BJP government are also using the war fever they have whipped up against Pakistan and the triumphalism over the “surgical strikes” to drown out, and channel in a reactionary direction, mounting anger over mass joblessness, deprivation and social inequality.

The BJP has served notice it intends to place the “surgical strikes” and its hardline stance against Pakistan at the center of its campaign for the coming state election in the country’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. It has also intensified its campaign to label critics of the government, even from the right-wing bourgeois opposition parties, as disloyal and “anti-national.”

The BJP’s stance has caused even some supporters of India’s aggressive posture to issue worried warnings.

Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA operative and former Obama administration adviser was among those in the US military-strategic establishment who rushed to endorse India’s Sept. 29 strikes inside Pakistan. But last week he told the New York Times, “We’re not at the point of no return, but we are in very dangerous waters. When we get to the next terror attack, which is probably only a matter of time, the prime minster has boxed himself in … (H)e can’t … choose to use solely diplomatic alternatives without some loss of face.”

Pakistan meanwhile is beset by crisis. One expression of this is the military establishment’s reaction to a Dawn report that claimed a meeting of top government and military officials had discussed the country’s acute diplomatic isolation and the need, therefore, for it to ratchet back its support for anti-Indian Islamist groups. Not only did the military force the Dawn to retract the story, but it has prevailed on the government to sack the Information Minister and order an inquiry into how the story came to be printed.

Meanwhile, the leader of the country’s third-largest party, Imran Khan, is to launch a mass protest today in Islamabad with the aim of forcing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to agree to an inquiry into his family’s massive offshore investments as revealed in the Panama papers.

Khan, who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has repeatedly accused Sharif of cowardice for supposedly failing to stand up to India. He has also indicated that he would not be averse to the military pushing the Sharif government aside. On Sunday he said Sharif would be responsible if a “third power” steps in as a result of the PTI’s Tuesday “lockdown” of Islamabad.

Sectarian tensions rise in Iraq as Mosul offensive enters third week

Jordan Shilton

Iraqi government troops entered the eastern outskirts of Mosul Monday, as the US-backed offensive launched October 17 to recapture the country’s second largest city from the Islamic State began its third week.

But the advances of Iraqi government soldiers, Peshmerga fighters and Sunni and Shia militias could not conceal the fact that growing sectarian tensions are threatening to vastly intensify the bloody conflict in Iraq and Syria and draw the major powers into a direct military clash.

Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) special forces captured Bazwaya, the last village outside of Mosul, in a dawn raid Monday. Although there were no reports of civilian casualties, the Associated Press noted burning houses and buildings with collapsed roofs in the village, where hundreds of families are believed to be.

Later, it was confirmed that Iraqi troops had entered the Karama neighborhood in Mosul’s east. Another section of the Iraqi army advancing on Mosul from the south remains approximately 10 miles away.

The US-led coalition also reported that it conducted nine air strikes in support of the Iraqi offensive Sunday, including three in Mosul and one near Tal Afar.

On Saturday, the Shia militias organized in the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) announced a major offensive to the west of Mosul with the goal of capturing the ISIS-held town of Tal Afar and cutting off escape routes from Mosul to Syria. Widespread reports have emerged since the beginning of the Mosul offensive that significant numbers of ISIS fighters were retreating via this route to Raqqa, prompting Russian and Syrian officials to accuse the US of having deliberately intended this to occur.

The PMU has promised it will remain outside of Mosul. They were previously accused of committing atrocities against Sunni residents following the capture of Ramadi and Fallujah.

In apparent retaliation for the PMU offensive, five bomb attacks attributed to ISIS took place in several Shia neighborhoods of Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 17 and injuring many more. Further attacks near Baghdad on Monday claimed an additional 16 lives.

The PMU offensive came a day after US-backed Islamist extremists launched a counterattack on Syrian government troops and aligned Shia militias in Aleppo. The indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas by the former al Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front, which claimed the lives of dozens over the weekend, did not prevent US media outlets from broadly hailing the mission.

This demonstrates once again the utterly reactionary character of US imperialist policy in the region. Its explicit backing for Islamist extremists in Syria has further inflamed the Shia-Sunni divide in both Iraq and Syria and poses the immediate danger of a further escalation of the conflict in both countries. The bitter sectarian tensions were sharply exacerbated by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, when Washington ruthlessly exploited Sunni and Shia animosities to install a puppet regime in Baghdad.

The Shia PMU militias, which are nominally under Iraqi government control but receive support from Iran, vowed Saturday to retake what they deemed to be Shia territory in Iraq, before joining the conflict in Syria on the side of the Assad regime. “After clearing all our land from these terrorist gangs, we are fully ready to go to any place that contains a threat to Iraqi national security,” said PMU spokesman Ahmed al-Asadi in Baghdad.

The intervention of the Iranian-backed Shia militias into Syria would cut across Washington’s strategy of bringing about regime change in Damascus, as well as raising the prospect of clashes between the US and its NATO allies on one side and Iran and Russia on the other.

At a meeting of the Russian, Iranian and Syrian foreign ministers in Moscow Friday to discuss the Syrian conflict, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said that his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had agreed to take measures to prevent ISIS fighters from crossing the border from Iraq. “I’m happy to hear from Mr. Lavrov the confirmation that we’ll prevent ISIL from reaching Raqqa,” he said. Whether or not this meeting discussed the imminent PMU offensive, it is clear that any attempt by Russia or Iran to intervene to cut off the flow of ISIS fighters back into Syria would only further escalate the potential for military clashes with the US.

Turkey reacted with concern to the PMU’s intervention, warning that if the significant Turkmen population in Tal Afar was threatened, it could take military measures to defend them. Turkey has deployed several hundred troops to a military base in Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, where they have been training Sunni Turkmen militias and lending some military support to the Peshmerga advance on ISIS territory.

As well as opposing the PMU consolidating a Shia-dominated region around Tal Afar, Ankara is also troubled by the increasing influence of Iran. It is already in dispute with the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad, which claims that Turkey’s Bashiqa deployment is illegal. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has indicated in a series of belligerent speeches over recent weeks that Turkey is determined to stake a claim to a much greater role in Iraq and throughout the territories of the former Ottoman Empire.

Last Wednesday, US President Barack Obama held an hour-long telephone call with Erdogan to discuss the US-Turkish strategy in Iraq and Syria. He welcomed Turkish involvement in northern Syria, where Turkish forces intervened to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish-controlled region on its border, while both leaders reaffirmed their formal commitment to maintaining Iraq’s borders.

In reality, the various forces currently aligned against ISIS are pursuing conflicting and even mutually antagonistic goals that threaten to tear Iraq apart. There are reports that advancing Iraqi government troops have raised Shia banners and flags in areas they have taken, including the Christian town of Bartilla. “The Iraqi military is blocking our people from getting inside Bartilla,” head of the Christian Bet-Nehrain Democratic Party Romeo Hakari told Voice of America.

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechervan Barzani told an interviewer from German daily Bild on Friday that the conclusion of the Mosul mission would be followed by a renewed push for Kurdish independence. After Mosul’s recapture, he declared, Kurdish officials will meet with “partners in Baghdad and talk about our independence.” “We are not Arabs, we are our own Kurdish nation. At some point there will be a referendum on the independence of Kurdistan,” he added.

The expanding conflict over Mosul has already forced more than 17,000 civilians to flee their homes. The US media and political establishment has sought to prepare public opinion for high civilian casualties by repeating reports that ISIS are using local residents as human shields. The deaths of civilians as a result of US-led air strikes or operations by the Iraqi government forces are largely being buried, including the call by Human Rights Watch for an investigation into an alleged air strike last week that killed between 15 and 20 civilians at a funeral near Kirkuk.

The UN estimates that upwards of 1 million people will be forced to flee, but places in camps, including those not yet constructed, are expected to amount to just 500,000. Aid workers also fear the impact on civilians fleeing with no personal belongings as the cold winter weather sets in.

The deepening sectarian divisions spreading throughout the region since the unleashing of the US-backed Mosul offensive only underscores that none of the powers involved offer a way out of the bloodbath engulfing the population of the Middle East. While chief responsibility for the death and destruction in Iraq and Syria rests with US imperialism, which has been waging virtually uninterrupted wars in the region for a quarter of a century, the attempts by Russia and regional powers like Turkey and Iran to defend their own interests only add fuel to the fire.

Assessing the Determinants of the Imminent Russo-Japanese Territorial Settlement

Shamshad A Khan

Japan and Russia have prepared the grounds to resolve their territorial dispute, which has lingered since the end of World War II, without a peace treaty. President Vladimir Putin will visit Japan on 15 December 2016 for a Russia-Japan summit meeting and the territorial issue will be discussed with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Yamaguchi, Abe’s home constituency.

 

In the past, Japan and Russia have taken various efforts to resolve this issue but no Japanese leader has sounded as confident as Prime Minister Abe regarding the resolution of the dispute. In a recent policy speech, Abe stated that he will “resolve the territorial issue,” conclude a “peace treaty” with Russia and “cultivate the major possibility of Japan-Russia cooperation in areas such as the economy and energy”. It is apparent from Abe’s remarks, during 15 recent meetings between the two leaders at different venues, that the two countries have laid down a broad framework for the resolution and a formal announcement of it is likely to be made after the summit meeting in December. 

 

The upcoming talks are taking place against the background of both countries showing some flexibility on their long-held stance on the contested territory. In 1956, Russia has offered to hand over the two smaller islands, Habomai islets and Shikotan island off-Hokkaido, to Japan while retaining the two bigger islands, Kunashiri and Etorofu. Japan’s political leadership was amenable to accept the Russian offer but following protests by a section of Japan’s domestic constituency, they pressed for the return of the four islands simultaneously. A stalemate continued between the two countries during the Cold War as both stuck to their respective demands. Since the end of the Cold War, the two countries have engaged in several rounds of inconclusive talks. 

 

In September 2016, President Putin and Prime Minister Abe agreed that the resolution should be based on the principle of ‘hiwiwake’, a term for draw in Judo. This was interpreted in Japan as dividing the contested territory into half of the total geographic area since the two islands offered to Japan constitute only 7% of the contested territory. This, however, has not been the Russian understanding. Russia states that it would hand over the two smaller islands to Japan out of ‘goodness of its heart’ but this would be conditional to the conclusion of a peace treaty. 

 

Japan has adopted a ‘two track’ approach to break this stalemate. It agrees to accept the two smaller islands from Russia and to negotiate the remaining two later. This is also an effort by the Japanese leadership to assuage the concern of its domestic constituency, especially the people who were displaced from the four islands after the Russians gained control of the territory following World War II. The displaced population from the Northern Territories (known as Kuriles Island in Russia) has been pushing governments of both countries to address their demand to go back to their “homeland”. Through a resolution, Tokyo would be able to fulfill this demand and also boost Prime Minister Abe’s and the Liberal Democratic Party’s popularity for the next elections. Japanese entrepreneurs, so far unenthusiastic to invest in Russian markets, would be keen to increase their footprints in the Russian market following a resolution.

 

A resolution is also in Russia’s interest. First, a mutually agreed settlement will ease Russian efforts to develop infrastructure on the territories. In the past Japan had objected to a Russian bid to involve South Korean and Chinese companies in the infrastructure projects; Japan argued that the territories were under its sovereignty and forced Russia to reconsider the South Korean and Chinese participation. Second, Russia has been in search of new markets for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) following a fall in demand in the recession-hit Europe. Post-Fukushima, LNG demands have been high in Japan as most of its nuclear reactors remain dormant. Third, Russia is also trying to improve its image following the Ukrainian crisis and the annexation of Crimea. By concluding a peace treaty that includes an exchange of islands, Russia wants to soften its expansionist image and wants to show the world that it is ready to live amicably with its neighbours.

 

The discussion between Japan and Russia, scheduled in December 2016, to resolve the territorial dispute is the not the first and neither will it be the last. However this time the talks are taking place at a time when a consensus has emerged among the Japanese political parties, backed by their domestic constituency, to adopt a ‘two track’ approach to resolve the dispute. This gives Japan the hope that it will get the two islands for sure. Moscow has however expressed a stiff stance on the other two islands and is unlikely to be ready to lose its hold on them. A deal would, however, ease tensions between Japan and Russia and also bring amity and peace in the region.