Western Leaders Grow Deaf To Israeli Abuses

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Israel has just emerged from its extended, three-week high holidays, a period that in recent years has been marked by extremist religious Jews making provocative visits to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Many go to pray, in violation of Israel’s international obligations. Most belong to groups that seek the mosque’s destruction and replacement with a Jewish temple – and now enjoy support from within the parliament, including from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party.

A rash of such visits last autumn outraged Palestinians and triggered a wave of so-called “lone-wolf” attacks on Israelis. The attacks only recently abated.

Taking advantage of the renewed quiet, Israel allowed a record number of ultra-nationalists to visit the mosque, figures released last week show. Parties of Israeli soldiers are also now entering the site.

The police, whose recently appointed commander is himself from the extremist settler community, has recommended too that restrictions be ended on visits by Jewish legislators who demand Israel’s sovereignty over the mosque.

Israel’s treatment of this supremely important Islamic holy site symbolises for Palestinians their powerlessness, oppression and routine humiliation. Conversely, a sense of impunity has left Israel greedy for even more control over Palestinians.

The gaping power imbalance was detailed last month at special hearing of the United Nations security council. Hagai El-Ad, head of B’tselem, which monitors the occupation, termed Israel’s abuses as “invisible, bureaucratic, daily violence” against Palestinians exercised from “cradle to grave”.

He appealed to the international community to end its five decades of inaction. “We need your help. … The occupation must end. The UN Security Council must act. And the time is now,” he said.

Israeli politicians were incensed. El-Ad had broken one of Israel’s cardinal rules: you do not wash the country’s dirty linen abroad. Most Israelis consider the occupation and Palestinian suffering as purely an internal matter, to be decided by them alone.

Netanyahu accused B’tselem’s director of conspiring with outsiders to subject Israel to “international coercion”.

With the US limply defending El-Ad’s freedom of speech, Netanyahu found a proxy to relaunch the attack. David Bitan, chair of his party, both demanded that El-Ad be stripped of his citizenship and proposed legislation to outlaw calls for sanctions against Israel in international forums.

Unsuprisingly, El-Ad has faced a flood of death threats.

Meanwhile, another UN forum has been considering Israel’s occupation. Its educational, scientific, and cultural body, Unesco, passed last month a resolution condemning Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian holy sites, and especially al-Aqsa.

Again, Israelis were enraged at this brief disturbance of their well-oiled machinery of oppression. The abuses documented by Unesco were overshadowed by Israeli protests that its own narrative, one based on security paranoia and Biblical entitlement, was not the focus.

While Israel exercises ever more physical control over Palestinians, its moral credit is rapidly running out with foreign audiences, who have come to understand that the occupation is neither benign nor temporary.

The rise of social media has accelerated that awakening, which in turn has bolstered grassroots reactions like the boycott (BDS) movement.

Aware of the dangers, Israel has been aggressively targeting all forms of popular activism. Facebook and Youtube are under relentless pressure to censor sites critical of Israel.

Western governments – which joined the chorus of “Je suis Charlie” after ISIL’s lethal attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine last year – have cracked down on the boycott movement. Paradoxically, France has led the way by outlawing such activism, echoing Israeli claims that it constitutes “incitement”.

And leftwing social movements emerging in Europe face loud accusations that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to an attack on all Jews. Notably, a British parliamentary committee last month characterised as anti-semitic parts of the opposition Labour party under its new leader Jeremy Corbyn, a champion of Palestinian rights.

In these ways, European governments – fearful of upsetting Israel’s patron in Washington – have been trying to hold in check popular anger at a belligerent and unrepetant Israel.

Illustrating that caution, Uneso was forced last week to vote a second time on its resolution, this time removing the word “occupation” and, against normal practice, giving equal status to the occupier’s names for the sites under threat from its occupation.

Even with the resolution neutered, Unesco’s usual consensus could not be reached. The resolution – pushed by the Palestinians and Arab states – passed by a wafer-thin majority, with European and other governments abstaining.

Israel and its enablers have successfully engineered a hollowing out of official discourse about Israel to blunt even the mildest criticism.

Gradually, as the Unesco vote and Corbyn’s experiences in the UK highlight, western powers are accepting Netanyahu’s doubly illogical premises: that criticising the occupation is anti-Israel, and criticising Israel is anti-semitic.

Incrementally, western leaders are conceding that any criticism of Netanyahu’s policies – even as he tries to ensure the occupation becomes permanent – is off-limits.

El-Ad called for courage from the UN security council. But his words have fallen on deaf ears.

Vertebrate species populations in dramatic decline

Philip Guelpa

An alarming new study, the Living Planet Report 2016, prepared by researchers from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, projects that by the year 2020, little more than three years from now, the population abundance of vertebrate species around the world will have dropped by two-thirds from what it was in 1970.

This dramatic decline encompasses species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Invertebrates and plants are, undoubtedly suffering similar effects, as demonstrated by the recently reported death of a large portion of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a 2,300-kilometer-long system of coral reefs, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and has existed for 25 million years.

The rate of decline shows no sign of slowing. Between 1970 and 2012, a span of 42 years, the overall vertebrate population abundance (the total numbers of animals for each species) dropped by 58 percent, according to the study. By 2020, only another eight years, that figure is expected to reach a 67 percent decrease. If this pace were to continue, total extinction (a decrease of 100 percent) would be reached by the middle of the 21st century. These figures are based on a large data set, the Living Planet Index (LPI), derived from the monitoring of 14,000 animal populations that encompass 3,700 species. While some level of uncertainty is to be expected when attempting to assess such a large and complex phenomenon, the general trend is clear.

This dramatic decline is mainly attributed to a combination of climate change, environmental pollution, the human-facilitated spread of diseases, over-exploitation, and habitat destruction. Vertebrate populations are clearly under tremendous stress, as indicated by the substantial decreases in population sizes. The report identifies freshwater environments—rivers and lakes—as being the hardest hit, with an 81 percent decline in species abundance between 1970 and 2012. Terrestrial species abundance has fallen by 38 percent and marine species abundance by 36 percent.

Living Planet Report 2016 is but one of many studies in recent years that have identified a dramatic trend toward species decline and extinction.

The scale of the devastation documented in the 2016 LPR, occurring over a span of only 50 years, is on a trajectory to rival the five previous mass extinctions of life on earth. However, whereas the previous events were caused by a variety of natural processes, this impending sixth extinction is conclusively attributable to the anarchic development of the capitalist economy, which mindlessly pursues profit without regard to the consequences to society or nature.

In attempting to explain the forces driving these dramatic animal population declines, the Living Planet Report refers only to empirical trends such as human population growth, increases in carbon dioxide emissions and fertilizer consumption and the like, and offers only vague remedies such as the adoption of an “Earth system perspective.” No reference is made to the fact that decisions regarding industrial growth, resource exploitation, the development of more efficient technologies, and a whole range of other economic issues that affect the environment are made by the financial and corporate elites, a tiny minority of the world’s population, to protect their own interests.

The effects of unplanned development, undertaken with little or no scientific assessment of potential impacts to the environment, did not begin in 1970. Human activities have caused disruption of natural communities for thousands of years, beginning with the development of agriculture. However, these effects have accelerated dramatically in scope and scale over the last several centuries, with the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution. The rate of change has now reached a qualitative transition, reaching a pace never before seen. The consequences of this hyper-acceleration cannot be precisely predicted, but will undoubtedly cause substantial disruption of both natural ecosystems and human communities.

Biological communities exist as complex, dynamic systems of interaction between a whole range of organisms, from top vertebrate predators to microorganisms, as well as the components of the physical environment in which they exist. The rapid removal, both quantitatively and qualitatively (i.e., by extinction) of growing numbers of species from this dialectical relationship renders such systems increasingly unstable and prone to catastrophic collapse.

This fundamental shift is now being officially recognized by the scientific community. Based on research spanning over two centuries, scientists have developed a chronological framework to study the development of life on earth. Successive periods of evolutionary change are defined, at least in part, by the existence of more or less distinct groupings of organisms, reflecting significant changes in the earth’s fauna. The most recent major subdivision, the Cenozoic, termed the Age of Mammals, spans roughly the last 65 million years (i.e., since the extinction of the dinosaurs). It, in turn, is comprised of a series of smaller units (each spanning millions of years). The latest three are the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene, which encompass the evolution of human beings. The Pleistocene alone lasted roughly 2.5 million years.

The Holocene, characterized by the existence of the modern suite of mammals, began only 12,000 years ago, following the end of the last ice age. Therefore, compared to the length of previous periods, it has barely begun. Nevertheless, using the same procedure of defining geologic periods based on assemblages of species, some scientists have in recent years proposed that the Holocene has now ended and that a new period, the Anthropocene, has begun. The use of the prefix “anthro,” the Greek word for man, in the name, is intended to indicate that humans have now become a major factor in both biological evolution and the linked process of climate and environmental change.

Human science and technology have reached the point at which we now have an unprecedented capacity both to develop a much deeper understanding of the complexities of natural ecological systems and rationally plan an economy that takes this understanding into account in order to substantially reduce its impact on the natural world while, at the same time, meeting human needs.

However, unless capitalism is replaced by a planned socialist economy, and in relatively short order at that, the extreme negative effects of anarchic development make it highly likely that the natural systems which are fundamental to the maintenance of a livable planet will suffer drastic, and perhaps irreversible, degradation. Efforts by the rival capitalist nation states to address climate change and environmental degradation have been feeble and ineffective. The LPR 2016 report is a warning that the future of life on earth hangs in the balance.

The pseudo-left and Brazil’s municipal elections: A trial run for mass betrayal

Miguel Andrade 

The expected debacle suffered by Brazil’s former ruling Workers Party (PT) in the first round of nationwide local elections on October 2 reduced the party’s control to just 40 percent of the municipalities it won in the last elections in 2012. The election, characterized by record rates of abstention and spoiled ballots, has further exposed the deep crisis of the whole Brazilian political establishment, and of the country’s pseudo-left in particular.

Last Sunday saw run-offs in more than 50 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants in which no candidate was able to win an outright majority in the first round. The first round had seen the PT reduced to half of its historic vote in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, where the incumbent mayor was the party’s candidate. It was also completely routed in its birthplace, the so-called “red belt” of industrial cities and towns on São Paulo’s outskirts, as well as in historically left-leaning regions such as the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul.

This rout in most cases benefited populist right-wingers, most notably in São Paulo where the regional-chauvinist João Doria, dubbed the Brazilian Donald Trump, was able to win an outright majority in the first round-–the first time any candidate was able to do so in the city.

In the second round, however, the country’s attention was focused on the election in Rio de Janeiro. In the country’s second city and former capital, state representative and former PT member Marcelo Freixo, running on the PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party, a parliamentary split-off from the PT), was defeated by the first-round frontrunner, the Christian fundamentalist Marcelo Crivella, of the Republican Party, a right-wing former ally of the PT government.

The elections unfolded amid Brazil’s worst economic crisis in a century and with the PT hard hit by the right-wing campaign that removed it from office in September with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on trumped-up charges of budget manipulations. She has been replaced by her former vice-president Michel Temer of the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), who has been brought in to implement a full restructuring of class relations in Brazil.

The PT was unable to mobilize support within the working class against impeachment due to its longstanding record of social attacks and its political alliances while in government with the same reactionary forces which moved to impeach Rousseff. The party all but disavowed the largely middle-class demonstrations against the impeachment, appealing instead to the Organization of American States and Brazilian bankers and businessmen for its defense.

In this context, the race in Rio was pushed to the forefront due to the large vote won by PSOL, PT’s main nominal left opposition, in the first round. A number of left-leaning youth flocked to the city to join Freixo’s one-month run-off campaign, in a process reminiscent of the recent Bernie Sanders campaign in the United States.

This was the second run for mayor of Rio by Freixo, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist, former PT member and PSOL founder. This time around, his vote totals fell substantially in Rio’s working class, industrial northern sector, and the campaign was oriented from start fundamentally to the upper-middle class southern zone of the city, which includes the world-famous districts of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon.

In the face of the PT’s nationwide debacle in the first round, there was a closing of ranks around Freixo’s candidacy by the whole of the pseudoleft, including most notably the PSOL currents which had previously criticized him, the “green” REDE party and the Morenoite PSTU and MAIS, which were joined by both factions of the Communist Party, the PT itself and the Liberation Theology-linked faction of Rio’s Catholic Church. In short, mobilized behind his candidacy was the whole range of anti-Marxist forces that founded and later supported the PT since 1980.

Freixo’s campaign was a case study in pseudo-left hypocrisy. It was initially centered on populist criticisms of the tax structure in the city, mild opposition to the privatization of hospitals, transport and schools, as well as overtures to big business, with the promise of a city-controlled development bank.

Significantly, the campaign made little mention of the city’s recent bitter experiences with the World Cup and the Olympics, which were accompanied by the crudest forms of dispossession of the city’s most oppressed layers, through expulsions and widespread police aggression in name of property development.

This already empty platform was reduced to nothing more than an anti-corruption campaign. One week before the second-round election, Freixo issued his now infamous “Letter of Commitment to Rio.” This missive was openly aimed at reassuring big business and attracting ruling class support in the face of corruption scandals dogging his opponent, Crivella. He promised a technocratic government and the review of privatization contracts in search of any irregularities – abandoning any opposition in principle to the privatizations. The letter was met with a unanimous reaction from the pseudo-left: “Vote for Freixo in order to push him to the left.”

This end of Freixo’s “left” pretensions was entirely predictable given not only the history of PSOL, but the development of his campaign, which exposed the party’s bottomless opportunism.

Pressed time and again by the press and the right wing on his position regarding the impeachment, Freixo ran away by saying he didn’t want to “nationalize” Rio’s elections. Accused of “Bolshevism” by Crivella, he tried to disavow his own party, declaring to Folha de São Paulo that “it is not PSOL which will run Rio.” Unmoved by Freixo’s opportunism, the pseudo-left brought his “popular councils,” reminiscent of the anti-Marxist “municipal communism” currents of post war Europe, to the forefront as a left cover.

One of the most revealing episodes was Freixo’s capitulation to the right wing’s slanderous accusations of anti-Semitism directed against his campaign, which were reminiscent of the slanders against Jeremy Corbyn in the recent Labour leadership contest in Britain. Freixo, who had strong support among Rio’s small, largely secular and left-leaning Jewish community, had declared his support for a two-state solution confined to the 1967 borders, a toothless declaration to the right even of the “official” discussions inside the larger Jewish-Brazilian community.

Nonetheless, he came under attack, most significantly from the Catholic and Evangelical right, after a small current inside PSOL published an obituary of Shimon Peres, citing his involvement in the many internationally recognized crimes of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. The group which published the obituary was disavowed by both Freixo and the PSOL leadership.

The pseudo-left’s closing of ranks around Freixo’s campaign serves as a damning political self-indictment. Claiming to oppose the PT from the left, these organizations have done everything in their power to prevent the working class from breaking with the forces which founded and supported the PT for almost four decades, including the Catholic Church and the unions.

Their support for Freixo was accompanied by a complete abandonment of any discussion on how the nominal left could suffer such an enormous defeat in São Paulo and its surroundings, one of the largest working class concentrations in the world and one of the world’s most unequal regions.

The real attitude of these layers has been made clear by elements like the anti-Marxist Guilherme Boulos, who appeared on Freixo’s platform in Rio. A fixture at pseudo-left protests, he has dismissed São Paulo’s middle classes as “fascist” and its working class as “alienated and consumerist.”

Along similar lines was an October 7 column by PSOL philosophy professor Vladimir Safatle, who wrote that “the political axis of the country” had moved from São Paulo to Rio (or more precisely its well-heeled southern zone) due to the virtues of Freixo’s campaign.

For more than a year now, Safatle has described the 40-million strong state of São Paulo as a homogeneously conservative, self-indulging, parallel-reality in Brazil. The PT and its main right-wing opposition, the PSDB, are “São Paulo products,” he wrote, adding that they are politically exhausted because the state is politically exhausted. Freixo, he argued, shows the way out by proposing nothing less than “a transmutation of forms of government,” by way of “direct democracy” through the “popular councils.”

More than a year after Syriza’s betrayal of the Greek working class, the pseudo-left forces in Brazil are insisting, as their counterparts in Greece and Europe generally did before them, that Brazilian workers and left-leaning middle-class layers must go through the experience of rule by the likes of PSOL and Freixo in order to build true socialist alternatives. This claim, bound up with the rejection of the fight to build a genuine revolutionary leadership, only betrays their own contempt for the working class. Above all, they are determined to prevent workers and young people from drawing any real lessons from the debacle of the PT, instead attempting to repeat the experience, with what will inevitably be even more disastrous results.

South Korea’s president in crisis over corruption scandals

Ben McGrath

South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s administration has been thrown into turmoil by a series of scandals that last week forced her to remove key secretariat officials. Protests have also broken out, with demonstrators demanding she resign or be impeached. According to media polls, the president’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level since coming to office in February 2013.

The woman at the centre of the crisis, Park’s long-time confidante Choi Soon-sil, was detained on Monday after returning from Germany to answer allegations of corruption and exerting inappropriate influence in state affairs. Choi, 60, arrived at the supreme prosecutor’s office in Seoul on Tuesday morning in handcuffs, a surgical mask and a dark coat, escorted by correctional officers.

Prosecutors said they are investigating whether Choi used her friendship with the president to gain access to classified documents that enabled her to influence government matters and benefit personally through non-profit foundations. Prosecutors have asked eight banks for documents related to Choi’s financial transactions, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

Park, 64, and Choi have known each other for decades. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, controlled South Korea for 18 years after seizing power in a military coup in 1961. Park senior was murdered in 1979 by the head of the country’s spy agency, which accused Choi’s father and family of holding undue influence over the dictator.

Last Friday, Park ordered 14 of her top secretaries to submit their resignations, although not all were accepted. The reshuffle included the removal of Woo Byung-woo (U Byeong-u), the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, and An Jong-beom, senior presidential secretary for policy coordination. Both men have faced corruption allegations. An, in particular, has been accused of involvement in the scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil. Three other secretaries believed to be associated with Choi—Lee Jae-man, Jeong Ho-seong and An Bong-geun—were also removed from their positions.

The allegations involving An Jong-beom and Choi Soon-sil emerged as part of an audit into the activities of Woo, who was involved in a bribery case with online gaming company Nexon, and other government figures. At the end of September, Noh Woong-rae (No Ung-rae), a member of the opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), released transcripts of An Jong-beom directing the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) on the amount of money they should “donate” to two non-profit corporations, Mir and K-Sports. That these allegations became public is an indication of the intensity of the conflict within the South Korean bourgeoisie.

Choi was reportedly behind the creation of Mir and K-Sports, which collected 80 billion won ($72 million) from 53 major companies in just a few months. The foundation of the two organizations—in October 2015 and January 2016, respectively—was approved in just a single day, a process that usually takes weeks. An Jong-beom has been accused of using the FKI to pressure corporations into giving money.

Choi has also been accused of being involved in deciding policy matters. Lee Sung-han, the former secretary-general of Mir, told the Hankyorehnewspaper that closed-door meetings over the shutdown of the Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea, for example, were led by Choi.

Park admitted in an apology on October 25 that Choi had assisted in writing her speeches. Choi, who has held no official position in government, is the daughter of Park’s one-time mentor Choi Tae-min, who headed a cult known as the Church of Eternal Life. The elder Choi died in 1994.

On Saturday, as many as 20,000 people in Seoul gathered to call for the president’s resignation, with similar protests in cities like Busan. Significantly, participants included high school and university students. Foreign workers also took part. The official opposition parties used the protests as platforms to advance themselves as alternative administrations.

“Park has lost her authority as president and showed she doesn’t have the basic qualities to govern a country,” Jae-myung Lee, from the Minjoo party and the mayor of the city of Seongnam, told protesters from a stage on Saturday.

Corruption scandals in South Korea are typically used to settle political scores, as bribery and influence peddling are commonplace. Park is not just unpopular with the population; she faces concerted opposition within her own Saenuri Party, where a strong anti-Park faction exists.

About 50 Saenuri legislators demanded the party leadership, comprised of mostly pro-Park figures, give up their positions at the head of the party. Rep. Hwang Yeong-cheol stated: “The current party leadership is responsible for failing to properly stop Choi’s involvement in state affairs.” They are calling for a “neutral” leadership, with more positions for the anti-Park lawmakers.

A strong anti-Park faction solidified in the 2000s around Lee Myung-bak, who touted his experience as Hyundai Engineering’s CEO to win support from big business. However, many of Park’s backers had closer links to her father’s military dictatorship. Bitter infighting took place before Lee defeated Park in the conservative party’s primary, and then became president in 2008. Four years later, Park secured the nomination.

The investigation into Park’s secretaries and confidantes has nothing to do with fighting corruption. It is an intensification of the struggle over who will be elected president in 2017, as the incumbent is limited to one, five-year term. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, is believed to be favored by the pro-Park faction. Kim Mu-seong of the anti-Park faction is also considered a potential candidate.

Facing deteriorating economic conditions globally, the South Korean elite has launched an austerity offensive against the working class. The economy last year grew by only 2.6 percent, and nearly half of that came from the production of unsold goods. Unemployment is growing, particularly among youth. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs in the shipping and shipbuilding industries.

In ruling circles, Park Geun-hye is increasingly under fire for not fully pushing through the “labor reform” demanded by big business. These measures are aimed at creating a low-paid, casual workforce, furthering the attack on lifelong employment begun under President Kim Dae-jung following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

With Park’s presidency in crisis, the official opposition parties are offering themselves as more reliable instruments for implementing the corporate agenda. The Wall Street Journal noted in an opinion piece on October 18 that neither the Minjoo Party nor the People’s Party, the two “left” parties in the political establishment, are “fundamentally opposed to reforms, and both are likely to propose their own variations on labor reform as the December 2017 presidential election draws near.”

Indonesia and Australia discuss joint naval patrols in the South China Sea

Peter Symonds 

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop yesterday confirmed that Australia and Indonesia are considering joint naval patrols in the South China Sea. Her comments followed a four-day visit to Indonesia last week, during which she met with Indonesian President Joko Widido and senior Indonesian ministers.

Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio, Bishop sought to portray the mooted patrols as a routine part of the Australian navy’s operations. “This is a regular part of what our navy does,” she said. “This is part of our engagement in the region and this is in accordance with Australia’s right of freedom of navigation, including in the South China Sea.”

Such military exercises would be anything but routine, however. Indonesian naval vessels have already been involved in clashes with Chinese fishing trawlers allegedly fishing illegally inside the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. Sharp diplomatic exchanges between Jakarta and Beijing resulted.

While China does not dispute Indonesian sovereignty over the Natunas, its extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea intersect with the EEZ around the island group. Joint Australian-Indonesian naval exercises in the area risk an incident involving Chinese fishing boats that could draw in the Chinese coast guard or navy.

Following a clash in June, President Widodo travelled to the Natunas to underscore Indonesia’s determination to assert its maritime claims. The Indonesian armed forces has been expanding its presence on the Natunas and last month staged its largest-ever air force exercise in the area, involving more than 2,000 personnel with fighter jets.

An Indonesian defence ministry spokesman told the media that no agreement had been reached to conduct joint naval patrols with Australia. However, the issue was clearly discussed at the annual “2+2” talks involving Bishop and Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne with their Indonesian counterparts last Thursday.

Their joint communiqué emphasised “the importance of maritime security.” It noted that the two countries were “natural maritime partners” and would take “practical steps to deepen and broaden bilateral maritime engagement.” The Indonesian and Australian navies have already carried out joint patrols in the Timor Sea, between the two countries.

The communiqué underlined “the importance of maintaining peace, security and stability, freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea.” It emphasised the “importance of non-militarisation” and backed Indonesia’s push for a code of conduct between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China in the South China Sea.

These diplomatic code-words are in line with the Obama administration’s aggressive intervention over the past six years in longstanding territorial disputes between China and its South East Asian neighbours. Washington has repeatedly criticised China’s “militarisation” of its atolls and “expansionism” in the South China Sea. The US navy last month conducted a fourth “freedom of navigation operation” that provocatively challenged Chinese maritime claims in the area.

The Australian government has been under intense pressure from Washington to authorise its own “freedom of navigation” incursion into Chinese-claimed territory—a move that Canberra has so far resisted amid deep divisions in the Australian political establishment. Sections of the ruling elite are fearful of the economic impact of a deterioration of relations with China, Australia’s biggest trading partner.

The communiqué referred to the need to resolve disputes in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled in favour of a US-backed Philippine challenge under UNCLOS to Chinese maritime claims. The subsequent tilt by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte toward Beijing has blunted Washington’s ability to exploit the PCA ruling to ramp up the pressure on Beijing over the South China Sea.

After discussions with Bishop, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said last Wednesday she would seek clarification from the Philippines—in other words, to add to US pressure on Duterte to fall back into line. Duterte has called for an end to joint US-Philippine military exercises and the removal of US troops from the southern island of Mindanao.

In her remarks yesterday, Bishop suggested that the proposal for joint patrols came from Indonesia. Whether that is the case or not, closer defence ties and strategic collaboration between Australia and Indonesia, along with joint operations in the South China Sea, are fully in line with US efforts to build a web of alliances and strategic partnerships as part of its “pivot to Asia” directed against China.

A report appraising the US-Australian alliance published last month by the US Studies Centre at Sydney University included among its recommendations that Canberra “midwife closer US-Indonesia ties.” Written by Richard Fontaine, a visiting fellow and prominent figure in the US foreign policy establishment, the report suggested that closer ties should be forged also with other countries, including India, to boost maritime surveillance and operations in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.

Bishop clearly had a brief—not only to strengthen Indonesian-Australian military ties but to draw Indonesia more fully into the US “pivot” against China. Echoing the reaction in Canberra and Washington to the proposal for joint Australian-Indonesian naval patrols, analyst Euan Graham from the Sydney-based Lowy Institute told the Financial Times: “This is a very significant development. It sends a message to Beijing that not all South East Asian countries are kowtowing to it over the South China Sea.”

The communiqué from last week’s talks in Bali also underscored closer Indonesian-Australian collaboration in regional forums such as ASEAN summits and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), which also took place last week in Bali. IORA was formed in 1997, comprising countries from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. It is assuming growing significance as the Indian Ocean becomes the focus of rising geo-political rivalry.

Closer Indonesian-Australian ties are underscored by the planned trip by President Widodo to Australia next week, during which he is slated to address the Australian parliament.

Death toll rises to 25, as India-Pakistan border clashes heighten war danger

Alex Lantier

At least 25 people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed during the past five days of heavy, cross-border artillery and machine gun fire between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region.

Yesterday, Indian police reported that Pakistani shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir had killed seven people, including three women and two children, in the Ramgarh sector of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.

This followed the deaths Monday of one soldier and one civilian in India and of six Pakistani civilians in the Nakyal and Jandrot sectors of Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir. Cross-border exchanges also claimed the lives of two members of the Indian security forces and six Pakistan civilians last Friday and Saturday.

The border clashes, which flared up after India blamed Pakistan for a September 18 attack on the Indian army base at Uri, threaten to trigger all-out war between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states.

“It appears as if a full-blown war is going on between India and Pakistan. Please have mercy and stop it,” villager Mohammed Saeed told Reuters by telephone, in an interview interrupted by the sound of gunfire. Hundreds of schools have been closed in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and anger and fear over the war is mounting in the population on both sides of the border.

Both Indian and Pakistani military commanders have pledged to intensify the fighting, however. Late Monday, the Pakistani army’s Inter-Services Public Relations agency issued a statement declaring that its forces were “effectively targeting Indian posts for heavy casualties,” in retaliation for “Indian targeting of civil population by unprovoked firing on LoC.”

Indian Defense Ministry officials told Asian News International, “They have targeted our forward areas and we have also responded appropriately. They are using 120 mm, i.e. heavy, mortars and we are also responding in equal measure... We are hitting them hard.”

Indian Border Security Force (BSF) Deputy Inspector General Dharmendra Pareek praised what he called a “calibrated retaliation” yesterday by BSF forces, who “targeted Pakistan Rangers’ posts across IB [the international border] in the same sector and caused heavy damage to 14 Pakistani posts.”

Six weeks after the Uri attack, it is clear that the attack on the Indian military camp only served to intensify a conflict whose causes are far more deeply rooted.

Officials on both sides of the LoC are whipping up nationalism and war fever, both to suppress rising social anger and divide workers along national and communal lines, and as part of an international escalation of military tensions driven above all by the US’s anti-China “pivot to Asia.”

India in particular has been shaken by social protests, including protests and strikes by tens of millions of workers against the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) austerity measures and pro-business market reforms.

The Uri camp attack was seized upon by New Delhi to legitimize and deflect attention from the Indian security forces’ bloody repression of mass protests in Kashmir. The protests, which have rattled India’s Hindu supremacist BJP government and the Indian establishment as a whole, erupted in July following the Indian security forces’ summary execution of Burhani Wali, an Islamist fighter calling for Kashmiri independence.

The crackdown on the anti-Indian protests in the Kashmir Valley has claimed the lives of more than 80 people and brutal police attacks on protesters are continuing.

Yesterday three girls aged 13, 16, and 18 were admitted to a hospital in Srinagar with wounds to the face, ears and eyes, after security forces shot them with pellet guns in the southern district of Pulwama, allegedly in response to stone throwing by protesters. Their families stated that they had not joined the protests. All three face weeks of painful operations in a desperate attempt to restore their sight, their hearing, and their ability to speak.

In this context, and with the support of Washington, the Indian government responded to the attack on the Uri base with unprecedented measures. This included threatening to abrogate the Indus Water Treaty and boasting that its Special Forces’ troops had mounted raids inside Pakistan and inflicted heavy casualties.

For more than four decades, New Delhi had not admitted to carrying out any military actions inside Pakistan, fearing that such statements could trigger a chain of strikes and counterstrikes that could escalate into all-out war. Now, nearly two decades after India and Pakistan both acquired nuclear weapons, India is proclaiming that the days of “strategic restraint” are over and that, if need be, it will wage war to enforce its demand that Pakistan cease supporting “terrorism”—deliberately stoking a conflict that could ultimately provoke a nuclear exchange claiming hundreds of millions of lives.

Over the last year, US officials signed military agreements with India that have turned it into a front-line state in Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China. If a major war were to develop between India and Pakistan, China’s principal ally in the Indian subcontinent and Indian Ocean region, it must be assumed that it would draw both the United States and China into a global conflict.

This danger has become so palpable that, amid escalating popular opposition to war in the border areas, officials presiding over the repression in Kashmir felt compelled to beg New Delhi not to escalate the conflict too far. Yesterday, Jammu and Kashmir (JK) Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti called for India and Pakistan to resume negotiations.

“We in JK yearn for peace as we have been suffering immensely because of the hostility and violence in the region and know very well its dangers and perilous consequences,” she said, adding, “We see world-over how wars have resulted in complete destruction of once most prosperous countries and annihilation of cultures.”

Powerful factions of the Indian ruling elite, of all political colorations, have supported the military escalation, however. In September, at the initiative of the Stalinist-led state government, the assembly in the southern Indian state of Kerala provocatively endorsed the Indian army’s “surgical strike” attacks inside Pakistan. Its resolution, moved by Chief Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan, declared: “The House congratulates the Army for taking steps to protect the country and people and fully supports its action.”

The BJP government and Indian elite have intensified their campaign of threats, bullying, and provocations against Pakistan based on two interlinked calculations: that their ever-closer strategic partnership with the US gives them new leverage over Islamabad and that Washington shares their anger and concern that Pakistan and China have responded to the emergence of an Indo-US alliance by enhancing their own strategic ties.

They have not been disappointed. In a reckless move, the Obama administration and the US political and media establishment have given New Delhi ever-clearer signals that they are ready to go much further than in similar crises in the past in supporting India in pursuing aggression against Pakistan.

This has included ignoring Islamabad’s concerns about India’s involvement in its northwestern neighbor Afghanistan and announcing a trilateral US, Afghan, Indian dialogue. It has also seen Washington give cautious, tacit support to an Indian plan to break Pakistan’s blockade of Indian-Afghan trade and strategically compete with China for resources and influence in Central Asia though the building of a trade corridor, even though the plan’s pivot is a port, Chabahar, that is located in Iran—a country the US views as a major regional rival and key obstacle to its regime-change war in Syria.

In September, prominent US newspapers indicated their support for India taking military action against Pakistan in reprisal for the Uri attack, with the Los Angeles Times titling one such piece “India has one of the world’s biggest armies, why doesn’t it use it?”

Last month, the Obama administration directly stated that its sympathies lie with New Delhi against Islamabad. While emphasizing “caution,” it lined up behind the BJP government’s illegal and highly provocative attacks inside Pakistan, declaring, “We empathize with the Indian position that it needs to respond militarily to the cross-border threat of terrorism.”

New York Times promotes war hysteria over Estonia

Bill Van Auken

Ever since the 2014 US-orchestrated and fascist-spearheaded coup in Ukraine, the New York Times has distinguished itself as the principal anti-Russian propaganda organ of the US government, demonizing Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin for everything from the death toll inflicted in Washington’s war for regime change in Syria to the political rise of Donald Trump.

In its November 1 edition, the Times continued this anti-Russian campaign with a news feature entitled “Wary of Russia’s Ambitions, Estonia Prepares a Nation of Insurgents.” The article touts the exploits of a paramilitary formation in the tiny former Soviet Baltic republic, which is now a member of NATO, located barely 85 miles from St. Petersburg.

Under the direction of the newspaper’s editorial page editor, James Bennet, who was installed earlier this year, the Times has pursued a virulently anti-Russian line that reflects the consensus within the Pentagon and the CIA that Moscow now stands as the foremost obstacle to Washington’s drive to assert US global hegemony. Bennet, whose father was a former chief of USAID, an agency that frequently operates as a front for the CIA, and whose brother is the senior US senator from Colorado, is uniquely prepared for the role of war propagandist.

Supplementing the editorial direction of the anti-Russian propaganda campaign are various on-the-ground specialists who churn out so-called “news” articles that reproduce all the worst features of “yellow journalism.”

Among them is Andrew E. Kramer, the Times Moscow correspondent. Kramer is responsible for a series of journalistic fabrications, distortions and lies in the service of the campaign to prepare the American public for a military confrontation with Russia. In April of 2014, in the wake of the coup in Kiev, he co-authored a front-page piece purporting to present photographic evidence, provided by the US State Department, that Russian troops were in eastern Ukraine and were leading the pro-Russian separatist rebellion against the right-wing regime in Kiev. It was quickly established that the photos were doctored and the Times was forced to retract the piece.

More recently, he penned a piece entitled “More Enemies of the Kremlin End Up Dead: A Pattern That Suggests State Involvement,” which essentially accused Putin of responsibility for a series of political assassinations without providing a shred of evidence to support the allegations.

In his latest article profiling the paramilitaries of the Estonian Defense League, Kramer’s journalistic pursuits dovetail entirely with the operations of US imperialism. It follows on the heels of last week’s announcement in Brussels of NATO’s finalized plans for the deployment of combat brigades in all three Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These 4,000 troops deployed on Russia’s doorstep are to be backed by a 40,000-strong rapid reaction force as well as a ring of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe designed to facilitate a US nuclear first strike.

Estonia serves as a strategic trip wire for a nuclear Third World War. In September 2014, President Barack Obama made this clear, flying to the Estonian capital of Tallinn to declare that “the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London.” He declared Washington’s “eternal” commitment to go to war under the terms of NATO’s Article 5 in defense of this tiny state of 1.3 million people on Russia’s doorstep, promising “American boots on the ground.”

In a rhetorical flight of fancy, Obama extolled Estonian nationalism, declaring, “You never gave up when the Red Army came in from the east or when the Nazis came in from the west.”

In the midst of his breathless recounting of the exploits of the Estonian Defense League as it tramped through the woods outside Tallinn and learned how to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Kramer echoes the same historical narrative promoted by Obama, writing that in Estonia “partisans are still glorified for fighting the Nazis and the Soviets in World War II.”

The claim that the so-called partisans equally resisted the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, and that the predecessors of the current Estonian Defense League are “glorified for fighting the Nazis,” is a grotesque historical fabrication. The historical predecessor of today’s Estonian Defense League, the Omakaitse (“home guard”), was formed in 1918 by former Tsarist officers in opposition to the Russian Revolution.

In 1941, the league was resurrected in conjunction with the German Nazi regime’s Operation Barbarossa to carry out operations against the retreating Soviet Red Army.

The partisans in Estonia are “glorified” each year on August 28, which marks the anniversary of the day in 1942 when the Nazi Waffen SS began recruiting members of the Estonian Defense League into its ranks. SS veterans have held rallies on that day, supported by fascist and extreme nationalist elements. They have received official greetings from leading state officials.

Approximately 80,000 Estonians joined with Nazis in the Second World War. Another 30,000 joined the ranks of the Red Army, fighting the Nazis as the Estonian Rifle Corps. These later veterans are neither “glorified” nor celebrated.

Elements drawn from the Estonian Defense League into the SS served as guards and even commandants in the network of 22 concentration and labor camps in Estonia. These proved so efficient that at the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, convened by the Nazi leadership to oversee implementation of the so-called “final solution to the Jewish question,” Nazi officials boasted that Estonia was already Judenfrei (free of Jews).

With the assistance of the Estonian fascists, the Nazis had exterminated virtually every one of the 4,500 Jews who failed to escape Estonia before the German occupation. Some 20,000 more Jews were transported from elsewhere in Europe to Estonia. Able-bodied men were worked to death in shale oil mines, while women, children and the elderly were murdered upon arrival.

Another 15,000 Red Army prisoners of war died in Estonia, many executed and others perishing from brutality and neglect.

What is involved in the whitewashing of this horrific legacy on the part of both Obama and the New York Times, who speak a common language crafted to promote the US military buildup against Russia, is the rewriting of the history of the last world war in order to prepare the grounds for the next.

After the Surgical Strikes

Syed Ata Hasnain

It has been a month since the surgical strikes were launched by the Indian Army’s Special Forces and denied by the Pakistani side. The entire strategic advantage which lay in our military claim appeared to have been negated by the political brouhaha that followed, between claims and counter claims of political parties in India. But this essay is not about that. It is about the situation that is unfolding in different domains post the strikes. To look through the complexities of the dynamic situation in J&K we need to examine three areas: first, the internal dynamics within Pakistan; second, the situation at the Line of Control (LoC), International Border (IB) and the counter-infiltration grid; and third, the activities in the Valley's hinterland, where the agitation continues in different forms.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif - weakened politically by the Panama Papers scandal and under the complete control of Pakistan Army Generals - is being exploited to project a civilian look to the anti-India campaign; a campaign orchestrated and owned entirely by the Pakistan Army and the deep state. On the other hand, Pakistan's Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif’s future is yet uncertain. 

His ability to take his own decisions on the succession or continuation in office has been under some doubt due to claims and counter claims of other senior Pakistan Army officers in line for the job. Gen Sharif is therefore busy ensuring that the LoC remains alive. A live LoC may not have a change of guard at the ‘Chief’s palace’. Besides, even if Gen Sharif wishes to act like a statesman, he would like to go not with a whimper but with a roar. Possibly, some arrangement could ensure another high profile job once out of uniform.  So in either possibility, the LoC will remain a bone of contention, and the location where messaging is done via actions. It is yet premature to say whether the ceasefire of 26 November 2003 will hold. It has successfully held even in turbulent times and even this time, the breaches are only in pockets.

The LoC is a strange place and along its alignment, a series of events can take place. In the priority of things at this time of the year, infiltration is uppermost in the mind of the deep state. 2016 may have been a good year for infiltration in terms of numbers but these are not sufficient to convert the burning streets of Kashmir into anything more. The attrition rate has also been very high and the spurt of ‘fidayeen’ was a bravado that was misplaced because it eroded the already low strength in the Valley. 

Secondly the terrorist handlers and strategists are under a mistaken impression that breaches of ceasefire and demonstrated aggression by Border Action Teams (BATs) in one or two areas will force the creation of gaps in the counter-infiltration grid. The Indian Army, fully conscious of this, has ensured suitable reinforcements through the campaigning season that will go into the winter grid too. The incident of a BAT raid and mutilation of the mortal remains of a brave jawan in Machil will have the necessary retribution and in double the measure. This is an issue to be left to local commanders who know best how to handle it and the people should have the confidence that in this mega media period, there need be no grandiose announcements. Sometimes, the silence of the action is enough to send home the message.

The exchange of firing along the IB and portions of the LoC is unnecessary and irksome to the populations on both sides. Clearly our forces have been returning fire in response but the casualties among uniformed people that are occurring appear to suggest that there is need for better embattlements and defences. We have yet to witness artillery duels that will take a higher toll and losses to snipers do not reflect good tactical drills.

In terms of the hinterland, true to form, the nature of violence is undergoing a change. The stamina is obviously questionable. However, what is reported by this author's many local friends is the degree of coercion not by the security forces but by young vigilantes, completely out of control of their parents. Each family is required to send a certain number of young men for stone pelting. Employed people are expected to come to the mosque and swear allegiance to the movement before proceeding to workplaces. There is extortion galore and vigilantism of an obscene kind that has taken over the society. With the police yet recovering from the trauma of the targeted ostracisation, it will be some time before any semblance of normalcy returns.

The Indian Army’s pro-activeness and support to the police in the built up areas and the outreach in the rural zone is ensuring security. Areas where the Indian Army has consciously not entered for many years - such as Old Town Baramulla - have been addressed appropriately with search operations and arrests to send home the message that no place would be safe for terrorists or rabble-rousers.

J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's government has definitely undergone a very challenging period. It could have completed wilted under the kind of pressure it bore. The chief minister may not have retained too many friends in Kashmir but has definitely proved that she can be a strong nut to crack. She has given it back to the separatists in equal measure and definitely displayed nationalist credentials to the detriment of her critics. As the state government moves to its winter capital, it is the time when two things should be in focus: first, it must make up to the Jammu populace the time lost over the last three months, by addressing their core concerns; Jammu’s silence must never be taken for granted. Secondly, it must concentrate on balancing itself by ensuring that the severe winter ahead is made as comfortable for the Kashmiris as possible. The deftness of the administrative skills must be felt on ground so that the alienation is at least partially allayed. That at least will make a better beginning next year.

Facebook Emerging Scholar Programme for PhD Students in Emerging Regions 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 

• Application Opens: November 1, 2016
• Application Deadline: February 28, 2017

Eligible Candidates: The Facebook Emerging Scholar Award is provided for first and second year PhD students who are underrepresented minorities in the technology industry.

To be taken at (country): US

About the Award:  The Facebook Emerging Scholar Award is provided for first and second year PhD students who are underrepresented minorities in the technology industry.

For the purpose of theFacebook Emerging Scholar award, underrepresented minority group is considered to include persons who identify as: Black or African American, person having origins in any Black racial groups of Africa; Hispanic or Latino, person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South American, Central American, Caribbean, or other Spanish culture origin, regardless of race; Native American or Alaskan Native, person having origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, or South America and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, person having origins in the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands.

Type: PhD

Eligibility:  

• You must be currently enrolled in your first or second year of a PhD program to apply.
• All applicants will need to use their Facebook account to apply.

Selection Criteria: Applications will be evaluated based on the strength of the student’s proposed research and their recommendation letters.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• Payment of tuition and fees for two academic years
• $37,000 annual stipend
• Up to $5,000 towards conference travel funds

How to Apply: 

• Research Statement: 1-2 page research summary
• Resume or CV with email, phone and mailing address, along with applicable coursework noted
• Two letters of recommendation (Please provide reference email addresses): Advisor and one Professional reference (can be from academia or industry)

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Facebook

Globalization Expressway to Universal Slavery

Gilbert Mercier

If humans were largely moral and ethical beings, then globalization could be a workable proposition. Unfortunately, the dark behavioral narcissism expressed by compulsive greed and an infinite appetite for power seems to have become the guiding precept of our collective nightmare. If only the desire to dominate others and have a lot more than them were not the prime motivations for the global elite on top of the human food chain, we could all have our respective modest slice of happiness on this planet. The Utopia of globalization through institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) was supposed to eradicate the universal pestilence of war, extreme poverty, hunger and slavery using the might of the above supranational institutions to prevent the rise of so-called rogue nations usually ruled by dictators.

World order of chaos with misery for profit

The opportunity of this push for a supranational form of government has to be understood in the psychological context of a world traumatized by World War II. Many public servants, who had fought against the Nazis and their Japanese and Italian allies, had genuinely the best intentions at heart when institutions like the UN were set up. If some of the original ideas were good and moral to some extend, a rot almost immediately contaminated and perverted most of the created institutions and quickly — using the pretext of the Cold War — allowed the birth of a monstrosity such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The globalists have controlled and ultimately Wall Street has financed, supranational government instances such as the UN, IMF, World Bank and a myriad of non-governmental organization (NGO) little helpers. Not only have these done nothing to curtail the man-made disasters of war, climate change, slavery and poverty, but they have exacerbated them, all for the sake of profit.

In this Orwellian time of moral decay, human misery is good for business. In a globalization controlled by Wall Street’s puppeteer sociopaths, who believe they are the masters of the universe, ordinary people everywhere have become canon fodder and slave labor. They are not even collateral damage but human lubricant, as viewed by the elite. One can see that if they are not stopped immediately, trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its Trans-Atlantic counterpart could seal the deal of the establishment of an atrocious world government, controlled by a few thousands, in complete disregard of not only national interest, but also cultural diversity.

Look what happened to Detroit, Michigan, and countless other manufacturing towns in the United States that are all collateral damage of  Bill Clinton’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The massive trade agreements in the works, to be put in place by the globalists if they remain in power, are intended to annihilate any form of economic or political independence from the signatory countries and to scatter their populations to the wind, as in the case in the globalist-controlled demolition of the Middle East in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Displaced and disenfranchised populations are beaten into submission and used as docile worker bees.

Drastic action or hell on earth

If we let the globalists complete their worldwide coup already in progress, then all sovereignty would be lost, and most of the world’s population would become slave-wage laborers at the mercy of the global corporate empire. Countries with a diversified agriculture would be turned into one-crop wastelands to ensure that most of the food supply has to be imported. Pseudo local governments would merely officiate as the slave drivers for the global elite. This must be stopped at all cost and undone by all means necessary. If we allow this final coup by the geriatric psychopaths at the top of the current world order, thousands of years of our rich human experience would be wiped out. Like poorly made cheap electronic products, the cultural garbage of the lowest common denominator empire would flood the world. This  cultural homogenization would affect primarily the information available to people. Since dissent is impossible without correct information and critical thought, the globalists want their propaganda to become the only source of  information. With the UN, the World Bank and the IMF, the political and economic framework financed by a worldwide network of banksters is already in place. Influential nations, on paper, like France and the United Kingdom, which are still officially full fledged members of the UN Security Council, have de facto abdicated their sovereignty to become vassals and secondary enforcers of the globalist plan. We are at the edge of an existential threat of greater magnitude than ever before in human history.

The semantics of deception

Machiavelli is known for his cynical view of political power; however, the advice the author of The Prince gave to the powerful of his time seems innocent by comparison to the depravity of today’s puppet masters. Words and ideas are gutted of their meaning to signify, most of the time, the exact opposite. For example, globalist eminence grise George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is an opaque giant NGO, with more than 100 offshoots worldwide by its own admission, but its tentacles are in reality more far reaching. The recent publications of Wikileaks in the voluminous Podesta email files have been a revelation of the extent of deception victimizing United States citizens. John Podesta may be viewed as a Soros right-hand man in the US in charge of delivering the returns for the globalist’s investments in the US elections. The connection between the two men is not only obvious but also official considering that Soros financed Podesta’s so-called Center for American Progress, the fake left equivalent of the neocon think tanks. The term progress is a lure that signifies power, just like Soros’ open society is, in reality, an exclusive club as tight as oysters reserved only for Soros’ chosen associates to savor. What is apparent from the email treasure trove is that Podesta’s job is really to supervise Hillary Clinton on behalf of Soros. In this context, the expression, leader of the free world, to describe the US president becomes a lie. The current world order of the globalists is anything but free, and one applicant for the job, Hillary Clinton, is not a queen on the chessboard, but a pawn.

Axis of resistance: Russia, China and Iran and lessons from Haiti’s revolution

One could ask: isn’t this psychopathic globalist coup of financiers well on its way? Isn’t it a done deal, and how can we resist and salvage anything? The examples of Russia, China and Iran prove that, as national entities, we still can. Germany, Japan and South Korea could reclaim their independence and kick out their US occupation. France and the UK could stop being submissive nations and get out of NATO. That would be a start. The path of war rhetoric expressed by the globalist mouthpieces of the West against Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China has to do with the national resistance of these three countries. The citizenry of Europe and North America should understand, that if such unprecedented conflicts occur, all countries will be on the front line, and there is more than enough fire power on each side to ensure massive destruction and no winning side. Russia, China and Iran are the last national obstacles to the globalist coup, and perhaps we are heading back to a bipolar two-block world order similar to the Cold War era. Other options, including the dismantlement, or at least the curtailment, of supranational organizations such as the UN, World Bank and IMF would surely be the side effects of what appears to be in many countries a revival of nationalism. The final plan of the globalists would  be atrocious for all of us. Waving the white flag is not an option. At this critical time of our history, and before our collective enslavement, we should  all emulate the brave Haitian slaves who beat not one, but three empires 212 years ago. Haitians were only the last ones to prove that it can be done; it must be redone.