Iran, sanctions and moral authority

Ron Forthofer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pornography is America’s misguided ghoul

Saad Mohammad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ramzy Baroud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Severe drought hits large regions of Australia

Frank Gaglioti

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrea Lobo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkish lira crisis renews fears of Italian banking system collapse

Allison Smith

In mid-August, the Turkish lira lost nearly 40 percent of its value after US President Donald Trump announced a doubling of steel and aluminium tariffs against Turkey and Turkey responded with tariffs against American imports into the country.

The devaluation of the Turkish lira threatens a hyperinflationary collapse of Turkey’s economy and has renewed fears about Italy’s continuing economic and financial crisis. Italy’s largest banks are heavily exposed to Turkey’s economy through nearly €20 billion in loans, in euros and Turkish lira, many of which are going into default. Should the loan defaults continue, it could lead to a full-blown Italian credit crisis and possibly trigger a collapse of the Eurozone, which holds more than €135 billion in Turkish debt.

Amid fears of an Italian collapse, Italy’s Unicredit Bank lost 5.2 percent of its share price.

The lira crisis comes just weeks after the Genoa motorway bridge collapse, an event that further exposed the fragility of Italian infrastructure, which has been underfunded and systematically looted for decades.

But according to economic analysts, the real issue in Italy is not the fall in the value of the Turkish lira. The rising cost of borrowing to cover Italy’s sovereign debt is triggering a jump in Italian interest rates coupled with a drop in economic growth down from 1.8 percent of GDP to 1.2 percent of GDP for the second quarter of 2018. Italy’s debt to GDP ratio is more than 131 percent, meaning it is barely able to service the interest, let alone pay down the principal.

Weak economic growth is leading to lower tax revenue at the same time that there is an increase in demand for social spending. Italy’s creditors are demanding that the government shore up the banking system through deeper cuts to social spending and continued pension “reform.”

As Italy’s new coalition government of La Lega (The League) and Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) puts together the next budget it is being closely scrutinized by European authorities and, more importantly, the markets, which will not allow for increased domestic spending.

The attacks already carried out on pensioners and workers since the 2008 global economic crash have resulted in a massive economic polarisation and increased social tensions. The major increase in the retirement age left millions of seniors in poverty. Although the liberalisation of the labour market slightly reduced unemployment figures several years ago, now two of every three newly created jobs are temporary and precarious; short-term contracts or low-paying positions.

According to the most recent report by Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), 30 percent of people in Italy—more than 18 million—are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Official unemployment stands at 10 percent, with youth unemployment more than 40 percent, the third highest in Europe. In reality, unemployment is much higher than the official statistics, since more than 30 percent of all working-age Italians are not counted since they are considered “inactive” because they cannot prove they are actively looking and/or have applied for work when statistics are taken. This means that for youth, a much higher percentage is without work or training.

The most recent report by the Caritas charity documents that for the first time the group most affected by poverty are aged 18 to 34. According to the Catholic charity, one in ten Italians in the 18-34 age group lives in extreme poverty and the group has seen a steep rise in the number of young people relying on its centres for food, shelter and clothing.

An equal number of men and women sought help from the charity, and 60.8 percent of those who did so were unemployed. The charity also noted a rise in requests for help from people in employment.

Historically, poverty has been mostly concentrated in the south of Italy. However, in recent years Caritas has also noted a marked increase in the number of requests for help from the centre-north of the country.

These statistics conceal a development with explosive social consequences. As the Italian economy faces a possible collapse and youth joblessness continues to rise, an increasing number of youth are turning their backs on traditional politics.

In a recent European-wide survey of youth, when asked, “Would you actively participate in a large-scale uprising against the generation in power if it happened in the next days or months?” more than half, 53 percent, said “yes.”

With social anger at the boiling point, Italian politicians are focusing their attention on agitating against refugees and immigrants, in order to divide the working class in an effort to direct the anger of the exploited and oppressed against the most vulnerable sections of the population.

Putin backs widely hated Russian pension reform

Clara Weiss

On August 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time came out openly in support of a widely hated pension reform, which will raise the retirement age for both men and women. The reform is opposed by more than 90 percent of the population. Just a little over a week earlier, a Duma hearing had ended with an approval of the reform. It is likely to be pushed through in the next few weeks.

The initial bill provides for a raising of the retirement age for women from 55 to 63, and for men from 60 to 65, an age that over a third of Russian men do not even reach. The raising of the retirement age will have far-reaching social implications for the entire working class, as substantial sections of workers rely on the meager pension payments to their parents as an addition to their salaries to sustain their families. About a third of Russian pensioners already work because they cannot live on their pension, which is on average only about 13,300 rubles ($210) per month.

While some media outlets, including the New York Times, have focused on the limited concessions that Putin made to the widespread hostility toward the reform, the main signal the Russian president sent is that he and his government will not budge on this issue in any substantial way.

In his 3,100-word address, Putin outlined the demographic problems facing Russian society, focusing on the devastating impact of the Second World War, which killed up to 40 million Soviet citizens, and of the total economic and social collapse of the 1990s following the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Stating that he had been forced by objective circumstances to change his position on the pension reform—ever since 2005, he had insisted he would never agree to raising the retirement age—he argued that the state budget did not have the resources to pay for pensions, under conditions in which the numbers of pensioners is rapidly growing, while the working-age population is shrinking. Putin added that Russia had come out of the economic and social crisis that still marked the 2000s and was now in a position to demand more concessions from the population.

He proposed a number of changes to the original pension reform draft: Instead of raising the retirement age for women by eight years from 55 to 63, it should be raised by five years, from 55 to 60.

Putin also argued for incentives for businesses so that they would keep people in pre-retirement age on the job, and for the maintenance of some benefits and exceptions for specific groups of workers.

He concluded: “I will emphasize again that we are faced with a very difficult, but necessary decision. I ask you to understand this.”

The argument that there is no choice but raising the retirement age is a lie.

“Resources” to pay for pensions, and increase living standards for both workers and pensioners, exist in abundance: They are concentrated in the hands of oligarchs close to Putin and a whole layer of other oligarchs who are in or close to the “liberal opposition.” They all have gained their fortunes through social plunder: the reckless destruction of the Soviet economy and welfare system, and the ongoing exploitation of Russia’s raw material resources and working class.

As of 2017, the country’s top decile owned 89 percent of all household wealth. The country is home to some 96 billionaires and 79,000 dollar millionaires. Among Russia’s wealthiest billionaires are Alisher Usmanov with $12.3 billion, Viktor Vekselberg, who is worth over $13 billion, Vladimir Potanin ($14.8 billion), Alexei Mordashov ($18.4 billion) and Leonid Mikhelson (over $20 billion).

The riches of the oligarchs and their origins are, of course, widely known in Russia. This is why no one believes or supports the official argument in favor of the pension reform.

Moreover, Putin’s argument that the social situation for Russians has become more stable flies in the face of the reality that Russian workers, youth and intellectuals are facing on a daily basis.

Especially since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis and the Western sanctions, which triggered another economic crisis in Russia in 2015-2016, and led to a dramatic devaluation of the ruble, living standards have steeply declined. The number of “extremely poor,” who live on 9,828 rubles (less than $174) has risen to almost 20 million. Many of the “extremely poor” are pensioners.

A recent article in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that the population will face a steep increase in payments for utilities in 2019, which would lead to a growth in the already high consumer debt. According to one expert, the debts of Russians for utilities rose by 5.3 percent over the past year, and is now 35 percent higher than in 2015. The average debt of Russians in terms of utility payments is over 46,000 rubles ($682). Consumer debt this year has risen twice as fast as real income.

This year has already seen multiple expressions of extreme social anger over the horrendous social and working conditions. Earlier this year, a teacher was fired (and later reinstated) for protesting against poverty wages for teachers in his region, which placed them in the income bracket of those counted as “extremely poor.” For several months in the late winter and early spring of this year, paramedics in Voronezh were engaged in a work-to-rule action (a full strike by paramedics is banned by law) to protest against new regulations that force them to drive to patients on their own time. Paramedics in the region receive a monthly salary of some 19,000 rubles ($282). In August, workers at the Russian VW plant in Kaluga also staged a work-to-rule action.

The so-far limited strikes and protests will no doubt grow in the coming months. The pension reform, with or without Putin’s proposed changes, constitutes an aggressive move by the oligarchy in its warfare against the working class. Like the bourgeoisie internationally, the oligarchy in Russia is determined to make the working class pay for the very crisis it itself has produced.

On September 2, several thousand people protested again against the pension reform. The protests had been mainly organized by the Stalinist KPRF, the largest opposition party in the Russian parliament. At the biggest rally in Moscow, which attracted some 10,000 people, Gennady Zyuganov, the long-time head of the KPRF, described the pension reform as “cannibalistic” but only mildly criticized Putin. His speech tried to whip up Russian nationalism and was filled with anti-American and anti-Ukrainian remarks. At other rallies, protesters raised demands for Putin to step down.

The politics of the forces that currently organize the protests, ranging from the KPRF, other Stalinist parties and various pseudo-left groups, to fascist forces and the far-right “liberal” politician Alexei Navalny, constitute a dangerous dead-end. Their aim is to divert social anger into reactionary nationalist channels and thus block the emergence of any genuine working class opposition movement to the reform.

Such a movement would have to be linked up with the growing class struggles of workers internationally on a socialist basis and take up a fight not only against Putin and the current government, but against the entire political establishment that has emerged out of the destruction of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism.

“Five Eyes” summit in Australia ramps up internet censorship

Mike Head 

A meeting of key cabinet members from the US-led Five Eyes global spying network, held in Australia on August 28-29, shed light on the ousting of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull three days earlier, as well as the intensifying social media censorship.

Despite the high-profile character of the gathering, the event received almost no publicity. Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton hosted the summit. Leading the other delegations were US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid, along with Canada’s Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and New Zealand Justice Minister Andrew Little.

As exposed by ex-US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, the five-country intelligence web conducts bugging, hacking and other forms of mass surveillance over the world’s population, as well as targeted governments. Its cyber warfare operations are dedicated to tracking and suppressing political and social discontent and preparing for wars to reassert US global hegemony.

The annual summit of Five Eyes ministers was no doubt scheduled months before Turnbull’s removal on August 24, yet the timing and the contents of the communiqué issued by the meeting point to the escalating demand from Washington for the Australian government and its other partners to commit themselves to front line involvement in any military conflict launched by the US, as well as to taking greater control over the internet.

Dutton, an extreme right-wing figure, notorious for his xenophobic anti-immigrant demagogy, anti-refugee operations and militarism, chaired the gathering just after failing to replace Turnbull as prime minister. After months of destabilisation of Turnbull by the most right-wing and pro-US elements in the Liberal Party, Dutton was narrowly defeated by Scott Morrison in a party room leadership ballot.

Despite Dutton falling short in his leadership bid, Morrison quickly reinstated him as home affairs minister, presiding over the central repressive apparatus of the capitalist state—the federal police, intelligence and Border Force agencies. In fact, the governor-general swore Dutton back into office at a special ceremony on August 27, a day before the rest of Morrison’s new ministry, so he could host the Five Eyes meeting.

In the meantime, Morrison, himself a right-wing militarist, had distanced himself from Turnbull by holding a “warm” conversation with US President Donald Trump, who rang to congratulate Morrison a day after he was installed.

During Turnbull’s three years in office, he had repeatedly assured US leaders of his commitment to the US military and intelligence alliance but his government had baulked at US requests to send warships and planes to challenge China’s activities in the South China Sea. Moreover, two weeks before he was ousted, Turnbull had given a “reset” speech calling for closer relations with China, Australian capitalism’s biggest export market.

At the two-day summit, the five countries firstly pledged their unity, specifically referring to its foundation through the US victory in World War II. “We reaffirmed that the close and enduring five country partnership, developed following the Second World War, remains fundamental to the security and prosperity of our nations,” the communiqué stated.

Next, the meeting agreed to jointly respond to “severe foreign interference” and publicly brand the governments responsible. Russia and China were not named, but they are clearly the focus of the declaration, coming amid a barrage of unsubstantiated accusations by the intelligence, political and media establishments against the two countries.

“We condemned foreign interference, being the coercive, deceptive and clandestine activities of foreign governments, actors, and their proxies, to sow discord, manipulate public discourse, bias the development of policy, or disrupt markets for the purpose of undermining our nations and our allies,” the communiqué said.

Under pressure from Washington, Turnbull’s government, backed by the opposition Labor Party, recently pushed through parliament unprecedented “foreign interference” laws, outlawing alleged links to China and many forms of anti-war and other political dissent, particularly involving international campaigns. Morrison’s government will now be expected to launch prosecutions.

The communiqué also denounced tech companies for not meeting with Five Eyes officials to discuss clamping down further on social media. An accompanying “Joint Statement on Countering the Illicit Use of Online Spaces” demanded that the internet conglomerates work more closely with the intelligence and police agencies to detect, identify and “urgently and immediately” remove “illicit content,” including “sources of disinformation” and “forms of malicious foreign interference.”

The meeting insisted that social media companies act on “previous commitments to invest in automated capabilities and techniques (including photo DNA tools) to detect, remove and prevent re‑upload of illegal and illicit content.”

Unless the companies cooperated, the five governments would work together to force companies to allow law enforcement agencies to access user data. “We may pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions,” the statement declared.

As the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) has proven, these governments and their European counterparts are already collaborating with social media companies to implement massive restrictions on internet access. In April 2017, Google announced new algorithms, aimed at limiting or blocking access to the WSWS and other left wing, anti-war and progressive websites. Facebook and Twitter have adopted similar measures.

The WSWS has taken the lead in exposing this conspiracy to censor the internet and called for the formation of an International Coalition of Socialist, Anti-War and Progressive Websites to fight back against this attack on freedom of speech and basic democratic rights.

The Five Eyes edicts signal an even more draconian offensive. A statement on combatting “ubiquitous encryption” declared the necessity to crack open “end-to-end encryption” tools allegedly used for “terrorist and criminal activities.”

Aware of the importance of encryption for online retail, banking and other corporate and financial purposes, the statement denied any “intention to weaken encryption mechanisms.” Nevertheless, the five governments “agreed to the urgent need for law enforcement to gain targeted access to data,” subject to further “discussion with industry.”

Under Turnbull, Australia’s Liberal-National government had already unveiled such legislation, tabled in parliament last month. Telcos, internet companies and device manufacturers that refuse to facilitate access to secret data face fines of up to $10 million.

The intelligence and police forces will have powers to compel any company, via a “Technical Capability Notice” issued by the attorney-general, to build a capability or functionality to provide the information required by agencies.

These powers will be far-reaching, potentially affecting any website. According to government ministers, they will apply to encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp, as well as “any entity operating a website.”

The Five Eyes summit underscores the need to develop the struggle against this ever-increasing internet censorship, together with the drive toward war and police-state rule, and to root it in the working class, the only social force capable of defending fundamental democratic rights and freedom of expression.

Washington escalates threats over Syria as Russia bombs Al Qaeda positions

Bill Van Auken

With forces loyal to the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad apparently preparing for a ground offensive to reassert control over the northwestern province of Idlib, the Trump White House, the State Department and the Pentagon have all issued warnings of a “humanitarian” catastrophe and threats of US retaliation over the use of chemical weapons.

The latest threats came Tuesday, with the White House issuing a statement declaring that Washington was “closely monitoring the situation in Idlib” and the “threat of an imminent Assad regime attack, backed by Russia and Iran.”

Such an attack, the statement continued “would be a reckless escalation of an already tragic conflict and would risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.” It added that, in the event of a chemical weapons attack, “the United States and its Allies will respond swiftly and appropriately.”

The statement reiterates earlier declarations by Trump and top administration officials. The US president had tweeted on Monday, “The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned last Friday that the US would view an offensive in Idlib as “an escalation of an already dangerous conflict,” and National Security Advisor John Bolton warned that the US “will respond very strongly” to any use of chemical weapons.

Russia and the Assad government have rejected the warnings. After a three-week lull, Russian warplanes carried out at least 20 airstrikes on targets near the Idlib’s western border, reportedly targeting positions held by Chinese Uighur Islamist extremists who are affiliated with the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. The action involved Russian Sukhoi Su-24Ms and Su-34s jets and was supported by Russian ships in the eastern Mediterranean.

Syrian Foreign minister Walid Muallem said that the US threats would not stop the “determination of the Syrian people and Syrian army’s plans to clear Idlib and finally put an end to terrorism in Syria.” Syrian troops and armor have reportedly been massed at the province’s border.

Speaking at a Moscow press conference Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Idlib as a “terrorists’ nest” that threatened Russian bases in Syria. “Just to speak out with some warnings—without taking into account the very dangerous, negative potential for the whole situation in Syria—is probably not a full comprehensive approach,” he said, in obvious reference to the threats from Washington.

Absent from the US statements is any recognition that Idlib is effectively run by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, which leads the dominant “rebel” faction, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (IHT), and includes large numbers of so-called foreign fighters. The IHT has reportedly set up gallows and employed firing squads to eliminate opponents seeking accommodation with the Syrian government.

The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has acknowledged that there are at least 10,000 Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Idlib. The front that the group leads is said to control 60 percent of the province’s territory along with its capital, and effectively governs the region. Others have put the number of Al Qaeda-linked fighters at between 20,000 and 30,000.

Washington is threatening to intervene not out of any humanitarian concerns. Successive US administration have carried out bloody interventions in the region—from the war of aggression in Iraq, to the regime change operations in Libya and Syria and the near genocidal US-Saudi war against Yemen—that have claimed the lives of millions and decimated entire societies.

If it launches a new act of aggression in Syria, it will be to rescue the Al Qaeda-led “rebels,” which Washington and its Western and regional allies have supported since the onset of the proxy war for regime change in 2011, pouring billions of dollars’ worth of money and weapons to support these forces. And it will be to further US geo-strategic interests in dominating the Middle East and rolling back the influence of Iran and Russia in both Syria and the wider region.

With the open defense of Al Qaeda in Syria, Washington is unceremoniously ditching the 17-year-old “global war on terror” in favor of preparations for military confrontation with what US national security documents describe as “revisionist states” challenging US hegemony—i.e., Russia and China.

As for the warnings over a chemical weapons attack, these amount to an invitation to the Al Qaeda forces to stage an incident in order to secure air support from the US and its allies. Damascus flatly denied responsibility for earlier incidents—in Douma last April and in Khan Shaykhun a year before. Both were used as the pretext for missile and air strikes by Washington and its allies.

The Washington Post Tuesday published excerpts from a new book on the Trump White House by Bob Woodward, Fear, which included an account that after the supposed April 2017 chemical weapons incident, Trump proposed to his defense secretary that the US military assassinate Syrian President Assad.

“Let’s fucking kill him!” Trump is quoted as saying “Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them.”

While Mattis is reported to have told Trump he would develop such plans, the book says that he immediately told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.”

Gripped by extreme political crisis over the internecine war within the US political establishment, particularly over US policy toward Russia, and confronting mounting social tensions and rising working class militancy at home, the impetus for the Trump administration seizing on another phony chemical weapons incident to launch a major US escalation in Syria is greater than ever.

The UN’s Syria envoy, De Mistura, told reporters this week that the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate had “the capability to produce weaponized chlorine,” meaning that it is entirely capable of staging a chemical weapons attack and blaming it on the government.

The moves toward a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive to retake Idlib are unfolding in the midst of intense rounds of diplomatic discussions between Moscow, Ankara and Tehran. The leaders of the three powers—Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hassan Rouhani—are set to meet in Tehran on September 7 for discussions that will center on the question of Idlib.

Turkey’s defense minister and intelligence chief were in Moscow, while Iran’s foreign minister has held meetings in both Ankara and Damascus in recent days.

Turkey, which has backed a section of the Islamist militias in Syria and is anxious to avoid another flood of refugees across its border, has sought to forestall the offensive, insisting that the “moderate” rebels can be separated from their Al Qaeda core. It has also sent troops and tanks to positions inside Idlib near the Turkish border with the aim of blocking any further movement of Syrians into Turkey.

Moscow is clearly hopeful that Turkey can provide a means of delivering Idlib to the government in Damascus without a protracted and bloody campaign.

The Erdogan government has come into increasing confrontation with Washington, over both the US military’s use of the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia as its principal proxy ground force in Syria and the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions that have exacerbated Turkey’s economic crisis.

The Turkish government reported on Tuesday that the country’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, had told the visiting US special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, that Turkey wanted all Kurdish militants out of the Syrian-Turkish border region.

The threat of the developments in Syria turning into a wider and far more dangerous confrontation are clear. Russia has reportedly moved 26 warships and 36 planes, including strategic bombers, into the Mediterranean. The US, meanwhile, has also positioned substantial forces in the region.

Moscow reported last week that the Pentagon had redeployed the USS Sullivans to the Persian Gulf, with 56 cruise missiles on board, and that B-1B strategic bombers had been redeployed to the Al-Udeid Air Bases in Qatar.