Fascism and Islamic Fundamentalism

Farhang Jahanpour

The rise of Fascism and Totalitarianism

Just over 100 years ago, Britain, France, Germany and Russia ruled half of the world – most of Europe, all of Africa, South Asia, most of Southeast Asia, and most of the Pacific region. They dominated China and were of course influential everywhere else.

During the past century, including the two devastating World Wars when the West resorted to mechanised butchery and industrialised slaughter, more than 170 million people, mainly civilians, were killed.

The West introduced unprecedented levels of totalitarianism and oppression by inventing and ruling through Communism, Fascism, Nazism, slavery and apartheid.

Some six million Jews perished as the result of the Holocaust, in the same way that European adventurers and settlers had carried out the genocide of tens of millions of native populations of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand.

After the end of the Second World War and the intensification of colonialism, the world was divided between the Western Capitalist camp and the Eastern Communist camp. At times, the rivalry between the two blocs brought the whole world to the brink of extinction, the best-known example of which was the Cuban missile crisis.

That is one incident that is relatively well-known but there were a number of close calls, some of them not even covered by mainstream media, and some of them became known only decades later.

As General Lee Butler, the former Chief of U.S. Nuclear Forces said: “We were just lucky to survive”.

The rivalry between the two superpowers extended to many countries in Asia and Africa, as most countries had to attach themselves to one of the two camps in order to remain immune from the threat of the other superpower.

Although fortunately the two superpowers did not engage in direct confrontation, there were many proxy wars fought between them at the expense of other people in Korea, Vietnam, and many other countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the sole “hyper-power” and for a while ruled the world almost unopposed. Thus, for a while, we had the era of unipolar American ascendance and hegemony throughout the world.

The American military boasted that it had “full-spectrum dominance” on land, in air and sea, and even in space. America’s military spending is almost equal to the military spending of all other countries combined, if one adds up the money that is spent on the CIA and other 16 American intelligence organisations.

Islamic fundamentalism – and Christian

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Islamic fundamentalism” has become the great bogey. Many Western scholars have viewed the 1990s as the era of Islamic fundamentalism, and the end of the 20th and the beginning of 21st century as the era of “the Islamic threat”.

The irruption of Islam into the political landscape, in Iran and in many Islamic countries, is viewed as an anachronism.

The Islamic Revolution in Iran 40 years ago caught everybody by surprise, and ever since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, America has tried by different means to bring it down and replace it with a pro-Western regime.

Since the revolution, Iran has been under various degrees of sanctions, as well as different plots to crush it.

Since then, “Islamic terrorism” has almost become synonymous with “Islamic fundamentalism” and “Islamic fundamentalism” has become synonymous with Islam.

The terrorist acts committed by a small number of militant Muslims, who often have grudges against their own rulers or against the countries that have invaded and destroyed their countries, are attributed to an inherently violent Islamic doctrine.

Although most of the terrorist groups, including the Afghan Mujahedin, the Taliban, the Al Qaida and most of the terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, have been created and nurtured by Sunni radicalism exported from some of the countries allied with the West, this has not reduced the hostility towards Iran.

The disastrous wars in Iraq, and the Western attempts at regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere have given rise to the most virulent and dangerous forms of terrorism, as represented by militant Sunni groups under various names, such as the al-Nusra Front, or the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

These groups overran a large area of territory in Iraq and Syria and nearly toppled the governments of those countries.

However, although Iran has been at the forefront of fighting those terrorist groups, no sooner were those groups defeated and on retreat that Iran again occupied the position of the main bogey and the “biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world” as the Americans would have it.

It is important to point out that terrorism has not been limited to Muslims.

As Olivier Roy, one of the greatest scholars of radical movements, explains in his book, The Failure of Political Islam:

“A strange Islamic threat indeed, which waged war only against other Muslims (Iran/Iraq) or against the Soviets (Afghanistan) and caused less terrorist damage than the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the Red Brigade, the Irish Republican Army, and the Basque separatist ETA, whose small-group actions have been features of the European political landscape longer than Hizbullah and other jihad movements.” (See Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, 1994, Preface, p ix).

No one criticises Christianity for the activities of those terrorist gangs, but any terrorist action carried out by a crazy Muslim or a radical Islamic group is often attributed to Islam.

This is not to say that terrorist acts committed by various Muslim groups against local rulers or against Western targets are not serious. They are very serious and have to be dealt with. There has been an ominous intensification of such terrorist acts in various countries, and if they remain unchecked, they may pose serious problems in the future too.

The defeat of ISIS does not necessarily mean the end of terrorism, which may reveal itself in a different guise and more diverse forms, as we have seen in various European countries.

America has also paid a high price as the result of the activities of some terrorist groups.

We have witnessed the terrorist activities in the United States by Omar Abd al-Rahman and his associates who were originally involved in the assassination of President Sadat, and also the massive bombings at American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania where again Muslim groups were implicated.

Of course, we had the most devastating example of that form of terrorism in the events of 9/11.
However, an over-emphasis on the Islamic nature of these grievances can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and can create a situation that is much more difficult to deal with.

At the same time, many unrelated terrorist activities in America and Europe have also been attributed to Muslims.

Shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing on 19 April 1995, a leading British columnist Bernard Levin, writing in “The Times”, pondered:

“Do you realise that in perhaps half a century, not more, and perhaps a good deal less, there will be wars in which fanatical Muslims will be winning? As for Oklahoma, it will be called Khartoum-on-the-Mississippi, and woe betide anyone who calls it anything else.” (Quoted in John Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 235).

I remember seeing the cover story of a British tabloid newspaper on the same day that published a photograph of the bombed building and a dead child with the caption: “In the name of Islam.”

Of course, none of those newspapers apologised for their mistake when it was made clear that the Oklahoma bombing had been carried out by a friend and associate of the Christian teacher David Koresh, the founder of a Christian messianic movement, called Branch Davidians Sect.

The attack was carried out on the anniversary of the attack on Koresh’s headquarters in Waco, Texas, that had set fire to the whole compound killing Koresh and at least 79 others, including many women and children.

As it happens, I was watching television when the news of the attack on Koresh’s compound was being broadcast live. The forces of US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms who had been sent to arrest David Koresh drilled a hole through the wall of the compound and pumped gas through it to force the people inside to come out.

The gas was set aflame when it came in contact with fire inside, and the whole compound was set ablaze, flames spreading very fast as the result of a strong wind. It is incredible that no one had thought of having some fire engines or ambulances ready in case of the attack going wrong. It was horrendous to watch dozens of men and women and children being burnt alive before the fire engines finally arrived.

Even when it was established that David Koresh had originally been a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church who claimed to have the gift of prophecy, later calling himself a prophet, he and his movement were referred to as members of a cult, not as Christian fundamentalists or Christian terrorists.

The founder of the Davidian movement, Victor Houteff, was a keen student of the Bible and taught Bible study classes, attracting large groups of Seventh Day Adventists.

Like many fundamentalist Christians, Houteff believed that God will have a judgement upon his people and have a purification in his church, resulting in only 144,000 people surviving. He wanted to establish the Davidic kingdom in Palestine, Texas.

Koresh shared many of Houteff’s views, but went a step further. He wanted to implement God’s orders and establish a Davidic kingdom in Jerusalem. In 1985, he traveled to Israel, where he claimed that he had a vision that he was the modern-day Cyrus, the saviour of Jews, hence his name Koresh, the Persian version of Cyrus.

He believed that like Jesus he would be martyred. Until 1990, he believed that he would be martyred in Israel, but later on he said that the prophecies of Daniel would be fulfilled in Waco and that his headquarters at Mount Carmel Centre was the Davidic kingdom.

There were similar anti-Islamic outbursts after the crash of the TWA Flight 800 on 17 July 1996. I remember distinctly that the day after the crash, the BBC studio announcer interviewing an American official asked if the bomb explosion on the aircraft had been connected with the attack on an American air base in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

An exhaustive and costly investigation finally concluded that the cause of the accident had been the explosion of flammable fuel vapours in a fuel tank. However, the harm had already been done, and in the minds of millions of traumatised viewers and listeners, the deadly explosion had been attributed to Muslim terrorists.

After years of campaigning and many Labour Party promises (when in opposition) that if the Labour Party came to power it would allow direct-grant Muslim schools, when the Labour government announced that it would allow two Muslim direct-grant schools, it gave rise to a strong backlash.

The day after the news was announced, one of the tabloid newspapers devoted its entire front page to the picture of a Muslim school with the caption “Government surrender to segregation.”

Although there are hundreds of Church of England, Catholic and Jewish schools in Britain, yet in the case of one Islamic school there was the use of emotion-charged terms such as “surrender” and “segregation.”

More Islamophobia and hate in Britain

Britain is one of the most tolerant, multicultural and compassionate societies in the world. It has provided shelter to millions of Asians and Africans and to people of all faiths and none.

British Muslims are perhaps more integrated into British society than is the case with Muslims in other European countries.

Nevertheless, even here there has been, and to some extent there still is, a feeling of hostility towards Muslims, that has been described as Islamophobia.

A report by the Runymede Trust, a race-relations think-thank, compiled by a committee composed of some senior Christian, Muslim and Jewish scholars and religious figures published on 28th December 1996, concluded that Britain had become a nation of Muslim haters, and Islamophobia was in danger of becoming institutionalised, unless the law was changed to outlaw religious as well as racial discrimination.

The report concluded:

“In 20 years it has become more explicit, more extreme, more pernicious and more dangerous… [it] is part of the fabric of everyday life in modern Britain, in much the same way that anti-Semitic discourse was taken for granted earlier in this century.” (For the text of the report see ‘The Observer’ magazine, 29th Dec. 1996).

Great strides have been made since then in outlawing religious discrimination, but recent terrorist attacks have again revived a feeling of hostility and suspicion towards Muslims.

After 9/11: The Staggering Economic and Human Cost of the War on Terror

Benjamin Dangl

“Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there,” President George W. Bush announced on September 20^th, 2001, following the 9/11 attacks.

Bush’s “War on Terror” did not end with Al Qaeda – it has roared on into an endless conflict spanning the globe, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of US taxpayers’ dollars.

“Americans should not expect one battle,” Bush continued, “but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen.”

Days later, the Bush administration launched its air war. By the end of 2001, the US had dropped 17,500 bombs on Afghanistan.

The War in Afghanistan is now in its 17th year, making it America’s longest war. The Pentagon reports that the Afghan conflict costs US taxpayers $45 billion per year.

The human and economic cost of the post-9/11 US War on Terror has been investigated extensively by the Costs of War Project, based out of the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

The Project is made up of researchers, legal experts, human rights officials, and physicians whose focus is to reveal the cost of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the related conflicts in Pakistan and Syria.

Their research findings are staggering.

The Project’s investigations show that at least 370,000 people have been killed in the post 9/11 wars. Project researchers explain that it is likely that many more people have died indirectly due to environmental catastrophes, malnutrition, and broken infrastructure tied to the wars.

In addition, over 10 million Afghan, Iraqi, and Pakistani people have been displaced as war refugees.

The Project calculated the US budgetary costs in the post-9/11 wars to be $5.6 trillion. (In the decade after 9/11, US military spending doubled.)

Their research also shed a light on worldwide US military operations, showing that the US conducted counter-terror operations in 76 centuries around the globe from 2015-2017.

The Project developed a map illustrating drone operations, the deployment of troops, locations of military bases, and training programs – all demonstrating the complex global reach of the US War on Terror.

“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,” Bush ominously warned in his 2001 speech.

It quickly became clear where Bush’s line in the sand was drawn with the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the administration’s military operations.

Nearly two decades have passed since 9/11, and the War on Terror appears more like an Endless War.

Pope Francis and the Battle Over Cultural Terrain

Gary Olson

“… [W]e should not be fooled: Much of the organized opposition to Francis has nothing to do with how we care for the divorced and remarried. It is this, his trenchant critique of modern capitalism that keeps money flowing to conservative outlets intent on marginalizing what the pope says.’

— Michael Sean Williams, The National Catholic Reporter,10/29/17.

So far, we have the still unsubstantiated allegations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò that Pope Francis covered up sex abuses by the now disgraced Theodore McCarrick, the Cardinal who oversaw Washington, D.C. churches from 2001-2006.  Vigano named 32 other senior clerics, all allies of Pope Francis and called for the pontiff’s resignation.

Although I remain highly skeptical of Vigano’s charges, I’m reluctant to draw any hard conclusion at this juncture. And being neither a Catholic nor a believer, I don’t have an ecclesiastical dog collar in this fight. However, my sense is that this matter is far more serious than a civil war within the Church — and that larger context warrants our attention.

Pope Francis has provoked powerful opponents who are outright bigots regarding what the pope terms “below-the-belt issues,” issues that he believes receive far too much attention by the Church. However, according to biographer Paul Vallely, it was Francis’s shift in emphasis to issues of economic justice, that was so “deeply disconcerting to those who sat comfortably atop the hierarchy of the distribution of the world’s wealth.” (P.405) In response to my written query, Villanova University Professor Massimo Faggioli, an expert on Vatican and global politics responded “This is a key issue to understanding the present moment.”

Here it’s important to note that the pope’s radical political metamorphosis preceded his ascension to the papacy.  According to Vallely, it was not until Jorge Maria Bergoglio (the future Pope Francis)  was nearing 50 years old that he fully grasped that capitalism was to blame for making and keeping people poor. And it wasn’t a Saul to Paul on the road to Damascus moment.

Bergoglio had been elected Procurate of Argentina’s Jesuits in 1987 but it was a rocky tenure and he later acknowledged making “hundreds of errors,” including a rigid and authoritarian leadership style that was offputting to his fellow Jesuits. His own journey to a profound personal change began when his superiors in Rome sent him to the Argentine city of Córdoba, a forced exile during which time he was virtually ignored by the Church hierarchy.

During this period of intense soul-searching and close interaction with ordinary people on the street, he gradually underwent an inner transformation and a radically altered political vision. He returned as an auxiliary bishop and in 1998 was named Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio’s actions soon earned him the informal title “Bishop of the Slums” while his strong social advocacy which employed the language of Liberation Theology, earned him the intense enmity of Argentina’s most influential economic actors.

Bergoglio became Pope Francis in 2013, the first Jesuit and first non-European to be elected in over 1,200 years. From his first day in office, those who believed he’d follow in the conservative tradition of John Paul II and Benedict were quickly disabused of that notion. From washing the feet of a young female Muslim prisoner to his first visit outside Rome to the “boat people” island of Lampedusa where he expressed solidarity with illegal African economic refugees, Francis sided with the wretched of the earth. But it was his excoriating, systematic critique of global capitalism and free market fundamentalists when he linked symptoms and cause, that alarmed global economic elites:

+In his papal exhortation “Joy of the Gospels,” he wrote “We have to say ‘Thou shalt not kill’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills.”

+ He wrote that some people defend “trickle down theories which have never been confirmed by facts…and express crude and naive faith in the goodness of those wielding power.” In his home country, Francis had observed the cruel consequences of IMF policies on the most vulnerable.

+ He described an amoral, throwaway culture where the elderly are deemed “no longer useful” and the poor are “leftovers.”

+ Offshore banking, credit default swaps and derivatives were described as “proximate immorality.”

+ His encyclical, Laudatory si’: On Caring for our Common Home,” named capitalism as a primary cause of climate change and in preparing the document Francis consulted with Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, the leading theorist of Liberation Theology.

+ Echoing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the pope proclaimed that “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater. It is a commandment.”

+ Francis directly challenged Washington’s rationale for its war on terrorism by saying that because “the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root, violence and conflict are inevitable.” Further, wars in the Middle East are not about Islam but a consequence of political and economic interests where disenfranchised people turn to desperate measures. He concluded that “Capitalism is terror against all humanity.”

Given the intellectual heft of his argument, the fact of some 1.3 billion Catholics and possessing, arguably, the world’s foremost moral credentials, the pope’s political enemies were at a disadvantage in fighting ideological battles on his turf. While biding their time, as John Gehring noted in The American Prospect, major Catholic businesspersons threatened to withhold sizable financial donations to the Church. Influential Catholics and publishing outlets set out to discredit the revolutionary pope. For example, the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, a Catholic, wrote in Forbes Magazinethat Francis had “aligned himself with the far left and has embraced a philosophy that would make people poor and less free.”

To obtain a more decisive impact, the pope’s enemies needed to conjure up an issue or wait for one. Vagano’s allegations about a Vatican cover-up either fell or were deposited in their laps. If Francis could be smeared over this matter, his moral authority on matters closer to their hearts would be tarnished. And barring a definitive resolution, doubts could be sown as a default strategy.

Emblematic of these efforts is the friendship between Vagano and OPUS DEI member Timothy Busch, avright-wing, Catholic, California lawyer and businessperson. The August 27, 2018 issue of The New York Times reported that Busch advised Vagano on the letter prior to its publication. Busch also sits on the Board of Governors that own the National Catholic Register, one of the first outlets to publish Vagano’s 8,000 word, 11-page letter, entitled “Testimony.” Conservative Catholic journalists acknowledged helping to prepare, edit and distribute the letter. In the meantime, digital Catholic media hostile to Francis worked overtime to undermine him.

The contrast between Francis and Busch couldn’t be more stark. On the one hand, Francis asserts that the manner in which those who run the financial system are trained, favors the “advancement of business leaders who are capable, but greedy and unscrupulous.” On the other hand, the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington,  D.C, recently renamed its business school the Tim and Steph Busch School of Business after receiving a gift of $15 million from the Busch Family Foundation. Five other donors brought the total to $47 million.  Among them was the Koch Family Foundation which chipped in an additional $10 million even though Koch readily admits he’s not religious, is pro-choice and approves of same sex marriage. Busch also persuaded Art Ciocca, CEO emeritus of The Wine Group to ante up another $10 million.

In announcing his gift, Busch said it was to help “show how capitalism and Catholicism can work hand in hand” and he wrote an complementary op-ed in The Wall Street Journal entitled “Teaching Capitalism to Catholics” in which he claimed that free markets are buttressed by moral principles taught by the Catholic Church. In a speech to CUA students, as reported in the Catholic Standard, Busch noted that as the only pontifical university in the United States, “We’re the pope’s business school” and later added,  “We realized that a professor in a business school can impact 100,000 students in his or his lifetime.”  To the influential, conservative Catholic organization, Legatus: Ambassadors for Christ in the Marketplace, Busch told 160 well-heeled members that the business school’s mission is to “impact how students think.” Note: Lest anyone question his motives, Busch said “The focus of my life is getting myself into heaven and to help others get there.”

Busch, along with Fr. Robert J. Spritzer, S.J., also co-founded the Napa Institute, which promotes a mix of free-market economics and theology. Among its goals is to “continue the work of the Apostles and their successors.”  Napa hosts hundreds of wealthy Catholic philanthropists at its annual gathering where they hear lectures from conservative bishops, philosophers and theologians.  In a September 5, 2018, letter to Napa’s “constituents,” Busch denied any involvemnt in Vagano’s letter but otherwise has not responded to further requests for comment. He also encouraged “constituents” to attend Napa’s upcoming conference on how to exert lay person influence on the Vatican.

In closing, Antonio Gramsci, the twentieth-century Marxist, explained  that culture, class and politics are inextricably intertwined. Powerful groups seek to influence culture with the human mind as the target. From the outset of his papacy, Francis sought to alter this landscape by vocalizing how capitalism is the primary cause of social injustice. In doing so he became a marked man. We’re witnessing one site in the larger struggle for cultural terrain, a battle occurring on many levels, including the Catholic Church.

Women driven towards suicide

 Sheshu Babu

While many reports indicate women face immense hardships in their lives, there is one more report indicating their distress.

Almost four in ten women who commit suicide are from India: 71.2% of women who commit suicide were under the group 15- 39 age group between 1990- 2016, according to the findings published in a paper titled ‘ Gender Differentials and state variations in suicide deaths in India: the Global Burden of Disease Study 1990-2016′ which appeared in The Lancet Public Health ( www.msn.org). The study found that India’ s contribution to global suicide deaths increased from 25.3 percent in 1990 to 36.6 percent in 2016 among women. The suicide rate in India is 15 per one lakh for women, double that of the global rate of suicide of women in 2016, which is seven percent. ( September 13, 2018, news18.com). Suicide rate of men was 24% when compared to women suicide rate of 37%. The report said that 63% of all suicide deaths reported in India were under the age group 15-39. Suicide ranked first in India as the cause of death compared to its third rank globally in this age group it said.

There was an increase of 40 percent in the number of suicide deaths between 1990- 2016 with an estimated 2,30,314 in 2016 indicating that ‘ disproportionately high suicide deaths in India are a public health crisis’ according to the lead author of the study Professor Rakhi Dandona from Public Health Foundation of India.

‘Having said that the suicide death rate (SDR) has reduced by 15 percent from 1990 to 2016’ , she saud. The study found wide variations in suicide death rates in India across the states in India.

Reasons for suicide deaths

One of the reason may be related to women unable to adjust after marriage. Married women accounted for high proportion of suicide deaths in India , the study stated. The Indian marriage system is less protective against suicide for women.

Many women face arranged and early marriage, young motherhood, low social status, domestic violence and almost total economic dependence.

The prevalence of child marriage is highest in Scheduled Tribes (15 percent) followed by Scheduled Castes (13 percent) according to a report released by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). According to the report, this phenomenon is evident among the top 10 states with the highest prevalence of child marriage. (Source NewsD, Sept 13, 2018, www.kracktivist.org). Though there are indications that child marriages are decreasing, they are still very much prevalent in rural areas . Hence, the rate of suicides may be high in lower strata of society including OBCs and Dalits due to problems associated with early marriage and forced marriage.

Pressure from family members of husbands specially relating to dowry may also have impact on women committing suicide. Due to modern trends of luxurious life style, the women are being harassed to get ornaments or lands or money in the shape of dowry. As asking for dowry openly is illegal, husbands and in- laws are adopting other ways to get their demands met. Helpless women are, thus, forced to take extreme steps unable to force their parents for fulfilling economic demands.

Failures in education, employment and love affairs too have a role in suicide deaths in modern times.

Besides, personal and health reasons are also reasons in increase of deaths by suicide in women.

Grave concern

The situation is serious and warrants urgent action. As Dandona said, ‘ the trends in SDRs in women in this study suggest the need to further assess the complex relationships between gender and suicidal behaviour to facilitate Women- specific suicide prevention strategies. Present system of patriarchy is mostly contributing to women suicide death rates. Empowerment programs should be implemented with greater urgency

Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era

Mairead Maguire

In examining the future, we must look to the past.

As we watch the media today, we are spoon fed more and more propaganda and fear of the unknown, that we should be afraid of the unknown and have full faith that our government is keeping us safe from the unknown. But by looking at media today, those of us who are old enough will be reminded of the era of Cold War news articles, hysteria of how the Russians would invade and how we should duck and cover under tables in our kitchens for the ensuing nuclear war. Under this mass hysteria all Western governments were convinced that we should join Western allies to fight the unknown evil that lies to the east. Later through my travels in Russia during the height of the Cold War with a peace delegation, we were shocked by the poverty of the country, and questioned how we ever were led to believe that Russia was a force to be afraid of. We talked to the Russian students who were dismayed by their absolute poverty and showed anger against NATO for leading their country into an arms race that they could not win. Many years later, when speaking to young Americans in the US, I was in disbelief about the fear the students had of Russia and their talk of invasion. This is a good example of how the unknown can cause a deep rooted paranoia when manipulated by the right powers.

All military is expensive, and we can see in Europe that the countries are reluctant to expand their military spending and find it hard to justify this to their people. In looking at this scenario, we can ask ourselves what is beneficial about this hysteria and fear caused on both sides. All armies must have an enemy to deem them necessary. An enemy must be created, and the people must be convinced that there is need for action to safeguard the freedom of their country.  Right now, we can see a shifting of financial power from old Western powers to the rise of the Middle East and Asia. Do we honestly believe that the Western allies are going to give up their power? My suggestion is: not easily. The old dying empires will fight tooth and nail to protect their financial interests such as the petrol dollar and the many benefits that come through their power over poverty-stricken countries.

Firstly, I must say, that I personally believe that Russia is not by any means without faults. But the amount of anti-Russian propaganda in our media today is a throwback to the Cold War era. We must ask the question: Is this leading to more arms, a bigger NATO? Possibly to challenge large powers in the Middle East and Asia, as we see the US approaching the South China seas, and NATO Naval games taking place in the Black Sea. Missile compounds are being erected in Romania, Poland and other ex-Soviet countries, while military games are set up in Scandinavia close to the Russian border to practice for a cold climate war scenario. At the same time, we see the US President arriving in Europe asking for increased military spending. At the same time the USA has increased its budget by 300 billion in one year.

The demonization of Russia is, I believe, one of the most dangerous things that is happening in our world today. The scapegoating of Russia is an inexcusable game that the West is indulging in. It is time for political leaders and each individual to move us back from the brink of catastrophe to begin to build relationships with our Russian brothers and sisters. Too long has the elite financially gained from war while millions are moved into poverty and desperation. The people of the world have been subjected to war propaganda based on lies and misinformation and we have seen the results of invasions and occupations by NATO disguised as “humanitarian intervention” and “right to protect”. NATO has destroyed the lives of millions of people and purposely devastated their lands, causing the exodus of millions of refugees. The people around the world must not be misled yet again. I personally believe that the US, the UK and France are the most military minded countries, whose inability to use their imagination and creativity to solve conflict through dialogue and negotiation is astonishing to myself and many people. In a highly militarized, dangerous world it is important we start to humanize each other and find ways of cooperation, and build fraternity amongst the nations. The policies of demonization of political leaders as a means of preparing the way for invasions and wars must be stopped immediately and serious effort put in to the building of relationships across the world. The isolation and marginalization of countries will only lead to extremism, fundamentalism and violence.

During our visit to Moscow we had the pleasure of attending a celebration of mass at the main Orthodox Cathedral. I was very inspired by the deep spirituality and faith of the people as they sang the entire three-hour mass. I was moved by the culture of the Russian people and I could feel that their tremendous history of suffering and persecution gave them sensitivity and passion for peace.

Surely it is time that we in Europe refuse to be put in a position where we are forced to choose between our Russian and American brothers and sisters. The enormous problems that we are faced with, such as, due to climate change and wars, mass migration and movement of peoples around the world, need to be tackled as a world community. The lifting of sanctions against Russia and the setting up of programs of cooperation will help build friendships amongst the nations.

I call on all people to encourage their political leaders in the US, EU and Russia to show vision and political leadership and use their skills to build trust and work for peace and nonviolence.

Australian unions amass wealth as membership plummets

Mike Head

Data compiled from the Australian government’s official register of trade unions has provided a glimpse of the transformation of these entities into corporate operations over the past four decades, even as their memberships have fallen to historic lows because of their role in helping destroy the jobs and conditions of their members.

According to the statistics, the annual revenue of the country’s 15 largest unions has grown by more than 40 percent, after inflation, in the past 14 years and their wealth in assets has trebled to nearly $1.6 billion, equalling the worth of major companies.

At the same time, union membership dropped to 14.5 percent of the workforce by 2016, down from 37.5 percent in 1993, and a peak of 64.9 percent in 1948. The biggest declines have been in manufacturing, construction, transport and telecommunications—industries ravaged by closures and privatisation.

Less than one in ten private sector workers are now union members, and the collapse is worst among young workers. Unions now cover just 7 percent of workers aged 20–24 and 4 percent of those aged 15–19.

These figures have been brought together in a report, “Unions Inc: From industrial strength to financial muscle” produced by a right-wing think tank, the Menzies Research Centre. The report’s thrust is clearly reactionary and anti-working class. It urges the Liberal-National Coalition government, headed by recently-installed Prime Minister Scott Morrison, to ramp up the offensive against the jobs, pay and basic conditions of workers.

Nevertheless, the data appears to be accurate. It is derived from union membership reports published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and union financial disclosures posted on the government’s Registered Organisation Commission website.

Far from representing the interests of workers, the bureaucratic apparatus of the trade unions has a direct material interest in boosting the profits and share prices of Australian corporations, at the expense of the working class.

Some of the unions’ income boost has come from charging their dwindling membership ever-higher dues. But by far the most has been derived from profit-making sources, making the unions significant participants in the financial elite. The unions’ vast “sundry income” includes share dividends, profits from insurance schemes, rents and investments, training course fees, superannuation and other board fees, grants and commissions.

Between 2002–03 and 2016–17, the 15 largest unions increased their combined yearly revenue from approximately $394,036,400 to $748,379,900, equating to a rise of 89 percent, before inflation. Over the same period, the total asset wealth of the 15 unions nearly trebled, from $572.57 million to $1.55 billion.

These unions are among the most profitable corporations operating in Australia. Their combined revenue is greater than that of the Ray White Group, a national real estate network, or J.J. Richards & Sons, a large garbage collection company. Their combined assets is greater than the market capitalisation of Bega Cheese Limited, a major dairy products firm, or Seven West Media Limited, one of the country’s media conglomerates. Nine of the 15 unions outpaced the ASX All Ords share index in wealth growth.

One of the biggest financial entities is falsely depicted in the media as a “militant” union—the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMMEU). Its 2017 income, prior to the CFMEU merging with the Maritime Union of Australia, was greater than Greyhound Australia or Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific.

Like all the unions, the CFMMEU suppresses the resistance of its members to the attacks of governments and the employers. Some of the greatest cuts to jobs and wages have occurred in mining and on the waterfront. In the construction industry, mutually lucrative enterprise agreements (EAs) are struck with companies to enforce their production schedules while the union bureaucrats draw considerable benefits personally, in terms of salaries and boardroom fees, as well as for the union’s financial empire.

For example, Incolink, an entity part-owned by unions, including the CFMMEU and the Australian Workers Union, earns commissions on the redundancy and income protection insurance that employers are required to take out under the terms of union-negotiated EAs. Many EAs include blatant kickbacks, such as employers agreeing to pay unions millions of dollars to conduct training courses.

Barely mentioned in the Menzies Research Centre report is that even greater sums are involved in the industry superannuation funds, such as the joint CFMMEU-construction employers’ Cbus. It now controls members’ funds worth $27 billion, making it one of the biggest investors in the property market and building industry. Union bureaucrats sit on the boards of such funds, in partnership with employer executives, rewarded with generous fees.

The origins of these corporatist arrangements lie in the “Accords” struck between the unions and the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996, which unleashed a pro-market onslaught on workers. Thousands of jobs were eliminated and hard-won conditions were destroyed, in the name of enabling companies to compete on globalised markets. Social inequality began to soar.

These processes accelerated—as did the decline in union membership—from 1993, when the Keating government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) introduced enterprise bargaining and compulsory superannuation, providing unions with new revenue streams.

Another once-large union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), has experienced a severe drop off in membership, from 141,544 in 2003 to 68,008 by 2017—a decline of 52 percent. Nonetheless, the AMWU’s asset wealth has increased by 187 percent to around $130 million.

The transformation of the unions into corporate operations cannot be explained as a matter of individual corruption on the part of certain officials and it is not unique to Australia.

Internationally, the globalisation of production shattered the previous ability of unions to extract concessions from employers on the basis of nationally regulated economies. Unions were always based on maintaining the system of wage labour, while bargaining over the price and terms for the exploitation of worker’s labour power. Today, amid intensifying global rivalry, the logic of that relationship means directly collaborating with the corporate elite to continually drive down the conditions of the working class to maintain the “international competitiveness” of Australian capitalism.

With typical contempt for their members, the unions responded to the right-wing think tank’s report by flatly defending their enrichment. An ACTU spokesman told the Australian Financial Review : “Generations of union leaders have made prudent financial decisions in the long-term interests of working people, precisely because our movement is not infected by the greed-driven mania for short-term profit that characterises the world of big business.”

The rapid growth of union assets proves the opposite. Generations of union leaders have become instrumental in facilitating and policing the profit-driven “mania,” sacrificing the historic interests of the working class. The ACTU’s latest “Change the Rules” campaign is a continuation of this process. It is an attempt to channel workers behind supporting the return of another big business Labor government, which will support the unions and their lucrative operations.

Workers, whether unionised or not, must break free from the influence of the corporatised trade unions and build new independent organisations in every workplace. A socialist and international perspective, aimed at expropriating the banks and major companies into public ownership and democratic control, must guide the struggles of the working class.

Political showdown erupts in the Philippines

Joseph Santolan

Over the past week, long-simmering political tensions in Manila came to a head in an open standoff between Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the ruling class political opposition. Duterte attempted to order the arrest of leading oppositionist, Senator Antonio Trillanes.

On August 31, Duterte signed Proclamation 572, revoking an amnesty extended to Trillanes by his predecessor President Benigno Aquino III, who pardoned Trillanes for leading two military coup attempts against Aquino’s predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The proclamation was made public on September 4, as Duterte, traveling in Israel, had his administration request an arrest warrant for the senator.

The Makati regional trial court balked at the request, declaring that the amnesty extended to Trillanes by Aquino had suspended earlier criminal proceedings against the senator and that if the amnesty was lifted, he should not be arrested, but brought back to court. The Department of National Defense (DND) then ordered a military arrest, for which it claimed no warrant was needed.

Trillanes took up residence in his office in the Senate building, and Senate President Tito Sotto, at the request of the minority bloc, insisted that arresting officers would not be allowed inside the legislature. The next day Trillanes filed a request before the Supreme Court for a Temporary Restraining Order on the military arrest. In the midst of legal proceedings on September 6 and 7, the DND announced that it would not pursue the arrest of Trillanes, but would await a ruling on Duterte’s revocation of the Senator’s amnesty.

As of this morning, Trillanes remained within the legislature, but he had publicly declared his intention of leaving the building. Duterte, promising not to arrest him, dared the senator to do so.

The battlelines being drawn between Duterte and Trillanes are sharp and run deep. They express the twin pressures upon the Filipino ruling class of geopolitical tensions and mounting social unrest.

Gathered around Trillanes are the remainders of the once powerful Liberal Party of former President Aquino, of which current Vice President Leni Robredo is now the head. A former Navy lieutenant and leader of the Magdalo Party, which represents restive sections of the military officer corps, Trillanes also has the backing of certain coup-plotting elements within the military.

To these forces is added the pseudo-left Akbayan party, which has been tied to the Liberal Party since 2010, and the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which over the past year broke its alliance with Duterte and denounced its erstwhile ally as a “fascist.”

On Tuesday, in a two-hour televised interview staged with his legal adviser, Sal Panelo, Duterte declared that “a foreign country sympathetic to us” had supplied him with recordings of conversations that detailed how the Magdalo and Liberal parties and Joma Sison, head of the CPP, were plotting a military uprising to overthrow him.

While all the accused parties denied the allegation, they have conspired together in the past. Trillanes staged a military coup attempt in 2003 and was imprisoned. President Arroyo had begun to reorient Philippine diplomatic and economic ties toward China, so Washington responded with moves to destabilize her government. Magdalo attempted another military coup in February 2006, and with the full support of both Akbayan and the CPP, who coordinated their efforts with the military officers. The attempt fizzled.

In 2007, with the backing of Akbayan, Trillanes ran for Senate from his jail cell and was elected. Trillanes along with Bayan Muna, a political party closely tied to the CPP, filed treason charges against President Arroyo for signing a deal with China for the joint exploration of the South China Sea.

In 2010, with the election of President Aquino, the Liberal Party took power, and shifted the Philippines’ ties back to Washington. Manila, under Aquino, came to serve as the leading proxy in Washington’s military drive against China, as part of the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia.” Akbayan joined with the Liberal Party and rode its coattails to power. Akbayan representative Risa Hontiveros became a senator. Former President Arroyo was charged with corruption and arrested.

Duterte’s election in 2016 reversed this course. In volatile fashion, he publicly attacked Washington and moved to establish diplomatic and economic ties with China on an unprecedented scale. As he consolidated and won the support of large sections of the ruling class, the Liberal Party crumbled, losing many members and most of its seats in the legislature. Its leaders chose to bide their time.

The May 2019 election is approaching, however, and the deadline for the declaration of candidacy is October 17. The various sections of the ruling class, in a ritual they conduct every three years, are renegotiating political ties.

The political maneuvering now occurs in an explosive social context. Anger is mounting among broad layers of the population over social inequality and skyrocketing prices of basic commodities.

During August, inflation hit 6.4 percent, the worst in a decade, while the price of basic foods, above all rice, went up substantially more. The press over the past three weeks has been full of pictures of people standing in line for hours to purchase government subsidized rice, of which they can buy a maximum of five kilos per person. The price of fish has gone up by as much as 20 percent, and vegetables as much as 35 percent.

This social anger is finding increasingly open expression. In the first half of 2018, the number of strikes went up nearly 20 percent over the same period in 2017.

In June, before the massive inflation set in, Duterte’s approval rating had already dropped to 57 percent, its lowest point since he took office. While it has not been officially measured since, it has doubtless plummeted since.

Sison, founder and head of the Stalinist CPP, responded to Duterte’s statements with an open appeal on September 11 for support from the military. In 2016, he had publicly proclaimed the possibility of the CPP forming a “coalition government” with Duterte, and instructed several leading members of the CPP’s front groups to enter Duterte cabinet.

On September 11, Sison claimed that he had not yet spoken to Trillanes, but stated that it “is no secret” that the CPP seeks to form a “broad united front of patriotic forces.” In order for the ouster of Duterte to succeed, these “patriotic forces” needed to secure the support of “Duterte’s own military and police forces.” Sison, along with Trillanes and the Liberal Party, is looking for the police and military, which are still carrying out Duterte’s death squad campaign against the poor, to shift allegiance into the rival camp, the one that is openly pro-Washington.

Anxious to shore up his political position, Duterte politely requested a private audience with US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim. No details of the meeting were released, but Kim subsequently tweeted: “Excellent meeting with President Duterte to discuss shared goals including defense priorities and economic partnership. Our alliance remains strong and ironclad.”

Scandal erupts over Dutch state’s funding of Islamist terror group in Syria

Kumaran Ira 

On Monday, Dutch public TV show “Nieuwsuur” (News Hour) reported that the Dutch government has been financing a jihadist group in Syria that public prosecutors have labeled a “terrorist” organisation.

The affair is a devastating exposure of the criminal character of the war for regime change stoked by Washington and the European Union (EU) in Syria since 2011. It follows the scandal involving Franco-Swiss construction conglomerate Lafarge, which financed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militia that carried out terror attacks in Europe.

“Nieuwsuur” reported that Amsterdam gave “non-lethal assistance” to 22 jihadist opposition groups fighting Syrian government forces. This included providing uniforms and pick-up trucks to the Jabbat al-Shamiya militia in 2017 as part of a secret programme providing assistance to rebel groups in Syria from 2015 to early this year.

Until the affair was exposed, the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry claimed that it only supported “moderate groups” in Syria. It told the Tweede Kamer (Dutch House of Representatives) that so-called “moderate groups” respect “humanitarian law of war,” don’t cooperate with extremists, and pursue an “inclusive political solution” for Syria.

However, a scandal erupted after the trial of a Dutch man charged with joining the Jabhat al-Shamiya militia in 2015. Prosecutors branded Jabhat al-Shamiya a terrorist organisation, calling it a “Salafist and jihadist” group that “strives to set up a caliphate” and insisting that it could not be qualified as anything other than a “criminal organisation of terrorist intent.”

It turned out, however, that the Netherlands were part of a coalition of NATO powers that funded the Jabhat al-Shamiya, also known as the Levant Front, an umbrella group for Turkey-backed rebel fighters in northern Syria, founded in 2014. In 2016, Amnesty International accused the group of carrying out summary executions and establishing courts enforcing a strict Islamic-based penal code.

The scandal comes as the NATO bid to impose regime change in Syria faces imminent military defeat. The Assad regime, with Russian air support, is taking over rebel-held areas and launching a new offensive in Idlib to capture the last Islamist strongholds.

Just a few days before, the Dutch parliament announced the government had decided to end its support for Syrian rebel groups, saying it did not provide the “expected results.” A September 7 letter to the House of Representatives signed by the foreign and trade ministers declared, “The possibility of rapidly changing the situation [in Syria] is very weak.”

It revealed Amsterdam had spent €70 million on so-called “stabilization” projects to support the Syrian opposition militias. Amsterdam has offered €25 million to a “non-lethal” assistance fund, €12.5 million to the White Helmets and another €15 million to the Access to Justice and Community Security (AJACS) programme. The September 7 letter admitted that this commitment, however, failed, because Syrian pro-government forces are on the verge of victory.

Russian state media reported that the AJACS programme was involved in backing the controversial Free Syrian Police project, which was the subject of a BBC documentary that reported that “a lot of funding from London destined to it ended up in the hands of jihadist elements.”

The “humanitarian” pretensions of NATO’s bloody war for regime change in Syria have completely collapsed. While they branded ISIS as a dangerous militia and claimed that they were fighting it as part of a “war on terror,” the NATO powers actually used terrorist organisations as their foreign proxies to pursue their imperialist interests and fan the flames of war in the Middle East.

They relied on Islamist militias in the 2011 war in Libya and then in Syria, working with Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms like Saudi Arabia to funnel billions of dollars into Islamist terror networks. They recruited tens of thousands of fighters from Europe, the Middle East and Asia to carry out shooting or bombing raids in both countries. In 2012, the Pentagon designated one proxy militia, Al Nusra, as a terrorist group and Al Qaeda affiliate, though it has continued to receive NATO support.

The revelations in the Netherlands expose the fraudulent character of the police-state measures imposed by European powers—like the state of emergency in France, placing Brussels on lockdown or putting armed law enforcement on the streets in Britain—after ISIS terror attacks in those countries. In fact, the same governments were funnelling massive amounts of public funds into the terror networks that carried out the attacks.

These police-state measures were not directed at stopping terrorism but suppressing rising social opposition to war and austerity.

The revelation of official Dutch complicity in Islamist terrorism again confirms the correctness of the WSWS analysis. It noted that the terrorists involved in each attack were “drawn from a broad pool of active fighters in the wars in Iraq, Syria and other countries, and who have been financed with the support of NATO and intelligence agencies in both Europe and the United States.” Such attacks “are facilitated by sections of the state for whom terrorist acts in Western countries serve the purpose of shifting foreign and domestic policy—or some combination of the two.”

These events also expose the pro-war policy of the pseudo-left organisations like France’s New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) and the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in the United States, who bear political responsibility in the imperialist crimes in the Middle East. They promoted NATO-backed Syrian rebels as “revolutionaries,” and pushed imperialist aggression and proxy wars waged by terrorist groups as a “humanitarian” war for “democracy.” These lies are now completely exposed.

The war in Syria has now escalated into a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire region and world in a violent conflict between the world’s main nuclear powers. Ahead of the Syrian regime’s assault on rebels in Idlib, Russia reinforced its naval forces in the Mediterranean off the Syrian coast, deploying several frigates in Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015. Moscow has accused Washington of building up its own forces in the Middle East in preparation for a possible strike on Syria.

Despite the US-NATO debacle, Washington and the European powers are preparing a new military offensive in Syria. Last Friday, over 100 US Marines flew into the country to participate in live fire exercises, signalling to Moscow and Damascus that Washington will not tolerate the planned offensive against Islamist militias in Idlib.

Moscow has alleged that US-backed, Al Qaeda-linked Islamists are planning to stage yet another chemical weapons attack as a justification to trigger a NATO intervention. In April 2017 and April 2018, the US, Britain and France launched cruise missiles and air strikes following fabricated charges that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. The chemical weapons attack, according to multiple reports, were staged by Syrian rebels, with the White Helmets involved in the incident in Douma on April 7.

US General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared: “The president expects us to have military options in the event that chemical weapons are used.”

The scandal in the Netherlands underscores that these threats are part of a broad, criminal collaboration between the imperialist powers and the Islamist terror militias fighting for regime change in Syria.