Political Corruption and the U.S. Government

Robert Fantina

It is almost astounding what the United States populace is willing to tolerate in those that call the shots and make the rules by which they – the plebeian populace – must live. The rule-makers, of course, are exempt from such concerns, but recoil in horror if anyone not a member of the 1% violates them. They are even willing to condemn others of their own class, for violations they, themselves, are guilty of.

The list is nearly endless.

This writer, a charter member of the 99%, with no aspirations to leave it, and no possibility of doing so anyway, must respect and live by certain laws. For example, if he wants to build an addition onto his house, and the local zoning board nixes the plan, he cannot grease the palm of a zoning board member, in order to get a different ruling. Such behavior would result in his arrest, and any of a variety of penalties, not to mention life-long damage to his reputation.

This is not so for members of Congress. Israel wants to ignore international law? Just have Israeli lobbies, the Apartheid Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) chief among them, donate large sums to Congress members’ campaigns. What does it get in return? Laws preventing the boycott of Israel (forget about the fact that such boycotts are protected by the Constitution; who needs that old thing when campaigns need to be financed?); protection from accountability in the United Nations for war crimes; $4 billion of taxpayer money annually, and a blind eye to the horrific human rights violations committed against the Palestinians.

The gun industry doesn’t want any regulations, whatsoever? Just get the National Rifle Association (NRA) to add their buckets of money to those of AIPAC. In return, anyone, even people who are legally blind, and people who are not allowed on U.S. airplanes because of suspected terrorist ties or activities, can purchase any gun or multiple guns that they choose. This includes semi-automatic weapons, designed to kill many people very quickly. Want to take your gun into a church? No problem!  Kill an unarmed person because you felt ‘threatened’? You have a right to protect yourself! Also, if someone is injured because of a faulty gun, he/she cannot sue the gun manufacturer. There are more laws in the U.S. regulating the manufacture of Teddy bears, than there are of guns.

For us little people, we must respect the personal boundaries of people to whom we may be physically attracted, but only marginally acquainted. Not so for the movers and shakers of the U.S; President Donald Trump has said that, if one is a celebrity, one can do anything they want to any unsuspecting woman who happens to pass by. Democratic Senator Al Franken took pictures of himself, grinning like the idiot that he is, fondling a sleeping woman. Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, when in his thirties, trolled malls and high school football games, seeking teenage girls. Former Republican Congressman Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, a married, family-values arch-conservative, encouraged his mistress to have an abortion, while he championed the ‘pro-life’ movement. He did, however, resign as a result.

War and Peace.

If one were to ask the average person on the street if war is a good thing, one would probably be told that it is a ‘necessary evil’, and that the U.S. only wages war for the good of the U.S. and the world (no, that doesn’t make any sense, but U.S. politicians are ace snake-oil salespeople). One would probably find that such persons don’t believe U.S. government officials only seek power and wealth for themselves and their already-wealthy cronies, and don’t care about the soldiers they send to kill and die, or the innocent victims in faraway nations. These lemmings-like citizens will not listen to stories of neglect of injured veterans, or consider the possibility that the U.S. government is lying to them (see: weapons of mass destruction; Iraq), but will always show up for Veterans’ Day parades, equipped with a flag to wave and a handkerchief with which to wipe away the tears that begin to flow as the national anthem is played. They will say it is sad that children die, but, they will be quick to add, that is the fault of the victim nation, not the mighty U.S.

Political Prisoners.

Somehow, inexplicitly, the U.S. citizenry seems content that their vaunted ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ operates a torture chamber in Cuba, and utilizes the services of various other nations to house and torture other U.S. political prisoners, including U.S. citizens. The fact that many have been released and exonerated after years of unspeakable torture is not something that concerns them; the U.S., they will say, only tortures people for the good of society. So there.

And didn’t the aged Republican Senator from Arizona, John McCain, during his failed campaign for the presidency in 2008, say that there are some ‘really bad people’ in Guantanamo? As long as he decrees it to be so, what are things like due process? Who cares about the right to an attorney? They are ‘bad people’, as judged by McCain. That is all that is important to know.

It’s bad enough that the inmates are running the asylum, but why must the rest of the inmates tolerate it all? The answer, one supposes, is clear: they have lost sight, thanks to government officials, of who really has the power. They have successfully been made to believe that the power lies in Congress, the courts and the presidency, the three branches of government that activist Dahlia Wasfi correctly refers to as terrorist cells. Yet it is the populace who could, at the very least, vote en masse to rid the country of its current government officials. It is the populace who could take to the streets in numbers so large that there aren’t sufficient police to arrest them all, or cells to hold them. And if they did, it is possible that some of the police would join them. If the National Guard were called out, many Guard members might also join them. It is the populace who could refuse to pay taxes, swarm Congressional offices with their demands, refuse (males who are 18 years of age) to register for the draft, withdraw their money from banks that support terrorism, or hold a nationwide workers strike. This last action would, at least temporarily, cripple the economy, hurting the oligarchs exactly where it most matters to them.

In the 1960s, the phrase ‘Power to the People’ was often chanted at rallies protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam. But the people have always had the power; they simply choose not to use it.

Peru’s entire political establishment engulfed in bribery scandal

Cesar Uco

Lima’s former mayor Susana Villarán, who was one of the most prominent representatives of what passes for “left’ politics in Peru, has become the latest political figure to become engulfed in a mushrooming scandal involving hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes, kickbacks and campaign financing from major Brazilian construction contractors.

Villarán, who was elected in 2010 as the candidate of a Broad Front of the Left and on the basis of vague promises of reform, used her office to promote big business interests in the Peruvian capital, including those of the Brazilian transnationals Odebrecht and OAS, which were given contracts to build deeply unpopular toll roads.

In return, these firms offered her political support, including by sending “advisers” from Brazil’s then-ruling Workers Party (PT).

Now she is accused of taking $4 million in illicit campaign donations from the Brazilian companies, and has been barred from leaving the country. Villarán has denied the charges.

The seemingly endless series of corruption charges against every major party and politician has exposed an immense crisis of bourgeois rule in Peru, while triggering a bitter internecine struggle as everyone tries to save themselves at the expense of their rivals.

One former president, Ollanta Humala, who came into office in 2011 posturing as a nationalist and populist, is already in prison. He and his wife are under preventive detention, awaiting prosecution on charges of corruption and money-laundering involving millions of dollars in illicit campaign contributions from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

In a plea agreement reached with the US Justice Department last December, the firm acknowledged paying out over $800 million in bribes to public officials in a dozen countries.

Another former president, Alejandro Toledo, is in the United States fighting extradition to Peru, where he is charged with taking $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht when he was in office from 2001 to 2006. Prosecutors recently unveiled new evidence of his receiving an illicit $3.9 million payment from another Brazilian construction firm, Camargo Correa.

Similarly implicated are both the current president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, known as PPK, and the leader of his right-wing opposition, Fuerza Popular, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Peru’s former dictator Alberto Fujimori. Her party, the FP, holds a firm majority in the Peruvian Congress.

Fujimori has been implicated by an entry in the agenda book of Marcelo Odebrecht, the CEO of the Brazilian company that bears his name, which reads, “Increase Keiko 500 and pay her a visit.” It is widely believed that the entry refers to a second payment of US$500,000 to Fujimori. The agenda also mentions OH and AG (most likely referring to former presidents Ollanta Humala and Alan García).

Peruvian prosecutors traveled to Brazil earlier this month where they grilled the imprisoned billionaire Odebrecht. The answers to their questions have yet to be made public.

Meanwhile, Kuczynski (PPK), has been increasingly implicated. On November 17, the newspaper Expreso published an article charging that in 1996, when Kuczynski was a member of the board of directors of the Peruvian development firm Cosapi, he helped form the Bechtel-Cosapi-Odebrecht consortium.

The independent congressman Juan Pari Choquecota, who comes out of the ranks of the Nationalist Party of Humala and headed up the first congressional commission to investigate the Brazilian bribery scandal, told the newspaper that bank accounts belonging to Kuczynski’s firm First Capital recorded payments from Odebrecht after he had become prime minister in the government of the now fugitive Alejandro Toledo.

Expreso asks “what was it that PPK offered to Odebrecht as Minister of State and [when] he provided financial advisory services to Marcelo Odebrecht?”

Not only have the fujimoristas who control Congress seized upon these charges to go after PPK, they have also begun proceedings aimed at impeaching the country’s attorney general Pablo Sánchez, and sought to sack members of the Constitutional Court (TC). While the FP has cast its actions as a campaign against official corruption, they are widely viewed as an attempt to carry out an “institutional coup” aimed at protecting Keiko Fujimori and other party leaders from prosecution in the Odebrecht case.

The attorney general, who has condemned the congressional move as an attack on the independence of his office, has received the backing of local bar associations, social organizations and press associations.

The political crisis triggered by the penetration of Odebrecht’s corruption scandal into every layer of the Peruvian government is directly affecting Peru’s economic development. The investigation has paralyzed mega-projects in which Odebrecht was playing a leading role, including the construction of sections 1 and 2 of the Lima Metro Line, and sections 2 and 3 of the Southern Interoceanic Highway.

The main national partners of Odebrecht are Graña y Montero (GyM), Ingenieros Civiles y Contratistas Generales SA (ICCGSA), and JJ Camet. Of the three, the largest and most influential is GyM. The testimony of Jorge Barata, the former executive director of Odebrecht in Brazil, who has turned state’s witness, is expected to corroborate charges that these companies were well aware of the political bribes being paid out for the contracts in which they were involved.

While the Lima Stock Exchange has continued to experience a speculative boom even in the face of poor economic growth during 2017, the construction sector has been hard hit by the political scandal. While over the course of the year mining companies have seen their shares rise by over 50 percent, and banks by 20, the construction companies are in free fall. GyM shares have fallen 53.62 percent—29.68 percent in the last week alone.

Meanwhile, the Peruvian pseudo-left, led by the former presidential candidate Veronika Mendoza, has limited itself to defending the constitutional order, while implicitly aligning itself with PPK’s right-wing government. “It is clear that the Fujimorismo aims to give an institutional blow as it did in the 1990s,” Mendoza declared, referring to the “auto golpe,” or self coup of 1992, when Alberto Fujimori closed down the Congress with the help of the army in order to establish authoritarian rule.

Vote count in Honduras grinds to a halt

Andrea Lobo

Two days after Sunday’s presidential elections in Honduras, the electoral board has announced less than 60 percent of the votes. Following its first installment on Monday, which showed the candidate of the Opposition Alliance against Corruption, Salvador Nasralla, five points ahead of the current president and National Party candidate, Juan Orlando Hernández, the announcements virtually stopped, and the country has been left in suspense.

While the international corporate press has described the opposition coalition as “left-right”, there is little doubt that the Alliance would continue to head a staunchly militarist, pro-business and pro-imperialist government. Such characterizations, like the description of Hernández as “authoritarian” by media sources like the New York Times, also express the willingness by sectors of the US establishment to back a Nasralla victory, amid fears that a reelection of Hernandez--proscribed by the country’s Constitution--would undermine the image of the Honduran state and feed domestic social opposition.

The Alliance’s de facto leader, Manuel Zelaya, was the president of a right-wing administration at the head of the oligarchic Liberal Party, but was deposed in a 2009 US-backed military coup because he was becoming too close to the Chavista government in Venezuela for the liking of Washington and the dominant sectors of the Honduran ruling elite.

On Sunday, all voting booths closed sharply at 4 p.m., amid complaints that the electoral board had promised to extend voting one more hour. The announcement of the results, with an 85 percent installment scheduled for 8 p.m that day, has not been so timely. Aside from the president, 298 mayors, 128 deputies to the unicameral National Congress and 20 to the Central American Parliament were also elected.

Late Sunday night, the polling company Ingeniería Gerencial announced that exit polls showed Hernandez ahead by 9 percentage points (with a 2 percent margin of error), leading Hernández to declare victory.

A few moments later, Nasralla, a TV host and former CEO of Pepsi Honduras, declared himself the winner, indicating that he had the official results for one-third of the voting centers, giving him a clear victory. At 10 p.m. the chief magistrate of the electoral board, David Matamoros, explained that there were delays in the results because the board had to check with technicians “to guarantee that the data is truly representatives of the voter register of the country.” By Tuesday, his excuse had changed, indicating that the problem was that the ballots had simply not arrived in the capital.

The electoral board has now established that it will not declare a winner before the last vote is processed, possibly not until Thursday.

Tuesday morning, Eduardo Facussé, the last president of the main business chamber COHEP, suggested on the TV channel Televicentro that electoral officials are virtually saying, “One moment; we have to consult the president because the situation is getting delicate.” With clear desperation and representing a growing layer of the ruling elite, he reminded the host that polls had shown almost 70 percent of Hondurans opposing an unconstitutional reelection. “The people are mad,” he warned.

On Monday, the third-placed candidate, Luis Zelaya of the Liberal Party, called on President Hernández to acknowledge his defeat in order to prevent violence. One of the four electoral magistrates, Marcos Ramiro Lobo, commented to the media that technical experts believed it was an irreversible result.

Referring to the post-electoral turmoil, the historian of the Catholic think-tank ERIC, Marvin Barahona, said that Hernández’s run “has a high dose of illegality, which turns the results into a catalyst for confrontations.” Suffering a sudden collapse in their optimist outlook, based on the support of Wall Street and the polls that showed the National Party comfortably in the lead, the Hernández-led ruling clique now fears a loss of their hold on power in the midst of numerous investigations and leaks regarding corruption.

In March, a former leader of one of the largest drug cartels in Honduras, Denis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, testified in a New York City court that the post-2009 regime, including the ex-President Porfirio Lobo, his son, and countless police and military officers were providing the cartels protection in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks. Maradiaga gave US authorities recordings of bribes that allegedly included Hernández himself, with his chief of staff denying the charges, but warning last month that if the truth comes out about politicians bought by organized crime, “hold on to your seats, because we’re talking about all colors here.”

The National Party governments since 2009 have pursued an agenda of antidemocratic and repressive measures seeking to consolidate a grip on power by the military and dictatorial rule. The coup regime, for instance, approved a Special Law of the National Defense and Security Council, granting the executive power centralized control over all branches of government. Hernández also formed the Military Police for Public Order.

In the last electoral campaign, he infamously said, “I will become the new Carías,” referring to the National Party dictator who governed for 16 years starting in 1933, defending fiercely the interests of the US fruit companies and brutally suppressing all social opposition.

Given the country’s history, perhaps the most telling images of the elections were of the 35,000 heavily-armed soldiers who were in charge of transporting and guarding the ballots. The country’s military is notorious for its history of bloody dictatorships, coups and the well-documented participation in fascistic death squads that work closely with gangs and corporations to terrorize any social opposition.

Determined to maintain firm control over the Honduran state while maintaining a democratic façade, Washington has sought to pressure the ruling elite to clean up its act. Its main method has been tying military and other aid to the compliance with a US-sponsored “anti-impunity” agency, MACCIH.

On top of pursuing selective investigations to keep pressure on the government, it promoted the 2016 “Clean Politics Act”, making these the first elections with a limit on campaign financing, established at about $20 million per presidential candidate. At the same time, presumably aimed at blocking campaign contributions from criminal organizations, candidates had to present financial statements listing all transactions.

The 2009 coup and decades of austerity have fatally discredited all factions of the ruling elite. The Hernández administration imposed deep austerity as part of a three-year IMF plan initiated in 2014, making Honduran dollar bonds the most profitable in the world, according to Bloomberg, with returns of 78 percent since October 2013.

But, during the two previous decades, it was the Liberal Party that headed the imposition of the IMF “adjustment” programs. The Carlos Flores Facussé administration even continued the austerity packages after Hurricane Mitch ravaged the country in 1998, killing 6,000 and leaving 8,000 disappeared.

Such reactionary measures and the 2009 coup, which also included key Liberal protagonists, have produced a deep crisis of bourgeois rule. In response, the US State Department and regional elites, with the collaboration of Honduran rights groups and the pseudo-left organized behind the Popular Resistance National Front (FNRP), put into motion policies designed to demobilize growing opposition and prevent the emergence of an independent movement of the working class.

In May 2011, the OAS, the Honduran regime, Hugo Chávez from Venezuela and the Santos administration in Colombia signed the Cartagena Accord, which called for canceling “the judicial processes against the ex-President José Manuel Zelaya”, and assuring that the “FNRP… participates democratically in the electoral processes.” With the increasing likelihood of a government headed by the Opposition Alliance, which incorporates the FNRP’s political arm, LIBRE, this plan seems to have ripened.

While the Morenoite group LIT-CI remained part of the “grassroots” of the FNRP, the so-called Revolutionary Left, which consists of Socialism or Barbarism, the Central American Socialist Party (PSOCA) and other organizations, have worked around its periphery. The latter have sought to use nationalist calls for greater “independence” from imperialism and a “worker-peasant and popular democracy” to channel social opposition behind the FNRP and, ultimately, the Opposition Alliance.

Nonetheless, the current global economic crisis, the US-led militarization of the region and the attacks against immigrants in the United States, including the threat by the Trump administration to deport the 85,000 Honduran Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, have continued destabilizing the country socially and politically.

Nasralla sought to exploit these circumstances, especially the broad opposition to Hernández’s unconstitutional bid for reelection, insisting that he would only stay in power for a maximum of four years. He also promised to pursue corruption cases against politicians and business figures and to close down some of the country’s new maximum-security prisons. Economically, he promised to raise corporate taxes, cut the regressive added-value tax, and invest in health and education—the latter as a response to a tumultuous year of strikes and demonstrations by university students and public health workers.

In reality, no change should be expected with the coming to power of an Alliance government.

“The five families”—Atala, Rosenthal, Faraj, Facussé-Nasser, and Larch—who control about 40 percent of GDP and constitute the top administrators of foreign financial capital in the country, will continue to exercise control. Meanwhile, some of the most powerful business-people have come to back the opposition. For instance, Adolfo Facussé, former president of the main business chambers COHEP and ANDI, and one of the top supporters of the 2009 coup and the military regime that followed, promoted the “business plan” of the Opposition Alliance this year.

Floods in Greece claim 23 lives

John Vassilopoulos 

Greek authorities are still surveying the extent of damage caused by flash floods in the Thriasian plain of West Attica. On Monday, the death toll rose to 23 as two more fatalities were announced. One body was found buried in mud near a bus station in the small town of Mandra, west of Athens, and an injured woman died in hospital.

The plain is located approximately 25 km west of Athens and is bounded by Mount Egaleo to the east, Mount Parnitha the north, Mount Pateras to the west, and the Bay of Elefsina to the south.

The towns affected are Mandra, Magoula and Nea Peramos, which are built on the floodplains of a number of different streams. Western Attica’s population is overwhelmingly working class and the region is home to the port of Elefsina as well as many industrial plants including the Skaramangas shipyards, oil refineries, quarries, logistic plants and steel mills.

The floods were caused by six hours of rainfall over the slopes of Mount Pateras during the early hours of November 15. According to reports, the recorded rainfall was over 200 millimetres, more than half the annual average and over 3 times the average for the month of November. The rain led to streams in the area bursting their banks.

Twelve people remain hospitalised, while according to the latest tally drawn up by the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure the number of buildings that have sustained damage that warrants compensation stands at around 1,500; over 70 percent are residential.

According to some reports the number of victims could be a lot higher since although there is currently only one person listed as missing, there are unofficial reports of people who are unaccounted for in neighbourhoods inhabited by immigrant workers, mainly from Pakistan.

The town of Mandra, which is built on the floodplains of the streams Soures and Agia Ekaterini, sustained the most damage and the overwhelming majority of those reported killed.

Speaking to Kathimerini, 21-year-old Mandra resident Thomas Bono described how he was woken by the sound of the water flowing down from Pateras: “I looked out of the window and saw the torrent washing the cars one after the other.” He went on to describe how he and his father tried in vain to stop the water from breaking down the wooden door of their kitchen: “Everytime I close my eyes I see the image of the water throwing us [across the room to the opposite wall].”

Syriza Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attributed the disaster to climate change blandly stating that “We all have a responsibility to tackle this global phenomenon.”

While climate change is indeed making extreme weather events more frequent, flooding has been a chronic problem in Western Attica for many decades. The last floods in the area occurred just two years ago and claimed the lives of three people.

The latest floods have therefore again exposed the absence of any coordinated town planning and inadequate anti-flood infrastructure in the area.

Speaking to Proto Thema, Emeritus Professor of Geology at Athens University Dimitris Papanikolaou stated that the town of Mandra has long served as a case study for his students “as a characteristic case where human intervention, ignorance, indifference or at any rate a lack of knowledge and a material engagement with the issue was of a criminal character.”

In a separate interview with the Guardian, Papanikolaou recounted how “in 1996 we had two victims in the same area [of Mandra] precisely because the flow of water had been blocked… Nature had already warned that such intervention was disastrous, that not maintaining the natural flow of water was disastrous.”

While many reports have tried to shift the blame on poor residents who built their homes without planning permission, much of the town of Mandra has in fact been constructed legally. According to Kathimerini “the Agia Ekaterini stream that caused most of the damage is not [officially] deemed to be within the bounds of the town, given that the 1989 General Urban Plan allowed construction on its riverbed (therefore the houses that were built there are legal).”

Kathimerini also highlighted how legislation was further relaxed in 2014 by giving the private sector the ability to participate in the setting of floodplain boundaries by carrying out its own studies.

This must be seen in the wider context of the attacks on what little urban planning there was by legislation that provided conditions for the successive bailout packages imposed on Greece by the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund since 2009.

Following the demands of the IMF for “a smaller state” the Public Corporation of Urban Planning and Housing (DEPOS) was abolished, which apart from urban planning was also responsible for the resettlement of people whose houses had been built without planning permission.

In 2011 the legislation that established the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, whose main function was to sell off state assets to the private sector, also stipulated that existing urban planning regulations could be nullified to allow for the establishment of frameworks that form part of specific investment initiatives. In 2014 there was a further attack on urban planning with the abolishment of the Organisations for Regulatory Planning and Environmental Protection in the cities of Athens, Thessaloniki and Ioannina.

Commenting on this in the aftermath of the flood, economist Gerasimos Potamianos wrote, “With the weakening of urban planning in the depth of the crisis and under the pressure of economic (revenue) needs… could see the promotion of private plans and opportunist solutions that serve momentary interests using economic development as a pretext.”

The floods in Western Attica are a further indictment of the Syriza-led government, which was swept into power in January 2015 on an anti-austerity ticket only to betray its mandate months later by signing a third bailout package with the EU and the IMF shortly after the overwhelming rejection of austerity in a July 2015 referendum.

In October 2014, when it was in opposition in the aftermath of the floods that devastated much of Attica, Syriza released a statement that attributed the devastation to “the consequence of the total and chronic abandonment for many decades by successive ND [New Democracy] and PASOK governments.”

Syriza now presides over a similar situation, with residents and volunteers left to clean up after the disaster, abandoned by the government. Attica Prefect and Syriza member Rena Dourou has come under attack for failing to make good her promises to construct anti-flood defences in the city of Mandra, for which a blueprint had existed since 2015 with an estimated cost of €11 million.

Spain accuses Russia of interference in the Catalan crisis

Alejandro López

Spain’s political establishment is the latest to blame a systemic crisis of rule on Russian meddling—this time in the Catalan independence referendum—and to use such accusations to attack democratic rights.

As elsewhere internationally, it is the erstwhile liberal media—in the shape of the traditionally pro-Socialist Party (PSOE) daily El País —that has instigated and led the campaign.

El Pais has carried out a frenzied and paranoid campaign claiming that the Catalan crisis was not sparked by the Popular Party (PP) government’s violent repression of the secessionists, but the result of Moscow and its promotion of “fake news.”

In the space of just two months, the newspaper has published 47 articles linking Russia to the Catalan crisis, five of which are editorials. At the forefront of the campaign is managing editor David Alandete.

Alandete graduated from George Washington University in 2006 with a Masters in International Policy and Practice, thanks to a Fulbright fellowship. He became an accredited journalist in the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress, and covered the court case of whistleblower Chelsea Manning as well as the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, while becoming one of the few non-US journalists allowed to visit the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

El País and Alandete began their “fake news” campaign with a September 25 article, “How Russian news networks are using Catalonia to destabilize Europe.”

Just one week before the October 1 independence referendum, the newspaper trumpeted, “In a bid to sow division within the European Union, Russia’s online disruption machinery is working at full speed to equate the Catalan crisis to the Crimean or Kurdish conflicts in the eyes of public opinion.”

The evidence it proffered was pro-Kremlin news organisations such as RT, Sputnik and Vzglyad and alleged pro-Russian Twitter accounts that dared to question the crackdown being prepared against the referendum—something El País and the other mainstream media in Madrid were fervently demanding the PP government launch, regardless of the consequences.

The following day another article appeared claiming a “detailed analysis of pro-Kremlin websites and social media profiles” had been carried out. In an all-encompassing rogues’ gallery amalgam it decried various Twitter accounts, RT news reports, an army of pro-Russian bots, as well as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who had all supposedly been working against Spain’s “constitutional legality” in the Catalan crisis.

Since then, El País has again and again claimed there is incontrovertible evidence of Russian state interference in the Catalan crisis—a fiction that it hopes, if endlessly repeated, will be established in popular consciousness as a fact.

The fact is that there is no evidence.

El País ’ main sources are the pro-US think tank, the Atlantic Council, the Spanish think tank, El Instituto Elcano, which relies on none other than El Paísfor its funding, and a study conducted by Javier Lesaca, visiting researcher at the School of Media and Public Affairs at Adanlete’s alma mater George Washington University and… also a columnist for El País ! The study has not been published nor is it mentioned by the university, and the reader has to accept at face value the “advanced software program that makes use of Spanish technology to measure and analyze big data” Lesaca supposedly used in his study.

At first, the PP government ignored El País ’ claims. At the time, it was hailing Moscow’s support for its clampdown, exemplified by Spanish Ambassador to Russia Ignacio Ibanez Rubio who declared, “From the very beginning, Russia has recognized that this is an internal affair of our country… So we are very pleased with Russia’s stand on the crisis in Catalonia.”

But the daily hit back. It published an editorial criticising the PP for ignoring the investigations of the intelligence committee of the US Senate and not displaying “at least publicly—any worry about what could be a direct foreign interference with the aim of destabilizing Spain” amid “the greatest institutional crisis that Spain has experienced in recent decades, a crisis that threatens its territorial integrity.”

Only on November 10, after 18 articles and three editorials from El País, did the Spanish government take the hint and itself raise the issue of alleged Russian interference—three days ahead of its attendance at a European Union (EU) Foreign Affairs Council meeting.

Brushing aside evidence from the National Cryptological Center saying it had not detected any foreign state involvement during the Catalan crisis, PP government spokesperson Íñigo Méndez de Vigo and Defense Minister María Dolores de Cospedal launched an attack on Russia.

Méndez declared: “We believe that Europe has to take this issue very seriously. It can’t be that foreign forces, outsiders, whom we don’t know who they are, want to change the constitutional order.”

Cospedal elaborated, “The government has corroborated the fact that many messages and operations that were seen via social networks come from Russian territory.”

The EU, in part using the false claims by Spain, then launched a High-Level Expert Group tasked with discussing “possible future actions to strengthen citizens’ access to reliable and verified information and prevent the spread of disinformation online.” In other words, the EU gave notice that it will now decide what people can read or say online across the continent.

The PSOE also weighed in, convening an urgent session of the National Security Commission in parliament to discuss Russian interference and inviting as guest of honor the Elcano Institute researcher and pro-PP think-tank FAES member, Mira Milosevich.

Milosevich, who is on record for her support of the 2003 Iraq War and the lies about weapons of mass destruction justifying it, concocted a presentation around—in her own words—a “hypothesis” based on Russia’s “previous behaviour” and “Russian official documents.”

Milosevich’s hypothesis amounted to vague and unsubstantiated claims, including: the assertions that “some media have transmitted erroneous information (intentionally or not) on Catalonia”; “The concept of information warfare is in the Russian military doctrine” and that Catalonia supposedly resembles “Previous events in the information warfare during the campaigns of the US presidential elections, the Brexit campaign, and the elections in France and Germany.”

Despite an admission that “There is no material evidence or computer evidence that it was ordered by the president Vladimir Putin or by members of his cabinet,” Milosevich’s brazen conclusion was that “Russia is in an information war with Spain.”

Following Milosevich’s contribution, representatives of the PP, PSOE and the right-wing Citizens party stepped up to demand measures to censor critical commentary directed at the Spanish government. They called for Google and other social networks to hide web pages from Russian influenced sites.

The only party to criticize the National Security Commission was the pseudo-left Podemos, but it did so from the right—attacking the PP for undermining Spain’s international prestige. Its organisation secretary, Pablo Echenique, lamented the telephone prank carried out by two Russian comedians who tricked the Spanish defence minister into believing that deposed Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont was a Russian spy. He called it a “national embarrassment… a huge inability of our Government to carry out an international policy that does not provoke ridicule outside our borders.”

The Spanish “anti-Russian” campaign serves the same political purpose as that in the US, where what started as Democratic Party efforts to explain its defeat as the result of Russian interference and justify its attempts to overturn Donald Trump’s election as president has evolved into a full-blown clampdown on freedom of expression. Russian news outlets are being targeted for censorship, as part of an ever-wider campaign against any web sites exposing the ruling class narrative on domestic and foreign policy—above all the World Socialist Web Site .

Tensions rise again as North Korea tests missile

Peter Symonds

North Korea test fired a long-range missile today that appears to have the range to potentially hit most parts of continental United States, including its capital Washington DC. The test took place amid high tensions on the Korean Peninsula stoked by the Trump administration’s threats to use military force to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities.

North Korea fired the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at about 3 am local time from around Pyongsong, a town northeast of the capital Pyongyang. It flew on a lofted trajectory for about 53 minutes, reaching an altitude of around 4,500 kilometres and landing 960 kilometres away to the north of Honshu, Japan’s largest island.

If the ICBM had been fired at an angle designed for maximum distance, the range is estimated at more than 12,500 kilometres, placing the US east coast and Washington DC potentially within its reach. Whether the missile can carry a heavy payload, such as a nuclear warhead, over that distance is unknown.

Two similar North Korean ICBMs tested in July remained aloft for 37 minutes and 47 minutes respectively. A US intelligence official told Reuters the initial indications were that the missile engine was not significantly more powerful than the previous Hwasong-14 tests.

David Wright from the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested in a blog that North Korea simply lightened the missile’s payload. “If true, that means it would not be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, since such a warhead would be much heavier,” he wrote.

Doubts also remain as to whether North Korea has developed a re-entry vehicle capable of shielding a nuclear payload from the intense heat and pressures generated when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere from outer space. According to Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera, the missile broke up before landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

US President Donald Trump made a relatively muted response at a press conference with Defence Secretary James Mattis. “We will take care of it,” Trump told reporters. “It is a situation that we will handle.”

Mattis declared that the missile “went higher, frankly, than any previous shots.” He continued: “The bottom line is it’s a continued effort to build a … ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace and certainly the United States.”

However, the chief responsibility for inflaming tensions in North East Asia lies with US imperialism. Trump’s administration, following on from President Obama’s, has tightened the noose of crushing economic and diplomatic sanctions around North Korea and made clear that only Pyongyang’s complete capitulation to US demands will prevent a war.

Following North Korea’s nuclear test in early September, Trump threatened at the United Nations to “totally destroy” the country. The remark highlights the vast disparity between the US, which has the world’s most powerful military and thousands of nuclear warheads, and North Korea, which has a very limited nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

The US has provocatively staged a series of large-scale military drills with South Korea, Japan and other allies throughout 2017. Earlier this month, the US navy held an exercise involving three American aircraft carriers, along with their accompanying strike groups of destroyers and cruises, and various South Korean vessels.

The latest war games, due to commence on Saturday, involve a massive display of air power. Known as Vigilant Ace, the air drill will involve 230 aircraft, including six F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, and 12,000 US military personnel. Its purpose, according to the US military, is to enhance interoperability between US and South Korean forces and “increase the combat effectiveness of both nations.” In other words, the intent is to prepare for war with North Korea.

Following today’s ICBM test by North Korea, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared: “Diplomatic solutions remain viable and open for now. The United States remains committed to finding a peaceful path to denuclearisation and to ending belligerent actions by North Korea.” He announced that the US and Canada would convene an international meeting next year to discuss how to counter North Korea.

However, the Trump administration has repeatedly rejected calls by China and Russia to pave the way for negotiations through a so-called freeze-for-freeze—suspending US and South Korean joint war games in return for North Korea halting its nuclear and missile tests.

Moreover, Trump last week reinstated North Korea to the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in a move calculated to undermine any attempt to start negotiations. The Bush administration removed Pyongyang from the list in 2008 as part of US commitments contained in a denuclearisation deal signed in 2007. Just months later, President Bush sabotaged the deal by demanding more intrusive inspection procedures.

North Korea reacted angrily to Trump’s announcement, declaring that the decision to relist it as a sponsor of terrorism was “a serious provocation and violent infringement” of its sovereignty. Today’s missile test—the first of any type since September—is another indication that Pyongyang judges that the US cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

The latest missile launch can only heighten tensions in North East Asia. South Korea responded six minutes later with its own show of force—the simultaneous test firing of a “precision” barrage of missiles from its army, navy and air force. All the missiles were calibrated to the distance to the North Korean test site, but fired into waters between South Korea and Japan.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has backed Washington’s aggressive stance toward North Korea to the hilt, spoke to Trump by phone. In comments to reporters, he called for a meeting of the UN Security Council, which is due to hold an emergency session on the launch Wednesday (US time).

The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” is not aimed just against North Korea, but also China, which is being pressured by the US and its allies to enforce what amounts to a complete economic blockade. The result is a highly dangerous situation in which any incident or accident could precipitate a catastrophic war.

Warnings of new financial bubble as bitcoin price hits $10,000

Andre Damon

The price of the digital currency bitcoin reached $10,000 late Tuesday, an eleven-fold increase since the start of the year, when it was valued at $900.

The explosive surge of bitcoin, the first so-called “cryptocurrency,” or digital money, has eclipsed the run-up of any comparable asset in modern history. As the New York Times noted Tuesday, “The Dow Jones industrial average, in its biggest year, 1915, went up 82 percent, or one-tenth as much as Bitcoin has gone up this year. Amazon’s red-hot stock is up only one-fifteenth as much as Bitcoin this year.”

To find financial bubbles comparable in scale, commentators have reached back hundreds of years to compare the bitcoin mania with the Dutch Tulip bubble of the 17th century and the South Sea bubble of 1721.

But with the rally in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies showing no signs of stopping, Wall Street and major financial institutions around the world are pouring billions of dollars into a financial asset that is totally unregulated, has no clear rules for lending and exchange, and no consumer safeguards.

With major investors flush with cash from open central bank spigots and soaring stock prices, there is every indication that this dangerous asset class is assuming an ever-larger presence on the balance sheets of banks, hedge funds and other outposts of the financial system.

The odds are increasing of another global financial meltdown on the scale of 2008, this time centered on cryptocurrencies instead of subprime mortgages.

The origins of bitcoin are shrouded in mystery. First introduced in January of 2009 by an unknown individual or group claiming to be a Japanese man named Satoshi Nakamoto, its nameless creator is now sitting on a nominal fortune of some $7 billion.

The currency was initially proposed as an anonymous and secure method of payment that bypassed central banks and government regulations, leading to its early adoption by anarchist and libertarian-minded individuals. In the ensuing years, however, it became clear that, due to its wild price fluctuations and institutional restrictions, bitcoin was inconvenient as a method of payment.

While an array of other cryptocurrencies have been created in an attempt to fill bitcoin’s purported role as a cash substitute, bitcoin’s proponents now advocate it as a long-term store of value, similar to gold, and supposedly immune to geopolitical instability. They promote it as a safe haven for investors living in countries with unstable currencies.

While the role of cryptocurrencies as either cash substitutes or as long-term stores of value remains unclear, bitcoin has proven its worth in one respect: as a vessel for rampant financial speculation.

This was made clear by hedge fund billionaire Mike Novogratz, who declared earlier this week that he expects the price of bitcoin to hit $40,000 by the end of next year. “There’s a big wave of money coming, not just here but all around the world,” the billionaire told the business cable channel CNBC.

“What’s different about these coins than other commodities,” he said, is that “there is no supply response here. So it’s a speculator’s dream in that as buying happens, there’s no new supply response that comes up. So every price move gets exaggerated. It’s going to get exaggerated on the way up. There will be 50 percent corrections. It will get exaggerated on the way down.”

To bolster his bullish claims about bitcoin, Novogratz billed it as a direct competitor to gold. “Bitcoin really has taken the use-case of digital gold,” he said.

In a telling example of the type of speculative mania that has taken hold among the financial elites, he candidly admitted to holding 30 percent of his net worth in cryptocurrencies, despite having advised even very rich investors to hold no more than five percent of their net worth in such assets just seconds earlier.

Whatever the merits of cryptocurrency as a store of value—and these have been widely questioned by financial, technology and security experts—the idea that Wall Street is going to create a substitute for gold out of thin air, then keep trillions of dollars of this magical substance on its balance sheets and watch what happens, is a recipe for a financial disaster.

On Wall Street, such an outcome is not totally unwelcome, given that the financial elite made out like bandits from the last crash.

Bitcoin is the latest in a series of financial bubbles that have been inflated since the stock market crash of October 1987, from the low interest rate, deregulated regime introduced by then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, which fueled the 1997-1998 Asian, Russian and Long-Term Capital Management crises, to the dot-com bubble collapse of 2000-2002, to the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage implosion. Increasingly, US and world capitalism have relied, addict-like, on the most parasitic and socially destructive forms of financial speculation.

The 2008 financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of the subprime mortgage bubble, which was driven by lending to consumers who were sold houses they could not afford and told their mortgages were investments that were sure to make money. As it turned out, the major Wall Street banks and hedge funds had massively speculated in subprime mortgages, which were repackaged as “collateralized debt obligations” and held on the balance sheets of financial firms.

An accelerating rise in default rates caused a massive sell-off in mortgage-backed securities, blowing multibillion-dollar holes in the balance sheets of leading banks and financial companies. The US government responded by using taxpayer dollars to finance multitrillion-dollar bailouts to the biggest Wall Street banks.

In the aftermath of the bailout, central banks around the world kept interest rates at historically low rates and introduced further measures to expand the money supply, such as the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program. This led the US stock market to increase in value by more than 3.5 times over the ensuing seven years, a rally that has continued, with all three major US stock indexes hitting new records Tuesday.

Now, with financial markets flush with cash, billionaire investors are eyeing cryptocurrencies as a means of securing even more massive returns on their investments. When and how this bubble pops is difficult to predict, but one thing is clear: When it does, it will take a substantial chunk of the real economy with it, with disastrous consequences for working people all over the world.

Chalmers Adlerbert Study Scholarships (Masters) for Developing Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 15th January 2018

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): Sweden

Eligible Field of Study: Unrestricted – all of the current Master’s programmes at Chalmers.

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• 1st year Master’s programme applicants
• Citizens of 143 countries (listed below).

Selection Criteria: The selection is based on the applicants’ relative academic excellence, which primarily includes weighted average grade but also home University’s stature (including position on global ranking lists) and priority order of the application for Chalmers Master’s Programmes.

Number of Awardees: 5

Value of Scholarship: Covers 100% of the tuition fees

Duration of Scholarship: 4 semesters/2 year programme

Eligible Countries: Angola, Kenya, Bolivia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Cabo Verde, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Argentina, Bhutan, Congo, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Belarus, Burundi, Egypt, Belize, Cambodia, El Salvador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Central African Republic, Georgia, Botswana, Chad,Ghana, Brazil, Comoros, Guatemala, Chile, Democratic Republic of the Congo,Guyana, Djibouti, Honduras, Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, Cook Islands, Eritrea, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Cuba, Gambia, Kyrgyzstan, Dominica, Guinea, Micronesia, Dominican Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Moldova, Ecuador, Haiti, Mongolia, Fiji, Kiribati, Morocco,Former Yugoslav, Republic of Macedonia, Lao People’s Democratic, Republic Nicaragua, Gabon, Lesotho, Nigeria, Grenada, Liberia, Pakistan, Iran, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Iraq, Malawi, Paraguay, Jamaica, Mali, Philippines, Jordan, Mauritania, Samoa, Kazakhstan, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Myanmar, Swaziland, Libya, Nepal, Syrian Arab Republic, Malaysia Niger, Tokelau, Maldives, Rwanda, Ukraine, Marshall Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, Uzbekistan, Mauritius, Senegal, Viet Nam, Mexico, Sierra Leone, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Montenegro, Solomon Islands, Montserrat, Somalia, Namibia, South Sudan,Nauru, Sudan, Niue, Tanzania, Palau, Timor-Leste, Panama, Togo, Peru, Tuvalu, Saint Helena, Uganda, Saint Lucia, Vanuatu, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Yemen, Serbia, Zambia,Seychelles, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uruguay, Venezuela.

How to Apply: It is important to go through the Application Requirements before applying

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Chalmers University of Technology

Michelin Challenge Design (Fully-funded to Detroit, USA) 2019

Application Deadline: 1st March, 2018

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online, Detroit, USA

Eligible Participants: 

1. OEM design studios
2. Independent design studios
3. Individual designers
4. Academic Transportation Design students and teams
5. Automotive suppliers

About the Award: Michelin Challenge Design invites you to design a vehicle for the year 2025 that becomes a classic and defines, or represents, this transitional era in automotive design and technology and will win the Michelin Concours d’Elegance 2050. Your design may feature an established brand, or one currently unknown, and is either among the first to feature innovative elements and characteristics, or perhaps the last to utilize certain technologies.

Originally created as work vehicles for farmers, contractors, and delivery; pickup trucks have evolved to provide growing appeal as open bedded personal vehicles for an increasingly wide range of users.

Today, changing lifestyles, work needs and economics are creating greater opportunities for pickup designs in varying shapes, sizes and capabilities to meet these growing new market segments around the world.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 

• Michelin Challenge Design is open to residents of any country. Parents or legal guardians of entrants less than the age of majority in their state, province or country must sign the MCD Questionnaire and the MCD Entry Form. Michelin Challenge Design is void where prohibited by law. All entries for the Michelin Challenge Design must be received by August 1 of the previous year.
• Employees of Michelin, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, distributors, suppliers, agents, representatives, advertising, promotional or judging agencies, authorized Michelin tire dealers and distributors, and their immediate family members and those living in the same household, or anyone working on this project, are not eligible to participate.
• By participating you agree to be bound by the Rules and Procedures of this challenge and by the decisions of the Michelin Challenge Design Jury and of Michelin, whose decisions shall be final and binding in all respects. Any entries or displays may be withdrawn or declined for any reason at any time.
• Entrants must include all data and information and fulfill all requirements as required by the Michelin Challenge Design Rules and Procedures and Entry Form in order for the entry to be valid. Entrants must provide all data and information that is accurate and complete. If more than one person designed an entry, all designer names must appear on the “Designer(s) Name(s)” portion of the Michelin Challenge Design Entry Form.
• Student designers who are working with an engineering department, at a university, are required to take the lead role in the development of any submitted work. This means that the designer has final say to all technical questions that will have an impact on the functional and aesthetic result of the design work.

Your entry should clearly present the compelling visual story behind your vehicle. What makes it distinct and collectible? What makes it a classic? Does it stand as the pinnacle of 140 years of vehicle design or signal a complete break with the past?

• Timeless
• Iconic
• Future Classic
• Distinctive
• Groundbreaking

Selection Criteria: Jury evaluates based on the following:

• Relevance to the theme
• Concept originality
• Design value and quality
• Developmental potential
• Design displayability.

Value of Contest: 

• Roundtrip coach airfare to Detroit to attend 2019 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS-Detroit) for the sole designer or, in the case of a team design, one team representative. Michelin will book the airfare on your behalf; any guests will be at your expense.
• Up to Five (5*) nights hotel accommodations in Detroit for NAIAS, including hotel internet service, room rate and taxes at a Michelin-selected hotel. You will be responsible for all other incidentals, and the hotel will ask for a credit card to cover any charges other than room, internet, and taxes.**
• Michelin-arranged transportation from Detroit Metro Airport to Detroit hotel upon arrival and from Detroit hotel to Detroit Metro Airport at departure***
• Travel Visa: If required and you provide Michelin with your receipt, Michelin will reimburse you the expense. This does not apply to passport fees.
• Daily per diem of $50.00 USD/day* (maximum of $250.00 USD) for meals and miscellaneous expenses, available for you at check in to your hotel in the form of a VISA® gift card.
• Entry credentials for Press Days and Industry Preview days at NAIAS (January 2019)
• Invitation to attend and recognition at the private Michelin Designer’s Reception – the Monday night during press days at NAIAS – highlighted by the exposure to NAIAS, media, designers and other winners.
• Private Portfolio Review with some members of the Michelin Challenge Design Jury
• Recognition on www.michelinchallengedesign.com web site
• Recognition on www.cardesignnews.com web site
• Inclusion in Michelin Challenge Design promotional materials and events throughout the year
• Invitation to join a new Michelin Challenge Design Alumni website
• Michelin Challenge Design may also recognize a select number of entries for Honorable Mention which will be publicized on the Michelin Challenge Design and Car Design News web sites.

How to Apply: 

• No purchase necessary to participate.
• Completed entries will be accepted via Mail, Fax or Internet.
• For Internet entries, visit http://www.michelinchallengedesign.com and complete and submit the online Michelin Challenge Design Entry Form with all accompanying required materials.
• For mail entries, visit http://www.michelinchallengedesign.com and complete and print the Michelin Challenge Design Entry Form PDF file and mail it to: Michelin Challenge Design, c/o Event Management Corp., 3150 Livernois, Suite # 175, Troy, MI 48083
• For fax entries, visit http://www.michelinchallengedesign.com and complete and print the Michelin Challenge Design Entry Form PDF file and fax it and all accompanying required materials to 248-687-7507
• Entry forms must be accompanied by photographs, drawings and/or computer-generated images.
• Incomplete entry forms are subject to disqualification.

 Entry Portal

Visit Contest Webpage for details

Award Provider: Michelin