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By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge

30 Apr 2019 – As if the past months of US push for regime change in Venezuela with officials like Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra conviction infamy at the helm wasn’t bizarre enough, things just got weirder, as Erik Prince has apparently been pitching a plan around Washington to privatize US coup efforts using his latest Blackwater inspired mercenary empire.

According to Reuters, Prince — the brother of billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos who has over the past years since selling his mired-in-controversy Blackwater group (now Academi) revived his mercenary empire in China in the form of Frontier Services Group (FSG) — intends to “deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicholas Maduro”.

Price has reportedly sought access to Trump administration officials to whom he’s attempting to pitch the whole operation, said to involve some 5,000 soldiers-for-hire to be used by opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to multiple sources who spoke to Reuters. The controversial private security CEO has sought investments from both Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles, and reportedly held meetings over the plan as recently as mid-April.

Neither the White House nor Guaido opposition representatives have confirmed they were entertaining such a plan, with the latter denying altogether that Guado’s team had even spoken with Prince or FSG reps.

Reuters’ sources described some of the details of the proposed Venezuela coup plan as follows:

The two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch said it calls for starting with intelligence operations and later deploying 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire from Colombia and other Latin American nations to conduct combat and stabilization operations.

Perhaps the most interesting detail to be revealed is the need for a triggering event that could set a final bid for coup over the top, after a number of small attempts failed to gain enough momentum in the past months.

Reuters’ sources described what Prince called a “dynamic event”:

One of Prince’s key arguments, one source said, is that Venezuela needs what Prince calls a “dynamic event” to break the stalemate that has existed since January, when Guaido – the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly – declared Maduro’s 2018 re-election illegitimate and invoked the constitution to assume the interim presidency.

In 2017, Prince is known to have lobbied the Trump administration for using private contractors to stabilize the Middle East.

He’s made headlines last year after pitching an idea to privatize the wars in Afghanistan and Syria to Trump administration officials, which has reportedly met with little progress, though there were some indicators Trump could be open to the idea.

Iraq-style mercenary occupation of Venezuela? Erik Prince hopes so…

To the shock and surprise of many, a subsidiary of his Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group has been allowed to operate in Iraq, showing up in the southern city of Basra, after both Prince and Blackwater were formally barred by Iraq’s government from ever entering the country again following the 2007 Nisour Square massacre.

As for Venezuela, things look to slowly destabilize further as continued total economic collapse fuels an ongoing humanitarian emergency, and on news of more armed uprisings by military defectors backing Guaido come out of Caracas.

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Zero Hedge is an English-language financial blog that aggregates news and presents editorial opinions from original and outside sources. The news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym “Tyler Durden” (a character from the novel and film Fight Club).

13 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Mark Curtis

3 May 2019 – The true extent of the fall-out from the Libya war is remarkable: it has spurred terrorism in Europe, Syria, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

Eight years on from NATO’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war.

The number is at least 14. The legacy of David Cameron’s, Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Barack Obama’s overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans.

Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever.

Ungoverned space

The 2011 conflict, in which NATO worked alongside Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist groups to thrive.

But it was Syria that suffered first.

The legacy of David Cameron’s, Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Barack Obama’s overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans

After civil war broke out there in early 2011, at the same time as in Libya, the latter became a facilitation and training hub for around 3,000 fighters on their way to Syria, many of whom joined al-Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State-affiliated Katibat al-Battar al-Libi (KBL), which was founded by militants from Libya.

In Libya itself, a rebranding of existing al-Qaeda-linked groups in the north-eastern area of Derna produced Islamic State’s first official branch in the country in mid-2014, incorporating members of the KBL.

During 2015, IS Libya conducted car bombings and beheadings and established territorial control and governance over parts of Derna and Benghazi in the east and Sabratha in the west. It also became the sole governing body in the north-central city of Sirte, with as many as 5,000 fighters occupying the city.

By late 2016, IS in Libya was forced out of these areas, largely due to US air strikes, but withdrew to the desert areas south of Sirte, continuing low-level attacks.

In the last two years, the group has re-emerged as a formidable insurgent force and is again waging high-profile attacks on state institutions and conducting regular hit-and-run operations in the southwestern desert.

Last September, UN Special Representative to Libya Ghassan Salame told the UN Security Council that the IS “presence and operations in Libya are only spreading”.

Terror in Europe

After the fall of Gaddafi, IS Libya established training camps near Sabratha which are linked to a series of terrorist attacks and plots.

“Most of the blood spilled in Europe in the more spectacular attacks, using guns and bombs, really all began at the time when Katibat al-Battar went back to Libya,” Cameron Colquhoun, a former counterterrorism analyst for Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, told The New York Times.

“That is where the threat trajectory to Europe began – when these men returned to Libya and had breathing space.”

Salman Abedi, who blew up 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester in 2017, met with members of the Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a faction of IS, several times in Sabratha, where he was probably trained.

Other members of the KBL were Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the 2015 Paris attacks on the Bataclan nightclub and sports stadium, which killed 130 people, and the militants involved in the Verviers plot to attack Belgium in 2015.

The perpetrator of the 2016 Berlin truck attack, which left 12 people dead, also had contacts with Libyans linked to IS.

So too in Italy, where terrorist activity has been linked to IS Libya, with several individuals based in Italy involved in the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis in 2015, which killed 22 people.

Libya’s neighbours

Tunisia suffered its deadliest terrorist attack in 2015 when a 23-year-old Tunisian armed with a machine gun mowed down 38 tourists, mainly Britons, at a beach hotel in the resort of Port El Kantaoui.

The perpetrator was reportedly an adherent of IS and, like Salman Abedi, had been trained in the camp complex at Sabratha from where the attack was staged.

Libya’s eastern neighbour, Egypt, has also been struck by terrorism emanating from the country. IS officials in Libya have been linked to, and may have directed, the activities of Wilayat Sinai, the terrorist group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has carried out several deadly attacks in Egypt.

After the fall of Gaddafi, the Western Desert became a corridor for the smuggling of weapons and operatives on their way to the Sinai.

Egypt conducted air strikes against militant camps in Libya in 2015, 2016 and again in 2017, the latter following the killing of 29 Coptic Christians near Cairo.

Into the Sahel

But Libya has also become a hub for jihadist networks stretching south into the Sahel. Libya’s 2011 uprising opened a flow of weapons into northern Mali, which helped revive an ethno-tribal conflict that had been brewing since the 1960s.

By 2012, local allies of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken control of day-to-day governance in the northern Mali towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

After France intervened in Mali, the ongoing lack of governance in Libya precipitated several groups to relocate their operational centres to Libya, including both AQIM and its offshoot, Al-Mourabitoun, from where these groups could acquire weapons more easily.

With Libya as its rear base, Al-Mourabitoun under its leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar was behind the attack on the Amenas hydrocarbon complex in eastern Algeria in January 2013, which left 40 foreign workers dead; the gun attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali in November 2015, which killed 22 people; and for the attack on Hotel Splendid in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which killed 20 people in January 2016.

Al-Mourabitoun has also attacked a military academy and French-owned uranium mine in Niger.

Disastrous foreign policy

The fall-out from Libya spreads even wider, however. By 2016, US officials reported signs that Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadists, responsible for numerous gruesome attacks and kidnappings, were sending fighters to join IS in Libya, and that there was increased cooperation between the two groups.

The International Crisis Group notes that it was the arrival of weapons and expertise from Libya and the Sahel that enabled Boko Haram to fashion the insurgency that plagues north-western Nigeria today.

There have even been claims that Boko Haram answers to IS commanders in Libya.

In addition to these 14 countries, fighters from several other states have joined IS militants in Libya in recent years. Indeed, it is estimated that almost 80 percent of IS membership in Libya is non-Libyan, including from countries such as Kenya, Chad, Senegal and Sudan.

These foreign fighters are potentially available to return to their own countries after receiving training.

The true extent of the fall-out from the Libya war is remarkable: it has spurred terrorism in Europe, Syria, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Islamic State, although now nearly defeated in Syria and Iraq, is far from dead.

Indeed, while Western leaders seek to defeat terrorism militarily in some places, their disastrous foreign policy choices have stimulated it in others.

Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.

13 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Richard Falk

There are important recent developments in Turkey. An unprecedented decision by the High Electoral Council(HEC) of Turkey to cancel the outcome of the election of mayor in Istanbul that had been narrowly won by Ekram Imamoglu of the leading opposition party, CHP, or Republican People’s Party. The rerun of the March 31stelection is scheduled for June 23rd. The HEC justified its 7-4 decision by citing ‘electoral irregularities,’ but many in Turkey believe the overturning of the result reflected pressures exerted by the AKP leadership, particularly, its controversial president, Recep Tayip Erdogan and his close circle of advisors, who contend that the earlier election in Istanbul was ‘unlawful.’ An interesting further development is the withdrawal from the rerun of three small minority parties that together gained 2.6% of the vote, which overshadows the .02% margin of victory by Imamoglu on March 31st. It is assumed that this withdrawal from the second election will help Imamoglu win a second time, presuming a fair election.

One notable consequence of this development have been the public assertions of Ahmet Davutoglu, former head of the governing party, AKP or Justice and Development Party, as well as former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister in the Erdogan-led government that has been running the country since 2002. Davutoglu’s Manifesto, really a statement of critique and a visionary reaffirmation of the original identity of the AKP, was written in response to the election results on March 31st, interpreted as sending a message of disapproval by the voters to the AKP and its leadership. It is significant that Davutoglu voiced his criticisms and hopes as situated within the party, but his Manifesto was released prior to the electoral reversal on May 6th, which underscored the mainline of his criticism that the AKP had lost touch with its own animating values and approach, and was thus losing the confidence of the Turkish citizenry. It should also be observed that there was sharp Kemalist opposition to Erdogan and the AKP ever since the 2002 elections, but what is new is for this criticism to come from a highly respected political figure long associated with the AKP. Whether this prefigures a reformist struggle within the AKP or an entirely new political constellation in Turkey is an unknown at this time, and may be influenced by how the control of Istanbul is finally resolved. In any event, the two statements by Davutoglu are themselves important political texts to be understood both in relation to the June 23rdIstanbul rerun, and in relation to the political future of Turkey during this period of exceptional regional instability and continuing turbulence.

These texts are posted here as suggesting the perspectives of a leading political personality in the Turkish context who is highly respected for his academic achievements as well as his dedication to the ideals of inclusive democracy as the basis of legitimate governance in Turkey. Davutoglu’s book Systemic Earthquake: The Struggle for World Order—Exclusive Populism versus Inclusive Democracy will be published in coming months by Cambridge University Press. It surveys the global scene from an ethically principled perspective that is informed by an impressive grasp of the geopolitical, cultural, and historical dimensions of contemporary world order. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that Ahmet Davutoglu has been a cherished and admired friend for more than 25 years. I am fully aware that in the present atmosphere any commentary on Turkish political developments is bound to be controversial, and elicit strong reactions pro and contra.

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Ahmet Davutoğlu’s Statement in Response to Annulling & Redoing the March 31, 2019 Election for Mayor of Istanbul

Despite all the deficiencies of Turkish political life and democracy, the most important power is the legitimacy of the elections.

The most fundamental value of our political future is the voice of the people, and this will be manifested at the ballot box.

Regardless of the excuse given and whatever the rationale, what happened after the March 31st election and the decision of annulment by the High Electoral Council has inflicted damage on these core values.

Elections that are fair and respected to rules and principles are the reference point for our democracy as well as our consciousness of communal belonging. The decision of the High Electoral Council contradicts universal law and established traditions and damages this consciousness.

The biggest loss for political movements is not the loss of elections but it is the loss of moral superiority as embodied in the social conscience. Now what we should do: To carry out the election process in accordance with our maturity, and avoid further tension and polarization so as to prevent any further deterioration of our democracy.

The following text constitutes Professor Ahmet Davutoğlu’s Manifesto, a document based on his observations and proposals in the context of the political conditions prevailing in the wake of the Turkish local elections of 31stMarch 2019:

“We are living through a historical process in which the most intensive transformations of human history are unfurling, communications and interactions between societies have gained extraordinary pace, and great opportunities as well as risks may come into play to the same degree and at the same time. The huge momentum that the flow of history has picked up informs the spirit of the age.

In the coming period, a fundamental differentiation is set to emerge between those who manage and steer this momentum by seizing this spirit of the age, and those who break away from it, only to be dragged headlong through the rapids of history. While countries that manage to overcome internal tensions to pursue a consistent approach and craft a vision in harmony with the zeitgeistshall master the shape of future decades and even centuries, nations whose energies are consumed on their own sterile internal tensions will turn into passive elements in history. Recent crises at national, regional and international levels are in fact the birth pangs emanating from the womb of history.

At the early years of the 2000s, our country, Turkey, achieved a self confidence-boosting democratization, rising economic development and a worldwide international influence as our Justice and Development (AK) Party swept to power on the wings of a vision that embraced the spirit of the age and the nation’s values; Turkey’s performance seized the momentum of the historical flow. However, internal tensions that began with the Gezi events in 2013, continued with the 17/25 December conspiracies of the same year, then took on a more perilous dimension with the trench warfare instigated by the PKK in 2015-2016 before peaking with the attempted coup d’état of 15thJuly 2016, drove our country from a position of vision and enterprise towards one that was reactionary and defensive.

The fact that our party, which remained the only political actor capable of managing this entire process, began to expend its own energy on the provocations and manipulations of certain power centers that disregarded the national will to play a leading role in these conspiratorial processes, served to shake our internal harmony, as well as restricting our capacity to forge and implement a fresh vision.

Today, we find ourselves at a critical threshold. I have communicated my assessments and concerns about our country and party during the critical processes of the past three years to our President verbally and in writing, but I chose not to share them publicly in order to avoid providing ammunition to various circles to indulge in malicious debate.

For the future of our party and our country, the 31stMarch elections and the social and political picture that has emerged in their wake necessitate an open, transparent and level headed accounting before the court of public opinion. With the responsibility I feel as the second chairman of the AK Party and our country’s last democratically elected Prime Minister, I regard it as my inescapable duty to share my views with the beloved people of Turkey on the eve of the 99thAnniversary of the founding of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

The 31stMarch elections have yielded significant results that require our prudent examination; the electorate issued important messages that we need to consider carefully. It is crucial that these messages on the future of our party and country are properly understood and that the necessary steps are taken. If we fail to take on board the essential messages from changes in the people’s preferences and decisively take the necessary measures, a difficult period awaits both us as the AK Party, and our country. In this context, and in the wake of the election results from the Istanbul and Ankara metropolitan municipalities that are such key symbols of our movement’s popularization and march to power and that have been administered by our personnel for a quarter of a century, we have to face the fact that there has been a visible fall in society’s support for our party and appraise this fact coolly.

First and foremost, we need to recall that the AK Party is not a neophyte political entity that emerged by happenstance in a particular political state of affairs. On the contrary, it is the product of having melded the anonymous legacy created by doggedly overcoming difficult conditions through cross-generational elbow grease and mental struggle, with the people, the nation and history. This is why the justification and future of its existence is not and must not be dependent on the fate, preferences or discretion of any transitory person, limited section of society, or economic interest group. This movement, the deep past of which shows how it rose up on the sweat of past generations, its future based on the hopes of the generations to come, must not be sacrificed to cronyism, increasingly swollen egos and fruitless strife.

We all owe a great deal to the past generations who strengthened the foundations on which our party was built, and the anonymous heroic men and women who carry the burdens of today on their shoulders. I had the honor of seeing the depth of this great legacy on the devoted faces of these anonymous heroes and heroines during the two general election campaigns I fought as Party leader on 7thJune and 1stNovember 2015. I still have a vivid picture in my mind’s eye of the women from Bergama in Izmir who so enthusiastically filled the public square for hours under the rain; the valiant people of Diyarbakır who greeted and embraced me in front of the Great Mosque as we carried on the struggle against the trenches dug by the PKK terror organization in Sur, the city’s historic heart; the elderly Istanbul gentlemen raising their hands to the sky in prayer at our rally in Sancaktepe; the garrulous people of Trabzon who brought their Black Sea exuberance into the main square in the middle of the night; the people of Konya who waved me off to Ankara in sadness on 7thJune just as they did in the jubilation of 1stNovember; and the steadfast people of this country who greeted me in all its 81 provinces.

We owe all our achievements, positions and authority to the voluntary sacrifices of past generations who endured all kinds of ordeals in order to clear our path, to heroic unnamed individuals who worked so ardently in every election, and to our party apparatus for organizing them so vigorously. As I pen these lines I bear the heavy burden of responsibility that comes from such a sense of indebtedness. This is the context in which I present my findings about the future of our party and our country to the conscience of our nation.

• There are five basic elements that make political movements and parties dominant players on the stage of history: (i) an internally coherent set of principles and values; (ii) a discourse and rhetoric consistent with the spirit of these values; (iii) a network of social relationships open to all sections of society; (iv) a robust organizational structure that is able effectively to manage this network and (v) the free thinking and shared wisdom that enables the development of policies, in line with the spirit of the age.
• The secret that has distinguished our party from others in our political history and that forms the basis for our extended periods in office lies within these fundamental characteristics. However, the events of recent years have shown that when it comes to these essential elements, serious weaknesses have become ever more pervasive. The drift and disorder observed from every perspective during and after the recent local elections reflect these failings.
• First of all, the deviations in word and deed from the principles and values upon which political ethics are based constitute a barrier preventing engagement with the conscience of society. The break from any sense of humility through an arrogant, self-centered idiom; the competition between even the smallest-scale politicians to have streets, schools and buildings named after them even while they seek to emphasize their virtue; the effort to do anything to be on the agenda based on an impulse to be constantly visible and recognized; the opening of the widest possible gap between the language used and the attitude exhibited; the crude exploitation of our sacred values in the service of political interests; efforts to establish and consolidate the influence of an entire family and circle by forgetting the fact that assumed duties are exclusive to an individual; the proliferation of all kinds of slander including social media operations in order to destroy people seen as political rivals; lending support through silence to accusations designed to ruin the reputations of people who have devoted a lifetime to the common struggle for this cause; and taking a wrecking ball to the sense of loyalty that we used to regard as our most cherished value: all these things demand our candid consideration.
• The drift at the level of fundamental values and principles has also directly impacted our political discourse and rhetoric. Our party’s people-oriented, human rights-based, freedom-loving, reformist, inclusive political rhetoric, confident in itself and the future, has been replaced in recent years by a discourse based on statist, security-oriented concerns focused on maintaining the status quo and mere survival.
• The state is the embodiment of the common will of the people who make up the nation, and cannot survive in the absence of this will. The state is a political organism that exists not beyond us, but through the will of the individuals who make up society as a whole; it is an administrative mechanism that can endure as long as it enjoys social legitimacy. Reinterpreting the principles of the great Sufi Sheikh Edebali, we may say that no state that neglects or deprioritizes fundamental human rights can last.
• There has evidently been a severe contraction in the social inclusivity and network of relations that had previously lifted our party to the top of the polls nationwide. The results of the last election show that even in conjunction with the main Nationalist party as the “People’s Alliance”, we have got detached from the coastal regions and find ourselves squeezed into an area of political activity tapering into Central Anatolia and the Black Sea. And in Central Anatolia, intra-alliance balances disfavor our party. If this narrowing in geographical and social support is not carefully dealt with in word and deed, it will become a political pincer.
• The chief factor in preventing such social contraction is the presence of an organization melded into the fabric of society and ready to assume a dynamic role in critical processes. Yet the recent exclusion of and insults against our provincial leaders and organizations, who put themselves bodily at the forefront of the national resistance at the time of the 15thJuly coup has opened up a wound deep in the conscience of our organization.
• Even more dangerous has been the emergence of a power center that sees itself as being above our party’s institutional bodies, which has tried to overrule the party’s elected officials, committees and institutions as a parallel structure attempting to rule over it, crippling the very essence of organizational institutionalization. The lack of enthusiasm observed in our organization during the last two elections is to some extent the product of frustration and disappointment at the disloyalty shown to organization members who have made such sacrifices for the party.
• In addition, restricting the authority of individuals directly elected by the people at general and local elections, then forcing them to leave office by means of direct or indirect accusations and pressure, has damaged the institutionalization of politics as well as dealing a severe blow to the principle of the supremacy of the national will and our party’s links with the fabric of society.
• One of the most important founding principles of our party is the quest for a shared wisdom and reasoning. Thanks to its institutional consultative mechanisms and this quest for shared wisdom, our party gained public favor by overcoming a number of severe crises. Unfortunately, however, the AK Party committees and consultative mechanisms that had functionalized shared wisdom have recently either been entirely disabled or lost their operability by becoming the approval authority for a single view. In this context, our party’s institutional structure should be restored to its real function of fostering the political manifestation of ideas and proposals emanating from our grassroots organizations.
• Our party and our country, founded on the nation’s tears, labor, hearts and minds, cannot be abandoned to the status-seeking concerns of a narrow, self-serving circle that is a slave to its own ambitions. In this framework, our party’s institutional structure should be strengthened, its consultative and shared wisdom mechanisms operated effectively, our grassroots organizations should have their original qualities and function restored, and our bonds to our people should be rebuilt on the basis of humility without delay.
• The review to be conducted in the wake of our party’s election results should also cover alliance politics. The development of dialogue, constructive cooperation and mutual understanding between different political parties is of critical importance with respect to our democracy and national unity. In this sense, the close dialogue and cooperative atmosphere embodied by the “Spirit of Yenikapı” (named after the Istanbul square that saw the largest gathering of people in the history of the Republic after the 15thJuly 2016 coup attempt), was correct. However, the election results showed that alliance politics harmed our party in terms of both votes and party identity. Our party failed to reach its objectives in the race within and between alliances and lost control of numerous municipalities.
• In addition, alliance politics has damaged our distinctively inclusive stance towards all parts of the country and every section of society by confining our party to a narrow political discourse and identity. Our party should therefore analyze the election results and review alliance politics. Its unique political identity and philosophy should be preserved while developing close cooperation with different political parties on a shared agenda for our country.
• In a nutshell, our party is now in need of a comprehensive renewal. The next four-year period, expected to be election-free, should provide sufficient time for this. If the AK Party undergoes a fundamental process of renewal, it could regain the discourse and the political dynamism that it has lost. Most crucially, it could take back the moral superiority that it is rapidly shedding. This great historical legacy and heritage, independent of transient personalities, cannot be expected to be left unclaimed.
• For the future of our country, I consider it necessary to share my convictions on these matters.
• Contrary to expectations, the alliance structures accompanying the introduction of the presidential system failed to declutter the political spectrum and have led to the formation of political poles and the destruction of the common values that hold society together. The harsh rhetoric stemming from the confrontational character of the alliance structures has damaged our social peace and shared sense of belonging by elevating political polarization to dangerous levels.
• Election competitors are not enemies, they are political rivals. And whoever emerges from the ballot, the winner is our nation and democracy.Respecting the result is the duty of politicians before anyone else. Concerns over survival cannot justify a readiness to suspend democracy. On the contrary, the basis of the survival of our state is democratic legitimacy.
• Unfortunately, we have recently experienced what can happen when rival parties turn into enemies through the rhetoric of survival and polarization and overstep the bounds of political rivalry at an ugly attack that took place at the funeral of a fallen soldier in Ankara, an occasion that should have brought us all together. I repeat my condemnation of this attack on the leader of the opposition and call on everyone to act within the constraints of the democratic order and avoid polarizing political rhetoric.
• The principal element in nations’ internal peace, the survival of states and the order of societies is a shared sense of belonging. The most fundamental fact that we need to bear in mind is that the Republic of Turkey is the product of a common will and the sense of ownership of its 82 million citizens. Therefore, no one identified as a citizen of the Republic of Turkey, a status crowned with human dignity, should be insulted or defamed by any authority or power, discriminated against on grounds of faith, gender, disability, language, race, political belief, philosophical concepts or lifestyle, or exposed to any kind of hate speech whatsoever.
• The primary virtue and merit of social order based on such a shared sense of belonging is justice. Social and political orders whose legal structures are not based on a sound philosophy of justice and fail to guarantee people’s lives, minds, beliefs, lineage and property are open to all kinds of internal and external intervention, attack and chaos. The law is not a field of power accumulation but one of power control and moral lines. Attempts to take control of the judiciary should be seen as the greatest crime, whoever does it and under whatever justification.
• In our recent history, we saw how the power that stopped the coup attempt that threatened our country and its people on the night of 15thJuly 2016 was honorable mass resistance; what carries this resistance to ultimate victory is the proper operation of the scales of justice in the judicial process. No judge or prosecutor should be subject to any kind of interference or criticism when making their judgment or preparing an indictment, beyond the nature of the case and the ultimate measure of justice.
• The implementation of various criteria by various people in the struggle against the FETO organization, which needs to be uncompromising, only damages that struggle. On this matter, the ‘individual criminal responsibility’ principle that constitutes the most fundamental principle of law needs to be painstakingly safeguarded. The fact that in certain cases there has been no objection to the appointment of alumni of the organization’s schools whose siblings or relatives played an important role in the organization and the coup attempt to the state offices at the highest level while the relative of a low-level clerk is dismissed for some low-level relationship casts a question mark over the struggle against FETO.
• Turkey’s need for a civilian, democratic and inclusive constitution is greater than ever. Immediately after the presentation of the last constitutional amendment package to the Turkish Grand National Assembly, I expressed my concerns and proposals to the President verbally and in writing. Unfortunately, what has transpired in the meantime has only served to justify my concerns. I regret to say that the new system fails to meet the expectations of the nation in terms either of its structuring or its implementation. In this context, we need to carry out a serious and frank review concerning changes to the system.
• The starting point for such a review should be the existence and protection of the principle of the rule of law. The capacity to protect the rule of law depends on the rebuilding of the principle of the separation of powers. The duality caused by Turkey being governed by the “12thSeptember Constitution” drawn up following the 1980 military coup led to administrative crises. Although the new system resolves this problem, it undermines the separation of powers principle by giving the executive dominance over the legislature and the judiciary, disabling balance and control mechanisms.
• In order to guarantee the separation of powers, the legislature must have a balancing autonomy vis-à-vis the executive and judiciary. In this context, the representative power of individual Members of Parliament and their effectiveness in the legislative process should be strengthened by revising the electoral system and the law on political parties.
• Another issue we need to address in the context of this review is that of the reorganization of the state architecture. The state manifests itself on the stage of history through the conventions and institutions it perpetuates. The natural flow of history obliges us to reorganize these conventions and institutions in line with changing conditions. The balance between continuity and change needs to be meticulously protected in such a reorganization process. Delaying the required change by distorting the balance in favor of continuity leads to stasis and opacity, while tipping it too far in the direction of change leads the state structure to be constantly sent back to the drawing board, weakening the perpetuation of the state.
• During the process of reorganizing the state, status quo-based institutionalism should be abandoned, institutional culture and memory preserved. This reorganization should be carried out not by means of conjectural, arbitrary and abrupt decisions, but exercising a degree of prudence that takes into account accumulated experience and the requirements of time, as well as mobilizing the sense of shared wisdom.
• One of the key continuity features of the state architecture in this context is the Presidency’s functioning as representative of the whole of society, embracing all its sections. One of the most sensitive issues we need to bear in mind when transitioning from the parliamentary system that ran contrary to the nature of the 12thSeptember Constitution to a presidential system is the prevention of conflict between the inclusive presidency of our state tradition and a presidential system based on party identity.
• Although, as we observe in democratic presidential systems, the fact that the President is also the member of a political party is not of itself a problem, the exercise of the role of party leader by the same person gives rise to problems with respect to the functioning of the state as well as party institutionalization. The fact that the President, as a first-degree party in elections, has to get involved in intense and often harsh political polemics as a requirement of the electoral environment causes the Presidency to suffer a psychological rupture with at least half of society, whereas in our state tradition the President should be equidistant from all sections of society.
• In this framework, the party-affiliated presidency regarded as one of the essential elements of the new system should be re-evaluated independently from the person of the current President, and the predicaments caused by the concurrent operation of the presidential and party leader functions should be removed.
• Matters such as the redefinition of horizontal institutional communications and vertical hierarchical relationships in the state architecture, elucidation of the role of ministries that appear to be stuck between political/technocratic identities and functions, and determining the status of newly established policy boards in the state architecture, should be clarified. No state architecture that lacks a holistic, inclusive vision and an esthetic functioning mechanism can last.
• It is clear that due to its geography Turkey faces security tests that cannot be compared to those of any other country. The fact that our army, the most powerful resistance element in these tests, has regained its internal order after overcoming the most profound trauma any army could possibly face on 15thJuly 2016, is beyond appreciation. The most essential transformation now required in order to avoid our country and its people having to face further coup attempts is the democratization of military-political relations to ensure that civilian political will is the ultimate influence and determinant of all bureaucratic mechanisms. In terms of the security risks we face, the justified struggle that we began on 23rdJuly 2015 against the PKK, DAESH and DHKP-C, on 17th-25thDecember 2013 against conspiratorial actions, and on 15thJuly 2016 against FETO in the wake of the attempted coup d’état, must be relentlessly maintained.
• That said, during the course of this struggle, taking care over the sensitive calibration of the freedom-security balance is of great importance in terms of the adoption of the struggle being undertaken by the general public. Identifying the declaration of differing views with terrorism and equating political differences with treason serves only to damage our national unity as well as dealing a severe blow to democracy, political and economic life by perpetuating the perception of crisis.
• It is unacceptable that security concerns have evolved to such an extent that after the recent local elections the constitutional right of those who had been dismissed from public office under state of emergency conditions without any court decision having been issued are deprived of their constitutional right to vote and to stand for election. I do not even want to think about what misapplications of executive decisions could result from such arbitrariness in the long term. The Constitution is everyone’s fundamental text, it cannot be interpreted arbitrarily.
• The reestablishment of our proudly coveted self-confidence and, most importantly, our trust and confidence in one another, is conditional on the earliest possible expansion of the area of freedom. Journalists, academicians, opinion leaders, politicians or anyone who expresses their ideas should never have to face dismissal, stigma, social media lynching or abusive threats. The freedom to criticize and to express ones ideas must be protected to the end.
• The press, the fundamental element of free thinking and criticism known as the Fourth Estate in developed democracies, has become a propaganda tool under the direction of a single hand. Real freedom of the press is our democracy’s immune system. Destroying it and steering us to media monopolization by means of irregular and repressive methods only serves to narrow Turkey’s intellectual capacity.
• In this context, a new freedom-security balance should be established in which the areas of freedom are expanded without forfeiting what we have gained in security matters.
• The strength of civil society manifests itself not in high rise buildings but deep in our conscience. Participatory democracy flourishes in an environment in which civil society influences political institutions legitimately and transparently and supervises public administration. The efforts of secret structures such as FETO to place politics under its tutelage by taking over the power of the state through illegitimate means, and the instrumentalization of the state by taking civil society under its control, damages democracy. The annexation of civil society by the state and the use of various concerns to make it impossible for people to express their views is destroying the spirit and conscience of civil society.
• The main factor in politics regaining its prestige in the eyes of society in the past was our party’s emphasis on the fight against prohibitions, corruption and poverty. Today, it looks like it will be extremely hard for politics to regain its reputation and its capacity to breathe fresh trust and confidence into society without a frank review on the question of where we currently stand on the matter of these three objectives.
• The sine qua nonfor the effective governance of a state is that its politics and public administration are based on competence and merit. On the other hand, the spread of cronyism and nepotism in public administration constitutes both the leading cause, and the most striking indication, of all kinds of corruption as well as the arrogance and hubris of power. The proliferation of this corruption makes it impossible for rational control mechanisms to function. For the rational functioning of political institutions and the bureaucracy, close relatives should have no place in the subordinate-superior hierarchy in the state administration, there should be no focus on a person’s origins, region or hometown in personnel recruitment, and exceptional appointments should be clearly and transparently defined.
• Contrariwise, the reflection of family relationships that should remain in the private sphere in the public and official realm harms family life as well as leading to the emergence of relationships that go beyond the field of legal responsibility. When it comes to benefiting from the possibilities afforded by the state, family members of politicians and public officials should neither be granted any special privileges nor be subject to unwarranted criticism.
• The most effective solution to all these issues of political ethics is the predominance of the principle of transparency in every area of the life of society. As well as being a moral principle, transparency is also the most fundamental means of preventing any kind of tutelage initiative such as that attempted by FETO. The key factor in preventing all kinds of coup attempt, whatever their objective, is for transparency to predominate in every area of life, from civil society to state institutions, corporate structures to charitable organizations, and traditional local papers to social media.
• In the reverse case, cases that give the impression of corruption such as the completion of public tenders without society’s knowledge, the effective disablement of the law on tenders and procurement through the use of exceptions and loopholes in the law, and the granting of publically financed public opinion contracts continuously to the same companies needs to be confronted and dealt with as a matter of urgency.
• Laws on political ethics, transparency, political financing and unearned rental income that include fundamental principles such as the auditable use of public resources, a ban on the use of public resources for personal gain and fame, and the avoidance of any conflicts of interest between public officials’ private economic activities and their public duties, need to be enacted urgently. In this way, the rules of political ethics should be defined in such a way that they will not be left to personal interpretation or any individual’s personal understanding of ethics, and strengthened with robust practices and rules.
• One of the principal areas of achievement underlying public approval of the AK Party was its economic policy. When the AK Party came to power in 2002, successive economic crises had thrown the country into despair, per capita income had fallen back to the levels of a decade before, and Turkey’s room for maneuver was restricted in many fields, from foreign policy to security.
• At the root of the dazzling successes recorded in the economy was the restoring of a sense of trust. Today, unfortunately, we see that we are way beneath the level we had attained in the past in this area. The most striking example of this is the fact that in US dollar terms, per capita income in 2018 fell back below its 2007 level. Denying this reality while every section of society is personally experiencing an atmosphere of crisis in the economy serves no purpose other than to shake trust in the government. We cannot manage the economic crisis by denying its existence.
• A crisis of governance underlies the current economic crisis. Confidence and trust in the government is lost if the view spreads that decisions on economic policy are disconnected from reality, made in defiance of market practices and the laws of economics, and implemented arbitrarily and prejudicially. The economy cannot be brought back to its feet without reestablishing trust and confidence. And self-confidence in economic governance is required before confidence and trust can be restored to society. However, self-confidence must be justified by knowledge and experience; doing what is necessary is essential. Self-confidence that is not backed up by knowledge and experience and propped up by personal close relations only gives the impression of an exaggerated show that appears to lack seriousness.
• Trying to deal with the situation by addressing sections of society who are anyhow in difficulty in an accusatory and patronizing manner, attempting to create the necessary balances that need to be formed within the rules of the market by applying pressure in spite of the market, and scaring off the global investors from whom we need to benefit for Turkey’s development, are dead ends that need to be avoided at all costs. What our citizens expect from the state in running the economy is not belligerence and turmoil but the protection of their work and business, the food on their table and their wellbeing.
• The precondition for economic success is the provision of the rule of law in such a manner that puts it beyond dispute. A competitive economy and an entrepreneur-friendly investment environment can only be established when predictability is ensured, rules are applied equally to everyone, and property rights are guaranteed. In turn, this is only possible in a state of law in which the judiciary is impartial, independent, efficient, effective, and above all operates in accordance with universal law.
• Our party has had a free market economic philosophy ever since the day it was founded. A free market economy is a structure in which the state does not intervene directly and arbitrarily in the economy, and prices are determined by supply and demand. Recent decisions on the running of the economy are moving us away from free market principles. In a market economy the state only guides the economy by setting objective general rules and controlling compliance with these rules. Control and supervision must be independent, impartial and objective and never used as a means of pressure or threat. In this context, problems cannot be resolved through direct intervention in banks’ deposit and lending policies.
• Bearing in mind that the economy exists not in a vacuum but in an international environment, the urgent realization of the EU visa exemption, which reached its final stage in 2016, and revisions to the Customs Union, will add momentum to the economy.
• A key component in the AK Party’s economic success story was the process of institutionalization that it implemented in the economy. The recent preference for criteria other than qualifications and merit in appointments to state bodies and an arbitrariness that has made it impossible to preserve institutional memory and culture has seriously harmed this institutionalization.
• The public finances are entrusted to those who govern the state. I have observed with great sadness that recent practices have given the impression that public administrators are profligate and excessively ostentatious. The growth in non-interest public expenditure and the attempt to conceal the resulting budget deficit with one-off revenues also serves to undermine confidence. Transparency and accountability in public spending must be robustly implemented.
• Confidence in the data released in decisions related to the economy is an absolute must. Unfortunately, certain recent practices have shaken that confidence. Moreover, when confidence that the economic data completely, accurately and without exception reflects the actual situation is shaken, news and speculation about the resort to non-transparent “back door operation” methods in the market spreads. This leads to excessive fluctuations in exchange and interest rates and the sudden loss of our manufacturers’ hard-earned gains and the income that our workers have made through the sweat of their brow. There can be no greater capital in economic governance than integrity, no greater credit than reputation. The operation of economic governance must be restructured in line with this principle.
• The solution is to reduce inflation permanently, increase predictability and reduce risks in the economy, and develop an investment environment in which global capital will come safely to Turkey to invest while domestic capital in Turkey will not be forced to seek ways to exit. In such an environment interest rates will fall permanently and the Turkish Lira will gain in strength and standing.
• Finally, I would like to emphasize that what we now need to do in the face of the significant challenges of recent years is to liberate our minds, renew our psychologies, strengthen our social ties and take the necessary steps for our common future. I call on our party leaders and concerned bodies sensibly and level headedly to assess all these matters and our future vision, to prepare for the future with steadfastness and perseverance without causing our party’s loyal and self-sacrificing base to lose hope, and to stand shoulder to shoulder with our opinion leaders, intellectuals and citizens of every political persuasion in order to determine our common future based on our common conscience, common mind and common will. Today is the day to bring together the mind of the state, the dignity of the people, and the conscience of the nation.”

Ahmet Davutoğlu

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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.

13 May 2019

Source: www.transcend.org

By Federico Fuentes

In the midst of Venezuela’s prolonged economic crisis, in which state budgets and support for the governing socialists steadily contract, at least one municipal council is bucking the trend. The key, according to the local mayor, has been focusing on people’s power and self-management.

Paéz is a rural municipality located in Apure state, along the tense border with Colombia. Opposition-controlled Tachira state lies to its west.

Despite this conflictive surrounding, José María “Chema” Romero managed to increase the United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s (PSUV) vote in the 2017 mayoral elections by 70% from its 2013 result (when it lost to the right-wing opposition).

Moreover, in the first two months of this year, the municipal council has generated more revenue than its entire annual budget allocated by the national government.

How has this occurred?

Chema explained to Green Left Weekly in March that, as in most of the country, the PSUV in Paéz had lost support in successive elections since 2013.

“At the national level,” Chema explained, “the vote has been decreasing because of the economic blockade and because of the corruption that has encrusted itself in the state.”

The local situation was further complicated by the former government-aligned mayor — whose political loyalties had been heavily questioned by community activists during his controversial tenure — joining the opposition after being booted out of office in 2013.

Paéz has a strong level of community organisation. Some of Venezuela’s first communes, which unite communal councils encompassing between 20 and 400 families to discuss and resolve local issues, were formed there.

So too was the first communal city, bringing together neighbouring communes and envisaged as the next level in grassroots self-government.

The Bolivar and Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ), of which Chema is a member, also has a strong presence in the municipality. Tracing its origins back to a local campaign for peasant rights, the CRBZ today operates as a radical left tendency within the PSUV.

Due to his ties with the CRBZ and the local communes’ movement, regional party authorities twice blocked Chema from running as a PSUV candidate. But out of office and faced with a declining vote, the PSUV turned to him as its last option.

“It took us years to recuperate the mayor’s office,” Chema said. “But, by working together with popular power, with the communal movement, we were able to regain this municipality.”

Since winning in 2017, Chema has lost no time in turning the municipality’s situation around.

“As a municipal government, our focus is on four areas: production; people’s participation; transparency and efficiency, that is, the struggle against corruption; and people’s wellbeing.

“In the one year and two months that we have been in government, we have, among other things, recuperated damaged machinery and equipment that belonged to the municipality; we have improved access to health and water; and we have set up Juntas de Gobierno para el Buen Vivir(Government Boards for Living Well) in each of the municipality’s parishes [wards].

“This has been possible because of our vision of self-management, which rests on two pillars: people’s power and participation; and a self-reliance on the resources and potentialities that exist in our territory.

“Given the country is in a very delicate economic situation, we believe self-management is what is needed to resolve the problems.”

The boards, Chema explained, sit between the commune and the municipal council. They are made up of six appointed representatives from the main departments of the mayor’s office (finance, sports and culture, services, production, security and an overall coordinator) and spokespeople elected from the communes.

“Importantly, people’s power has a majority, as there is a maximum of six representatives of the constituted power, whereas each parish has 9, 11, or 17 communes, depending on the parish.

“On top of this, spokespeople are also elected to represent each sector of production in the municipality.

“The municipality has 13 productive sectors, and in each parish at least three, four, or five of these productive sectors are present, each with their own spokesperson.

“Finally, the local commander of the militia battalion is also on the board as a spokesperson for security and defence.

“What we have is constituent power working with the constituted power in an assembly to discuss and prioritise problems and projects.”

In terms of funding community projects in the middle of a crisis, Chema explained: “When there was abundance and oil was at more than $100 a barrel, the state provided everything; the national government could guarantee funds for all types of projects.

“That is not possible today with the economic blockade and decline in oil production.

“So now, if we need to deal with a problem, the municipality contributes 70% of the funds and the community contributes the other 30%”, through fundraising or individual contributions.”

In order to generate revenue, the municipality has sought to benefit from its increasingly prominent role as a gateway for people seeking to buy and sell products across the Venezuela-Colombia border. It applies a small tax on local hotels and transport companies profiting from the boom in the number of people passing through Paéz.

“On top of this, we have implemented a way in which people can contribute to the cost of basic services such as water and electricity that are currently provided essentially for free by the national government.

“The idea is to encourage people to contribute to compliment the budget.”

Though these taxes have been adopted in municipal law, they remain voluntary. The idea is to convince people, through assemblies and a communicational campaign, “that they need to pay something to be able to sustain the services.”

“The people have cooperated: the municipality has collected more money in the first two months of this year than our entire allocated budget for 2018.”

To avoid corruption, an electronic system has been established so that no one pays in cash and the council’s books are open for residents to see what money has come in and out. How funds are spent is decided by public debate in the communal councils, communes and boards.

“All of the resources are dedicated to tending to people’s needs, whether it is access to water, or improved roads; all of this money is reinvested in the municipality.”

Some of the projects the municipality has embarked on include sowing 550 hectares with rice (a feat it hopes to repeat this year) and fixing up the municipal hospital and several local health centres. It has also set up popular pharmacies, where the municipality sells medicine it buys in Colombia at much cheaper prices than private pharmacies.

The municipality now has its own food company, slaughterhouse and recycling plant.

“We know that the country is facing an economic crisis, so we are not sitting back, waiting for the central government to send us resources,” Chema said.

“We have sought out our own responses, using our resources, together with our people. And we have the results to show for it.”

13 May 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Justice for Assange

The Facts

There is widespread media misreporting about allegations made against Julian Assange in Sweden in 2010. Here are the facts:

First, Assange was always willing to answer any questions from the Swedish authorities and repeatedly offered to do so, over six years. The widespread media assertion that Assange “evaded” Swedish questioning is false. It was the Swedish prosecutor who for years refused to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy: they only did so, in November 2016, after the Swedish courts forced the prosecutor to travel to London. Sweden dropped the investigation six months later, in May 2017.

Second, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 to avoid onward extradition to the US – not to avoid extradition to Sweden or to refuse to face the Swedish allegations. Assange would have accepted extradition to Sweden had it provided an assurance against onward extradition to the US (as Amnesty International also urged at the time) – but both Sweden and the UK refused to provide an assurance that he would not be extradited to the US.

Third, Sweden wanted to drop its arrest warrant for Assange in 2013. It was the British government that insisted that the case against him continue. This is confirmed in emails released under a tribunal challenge following a Freedom of Information Act request. UK prosecutors admitted to deleting key emails and engaged in elaborate attempts to keep correspondence from the public record. Indeed, the lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service advised the Swedes in January 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff.

Fourth, despite widespread false reporting, Assange was never charged with anything related to the Swedish allegations. These only reached the level of a “preliminary investigation”. The Swedish prosecution questioned Assange on two separate occasions, in 2010 and 2016. He has consistentlyprofessed his innocence.

Fifth, almost entirely omitted from current media reporting is that the initial Swedish preliminary investigation in 2010 was dropped after the chief prosecutor of Stockholm concluded that “the evidence did not disclose any evidence of rape” and that “no crime at all” had been committed. Text messages between the two women, which were later revealed, do not complain of rape. Rather, they show that the women “did not want to put any charges on JA but that the police were keen on getting a grip on him” and that they “only wanted him to take a test”. One wrote that “it was the police who made up the charges” and told a friend that she felt that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.

Sixth, Assange left Sweden after the prosecutor told him that he was free to leave as he was not wanted for questioning. Assange had stayed in Sweden for five weeks. After he left, Interpol bizarrely issued a Red Notice for Assange, usually reserved for terrorists and dangerous criminals – raising concerns that this was not just about sexual accusations.

Seventh, Sweden’s investigation is now entirely closed. It was shelved for six years during the period 2010-2016 while the Swedish prosecutor refused to question Assange in London. Sweden’s Court of Appeal ruled that that the prosecutor had breached her duty because a preliminary investigation either has to be open and active leading to a charge, or closed—there is no intermediate phase. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also concluded that the prosecutor’s inaction had resulted in Sweden and the UK violating international obligations.

Eighth, there was no technical impediment for the prosecutor to proceed to charge Assange after he was questioned in the Ecuadorian embassy. In early 2017, Assange’s lawyers asked a Swedish court to force the prosecutor to either charge Assange or drop the arrest warrant. The prosecutor closed the investigation in May 2017 without attempting to charge him.

Since his arrest on 11 April 2019, there has been considerable political pressure on Sweden to reopen the investigation. Theoretically any closed investigation can be reopened until the statute of limitations expires—August 2020 in this case. Such calls serve to displace the critical issue of Assange’s impending US extradition over WikiLeaks publications (whether from UK or Sweden). They also obfuscate critical facts, such as the fact that the UK and Swedish authorities had actively prevented Assange from responding to the allegations, which is contrary to basic principles of due process.

It is critical to note that the re-opened Swedish allegations in September 2010 occurred after WikiLeaks published the Iraq “Collateral Murder” video in April 2010 and the Afghanistan war logs in July 2010. In fact, US grand jury proceedings already began against Assange in June 2010 and by July, the US was publicly describing WikiLeaks as a “very real and potential threat”. The Intercept’s Charles Glass has reported that “Sources in Swedish intelligence told me at the time that they believed the U.S. had encouraged Sweden to pursue the case.” Other reports from just days before the Swedish allegations were initiated show that the U.S. State Department was encouraging allied statesto initiate prosecutions against Assange. To ignore all this, as much media reporting does, is to ignore vital further context.

In December 2018, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, together with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, reiterated their finding from 2016 and urged Assange’s freedom to be restored. UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture are currently investigation Assange’s case.

13 May 2019

Source: Justice for Assange

The Venezuela Chapter of the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity urges you to subscribe to the following statement by sending your complete name, country, organization and occupation to the following email address: Redintelectualesvenezuela@gmail.com

We are appealing to you, people of all countries of the world, people concerned about freedom and social justice, who share with us the ideal that all human beings have the right to live and that we are all free and worthy of respect. We call on you knowing that you may feel that international institutions and the corporate press have told you the truth about the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and that they performed abiding by ideals of the U.N. Charter and Agreements to respect Human Rights.

We appeal to you because we know they have lied to you and they have not given you the opportunity to know what Venezuela actually is, what is going on there, its human accomplishment and why the image of our country has been grossly distorted.

They have not told you the truth in order to provoke the current situation, that worsens every day, they have taken coercive measures that are carried out by banks, big industries and financial and media corporations, as well as other actions undertaken directly by governments. In particular the Trump administration in the United States has chartered a course to sanction and isolate Venezuela until the function of governing is just not feasible. In the face of this situation, current events in Venezuela have been described as crimes against humanity by some experts, such as Alfred de Zayas. He has warned that as the scenarios unfold the general public is not receiving the real information about what is really going on in Venezuela.

We are coming to you, whom we feel are brothers and sisters of the people, with a view to tell you the truth and ask you to condemn, by way of what links humans as a single family, the events being carried out against Venezuela and to join us in our demand for justice on behalf of the honorable and free people here in resistance.

Venezuela is a country inhabited by 32 million people, placed over territories extraordinarily rich in oil, gas, gold and, fresh water. We are the nation where the process of South America’s independence began. We have undertaken an intense revolutionary process that since its beginnings has faced the hostility of each subsequent administration in Washington that has tried hard to over throw it. Venezuela has however proven its resilience by having a people’s, socialist and anti-imperialist government through more than 20 elections, during and after two coup attempts.

Venezuela was declared by the Obama administration as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, an action condemned by over 10 million people who signed petitions against it. Venezuela has been financially persecuted because of this, which has resulted in the loss of more money than what is needed to grant free education for 26 years, at all levels and in optimal conditions. Our country is being persecuted internationally, in violation of principles consecrated by the Law of Geneva and the Law of the Hague, founding principles of international organizations, to such an extent that the country’s savings in gold were confiscated by the London Bank while the United States granted the administration of its assets to people who have not been appointed by legitimate authorities.

Furthermore, Venezuela is now a place where the concept of democracy is at stake, not just for the country but for the concept itself since it is being established that a person who has not run for the office of president in any election has declared himself the Interim President because of his total backing by Washington.

But above all, Venezuela is made up of 32 million people, a population that is being threatened day by day, through press releases and digital communication, by the United States spokespeople who say they will spare no effort to bend Caracas’ will, to maximize the pain on all Venezuelans, to achieve an America free of Bolivarianism, and where they say they will use all available force and technology, as if it was a foreign policy based on science fiction.

Before being sanctioned Venezuela had reached the region’s highest literacy rate, highest university enrolment rate, our best sports development; we had reached our lowest level of inequality and the highest level of human development ever; and we had opened up ourselves to give oil and opportunities to people in the poorest villages in the region, such as in Central America and the Caribbean.

But this has not been told; instead according to the international press, there is an alleged humanitarian crisis in effect in Venezuela since 2016, a groundless argument because the country has not reached levels of hunger and misery to justify the crisis. They have omitted that there is a daily battle in this country to prevent hunger while unilateral coercive measures are imposed against all efforts, aggression and terrorist acts are committed, such as the partial destruction of Venezuela’s power grid. The international media corporations omit that everyday women and men are sowing and distributing food stuff home by home, together with the National Government, and using their inventiveness to keep public services working.

Venezuela is also made up of mothers of young people who were burnt alive in 2017 because they looked like Chavistas, deaths that are not reported abroad because the responsibility for these horrendous crimes was committed by sectors opposed to the Government.

People like these mothers compel us to communicate to you that there are people in Venezuela insisting for the recognition that they have rights, for their rights not to be nullified through financial suffocation, and for justice to be brought in cases that should be known by the entire world.

This is why we are requesting your support to convene and act before the Russell Tribunal or other agencies which allow a space that could hear the voices of the Venezuelan people, to put on record the ongoing suffering in our country due to actions banned by International Public Law and which runs contrary to the idea that people can define their own system of government and their decisions should be respected by all other nations.

We call on you because we don’t want the world to forget the anguish we are living everyday with the threat of a military invasion always hovering nearby, for the increase in deaths and diseases that might be prevented if the country would be able to use its own resources and be part of the normal integration of international markets, understanding that the only way the world can improve is if people, despite being oppressed, refuse to be oppressed and act despite the permanent lies in large media corporations.

Venezuela Chapter of the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity

4 May 2019

Source: Network in Defense of Humanity – US

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Recent reports suggest that Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, together with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are “doing everything possible to instigate a war with Iran”. Will they succeed?

Bolton-Pompeo are involved in deliberate acts of provocation. The Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group is currently en route to the Persian Gulf “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime…”

This is not the first time that threats of this nature have been formulated. War on Iran has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for the past 16 years. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. military sources intimated at the time that an aerial attack on Iran could involve a large scale deployment comparable to the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003.

Without dispelling the dangers of the reckless Bolton-Pompeo initiative, a large scale US-NATO-Israel military operation directed against Iran from a strategic and geopolitical standpoint at this juncture is unlikely.

Why?

A shift in military alliances between “Great Powers” is unfolding, which is exceedingly more complex than that pertaining to World War I. (i.e the confrontation between “The Triple Entente” and “the Triple Alliance”).

Today, the structure of military alliances is in jeopardy much to the detriment of Washington.

You cannot successfully wage war on Iran when Turkey, your ally and NATO heavy weight is “sleeping with the enemy”.

While Turkey is officially a member of NATO as well as a firm ally of the US, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been developing “friendly relations” with two of America’s arch-enemies, namely Iran and Russia.

Needless to say NATO is in crisis. Moreover, US and Turkey supported proxy forces are fighting one another in Northern Syria.

There is also a Turkey-Israel military-intelligence alliance which dates back to the Security and Secrecy Agreement (SSA) signed with the government Tansu Çiller in 1993-94. This alliance which had been designed by the Clinton administration is no longer functional.

The strategic bilateral US-Israel relationship as well as the US-Turkey alliance coupled with the Israel-Turkey military and intelligence cooperation agreement as well as the Israel-NATO agreement (2003), were the foundations of the US-Israel-Turkey “Triple alliance” or what the Brookings Institute called the US-Turkey- Israel Triangle.

This US sponsored triangular structure of alliances is dead and defunct, much to the detriment of Washington’s interests in the Middle East.

What is now unfolding is a new Triple Entente between Turkey, Iran and Russia

The Netanyahu-Putin “Love Relationship”

But there is another element which is absolutely crucial: Israel is also sleeping with the enemy. Netanyahu and Putin have developed over the years an informal and friendly relationship. They consult one another frequently on key political and strategic issues.

While the Netanyahu-Putin relationship is not a formal alliance, it nonetheless serves the interests of both Russia and Israel. “Putin has a friend in Bibi Netanyahu, and maybe even a soulmate”. According to Reuters, “Vladimir Putin is the closest thing to a friend Israel has ever had in Moscow”.

Turkey, NATO Exit

Contemporary developments point to a historical shift in the structure of military alliances which is contributing to weakening US hegemony in the Middle East as well as creating an unspoken crisis within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Waging US-NATO-Israel war on Iran with or without Turkey?

Turkey is NATO’s heavy weight, it is the only NATO member state which is (largely) situated in the Middle East bordering onto Iran.

In early April, Secretary State Mike Pompeo met up with his counterpart Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara. The Pompeo-Cavusoglu confrontation made the headlines, In turn, Vice President Pence openly threatened the Turkish government:

Vice President Mike Pence warned Turkey against going ahead with the purchase of the Russian-made [S-400] missile system, hours after the Turkish foreign minister said the acquisition was “a done deal” … Pence said the weapons purchase could “threaten the very cohesion of this alliance… We’ve also made it clear that we’ll not stand idly by while NATO allies purchase weapons from our adversaries,“ Pence said. (CNN, April 3, 2019)

Mike Pence is right: The cohesion of NATO is at stake. And Turkey cannot be trusted as an ally of the US.

Turkey’s NATO-Exit? It is almost a done deal.

And if Turkey exits NATO, other countries might follow suit.

In the course of the month of April (following Pompeo’s diplomatic blunder in Ankara) Turkey and Iran have strengthened their bilateral relations.

Pompeo’s counterpart Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has retorted: “We do not accept unilateral sanctions and impositions on how we build our relationship with our neighbors.” (quoted in Al Monitor, April 29, 2019)

US, NATO, Israel Military logistics are integrated, and Turkey is still (officially) part of NATO.

The evolving structure of military alliances (and cross-cutting coalitions) including the crisis within NATO does not favour the launching of a large scale military operation against Iran. One assumes that Bolton-Pompeo are fully aware of this issue. Or are they?

Turkey is a NATO Member State which is sleeping with enemy. Given It’s relationship with Russia and Iran, from a logistical point of view the practice of coordinated US-NATO military planning is in jeopardy.

This does not exclude the conduct of other forms of warfare including economic sanctions, sabotage, Bolton-style spontaneous acts of provocation, covert support of terrorist organizations, etc.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, May 09, 2019

Source: www.globalresearch.ca

By Countercurrents Team

U.S.-China trade was is now a major world issue. The United States is taking measures against China while China vows to take counter-measures.

Media reports from Washington DC and Beijing said:

China plans to take “necessary countermeasures” in response to the US’ decision to increase tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion in Chinese goods, a decision China’s Commerce Ministry said it “deeply regrets.”

The ministry did not elaborate on what those countermeasures might be, but added in a statement that it hoped the US could come to a mutually satisfactory agreement with China through “cooperation and consultation”.

China’s statement was made as the increase in tariffs took effect at the turn of midnight on Friday Eastern time, between two days of desperate talks aimed at rescuing a trade deal that has been in the making for months now.

US President Donald Trump announced the hike on Sunday, accusing China of backtracking on commitments it had made while fleshing out the deal – what he later called “they broke the deal.”

Chinese officials rushed to the US to continue the negotiations, a move they said proved that they were “serious” about reaching an agreement. None has been forthcoming so far, with the talks in Washington moving into the second day without visible progress.

The tariffs impact a wide range of imported consumer products including electronics, luggage, furniture, construction materials, seafood, and lighting. They do not affect products currently in transit, meaning the two countries have a small window of opportunity to reach an agreement while the next shipment of goods from China is en route.

A Chinese delegation is currently in Washington for the 11th round of China-U.S. high-level economic and trade consultations.

With this round of talks still ongoing, China hopes that the U.S. can meet China halfway, and that the two sides will make joint efforts to resolve existing problems through cooperation and consultation, the delegation said.

China better prepared than U.S. to withstand trade war

Chinese state media Thursday published and aired reports quoting U.S.-based organizations and individuals critical of Trump’s decision to raise tariffs, but played down the impact higher U.S. tariffs would have on the Chinese economy.

“China is well-prepared for an escalation in trade tensions. A variety of plans are in place, such as countermeasures for any tariff rise, and favorable policies to minimize losses for Chinese enterprises,” the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily, said in an editorial.

It said: “Mentally and materially, China is much better prepared than its U.S. counterpart.”

This came in response to U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting Sunday that he will hike U.S. tariffs by 25 percent on US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods by Friday and target hundreds of billions more soon, prior to this week’s negotiations between the two countries.

According to a Reuters report, Trump’s team was upset that Beijing deleted commitments Chinese negotiators had made to change domestic laws in every one of the seven chapters of the nearly 150-page draft text of the agreement. The sources said the changes were not shown to the U.S. side until Friday night, via a diplomatic cable.

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng responded by saying that “China’s attitude has been consistent and China will not succumb to any pressure. China has made preparations to respond to all kinds of possible outcomes.” He did not elaborate.

Neither side has raised tariffs since both leaders met in Argentina in November 2018 and agreed to a truce while their teams negotiated an end to the trade war. Tariffs on Chinese goods are paid to the U.S. by the companies importing the goods; most of those companies are U.S.-based

Back in February 2019, the U.S. president decided to delay the increment from 10 to 25 percent trade tariffs on imported Chinese goods, as negotiations and talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping were underway. Yet with the latest statement, the Chinese delegation could decide not to convene because of what is likely to be seen as an escalation by Trump.

US announces 25% tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese imports

Earlier reports said:

US Customs and Border Protection announced Thursday a 25% hike on tariffs on 5,700 categories of Chinese imports, amounting to $200 billion that would take effect the following day – just as stock markets in the US closed.

A guidance notice on CBP’s website said the import categories were previously subjected to a 10% tariff.

Trump said on Thursday that the move was intended to apply pressure to Beijing, which requested substantial edits to a trade deal being negotiated between the two countries. If successful, the deal is anticipated to bring the lifting of tariffs on each others’ imported goods, as well as enhanced intellectual property protections for Chinese companies and expanded markets in China for US goods.

“We were getting very close to a deal then they started to renegotiate the deal. We can’t have that,” Trump said Thursday. “I think it will be a very strong day, frankly, but we’ll see. We’ll see. It was their idea to come back.”

Trump said he was more than happy to keep tariffs on Chinese goods if a deal could not be reached.

“They’ll see what they can do, but our alternative is, is an excellent one,” Trump said, referring to the tariff threat.

10 May 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Peter Koenig

After the new coup attempt – or propaganda coup – Venezuela lives in a state of foreign imposed insecurity. The failed coup was executed on 30 April by Juan Guaidó, the self-proclaimed and Washington-trained and endorsed “interim President”, and the opposition leader, Leopoldo López, who was hurriedly freed from house arrest by Guaidó with a couple of dozens of armed-to-the-teeth defecting military, who apparently didn’t quite know what they were up to. Because, when all was over after a few hours, most of them asked to be re-integrated into their military units – and, as far as I know, they were readmitted.

These are Washington’s puppets and “coup-makers”. When one sees that the so-called coup was defeated in a mere few hours, without any Venezuelan military interference, one wonders whether this was really planned as a coup, or merely as a “public relations” coup, for the media to ‘recharge’ their narrative of Maduro dictatorship, of a suffering people, of famine, of lack of medication and medical supply – all due to the Maduro government’s mismanagement of Venezuela’s natural riches, the lie-slander we have been used to for the last several years.

For sure, the Venezuelan people are suffering. According to a CEPR report (https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/1/economist_jeffrey_sachs_us_sanctions_have) sanctions have killed some 40,000 Venezuelans. And this, not because of President Maduro’s squandering of Venezuelan resources, but because of a brutal, merciless outside interference, principally from the United States and to a lesser degree from Washington’s European vassals. If you listen to the ceaseless drumbeat for war against Venezuela and her democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro, by Pompeo, Bolton, Pence and Trump – you can only wonder and shake your head – what pathological and schizophrenic world we are living in? – And – are we all sick to the bone, that we tolerate it, that nobody of and in power – other than Russia and China – say ‘Halt’ to this deadly fiasco?

This article by Eric Zuesse, including leaked documents from Pentagon’s southern command, SOUTHCOM, will give the non-believers plenty of reasons to change their minds: (https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-government-plan-dated-23-february-2018-coup-venezuela/5676380)

Western humanity has reached an abject state of mental disease. We allow the slaughter of tens of millions of people by the United States and its NATO allies, in US-provoked wars and conflicts around the world, indiscriminate killing for resources and monetary dominion. But we follow the same killer nation in accusing a quiet, peace-loving, fully democratic country, like Venezuela, to be utterly trampled on and punished with the most horrific monetary and economic sanctions – all illegal, by any standards of law – and our western “leaders” know it all.

These western heads of state and their chosen minions do not have the guts or political courage to say ‘STOP’. — They could, if they had any conscience left. These so-called leaders (sic) of vassal states, they have it all in their sovereign power – they could together decide that enough is enough, separate themselves from the Washington horrors and form a real European Union, a union to say no to the tyrant, a union that is capable of calling its own sovereign shots – decide its own destiny, a destiny of alliance with peaceful countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China, Iran and more – basically all those that have decided not to bend to the dictate of Washington.

Why don’t they? Have they been bought, or received death threats if they dare to deviate? – All is possible – even likely, because it is unfathomable that the leaders, the political heads of all those 28 EU countries are hell-bent to believe the lies being propagated day-in and day-out, drip-by-miserable drip. It is not possible.

Back to Venezuela.

The western public at large must never be too long without devastating smear-news about a regime the empire wants to “change”. It is clear that the nefarious pair in Venezuela, Guaidó-López, followed strict Washington instructions. Guaidó would never dare doing anything without prior approval and directives from his masters in Washington.

Despite threats after pompous threats and false accusations and failed coup attempts, President Maduro holds on to a solid backing of six million voters who supported him, more than two thirds of those who went to the ballots, on 20 May 2018. He also has the solid support of the military, who have a revolutionary integrity and conscience unknown to the west. And not least, he has the support of Venezuela’s solid allies, Russia and China.

Nevertheless, the United States will not let go. Why do they risk everything – even a devastating war?

Well, there are several reasons. First you may think, “It’s the Oil, stupid!” – And second, the turbo-capitalist, neoliberal turning-to-neofascist US will not tolerate a socialist state in what they still consider their ‘backyard’. – Well, all of this is true. Venezuela has indeed the world’s largest hydrocarbon reserves – and it is conveniently close to The US’s Texas refineries.

However, the key reason for Washington forcing ‘regime change’ is that Venezuela has stopped selling her hydrocarbon in US dollars, and, may therefore become a risk for the US-dollar hegemony around the globe. That is a punishable violation for the empire. At least two heads of state were assassinated because they dared abandoning the unwritten and unlawful, but nevertheless US-imposed rule to sell their oil and gas in US-dollars, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi. Both had started trading their oil in other than US-dollar currencies – and were strong advocates for others to do likewise.

Some three years ago, Venezuela started selling her oil and gas in other currencies than the US-dollar, a cardinal sin.

Global dollar hegemony, meaning the full control of economies throughout the globe – a control that is rapidly fading – can only be maintained by a world flooded by dollars and with a monetary system that is entirely controlled by the FED and its associated American banks, by an international transfer system, SWIFT, that channels every dollar to be moved between countries, whether it is the US or any other country – through a US bank, in either New York or London. That still being the case, the US dollar remains the key reserve currency in the world, though rapidly fading. And second, through the obligatory trading of a commodities – like hydrocarbon energy – ONLY in US-dollars. The latter also allows the empire to print as many dollars as it needs to keep the world economy under control – and punish those that do not want to bend to Washington’s rule, with sanctions and confiscation of assets abroad, because — all transactions are controlled by the US banking system.

First, the dollar as a reserve currency, is fading rapidly, as ever fewer countries entrust their reserves to a largely recognized ‘fake’, fiat and debt-based currency, the US-dollar. They convert their dollar reserve holdings gradually into other assets, i.e. gold, or the Chinese Yuan which has become high in demand over the last few years. Logically, because China is already known as the undisputable strongest economy in the world, hence, the Chinese currency has a special reserve standing. However, the mainstream media do not report on this.

Second, with a growing number of countries that do no longer respect the Washington imposed US-dollar rule for hydrocarbon trading – the demand for dollars decreases rapidly – a direct confrontation to the United States’ dollar hegemony over the world. Russia and China have years ago stopped trading in US dollars, not only hydrocarbons, but everything. India and Iran have started doing the same. Other countries will follow – and Venezuela, one of the vanguards with the world’s largest oil reserves – should, therefore, not be allowed to become a model for other nations. The Trump Administration and its Wall Street masters will do what it takes to stop Venezuela from abandoning the dollar.

Hence, regime change and taking over the vast oil assets is of the order – with war, if necessary – “all options are on the table” – all under the blatantly fakest pretexts of “humanitarian intervention” and bringing back democracy – when the world knows that anywhere the US intervenes, democracy is abolished. In fact, what the US has managed – and wantonly so – is kill any democracy that ever existed.

Under these circumstances, Venezuela’s transgression in shedding the dollar for oil trading – and for trading in general – amounts to a serious threat to the dollar hegemony and must be suffocated. That’s what these coup attempts are all about. If they succeed, the dollar-currency collapse could be postponed for a bit, and taking possession of the oil reserves would be the icing on the cake.

What’s left after the dollar dominance over the world is gone, once the key tool, economic sanctions, for manipulating nations into doing the bidding of the emperor is no longer effective? – A broken US economy, one that already today depends heavily on the war and weapons industry – in fact, for over 50% of US GDP, when all associated manufacturing and services are counted. What’s left is the overwhelming firepower of that belligerent warmongering and war-dependent nation, with which the US and NATO could pull the rest of the world into oblivion.

That’s what’s at stake with any nation that wants to kick the petro-dollar. Also, Iran, of course. But both Iran and Venezuela have strong protection from Russia and China – two countries that freed themselves from the fangs of the dollar system years ago. And they are offering a bright future with viable Eastern monetary alternatives, mostly based on the Chinese Yuan and other currencies linked to SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) members.
Venezuela – Venceremos!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst.

9 May 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nile Bowie

One year ago today (May 9), Malaysians from all walks of life went to the ballot box seeking change. Victory for Pakatan Harapan, a reform-oriented multi-party alliance led by 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, stunned observers and brought six-decades of rule by the once-formidable Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition to a jubilant end.

At a time when many lamented democratic backsliding in the region and beyond, the unlikely election of a pluralistic ruling coalition bent on broad political reform imbued Malaysia with a newfound significance. Economic headwinds and widening sociopolitical polarization, however, have since complicated matters for the upstart leadership.

Though some argue campaign vows have been realized, perceptions of the government’s performance after a year in power are decidedly mixed. According to research by the Merdeka Center, an independent polling agency, recent approval ratings for both the ruling coalition and the prime minister have suffered a significant slide.

Mahathir, an iconic political personality who previously served as premier for over two decades before his re-election, polled at 83% shortly after taking office last May. His popularity, according to a survey published last month, has almost halved to just 46%. Harapan’s rating fared similarly with approval falling from 79% last May to 39% in March of this year.

Concerns over corruption, rising living costs and the preservation of Malay rights were among the top three concerns of survey respondents, anxieties that a resurgent right-wing opposition deftly leveraged as it clinched three back-to-back by-election victories since the beginning of the year.

Despite its falling popularity, a separate survey by polling firm Kajidata Research found that a 40% majority of Malaysian voters still preferred Harapan in comparison to other parties, though support for the government was lower among rural and low-income communities that are an essential vote bank for the coalition as it seeks to turn the tide and win support for its policies.

Rooting out entrenched corruption has been Harapan’s key deliverable, with scandal-ridden former prime minister Najib Razak first in the firing line. One of several graft trials that have Malaysians on tenterhooks, the ex-premier faces dozens of charges in connection with billions of dollars allegedly pilfered from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund.

Najib’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, and former deputy, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, among others, are also ensnared in the prosecutors’ dragnet over alleged graft. While efforts to get to the bottom of corruption remain popular with voters, some are uneasy over Harapan’s tendency to blame the former regime when questioned over the slow pace of change.

After taking power, Harapan said public debt levels exceeded 1 trillion ringgit (US$240.3 billion), a substantially higher figure than the Najib administration claimed. While the government has attempted an economic course correction, recent data points to declining investor confidence and bearish market sentiment.

To curb spending and curtail future debt, the Malaysian government chose to cancel or renegotiate several multibillion-dollar mega-projects inked by the previous government, including those backed by China and neighboring Singapore, moves that have generally been politically popular at home despite triggering initial market jitters.

Last month, Malaysia announced that it would move ahead with a multibillion-dollar Beijing-backed rail link on more equitable terms after reaching a deal with the project’s Chinese state-owned contractor to cut construction costs nearly one-third, an outcome that analysts and observers generally saw as a much-needed victory for Harapan.

Many in the region and beyond watched as Mahathir, the world’s oldest serving leader, went about recalibrating ties with China after calling out his predecessor’s unscrupulous borrowing and stance toward the Asian superpower, with some seeing his strategy and tactics as an example of how best to negotiate with Beijing.

On the domestic front, however, the government appears to be perpetually fighting fires while failing to speak with a single voice on issues dividing the electorate on racial and religious grounds. Perceptions that Harapan is not sufficiently committed to safeguarding the interests and privileges of the Malay Muslim majority are a key stumbling block.

Since being toppled last year, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the lynchpin party of the former ruling BN coalition, has sought to dispel impressions of it being a mainstay for corrupt elites and blood-blue patricians, fashioning itself instead as a disruptive populist vehicle championing the preservation of Islam and Malay rights.

It has formalized a loose alliance with Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), a hardline Islamist party that seeks to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state with greater criminal powers for sharia courts, in hopes of nurturing a Malay Muslim wave capable of toppling Harapan, which they allege is beholden to a plot by ethnic Chinese politicians to deny Malays political power.

“The defeat of BN, with UMNO at its helm, was an epoch-making event. UMNO was an institution that was so deeply and historically intertwined with what was seen as the Malay position that its defeat came as a huge, monumental shock to a lot of people,” Chandra Muzaffar, a Malaysian political scientist and public intellectual, told Asia Times.

“I don’t think the UMNO leadership, and a very big segment of the Malay society, could accept it psychologically and so there’s been a lot of exaggeration about how Malay interests are threatened as a way of restoring their own position,” he said, noting that Harapan’s inability to counter opposition rhetoric has compounded its problems.

When Harapan pledged to ratify a United Nations statue against racial discrimination, known as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), tens of thousands took to the streets to oppose the move, fearing it covertly sought to unwind long-standing affirmative action policies and special privileges accorded to Malays.

According to Article 153 of the country’s constitution, ethnic Malays are granted special status as “sons of the soil”, or bumiputera. The New Economic Policy (NEP), race-based measures granting Malays preference over affordable housing, university scholarships and government contracts, entered force following deadly Chinese-Malay race riots in 1969.

The memory of May 13 – the date when sectarian violence that claimed hundreds of lives unfolded 50 years ago – still looms large in the national consciousness as ethno-nationalist activism pushed by the right-wing opposition widens polarization across political and racial lines and keeps race relations in the multi-ethnic nation on edge.

“A lot of lies were churned out” that the anti-discrimination convention Harapan pledged to ratify would have been to the detriment of ethnic Malays, said Muzaffar. “The reaction [from Malays] was very strong but Mahathir, being the seasoned politician that he is, read the signs very quickly and decided not to go ahead.”

Harapan similarly reneged on plans to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after critics alleged a government plot to undermine the country’s powerful constitutional monarchs, opening a fresh clash with Johor’s influential ruler, Sultan Ibrahim Ismail, and his acerbic-tongued crown prince.

“The government withdrew from the Rome Statute because it was easy to whip up sentiments along these lines, especially as one or two members of the royalty itself helped to manipulate these issues because they’re against the Harapan government and against Mahathir in particular,” Muzaffar told Asia Times.

Dennis Ignatius, a former ambassador and veteran Malaysian diplomat, believes Harapan’s leaders must first be “convinced of what they want to accomplish and then be prepared to fight tooth and nail to defend their policies. Crumbling in the face of opposition as they did on ICERD, the Rome statute sends the wrong signal and demoralizes their base,” he said.

Ignatius said that Harapan lacked “a clear vision and purpose of where they want to take the country. They need “a common plan of action on issues like national unity, education reform, the NEP and economic uplift. These are the critical issues that will define our nation going forward. I don’t see such a vision as yet.”

The veteran diplomat did, however, note that the government had made progress in some areas: “The fight against corruption, appointments that have increased the integrity of the judiciary, an election commission that we can finally have confidence in, are all very significant. They have also opened up the public space for discussion and dissent.”

“The most positive aspect of this multi-party coalition,” said Muzaffar, “is that they’ve stood together. If you look at the background of the parties involved and the constituencies that were important to each of them, the fact that they’ve remained together is an achievement, especially for Mahathir, who is the glue that holds the coalition together.”

Mahathir’s bumiputera-centric Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), the ethnic Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP), the left-of-center multiracial Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), progressive Islamist outfit Amanah, and Warisan, a Sabah-based political party, are among Harapan’s diverse component parties.

Given that many see the nonagenarian premier as integral to the coalition’s political cohesion, certain anxieties persist about what could happen after Mahathir steps aside. Veteran politician and reformasi icon Anwar Ibrahim, 71, is slated to take over as prime minister when Mahathir retires, though a date for that transition has not been set.

Putting a time limit on Mahathir’s rule would make him a “lame-duck leader” Anwar has claimed as he bides his time as a parliamentary backbencher. Though relations between the two men – who have been both political allies and bitter rivals at different intervals of Malaysia’s recent history – appear cordial, factional politicking continues to play out behind the scenes.

“Both Mahathir and Anwar should pay serious attention to the succession issue,” said Muzaffar, who was once the deputy president of the Anwar-led PKR, now the ruling coalition’s largest party. “While they make statements that are politically correct, if you look at their followers and manipulations that are taking place, it’s not healthy.

“One has to put a stop to it. The best way of doing that is for Anwar to join the cabinet and to become the deputy prime minister, the position which his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, holds at the moment, making clear what the line of succession is so there won’t be any sort of internal maneuvering or attempts by one side to undermine the other,” he said.

“There is widespread support for Mahathir to stay for as long as possible but the longer he stays the harder it will be for Anwar to unite the coalition under his leadership and successfully stave off the challenge from a resurgent UMNO,” said Ignatius. “Many also have doubts about whether Anwar is the right person to lead Harapan to victory at the polls.”

“It is not cast in stone or a foregone conclusion that Anwar will lead the country,” believes Mustafa Izzuddin, a political analyst at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Institute of South Asian Studies, who noted that PKR has “been careful not to rock the political boat” and has moved “in concert with Mahathir’s Bersatu on domestic exigencies and initiatives.”

Harapan, said the academic, “has gone into auto-pilot mode [and is] simply enacting incremental domestic reforms because the priority for the government is to win the next general election by preserving, if not increasing, the support of the Malays in the light of some semblance of solidarity between UMNO and PAS.”

“Racialized politics coupled with religious fervor within the larger context of Malay nationalism will remain the prevailing orthodoxy under Harapan, although perhaps not as intense or excessive under the previous BN regime,” Mustafa said, an appraisal that would not sit well with many who cast their ballots for change on May 9 last year.

Nile Bowie is a writer and journalist with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia.

9 May 2019

Source: www.asiatimes.com