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By Robert J. Burrowes

It is easy to identify the ongoing and endless violence being inflicted on life on Earth. This ranges from the vast multiplicity of assaults inflicted on our children and the biosphere to the endless wars and other military violence as well as the grotesque exploitation of many peoples living in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. But for a (very incomplete) list of 40 points see ‘Reflections on 2018, Forecasting 2019’.

However, despite the obvious fact that it is human beings who are inflicting all of this violence, it is virtually impossible to get people to pay attention to this simple and incontrovertible fact and to ask why, precisely, are human beings behaving in such violent and destructive ways? And can we effectively address this cause?

Of course, one part of this problem is the existence of many competing ideas about what causes violence. For example, some ideologies attribute the cause to a particular structural manifestation of violence, such as patriarchy (which generates a gendered system of violence and exploitation) or capitalism (which generates a class system of violence and exploitation). However, none of these ideologies explains why humans participate in structures of violence and exploitation in the first place. Surely a person who was not violent and exploitative to begin with would reject such violent and exploitative structures out of hand and work to create nonviolent and egalitarian structures instead.

But most people really just accept the elite-promulgated delusion that humans are innately dysfunctional and violent and this must be contained and controlled by socialization processes, laws, legal systems, police forces and prisons or, in the international arena, by such measures as economic sanctions and military violence. It is a rare individual who perceives the blatant dysfunctionality and violence of socialization, laws, legal systems, police forces, prisons, economic sanctions and military violence, and how these institutions and their violence serve elite interests.

Hence, humans are trapped in a cycle of attempting to address the vast range of manifestations of violent human behaviour – the wars, the climate catastrophe, destruction of the environment, the economic exploitation of vast sectors of the human population (women, indigenous peoples, working peoples…), the military dictatorships and occupations – without knowing what, fundamentally, causes dysfunctional and violent human behaviours and draws many people to participate in (and benefit from) violence in whatever form it takes.

Well I, for one, find it boring to see the same manifestations of violence repeated endlessly because we do not understand or address the fundamental cause (and so even well-meaning efforts to address it in a variety of contexts are doomed to fail). How about you?

Moreover, I find it boring to listen to (or read about) people endlessly deluding themselves about the violence; that is, deluding themselves that it isn’t happening, ‘it was always like that’, ‘it isn’t as bad as it seems’, ‘nothing can be done’, ‘there is another explanation’, that I am ‘doing enough already’, and so on.

To illustrate the above let me write some more frequent examples of people deluding themselves about the cause. You may have heard delusions like these expressed yourself; you may know some of the many others.

1. ‘The child deserved the punishment.’

2. ‘She asked for it.’

3. Violence is innate: it is ‘in our nature’.

4. ‘War is inevitable.’

5. The people in Africa/Asia/Central/South America ‘have always been poor’.

6. ‘The weather hasn’t changed; it was like that when I was a child.’

7. ‘We can’t control Mother Nature.’

8. ‘Nature is abundant.’

Of course, the most common delusional state is the one in which most people are trapped: they are just not paying significant attention to critical issues and have no knowledge (and informed opinion) about them but allow themselves to be distracted from reality by the various elite channels used for doing so, such as the corporate media.

So why do most people delude themselves rather than carefully observe reality, seek out and analyze the evidence in relation to it, and then behave appropriately and powerfully in response?

Because they are (unconsciously) terrified.

‘Is that all?’ you might say. ‘Surely the explanation for dysfunctional (and violent) human behaviour is more complex than that! Besides, when people I observe doing the sorts of dysfunctional and violent behaviours you mention above, they don’t look frightened, let alone terrified.’

So let me explain why the explanation above – that most human beings live in delusion, behave dysfunctionally and violently, fail to observe and analyze reality and then behave powerfully in response to it, because they are terrified – is the complete explanation and why people who are utterly terrified don’t ‘look frightened’.

At the moment of birth, the human individual has a genetically-embedded potential to seek out and powerfully pursue their own unique destiny by progressively developing a complex set of capacities to observe and listen, to think and feel, to analyze and evaluate, to plan and strategize, and to behave with awareness and power in response to their own astute insight into reality and the guidance provided by their conscience.

However, rather than nurture this potential so that the child grows up deeply in touch with their conscience, sensing capacities, thoughts, feelings and other faculties necessary to seek out and powerfully travel their own unique path, the significant adults in the child’s life immediately start to ‘socialize’ (that is, terrorize) the child into conforming with culturally and socially-acceptable norms of thought and behaviour on the basis that one human is more-or-less identical with another (give or take some minor variations among races, languages….).

The idea that each human mind might be unique in the way that each body is unique (while conforming to a general pattern in relation to shape, height and other physical characteristics) never even occurs to anyone. The idea that their child could have the potential to be as creative, powerful and unique as Leonardo Da Vinci, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Albert Einstein, Mohandas K. Gandhi or Rosalind Franklin never enters the mind of the typical parent.

Instead, we parent and teach children to conform to an endless sequence of beliefs and behavioural norms on the basis that ‘one size fits all’ because we are literally (but unconsciously) terrified that our child might be ‘different’ or, horror of horrors, unique! And we reward most highly those individuals who do conform and can demonstrate their conformity by passing, often literally, the endless series of socially-approved tests, formal and otherwise, that we set. See, for example, ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

The last thing we want is an individual who fearlessly thinks, feels and behaves as they personally decide is best for themself, perhaps even because their conscience dictates. But when they do act out of their own volition, we punish them to ensure that behaviour that is generated by their unique ‘Self’ is, if possible, terrorized out of them.

Of course, there are ‘good reasons’ for doing this. If we want obedient students, soldiers, employees and citizens, it is the perfect formula. Terrorize the child when they are young and obedience to a set of parentally/socially-approved beliefs and behaviours is virtually guaranteed.

Equally importantly, by starting this onslaught against the child from the moment of birth, they will grow up utterly unaware of the fact that they were terrorized out of becoming their ‘True Self’ and seeking their own unique destiny so that they could be the slave of their society, performing some function, menial or even ‘professional’, after they have submitted to sufficient training. The slave who never questions their role is truly a slave. And that is what we want!

Equally importantly, the person who has fearfully surrendered their Self at the alter of physical survival cannot observe or listen to the fear expressed by anyone else, including their own children. So they simply ‘fail to notice’ it.

So what, exactly, do we do so that each human being’s individual Self is crushed and they are rendered too terrified, self-hating and powerless to pursue their own life path, to honestly observe and listen to their own children and to mindfully consider the state of our world and act powerfully in response?

We inflict enormous, ongoing violence on the child, starting immediately after their birth.

‘How?’ you might ask. ‘I don’t scream at or hit my child. And I never punish them.’

Well, if that is true, it is a good start.

But, unfortunately, it is far more complex than these obvious types of violence and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? As noted above, we do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen.

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorize a child into accepting certain information about themself, other people or the state of the world, the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’).

Fundamentally, the child is now incapable of carefully observing reality, analyzing the evidence in relation to that reality and responding strategically so that conflicts and problems are moved closer to resolution. That is, the child is now unconsciously trapped, believing and behaving precisely within the spectrum of socially-approved beliefs and behaviours that society terrorized them into accepting, no matter how dysfunctional and violent these beliefs and behaviours might be.

In industrialized countries, for example, this will invariably include overconsuming, which is standard (but highly dysfunctional and violent) behaviour, particularly given the current state of the biosphere. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Responding Powerfully to Reality

So how do we nurture children to become the unique and powerful individual that is their birthright? Someone who is able to clearly identify what they need and what outcomes work for them, and who does not learn to progressively compromise themselves until there is nothing left of their unique identity. Someone, in short, who is so powerless, that they are incapable of considering themself, others and the state of the biosphere. Someone who lives in delusion.

Well, if you want a powerful child, you can read what is required in ‘My Promise to Children’.

If, after reading this ‘Promise’, you feel unable to nurture children properly, you might consider doing the healing necessary so that you can do so. See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If you already feel free of the delusions that afflict most people and able to respond powerfully to the state of our world, then consider joining those participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ and signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

If you are powerful enough to campaign for change against one or more of the ongoing manifestations of violence in the world, consider doing so strategically so that you have maximum impact. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy.

And if none of the options I have offered immediately above appeals, ask yourself if you are serious about helping to end the violence or just deluding yourself like all of those people I described above.

17 January 2019

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence.

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

The game is afoot. Israel, believe it or not, is demanding that seven Arab countries and Iran pay $250 billion as compensation for what it claims was the forceful exodus of Jews from Arab countries during the late 1940s.

The events that Israel is citing allegedly occurred at a time when Zionist Jewish militias were actively uprooting nearly one million Palestinian Arabs and systematically destroying their homes, villages and towns throughout Palestine.

The Israeli announcement, which reportedly followed “18 months of secret research” conducted by the Israeli government’s Ministry of Social Equality, should not be filed under the ever-expanding folder of shameless Israeli misrepresentations of history.

It is part of a calculated effort by the Israeli government, and namely by Minister Gila Gamliel, to create a counter-narrative to the rightful demand for the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed by Jewish militias between 1947-1948.

But there is a reason behind the Israeli urgency to reveal such questionable research: the relentless US-Israeli attempt in the last two years to dismiss the rights of Palestinian refugee rights, to question their numbers and to marginalize their grievances. It is all part and parcel of the ongoing plot disguised as the ‘Deal of the Century’, with the clear aim of removing from the table all major issues that are central to the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

“The time has come to correct the historic injustice of the pogroms (against Jews) in seven Arab countries and Iran, and to restore, to hundreds of thousands of Jews who lost their property, what is rightfully theirs,” said Gamliel.

The language – “.. to correct the historic injustice” – is no different from language used by Palestinians who have for 70 years and counting been demanding the restoration of their rights per United Nations Resolution 194.

The deliberate conflating between the Palestinian narrative and the Zionist narrative is aimed at creating parallels, with the hope that a future political agreement would resolve to having both grievances cancel each other out.

Contrary to what Israeli historians want us to believe, there was no mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries and Iran, but rather a massive campaign orchestrated by Zionist leaders at the time to replace the Palestine Arab population with Jewish immigrants from all over the world. The ways through which such a mission was achieved often involved violent Zionist plots – especially in Iraq.

In fact, the call on Jews to gather in Israel from all corners of the world remains the rally cry for Israeli leaders and their Christian Evangelical supporters – the former wants to ensure a Jewish majority in the state, while the latter is seeking to fulfill a biblical condition for their long-awaited Armageddon.

To hold Arabs and Iran responsible for this bizarre and irresponsible behavior is a transgression on the true history in which neither Gamliel nor her ministry are interested.

On the other hand, and unlike what Israeli military historians often claim, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947- 48 (and the subsequent purges of the native population that followed in 1967) was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It has been part of a long-drawn and carefully calculated campaign that, from the very start, served as the main strategy at the heart of the Zionist movement’s ‘vision’ for the Palestinian people.

“We must expel the Arabs and take their place,” wrote Israel’s founder, military leader and first prime minister, David Ben Gurion in a letter to his son, Amos in October 5, 1937. That was over a decade before Plan D – which saw the destruction of the Palestinian homeland at the hands of Ben Gurion’s militias – went into effect.

Palestine “contains vast colonization potential,” he also wrote, “which the Arabs neither need nor are qualified to exploit.”

This clear declaration of a colonial project in Palestine, communicated with the same kind of unmistakable racist insinuations and language that accompanied all western colonial experiences throughout the centuries was not unique to Ben Gurion. He was merely paraphrasing what was, by then, understood to be the crux of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine at the time.

As Palestinian professor Nur Masalha concluded in his book, the ‘Expulsion of the Palestinians’, the idea of the ‘transfer’ – the Zionist term for “ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinian people – was, and remains, fundamental in the realization of Zionist ambitions in Palestine.

Palestinian Arab “villages inside the Jewish state that resist ‘should be destroyed .. and their inhabitants expelled beyond the borders of the Jewish state,” Masalha wrote quoting the ‘History of the Haganah’ by Yehuda Slutsky. .

What this meant in practice, as delineated by Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi was the joint targeting by various Jewish militias to systematically attack all population centers in Palestine, without exception.

“By the end of April (1948), the combined Haganah-Irgun offensive had completely encircled (the Palestinian city of) Jaffa, forcing most of the remaining civilians to flee by sea to Gaza or Egypt; many drowned in the process, ” Khalidi wrote in ‘Before Their Diaspora’.

This tragedy has eventually grown to affect all Palestinians, everywhere within the borders of their historic homeland. Tens of thousands of refugees joined up with hundreds of thousands more at various dusty trails throughout the country, growing in numbers as they walked further, to finally pitch their tents in areas that, then were meant to be ‘temporary’ refugee encampments. Alas, these became the Palestinian refugee camps of today, starting some 70 years ago.

None of this was accidental. The determination of the early Zionists to establish a ‘national home’ for Jews at the expense of the country’s Palestinian Arab nation was communicated, openly, clearly and repeatedly throughout the formation of early Zionist thoughts, and the translation of those well-articulated ideas into physical reality.

70 years have passed since the Nakba’ – the ‘Catastrophe’ of 1948 – and neither Israel took responsibility for its action, nor Palestinian refugees received any measure of justice, however small or symbolic.

For Israel to be seeking compensation from Arab countries and Iran is a moral travesty, especially as Palestinians refugees continue to languish in refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East.

Yes, indeed “the time has come to correct the historic injustice,” not of Israel’s alleged ‘pogroms’ carried out by Arabs and Iranians, but the real and most tragic destruction of Palestine and its people.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

16 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Robert Stevens and Chris Marsden

MPs voted by a massive majority Tuesday evening against Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposed deal with the European Union (EU) on the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc.

May was defeated by a majority of 230, with 432 MPs against the deal and just 202 for in the biggest vote against a sitting prime minister in history.

The vote was held after a five-day debate. Opposing May were 118 rebels from her own Conservative Party (nearly 40 percent of Tory MPs). They joined 248 MPs from the main opposition Labour Party and 35 from the Scottish National Party (SNP). May’s defeat would have been even greater had not three Brexit supporting Labour MPs, Ian Austin, Sir Kevin Barron and John Mann, not voted with her. Also voting with May were three Independents—former Labour MP Frank Field, Lady Hermon, and Stephen Lloyd.

Following the historic defeat, May announced that if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn exercised his right to call a no-confidence vote it would be heard today. Making capital over his previous refusal to do so, she added that consideration would be given to a debate if one of the smaller opposition parties demanded one. If she won a no confidence vote, she would meet with the Tories’ “confidence and supply partner” the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), “and senior parliamentarians from across the House to identify what would be required to secure the backing of the House . ”

Corbyn immediately tabled a vote of no confidence that was backed by the SNP and the leaders of the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

May is expected to win the no confidence vote, to be held this evening at 7 p.m., with the DUP stating that it would continue to prop up the Tories and support her government. The pro-Brexit Conservatives in the European Research Group said they would also back her. Both said they would do nothing that would bring Corbyn and Labour to power. Leading Brexiteer and May’s former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, said that he would back May, but insisted that the scale of her Brexit deal defeat meant that she had to return to talks with the EU and demand a deal more amenable to the Brexiteers—including abandoning the “backstop” arrangements keeping Northern Ireland in a customs union.

May had cancelled a vote on her deal in December, on the basis that it was expected to be heavily defeated. She spent the next weeks seeking to gain concessions from the EU, in the hope that she could persuade her hard Brexit opponents to change their minds. But all May was able to present before the vote was a perfunctory exchange of letters with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and President of the European Council Donald Tusk. The EU leaders offered nothing that could satisfy hard Brexiteers, insisting that a backstop was the only way to prevent a hard-border with the Republic of Ireland until a future free trade agreement is signed between the UK and Brussels.

A letter from Juncker to May promised only to make “this period [when the backstop is in place] as short as possible.” This had no impact, with DUP leader Arlene Foster saying the party’s 10 MPs would vote against the deal and that “What we want the prime minister to do after today is to go back to the European Union and say that the backstop has to go.”

The vote was confirmation of parliament’s overall support for a soft-Brexit, with a core of Blairite Labour MPs, the SNP, Liberal Democrats and some Tories all favouring remaining in the EU and wanting a second “People’s Vote” referendum to reverse the 2016 result.

In expectation of the proposed deal with the UK being rejected by MPs, Juncker cancelled a planned engagement in Strasbourg Wednesday to return to Brussels for emergency talks on Brexit with May. MPs voted last week to ensure that May has only limited time to come up with a “Plan B” that parliament can vote on, meaning May must return to parliament with new proposals by next Monday. May promised to do so and that her deal would be subject to amendments.

The Confederation of British Industry called on May to quickly put forward a new deal. CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said, “Every business will feel no deal is hurtling closer … All MPs need to reflect on the need for compromise and to act at speed to protect the UK’s economy.”

While the strategy of the EU leaders over the past two years has been to maintain a hard line against the UK in negotiations—in order to ward off any other countries contemplating an exit from the bloc—there are concerns that a no-deal Brexit will provoke serious economic and social turmoil. The EU’s official line prior to the vote was that the deal had taken two years to finalise and was the only one on the table. However, on Tuesday afternoon, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas declared, “If it goes wrong tonight, there could be further talks.”

Europe’s fears were articulated in the starkest terms by Deutsche Bank chief executive, Christian Sewing, who warned that a “disorderly Brexit” would have “dramatic consequences” for the British economy. He predicted, “The UK would fall into a recession for at least two years,” with economic output cut by half a percentage point in the remaining EU countries. This was dire, as “the distortions would be too great for trade, financing conditions and investor confidence.”

The most striking aspect of yesterday’s debate is how the interests of working people have been entirely excluded from official politics—with Corbyn playing the central role in his insistence that parliamentary arithmetic must be respected and restoring “national unity” must be prioritised.

A few hundred pro-EU and pro-Leave protesters demonstrated outside Westminster, but inside the Commons all discussion was on how best to secure a deal with the EU, combining an ability for UK business to sign independent trade deals with tariff-free access to the Single European Market.

The pro-Brexit Tories plans to fashion the UK as Europe’s Singapore are overtly based on ramping up the exploitation of the working class. But the Remain faction, including Corbyn, all know that EU membership or even some form of “customs union” is just as firmly rooted in ongoing effort to make the UK competitive against its rivals at the expense of the working class. They offer nothing to the 5,000 Jaguar Land Rover workers, 1,000 Ford workers and thousands of retail staff told they face redundancy this past week.

Austerity is hard-wired into the EU. The Social Europe think-tank issued a report on the day of the vote noting that, after a decade of attacks on workers’ living standards and based on the at-risk-of-poverty threshold for the EU as a whole (60 percent of median EU income or €9,760), the “EU-wide poverty rate is 28.2 per cent (equivalent to around 142 million out of a total EU population of around 500 million).”

Last week, a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Athens provoked clashes between riot police and protesters, including striking teachers—giving expression to how millions of Greeks feel about EU-dictated austerity. The Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras, which Corbyn cites as a model and ally, is now so hated for imposing austerity that it is 10.5 percent behind the conservative New Democracy in opinion polls. The same sentiment animates France’s Yellow Vests, the strike wave gripping Poland and labour disputes throughout the continent.

16 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nick Beams

The World Bank has added its voice to those warning of a worsening outlook for the global economy this year, amid signs that some major economies could experience a recession.

In its Global Economic Prospects report issued last week, entitled “Darkening Skies,” it stated that “storm clouds are brewing for the global economy” and contrasted the situation with that of a year ago.

“At the beginning of 2018 the global economy was firing on all cylinders, but it lost speed during the year and the ride could get even bumpier ahead,” the World Bank chief executive Kristalina Georgieva said.

Pointing to the main reasons for the slowdown, the bank said international trade and investment had softened, trade tensions remain elevated and several large emerging markets experienced “substantial financial pressures last year.” Growth in emerging markets and developing economies is expected to remain flat, the pickup in economies that rely heavily on commodity exports is likely to be much slower than hoped for and “growth in many other economies is anticipated to be decelerate.”

The bank cut its June forecast for global growth of 3 percent this year to 2.9 percent and warned that “the risks are growing that growth could be even weaker than anticipated.” It predicted that growth in world trade will slow to 3.6 percent this year, down from 3.8 percent in 2018 and 5.7 percent in 2017.

After downgrading its forecasts for global growth last November, saying “global expansion has peaked,” the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a series of leading indicators yesterday pointing in the same direction.

“In the United States and Germany, the tentative signs of easing growth momentum, that were flagged in last month’s assessment, have been confirmed,” it stated. For the third consecutive month, the OECD’s index for the US was below the 100 mark, which points to steady growth, and the index for Germany was below 100 for the fourth straight month.

One of the clearest indications of economic weakening comes from Europe. Data published last week showing that eurozone labour productivity had stopped growing for the first time in almost a decade. Since the financial crisis of 2008, eurozone productivity growth has been around half its previous levels. But in the third quarter of last year it dropped to zero compared to the same period in 2017. In Germany, Europe’s leading economy, it contracted at an annual rate of 0.3 percent, the first decline since 2009.

Industrial production is falling in the main eurozone economies, bringing warnings that Germany and Italy could record a technical recession with a second consecutive contraction in gross domestic production in the final quarter of last year.

In an editorial comment on Saturday, the Financial Times warned that after a “staggered” economic expansion, “a bout of nerves is now gripping the major economies in an unhelpfully synchronised wave” with “signs of trouble” in China and the US, “accompanied by an ever-extending period of weakness in the eurozone.”

Having “chugged along” for the past five years, the eurozone economy seemed to hit some turbulence in the summer months but “more recently, data seem to suggest the blip is at risk of turning into a sustained downturn” and “eurozone growth ended the year very weakly.”

The slowdown is centred in Germany. Economic problems that started to emerge six months ago were initially attributed to the effect of new emissions regulations in the car industry.

“The longer the weakness has continued, however, the more the slowdown has appeared more fundamental,” the editorial noted, with the most recent data showing German industrial production falling sharply, and imports and exports contracting in November.

Another key area of concern is China. The stock market fell by 25 percent last year and there are indications that growth rate of 6.5 percent could move down to 6 percent over the next year.

The China slowdown made a major impact earlier this month. For the first time in 16 years, Apple was forced to cut its sales forecasts for the coming year, citing the contracting Chinese market and rising trade tensions with the US. It led a 660-point fall in Wall Street’s Dow index.

The fall in the sales of iPhones is only one indicator of the slowdown in Chinese consumption spending which is impacting on all global brands. When the final data for last year are issued they are expected to show that car sales in China fell in 2018 for the first time in 28 years.

The car sector represents about 5 percent of the country’s GDP and around 30 percent of the global car market but the significance of China extends far beyond the auto market.

China accounted for around 16 percent of global GDP last year and over the decade since the global financial crisis has contributed around 30 percent of global growth. This has been largely the result of the vast stimulus package initiated by the Chinese government and financial authorities in the wake of the 2008-09 global financial crisis. But now the government is seeking to rein in credit expansion in order to lower debt levels in the economy.

At the same time, the economic problems to which this gives rise are being compounded by the trade war measures of the US. Anti-China hawks in the Trump administration are actively seeking to weaken the Chinese economy in order to extract greater concessions in negotiations.

Evidence of the impact of the US trade war measures emerged yesterday when government data revealed that exports had fallen 4.4 percent in December, far below the predictions of a 3 percent increase from a poll of economists. Imports also shrank 7.6 percent against expectations of a 5 percent rise.

In the US, the turbulence in financial markets is giving rise to concerns that a recession is in the making as the prospect of a yield inversion in bond markets draws closer. An inversion, which occurs when the yield on long-term bonds fall below that on shorter term bonds, is regarded as an indicator of recession as investors seek a safe haven. Inversion has not yet occurred but the gap between the yield on two-year Treasury bonds and of ten-year bonds has been narrowing.

While growth in the rest of the world slowed in 2018, the US continued to advance largely because of the stimulus effect of the corporate tax cuts enacted by the Trump administration at the end of the 2017. While Trump promised this would boost investment and jobs, most of the money went towards share buybacks in an effort to boost equity values and its effect will now start to wear off.

At least one major investor has countered claims by Trump that he is presiding over a strong economy. According to Jeffrey Gundlach, the head of DoubleLine Capital LP, the US economy is floating on an “ocean of debt.”

“I’m not looking for a terrible economy, but an artificially strong one, due to stimulus spending,” he told a forum organised by the investment and financial news service Barron’s. “We have floated incremental debt when we should be doing the opposite if the economy is so strong.”

Short-term economic data are not the only cause for concern. A major issue is whether the long-term increase in debt, which has continued since the global financial crisis, and rising geo-political tensions, will exacerbate the impact of any significant global slowdown.

In a comment published last week, Financial Times economics correspondent Martin Wolf wrote that the economy appeared to be heading into what he called a “mild cyclical downturn.” However, this was taking place amid profound structural changes, characterised by the growth of debt and major political shifts. These included the rise of nationalism, Brexit, the election of Trump as well as “a trade war between the world’s two most important economies and an erosion of the liberal global economic order.”

The “worry” was not over the short-term cycle, he wrote, but rather “the context in which such a slowdown might occur.”

“It is the political and policy instability, combined with the exhaustion of safe options for credit expansion, that would make handling even a limited and natural short-term slowdown potentially so tricky.”

But, he concluded, there were “no simple mechanisms” for reducing these “deeply ingrained” developments which were more likely to get worse than better.

15 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Stephen F. Cohen

A wise decision is greeted by denunciations, obstructionism, imperial thinking, and more Russia-bashing.

9 Jan 2019 – President Trump was wrong in asserting that the United States destroyed the Islamic State’s territorial statehood in a large part of Syria—Russia and its allies accomplished that—but he is right in proposing to withdraw some 2,000 American forces from that tragically war-ravaged country. The small American contingent serves no positive combat or strategic purpose unless it is to thwart the Russian-led peace negotiations now underway or to serve as a beachhead for a US war against Iran. Still worse, its presence represents a constant risk that American military personnel could be killed by Russian forces also operating in that relatively small area, thereby turning the new Cold War into a very hot conflict, even if inadvertently. Whether or not Trump understood this danger, his decision, if actually implemented—it is being fiercely resisted in Washington—will make US-Russian relations, and thus the world, somewhat safer.

Nonetheless, Trump’s decision on Syria, coupled with his order to reduce US forces in Afghanistan by half, has been “condemned,” as The New York Times approvingly reported, “across the ideological spectrum,” by “the left and right.” Analyzing these condemnations, particularly in the opinion-shaping New York Times and Washington Post and on interminable (and substantially uninformed) MSNBC and CNN segments, again reveals the alarming thinking that is deeply embedded in the US bipartisan policy-media establishment.

First, no foreign-policy initiative undertaken by President Trump, however wise it may be in regard to US national interests, will be accepted by that establishment. Any prominent political figure who does so will promptly and falsely be branded, in the malign spirit of Russiagate, as “pro-Putin,” or, as was Senator Rand Paul, arguably the only foreign-policy statesman in the senate today, “an isolationist.” This is unprecedented in modern American history. Not even Richard Nixon was subject to such establishment constraints on his ability to conduct national-security policy during the Watergate scandals.

Second, not surprisingly, the condemnations of Trump’s decision are infused with escalating, but still unproven, Russiagate allegations of the president’s “collusion” with the Kremlin. Thus, equally predictably, the Times finds a Moscow source to say, of the withdrawals, “Trump is God’s gift that keeps on giving” to Putin. (In fact, it is not clear that the Kremlin is eager to see the United States withdraw from either Syria or Afghanistan, as this would leave Russia alone with what it regards as common terrorist enemies.) Closer to home, there is the newly reelected Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who, when asked about Trump’s policies and Russian President Putin, told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “I think that the president’s relationship with thugs all over the world is appalling. Vladimir Putin, really? Really? I think it’s dangerous.” By this “leadership” reasoning, Trump should be the first US president since FDR to have no “relationship” whatsoever with a Kremlin leader. And to the extent that Pelosi speaks for the Democratic Party, it can no longer be considered a party of American national security.

But, third, something larger than even anti-Trumpism plays a major role in condemnations of the president’s withdrawal decisions: imperial thinking about America’s rightful role in the world. Euphemisms abound, but, if not an entreaty to American empire, what else could the New York Times’ David Sanger mean when he writes of a “world order that the United States has led for the 79 years since World War II,” and complains that Trump is reducing “the global footprint needed to keep that order together”? Or when President Obama’s national-security adviser Susan Rice bemoans Trump’s failures in “preserving American global leadership,” which a Times lead editorial insists is an “imperative”? Or when General James Mattis in his letter of resignation echoes President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeline Albright—and Obama himself—in asserting that “the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world”? We cannot be surprised. Such “global” imperial thinking has informed US foreign-policy decision-making for decades—it’s taught in our schools of international relations—and particularly the many disastrous, anti-“order” wars it has produced.

Fourth, and characteristic of empires and imperial thinking, there is the valorization of generals. Perhaps the most widespread and revealing criticism of Trump’s withdrawal decisions is that he did not heed the advice of his generals, the undistinguished, uninspired Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis in particular. The pseudo-martyrdom and heroizing of Mattis, especially by the Democratic Party and its media, remind us that the party had earlier, in its Russiagate allegations, valorized US intelligence agencies, and, having taken control of the House, evidently intends to continue to do so. Anti-Trumpism is creating political cults of US intelligence and military institutions. What does this tell us about today’s Democratic Party? More profoundly, what does this tell us about an American Republic purportedly based on civilian rule?

Finally, and potentially tragically, Trump’s announcement of the Syrian withdrawal was the moment for a discussion of the long imperative US alliance with Russia against international terrorism, a Russia whose intelligence capabilities are unmatched in this regard. (Recall, for example, Moscow’s disregarded warnings about one of the brothers who set off bombs during the Boston Marathon.) Such an alliance has been on offer by Putin since 9/11. President George W. Bush completely disregarded it. Obama flirted with the offer but backed (or was pushed) away. Trump opened the door for such a discussion, as indeed he has since his presidential candidacy, but now again, at this most opportune moment, there has not been a hint of it in our political-media establishment. Instead, a national security imperative has been treated as “treacherous.”

In this context, there is Trump’s remarkable, but little-noted or forgotten, tweet of December 3 calling on the presidents of Russia and China to join him in “talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race.” If Trump acts on this essential overture, as we must hope he will, will it too be traduced as “treacherous”—also for the first time in American history? If so, it will again confirm my often-expressed thesis that powerful forces in America would prefer trying to impeach the president to avoiding a military catastrophe. And that those forces, not President Trump or Putin, are now the gravest threat to American national security.

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.

14 January 2019

Source: transcend.org

By Jan Oberg

9 Jan 2019 – UPI writes that the European Union issues sanctions on Iran over assassination plots on January 8, 2019. And US Secretary of State, Pompeo, fully supports them.

The move puts the individuals and intelligence unit on the EU terrorist list – freezing their financial assets.

It’s a brilliant example of Matthew 7:3-6: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

Which, it seems, is now a standard operating policy by the Western world.

Or, one may say, an example of psycho-political projection of the West’s own dark side onto this enemy today and that enemy tomorrow.

Here some arguments in support of that – perhaps to some – provocative statement:

•  It should be clear from contemporary history’s records that countries such as the UK, France and the US do infinitely more of what Iran is accused of here. (See point 4 below).
• “Alleged”, “accused of attempting” and “strong evidence” are the words used by all. In other words, not a shred of hard evidence and punishment before proof. It’s no good for legal states and anyone is to be considered innocent until the opposite has been proven. Thus, basic legal principles – not to speak of ethics – are set aside by politicians who, on a daily basis, teach others about what is unacceptable, or what they should do.
• The self-same countries have put economic sanctions on Iran for not one good reason beyond US order. The basic sanctions installed – in various forms and shapes since 1979 – can be categorized as terrorism as they deliberately target and hit the millions of innocent Iranian citizens.
• Has the US and all EU countries not been fighting what they consider terrorist – the Global War on Terrorism – since September 11, 2001? Don’t they use tools such as CIA, special operating forces, agents to hunt down and kill those they consider a threat to their country – and don’t they do so on any other country’s territory if they deem it necessary? Indeed, isn’t international politics filled with such cases, including systematic attempts in dozens of countries of killing people, including heads of state?
• Iran is the victim of primary sanctions by the US and EU – has been for years. And it’s a victim of secondary sanctions – those that are applications of US law on other countries implying that if the US has put up sanctions against Iran, then it will punish countries – such as the EU, China, Russia – if they deal with Iran.

And the EU has been woefully split on the issue too, even unable to develop an alternative to Trumpist-CIA-State Department-Deep state constantly self-contradictory, confusing and unprincipled policies.

And why is Iran and its people targeted? Because, since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when the Western-installed (by a US/UK coup d’etat in 1953 against democratically elected Mossadegh) Shah was forced out and Ayatollah Khomeni took over, Iran has been considered a pariah state by the US and other Western countries and demonised ad absurdum.

Anybody who, like the author, has visited Iran and spoken with people at different levels and walks of life, know that the Western image of Iran has frighteningly little to do with the reality there: Fake and omission united.

That is the general background – “we don’t like them and what they do to our world leadership”. Simple as that.

The present specific sanctions have been installed in the wake of the US violating international law by leaving the JCPOA agreement about Iran’s nuclear policies – perhaps the single most important piece of international diplomacy and negotiated solution to a problem that could otherwise have caused war. (Not that there is any hard evidence that Iran attempted to acquire nuclear weapons, but so it is “alleged”, not the least by Israel and the US as pointed out so thoroughly by TFF Associate Gareth Porter.

The JCPOA is embedded in a UN Security Council resolution (2231) and, thus, a piece of international law. So, it’s the US, not Iran, that should be punished.

all these issues are so important for understanding the conflict between Iran and the West. And why sanctions, demonization and constant threats issued (also against the UN Charter) is probably all part of a build-up to some kind of violent action on Iran.

And, thus, you won’t find such arguments in the Western mainstream media. News journalists and selected experts are either conveniently ignorant about them or know how to practise self-censorship through something much much more important than fake – namely omission.

That is, the omission of facts, of conflict analysis, of the perspectives of “the others”, of peace perspectives and of even the slightest criticism of the West’s policies.

One reason, of course, is that these media and experts are dependent on being politically correct for their survival on corporate and state support.

And when the states plot wars in foreign lands, mainstream media follow His Master’s Voice.

TFF Director Prof. Jan Oberg is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

14 January 2019

Source: transcend.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Newly-inaugurated Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, is set to be the arch-enemy of the environment and of indigenous and disadvantaged communities in his country. He also promises to be a friend of like-minded, far-right leaders the world over.

It is, therefore, not surprising to see a special kind of friendship blossoming between Bolsonaro and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We need good brothers like Netanyahu,” Bolsonaro said on January 1, the day of his inauguration in Brasilia.

Bolsonaro is a “great ally (and) a brother”, Netanyahu replied.

But, while Bolsonaro sees in Netanyahu a role model – for reasons that should worry many Brazilians – the country certainly does not need ‘brothers’ like the Israeli leader.

Netanyahu’s militancy, oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people, his racially-motivated targeting of Black African immigrants and his persistent violations of international law are not at all what a country like Brazil needs to escape corruption, bring about communal harmony and usher in an era of regional integration and economic prosperity.

Netanyahu, of course, was keen on attending Bolsonaro’s inauguration, which is likely to go down in Brazilian history as an infamous day, where democracy and human rights came under their most serious threat since Brazil launched its democratic transition in the early 1980s.

In recent years, Brazil has emerged as a sensible regional power that defended Palestinian human rights and championed the integration of the ‘State of Palestine’ into the larger international community.

Frustrated by Brazil’s record on Palestine and Israel, Netanyahu, a shrewd politician, saw an opportunity in the populist discourse parroted by Bolsonaro during his campaign.

The new Brazilian President wants to reverse Brazil’s foreign policy on Palestine and Israel, the same way he wants to reverse all the policies of his predecessors regarding indigenous rights, the protection of the rainforest, among other pressing matters.

What is truly worrying is that, Bolsonaro, who has been likened to Donald Trump – least because of his vow to “make Brazil great again” – is likely to keep his promises. Indeed, only hours after his inauguration, he issued an executive order targeting land rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil, to the delight of the agricultural lobbies, which are eager to cut down much of the country’s forests.

Confiscating indigenous peoples’ territories, as Bolsonaro plans to do, is something that Netanyahu, his government and their predecessors have done without remorse for many years. Yes, it is clear that the claim of ‘brotherhood’ is based on very solid ground.

But there are other dimensions to the love affair between both leaders. Much work has been invested in turning Brazil from having an arguably pro-Palestinian government, to a Trump-like foreign policy.

In his campaign, Bolsonaro reached out to conservative political groups, the never truly tamed military and Evangelical churches, all with powerful lobbies, sinister agendas and unmistakable influence. Such groups have historically, not only in South America, but in the United States and other countries as well, conditioned their political support for any candidate on the unconditional and blind support of Israel.

This is how the United States has become the main benefactor for Israel, and that is precisely how Tel Aviv aims to conquer new political grounds.

The western world, in particular, is turning towards far-right demagogues for simple answers to complicated and convoluted problems. Brazil, thanks to Bolsonaro and his supporters, is now joining the disturbing trend.

Israel is unabashedly exploiting the unmitigated rise of global neo-fascism and populism. Worse, the once perceived to be anti-Semitic trends are now wholly embraced by the ‘Jewish State’, which is seeking to broaden its political influence but also its weapons market.

Politically, far-right parties understand that in order for Israel to help them whitewash their past and present sins, they would have to submit completely to Israel’s agenda in the Middle East. And that is precisely what is taking place from Washington, to Rome to Budapest to Vienna … And, as of late, Brasilia.

But another, perhaps more compelling reason is money. Israel has much to offer by way of its destructive war and ‘security’ technology, a massive product line that has been used with lethal consequences against Palestinians.

The border control industry is thriving in the US and Europe. In both cases, Israel is serving the task of the successful role model and the technology supplier. And Israeli ‘security’ technology, thanks to the newfound sympathy for Israel’s alleged security problems, is now invading European borders as well.

According to the Israeli Ynetnews, Israel is the seventh largest arms exporter in the world and is emerging as a leader in the global export of aerial drones.

Europe’s excitement for Israel’s drone technology is related to mostly unfounded fears of migrants and refugees. In the case of Brazil, Israeli drones technology will be put to fight against criminal gangs and other internal reasons.

For the record, Israeli drones manufactured by Elbit Systems have been purchased and used by the former Brazilian government just before the FIFA World Cup in 2014.

What makes future deals between both countries more alarming is the sudden affinity of far-right politicians in both countries. Expectedly, Bolsonaro and Netanyahu discussed the drones at length during the latter’s visit to Brazil.

Israel has used extreme violence to counter Palestinian demands for human rights, including lethal violence against ongoing peaceful protests at the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. If Bolsonaro thinks that he will successfully counter local crimes through unhinged violence – as opposed to addressing social and economic inequality and unfair distribution of wealth in his country – then he can only expect to exasperate an already horrific death toll.

Israeli security obsessions should not be duplicated, neither in Brazil nor anywhere else, and Brazilians, many of whom rightly worry about the state of democracy in their country, should not succumb to the Israeli militant mindset which has wrought no peace, but much violence.

Israel exports wars to its neighbors, and war technology to the rest of the world. As many countries are plagued by conflict, often resulting from massive income inequalities, Israel should not be seen as the model to follow, but rather the example to avoid.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

10 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Gail Tverberg

Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that the world economy is gradually changing from a growth mode to a mode of shrinkage. This is something like a ship changing course, from going in one direction to going in reverse. The system acts as if the brakes are being very forcefully applied, and reaction of the economy is to almost shake.

What seems to be happening is that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as predicted in the computer simulations modeled in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth. In fact, the base model of that set of simulations indicated that peak industrial output per capita might be reached right about now. Peak food per capitamight be reached about the same time. I have added a dotted line to the forecast from this model, indicating where the economy seems to be in 2019, relative to the base model.

The economy is a self-organizing structure that operates under the laws of physics. Many people have thought that when the world economy reaches limits, the limits would be of the form of high prices and “running out” of oil. This represents an overly simple understanding of how the system works. What we should really expect, and in fact, what we are now beginning to see, is production cuts in finished goods made by the industrial system, such as cell phones and automobiles, because of affordability issues. Indirectly, these affordability issues lead to low commodity prices and low profitability for commodity producers. For example:

• The sale of Chinese private passenger vehicles for the year of 2018 through November is down by 2.8%, with November sales off by 16.1%. Most analysts are forecasting this trend of contracting sales to continue into 2019. Lower sales seem to reflect affordability issues.
• Saudi Arabia plans to cut oil production by 800,000 barrels per day from the November 2018 level, to try to raise oil prices. Profits are too low at current prices.
• Coal is reported not to have an economic future in Australia, partly because of competition from subsidized renewables and partly because China and India want to prop up the prices of coal from their own coal mines.

The Significance of Trump’s Tariffs

If a person looks at history, it becomes clear that tariffs are a standard response to a problem of shrinking food or industrial output per capita. Tariffs were put in place in the 1920s in the time leading up to the Great Depression, and were investigated after the Panic of 1857, which seems to have indirectly led to the US Civil War.

Whenever an economy produces less industrial or food output per capita there is an allocation problem: who gets cut off from buying output similar to the amount that they previously purchased? Tariffs are a standard way that a relatively strong economy tries to gain an advantage over weaker economies. Tariffs are intended to help the citizens of the strong economy maintain their previous quantity of goods and services, even as other economies are forced to get along with less.

I see Trump’s trade policies primarily as evidence of an underlying problem, namely, the falling affordability of goods and services for a major segment of the population. Thus, Trump’s tariffs are one of the pieces of evidence that lead me to believe that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth.

The Nature of World Economic Growth

Economic growth seems to require growth in three dimensions (a) Complexity, (b) Debt Bubble, and (c) Use of Resources. Today, the world economy seems to be reaching limits in all three of these dimensions (Figure 2).

Complexity involves adding more technology, more international trade and more specialization. Its downside is that it indirectly tends to reduce affordability of finished end products because of growing wage disparity; many non-elite workers have wages that are too low to afford very much of the output of the economy. As more complexity is added, wage disparity tends to increase. International wage competition makes the situation worse.

A growing debt bubble can help keep commodity prices up because a rising amount of debt can indirectly provide more demand for goods and services. For example, if there is growing debt, it can be used to buy homes, cars, and vacation travel, all of which require oil and other energy consumption.

If debt levels become too high, or if regulators decide to raise short-term interest rates as a method of slowing the economy, the debt bubble is in danger of collapsing. A collapsing debt bubble tends to lead to recession and falling commodity prices. Commodity prices fell dramatically in the second half of 2008. Prices now seem to be headed downward again, starting in October 2018.

Even the relatively slow recent rise in short-term interest rates (Figure 4) seems to be producing a decrease in oil prices (Figure 3) in a way that a person might expect from a debt bubble collapse. The sale of US Quantitative Easing assets at the same time that interest rates have been rising no doubt adds to the problem of falling oil prices and volatile stock markets. The gray bars in Figure 4 indicate recessions.

Growing use of resources becomes increasingly problematic for two reasons. One is population growth. As population rises, the economy needs more food to feed the growing population. This leads to the need for more complexity (irrigation, better seed, fertilizer, world trade) to feed the growing world population.

The other problem with growing use of resources is diminishing returns, leading to the rising cost of extracting commodities over time. Diminishing returns occur because producers tend to extract the cheapest to extract commodities first, leaving in place the commodities requiring deeper wells or more processing. Even water has this difficulty. At times, desalination, at very high cost, is needed to obtain sufficient fresh water for a growing population.

Why Inadequate Energy Supplies Lead to Low Oil Prices Rather than High

In the last section, I discussed the cost of producing commodities of many kinds rising because of diminishing returns. Higher costs should lead to higher prices, shouldn’t they?

Strangely enough, higher costs translate to higher prices only sometimes. When energy consumption per capita is rising rapidly (peaks of red areas on Figure 5), rising costs do seem to translate to rising prices. Spiking oil prices were experienced several times: 1917 to 1920; 1974 to 1982; 2004 to mid 2008; and 2011 to 2014. All of these high oil prices occurred toward the end of the red peaks on Figure 5. In fact, these high oil prices (as well as other high commodity prices that tend to rise at the same time as oil prices) are likely what brought growth in energy consumption down. The prices of goods and services made with these commodities became unaffordable for lower-wage workers, indirectly decreasing the growth rate in energy products consumed.

The red peaks represented periods of very rapid growth, fed by growing supplies of very cheap energy: coal and hydroelectricity in the Electrification and Early Mechanizationperiod, oil in the Postwar Boom, and coal in the China period. With low energy prices, many countries were able to expand their economies simultaneously, keeping demand high. The Postwar Boom also reflected the addition of many women to the labor force, increasing the ability of families to afford second cars and nicer homes.

Rapidly growing energy consumption allowed per capita output of both food (with meat protein given a higher count than carbohydrates) and industrial products to grow rapidly during these peaks. The reason that output of these products could grow is because the laws of physics require energy consumption for heat, transportation, refrigeration and other processes required by industrialization and farming. In these boom periods, higher energy costs were easy to pass on. Eventually the higher energy costs “caught up with” the economy, and pushed growth in energy consumption per capita down, putting an end to the peaks.

Figure 6 shows Figure 5 with the valleys labeled, instead of the peaks.

When I say that the world economy is reaching “peak industrial output per capita” and “peak food per capita,” this represents the opposite of a rapidly growing economy. In fact, if the world is reaching Limits to Growth, the situation is even worse than all of the labeled valleys on Figure 6. In such a case, energy consumption growth is likely to shrink so low that even the blue area (population growth) turns negative.

In such a situation, the big problem is “not enough to go around.” While cost increases due to diminishing returns could easily be passed along when growth in industrial and food output per capita were rapidly rising (the Figure 5 situation), this ability seems to disappear when the economy is near limits. Part of the problem is that the lower growth in per capita energy affects the kinds of job that are available. With low energy consumption growth, many of the jobs that are available are service jobs that do not pay well. Wage disparity becomes an increasing problem.

When wage disparity grows, the share of low wage workers rises. If businesses try to pass along their higher costs of production, they encounter market resistance because lower wage workers cannot afford the finished goods made with high cost energy products. For example, auto and iPhone sales in China decline. The lack of Chinese demand tends to lead to a drop in demand for the many commodities used in manufacturing these goods, including both energy products and metals. Because there is very little storage capacity for commodities, a small decline in demand tends to lead to quite a large decline in prices. Even a small decline in China’s demand for energy products can lead to a big decline in oil prices.

Strange as it may seem, the economy ends up with low oil prices, rather than high oil prices, being the problem. Other commodity prices tend to be low as well.

What Is Ahead, If We Are Reaching Economic Growth Limits?

1. Figure 1 at the top of this post seems to give an indication of what is ahead after 2019, but this forecast cannot be relied on. A major issue is that the limited model used at that time did not include the financial system or debt. Even if the model seems to provide a reasonably accurate estimate of when limits will hit, it won’t necessarily give a correct view of what the impact of limits will be on the rest of the economy, after limits hit. The authors, in fact, have said that the model should not be expected to provide reliable indications regarding how the economy will behave after limits have started to have an impact on economic output.

2. As indicated in the title of this post, considerable financial volatility can be expected in 2019 if the economy is trying to slow itself. Stock prices will be erratic; interest rates will be erratic; currency relativities will tend to bounce around. The likelihood that derivatives will cause major problems for banks will rise because derivatives tend to assume more stability in values than now seems to be the case. Increasing problems with derivatives raises the risk of bank failure.

3. The world economy doesn’t necessarily fail all at once. Instead, pieces that are, in some sense, “less efficient” users of energy may shrink back. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the countries that seemed to be most affected were countries such as Greece, Spain, and Italy that depend on oil for a disproportionately large share of their total energy consumption. China and India, with energy mixes dominated by coal, were much less affected.

In the 2002-2008 period, oil prices were rising faster than prices of other fossil fuels. This tended to make countries using a high share of oil in their energy mix less competitive in the world market. The low labor costs of China and India gave these countries another advantage. By the end of 2007, China’s energy consumption per capita had risen to a point where it almost matched the (now lower) energy consumption of the European countries shown. China, with its low energy costs, seems to have “eaten the lunch” of some of its European competitors.

In 2019 and the years that follow, some countries may fare at least somewhat better than others. The United States, for now, seems to be faring better than many other parts of the world.

1. While we have been depending upon China to be a leader in economic growth, China’s growth is already faltering and may turn to contraction in the near future. One reason is an energy problem: China’s coal production has fallen because many of its coal mines have been closed due to lack of profitability. As a result, China’s need for imported energy (difference between black line and top of energy production stack) has been growing rapidly. China is now the largest importer of oil, coal, and natural gas in the world. It is very vulnerable to tariffs and to lack of available supplies for import.

A second issue is that demographics are working against China; its working-age population already seems to be shrinking. A third reason why China is vulnerable to economic difficulties is because of its growing debt level. Debt becomes difficult to repay with interest if the economy slows.

1. Oil exporters such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria have become vulnerable to government overthrow or collapse because of low world oil prices since 2014. If the central government of one or more of these exporters disappears, it is possible that the pieces of the country will struggle along, producing a lower amount of oil, as Libya has done in recent years. It is also possible that another larger country will attempt to take over the failing production of the country and secure the output for itself.

2. Epidemics become increasingly likely, especially in countries with serious financial problems, such as Yemen, Syria, and Venezuela. Historically, much of the decrease in population in countries with collapsing economies has come from epidemics. Of course, epidemics can spread across national boundaries, exporting the problems elsewhere.

3. Resource wars become increasingly likely. These can be local wars, perhaps over the availability of water. They can also be large, international wars. The timing of World War I and World War II make it seem likely that these wars were both resource wars.

Peak coal in UK occurred at time of World War I, and Peak Coal in Germany at time of War II. Led to Wars?

1. Collapsing intergovernmental agencies, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund, seem likely. The United Kingdom’s planned exit from the European Union in 2019 is a step toward dissolving the European Union.

2. Privately funded pension funds will increasingly be subject to default because of continued low interest rates. Some governments may choose to cut back the amounts they provide to pensioners because governments cannot collect adequate tax revenue for this purpose. Some countries may purposely shut down parts of their governments, in an attempt to hold down government spending.

3. A far worse and more permanent recession than that of the Great Recession seems likely because of the difficulty in repaying debt with interest in a shrinking economy. It is not clear when such a recession will start. It could start later in 2019, or perhaps it may wait until 2020. As with the Great Recession, some countries will be affected more than others. Eventually, because of the interconnected nature of financial systems, all countries are likely to be drawn in.

Summary

It is not entirely clear exactly what is ahead if we are reaching Limits to Growth. Perhaps that is for the best. If we cannot do anything about it, worrying about the many details of what is ahead is not the best for anyone’s mental health. While it is possible that this is an end point for the human race, this is not certain, by any means. There have been many amazing coincidences over the past 4 billion years that have allowed life to continue to evolve on this planet. More of these coincidences may be ahead. We also know that humans lived through past ice ages. They likely can live through other kinds of adversity, including worldwide economic collapse.

Gail E. Tverberg graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1968 with a B.S. in Mathematics. She received a M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1970.

10 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By News Report

Tens of millions of workers throughout India yesterday joined the second day of a 48-hour national protest strike against the hated pro-investor economic “reforms” of the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led government.

While the capitalist media largely tried to black-out the strike, it was supported by broad sections of the working class, both in the so-called formal and informal sectors. Moreover, the strike cut across the caste and communal divisions that the ruling capitalist class has used for decades to channel social discontent along reactionary lines.

The large turnout reflects mounting working-class anger toward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s big business-backed government. During its four-and-a-half years in office, it has dramatically intensified a decades-long assault on the Indian working class, one of the largest in the world. This has included savage austerity measures, acceleration of privatisation, promotion of contract-labour, the gutting of environmental and workplace safety standards, and onerous tax increases on working people.

Chief among those taking part in the stoppage were coal miners, postal workers and dockers, as well as bank, insurance, telecommunication, transport and tea estate workers. Workers from government-owned industries were joined by those from global companies like Bosch, Toyota, Volvo, CEAT, Crompton and Samsonite.

Indicating the sharp class tensions and vicious response of the employers and governments, there were numerous reports of violent clashes, sackings and arrests of striking workers. In several states, such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, public sector workers defied government threats of dismissals, pay cuts and other disciplinary retaliation.

The most significant conflict erupted at the Daikin air-conditioning plant in the Neemrana industrial hub of Rajasthan, where 12 workers were arrested yesterday on trumped-up charges of rioting and attempted murder, with similar charges against some 700 unnamed workers. This was after police and security guards attacked a rally of about 2,000 strikers, using lathis (heavy iron-tipped sticks), rubber-coated pellets and tear gas shells on Tuesday.

This repression occurred less than 70 kilometres from the Maruti Suzuki car assembly plant at Manesar, in the neighbouring state of Haryana, where 13 workers have been sentenced to life imprisonment on frame-up murder charges. The 13 are the target of a company-government witch hunt for leading strikes and a plant occupation in 2011–12 against sweatshop conditions and precarious contract jobs.

According to reports, the impact of the two-day strike was substantial in key states, including Haryana and Rajasthan, as well as Maharashtra and Goa in the west, Punjab in the north, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the south and West Bengal and Odisha in the east.

Private hospital workers and workers from the “unorganised” sector, including in the beedi and construction industries, as well as in retail and distribution, joined the strike in many states.

In Kerala, both state-owned and private buses were off the road. Public bus services were stopped in Karnataka and Haryana, where the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt is located.

In Mumbai, India’s financial centre and second largest city, most banks and government offices were shut down and port operations were crippled. About 32,000 workers from the city’s public transport service continued an indefinite strike for the second day, demanding higher wages and better working conditions, in defiance of a government Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) order outlawing the strike.

However, the trade unions did not mobilise some of the most important and powerful sections of the working class, such as railway workers. Airports continued to function, with little to any disruption. That reflected the political perspective of the union bureaucracies.

The strike was called by ten central unions and politically led by the Stalinist Communist Party of Indian (Marxist) or CPM. Among the unions were the CPM-affiliated Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), controlled by the other main Stalinist party, the Communist Party of India (CPI). They were joined by the Congress-led Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and the Labour Progressive Front (LPF), which is affiliated to the DMK, a right-wing party based in Tamil Nadu.

The Kerala state government, which is led by the CPM, encouraged participation. However, underscoring the pro-business nature of the Stalinist parties, it struck an agreement with the CITU to exempt passenger train services and the tourism sector, citing likely financial losses.

Likewise, the unions did not call out autoworkers in Oragadam, on the outskirts of Chennai, which has been dubbed the “Detroit of India” because major automakers have factories there.

Just last November, the unions shut down two-month-long strikes involving over 3,000 workers from three companies operating in Oragadam—Yamaha, Royal Enfield and Myoung Shin India Automotive—without meeting any of the workers’ major demands. In its deal with Yamaha, the CITU pledged “industrial peace” and a “freeze” on sit-in strikes.

By joining the two-day strike, millions of workers have demonstrated their mounting hostility to the pro-market measures imposed by successive governments since 1991, when the Indian elite set out to transform the country into a cheap labour platform for global corporations.

This is the 18th national strike led by the CITU since 1991. But all the central and state governments formed by the parties with which the unions have been allied, including Congress, regional parties like the DMK and the Stalinist CPM and CPI, have ruthlessly pursued the same “investor-friendly” policies. This includes CPM-led state governments in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala.

India’s much-vaunted “rise” has provided gargantuan wealth to a tiny capitalist elite while condemning the vast majority of people to poverty and economic insecurity, in which any misfortune—from illness to a job loss—can push a family into the social abyss.

Whereas India counted only two billionaires in the mid-1990s, it now boasts about 130—the fourth largest concentration in the world. Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of the population struggles to survive on less than $2 per day. Modi routinely seeks to entice global investors by emphasising that wages in India are no more than a quarter those in China.

The BJP won office in 2014 by pledging to create jobs. This has proven a cruel hoax. A Center for Monitoring Indian Economy study released this week estimated the unemployment rate rose in December to 7.4 percent. If those who have disappeared from the labour force since September 2016 are counted, the true rate is almost 13 percent—that is, more than 50 million unemployed.

To pursue the great-power ambitions of the ruling class, India also has formed a “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism and dramatically increased military spending. With the fifth biggest military budget globally, India now spends two-and-a-half times more on its military than on providing health care to its 1.3 billion people.

Underscoring the government’s callous indifference to the concerns of working people, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley issued a tweet yesterday denouncing the strike. The multi-millionaire accused the “Left trade unions” of seeking “to manufacture a protest on non-existent issues.”

The two-day strike is a part of an emerging international upsurge of the working class, from the Yellow Vest protests in France against the Macron government to US teachers and autoworkers, and Sri Lankan plantation workers who are demanding a doubling of their wages.

All over the world, in their struggles, workers are coming up against the unions and so-called “Left” parties that once claimed to represent their interests. The Indian unions called the strike with the aim of containing the growing anger of the working people and rural toilers, and channelling it behind electoral manoeuvres to bring to office an alternative capitalist government, whether led by the big business Congress Party or regional and caste-based parties.

That is why the Stalinist-led unions failed to make any reference to the fate of the Maruti Suzuki workers. They fear their militant example, and even more importantly, they recognise that a campaign linking the defence of the victimised workers to the struggle against poverty wages and precarious employment would blow up their alliance with the Congress Party and their corporatist relations with big business.

The Stalinists also utilised the strike to push for a dialogue with Modi’s government, including on its latest labour legislation. The CITU yesterday issued a statement appealing to the government to “immediately put on hold all the anti-worker amendments to the labour laws and take immediate concrete action on all the demands raised by the joint trade union movement.”

ICFI/WSWS supporters campaigned among striking workers in Chennai and Kolkata on both days, circulating WSWS articles on the strike and discussing the central political issues facing the workers, and above all, the need for a socialist program to fight the government-corporate offensive.

10 January 2019

Source: countercurrents.org

By Mahmudur Rahman

My association with politics started from the year 2007. Any knowledgeable reader who has kept track of the activities of a simple person like me, might protest this statement, claiming that I am not telling the truth, since I got involved with the government by joining the National Investment Board as its Executive Chairman since November 2001. I would humbly like to state that I had joined the erstwhile government as a technocrat. My work was confined to the official economic sphere. Neither did the erstwhile Prime Minister Begun Khaleda Zia involve me with the proceedings of her political party the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), nor did she ask me any advice regarding any political matter. It was on the eve of the treacherous army takeover under the leadership of General Moin, and the ensuing danger to freedom of the country, that I entered politics as a means of protest. My stint as a writer also began from that point in time.

I am a disciple of Shaheed Zia’s ideology of Bangladeshi nationalism. From the time I joined politics, I have never strayed from following the path of that ideology, and neither have I sought to gain any favour from my association with it. Neither have I accepted any temporary or cheap alternative in its place. Upholding the belief, culture and virtue of a Bengali Musulman, I have many a time taken a position against the tide. The 1/11 government had been initially able to trick the people about its motives and had attained some measure of popularity. A majority of the BNP leadership at the time had stooped low and were running from door to door to beg for mercy from the military backed administration. Many had fled from the country. The so-called ‘Iron Lady’ Sheikh Hasina herself had fled to America and the UK at the time. Even at that dark time, I had written in Naya Diganta in protest against General Moin’s ‘Father of the Nation’ ideology, titled ‘Father of the Nation nationally and abroad’ (February, 2007). I had refused to accept Sheikh Mujib as the Father of the nation then, and I refuse to do so even now.

Through my columns at the Amar Desh newspaper, I continued to expose the true face of the Delhi-backed puppet government of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh, which had been installed in lieu of the collaboration of the military backed government with the Indian-American-Israeli lobby. I published news on the corruption of the anti-Islamic secular government within one year of their attaining power. Many senior leaders within the BNP at the time called me out as brash and foolhardy for my writings. They asked me what was the need of so much criticism of the government at the paper in its very first year? It was too much! In the beginning, I began by exposing, to the people, the true face of the corrupt and government-puppet high court. After a case was filed citing contempt of court, many BNP leaders, lawyers and policymakers had pressured me into seeking pardon for my comments, but I stood my ground and did not flinch from my moral position one bit. Despite facing inhuman torture at the hands of police, I stood my ground at the appeals court, and stated that I would not seek any pardon, since what I had said was perfectly true.

After information on the 2012 Skype scandal reached me, I did not hesitate one bit in publishing about it, after verifying the truth behind the information. I did not fear any threats or intimidations from the government, the judiciary, or from Delhi for that matter. In 2013, despite the uninhibited weight of national-international media behind the Delhi backed project-the Gonojagoron Moncho in Shahbag, Amar Desh (Mahmudur Rahman’s newspaper) challenged this project alone. Despite knowing that I would be subject to hatred from the Islam-hating city-based middle class, I still covered the events with the title – Footsteps of Fascism in Shahbag. The easy-going leaders in the BNP were enraged again. They had been planning to take Begum Zia to Shahbag at the time. They were then of the belief that without the blessings of India, they would be unable to come to the helm of power. Everyone was ready and united to throw the ideology of Shaheed Zia out of the window. They were thinking that Delhi would be happy if they joined Gonojagoron. The notions of a secular BNP began to take its roots within the party.

I attained freedom from jail on 23 November, 2016. In the meantime, the fake elections of 2014 had already passed, and BNP had failed to unseat the fascist government through the mass-movements of 2014 and 2015. In my second stint of jail term spanning four years, I had the opportunity to have political discussions with a lot of leaders and members of BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. I noted with alarm that a lot of the senior leadership of BNP were blaming Begum Zia for boycotting the farcical elections of 2014. Defending Begum Zia’s decision as being the right choice, I have tirelessly argued with them, and as a result have become undesirable in their eyes. From within the confines of the jail, I was beginning to clearly discern BNP’s unmistakable slide towards a pro-Indian position. After getting out of Kashempur (name of a prison in Dhaka), I understood that the pro-Indian group within the BNP had been successful in influencing even the senior most leadership within the party. My strong uncompromising stance against India at various seminars and discussion panels had made them restless. It came to a point where even Begum Zia began to indicate to me to be more restrained on speaking out on issues of Islam and India. It was alleged that India and the United States were becoming irritated against the BNP because of me. I have tried to convince Begum Zia that Delhi will never bring her to power in the place of Sheikh Hasina. The connections between the Sheikh family and the intelligence agencies of India and the Delhi establishment are deep and go back a long way right from the days of Pakistan. Whether BJP or Congress, whoever is in the seat of power in Delhi, the Sheikh family and Awami League are their allies. In light of the geopolitical realities of the 21st century, America will also not go against the wishes India in supporting any political party in Bangladesh. Moreover, in terms of Islamophobia, Sheikh Hasina, Hindutva India and the Zionist white supremacists are complement each other. BNP has to continue its fight by uniting the majority of Bangladesh under its aegis. It is mentionable that in the policymaking forums of BNP, my political stance has been labelled utopian and foolhardy. At one point of time, I observed that I was being kept out of the intellectual forum of the party. The opportunist and pro-Indian so-called intellectuals of 1/11 began to crowd around the Gulshan premises of the Chairperson. BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Alamgir and Standing Committee member Amir Khusru Mahmud Chowdhury began to lead this new bloc of BNP intellectuals. This new bloc of intellectuals has put BNP on the track to elections in a premature fashion on the advice of India. Even though I knew the BNP leadership has ceased to listen to my advice, I nonetheless tried my utmost to bring them back to the track of Ziaur Rahman’s ideology. All my attempts have failed. In the meantime, the pro-Indian agent group within the BNP has already begun implementing the blue print set up to grant legitimacy to Sheikh Hasina’s illegitimate rule. By continuously propagating the hyped-up slogan that boycotting the 2014 elections was a wrong decision, they have even weakened Begum Zia’s resolve mentally and psychologically. I would like to share an incident from personal experience in this regard.

I was forced to journey throughout the length and breadth of Bangladesh for appearing at court due to my numerous old and new 125 court cases. In one such court appearance, I had gone to Dinajpur. At the court, I ran into Akhtaruzzaman, a BNP ex-parliamentary member from one of the parliamentary seats at Dinajpur. A gentleman, he always tries to keep abreast of the BNP leaders-members of his area. At one point of discussing about politics, he said that Begun Zia had committed a huge mistake in boycotting the 2014 elections, and that if BNP were to boycott the 2018 elections as well, it would spell the end of the BNP. I tried my best to convince him that Sheikh Hasina should not be given legitimacy. It was useless. He forcefully stated that the BNP Secretary General and all the election candidates were for participating in the elections. On that day, I became convinced that suicidal politics within the BNP had festered and become untreatable. The morally corrupt opportunistic bloc within BNP had successfully confused the rank and file of the party. I do not know if Akhtaruzzaman had attained candidacy in this farcical election, or whether, if he has attained candidacy, he has been able to save his election deposit money by garnering enough votes. I do not even have the desire to want to know such news. I just wonder about the huge loss to the party and the country due the faulty beliefs of experienced and root level politicians like Akhtaruzzaman. I imagine that it is not just Aktaruzzaman who has single handedly set foot into this quicksand trap through the faulty decision to take part in the elections, many leaders at various levels in the BNP have made the same mistake. And it is not just the BNP, but Jamaat-e-Islami is living in the same fool’s paradise. That participation in the election is a must, this madness has trumped all considerations within Jamaat, resulting in a grab for election participation under the paddy sheaf symbol of the BNP, despite Jamaat itself having no electoral registration. The simple truth that Delhi and Sheikh Hasina will not even give Jamaat one seat has eluded the leadership of Jamaat. What should I call this strategy – foolhardiness, opportunistic, or simply stupidity?

The lack of self-confidence within the BNP leadership is clear from the recruitment of leaders from outside BNP. Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul expended a lot of effort in bringing in former Awami League leaders into the Oikyo Front coalition and went to contest elections under the leadership of Dr. Kamal Hossain. I have tried to find the reason behind why the BNP required the likes of Dr. Kamal, Kader Siddiqui, ASM Rob, Mahmudur Rahman Manna, etc. The BNP, in order to please the Indo-American nexus, tried as much as possible to shed their imagined Islamic garb. I believe that this move may also explain why the BNP tried to recruit one time Awami League leaders. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the initiative by the BNP Secretary General received complete support from Begum Zia and Tareq Rahman. It is interesting to note that the policymaking body of BNP is full of those who are highly secular in their personal lives. Unfortunately, the reason behind the sticking of the Islamic label on their backs was due to the founding ideology of Bangladeshi nationalism by the party founder, and the BNP’s electoral alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami. It is surprising to note that although the party leadership did not sever its ties with Jamaat-e-Islami, the same leadership did not hesitate to abandon Ziaur Rahman. The name of Ziaur Rahman did not once escape Dr. Kamal’s lips, not before the election, and neither after it. Seating Mirza Fakhrul beside him, he readily praised the first killer of democracy in Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. While outside the country, I heard that the policymaking body of the BNP had heatedly debated whether to keep ‘Bismillahir Rahmanur Rahim’ (In the name of God, the Merciful, the Benevolent) in the text of the election manifesto. The Islam-hating nature of the Awami League is well known and goes back quite a long way. Sheikh Hasina can readily work to remove “Absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah” from the constitution on a mere whim. However, it is difficult to conceive that, following her example, the BNP leadership is having a dilemma with the name of Allah.

The bankruptcy of current BNP politics during election time was clear from the interview given by Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul to an Indian newspaper. He admitted with ease that BNP had eagerly tried to sit in a meeting at Bangkok with the Secretary General of current ruling party in India, the Hindutva BJP, but had failed due to indifference from the other side. Moreover, it is said that even the people at the embassy of India in Dhaka refuse to give any importance to the BNP. Earlier, Humayun Kabir, personal aide to Tareq Rahman, Standing Committee member Amir Khusru and Vice Chairman Abdul Awwal Mintu had gone to India, and openly criticized the politics of Begun Zia and Ziaur Rahman in a shameless attempt at gaining the favour of Delhi. It is expected that a party lacking morals and self-respect would not receive respect anywhere, nationally or internationally.

As per information from the online news outlets, Sheikha Hasina has granted a total of 7 constituencies to the BNP and Gonoforum as charity. Among those attaining these constituencies as charity, there is Mirza Fakhrul Alamgir too. However, instead of being granted his home ground seat in Thakurgaon, he was declared as the winner from Begum Zia’s constituency in Bogura. I had earlier, more than once, warned of the fate of those who would be participating in the elections under Sheikh Hasina’s government- the number of constituencies and who would win from the opposition party would be decided together by Sheikh Hasina and Indian intelligence agency RAW. My fears have turned into reality. Regarding the seven seats given to the opposition, two old facts come to mind. The history of farcical elections in Bangladesh began in 1973. Sheikh Mujib, the father of BNP-legitimized fascist Sheikh Hasina, had similarly given 7 seats to the opposition while showing the Awami League winners in the remaining 293 seats. In that election, Oikyo Front’s Dr. Kamal had also won a constituency on the ticket of Awami League. The daughter of Sheikh Mujib has fulfilled the ideology of her father word by word. Here, the number of seats, seven, is not a coincidence, but deliberate. Questions have risen among the people as to whether the BNP Jamaat leadership have the ability to face such fearful fascism. The second incident is from 1991. In an interview given to an Indian newspaper before the elections, Sheikh Hasina predicted that she would become the Prime Minister and Jatiya Party’s General Ershad would be in the second position. Her opinion on the BNP was that the party would merely receive about ten seats. I believe that Sheikh Hasina clearly remembers these words of hers. She has kept her word. In the farcical elections of the 30th of December, Jatiya Party has come second with 22 constituencies. And BNP hasn’t attained 10 seats, even after recruiting Dr. Kamal. The process which the Bangladesh military started in 2007 through sacrificing the country’s freedom to India, has been completed by Sheikh Hasina on 30th December 2018, with help from BNP-Jamaat. The patriotic army, like during the Plassey tragedy, continued to watch motionless as the seal was stamped on the document of subservience. It had taken 190 years to reclaim the independence of Bengal and India. I will perhaps not live long enough to see how many years it will take us to attain our independence. But I still dream of reclaiming independence and want to live out my life with this dream. I reiterate what I have said many times in the past to the people of Bangladesh. No one willingly gives you your freedom or right. It is only won after a lot of struggle, and at the cost of a lot of lives. I pray to the Almighty Allah that subservience does not turn into a habit of the people of this land.

On a different note: Since the afternoon before the day of election, two government leaning TV channels, Shomoy and DBC, without any relevance whatsoever, unleashed an information war against me. They broadcast a minute or so long audio claiming that I had met some ISI agent while performing Umrah in 2017. The Indian-puppet regime and the TV authorities can best explain why this one-year old incident had suddenly become relevant now.

I listened to the audio. A person called Mehmud had called me to get an appointment with me. In response I said that I would leave Medina the next day. So, he must come that very day if he still wanted to meet me. If anyone listens to the audio s/he will understand that I didn’t know this Mehmud person and I had never met him before. Now, what is the proof that this person named Mehmud wasn’t an agent of Indian intelligence RAW or CIA? I had met countless people in Mecca and Medina. All of them are Muslims by default since only Muslims are allowed to enter into those two sacred cities. People know me at home and abroad and I enjoy being in people’s company. Talking to them is a learning and inspiring experience to me. I never object to meet with anyone visiting me. If that unknown gentleman’s name was Modi instead of Mehmud I would still have met him with same eagerness. In no way could I know who is the agent of whom.

A more interesting note is that the news outlets claimed that I met that Mehmud person on behalf of BNP permanent committee member Khandokar Mosharraf. Dude, although Khadokar Mosharraf and I both hail from Comilla’s Daudkandi, it is well known to Begum Khaleda Zia and many others within BNP that we don’t see eye to eye. During the 2001-06 tenure of BNP, Khandokar Mosharraf had complained to Begum Zia against me. We exchanged uncomfortable exchanges between us. An even bigger fact is that I am extremely independent minded, and a stubborn person. It is not characteristic of me that I would talk to a foreign agent on behalf of someone else. By now my countrymen have known me enough to clearly understand this much about me. Thus, it is better if the concerned people refrain from such fake propaganda.

Lastly, I heard Bangladesh has enacted some digital security law. Are such fake phone conversation leaks deemed a criminal offense under the digital law? I wonder what the fate of these channel authorities will be when this authoritarian regime will collapse. You people cannot stop me from my struggle against fascism and Indian hegemony by unleashing such campaigns based on fake news. The real patriotic people of Bangladesh will always be on my side insha Allah.

1 January 2019

Editor, The Daily Amar Desh