Archives: Articles

By Bill Van Auken

The death toll rose to at least 37 Thursday in the nationwide protests and street clashes that have gripped Venezuela over the past month.

The identity of the latest victims reflects the violent and provocative character of the campaign being waged by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition, as well as the increasingly repressive crackdown being carried out by the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Parallel to this political confrontation playing out in the streets of Caracas and other major cities, the country’s desperate economic crisis has unleashed a growing wave of looting by sections of the oppressed, driven to desperation over the lack of food and declining real incomes.

Hecder Lugo Perez, 22, died Friday after being hit in the head by a projectile in the northwestern city of Valencia, a center of Venezuela’s moribund auto industry and other manufacturing plants that have seen mass layoffs. The city of 1.8 million has been one of the major flash points in the looting that has swept the country, with some 70 stores sacked on Tuesday.

Killed on Thursday was Juan Lopez Manjares, 33, the student federation president at the Instituto Universitario Tecnologico Jose Antonio Anzoategui in the northeastern city of El Tigre. The student leader, a supporter of the government, was gunned down after leading a student assembly, with his assassin fleeing on a motorcycle.

Also reported Thursday was the death of a policeman, Gerardo Barrera, 38, who died from gunshot wounds suffered the day before in a confrontation with demonstrators in the northwestern town of San Joaquin.

The wave of demonstrations was touched off on April 1 after Venezuela’s Supreme Court issued a ruling abrogating the legislative powers of the country’s opposition-controlled National Assembly. The move was part of the attempt by the Maduro government to consolidate power under conditions in which the president and his policies have become deeply unpopular, not only among the well-heeled constituency of the political right, but among far wider layers of working people.

The government was compelled to reverse the measure after coming under significant criticism from within its own ranks, including by the country’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega Diaz, a government loyalist who is married to a legislator of the ruling PSUV. Symptomatic of the continuing internal crises of the Maduro government, and calculations among some of its leading figures that regime change may be near, Ortega intensified her criticisms in an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, declaring, “It’s time to hold talks and to negotiate. It means one has to yield on decisions for the good of the country.” She also departed from the government’s blaming of all the violence on demonstrators, stating, “We can’t demand peaceful and legal behavior from citizens if the state takes decisions that don’t accord with the law.”

Demonstrations have intensified after Maduro’s announcement that he is calling a “constituent assembly” to make changes to the constitution instituted in 1999 by his predecessor as president, the late Hugo Chavez.

The government has given no clear indication of what it intends to change in the existing constitution, but has made it clear that it intends to pack the body with its own supporters, drawing 50 percent of its members from “social movements,” which are state-controlled, and 50 percent from regional elections.

Maduro has vaguely described the assembly as a path to “peace” and “national dialogue.” The right-wing opposition has charged that it is aimed at circumventing a 2018 presidential election that he would likely lose.

In a May 1 speech, Maduro claimed that the revisions to the constitution would include measures to support the “post-petroleum economy,” an oblique reference to the failure of 18 years of chavista rule to alter Venezuela’s fatal semi-colonial dependence on a single commodity, oil. It is entirely possible that the government aims to invite foreign investors to bid on parts of the state-owned oil industry, PDVSA. Late last year, the government opened up 112,000 square kilometers to open-pit mining in a $4.5 billion dollar deal with transnational mining companies.

Like the attempted suspension of the right wing-led National Assembly, there is nothing progressive about the convening of such an assembly, which will reflect not the will or aspirations of the masses of Venezuelan working people, but rather the political exigencies of the Maduro government and its principal constituencies: the military, functionaries within the state apparatus and ruling party and the boliburguesia, the layer of capitalist investors, contractors and speculators who have enriched themselves under the rule of so-called “Bolivarian Socialism.”

Under Chavez—and thanks to oil prices that topped $100 a barrel—these layers were able to pursue their interests while still providing minimal social assistance programs that reduced poverty and provided housing, health care and improved education to the more oppressed sections of the population. Chavez’s death in 2013, however, was quickly followed by the plummeting of the price of oil, the commodity that accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings. Since then, the economy has contracted by 27 percent, while the inflation rate, the highest in the world, is set to reach 720 percent this year, according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

With vastly reduced export earnings, the government has slashed imports of foreign food, medicine and other basic necessities in order to divert dwindling reserves to meet foreign debt payments to international finance capital.

Venezuelan working people have borne the terrible burden of paying off Wall Street. Four out of five people now live in poverty, and masses are facing hunger. Recent surveys have found that nearly a third of the population now eats two or fewer meals a day—compared to 12.5 percent in 2015—and three out of four Venezuelans had lost on average 19 pounds last year.

In the face of the right-wing campaign to topple his government, on the one hand, and growing social unrest and class tensions, on the other, Maduro has turned increasingly to the military, which has always served as the principal pillar of the movement founded by Hugo Chavez, himself a former paratrooper colonel who led an unsuccessful coup in 1992.

Military officers now head up a third of the government’s ministries and make up half of the country’s governors. Key areas of the economy, including those where the most money is to be made off of corruption, have been placed under military control, including ports, food distribution and the control of foreign exchange.

Under a decree known as Plan Zamora, the Maduro government has essentially arrogated to itself the power to impose martial law, while bringing the police under the control of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). On Thursday it was announced that “70 vandals” arrested during a wave of looting in the state of Carabobo will be brought before military tribunals to face charges of looting and “rebellion.”

The right-wing opposition is appealing increasingly to the military to overthrow Maduro in a coup under the pretext of defending the constitution. Venezuelan right-wing opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who has demanded that the military “intervene,” claimed on his Twitter feed Friday that “85 officers of our FANB (Bolivarian National Armed Forces)” had been arrested for “having manifested their discontent.”

The New York Times, which openly supported the CIA-backed abortive coup against Chavez in 2002, published an opinion piece this week by a Venezuelan journalist, who assessed that “the possibility of a negotiated transition satisfactory to the opposition is negligible,” adding that “the alternative would be a military intervention to install a national unity government.”

Meanwhile, one of the biggest holders of Venezuelan bonds has made it clear that his firm is betting on and supporting “regime change.”

“Like most Venezuelans, we would welcome, and ultimately expect a change in regime,” Mike Conelius, who manages the $6.5 billion T. Rowe Price Emerging Markets Bond Fund, wrote investors in an email reported by Bloomberg News. The firm has posted huge profits as Venezuela has repeatedly made interest payments by slashing imports and the living conditions of masses of Venezuelan workers. It expects even richer dividends in the event of a coup against Maduro. “The cathartic moment of regime change will be quickly repriced in the market,” Conelius wrote.

Attempting to place US imperialism’s thumb more firmly on the scale, a bipartisan group of US Senators has urged President Donald Trump to intervene more aggressively against Venezuela. The Senators, who include Democrats like Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate Tim Kaine of Virginia, introduced on Wednesday the “Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act of 2017” to ratchet up sanctions against Venezuela and pressure on its government.

In particular, the legislation calls attention to investments by the Russian energy giant Rosneft in Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned PDVSA petroleum company, describing the ties as a “significant risk to U.S. national security and energy security.”

The pursuit of a more aggressive policy against Venezuela, linked to the military buildup against Russia, would be entrusted in large measure to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He is the former CEO of ExxonMobil, whose predecessor company, Standard Oil, controlled Venezuelan oil production for half a century until Caracas nationalized the industry in 1976.

7 May 2017

By Thomas Piketty

“The break with the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ or thirty year post-war boom is striking: between 1950 and 1983, incomes were rising steadily by almost 4% per annum for the immense majority of the population. On the contrary, it was the highest incomes which had to settle for a growth of barely 1% per annum. The fact that the post-war boom (Trente Glorieuses) is not over for everyone has not gone unnoticed: you only have to read the weekly magazines with the salaries of the executives and the ranking of fortunes to realise this”.

A long-standing legend has it that France is a profoundly egalitarian country which has miraculously escaped the sharp rise in inequality observed elsewhere. If so, how can we explain the anxiety provoked by globalisation and by Europe which is expressed so forcefully in this presidential campaign? In the first instance by recognising that  this great national myth of France as egalitarian and an exception to the rule is grossly exaggerated and, secondly, because it is too often used by the dominant groups to justify our own national hypocrisy.

There is nothing new here. France was the last country to adopt a progressive income tax, and did so under the Law of 15 July 1914, voted in extremis to finance the war. In contrast, this tax had already been introduced in Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States and Japan, sometimes decades previously, to finance schools and public services. Until 1914, the political and economic elites in the Third Republic had stubbornly refused this type of reform declaring that France had already become egalitarian, thanks to the Revolution, and therefore had no need of an intrusive and predatory tax, more suited to the aristocratic and authoritarian societies which surrounded us. In reality, the inheritance archives demonstrate that the concentration of property and income was as extreme in the France of the period as in other European societies (and greater than in the United States).

Today we find the same hypocrisy when confronted with the glaring inequalities in our educational system. In France, in all good republican conscience, we choose to devote three times more public resources to the selective « grandes ecoles » than is spent on those university courses in which young people from socially underprivileged backgrounds are concentrated. Now this elitist and austerity tendency which has already led to a fall of 10% in expenditure per student between 2007 and 2017 (even though we all talk of the ‘knowledge society’, ‘innovation’, etc) may well get worse in the next five years, if we judge from some of the electoral programmes. France is also the country in which private primary and secondary schools are almost entirely financed by the taxpayers, while reserving the right to choose the pupils which suit them. This contributes to unacceptable levels of social segregation. There again the status quo is breezing ahead.

As far as the development of monetary inequalities is concerned, a new study carried out with Bertrand Garbinti and Jonathan Goupille-Lebret (on line on WID.world), clearly shows the limits of the French myth of egalitarianism. True, the rise in inequality has been less widespread than in the United States, where the share of the poorest 50% in the national income has literally collapsed. The fact remains that France has also experienced a sharp rise in inequality. Between 1983 and 2015, the average income of the richest 1% has risen by 100% (above inflation) and that of the 0.1% richest by 150%, as compared with barely 25% for the rest of the population (or less than 1% per annum).  The richest 1% alone has siphoned off 21% of total growth, as compared with 20% for the poorest 50%. The break with the ‘Trente Glorieuses’ or thirty year post-war boom is striking: between 1950 and 1983, incomes were rising steadily by almost 4% per annum for the immense majority of the population. On the contrary, it was the highest incomes which had to settle for a growth of barely 1% per annum. The fact that the post-war boom (Trente Glorieuses) is not over for everyone has not gone unnoticed: you only have to read the weekly magazines with the salaries of the executives and the ranking of fortunes to realise this.

The study also confirms the strong growth of the highest assets, 90% of which are held in financial portfolios, when above 10 million Euros, These have risen, not only much faster than GDP since the years 1980-1990, but also faster than the average assets (driven upwards by property assets). We find this prosperity in the number and amounts of assets declared year after year in the wealth tax. There is no problem of outflow here: on the contrary we see a very dynamic basis for fiscal purposes.

In these conditions, it is difficult to understand why some candidates think it opportune to abolish the wealth tax on financial assets, or to impose a lower tax on financial incomes than on income from employment. To promote mobility, it would be more judicious to lower the property tax (which is by far the principal tax on wealth: it generates 30 billion Euros as compared with 5 billion Euros for the wealth tax) for the households who have borrowed to buy property.

Some may consider this a kickback in return for the political financing observed. One can also see in these fiscal choices the effects of a sincere but false ideology, whereby subjecting people and territories to whole scale competition would spontaneously result in social harmony and prosperity for all. What is sure is that it is dangerous to address first and foremost those who have gained from globalisation and to invent a new French passion for the regressive tax, while the most vulnerable social groups have the impression they have been abandoned and are increasingly attracted by the sirens of xenophobia.  It is urgent to face up to the fact that inequality does exist in France.

Thomas Piketty is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Capital in the Twenty-First Century

18 April 2017

By Gail Tverberg

Most people assume that oil prices, and for that matter other energy prices, will rise as we reach limits. This isn’t really the way the system works; oil prices can be expected to fall too low, as we reach limits. Thus, we should not be surprised if the OPEC/Russia agreement to limit oil extraction falls apart, and oil prices fall further. This is the way the “end” is reached, not through high prices.

I recently tried to explain how the energy-economy system works, including the strange way prices fall, rather than rise, as we reach limits, at a recent workshop in Brussels called “New Narratives of Energy and Sustainability.” The talk was part of an “Inspirational Workshop Series” sponsored by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

My talk was titled, “Elephants in the Room Regarding Energy and the Economy.” (PDF) In this post, I show my slides and give a bit of commentary.

The question, of course, is how this growth comes to an end.

I have been aided in my approach by the internet and by the insights of many commenters to my blog posts.

We all recognize that our way of visualizing distances must change, when we are dealing with a finite world.

I should note that not all economists have missed the fact that the pricing situation changes, as limits are reached. Aude Illig and Ian Schindler have recently published a paper that concludes, “We find that price feedback cycles which lead to increased production during the growth phase of oil extraction go into reverse in the contraction phase of oil extraction, speeding decline.”

The comments shown in red on Slide 6 reflect a variety of discussions over the last several years. Oil prices in the $50 per barrel range are way too low for producers. They may be high enough to get “oil out of the ground,” but they are not high enough to encourage necessary reinvestment, and they are not high enough to provide the tax revenue that oil exporters depend on.

Most people don’t stop to think about the symmetric nature of the problem. They also don’t realize that the adverse impacts of low oil prices don’t necessarily appear immediately. They can temporarily be hidden by more debt.

There would be no problem, if wages would rise, as oil prices rise. Or if there were an easily substitutable source of cheap energy. The problem becomes an affordability problem.

The economists’ choice of the word “demand” is confusing. A person cannot simply demand to buy a car, or demand to go on a vacation trip. The person needs some way to pay for these things.

If researchers don’t examine the situation closely, they miss the nuances.

Many people think that growing use of tools can save us, because of the possibility of increased productivity.

Using a growing amount of tools leads to the need for a growing amount of debt.

Read this chart from left to right. If we combine increasing quantities of resources, workers, and tools, the output is a growing quantity of goods and services.

Read this chart from right to left. How do we divide up the goods and services produced, among those who produced the products? If we can only use previously produced goods to pay workers and other contributors to the system, we will never have enough. But with the benefit of debt, we can promise some participants “future goods and services,” and thus have enough goods and services to pay everyone.

If we decrease the amount of debt, we have a big problem. Instead of the debt adding to the amount of goods and services produced, the shrinkage acts to decrease the amount of goods and services available for distribution as pay. This is why moving from deficit spending to a balanced budget, or a budget that reduces debt, is so painful.

When I say (resources/population), I mean resources per capita. Falling resources per capita makes it harder to earn an adequate living. Think of farmers trying to subsist on ever-smaller farms. It would become increasingly difficult for them to earn a living, unless there is a big improvement in technology.

Or think of a miner who is extracting ore that is gradually dropping from 5% metal, to 2% metal, to 1% metal content, and so on, because the best quality ore is extracted first. The miner needs to work an increasing number of hours, to produce the ore needed for 100 kilograms of the metal. The economy is becoming in some sense “worse off,” because the worker is becoming “inefficient” through no fault of his own. The resources needed to provide benefits simply are less available, due to diminishing returns. This problem is sometimes reported as “falling productivity per worker.”

Falling productivity per worker tends to lower wages. And lower wages put downward pressure on commodity prices, because of affordability problems.

The problems that prior civilizations reached before collapse sound in many ways like the problems we are seeing today. We are seeing increased specialization, and falling relative wages of non-elite workers.

We seem to have already gone though a long period of stagflation, since the 1970s. The symptoms we are seeing today look as if we are approaching a steep downslope. If we are approaching a crisis stage, our crisis stage may be much shorter than the 20 to 50 years observed historically. Earlier civilizations (from which these timeframes were observed), did not have electricity or the extensive international trade system we have today.

The period since 1998 seems especially flat for wages for US wage earners, in inflation-adjusted terms. This is the period since energy prices started rising, and since globalization started playing a greater role.

This is a list I made, showing how, what looks to be beneficial–adding tools and technology–eventually leads to our downfall. The big problem that occurs is that non-elite workers become too poor to afford the output of the economy. Adding robots to replace workers looks efficient, but leaves many unemployed. Unemployment is even worse than low pay.

We can think of the economy as being a self-organized network of businesses, consumers, and governments. New products are gradually added, and ones that are no longer needed are eliminated. Government regulations change in response to changing business conditions. Debt is especially important for economic growth, because it makes goods affordable for customers, and it enables the use of “tools.” Prices are created almost magically by this networked system, through the interaction between supply and demand (reflecting affordability, among other things).

It is only in recent years that physicists have become increasingly aware of the fact that many types of structures form in the presence of flows of energy. We have known for a long time that plants and animals can grow when conditions are right. The networked economy illustrated on Slide 22 is one of the types of things that can grow and flourish in the presence of energy flows.

This is my view of how an economy, as a dissipative structure, works. “Tools and technology” are at the center. If a person doesn’t think too much about the issues involved, it is easy to assume that tools and technology will allow the economy to grow forever.

There is a potential for problems, both with respect to inputs and waste outputs. Early modelers missed many of these “issues.” M. King Hubbert created a model in which the quantity of energy supply and technology are the only issues of importance. He thus missed the impact of the Waste Output problems at the right. The Waste Outputs lead to falling prices as limited supply nears, and thus lead to a much steeper drop in production than Hubbert’s symmetric model would suggest.

Peak oilers recognized one important point: our use of oil products would at some point have to come to an end. But they did not understand how complex the situation is. Low prices, rather than high, would be the problem. We would see gluts rather than shortages, as we approach limits. Much of the oil that seems to be technologically extractable, will really be left in the ground, because of low prices and other problems.

Here, I am getting back to the topic I was originally asked to talk about. What else, besides low energy prices and too much debt, are likely to be problems as we reach limits?

The easy way of modeling the use of wind turbines and solar turbines is to assume that the electricity produced by these devices is equivalent to electricity produced by fossil fuels, or by hydroelectric. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Trying to integrate solar panels into an electric grid adds a whole new level of complexity to the electrical system. I have only illustrated some of the issues that arise in Slide 28.

The fact that the price system doesn’t work for any fuel is a major impediment to adding more than a very small percentage of intermittent renewables to the electric grid. Intermittent renewables can only be used on the electric grid if they have 24/7/365 backup supply that can be ramped up and down as needed. Unfortunately, the pricing system does not provide nearly high enough rates for this service. We are now seeing how this works out in practice. South Australia lost its last two coal-fired electricity power plants due to inadequate wholesale electricity prices when it added wind and solar. Now it is experiencing problems with both high electricity prices and too-frequent outages.

Another problem is that new [long distance] transmission makes buying from neighbors optimal, over at the left of Slide 28. This is a new version of tragedy of the commons. Once long distance lines are available, and a neighbor has a fairly inexpensive supply of electricity, the temptation is to simply buy the neighbor’s electricity, rather than build local electricity generating capacity. The greater demand, without additional supply, then raises electricity prices for all, including the neighbor who originally had the less expensive electricity generation.

It is easy to assume that EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) or some other popular metric tells us something useful about the cost of integrating intermittent renewables into the electric grid, but this really isn’t the case.

We are now beginning to see what happens in “real life,” as intermittent renewables are added. For example, we can now see the problems South Australia is having with high eletricity prices and too many outages as well as the high electricity prices in Germany and Denmark (Slide 29).

Wind and solar are not very helpful as stand-alone devices. Yet this is the way they are modeled. Some researchers have included installation costs, but this still misses the many problems that these devices cause for the electrical system, especially as the share of electricity production by these devices rises.

A networked system works differently than a system that is “user controlled.” It builds itself, and it can collapse, if conditions aren’t right. I have shown the economy as hollow, because there is no way of going backward.

Many people miss the point that economy must keep growing. In fact, I pointed this out in Slide 2 and gave an additional reason why it must keep growing on Slide 16. As the economy grows, we tend to need more energy. Growing efficiency can only slightly offset this. Thus, as a practical matter, energy per capita needs to stay at least level for an economy to grow.

If energy prices rise, this will tend to squeeze out non-discretionary spending. If we cannot obtain energy products sufficiently cheaply, the system of economic growth will stop.

The fact that energy prices can, and do, fall below the cost of production is something that has been missed by many modelers. Prices can go down, even when the cost of production plus taxes needed by governments rises!

Wind and solar are part of the category at the top called “renewables.” This category also includes energy from wood and from geothermal. Many people do not realize how small this category is. Hydroelectric is also considered a renewable, but it is not growing in supply in the United States or Europe.

It takes energy to have an intergovernmental organization, such as the European Union. In fact, it takes energy to operate any kind of government. When there is not enough surplus energy to go around, citizens decide that the benefits of belonging to such organization are less than the costs involved. That is the reason for the Brexit vote, and the reason the question is coming up elsewhere.

The amount of taxes oil-producing countries can collect depends on how high the price of oil is. If the price isn’t high enough, oil-exporting countries generally have to cut back their budgets. Even Saudi Arabia is having difficulty with low oil prices. It has needed to borrow, in order to maintain its programs.

Oil prices have been too low for producers since at least mid-2014. It is possible to hide a problem with low prices with increasing debt, for a few years, but not indefinitely. The longer the low-price scenario continues, the more likely a collapse in production is. Also, the tendency of international organizations of government to collapse (Slide 38) takes a few years to manifest itself, as does the tendency for civil unrest within oil exporters.

It is easy to miss the point that modeling a piece of the system doesn’t necessarily tell a person very much about the system as a whole.

Once an incorrect understanding of our energy problem becomes firmly entrenched, it becomes very difficult for leaders to understand the real problem.

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. Ms. Tverberg is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries.  Ms. Tverberg began writing articles on finite world issues in early 2006.  Since March 1, 2007, Ms. Tverberg has been working for Tverberg Actuarial Services on finite world issues.  Her blog is http://ourfiniteworld.com

5 May 2017

By Eric Zuesse

A Morning Consult poll published on April 28th showed that “roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media ‘is out of touch with everyday Americans,’ compared with 28 percent who said it ‘understand the issues everyday Americans are facing’.” Plus: “Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they trusted Trump’s White House to tell the truth, while 29 percent opted for the media.” So: the U.S. ‘news’ media are widely distrusted by the American people.

Among Republicans, 72% trusted “Trump’s White House” over (or more than) “National Political Media,” and 10% trusted the media over Trump, and that’s a ratio of 7.2 to 1 trusting Trump over the media. Among Democrats, however, 54% trusted media over Trump, and 12% trusted Trump over media, and that’s a ratio of 4.5 to 1 trusting media over Trump. So: Democrats there were far more trusting of the media than were Republicans.

The big turning-point on the trust of U.S. ‘news’ media was 2003. Americans had trusted the media not to be mere stenographers for the George W. Bush White House back before we invaded and wrecked Iraq on 20 March of that year, and Americans gradually discovered that the media instead had been mere stenographers, not authentic journalists at all — not journalists in any genuinely democratic country. (In any country where the newsmedia can’t reasonably be trusted, and this must include any stenographic press, no real democracy is even possible.) Other studies have shown that Republicans trust Fox News and other Republican Party organs the most as ‘news’media, and that Democrats trust CNN and other Democratic Party organs the most as ‘news’media. Practically everyone seeks ‘news’ that ‘confirms’ his/her particular political myths.

And Gallup has found that during 1997 to 2005, Democrats’ “Trust in Mass Media” gradually rose from around 60% in 1997, to a peak of 70% in 2005, as Democrats’ suspicions of the Republican White House after Bush’s invasion of Iraq soared when no WMD were found there and the ‘news’ media were by now blaming the ‘errors’ upon allegedly ‘faulty intelligence’, instead of upon America’s real dictatorship — the actual regime in power and its stenographic ‘news’ media. From 2005 till now, that 70% figure among Democrats has declined to 51%, as increasing numbers of Democrats come to recognize that we live in a dictatorship. Meanwhile, Republicans during the period 1997 to the start of 2003, trusted the “Mass Media” at percentages ranging in the 40s, but this figure suddenly plunged down to 31% after the invasion of Iraq when the ‘news’ reports from Iraq disconfirmed all of the Republican regime’s allegations — Republicans distrusted the press the more, as the truth started to be reported the more. By the start of 2015, those Republican percentages were still around 31%, and Republicans were still trusting the most, the Republican news network Fox News, which had cheer-led Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But then, on 14 September 2016, Gallup headlined “Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low”, and reported that the main reason for the new low was that now only a record low of 14% of Republicans still trusted the “Mass Media.” It had plunged more than half since the prior year’s 32% figure for Republicans. And, at that same time, 51% of Democrats still trusted the “Mass Media,” which was a record-low percentage for Democrats too, but still remained higher than every Republican percentage for trusting the media except for the 52% Republican trust in the “Mass Media” back in 1998, when the Democrats’ Lewinsky affair and impeachment of Bill Clinton dominated the ’news’.

In other words: people trust the media if and to the extent that the media are confirming their suspicions. American politics is two imaginary ‘realities’, both controlled by the same aristocracy: the Republicans’ ‘reality’, and the Democrats’ ‘reality’ — and both ‘realities’ are dominated by the same lies, but different bumper-stickers representing them. (These shared bipartisan lies are the falsehoods that are essential to supporting the entire oligarchy, and they mainly concern international relations.)

Trust in the ‘news’ media is sinking, but remains unrealistically high, unrealistic especially amongst Democrats (since they still overwhelmingly trust the ‘news’); and this trust is the chief thing that keeps the U.S. regime — both the “Democratic” and the “Republican” wings of it — in power, as a two-Party dictatorship, both of whose Parties represent the same aristocracy.

During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaigns, it was clear to any intelligent American that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton was at all trustworthy, and so the country split even more sharply than before along purely partisan lines. There was really nothing else for voters to go on; it was just a selection between two competing psychopaths. Not voting at all in such an ‘election’ is to allow all other voters to make the choice instead; and this can be an efficient thing to do in such a desperate situation, if both of the psychopaths are approximately of equivalent evil — just letting everyone else do the ‘coin-tosses’.

The least intelligent Americans chose instead the inefficient way to allow everyone but oneself to make this political choice: these were the voters who cast ‘protest’ votes for third-party candidates whose only real participation in the contest was to draw off more voters from one major-Party candidate than from the other and so to throw the ‘election’ to the one whose lying rhetoric sounded the more different from that given third-party candidate’s political rhetoric. This ‘symbolic’ act (third-party voting) was merely enhancing the prospects that a minor-party candidate could become a ‘kingmaker’ between the two real candidates, and thus adding still further to the pervasive corruption. It happened with Nader in 2000 (who was crucially funded by major Republican donors), but that was the only successful recent third-party Presidential candidacy up till then — Bush v. Gore would never even have been possible, and both Florida and New Hampshire would have incontestably gone to Gore, if Nader hadn’t thrown that ‘election’ from Gore to Bush, but Nader was the only recent successful “spoiler.”

In an oligarchy, public politics is always a choice between two evils (not really more than that). It’s an attempt to select the lesser evil. What protects the oligarchs the most, is whatever sustains the lie that the nation is (or that it remains) a democracy — in other words: the longer that the myth of there being (or still being) a democracy can be sustained among the public, the safer the oligarchy will be. Maintaining this lie is maintaining the existing dictatorship.

However, it’s not only the ‘news’media that serve this essential function for the aristocracy. For example, Google, now officially known as “Alphabet Inc.,” is a major determinant of the ‘news’ that the public receives from web-searches; and in order for Google to be able to shift blame onto “an error by one of our contractors” whenever an online site that Google wants to bury discovers that Google has been hiding the given site from the public, Google has selected contractors who understand the objectives of the people who control Google; and, when those contractors then suppress a site, they cite the best-sounding excuse they can, so that the company that’s paying them, Google, will always have some excuse for its (contracted-out) censorship, and can always override the contractor’s decision as having been a mere ‘mistake’ if ever the suppressed site is already big enough to be able publicly to embarrass Google for having censored it out. Thus, for example, as “Business Insider,” one of the aristocracy’s ‘news’media explains it, “A vendor hired by Google employs contractors to rate the websites that appear in its search results — the rating is used to improve search quality, helping Google’s automated search algorithm prioritize higher-rated, reliable information.” And, after the large anti-Establishment InfoWars site complained, “Google said Monday that a vendor mistakenly told staffers working for the search engine that InfoWars should be ranked as a low-quality site.” In other words: the censorship then can be described as having been a “mistake.” (But, of course, the contractor doesn’t usually get fired for a ‘mistake’ — unless it really was that, which rarely is the case.) And, so, “Google’s representative distanced the company from the contractor’s instructions, telling Business Insider that it does not instruct quality raters how to grade specific websites.” “Quality raters” — as if Google really cares about quality, instead of about its own bottom-line, which depends not upon quality, but upon satisfying the rest of the aristocracy (which means to provide low quality, deceiving the public in the ways that the aristocrats want).

More commonly, Google’s “quality raters” target little-known, truly independent, sites, which have no allegiance to any Party but only to truth. (Some people care about truth, no matter how unprofitable it might be.) For example, when Google threatened one of my publishers, RINF, it was over a specific article, which Google (probably actually one of their “contractors”) demanded the site to remove. The site refused to remove it. No issue of “quality” was even involved, merely a demand, and an implicit threat. The site’s owner ultimately decided that he’d rather just quit than participate in Google’s censorship of the web; and so he instead chose to ignore the threat. These are small sites, anyway; so, almost everyone who goes there is a repeat visitor, and becoming rich isn’t such a site-owner’s chief objective. These are individuals who really do care about democracy, and this means also about truth.

Incidentally, Google was deeply committed to Hillary Clinton’s becoming America’s President, and also participated importantly in her State Department’s successful coup in Ukraine, and in its (as-yet-unsuccessful) effort to overthrow Syria’s Russia-and-Iran-allied government and replace it with one that allies instead with the owners of Saudi Arabia and of Qatar, and with their allied governments, which control the U.S. and Israel.

So, international affairs are a rich thicket of deceptions, and of power; and the largest international corporations are intimately involved in it. Trump’s voters thought that he would resist that, but instead his international policies (and also many of his domestic policies) seem to be just continuing those of his predecessor, whose international policies he had intensely condemned. Mass-deception is at the basis of this ‘democracy’. But it’s not only the media, and it’s not only the government; it is the whole corrupt system, and especially the coterie of perhaps as few as a hundred people (perhaps most of which are hidden from the public, and there is no guess here as to whom are at the very top) who collectively control it.

The higher one gets, the darker it gets, but this is the only thing that’s clear, about the system. The ‘news’media serve that system, and cast any light they shed, only downward from it — below and away from it, where the stage is, not where the scriptwriters and directors and producers are, which can be very different places.

It’s all just a show, even if it’s not an entertaining one. It’s where the public are, split into various prejudices, and the prejudices that are their opposites. It’s organized truth-evasion, on ‘both’ sides.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

5 May 2017

By Andre Vltchek

In Cairo, Pope Francis, once again, did what he usually does best: he snapped at the state of immorality and selfishness, which is governing the world, particularly in the West. The message to Egypt’s priests couldactually be directed at the population of the European and North American cities:

“The first temptation is to letting ourselves to be led, rather than to lead… The second temptation is complaining constantly… The third temptation is gossip and envy… The fourth temptation is comparing us with those better off… The fifth temptation is individualism, ‘me, and after me the flood’… the final temptation is ‘keep walking without direction or destination…”

Pope Francis gave speeches, and met the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El Sisi. He appealed to Egypt to “Save the world from famine of love”. The Egyptian Gazette, an official English language newspaper, carried a headline with a photograph of Pope Francis and the President (and ex-general El Sisi), smiling at each other, as if this odd couple could truly become the entitycapable of returning both love and passion to the world.

“Although the Pope’s speeches were good, I have a big problem with anyone meeting the murderer El Sisi,” one of my friends wrote to me from exile in Paris, one of the ‘revolutionary doctors’, a man who used to be imprisoned and tortured here in Egypt.

And El Sisi he did meet, and they grinned at each other for the camera lenses.

There is one point that is hardly made in the local and international media: the Christians in Egypt fully embraced the military coup of July 2013, during and after which allegedly thousands of people were massacred (some in the poorest slums of Cairo), tens of thousands tortured, and more than a million imprisoned.

In 2012 and 2013 I was filming in Egypt for Telesur, directing and producing a documentary film about the end of the Arab Spring and the crashing of all hopes for a better, socialist Egypt. After witnessing the horrors of El Sisi’s crackdown on Morsi’s supporters, as well as on the Egyptian left, I went to the famous ‘Hanging Church’ in Coptic Cairo and asked the believers about the coup. They refused to even use the word ‘coup’, and expressed their unconditional support for the military junta.

Today, almost 4 years later, I went back to the same church, and confronted two leading Orthodox Christian clerics of Egypt, Father Jacoub and Father Samuel (they claim that in their mind there is “no difference between the Catholics and Orthodox Christians).

“Now that Egypt is bleeding and people are pushed to the edge, do Christians still support the military government?” I asked point-blank.

First, Father Samuel replied:

“Yes, now it is the same unwavering support as before. The church was behind the President, El Sisi from the very beginning, and it is with him now.”

Then Father Jacoub joined the litany:

“El Sisi protected us; he saved our country.”

Then Father Samuel again:

“President Sisi came to power during the difficult time for Egypt. He’s doing well, changing the country.”

“Isn’t it all sectarian, religious?” I wanted to know. “ Aren’t you supporting El Sisi because he attacked the Muslim Brotherhood?”

Another honest answer followed:

“Yes it is religious… Yes, it is one of the reasons for our support.”

I spoke to people in slums and on the street. Almost all of them were desperate. Food prices were skyrocketing and periodically, there have been shortages, even of some basic food.

A person with whom I used to work before, during the ‘days of hope’, was subdued, frustrated, and angry:

“Now people are really furious. Everything is getting more and more expensive. But currently, people don’t even dare to protest: the police and the army closely monitor everything. You dare to go to the streets, and they disappear you; you get immediately arrested. There are some 2 million people in our prisons, now… Perhaps one or two more years and things will explode again. It really cannot continue like this, forever.”

Egyptian people are well informed, but frightened and fragmented. They clearly comprehend what is taking place, but they are waiting for the right moment to return to the streets. I personally know those who were imprisoned and tortured in Egypt, after the coup. Every trip back here reminds me of extremely close calls, when I could have been killed myself, be it in Port Said, in Alexandria, and in Cairo. But Egypt is ‘addictive’: once you begin writing about it, it is extremely difficult to leave, forever.

“The military is everywhere,” I’m told inside the monumental Citadel built by the great Sultan Saladin, who fought against the European crusaders, defending vast areas between Egypt, Syria and Iraq:

“The military and the police; they are paid by the West, particularly by the United States. For decades, they were corrupted; they control Egyptian businesses, from A to Z. It would be suicidal to criticize them openly. And they love the West. Many of our people also have no choice but to ‘love the West’, because the economy of this enormous country has already collapsed. You are either miserably poor, or you are part of the armed forces, or in the tourist industry, or the few other services which are all somehow intertwined with the West.”

The same pattern as in Afghanistan, I realize. Endemic corruption mostly injected from outside, and hundreds, perhaps thousands of treasonous families, the elites, whoproduce nothing tangible but live well from selling their own country to the imperialist Western rulers. And then there are of course the army, the police, and dozens of their branches with complicated and proud names.

And countries are going to the dogs, while the Western mass media is busy demonizing Syria, Venezuela, the Philippines and North Korea.

This is an S.O.S. written to me a few months ago by one of the left-wing “revolutionary doctors”, with whom I was working on my Egypt film:

“The counter revolution has triumphed… Sisi dictatorship strengthened… All opposition parties and organizations squashed… thousands of revolutionaries imprisoned… Hundreds executed by court orders or liquidated by the police… Media suppressed and directly controlled by the regime… The military economic investment in the country has soared… Neoliberalism is taking hold… People are suffering.”

Is the Pope blind? Or is there perhaps some other, more complex game,which is being played?

Pope Francis is, after all, from Argentina, and his own country is deeply divided about his role during the military dictatorship there.

“POPE OF PEACE, IN EGYPT OF PEACE” one reads from the thousands of posters hanging on the electric poles of Cairo.

Really? Egypt of peace…

“The famine of love!”He and the General (currently President), together, are now ready to tackle it, heroically, hand in hand, while millions are rotting in prisons, and the country is gradually collapsing.

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images,a writer of revolutionary novel Aurora and several other books.

5 May 2017

By Kathy Kelly

The ruins carpeted the city market, rippling outwards in waves of destruction. Broken beams, collapsed roofs, exploded metal shutters and fossilized merchandise crumbled underfoot.

In one of the burnt-out shells of the shops where raisins, nuts, fabrics, incense and stone pots were traded for hundreds of years, all that was to be found was a box of coke bottles, a sofa and a child nailing wooden sticks together.

This is Sa’ada, ground zero of the 20-month Saudi campaign in Yemen, a largely forgotten conflict that has killed more than 10,000, uprooted 3 million and left more than half the country short of food, many on the brink of starvation.

Gaith Abdul-Ahad in The Guardian, 12/9/16

Yemen stands as the worst-threatened of four countries where impending famine conditions have been said to comprise the single-worst humanitarian crisis since the founding of the U.N.  On May 2nd, 2017, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a grim infographic detailing conditions in Yemen where 17 million Yemenis — or around 60 percent of the population — are unable to access food.  The U.S. and its allies continue to bomb Yemen.

Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), says that seven million Yemeni people are on the brink of famine. “I am shocked to my bones,” said Egeland, following a five day visit to Yemen. “The world is letting some 7 million men, women and children slowly but surely be engulfed…” Egeland blames this catastrophe on “men with guns and power in regional and international capitals who undermine every effort to avert an entirely preventable famine, as well as the collapse of health and educational services for millions of children.” Egeland and the NRC call on all parties to the conflict, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, the U.S. and the U.K. to negotiate a cease fire.

This weekend, the situation stands poised to become dramatically worse with the apparently imminent bombing, by Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’ closest allies, of the aid lifeline which is the port of Hodeida.

Egeland stresses the vital importance of keeping humanitarian aid flowing through Hodeida, a port which stands mere days or hours from destruction. “The Saudi-led, Western-backed military coalition has threatened to attack the port,” said Egeland, “which would likely destroy it and cut supplies to millions of hungry civilians.”  U.S. congress people demanding a stay on destruction of the port have as yet won no concessions from the Saudi or U.S governments.

The U.S. Government has as yet sounded no note of particular urgency about ending or suspending the conflict, nor has its close ally in the Saudi dictatorship.  Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently gave “a positive view of the war in Yemen.” (New York Times, May 2, 2017). He believes that Saudi forces could quickly uproot the Houthi rebels, but rather than endanger Saudi troops he says “the coalition is waiting for the rebels to tire out.”

“Time is in our favor,” he added.

Even if Hodeida is spared, reduced import levels of food and fuel from the Saudi-imposed naval blockade puts the price of desperately needed essentials beyond the reach of the poorest.  Meanwhile prolonged conflict, dragged out by a regime that feels “time is on its side” and punctuated by deadly airstrikes, has displaced the needy to those areas where food insecurity is the highest.

Refugees from three North African countries where conflict is also threatening to impose terrible famine have Yemen on their route to escaping the continent, so they have fled conflict and famine only to be trapped in the worst of this dreadful year’s arriving tragedies.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describes the present situation, two years since Saudi airstrikes escalated the conflict:

“The violent deaths of refugees fleeing yet another war, of fishermen, of families in marketplaces – this is what the conflict in Yemen looks like two years after it began…utterly terrible, with little apparent regard for civilian lives and infrastructure.

“The fighting in Hodeida has left thousands of civilians trapped – as was the case in Al Mokha in February – and has already compromised badly-needed deliveries of humanitarian assistance. Two years of wanton violence and bloodshed, thousands of deaths and millions of people desperate for their basic rights to food, water, health and security – enough is enough. I urge all parties to the conflict, and those with influence, to work urgently towards a full ceasefire to bring this disastrous conflict to an end, and to facilitate rather than block the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”
Time is on no-one’s side as regards the crisis in Yemen. As nightmare visions of living skeletons with bloated bellies and pleading eyes once more appear on the planet’s TV screens, we in the U.S. will have missed a vital chance to avert a world in which untold millions are to be shocked to their bones.

Kathy Kelly, (Kathy@vcnv.org), co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org)

5 May 2017

By William John Cox

During the Korean War, the United States dropped more bombs and napalm on North Korea than was used against the Japanese during World War II. The carpet bombing destroyed all of the cities and most of the villages in North Korea. More than 3,000,000 Korean civilians died in the war—most were in the North. Since the war ended with a cease fire in 1953, the North has been governed by the Kim family dictatorship, which uses the threat of American aggression to maintain its ironfisted physical and mind control of the North Korean people.

President Trump is now threatening another destructive war against the North Korean people and their society. He must not be allowed to do this—there is another way to deal with the problem. As a matter of policy, Trump can redirect his energy and efforts onto the person of Kim Jong-un, the country’s dictator, who not only threatens the safety of other nations, but who holds his own people in slavery. Why should the United States make war against a captive nation and its helpless people when there is a more effective solution?

The Failure of War as an Instrument of Public Policy

Making war against nation states and their people no longer works. Unstable and undemocratic countries, such as North Korea, are usually controlled by individuals and cabals against whom military force ends up harming their own domestic victims more than the entrenched leadership. The wrath of the people is directed against the outsiders who slaughter their children and helps solidify the rule of their domestic despots.

Destroying the infrastructure of a nation to turn its people against their “leadership” fails—as in Iraq—resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent children. Targeting “insurgents” using drones and violent nighttime home invasions fails—as in Afghanistan—resulting in “collateral” deaths and injuries to children and noncombatants. Imposition of economic sanctions fail—as in Iran—resulting in the destruction of the middle class and small businesses that are essential to a free society. Support of “rebels” against their government fails—as in Libya—when the new government is controlled by hostile and undemocratic forces. Direct military strikes fail to make a difference—as in Syria—for all of these reasons; and the threat of violent war—as in North Korea—is simply stupid against an immature dictator who has nuclear weapons and nothing to lose by using them.

The use of war as an instrument of foreign policy fails in all of these situations because it does not produce the desired change. It primarily injures the innocent victims of their unrepresentative governments and results in their hatred of the aggressors, rather than their oppressors.

In addition, the use of war by the United States also harms its own people through the wasteful diversion of scarce tax resources to the military-industrial complex, the compiling of massive and unsustainable public debt, a reduction of personal freedoms by the intelligence-security complex, and a loss of respect by other people and nations around the world.

Moreover, continued use of aggressive—yet undeclared—wars by the United States has resulted in an undemocratic shift of power from the legislative branch to the executive branch of government. The Constitution provides that “The Congress shall have power . . . To declare War . . . .”  For the past 50 years, however, American presidents, rather than Congress, have repeatedly unleashed military force against far weaker nations and their people—who do not have the means or ability to fight back, except through acts of terror.

In addition to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, the United States is also currently conducting military operations in Somalia and Yemen. Not only are these wars undeclared by Congress, their extent is largely concealed from the People. Moreover, in “fighting” these wars, the president, as Commander-in-Chief, claims the right to kill and detain “unlawful combatants,” including American citizens, anywhere in the world, without trial.

Americans no longer want to militarily intervene in other countries. A CBS/NYT poll found that 72 percent of Americans are opposed to removing dictators where it can, and a CNN poll found more than six in ten Americans desiring a more “non-interventionist” foreign policy. Part of President Trump’s electoral support resulted from his campaign promises to avoid military action in foreign nations. He said the United States. should “stay out of Syria and other countries that hate us.”

Yes, there is violence and repression in the world, some of which may threaten the security interests of the United States, and it would be naive to deny it. It is equally foolish, however, to believe that launching undeclared aggressive wars against nation states and their people can resolve each and every one of these threats. There has to be a better solution, one that is both legal and effective.

An Alternative to War

Let us, for a moment, think “outside the box” about an alternative public policy to deal with these dangerous geopolitical situations—one based on commonsense and the law.

Assuming that the Trump administration can make the case that Kim Jong-un and his regime pose a risk of danger to the People of the United States, shouldn’t President Trump present that evidence to Congress and allow it to decide what to do? Rather than an authorization to launch a violent military attack against North Korea—essentially a declaration of war—Congress could pass a resolution along these lines:

The Congress of the United States declares that Kim Jong-un and his administration of the government of North Korea pose a danger to the United States, and he is hereby declared to be an outlaw. Congress directs the President of the United States to file a legal proceeding against the government of North Korea in the International Court of Justice and to take all necessary and reasonable steps to compel the personal attendance of Kim Jong-un to defend his government and its conduct.

As a member of the United Nations, North Korea is automatically a party of the International Court; however, it must consent to jurisdiction in a specific case. The congressional resolution would, however, be directed against Kim, personally—as the dictator of North Korea—instead of the people of North Korea. It is narrowly designed to compel him to personally leave North Korea and to accept jurisdiction of the Court on its behalf. As a practical matter, once Kim leaves the country, the chances of his ever returning are very slim.

In many respects, the congressional resolution would act like an arrest warrant in a domestic criminal action. There, a judge finds probable cause for the arrest and directs the police to take the suspect into custody and deliver the defendant for trial. In doing so, the police are authorized to use all necessary and reasonable force to take custody of the accused.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee approved a resolution in 2014 calling for North Korea to be brought before another international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), on charges of human rights violations. During testimony before the UN Security Council in 2015, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights asked the Council to refer North Korea to the ICC.  Following the recent assassination of Kim’s brother, Kim Jong-nam, the UN General Assembly again asked the Security Council to refer the North Korean leadership to the ICC  While a congressional resolution directing President Trump to secure the presence of Kim Jong-un before these international tribunals would be coercive, it would be far less violent than the unleashing of bombs and cruise missiles on the poor North Korean people.

Although the use of reasonable force personally directed against the outlaw dictator to “arrest” him might result in his death, the use of force would not have political assassination as its purpose. To the contrary—much like hostage negotiations by professional police officers—every attempt should be made to obtain his voluntary surrender. Reasonable rewards and incentives might also be offered for his surrender by members of his own government.

The Kim dictatorship dominates the North Korean media and carefully controls the information received by the people. Radios and television sets are preset to North Korean frequencies and must be registered with the authorities. Although there is little access to the Internet, there is a widespread market for USB flash drives which feature South Korean music and movies. It is not difficult to image infiltrating and “bombing” the nation with bootleg flash drives and other forms of person-to-person communications reassuring the North Korean people that the United States was renouncing the making of war against them and their nation in favor of rewards and benefits for the arrest and delivery of their dictator. While ordinary North Koreans might not have the ready ability, those most close to the person of Kim Jong-un might be sufficiently encouraged to take action.

Sounding the Alarm

On becoming the Commander-in-Chief of the United States military, President Trump immediately abdicated his command responsibility by empowering the Secretary of Defense and the Central Command to authorize military actions they deem appropriate. Because of the numerous scandals and dysfunction associated with his political staff, Trump is relying on the military to distract the public from his presidential failures.

Within days of Trump’s inauguration, a botched military counterterrorism operation in Yemen resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians, including an eight-year-old American girl. Trump blamed the failure on his generals and the Obama administration, while claiming unfounded successes. Trump’s military aggression continued with a massive tomahawk cruise missile attack against a Syrian airbase—which risked war with Russia—and the dropping of the largest conventional bomb in history in Afghanistan. Trump claimed that all of these attacks were successful, but the primary result was to divert attention from his rapidly falling popularity ratings, which are the lowest of all newly-elected presidents.

As Trump is now threatening to go it “alone” on North Korea, his senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has declared “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is warning of “catastrophic consequences” of a failure to take action against North Korea and warns that the United States will use military force if necessary. The Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command refuses to rule out an invasion of North Korea, even for the “heck of it.”

Claiming “bone spurs” as a young man, Trump dodged military service. Now as America’s leading “chicken hawk,” he is like a little boy playing with matches as he risks reigniting the Korean War. Perhaps it matters not to him that millions of North and South Koreans may once again die in the resulting war, but he will also risk the lives of American service members and the economic health of the nation in an entirely avoidable war.

Near the end of World War II, as allied forces discovered the conditions in the German concentration camps, General Eisenhower ordered that local citizens be forced to look inside the camps at the atrocities committed by their Nazi leaders. Following the conviction and execution of these leaders at the Nuremberg trials, the United Nations established the principle that “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state . . . .”

The United States has not formally declared war on another nation since World War II; however, its presidents have repeatedly threatened to use, and have actually used, military force against other states. Truman and Eisenhower had the Korean War; Johnson and Nixon had Vietnam; Reagan invaded tiny Grenada; Bush Sr. invaded Panama and Iraq; Clinton bombed Sudan and Yugoslavia; and Bush Jr. invaded Iraq based on falsified evidence. Obama continued the “war against terrorism,” extended it worldwide, and institutionalized the presidential hit list.

President Trump repeatedly expresses his admiration for “strong,” yet repressive leaders, including Putin in Russia, Duarte in the Philippines, and Kim Jong-un—whom Trump calls “a pretty smart cookie.” Trump sees the world as a “vicious and brutal place” and imagines himself as the risk-taking, angry, tough, and authoritarian warrior who can win every game. In response to threats in the Middle East, Trump said, “I would bomb the s— out of them. . . . I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.” Conservative commentator George W. Will described Trump as having “an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.”

More than 53,000 mental health professionals have signed a petition sounding the alarm that Trump “manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.” The petition was started by Dr. John Gartner, who said “Worse than being just a liar or a narcissist” Trump is “paranoid, delusional and [engages in] grandiose thinking.”

With the most mentally unstable person ever to occupy the presidency having the most powerful military force in history at his unfettered disposal, Americans must ask themselves whether or not they approve of another war being launched in their name. If not, they must arrive at a solution to avoid their personal complicity with the consequences of their failure to act.

The American People are not powerless; however, they still have, restricted as it has become, the freedom to assemble and protest. They still have the power to contact their congressional representatives and implore them to take legislative action to avoid another war in Korea, and they still have the power to vote out of any office any representative who does not listen to their voice and respond to their demands. Their vote is the only real power left to the People; however, time is short. With an Army general now serving as the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States is only one terrorist act away from the imposition of martial law by presidential order, in which all of these remaining rights may be forfeit.

William John Cox wrote the role of the police in America for President Nixon’s National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals in 1972. As a public interest lawyer, Cox filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1979 against President Carter and the Congress alleging that the government no longer represented those who voted for it. In 1980, he ran a write-in campaign for president calling for a law enforcement alternative to making war against the innocent people of other nations. Cox continues to write about philosophy, politics, and public policy matters. His latest book is Transforming America: A Voters’ Bill of Rights.

5 May 2017

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Rather than signalling any major, dramatic or radical change in direction, the new ‘charter’ (officially called ‘A Document of General Principles and Policies’) of the Palestinian group Hamas formalises what has existed in terms of the party’s policies and practices for more than a decade, superseding its old charter which has largely been outdated, irrelevant and an albatross around the organisation’s neck.

The new document, which took two years to debate and draft (but has been in the making since 2006), replaces the ‘Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement’, which was authored by a single individual in 1988, and adopted barely nine months after Hamas’s founding. Hamas has variously defended, been apologetic about and embarrassed by the 1988 charter, but, for mysterious reasons, has not been able to get rid of, or even amend, it. The group’s spokespersons have often said broad consultation was too difficult within its security constraints – even though it regularly holds leadership elections that encompass its members in various parts of the world. In 2006, in the run-up to elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the first Palestinian Authority (PA) election that Hamas contested, the party issued an election platform that articulated changes in its positions from that contained in the original charter. But the platform was not comprehensive enough to be regarded as superseding the charter, and Hamas leaders themselves never referred to it in this way.

The platform did highlight the irrelevance and embarrassment of the old charter, and sparked a debate within the organisation on a range of issues – from the role of religion in the Palestinian struggle to the nature of a future Palestinian state. That debate culminated on 1 May 2017 with the launch of the new document. The process leading up to the launch was vigorous, and produced some issues of sharp disagreement within the movement. The 1 May document attempts to balance those debates within the Hamas constituency, and still provide a vision and strategies in a manner that will keep the organisation united, and allow all its members to feel satisfied.

Since the launch, much attention has been paid to the clause that accepts a Palestinian state along the 4 June 1967 border – essentially confining a future Palestinian state to the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. The clause, however, does not actually go as far as ‘accepting’ the 1967 borders or a two-state solution, but notes that ‘Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967…to be a formula of national consensus.’ The clause was qualified with its ‘rejection of the Zionist entity’, support for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees – including to their homes in Israel, and rejection of ‘any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea’. It is debatable whether the 1967 border ‘formula’ ever was one of ‘national consensus’ among Palestinians. In the past few years, especially, after Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu repeatedly rejected any notion of a two-state solution, former US secretary of state John Kerry lamented its end, and US president Donald Trump refused to endorse the well-worn US support for such a solution, Palestinians have increasingly been arguing that a two-state solution is not possible, and the current reality is that there is already a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea that is governed by Israel. Despite the language in the document, however, after the launch Hamas leader Khaled Mesha’al, interpreted it as supporting a two-state solution. This contradiction between the charter’s insistence on Hamas’s ultimate goal being the ‘liberation’ of all of British Mandate Palestine, and the seeming acceptance of a two-state solution could prove to become a difficulty for the movement in the future, even though the notion of a two-state solution has already been articulated by Hamas spokespersons, including by its founder Shaykh Ahmed Yassin and by Mesha’al. The document’s position might be viewed as support for a two-state solution as the first phase towards a single state.

This is not the most significant aspect of the document, however. Perhaps most significant (and the most radical change) is the language and tone that describes Hamas as a nationalist Palestinian movement rather than as part of a global Islamist one. This begins with the description of Palestine as ‘the land of the Arab Palestinian people’, while the old charter regarded Palestine as ‘an Islamic Waqf [endowment] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day’ – somewhat mirroring the Zionist conception of Israel as the land of all Jews. No longer. While Palestine is still ‘a land whose status has been elevated by Islam’, it belongs, according to Hamas to Palestinians, not to Muslims. Even in its characterisation of itself, Hamas now views itself as a ‘Palestinian Islamic national liberation and resistance movement’. The positioning of the words ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Islamic’ are not accidental. ‘Its goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam,’ and there is no proclamation of ‘The universality of the Islamic Resistance Movement’ as in the old document. This new orientation is likely the reason that references to the Muslim Brotherhood (whose name and slogans peppered the earlier document) have been dropped. There is a glaring question that the document does not answer, however: if Palestine is ‘the land of Arab Palestinians’, what would be the place of Jews in a future Palestinian state.

Despite speculation that the document would attempt to placate Israel and western powers, it makes no serious attempt to do so. Even its strong emphasis that the ‘conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion’ and its accusation that it is Zionists who have co-opted Judaism and Jews in service of its ‘colonial project and illegal entity’ reflects a change in the way the movement views Jews and Zionism, and is guidance provided to its own constituency, rather than a placatory gesture to outsiders. Indeed, the three demands that the West (through the Middle East Quartet, comprising of the UN, USA, EU and Russia) have made of Hamas since 2007 have been emphatically rejected in the charter. The demands were that Hamas recognises Israel; renounces violence; and accepts all previous agreements made by the PLO and PA with Israel. Instead, the charter emphasises that ‘There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity’; insists that ‘At the heart of [means of resisting occupation] lies armed resistance’; and rejects the Oslo Accords ‘and all that flows from them’.

Of course, the rejection of the Oslo presents a contradiction. The charter affirms a role for the PA (a creature of Oslo) ‘to serve the Palestinian people and safeguard their security, their rights and their national project’. Further, the movement contested elections for the PLC (another Oslo creation), plays a role as part of the PA, and has expressed no intention to extract itself from the PA and refuse to contest future elections.

If we ignore the opportunity Hamas provides us to do interesting analyses of a new document, its release is a rather ‘ho hum’ moment. In itself, it says nothing new, and only documents what has already become a reality within the movement through decade-and-half shifts in thought and practice. At most, it will allow its spokespersons a sigh of relief that they no longer have to defend the old anti-Semitic and irrelevant document. The timing of its release does has some significance. While it will be seen as Mesha’al’s swan-song (he did not contest the recent leadership election, whose results will be announced later this month), it also happens when more militant leaders are rising, and they have expressed no criticism of the document. Yahya Sinwar, for example, a leader of Hamas’s armed wing, the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, who spent twenty years in an Israeli prison, is now the group’s Gaza leader and the ‘prime minister’ in the territory. His embrace of the document indicates that the political and military wings of the movement are united in supporting it, and it is not an imposition by ‘moderates’ on the rest of the organisation.

If Hamas was unconcerned about how its critics in Israel and the West might view its new charter, it should be concerned about criticism from Palestinians, particularly the disappointment (and even anger) expressed by some at the seeming acceptance of the two-state solution. For many Palestinians who have become weary of the shenanigans of the PA, Fatah and the PLO, who oppose the PA’s ‘security coordination’ with Israel, and who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel had hoped that Hamas would not compromise its support for armed resistance, and would clearly express support for a one-state solution. For some in this group, the new document does not distinguish Hamas from Fatah in terms of its vision for the future (even though that’s not a correct reading of the relevant clauses).

4 May 2017

By Budour Youssef Hassan

Hunger strikes don’t get any easier with experience.

So says the family of Palestinian prisoner Majd Ziada, who has participated in multiple collective strikes since his arrest by Israeli occupation forces in 2002.

“It is as if you are carrying the weight of 15 years of imprisonment on your shoulders,” Hurriyah Ziada, Majd’s youngest sister, told The Electronic Intifada. “It is like running the last kilometers of a marathon: at the start you have a lot of energy but you eventually become drained.”

Majd, whose family hails from the village of al-Faluja northeast of Gaza City, ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948, was 19 when he was swept up during a wave of mass arrests at the height of the second intifada.

He spent 50 days in incommunicado detention, during which he was subjected to physical and psychological torture, his father and lawyer say. The abuse exacerbated preexisting ear inflammation, resulting in a complete loss of hearing in Majd’s right ear.

During a hearing in an Israeli military court the year of his arrest, Majd proclaimed that he did not recognize the court’s legitimacy and that it was Israeli soldiers who should be put on trial.

Majd was convicted of carrying out armed attacks and organizing a resistance cell, receiving a 30-year prison sentence.

Majd’s attorneys requested a retrial, arguing that his conviction was rife with grave procedural errors. An Israeli military court issued a rare commutation last month, reducing Majd’s sentence to 20 years.

Majd, who was arrested in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, has most recently been held in Hadarim prison, in central Israel. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power such as Israel from transferring detainees from the territory it occupies, such as the West Bank, into its own territory. Majd’s imprisonment in Israel is thus a war crime.
Punishment

In her most recent visit to Hadarim, on 12 April, Hurriyah was told by Majd that he was planning to join the open-ended hunger strike set to begin five days later.

One of the main demands of the hunger strike is to end medical negligence of prisoners.

“[Majd] requires surgery to his ear and he is at risk of losing his hearing completely if it’s not performed,” Hurriyah said. “But the Israel Prison Service has refused to allow it and the only treatment he has received has come in the form of painkillers.”

Israel has punished hunger striking prisoners with a series of measures, including denying family visits and meetings with lawyers. All Hurriyah knows about her brother is that he was transferred from Hadarim and put in isolation. She does not know where he is currently being detained.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are also protesting solitary confinement, night raids on prisoners’ cells, humiliating searches, the reduction of family visits, a ban on mobile phones, suspension of university education, restrictions on books and magazines, and widespread imprisonment without charge or trial, family members of striking prisoners and their lawyers told The Electronic Intifada.

“Through the battle of empty stomachs, prisoners are not only calling for their basic rights and demanding an improvement in prison conditions,” Abdel Nasser Ferwana, a writer who has done extensive research on the history of Palestinian hunger strikes, told The Electronic Intifada.

“They also seek to express their defiance, to reinvigorate public solidarity with the prisoners’ cause and to draw attention to their plight.”

A dangerous tactic of last resort, the first known hunger strike in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement was in 1968, one year into Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Inmates at a prison in Nablus waged a three-day hunger strike protesting physical abuse and humiliating treatment by Israeli soldiers.

The first Palestinian prisoner to lose his life during a hunger strike was Abd al-Qader Abu al-Fahm, who died after being force-fed during a mass strike in Ashkelon prison in 1970.
History of struggle

Ferwana said that the current hunger strike is not an isolated event and is part of a long history of struggle.

“We need to remind people that Palestinian prisoners improved their conditions in jails and attained some of their rights thanks to their sacrifices, rather than Israeli generosity,” Ferwana said. “Some have lost their lives to secure those rights but this has been the most effective form of resisting and confronting the Israeli prison system.”

According to the Palestinian rights group Addameer, Israel currently holds 6,300 Palestinian political prisoners, 500 of whom are held without charge or trial under indefinitely renewable administrative detention orders issued by a military court.

Administrative detention has been the impetus for some of the more high-profile hunger strikes in recent years, such as those undertaken by Khader Adnan – a baker from the northern West Bank who has embarked on two lengthy strikes, becoming an icon of the prisoner movement – as well as journalist Muhammad al-Qiq, lawyer Muhammad Allan, and Bilal Kayed, who won his release after 15 years of imprisonment following a 71-day strike.

Hunger strikes waged by individual prisoners have been more prevalent than mass hunger strikes in recent years.

Esmat Mansour, who was imprisoned by Israel between 1993 and 2013, said this is a direct result of the fragmentation of the prisoners’ movement – a spillover of the bitter impasse between the two main Palestinian political parties, Fatah and Hamas, that has prevailed over the past decade.

Mansour pointed to the August 2004 mass hunger strike – which lasted up to 19 days, depending on the prison, yielding little improvement in prisoners’ conditions – as a turning point.
Overcoming failure

Several factors contributed to the failure of that strike, according to Mansour: the harsh repression of the Israel Prison Service, then headed by Yaacov Ganot. Mansour described Ganot as a “fascist,” adding that he reintroduced the practice of strip-searching and ordered the separation of prisoners from their visiting family members with glass instead of a net that allowed for physical contact.

The second intifada was still going on and Ariel Sharon, Israel’s prime minister at the time, was not willing to compromise. This was the first hunger strike for many of the prisoners, and they lacked experience to deal with the inevitable Israeli retribution.

“The leadership of the strike was divided and the fragmentation of the prisoners made it easier for the [prison authorities] to quell it and break our spirits,” Mansour, who participated in that strike, told The Electronic Intifada.

“It took a long time and effort for the prisoners’ movement to recover from that setback and to restore confidence among prisoners and rebuild the movement.”

It wasn’t until 2012 that prisoners from all political factions organized another sustained mass hunger strike involving multiple prisons and political parties.

Preceded by a series of individual hunger strikes in protest of administrative detention, thousands of prisoners began an open-ended strike on 17 April 2012 – Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – and refused food for nearly one month.

The hunger strikers demanded an end to solitary confinement for all prisoners and a resumption of family visits to prisoners from the Gaza Strip. Such visits had been done away with following the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza in June 2006 and maintained even after the soldier’s release in a prisoner exchange deal in October 2011.

The 2012 hunger strike was accompanied by popular protests and escalated mobilization on the ground, not seen in Palestine since the early days of the second intifada more than a decade earlier. Even though the Fatah leadership did not participate in that hunger strike and was even accused by some prisoners of not showing enough solidarity, according to Esmat Mansour, the Fatah base in the prisons did join the strike.

The agreement reached between Palestinian detainees and the Israeli prison authorities in May 2012 was said to include limitations on administrative detention, the end of prolonged isolation and resumption of family visits to prisoners from Gaza.
“No other option”

Five years on, Palestinian prisoners are having to resort to their empty stomachs again to fight for their rights.

“Prisoners have been preparing for this hunger strike for almost two months and my husband confirmed to me on 4 April that he was taking part,” said Khalida Hamdan, whose husband, Muhammad Mesleh, is sentenced to nine life sentences plus 50 years for his involvement in the killing of nine Israelis.

“I initially questioned his decision but he explained to me how the increasing crackdown by Israeli prison authorities had left them with no other option,” Hamdan told The Electronic Intifada.

Mesleh, a leading figure in Fatah’s armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was arrested by Israeli occupation forces on 17 February 2001, leaving Hamdan to raise their months-old child on her own. For almost a decade, Hamdan was banned from visiting her husband on security grounds. In 2012, she went on hunger strike for seven days in solidarity with her striking husband.

Mesleh is a close companion of Marwan Barghouti, the high-profile Fatah leader serving multiple life sentences after his arrest in 2002, and the face of the current hunger strike.

“He pleaded with me to not go on a solidarity hunger strike this time around but since 17 April, I have been unable to cook, unable to sleep properly or think about anything else,” Hamdan said.

“I only hear about him in the media. Is he in solitary confinement? How is he handling pain and fatigue? How is he surviving the revenge of the prison guards? You cannot exorcise those thoughts when a loved one is on hunger strike.”
Unity

The current hunger strike, estimated by Addameer to include 1,500 prisoners, is being led by Fatah, but prisoners from all the major Palestinian factions are participating.

Following his release from Israeli prison on 20 April, former Palestinian minister Wasfi Qabaha said that the hunger strike in Hadarim prison, the epicenter of the protest, involved prisoners from all factions and that parties from across the political spectrum were represented in the strike leadership.

He added that strike leaders such as Marwan Barghouti and Karim Younes, the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner currently held by Israel, were transferred to Jalameh prison and put in isolation.

Nadim Younes, brother of Karim Younes, who has been imprisoned by Israel since 1983, told The Electronic Intifada that family and lawyers lost all contact with Karim since he began his hunger strike.

“Karim is now 58 and 35 years of imprisonment have definitely taken their toll on his ailing body,” Nadim said. “The importance of this strike lies in the fact that it has brought together prisoners from all factions and from all over Palestine: Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem and Palestinians from the ’48 territories [present-day Israel].”

There are lingering doubts about whether this hunger strike will avoid the failure suffered in 2004. Former prisoner Esmat Mansour does not dismiss those concerns.

“It is true that Barghouti is the undisputed leader of this hunger strike. Some believe that he is trying to send a message to the Fatah Central Committee that he remains an influential leader,” Mansour said.

“But prisoners are not puppets: they would not join this strike if they didn’t have pressing demands. And Marwan’s leadership of this strike has definitely given it momentum and unprecedented media attention.”

The unity and resilience of the prisoners’ movement in the face of Israeli repression, intimidation and attempts to delegitimize the strike are being put to the test. Moreover, it is a test of the capacity of Palestinian society to mobilize in support of the prisoners, to build sustained pressure on Israel, and overcome their divisions to stand behind the prisoners.

If there is one cause that has managed to bring Palestinians together in recent years, it has proven to be the prisoners’ struggle.

Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer based in Jerusalem. She blogs at budourhassan.wordpress.com.

26 April 2017

By The Peace People – TRANSCEND Media Service

1 May 2017 – Mairead Maguire, who visited the women’s peace movements of North and South Korea last year with 30 international women from around the world, made the following appeal to President Trump and the U.S. administration:

“The people of North and South Korea want peace and they want a peace treaty. They do not want their country to be bombed or their government to bomb others. Having visited both North and South Korea last year and walked with thousands and thousands of Korean women, North and South, I am convinced that peace is possible and what is needed is the political will of all parties to the conflict to dialogue and for negotiations to move from a Korean armistice to a Korean Peace Treaty.

“I therefore would like to appeal to President Trump and his administration not to carry out a military strike on North Korea, but to use the means of dialogue and diplomacy to reach a peace treaty for North Korea. Such peace leadership by President Trump will give hope to the people of Korea and all of humanity.

“The people of the world need to know that peace is possible between all the human family and that there are political leaders who have the courage to move from enmity to friendship and from war to peace.”

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.

The Peace People began in 1976 as a protest movement against the ongoing violence in Northern Ireland. Its three founders were Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown. Over 100,000 people were involved in the initial movement and two of the founders, Mairead and Betty, received the Nobel Peace Prize for that year. Since its inception, the organization has been committed to building a just, peaceful society through nonviolent means – a society based on respect for each individual, and that has at its core the highest standards of human and civil rights. www.peacepeople.com

1 May 2017