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By Henry wismayer

Demagogues like Donald Trump thrive on simplicity. One of the keys to his ascendancy has been the lumping together of his many enemies into a single entity, a group to blame for all the economic anxiety and cultural dispossession felt by a vocal subset of his constituency. And so, various strains of right-wing anger have for some time now been congealing around a single vague word: liberal.

As a political philosophy, liberalism is an untidy confection. But I’m pretty sure I am one, at least in part because I subscribe to liberalism’s first principle—that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, like all self-identifying liberals in the age of Trump, recent events have plunged me into a sea of doubt. Which is why I think it’s important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.

That statement requires some immediate qualification. I am not your garden-variety racist. I do not cultivate hatreds based on skin color or nationality. I do not have an Aryan Viking or a colored egg as my Twitter avatar. A child of the 1980s, and an urbanite, pluralism is part of my cultural inheritance. But the truth is that, for someone who has spent the last decade as a travel writer and literary cheerleader for foreign people and places, I often have a hard time transcending stark cultural differences.

Some examples from my rap-sheet include a month in China, during which my girlfriend’s red hair invited the kind of swivel-eyed scrutiny you might expect if she’d had two heads, was enough to turn me against the entire country. The disdain for punctuality common to Latin America and Africa drives me to distraction. In abject fulfillment of the British stereotype, the world’s widespread inability to queue drives me to silent, haughty outrage. Whilst I am adept at reciting the world’s capital cities, I’m also an authority on being judgmental.

Such observations don’t generally make the final copy of daily opinion columns, but there’s nothing especially novel or incendiary about them. (I suspect few members of the liberal chattering classes can watch the Broadway classic Avenue Q without a wry, self-conscious chuckle at the musical’s most famous number, “Everybody’s a little bit racist.”) However, at a time when liberalism as a concept is under attack—when half of America is blaming it for all the world’s problems, and the other half are catastrophizing about the implications of its demise—this mea culpa may help formulate a better understanding of what liberalism is, and why it is in crisis today.

Crucially, the idea that a liberal can also be a bigot presupposes that a person’s politics do not depend on the purity of their soul. Or, to put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person. It just means you believe base humanity is flawed and needs to be contained within a framework of social mores and ethical absolutes.

Liberalism, wrote the controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “is sustained by a profound pessimism about human nature.” Where the nostalgic conservative sees a past of white picket fences and peaceful cultural homogeneity, the liberal sees centuries of genocide, sectarian war, colonization and enslavement. A right-winger might call it hysteria. A liberal would call it a rational reading of human fallibility. Viewed through this pessimist’s lens, political correctness is a safeguard, a levee against the dark rivers of our intolerant tribalism.

Against this backdrop, a person opposed to liberal ideals comes across as either willfully foolish or worse. Liberals don’t brand such people as racist because we think they are. We brand them as racist because we know they are. Because deep down, we know we are too.

And that’s the problem. The central weakness of modern liberalism is that the self-criticism required in order to disown this instinctive bias has become a form of blindness—of our own moral imperfection, and of our tendency to offer a prescription for society to which we ourselves struggle to adhere. Three months on from Trump’s election victory, and with the anti-liberal backlash continuing to shape politics across western democracies, the vulnerabilities in this picture grow starker by the day.

In “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill, among the founding fathers of modern liberalism, wrote that “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.” But it seems unlikely that he could ever have imagined how future generations would see, in the ideology he championed, a haunting echo of that same oppression. What emerged as a philosophy of opposition to structural prejudice started to grow sclerotic the moment it assumed the mantle of orthodoxy. The result—an inflexible dogma rooted in secularism and identity politics—has ended up provoking the vengeance of those who feel marginalized by it.

Often, the accusations of hypocrisy marshaled in opposition to liberal points of view are more absurd than effective—witness, to name one recent example, the thousands of Trump apologists disparaging women’s marchers on the premise that those same people hadn’t been holding weekly sit-ins to protest the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Yet the overarching criticism is valid, for how many liberals can say with sincerity that they are immune to instinctive bias? Can any of us truly claim that we feel as much sympathy for thousands of innocent Syrians immolated by Assad’s barrel-bombs as we do for European terror victims? While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?

Indeed, the words “do as I say, not as I do” could be the catchphrase for the entire liberal order—from the everyday leftie who decries gentrification while secretly celebrating the increased value of their house to figureheads we eulogize. As people around the world lamented the end of Barack Obama’s administration, many pointed out that the man elected US president on a tide of hope and optimism, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize within months of taking office, vacated the White House as the first American president in history to have been at war for every day of his tenure. It doesn’t require a huge leap of empathy to understand how someone anathematized to his politics might have seen, in the deluge of liberal tears that accompanied his departure, evidence of an intractable contradiction.

None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed. The Trump era, if anything, looks set to demonstrate its importance anew. And while populists would have us believe that 2016 heralded the start of liberalism’s downfall, we must keep faith that most people, if pushed, would choose a more self-aware liberal future to Steve Bannon’s nihilistic vision of religious war.

But as today’s progressives confront a newly energized right-wing populism, we must recognize the shortcomings in liberalism that have led us to this juncture. We should be able to acknowledge that, in seeking absolution for our worst instincts, we may have overcompensated by acquiescing to a status quo that has overseen rampant inequality and catastrophic foreign wars. And we should admit that the reactionary ideas fueling the right-wing surge—nativism, nationalism, and American exceptionalism among them—are understandable, albeit execrable, responses to our transparent balancing act. Trump is sticking a middle finger up to a liberal consensus teetering on feet of clay.

“Everyone carries a shadow,” wrote the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” It seems likely, were he alive today, that Jung might suspect liberals of possessing the biggest shadows of all. Perhaps we need to embrace our shadows before we can properly push them away.

Follow Henry on Twitter at @henrywismayer. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

7 February 2017

By rt.com

Over the next three decades, the global economy will be dominated by China, and the US economy will lose steam and fall behind India, says consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Russia will become the leading European economy ahead of Germany, UK, and Italy with GDP of $7 trillion, according to a PwC report.

The report, called “The long view: how will the global economic order change by 2050?,” ranked 32 countries, based on their projected Gross Domestic Product by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

PwC concluded that by 2050, China’s GDP would reach $58.5 trillion, India, over $44 trillion, while the US will have a $34.1 trillion economy.

“We expect this growth to be driven largely by emerging market and developing countries, with the E7 economies of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Turkey growing at an annual average rate of almost 3.5 percent over the next 34 years, compared to just 1.6 percent for the advanced G7 nations of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US,” the report said.

Given a robust annual growth of four to five percent, Vietnam, the Philippines and Nigeria are predicted to make the greatest move up the GDP rankings.

The US and Europe’s share of global GDP are expected to shrink, while the Chinese and Indian economies are projected to grow significantly.

The consulting firm also predicted 2050 GDP numbers based on market exchange ratings, an alternative method for GDP calculation. In these rankings, the US will lose global dominance by 2030, and the gap will only grow by 2050 with China having a nearly $50 trillion GDP, and the US having the same $34.1 trillion.

Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is an economic theory that compares different countries’ currencies through a market “basket of goods” approach. PPP determines the economic productivity and standards of living of various countries over a period. Since market exchange rates fluctuate substantially, many economists consider PPP as a more precise way of estimating a country’s economy.

7 February 2017

By http://jesuits.org

“As members of a global religious order that works to form men and women of conscience and compassion, we denounce the Trump Administration’s Executive Order suspending and barring refugees and banning nationals of seven countries as an affront to our mission and an assault on American and Christian values.

“The Jesuits — through our work in high schools, colleges, parishes and signature ministries such as Jesuit Refugee Service — have a long, proud tradition of welcoming and accompanying refugees, regardless of their religion, as they begin their new lives in the United States. We will continue that work, defending and standing in solidarity with all children of God, whether Muslim or Christian.

“The world is deeply troubled, and many of our brothers and sisters are justifiably terrified. Our Catholic and Jesuit identity calls us to welcome the stranger and to approach different faith traditions and cultures with openness and understanding. We must not give in to fear. We must continue to defend human rights and religious liberty. As Pope Francis said, “You cannot be a Christian without living like a Christian.”

“Washington, D.C. – January 30, 2017

Jesuit Conference of Canada and United States”

By Barry Grey

President Donald Trump signed executive directives on Friday initiating a sweeping rollback of regulations on banks and financial brokers enacted under the Obama administration following the Wall Street crash of 2008.

Trump’s actions target in particular the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulations and a Labor Department rule set to take effect in April requiring financial advisers to put the interests of retired clients before their own monetary rewards.

The billionaire president seemed to flaunt his promotion of Wall Street’s interests, signing the two measures after meeting in the White House with his business council. The council is chaired by Stephen A. Schwarzman, the multi-billionaire chief executive of the private equity giant Blackstone Group.

Among the dozen or so corporate executives in attendance were Jamie Dimon, another billionaire, who heads JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank, and Laurence D. Fink, the mega-millionaire chief of the investment firm BlackRock.

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they can’t borrow money,” Trump said during his meeting with the corporate bosses. He praised Dimon, who has bitterly campaigned against the Dodd-Frank law. JP Morgan Chase was fined billions of dollars in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis for multiple violations of bank regulations and laws, including fraudulent sub-prime mortgage deals that contributed to the collapse of the US housing market in 2007. A frequent visitor to the Obama White House, Dimon was for a time known as “Obama’s favorite banker.”

“There’s nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie,” Trump declared.

Trump also had high praise for Fink, touting BlackRock’s management of Trump money for earning “great returns.”

Nothing could more clearly expose the farce of Trump’s pretensions to be a champion of the American worker.

Wall Street celebrated the attack on financial regulations with a stock buying spree focused on bank and financial shares. The biggest winners were JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Visa on a day that saw the Dow surge 186 points to recoup recent losses. It closed once again above the 20,000 mark, ending at 20,071. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq indexes also recorded big gains, with the Nasdaq ending the trading session in record territory.

Trump’s assault on bank regulations is of a piece with his moves to gut all legal and regulatory restrictions on corporate profit-making. Since taking office two weeks ago, he has signed executive orders mandating the lifting of regulations across the board, removed obstacles to the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access oil pipelines, and picked long-time opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency, occupational health and safety rules, and limitations on industrial and mining pollution to head the federal agencies tasked with overseeing these activities.

The White House economic program—including sharp tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, an infrastructure program that amounts to a tax windfall for private investors, a hiring freeze for federal workers, and historic cuts in social programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security—is the fulfillment of the wish list of America’s financial oligarchy.

Trump and his aides have denounced the 2010 Dodd-Frank law as a “disaster” and an “overreach” of government authority, and they have questioned its constitutionality. In fact, it is a largely token measure passed mainly to provide political cover for Obama’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and the financial elite.

Under Obama, not a single leading banker was prosecuted for the criminal activities that led to the biggest financial disaster and deepest slump since the 1930s, destroying the jobs, life savings and living standards of tens of millions of workers in the US and around the world.

Despite the minimal restraints imposed by Dodd-Frank, during the Obama years bank profits soared, the wealth of the richest 400 Americans increased from $1.57 trillion to $2.4 trillion, the Dow rose by 148 percent, and the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the top 10 percent, and above all the top 1 percent and 0.01 percent, reached historically unprecedented levels.

But the financial oligarchy, whose grip on the country increased under Obama, will brook not even minor limitations on its “right” to plunder the American and world economy. The Obama years paved the way for the emergence, in the Trump administration, of a government that embodies the oligarchy not only in its policies, but also in its personnel, beginning with the billionaire real estate speculator and reality TV star at its head.

Besides Trump, at least three multi-billionaires will occupy high posts in the administration, including Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos and Carl Icahn. Mega-millionaires will include Stephen Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson, Andrew Puzder, Elaine Chao and Gary Cohn, who gave up his number two post as president of Goldman Sachs to become the director of Trump’s National Economic Council.

Overseeing Wall Street as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission will be the longtime lawyer for Goldman Sachs, Jay Clayton. In addition to Cohn, other Goldman alumni include Mnuchin and Trump’s top political adviser, Stephen Bannon.

On Friday, Cohn told Bloomberg Television, “We’re going to attack all aspects of Dodd-Frank.” He absurdly accused the law of “shackling” US banks.

The White House could do “quite a bit” on its own, he said, while making clear that the administration would work with the Republican-dominated Congress to finish the job of ripping up bank regulations. House Republicans are preparing to put forward a bill to replace Dodd-Frank in the coming weeks.

Cohn singled out two provisions of the Dodd-Frank law for particular attack. The first is the so-called Volcker Rule, which restricts the ability of federally insured banks to make financial bets on their own behalf, in what is known as “proprietary trading.” Such gambling, including with depositors’ money, played a major role in the collapse of the banking system in 2008. Wall Street banks, led by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, have pushed relentlessly for the elimination of this provision.

The second provision is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a largely toothless body under the aegis of the Federal Reserve Board that is tasked with shielding the public from the depredations of the banks, credit card companies and other financial firms. Cohn indicated that the White House might demand the resignation of its director, Richard Cordray, as the first step in the bureau’s evisceration or outright elimination. “Personnel is policy,” he said.

The second action Trump signed was a memorandum instructing the labor secretary to delay implementation of the rule banning financial advisers and brokers from recommending to their retired clients more expensive investments for the purpose of generating greater returns to the advisers. A 2015 report from the Obama administration concluded that “conflicted advice” costs retirement savers $17 billion a year.

Even as Trump was issuing his executive directives on Friday, Senate Republicans were voting to repeal a rule linked to Dodd-Frank that requires oil companies to publicly disclose payments they make to governments in connection with their business operations around the world. Among those who lobbied against the Securities and Exchange rule was the new secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in his capacity as CEO of Exxon Mobil.

This amnesty for corporate bribery and criminality reveals the essence of the Trump administration’s scorched earth campaign against business regulations.

The Democrats will do nothing to oppose these policies. Their opposition to Trump is focused on differences over US imperialist foreign policy, not opposition to his assault on the democratic and social rights of working people.

But workers looking for an alternative to the political establishment who may have entertained hopes in Trump’s promises to restore decent-paying jobs will be rapidly disabused. The realization that they have once again been conned will have socially explosive consequences.

4 February 2017

By T Navin

President Donald Trump you have placed restrictions on entry of immigrants from seven Muslim countries in your executive order dated 27th January, 2017. You have placed restrictions in the name of security of American citizens and protecting them from the threat of terrorism. The concern for security of American citizens is welcome. So also is the case of being concerned with repetition of September 11th event. It truly was a human tragedy in which 2,600 Americans lost their lives.

However, while it is accepted that terrorism has claimed lives of Americans and needs to be condemned, it also needs to be acknowledged that far greater proportions have lost their lives due to American militarism in these countries. It is estimated that American militarism in Iraq has led to about 5 lakh deaths. This includes lots of children. Many children became orphans and families became homeless.

While it is true that lives need to be protected through checking terrorism emanating from some of these countries, but how about checking deaths that emanate due to, American militarism and imperialism? Isn’t it necessary to also place restrictions on that? Haven’t the interests of US corporations, oil interests led to loss of so many lives in these countries? Can restrictions be placed on entry of US military and corporations to these countries in a similar manner? Moreover, isn’t it a fact that American misadventure in these countries led to rise of growth of groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS?

In the process of targeting the immigrants from Muslim countries, you are only mainstreaming the Islamophobia. You are branding every person belonging to a particular religion as a ‘potential terrorist’. You are creating a divide between Muslims and Non-Muslims within your own country and creating distrust.

Moreover, the theory that you are trying to build goes against the available facts. An FBI report shows that only a small percentage of the terrorist attacks carried out on the US soil between 1980 and 2005 were perpetuated by Muslims. The data shows that among incidents of terrorism in US between the period included: 42% (Latinos), Extreme left wing groups (24%), Jewish extremists (7%), Islamic extremists (6%), Communists (5%) and others (16%). Among 2,700 terrorist incidents between 1970 t0 2015 as compiled by START database, only 60 involved Muslims.

You have described your measure as a way to “keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of America. Your act will only lead to mass alienation among Muslims and create a divide among people based on religious identity. Your actions may be supported by non-Muslim fanatic groups and will encourage fanatic elements within Islam. This is at the cost of the large majority who continue to be innocents.

Your attempts are only building a coalition of hatred against a religious community by uniting fanatics across religions in different religions. In India, you have admirers in Hindu Sena. Your order gets support by a fanatic named Yogi Adityanath, who justifies the need for such an act in India too.

Trump, through the Executive order, you are only building a coalition of propagators of Islamophobia. Your actions are only divisive and go against the entire liberal-democratic ethos. You are only on the way to build a much darker world. In this world, trust is based on ones religious identity. Safety and security is dependent on one’s religious background.

Trump, we oppose your actions.

Author: An Indian Citizen

3 February 2017

By Alex Jensen

While misogyny, racism, and ethnic taunts were conspicuous signposts on Donald Trump’s path to the White House, much of that road was paved with “populist”, “anti-establishment” and “anti-globalization” rhetoric. Trump’s inaugural address featured numerous populist lines (e.g. “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people”), attacks on the status quo (“The establishment protected itself, not the citizens of our country”), and barbs aimed at globalization (“One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.”)

Are these themes accurate predictors of how Mr. Trump and his administration will govern for the next four years?

Hardly. Long before the election, it was widely pointed out that the populist platitudes issuing from the silver-spooned mouth of a billionaire plutocrat represented little more than elite hucksterism.[1] Of course, post-election, the band of fellow billionaire corporate rascals and knaves Trump assembled for his cabinet and close advisors should have put an end to this fatuous ‘anti-establishment’, ‘populist’ charade once and for all. As one observer noted, “Trump’s cabinet has begun to resemble a kind of cross between the Fortune 500 rich list, a financier’s reunion party and a military junta.”[2]

What about Trump as an ‘anti-globalization’ crusader? Apart from the inconvenient fact that his own loot was built upon global outsourcing and the exploitation of cheap labor abroad for which ‘globalization’ is shorthand, the fact is that a “former Chamber [of Commerce] lobbyist who has publicly defended NAFTA and outsourcing more generally was appointed to Trump’s transition team dealing with trade policy.”[3] Did anyone really buy the notion that the swaddled child of corporate globalization had morphed into a working-class hero battling the ravages of that same globalization?

Some of Trump’s voters were undoubtedly among those who have been economically marginalized by globalization and wealth inequality – the common folk on whose behalf populism historically emerged. No doubt some allowed Trump’s populist, anti-globalization legerdemain to blind them to his scapegoating of fellow displaced working-class victims of globalization – aka immigrants from non-European countries. That these constituted the majority of his voters, however, is questionable. As Jeet Heer argued convincingly back in August,

“Rather than a populist, Trump is the voice of aggrieved privilege—of those who already are doing well but feel threatened by social change from below, whether in the form of Hispanic immigrants or uppity women. … Far from being a defender of the little people against the elites, Trump plays to the anxiety of those who fear that their status is being challenged by people they regard as their social inferiors.”[4]

In other words, Donald Trump is no populist, but an “authoritarian bigot”[5], and his election represents the victory of the rich – and a victory for corporate globalization. He is “not an outlier, but instead the essence of unrestrained capitalism.”[6] (To be clear, this should in no way be read as an implicit endorsement of the neoliberal Democratic Party, whose economic and trade policies are largely pro-corporate as well.)

To see Trump as an anti-globalization crusader is to misunderstand one of the main structural features of globalization itself: the concentration of wealth by fewer and fewer corporations and the consequent widening of the gulf between rich and poor. According to a recent report[7], here are some relevant trends from 1980 to 2013 – roughly the period of hyper globalization:

– Corporate net profits increased about 70 percent;
– Three-quarters of this increase went to the largest corporations (those with over $1 billion in annual sales);
– Just 10 percent of publicly listed companies account for 80 percent of corporate profits; the top quintile earns 90 percent;
– Two-thirds of 2013 global profits were captured by corporations from rich, industrialized countries;
– During this period in these same “rich countries”, labor’s share of national income has plummeted. Needless to say, labor in poorer countries has not fared better – indeed, exploitation of labor’s “cheapness” in the poorer countries is the sine qua non of this spasm of corporate profits.

As Martin Hart-Landsberg explains in his summary of the report, “the rise in corporate profits has been largely underpinned by a globalization process that has shifted industrial production to lower wage third world countries, especially China; undermined wages and working conditions by pitting workers from different communities and countries against each other; and pressured core country governments to dramatically lower corporate taxes, reduce business regulations, privatize public assets and services, and slash public spending on social programs.”[8]

This strategy has not “helped lift hundreds of millions to escape poverty over the past few decades”, as is repeatedly, unquestioningly claimed in the mainstream media.[9] As scholar Jason Hickel has shown, such a claim rests on propagandistic World Bank-sponsored poverty statistics; if poverty were to be measured more accurately, “We would see that about 4.2 billion people live in poverty today. That’s more than four times what the World Bank would have us believe, and more than 60% of humanity. And the number has risen sharply since 1980, with nearly 1 billion people added to the ranks of the poor over the past 35 years.”[10]

Additionally, inequality has reached nauseating heights: the latest analysis by Oxfam shows that “Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”[11] Globalization – an abbreviated way of describing the worldwide evisceration of regulations hampering corporate profits and the institutionalization of those that enhance them – is an engine of extreme inequality and corporate power, within and between countries, full stop. It is not cosmopolitanism, humanism, global solidarity, multicultural understanding and tolerance, or any of the other noble liberal virtues claimed for it by its votaries. In fact, while a ‘borderless’ world was seen as the pinnacle of the globalization project, physical barriers at the world’s borders have actually increased by nearly 50 percent since 2000[12] – with the US, India and Israel alone building an astounding 5,700 km of barriers. [13]

Widespread hostility towards globalization by the working class in ‘rich countries’ is understandable and justified. The problem is that this animosity is being misdirected against fellow working-class victims of corporate profiteering (“immigrants”, “the Chinese”), and not against the banks and corporations that are the source of working-class misery. This is the strange creature called ‘right-wing anti-globalization’, or, ‘right-wing populism’ – concepts that seem rather contradictory insofar as right-wing politics is about defending and strengthening status quo arrangements of power, privilege and hierarchy. Anti-globalization, on the other hand, is about challenging the gross inequality and injustice of the status quo; and populism – historically at least – is supposed to be about advancing the interests of common people and creating a more egalitarian society. [14]

Nonetheless, it is common in the mainstream media for ‘anti-globalization’ to appear on the ugly right-wing and reactionary side of a simplified binary ledger of political ideologies. It is listed, almost automatically, alongside such distasteful qualities as “inward-looking” and “anti-immigrant”, while the opposite side is ascribed noble qualities like “tolerance” and “solidarity”. This is merely a recycling of the popular (and very much corporate-sponsored) notion of globalization-as-humanizing-global-village. This Thomas Friedman-esque framing works to deflate the would-be critic of corporate globalization by threatening to tar her by association with reactionaries and xenophobes.

To accede to this binary framing would be a grave error, since it further empowers the existing system of corporate exploitation and wealth concentration. However, because there is undeniably an element of the anti-immigrant, xenophobic right that is also – at least rhetorically – anti-globalization, it is absolutely essential for the left to articulate in the clearest terms possible an anti-globalization stance rooted in international solidarity, intercultural openness and exchange, environmental justice, pluralism, fraternity, solidarity, and love, and to continually expose the fact that globalization is intolerant of differences in its relentless dissemination of a global consumer monoculture. In other words, the right should not be allowed to hijack the anti-globalization discourse, and contaminate and confuse it with racist, anti-immigrant sentiment, nor let localization – the best alternative to globalization – become equated with nativism, nationalism, xenophobia etc. It is unfortunate that we have to do this, since peoples’ movements against globalization and for decentralization/re-localization have already clearly drawn this distinction, indeed emerged in large measure in opposition to global injustice. But do it we must, since the corporate media is happily using the rise of the right-wing to discredit the spirited, leftist opposition to globalization that has stalled such corporate power grabs as TPP, CETA, and TTIP.

Should the left make common cause with those on the right when it comes to opposing globalization, irrespective of our profound opposition to the rest of the rightist agenda? Can we hold our noses and engage with this strange bedfellow to slay our ‘common’ foe, globalization? I do not think so. Not only is right-wing anti-globalization based on a deeply flawed and internally incoherent analysis, more importantly the political expediency of the implicit message – “as long as you join us in opposing corporate free trade treaties, your xenophobia, racism et al. can be temporarily ignored and tacitly tolerated” – is noxious and inexcusable.

Fortunately, a number of writers and activists have already been busy on the critical project of framing an inclusive anti-globalization stance. Chris Smaje, agrarian and writer of the Small Farm Future blog in the UK has spelled out a vision of “left agrarian populism” that is genuinely anti-establishment and pro-people (all people), is based on and strengthens local economies, and is fiercely internationalist.[15] Localist and internationalist? Yes. Localization of economic activity is, perhaps counter-intuitively, supportive of greater global collaboration, understanding, compassion and intellectual-cultural exchange, while corporate-controlled economic globalization has hardened, and even produced, cultural/national friction and competition.

Political theorist Chantal Mouffe has similarly acknowledged the right-wing hijacking of legitimate political discontentment against corporate elitism across Europe, the answer to which, she says, must involve “the construction of another people, promoting a progressive populist movement that is receptive to those democratic aspirations and orients them toward a defense of equality and social justice. Conceived in a progressive way, populism, far from being a perversion of democracy, constitutes the most adequate political force to recover it and expand it in today’s Europe.”[16]

Degrowth scholar-activists Francois Schneider and Filka Sekulova have, in line with Smaje’s left-green localism-populism, articulated the important concept of ‘open-localism’ or ‘cosmopolitan localism’.  “Open-localism”, they write, “does not create borders, and cherishes diversity locally. It implies reducing the distance between consumer and producers … being sensitive to what we can see and feel, while being cosmopolitan”.[17] These visions, and many other related ones, provide an important foundation for social justice and environmental activists to build upon in boldly reclaiming the anti-globalization narrative and resistance in these difficult times.

Alex Jensen is Project Coordinator at Local Futures. Alex has worked in the US and India, where he coordinated the Ladakh Project from 2004 to 2009. He has collaborated on Local Futures’ Roots of Change curriculum and The Economics of Happiness discussion guide. He has worked with cultural affirmation and agro-biodiversity projects in campesino communities in a number of countries, and is active in environmental health/anti-toxics work.

For permission to repost this and other Local Futures posts, please contact info@localfutures.org

[1] See for example Naureckas, Jim, “Hey NYT – the ‘Relentless Populist’ Relented Long Ago”, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, January 22, 2017; Lynch, Conor, “Don’t be fooled: Trump’s populist economic rhetoric is a fraud”, Salon, July 9, 2016; Paarlberg, Michael, “Donald Trump is a pretend populist – just look at his economic policy”, The Guardian, August 10, 2016.

[2] Warner, J. (2016) “Donald Trump’s cabinet of oil men and generals is just what’s needed to get US out of its rut “, The Telegraph, December 16, 2016.

[3] Hart-Landsberg, M. (2016) ‘Confronting Capitalist Globalization’, Reports from the Economic Front.

[4] Heer, J. (2016) ‘Donald Trump Is Not a Populist. He’s the Voice of Aggrieved Privilege’, New Republic, 24 August.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Cuadros, A. (2016) ‘The Other Buffett Rule; or why better billionaires will never save us’, The Baffler, No. 33.

[7] McKinsey Global Institute (2015). “Playing to Win: the new global competition for corporate profits”, September 2015.

[8] Hart-Landsberg, M. (2016) ‘The Trump Victory’, Reports from the Economic Front, 18 November, 2016.

[9] See for example Pylas, P. and Keaten, J. (2017) ‘Will Trump end globalization? The doubt haunts Davos’ elite‘, Associated Press, January 20, 2017.

[10] Hickel, J. (2015) “Could you live on $1.90 a day? That’s the international poverty line”, The Guardian, November 1, 2015.

[11] Oxfam (2017) ‘Just 8 men own same wealth as half of humanity’, Oxfam International Press Release, 16 January, 2017.

[12] Harper’s Index, ‘Percentage by which the number of international borders with barriers has increased since 2014: 48’, Harper’s Magazine, January 2017.

[13] Jones, R. (2012) Border Walls: Security and the War on Terror in the United States, India and Israel, London: Zed Books.

[14] cf. Heer 2016, op.cit.

[15] Smaje, C. (2016) ‘Why I’m still a populist despite Donald Trump: elements of a left agrarian populism’, Small Farm Future, 17 November.

[16] Mouffe, C. (2016) ‘The populist moment’, Open Democracy, 21 November.

[17] Schneider, F. and Sekulova, F. (2014) ‘Open-localism’, paper presented at the 2014 International Conference on Degrowth, Leipzig, Germany.

3 February 2017

By Patrick Martin

The US Congress took its first legislative action of the new congressional term on behalf of the corporate elite, as the Senate voted by 54-45 to pass a resolution rescinding the Stream Protection Rule adopted by the Department of the Interior in December. The rule restricts the dumping of waste by coal companies engaged in a technique known as “mountaintop removal.”

Four Democrats joined 51 Republicans to approve the resolution, which passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday, in a similar near-party-line vote, by a margin of 228-194. The resolution now goes to the White House, where President Trump will sign it, repealing the regulation.

The Stream Protection Rule was finalized by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement on December 20, 2016 after years of delaying tactics by the coal companies and their legislative allies, Democratic and Republican. The rule runs to thousands of pages in an effort to counteract the various methods employed by the coal companies to evade responsibility.

At the time of the rule’s enactment, the Department of the Interior said it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters. The rule also establishes stricter guidelines for exceptions to the rule banning mining within 100 feet of a waterway.

The regulation requires coal companies engaging in surface mining to set aside resources to clean up waste and prevent it from going into local rivers and streams. It requires companies to pay for the cleanup of waterways affected by the dumping of mine waste.

Prior to adoption of the rule, companies could engage in mountaintop removal while promising to remedy at some later time the environmental horrors that resulted. They could then file for bankruptcy and escape the financial consequences of the pollution disasters they created. At least 2,000 miles of waterways in coalfield regions have been devastated in this way.

The four Senate Democrats who backed repeal are from states with either significant coal industries or the headquarters of major coal companies: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Republicans portrayed the bill as a measure to liberate American industry from the stranglehold of misguided overregulation. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday, “In my home state of Kentucky and others across the nation, the stream buffer rule will cause major damage to communities and threaten coal jobs.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said, “The stream protection rule is really just a thinly veiled attempt to wipe out coal mining jobs.” He claimed, “The Department of Interior’s own reports show that mines are safe and the surrounding environment is well-protected.”

Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was more explicit about the ideological basis of the repeal, calling the rule part of “a radical leftist elitist agenda against carbon-based jobs.”

Environmental organizations condemned the congressional action. Brandi Colander of the National Wildlife Federation said that “the people of coal country deserve to have states empowered with regulatory certainty to implement these rules with confidence that their water is safe to drink and land will be left behind for future generations to enjoy.”

The congressional action takes place under the auspices of the Congressional Review Act, which allows a new Congress to repeal, by a simple majority vote of each house, any regulation enacted by a federal department during the last 60 legislative working days of the previous Congress. This makes quick congressional action possible, since the repeal requires only 51 votes in the Senate and cannot be filibustered.

The law has been used only once since its passage in 1996. In 2001, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to repeal a Labor Department regulation protecting workers from repetitive-motion injuries, adopted in the final days of the Clinton administration, and the new president, George W. Bush, signed the bill into law.

House and Senate Republican leaders have set out to employ this previously obscure law as a mechanism for the wholesale repeal of environmental, workplace and other regulations enacted toward the end of the Obama administration. Some congressional aides have argued that the timeframe could be expanded to include virtually any regulation enacted by the previous administration.

The repeal of the Stream Protection Rule was the first in a series of five House resolutions to repeal regulations enacted last year under the Obama administration. These measures demonstrate the priorities of the Republican-controlled Congress and the new Trump administration.

The second resolution to pass the House Wednesday, and awaiting a Senate vote Thursday night, will repeal a regulation enacted by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Resource Extraction Rule requires energy companies to report payments they make to foreign governments for the right to extract oil, gas and minerals.

While seemingly arcane, the rule, authorized under the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulation law, is aimed at allowing the citizens of impoverished Third World countries to know what corporations are paying their governments to loot their countries’ resources. It has been fiercely opposed by the oil industry because it would shed light on their payoffs to foreign government officials.

The Reuters report on the House vote Wednesday to repeal the two regulations, the Stream Protection Rule and the Resource Extraction Rule, carried the unusually blunt headline “US House axes rules to prevent corruption, pollution.”

The other three regulations targeted for repeal include:

• The so-called “blacklisting” rule for federal contractors. This rule, finalized by the Department of Labor in August 2016, requires companies bidding on federal contracts to disclose any labor law violations in the previous three years, such as failure to pay the minimum wage, cheating workers out of overtime, and so on. A corporate lawsuit resulted in a court injunction temporarily blocking the rule, which would now be repealed.

• A rule enacted by the Social Security Administration requiring background checks before people who receive disability benefits because of mental illnesses are allowed to buy guns. This was opposed by right-wing politicians as an infringement of Second Amendment rights.

• The Methane Waste Rule, also established by the Department of the Interior, which requires oil and gas companies operating on federal or Native American tribal land to reduce methane leaks, capturing the methane instead of releasing it into the air. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gas emissions.

According to numerous press accounts, venting and flaring of methane from oil and gas drilling has led to the creation of a methane cloud the size of the state of Delaware, situated above the Four Corners area where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado come together. The cloud was first detected by NASA satellites.

The Congressional Review Act not only expedites the repeal of regulations, it makes it far more difficult to re-enact them later. Once a rule has been repealed, federal agencies are barred from ever again adopting new rules that are in “substantially the same form.” Such rules would have to be authorized by new legislation that would be subject to a Senate filibuster. Moreover, the law bars any judicial review of any “determination, finding, action, or omission” under the CRA.

Congressional Republicans are limited in how far they can proceed with the repeal of regulations using the CRA only by the law’s provision that each regulation requires a separate resolution, and each resolution requires 10 hours of debate in the House and the Senate.

There is not enough legislative time available to pass separate resolutions for all 200 of the regulations identified by the Congressional Research Service as eligible for repeal. On January 4, to address this difficulty, the House passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, which allows Congress to bundle an entire group of regulations into a single bill for up or down vote by a simple majority. This act, however, faces a likely filibuster in the Senate.

The following day, the House passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. This bill requires regulations that cost US corporations more than $100 million to be approved by a vote of both houses of Congress before they take effect. Passage of the REINS Act would effectively shut down all federal regulation of corporate business—the real goal of the Trump administration and its congressional allies.

While the House of Representatives has taken the lead in repealing regulations, the Senate is pushing ahead with the greatest gift to polluters, the installation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. As attorney general of the state of Oklahoma, Pruitt was widely regarded as the best friend of the oil and gas industry, filing lawsuit after lawsuit against EPA anti-pollution regulations and even directly incorporating text provided by the corporations into his legal briefs.

Pruitt’s nomination was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by an 11-0 vote after the minority Democrats boycotted the hearing and the Republicans voted to suspend the rules and proceed to a vote. The nomination now goes to the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote, expected next week, along party lines.

3 February 2017

By Gabriel Black

President Donald Trump threatened to revoke federal funding to the University of California at Berkeley, one of the top public research institutions in the United States, following a protest Wednesday night by thousands of students against Milo Yiannopoulos, the extreme right-wing editor of Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos had been invited by the campus Republicans to speak at the university.

The protest was peaceful, but a small, well-organized group of anarchists assaulted Trump supporters and vandalized stores and other property. The university police canceled Yiannopoulos’s appearance and ordered a lockdown of the campus, with students told to “shelter in place.”

The gratuitous violence carried out by the black-hooded ANTIFA group was a gift to the Trump administration, which seized on its actions to smear the students who demonstrated to express opposition to the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism and general contempt for democratic rights pushed by Breitbart News and Yiannopoulos. The former head of Breitbart, a media platform for the fascistic “alt-right,” is Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief White House adviser.

All three early morning network news programs led Thursday with the violence in Berkeley in reports designed to discredit the protesters and promote Yiannopoulos and his supporters as defenders of free speech and academic freedom. The viciously anti-Muslim Breitbart editor is touring mostly liberal US campuses in a well-organized provocation aimed precisely at inciting violent incidents that can be used as a pretext for the suppression of democratic and left-wing views.

Several other stops on Yiannopoulos’s tour have been canceled. At his speech at the University of Washington, one of his supporters shot and seriously injured a protester.

His speech Tuesday night at California Polytechnic University was a diatribe against the right to abortion. Yiannopoulos presented the world as a battle between Christian “Western civilization” and Islam. In another speech last year he said, “Islam, not radical Islam, is the problem.” Muslim immigrants, he added, “bring their delicacies with them: pork chops, yoghurt and gang-rape.”

Writing at 2 am Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, Trump tweeted, “If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view—NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

Berkeley research relies on $370 million in annual funding from the federal government, a little more than half of its yearly research budget. The University of California system as a whole receives $1.6 billion in federal aid for students.

Protests on the campus began at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday, with some 2,000 students participating. Shortly after the protesters assembled, a section of anarchists began to shoot fireworks at police and event organizers and assault the few Trump supporters in the area. They attempted to break into the building where the event was scheduled by smashing the windows. The university police canceled the event and evacuated Yiannopoulos.

The police then fired tear gas, rubber bullets and noise grenades into the crowd. Some of the so-called “black bloc” protesters tore down a mobile floodlight and set its generator on fire.

After the event had been canceled, a smaller section of the protest took to the streets and marched around Berkeley. One teenager, not a student at UC Berkeley, was arrested. Two others were arrested earlier in the afternoon for allegedly assaulting a Trump supporter on campus.

Anarchist groups such as ANTIFA are politically reactionary. They represent demoralized sections of the middle class that are hostile to any struggle to politically educate and mobilize the working class and youth against the capitalist system. Their tactics, gratuitous violence and destruction of property, flow from and reflect their bankrupt politics.

Undercover police and paid provocateurs would act no differently at a mass demonstration than ANTIFA did Wednesday evening in Berkeley. In fact, such organizations are, by dint of their politics and the social forces they attract, magnets for police infiltration. There can be little doubt that significant numbers of the hooded anarchists who rioted in Berkeley were police agents or informants.

3 February 2017

By Mike Head

In what appears to have been a calculated leak from the highest echelons of the White House, US President Donald Trump reportedly “blasted” Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a phone call last weekend and then abruptly cut off the call.

According to the details first published by the Washington Post yesterday, Trump fumed at Turnbull for asking him to honour an Obama administration refugee-swapping deal with Australia. In line with his demonisation of refugees, Trump labelled it “the worst deal ever” and accused Turnbull of trying to export the “next Boston bombers” to the US.

Trump went further, however, telling Turnbull that their conversation was the “worst by far” of the five phone calls he had that day with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. After 25 minutes, Trump suddenly ended the scheduled one-hour call “making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin,” the newspaper reported.

The leaked content of the conversation exposed Turnbull’s insistence that it “ended cordially” and the fraud of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s earlier claims that the call was “very warm” and “very engaging.” Turnbull yesterday said he was “very disappointed” that details of the call were leaked.

Clearly, however, this was not merely a personal slight to Turnbull. It was a deliberate warning shot to his government and the entire Australian political establishment about the future of its post-World War II military alliance with the US. Sitting in the Oval Office monitoring Trump’s call was his chief strategist, the fascistic Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s militarist national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Yesterday, Trump reiterated the wider bellicose “America First” message, to US allies and rivals alike. In a speech, he told a Washington audience that the world was in a mess, but he was “going to straighten it out.” He declared: “When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it… We have to be tough. It’s time we have to be a little tough, folks. We are taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore.”

Earlier in the day, gangster-like, Trump said he “loved Australia as a country” but had “a problem” with the refugee deal. His spokesman Spicer reiterated that Trump was “unbelievably disappointed” about the “horrible deal” and refugees would be allowed in the US only if they passed “extreme vetting.”

In reality, this draconian screening was already central to the agreement stuck with the Obama administration last year, which was designed to reinforce the reactionary anti-refugee policies on both sides of the Pacific. Not one of the more than 2,000 refugees incarcerated indefinitely by Australia on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island is guaranteed entry into the US.

Trump’s bullying treatment of Turnbull has thrown the Australian government and the media and political elite into turmoil because it makes brutally clear that the new administration’s belligerence has ominous implications. This is not least because Washington is reportedly pressing for a far greater military commitment from Canberra, particularly in the Middle East and the South China Sea.

In return for US military and strategic protection, Australian governments have sent troops to kill and die in every major US-instigated war for the past six decades—from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But much more is now being required as the Trump White House seeks to “make America Great again” against its rivals, including China and Germany.

Largely buried in the Australian media is what the White House has demanded of Turnbull’s government, or is soon likely to, in return for the refugee-swap arrangement. In today’s Australian, editor-at-large Paul Kelly noted: “If the deal proceeds Trump, as a transactional president, will seek a quid pro quo at some point on some issue. And Turnbull, aware he has used up his political capital, will agree.”

On Wednesday, citing unnamed “senior US sources,” the Australian reported that the Trump administration had agreed, after lobbying from Canberra, to amend its sweeping anti-immigrant executive order to allow for the “pre-existing” refugee-swap agreement.

But the White House was “not happy” and “made no secret that Australia would ultimately be expected to reciprocate.” One source said: “The favour won’t be called in straight away … but some sort of reciprocity will come eventually. And that is likely to come in the form of freedom-of-navigation exercises [in the South China Sea] or the deployment of special forces to Iraq.”

Under Turnbull’s ousted predecessor, Tony Abbott, the Liberal-National government sent war planes and other military forces to join the renewed US war in Iraq, under the guise of combatting the Islamic State. Dispatch of special forces to join US ground forces would signal a marked escalation of the ongoing US drive for hegemony over the resource-rich Middle East.

Until now, the Turnbull government, while carefully toeing Washington’s line, has not followed the US in sending warships or planes into the territorial zones around islets under China’s control in the South China Sea, under the bogus pretext of defending “freedom of navigation.” The Obama administration conducted three such provocative operations, which heightened tensions with Beijing and intensified the danger of a war between the US and China, two nuclear powers.

Trump and his newly-confirmed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have threatened to block China’s access to the islets, which would be an act of war. Such a conflict could have disastrous consequences for the Australian capitalist class, which relies heavily on China as its largest export market.

Trump is now taking to a new level pressure on Canberra that was initiated under Obama, as part of the US military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to combat and prepare for war against China. In mid-2010, when then Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed that the US make some accommodation to China’s economic growth and rising influence, he was deposed in a backroom Labor Party coup orchestrated by elements close to the US embassy, including current Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Barack Obama himself sent blunt warnings to Turnbull, who was initially somewhat critical of the “pivot” when Obama announced it on the floor of the Australian parliament in 2011. Last September, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported that Turnbull, because of his past business interests in China, was “not trusted” by Australian intelligence agencies. Two months later, media leaks revealed that during a one-on-one meeting in Manila, Obama had rebuked Turnbull for failing to consult Washington before a Chinese corporation was awarded a 99-year lease to operate Darwin’s commercial port.

Today, the Australian media is full of alarm and foreboding about the implications of Trump’s dressing down of Turnbull, including the impact it will have on the already falling public support for the US alliance.

AFR chief political correspondent Phillip Coorey wrote: “If Trump continues treating Australia like dirt, public support for doing anything to help the Americans, including letting them keep their troops based in Darwin, let alone following them on any frolic in the South China Sea, will quickly wane.”

Professor James Curran of the US Studies Centre at Sydney University—a centre dedicated to overcoming public hostility to the US after the 2003 Iraq invasion—voiced concerns of what lies ahead. “If you have this sort of tension this early in the life of the administration over relatively small beer, what will happen in the event of a major crisis?”

Others within the media and political establishment, while not calling for a break from the US alliance, are casting doubt on its reliability. Fairfax Media political editor Peter Hartcher today declared it was time to “wake up, Australia!” The “moment of alliance shock” could “jolt Australia into doing more for itself” and “the country might mature from a state of adolescent dependency on America into a more adult state.”

Such statements are part of efforts in the ruling elite to divert public opposition to the Trump administration in a reactionary nationalist direction by advocating a more “independent” foreign policy to assert the interests of the Australian ruling class.

3 February 2017

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Talks between the Syrian regime and opposition forces, held in Kazakhstan’s capital from 23 to 24 January, concluded with Russia, Turkey and Iran announcing their intention for a trilateral mechanism to monitor and enforce the ceasefire between regime forces and rebels. The talks aimed to build on the 30 December truce, which was brokered by Ankara and Moscow, and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Delegations from armed opposition groups and the Syrian regime were meant to speak directly; however, this failed to materialise. The talks suggest the possibility of a diplomatic resolution for Syria in the future, but one which will favour the regime, and will not totally end the fighting.

The Astana talks highlighted the role of these three regional powers in Syria’s civil war, and the sidelining of the USA and Saudi Arabia; the former was invited as an observer, and the latter not at all. Astana did little to change the situation on the ground as regime forces continue attacking rebel fighters in Wadi Barada, near Damascus, while fighting between rebel groups broke out in Idlib, further weakening the opposition in the face of an assertive regime.

The nature of the Syrian civil war, with the involvement of a number of states supporting a range of actors, and the role of the Islamic State group (IS), has led to the failure of several UN-mandated peace talks. The organisers positioned the Astana talks as a basis for upcoming UN talks in Geneva, intended to cement the ceasefire while establishing a trajectory for future negotiations. The fall of Aleppo in December was a turning point in the conflict, and allowed the Syrian president, Bashar al-Asad, to claim victory and rubbish any attempts to exclude him from any transition process. Since Turkish and Russian support led to Asad’s success in Aleppo, they also took the diplomatic initiative. Their ceasefire deal was signed by Syria and seven major opposition groups. It was active in all areas not under IS control, and excluded UN-designated ‘terrorist’ groups, particularly IS and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly al-Qa’ida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra). When the parties decided early January that the ceasefire was substantially holding, Russia and Turkey began preparations to host talks between the regime and opposition forces.

Differing expectations of the Astana talks threatened to collapse the dialogue before it has started. Asad expressed hope that the armed rebel groups will disarm in exchange for an amnesty deal. Opposition groups expected to the talks only to strengthen the ceasefire, leaving any discussion of Syria’s political future to Geneva. The ceasefire agreement between Russia and Turkey has been more successful than previous agreements between Russia and the USA, and the organisers hoped that excluding the USA from a pivotal role may invoke greater trust between participants. Washington’s involvement in the Syrian peace process has decreased not only due to Asad’s ascendency with Russian support or Iran wishing to exclude them from the process, but also as Obama’s presidency ended. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem also spoke highly of the chance of success due to ‘strong guarantees’ from Moscow, calling the ceasefire a potential starting point for a political process.

Although all opposition groups that had signed the 30 December ceasefire had received invitations to Astana, the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, one of the larger rebel groups, did not attend, citing the fighting in Wadi Barada. The USA had insisted that the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD, the largest group in the US-sponsored Syrian Democratic Forces) be involved; Moscow remained silent while Ankara refused to consider the inclusion of either the PYD or its armed wing, the YPG, due to their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The SDF responded by announcing its rejection any decisions that would be made in Astana. Opposition groups are divided, and the loss of eastern Aleppo highlighted their weakened position. Turkey is the opposition’s major state ally; however, Ankara’s rapprochement with Moscow forces opposition groups to question the usefulness of a diplomatic route that constrains their offensive options and increases tensions with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The current fighting between Fateh al-Sham and allies against Ahrar al-Sham and allies in Idlib highlights this tension among rebel factions.

The Astana talks were largely unproductive, and their primary impact emerged from discussions on the sidelines between Russia, Turkey and Iran on strengthening the ceasefire. In their agreement to set up a trilateral mechanism to monitor the ceasefire, the parties agreed there could be no military solution in Syria, and that the conflict could only be resolved through compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254. Neither the Syrian regime nor the rebel delegation appeared satisfied by the outcome of the talks. The opposition protested Iran’s inclusion in monitoring the ceasefire and mediating the conflict, and refused to sign any agreement. The government, meanwhile, announced the continuation of an offensive in Wadi Barada despite the ceasefire and had recaptured all rebel villages within a week.

An agreement to extend the ceasefire is a shaky foundation for the UN-mandated talks in Geneva starting on 20 February. Further, the exclusion of up to two thirds of opposition groups does not provide the rebel delegation with a popular mandate. The exclusion of armed groups with alleged al-Qa’ida links has further divided the opposition while providing the regime with an excuse for violating the ceasefire. Iran’s commitment to the ceasefire is a positive step towards freezing the conflict. Ultimately, it seems that a diplomatic solution is on the horizon, with the main drivers being Russia, Turkey and Iran. It will likely be a resolution that sees the co-option of certain sections of the opposition into the government, and an agreement that Asad will remain in power until the next election, when he will gracefully exit.

2 February, 2017