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By Asad Ismi

The Latin American revolution seemed unstoppable until recently. From El Savador in the north to Argentina in the south, leftists elected since 1998 have implemented the greatest redistribution of wealth in the region’s history, providing millions of jobs, free medical care and education, land reform and public subsidies, thereby lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty. Now, in Venezuela and Argentina, a resurgent right is using economic hardship to foment resentment and secure legislative victories.

In November 2015, after 12 years under a popular leftist government, voters in Argentina chose Mauricio Macri, right-wing former mayor of Buenos Aires, as their new president. A month later, Venezuelan voters handed 109 of 167 legislative seats to the centre-right Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, or MUD)—the first time since 1999 that the United Socialists (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, or PSUV) have not held the assembly.

Venezuela’s angry opposition

Several factors converged to bring about the change in Venezuela. Foremost were the crash of oil prices, a campaign of economic sabotage or capital strike by local business elites (including price speculation and the hoarding of key consumer items to create scarcity) and a media war carried out by the political opposition in league with Washington. MUD picked up 2.4 million more votes in the December election than in 2010, while about two million PSUV supporters chose not to vote in protest of the government’s handling of the food shortages.

“These voters are upset by the way the government of Nicolás Maduro has handled the economy,” says Antonio Garcia, an analyst of Venezuelan and Latin American politics who recently stepped down as Venezuela’s ambassador to the European Union. “Maduro failed to effectively explain to the people how the economic sabotage against Venezuela negatively impacts them and failed to implement measures to effectively confront this economic war. The public had the perception that the Maduro government was not doing enough to counter this attack and I believe that perception did more harm to the PSUV that the economic situation itself.”

Garcia points out that the economic problem in Venezuela is not very different from what is happening in other Latin American countries, though it is felt more acutely. The Venezuelan economy, and the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chávez generally, have been propped up for 15 years by high oil prices. The rout in the price of oil and other commodities has constrained state efforts to redistribute national wealth and expand equalizing social services. In Venezuela, oil revenues—which account for 95% of export earnings and 25% of GDP—have been cut by 60% in the past few years, leading to inflation of 140%, soaring food prices and currency destabilization.

According to Venezuelan-Canadian sociologist Dr. Maria Páez Victor, the fall in the price of oil “has been a godsend to the U.S. attempts to destabilize Venezuela politically and economically, which have been ongoing since 2002.” These include U.S. involvement in a military coup and economic sanctions imposed by U.S. President Obama on state-owned oil company PDVSA based on the premise that Venezuela presented an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States.

As I’ve written previously in the Monitor (April 2015), the U.S. has given anti-PSUV opposition groups more than $100 million since 2002 to undermine and overthrow the Maduro/Chavez government. Most of Venezuela’s privately owned news media are also hostile to the PSUV, and their attacks on the government are widely quoted by the international capitalist press. During the December election, the media blamed only the government for the economic crisis, mocking the possibility of a planned emergency, and repeatedly predicted the implosion of the country.

But winning one election does not mean the opposition can derail the profound progressive transformation of Venezuela that the PSUV has carried out. Paez Victor points to a survey carried out in January, by the non-partisan polling company Hinterlaces, which showed 79% approval of the socialist economic policies of the government. The MUD opposition is made up of 20 parties that are united on only one issue: the removal of Maduro from office before his term ends in 2019. It is an unlikely prospect.

While the coalition decried a supreme court decision in February to grant Maduro emergency powers to handle the economic crisis, it has no positive solutions of its own. Even the notoriously anti-Chavez New York Times was still, in March, calling for co-operation between the government and opposition rather than a complicated and potentially violent confrontation the latter cannot win.

A slick new president in Argentina

The fall in commodity prices has also affected political fortunes in Argentina where a new president is making good with Wall Street’s vulture capitalists, pulling out of Bolivarian Revolution projects like TeleSUR, and inviting the International Monetary Fund to audit the public books (read: proscribe austerity) for the first time in a decade.

From 2003 to 2015, under the leftist governments of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband Néstor Kirchner, the Argentine economy grew by an amazing 78%, creating one of the biggest increases in living standards in Latin America. Wealth redistribution programs reduced poverty by 70% and extreme poverty by 80%. Unemployment fell from 17.2% to 6.9%. Since 2012, however, growth has slowed to an annual average of 1.1%, inflation has been high and the fall in commodity prices, notably for cash crop soybean, has driven the country into recession. A third of Argentina’s exports are agricultural products including grain and beef.

With approval ratings above 50%, despite blurry allegations of corruption from opponents, Fernandez remained popular into October 2015, but she was constitutionally barred from running for another term. Her chosen replacement, Daniel Scioli, ran a lacklustre campaign that failed to capitalize on her reputation or emphasize the Kirchners’ impressive record. During the election, Macri took advantage of this situation by positioning himself as a “moderate” who, if elected, would continue some of Kirchner’s progressive policies, even promising “zero poverty.” He won by only 3% of the vote.

Since taking office, Macri has moved aggressively to the right, ruling by decree rather than run his policy through the left-dominated legislature. The president has devalued the national currency, the peso, by 40% (to increase exports, but with upward pressure on inflation), liberalized the financial sector by removing capital controls, lifted restrictions on imports, eliminated taxes on mining, ended subsidies for electricity, laid off thousands of civil servants, and pledged to finally pay US$4.6 billion ($6.02 billion) to the U.S. hedge funds that gamed Argentina’s 2001 bankruptcy for private gain.

For his efforts to reconnect Argentina to the neoliberal global order—Wall Street in particular—Macri got a special visit by Obama in March after the U.S. president’s official visit to Cuba. “Argentina is re-assuming its traditional leadership role in the region and around the world,” Obama said, referring endearingly to Macri as “a man in a hurry.” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde is likewise “encouraged” by the new president. The IMF will issue a series of further economic reform proposals after it concludes its audit of Argentina’s books. It is the standard “shock doctrine” at work.

“Macri is a disaster for the economy, but he is even worse for human rights,” says Argentinian-Canadian Antonio Savone, who was imprisoned and tortured by the vicious military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. The dictatorship killed 30,000 Argentines. In 2015, Savone returned to Argentina to testify against the military officers who tortured him and also in the trial of Rosa del Carmen Gomez who was raped repeatedly by officers for months in front of Savone as they shared the same prison cell.

As part of a reconciliation project, the Kirchner governments have imprisoned hundreds of military officers for murder and torture, including those in Savone’s and Carmen Gomez’s cases, in a determined effort to bring justice to a traumatized society. But Macri has dismissed the importance of continuing these trials, insisting that Argentina deal with “21st century” human rights issues instead.

According to Savone, the new president has moved to enforce a level of repression in Argentina that “has not been seen for 13 years.” This includes criminalizing demonstrations and suppressing them with tear gas and rubber bullets, and jailing Milagro Sala a prominent social activist, on charges of fraud—an act that was criticized by Pope Francis in February. Sala is the leader of the Túpac Amaruorganization in the poor province of Jujuy. The organization which is made up of 70,000 mostly Indigenous members, operates schools, health clinics, and textile factories for the poor and has built entire neighbourhoods with subsidies from the Kirchner government.

“What Sala has done is amazing,” says Savone. “Her arrest shows that Macri is set on attacking social movements.”

Macri’s shock treatment is going to fail, Savone concludes, “because Argentines are now much better organized than they were in 2001.” On February 24, tens of thousands of public sector workers launched the first national strike against Macri with massive protests against layoffs and spiralling inflation. The workers blocked the streets in front of the Argentine legislature in Buenos Aires and the police refused to face them despite the new powers that Macri has given security forces to suppress demonstrations.

“The people of Argentina have had 13 years of successful leftist government backed by powerful labour unions and they are not going to let some millionaire turn their country back into a fiefdom for the rich,” says Savone.

Asad Ismi is the CCPA Monitor’s international affairs correspondent and author of the anthologyThe Latin American Revolution which can be ordered from the CCPA by writing to <jason@policyalternatives.ca>. He is also author of the radio documentary with the same title which can be heard on his website:www.asadismi.ws.

25 May 2016

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By Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi

Transcript of Nahdha’president Rached Ghannouchi’s Opening Speech at the opening ceremony of the Tenth Party Congress:

In the Name of God, Most Beneficent, Most Merciful

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds, and prayers and peace be on his messenger

Your Excellency President of the People’s Assembly

Your Excellencies,
Ministers,
Members of the diplomatic corps in Tunis,
Representatives of parties and organizations,
Dear friends and guests who have honored us by coming from abroad to attend our Congress,

Dear Guests,

Peace be upon you all.

And I also greet Nahdha’s faithful supporters – whether those inside the stadium, or the thousands more outside to whom I apologize – this opening ceremony should have been held in an open space; those who were afraid that this stadium may not be filled, are still not familiar with Nahdha.

Ladies and gentlemen, guests and delegates,

Today, we inaugurate, by God’s Grace, the tenth national party congress of Nahdha Party, the second national congress after the revolution.

Even during the most difficult periods of secret activity and police harassment under dictatorship, our Movement was committed to holding its national congress regularly, as a way of evaluating and reforming its path, reviewing its policies, and renewing its leadership. I do not believe that there is another party in the country, despite the great number of parties, that is holding its tenth party congress – which means that you are the oldest amongst political parties. Our first congress was held in 1979 – which means that in a period of around a third of a century, ten congress were held – that is an average of one congress every less than four years. That is an expression of the fact that Nahdha is run by institutions, by democracy, by consultation – an important Islamic value.

At the beginning of this occasion, we pray for the souls of the martyrs of the revolution and martyrs of the struggle against dictatorship, led by martyrs of the movement, such as student Othman Ben Mahmoud- through whom we salute Tunisia’s youth.

We also remember the martyrs of the national army and police, and victims of the war against terrorism, and victims killed by terrorism, led by martyrs Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi.

We reaffirm to all those that we remain faithful to the martyrs and that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

Our accumulated experience in the war against terrorism has struck fear into the opposite camp, which is now receding at the hands of the successful preemptive operations by our security and military forces. As we reaffirm Nahdha’s absolute support for the state in its war against ISIS and takfiri extremists, we say to them that Tunisia, despite all the sacrifices, is stronger than their hatred, and it will, God willing, defeat them. In this regard, the great city of Ben Guerdane set a living and striking example that our people will never be defeated by terrorism. A small city that refused to allow evil terrorists to settle in it – for Tunisia will not allow terrorism to triumph, thanks to its national unity and to the well-established concept of the state in this country – even if they may protest against the state or criticize it, they refuse to move from order to chaos – we salute the Tunisian state.

The path of the revolution, therefore, is one of political successes, re-establishing security, and strengthening international solidarity, culminating in Tunisia being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the National Dialogue Quartet. Tunisia remains the shining candle among countries of the Arab Spring, having sparked the revolutions, demonstrating that democracy in the Arab world is possible.

In 2011, the spark was lit. Five ships sailed, carrying the hopes of their peoples for freedom and dignity. However, sadly within two years, storms and hardships surrounded those ships – storms of conspiracies, division, ideological polarization, mutual hatred, exclusion, revenge, assassinations, and terrorism.

Some ships met with destruction; others drowned in coups, civil wars and chaos. Tunisia’s ship was the exception. It was able to overcome the storms of the counter-revolution, chaos and destruction, thanks to Tunisians adopting the principle of dialogue, acceptance of the other, and avoidance of exclusion and revenge. We were able, by God’s grace, to bring Tunisia to the shores of safety.

At the height of the acute crisis of 2013, which threatened to drown Tunisia’s ship in the swamps of division, His Excellency President Beji Caied-Essebsi invited me to a dialogue, in a historic step. I agreed, and I said to those who criticized me at the time for going to Paris to meet him, that I was ready to go anywhere for the sake of Tunisia’s interest.

As I renew Nahdha’s wholehearted support for the policy of consensus, I say today to those who seek political gain through hostility to Nahdha: Do not divide our country. Our hands are stretched out to everyone; the system of consensus accommodates everyone; Tunisia’s ship can only sail safely if it carries all Tunisians.

In this context, I would like to commend members of the outgoing Consultative Council of the Party, and Nahdha members of the National Constituent Assembly who facilitated Tunisia’s path towards social peace and consensus through their difficult and wise decisions: when they chose to preserve the first article of the Constitution of 1959, when they voted against the political exclusion law, and when they approved the national dialogue roadmap. Thus they proved that Nahdha is a national party that places Tunisia’s interest above its own. And when we were discussing stepping down from legitimate elected government, we repeatedly said: We may lose power, but Tunisia will win.

I am full of pride in our sons and daughters who were patient and persevered, and withstood the campaigns of doubt, demonization and provocation against their Party.

At this sensitive juncture, I urge them to continue in the same way, for the most important thing for us, before anything else, is our country’s stability and prosperity. We stress that Nahdha will remain a pillar of support for Tunisia’s stability. We renew our support for the government of Prime Minister Essid and our commitment to the unity of the governing coalition and to the method of consensus which created the Tunisian exception.

We, in Nahdha, are serious and sincere in our desire to learn from our shortcomings before and after the revolution. We admit them and we humbly address them through reform. In our Congress we have an “Evaluation motion” – we are a party that evolves and reforms itself, and are not afraid to admit our mistakes.

We are a party that never stopped evolving – from the seventies to this day – from an ideological movement engaged in the struggle for identity – when identity was under threat, to a comprehensive protest movement against an authoritarian regime, to a national democratic party devoted to reform, based on a national reference drawing from the values of Islam, committed to the articles of the Constitution and the spirit of our age, thus consolidating the clear and definitive line between Muslim democrats and extremist and violent trends that falsely attribute themselves to Islam.

The specialization and distinction between the political and other religious or social activities is not a sudden decision or a capitulation to temporary pressures, but rather the culmination of a historical evolution in which the political field and the social, cultural and religious field were distinct in practice in our movement.

We are keen to keep religion far from political struggles and conflicts, and we call for the complete neutrality of mosques away from political disputes and partisan utilization, so that they play a role of unification rather than division.

Yet we are astonished to see the insistence of some to exclude religion from public life, despite the fact that the leaders of the national liberation movement considered religious sentiments to be a catalyst for revolution against occupation – just as today we see the values of Islam as a catalyst for development and promoting work, sacrifice, truthfulness, and integrity, and a positive force in our war against ISIS and extremists and supporting the state’s efforts in development. Otherwise, if we do not counter ISIS – which claims to represent Islam – through using Islamic values, how can we counter it? We need scholars who champion Islamic moderation and refute extremism in the name of Islam.

Despotic regimes disfigured Nahdha’s relationship with the state, through repression, defamation and fear mongering. But they have failed, by God’s Grace, to make the state and Nahdha mutual enemies. Our experience in government after the revolution proves that Nahdha is part of the state and a source of significant support for it. Our leaving government to promote the country’s unity proves that we are not power seekers, nor after domination nor monopoly of power.

The Tunisian state is our ship, which must carry all Tunisian men and women without any exception, exclusion of marginalization.

We ask here: when will attempts to undermine the state stop? And in whose interest are these attempts to weaken it, while it is combating terrorism, and seek anarchist methods to promote breaking the law?

The time has come not only to condemn that behavior, but to consider it a crime against the nation, martyrs and future generations.

Our call for a just state becomes devoid of meaning and value if that state is not also strong, able to apply the law and the Constitution and protect freedoms, under the supervision of the legislative and judicial powers, the specialized oversight bodies, civil society and the media.

Freedom does not mean chaos, just as the state’s power does not mean repression and denial of freedoms. It is necessary for the revolution to reinstate the role of our well-established state and of its institutions and members, providing for their needs, adopting incentives that encourage productivity and eliminate the mentality of routine administration, the “come back tomorrow”, “no network connection”, and “A little something for me”.

The dignity of public administration workers is part of the state’s dignity, and no economic or social renaissance can take place without a real administrative reform that includes full digitization and elimination of paper administration. When will we be able to have an administration where a businessman or a young entrepreneur can create a company in a few hours instead of wasting his life from one department to another.

While it was one of the gains of the revolution to develop administrative working hours by adopting the five-day week, it is now necessary to accelerate the pace of reform far from slogans and political wrangling.

We are proud of our state, we demand rights from it, and we fulfill our duties towards it. Amongst the prerequisites of reinstating respect for the state is that we announce a war on corruption, and that no one should enjoy impunity that places him above the law.

I say clearly that Nahdha Party is committed to combating corruption, bribery, tax evasion and wasting of public wealth. Our call for reconciliation does not mean whitewashing corruption or justifying or recreating a new system of corruption.

Our aim is to distinguish between the majority of businessmen and the minority implicated in corruption, and giving the latter the opportunity to own up, apologize and give back that which they acquired illegally. That would help encourage free economic enterprise.

We have stressed our support for the President’s economic reconciliation initiative, while we await the discussion of its details at the Assembly of People’s Representatives.

I also stress our commitment to the Transitional Justice process. Furthermore, I call for a comprehensive national reconciliation that turns a new page and prevents the perpetuation of enmity. The comprehensive national reconciliation we all seek is not the initiative of one person or one party, but for a whole country looking forward to the future.

Thus we have said repeatedly, we are for a comprehensive national reconciliation and for cooperation and consensus-building with all those who recognize the revolution and its martyrs and respect the Constitution, a partnership with all those who regard the revolution as an opportunity for all of us – islamists, destourians, leftists, and all intellectual and political trends, so we can all go forward steadily towards a future that is free from grudges and exclusion.

Nor is it a “deal under the table” but rather a national vision of reconciliation between the state and citizens, between the state and deprived regions, between opposing political elites, between the past and the present – because Nahdha is a force of unification not one of division.

This also applies to the way we view our history, not as contradictory phases and figures – rather we see Khaireddine Al-Tounisi, Ahmed Bey, liberator of slaves, Moncef Bey, the late leader Habib Bourguiba, Farhat Hached, Abdelaziz Thaalibi, Salah Ben Youssef, Sheikh Mohamed Taher Ben Achour, and Tahar al-Haddad, God’s mercy be upon them all, all those and others, as leading symbols of our dear nation, as sources of inspiration for us all, which must all enjoy our respect. They undoubtedly had their mistakes, but we take the positives and build on them.

Tunisians are tired of politicians bickering on media debates; they are concerned about security, terrorism, the cost of living, economic development, and the struggle of vulnerable groups, the poor and deprived, and marginalized regions. You, Nahdha members and supporters, must not be drawn into the elite’s ideological battles, but should rather focus on the concerns of fellow citizens. A modern state is not run through ideologies, big slogans and political wrangling. It is guided by social and economic programs and solutions that provide security and prosperity for all.
Nahdha had evolved from defending identity, to ensuring the democratic transition, and today moves on to focus on the economic transition. The new phase is primarily about the economy.

Since liberation from colonization, Tunisia has achieved much in the fields of education, health, women’s rights, literacy and other fields of human development. We embrace and value those achievements. We commit to preserving and developing them, within the framework of the continuity of the state and our pride in the republican system and Tunisian society and its choices, as enshrined in the Tunisian Constitution.

I salute Tunisian women, in urban and rural areas, in Tunisia and abroad, in schools, universities and workplaces, in society and at home. Our movement is very proud of the gains and rights achieved by Tunisian women, and will continue to support them to guarantee further freedom and advancement in fulfilling their potential, and preserving the social fabric and the family as the source of social cohesion and unity.

We, Tunisians, are the product of the struggle of our mothers – Sheikh Abdelfattah Mourou sitting here in front of you is the fruit of a hard-working illiterate woman, who gave Tunisian such a man. My own mother was also illiterate, but while my father merely focused on teaching us the Quran, she insisted on sending me and my brothers to continue our education, and accepted to work in the field with my sisters to give the males – only unfortunately the chance to be educated. My own wife, a university graduate, devoted her life to her children’s education such that my four daughters obtained their PhDs or masters, as did our two sons who have masters in law and economics. I salute Tunisian women, who made this nation an educated developed nation.

I say to young people, torn between ambition and despair, who are disappointed in the outcome of the revolution and the political class: We hear you.

You are the future for which we work. The difficulties you face today must not be a source of pessimism or disengagement from public life. We need to overcome these challenges together, through sincere attachment to the nation, determination and persistence.

We call on the political elite to think about the youth and to provide them with the space to participate and to assume responsibility. It is high time for a national pact for youth development, so that no young man or woman is left marginalized, with no job, house, or prospects to establish a family.

Education is Tunisians’ most valued capital. Today we are required to agree on a national vision for its reform in such a way that guarantees balance between knowledge and ethics, and employability. We have to address the dangers in young people’s environment: violence, drugs, all the ways to exploit young people’s minds through terrorism’s evil plots. We have to address how education has become divorced from the job market.

We must break with ad-hoc reforms and with the search for quantity without quality. It is necessary to stress that education must be a door to work, not a bridge to unemployment.

No human development can take place without a cultural renaissance, without supporting creativity, without establishing cultural and sports activities in all regions, particularly in marginalized regions and popular urban neighborhoods. We want to see in every popular neighborhood a swimming pool, a sports centre, a cultural centre.

Strengthening the vocational training system and promoting it and reinstating its value are undoubtedly among the pillars of our reform plan.

The post-revolution state inherited an unemployment rate that was close to 14% according to official statistics in 2011, and the current rate is close to that.

Unemployment is the result of historical accumulations in the fields of education and training, the restriction of economic enterprise by laws that restrict freedom of investment, and by weak infrastructure in most regions of the country making them unattractive for economic projects.

Overcoming unemployment can only take place within a holistic economic model based on investment, which creates jobs and achieves balanced regional development and eliminates the mentality which eschews entrepreneurship and even the value of work.

We believe in the necessity of implementing the principle of positive discrimination enshrined in the Constitution for the benefit of deprived regions. We welcome and support the coming process of decentralization after the local elections, just as we support the right of the regions to a percentage of their natural resources in order to achieve regional development.

As I call upon businessmen to invest, particularly in the inner regions, I stress the necessity to lift all restrictions placed before them in this regard.

I call from this platform for an urgent economic recovery program that prioritizes reactivating obstructed production in certain strategic sectors and implementing stalled public projects. This program must adopt exceptional measures in all fields related to employment, investment and developing deprived regions, and mobilize internal financial resources and reduce dependence on external debt by encouraging national savings, reforming taxation and further simplification of the procedures for creating companies and initiating projects.

It is necessary to seek to implement a major economic project in each priority district over the next five years, to begin to distribute national lands to young entrepreneurs, to launch a legislative and administrative revolution to lift restrictions to investment and entrepreneurship, and to support the government’s work through a major economic ministry.

It is also important to stress the need to spread social welfare coverage particularly for workers in the agricultural field, and to direct subsidies to those who need them, to reinstate the culture of work and the link between fulfilling one’s duty and demanding one’s right.

As I renew my call for a social truce that preserves the rights of workers and protects economic institutions, I salute the important role played by the Tunisian General Workers’ Union, the Union of Industry, Commerce and Handicrafts, the Union of Agriculture and Fisheries and all national organizations for their role in development.

Your Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

The revolution gave Tunisians abroad for the first time the right to be part of parliament and to elect their representatives, as an integral component of Tunisia. I call for further support to them as they face a new wave of xenophobia. And I call on them to further strengthen their economic ties to their beloved homeland through increasing transfers and spending their summer holidays in Tunisian hotels, as well as investing, and it is necessary to create incentives for them to do so.

It is important in this regard to support Tunisian diplomacy in its official and cultural dimensions, and economic diplomacy in particular. I stress Nahdha’s commitment to supporting the state’s foreign policy, and Tunisia’s role in spreading peace, consensus and combating terrorism around the world. As I commend the steps made by our Libyan neighbors towards reconciliation and unity, it is our hope that the Arab world will soon inaugurate an age of peace and comprehensive reconciliation.

We also express our commitment to the Arab Maghreb Union, and we salute our neighbors Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Libya, and renew our commitment to strengthening our relations with our Arab, Muslim and African neighbors, and our pride in the good relations between Tunisia and Europe, the United States of America and all countries around the world.

We are proud that the Tunisian experience, which has won international acclaim, has proven that the solution to conflict is consensus-building and seeking the foundation for co-existence. We have demonstrated that democracy is possible in the Arab world, and that democracy is the solution to corruption, bribery, despotism, chaos and terrorism, and that investing in democracy is better and more effective than supporting regressive dictatorships.

The solution is reconciliation between the poor and the rich, between the north and south, between cultures and civilizations, between faiths. Our world needs mutual understanding, peace, solidarity, security and tolerance.

Your Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Nahdha’s members, with their blood, tears and sacrifices, have gone through trials and tribulations that taught us courage to admit our errors and review our policies far from any arrogance or egoism.

Self-criticism is a condition for evolution in the modern world, and just as we have practiced it throughout our history, we will consolidate it in our Tenth Congress, for which Tunisians have many expectations.

The success of this congress is primarily about presenting a renewed united Nahdha that is able to participate in solving Tunisia’s problems, a party of national ambition, a party of objective analysis and constructive criticism that give rise to a democratic alternative, a party that is open to its environment and to all capabilities and potential, a party that is proud of its members – women and men.

Every individual in Nahdha is a story of sacrifice and heroism. Families that have been torn apart and exiled; tens of thousands of prisoners..

Nahdhaouis sacrificed a lot for the sake of Tunisia – that is why we regard Nahdha as the shared possession of Tunisia and all Tunisians, before belonging to Nahdha members and supporters. That is what strengthens our conviction that the choice of reform is our path to rising to our people’s aspirations, and that partnership and cooperation are our choice. Tunisia cannot be ruled in the coming years by the logic of majority and minority but rather by the logic of consensus and partnership.

Ladies and gentlemen,

For many years, I was banned from entering Tunisia. When I used to see Tunis Air flights at any airport around the world, I would dream of returning to my land, dreams that were then very far from reality.

Will I return home one day?

Will I once again meet our sons and daughters scattered between dozens of prisons and places of exile?

Will I ever have the right to walk the streets of my country and congratulate my fellow Tunisians, my friends and family on festivals and Eids?

That dream has become a reality, by God’s Grace. And it continues to grow inside me day by day, turning from the dream of return to the dream of building a new beginning for Tunisia.

A dream of a better Tunisia – a united Tunisia; a democratic, developed and inclusive Tunisia.

We must share this dream with all Tunisians, as we look together with optimism, determination and hope to the future, not towards the past.

It is the Tunisian dream that motivates us to work hard and sacrifice in order to turn the revolution’s dreams into reality.

You, Tunisian men and women, are stronger than all difficulties and challenges.

You, grandchildren of Hannibal, Jugurtha, Oqba, Ibn Khaldun, el-Chebbi; children of Carthage, Kairouan, Mehdia and al-Zaytouna; you are able, God willing, through your unity and solidarity, through your attachment to your beloved country and your belief in yourselves, to achieve what we aspire to, and more – to achieve the Tunisian dream, just as you created, through your consensus, the Tunisian exception; and just as you sparked, with your courage and defiance, the flame of the Arab Spring.

It is time for Tunisia’s ship to leave the shore, to sail on its journey towards development and prosperity for all its people.

By God’s grace, we inaugurate this Congress, and we ask God to guide us to choose what is best for our country and our shared future.

Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi is the President of the Nahdha Party.

20 May 2016

By Boston Globe

DONALD TRUMP HAS promised that as soon as he becomes president of the United States, he will “rip up and rescind this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal.” Hard-liners in Iran are cheering. One of their leaders, the powerful editor Hossein Shariatmadari, recently declared, “The wisest plan of crazy Trump is tearing up the nuclear deal.”

Extremists in the United States and Iran have joined to derail this 10-month-old deal. They share a horror scenario: an Iran that is successfully integrated into the Middle East and the wider world, increasingly free at home and responsible in its neighborhood. Militants in Washington fear that this would give Iran a regional role commensurate with its history, size, and power, while they wish to see it tied down forever. Militants in Tehran fear that cooperating with the outside world will erode their authority and possibly lead to collapse of the Islamic Republic. These are reasonable fears.

When debate over the nuclear deal was raging last year in Washington, opponents relentlessly repeated a potent argument. They insisted that the deal made no sense because Iran is untrustworthy and never keeps its promises. Now, a new kind of Iran-related panic has broken out in Washington. This year’s fear is the opposite of last year’s. Opponents of the deal say it must be junked because Iran is living up to it.

“Iran has complied,” the Congressional Research Service reported last month. Its conclusion is hard to dispute. Iran has dismantled more than 12,000 nuclear centrifuges, shipped 98 percent of its nuclear fuel to Russia, and poured cement into the core of its heavy-water reactor. This has set off waves of outrage in Washington and Tehran. The prospect that the nuclear deal might actually work terrifies hard-liners in both capitals.

Many in Washington portray Iran as recklessly irresponsible and a relentless enemy of the United States. Iran undermines that image by fulfilling its obligations under a major international accord. In a coordinated effort to throw the deal off course even at this late date, members of Congress have introduced a host of bills aimed at crippling it.

One of those bills would make it illegal for Americans to buy heavy water from Iran — water that Iran must sell under terms of the nuclear deal. Another would forbid the awarding of defense contracts to “any company that does business with hostile Iranian actors.” Others threaten unspecified steps to counter Iran’s “malign activities” and punish it for “conducting military operations in a manner that raises tensions.”

Members of Congress have even sent a strongly worded letter to Boeing urging that it not seek to sell civilian airliners to Iran. Boeing has pursued this deal, which could be the richest contract in aviation history, but the congressmen said that would be “placing profits over the safety and well-being of the American people.” This increases the possibility that Iran Air will buy its new fleet from Boeing’s European competitor, Airbus. Even Trump sees the illogic. “We give them the money, and we now say, ‘Go buy Airbus instead of Boeing,’ ” he reasoned. “So how stupid is that?”

The phrase “give them the money” reflects another misleading aspect of the US-Iran narrative. American banks are holding billions of dollars in Iranian money that was impounded after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Under terms of the nuclear deal, that money is supposed to be returned. Estimates of the total run from $50 billion to $150 billion. Secretary of State John Kerry sounded positively jubilant when he said in a recent Washington speech that Iran had received no more than $3 billion so far. The United States has also been exceedingly slow to lift sanctions that can be imposed on foreign companies if they do business with Iran.

“The Americans have said that they would lift sanctions, and they have actually done so on paper,” Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, complained recently, “but through other ways and methods, they are acting in a way that the result of sanctions repeal will not be witnessed at all.”

The nuclear deal is threatened not just by assaults from Congress and foot-dragging by the Obama administration. The Supreme Court has also piled on. Last month, it ruled that victims of terror attacks said to have been plotted in Iran may sue to collect up to $2 billion in impounded Iranian assets. Iran, which denies involvement in the attacks, furiously denounced this as “theft of the assets and properties of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Iranians opposed to the nuclear deal are doing all they can to make Iran look bad in the world. They are behind a new crackdown on dissent, the arrest of foreigners, continued executions, and ballistic missile tests — which they hope will turn Americans against the nuclear deal. Some in Washington are eagerly rushing into their trap.

The nuclear deal with Iran was a major advance for American and global security. It is in our interest to see the deal fully implemented. Opponents in Congress are trying to undermine it. The Obama administration, which worked mightily to secure the deal, has not worked hard enough to assure that Iranians see some benefit from it. If true sanctions relief does not begin soon, the coalition of “mad mullahs” in Tehran and Washington could succeed in killing or crippling the nuclear deal. That would be bad for everyone who seeks a freer Iran and a more peaceful Middle East.

Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

11 May 2016

 

By RT News

Secret phone recordings between Brazil’s planning minister and the former president of Transperto have revealed that the minister suggested a “change” in the government to “stop the bleeding” caused by an investigation into Petrobras.
The March conversation between Planning Minister Romero Juca and former Transperto President Sergio Machado took place just weeks before impeachment proceedings were launched against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported.

The dialogue centered around Operation Lava Jato, a probe into allegations of corruption at the state-controlled oil company Petrobras, of which Transperto is a subsidiary. Both Machado and Juca are being investigated under the probe.

Machado mentioned a renewed drive in the investigation against Petrobras, saying that the operation was leaving “no stone unturned.”

In response, Juca said a change of government was needed to “stop the bleeding” caused by the probe.

“I think we need to articulate a political action,” Juca said, adding that a possible government with Michel Temer as president should include a national pact.

Juca’s lawyer, Antonio Carlos de Almeida Castro, said his client would “never think of doing any interference” in the investigation, and that the conversation between Juca and Machado contained no illegalities.

The minister himself denied that he had discussed Rousseff’s impeachment with Machado.

“I want to repeal the interpretation made by Folha de Sao Paulo … I was speaking of putting an end to the paralysis of Brazil, of ending the ‘bleeding’ of unemployment, separate [politicians] who are guilty and who are not,” Juca said in response to allegations, as quoted by the BBC.

The conversation took place just weeks before Rousseff was suspended from her post amid impeachment proceedings.

The leader, who is accused of illegally manipulating finances to hide a growing public deficit ahead of her 2014 re-election, was removed from office after senators voted to suspend her by 55 votes to 22 earlier this month. Her trial may last up to 180 days.

Rousseff, who denies the allegations against her, made an appeal to the Supreme Court to stop proceedings, but the move was rejected.

She told RT that the impeachment situation is a coup attempt by the old Brazilian oligarchy.

“This coup is not like usual coups in Latin America, which normally involve weapons, tanks in the streets, arrests and torture. The current coup is happening within the democratic framework, with the use of existing institutions in support of indirect elections not stipulated in the Constitution. This coup is carried out by hands tearing apart the Brazilian Constitution,” Rousseff said.

“If there is no crime, an impeachment is illegal. And since it’s illegal, it’s a serious problem for the interim government. I’m living proof of this unlawfulness and injustice,” she added.

Meanwhile, Operation Lava Jato continues, with federal authorities investigating corruption allegations at Petrobras, where it is alleged that executives accepted bribes in return for awarding contracts to construction firms at inflated prices. The operation, launched in March 2014, has resulted in more than 100 warrants for search and seizure, temporary and preventive detention, and coercive measures.
23 May 2016

Rohingya Muslims, in camps, wait for what democracy led by a Nobel peace prize winner will bring them. So far: Nothing.

By Wayne Hay

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights”. Back then, she was a campaigner for those things, spending a total of 15 years under house arrest.

She knows what it’s like to have rights and freedom taken away.

But now that she is in perhaps the ultimate position of power in Myanmar, there is no sign that she is going to defend the rights of people who have been detained simply because of who they are.

Tens of thousands of Muslims, mainly Rohingya, have been kept in camps in western Myanmar’s Rakhine State for almost four years since their homes and communities were attacked.

They were horrific events that were fanned by a powerful, nationalist Buddhist agenda – alive and well today – and it’s a movement Aung San Suu Kyi seems afraid of upsetting.

Grim prospects for democracy

After decades of campaigning against the previous military regime, her National League for Democracy party won last November’s general election and, even though the constitution prevents her from becoming president, she made it clear that she would be in charge and gave herself the title of State Counsellor.

Her choice of Religious and Cultural Affairs Minister raised eyebrows. Thura Aung Ko is a former army general and was a deputy in the same ministry under the previous military-backed government. And, so far, the new government isn’t sending any signals that it will adopt a policy to give rights to Rohingya who, in Myanmar, are widely regarded as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

On his first day on the job in the new administration, Thura Aung Ko gave a media interview in which he said that Muslims and Hindus were “associate citizens”, referring to the 1982 citizenship law that places people into three categories depending on their status.

He then visited leaders of a nationalist Buddhist movement who regularly spew anti-Islam rhetoric. It’s not known what was discussed at the meeting but it sent a bad message, something Aung San Suu Kyi herself has also been guilty of.

In April, the United States embassy in Yangon released a statement, offering their condolences for people who were killed when a boat sunk off Rakhine State. The people onboard were Rohingya and that’s exactly what the US statement called them.

That led to protests outside the embassy by people who refuse to recognise the term Rohingya because it’s not one of the official ethnic minority groups in Myanmar.

The response from Suu Kyi? Government officials sent a letter to the US ambassador and other diplomats urging them to refrain from using the word Rohingya.

Yes, it’s very early days in the life of the new government and there are many problems in this country to solve. Yes, the plight of the Rohingya is a very complex issue. Yes, the new government is talking about new laws to safeguard religious freedom and to get tough on hate speech.

But it’s not enough.

Here’s what we also know: Around 100,000 people have been living in squalid conditions for almost four years. They have no rights and many have died in a desperate attempt to leave. Over the past year though, the number of departures fell, partly because people wanted to see what the new government would do for them.

What Aung San Suu Kyi has at her disposal now is the power to speak out. Words can be powerful. They can offer hope. Particularly when they come from someone who built her name on a fight for freedom and rights.

But when it comes to the Rohingya, there has been nothing but silence; meaning for them, hope is already fading so early in Myanmar’s new democracy.

Wayne Hay has been covering the Asia/Pacific region since 2001, first with Television New Zealand before joining Al Jazeera English in 2006.

22 May 2016

 

By Bill Van Auken

Five years after a US-NATO war shattered Libya, Washington is preparing to send troops into the oil-rich North African nation for a “long-term mission,” the Pentagon’s top uniformed commander said Thursday.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters returning aboard his plane from a meeting of NATO commanders in Brussels that the new military deployment, which could involve thousands of US troops, could happen “any day.” It awaited only a formal agreement with the new government that the Western powers and the UN are attempting to set up in Tripoli, he indicated.

General Dunford told reporters that there had been “intense dialogue” and “activities under the surface” aimed at bringing about the Libya intervention. This apparently referred to efforts by the US ambassador to Libya, Peter Bodde, and the State Department’s special envoy for Libya, Jonathan Winer, to wrest a formal request for military intervention from Fayez al-Sarraj, the unelected head of the Western-backed Libyan Presidential Council.

Under UN and US tutelage, Sarraj and his allies established this council in exile in Tunisia, returning to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, at the end of March. It is obvious that this new puppet regime has been created for the sole purpose of providing a veneer of legality to another US-NATO military intervention in the devastated country.

Sarraj’s legitimacy, however, is by no means clear. His is now one of three competing regimes, including the Islamist-dominated General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli and the House of Representatives (HoR) based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which was previously recognized by the West as the legitimate government of Libya. Neither the GNC nor the HoR have recognized the authority of Sarraj’s presidential council.

Nor is it clear what fighting force Sarraj can rely upon and the US and its allies can arm and train. It was revealed earlier this month that US Special Operations troops have been on the ground in Libya since last year attempting to contact and assess various rival militias to see which one could be employed in the service of Washington’s interests in the country.

Ostensibly, the US and its allies are intervening to counter the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside the country. ISIS fighters, reported to number at least 5,000, have taken control of a stretch of the Libyan Mediterranean coast. It is no accident that the center of this territory is the city of Sirte, formerly the hometown of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The city was reduced to rubble by US-NATO attacks in the days leading up to the October 2011 torture and murder of Gaddafi at the hands of US-backed Islamist militiamen.

As in Iraq and Syria, Washington is justifying this new intervention in the name of combating a force that it itself spawned. Libya’s ISIS fighters came from the Islamist militias that the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies supported and armed in the bid to oust Gaddafi in 2011. Many of them were then sent into Syria, along with large stockpiles of Libyan weapons that were shipped to that country as part of an operation run out of the secret CIA station in Benghazi. That station and a separate US consulate were overrun by Libyan Islamist militiamen in September 2011, leading to the deaths of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Discussions on the coming Libya intervention took place at a meeting of foreign ministers from the US, Europe and the Middle East on Monday in Vienna. Among the decisions taken was to seek exemption from an arms embargo imposed by the UN after the fall of Gaddafi so that weapons can be funneled in to forces loyal to the puppet Sarraj, though it is, as of yet, unclear who those forces are. US Secretary of State John Kerry allowed that a “delicate balance” had to be found to prevent the arms from falling into the hands of Al Qaeda-linked and ISIS elements that Washington is ostensibly fighting.

The real objective in Libya today, as in 2011, is the assertion of undisputed US-NATO hegemony over the country and its massive oil reserves, the largest on the African continent. Having turned Libya into the model of a so-called “failed state” with its first intervention, Washington appears to want to impose some kind of neocolonial regime with its pending second incursion.

The centrality of oil is manifest in the operations of the two major armed militias that are being considered for the role of Western puppet forces. The first is the so-called Libyan National Army formed under the command of Khalifa Hafter, a former Libyan army officer who became an “asset” of the CIA in the 1980s, set up near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia and then airlifted by the Americans back into Benghazi during the 2011 war for regime change.

Hafter’s forces have been moving slowly west from Benghazi toward the ISIS center of Sirte, expending most of their energies on seizing control of some 14 oil fields along the way. The fields were taken largely from the Petroleum Facilities’ Guards (PFG), whose commander, Ibrahim Jadhran, had sworn allegiance to the US-backed regime of Sarraj after previously seeking autonomy for the east and attempting to sell oil independently of the government in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, a rival militia based in the city of Misurata in northwestern Libya has been approaching Sirte from the opposite direction with similar intentions. It is widely anticipated that these two forces, apparently the principal candidates for serving as the foundation of a Western puppet force in the country, may end up battling each other rather than ISIS.

While General Dunford predicted a US-NATO intervention was imminent, he was less forthcoming about its composition.

It had been reported initially that Italy, which exercised brutal colonial rule over Libya under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, would lead the mission, providing upwards of 5,000 troops. Among Rome’s principal concerns—aside from reasserting its old colonial ambitions—is securing the Libyan coast, which is expected to be the major route for refugees seeking to reach Italy, now that the EU has sealed off the so-called Balkan route.

On Monday, however, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy would not send troops into Libya. “While under pressure to intervene in Libya, we have chosen a different approach,” Renzi said in a statement.

For its part, Germany has reportedly rejected placing any of its troops in Libya, saying that it would only train Libyan forces in neighboring Tunisia.
The apparent disarray within NATO’s ranks reflects the competing interests of the US and the various European powers as the Libyan intervention escalates what is emerging as a new imperialist scramble for Africa.

As Washington prepares to launch another military intervention into a nation that it previously decimated through a war of aggression, its ongoing campaign in Iraq appears in growing danger. Baghdad was placed under military curfew Friday night after Iraqi security forces used tear gas and live fire to drive back thousands of antigovernment demonstrators who stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, reaching the office of Iraq’s US-backed prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.
Initial reports indicated at least one civilian, and perhaps several, killed by security forces, and dozens wounded.

Protesters, including supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had stormed into the blast wall-enclosed Green Zone on April 30 to protest government corruption and failure to provide basic services and security. Anger has only deepened in the intervening weeks as the result of a series of terrorist bombings claimed by ISIS that have killed more than 150 people in Baghdad this month.

In the wake of the bloodshed in the Green Zone, there is a growing threat that an armed confrontation between government forces and armed Shia militias in the Iraqi capital could eclipse the so-called war against ISIS.

21 May, 2016
WSWS.org

A Conversation with Pepe Escobar. Global Research News Hour Episode 143

By Michael Welch, Pepe Escobar, and John Schertow

LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

As of 12 May, 2016, Dilma Rousseff, 36th President of Brazil has had her powers and duties suspended.

Michel Temer, her vice-President, has taken over those responsibilities while a 180 day impeachment process plays out in the Brazilian Senate.

Once registering personal approval ratings of over 70%, Rousseff popularity started to decline in early 2015 in the midst of accusations of involvement in a corruption scandal known as Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato in Portuguese). This scandal involved the State-owned oil company Petrobras and a collection of construction companies which were using bribes to secure contracts at inflated rates. Elected officials were allegedly receiving kickbacks as part of this operation. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Brazil to make their displeasure known.

The impeachment, however, was instigated not by Car Wash, but by a finding that her use of loans from the public treasury to make the country’s budget surplus seem larger than it was constituted a “crime of responsibility.”

Rousseff, once considered the third most powerful woman on the planet, Ms. Rousseff now must wait out a process which could see her removed from office for good. Meanwhile, her replacement, Acting President Temer has already sparked controversy by appointing all white and male members to the Cabinet, and beginning ushering in health and education cuts.

Ms Rousseff has accused right wing elements within the halls of power of orchestrating a coup against her. And she is not alone.

Pepe Escobar has been outspoken throughout this drama in his belief that not only was the impeachment of Rousseff a coup, but that the entire affair benefits not just comprador elites within Brazil, but Washington’s imperialist ambitions as well. Escobar is our featured guest in this hour.

Filling out the show, Intercontinental Cry’s John Ahniwanika Schertow returns to give us a breakdown of how indigenous rights and indigenous struggles are being affected in the midst of the Brazil’s political turmoil.

 

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

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It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

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The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Michael Welch, Pepe Escobar, and John Schertow, Global Research, 2016
22 May 2016

By Alastair Crooke

BEIRUT — Something significant happened in the last few days of April, but it seems the only person who noticed was Stephen Cohen, a professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University.

In a recorded interview, Cohen notes that a section of the Russian leadership is showing signs of restlessness, focused on President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. We are not talking of street protesters. We are not talking coups against Putin — his popularity remains above 80 percent and he is not about to be displaced. But we are talking about serious pressure being applied to the president to come down from the high wire along which he has warily trod until now.

Putin carries, at one end of his balancing pole, the various elites more oriented toward the West and the “Washington Consensus“ and, at the pole’s other end, those concerned that Russia faces both a real military threat from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a hybrid geo-financial war as well. He is being pressed to come down on the side of the latter, and to pry the grip of the former from the levers of economic power that they still tightly hold.

In short, the issue coming to a head in the Kremlin is whether Russia is sufficiently prepared for further Western efforts to ensure it does not impede or rival American hegemony. Can Russia sustain a geo-financial assault, if one were to be launched? And is such a threat real or mere Western posturing for other ends?

What is so important is that if these events are misread in the West, which is already primed to see any Russian defensive act as offensive and aggressive, the ground will already have been laid for escalation. We already had the first war to push back against NATO in Georgia. The second pushback war is ongoing in Ukraine. What might be the consequences to a third?

In mid-April, General Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee (a sort of super attorney general, as Cohen describes it), wrote that Russia — its role in Syria notwithstanding — is militarily ill prepared to face a new war either at home or abroad, and that the economy is in a bad way, too. Russia, furthermore, is equally ill prepared to withstand a geo-financial war. He goes on to say that the West is preparing for war against Russia and that Russia’s leadership does not appear to be aware of or alert to the danger the country faces.

Bastrykin does not say that Putin is to blame, though the context makes it clear that this is what he means. But a few days later, Cohen explains, the article sparked further discussion from those who both endorse Bastrykin and do precisely mention Putin by name. Then, Cohen notes, a retired Russian general entered the fray to confirm that the West is indeed preparing for war — he pointed to NATO deployments in the Baltics, the Black Sea and Poland, among other places — and underlines again the unpreparedness of the Russian military to face this threat. “This is a heavy indictment of Putin,” Cohen says of the revelations from this analysis. “It is now out in the open.”

What is this all about? For some time there have been indications that a key faction within the Kremlin, one that very loosely might be termed “nationalist,” has become deeply disenchanted with Putin’s toleration of the Washington Consensus and its adherents at the Russian central bank and in other pivotal economic posts. The nationalists want them purged, along with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s perceived Western-friendly government. Putin may be highly popular, but Medvedev’s government is not. The government’s economic policy is being criticized. The opposing faction wants to see an immediate mobilization of the military and the economy for war, conventional or hybrid. This is not about wanting Putin ousted; it is about pushing him to wield the knife — and to cut deeply.

What does this faction want apart from Russia preparing for war? They want a harder line in Ukraine and for Putin to reject U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s snares in Syria. In short, Kerry is still trying to force Assad’s removal and continues to push for further U.S. support for the opposition. The American government is reluctant as well to disentangle “moderates” from jihadis. The view is that America is insincere in trying to cooperate with Russia on a settlement and more intent on entrapping Putin in Syria. Perhaps this is right, as Gareth Porter and Elijah Magnier have outlined.

What this means at a more fundamental level is that Putin is being asked to side with the nationalists against the internationalists aligned with the Washington Consensus, and to purge them from power. Recall, however, that Putin came to power precisely to temper this polarity within Russian society by rising above it — to heal and rebuild a diverse society recovering from deep divisions and crises. He is being asked to renounce that for which he stands because, he is being told, Russia is being threatened by a West that is preparing for war.

The prospect of the seeming inevitability of future conflict is hardly new to Putin, who has spoken often on this theme. He has, however, chosen to react by placing the emphasis on gaining time for Russia to strengthen itself and trying to corner the West into some sort of cooperation or partnership on a political settlement in Syria, for example, which might have deflected the war dynamic into a more positive course. Putin has, at the same time, skillfully steered Europeans away from NATO escalation.

But in both of these objectives the Obama administration is acting to weaken Putin and Lavrov’s hand, and therefore strengthening the hand of those in Russia calling for a full mobilization for war. It is not coincidental that Bastrykin’s alarm-raising article came now, as the Syria ceasefire is being deliberately infringed and broken. Is this properly understood in the White House? If so, must we conclude that escalation against Russia is desired? As Cohen notes, “the Washington Post [in its editorial pages] tells us regularly that never, never, never … under any circumstances, can the criminal Putin be a strategic partner of the United States.”

Is the die then cast? Is Putin bound to fail? Is conflict inevitable? Ostensibly, it may seem so. The stage is certainly being set. I have written before on, “the pivot already under way from within the U.S. defense and intelligence arms of Obama’s own administration” toward what is often referred to as the “Wolfowitz doctrine,” a set of policies developed by the U.S. in the 1990s and early 2000s. The author of one of those policies, the 1992 U.S. Defense Planning Guidance, wrote that the DPG in essence sought to:

… preclude the emergence of bipolarity, another global rivalry like the Cold War, or multipolarity, a world of many great powers, as existed before the two world wars. To do so, the key was to prevent a hostile power from dominating a ‘critical region,’ defined as having the resources, industrial capabilities and population that, if controlled by a hostile power, would pose a global challenge.

In an interview with Vox, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter was clear that this was broadly the bearing by which the Pentagon was being directed to sail. Then again, there is the rather obvious fact that, instead of the much-touted U.S. military pivot ostensibly being to Asia, the actual NATO pivot is being directed to Central Europe — to Russia’s borders. And NATO is plainly pushing the envelope as hard as it dares, up and against Russia’s borders.

Then there is the rhetoric: Russian aggression. Russian ambitions to recover the former Soviet Empire. Russian attempts to divide and destroy Europe. And so on.

Why? It may be that NATO simply presumes these envelope-pushing exercises will never actually come to war, that Russia somehow will back off. And that continuously poking the bear will serve America’s interest in keeping Europe together and NATO cohesive, its sanctions in place, divided from Russia. NATO is due to meet in Warsaw in early July. Perhaps, then, the Western language about Russia’s “aggression” is little more than America heading off any European revolt on sanctions by stirring up a pseudo-threat from Russia and that the Russians are misreading American true intentions, which do not go beyond this. Or do they?

The extraordinary bitterness and emotional outrage with which the American establishment has reacted to Donald Trump’s probable nomination as a presidential candidate suggests that the U.S. establishment is far from having given up on the Wolfowitz doctrine. So has Putin’s strategy of co-opting America in the Middle East been the failure that the Bastrykin faction implies? In other words, is it the case that the policy of gaining cooperation has failed and that Putin must now move beyond it, because America is not about to cooperate and is, instead, continuing the process of cornering Russia?

As the Texas Tribune reported on May 4, “For the first time since his own presidency, George H.W. Bush is planning to stay silent in the race for the Oval Office — and the younger former president Bush plans to stay silent as well.”

To get a sense of the war within the Republican Party (and the Democrats are no less conflicted), read this reaction to that story by the two-time Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. Here’s a small selection:

Trump’s triumph is a sweeping repudiation of Bush Republicanism by the same party that nominated them [the Bush’s] four times for the presidency. Not only was son and brother, Jeb, humiliated and chased out of the race early, but Trump won his nomination by denouncing as rotten to the core the primary fruits of signature Bush policies … That is a savage indictment of the Bush legacy. And a Republican electorate, in the largest turnout in primary history, nodded, ‘Amen to that, brother!’
Buchanan continues in another piece: “The hubris here astonishes. A Republican establishment that has been beaten as badly as Carthage in the Third Punic War is now making demands on Scipio Africanus and the victorious Romans” — a reference to Paul Ryan’s attempts to make Trump adhere to Bush Republicanism. “This is difficult to absorb.”

But here, in this crisis, is an opportunity. America could be heading into recession, corporate profits are falling, huge swaths of debt are looking suspect, global trade is sinking and U.S. policy tools for controlling the global financial system have lost their credibility. And there are no easy solutions to the global overhang of increasingly putrid debt.

But a President Trump — were that to happen — can lay blame for any perfect economic storm on the establishment. America is all knotted up at present, as the presidential nomination melee made clear. Some knots will take time to undo, but some could be undone relatively easily, and it seems that Trump has some sense of this. It could start with a dramatic diplomatic initiative.

Historically, most radical projects of reform have started in this way: overturn a piece of conventional wisdom and unlock the entire policy gridlock — the momentum gained will allow a reformer to steamroll even the hardest resistance — in this case, Wall Street and the financial oligarchy — into making reforms.

Trump can simply say that American — and European — national security interests pass directly through Russia — which they clearly do — that Russia does not threaten America — which it clearly does not — and that NATO is, in any case, “obsolete,” as he has said. It makes perfect sense to join with Russia and its allies to surround and destroy the so-called Islamic State.

If one listens carefully, Trump seems halfway there. It would cut a lot of knots, maybe even untie the policy gridlock. Perhaps that is what he intends?

17 May 2016

By Dmitry Babich

A Russian diplomatic call to outlaw the US-sponsored policy of “regime change” is timelier than ever following recent events in Latin America.
The developments there are now routinely described as ‘institutional’ coups d’état, with popular presidents removed from power and replaced by neoliberal functionaries, enjoying almost unhidden support of the US government and American financial capital.

“What we see in the world now is an attempt by the so-called historic West to preserve its dominance in international affairs,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at a conference on Latin American development, held in Moscow. “Latin America is not an exception to this global trend. We see attempts by the United States to interfere directly into the internal affairs of some countries in the region… Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela are just the most recent examples.”

Last week, Brazil’s leftist President Dilma Rousseff was removed from power by a very unpopular group of senators, despite having the votes of 54 million citizens, who expressed their will a year and a half ago. Rousseff was removed because of accusations of corruption. However, even the mainstream media in the United States did not consider these accusations to be well founded.

The New York Times, on the eve of Rousseff’s ousting, called accusations against her “debatable” and added that “Ms. Rousseff is right to question the motives and moral authority of the politicians who were seeking to oust her.”

In 2014-2015, a similar campaign of personal attacks and ‘character assassination’ took place in Argentina against that country’s leftist president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

In both cases, the US-preferred candidates somehow managed to get to power posing as the only viable alternatives to the ousted women leaders.
In Brazil, the former vice-president Michel Temer took the reins of power without elections. Mr. Temer, whose popularity in Brazil is in single digits, has already started what RT’s expert on Latin America Juan Manuel Karg called a “realignment” of Brazil’s foreign policy. That “realignment” is supposed “to move Brazil closer to the United States and to the EU with or without Mercosur” (a bloc integrating the markets and economies of Latin American countries).

“It is worth noting that the foreign policy program of Temer’s party PMDB from 2015 does not even mention BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – an important bloc of countries which Brazil played an important role in founding in 2009,” Juan Manuel Karg writes on RT’s Spanish page.

PMDB, which stands for the Party of Brazilian Democratic Movement, is a loose union of centrist and rightist forces, which never took more votes than Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party. Temer himself has a disapproval rating of 58 percent in Brazil. New Argentinian President Mauricio Macri also did not seem to be keen on following Fernandez de Kirchner’s policy of discovering new horizons for Argentina in China and Russia. During her tenure between 2007 and 2015, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner several times met with Russian presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, allowed RT Spanish to be included in the set of TV channels accessible for Argentina’s broadest television public, and expanded trade ties with Russia. This policy so far has not been continued under Macri.

In Venezuela, the situation is even clearer: the US makes no secret of its support for the “anti-chavista” opposition to President Nicolas Maduro, the successor to leftist leader Hugo Chavez, who gave his name to “chavizmo,” an ideology combining oil sales to the US with spending the proceeds from these sales on social development.

The American media gives full support to anti-chavista opposition, despite its role in violent street protests, which have claimed the lives of several dozen people. “The US policy of support for violent protests is inexcusable, since Venezuela is not a dictatorship. The country has many anti-Maduro media outlets, people have been given a chance to elect the majority of President Maduro’s critics into parliament,” explains Andres Izarra, a cabinet minister in Mr. Maduro’s cabinet in 2014. “The Venezuelan government suggested dialogue with the government of the United States, we wanted a compromise. But Washington simply has no policy towards Latin America except the so-called regime change.”

But why is Russia concerned with US pressure on Latin American countries? Seemingly, Moscow’s economic interests are not focused on that region. The share of Latin American countries in Russia’s foreign trade, with the notable exception of Venezuela, remains relatively small; it is still dwarfed by Russia’s trade with the EU or with China.

But the point is that in recent years it became absolutely clear to Russian diplomats that the policy of “regime change” in Latin America, Syria, Ukraine and – last, but not least – Russia itself, is conducted by the same people in Washington D.C. and in Brussels, and the same technology is being used for the purpose. Therefore, the events in faraway Brazil may have a direct impact on the developments in Russia.

“Attempts to “seat out” US-led color revolutions in other countries are simply not wise,” says Joshua Tartakovsky, a US-based foreign policy analyst, who recently visited both Venezuela and Ukraine. “Sooner or later, the American enthusiasts of regime change plan to go after all the regimes which even potentially can challenge American domination. First, they will do it in the Western hemisphere, but it won’t take long before they come to Russia, China and India too. The only way to survive for BRICS is to come together and act together – before it is too late.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, unlike the official representatives of India and China, openly says that he sees the West’s attempting to bring about a “regime change” in his country. In Latin America, only the Venezuelan foreign minister has similar courage to face the facts, while the others prefer the Tartakovsky-described tactic of “seating out” the storms of Washington-inspired revolutions.

“I listened to the Western leaders who announced economic sanctions against Russia,” Lavrov said at a meeting with foreign policy experts in autumn 2014. He referred to the aftermath of the US-sponsored Ukrainian coup in 2014, which ousted the centrist Ukrainian President Yanukovich and led to a civil war.

“These Western leaders openly said that sanctions should be applied in a way that would cripple Russia’s economy and lead to popular protests. So, the West is sending us a message: we don’t even want to change the policy of the Russian Federation; we want to change the Russian Federation’s regime. In fact they are not even denying that desire of theirs.”

How far will Russia go in its support for independence of Latin American countries? Who and how can shield them from the policy of “regime change” conducted by their powerful northern neighbor? Obviously, Lavrov is not under the illusion Russian can guarantee such independence alone. At the 69th General Assembly of the United Nations in autumn 2014, the Russian foreign minister suggested making a special UN declaration on the inadmissibility of the policy of “regime change” and on “non-recognition of coups as methods of changing state power.”

At the time, the Brazilian leader Dilma Rousseff did not openly support Lavrov’s suggestion, even though she was present at that UN General Assembly. Earlier, in 2013, she even made an indignant speech at the United Nations about the NSA’s eavesdropping of Brazil’s representatives at the UN and even on the office of the president of Brazil.

Rousseff might regret not seizing the opportunity to act against “regime change” then. Now it appears to be too late – for her and, most likely, for Brazil.

Dmitry Babich was born in Moscow, in 1970. He has worked for various media outlets for 25 years, including The Moscow News and RIA Novosti news agency. He is currently working as a political analyst at Sputnik International, and is a frequent guest on BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN commenting on international affairs and history.

18 May 2016

By Bill Van Auken

Foreign ministers of the major powers, including both Washington and Moscow, ended a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in Vienna with no proposal for a date to resume peace talks between the Syrian government and the collection of Western-backed Islamist militias that constitute the “armed opposition.”

The so-called rebels walked out of the last round of talks in Geneva, accusing government forces of continuing to attack their positions in violation of a February 27 cessation of hostilities brokered by the US and Russia.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad and its allies, Russia and Iran, have insisted that continued operations were being carried out against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Al Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, both of which are designated by the United Nations Security Council as terrorist groups and remain excluded from the shaky cease-fire.

In a communiqué issued at the close of the Vienna meeting, the ISSG member states warned that the consequences of a failure to fully implement the cessation of hostilities “could include the return of full-scale war.”

While the communiqué warned of consequences for any party violating the agreement, including “the exclusion of such parties from the arrangements of the cessation and the protection it affords them,” it gave no indications of what concrete actions would ensue.

What is painfully obvious, however, is that alleged violations by forces loyal to the government of Assad could provoke retaliation from the US, whose warplanes are already engaged in strikes on ISIS targets in Syria. At least 250 Special Operations troops have also been deployed on the ground, without the permission of Damascus and in violation of international law.

A US air strike against the city of al-Bukamal in Dayr al-Zawr province near Syria’s border with Iraq reportedly killed three children and one woman on Monday.

Violations by the so-called rebels, meanwhile, are ignored by their Western sponsors, and would be punished only by the government and its ally, Russia.

This is clearly a formula for an intensification of a conflict that has already claimed over a quarter of a million lives, while driving some 11 million Syrians from their homes. It also creates the conditions for the Syrian conflict to spill over into a wider war pitting the US against Russia.

Washington only entered into the Syrian “peace process” as a means of buying time under conditions in which Russia’s intervention on the side of the Assad government had reversed the tide of battle against the Western-backed Islamist militias and thrown the US-orchestrated war for regime change into disarray.

From the outset, the Obama administration has threatened to resort to a “Plan B” if the negotiations in Vienna and Geneva fail to achieve Washington’s original aim in stoking the bloody war in Syria: the toppling of the Assad government and the imposition of a more pliant Western puppet regime. Last month, unnamed senior US officials let it be known that “Plan B” would include the provision of more sophisticated weaponry to the “rebels,” including MANPADS, portable shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down Russian planes.

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to the media alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN special envoy Steffan de Mistura at the close of the Vienna conference, issued a direct threat to Syria’s Assad, stating, “He should never make a miscalculation about President Obama’s determination to do what is right at any given moment of time where he believes he has to make that decision.”

For his part, Lavrov charged that Washington’s key regional allies, including Turkey, are pouring more arms into Syria to fuel the conflict. Lately, he said, this has included the provision of tanks to the “rebels.”

The “main supply conduit for extremists,” the Russian foreign minister said, is a 90 kilometer stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border controlled on one side by the Turkish military and, on the other, by ISIS. He charged that there existed “a large, widely-spread network created by Turkey on its side of the border to continue and cover up these supplies.”

Kerry spent the weekend preceding the Vienna talks in Riyadh, meeting behind closed doors with representatives of the Saudi monarchy, a principal US regional ally and main supporter of the Islamist forces in Syria. The Saudi regime was the organizer of the so-called High Negotiations Committee, which was formed to represent these Salafist jihadi militias in talks with the Syrian government.

Speaking at the conference in Vienna, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir advocated a speedy escalation of the war for regime change in Syria.

“We believe we should have moved to a ‘Plan B’ a long time ago,” Adel al-Jubeir told reporters. “The choice about moving to an alternative plan, the choice about intensifying the military support [to the opposition] is entirely with the Bashar regime … He will be removed, either through a political process or through military force.”

Meanwhile, Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally and also a key backer of the “rebels,” threatened Tuesday to carry out a unilateral military intervention in Syria.

President Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting in Istanbul that the Turkish military would act alone, supposedly to deal with ISIS missile attacks coming across the Syrian border and striking the town of Kilis.

“We will solve that issue ourselves if we don’t receive help to prevent those rockets from hitting Kilis,” he said. “We knocked on all doors for a safe zone at our southern border. But no one wants to take that step.”

Erdogan’s statement echoed that made by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu earlier this month: “If necessary, Turkey may launch a ground military operation in Syria by itself.”

Erdogan’s remarks made clear that his concern is not ISIS, which Ankara has armed and supplied, but rather the growing strength of Syrian Kurdish forces near the Turkish border. In a thinly veiled criticism of US backing for these forces, he declared: “States which exercise control over the world’s arms industry give their weapons to terrorists. I challenge them to deny this.”

The Turkish government is committed to the war for regime change in Syria and has demonstrated, with its shoot-down of a Russian jet last November, its willingness to push this conflict into an armed confrontation with Moscow.

There is little doubt that the Saudi and Turkish regimes are openly advocating a policy that is being supported within powerful sections of the US ruling establishment and military and intelligence apparatus.

An escalation of the Syrian bloodbath also has the backing of the leading candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties, but its initiation is almost certain to be postponed until after November in order to prevent the subject of war becoming an issue in the US presidential election.
18 May, 2016
WSWS.org