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By Andre Damon

The number of children in poverty in developed countries has increased by 2.6 million since 2008, according to a report published Tuesday by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The report, titled Children of the Recession, states that there are 76.5 million children in poverty in the 41 countries surveyed by UNICEF.

The study documents the devastating impact that the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity measures have had on the well-being of children, and makes clear that despite official proclamations of economic recovery, the most vulnerable sections of society are far worse off now than they were before the crash. Young people have been made to bear a disproportionate burden of the economic crisis, with poverty rates increasing more rapidly for young people than for other age groups.

Between 2008 and 2013, the rate of child poverty increased by 2 percentage points in the United States and by 3 percentage points in France. But even these substantial increases were dwarfed by the increase in countries such as Spain, where the rate of child poverty grew by 8 percentage points; Ireland, where it grew by ten percentage points; Greece, where it grew by 17 percentage points; and Iceland, where it more than doubled, surging from 11.2 percent to 31.6 percent.

The report notes that, “rising numbers of children and their families have experienced difficulty in satisfying their most basic material and educational needs.” It adds that, “unemployment rates not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s have left many families unable to provide the care, protection and opportunities to which children are entitled.”

“The stock market may be going up, but the social safety net has not recovered,” said Alexandra Yuster, chief of social inclusion and policy at UNICEF, in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The fact is that the economic recovery has not resulted in declines in joblessness, which affects both young people and their parents,” she added.

As an example, Ms. Yuster noted that the budget for the Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) program in the United States was slashed both before and after the 2008 financial crash. “The program had a budget of $30 billion in 1994, reaching 5 million people,” she said, “but its funding had been reduced to $10 billion, allowing it to reach only 2 million people, by 2010.”

The report states that the ability of governments to provide social services in some of the countries most affected by the 2008 crash has been “hindered by the weight of the conditions imposed on them by the financial markets and the providers of financial assistance.” As a condition for emergency funding by the International Monetary Fund to pay for their massive bank bailouts, countries such as Greece, Portugal and Cyprus were forced to slash spending on social services. The cuts have had a dramatic impact on the well-being of children.

Since 2008, the share of households with children that are not able to afford one meal with meat, chicken or fish every other day has more than doubled in Estonia, Greece, Iceland and Italy. Jeffrey O’Malley, UNICEF’s head of global policy and strategy, said these findings reflected a “great leap backwards.”

“Twenty-five years after the Convention on the Rights of the Child became international law, many of its commitments remain unrealized, and the developed countries most capable of delivering on them are losing ground,” notes the report. “The Great Recession… has inflicted the economic crisis on children.”

The report adds that, “the gap between rich and poor families has widened in an alarming number of industrialized countries. For many of these children, once again place of birth may determine their rights and opportunities in life.”

UNICEF found that the share of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) has risen dramatically. Some 7.5 million young people in the European Union were not in education, employment or training in 2013–nearly a million more than in 2008.

In the United States, the share of NEETs has grown by 3 percentage points, putting the US squarely in the company of the countries most severely affected by the crisis. In Italy, NEETs have increased by 5.6 percentage points; in Greece, by 8.9 percentage points; and in Cyprus, by 9 percentage points. The percentage of NEETS in these latter countries has grown by 30 percent or more.

In the countries most exposed to the economic crisis, “The number of 15- to 24-year-olds in part-time work or who are underemployed has tripled,” the report states.

These changes have had a dramatic impact on the individual well-being of young people. The report notes that in Greece, the share of young people surveyed who said they “experienced stress today” jumped from 49 per cent in 2006 to 74 percent in 2013. In the United States, “the share of respondents that have experienced not having enough money to buy food doubled, from 10 per cent to 20 percent.”

The growth of social misery has not been confined to the countries most associated with austerity programs. The report states that between 2008 and 2013, “the use of food banks by families in Canada increased by 23 percent.”

Six years after the 2008 crash, there has been no recovery for the great majority of the world’s population. Even as the wealth of the super-rich continues to soar, tens of millions remain unemployed in North America, Europe and Japan. Wages continue to be driven down and social services slashed.

There is supposedly no money to feed, house or educate children, but unlimited funds are made available to the financial markets by the world’s central banks. More and more billions are being squandered on imperialist wars and rearmament, as the major powers, led by the United States, hurtle toward a new world war.

This state of affairs is an indictment of capitalism and demonstrates the need for its overthrow and replacement by socialism.

29 October, 2014
WSWS.org

 

By Robert Barsocchini

The majority of US citizens, according to a Google Consumer Survey (cited here), think the US gives too much aid to Israel:

Today 6 in 10 Americans believe the U.S. gives too much aid to Israel

Surveying Americans about U.S. aid to Israel requires putting it into proper perspective. Given Israel’s position as the leading single U.S. foreign aid recipient (by a wide margin), as in 1989 asking the foreign aid question requires embedding relevant data to obtain a bona fide response. When such data is included, the majority of Americans (60.7 percent) believe U.S. aid to Israel is excessive. The major response, that aid to Israel is “Much too much” is 33.9 percent of Americans. Some 26.8 percent believe it is “too much” while 25.9 percent believe it is “about right.” Only 13.4 percent of Americans believe U.S. aid to Israel is not enough.

The policy and political implications of this finding are stark. Elected officials passing ever larger aid packages and supplemental spending for Israel simply cannot claim they are representing the majority interests of their constituents. American presidents proclaiming the U.S.‐Israel bond is “unbreakable” cannot claim such a bond is willingly underwritten by U.S. taxpayers. The finding also shines yet more light on Israel lobby organizations as the major factor coming between most constituents and their representatives and quietly working to ensure that Israel’s majority share of the U.S. foreign aid budget continues.

The survey also finds that, in particular, younger US citizens are strongly opposed to the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, and, crucially, finds that “Only the Wealthiest Americans believe U.S. aid is ‘about right’”:

The only category of Americans (47.6 percent) who believed U.S. aid for Israel is “about right” is the segment earning $150,000 or more (although even 42.9 percent in that category thought aid was too high). The next lower income category, $100,000‐149,000 is the most vehemently opposed to aid, with 79.5 percent believing it is too high (42.9 percent responding “much too much” and 36.6 percent “too much.” )

While the Google report says the findings are “stark”, they are nothing new at all, and are entirely consistent with the findings of the recent study out of Cornell and Northwestern universities, the largest study of its kind to date, that looked at nearly 1,800 individual US policy issues and found that the average US citizen has zero impact on those policies, while the wealthiest citizens essentially get exactly what they want, meaning they dictate US policy (and they largely comprise the US government).

This Google survey simply singles out one of the policy issues, which all illustrate that the USA is in no way a democracy, but simply a society in which people are allowed to choose which person they want as the face of an oligarchy that dictates government policy.

It is also worth noting here that the top ten recipients of US aid (with Israel as #1) all have torture regimes.

Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics. He also writes professionally for the film industry.

30 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

By Pepe Escobar

Sun, sex, samba, carnival and at least until the World Cup hammering by Germany, the “land of football”. And don’t forget “vibrant democracy”. Even as it enjoys one of the highest soft power quotients around the world, Brazil remains submerged by cliches.

“Vibrant democracy” certainly lived up to its billing as President Dilma Rousseff of the ruling Worker’s Party (PT) was re-elected this Sunday in a tight run-off against opposition candidate Aecio Neves of the Social Democracy Party of Brazil (PSDB).

Yet another cliche would rule this was the victory of “state-centric” policies against “structural reforms”. Or the victory of “high social
spending” against a “pro-business” approach – which implies business as the privileged enemy of social equality.

Exit cliches. Enter a cherished national motto: “Brazil is not for beginners”.

Indeed. Brazil’s complexities boggle the mind. It starts with arguably the key, multi-layered message a divided country sent to winner Dilma Rousseff. We are part of a growing middle class. We are proud to be part of an increasingly less unequal nation. But we want social services to keep improving. We want more investment in education. We want inflation under control (at the moment, it’s not). We support a very serious anti-corruption drive (here’s where Dilma’s Brazil meets Xi Jinping’s China). And we want to keep improving on the economic success of the past decade.

Rousseff seems to get the message. The question is how she will be able to deliver – in a continental-sized nation suffering from appalling education standards, with Brazilian manufacturing largely uncompetitive in global markets, and with corruption run amok.

Those ignorant, arrogant elites
Brazil is now mired in dismal GDP growth (0.3%). Just blaming the global crisis doesn’t cut it; South American neighbors Peru (3.6%) and Colombia (4.8%) are definitely going places in 2014.

And yet the numbers are not that shabby. Job creation is up. Unemployment is down (only 5.4%). Investment in social infrastructure is picking up. From 2002 to 2014, the minimum wage more than tripled. GDP per capita is up, reaching roughly $9,000 while the gini coefficient of social inequality (2012 data) is down.

Industrial production is back to the same level before the 2008 financial crisis. Brazil paid all its debts to the IMF. The proportion of debt in relation to GDP is falling – reaching only 33.8% in 2013. Workers have more purchasing power – and even with rising inflation, that mirrors better income distribution.

Social programs have benefited 14 million families – roughly 50 million Brazilians. These policies may arguably be derided as too little, too late Keynesianism. But at least that’s a start – in a nation exploited by immensely ignorant, arrogant and rapacious elites for centuries.

Rousseff’s first stint as president may also be blamed for too many concessions to big banks (extremely profitable in Brazil), powerful agribusiness interests and Big Capital. What happened, in a nutshell, is that the center-left Workers’ Party swung to the center – and was compelled to make unsavory oligarchic alliances. The result is that a significant section of its social base – the metropolitan working class, now heavily indebted to sustain its brand new consumer dream – ended up flirting with the right as a political alternative.

Add to it the PT’s not exactly brilliant management skills. True, the fight against poverty is a lofty ideal. But in such an unequal nation, that will take at least until 2030 for really serious results. Meanwhile, serious planning is in order – such as building a high-speed rail between the two megalopolises, Rio and Sao Paulo (the Chinese would do it in a few months). And seriously tackling Brazil’s oligopolies; banks, corporate media, construction/real estate conglomerates, the auto industry lobby.

And the loser is – neoliberalism
Unlike the US and Europe, neoliberalism in Brazil has been repeatedly knocked out at the ballot box since 2002, when Lula was first elected president. As for the “social democrat” opposition, there’s nothing social, and barely democratic, about it. The PSDB’s pet project is turbo-neoliberalism, pure and simple.

Team Neves had everything going for them. Their key constituency was in fact 60 million mostly angry Brazilian taxpayers – over 80% living and working in the wealthier southeastern seaboard. Life is tough if you are a Brazilian salaried professional or the owner of a small and medium-sized enterprise. The tax burden is on a par with the industrialized world, but you get virtually nothing in return.

No wonder these irate taxpayers are desperate for decently paved roads, urban security, better public hospitals, a public school system they can send their children to, and less red tape and bureaucracy – which add to the nefarious, universally known “Brazilian cost” (as in no value for money). These are not Workers’ Party voters – although some of them were. What they want is galaxies beyond the everyday tribulations of the new, large lower middle class created by the social programs first implemented by Lula.

Yet with a mediocre candidate like Neves – he even lost in his home state, where he was governor – neoliberalism does not need enemies.

Neves predictably billed himself as the dragon who would slay what Wall Street derides as “statism” – cutting government spending and “liberalizing” trade, code for privileging corporate US interests. At the same time Neves has never been able to capture the vote of an overburdened black woman in the favelas.

With Neves, Brazil’s future finance minister would have been Arminio Fraga, a slick operator who, among other things, ran high-risk funds in emerging markets for George Soros and is also a former president of Brazil’s Central Bank. Some of his shenanigans are detailed in More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, by Sebastian Mallaby. Fraga would have been the point man of a Soros-inspired government.

Fraga is the proverbial Wall Street predator. With him at the Finance Ministry, think JP Morgan controlling Brazil’s macroeconomic policy. The road in fact was already paved by PSDB’s eminence, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who met with key global investors – via JP Morgan – in New York last month.

Fraga was keen on destroying the Lula and Rousseff administrations’ “hyper-Keynesian bet on demand” and replace it with supply, via a new “capitalist shock”. Predictably, his prescription was amplified by the enormous echo chamber of conservative Brazilian media, and drowned everything else.

And as perception is reality, contamination ensued – pressuring public spending downwards, installing major confusion among private investors, and leading Western credit rating agencies to confirm the supposed lack of credibility of the Brazilian economy.

And it’s the US against the BRICS
Brazil is slowly but surely moving from the semi-periphery to being closer to the center of the action in international relations; because of its own regional geopolitical relevance and mostly because of its leading role among the BRICS. This is happening even as Washington could not give a damn about Brazil – or Latin America for that matter. US Think Tankland, by the way, abhors BRICS.

Politically, a victory for the Cardoso/Neves neoliberals – a ghost of the social democracy they once practiced – would have thrown Brazilian foreign policy upside down; not only against the way the historical winds are blowing, but also against Brazil’s own national interests.

As Rousseff argued at the UN last month, Brazil is trying to fight a global crisis marked by increasing inequality without provoking unemployment and without sacrificing workers’ jobs and salaries. As ace economist Theotonio dos Santos stressed the decadence of the West still exerting substantial influence over the Global South via their extensive network of collaborators, he also went one up; the key fight, as he sees it, is to control Brazilian oil.

Dos Santos is referring to Brazil’s top corporation, Petrobras, currently mired in a bribery scandal – which must be fully investigated – that obscures the Holy Grail: the future revenues from “pre-salt” oil – named after the billions of barrels of oil capped by a thick layer of salt lying several miles below the south Atlantic floor. Petrobras plans to invest $221 billion up to 2018 to unlock this treasure – and expects to make a profit even if oil trades around $45 to $50 a barrel.

Politically, in a nutshell, Rousseff’s narrow victory is crucial for the future of a progressive, integrated South America. It will reinvigorate Mercosur – the common market of the South – as well as Unasur – the union of South American nations. This goes way beyond free trade; it’s about close regional integration, in parallel to close Eurasia integration.

And starting in 2015, Brazil may be on the road to renewed economic expansion again – largely boosted by the fruits of “pre-salt” and compounded with accelerated building of roads, railways, ports and airports. That is bound to have a ripple effect across Brazil’s neighbors.

As for Washington/Wall Street, the Empire of Chaos is certainly not happy – and that’s a major euphemism, especially after betting on the wrong horse, Marina Silva, a sort of Amazon rainforest-born female counterpart to Obama’s “change we can believe in”. The fact is as much as the Brazilian model of income distribution is against the interests of big business, Brazilian foreign policy is now diametrically opposed to Washington’s.

On a lighter note, at least some things will remain the same. Like “Dilma’s diary” – an apocryphal, satirical, ghost written take on the President’s busy schedule published by top Brazilian monthly Piaui, a somewhat local version of The New Yorker. Here’s a typical entry: “I watched a whole pirate copy of Homeland. Awesome! We stayed up late, me and Patriota [the former Minister of Foreign Affairs]. He found the whole thing extremely believable!”

Who said a “vibrant democracy” can’t also be fun?

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

28 October 2014

By Mohammed Al-Sudairi

In China, the Hui Salafi sect, and its links with Saudi Arabia, have a long and complex history.

Salafism, or Salafiyya, is a doctrinal-intellectual current within Islam that espouses a return to the ways of the Salaf As-Salih (the Pious Ancestors), the first three generations of Muslims who lived during and after the death of the Prophet Mohammed. Often described as being rooted in the works of the medieval scholars Ibn Hanbal and Ibn Taymiyyah, Salafism seeks to establish a more “authentic” religious experience predicated on a presumably correct reading of the Quran and the sunnah (the sayings and practices of the Prophet) and away from the supposed bid’ah (innovations) and heretical practices that have “polluted” it.

This current moreover embraces to a certain extent a rejection of the madhhab (legal school) Sunni traditions that had emerged in Islam’s early centuries. As a relatively modern phenomenon building on the Sunni orthodox revivals of the 18th century, the failures of traditional Muslim authorities to contend with mounting internal and external challenges, as well as the spread of new modernistic discourses, Salafism found a popular following across many Muslim societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its growth was facilitated by Saudi Arabia – which embraced its own idiosyncratic brand of Salafism rooted in the mid-18th century religious revivalism that swept central Arabia (usually denoted by its detractors as Wahhabism after its “founder” Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab) – especially after its annexation of Mecca and Medina in 1924-25, and the subsequent influx of oil wealth, which endowed the country with the religious authority and means (universities, charities, organizations, preachers, and communicative mediums) to promote this current globally.

Among China’s Hui ethnic group, Saudi-influenced Salafism has been present for nearly a century. Aside from the intellectual residue influencing other sects and currents, its most obvious manifestation is to be found in the Salafi sect, which constitutes a small minority within the community of the faithful in China. Concentrated in small clusters across the Northwest and Yunnan, and identified by their “Saudi” clothes, Salafis have elicited fear and opposition from their ideological opponents within the wider Chinese Muslim community, leading at times to outright sectarian conflict.

Since the 1990s, and particularly following 9/11, the Chinese state has placed the Salafi community under close surveillance, fearing that its close connections with Saudi Arabia as well as presumed Uighur Salafi networks, not to mention the sect’s considerable growth over the past few years (attracting not only other Hui, but increasingly Han as well), might herald political and religious violence in the future. These security concerns have only abounded with the rising specter of the Islamic State and the appearance of a few Chinese fighters in the ranks of the contending Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq.

Historical Roots of Chinese Salafism

Although relatively isolated since the 14th century with the disintegration of the Yuan dynasty, the Hui Muslim communities, and especially those in the Northwest of China, remained open to the religious and intellectual influences emanating from other parts of the Muslim world. The spread of the various Sufi tariqas (orders), such as the Naqshibandis, Kubrawis, and Qadiris, during the late Ming and early Qing in China in the 17th century, as well as the consolidation of Sufi tariqas with their own distinct lineages, tombs and practices (such as the Khuffiyya and Jahriyya), is indicative of this permeability, which endured primarily through the Hajj and overland trade networks via Central Asia and Yunnan. Unsurprisingly, the transmission of Salafism – or initially Wahhabi ideas – amongst the Hui follows this template in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Wahhabism gained converts in China throughout the Republican era, primarily as a byproduct of the growing traffic of Muslim pilgrims going to the Hejaz, facilitated by the proliferation of new means of transportation such as the steamship. Between 1923 and 1934, hundreds of Hui Muslims made the Hajj. In 1937 – prior to the full-fledged Japanese invasion of the country – well over 170 Hui reportedly boarded a steamer in Shanghai bound for Mecca. The effects of this were palpable, ranging from a noticeable increase in the availability of Wahhabi literature across China in the 1930s, as observed by the scholar Ma Tong, to high-profile conversions of detractors of the movement, including Sufi Sheiks.

It is from within this context that the first pronounced Salafiyya sect emerged within China and mostly, interestingly enough, in reaction to the perceived “departure” of the Yihewani movement from its puritan and proto-Wahhabi ethos. The founding propagator of an explicit Salafism is usually identified as Ma Debao (1867-1977), originally a Yihewani adherent who officiated in various mosques across the Northwest. His earliest encounters with Salafism came through a visiting – presumably Arab – scholar who settled in Xining, Qinghai in 1934 to teach the Wahhabi doctrine. This exposure led him to reassess some of his views, although his major intellectual transformation would only come when he departed for the Hajj in 1936, a period during which he spent considerable time at the Salafi Dar Al-Hadith school.

On returning to China in 1937, Ma Debao became an enthusiastic promoter of the teachings, quickly gathering a following of his own centered in the Xinwang mosque in Linxia, Gansu and breaking away in turn from the Yihewani movement, whom he perceived to have compromised their beliefs. His Salafi group encountered strong opposition from the established Yihewani clergy and their warlord backers, forcing the movement to assume a more cautious and quietest attitude towards politics for the sake of its survival.

After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, the Salafis – now unfettered by the Muslim warlords – experienced a brief period of religious growth, with its leadership actively participating in a number of state organs as well as the newly created Islamic Association of China (IAC). This soon came to an end as the 1958 “Religious Reform Campaign,” followed by the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), forced the movement underground as many of its leaders and adherents were killed off or sent to concentration camps. It survived as remnants from the leadership settled in Xinjiang and Tibet during these difficult years.

Channels of Saudi Influence

The start of the “Reform and Opening Up” in 1978 signaled the end of a dark period of sustained persecution against China’s Muslim communities, including the Salafis. The dismantlement of restrictions on religious worship, the restoration of mosques, and the reformation of the IAC served to reconsolidate state control over these communities but more significantly, served to showcase (in a resurrection of Chinese foreign policy patterns in the 1950s) Beijing’s tolerance of Islam, a policy principally aimed at courting the support of various Muslim states. The direct outcome of this new “opening” allowed the re-introduction, and even amplification of, Saudi Salafi influences across the country, with implications for both the Salafi and wider Muslim community as a whole. This occurred through various channels, the most important of which was the restoration of the Hajj missions in 1979 (after nearly a decade-long suspension dating from 1964) followed by new regulations allowing private individuals to make the pilgrimage in 1984, that allowed considerable numbers of Hui Muslims – jumping from nearly 2000 in 1985 to nearly 10,000 annually in 1990 – to travel to the Kingdom. There, some of these pilgrims opted to stay for further study or came in touch with relatives from the well-established Chinese Saudi diaspora (which had settled in the Hedjaz following the end of the Chinese civil war and received citizenship there). These interactions exposed Chinese Muslims to new discourses and religious experiences that challenged their own traditional understandings of Islam. They returned to China carrying Wahhabi books, leaflets, fatwas (religious rulings), and sermon tapes that broadly disseminated Salafi ideas.

Other significant channels included the arrival of Saudi organizations and preachers in China during the 1980s. Initially, religious activities were limited to influential groups like the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, the Muslim World League, and the Islamic Development Bank, which operated under the auspices of the IAC and in turn re-directed their efforts in a non-sectarian fashion. Their activities, beyond providing alternative channels of communication between Saudi and Chinese officials, encompassed the construction of various Islamic Institutes, the renovation of major mosques, the initiation of a Quranic printing and distribution project (in 1987, more than a million copies were disbursed across China as a “royal gift” from the Saudi King), and the provision of training workshops for clerics and scholarships for students (initially in China and Pakistan,) amongst others. By the mid-1980s, religious policies were relaxed considerably, allowing for a growing number of Saudi private organizations and individuals (mainly preachers and missionaries bringing in religious literature) to increasingly work outside established IAC channels. In this new environment, these entities began to selectively target their funding towards specific groups – particularly those visibly identified as Salafi in places like Gansu, Qinhai, Ningxia, Shanxi, and Yunnan – and popularize certain discourses that might have been rejected by the IAC for fear of inviting state reprimand.

The activities of these groups were greatly facilitated by a network of Chinese Salafi activists who had graduated from Saudi or Saudi-affiliated institutions like Imam Saudi University, Umm Al-Qura, and Medina University. While numbers are hard to come by, one study from Medina University shows that between 1961 and 2000/2001, over 652 scholarships were granted to mainland Chinese. Nearly 76 percent of these were offered in the 1980s and 90s alone. While significant numbers of the graduates (who ofter never actually completed their studies) gravitated towards middlemen jobs in Guangzhou or Yiwu where they could utilize their Arabic proficiency, a few joined privately run religious academies in Yunnan or Gansu, and some began officiating in mosques after the longstanding official barriers on the hiring of foreign-trained Imams eased in the 2000s. A smaller but far more influential group fostered close ties with Saudi organizations and preachers – a relationship that was beneficial to both sides.

The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which came under a U.S.-backed UN ban in 2004 due to its presumed affiliations with Al-Qaeda, is illustrative. Throughout the 1990s, the organization expended considerable funds on the construction of Salafi mosques across China, the maintenance of Salafi-aligned schools (typically “Arabic language” schools that double as Islamic institutions), and the provision of scholarships for interested students – an array of activities that were largely overseen by various (at times competing) circles of Medina University graduates who leveraged their influence within the wider community.

In conjunction with these developments, Beijing had assumed a more cautious attitude by the 1990s, typified by the barring of entry of suspected preachers, continued refusal to offer scholarships for students heading to Saudi Arabia, and the introduction of new laws that restricted foreign religious activities, including one in 1994 that banned donations made outside the auspices of the IAC. Unsurprisingly, these restrictions have grown more stringent over the last decade, but they have not severed the Saudi ties altogether.

The Saudi Impact

Saudi influences have had a somewhat contradictory impact on Hui Salafis and the wider Muslim community in China. On one level, these influences have contributed – to a degree – to the salafisation (namely, a cultural and religious approximation of an “idealized” Saudi orthodoxy) of Hui Muslim society. This salafisation subsumes the adoption of presumably Salafi doctrines, prayers rituals, attitudes, and even culturally authentic attire (the Saudi headgear worn in a manner usually associated with the religiously conservative in the Kingdom) and mosque architecture under what can be described as an Arabization process, although the appearance of these trends is not always indicative of a Salafi influence. The salafisation of Hui Muslims has affected nearly all sects, albeit in different ways. Amongst Salafis, the re-introduction of orthodox sources after a significant period of isolation, and amplified now by globalizing forces, led to the breakdown of the old Salafi community as a new generation of Salafis (the early graduates and pilgrims) in the 1980s sought to “correct” the errors of their elders. This was reflected in the schism that emerged over the interpretation of certain Quranic verses, the appearance of a more activist opposition to Sufism leading to the demolishment of some Sufi tombs in the Northwest, and the enunciation of a takfeeri (excommunicatory) stance towards “deviant” Salafis and non-Salafi Muslims that led to bouts of sectarian infighting. Beyond the Salafis, salafisation is also observable amongst Yihewani and Gedimu (“old” traditional) Muslims who, in many cases, while not describing themselves necessarily as Salafis (due to fears of ostracization or out of a fidelity towards the Hanafi madhab), embraced aspects of this intellectual tradition. In the Yihewani case, it is marked by a revived interest in the Wahhabi origins of the movement.

On another level, Saudi influences have, counterintuitively, encouraged a fragmentation of the Salafi community within China. This has been driven of two factors: First, the introduction of new sources of funding and ideas brought by Saudi organizations, preachers, and affiliated graduates led to the proliferation of new “mosque communities” or jama’at amongst Salafis, a development that was principally shaped by the leadership struggles that assumed an intergenerational character. Second, Salafis – like other sects – were not exposed to homogenous discourses on Islam or Salafism, mainly because of existing cultural and linguistic barriers, and the multiplicity of doctrines and agendas pursued by various organizations and preachers, which have induced a splintering effect along doctrinal and ritualistic lines within the Salafi community, even if less pronounced than elsewhere in the Islamic World.

Indeed, the most significant outcome of these two simultaneous developments is that it has helped give way to the formation of what can be called a “Salafism with Chinese characteristics.” Its proponents – mainly from the 1990s generation, are charting new discourses about Salafism that deviate from that which exists in the Saudi mainstream. Most notably, there is a strong rejection of sectarianism (although there is a troubling growth in anti-Shia sentiment) and an emphasis on ecumenical approaches – a shift that stems principally from what many view as the takfeeri legacy of the 1980s that led to unnecessary confrontations with the wider Muslim community. Indeed, the Salafis today encounter severe challenges in proselytize and even practicing in places like Xining, Qinghai.

The post-90s generation is also far more internationalist and, to a large extent, far more cognizant of the realities facing Hui Muslims within the Chinese state (as a minority of a minority contending with the attention of the state security apparatus). While courting Saudi funding and literature, it is selective in what discourses it seeks to reproduce. This explains why some Saudi-oriented Salafis are increasingly discouraging visits by Saudi preachers, who are unable to appreciate the specificities of Chinese Islam there. More importantly, this new generation is more willing to cooperate with the authorities, and is displaying signs of seeking to participate more actively within the political channels that have been traditionally dominated by Sufi and Yihewani groups.

In all, the Hui Salafi scene and its connections to Saudi Arabia are complex. The community is fragmenting intellectually and generating new discourses that reflect the tensions that confront new religious authorities and groups seeking to navigate the difficult waters between perceived orthodoxy and the realities of their situation. Hui Salafis want to carve out a space of their own within China. Their concerns are not political per se: Across the spectrum, they appear to have embraced the apolitical quietism one expects to see within the Saudi clerical establishment. Even with regards to the Uighur Salafis – if we speak in terms of an Islamic political project – there is little evidence to suggest a burgeoning solidarity between the two groups. Historical hatreds notwithstanding, the evolution of Uighur Salafism has taken a completely different trajectory than that of the Hui and its political/religious dynamics are therefore different. Rather, for the majority of Hui Salafis, their concerns remain solely those of identity and religious legitimization.

Mohammed Al-Sudairi is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar (International Politics).

23 October 2014

By Nizam Mahshar

A new paper by a United Nations senior economist has shown damning evidence that should Malaysia join the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), it will not be overtly beneficial for the country’s domestic value-added trade, and may in fact prove detrimental to certain industries.

In her report, Rashmi Banga of the Unit of Economic Cooperation and Integration among Developing Countries (ECIDC) showed that Malaysia will have an unfavourable balance of trade (BOT, defined as exports minus imports) of negative US$300 million per annum, roughly RM900 million per annum specifically to the United States.

This means that while our government insists that the TPPA promises that “benefits outweigh costs”, it is only a half-truth.

According to the paper, under the TPPA, while Malaysia’s exports will increase to other TPPA countries, its imports from these countries will increase by even more, thereby resulting in a net loss in Malaysia’s trade balance.

In 2013, Malaysia exported US$93.7 billion worth of goods to 11 TPPA countries, and imported US$73.9 billion from them. Malaysia thus enjoyed a US$19.8 billion surplus in trade.

The new paper showed that once the TPPA was implemented, Malaysia’s exports to these 11 countries would increase by US$1.5 billion (from US$93.7 billion to US$95.2 billion) while its imports would rise by more than US$2.9 billion (from US$73.9 billion to US $76.8 billion).

Therefore, the BOT for Malaysia will worsen by US$1.465 billion (or RM4.79 billion) causing its trade surplus to fall from US$19.84 billion to US$18.37 billion.

This worsening trade balance for Malaysia may even be more simply because the paper assumed that Malaysia would be able to export more textiles and clothing to the United States, at zero tariffs and without other impediments.

In actual fact, the US is insisting on a “yarn forward rule”, where TPPA countries like Malaysia can only use yarn from other TPPA countries when producing textiles and apparel. Thus, the cost of production of some of Malaysia’s textiles and clothing will be more costly as it will not be able to continue to use yarn from lower cost countries like China or even Indonesia.

Thus the estimated increase in Malaysian exports of textiles and apparel to the United States by about RM454 million (US$139 million) may exaggerate the gains for Malaysia. If the increase of textile exports is less than this RM454 million, then the loss in trade balance for Malaysia will be more than RM4.79 billion per annum. The loss could be even more than RM5 billion per annum.

While it is true that this amount may be small, it will have a big impact on Malaysians as a whole in terms of employment.

In addition to this, Rashmi added that if the TPPA was signed, Malaysia would be seeing an increase in imports of as high as 61% in terms of electrical machinery from the United States and an increase of as much as 97% in the import of vehicles and 90% in iron and steel from Japan.

The steel industry, electrical machinery and automotive sector already exists in Malaysia and will face stiff competition once the TPPA is implemented. We all know that these sectors employ tens of thousands of local Malaysians, are ailing, very dependent on government funds and policies and will now have to compete on a global level.

The economist also said that the gross exports of our business services – which Prime Minister Najib Razak said was getting support for further growth in Budget 2015 – contributed a domestic value-added (DVA) export of only 3.8%.

There were also intangible negatives in terms of intellectual property rights which would affect the price of medicines. Also affected will be investor state dispute settlements, proving that this agreement will not be beneficial to Malaysia from any perspective whatsoever.

So yet again, our Prime Minister is guilty of painting us a rosy picture that is factually untrue. Bantah TPPA calls on the Minister of International Trade and Industry, Mustapa Mohamed, and also Najib to clarify their stance.

Where are these facts that support the argument of “benefits outweigh costs”? Where is the cost benefit analysis report that was due out in May 2014?

Until all these questions are answered with facts, figures and direct engagement with civil society and stakeholders, Bantah TPPA will continue to call on everyone to protest against this deal.

It is not beneficial to us and we have economists from the United Nations such as Rashmi, Nobel Peace Prize winners like Joseph Stiglitz and even local economists here who say that the agreement is a bad idea.

In fact, we even had Jean Pierre Lehmann from the International Institute of Management Studies based in Switzerland (which offers the world’s best MBA programme) tell the Global Economic Symposium (GES), that the TTPA was a “stupid idea”.

The ball is now in Najib’s court – please counter the arguments of these brilliant people.

Nizam Mahshar is Chairman of Bantah TPPA

22 October 2014

By Pepe Escobar

Pay close attention to the women of Kobani, where Syrian Kurds are desperately fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. They are also fighting the treacherous agendas of the US, Turkey, and the government of Iraqi Kurdistan. Who will prevail?

Let’s start by talking about Rojava. The full meaning of Rojava – the three mostly Kurdish provinces of northern Syria – is conveyed in this editorial (in Turkish) published by jailed activist Kenan Kirkaya. He argues that Rojava is the home of a “revolutionary model” that challenges “the hegemony of the capitalist, nation-state system” – way beyond its regional “meaning for Kurds, or for Syrians or Kurdistan.”

Kobani – an agricultural region – happens to be at the epicenter of this non-violent experiment in democracy, made possible by an arrangement between Damascus and Rojava (you don’t go for regime change against us, we leave you alone). Here, for instance, it’s argued that “even if only a single aspect of true socialism were able to survive there, millions of discontented people would be drawn to Kobani.”

In Rojava, decision making is via popular assemblies – multicultural and multi-religious. The top three officers in each municipality are a Kurd, an Arab and an Assyrian or Armenian Christian; and at least one of these three must be a woman. Non-Kurd minorities have their own institutions and speak their own languages.

Among a myriad of women’s and youth councils, there is also an increasingly famous feminist army, the YJA Star militia (“Union of Free Women”, with the “star” symbolizing Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar).

The symbolism could not be more graphic; think of the forces of Ishtar (Mesopotamia) fighting the forces of ISIS (originally an Egyptian goddess), now transmogrified into an intolerant Caliphate. In the young 21st century, it’s the female barricades of Kobani that are at the forefront of fighting fascism.

Inevitably there should be quite a few points of intersection between the International Brigades fighting fascism in Spain in 1936 and what is happening in Rojava, as stressed by one of the very few articles about it published in the mainstream Western media.

If these components were not enough to drive crazy deeply intolerant Wahhabis (and their powerful Gulf petrodollar backers) then there’s the overall political set up.

The fight in Rojava is essentially led by the PYD, which is the Syrian branch of the Turkish PKK, the Marxist guerrillas at war against Ankara since the 1970s. Washington, Brussels and NATO – under relentless Turkish pressure – have always officially ranked both PYD and PKK as “terrorists.”

Careful examination of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s must-read book Democratic Confederalism reveals this terrorist/Stalinist equation as bogus (Ocalan has been confined to the island prison of Imrali since 1999.)

What the PKK – and the PYD – are striving for is “libertarian municipalism.” In fact that’s exactly what Rojava has been attempting; self-governing communities applying direct democracy, using as pillars councils, popular assemblies, cooperatives managed by workers – and defended by popular militias. Thus the positioning of Rojava in the vanguard of a worldwide cooperative economics/democracy movement whose ultimate target would be to bypass the concept of a nation-state.

Not only is this experiment taking place politically across northern Syria; in military terms, it was the PKK and the PYD who actually managed to rescue those tens of thousands of Yazidis corralled by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in Mount Sinjar, and not American bombs, as the spin went. And now, as PYD Co-President Asya Abdullah details, what’s needed is a “corridor” to break the encirclement of Kobani by Caliph Ibrahim’s goons.

Sultan Erdogan’s power play
Ankara, meanwhile, seems intent in prolonging a policy of “lots of problems with our neighbors.”

For Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, “the main cause of ISIS is the Syrian regime.” And Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – who invented the now defunct “zero problems with our neighbors” doctrine in the first place – has repeatedly stressed Ankara will only intervene with boots on the ground in Kobani to defend the Kurds if Washington presents a “post-Assad plan.”

And then there’s a larger than life character; Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a.k.a. Sultan Erdogan.

Sultan Erdogan’s conditions are well known. Syrian Kurds should fight against Damascus under the command of that lousy fiction, the reconstituted (and to be trained, of all places, in Saudi Arabia) Free Syrian Army; they should forget about any sort of autonomy; they should meekly accept Turkey’s request for Washington to create a no-fly zone over Syria and also a “secured” border on Syrian territory. No wonder both the PYD and Washington have rejected these demands.

Sultan Erdogan dreams of rebooting the peace process with the PKK – and he wants to lead it in a position of force. So far his only concession has been to allow Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga to enter northern Syria to counter-balance the PYD-PKK militias, and thus prevent the strengthening of an anti-Turkish Kurdish axis.

At the same time Sultan Erdogan knows ISIS/ISIL/Daesh has already recruited up to 1,000 Turkish passport holders. His supplemental nightmare is that the toxic brew in “Syraq” will sooner rather than later mightily overspill Turkish borders.

Barbarians at the gates
Caliph Ibrahim’s goons have already telegraphed their intention to massacre and/or enslave the entire civilian population of Kobani. And yet Kobani, per se, has no strategic value for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh (that’s what US Secretary of State John Kerry himself said last week; but then, predictably, he reversed himself). This very persuasive PYD commander though is very much aware of the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh threat.

Kobani is not essential compared to Deir ez-Zor (which has an airport supplying the Syrian Arab Army) or Hasakah (which has oil fields controlled by Kurds helped by the Syrian Arab Army). Kobani boasts no airport and no oil fields.

On the other hand, the fall of Kobani would generate immensely positive P.R. for the Caliph’s goons – widening the perception of a winning army especially among new, potential, EU passport holder recruits, as well as establishing a solid base very close to the Turkish border.

Essentially, what Sultan Erdogan is doing is to fight both Damascus (long-term) and the Kurds (medium- term) while actually giving a free pass (short-term) to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. And yet, further on down the road, Fehim Tastekin is right; training non-existent “moderate” Syrian rebels in Saudi Arabia will only lead to the “Pakistanization” of Turkey.

As if this was not muddled enough, in a game changer – and reversing its “terrorist” dogma – Washington is now talking to the PYD. And that poses an extra headache for Sultan Erdogan.

This give-and-take between Washington and the PYD is still up for grabs. Yet some facts on the ground spell it all out; more US bombing, more US air drops. A key fact though should not be overlooked. As soon as the PYD was more or less “recognized” by Washington, PYD head Saleh Muslim went to meet the wily Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Masoud Barzani. That’s when the PYD promised a “power sharing” with Barzani’s Peshmergas on running Rojava.

Syrian Kurds who were forced to abandon Kobani and exile themselves in Turkey, and who support the PYD, cannot return to Syria; but Iraqi Kurds can go back and forth. This dodgy deal was brokered by the KRG’s intelligence chief, Lahur Talabani. The KRG, crucially, gets along very well with Ankara.

That sheds further light on Erdogan’s game; he wants the Peshmerga – who are fierce enemies of the PKK – to become the vanguard against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and thus undermine the PYD/PKK alliance. Once again, Turkey is pitting Kurds against Kurds.

Washington for its part is manipulating Kobani to completely legitimize its crusade against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh (we should always remember how the whole thing started with a barrage of spin about the bogus, ghostly Khorasan group preparing a new 9/11).

What that means, in the long run, is a serious threat to the direct democracy experiment in Rojava – which Washington cannot but interpret as a return of communism.

Kobani is now a huge pawn in a game manipulated by Washington, Ankara and Irbil. None of these actors want the direct democracy experiment in Kobani and Rojava to bloom, expand and start to be noticed all across the Global South. The women of Kobani are in mortal danger of being, if not enslaved, bitterly betrayed.

And it gets even more ominous when the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh play on Kobani is seen essentially for what it is; a diversionary tactic, a trap for the Obama administration. What the Caliph’s goons are really aiming at is Anbar Province in Iraq – which they already largely control – and the crucial Baghdad belt. The barbarians are at the gates – not only Kobani’s but also Baghdad’s.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

22 October 2014

By F. William Engdahl

The details are emerging of a new secret and quite stupid Saudi-US deal on Syria and the so-called IS. It involves oil and gas control of the entire region and the weakening of Russia and Iran by Saudi Arabian flooding the world market with cheap oil. Details were concluded in the September meeting by US Secretary of State John Kerry and the Saudi King. The unintended consequence will be to push Russia even faster to turn east to China and Eurasia.

One of the weirdest anomalies of the recent NATO bombing campaign, allegedly against the ISIS or IS or ISIL or Daash, depending on your preference, is the fact that with major war raging in the world’s richest oil region, the price of crude oil has been dropping, dramatically so. Since June when ISIS suddenly captured the oil-rich region of Iraq around Mosul and Kirkuk, the benchmark Brent price of crude oil dropped some 20% from $112 to about $88. World daily demand for oil has not dropped by 20% however. China oil demand has not fallen 20% nor has US domestic shale oil stock risen by 21%.

What has happened is that the long-time US ally inside OPEC, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been flooding the market with deep discounted oil, triggering a price war within OPEC, with Iran following suit and panic selling short in oil futures markets. The Saudis are targeting sales to Asia for the discounts and in particular, its major Asian customer, China where it is reportedly offering its crude for a mere $50 to $60 a barrel rather than the earlier price of around $100. [1] That Saudi financial discounting operation in turn is by all appearance being coordinated with a US Treasury financial warfare operation, via its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in cooperation with a handful of inside players on Wall Street who control oil derivatives trading. The result is a market panic that is gaining momentum daily. China is quite happy to buy the cheap oil, but her close allies, Russia and Iran, are being hit severely.

The deal

According to Rashid Abanmy, President of the Riyadh-based Saudi Arabia Oil Policies and Strategic Expectations Center, the dramatic price collapse is being deliberately caused by the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer. The public reason claimed is to gain new markets in a global market of weakening oil demand. The real reason, according to Abanmy, is to put pressure on Iran on her nuclear program, and on Russia to end her support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria.[2]

When combined with the financial losses of Russian state natural gas sales to Ukraine and prospects of a US-instigated cutoff of the transit of Russian gas to the huge EU market this winter as EU stockpiles become low, the pressure on oil prices hits Moscow doubly. More than 50% of Russian state revenue comes from its export sales of oil and gas.

The US-Saudi oil price manipulation is aimed at destabilizing several strong opponents of US globalist policies. Targets include Iran and Syria, both allies of Russia in opposing a US sole Superpower. The principal target, however, is Putin’s Russia, the single greatest threat today to that Superpower hegemony. The strategy is similar to what the US did with Saudi Arabia in 1986 when they flooded the world with Saudi oil, collapsing the price to below $10 a barrel and destroying the economy of then-Soviet ally, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and, ultimately, of the Soviet economy, paving the way for the fall of the Soviet Union. Today, the hope is that a collapse of Russian oil revenues, combined with select pin-prick sanctions designed by the US Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will dramatically weaken Putin’s enormous domestic support and create conditions for his ultimate overthrow. It is doomed to fail for many reasons, not the least, because Putin’s Russia has taken major strategic steps together with China and other nations to lessen its dependence on the West. In fact the oil weapon is accelerating recent Russian moves to focus its economic power on national interests and lessen dependence on the Dollar system. If the dollar ceases being the currency of world trade, especially oil trade, the US Treasury faces financial catastrophe. For this reason, I call the Kerry-Abdullah oil war a very stupid tactic.

The Kerry-Abdullah secret deal

On September 11, US Secretary of State Kerry met Saudi King Abdullah at his palace on the Red Sea. The King invited former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar to attend. There a deal was hammered out which saw Saudi support for the Syrian airstrikes against ISIS on condition Washington backed the Saudis in toppling Assad, a firm ally of Russia and de facto of Iran and an obstacle to Saudi and UAE plans to control the emerging EU natural gas market and destroy Russia’s lucrative EU trade. A report in the Wall Street Journal noted there had been “months of behind-the-scenes work by the US and Arab leaders, who agreed on the need to cooperate against Islamic State, but not how or when. The process gave the Saudis leverage to extract a fresh US commitment to beef up training for rebels fighting Mr. Assad, whose demise the Saudis still see as a top priority.” [3]

For the Saudis the war is between two competing age-old vectors of Islam. Saudi Arabia, home to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina, claims de facto supremacy in the Islamic world of Sunni Islam. The Saudi Sunni form is ultra-conservative Wahhabism, named for an 18th Century Bedouin Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist named Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahha. The Taliban derive from Wahhabism with the aid of Saudi-financed religious instruction. The Gulf Emirates and Kuwait also adhere to the Sunni Wahhabism of the Saudis, as does the Emir of Qatar. Iran on the other hand historically is the heart of the smaller branch of Islam, the Shi’ite. Iraq’s population is some 61% majority Shi’ite. Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad is a member of a satellite of the Shi’ite branch known as Alawite. Some 23% of Turkey is also Alawite Muslim. To complicate the picture more, across a bridge from Saudi Arabia sits the tiny island country, Bahrain where as many as 75% of the population is Shi’ite but the ruling Al-Khalifa family is Sunni and firmly tied to Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the richest Saudi oil region is dominated by Shi’ite Muslims who work the oil installations of Ras Tanura.

An oil and gas pipeline war

These historic fault lines inside Islam which lay dormant, were brought into a state of open warfare with the launching of the US State Department and CIA’s Islamic Holy War, otherwise known as the Arab Spring. Washington neo-conservatives embedded inside the Obama Administration in a form of “Deep State” secret network, and their allied media such as the Washington Post, advocated US covert backing of a pet CIA project known as the Muslim Brotherhood. As I detail in my most recent book, Amerikas’ Heiliger Krieg, the CIA had cultivated ties to the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood death cult since the early 1950’s.

Now if we map the resources of known natural gas reserves in the entire Persian Gulf region, the motives of the Saudi-led Qatar and UAE in financing with billions of dollars the opposition to Assad, including the Sunni ISIS, becomes clearer. Natural gas has become the favored “clean energy” source for the 21st Century and the EU is the world’s largest growth market for gas, a major reason Washington wants to break the Gazprom-EU supply dependency to weaken Russia and keep control over the EU via loyal proxies like Qatar.

The world’s largest known natural gas reservoir sits in the middle of the Persian Gulf straddling part in the territorial waters of Qatar and part in Iran. The Iranian part is called North Pars. In 2006 China’s state-owned CNOOC signed an agreement with Iran to develop North Pars and build LNG infrastructure to bring the gas to China.[4]

The Qatar side of the Persian Gulf, called North Field, contains the world’s third largest known natural gas reserves behind Russia and Iran.

In July 2011, the governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas pipeline energy agreement which went largely unnoticed in the midst of the NATO-Saudi-Qatari war to remove Assad. The pipeline, envisioned to cost $10 billion and take three years to complete, would run from the Iranian Port Assalouyeh near the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, to Damascus in Syria via Iraq territory. The agreement would make Syria the center of assembly and production in conjunction with the reserves of Lebanon. This is a geopolitically strategic space that geographically opens for the first time, extending from Iran to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.[5] As Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar put it, “The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline – if it’s ever built – would solidify a predominantly Shi’ite axis through an economic, steel umbilical cord.”[6]

Shortly after signing with Iran and Iraq, on August 16, 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian Ministry of Oil announced the discovery of a gas well in the Area of Qarah in the Central Region of Syria near Homs. Gazprom, with Assad in power, would be a major investor or operator of the new gas fields in Syria. [7] Iran ultimately plans to extend the pipeline from Damascus to Lebanon’s Mediterranean port where it would be delivered to the huge EU market. Syria would buy Iranian gas along with a current Iraqi agreement to buy Iranian gas from Iran’s part of South Pars field.[8]

Qatar, today the world’s largest exporter of LNG, largely to Asia, wants the same EU market that Iran and Syria eye. For that, they would build pipelines to the Mediterranean. Here is where getting rid of the pro-Iran Assad is essential. In 2009 Qatar approached Bashar al-Assad to propose construction of a gas pipeline from Qatar’s north Field through Syria on to Turkey and to the EU. Assad refused, citing Syria’s long friendly relations with Russia and Gazprom. That refusal combined with the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline agreement in 2011 ignited the full-scale Saudi and Qatari assault on Assad’s power, financing al Qaeda terrorists, recruits of Jihadist fanatics willing to kill Alawite and Shi’ite “infidels” for $100 a month and a Kalishnikov. The Washington neo-conservative warhawks in and around the Obama White House, along with their allies in the right-wing Netanyahu government, were cheering from the bleachers as Syria went up in flames after spring 2011.

Today the US-backed wars in Ukraine and in Syria are but two fronts in the same strategic war to cripple Russia and China and to rupture any Eurasian counter-pole to a US-controlled New World Order. In each, control of energy pipelines, this time primarily of natural gas pipelines—from Russia to the EU via Ukraine and from Iran and Syria to the EU via Syria—is the strategic goal. The true aim of the US and Israel backed ISIS is to give the pretext for bombing Assad’s vital grain silos and oil refineries to cripple the economy in preparation for a “Ghaddafi-”style elimination of Russia and China and Iran-ally Bashar al-Assad.

In a narrow sense, as Washington neo-conservatives see it, who controls Syria could control the Middle East. And from Syria, gateway to Asia, he will hold the key to Russia House, as well as that of China via the Silk Road.

Religious wars have historically been the most savage of all wars and this one is no exception, especially when trillions of dollars in oil and gas revenues are at stake. Why is the secret Kerry-Abdullah deal on Syria reached on September 11 stupid? Because the brilliant tacticians in Washington and Riyadh and Doha and to an extent in Ankara are unable to look at the interconnectedness of all the dis-order and destruction they foment, to look beyond their visions of control of the oil and gas flows as the basis of their illegitimate power. They are planting the seeds of their own destruction in the end.
William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New World Order. He is a contributing author at BFP and may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.

Notes:

[1] M. Rochan, Crude Oil Drops Amid Global Demand Concerns, IB Times, October 11, 2014 http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/crude-oil-drops-amid-global-demand-concerns-1469524

[2] Nihan Cabbaroglu, Saudi Arabia to pressure Russia Iran with price of oil, 10 October 2014, Turkish Anadolu Agency, http://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/402343–saudi-arabia-to-pressure-russia-iran-with-price-of-oil

[3] Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, Deal With Saudis Paved Way for Syrian Airstrikes: Talks With Saudi Arabia Were Linchpin in U.S. Efforts to Get Arab States Into Fight Against Islamic State, Wall Street Journal, September. 24, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/articles/deal-with-saudis-paved-way-for-syrian-airstrikes-1411605329?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

[4] POGC, North Pars Gas Field, Pars Oil and Gas Company website, http://www.pogc.ir/NorthParsGasField/tabid/155/Default.aspx

[5] Imad Fawzi Shueibi , War Over Gas–Struggle over the Middle East: Gas Ranks First, 17 April, 2012. http://www.voltairenet.org/article173718.html

[6] Pepe Escobar, Why Qatar Wants to Invade Syria, Asia Times, September 27, 2012, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32576.htm

[7] Ibid.

[8] F. William Engdahl, Syria Turkey Israel and the Greater Middle East Energy War, Global Research, October 11, 2012, http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-turkey-israel-and-the-greater-middle-east-energy-war/5307902
27 October, 2014
Engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

 

By Shamus Cooke

How did Obama manage to botch U.S. foreign policy so stunningly? The promising speeches he gave in 2008 earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. But his inspiring words have since been buried in the rubble of Libya, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria. The region that once viewed Obama as a peace messiah now rejects him as a warmonger. And with every new foreign policy zigzag Obama only finds fresh “threats” while never managing to find the path to peace.

Obama would like peace in theory, but doing so requires he shake up his Middle East alliances. The U.S. stands pigeonholed in tightly-wound alliances with the most hated regimes in the world, sandwiched between the global pariah Israel and the brutal totalitarian dictatorship of Saudi Arabia. The other important U.S. ally is war-hungry expansionist Turkey, while the smaller U.S. allies are the remaining Gulf state monarchy dictatorships.

Allies like these make peace impossible. Obama recognizes that these friends restrict the ability of the U.S. to retain regional credibility. Consequently, there has been much speculation about a massive shift in U.S. alliances that hinges on peace with Iran, possibly supplemented by strengthening the alliance with Iraqi Kurds.

Americans and Iranians would celebrate a peace between nations, but this scenario now seems off the table. After “talking” peace with Iran for the first time in decades, Obama chose the warpath yet again.

This decision was finalized recently when the “ISIS deal” was struck between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, again cementing this ugly alliance. In exchange for Saudi Arabia attacking ISIS, the U.S. would commit to war against the Syrian government, which the Saudis want toppled to undermine their rival Iran. The Syrian rebels that Saudi Arabia agreed to train — with $500 million from U.S. taxpayers — will be used against the Syrian government, not to fight ISIS. The U.S. allies in the region understand the war against the Syrian government as a first step to war against Iran. Even if a nuclear deal is struck between the U.S. and Iran the path to war will have been set.

Economics is a key reason that U.S. allies want Iran destroyed. Iran stands as a competitor for markets and investment throughout the region, and the destruction of Syria and Iran would open up new markets for the vulture-like U.S. allies. The economic oil war between Saudi Arabia and Iran has recently heated up, with Saudi Arabia selling oil at extra low prices to put political pressure on Iran. This, coupled with the ongoing “economic war” that Obama is waging, has the potential to weaken Iran via internal chaos, softening it up to possible invasion if the Syrian government falls.

Iran’s military is another reason the U.S. wants regime change. There are U.S. military bases scattered around the Middle East, though none in Iran, which has a powerful regional military force that patrols the strategic Strait of Hormuz, jointly controlled by Iran and Oman. It’s intolerable for the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that one fifth of the world’s oil production must pass through this Iranian controlled area.

Iran’s regional power is bolstered by its political and religious connections throughout the Middle East. Not only does Shia Muslim Iran exert automatic authority over Shia majority Iraq, but also over Shia Hezbollah and Shia-led Syria. This region-wide dynamic is often referred to as the “Shia Crescent.” There also exist sizable oppressed Shia populations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, and Turkey that act as intrinsic political thorns in the sides of these Sunni sectarian governments, giving Iran a powerful political base in each case.

For example, when Saudi Arabia recently announced a death sentence for a popular Shia cleric, Iran responded that there would be “consequences” if the sentence were carried out, thus re-enforcing Iran’s self-portrayed position as “defender of the Shia.”

In Yemen there already exists a strong Shia insurgency against the pro-U.S. Sunni government that is using al-Qaeda-linked fighters against the Shia; the results of the conflict will either empower Iran or weaken it.

These regional religious tensions have been exponentially deepened by the U.S.-led coalition against the Syrian government, which has relied on systematic Sunni Islamic sectarianism to attract jihadist fighters and a flood of Sunni Gulf state donations.

The Sunni fundamentalism in Syria — loosely based on the Saudi fundamentalist version of Islam — views Shia Muslims as heretics worthy of death. The executions of Shia in Syria have reverberated throughout the Middle East, acting as an implicit threat to Shia Iran while increasing tensions in the Shia populations of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and beyond. The regional Shia backlash against the Sunni fundamentalists have strengthened Iran’s regional influence, one likely reason why Obama made the peace-killing deal with Saudi Arabia against ISIS and the Syrian government.

Saudi Arabia and Israel are adamant that the U.S. make no peace with Iran. Both sent strong messages after Obama’s 2013 last minute decision not to bomb the Syrian government, and his brief flirtation with Iran. Saudi Arabia went as far as refusing a seat on the UN Security Council. Israel protested the decision too, after it had lobbied heavily in the U.S. Congress through AIPAC to ensure the bombing took place.

The Kurdish Question

Turkey has long assisted the U.S. in attempting to topple the Syrian government, and has recently been insisting on a U.S. enforced “no-fly zone” in northern Syria, which would be directed against the Syrian government, since ISIS has no air force. Turkey has no good intentions in Syria, and has long wanted to grab easy oil-rich land for itself; which happens to be where the Kurdish population in Syria resides.

The call to enforce a no-fly zone to “protect the Kurds” on Turkey’s border, if achieved, will be similar to the no-fly zone in Libya — to create a “humanitarian corridor” — that was used instead to create a massive U.S.-led bombing campaign for regime change.

The Kurdish people face the same situation they’ve faced for hundreds of years: other nations have used the Kurds for their own self-interest. The Kurdish people want and deserve their own independent nation state, but they’ve been betrayed countless times in the past and the situation now seems no different. Promises are made and arms given to the “good” pro-U.S. Iraqi Kurds, while across the border in Turkey another faction of Kurds are labeled terrorists and repressed by the government.

Recently, the Kurdish Syrian town on the border of Turkey was invaded by ISIS and militarily defended by the “bad Kurds” of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) an affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who are based in Turkey. The Turkish military watched across the border as ISIS relentlessly attacked Kobani, while the Turks used military force to prevent Turkish Kurds from crossing the border into Syria to help defend the Kurdish city.

This reinforced perceptions that ISIS was, in part, a Turkish creation, since Turkey’s border has long been an uncontested point of entry for foreign jihadists to enter Syria. Turkey defended its actions by essentially equating the Kurdish PYD and PKK with ISIS, dismissing all of them as “terrorists.” In Turkey, Kurdish protests erupted against the government’s actions and inactions in Kobani, leaving 40 dead. Protests also occurred in other Kurdish regions including Iran.

Turkey ultimately proved that it fears the Kurds more than ISIS, and further proved that negotiations with its domestic Kurdish population will never result in an independent Kurdistan on any inch of Turkish territory. Turkey will likewise be violently opposed to any creation of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq or Syria, since it would empower the Turkish Kurds while preventing Turkey from grabbing the oil-rich regions for itself.

This dynamic acts as an impossible barrier for the Obama administration to “re-balance” its Middle East alliances by using the Kurds. No nation with a sizable Kurdish population — Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria — will buy in to a possible U.S. policy of Kurdish statehood, since they would lose the oil-rich territory that the Kurds live on.

Not only would the U.S. lose regional allies by advocating Kurdish independence, but if such a state were to emerge, it would be a weak nation, since the Kurds are already divided into various factions, and thus not strong enough for the U.S. to rely on to achieve regional objectives.

Consequently, Obama feels compelled to continue down the same war-torn path as his predecessors. But Obama’s perspective is colored by his assumption that the United States must remain the regional power in an area thousands of miles from its border, and that U.S. corporations should dominate the oil, banking, weapons selling, and other markets in the region.

The U.S. is long past the point where it can claim that its Middle East goals are “peace, stability, and democracy,” especially after invading and destroying Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now the dirty war against Syria. The oil, minerals, and other wealth that attracts the U.S. corporations that steer U.S. foreign policy prevent any real lasting peace to be achieved. The logic of corporate America is to crush the competitor by any means necessary.

Peace with Iran and Syria could be achieved if Obama told the world the truth about the above dynamics in the region, and treated Iran and Syria with the respect that an independent nation deserves, while working to curb the power of Israel and Saudi Arabia, who both depend on U.S. financial, military, and political support.

But instead Obama has dug in his heels and re-enforced alliances that demand the continuation of the Syrian war, and after that Iran. A war-shredded region remains on the bloody path to a potentially even wider war, while the billions of U.S. tax dollars funding this genocide will remain unusable for domestic projects like job creation and climate change reduction and preparedness. During this election season both Democrats and Republicans agree on continuing Middle East war.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).

24 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

 

By Dr Gideon Polya

Courageous, anti-racist social humanist and former Australian Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam (1916-2014), died on 21 October 2014 at the age of 98. Gough Whitlam was a courageous, intelligent and visionary social democrat who transformed Australia in 3 short years (1972-1975) before his removal in a US-backed Coup. Whitlam gave Australia peace, womens rights, equal pay for women, no fault divorce, Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory , universal free access to health services and tertiary education, rejection of explicit racism and abolition of the White Australia Policy, but his humane legacy is being attacked by the neoliberal Coalition and Labor Right [1-3].

Gough Whitlam came from a privileged upper middle class family and was a Queens Counsel (QC) barrister. A veteran of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in World War 2 he joined the Australian Labor Party (ALP) after the war and courageously crashed through to reform the ALP and make it a social democratic party for all thoughtful and aspirational Australians as a well as for trade unionists.

Pro-peace, pro-humanity, and pro-human rights Whitlam transformed Australia in a mere 3 years before his removal in a US-backed Coup by a CIA-linked Governor General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 (The Dismissal). Tributes have flowed for Gough Whitlam and his immense, enduring social legacy but the appalling Mainstream media of Murdochracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy Australia have ignored the horrible reality that in the 4 decades since his Dismissal, both the 2 major political groups in Australia, the conservative Liberal Party and National Party Coalition and the Right-dominated Labor Party (known collectively as the Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) have sought to roll back his pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-human rights, pro-education, pro-equity and pro-opportunity legacy.

The pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-environment, pro-equity, pro-opportunity, and pro-human rights agenda of Whitlam is in stark contrast to that of the pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-fossil fuels, anti-science, anti-environment, climate criminal, war criminal, US lackey Lib-Labs. Indeed the Whitlam agenda very much resembles the pro-peace, pro-humanity, pro-environment, pro-equity, pro-opportunity, and pro-human rights agenda of the Australian Greens. The Labor Party was angered when the Greens published a picture of the late Gough Whitlam above the Greens logo and referred to his landmark decision to abolish university fees (a position reversed by the subsequent Hawke Labor Government).

Progressive Australian journalist Ben Eltham writing in the Alternative Australian web magazine New Matilda has stated the appalling obvious that is being resolutely ignored by the Mainstream journalist, politician and academic presstitutes, specifically that many of the great advances under Gough Whitlam are being reversed or weakened by the dominant neoliberal culture: “Since 1975, Whitlam’s achievements have never been under greater attack than today” [4].

Below is a summary of PM Gough Whitlam’s social democracy achievements (with subsequent actual or attempted roll-backs by the neoliberal, US lackey Lib-Labs in parentheses):

1. Whitlam sought greater independence from America .

Whitlam sought more balanced, peaceful and friendly relations with Developing countries, a policy that was not only humane but eminently rational with 3 billion Asians and Africans, half of them Muslims, between Australia and Mother England. Whitlam raised the ire of the Americans because of his opposition to the Vietnam War and Israeli state terrorism and his demand for clarity over the Pine Gap spying establishment in Central Australia . (After the US-backed Dismissal of PM Gough Whitlam in 1975, the Australian Labor Party recognized that its central policy must be “all the way with the USA ” and that necessarily included fervent support for genocidally racist Apartheid Israel . Deviations from Washington or Tel Aviv were subject to extreme punishment. Right wing Labor Opposition leader Mark Latham wanted to bring Australian troops home from Iraq “by Christmas” but was publicly vetoed by the US ambassador in the 2004 election. Right wing Labor PM Kevin Rudd opposed the Iraq War, proposed destruction of Afghan opium poppy crops, mildly objected to Apartheid Israeli violation of Australians and Australian sovereignty, and wanted a big Mining Tax on mostly foreign-owned mining companies – he was removed in a US-approved, Mining Company-funded and pro-Zionist -led Coup on 24 June 2010. Up to 2,500 child-killing US Marines were stationed in Darwin under Labor PM Gillard with more adumbrated by the Coalition plus more joint exercises and more nuclear-armed ship visits)

2. Whitlam opposed US Asian wars.

Whitlam opposed the horrendous US wars against Vietnam , Cambodia and Laos that were ultimately associated with deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation totalling 15 million, 6 million and 1 million, respectively [2]. (With the exception of Whitlam, all post-1990 Australian PMs variously participated in US Asian wars associated with deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation totalling 4.6 million for the Iraqi Genocide, 5.5 million for the Afghan Genocide, and 40 million in total).

3. Whitlam brought Australian troops home from Vietnam .

Whitlam’s first actions on gaining office were to arrange for the immediate return of Australian soldiers from Vietnam , the freeing of conscientious objectors from prison, and the cessation of the “birthday ballot” conscription of young Australian men for killing Asians. (All Lib-Lab PMs with the exception of Whitlam sent Australian forces to US Asian wars that since 1950 were associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation).

4. Whitlam defended Australian sovereignty over Pine Gap.

Whitlam wanted clarity over the function of the joint US-Australian spying facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia . This facility had (and still has) a key role in US nuclear terrorism and Whitlam’s concerns are among the key reasons for the US-backed Dismissal. (Under successive Lib-Lab Governments Pine Gap operations remained secret and are key to spying on everyone in the world for the US and Apartheid Israel and for targeting war criminal US drone strikes from Africa to South Asia ).

5. Whitlam defended Australians’ right to know.

Whitlam sought clarity over the function of the joint US-Australian spying facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia, this raising the ire of the US and leading in part to his Dismissal. (Successive Lib-Lab governments have been obsessively secretive and are about to pass bipartisan-supported “anti-terror” legislation that criminalizes reportage of intelligence abuses).

6. Whitlam famously visited and thence recognized China .

As leader of the Opposition and thence as Australian PM Whitlam visited China . He “got away” with visiting “Communist China” at the height of the Cold War despite howls of protest from the racist right because his visit was quickly followed by that of war criminal and mass murderer US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. China is now Australia ‘s biggest trading partner. (According to Wikileaks, Labor PM Rudd suggested US war with China to the Americans and former Labor Opposition leader and Australian Ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, offered Australian soldiers in that eventuality. The Coalition and Labor Right are Sinophobic and Russophobic and partners in the US policy of “containing” China and Russia . In a great irony, former Coalition PM Malcolm Fraser, who was appointed caretaker PM by Governor-General Kerr after he dismissed PM Whitlam, has become an important critic of Lib-Lab Sinophobia and other policies, stating that “Slavish devotion to the US [is] a foreign policy folly for Australia” [5] ).

7. Whitlam was pro-science and pro-intellectual.

Whitlam was a thinker and definitely pro-science as reflected in private comments, public comments and support for universities, research, the environment and intellectual pursuits. (The Lib-Labs are anti-science, in being effective climate change denialist, pro-coal, pro-gas, and anti-environment, and for variously slashing university, Australian Research Council (ARC), Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and industry research funding. The Lib-Labs recently passed draconian legislation providing for 10 years in prison for scientists who mention to non-Australians any of thousands of items in a 353-page Defence and Strategic Goods List under the terms of the US Alliance-inspired Defence Trade Controls Bill [6]).

8. Whitlam was pro-universities and pro-higher education.

Whitlam was an intellectual, funded expansion of universities, and made tertiary education accessible to everybody regardless of parental wealth (see item #9 below). (Under Labor PM Bob Hawke’s Education Minister John Dawkins, Hawke Labor “Dawkinized” and dumbed-down research-plus-teaching universities through fusing them with non-research, teaching-only Colleges of Advanced Education ( CAEs). Labor PM Julia Gillard slashed billions of dollars from the universities. The present Coalition Government is starving and deregulating higher education, with adumbrated hugely increased Federal Government funding of Mickey Mouse private tertiary institutions such as that which gave PM Abbott’s daughter a $60,000 “scholarship”).

9. Whitlam introduced free tertiary education.

Free tertiary education was variously available in Europe . Whitlam’s introduction of free tertiary education for Australia suddenly made tertiary education accessible to all Australians regardless of wealth. This was a huge advance on the social humanist agenda of maximizing human opportunity and happiness. ( Free tertiary education was reversed by the Hawke Labor Government with introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) loan system enabling the students to pay off the re-introduced fees over many years as a levy on earnings above a particular level. The current Coalition plans to greatly increase fees and hence HECS Debt, interest payments and hence the worsening wealth-based social divide. Students doing a basic Bachelor of Arts degree may now start postgraduate adult life at 21 with a HECS debt of $100,000).

10. Whitlam introduced Medibank (now called Medicare) and free health services for all.

Whitlam introduced free hospital and other medical services for everyone called Medibank (now called Medicare). This was a major social humanist advance that saved lives and suffering on a huge scale and also saved the poor from crippling penury from medical costs. (Neoliberal greed inevitably meant the growth of private medical insurance, ostensibly for “the doctor of your choice”, that enabled the well-off to avoid long delays in public hospitals and get immediate attention. The current Coalition Government proposal for co-payments for medical attention is part of a neoliberal push for a wealth-based US-style health system which sees 45,000 Americans dying from lack of medical cover each year and 1.5 million Americans dying from preventable causes each year [7]. About 80,000 Australians die from preventable causes each year [8]).

11. Whitlam stood up for Womens Rights and Equal Pay.

Gough Whitlam, backed by his marvellous and forthright wife of 70 nearly years, Margaret Whitlam, stood up for womens rights and in particular for equal pay for women. The free tertiary education reform also greatly empowered women. (Under the Lib-Labs child care is still not fully tax deductible while negative gearing costs for prosperous investors investing in equities or property are tax deductible. There is still a large gap between male and female earnings in Australia . Appallingly and appallingly ignored by Australia ‘s Mainstream media presstitutes, 34% of Australian women and 16% of Australian men have been sexually abused as children [9]).

12. Whitlam gave Australia the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act.

Whitlam Labor’s 1975 Racial Discrimination Act outlawed Federal racial discrimination and was important for human rights and Indigenous Australian human rights in particular as well as outlawing racial discrimination in immigration. (The 1975 Racial Discrimination Act was grossly violated by Lib-Labs in relation to Northern Territory (NT) Aborigines and the Coalition Intervention in the NT with the backing of racist Labor. Labor in government also subsequently violated the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act in relation to Afghan refugees fleeing the US- , Zionist- and Australia-backed Afghan Genocide and Tamil refugees fleeing the US- , Zionist- and Australia-backed Tamil Genocide) .

13. Whitlam legislated Land Rights for NT Aborigines, notably the Gurindji People.

The Indigenous Australian Gurundji People of the NT had gone on strike for many years for decent pay from the British Lord Vestey who owned the Wave Hill cattle station on Gurundji land. Whitlam legislated Land Rights for NT Aborigines, most notably the Gurindji People. (The removal of Whitlam from office forestalled further such action. In the 21st century there is big Lib-Lab pressure for Aborigines to quit traditional land in remote areas and move to towns for key services).

14. Whitlam addressed urban Australia and suburban services, notably sewerage.

Whitlam was conscious of the basic needs (e.g. sewerage, schools, roads) of ordinary suburban Australians, 90% of whom live in cities or towns. Whitlam addressed urbanization in both the city suburbs and in towns in regional Australia (Albury-Wodonga straddling the Victoria and New South Wales border being a major example). (The climate criminal Coalition favours dirty roads over badly needed rail services to outer suburbs, noting that rail transport of people is 20 times more energy efficient than car transport. Successive neoliberal Lib-Lab governments have favoured horizontal, outwards spread of Australian cities rather than vertical, centralized growth ).

15. Whitlam introduced major family law reforms and no fault divorce.

Whitlam, a Queens Counsel (QC) barrister, introduced major family law reforms and notably no fault divorce. (Under Lib-Labs forced removal of children from Aboriginal mothers has reached an historic high notwithstanding the “Sorry” to the Stolen Generations by Labor PM Kevin Rudd) [10]).

16. Whitlam attempted to buy back the farm from foreign miners.

Whitlam attempted to raise billions of dollars in loans to get Australian ownership of major mineral resources (e.g. minerals, coal and gas), Unfortunately, the Arab Oil Crisis due to Apartheid Israeli militarism lead to a worldwide economic downturn that involved higher inflation and unemployment in Australia with restricted access to capital. Whitlam Labor’s attempt to raise money from oil-rich Arab sources rather than traditional “White” European sources was a red rag to Australian racists and led to the “Khemlani Loans Scandal” beat-up that helped damage the Labor Government when the king-maker Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire that helped install Whitlam in 1972 turned against him in 1975. (Labor PM Kevin Rudd attempted to get a better share of mining royalties in 2010 but was betrayed and removed in a US-approved, foreign Miner-funded and pro-Zionist-led Coup. PM Julia Gillard drafted a toothless Mining Tax. The Coalition opposed the Mining Tax which it abolished in 2014 with the help of the Mining billionaire Clive Palmer MP’s Palmer United Party (PUP)).

17. Whitlam secured welfare for single mothers.

In addition to his pro-women actions in relation to family law, free tertiary education and equal pay, Whitlam legislated for welfare for single mothers. (Labor PM Julia Gillard drastically cut welfare for single mothers and the present Coalition Government has the same callous attitude.

18. Whitlam espoused opportunity for all.

Whitlam was a social humanist who believed in maximizing the opportunity for everyone to better themselves. This is in stark contrast to the currently dominant neoliberal agenda of maximizing the freedom of the rich and advantaged to make wealth from the world’s ‘ physical and human resources with benefits “trickling down” to the poor and disadvantaged. ( Whitlam’s social humanism is utterly rejected rejected by the pro-One Percenter neoliberal Lib-Labs. The One Percenter and Ten Percenter share of national income has steadily increased in the Anglosphere countries including Australia since the Whitlam era [11] ).

19. Whitlam sought peaceful engagement with Asia .

In addition to opposing US Asian wars, Whitlam sought friendly relations with Asian countries, most notably Indonesia , Japan and China . (The cowardly and racist Lib-Lab policy of helping the US in killing Asians and devastating their countries has meant that Australia is complicit in 40 million Asian deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation in US Asian wars since 1950).

20. Whitlam abolished the White Australian Policy.

Whitlam’s predecessor as Leader of the Labor Party was Arthur Calwell a traditional Labor racist who is remembered for his appallingly racist comments about Asians e.g. “Two Wongs do not make a White”, “We can have a white Australia, we can have a black Australia, but a mongrel Australia is impossible, and I shall not take the first steps to establish the precedents which will allow the floodgates to be opened”, “We will not let the yellow hordes contaminate our golden shores”, “ Japanese women should not be allowed to pollute our shores” and “No red-blooded Australian wants to see a chocolate-coloured Australia in the 1980s”. What was popularly known as the White Australian Policy excluded non-Europeans from Australia from 1901 when Australia ‘s first Prime Minister Edmund Barton in debating the Commonwealth Immigration Restriction Bill (1901) stated “The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of an Englishman and the Chinaman.” Whitlam abolished the racist White Australian Policy in 1974 [3]. (Successive racist Lib-Lab Governments permitted the New White Australia Policy that makes acquiring visas for travelling to Australia much more difficult for non-Whites that for Whites and “Honorary Whites” like Japanese ).

21. Whitlam advanced human rights, especially for women and Aborigines.

Whitlam advanced human rights by abolishing conscription, abolishing the White Australia Policy, opposing Apartheid in South Africa, opposing Israeli state terrorism, stopping Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, promoting equal pay for women, legislating NT Aboriginal land rights and through the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act, (There has been gross Lib-Lab human rights abuse in relation to children, refugees, Muslims, subject Asian populations and Indigenous Australians).

22. Whitlam reduced the voting age to 18.

Whitlam reduced the voting age to 18 arguing that if they were old enough to die for Australia in wars then they were old enough to have a say in elections. (Lib-Labs and media presstitutes are involved in gross deception of the young in a spin-driven, look-the-other-way Australia . Thus, for example, Australian Mainstream media and Lib-Lab politicians deceive the young by steadfastly ignoring the realities that (a) Australia’s historical Carbon Debt from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is $1.7 trillion and increasing at $300 billion each year and (b) undergraduate teaching can be provided for about 10% of the current cost using casual academics and for about 1% of the current through part-time expert accrediting assessments for top quality courses emplaced for free on the web (MOOCs) by top institutions like 152-Nobel-Laureate Harvard and 83-Nobel-Laureate MIT [12, 13]).

23. Whitlam initiated protection of wild Australia .

Whitlam was pro-environment and commenced protection of wild Australia e.g. stopping barbarians drilling for oil on the Great Barrier Reef . (In the 21st century, anti-environment, climate criminal Lib-Labs are threatening forests, ecosystems, species, and the Great Barrier Reef . Under the climate criminal Lib-Labs Australia (population 24 million) is one of the worst annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters. Australia’s annual Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution is about 2 billion tonnes CO2-e , this giving an Australian annual per capita GHG pollution of 83 tonnes CO2-e per person per year as compared to the World average of 9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year and Bangladesh’s 0.9 tonnes CO2-e per person per year [14]. The climate criminal Australian Coalition Government and Labor Right are effectively climate change denialist through resolute commitment to climate change inaction and in so doing is committed to climate criminal One Percenter and Ten Percenter wealth acquisition at the expense of young people and future generations ).

24. Whitlam fostered intellectual debate.

Whitlam achieved leadership of the Labor Party and thence of Australia by overcoming the traditional class warfare and racism of the traditional Labor Party and bringing on board educated, middle class Australians to unite with the Trade Union movement to get a better deal for all ordinary Australians. (The honest debate espoused by Whitlam has been replaced by lying Lib-Lab spin. Major matters such as Australia ‘s huge Carbon Debt, free tertiary education, and the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) perversion and subversion of Australian politicians, journalists, academics and institutions are strictly off limits for public discussion).

25. Whitlam opposed Apartheid.

In 1971 Australia hosted a tour by the South African rugby team, the Springboks. 6 Australian players refused to play against the race-based Springboks and Whitlam’s predecessor, Coalition PM Billy Mc Mahon declared that their behaviour was a disgrace and insisted the tour would continue. Whitlam placed a government ban on sporting tours involving South African teams, a policy that was retained by subsequent Coalition and Labor governments. (The Coalition and Labor are extremely pro-Zionist and are the strongest supporters after the US of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel that excludes 72% of its Palestinian subjects from voting for the government ruling all of Palestine ).

26. Whitlam supported human rights for Palestinians.

Whitlam gave recognition to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and approved the establishment of a PLO liaison office in Canberra . Under Whitlam , Australia also voted for a resolution equating Zionism with racism at a UN women’s conference in Mexico . According to the pro-Zionist Australian Jewish News “W hitlam, the prime minister who shines brightest in Labor’s pantheon, had an “immoral, unethical and ungrateful attitude” towards Israel , his nemesis Bob Hawke allegedly said” [15]. ( The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Australian Lib-Labs are the most fervent supporters of Apartheid Israel after the Zionist -perverted US).

27. Whitlam supported Arab Australians.

Whitlam moved away from the US and more towards the non-aligned movement and criticized Israeli attacks on Lebanon as “terrorism”. In arguing policy of “evenhandedness and neutrality ” with the hostile Zionist Lobby Whitlam stated “You people should realise that there is a large Christian Arab community in this country”. (The Coalition and Labor Right try to outdo each other in slavish support for Apartheid Israel even when it is violating Australians and Australian sovereignty. Under the Lib-Labs Australia has proscribed 19 organizations as “terrorists”, all being Muslim in origin and including 4 Palestinian, Lebanese and Somali groups (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Al-Shabaab) opposing violent and deadly foreign occupation of their countries, variously by Apartheid Israel, the US or the US Alliance. In contrast the Lib-Labs removed from its list of proscribed terrorist organizations the Zionist terrorist organization Irgun that killed Allied servicemen before, during and after WW2, collaborated with the Nazis, and was responsible for the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Fervent Lib-Lab support for the Zionist-promoted US War on Muslims involving 12 million Muslim deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation since 1990 is linked to widespread and entrenched anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Muslim terror hysteria in Australia involving verbal and physical attacks on Muslims and most appallingly on Muslim women [8, 16-18]).

28. Whitlam supported the Arts.

Whitlam supported the Arts in numerous ways and this led to a renaissance of specifically Australian culture in literature, art, music and movies . Whitlam’s famous purchase for the National Gallery of Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionist painting “Blue Poles” for $1.3 million has been vindicated financially as well as aesthetically (it is now valued at $20-100 million). (Labor PM Julia Gillard took an axe to impoverished Australian artists by abolishing use of paintings as appreciating components of superannuation schemes. The Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Lib-Labs and their PC racist supporters are at the bottom of the moral, spiritual and intellectual barrel).

Conclusions.

The death of Gough Whitlam at the age of 98 has led to an outpouring of accolades from all sides of politics for this courageous social humanist who transformed Australia in his mere 3 years in Government that were terminated by a US-backed Coup. Whitlam achieved so much that is now taken for granted in principle in Australia – womens rights, equal pay for women, no fault divorce, Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal land rights in the NT , universal access to free health services and tertiary education, rejection of explicit racism, and abolition of the White Australia Policy.

Nevertheless Whitlam’s neoliberal successors – the pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-environment, anti-science, climate criminal, warmongering, war criminal, US lackey Coalition and Labor Right (aka Lib-Labs or Liberal-Laborals) – have relentlessly chopped away at the Whitlam social humanist legacy and immediately reversed his anti-war, anti-racism and anti-imperialist stance. Unlike any of his successors as PM of Australia , Whitlam actually served Australia in war (in the Royal Australian Air Force). Yet Whitlam’s ethical pro-peace, pro-human rights position has been replaced by the racism, warmongering and war criminality of all of his US lackey successors.

While Whitlam made huge permanent changes for the betterment of Australian society, the political consequences of the US-backed Dismissal of PM Whitlam on 11 November 1975 have been dire. The cowardly, unprincipled Labor Party rapidly adopted an “all the way with the USA ” policy in concert with the position of the Coalition. The cowardice, greed, mendacity and racism of the pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-science, climate criminal, war criminal, US lackey Lib-Labs have made Australia a terror hysteria-obsessed , war mongering, war criminal police state and are set to make White Australia an international pariah.

Whitlam has been criticized by economists for failing to handle the inflation, unemployment and credit crunch realities associated with the Oil Crisis and world economic downturn of the early 1970s but the unethical and unpatriotic Parliamentary warfare by the Coalition in blocking Supply hardly helped. Whitlam can also be criticised for apparently passively accepting the US-backed Indonesian invasion of East Timor that was to kill about 1/3 of the East Timorese population [1-3]. During the Whitlam Government period it appears that Australian Intelligence operatives were assisting the US CIA in the lead up to the bloody overthrow of the democratically –elected Allende Government in Chile on 11 September 1973, but it is likely that Whitlam was no more aware of this criminality than he was aware of US Intelligence moves leading to his own downfall on 11 November 1975.

Decent, humane, anti-racist, anti-violence, anti-war Australians will honor Gough Whitlam’s memory by rejecting the pro-war, pro-fossil fuels, anti-environment, US lackey, neoliberal Coalition and Labor Right (aka the Lib-Labs or Liberal Laborals), vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last. Decent people around the world should (a) inform everyone they can about the ongoing destruction of the social humanist Whitlam legacy in Australia , and (b) urge Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all parties, politicians, presstitutes, crooks, companies and corporations involved in neoliberal Australian human rights abuses, war crimes and climate crimes.

References.

[1]. William Blum’s ” Rogue State “.

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” that is now available for free perusal on the web : http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/ .

[4]. Ben Eltham, “Obituary: Gough Whitlam’s ideas must live on”, New Matilda, 21 October 2014: https://newmatilda.com/2014/10/21/obituary-gough-whitlams-ideas-must-live .

[5]. Malcolm Fraser. “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2010”|: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/slavish-devotion-to-the-us-a-foreign-policy-folly-for-australia-20101213-18vec.html .

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Impact of the Defence Trade Controls Bill on academic freedom”, NTEU: 10 October 2012: http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Impact-of-the-Defence-Trade-Controls-Bill-on-academic-freedom-13461 .

[7]. Gideon Polya, “One Percenter greed & war means over 1.5 million Americans die preventably each year”, Countercurrents, 19 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190914.htm .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism – Zero Australian Terrorism Deaths, 1 Million Preventable Australian Deaths & 10 Million Muslims Killed By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm .

[9]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous child abuse by pro-war, pro-Zionist, climate criminal Australian Coalition Governments”, Countercurrents, 4 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya041213.htm .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Film Review: “Utopia” By John Pilger Exposes Genocidal Maltreatment Of Indigenous Australians By Apartheid Australia ”, Countercurrents, 14 March, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya140314.htm .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “Key book review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty”, Countercurrents, 1 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “ $10 trillion annual Carbon Debt increase for Young People on a threatened Planet”, Countercurrents, 8 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080714.htm .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Letter to Young People over $220 trillion Carbon Debt: Revolt (Peacefully)”, Countercurrents, 11 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110714.htm .

[14]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[15]. “Our “disappointing relationship” with Gough”, Australian Jewish News, 23 October 2014: http://www.jewishnews.net.au/tag/gough-whitlam .

[16]. Australian Government, Australian National Security, “Listed terrorist organizations”: http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/Listedterroristorganisations/Pages/default.aspx .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “50 Ways Australian Intelligence spies on Australia and the World for UK , Israeli and US State Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 11 December, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya111213.htm .

[18]. Gideon Polya, “ Terror Hysteria – Draconian new Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws target journalists, Muslims and Human Rights”, Countercurrents, 8 October, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya0810114.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades.

23 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

By Federico Fuentes

Predictions by pollsters and commentators that Evo Morales would easily win Bolivia’s October 12 presidential elections were confirmed when the incumbent obtained over 60% of the vote.

Most however differ over why, after almost a decade in power, Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) continues to command such a huge level of support.

Their explanations tend to focus on specific economic or political factors, such as booming raw material prices or the MAS’s ability to control and co-opt the country’s social movements.

However, to understand why Morales will soon become the longest serving head of state in a country renowned for its history of coups and rebellions, it is necessary to start with an acknowledgement of the profound changes that Bolivia has undergone during his presidency.

Economic transformation

For some, the old saying “it’s the economy, stupid” neatly summed up the reasons for Evo’s victory.

They argue Morales simply rode the wave of high commodity prices, or promoted the ongoing expansion of lucrative extractivist industries, irrespective of social or environment costs, in order to use these funds to boost his popularity.

Yet, these views ignore (or purposely conceal) a basic truth, namely that Bolivia’s economic success is a direct result of the MAS government’s program for economic transformation.

This program has focused on weakening transnational control over the local economy and diversifying the economy away from its position of dependency on raw material exports.

A key plank of this program was Morales’ 2006 decree nationalizing the all-important gas sector.

Without this move, any increased windfall from higher commodity prices would have inevitably flowed out of the country, as it had under previous governments.

Instead, the capture and dramatic internal redistribution of Bolivia’s gas wealth helped fuel a huge surge in domestic demand, as ordinary people were lifted out of poverty and finally able to attend to their basic needs.

In fact, Bolivia’s record growth rates had more to do with a booming internal market than with external demand, which actually had a negative affect on growth during the global economic crisis.

Increased revenue derived from nationalization also enabled the Morales government to take steps towards making the local economy less dependent on raw material exports.

The government launched its industrialization program, which will soon see Bolivia go from a position of importing processed gas to exporting liquefied petroleum gas and other derivatives (for much higher returns).

Furthermore, the redistribution of gas revenue to other productive sectors has facilitated growth in non-extractive based industries.

This is particularly true for those sectors that provide livelihoods for a majority of the MAS’s social base, which is largely comprised of small-scale farmers, cooperative miners, street vendors and those employed in family businesses or micro-enterprises.

Economic diversification has also meant that growth in manufacturing outpaced both the mining and gas sectors last year.

The idea that Morales’ success is the result of external or internal economic factors such as high commodity prices or dependence on existing extractive industries is as simple as it is wrong.

The truth is that support for Morales is actually a result of the economic transformation that has taken place in Bolivia.

Political revolution

Many analyses also ignore the critical role that Bolivia’s indigenous and social movements have played in revolutionizing the country’s political set-up.

While the nationalization of Bolivia’s gas was officially decreed by the Morales government, it was in fact the direct result of years of struggle by the Bolivian people.

At the heart of these struggles was the demand to nationalize the gas in order to redirect this wealth towards meeting peoples’ needs.

Unsurprisingly, opinions differ as to what exactly should be done with this wealth.

Given the highly organized and mobilized nature of Bolivia’s popular classes, these differences have often been contested in the streets. As a result, the second Morales government (2009-2014) witnessed the highest rate of protests for any government in Bolivian history.

Only a tiny minority of these protests focused on issues to do with resource extraction.

The overwhelming bulk revolved around disputes over resource redistribution. This includes protests over access to basic services through to the redistribution of electoral boundaries and concurrent changes in funding allocation, and mobilizations against particular economic measures (for example, attempts to clamp down on contraband or impose taxes on cooperative miners).

The record number of protests would seem to go against the idea that the MAS has successfully co-opted Bolivia’s social movements. Yet, it also begs the question: if the Bolivian population is staging more protests than ever, why does Morales continue to maintain his popularity?

The explanation lies in the fact that Morales’ election heralded much more than the arrival of the first indigenous person to the presidential palace. It marked the onset of a political revolution that has gradually seen Bolivia’s old political elites dislodged from power and replaced by representatives from the country’s indigenous peoples and popular classes.

For this majority, the MAS government represents a safeguard against a return to the Bolivia of yesteryear, run by corrupt, white elites. More than that, for most indigenous people and social movements, the MAS government is “their” government.

This does not mean that the people have handed the MAS a blank check. Already on several occasions the MAS government has been forced to back down on certain policies due to popular pressure.

However, none of these protests have posed a fundamental challenge to the MAS’s overall vision for Bolivia, precisely because this vision is largely informed by the struggles and demands of the people themselves.

Instead, these conflicts have primarily been disputes over how best to make this vision a reality.

The MAS’s response to date has been to follow an approach of seeking dialogue and consensus, retreating where necessary but always attempting to continue to drive the process forward towards its goal.

Morales constantly sums up this approach using the Zapatista slogan “to govern by obeying”.

It was this approach that enabled the MAS to come into the elections with the backing of all of the country’s main indigenous, campesino, worker and urban poor organizations and to ensure its thumping victory.

The failure of opposition forces and critics to recognize or accept the fact that a political revolution has taken place and important economic transformations are underway explains why they are so far out of touch with the majority of Bolivian society.

Bolivia’s process of change is far from complete, and it may yet falter. It may also be dramatically impacted by events in the region, for example a change of government in neighboring Brazil.

For now, however, Bolivians have once again overwhelmingly chosen to push forward with their process of change.

[Federico Fuentes is co-author, together with Roger Burbach and Michael Fox, he is the co-author of Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Socialism (Zed Books 2013).]

23 October, 2014
TeleSUR English