Ethiopia – A Case Study in Take-Over by Western Interests

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


Ethiopia is a landlocked country, bordering on Somalia which is dominating the Horn of Africa. Due to several border conflicts during the past decades with Somalia, many of them supportive of Ethiopia by the US military, the border between the two countries has become porous and ill-defined. Ethiopia also borders on Djibouti, where the United States has a Naval Base, Camp Lemonnier, next to Djibouti’s international airport. The base is under AFRICOM, the Pentagon’s African Command. AFRICOM has its boots in Ethiopia, as it does in many other African countries.

Ethiopia’s new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has already demonstrated that he is poised to hand over his country to western interests, vultures, such as the World Bank, IMF and eventually the globalized Wall Street banking clan. In fact, it looks like these institutions were instrumental in manipulating parliamentary maneuvers, with arm-twisting of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to make Mr. Abyithe new Prime Minister, succeeding Mr. Hailemariam Desalegn, who rather suddenly was forced to resign in February 2018, amidst endless foreign induced protests and violent street demonstrations. With EPRDF Ethiopia is a de facto one-party state. EPRDF is a coalition of different regional representations.

Proud Ethiopia, has never been colonized by western powers per se, except for a brief Italian military occupation (1935 – 1939) by Mussolini. And now, in the space of a few months, since Mr. Abiy’s ascent to power, the country is being enslaved by the new western colonial instruments, the so-called international development institutions, the World Bank, IMF – and others will follow.

Mr. Abiy is an Oromo leader; Oromia being a disputed area between Ethiopia and Somalia.The latter is effectively controlling the Horn of Africa, overseeing the Gulf of Aden (Yemen) and the entire Iran controlled Persian Gulf area. Control over the Horn of Africa is on Washington’s strategic wish list and may have become an attainable target, with the Oromo leader and new PM,Abiy Ahmed.

Think about it – Yemen, another ultra-strategic location, being bombed to ashes by the Saudis on behalf of the western powers, primarily the US and the UK, being subdued for domination by the west wanting to control the Gulf area, foremost Iran and her riches. On the other hand, Ethiopia, a prime location as an assault basis for drones, war planes and ships.

Curiously, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a former rebel leader, elected in 1991 and in power for 21 years, died suddenly at age 57 in August 2012, while actually recovering from an undisclosed illness in a hospital abroad, allegedly from an infection – according to official Ethiopian state television. He was succeeded by Mr. Hailemariam, who last February had to resign.

In the same vein of strange events – events to reflect on – PM Zenawi, about 18 months before he died, signed on 31 March 2011 a no-bid contract for US$ 4.8 billion with ‘SaliniCostruttori’, alias SaliniImpregilo. The Italian company, well established in Ethiopia since 1957, is responsible for the construction of the controversial “Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam”, formerly the Millennium Dam on the Nile. When finished, it will be African’s largest artificial water reservoir with a capacity of 74 billion m3.

Under construction since 2011, this gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz Region, about 15 km from the Sudanese border, is expected to produce 6.45 gigawatts which will make it the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa and the 7th largest in the world. The works are about two thirds completed, and the dam will take from 5 to 15 years to fill up.

The project was fiercely contested by Egypt which claimed that the dam would reduce the agreed amount of Nile water flowing into Egypt. However, Prime Minister Zenawi argued that the dam would not reduce the downstream flow, and – in addition to generating hydropower and making Ethiopia Africa’s largest electricity exporter, would help regulate irrigation, thus, helping to avert Ethiopia’s notorious droughts and famines that kill regularly tens of thousands of people. Indications are that this dam project could become an economic “power house” for Ethiopia, a country otherwise known as impoverished and destitute.

This water flow conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt was discussed in numerous meetings and conferences of the World Bank sponsored Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), encompassing ten riparian countries (Burundi, D.R. Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda); and about 350 – 400 million people. It is not clear whether the dispute was ever satisfactorily settled.

Mr. Zenawi’s successor, PM Hailemariam Desalegn, continued with the project unchallenged and unchanged until his sudden resignation earlier this year. At the end of August 2018, in a surprise move, the new PM, Abiy Ahmed, ousted the dam project’s subcontractor, METEC, under the pretext of numerous work delays. METEC is a state enterprise run by the Ethiopian military. According to several insider accounts, there were never any complaints about project delays, caused by METEC. The new sub-contract was to be awarded to a foreign private company.

Simultaneously, in another alarming occurrence, on 26 August 2018, Mr. Simegnew Bekele, the chief engineer and project manager of the controversial dam, was found murdered, shot to death, in his Landcruiser in an Addis Ababa parking lot.

The series of events, starting from the signing of the dam project in 2011, to the sudden death of then PM Zenawi a year later, the resignation of his successor, Mr. Hailemariam, earlier this year, the hasty appointment of the neoliberal PM Abiy Ahmed in February 2018, the assassination of the dam’s project manager in August 2018 – all this looks like well-orchestrated, with a few hick-ups in between that were rapidly ironed out – to pave the way for a neoliberal, corporate and maybe foreign military take-over of this once proudly independent country, an African nation with a potentially prosperous future.

***

This leads to the other side of the same coin, the west is interested in.

With a population of about 104 million (2018 est.), Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa and one of the most densely populated ones, with an annual population growth rate of about 2.5%. Ethiopia is known for endemic poverty and her periodic droughts. Ethiopia is also the world’s second fastest growing non-oil economy (after Bhutan), having increased her GDP more than ten-fold since 2000, from US$ 8 billion to US$ 80.6 billion in 2017, however with a nominal GDP of only US$850, or US$2,100 PPP (Purchasing Power Parity).

Agriculture contributes about 36% to GDP, indicating a considerable growth potential with regulated irrigation expected to emanate from the Renaissance Dam project. Economic expansion amounted to more than 10% in 2017 and is projected at close to 9% per year through 2019.

This economic profile, plus the potential increase in output from the Grand Renaissance Dam, offer more than fertile grounds for corporate exploitation through debt enslavement and privatization of public, civil and social services. This has already started. Ethiopia’s current debt is a modest 33.5% of GDP – but is predicted to grow to at least 70% by 2022. – Why?

In November 2017 the World Bank has committed US$ 4.7 billion over the coming 5 years, roughly a billion per year – which may be called blank checks. These funds are destined for structural adjustment type activities, for loosely defined and little controlled budget support measures, much of which, as worldwide experience shows, is likely to ‘disappear’ unproductively, leaving behind public debt – and what’s much worse, a plethora of austerity conditions, from cutting public employment, to privatization of water, electricity and other public services, as well as ‘land-grabbing’ type agricultural concessions to foreign agricultural enterprises.

The latter will be especially attractive, thanks to the new regulated irrigation potential, making Ethiopia’s desert fertile – but leaving hardly any additional food at affordable prices for the impoverished population in the country. Frequently such land concessions come with long-term GMO contracts attached. Bayer-Monsanto may already be a player in Ethiopia’s future agricultural sector. If so, the country may not only be enslaved by debt, but also by endless, oppressive, land-destructive GMO contracts that bear high risks for human health.

Such a WB commitment will usually be followed by an IMF intervention, both of which will serve as leverage for further debt from private banking and corporate investors. The modest 2017 debt ratio of about one third to GDP may explode and skyrocket in the near future, making Ethiopia to the Greece of Africa, shamelessly exploited and “milked” to the bones by western corporate and financial interests.

Fortunately, there are other economic interests alive in Africa and especially in Ethiopia. There is, for example, China, for whom Ethiopia is a key partner and a linchpin for President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a massive China-initiated infrastructure development plan, spanning the globe from east to west, via different routes, one of them via Africa. Although China has become cautious over the past years with direct investments in Ethiopia, mainly due to the lasting unrest, said to be over ‘territorial issues’, Ethiopia remains an important partner, because of its strategic location next to the tiny port of Djibouti, where China has a naval base. Ethiopia is also attractive for manufacturing with low-cost labor and because of her transport links to other African countries, and a potentially large consumer market.

Chinese, Russian and other eastern investments are usually based on mutual benefits, in contrast to the western one-sided exploitation method. Hopefully, Chinese, Russian and other eastern investments may continue as a strong counter-balance to the west, and help bringing a more equitable development model not only to Ethiopia, but to the African Continent in general.In fact, recent statements by the leaders of South Africa, Ghana and Rwanda have praised Chinese investments over the western abusive ‘carrot and stick approach’. With the help of China, Russia and other eastern investors, Ethiopia might prevent western vultures from devouring the poverty struck nation and from falling into the trap of neoliberal, everything-goes “free market ideology” – to the detriment of the Ethiopian population
https://journal-neo.org/2018/09/10/ethiopia-a-case-study-in-take-over-by-western-interests/

 



About the Author
 Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance


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The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 




Elections and the Illusion of Political Control


HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

 


Photo Source Paul Sableman | CC BY 2.0


As if on special at Metaphors-R-Us, and just in time for the primary elections, CNN published an article on fake buttons that are provided to give people the illusion of control. It seems psychologists determined that fake buttons at crosswalks, in elevators and in other public and quasi-public places convey a sense of control without the power of control. In the space between upcoming elections and the creeping realization that connected capitalists still control the country, the question is of what reform candidates can really accomplish?

Staying with the metaphor for a minute, of relevance is that these buttons are engineered illusions— they are intended to deceive. The modes of existing they are designed to facilitate— office dwelling, high-rise living and urban traffic, preceded the psychologists’ additions. The fake controls are a response to adverse reactions to these modes of living. The question left unasked is: why are people having adverse reactions to the absence of control? The follow-on question is: what are the human consequences of the distance between the illusion and real control?

The progressives running in upcoming elections seem to be decent enough people. And reflexive cynicism— say about the plausibility of reform politics, only passes for knowledge in some particularly deplorable circle of hell. With apologies, welcome to hell. National Democrat Nancy Pelosi is promising to preclude all of the irresponsible social spending on progressive programs with ‘pay-go,’ the national Democrats’ austerity-in-a-can. And the New York Times is endorsing Andrew Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon because (corrupt machine politician) Cuomo can better ‘stop Trump.’

Graph: Given the relationship of economic distribution to political power, it is a good proxy for the distribution of political power. Since the 1980s a rising proportion of national product has been shifted from working class workers to the very rich. This is the result of specific policies designed to accomplish this outcome, not nature. When national Democrats proclaim themselves to be capitalists, this is the economic distribution they support. Source: LA Times / World Inequality Database.


Andew Cuomo: he's been relentlessly campaiging for president under the guise of campaigining for governor. A dollar Democrat endorsed by the DNC, phonies don't come much worse than this.

‘New’ Democrat Cuomo, who has governed as a Republican, would seem an odd choice to stop Trump if that were the goal. With Wall Street downstate from the governor’s mansion and Manhattan real estate serving as a money-laundering mechanism for the global looting class, Mr. Cuomo is Donald Trump’s ex-bootlick / errand person running New York’s patronage system. It is this intersection of real estate and global money laundering that made Donald Trump the titan of inheritance capitalism he is. Alas, promoting otherwise unelectable Democrats has long seemed the subtext of the ‘stop Trump’ campaign.

Economic austerity, the mantra and clarified butter of the national Democrats, is the claim that the only legitimate expenditures by the Federal government are for unnecessary wars, Wall Street bailouts and prisons. Other expenditures— for housing, education, health care, food and retirement, are burdens on our children and grandchildren. If this reads like the program of the radical right, you might be on to something. And if you don’t understand the implications for bottom-up political reform, please read on.

The institutional backdrop is that the Federal government (‘public’) and banks (‘private’) create money. State and local governments can borrow, but they are otherwise constrained by the revenues they collect. Why then would Ms. Pelosi suggest that Federal spending is constrained by revenues (via the Federal budget) when it isn’t? More broadly, why has this been Democratic Party dogma since Bill Clinton assumed office? Don’t they want for their constituents to be fed, housed, educated, healthy and retired in security? Phrased more plainly, why do they hate their constituents?

Graph: When Bill Clinton entered office as president in 1993 he immediately reneged on his campaign promise to increase social spending citing the budget deficit as the reason. Shortly thereafter (non-financial) private debt (as a percent of GDP) began to rise rapidly as government spending was replaced with bank loans. This increased profits for Wall Street until excessive private debt killed the economy in 2007.  National Democrats favor economic austerity because it increases profits for Wall Street. Source: Worldbank.

Money creation is politically important because it is a control device for social spending. How far is democratic socialism likely to get if the Federal purse strings are controlled by committed capitalists in the Federal government? Is it incidental that Ms. Pelosi is restating the national Democrats’ commitment to fiscal probity while single-payer healthcare, federally funded college education and a Federal job guarantee are being put forward as components of the progressives’ program? Lest this remain unclear, the national Democrats are telling progressives to take a hike.

Missing from progressive consciousness appears to be a plausible explanation for the national Democrats’ fiscal obsession. In olden times banks earned profits by making loans. Government spending funds public investment that could otherwise be financed through bank loans. Additionally, inflation— the alleged result of ‘excess’ public investment and / or household income, reduces the purchasing power of bank loans when they are repaid. Wall Street hates public investment almost as much as it hates inflation. National Democrats are the Party of Wall Street. Ergo, national Democrats hate public investment almost as much as they hate inflation.

Is it incidental then that the first modern President of Wall Street, Bill Clinton, introduced economic austerity to the national Democrats’ canon? It was ex-Goldman Sachs Co-Chair Robert Rubin who, as Mr. Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, explained the ‘tyranny of the bond market’ to Mr. Clinton. At the time economist John Kenneth Galbraith explained that the New Democrats’ patrons-to-be thrived on human misery. To close the circle. Wall Street thrives on human misery, national Democrats are the Party of Wall Street, ergo national Democrats thrive on human misery.

A weltanschauung was demonstrated when Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street and quickly followed up with calls for economic austerity. His quest to ‘get the banks lending again’ in the face of excessive private debt was to favor bank loans over public expenditures. The ‘lesson’ of the Great Depression was that the public expenditures of the New Deal revivified American capitalism. But why piss-off Wall Street patrons and counter IMF prognostications for ‘lesser’ countries when Wall Street can make debt-slaves of the entire populace? There is an economic logic to manufacturing human misery.

The predictable result, that a few already rich people were made richer to the outer bounds of human avarice while everyone else was stuck in a public-private partnership of engineered downward mobility, is the program that Ms. Pelosi and the national Democrats intend to move forward. The apparent calculation is that Donald Trump is so widely loathed that they can run on an austerity program and counter the reformers and democratic socialists through control of the public purse. Republicans certainly aren’t going to come to their aid by advocating public spending on social programs.

As has been commented on quite effectively elsewhere, the irony of the Democratic establishment’s support for largely white, largely male establishment candidates— see Andrew Cuomo above, against their identity-politics dream-team challengers— Ms. Nixon is female and lesbian, exposes the tactic as a fraud. The prevalent explanation— that the political stakes are too high, begs the question of why they are so high? This isn’t to claim they aren’t, but rather to ask why austerity economics is still central to the Democrats’ program given the electoral losses that have followed its implementation?

With not much implied beyond what is written, a difference between Occupy Wall Street and the #Resistance is the choice of targets. As the center of American finance capitalism, Wall Street controls American political economy. Bringing Wall Street to heel would solve a lot of social iniquities. The #Resistance poses one person, Donald Trump, as ‘the problem’ implying that getting him out of office would solve everything that needs to be solved. In fact, Wall Street and the American ruling class would still control most of what matters.

The question regarding elections is: do they change the distribution of power? Again, the Federal government and banks can create financing giving them fundamentally different levers of social control than state and local governments possess. This is a problem for bottom-up electoral strategies— the purse strings are controlled by people and groups with contrary interests and the economic power to get their way. Running on platforms that suggest otherwise is a recipe for one-term ‘insurgencies.’

It is ironic, and perhaps wholly coincidental, that insurgent groups as diverse as Occupy Wall Street and the Black Panthers were shut down when they began demonstrating that they could build (small scale, ultimately utopian) alternative institutions. Elections are intended to change the cast of characters without challenging existing institutions. This is what Nancy Pelosi is making clear through her re-statement of the Democrat’s commitment to economic austerity. And it would seem to imply that the greatest impediment to progressive programs comes from establishment Democrats.

Without changing the distribution of power, elections are the fake buttons of politics— they provide the illusion of political control without its fact. This is a central reason why I have resisted the #Resistance assertion that Donald Trump is ‘the problem’— underlying political economy is little changed between administrations. Current problems were set in motion with the ascendance of finance capitalism beginning in the 1970s. I plan to vote for the ‘insurgents’ and hope they are successful with their stated programs. Otherwise, building alternative institutions seems the more promising path.

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Wholesale Crimes


HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

 



Tom Engelhardt, in a recent column explaining the deeply criminal thrust of the Trump legacy, recalls to our attention a term coined in 2013 by journalist Nick Turse: terracide, meaning the total destruction of the earth-system — next to which the common crimes committed by isolated individuals pale in magnitude.

The distinction here is one of scale and not of principle, as in the classic juxtaposition of robbing a bank (“retail”) versus owning one and fleecing the entire public (“wholesale”). This point is easy enough for anyone to see, but, sadly, it has not become a matter of common awareness.

Why is it so difficult for people to perceive the criminality of the dominant priorities? This is where the political culture – aka the politics of mass deception – comes into play.

The political culture is many-faced, depending on which part of the public is being addressed. Above all, the political culture is shaped not only by those most fervently committed to a particular agenda, but also by all those who serve the central actors as buffers or enablers.

Typically, the buffers or enablers try to project a certain distance between themselves and the main actors. This was exemplified in the anonymous New York Times column of Sept. 5, whose author denounced Trump while embracing the Trump agenda.

Such dissociation, however, is fraudulent. The fit between Trump’s persona and his government’s agenda is not accidental. The agenda cannot be rationally defended. It rests on lies – most conspicuously, about the climate crisis – and therefore requires shameless hacks to defend it.

Not all of them are exactly like Trump, of course, but Trump got to play the flagship role because of the media’s wall-to-wall coverage of him throughout the run-up to the 2016 election.

Another type of enabler is the evasive lawyer, whom we now see in the person of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Where Trump peddles the dominant agenda with bombast (sometimes embarrassing to his staff-enablers), Kavanaugh and his strategists rely on stealth, specifically, concealing the legal trickery in which he took part in advancing the anti-popular agenda (e.g., on reproductive rights) of the Bush administration (see William Rivers Pitt’s incisive analysis). Behind Kavanaugh’s evasiveness lies an unambiguous commitment to corporate interests over citizen rights, as illustrated in his contention that Net Neutrality violates the free-speech rights of corporations.

A less direct but no less vital set of enablers is Trump’s “loyal opposition”: the top Democrats and the corporate media, who in this context act very much as a unit. Basically, they have legitimized Trump by failing to offer policies in the interest of the majority and then by attacking both his election and his administration on false grounds – focusing disproportional attention on alleged Russian influences and not giving the electorate the understanding and the organizational tools that they would need in order to effectively advance an alternative agenda.

The Democrats out of power get to play the role of “good guys,” but their unwillingness to advocate and work toward ambitious policy changes means that when they return to office, they will succeed only in driving a still passive citizenry back into the arms of the Republicans.

This dynamic is particularly upsetting when we consider how little time remains to halt the course toward environmental catastrophe – the terracide that Engelhardt speaks of. It’s a matter of urgency to get rid of profit-driven economic decisions and replace them with a structure in which decisions are grounded in the real interests of the natural world and of human society as a whole. Until such a structure is attained, the currently dominant forces will only tighten their grip even further, thereby accelerating the drive to destruction.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Victor Wallis is the author of Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Toronto and Chicago: Political Animal Press, 2018).

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License


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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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A week of crisis and deepening dysfunction in US politics


HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Patrick Martin, wsws.org



Every day last week brought new demonstrations of an unprecedented crisis within the Trump White House and US state apparatus. The Trump administration is torn by internal divisions, amidst palace coup conspiracies involving the corporate media and sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, as well as the Democratic Party.

On Tuesday, initial reports on the new book by Bob Woodward portrayed top Trump aides deriding his intelligence and even sanity, working behind the scenes to derail his most inflammatory orders—such as a demand for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Trump administration officials were carrying out what Woodward characterized as “an administrative coup d’état,” i.e., disobeying his wishes and carrying out their own.

The next day, the New York Times made public an op-ed, written for its Thursday print edition, in which an unnamed “senior administration official” presented himself as the spokesman for a cabal of top officials working to keep Trump in check. “We are the real resistance,” the official claimed, making clear his support for the main elements of the administration’s right-wing program.

On Friday, Barack Obama weighed in with a campaign-style speech—unusual for an ex-president in the first election after leaving office—in which he described the Trump administration as “radical” and “not normal.” He called on Republicans, conservatives and Christian fundamentalists to vote for Democratic candidates in November, to “restore sanity” in Washington and allow a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives to provide an institutional check on Trump.

President Trump responded in kind. On Monday, he attacked his own attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, for not quashing Justice Department investigations into two Republican congressmen indicted on criminal charges of stock market swindling and theft. On Tuesday he denounced the Woodward book as a fabrication, and on Wednesday he called the New York Times op-ed an act of treason. On Thursday, he told a campaign rally in Montana that they had to vote Republican in November to prevent his impeachment. On Friday, he tweeted his demand that Sessions have the Justice Department investigate the New York Times op-ed and identify the anonymous writer.

Top Trump aides like chief of staff John Kelly, national security advisor John Bolton, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly met with Trump Thursday in an effort to convince him that none of them was the author of the op-ed and that he could still trust his inner circle. Some two dozen top officials issued formal denials that they were the anonymous writer.

There is simply no precedent in modern American history for such a level of political conflict and dysfunction within the leading institutions of the capitalist state. How is this to be explained? What direction will the crisis take? 

"This social crisis underlies the political convulsions in Washington. There are, of course, political differences within the two factions fighting it out within the ruling elite. They are deeply divided over foreign policy, particularly over how to deal with the failure of US intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly, and over whether to target Russia or China first in the struggle to maintain the global dominance of American imperialism. The most significant passage in Obama’s speech was his criticism of the Republican Party for having retreated from its Cold War, anti-Communist roots by tolerating Trump’s supposed “softness” toward Putin..."
It is entirely superficial to root such an explanation in the personality of Donald Trump. Even Obama in his Illinois speech admitted that Trump is not the cause, but merely the symptom, of more profound processes. But Obama, of course, covered up his own role, depicting his presidency as eight years of heroic efforts to repair the damage caused by the 2008 financial crash. At the end of those eight years, however, Wall Street and the financial oligarchy were fully recovered, enjoying record wealth, while working people were poorer than before, a widening social chasm that made possible the election of the billionaire con man and demagogue in November 2016.

This social crisis underlies the political convulsions in Washington. There are, of course, political differences within the two factions fighting it out within the ruling elite. They are deeply divided over foreign policy, particularly over how to deal with the failure of US intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly, and over whether to target Russia or China first in the struggle to maintain the global dominance of American imperialism. The most significant passage in Obama’s speech was his criticism of the Republican Party for having retreated from its Cold War, anti-Communist roots by tolerating Trump’s supposed “softness” toward Putin.

More fundamental, however, is the growing concern within all sections of the ruling elite over the possibility of a renewed economic crisis under conditions of mounting social opposition from below, following the initial stirrings of the American working class this year—the series of statewide teachers’ strikes, the mounting resistance of industrial workers to sellout contracts imposed by the unions, and the buildup of anger over super-exploitation by giant employers like Amazon and Walmart.

Facing an impending eruption of the class struggle, there is little confidence in corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street, or at the Pentagon and CIA that the current chief executive of the American government can meet the test of great events.

One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor.”

The report went on to note that political explosions on the scale of 1968 could develop, facilitated by the role of the internet as a means of dissemination for radical political views and a means of political self-organization. “The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968,” the bank report warned. “Similar to 1968, the internet today (social media, leaked documents, etc.) provides millennials with unrestricted access to information … In addition to information, the internet provides a platform for various social groups to become more self-aware, polarized, and organized.”

The ruling class response to this danger is to prepare domestic repression on a massive scale. In that respect, there is no difference between Trump and his opponents, except the ferocious disagreement over who should be in control of the forces of repression that will be unleashed against the American working class. Trump, of course, is an authoritarian through and through, organizing a fascistic attack on immigrant workers and developing tools that will be used against the entire working class.

However, his opponents, utilizing of the methods of the palace coup—intrigues, leaks, media smears, special prosecutors and other provocations—are no more wedded to democratic forms than Trump. The essence of the drive to censor the internet, spearheaded by the Democratic Party, is revealed by the JP Morgan report: it is the platform for “social groups,” above all, the working class, “to become more self-aware.”

As one of Trump’s leading media critics, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, a frothing anti-communist, wrote Sunday, “Maybe we have also underestimated the degree to which our Constitution, designed in the 18th century, has proved insufficient to the demands of the 21st.”

Trump’s political opponents seek to use the Democratic Party campaign in the November elections both to further the preparations for repression and to disguise them from working people. The disguise is provided by a handful of self-styled leftwing and even “socialist” candidates for the House of Representatives, many aligned with Bernie Sanders, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.

The substance is provided by the much larger number of Democratic candidates drawn directly from the military-intelligence apparatus, nearly three dozen in all, who will hold the balance of power if the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives. The policy the Democrats will pursue if they win the election has already been demonstrated by the anti-Russia campaign and the accompanying demands for internet censorship.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, it will not resolve the crisis in Washington nor alter the basic trajectory of politics, which is bringing the working class into explosive conflict with the ruling class, the entire state apparatus, and the capitalist system.

—Patrick Martin

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author is a senior editor with wsws.org, a Marxian publication.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Russia’s Asymmetric Response to the US in Syria


HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Since the military power of Russia doesn’t allow the enemy to use military methods to push it back, the West uses all the other things at its disposal – diplomacy, finance, special operations, and propaganda. In order to provide a complex of measures to push Russia back, the Anglo-Saxon elite uses the principle of provocation, where a crime is organised and then attributed to Russia, and, under the control of dependent pseudo-expert and information structures, statements about Russia’s guilt are spread. On the basis of these charges, a number of aggressive strategies are put to work that couldn’t have legitimate justification in the opinion of the public of the West if it wasn’t for these provoked pretexts.

One of such crimes organised for the purpose of informationally and politically ensuring a whole cascade of aggressive measures against Russia in all spheres – from military to information and economic – is the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter by gas, the production and delivery of which to the territory of Britain is attributed to Russia. As Britain can’t really counter Russia in foreign policy, it chose the method of bribing international officials and putting pressure on international organisations in the form of its intelligence agencies blackmailing the responsible employees of these structures. And this is how Britain frankly – because of its inability to do it covertly – put the OPCW at its mercy and then, using the hands of this organisation, carried out a made-to-order “examination”, in which it declared that the Skripals were poisoned with the “Novichok” gas.

Since after the Skripals were poisoned in Salisbury other people in another town – Amesbury – were poisoned and, unlike the Skripals, died, the OPCW gave out the verdict that the gas used was “Novichok”, however the Skripals and a certain Sturgess/Rowley were poisoned with different batches. Since what is called the word “Novichok” is manufactured by many other states, it is impossible to prove the direct participation of Russia. But such a task is at the same time not necessary. Britain considers the desired effect as achieved and the needed paper from the OPCW as received. London stated that the OPCW carried out the task with honor, and that the high standards of the scientists of this organisation again proved themselves – well, and so on, and so forth.

It is clear that since the Brits praise the decision of the international experts for their objectivity, it means that the Brits organised everything as they needed it to be, and with these compliments they formally take away suspicion from the OPCW of performing a political order. Nothing more is needed – any participation of Russia in the investigation won’t be allowed, like concerning the examination of the case of the Malaysian Boeing.

The policy of Britain and the US in regards to Russia is reminiscent of a title fight in boxing: Russia is tied to the ropes, then the Englishman kicks Russia in the groin – and the judge declares the victory of the English boxer. And the American boxer jumps out behind the judge’s back and rabbit punches the tied-up rival several times, which the judge doesn’t react to in any way. Then the voting panel hands the championship belt to the Englishman and the American and declares both of them world champions. And police officers take the tied-up Russia to the locker room and, after untying it, throw it out onto the street. Everyone in the world sees what the Anglo-Saxons are up to, but everyone supports what is happening because they are afraid.

Why do the Anglo-Saxons do this? After all, this isn’t rational. Everyone can see that they are provokers and villains. They are despised and hated. They aren’t trusted by their own citizens. They already don’t care about looking correct at all. They behave like bandits who occupy a village and don’t even pretend to seem like decent gentlemen.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he fact is that Russia pursues its policy without paying attention to their provocations. It crushed the Wahhabis in the Caucasus well trained by the West and snatched Crimea from under NATO’s nose. It snapped the US’ scenario in Ukraine. It restores the EAEU. In Syria Russia completely booted the Anglo-Saxon West from the pedestal that it had occupied during the whole post-war 50-year period. By its bombings of ISIS militants, Russia broke the rigid ribs of the geopolitical world contours built by the Americans. This is a catastrophe, to which the Anglo-Saxon world has nothing to reply with in relation to the nuclear power of Russia.

While Britain was showering the bought-and-paid-for experts of the OPCW with compliments for the needed act, Russia struck the strongest bombing attack on Idlib, clearing the way for the Syrian army for the destruction of the last enclave of American fosterlings, thus striking a blow to the gut of the British political elite. After all, all the dancing around the Skripals and the subsequent sanctions is designed to prevent what Russia is now doing in Idlib. They didn’t succeed in preventing it, and this is a demonstration of the weakness of the British ruling class, which is capable of only stealthily nibbling the heels.

But what’s worst of all is that the actions in Idlib show the weakness of the US. Trump is completely muzzled – not by his adversaries, but by Russia. It’s exactly like this. Russia uncovered preparation for a provocative chemical attack in Idlib, which it reported at the UN in front of the whole world. And everyone heard it. With all the details, including the quantity of barrels and their color, and also the description of ways of delivering chlorine to Idlib and the places of their secret storage. All the trump cards of Americans have been exposed. There is no sense in the operation anymore.

But there will be an operation all the same. The match will take place under any weather conditions. The US already planned the places that it will bomb. The storm will be more resolute than the previous time. Preparation happens as if the US is sure that a chemical attack will take place, when the US will decide on it. Not Damascus, but Washington. I.e., in general all masks were thrown off, and the US openly prepares aggression with a provocation in a sovereign country where they frankly have the status of occupier.

And even if there won’t be a chemical attack at all, the American strike will take place anyway, because via bombing the Russians shook their American proteges  too strongly. They are too close to defeat – their excuse for being in Syria will be evaporated. How can such a thing be allowed? A strike of prestige is needed, and it will happen, even if the sun falls on the Earth and the Mississippi river flows in reverse. It’s just that it’s difficult to see any prestige in this.

The US is increasingly sliding from strategy to tactics. The Americans need a strike on Syria not because it will decide something in terms of the outcome of the campaign. It won’t decide anything, because in order to change the course of the war the US needs to enter its land troops with everything that it implies – the death of military personnel and clashes with Iran, Syria, and Russia. And even with Turkey. Along with China, which is silently standing behind them. This is a guaranteed defeat, the global consequences of which are unpredictable.

The first thing that can be made out is the crumbling of NATO. A second Vietnam will crush not only the American president, but also the US itself. That’s why Americans will score a goal of prestige and will leave the lost match. They will strike in Syria where again Russian intelligence will beforehand reveal the supposed targets of the blow, will withdraw the Syrian leaders from there, and will then again collect from the fields of Idlib a heap of unexploded Tomahawks, which will be presented to Russian rocketeers in the form of a gift so that they can improve their missile defense methods further.

Russia has a difficult task in Idlib now. It consists not of repelling an American attack, but of not repelling it too strongly. Trump opts for an attack not because he wants to win against the Russians in Syria, but because he wants to win against the globalists back home in America, and to do this on the eve of congressional elections. I.e., the reasons for America’s attack against Syria are purely internal.

If Russia hits Trump in Syria too strongly, it risks drowning him instead of somehow supporting his menacing image and helping him to win [in elections – ed]. Simply because Trump is favorable to Russia – he breaks too well everything that the American power of the last few decades has been based on. To help the impeachment of such a guy is outside the national interest of Russia. We can’t now overstep the mark in Syria. Trump has to leave the line of fire as a fine fellow, but not as a fool and a loser.

That is, the fate of the US is now in Russia’s hands. And Russia guides America according to its plan, lowering it slowly and controllably – although the US remains the world hegemon and thus hits Russia very strongly via sanctions. But Russia thus doesn’t sink its teeth into the throat of the US. At the same time Berlin, maintained by the cheap gas of Moscow, finishes off London in Europe.

Understanding this is very painful for Brits and Americans. It is so painful that no collapses of the ruble or jokes in Salisbury – with useless scraps of paper of local clerks from the OPCW who were intimidated by the British intelligence agencies – are capable of relieving this pain. Russia answers asymmetrically – by continuing to do what became the very reason London and Washington resorted to such crazy and inefficient actions in the first place.

After the US has fired its load at Damascus, Russia and Syria will continue to squeeze Idlib and will resolve the situation definitively. And after this they will construct a “big Chinese wall” around Deir Ezzor and no mouse will slip out from there, especially with oil. We have already seen with the example of Erdogan how easy it is to bomb caravans of oil, the export of which from Syria Russia doesn’t wish to allow. And the US will have to leave from there too. And saving the face of the US in this story of their latest defeat will be the subject of negotiations with Russia.

But in the meantime, Russia needs to apply itself very much in order to not let Trump fire missiles where they shouldn’t be fired and at the same time not to expose him as a weakling and a symbol of American shame. Russia must give Trump the chance to resolve his important affair. The US won’t have another such president, just like how Russia won’t have a second Mishka Mecheny [a nickname assigned to Mikhail Gorbachev; “mecheny” = labeled, because of the birthmark on his head – ed].

 

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

black-horizontal
[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]

Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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