=By= Dinesh C. Sharma

CC BY-SA by fsgm

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he debate on genetically modified (GM) brinjal variety continues to generate heat. Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so.

Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.

On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company “used to fake scientific data” submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.

The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

“The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India. But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked,” Jagadisan said.

“I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country,” Jagadisan, 84, said from his home in Bangalore.

“At that time, Monsanto was getting into the seed business and I had information that a ‘terminator gene’ was to be incorporated in the seeds being supplied by the firm. This meant that the farmer had to buy fresh seeds from Monsanto at heavy cost every time he planted the crop,” he said.

Jagadisan said the parent company also retracted from the assurance given to then minister for chemicals and fertilisers, Vasant Sathe, on setting up a manufacturing unit in collaboration with Hindustan Insecticides for the herbicide butachlor.

“The negotiations went on for over a year and in the meantime, Monsanto imported and sold large quantities of the product and made huge profits,” he said.

Asked to comment on Jagadisan’s allegations, a Monsanto spokesperson said: “We have full faith in the Indian regulatory system, which has its checks and measures in place to ensure accuracy and authenticity of data furnished to them.” On approval of GM crops, the spokesperson said the regulatory process was stringent and “no biotech crops are allowed in the market until they undergo extensive and rigid crop safety assessments, following strict scientific protocols”.

Dinesh C Sharma is award winning journalist and author with over 30 years’ experience of reporting on science, technology, innovation, medicine and environment related issues for national and international media outlets.

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=By= Sabita Banerji

Tea pickers in Wayanad, India. Steenbergs under a Creative Commons License

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast September, the BBC revealed appalling conditions on Assamese tea plantations (which supply, among others, London’s Fortnum and Mason) – overflowing cesspits, leaking roofs, child labour, pesticide poisoning and severely malnourished children.

But this was not exactly news.

There have been numerous similar reports over the past decades. In 2014, the Guardian reported on ‘Assam’s modern slaves’, claiming poverty wages were the cause of plantation workers’ children being trafficked into sexual or domestic slavery.

A report entitled ‘The more things change… Enduring abuses on India’s tea plantations’ found that, despite being part of a World Bank-funded scheme to move Assamese plantations partly into worker ownership, they failed to meet the standards of the World Bank, of certification bodies or of Indian law.

One of the root causes, it concluded, was that the ‘compensation scheme originally developed for the colonial plantations and their migrant workers – low cash wages, supplemented with housing and social benefits – has remained unchanged. As in the colonial period, the plantations function as a parallel governance structure, with little active involvement by the state, whether in setting wages or in monitoring working and living conditions.’

Certification bodies introduced hope that change was possible, but a 2013 report by Oxfam and the Ethical Tea Partnership, found that workers on fair trade-certified plantations received no higher wages than on non-certified ones; although it provides other benefits, fair-trade certification only requires payment of the legal minimum wage. The minimum wages for tea workers in Assam are ‘just above the World Bank poverty line…’ and only 40 per cent of the Indian average.

Where benefits are provided at all, they are often of appalling quality. Though trade unions have in the past won important benefits for workers, including equal pay for women, they seem to struggle to win better outcomes for workers in the tripartite negotiations ostensibly between government, employers and workers’ representatives. Protesting plantation workers in Munnar, Kerala, alleged that their trade unions had been bought out by management and were closely allied to political parties and therefore did not represent them at all.

Because local populations were unwilling to take up the back-breaking, low-paid work being offered in the new tea plantations of the 19th century, today’s workers are mostly descendants of impoverished, tribal or low-caste people from other areas. In Kerala and Sri Lanka, they were Tamil indentured or bonded labourers. Sri Lankan companies considered shipping in African slaves but were deterred by transport costs. Chinese labour was discounted as being too ‘demanding’.

West Bengal plantations relied on forced labour from Nepal, where slavery was common. In Assam, conditions were even closer to slavery. ‘The picture was not a pretty one,’ says Alan Macfarlane in Green Gold. ‘Men and women, newly arrived in a strange country after an appalling journey, crowded on a boat without sanitation from which dead bodies were heaved overboard at the rate of 20 a week, now driven like cattle towards a miserable journey’s end.’

Thus these huge, remote plantations were staffed by a captive labour force kept powerless by poverty, illiteracy, debt and isolation. The lucky ones had benign, patriarchal managers. The less fortunate were driven hard, prevented with violence from leaving, paid a pittance and given the barest minimum of benefits.

Most plantation workers have lost contact with their homelands and language, yet have not been integrated into the culture of their new home. They’re often subject to disenfranchisement, violence and discrimination by the local population. They know no other skills than those associated with tea cultivation and have few employment alternatives. So when plantations go bankrupt – as has happened frequently recently in West Bengal – they often stay put, even if it means starvation.

In Kerala, the result of a growing tourism market, offering better paid jobs, is a shrinking labour supply at a time when global tea demand and prices are falling or stagnant. In September last year, falling profits led to the annual bonus being halved, triggering a strike by thousands of women that lasted almost a month, stifling the tourism trade and spreading to other plantations – including coffee and rubber – across Kerala. The women – who called themselves Pembilla Orumai (Unity of Women) – were also protesting against low wages, poor living conditions and unhealthy working conditions.

The government has been forced to open its eyes; Kerala’s Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, observed that ‘successive governments failed to catch the lapses of the management [in observing laws on the humane treatment of workers]’.

So can this group of women workers do what international financial institutions, NGOs, trade unions, company corporate social responsibility programmes, certification bodies and governments have so far failed to do? To break the system that keeps tea plantation workers poor, freeing them to enjoy the same rights as other agricultural workers?

As author and anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’

Let’s hope that she will be proved right in this case, and that another century won’t pass with the same atrocities being sustained.

Sabita Banerji is an economic justice campaigner based in London, but originally from India. After many years of working in international development and fair trade volunteering, she now works for the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). The views in this blog are her personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of ETI.

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By= Steven Argue

“China, due to their social revolution, outdoes capitalist Nepal, Bhutan, and India on all basic measures of real happiness from women’s literacy and literacy in general to life expectancy. These are real human gains brought about in the material world that bring real human happiness.”

News that the King of Bhutan and his queen may be expecting a child has sent ripples of adulation throughout the bourgeois press, always fixated on royals as some sort of super-celebrities. The anglo-American media are especially sickening in their sycophancy, but France, Spain and Italy are not too far behind with their ubiquitous gossip.

In case you missed it, Bhutan has a new royal baby on the way. The western corporate media’s propaganda is incredible. Here is a taste from Fairfax Media Limited in their article “Royal Baby Joy For Bhutan”:

“Congratulations from citizens of the “happiest country on Earth” have poured in for the Bhutanese royal family, following the happy news that the queen is expecting a son. King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, 35, made the announcement on November 11, in a royal address during the 60th birthday celebrations of his father, the nation’s fourth king. “I’m deeply pleased to announce that Jetsun and I look forward to the birth of our son,” the Oxford-educated king said in a statement, adding that his heir is due in February 2016. …The surprise news was warmly received by Bhutanese subjects.”

Warmly received? Happiest country on Earth? Today, the Indian allied Bhutanese ruling class remains extremely repressive. As capitalism and imperialism keep Bhutan poor, Bhutan’s Nepalese speaking minority, communists, and journalists remain highly oppressed by the Buddhist government.

Among Bhutan’s statistics is an illiteracy rate of 47%. The standard of living is so poor in the country that the king announced in the 1970s a new measure, the measure of Gross National Happiness based on Buddhist values rather than the material world. Similar clap trap runs like diarrhea from the mouth of the Dalai Lama, the deposed former absolute ruler of Tibet.

Bhutan’s king in a photo op: Modern monarchs try to act like “democratic politicians.”

Progress came to Tibet through communist revolution. With the overthrow of the Dalai Lama, in the time of Mao’s rule, chattel slavery and serf slavery were abolished in Tibet; Punishments like amputations of limbs and removal of eyes for escaped slaves, communists, and other “crimes” were abolished; Religion and state were separated; Life expectancy doubled; Education was provided to everyone for free where the average person had none before the revolution; Healthcare was provided where there was none; And massive state run development programs in Tibet today continue to raise the standard of living.

Fact is, China, due to their social revolution, outdoes capitalist Nepal, Bhutan, and India on all basic measures of real happiness from women’s literacy and literacy in general to life expectancy. These are real human gains brought about in the material world that bring real human happiness. Gross Human Happiness based on Buddhist values in a “quaint” mountain kingdom? That may play well among relatively privileged new age adherents in the west who often have their basic needs met, in part due to the wealth gained in the imperialist world centers through capitalist plunder of subjugated countries, but for much of the world, development and other advances are life and death questions. And far more than capitalism, it is primarily the efficiency of planned socialist economies established in worker and farmer anti-imperialist revolutions that can deliver the goods.

Prince William’s marriage to a “commoner” has triggered a paparazzi’s feeding frenzy. Meanwhile, the Prince, telegenic, unassuming, with a beautiful bride on his arm, has done more to fortify monarchy than a thousand p.r. mavens working overtime. And the British press continues to play its assigned role as royal boosters.

Bhutan, unlike the People’s Republic of China, never had a social revolution. It is a country with no separation of religion and state and was, up until 2011, still ruled by a monarchy. In 1958, the Buddhist absolute monarchy of Bhutan freed its slaves, carried out a land reform, and carried out some democratic reforms that elevated Jigme Palden Dorji’s position to that of prime minister. This was not coincidental to influences and fears the Bhutanese ruling class would have had of the potential spread of the social revolution that was taking place in China. The Chinese Revolution had, after all, during this same immediate time period freed the chattel and serf slaves held under the Dalai Lama’s brutal feudal system where amputations and gauging out eyes were accepted punishments for escaped slaves and communists.

The royal couple hosting India’s PM Mori.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter Indian independence, Bhutan came greatly under the influence of India, as did the other mountain kingdoms of Sikkim and Nepal. As India became a regional power, a repetitive reason for Indian aggression against Nepal and Bhutan has been their relations with the People’s Republic of China. Bhutan’s first Prime Minister, Jigme Palden Dorji, was assassinated by Indian operatives in 1964 for trying to establish more balanced relations with China. That assassination put the king’s younger brother, Lendrup Dorje, in the position of prime minister. Indian troops were then placed at the border crossing between Bhutan and China where they remain to this day.

Today, India is also carrying out a brutal economic blockade against Nepal. This is part of an attempt to unravel democratic reforms that have occurred in Nepal as part of India’s demand that Nepal not sell its future hydroelectric production to China. Near total silence in the western corporate media and by their governments can be read as support for India’s aggression against Nepal. My next article will explore that question in more detail.

-Steven Argue For The Revolutionary Tendency

Relevant Facebook Pages:

Revolutionary Tendency

https://www.facebook.com/RevolutionaryTendency/

Our demands then should be:
Indian Hands Off Nepal!
https://www.facebook.com/EndNepalBlockade/

Imperialist Hands Off China 别纠缠中国
https://www.facebook.com/Imperialist-Hands-Off-China-%E5%88%AB%E7%BA%A0%E7%BC%A0%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD-569057593198025/

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ARMS DEALER TO THE WORLD
=By= Nazish Kolsy

In early October, the world was reminded of the ongoing deterioration of Afghanistan when U.S. warplanes eviscerated a civilian hospital. For one brief moment, attention returned to the disasters that so often strike the lands of terror and combat, especially in the northern hinterlands of South Asia.

However, this sort of fleeting attention often ignores the deeper political games at play. Neighboring Pakistan, a country often ignored unless its name is mentioned alongside the dangers of the Taliban and negotiations with Afghanistan, has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world.

Since 9/11, Pakistan has ranked among the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, with its haul totaling $18 billion for fiscal years 2002-2015. However, this number only covers the amount used for economic development, humanitarian aid, and (especially) security-related assistance.

Pakistan has also received an additional $13 billion in Coalition Support Fund (CSF) payments that are meant to reimburse the country for its support of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. For the 2016 fiscal year, the Obama administration requested $794 million for aid to Pakistan — a 10 percent decrease from 2015 — while the country’s CSF allotment has dropped from $1.2 billion per year in 2010 to $300 million in recent years as the U.S. looks to wind down its military role in the region.

Still, it’s a huge figure. So where does CSF money go? How has that $13 billion been distributed?

Suffice it to say those funds aren’t spent on rehabilitating or relocating the millions of people displaced by years of military operations in the country’s northwest. Instead, they’re funneled back into military spending and counterterrorism efforts. It becomes a vicious cycle of never-ending defense spending — which includes a rapid build-up of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

That nuclear arsenal is Pakistan’s ultimate defense against India — the neighboring nation it’s fought three wars against. Complicating matters, the United States has entered a nuclear agreement with India. That 2005 deal allows India to buy civil nuclear technology for its civilian program, which is subject to international inspections, but didn’t put any limits on its military nuclear program, which is exempt.

Pakistan and India, neither of which signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, are heavily involved in the nuclear arms race in the greater South Asian region. Pakistan’s accelerating nuclear weapons program is a cause for concern for U.S. officials, who are seeking to make a deal with Pakistan to limit its nuclear arsenal. However, these efforts may prove futile, considering the importance the country places on nuclear weapons in its standoff with India.

Meanwhile, as U.S. aid gradually lessens, Pakistan has pivoted to other powerful allies for financial assistance. China and Russia are key sources of economic and military support, with China promising $46 billion in development aid — making up for the cuts made by the United States and then some.

So while the United States remains on good terms with India, it finds itself subsidizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — the fastest-growing in the world — even as the country drifts closer to China and Russia. And all that’s in the interest of fighting a militant group, the Taliban, that’s received ample support from the Pakistani security establishment over the years.

This should be interesting.

Nazish Kolsy is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus

Sources
Article: Foreign Policy In Focus
Lead Graphic: An Indian Agni-II missile at the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi January 26, 2004. By Agência Brasil (Brazilian (CC By 3.0 BR)

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By Andrew KORYBKO (USA)

Benigno Aquino III,  president of the Philippines, the third (or fourth?) Aquino to hold the title, and poster boy for a comprador dynasty of notorious American colaborators. The US is good at finding such “dynastic” leaders among the native bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries. In Nicaragua they found a close equivalent, the Chamorros. The US plutocracy and its agents in the government feel instinctively comfortable with the well off of other nations, with whom they form strong alliances to maintain a reactionary status quo. Is it any surprise that this imperial puppet should be the linchpin of the new anti-China coalition?

The US’ Pivot to Asia (P2A) is obviously aimed against China, and Washington’s ultimate plan has always been to assemble a coalition of countries that can contain the global supergiant. As the Pivot enters its fourth year soon, the contours of the Chinese Containment Coalition (CCC) are beginning to take shape, and it’s become evident that it’s going to be centered on the Philippines.
..
The island chain’s geopolitical connectivity potential can easily be harnessed to link together the CCC’s various players, and it’s also subservient enough to the US to the degree that it has ignored the exceptionally dangerous consequences of potentially hosting multilateral forward operating bases against China. As apocalyptic as the US’ end game scenario may be for regional multipolarity, it’s not at all assured to succeed, as there are quite a few contingencies that could develop between all of its assorted partners in preventing them from linking up in the Philippines and actualizing the Asian NATO. The article is thus divided into two parts; the first one describes the forecasted composition of the Asian NATO and explains the bilateral relationships that make it possible, while the second one investigates the multitude of factors that could impede its formation and/or lead to its eventual unravelling.

The Asian NATO

Prior to commencing the study, one must first understand exactly what is meant by the “Asian NATO”. The author explored the genesis of this concept in his earlier work on how The US Is Juggling Chaos And Coordination To Contain China, and it boils down to formalizing the CCC in order to simultaneously split ASEAN between anti-Chinese states (like the Philippines) and those that behave pragmatically towards it (like Cambodia), and create a formalized mechanism for the US to coordinate further anti-Chinese moves in the region. The Philippines are the logical staging ground for this endeavor owing to its de-facto mutual defense guarantee with the US and the overlapping strategic partnerships that it has with Japan and soon Vietnam (which are its first and second respectively, not counting the ‘special relationship’ with its former American colonizer).

Baits and Lures

The overall idea is for the island chain to act as a geographic facilitator in linking together both of its strategic partners under American guidance in order to enhance their combined ability to coordinate anti-Chinese actions in the East and South China island disputes. Additionally, because of the Philippines own spat with China, it could also be used as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ in provoking a small-scale military engagement with China (one in which the US would purposely refrain from participating in) in order to test the People’s Liberation Army-Navy’s responses and assist with the crafting of more effective anti-Chinese tactical maneuvers by the Asian NATO. Or, in a variation of this scenario, it could become the Asian application of the Reverse Brzezinski policy of luring China into a strategic military trap by using its small and provocative neighboring maritime state as bait. Unlike Ukraine, which has no formalized mutual defense relationship with the US, the Philippines could call upon the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement in order to turn even the tiniest exchange of fire into a global hot spot of brinksmanship between the US and China, thus giving it a freakishly disproportionate weight in international affairs.

The ‘Backwards L’

Japan:

Shinzo Abe, chauvinistic and militaristic leader of Japan, and eager player in the American maneuver to encircle China and rearm Japan. Abe stands out among the corrupt, pathetically servile politicians of postwar Japan, which is something of an accomplishment.

The function of a Japan-Philippines-Vietnam axis is to create a ‘backwards L’ of military containment in order to ‘box’ China inside mainland Asia, with the Philippines being the fulcrum of this entity. Japan is the most active Lead From Behind proponent of this policy, taking the initiative (under American instruction) to authorize both the sales of weapons and the deployment of troops abroad. Considering the strategic partnership between them and how each has their own island disputes with China, it’s logical to conclude that Japan will seek to make the Philippines the central focus of both anti-Chinese policy manifestations. The Diplomat reported at the end of June that this certainly seems to be in the cards, with Tokyo preparing to sell Manilla a slew of naval and air units in exchange for a “Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA)” that could allow it to deploy its first foreign forces since World War II. One should also be reminded that both sides held their second-ever naval drills this summer together with the US, showing that there’s actual substance to their strategic partnership and that it’s not just rhetorically based.

Vietnam:

The other end of the ‘backwards L’, Vietnam, is also increasing its interactions with the Philippines, as the slated strategic partnership attests. Last May, military units from the two sides symbolicallyenjoyed a game of football together on one of the South China Sea’s disputed islands (the second time they have done so), showing that each of them is serious about working together to confront China in this region. The aforecited article also details some of the bilateral military cooperation between both sides, with each country’s navy calling port at the other and even holding informal discussions on setting up joint patrols in the area. It’s highly predicted that the signing of a strategic partnership between them will lead to an acceleration of military cooperation, and furthermore, will even put Vietnam and Japan’s militaries into direct contact with the other via the Philippines’ geographic intermediary function, which also accomplishes a contingent goal of the US’ P2A by having both CCC anchors enhance their full spectrum bilateral relations (especially in the military field).

Incorporating South Korea

In essence, there are actually two CCC axes that the US is building and wants to unite, and these are the ones between Vietnam-The Philippines (already discussed) and Japan-South Korea. To say a few words about the latter, it’s still not entirely certain that Seoul will commit to joining the CCC. For example, even though it’s part of a trilateral information sharing mechanism between it, Japan, and the US ostensibly against North Korea (which could realistically be turned against China in the future), it’s also being wooed by China through the recently inked Free Trade Agreement and has been ambivalent about hosting the US’ THAAD “missile defense” units (potentially even going it alone to produce its own domestic version instead).

Still, this hasn’t halted the country’s interest in cooperating with the Philippines, the magnetic center of geopolitical attraction to all members of the CCC community. The country’s Defense Minister visitedthe island nation earlier this month to discuss future military collaboration (as of now, just weapons sales and technical assistance), but such a big step could also help further last year’s proposal for the two countries to enter into a strategic partnership with one another. While South Korea doesn’t have any island disputes with China and behaves moderately friendly towards it in a military sense (not counting the anti-Chinese agenda of the thousands of US troops that are based there), if it got caught up in the CCC’s intrigue inside the Philippines, bilateral relations could certainly suffer as a result of the heightened and warranted suspicions that China would inevitably have towards its maritime neighbor.

With or without South Korea’s incorporation (which is still questionable), however, the central axis of Japan-Philippines-Vietnam still represents a formidable threat to China, but the auxiliary participation of the peninsular state would definitely contribute to its enhanced effectiveness, and it’s worthy to monitor any forthcoming decisions that its leadership takes in this regard.

The Greater CCC

India:

On the topic of auxiliary members in the CCC, one must inevitably consider India’s inclusion and the anticipated role that Australia will also play. Looking at the first, New Delhi under Prime Minister Modi has been increasingly assertive of its foreign interests, and this includes the evolution of its “Look East” policy to one of “Act East”. One of the highlights of the US’ new National Security Strategy is to assist India in the application of this new policy, with the understood overtone that it’ll be directed against China in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. As India finally grows out of its South Asian neighborhood and begins exploring its role in the global context, it’s entirely possible that it could take on the role of anti-Chinese vanguard if certain American-hoped-for conditions are met, specifically the intensification of Indian-Filipino military relations that seem to be directed against China. If the Philippines go as far as establishing a strategic partnership with India that draws the country into contact with the nascent Asian NATO that’s forming there, then it would confirm Beijing’s suspicions that India does in fact intend to challenge it in the region, likely on the US’ Lead From Behind behalf.

Australia:

The second auxiliary anchor, Australia, has an entirely self-interested reason to get involved, and this is to counter its regional Indonesian rival and open up a second front of pressure that could possibly be applied against it in the future. The two countries have been competing with one another for some time, and Australia bases all of its regional policies around the issue of how they relate to this rivalry. Thus, the twin military exercises that it plans to hold with the Philippines this year (built on the basis of a 1995 defense cooperation memorandum) aren’t so much directed against China as they are against Indonesia, at least in Australia’s strategic calculations. The island-continent just signed a free trade agreement with China earlier this summer, so it would be entirely schizophrenic for it to totally turn against its largest economic partner at this moment. Rather, it’s paying superficial homage to the US’ CCC in order to please its ‘big brother’ while simultaneously maneuvering itself into a more beneficial position vis-à-vis Indonesia, which incidentally, also satisfies another American goal pertaining to the P2A.

To explain, the US wants to ensure that Indonesia does not become too pragmatically friendly in its relations with China, preferring instead for the country to remain the ‘Asian Yugoslavia’ as long as possible in the context of this New Cold War. To prevent Indonesia from acting out of line with American grand strategic interests, the US is using Australia to ‘box’ the country in, following the ‘backwards L’ template that it’s directed against China. Australian-Filipino military cooperation is the northern point of this construction, with the fulcrum being Australia’s political influence over former colony and LNG-rich Papua New Guinea and the de-facto protectorate that it’ll likely form over Bougainville Island after the mineral-rich province predictably votes for independence sometime before the referendum scheduled by 2020. Pertaining to Papua New Guinea’s LNG potential, between Total and Exxon’s investments, it has the capability of producing 13 million tons of LNG per year, or about 1/6 the output of Qatar, and about Bougainville, if it restarts operation of the world’s largest copper mine in Panguna and returnsoperating rights to Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, then Canberra would inevitably gain a strategic foothold over its government. Concurrent to its influence on the eastern part of the New Guinea island and its surroundings, Australia could also become a de-facto state sponsor of the West Papua independence movement (“Indonesia’s Katanga” in terms of its mineral wealth), which while havingstrong arguments in its favor and a lengthy list of documented and legitimate grievances, could see its cause hijacked by abroad for geopolitical ends and marketed as an “Asian Darfur”.
…

Rounding out the ‘backwards L’ of Indonesian containment, over 1,000 US Marines are now routinely rotated out of the North Australian city of Darwin, thus adding a third lever of external pressure against the archipelago’s authorities. If one adds in the US’ regime change attempt in Malaysia (meticulouslyexposed by Tony Cartalucci), then an actual containment square emerges, whereby the country is faced with potentially hostile elements in its northwest (a Color Revolution government in Malaysia), northeast (the CCC/Asian NATO that could also turn against Indonesia), southeast (foreign influence over the Papuas), and southwest (American Marines in Darwin, Australian control over Christmas and Cocos Islands and American military interest there). Therefore, it’s becoming apparent that the containment of Indonesia is inseparable from the containment of China, as the former is entering into effect via moves euphemistically made in advancement of the latter, and this underreported element of the P2A certainly deserves further analytical attention from other researchers.

To be continued…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Korybko is the American political commentaror currently working for the Sputnik agency.

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