Trump’s Utopian Idea

by N.S.Venkataraman- Feb 10, 2019

Feb 10, 2019

U S President Trump’s determined anti migrant pronouncements and his declared aim to construct border wall with Mexico to prevent the migrants from Mexico illegally entering US has been much criticized by the pledged critics of Trump, the so called human rights activists and the Democratic party. Even in Trump’s Republican party, not many have come forward to openly support Trump’s approach and have remained largely silent.

However, it appears that many American citizens would appreciate the broad tenet of Trump’s views on the matter, though significant segment of them may not agree that Trump should take forward his approach to extreme level by creating an anti migrant phobia.

Across the world, there have been considerable concern in different countries about the migration of foreign citizens legally or illegally , on the pretext of pursuing higher studies and employment and then permanently settling down . Such concern is justified , since such migration inevitably affect the demographic structure of the countries , cause social tension and disturb the traditional cultural practices. Any unrestricted or illegal migration inevitably lead to sectarian violence.

In recent years, West Europe has become the victim of the liberal policy of a few governments , particularly German government, towards the migrants and refugees, interpreting that the migrant / refugee issue is a humanitarian problem and civilized society cannot afford to be brutal in violently or forcibly preventing the entry of refugee / migrants from different countries, particularly from the war torn regions and those with oppressive regimes.

Europe is already paying the price for such liberal migrant policy and the problem is likely to become more tense and acute in the coming years , as the migrants with different educational and skill level and religious beliefs would stay on permanently. European governments have woken up to it’s mistakes and have taken some preventive steps now to stop the migrant flow. However, it appears to be too late now , as significant number of migrants / refugees have already entered and would multiply themselves in the course of time. Certainly, they are unlikely to go back. It is said that domination of people belonging to different overseas religions has become too evident in UK and racial tension in Germany is disturbing the peace and harmony.

Canada is another country which is adopting liberal migrant policy without clarity and long term strategies. Canada is a large and under populated country and it’s population growth is not matching the needs of the future. Canadian government appears to think that it is of imperative importance that Canada should have more people. Then, the question is that not all entering Canada from other countries are skilled and have adequate education and many of them are refugees. Racial conflicts and murders have been taking place in Canada in recent time, which was known to be a peaceful region earlier.

The Rohingya crisis when thousands of refugees from Myanmar entered Bangladesh and are determined to stay there and lack of policy and clarity in dealing with the Rohingya crisis is all too evident. Bangladesh government with it’s weak economy is facing the brunt of the problem and United Nations Organisation have been supporting the Rohingya refugees without taking a holistic view of the issues.

Given such conditions, there is lot of sense in Trump’s anti migrant policy. It is well known that thousands of Mexicans have entered US in the past illegally and are staying there permanently , with most of them doing menial jobs in households .U S citizens have not objected to this in any visible manner so far, since the migrants provide them cheap labour. But, the consequences of such liberal view on illegal Mexicans in US could cause serious tension and social unrest in US before long.

In spite of it’s technological and industrial progress and advanced economy, US still remains as a divided country with blacks and whites not reconciling themselves to each other and the differences are obvious to be ignored. Large influx of illegal Mexicans in US will only contribute to intensify the racial tensions in USA in future. Many citizens in US seem to realize this but are disturbingly silent.

Trump’s anti migrant policy is bound to be appreciated by those in US who take a long term view of social stability of the country.

However, the question is whether constructing a huge border wall with Mexico of distance 3145 kilometres at enormous cost of 5.7 billion US$ is the ideal way of sorting out the Mexican migrant issue . Protecting the lengthy wall and keeping the migrants at bay can be a formidable exercise , inspite of the technological and infrastructure advancement in US

Many believe that constructing a border wall with Mexico is an Utopian idea and is unlikely to be realized. It is very well known that migrants and refugees around the world are determined people who will do their level best to overcome the obstacles and a mere wall will not be an obstacle for them.

Obviously, the next US President who may share Trump’s anti migrant sentiments will have to think of more feasible options for checking the flow of illegal migrants from Mexico. . Perhaps, the time has come in US to launch a soft and non violent anti migrant campaign amongst the US citizens to create conditions where the illegal migrants would not be entertained by the peopl

Acting Pentagon chief supports Kabul role in peace talks

Acting U.S. defense secretary Patrick Shanahan arrives in Kabul, Afghanistan February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Idrees Ali

Idrees Ali-FEBRUARY 10, 2019

KABUL (Reuters) - Acting U.S. Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Monday it was important for the Afghan government to be included in talks to end the country’s 17-year war, an involvement that the Taliban has so far rejected.

Shanahan, making his first trip to Afghanistan in his new role, met U.S. troops and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. He said he had so far not received any direction to reduce the nearly 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but noted what he called strong U.S. security interests in the region.

Ghani’s government has been shut out of the peace talks between Taliban negotiators and U.S. envoys, with the hardline Islamist movement branding it a U.S. puppet. Kabul is concerned that a sharp drawdown of U.S. forces could lead to chaos in the region.

“It is important that the Afghan government is involved in discussions regarding Afghanistan,” Shanahan told reporters traveling with him on the previously unannounced trip. “The Afghans have to decide what Afghanistan looks like in the future. It’s not about the U.S., it is about Afghanistan.”
Shanahan, who took over the job after Jim Mattis quit in December over policy differences with U.S. President Donald Trump, said he could not make any guarantees because U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was leading the talks.

“The U.S. military has strong security interests in the region. (The) presence will evolve out of those discussions,” Shanahan said.

He said the aim of his trip was to get an understanding of the situation on the ground from commanders and then brief Trump on his findings.

Shanahan’s meeting with Ghani covered a range of defence issues important to the bilateral relationship, Pentagon spokesman Commander Sean Robertson said.

That included “achieving a political settlement to the war that ensures Afghanistan is never again used as a safe haven from which terrorists can plan and launch terrorist attacks against the United States, our interests and our allies,” Robertson said.

U.S. officials have held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in Qatar since last year in what is widely seen as the most serious bid yet for peace in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

Both sides hailed progress after the latest round last month, although significant obstacles remain. Those include the involvement of the Afghan government.

The next round of talks is due in Qatar on Feb. 25.

Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at the Woodrow Wilson Center, said Shanahan’s main priority in Kabul should be to address Afghan government concerns.

“The top priority of Shanahan has to be to impress upon the government that we’re going to do everything we can to get you into this conversation,” Kugelman said.

‘LEVERAGE’

Afghanistan and neighbouring countries are concerned about the effect of a sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces on the region.

An Afghan official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said even the suggestion of U.S. troops leaving was dangerous.

“Of course it has given leverage to the Taliban, there is no question about that,” the official told Reuters.

Trump has offered no specifics about when he would bring home U.S. troops from Afghanistan but has said progress in negotiations with the Taliban would enable a troop reduction and a “focus on counter-terrorism”.

 

Acting U.S. defense secretary Patrick Shanahan meets with Afghan commandos at Camp Morehead in Kabul, Afghanistan February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Idrees Ali

Shanahan said a withdrawal of about half the U.S. troops was not something that was being discussed.

“The presence we want in Afghanistan is what assures our homeland defence and supports regional stability and then any type of sizing is done in a coordinated and disciplined manner,” he said.

Khalilzad said after six days of talks with the Taliban in Doha last month that the United States and the Taliban had sketched the outlines for an eventual peace accord.

He has said since then there has been progress on the future of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have put out contradictory information on what timeline the United States has agreed to in any potential withdrawal. Most recently, a Taliban official said no timetable had been agreed with the U.S. government.

U.S. officials have told Reuters that while no formal orders have been sent, the military is preparing for what a withdrawal of about half of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan would look like.

Officials have expressed concern that Afghan security forces, already stretched thin, could crumble if U.S. troops leave.

Shanahan met with a group of elite Afghan commandos later on Monday and backed using more resources for offensive operations by the special forces.

Afghanistan’s special forces units suffered increasingly heavy casualties last year as the Taliban mounted major assaults on provincial centers including Ghazni and Farah in the southwest.

Reporting by Idrees Ali in Kabul; Editing by Greg Torode, Paul Tait, Nick Macfie and Frances Kerry

Apple: The Emperor has no clothes

 Monday, 11 February 2019

A Goldman Sachs analyst has compared Apple’s current troubles to that faced by Nokia in 2007. Nokia depended on customer upgrades for sales in a saturated market in 2007 for that era’s phones. Steve Jobs came out with the touchscreen iPhone that created a new industry, which Apple has rode on that made it a trillion dollar company. Now, that market is saturated. Other phone makers are flooding the market with cheaper phones. Samsung and now Huawei has beaten Apple in revenue, pushing Apple to third place. There are no more queues outside Apple stores for the latest iPhones. How did Apple mess up?


Apple’s short term strategy

The alarm bells rang loud and clear for Apple in 2016. The number of iPhones sold peaked in 2015. IPhones constitute around two-thirds of Apple’s revenues. In 2016, fewer iPhones were sold compared to 2015. Instead of coming up with a strategy to solve this, Apple simply raised the prices of iPhones every year. This meant that even though it was selling less iPhones, its revenue was still higher. Apple continued to raise the price of its iPhones every year to compensate for the lower number of iPhones sold.

It is well known that technology gets cheaper over time. In 1984, a cell phone by Motorola was $ 4,000. Today, much more advanced cell phones are less than $ 100. But Apple went the other way and kept increasing the prices. A price increase for iPhones meant more profits from a sale. This greatly increased Apple’s profits and investors flocked to buy Apple’s shares. Soon, Apple was the first company to be worth one trillion dollars. Apple’s diehard fans and its brand meant this was possible for a few years. But this was not sustainable in the long term as there was a limit to which Apple’s customers would go to buy an iPhone.

Consumers simply refused to buy anymore for such high prices and even the diehard Apple fans started skipping upgrading their iPhones from every year to once in two years. Technology got cheaper but Apple kept increasing its prices, but Apple’s competitors did the opposite and decreased their prices. Many Apple customers saw more economically attractive alternatives. Samsung and now Huawei have beaten Apple in revenue. So, Apple deciding to not disclose sales figures of iPhones to investors and slashing earnings forecast for the first time since 2002 made investors panic.


Apple’s shares collapse

Around $ 450 billion have been wiped out since November 2018. $ 450 billion is more than the entire market capitalisation of Facebook. After Apple slashed its earnings forecast, 10% of its market capital went off. Since November, Apple has lost 35% of its value and analysts say it’s not the end and more downfalls are to come.


Apple’s strategy to create a services business

When iPhones started selling less in 2015, Apple decided to try selling services to its existing customers. Apple has millions of customers and it could sell them services through its App Store, Apple Music and Apple Pay. Investors did not buy this as services could not replace the success of the iPhone.


US-China tensions

The increasing trade war between the US and China has investors worried. Around 20% of Apple’s sales come from China and Apple is very vulnerable as the US President adds tariffs to more and more Chinese products. The arrest of Huawei’s CFO by Canada at the request of the US Government does not help Apple. Huawei is China’s flagship company and US actions against Huawei means the Chinese Government could retaliate against Apple. Lastly, Apple depends heavily on China for manufacturing its products. Though Apple has been exempt for now in the trade war, Donald Trump has said he is not concerned about Apple as it manufactures its products outside the US.


Lack of innovation

Not adding 5G to its next iPhone will be a mistake according to analysts as its rivals will be rolling 5G out. At a time when Apple’s rivals add any new feature immediately to their next product release, Apple’s customers complain that Apple holds on to new features and keeps them for the year after to give it to its customers. This lack of innovation and being late to roll out new feature has frustrated its base.


Taking customers for granted

When your customers spend days waiting outside your stores to buy your product, you have to give them the best. In 2011, a Chinese teenager sold his kidney to buy an iPhone and iPad. That was how much people loved Apple’s products. But using that love to make money by yearly increasing the iPhone prices while at the same time withholding new features cannot last long. As the story of the Emperor without clothes goes, everyone knew that the Emperor had no clothes but everyone, including the Emperor, was afraid to speak out fearing they would be called a fool until a small child shouted out that the Emperor had no clothes. Nowadays, Apple’s customers may have woken up to realise the truth. If Apple was the Emperor, then its investors and customers have shouted out that it has no clothes.

From Trump to Brexit, a look at the good, bad and ugly of populism today

Thanks to current right-wing populists, people are conflating right wing ideologies such as being anti-migrant with populism. Source: Felicity Burke/The Conversation

Feb 05, 2019Feb 10, 2019

NO DOUBT thanks to Donald Trump, Brexit, and a string of anti-establishment leaders and parties in Europe, Latin America and Asia, everyone seems to be talking about populism.

But populism is nothing new. It’s long accompanied democratic politics, and its activity and success has experienced peaks and troughs. Right now we’re in a bit of a heyday for populism, and this is impacting the nature of politics in general. So it’s important we know what it means and how to recognise it.

Even among academics, populism has been difficult to define. This is partly because it has manifested in different ways during different times. While currently its most well-known cases are right-wing parties, leaders and movements, it can also be left-wing.

SEE ALSO: Populism, Asian style: 40 percent of the continent under populist governance

There’s academic debate on how to categorise the concept: is it an ideology, a style, a discourse, or a strategy? But across these debates, researchers tend to agree populism has two core principles:

1. it must claim to speak on behalf of ordinary people
2. these ordinary people must stand in opposition to an elite establishment which stops them from fulfilling their political preferences.

These two core principles are combined in different ways with different populist parties, leaders and movements. For example, left-wing populists’ conceptions of “the people” and “the elite” generally coalesce around socioeconomic grievances, whereas right-wing populists’ conceptions of those groups generally tend to focus on socio-cultural issues such as immigration.

The ambiguity of the terms “the people” and “the elite” mean the core principles of people-centrism and anti-elitism can be used for very different ends.

How can appealing to ordinary people be a bad thing?

In Asia, populism is a beast of its own. Supporters of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) celebrate in front of a cut-out of populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi after learning of the initial poll results of Tripura state assembly elections, in Agartala, India March 3, 2018. Source: Reuters/Jayanta Dey

Populism gets a bad name for a couple of reasons.

First, because many of the most prominent cases of populism have recently appeared on the radical right, it has often been conflated with authoritarianism and anti-immigration ideas.

But these features are more to do with the ideology of the radical right than they are to do with populism itself.

Second, populists are disruptive.

They position themselves as outsiders who are radically different and separate from the existing order. So they frequently advocate for a change to the status quo and may champion the need for urgent structural change, whether that is economic or cultural.

They often do this by promoting a sense of crisis (whether true or not), and presenting themselves as having the solution to the crisis.

SEE ALSO: A tale of two populisms: Uncertainty among New York’s Indonesian student diaspora

A current example of this process is Trump’s southern border wall, where he’s characterised the issue of illegal crossings on the southern border as a national emergency, despite, for example, more terrorist-related border crossings occurring on the northern, Canadian border and by air.

The fact populists often want to transform the status quo, ostensibly in the name of the people, means they can appear threatening to the democratic norms and societal customs many people value.

And the very construction of “the people” plays a large part in populists being perceived as “bad”, because it ostracises portions of society that don’t fit in with this group.

What are some examples of populist leaders and policies?

The most famous contemporary example of a populist leader is the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the renewed interest in populism is partly due to his 2016 electoral success.

One way researchers measure populism, and consequently determine whether a leader or party is populist, is through measuring language.

Research has found Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign was highly populist. He targeted political elites, drawing on the core populist feature of anti-elitism and frequently used people-centric language, with a strong use of collective pronouns of “our” and “we”.

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a Make America Great Again rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, on November 26, 2018. Source: Jim Watson / AFP

He combined this populist language with his radical right ideology, putting forward policies such as “America First” foreign policy, his proposed wall between the US and Mexico, and protectionist and anti-globalisation economic policies.

The combination of populism and such policies allowed him to draw a distinction between “the people” and those outside that group (Muslims, Mexicans), emphasising the superiority of the former.

These policies also allow for the critiquing of the elite establishment’s preference for globalisation, free trade and more liberal immigration policies. His use of the “drain the swamp” slogan – where he’s claiming he’ll rid Washington of elites who are out of touch with regular Americans – also reflects this.

Along with Trump, Brexit has also come to exemplify contemporary populism, because of its European Union-centred anti-elitism and the very nature of the referendum acting as an expression of “the people’s” will.

In South America, populism has been most associated with the left. The late Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela, was also highly populist in his rhetoric, and is perhaps the most famous example of a left-wing populist leader.

Chavez’s populism was centred around socioeconomic issues. Even while governing, he positioned himself as an anti-establishment politician, channelling the country’s oil revenues into social programs with the aim of distributing wealth among the Venezuelan people, relieving poverty and promoting food security.

The current Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the Bolivian president, Evo Morales are also considered left-wing populist leaders.

SEE ALSO: Australia’s Brexit strategy needs less Britpopulism, more Eurovision

But left-wing populism is not just confined to South America. In Europe, contemporary examples of left-wing populist parties include the Spanish Podemos and the Greek Syriza. These parties enjoyed success in the aftermath of the Great Recession. They questioned the legitimacy of unregulated capitalism and advocated structural economic changes to alleviate the consequences of the recession on their people.

It doesn’t look like populism is going anywhere. So it’s important to know how to recognise it, and to understand how its presence can shape our democracies, for better or worse.

By Octavia Bryant, Doctoral Candidate, National School of Arts, Australian Catholic University and Benjamin Moffitt, Senior Lecturer & ARC DECRA Fellow, Australian Catholic University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Macron Is Going Full De Gaulle

France’s president is pushing around Britain, Germany, and Italy—and going back to his country’s foreign-policy roots.

French President Emmanuel Macron looks at a portrait of former French President Charles de Gaulle at the city hall in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, France, on Oct. 4, 2018. (Vincent Kessler/AFP/Getty Images)

BY ROBERT ZARETSKY

| FEBRUARY 11, 2019, 12:40 PM

In the case of Emmanuel Macron’s official presidential photograph, a picture is worth not a thousand but quite literally hundreds of thousands of words. The photo showsMacron flanked by the French and European Union flags and an opened book on the desk behind him. Though the title is not shown, Macron made it known that the book was none other than the memoirs of Charles de Gaulle.

In the two years since the photograph was snapped, Macron has tried to portray himself to the French, as well as portray France to Europe and the rest of the world, as de Gaulle once did. Those efforts—specifically, Macron’s dealings with Germany, Italy, and Britain—have recently become more pronounced. They have also become more successful.

For nearly half a century, every president of the Fifth Republic has had to define his politics and policies in relation to the man who founded it. This is especially true with what, in effect, was de Gaulle’s raison d’être for the new republic: the ability to undertake what he called grands travaux, or great projects, on the world stage. For this reason, Macron did not hesitate to make his position clear on France’s position in the world: Apart from the Gaullist François Fillon, Macron cited de Gaulle’s name more often than any other presidential candidate in 2017. More specifically, in an interview he gave between the two rounds of the presidential election, Macron fully embraced what he called the “Gaullo-Mitterrandist” approach to foreign affairs.

While Hubert Védrine may not have coined the clunky term, he certainly popularized it. Having served as the Socialist president’s diplomatic advisor, then as foreign minister to Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, Védrine appreciates the ironic coupling of François Mitterrand’s name to that of his ideological and political nemesis. Yet he also argues for its accuracy: For both the traditionalist de Gaulle and socialist Mitterrand—and, for that matter, the conservative Jacques Chirac—foreign policy was based on three irreducible values: sovereignty, independence, and strategic autonomy.

According to Védrine, this came to an end with Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. Though dissimilar in so many ways, both of these presidents adopted what Védrine calls a neoconservative foreign policy, which placed a greater emphasis on the protection of human rights in France’s dealings with other countries, and the so-called right of intervention when foreign governments flout those rights (which corresponded with a closer relationship to the United States and Western military alliances such as NATO). The pinnacle of this approach—or nadir, depending on one’s perspective—was NATO’s intervention against the Libyan regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi, an effort largely initiated at Sarkozy’s vocal insistence.

Macron, for his part, has always insisted on the difference between the Gaullist and Atlanticist positions—and on the superiority of the former. In an interview with several European newspapers shortly after becoming president, he announced: “I will bring to an end the form of neoconservatism that has been imported to France over the past 10 years.” Rejecting the U.S. attempt at nation building in Iraq, Macron concluded: “Democracy cannot be imposed from the outside without the participation of the people. France was right not to participate in the war in Iraq and was wrong to go to war in this manner in Libya.”

His domestic reform agenda having recently stalled in the face of popular discontent and an increasingly radical yellow vest movement, Macron has had ever more incentive to focus his energy, and Gaullist impulses, on foreign policy. This has become most apparent on the European stage.

In the case of Germany, Macron continues to build on the foundation laid by de Gaulle. Last month, he met with Chancellor Angela Merkel in the border city of Aix-la-Chapelle to mark the 56th anniversary of the historic treaty signed by de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer. While the treaty’s spirit reflected Merkel and Macron’s desire for greater collaboration, its letter reflected a Gaullist emphasis on sovereignty and independence. For example, it ignored the demands made by a number of German political leaders that France transfer its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council to the European Union, instead vaguely plumping for a larger German role. Meanwhile, Macron’s government also forcefully spoke out against Germany’s Nord Stream gas pipeline project with Russia, which has long been controversial among Eastern European countries but which had previously seemed to have France’s tacit approval. Macron, in Gaullist fashion, seems to have sensed the pipeline was an easy opportunity to increase France’s influence at Germany’s expense.

This same reflex has shaped France’s response to the burgeoning Brexit drama. Last summer, Prime Minister Theresa May visited Macron at the French presidential retreat of Fort de Brégançon in the hope of winning his support for her Chequers plan. Her hopes melted as quickly as sorbet under the southern sun, however, when Macron did not even bother to schedule a news conference at the end of the visit. At the end of the EU summit meeting in Salzburg, Austria, last September, May no doubt wished that Macron would have once again nixed a press conference. Instead, the French president, in what the pro-Brexit tabloid the Sun described as a “vicious rant,” declared the British must now come to terms with the fact that “those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars.”

In a curious way, Macron is re-enacting de Gaulle’s hostility to Britain. Just as the latter repeatedly rejected Britain’s repeated moves to enter the European Economic Community, the former has repeatedly reminded the Brits of the costs of moving out of the EU. Gnashing his teeth in the wake of Salzburg, one British government source muttered that Macron and his team “just say no to everything and, by a mile, are the most difficult ones,” while another echoed that the French had been the most “disobliging” nation during the multilateral negotiations.

Such complaints from the British would have warmed the general’s heart. So, too, would have Macron’s increasingly strident war of words with the Italian government. Led in principle by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the government is, in fact, controlled by its two deputy prime ministers, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio. The former is the leader of the anti-immigrant League, the latter is the head of the anti-government Five Star Movement, and what they mostly share is a taste for baiting and distaste for Brussels, particularly its approach to illegal immigration. As a result, when Macron warned against the spread of the “nationalist leprosy” shortly after the formation of the Italian government, Salvini asked that Macron “stop insulting Italy and act on the generous words that fill his mouth.”

It’s been downhill ever since, with Di Maio urging on the yellow vest protestors, Salvini encouraging the French to replace their “very bad president,” and Macron dismissing these barbs as “utterly without interest.” However, Macron took a sharp interest last week when Di Maio, without first consulting with the French government, made a lightning visit to France in order to meet with a group of yellow vests in order to discuss common interests. An outraged Macron recalled his ambassador to Italy, and what had been a shouting match has now morphed into a full-fledged diplomatic crisis.

Here, too, the general’s shadow looms. In 1945, as the head of liberated France’s provisional government, de Gaulle very nearly annexed the Aosta Valley region in northern Italy. His reasons were both punitive—Fascist Italy’s last-minute invasion of southern France in 1940 still rankled—and strategic. But as the historian Pierre Guillen argues, de Gaulle was also “marked by the French tradition of regarding Italy as a second-class power. Notwithstanding the sincerity of his declarations on the solidarity of Latin peoples … he considered Italy just one element in an ensemble over which France was to play a leading role.”

While the individuals and issues on the European stage have changed over the past half-century, Macron believes, like de Gaulle, that France must play a leading role, this time in fending off the forces of populism and illiberalism. Whether he is up to the task remains to be seen. But it should be noted that, along with de Gaulle’s memoirs, one of the other books on the desk in his official photograph is Stendhal’s The Red and the Black—the story of Julien Sorel, a young man who scales the heights of power only to fall at the very end.

 

Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history at the University of Houston’s Honors College and the author of the forthcoming book Catherine & Diderot: The Empress, the Philosopher, and the Fate of the Enlightenment.

Iran's president calls Trump 'idiot' as crowds chant 'death to America'

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians march through capital to mark 40th anniversary of Islamic revolution
 Female students wave Iranian national flags during a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, at the Azadi (Freedom) square in Tehran. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

Mon 11 Feb 2019

Iran’s president has insisted “enemy” plots against the country will fail and called President Donald Trump an “idiot” as vast crowds marked 40 years since the Islamic revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians, including soldiers, students, clerics and chador-clad women holding small children, marched through the capital in freezing rain on Monday to mark the anniversary.

State television showed crowds carrying Iranian flags in cold rainy weather, shouting “Death to Israel, Death to America” – trademark chants of the revolution – as well as burning US flags and carrying portraits of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shia cleric who toppled the Shah in an Islamic uprising that still haunts the west.

The Times reported that the crowds also chanted “Death to Theresa May”.

“The presence of people today on the streets all over Islamic Iran … means that the enemy will never reach its evil objectives,” a defiant President Hassan Rouhani told those thronging Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square, decrying a “conspiracy” involving Washington.

A pre-prepared resolution was read out ahead of Rouhani’s speech that proclaimed “unquestioning obedience to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei” and called Trump an “idiot”.

In a tweet written on the anniversary that he also sent out in Farsi, Trump said the revolution had been a complete failure.

“40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future,” he posted in both English and Farsi.

The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, also responded on Twitter. “#40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission. #40YearsofFailure to adjust US policy to reality. #40YearsofFailure to destabilize Iran through blood & treasure. After 40 yrs of wrong choices, time for @realDonaldTrump to rethink failed US policy,” he wrote.

View image on Twitter

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Replying to @realDonaldTrump

۴۰ سال فساد. ۴۰ سال سرکوب. ۴۰ سال ترور. رژیم ایران فقط موجب #چهل_سال_شکست شده است. مردم ایران که مدتهاست در رنجند شایسته آینده روشن تری هستند

38.9K

2:58 PM - Feb 11, 2019

The routes leading up to the square in Tehran were packed with people as loudspeakers blared revolutionary anthems and slogans. Life-size replicas of Iranian-made cruise and ballistic missiles stood in a statement of defiance after the US last year reimposed sanctions following its withdrawal from a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Rouhani lambasted calls from the United States and Europe for a fresh agreement to curb Iran’s missile programme.

“We have not, and will not, request permission from anyone for increasing our defensive power and for building all kinds of … missiles,” he told the crowd.

Speaking from a flower-festooned stage overlooking the square, the president warned that Iran was now far stronger than when it faced off against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in a devastating 1980-1988 war.

“Today the whole world should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is considerably more powerful than the days of the war,” Rouhani said.

Yadollah Javani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ deputy head for political affairs, said Iran would demolish cities in Israel if the United States attacked.

“The United States does not have the courage to fire a single bullet at us despite all its defensive and military assets. But if they attack us, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” Javani told the state news agency IRNA.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissed the threat. “I am not ignoring the threats of the Iranian regime but nor I am impressed by them,” he said.

“Were this regime to make the terrible mistake of trying to destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa, it would not succeed, but it would mean that they had celebrated their last Revolution Day. They would do well to take that into account.”

Iranians face mounting economic hardships many blame on the country’s clerical leaders, and pictures on social media showed some people also demonstrating against corruption, unemployment and high prices.

In 2018 Iran cracked down on protests over poor living standards that posed the most serious challenge to its clerical elite since a 2009 uprising over disputed elections.

Prices of basic foodstuffs have soared since Trump withdrew Washington from world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

In January Rouhani said Iran was dealing with its worst economic crisis since the Shah was toppled.
But he remained defiant on Monday as Iranians recalled the end of a monarch who catered to the rich.

“The Iranian people have and will have some economic difficulties but we will overcome the problems by helping each other,” he said.

Podcast Ep 2: How Israel helps Latin American death squads

Nora Barrows-Friedman- 11 February 2019

For the second episode in our new podcast format, hosts Nora Barrows-Friedman and Asa Winstanley are joined by Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone Project and co-host of the excellent Moderate Rebelspodcast.

As someone with a long Electronic Intifada history, there was a lot to discuss with Max, and the conversation is wide-ranging and global in outlook.

We take a look at the Integrity Initiative, a covert disinformation operation funded with millions of pounds from the British government’s foreign and defense ministries. The Grayzone Project has done some of the leading reporting on this shady outfit.

“If you want to understand not just Russiagate but how our media is acting as a permanent arm of the national security state, both in the UK and the US, you have to understand the Integrity Initiative scandal,” Blumenthal says.

Run out of the offices of an obscure London think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, just what is this “initiative” up to?

How is it working to subvert the Labour Party, the Democrats and the wider left in the UK and the US? Exactly what is its right-wing extremist agenda?

Max Blumenthal

✔@MaxBlumenthal

Israel has longstanding ties to Latin America's right-wing. It trained Brazil's military junta in torture tactics, backed Pinochet's coup, & trained Guatemalan dictator Ephraim Rios-Montt's death squads on behalf of the US. Today, it inspires Venezuela's oligarchic opposition.

Dan Cohen

✔@dancohen3000

These photos from an opposition rally in Venezuela today say everything. Juan Guaidó and his elite supporters are proud to display the flags of the most violent, destructive country in the world and the Israeli military dictatorship. #SharedValues

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8:03 PM - Feb 2, 2019

Since recording took place on the day the attempted coup in Venezuela was launched, we also talk about what’s been going on there.

While Palestine is the top of the list of “foreign policy” issues that some social democrats are too quick to wave the white flag over, Venezuela is another clear example.

How does the US-led subversion of that country show that Israel is a leading part of a transatlantic alliance against progressive governments?

Finally, we discuss “Russiagate” and how it is being weaponized against the left in the US and the UK, including against Palestine solidarity.

Articles we discussed

• “Israel recognizes Guaido as leader of Venezuela” (Reuters)
• “86% of Venezuelans oppose military intervention, 81% against US sanctions, local polling shows” by Ben Norton (Grayzone Project)
• “New documents reveal a covert British military intelligence smear machine meddling in American politics” by Max Blumenthal and Mark Ames (Grayzone Project)
• “How Israel lobby fakes campus anti-Semitism” by Ali Abunimah (The Electronic Intifada)

Music: “Go Down Standing” by Excentrik featuring Rythmatik

Theme music and production assistance by Sharif Zakout

Image: Palestinians in Gaza rally in support of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in front of the UN headquarters in Gaza City, 28 January. (Ashraf Amra/APA Images)

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