Are we on the brink of a general election?

Last night Theresa May suffered the biggest defeat for a government in 100 years after MPs voted resoundingly against her Brexit deal.

• By Georgina Lee-16 Jan 2019

Jeremy Corbyn has tabled a motion of no confidence in the government for this evening.
So is the UK on course for an early general election?

What is happening tonight?

Labour have been agitating for a vote of no confidence in the government for weeks now. Last night, they pulled the trigger and tabled the motion.

Remember, this is not the same as the confidence vote Mrs May faced in December, which was about her status as leader of the Conservatives. Tonight’s ballot is about the government’s control of Parliament.

It used to be in the gift of the Prime Minister of the day to decide when a general election is called. But since 2010, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act has made things more complicated. That legislation – designed to prop up Conservative Lib Dem coalition – sets out a few constitutional hurdles that must be cleared before we get to a general election.

First of all, a majority of MPs must vote for the motion “this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government” which is what Labour hope will happen tonight.

What are Labour’s chances of defeating the government this evening?

You might think after last night’s crushing defeat, Mrs May is certain to lose this evening’s vote.
But unlike yesterday, which was all about the deal, the Democratic Unionists have said they will back the Conservative government in a confidence vote.

In many ways, that makes sense: why would the DUP would risk triggering an election when they hold the balance of power in the Commons? Their “confidence and supply” arrangement with the Conservatives has already benefited Northern Ireland to the tune of £1 billion. And the party has suggested in the past that the Tories will always have its backing as long as Mr Corbyn is Labour leader because of his stance on Northern Ireland.

So how many votes are needed to pass the confidence motion?

There are 650 MPs in the Commons, of whom four don’t vote because they are the Speaker and Deputy Speakers (two Conservatives, two Labour members). Then we’ve got the seven Sinn Féin MPs who don’t take their seats in Parliament, plus the two Tory and Labour MPs on each side who will be “tellers” for the vote, and we’re left with 635 potential voters in tonight’s ballot.

Assuming all of those members vote (some may not due to illness, for example), that makes the magic threshold 318.

If all DUP and Conservative MPs back Mrs May tonight, that will leave her with 323 votes in her favour. If Mr Corbyn manages to get every Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat, Independent, Plaid Cymru and Green MP on board, he will have 311 MPs voting with him against the government. As it stands, that’s not enough to defeat Mrs May.

So Mr Corbyn would need at least a handful of Conservative MPs to rebel against their party and join him in order to get over the first hurdle to a general election.

What if the government does lose tonight?

Back to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. If the government is defeated in a confidence vote, we’re in 14 days of frantic limbo as the Conservatives, and potentially other parties, try to gain or regain control of Parliament. If no-one can secure the support of a majority of MPs in that time, an election is called.

So if Mrs May loses tonight’s vote, she has a second chance to stay in power.
Again, Mr Corbyn would be working with the same parliamentary arithmetic, so he’d almost certainly need a cross-party coalition, including a chunk of Conservative MPs, to block Mrs May from regaining control of the Commons.

FactCheck verdict

Two things must happen before the UK will return to the ballot box for a general election.
The government must lose a confidence vote in the Commons, like the one tabled for this evening. Then there’s 14 days during which the Conservatives, and potentially other parties, can try to form or re-form a government. If no-one can manage that before the clock runs out, Britain will be back at the polls.

Labour will need at least 320 MPs to join them if they want to defeat the government in the confidence vote. That would require every Labour, SNP, Lib Dem, Independent, Plaid Cymru and Green MP – plus a handful of Conservative/DUP members – to back Labour.

If the government is defeated, Mrs May has a second chance to stay in power: that 14-day limbo. Mr Corbyn would be faced with the same parliamentary arithmetic, and would again need a chunk of Conservative MPs on his side to block Mrs May’s attempt to re-form her government.

Warsaw summit was a failure for Trump - but a win for Netanyahu

It may have been a 'dumpster fire' for the Trump administration and an embarrassment to Europe, but Israeli premier stands out as summit winner

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) shakes hands with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on 14 February 2019 (AFP)

With a joint statement that did not even mention Iran, there is little doubt that the Trump administration's anti-Iran Warsaw summit was an abject failure - at least when measured against the objective of creating an anti-Iran alliance.

Trita Parsi

15 February 2019 11:07 UTC | Last update: 1 day 11 hours ago

That, however, does not mean that the summit wasn't useful to some of its key supporters. Above all, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands out as a clear winner of the failed summit.

A simplistic analysis

As I have explained elsewhere, using an anti-Iranian alliance as an organising principle to unite Israel and the Arab states is not a new idea. It has been tried several times by the United States, going all the way back to the 1990s.

Indeed, the parallels between the language of the Trump administration today and that of senior Clinton officials in the mid-1990s are eerily similar. Then too, the US tried to sell a hysterically simplistic analysis of the region that identified Iran as the root cause of all problems.

Using an anti-Iranian alliance as an organising principle to unite Israel and the Arab states is not a new idea

"Wherever you look, you will find the evil hand of Iran in this region," then-secretary of state Warren Christopher said in 1995 as he tried to defend Washington's infatuation with Iran.

Echoing the same line of thinking, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in Warsaw this week that: "You can't achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran."

Similar to today, this almost obsessive focus on Iran was sold to Washington by US allies who wanted the United States to use its power to tip the geopolitical scales in their favour, particularly in terms of weakening Iran and preventing the US and Iran from resolving their problems. 

Which is precisely why the failure of the Warsaw summit does not mean that it lacked utility for Iran's geopolitical rivals in the region. Netanyahu, in particular, scored five central victories in Warsaw.

Netanyahu victories

First and foremost, the summit provided Netanyahu with much-desired optics: the fact that Arab leaders were willing to share the stage with an Israeli prime minister at a summit that didn't even pretend to address the Palestinian issue clearly signalled that autocratic Arab rulers have openly abandoned the Palestinians.

US Vice President Mike Pence, Poland's President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pose for a photo at the Warsaw summit (AFP)

To Netanyahu's supporters, this vindicated his strategy: patiently refusing to compromise with the Palestinians while aggressively expanding illegal Israeli settlements would eventually force the Arab side to succumb to Israel's demands and dominance. 

The summit succeeded in deepening the US-Iran enmity and rendered any prospects for a rapprochement all the more implausible

"Yesterday was a historical turning point," Netanyahu proudly told reporters. "In a room of some 60 foreign ministers, the Israeli prime minister and foreign ministers of leading Arab countries stood together, and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against a common threat of the Iranian state."

Second, even short of establishing a real coalition against Iran, the summit succeeded in deepening US-Iran enmity and rendered any prospects for a rapprochement all the more implausible.

As long as US-Iran tensions remain high, Washington is further pushed away from any thaw with Tehran that could result in the US ceasing its unquestionable support for Israel. This fear of "abandonment" was a key factor behind Netanyahu's opposition to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Shifting the balance of power

Third, increased US-Iran tensions also achieve another objective: it moves the US closer towards a military confrontation with Iran that for Netanyahu is the ultimate tool to shift the balance of power in the region in Israel's favour. Netanyahu's advocacy for a US-Iran war is neither new nor a secret.

At the summit, he told Israeli media that Arab states and Israel are coming together "in order to advance the common interest of war with Iran". On his Twitter account, he later changed the translation of his comment to read "common interest of combating Iran".

Trump's Middle East policy has learnt nothing from failures of the past

Read More »

The US intelligence community has been very worried about Netanyahu's manoeuvres to drag the US into war with Iran. Last month, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that: "Iran seeks to avoid a major armed conflict with Israel" but that "Israeli strikes [in Syria] that result in Iranian casualties increase the likelihood of Iranian conventional retaliation against Israel."

Such an escalation sparked by Israel, in turn, carries a likelihood of the US getting dragged into the conflict. Much to Netanyahu's satisfaction, presumably.

Fourth, Netanyahu calculates that all of the above benefits him politically at home at a time when he is facing both a potential prison sentence for corruption charges and upcoming elections in April.  

Unhelpful sideshow

Finally, the Warsaw summit didn't just increase US-Iran tensions, it also intensified the rift between the US and the EU - and within the EU.

Vice President Mike Pence - standing on European soil - blasted the EU effort led by Germany, France and the UK to create an alternative payment system for legal trade with Iran, calling it an "ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the EU and create still more distance between Europe and America". 

Netanyahu hails Warsaw talks with Arab states as 'turning point' in confronting Iran

Read More »

The Europeans, in turn, blasted the conference as "an unhelpful sideshow announced without any consultation or regard for America's traditional partners".

Netanyahu believes Israel benefits from widening the rift between the EU and the US, as it protects him from any remaining EU pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Palestine.

Like Trump, Netanyahu's goal has been to weaken and divide Europe, and like Trump, he has allied himself with the right-wing, anti-democratic governments in Poland and Hungary.

All in all, the Warsaw summit may have been a "dumpster fire" for the Trump administration and an embarrassment to Europe. But for Netanyahu, he could hardly have wished for a better gathering.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

California tells Trump that lawsuit over border wall is 'imminent'

FILE PHOTO: Construction workers check a new section of bollard wall in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, as seen from the Mexican side of the border in San Jeronimo, on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

David Morgan, David Lawder-FEBRUARY 17, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California will “imminently” challenge President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to obtain funds for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said on Sunday.

“Definitely and imminently,” Becerra told ABC’s “This Week” program when asked whether and when California would sue the Trump administration in federal court. Other states controlled by Democrats are expected to join the effort.

“We are prepared, we knew something like this might happen. And with our sister state partners, we are ready to go,” he said.

Trump invoked the emergency powers on Friday under a 1976 law after Congress rebuffed his request for $5.7 billion to help build the wall that was a signature 2016 campaign promise.
The move is intended to allow him to redirect money appropriated by Congress for other purposes to wall construction.

The White House says Trump will have access to about $8 billion. Nearly $1.4 billion was allocated for border fencing under a spending measure approved by Congress last week, and Trump’s emergency declaration is aimed at giving him another $6.7 billion for the wall.

Becerra cited Trump’s own comment on Friday that he “didn’t need to do this” as evidence that the emergency declaration is legally vulnerable.

“It’s become clear that this is not an emergency, not only because no one believes it is but because Donald Trump himself has said it’s not,” he said.

Becerra and California Governor Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, have been expected to sue to block Trump’s move.

Becerra told ABC that California and other states are waiting to learn which federal programs will lose money to determine what kind of harm the states could face from the declaration.

He said California may be harmed by less federal funding for emergency response services, the military and stopping drug trafficking.

“We’re confident there are at least 8 billion ways that we can prove harm,” Becerra said.

Three Texas landowners and an environmental group filed the first lawsuit against Trump’s move on Friday, saying it violates the Constitution and would infringe on their property rights.

The legal challenges could at least slow down Trump’s efforts to build the wall but would likely end up at the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court.

Congress never defined a national emergency in the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which has been invoked dozens of times without a single successful legal challenge.

Democrats in Congress have vowed to challenge Trump’s declaration and several Republican lawmakers have said they are not certain whether they would support the president.

“I think many of us are concerned about this,” Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump could, however, veto any resolution of disapproval from Congress.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News on Sunday that Trump’s declaration would allow the administration to build “hundreds of miles” of border wall by September 2020.

FILE PHOTO: The prototypes for U.S. President Donald Trump's border wall are seen behind the border fence between Mexico and the United States, in Tijuana, Mexico January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes/File Photo

“We have 120-odd miles that are already under construction or are already obligated plus the additional funds we have and then we’re going to outlay – we’re going to look at a few hundred miles.”

Trump’s proposed wall and wider immigration policies are likely to be a major campaign issue ahead of the next presidential election in November 2020, where he will seek a second four-year term.

Reporting by David Morgan and David Lawder; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

President Trump looked for the failed idea of a wall

Saturday, 16 February 2019

The talks over the “Wall of Trump” between the US-Mexico Border Security broke down with Congressional leaders over the weekend. After the renewed call for a wall at his second State of the Union, President Donald Trump attended a political rally in El Paso, a “safe” border city in Texas. Even with a Congressional deal, the White House intends to deploy the American military at the Mexican border and continues to threaten Congress that the President would declare a “National Emergency” to get his border wall.

Characterising Trump’s exaggerated claims on border crimes and calling immigrants “rapists” and “animals,” Congresswoman Veronica Escobar representing El Paso called the president “a liar.” The bipartisan Congress does not also seem to fully fund the Trump wall.

Walls and nation-building 

Long before Trump, however, there was an original love affair with China’s Great Wall. It was none other than Benjamin Franklin, the chief disciple of Confucius and chinoiserie among the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Unlike President Trump, Franklin was an American statesman who always had the veracity for facts and joined the military for national unity—a character of authentic Americanism to its founding conviction.   

Soon after commissioning him as a military commander, Governor Robert Morris of the Pennsylvania Colony dispatched Franklin to defend the British colonists against the encroaching French and their Native American allies by building a “line of forts” in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Envisioning a China Wall, Franklin wrote, “You cannot protect the country from Indians on the warpath by forts. They can pass between them through the forests, burn and pillage and massacre the people of the scattered villages, and return again in perfect safety. Only a Chinese wall the whole length of the Western frontier would be a sufficient protection against these savages.”


Once the war broke out in the Ohio River Valley in 1754, Pennsylvania was divided on a provincial security strategy. While some argued for carrying the war to the enemy, Governor Morris and Franklin advocated a defensive strategy with forts that “were connected by a wall like that of China.”

After building Fort Allen, Franklin supervised the construction of three other fortifications—Forts Franklin, Hamilton, and Norris—over the Blue Mountains of Pennsylvania. To galvanise public opinion to unite the colonies and defence against France, Franklin published a now-famous political cartoon in 1754, “Join or Die,” and wrote to support the construction of forts on “the Back of our Settlements in all our Colonies.”

Not everyone in colonial America agreed. In his letter to Franklin in 1776, the Chevalier de Kermorvan, a French engineer in the Continental Army under George Washington, disagreed arguing that “this work would be as useless here as the great wall of China, which has not preserved this empire from being conquered by the Tartars.”  Likewise, in his exit interview General John Kelly, former Chief of Staff for President Trump, realised the futility of a wall when he concluded, “if you want to stop illegal immigration, stop US demand for drugs, and expand economic opportunity in Central America.” Unlike the American experience, however, the Great Wall of China was built by labourers with human tragedies over a period of two millennia, beginning roughly with the years of Confucius (551-479 BC). But, the Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty (221-207BC) and the first emperor of the unified Imperial China connected a number of remaining network of fortifications into a single defensive system against the invading Mongol, Turkic, and other nomadic tribes. In the ensuing centuries, various dynasties continued to construct a strong defensive border-wall to safeguard against foreign invasion, regulate immigration, and manage trade until the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 AD). While it hardly prevented the non-Chinese nomadic intruders like the Mongols and Manchu from establishing the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) and the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) respectively, the Great Wall has indeed played a historic role in unifying China and its national identity.

Walls of union and division 

President Trump’s “immoral” campaign to build a “Great Wall” of concrete and steel across the US-Mexican border, on the other hand, has more to do with the white nationalism shrouded in the White House’s immigration policy. The President’s descriptions of invading “caravans” of migrants and “criminals” coming through the border and the arriving war refugees from Muslim countries seem to resonate with yet another “wall” sentiment of the nascent republic.

In considering the New York Constitution, for example, John Jay, who later became the first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, suggested that “we must erect a wall of brass around the country for the exclusion of Catholics,” who were generally meant to include French, Irish, Italians, and Spanish as opposed to white Protestants. The New York Constitution in 1777 adopted that freedom from “spiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priest and princes have scourged mankind” and then declared “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed, with this State, to all mankind.”   

In politics now as it was then, the perennial debate over the inkling of a physical “wall” is still in the public discourse as it has always been with Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor of a “wall of separation” between Church and state. The American experiment born out of the Jeffersonian ideal that “all men are created equal” was meant to eventually make the new republic into a great melting pot. Unlike with the rising and falling empires of Chinese civilisation that has evolved, the US was created by the enlightened men envisioning a “philosophic empire” as a work-in-progress for the posterity to build a “more perfect union.”

Bridges not walls 

Ironically, however, while Trump continues to advocate a “beautiful” wall, Chinese President Xi Jinping has delivered a clear message to the White House that “the wise man builds bridges, the fool builds walls.” Similarly, while visiting Panama last week, Pope Francis also remarked without directly referring to Trump that “we know that the father of lies, the devil, prefers a community divided and bickering” by building walls, not bridges.

In his farewell address, President Ronald Reagan invoked John Winthrop’s famous “Model of Christian Charity” phrase “shining city on a hill” to describe authentic Americanism when he said, “if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Surely, the American experience that progressed through the French and Indian War has made this Reaganite idea into a global nation—not a politically opportunistic slogan of “American First” with shameful “isolationism.”

As Congress contemplates the very idea of a wall and the cost of another government shutdown and national emergency, these representatives ought to remember that we are transitory guardians with diverse faith traditions on a land expropriated from the rightful owners of Native Americans; thus, they must restore the enlightened founding vision to make American democracy safe for global diversity. The Republican leaders should also educate Trump, reminding their inspired leader Reagan who said in 1987 to his Soviet counterpart at the Berlin Wall, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” That is authentic Americanism.

[Professor Patrick Mendis, the author of ‘Peaceful War,’ is a former American Field Service (AFS) inter-cultural exchange student from Sri Lanka to the United States and later adopted by the community of Perham in the state of Minnesota, which he considers his “birthplace” in America.]

The Donald Trump mythos

by Anwar A. Khan- Feb 16, 2019

Feb 16, 2019

The overarching pretension of America is that it believes itself to be the final telomere of every human society. It believes, in the words of a US military officer in Stanley Kubrick’s macabre masterpiece “Full Metal Jacket” that: “inside every gook is an American trying to get out.” Gook here, of course, being a placeholder for any non-American Identity. This pretension to being the universal destiny of human society is not an accidental facet of American Identity; rather it is the basis of it. Without this prime symbol with which to frame the American symbolic order, American Identity itself disappears.

This much has been admitted by many. Columnist Roger Cohen of TNYT has made this acute observation, “America is an idea. Strip freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law from what the United States represents to the world and America itself is gutted.” But these are the ornaments of power with which they adorn their mythical being. So it is down to America and it is down to everywhere. American White House is now an abode of neo-mythos under the presidency of Donald Trump with a newfangled government activity. It gibes in definite but not specified or identified paths. It has, rather, chartered a shape of authoritative political orientation of Germany and Italy of Hitler, Mussolini… which the world witnessed during their regimes, but with respect to history trenchant lineaments finicky to the governmental economic system and acculturation of America in this century.

This neo-mythos portrays the character or the qualities or peculiarities of the president and his snuggest advisors, and some of the principal corpuses in his cabinet. From a fuller sociological point of view, it reflects the electoral bases, class constituencies and alignments, and racist, fraid doctrines that has brought Donald Trump into authority. Neo-mythos dissertation and political praxis are now-a-days evident on regular basis in blistering assaults on the international affairs of other independent and sovereign states, at present in the internal affairs of Venezuela, a land of pride, of patriotism and the racially oppressed, immigrants, women, environmentalists, and workers in his own country. These have been companioned by a corroborated crusade to bring the judicatory, governmental employees, the military, spy agencies, and the press into line with this novel mythos and political realism.

Some say the details of the Trump hagiography don’t matter, that his policies may be up for discussion but his can-do bona fides are not—they are a given, unquestioned and unquestionable. They add that the foibles and quibbles have all been brought up in the past and they do not stick; he is a guy who knows how to get things done in a colossal way, and that’s all that counts, forget the other stuff. The fascists expect to find shortcuts around the chaos of humans acting freely together. But even in the autonomous council such ideologies recur, seeking always to restore some natural hierarchy.

The White House’s “America First” policy, unfurled in Trump’s inaugural address, with its characteristically fascist rebirth form of ultra-nationalism is not aimed at domination of Europe and its colonies, as in Nazi Germany, but in restoring US primacy over the entire world, leading to the potentially deadliest phase of imperialism. If the White House is now best described, as neo-fascist in its leanings, this does not extend to the entire US state. Congress, the courts, the civil bureaucracy, the military, the state and local governments, and what is often called, after Louis Althusser, the “ideological state apparatus”—including the media and educational institutions—would need to be brought into line before a fully neo-fascist state could operate on its own violent terms. There is no doubt that liberal or capitalist democracy in the United States is now endangered. At the level of the political system as a whole, as political scientist Richard Falk has put it, in a “pre-fascist moment.”

It is vital to understand that fascism is not in any sense a mere political aberration or anomaly, but has historically been one of two major modes of political management adopted by ruling classes in the advanced capitalist states. Since the late nineteenth century, capitalist states, particularly those of the major imperial powers, have generally taken the form of liberal democracy—representing a kind of equilibrium between competing social sectors and tendencies, in which the capitalist class, by virtue of its control of the economy, and despite the relative autonomy accorded to the state, is able to assert its hegemony. Far from being democratic in any egalitarian sense, liberal democracy has allowed considerable room for the rise of plutocracy, i.e., the rule of the rich; but it has at the same time been limited by democratic forms and rights that represent concessions to the larger population. Indeed, while remaining within the boundaries of liberal democracy, the neoliberal era since the 1980s has been associated with the steepest increases in inequality in recorded history. Such a crisis of world hegemony, real or perceived, fosters ultra-nationalism, racism, xenophobia, extreme protectionism, and hyper-militarism, generating repression at home and geopolitical struggle abroad. Liberal democracy, the rule of law, and the very existence of a viable political opposition is endangered. Fascism is one of the political forms which capitalism may assume in the monopoly-imperialist phase. The issue of fascism, whether in its classical or current form thus goes beyond right-wing politics. It raises the much more significant question of the jumping off place that marks the qualitative break between liberal democracy and fascism and today between neoliberalism and neo-mythos.

The complete development of a fascist state, understood as a historical process, requires a seizure of the state apparatus in its totality, and therefore, the elimination of any real separation of powers between the various parts, in the interest of a larger struggle for national as well as world dominance. Hence, upon securing a beachhead in the government, particularly the executive, fascist interests have historically employed semi-legal means, brutality, propaganda, and intimidation as a means of integration, with big capital looking the other way or even providing direct support. In a complete fascist takeover, the already incomplete protections to individuals offered by liberal democracy are more or less eliminated, along with the forces of political opposition.

The political forces in power aim at what Nazi ideology called a “totalitarian state,” organised around the executive, while the basic economic structure remains untouched. The fascist state in its ideal conception is thus totalitarian in itself, reducing the political and cultural apparatus to one unitary force, but leaving the economy and the capitalist class largely free from interference, even consolidating the dominance of its monopolistic fraction. The aim of the state in these circumstances is to repress and discipline the population, while protecting and promoting capitalist property relations, profits, and accumulation, and laying the basis for imperial expansion.

As Mussolini himself declared: “The fascist regime does not intend to nationalize or worse bureaucratize the entire national economy, it is enough to control it and discipline it through the corporations…. The corporations provide the discipline and the state will only take up the sectors related to defense, the existence and security of the homeland.” Hitler likewise pronounced: “We stand for the maintenance of private property…. We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.” Many of these developments were specific to Europe in the 1930s, and are unlikely to recur in anything resembling the same form in our day. Nevertheless, neo-mythos today also has as its aim a shift in the management of the advanced capitalist system, requiring the effective dissolution of the liberal-democratic order and its replacement by the rule of representatives of what is now called the “alt-right,” openly espousing racism, nationalism, anti-environmentalism, misogyny, homophobia, police violence, and extreme militarism in other independent and sovereign states across the world.

The deeper motive of all these forms of reaction, however, is the repression of the work force. Behind Trump’s appeals to alt-right bigotry lie the increased privatisation of all state-economic functions, the reinforcement of the power of big business, and the shift to a more racially defined imperialist foreign policy. The Trump White House is working to implement neo-fascist forms of capitalist state management, transgressing legal norms and abrogating liberal democratic protections. The fascist choice for managing a capitalist state in crisis is always based by definition even—on the categorical rejection of democracy. Fascism always replaces the general principles on which the theories and practices of modern democracies are based—recognition of diversity of opinions, recourse to electoral procedures to determine a majority, guarantee of the rights of the minority, etc. with the opposed values of submission to the requirements of collective discipline and the authority of the supreme leader and his main agents. This reversal of values is then always accompanied by a return of backward-looking ideas, which are able to provide an apparent legitimacy to the procedures of submission that are implemented.

In his inaugural address, written by his alt-right advisers Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, Trump declared, in what economist Joseph Stiglitz has called “historical fascist overtones”: “From this moment on, it’s going to be America First…. And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again.” The Trump administration is marked by an extraordinary attempt to bring the mainstream media in line with its neo-fascist objectives. Trump has declared that he is in a running war with the media and that journalists are among the most dishonest people on earth. Barely a month into his presidency, Trump tweeted that the mainstream media “is the enemy of the American people.” A part of the power of his administration lies in a largely compliant and ideologically right-wing Republican-dominated Congress.

What makes the rise of a neo-fascist White House of such great concern is the enormous weight of the US presidency, and the long-term breakdown in the separation of powers in the US Constitution. The undermining of the Congressional power to declare war, established in the Constitution, is well known. In the Trump vision of the restoration of US geopolitical and economic power, enemies are primarily designated in racial and religious terms. A renewed emphasis is put on placing US boots on the ground in the Middle East and on naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea, where much of the world’s new oil reserves are to be found, and which is China’s main future surety of access to oil in the case of world conflict. Because of Trump’s hauteur and warfare aridity, the Korean peninsula has also become a hot-bed bedeviling grievous affrights to millions of people. The result of these attempts to institute a sudden shift in the geopolitical strategy of the United States has been not only a falling-out in the US ruling class between neoliberals and Trump-style neo-fascists, but also a struggle within the deep state, resulting in the leaks that brought down Flynn.

Trump’s geopolitical strategy ultimately looks east toward China, taking the form of threatened protectionism combined with military posturing. The new administration immediately moved to set aside the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which appeared to be failing as an instrument for controlling China—preferring instead blunter methods, including a possible confrontation with China over the South China Sea.

A neo-fascist economic strategy would be a more extreme version of neoliberal austerity, backed by racism and war preparation. It would be aimed at liberating capital from regulation—giving free rein to monopoly-finance capital. This would be accompanied by more aggressive attempts to wield US power directly, on a more protectionist basis. In the longer-run the economic contradictions of the system would remain, but the new economic nationalism would be aimed at making sure that in the context of global economic stagnation, the United States would seize a greater share of the global pie.

Nevertheless, an expansion of the war economy is fraught with dangers, and its stimulus effects on production are less potent than in the past. Now, in our own time, the old contest i.e. fascism versus the democratic resistance is there again. Self-appointed super-patriots of the far right…croak their froglike voices to the tunes of a victory which, they would have us believe, is theirs: whereas, in fact, the truth is precisely the reverse. New national fronts clamber on the scene, no smaller or more stupid than the Nazis were when they began. Old equivocations are replaced by new equivocations, just as apparently respectable and proper as the old ones were.

Donald Trump must be one of the most widely and fiercely lampooned people of all time; indeed, his entire life can be seen as a one-man war of attrition against the forces of irony. His fortunes are not damaged by it. In fact, it is a war he keeps winning. Trump has a lot of fragile pride, but no shame. His campaign for president invited what must have been the largest onslaught of parodies, sketches, punch lines, unflattering cartoons and disparaging limericks that has ever been unleashed against a single individual. It had zero effect.

In spite of it all, he managed to win. But they are all things to resist. Jack London reminds us these words, “There is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What its nature may be I refuse to imagine. But what I wanted to say was this: You are in a perilous position.” The dirty truth is Trump can’t be trusted. Today it is clear that the future order of society is in the grassroots, but the soil and sunlight are still up for grabs.

-The End –

How (and How Not) to Talk About the Israel Lobby

There’s a difference between fair and unfair criticisms of AIPAC—and it’s time everyone, including AIPAC, acknowledges it.

Vehicles burn along a road during a protest in Jammu on Feb. 15, the day after an attack on a Central Reserve Police Force convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir. (Rakesh Bakshi/AFP/Getty Images)

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

| FEBRUARY 15, 2019, 12:11 PM

The recent uproar over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweets criticizing the conduct of Israel’s government and its U.S. supporters, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), makes one thing clear: U.S.-Israel relations (and U.S. Middle East policy more broadly) remains a third rail that one touches at one’s peril. The harsh responses to Omar are hardly surprising, and unfortunately—as in the past—this latest furor has generated considerably more heat than light. But the breadth and vehemence of the reaction are still instructive.

Let’s start with some obvious but vital points. Anti-Semitism has a long and loathsome history dating back centuries, and the vicious killings at a Pittsburgh synagogue last year remind us that it remains a threat today. Anti-Semites have fanned the flames with bizarre conspiracy theories about secret cabals (e.g., the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and sinister claims about the influence of “Jewish money,” along with divisive accusations of national disloyalty (as in the notorious Dreyfus affair in France). Such hateful beliefs and tropes have had fatal consequences, most notably the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust, but it’s important to recognize (as Omar has acknowledged learning recently) that the history of anti-Semitism and its current expression are more widespread than that particular horror.
Given all that, Jews are understandably alarmed and angry when similar ideas or tropes are invoked today. Indeed, everyone should be. We should all be outraged when a world leader such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban directs classic anti-Semitic accusations at someone like George Soros or when Republican politicians use similar themes in campaigns and fail to denounce anti-Semitic chants at political rallies.

But at the same time, we need to be able to talk openly and calmly about all the forces that shape U.S. politics today, including groups like AIPAC and related organizations that seek to influence U.S. policy toward Israel and the Middle East. Bigotry and violence must be firmly rejected, but vigilance to prevent a resurgence of anti-Semitism should not be used as a political weapon to silence honest discourse now. As J.J. Goldberg, the former editor of the Forward, wrote in his insightful book Jewish Power, “It seems as though we’re forced to choose between Jews holding vast and pernicious control or Jewish influence being non-existent. … [S]omewhere in the middle is a reality that none wants to discuss, which is that there is an entity called the Jewish community made up of a group of organizations and public figures that’s part of the political rough-and-tumble. There’s nothing wrong with playing the game like everybody else” (my emphasis).

Precisely. Goldberg’s candid acknowledgement of both the historical legacy and context and the present reality tells us a lot about how one should think and talk about the influence that different organizations and individuals play in U.S. Middle East policy. To be specific:

First, what groups such as AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Christians United for Israel, the Zionist Organization of America, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and various other groups are doing, and what wealthy individuals such as Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson have done for years, is normal political activity and wholly in line with the interest group basis of U.S. politics.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of association and protects free speech, which means that any Americans who want to organize themselves and press for particular policies can do so within the confines of the law. The activities of the various groups and individuals comprising the Israel lobby are no different from what the National Rifle Association (NRA), the farm lobby, Big Pharma, the American Civil Liberties Union, or dozens of other interest groups do. There’s nothing secretive, conspiratorial, or illegitimate about it; it is how the U.S. system of government works.

Second, these groups and individuals are not a unified monolith, and there is no central leadership that directs their activities. Yes, there are a number of groups that actively work to preserve the so-called special relationship between the United States and Israel, but they sometimes disagree on specific issues, such as the merits of the nuclear deal with Iran or whether a two-state solution is the right answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. To suggest otherwise echoes the tropes described earlier and is simply incorrect.

Third, the Israel lobby is defined not by its members’ religion or ethnicity but by its political agenda—i.e., working to promote staunch U.S. support for Israel. To be sure, this includes American Jews who are ardent in their support of Israel, but some Americans who strongly favor unconditional support for Israel—notably Christian evangelicals—are not Jewish. Moreover, there are many people in the U.S. Jewish community who are critical of Israel and its policies. For this reason, using terms such as “Jewish lobby” to talk about pro-Israel groups is both inaccurate and inevitably conjures up dangerous stereotypes.

Fourth, like other interest groups, the Israel lobby uses a variety of strategies to accomplish its goals. Some of its influence comes from campaign contributions to political parties or politicians (although AIPAC does not do this), some from direct lobbying on Capitol Hill, some from public outreach (op-eds, books, position papers, media appearances, etc.), and some from the role that pro-Israel individuals may play in the U.S. government itself. Once again, such influence is no different from the influence that oil or pharmaceutical companies gain when individuals sympathetic to their aims get appointed to run the Department of the Interior or the Food and Drug Administration. Focusing solely on one item such as campaign contributions misses a lot of the story and risks reinforcing old historical canards.

Lastly, no interest group gets its way all of the time. The Israel lobby doesn’t control every aspect of U.S. Middle East policy, just as the NRA doesn’t control every aspect of gun control and health insurers didn’t get everything they wanted with Obamacare. But no one who has worked on foreign-policy issues in Washington or studied them with any objectivity would deny that AIPAC and related groups have considerable clout (which AIPAC brags about on its website), and policymakers remain sensitive to the lobby’s concerns, as any number of former officials have testified. But words matter, and using words such as “control” conjures up creepy and inaccurate images of shadowy puppet masters pulling strings.

Given all that, Omar’s tweets were both unfortunate and careless, and they stemmed from ignorance that she has subsequently acknowledged. But I do not believe they are evidence of anti-Semitism, and I don’t think it is helpful to respond to them with alarmist accusations and demands for her resignation. For starters, Twitter was the wrong medium: There’s simply no way to address the complexities of these issues in 140 (or even 280) characters. Second, her suggestion that AIPAC gives money to congressional candidates was factually incorrect. AIPAC engages in lots of face-to-face lobbying, runs a big annual conference, does grassroots work in local districts, sponsors congressional trips to Israel, and provides guidance to pro-Israel groups and individuals about candidates’ views on U.S.-Israel relations, but it doesn’t donate to congressional campaigns. If you’re going to wade into this minefield, it’s important to get your facts right.

But here’s the kicker: Though Omar deserved to be educated about the unfortunate manner and content of her critique, she would still have been pilloried even if she had been more sensitive to the history of anti-Semitism and offered a nuanced and well-documented argument. Why? Because being aware of, sensitive to, and deeply opposed to anti-Semitism and offering an informed, factual picture of the lobby’s activities affords little or no protection to anyone who is critical of Israel’s actions, is concerned about the one-sided nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and disagrees with the policy positions that groups like AIPAC endorse.

How do I know? Let’s just say I have some experience with this phenomenon.

In my 2007 book with John Mearsheimer, we began by observing that any discussion of this topic “takes place in the shadow of two thousand years of history, especially the centuries of very real anti-Semitism in Europe.” We described that history as a “shameful record.” We also condemned its more recent manifestations—such as the hatemongering of people like David Duke—and we “categorically reject[ed]” the hateful canards about Jewish finance, media control, and “dual loyalty.”

We were quite critical of some of the positions that groups like AIPAC and others had advocated for, but at no point did we suggest these activities were illegitimate, just that the consequences had been a disaster for the Middle East and for the United States. While critical of many of Israel’s actions, we also expressed our admiration for its many achievements and wrote the book in the hope that a more balanced debate over these critical issues and policies would ensure a more secure Israel in a more stable Middle East. Our book said repeatedly that the United States should come to Israel’s aid if its survival were ever in jeopardy, and we argued forcefully for a two-state solution.

Yet despite these points repeated throughout the book, we faced essentially the same firestorm of criticism that Omar’s brief tweets occasioned. We were openly and repeatedly denounced as anti-Semites or “Jew-baiters,” falsely charged with having done our research on neo-Nazi websites, and in many cases accused of saying the exact opposite of what we actually wrote. Our critics were not just Twitter trolls but were in many cases prominent individuals with intellectual and political credentials. Even 12 years later, it makes me shake my head that we were in effect condemned as haters for pointing out that AIPAC and other like-minded organizations were extremely effective at accomplishing what they openly advertised they were trying to do!

Why does any serious criticism of Israel or the lobby generate this sort of firestorm, no matter how well one understands the sensitivity of these issues and no matter how carefully one expresses one’s views? Because after more than 50 years of occupation, the repeated and disproportionate pummeling of a captive population in Gaza, and the steady rightward drift of Israeli domestic politics, support for Israel is declining in the United States. Only by discrediting and shaming those who point out some of these difficult realities can the pro-Israel lobby keep the debate one-sided and U.S. unconditional support sustained.

So the reaction to anyone of any prominence who criticizes Israel’s actions or the current special relationship must be to condemn, marginalize, and if possible silence them. If their careers are permanently damaged so much the better, as that may deter others from speaking up in the future. The result is that there is still no honest or accurate discourse about such matters in the United States.
I believe that such efforts will ultimately backfire. Most Americans—including the vast majority of American Jews—prize freedom of speech, mutual tolerance, and basic human rights. They rightly resent efforts to silence dissenting voices, and they understand that the traditional protections of a liberal society are essential to preserving the security of minority populations everywhere.

Most importantly, only an open and honest discourse on these topics is likely to produce a Middle East policy that would be better for the United States and Israel alike. As J Street noted in its own response to the controversy surrounding Omar: “It does nothing to advance the true interests and needs of Israelis or Palestinians, nor those of the American Jewish community.”
Exactly.

Defence Industrial Policy & Production Programme – Tamil Nadu

AF’s TEJAS Light combat aircraft

By  S. Sivathasan –FEBRUARY 16, 2019

S. Sivathasan

 together with armament production, procurement and policy related thereto fall within the ambit of the central government of India. No country that develops economically, neglects to grow militarily. The quality of armaments decides success in diplomacy and victory in war. This is no discovery but a commonplace. The critical decision that India took in recent years, declared or unannounced, was to turn militarist; not for aggression but for defence. On the issue of integrating Goa with India, Patel said at the cabinet meeting, “If you are agreed, I need only 24 hours”. Horror struck Rajaji said, “We must conquer Goa by love”. In 1962, Krishna Menon boldly declared to the world “India never abjured violence when it came to safeguarding her interests”. He did a Patel and with Police action, Goa became integrally Indian.

Not for nothing does Patel stand tall in steel in Gujarat; the tallest in the world. Not without sense was he called the Bismarck of India. Now Modi’s diplomacy works with remarkable success. When buttressed by more impressive arms, it will work with greater potency. The Indian bureaucracy, technocracy, military and the nation’s leadership are learned enough and adequately experienced not to repeat the Sino – Indian debacle of 1962. So quite adroitly, the correct moment is now seized, to burnish military prowess with unstoppable forward movement.

Compulsions for Indigenous Defence Production

India’s strength is a compound of economic power and demographic growth. Increasing assertiveness already displayed, permits of no stepping back. Threats in the western frontier, danger from the North, ravenous appetite and drool for Indian territory seen in the east are ominous enough. To add to the woes is the risk of what was called the ‘Permanent Aircraft Carrier’ in the south of Indian Ocean being hijacked. To students of history greater danger lurks in the “soft underbelly that is South India”. The latest incursion by the British in the 18thcentury was not from the northern passes, but through the South.

To Kautilya, that state which is on the borders of another state is an enemy. Hitherto, such a prospect might have been staved off through adroit diplomacy. Now the wisdom of Frederik the Great, “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments’, is a constant reminder.

In 1976, KPS Menon the distinguished scholar, a student of history, diplomat and writer declared open the Foreign Affairs Unit of the BMICH, Sri Lanka. In the course of his speech, he said that the US President had appointed a group of scholars to study and forecast how the world will be 20 years from then ie around 1996. The group had said among other things “India will grow into a great power, SHE WILL BE A DANGER TO HER NEIGHBOURS…,”. Then with a touch of humour Menon said that it does not mean India will be a threat to Sri Lanka. There was laughter. He added “I don’t know how learned men can make such a statement”. To this writer, it was the learned men’s learning that brought forth this warning.

Imperatives Before India

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'I only knew about weddings': Destitute Yemenis sell their daughters to pay their debts

Child marriage rates in Yemen were falling before the war, but the now desperate situation means a dowry can be tempting

By Nasser al-Sakkaf-in Taiz, Yemen- 17 February 2019 

Zahr is 15 years old, the first of four siblings living in an old house in a village 50km south of Taiz city, in southwest Yemen.  

Her father is a labourer, but there is not much construction work to be found because of Yemen's war and the family has been forced to borrow money to pay for food and other basic items.

One day last year, Zahr's aunt, who lives in the same house, went to see a doctor about a nasal congestion condition.

The doctor advised that she should undergo surgery, which the family paid for at a cost of 100,000 Yemeni rials ($153).

And while Zahr's aunt found she could breathe more easily, the family felt increasingly constrained by their worsening finances.

A few days later, a man in his 40s proposed to marry Zahr for a dowry of $1,000. The family immediately rejected his offer.

"But then we thought about the proposal, and we realised it was a way to pay off our debts," Zahr's mother, Fatima, told Middle East Eye.

"So we contacted the man, and we married off our daughter to him to pay the debt of my sister's treatment."

'I only knew about weddings'

Zahr was 14 at the time and still a schoolgirl. But she withdrew from classes because, she said, her husband did not allow her to study.

The marriage would prove to be a “very difficult experience” because she was still a child, she said.

"I was not aware enough about marriage. I only knew about weddings and the juice and the cakes," she told MEE.

"I never dreamt I would be a bride, but one day, unfortunately, it happened to me."

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The arguments with her husband started immediately, Zahr said, as he not only stopped her from going to school but also tried to prevent her from contacting her family.

"I resorted to selling my wedding ring and buying a phone so I could speak to my family. But my husband found out, and he took away my mobile," she said. "In the way he treated me, he became a symbol of injustice and oppression."

Finally, after a few months, Zahr was able to flee and return to her family home. She refuses to go back to her husband.

"I was not a wife at all. I married an old man who made me a servant for his extended family from early in the morning to the night," she said.

"Child marriage is inappropriate. and I do not advise girls to marry until they are aware about marriage."

Deprived of a childhood

Speaking to MEE, Zahr's mother, Fatima, could not hold back her tears and said she was crying because she felt guilty about the way in which her daughter had been treated.

"We are sinful as we deprived Zahr of her childhood. My daughter suffered in her marriage, and I hope Allah will forgive me for this sin."

Figures suggest that rates of child marriage in Yemen, which had been in decline prior to the war, have been rising as a consequence of the desperate circumstances in which many families find themselves because of the conflict.

Child marriage was once a widely accepted custom in Yemen. But determined efforts by activists and children's rights organisations, and publicity surrounding the case of Nujud Mohammed Ali, who was granted a divorce in 2008 at the age of eight, had been effective in raising awareness about the negative consequences of the tradition.

However, the conflict has disrupted pre-war efforts by activists to push for the introduction of a legal minimum age of 17 for marriage. Sanaa had also seen protesters gather outside the parliament.

Nujud Mohammed Ali, who was granted a divorce at the age of eight, takes part in a demonstration against child marriage in Sanaa in 2010 (AFP)

According to a UNICEF report published in 2017, more than two-thirds of girls in Yemen are married off before the age of 18 compared with about 50 percent before 2015.

Some parents believe that marrying off their daughters will spare them the cost of caring for them, or that they will be better protected by their husband’s family.

And like Zahr's family, some are tempted by dowry payments that can help them clear debts or buy food, medicine or other essential supplies.

UNICEF also noted in 2017 that cases of child brides were more common in areas hosting large numbers of displaced people.

MEE contacted the Save the Children country office in Yemen to comment, but they declined to speak because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Walter Mawere, the manager of advocacy, media and communications at Save the Children in Yemen, told MEE that child marriage was a "red-line" issue for the organisation on which it never commented.

'I cannot write my name'

Fawzia, 15, was brought up by her grandmother, Husn, after her father had divorced her mother before she was born. When both remarried, Fawzia said, there was no one else to care for her.

Husn, who is in her 60s, works as a shepherd tending sheep and goats in al-Shimayateen district, 70km from Taiz city, and earns enough to support herself, her blind husband, a divorced daughter and Fawzia.

Since the age of five, Fawzia has worked alongside her grandmother, minding the livestock. As a consequence though, Fawzia has never been to school and she remains illiterate.

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"I cannot write my name because I did not get a chance to study. I can only work as a shepherd," Fawzia told MEE. "This is what I have learnt from my grandmother."

As Fawzia got older, her grandmother found it harder to buy everything that she needed, and her father was not sending any money to help.

When a marriage proposal was offered last year by the family of a boy of Fawzia’s age, Husn accepted.

"Child marriage is a disaster and I do not advise girls of my age to marry. I have suffered in my marriage, but on the other hand, it was also better than a life dependent on my grandmother," said Fawzia.

Married nine months ago, Fawzia is now eight months pregnant and soon to be a mother to a baby who will never know its father.

"Six months ago, my husband got in a dispute with some other people and they hit him so violently that they killed him," she said.

'He's still in the fridge'

The family want the killers to be brought to justice and have vowed not to bury Fawzia's husband until the local court issues a judgement in the case.

"He's still in the fridge of the hospital. So I've no one to pay for my livelihood anymore, and I have resorted to working as a shepherd with my grandmother again," she added.

Fawzia has not returned to her grandmother's two-room home, however.

Instead, she now lives in her uncle's house where five of them share one room and a hall, which doubles as a kitchen.

Although she needs to visit a doctor to check on the health of her unborn baby, she does not have the money to do so and her uncle prevents her from asking other people for help, she said.

Husn, Fawzia's grandmother, told MEE she had married off all of her three daughters before they turned 18 because she could not afford to support them as adults, and had done the same for Fawzia.

"I treated Fawzia like my daughters and I married her off at 15 years old, but she was unlucky as her husband was killed," Husn said.

"I married Fawzia off for a dowry of 300,000 rials [$450]. Her husband only paid me 100,000 - and I'm still owed 200,000."

Editor’s note: Some of the names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of the people concerned.