The survey comes within a month of the “partnership” between Trump and Fox News, of the type one sees between Modi and Republic TV in India, falling apart, with TV channel anchor Neil Cavuto declaring: “First of all, Mr President, we don’t work for you. I don’t work for you. My job is to cover you, not fawn over you or rip you. Just report on you – call balls and strikes on you.”

Cavuto’s response was to Trump, who had tweeted: “Just watched Fox News heavily promoting the Democrats… The New Fox News is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”

Reporting on the survey, which took place on September 17-19, and released just ahead of the Modi event, a Fox News report said, “Many voters are frustrated with how the federal government is working and a growing number are nervous about the economy”. It added, “While 37 percent feel confident about the economy, 48 percent feel nervous. That’s up from a low of 43 percent nervous in March 2019.”

“The poll also finds the president’s economic policies receive mixed reviews: 43 percent think Trump’s policies are hurting the economy, while 39 percent say helping”, the report says, adding, “Views are more negative on tariffs, as voters think they hurt rather than help the economy by a 45-31 percent margin.”

The report continues, “Despite those concerns, the economy barely makes the top five when voters are asked, without prompting from a list, the most important issue facing the country. Immigration is the most frequently mentioned at 13 percent. No other issue hits double-digits. Next is gun violence (9 percent), health care (8 percent), opposing Trump (8 percent), and the economy (7 percent).”

According to the report, Trump’s “job ratings on every other issue tested are underwater: national security (45 approve-48 disapprove), immigration (42-54), international trade (38-53), foreign policy (36-54), guns (35-56), health care (34-56), and Afghanistan (31-49).”
 

 

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What is happening to democracies across the globe? Neoliberalism and the rise of authoritarianism are moving together and, by dismantling social harmonies and states, are threatening democracy’s very existence. In fact they are combining and consolidating in different forms, of which three look more remarkable.

First, there is the rise of nationalist populism. The success of Donald Trump in the USA, Narendra Modi in India, Boris Johnson in Britain, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Jair Messias Bolsonaro in Brazil and many others is not only an example of the symptoms but also the result of a democratic deficit in the present world. Old political forces are losing ground (for instance traditional conservative, liberal, and social democratic parties) and, following Gramsci, “the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic ‘men of destiny’[1].”  Local, national and international politics is increasingly driven by ethnic, racial and religious conflicts in Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East; examples are the wars in Kashmir and Myanmar, or the ‘proxy’ wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The populist upheavals have not changed the old-world order; they are rather reinforcing it more vigorously, by imposing a harsher neoliberalism and creating an illusion of welfare only for the national/religious/ethnic community of choice[2]. Religious fundamentalism, national glory, lawlessness, vulgar wealth and huge inequalities are five common features between old and modern world. They have laid the foundations for reactionary nationalism and authoritarian capitalism across the globe;democracy and states have become tools of such a dangerous worldwide process.

Together with nationalist populism, the world has witnessed the rise of two other types of authoritarian political form. In Europe, the continental union has increasingly imposed its rules as a technocratic infrastructure mainly aimed at incorporating Eastern and later Southern European countries into a neoliberal (more specifically, or do liberal) system in which democratic choices are marginalised in the name of a repressive ideology of austerity masked as ‘technocracy.’ Far from being a neutral instrument for the common good, rule by experts has proved instrumental to the wishes and interests of Western European corporations, their supporters in ‘core’ countries (especially Germany), and their allies in the so-called ‘periphery.’ The third type of authoritarian neoliberalism has emerged in countries where authoritarianism was already a reality (for example, China, Russia, Central Asian states), and in which it has taken on more nationalist, protectionist, and repressive features, mostly as a response to pressure coming from the neoliberalising West. Russia and the various ex-Soviet -stan have embraced more authoritarian forms after being catapulted to neoliberalism in the 1990s. China has become more authoritarian in reaction to its growing engagement with the global economy, and also to defend the economic benefits, if limited, its hundreds of millions of citizens have earned over the last four decades.

Authoritarianism, in short, is spreading in a variety of forms.

The pioneers of globalisation and lovers of free market argued that they would bring peace and prosperity by ending war and conflicts. They also argued that it would help in the growth and establishment of vibrant and multicultural democracies, and even put an end to history itself. In reality, globalisation has expanded the conflicts and old world inequalities. The rich have become richer and the poor, poorer. The class, gender, race, caste and regional fault lines continue to grow. The neoliberal capitalist project has out manoeuvred the ideal alternatives of the October and French revolutions and the promises of anti-colonial struggles. All idealisms are in a downward spiral. How do we analyse these upheavals? Is it a sign of the Westphalian nation state’s end?

It is impossible to offer alternatives for a better tomorrow without understanding the present predicaments and their history.

Lineages and transformations of the state

The democratic deficit of the state is embedded within the history of the capitalist and Westphalian nation state. The peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 set the conditions for the emergence of capitalist forces by establishing states based on the idea of territorial sovereignty. It helped to end thirty years of savage war in Europe and complemented the changes leading to the industrial revolution in Britain[3]. Together with later peace treaties (for example, Utrecht in 1713), it also helped Europe plunder other continents with colonial rule in different parts of the world. The resources of the colonies were used to establish different institutions of economic development and democratic governance in Europe.

Therefore, ‘Westphalian’ states are innately colonial, capitalistic and authoritarian by nature but dressed up as democracies. Their democratic deepening depended to a large extent on the exploitation of vast regions of the world, clearly a non-democratic process. The referendum results and debates over Britain leaving the European Union (EU) are a classic example of democratic deficit and its relationship with European capitalism as embodied by the EU.

The post-colonial states emerged after the success of anticolonial struggles. The post-colonial states promised democratic governance based on ideals of liberty, equality, justice and welfare of all their citizens. Nehru’s India or Nkrumah’s Ghana are just two examples of a variety of new political forms that attempted to combine liberty and equality, national unity and non-Western ideas of cosmopolitanism. The anticolonial struggle had positive influence on European states. It transformed the nature of the states in Europe by making them more democratic, secular and multicultural in terms of citizenship rights with welfare orientations. Similar processes occurred in the USA, where the 1960s where the age of the ‘Great Society’ and witnessed the struggle and emancipation of women, African-Americans, and other minorities. Yet since the late 1970s the neoliberal Washington consensus has led to the universalisation of neoliberalism by ending ideals of democratic welfare state. The centralisation and securitisation of state became the order of the day to uphold the interests of the private capital which has grown enormously since the implementation of neoliberal policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.

We live in a world where Vox Populi, Vox Dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God) is replaced by the order of capitalism where market and money dominate the social, economic, political, cultural and even religious sphere. It is within this context that democracy and the state face challenges. Neoliberal authoritarianism emanates from a political and economic project that creates a culture of democratic deficit and a privatised state. The legitimacy crisis of the state creates the vacuums where ruling and non-ruling elites control the masses and all the resources with the help of securitised, centralised and authoritarian states. The ideological narrative of neoliberalism was based on individual freedom but in reality, we live in a society where people are in free prisons of market where prices are independent and free. It means the dead capital is free and lively labour in chains.

The quest for an alternative manifesto

The crisis created by democratic deficit, neoliberal authoritarianism and rise of reactionary right wing politics is a global phenomenon. Local and national contexts are important in the search for alternatives, even if the current political and economic crisis needs international solutions. It is imperative to develop a pluriversal praxis that is applicable to the world today. With this aim, four steps are particularly important.

The first step is to dismantle the structures of the Westphalian capitalist state system and all its affiliated supranational and international organisations. This is only possible by creating a solidarity of all grassroot movements for alternative democracy, for peace, the environment, development and prosperity as inalienable citizenship rights. International institutions should become fully democratic and inclusory, starting with those dealing with peace and development such as the United Nations and the European Union. It is also important to have a continuous solidarity of struggles to develop conditions for non-discriminatory, pluriversal and inalienable rights based on progressive and scientific ideas.

The second step is to develop conditions where local communities can control and manage their local resources based on their needs and desires with egalitarian distributive mechanisms. For example, Kurdish communities in Northern and Eastern Syria are currently at the heart of a system in which private property serves the needs of communities and is complemented by strong elements of cooperation and egalitarianism.
The third step is to develop local, national and international struggles against all conflicts, wars and industries affiliated with them including nuclear weapons. The defence industry (the ‘military-industrial complex’, still existent despite the end of the Cold War thirty years ago) creates wars to expand its profits. According to SIPRI, the USA spends on the military a staggering 649 billion dollars annually, more than the sum of the other nine top spenders. At the same time, the USA ranks 35 out of 37 OECD countries in terms of poverty and inequality.

The fourth one is a continuous struggle against all forms of authoritarianism and all forms of discrimination in every sphere of life. Racism, gender-based discrimination, persecution of LGBT groups, and disrespect for any diversity have regained ground in the West and much beyond it. International institutions should fight them more effectively and promote inclusion at all levels.

[1]Gramsci A (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: International Publishers.

[2]Nordensvard J and Ketola M (2015) Nationalist Reframing of the Finnish and Swedish Welfare States – The Nexus of Nationalism and Social Policy in Far-right Populist Parties. Social Policy & Administration 49(3): 356-375.

[3]Teschke B (2003)The Myth of 1648. Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations. London: Verso.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak, Coventry University, UK
Ernesto Gallo, Regents University, London

Courtesy: Counter Current

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Navy boats from the United Arab Emirates next to the Al Marzoqah of Saudi Arabia, one of several international oil tankers attacked in the Gulf in May 2019. The Saudi government has blamed Iran for acts of sabotage. Reuters/Satish Kumar

It was the latest in a series of assaults on tankers transporting oil through the Gulf. In May, Saudi, Norwegian and Emirati oil tankers were attacked off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, causing damage but no casualties. The attacks have gone unclaimed, so the perpetrator is unknown – at least publicly.

U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, blamed the Iranian government and called the May attacks “naked aggression.” Saudi King Salman asked the international community to “use all means” to punish Iran.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, who has called for bombing Iran to cripple its nuclear program, has maintained that Iran is “almost certainly” responsible for the attacks. In May Bolton announced the deployment to the Persian Gulf of a carrier strike group and a nuclear-capable bomber task force, America’s most formidable military assets.

The purpose: “to send a clear and unmistakable message” to Iran.

But the White House is squabbling over its objectives, which are far from clear. Trump administration officials do not seem to agree whether the U.S. wants behavior change or regime change. Should the U.S. use diplomacy or force? Are frustrated Iranians or frustrated Americans the target of this military deployment?

President Trump told U.K. television host Piers Morgan that military options are on the table but, “I’d much rather talk.”

According to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, President Trump “wants to sound tough (popular) so long as it doesn’t get him into a war (unpopular).” President Trump “doesn’t want to go to war with Iran,” retired General David Petraeus told ABC News.

As a scholar who has studied the onset of a number of wars, I believe these commentators underestimate the influence of shrewd warmongers like Bolton. They also fail to credit how quickly a trivial confrontation between industrialized forces can change a leader’s calculus and drag the great powers and their allies into war.

The showdown in the Persian Gulf is not like the U.S. and the Soviet Union incrementally adjusting the balance of power, as they did during the Cold War.

Mixed signals, bad timing and this kind of uncalibrated brinksmanship is how World War I began and spiraled out of control. It has brought the U.S. closer to the next Middle East war.

Up to the edge

Iran brokered a deal with the U.S., the EU, Russia, China and Germany in 2015 to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
The current standoff began in May 2018 when President Trump reneged on the deal and later implemented a new “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which included economic sanctions punishing countries purchasing Iranian oil.

The U.K., France, China, Russia and Germany pledged to abide by the terms of the deal. Nevertheless, U.S. sanctions against Iranian industry at a time when Iran was complying with the deal are collapsing the Iranian economy.

The White House claims its “maximum pressure” policy is working – that Iran is cutting aid to malevolent allies and proxies in the region, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah and Hamas.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo maintains, without evidence or a tangible timeline, that grueling economic conditions created by the U.S. will turn frustrated Iranians against their leaders, provoking regime change.

That idea seems to me to be magical thinking. U.S. belligerence, especially when it has been rejected by the broader international community – as it is now by parties to the 2015 nuclear deal – is more likely to turn Iranians against the U.S., polarize U.S. allies and strengthen Iran’s hardliners.

Cosmopolitan Iranian youth, for example, who are the best hope for peace with the U.S., are the most likely group to turn against their government – but not if the Trump administration strangles their economy and threatens to invade their country.

Limited choices

In the meantime, Iran’s economic troubles are narrowing its options.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has accelerated uranium enrichment and intends to quadruple production, in violation of the nuclear deal. Attacks on U.S. forces or allies, including Israel, are becoming increasingly appealing to Iranian leaders to give Iran some leverage against the U.S.

The prospect of economic collapse under draconian sanctions by the U.S. also provokes Iran’s leaders to instigate a confrontation sooner rather than later, while its military and proxies are strong. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has given Germany, the U.K., France, China and Russia 60 days to honor their promise to buttress Iranian energy and banking sectors before taking additional steps to withdraw from the nuclear deal.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, center, announced on May 8, 2019 that his country would resume higher uranium enrichment if the Iran deal was acceptably not altered. Iranian Presidency Office via AP

Iran’s economic and military weakness also encourages its leadership to cooperate more closely with America’s foreign adversaries, including Russia, despite Iran’s aversion to ceding precious influence in the region.

If the Iran-Russia relationship tightens, it will result in even greater tension with the U.S. Increased Iranian-Russian cooperation is also an invitation to U.S. leaders to strike before U.S. troops find themselves facing an emboldened Iranian military reinforced with Russian equipment and know-how.

With each day of U.S. sanctions, Iran’s leaders become increasingly desperate, with diminished leverage should the two countries face off on the battlefield or at the negotiating table.

Defusing the tension

With tensions rising, the U.S. has sent an additional 1,500 troops to the Middle East. Iran’s 60-day ultimatum to parties to the nuclear deal expires in early July.

According to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, “Negotiation has no benefit and carries harm.”

Iran experts Colin Kahl and Jon Wolfsthal warn, “Bolton’s preferences, not Trump’s, are winning out.”

There is still time for President Trump to extract the U.S. from this dangerous standoff that he allowed to escalate.

Trump’s greatest hope lies in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Japan, which is not party to the 2015 nuclear deal, is a major purchaser of Iranian oil and Abe is perceived to be a neutral broker.

Abe is visiting Iran this week – the first Japanese leader to do so in four decades – and will meet with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Prime Minister Rouhani to discuss the standoff.

It is unclear what Abe can accomplish in this overheated climate. A potential solution lies in intense, nuanced diplomacy where the U.S., building on the 2015 nuclear deal, trades sanction relief for slightly tougher limits on Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton has a lead Trump administration critic of Iran. Reuters/Darren Ornitz

This includes renegotiating the restrictions on Iran’s centrifuges, mandatory international inspections, and its accumulation of nuclear material. A slightly modified nuclear deal like Trump’s slightly modified trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, can be recast as victory by all.

Trump emerges as peacemaker and potential contender for the Nobel Prize. Iran’s leaders can then right their economy.

Trump’s winning outcome, however, is not the outcome Bolton has long advocated.

For decades, Bolton has publicly agitated for preventive strikes against Iraq, North Korea and Iran. Only grudgingly, perhaps for fear of losing his job, has Bolton acquiesced to a policy of behavior change over regime change.

This is the price Bolton pays to remain the president’s national security adviser — filterer of Trump’s intelligence reports, first one in and last one out of the room whenever the president is discussing matters of war and peace.

If Abe fails, the current Iran crisis may yet become the culmination of Bolton’s lifelong ambition. When new explosions rock the Persian Gulf, U.S. troops are injured or killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq, or Iranian-made drones pepper the Saudi skies, will President Trump resist the urge to escalate?

Courtesy: The Conversation

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Donald Trump has now declared the caravan of refugees from Honduras and other Central American countries making their way on foot to the U.S. border an “invasion of our country” that has created a “national emergency.” “We have no choice,” he bellowed from the White House on November 1. “We will defend our borders. We will defend our country.” And on November 3, at a rally in Montana, he said of the people on the caravan, “These people are vicious,” calling them “very tough, young people” and claiming they were “criminals in some cases. In many cases.”

On the basis of this pack of lies, Trump has called out the army, and the Department of Defense immediately responded with the deployment of 5,200 active duty military troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has now upped that to 15,000 troops. Military officials have made clear that some of these soldiers will be armed. Still not enough for Trump, he told the soldiers they can open fire if a refugee throws a rock, then backed off when the military refused to do it.

These troops are in addition to the 2,100 National Guard troops already there as “backup” to the nearly 20,000 Border Patrol agents with all of their high-tech border security already in operation. The deployment of active-duty military forces is unprecedented, although both Obama and Bush mobilized thousands of National Guard troops to the border when they were in office.

Not satisfied with mobilizing “troops on the ground,” Trump is expanding the list of “emergency measures” he’s considering to further threaten and intimidate these refugees who have every right—including the clear legal right under U.S. law—to come to the border and request asylum:

• Shutting down the border completely.
• Prohibiting all immigrants from the countries represented from entering the U.S.—including refugees requesting asylum—similar to his successful banning of Muslims from selected predominantly Muslim countries.
• Threatening to imprison refugees indefinitely while awaiting their asylum hearing—potentially for years—outdoors in tent city detention centers in the sweltering heat. These are refugees who’ve already shown a “credible fear” of facing repression if forced to return. Until recently, most refugees were released eventually while awaiting their asylum hearing in immigration court.
• Now Trump has proposed eliminating birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants—and claims he can bypass Congress, and violate the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—by simply issuing an executive order. This proposal has triggered controversy and opposition within the ruling class, even among Republicans.

Trump’s unrelenting anti-immigrant tirade is being portrayed by the mainstream media as just an election maneuver—putting the blame at the feet of the Democrats for their supposed “open borders” policy. But what the Trump/Pence regime is accomplishing is far more. They’re further mobilizing fascist forces behind the intensifying attacks on immigrants and their call for ethnic cleansing, as part of consolidating their whole fascist program.

In America, “I’m a nationalist!” = “I’m a white supremacist!”

The Trump/Pence regime has brought forward a fascist program in the face of the serious crises U.S. imperialism is facing internationally and within this country. They have set out to consolidate this country around the open restoration of white supremacy, male supremacy, and anti-immigrant xenophobia, along with USA #1 chauvinism, with the rallying cry: “Make America White Again!”

In the middle of his xenophobic horror show, Trump declared “I’m a nationalist!” In a country founded on slavery and genocide—with white supremacy sewn into its fabric from the very start—this means “I’m a white supremacist.” The ethnic cleansing of dark-skinned, poor immigrants from “shithole countries” has become a crucial part of galvanizing their core white supremacist supporters and consolidating their fascist program as a whole. And that includes slamming, and threatening to criminalize, opposition from Democrats representing other sections of the ruling class, as they’ve done in going after “sanctuary cities,” threatening to arrest the mayor of Oakland and bring charges against the governor of California.

The Trump/Pence regime is exaggerating and playing on the fears in this country of the massive numbers of immigrants coming to the border.

What is the larger context? The U.S.’s open backing of right-wing death squads and reactionary regimes in these countries (see accompanying article “Hell in Honduras—American Made”) is coupled with continued economic domination and devastation of countries south of the U.S. border—a border that is itself a result of wars of conquest by the U.S. The workings of this capitalist-imperialist system have led to a great lopsidedness between the imperialist countries of the world, the “First World,” and the vast number of oppressed nations, the “Third World.” This generates massive flows of migrants from the Third World, looking for refuge and livelihood, now further exacerbated around the world by devastating wars and global warming. They—the rulers and enforcers of this system—have NO ANSWER. Faced with this, the rulers rely on more and more militarization of borders and deportation of immigrants in response to what they perceive as “the problem.”

What Is the Response of the Democrats?

This is why, even before the Trump/Pence regime escalated the assault on immigrants to new, fascist levels of brutality, the same program was carried out by Obama, Bush, Clinton, and by previous presidents.

It was the Democrat Obama who earned the title “deporter-in-chief” by the pro-immigrant community for setting the record with more than two million deportations while he was president. And his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, responded to the arrival of large numbers of unaccompanied migrant children in 2014 this way: “We have to send a clear message: just because your child gets across the border doesn’t mean your child gets to stay.” Note she didn’t distinguish asylum seekers who would be, and at times were, killed because she saw to it the child didn’t “get to stay.”

Where have the Democratic Party leaders been while Trump has been issuing a call to arms to “real” Americans to take action against immigrants? In large part they’ve stood aside and told people to stay focused on health care, and let this attack go unchallenged. They’ve agonized at the sight of poor and exhausted refugees coming to seek asylum—because it helps rally anti-immigrant Republicans in the elections! The reality is that the Democrats have no other program to bring forward, because it is the very workings of the system of capitalism-imperialism that they, too, represent that created this immigration crisis.

This, even as the fascist sections of the ruling class of this system, such as Trump, Pence, and Jeff Sessions, further promote extreme forms of demonization of immigrants, relying on and reinforcing the white supremacy which pervades this society, as most of the immigrants are Central and South Americans.

The demonization, criminalization, and deportation of immigrants is rooted deeply in and flows from the system—the system of capitalism-imperialism. The Democratic Party, as demonstrated by Obama, is not the answer, because they represent and enforce the very same system—and relying on them is worse than useless: it contributes to shoring up this whole oppressive setup. To actually move fundamentally beyond this intolerable situation—and get to a far better society and world—this system must be OVERTHROWN by an actual revolution—to be replaced by a radically different society and system, aiming to end all of the social divisions worldwide, the oppression and exploitation of this system, that give rise to this problem in the first place. And from this perspective, it is even more crucial that we wage fierce resistance against these escalated attacks on immigrants, uniting with the tens of millions whose consciences are shocked by the scope and nature of these acts of the Trump/Pence regime.

We urge readers to watch the new talk by Bob Avakian (available at revcom.us)—Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution—where the source and solution to the immigration crisis is addressed. And in particular, watch the Q&A: “Bob Avakian’s Answer to People Who Complain About Immigrants Crossing Borders.”
STOP: The Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!

This article was first published on countercurrents.org
 

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Image: DonkeyHotey / Flickr
 

President Donald Trump has just fulfilled a campaign pledge to tear up the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievement, a multilateral agreement constraining Iran’s nuclear enrichment (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA).

In doing so, the president went against the advice of, among many others, his secretary of defense, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), Washington’s three most important European allies, and almost-two thirds of Americans who believe that the U.S. should not withdraw from the deal, according to a CNN poll released on Tuesday morning.

Trump appears absolutely determined to undo as much of what Barack Obama accomplished as possible. In addition, the sheer perversity of his personality may well explain today’s action. But it may also be useful to follow the apochryphal advice that Watergate’s famous “Deep Throat” offered to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men, particularly in the unbelievably corrupt swamp of the Trump era.

Indeed, today’s unpopular announcement may have been exactly what two of Trump’s biggest donors, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, and what one of his biggest inaugural supporters, Paul Singer, paid for when they threw their financial weight behind Trump. Marcus and Adelson, who are also board members of the Likudist Republican Jewish Coalition, have already received substantial returns on their investment: total alignment by the U.S. behind Israel, next week’s move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and the official dropping of “occupied territories” to describe the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Adelson, for his part, was Trump and the GOP’s biggest campaign supporter. He and his wife Miriam contributed $35 million in outside spending to elect Trump, $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC exclusively dedicated to securing a GOP majority in the House of Representatives), and $35 million to the Senate Leadership Fund (the Senate counterpart) in the 2016 election cycle.

Trump, who had previously complained that Adelson was seeking to “mold [Marco Rubio] into the perfect little puppet,” quickly snapped around and echoed Adelson’s hawkish positions on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem after Trump won the Republican nomination and secured Adelson’s backing.

Politico reported that the most threatening line in Trump’s October UN speech—that he would cancel Washington’s participation in the JCPOA if Congress and U.S. allies did not bend to his efforts to renegotiate it—came directly from John Bolton, now Trump’s national security advisor, and with the full weight of Trump’s biggest donor. The hawkish language was not in the original remarks prepared by Trump’s staff.

The line was added to Trump’s speech after Bolton, despite Kelly’s recent edict [restricting Bolton’s access to Trump], reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely, according to two sources familiar with the conversation.

Adelson, for his part, has advocated launching a nuclear weapon against Iran as a negotiating tactic and threatening to nuke Tehran, a city with a population of 8.8 million, if Iran does not completely abandon its nuclear program.

Newt Gingrich, a huge recipient of Adelson’s financial largesse during his failed 2012 presidential campaign, said that Adelson’s “central value” is Israel.

And Adelson isn’t alone in holding radical views about Iran and having the ear of the president, or at least significant financial leverage.

Home Depot cofounder Bernard Marcus, Trump’s second largest campaign contributor, contributed $7 million to pro-Trump Super PACs, $500,000 to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and $2 million the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF).

In a 2015 Fox Business interview, Marcus compared the JCPOA to “do[ing] business with the devil.” He went on to clarify, “I think Iran is the devil.”

Adelson and Marcus also share a common affinity for the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht may have set a record by publishing no less than three anti-JCPOA columns for The Atlantic in the past week.) Adelson contributed at least $1.5 million to the group by the end of 2011 (a year that saw a sharp rise in tensions and rumors of war by Israel against Iran) according to FDD’s 2011 Schedule A tax disclosure, and Marcus, the group’s biggest donor, contributed at least $10.7 million.

FDD says Adelson is no longer a contributor, but Marcus continues to give generously, contributing $3.25 million in 2015, the last year for which his foundation’s grants are known.

Hedge Fund billionaire Paul Singer contributed at least $3.6 million to FDD by the end of 2011, making him the group’s second biggest donor after Marcus at the time.

Employees of Singer’s firm, Elliott Management, were the second largest source of funds supporting the 2014 candidacy of the Senate’s most outspoken Iran hawk, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Singer contributed $1.9 million to the CLF and $6 million to the SLF. He was a holdout in supporting Trump’s candidacy and financed the initial research by Fusion GPS that turned into the Steele Dossier detailing alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and businesses with Moscow. But he came around before Trump’s inauguration and contributed $1 million to the festivities.

Between them, the three billionaires account for over $40 million in pro-Trump political money. In the 2016 cycle, the three were also the source of 44% of individual contributions to the CLF and 47% of those received by the SLF, the biggest spending campaign finance vehicles for House and Senate Republicans.

Trump and the GOP are deeply indebted to anti-Iran deal billionaires who aren’t afraid to advocate for policies that push the country closer to another war in the Middle East.

Trump’s decision to back out of the JCPOA might come across as a renegade president bucking conventional wisdom and following through on a poorly thought-out campaign promise to undo the work of his predecessor.

But another explanation is that Trump and the Republican Party are effectively captive to a small cohort of hawkish billionaires dead set on steering the country away from any sort of detente with Iran, even a multilateral agreement that ensures limits on enrichment and subjects the Islamic Republic to invasive inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Both explanations may be true.

And, as if on cue, The Washington Post‘s Ashley Parker reports that Adelson will visit with Trump on Wednesday. It’s “described as a ‘friendly,” long-planned meeting, not related to today’s Iran news.”

This article was first published on lobelog.com.
 

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Nuriye Gulman and Semih-Esra Ozakca, on a hunger strike to protest Turkish purges. 
Photo Credit: Screenshot / Twitter
 

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The world may think what it likes but the firebrand BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh likes US President Donald Trump.

Addressing an election rally in Bulandshahr on Monday for the coming Assembly polls in his state, the BJP leader said, “Similar action is needed to contain terror activities in this country.”

Adityanath also reportedly raised the alleged exodus of Hindus from Kairana and promised to deal with the issue “strictly” if the BJP was voted to power. The Times of India reported him as comparing the situation in Kairana to that of Kashmir over 27 years ago “Have you forgotten the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990?… If you do not wake up even now, you will also be forced to migrate to other regions,” he said. He exhorted voters to "remember the riots and the rapes" when you vote on February 11.

Meanwhile The Indian Express reported him as claiming at another rally in Sahibabad the same day that Trump sees Modi as his “political icon”.

Adityanath also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to not grant special rights to any minority community. “Whoever lives in Russia will abide by Russian laws and whoever doesn’t follow, should go where they like Shariat law”, he said at the rally. India’s self-proclaimed secular parties, he said, lacked the courage to speak the same language.

On Monday, another controversial BJP MLA Suresh Rana was booked by Uttar Pradesh police on charges of inciting hatred after he said that curfew will be imposed in Kairana, Deoband and Moradabad if he is elected again in assembly polls next month.

Voting for the state’s 403 seats will be held in seven phases and results will be out on March 11.

For a video clip of the BJP MP’s take on Kairana, click here.

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A federal judge in Brooklyn issued an emergency stay Saturday night against President Donald Trump's executive order banning immigration from certain predominantly Muslim countries, temporarily allowing people who have landed in the United States with a valid visa to remain.

The ruling—a stunning defeat for Trump at the end of his first week in office—protects from deportation refugees or visa holders who were detained at American airports since the signing of so-called "Muslim ban." It also protects those in transit when the emergency ruling was filed.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two men detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The men were subsequently released. Cody Wofsy, a lawyer with the ACLU, told Mother Jones he'd worked though the night with a large group of attorneys on Friday to write the brief that challenged the executive order.

The director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project announced the victory on Twitter:

The stay, granted by Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the US District Court, is temporary, and a court will have to decide whether to make it permanent at a later date. But for now, people will not be deported because of Trump's executive order.

One Syrian women was reportedly about to be sent back to her home country when the ruling came down—and was promptly taken off the flight by Customs and Border Protection agents.

Wofsy, the ACLU lawyer, said he planned to stay at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday night to make sure those who are detained there are not removed in violation of the judge's order. 

"This executive order runs contrary to really our most fundamental constitutional rights and human values in this country," Wofsy said. "These individuals, many of whom have green cards and have lived here for many years, can't just be put on a plane and shipped off."

You can read the judge's full order here:
 

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And the ACLU's original complaint below:

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Courtesy: Mother Jones

The post A Federal Judge Just Issued a Stay Against Donald Trump’s “Muslim Ban” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Muslims and immigration activists at a prayer and rally against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Jan. 27, 2017, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security told Reuters on Saturday morning that the President’s executive order will, in fact, stop green card holders from seven countries from returning to the United States if they travel abroad. “It will bar green card holders,” the spokeswoman said.

When details leaked earlier this week about a spate of immigration-related executive orders from President Donald Trump, much public discussion focused on a 30-day ban on new visas for citizens from seven “terror-prone” countries.

But the order signed this afternoon by Trump is actually more severe, increasing the ban to 90 days. And its effects could extend well beyond preventing newcomers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, from entering the U.S., lawyers consulted by ProPublica said.

It’s also expected to have substantial effects on hundreds of thousands of people from these countries who already live in the U.S. under green cards or on temporary student or employee visas.

Since the order’s travel ban applies to all “aliens” — a term that encompasses anyone who isn’t an American citizen — it could bar those with current visas or even green cards from returning to the U.S. from trips abroad, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama.

“It’s extraordinarily cruel,” he said.

The order bans the “entry” of foreigners from those countries and specifically exempts from the ban those who hold certain diplomatic visas.

Not included in the exemption, however, are those who hold long-term temporary visas — such as students or employees — who have the right to live in the United States for years at a time, as well as to travel abroad and back as they please.

“If applied literally, this provision would bar even those visitors who had made temporary trips abroad, for example a student who went home on winter break and is now returning,” Legomsky said on Friday evening executive order.

Trump made “extreme vetting” of foreigners a cornerstone of his campaign, particularly those from countries that are predominantly Muslim and that he considers hostile to the U.S.

“I’m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don’t want them here,” Trump said this afternoon, describing the intention of the executive order. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting to our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.”

Trump signed the directive just before 5 p.m. but it took the White House almost three hours to release the actual text.

About 25,000 citizens from the seven countries specified in Trump’s ban have been issued student or employment visas in the past three years, according to Department of Homeland Security reports.

On top of that, almost 500,000 people from the seven countries have received green cards in the past decade, allowing them to live and work in the United States indefinitely. Legally speaking, green card holders are considered aliens. While lawyers are unsure if they would actually be barred from reentering the U.S. if they have traveled abroad, they conceded it’s a possibility.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking for clarification on the meaning of the executive order.

Citizens of Iran and Iraq far outnumber those from the other five countries among green card and visa holders. In the past 10 years, Iranian and Iraqi citizens have received over 250,000 green cards.

Iran also has the 11th most students in the U.S. among foreign nations, according to the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors report, which tracks the demographics of international students.

“We are inundated with calls and questions of how this is going to affect people,” said Jamal Abdi, policy director for the National Iranian American Council, an organization that advocates for better relations between Iranian and American people.

Abdi is concerned the temporary ban will become permanent. The order says the 90-day ban is meant to allow the U.S. and the seven targeted countries to discuss what information would need to be shared in order to start granting visas once again. But if no agreement is reached, citizens would remain blocked from entry.

“My interpretation is that the Iranian government is not going to comply regarding sharing information,” Abdi said, “which would render this a permanent ban.”

(Courtesy: ProPublica)

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Bowled over by the news this past year, one can be forgiven for grasping for the crutches of historical analogy. Indeed, a number of eminent historians of inter-war Europe have discerned thunderous echoes of the 1930s.

Demonstrators march on international migrant day 2016. EPA

On December 31 1937, Cambridge classicist and man of letters F L Lucas embarked on an experiment. He would keep a diary for exactly one calendar year. It was, as he put it: “an attempt to give one answer, however inadequate, however fragmentary, to the question that will surely be asked one day by some of the unborn – with the bewilderment, one hopes, of a happier age: ‘What can it have felt like to live in that strange, tormented and demented world?’”

Lucas sought to preserve an affective archive, and to write about how it felt to live in an era of spiralling crisis.

As someone who wasn’t born in 1938 I cannot help but feel that Lucas’ solemn hope that his generation was living through the worst of it – and that lessons would surely be learned – have been well and truly dashed. Has 2016 been 1938 all over again?

Bowled over by the news this past year, one can be forgiven for grasping for the crutches of historical analogy. Indeed, a number of eminent historians of inter-war Europe have discerned thunderous echoes of the 1930s.

At present, as in the “Devil’s Decade”, we are experiencing the capricious convergence of historical forces: the fall-out of economic crisis and the extreme polarisation of the political spectrum from far-right to hard-left – the centre doesn’t hold. A tidal wave of refugees is being met by proportionately more xenophobia than compassion. Militant isolationism is thriving. Doors are being closed and walls built. Culture wars are punctuated by attacks on “experts” and intellectuals. 2016 has even seen open an unashamed airing of anti-Semitism.

The historical parallels between 2016 and 1938 are abundant. There are important differences in detail, in time and place, but the pattern of events, and of cause and effect, is striking.

Civil war raged in Spain then – as it rages in Syria today. Then as now, these internecine conflicts provide mirrors to existing fissures in international relations and deepening ideological antagonisms. By the end of 1938, and after Abyssinia, Spain, Anschluss, and Kristallnacht, not much faith was left in the ideal of internationalism or in the League of Nations – and this too sounds all too familiar.

The aftermath of the Kristallnacht. Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA

The rescue of refugee children through the Kindertransports was just as symbolically important, yet as negligible, a solution to an immense humanitarian and moral crisis as has been the response to lone children refugees holed up in Calais this year. And what of Aleppo? Shame was, and is, a dominant feeling.

Where next?

The Munich Agreement of September 1938 was perceived by many of its British critics as an act of national suicide. The Brexit decision has likewise, again and again, been described as an act of self-harm, even of national hari-kari.

Writing at the end of the year, contemporary historian R W Seaton-Watson had no doubt that 1938 had “resulted in a drastic disturbance of the political balance on the Continent, the full consequences of which is still too soon to estimate”. Treaties weren’t worth the paper they were written on in 1938 – and at the end of 2016 it is worryingly unclear where Britain will stand after triggering Article 50.

Meanwhile, George Orwell’s assessment of the disarray of the political left post-Munich could just as well apply to Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. As Orwell saw it:

Barring some unforeseen scandal or a really large disturbance inside the Conservative Party, Labour’s chances of winning the General Election seem very small. If any kind of Popular Front is formed, its chances are probably less than those of Labour unaided. The best hope would seem to be that if Labour is defeated, the defeat may drive it back to its proper ‘line’.

Full circle

One could go on seeking coordinates but the sum total would still be the same. The rug has been pulled out from under the assumed solidity of the liberal democratic project. A delicate tapestry of structures and ideas is coming apart at the seams.

Even more specifically, it is the psychological experience, the search for meaning, and the emotional cycle, the feelings – collective and individual – of 1938 that are uncannily familiar.

Post-truth politics is anti-rational. Emotion has unexpectedly triumphed over reason in 2016. Love and/or hate has beaten intellect. That’s true for Hillary Clinton’s “love trumps hate” slogan as much as it is for her opponent.

The referendum result shook many. PA

New political technologies render older ones obsolete. In both Britain’s referendum campaign and in the American election, traditional opinion polls failed to capture the emotion being expressed across social media platforms.

Back in 1938, it was British Gallup and the rival Mass-Observation that were the innovative political technologies. Using very different techniques, each offered fresh insight into the psychology of political behaviour and tried to unseal the stiff upper lip of the British electorate.

Mass-Observation tried to get into people’s heads, and diagnosed an increasing occurrence of “crisis fatigue” as a response to nervous strain and “a sense of continuous crisis”.

Almost immediately after the EU referendum, therapists reported “shockingly elevated levels of anxiety and despair, with few patients wishing to talk about anything else”. And the visceral nature of the US election campaign contributed, tragically, to the exponential increase of calls to suicide helplines. National crisis is inevitably internalised.

Reflecting on the psychological fallout of the Munich Crisis, novelist E M Forster observed that: “exalted in contrary directions, some of us rose above ourselves, and others committed suicide.”

As 1938 drew to a close, serious conversations were dominated by the verbal and physical expressions of fatalism, anxiety, sickness, depression, and impending doom. Lucas wrote in his diary:

The Crisis seems to have filled the world with nervous break-downs. Or perhaps the Crisis itself was only one more nervous break-down of a world driven by the killing pace of modern life and competition into ever acuter neurasthenia [shell shock].

It is too simplistic to say that history repeats itself. And yet, throughout this past year I could not escape the feeling that we have been here before. We share with those who lived through 1938 overwhelming sensibility of bewilderment, suspense, desperation and fear of the unknown. I can’t help but wonder what future historians will make of 2016.

It’s probably sage advice to go see a good movie over the holidays – and La La Land, already tipped to win an Oscar, may provide just the kind of escapism that is needed. However, when someone comes to make the movie of 2016, the soundtrack will probably be the late Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker. It certainly feels like 1938 all over again. Time to start keeping a diary.

(Julie Gottlieb is Reader in Modern History, University of Sheffield).

(This story was first published on The Conversation).

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