International

The 2017 presidential election is a boring soap opera where the only excitement is the danger of the result.

In 1898 US PresidentWilliam McKinley decided it was time for the USA to have colonies and that Cuba would be first

The 2017 presidential election is a boring soap opera where the only excitement is the danger of the result

Published in the November 2016 issue of Village Why has rebel-held East Aleppo taken so long to fall, despite being besieged for months by Syrian Government soldiers, backed by Russian war-planes? Will ISIS-occupied Mosul hold out similarly against Iraqi troops supported by the Kurds and Americans? Or will agreed escape corridors in either case help the rebels/terrorists steal away? World War 2 showed how costly it can be for troops to take besieged cities in house-to-house fighting against well-motivated defenders holding out in cellars, rooms and on roof-tops, with good sniper positions on all sides. The sieges of Stalingrad, Warsaw and Berlin are good examples. Even our own Easter Rising’s Battle of Mount Street Bridge showed the heavy losses a small group holding a building can inflict on a much more numerous attacking enemy. President Assad’s soldiers are presumably in no hurry to get killed, so the miserable Aleppo story goes on while the international media try to make our hearts bleed at the thought of the unfortunate civilians, especially children, in the besieged city. The Assad Government and its Russian allies are judged heartless for not permitting enough truces to allow in food and medicines. But who decides the allocation of aid once it gets behind rebel lines? Presumably the rebel leadership, who are unlikely to allow themselves starve while they dole out food to the women and children. Last year I saw a TV film of food aid being distributed in another besieged Syrian town. Some children grasping for the food tins being handed down from the back of a lorry looked as well-nourished as their Irish counterparts. Other children beside them were clearly starving. One could count the ribs of their thin bodies. The scene pointed to a pecking order among aid recipients, with unseen people in the background, presumably the rebel leadership or administration, giving aid supplies to those they favoured and denying supplies to others, when there were no TV cameras around to film them. This is likely to be the reality on the ground as regards aid being delivered along ‘humanitarian corridors’. While Assad is the West’s current “bad guy” in Syria and we are urged to wax indignant at the thought of his bombs falling in Aleppo, we hear little of the bombs which Saudi Arabia, that staunch ally of “the West”, is dropping simultaneously on a different group of rebels/terrorists in Yemen. One of these recently killed a hundred mourners at a funeral. This selective indignation is encouraged by the aid agencies which echo the political rhetoric of the Western Governments that supply most of their funding. It is startling to learn that the income of Ireland’s aid agency, GOAL, increased three-fold from €60m in 2012 to €210m in 2015, according to the Irish Times, mostly for its Syrian operation. This money came from the US and British Governments which have their own political agenda in Syria. Syria has turned GOAL into Ireland’s biggest charity. Political allegiance follows donor money. GOAL spokesmen have strongly criticised the Syrian Government’s attempts to suppress the rebellion against it, although such suppression is the right of any lawful internationally recognised government, which, whether one likes it or not, the Assad regime happens to be. Likewise spokesmen for Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland echo French Government policy on Syria as it assumes a continuing right of intervention in France’s one-time mandatory territory. These aid agencies serve the internationally orchestrated campaign to delegitimise the Assad Government and give moral sanction to those attempting its overthrow. Yet if the Assad Government were to be overthrown thousands of Shias, Alawites and Christians could expect to have their throats cut by the fundamentalist ‘freedom-fighters’ who would then take over in Syria. Concern at the fate of civilians in Benghazi, Libya, in face of Colonel Gaddafi’s threatening rhetoric was what ostensibly motivated Britain, France and America to intervene in Libya in 2011. This led to Gaddafi’s overthrow and gave us the current failed State there. Hilary Clinton, then Obama’s Secretary of State, pressed hard for that intervention and got a UN Security Council resolution to authorise it. Mrs Clinton has called for a no-fly zone in Syria to stop President Assad’s forces dropping bombs on East Aleppo, ostensibly because they hit civilians. If the President tries to push through such a policy while the Russians are still supporting Assad, it could have the potential to start World War 3! The Syrian conflict shows alarming evidence of tension between the military hardliners of the Pentagon and the diplomats around US Secretary of State John Kerry. On 17 September last US and Australian air attacks on Syrian army troops killed 62 and wounded 100. The Americans said it was an accident. Others thought it a deliberate attempt by hardliners in Washington to scuttle the partial ceasefire which Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov had agreed with the support of Presidents Obama and Putin, and which had taken effect just five days before. In public remarks bordering on the insubordinate, senior Pentagon officials showed unusually open scepticism regarding key aspects of that Kerry-Lavrov deal. One can assume that what Lavrov told his boss in private was close to his blunt words on Russian TV on 26 September: “My good friend John Kerry is under fierce criticism from the US military machine. Despite the fact that, as always, they made assurances that the US Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama, supported him in his contacts with Russia, apparently the military does not really listen to the Commander in Chief”. Lavrov also criticised General Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, for telling the US Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia “after the agreements concluded on direct orders of Russian President Putin and US President Barack Obama stipulated that they would share intelligence…It is difficult to work with such partners”. It is scarcely surprising in the light of this that the Russians and the Assad regime are desperate to get the siege of

The Middle Eastern mess is caused by the usual imperial suspects, and their agencies

The Middle Eastern mess is caused by the usual imperial suspects, and their agencies

Village Magazine, Issue 49, October 2016 Editorial Village’s agenda remains as always: equality of outcome, sustainability and accountability. Defeated Democrat US Presidential contender, Bernie Sanders, thinks in these terms but his Democrat vanquisher Hillary Clinton is ideologically vague, compromised, jaded and ultimately conservative; and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, is post-ideological/narcissistic with no interest in ideas, still less in the ideas that comprise Village’s agenda. Clinton’s personality borders on the alienating and it is difficult to feel warmth for a woman with €45m in personal wealth, much of it earned in payments for private political speeches. She is a rotten orator, shouts at public meetings and seems to have taken lessons in smiling. Hillary was never far from financial controversy when Bill was in the White House: there was Whitewater, Vince-Fostergate, Travelgate, Filegate. She remains compromised in her dealings with the financial sector as she has taken vast donations from it, including $225k for just one speech to Goldman Sachs: “That’s what they offered”. When she ran the State Department two of her top aides, Robert Hormats and Thomas Nides were drawn from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, respectively. Both received benefits tied to their Wall Street employment contracts for entering public service. Clinton did not force her aides to give up these accelerated payments, unlike President Obama, who, for example, expected his Trade Representative Michael Froman to surrender the $4m in bonuses he received from Citigroup for joining the government. Bill Clinton was famously open to the revolving door for bankers. His Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, left the White House six weeks after a bill was passed to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act which had separated commercial and investment banks, since the 1930s Depression. Before he became Treasury Secretary Rubin worked for Goldman Sachs; afterwards for Citigroup. Their mix of politics, profit and philanthropy is a problem for the Clintons. The Economist magazine says: “Their foundation and financial affairs are now a liability: a swirl of truth, innuendo and crazed conspiracy theories. What shortcomings there are, it is true, pale into insignificance compared with Donald Trump’s empire of lies and misconduct. But Mrs Clinton has been repeatedly forced to defend her own financial affairs, weakening her campaign”. Clinton faces questions across a range of other issues, though nothing that precludes her from high office. Controversies that do not reflect well on her include Benghazi, her use of a private email server while Secretary of State and her disingenuousness over her health problems. On the other hand her opponent is the most dangerous candidate for the Presidency in at least a generation. He does not distinguish truth from lies, argument from abuse or policy from whimsy. He is fraudulent and ‘truthy’ in a way that no other US presidential candidate, less still President, has ever been. Even Reagan and Bush regarded themselves as accountable for untruths; he does not. A self-confessed greedy plutocrat he lies about his wealth and his financial acumen, dodges taxes, abuses women, some allegedly physically. His persona is obnoxious, entirely self-unaware, crass and bombastic. Trump has encouraged violence at his rallies, like Fascists do, and incited hatred against Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese. Moreover, Trump has no clear policies, only policy-substitute hatreds. From what we can glean, from a stomp or yell here or a grimace there, it appears Trump’s primary policy, after self-furtherance, is aiding both the richest and the ordinary white Joes he knows from his building sites. While Clinton wants to raise taxes on high-income households Trump seems to aim to cut taxes for all income brackets – with no budgetary concern. Clinton is pro-choice, Trump is pro-life; Clinton supports citizenship for undocumented immigrants, while Trump wants to deport illegal immigrants, make Mexico build a beautiful wall on its border and start a trade war with China for its currency manipulation and for hoaxing everyone on climate. Clinton wants to expand gun control legislation, Trump’s constituency is the National Rifle Association;. Clinton is for LGBT rights; Trump says he sees himself as a “traditional guy” on the issue and would “strongly consider” appointing judges to overturn the Supreme Court’s same-sex-marriage decision. Clinton is the second-least popular candidate from the major parties this century; Trump is the first. That these two unattractive candidates compete for the most powerful office in the world says more about the system than it does about the candidates. But most of all it bespeaks problems for fragile democracy and for the political culture of what has passed for a great nation. Ultimately Hillary will take us back to the political era of her husband Bill. Trump’s policies on climate, foreigners and even equality; and his tiny fingers on the nuclear button, risk taking us back to the stone age. In the unlikely event you have a vote, use it for Hillary. By Michael Smith