¡ES EL NEOLIBERALISMO…ESTÚPIDO!

En 1992, Bill Clinton buscaba el eje de su campaña presidencial para poder derrotar al presidente George H.W. Bush en las elecciones de noviembre de ese año, cuando uno de los principales estrategas del gobernador de Arkansas, de nombre James Carville, se impacientó y les gritó al resto de sus compañeros “¡es la economía…estúpido!”, subrayando que en esos momentos el tema que más preocupaba a los estadounidenses era la economía, y no el terrorismo, o la situación en el Medio Oriente o el mundo de la posguerra fría.

Pues bien, para las elecciones presidenciales del 2018, tanto el PRI, como los esfuerzos del PAN y PRD por conformar un frente opositor, y los de los supuestos “candidatos independientes” están enfocados a la lucha descarnada por el poder. Esto es, el PRI y sus aliados, mantenerse, como sea, en él; y la “oposición” sacarlo del mismo.

Sólo tocan superficialmente los temas principales que agobian a la mayoría de la población y la tienen hundida en la desesperación, la apatía y la frustración tales como la inseguridad, la violencia, la impunidad, la pobreza, la desigualdad, la marginación, la corrupción, etc.

Todos ellos buscan fórmulas de mantenerse en el poder o de llegar a él; e incluso la principal formación política que se enfrenta tanto al PRI, como al resto de los supuestos partidos de oposición, está centrando su tema principal de campaña para el 2018 en el combate a la corrupción.

Sin embargo, el verdadero causante de los más graves problemas del país, que ha provocado la brutal concentración del ingreso en una minoría; que ha generado enormes desigualdades económico-sociales entre clases sociales y regiones; el que ha devastado los recursos naturales; el que ha explotado brutalmente la mano de obra del país; y el que sigue demandando concesiones y rendiciones de parte de la mayoría de la población es el sistema económico impuesto al país desde hace 35 años: el neoliberalismo.

La causa profunda de los principales problemas de México es un sistema económico diseñado y operado para beneficio de una minoría de plutócratas nacionales, grandes empresas trasnacionales y una casta de políticos corruptos, que a cambio de dicha corrupción han permitido la devastación del país, el saqueo de sus finanzas públicas y la explotación inmisericorde de su mano de obra.

Por lo tanto, lo que no se atreven a decir ninguno de los partidos políticos, y que en el fondo ha empujado a la búsqueda desmedida de la ganancia, incluyendo en ello el crecimiento y la colusión de las organizaciones criminales con el poder político y económico, es el sistema neoliberal, que funciona en busca de la mayor ganancia, por encima de cualquier necesidad humana o del propio equilibrio y sustentabilidad medio ambiental.

Y todos los partidos y grupos políticos, unos más que otros; no se atreven a retar abiertamente a los detentadores del poder de este sistema (el sistema financiero internacional y las grandes corporaciones trasnacionales), por lo que prefieren irse “por las ramas”, y señalar que con nuevas “reformas” o aplicando eficientemente las que ya se han aprobado, con el tiempo (25 a 50 años) se irán resolviendo los problemas. O, como en el caso de Morena, que un gobierno honesto y eficaz “limará” las aristas más nocivas del sistema neoliberal.

La verdad es que dicho sistema no va a permitir ninguna “limadura”, como ya lo ha demostrado fehacientemente en los casos brasileño, argentino, venezolano, etc. Sino por el contrario, va a utilizar a su subordinado aparato de represión para evitar cualquier intento de disminuir sus estratosféricas ganancias y la concentración de las mismas en la minoría expoliadora cosmopolita que lo dirige.

Lo demás (gobiernos de coalición, segundas vueltas, etc.), son cuentos engañabobos para mantener en su lugar lo que realmente les importa y que no debe cambiar: el sistema de explotación económica, denominado neoliberalismo.

Agentes de EU en México: los mexicanos no tienen derecho a saber

Julio 30, 2017 contralínea.com

ZÓSIMO CAMACHO @ZOSIMO_CONTRA

Los mexicanos no tenemos derecho a saber cuántos agentes de corporaciones de Estados Unidos se encuentran en misiones en México. La Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores –hoy encabezada por el “aprendiz” de diplomático Luis Videgaray, según sus propias sinceras palabras– poseedora de la información, dijo que revelar tal estadística vulneraría la seguridad nacional de este país y, además, se molestarían nuestros vecinos.

Más sorprendente aún es que el Instituto Nacional de Transparencia, Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos Personales (Inai) haya confirmado tal reserva de la información.

Lo que requerimos desde principios de año es apenas una estadística básica. Sólo quisimos saber el número de los agentes estadunidenses que están en México. A sabiendas de lo quisquillosos que se vuelven los funcionarios mexicanos cuando se trata de información que involucra a sus ¿pares? gringos, sólo les preguntamos por el número total. No requerimos el número por agencia, los lugares en que se encuentran ni la naturaleza de las misiones que cumplen en México.

La pregunta cuya respuesta causaría una hecatombe –si nos atenemos a los sesudos raciocinios de los censores de Relaciones Exteriores y de la Inai– es bastante simple: “Solicito conocer el número de integrantes de las agencias de seguridad de los Estados Unidos de América que, en territorio mexicano, cooperan con las autoridades mexicanas desde 2006. Desglosar por año”.

Ya en este espacio habíamos dado cuenta –con documentos de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores– de que un número indeterminado de elementos de 13 agencias de seguridad estadunidenses se encuentran en México “colaborando” con las autoridades mexicanas. Siete de ellas están adscritas al Departamento de Justicia, cinco al Departamento de Seguridad Interna y una al Departamento del Tesoro.

Por parte del Departamento de Justicia, se trata de la Oficina Federal de Investigación (Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI); la agencia antidrogas (Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA); la Oficina de Alcohol, Tabaco, Armas de Fuego y Explosivos (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF); la Oficina del Servicio de Alguaciles de Estados Unidos (United States Marshals Service, USMS); la Oficina de Asuntos Internacionales del Departamento de Justicia (Office of International Affairs, OIA-DoJ); la Oficina de Desarrollo, Asistencia y Entrenamiento Judicial Internacional (Office of Prosecutorial Development Assistance and Training (OPDAT), y la Oficina de Programas de Asistencia y Adiestramiento Internacional para la Investigación Criminal (International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program Office, ICITAP).

En lo que respecta al Departamento de Seguridad Interior, las agencias que tienen presencia en México son la Agregaduría legal; la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (Custom and Border Protection, CBP); la Oficina de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (Inmigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE); el Servicio Secreto (Secret Service, SS), y la Administración de la Seguridad en el Transporte (Transport Security Administration, TSA).

Finalmente, la agencia dependiente del Departamento del Tesoro con efectivos en México es la Oficina de Control de Activos Extranjeros (Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC).

Si ya sabemos que todas esas instituciones estadunidenses tienen agentes en misiones en México, ¿por qué no informar del número total? ¿Qué “atentado” contra los mexicanos significaría dar la cifra?

En su resolución, como una calca de las disertaciones de Relaciones Exteriores, el Inai encontró que ofrecer el dato perjudicaría a México en dos sentidos: se vulneraría la seguridad nacional y se “menoscabarían” las relaciones con Estados Unidos.

Según la resolución del recurso de revisión del Inai, cuya comisionada ponente fue María Patricia Kurczyn Villalobos, revelar el número de integrantes de las agencias de Estados Unidos con misiones en México “podría causar un serio perjuicio a la seguridad nacional, ya que se estarían revelando aspectos que se toman en cuenta al planear y conducir operaciones estratégicas y/o tácticas para combatir al narcotráfico, la farmacodependencia y el crimen organizado en territorio mexicano, con lo cual se estarían proporcionando elementos que permitirían a miembros de las organizaciones de la delincuencia organizada anticiparse, obstaculizar o bloquear las operaciones o tareas específicas encomendadas a dichos agentes, a partir del conocimiento de patrones de conducta en la determinación del número de agentes extranjeros enviados al país a lo largo del tiempo” (sic).

¡Sic! ¿En serio? ¿Saber que son 50, 500 o 2 mil de manera genérica permitiría a los delincuentes diseñar mejor sus golpes? ¿Cómo distinguirían a los capacitadores u oficinistas de los de inteligencia? Vaya discurso para justificar una reserva de información.

Y el otro remache para guardar los datos bajo llave es el de: no vaya a ser que se nos moleste el vecino. Resulta que, en la disertación del Inai, revelar el número de agentes estadunidenses en México, “se podría menoscabar la conducción de dicha relación internacional [México-Estados Unidos], en tanto que se podrían ver afectados los puntos de acuerdo a los que llegaron o podrían llegar ambas partes”.

Más aún: “el incumplimiento de los principios de derecho internacional por parte del Estado mexicano afectaría de manera directa la confianza mutua que sustenta la relación entre los Estados Unidos Mexicanos y los Estados Unidos de América” (sic).

El ocultamiento del número de agentes de un país extranjero elevado a categoría de “principio de derecho internacional”. ¿Pues qué tipo de actividades realizan los gringos en México? La ley sólo dice que se trata de intercambio de información…

Además, como si los estadunidenses no informaran del número de mexicanos de todas las agencias de seguridad –civiles, policiacas y militares– que van al Norte a recibir adiestramiento y a “colaborar”. Puede consultarse el interesante y basto informe del Colectivo de Análisis de la Seguridad con Democracia (Casede) y el Instituto Belsisario Domínguez del Senado de la República: Atlas de Seguridad y Defensa de México 2016, en el que se consignan los datos de mexicanos en Estados Unidos proporcionados por las agencias de ese país.

En realidad el gobierno mexicano no desea que se conozca el número de estadunidenses en México porque sería escandaloso saber que, desde la llegada de Felipe Calderón y hasta la fecha, los gringos han copado el país con sus agentes. Y el Inai, presto, a lavarle la cara.

Zósimo Camacho

Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

August 5, 2017

By Robert Parry consortiumnews.com

A savvy Washington observer once told me that the political reality about the neoconservatives is that they alone couldn’t win you a single precinct in the United States. But both Republicans and Democrats still line up to gain neocon support or at least neocon acceptance.

Part of the reason for this paradox is the degree of dominance that the neoconservatives have established in the national news media – as op-ed writers and TV commentators – and the neocon ties to the Israel Lobby that is famous for showering contributions on favored politicians and on the opponents of those not favored.

Since the neocons’ emergence as big-time foreign policy players in the Reagan administration, they also have demonstrated extraordinary resilience, receiving a steady flow of money often through U.S. government-funded grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and through donations from military contractors to hawkish neocon think tanks.

But neocons’ most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left’s disgust with President Trump.

People who would normally favor international cooperation toward peaceful resolution of conflicts have joined the neocons in ratcheting up global tensions and making progress toward peace far more difficult.

The provocative “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” which imposes sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea while tying President Trump’s hands in removing those penalties, passed the Congress without a single Democrat voting no.

The only dissenting votes came from three Republican House members – Justin Amash of Michigan, Jimmy Duncan of Tennessee, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – and from Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Senate.

In other words, every Democrat present for the vote adopted the neocon position of escalating tensions with Russia and Iran. The new sanctions appear to close off hopes for a détente with Russia and may torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran, which would put the bomb-bomb-bomb option back on the table just where the neocons want it.

The Putin Obstacle

As for Russia, the neocons have viewed President Vladimir Putin as a major obstacle to their plans at least since 2013 when he helped President Obama come up with a compromise with Syria that averted a U.S. military strike over dubious claims that the Syrian military was responsible for a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

Subsequent evidence indicated that the sarin attack most likely was a provocation by Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate to trick the U.S. military into entering the war on Al Qaeda’s side.

While you might wonder why the U.S. government would even think about taking actions that would benefit Al Qaeda, which lured the U.S. into this Mideast quagmire in the first place by attacking on 9/11, the answer is that Israel and the neocons – along with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-governed states – favored an Al Qaeda victory if that was what was needed to shatter the so-called “Shiite crescent,”anchored in Iran and reaching through Syria to Lebanon.

Many neocons are, in effect, America’s Israeli agents and – since Israel is now allied with Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states versus Iran – the neocons exercise their media/political influence to rationalize U.S. military strikes against Iran’s regional allies, i.e., Syria’s secular government of Bashar al-Assad.

For his part, Putin compounded his offense to the neocons by facilitating Obama’s negotiations with Iran that imposed strict constraints on Iran’s actions toward development of a nuclear bomb and took U.S. war against Iran off the table. The neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted the U.S. military to lead a bombing campaign against Iran with the hope of crippling their regional adversary and possibly even achieving “regime change” in Tehran.

Punishing Russia

It was in that time frame that NED’s neocon President Carl Gershman identified Ukraine as the “biggest prize” and an important step toward the even bigger prize of removing Putin in Russia.

Other U.S. government neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain, delivered the Ukraine “prize” by supporting the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and unleashed anti-Russian nationalists (including neo-Nazis) who began killing ethnic Russians in the south and east near Russia’s border.

When Putin responded by allowing Crimeans to vote on secession from Ukraine and reunification with Russia, the West – and especially the neocon-dominated mainstream media – denounced the move as a “Russian invasion.” Covertly, the Russians also helped ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who defied the coup regime in Kiev and faced annihilation from Ukrainian military forces, including the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which literally displayed Swastikas and SS symbols. Putin’s assistance to these embattled ethnic Russian Ukrainians became “Russian aggression.”

Many U.S. pundits and journalists – in the conservative, centrist and liberal media – were swept up by the various hysterias over Syria, Iran and Russia – much as they had been a decade earlier around the Iraq-WMD frenzy and the “responsibility to protect” (or R2P) argument for the violent “regime change” in Libya in 2011. In all these cases, the public debate was saturated with U.S. government and neocon propaganda, much of it false.

But it worked. For instance, the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks achieved extraordinary success in seducing many American “peace activists” to support the “regime change” war in Syria by sending sympathetic victims of the Syrian government on speaking tours.

Meanwhile, the major U.S. media essentially flacked for “moderate” Syrian rebels who just happened to be fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate and sharing their powerful U.S.-supplied weapons with the jihadists, all the better to kill Syrian soldiers trying to protect the secular government in Damascus.

Successful Propaganda

As part of this propaganda process, the jihadists’ P.R. adjunct, known as the White Helmets, phoned in anti-government atrocity stories to eager and credulous Western journalists who didn’t dare visit the Al Qaeda-controlled zones for fear of being beheaded.

Still, whenever the White Helmets or other “activists” accused the Syrian government of some unlikely chemical attack, the information was treated as gospel. When United Nations investigators, who were under enormous pressure to confirm the propaganda tales beloved in the West, uncovered evidence that one of the alleged chlorine attacks was staged by the jihadists, the mainstream U.S. media politely looked the other way and continued to treat the chemical-weapons stories as credible.

Historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer has said, “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press.”

But all these successes in the neocons’ “perception management” operations pale when compared to what the neocons have accomplished since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton last November.

Fueled by the shock and disgust over the egotistical self-proclaimed pussy-grabber ascending to the highest office in the land, many Americans looked for both an excuse for explaining the outcome and a strategy for removing Trump as quickly as possible. The answer to both concerns became: blame Russia.

The evidence that Russia had “hacked our democracy” was very thin – some private outfit called Crowdstrike found Cyrillic lettering and a reference to the founder of the Soviet KGB in some of the metadata – but that “incriminating evidence” contradicted Crowdstrike’s own notion of a crack Russian hacking operation that was almost impossible to trace.

So, even though the FBI failed to secure the Democratic National Committee’s computers so the government could do its own forensic analysis, President Obama assigned his intelligence chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, to come up with an assessment that could be used to blame Trump’s victory on “Russian meddling.” Obama, of course, shared the revulsion over Trump’s victory, since the real-estate mogul/reality-TV star had famously launched his own political career by spreading the lie that Obama was born in Kenya.

‘Hand-Picked’ Analysts

According to Clapper’s later congressional testimony, the analysts for this job were “hand-picked” from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and assigned to produce an “assessment” before Obama left office. Their Jan. 6 report was remarkable in its lack of evidence and the analysts themselves admitted that it fell far short of establishing anything as fact. It amounted to a continuation of the “trust us” approach that had dominated the anti-Russia themes for years.

Much of the thin report focused on complaints about Russia’s RT network for covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and sponsoring a 2012 debate for third-party presidential candidates who had been excluded from the Democratic-Republican debates between President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney.

The absurdity of citing such examples in which RT contributed to the public debate in America as proof of Russia attacking American democracy should have been apparent to everyone, but the Russia-gate stampede had begun and so instead of ridiculing the Jan. 6 report as an insult to reason, its shaky Russia-did-it conclusions were embraced as unassailable Truth, buttressed by the false claim that the assessment represented the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So, for instance, we get the internal contradictions of a Friday column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius who starts off by making a legitimate point about Washington groupthink.

“When all right-thinking people in the nation’s capital seem to agree on something – as has been the case recently with legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia – that may be a warning that the debate has veered into an unthinking herd mentality,” Ignatius wrote as he questioned the wisdom of overusing sanctions and tying the President’s hands on when to remove sanctions.

Lost Logic

But Ignatius failed to follow his own logic when it came to the core groupthink about Russia “meddling” in the U.S. election. Despite the thinness of the evidence, the certainty about Russia’s guilt is now shared by “all right-thinking people” in Washington, who agree that this point is beyond dispute despite the denials from both WikiLeaks, which published the purloined Democratic emails, and the Russian government.

Ignatius seemed nervous that his mild deviation from the conventional wisdom about the sanctions bill might risk his standing with the Establishment, so he added:

“Don’t misunderstand me. In questioning congressional review of sanctions, I’m not excusing Trump’s behavior. His non-response to Russia’s well-documented meddling in the 2016 presidential election has been outrageous.”

However, as usual for the U.S. mainstream media, Ignatius doesn’t cite any of those documents. Presumably, he’s referring to the Jan. 6 assessment, which itself contained no real evidence to support its opinion that Russia hacked into Democratic emails and gave them to WikiLeaks for distribution.

Just because a lot of Important People keep repeating the same allegation doesn’t make the allegation true or “well-documented.” And skepticism should be raised even higher when there is a clear political motive for pushing a falsehood as truth, as we should have learned from President George W. Bush’s Iraq-WMD fallacies and from President Barack Obama’s wild exaggerations about the need to intervene in Libya to prevent a massacre of civilians.

But Washington neocons always start with a leg up because of their easy access to the editorial pages of The New York Times and Washington Post as well as their speed-dial relationships with producers at CNN and other cable outlets.

Yet, the neocons have achieved perhaps their greatest success by merging Cold War Russo-phobia with the Trump Derangement Syndrome to enlist liberals and even progressives into the neocon drive for more “regime change” wars.

There can be no doubt that the escalation of sanctions against Russia and Iran will have the effect of escalating geopolitical tensions with those two important countries and making war, even nuclear war, more likely.

In Iran, hardliners are already telling President Hassan Rouhani, “We told you so” that the U.S. government can’t be trusted in its promise to remove – not increase – sanctions in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

And, Putin, who is actually one of the more pro-Western leaders in Russia, faces attacks from his own hardliners who view him as naïve in thinking that Russia would ever be accepted by the West.

Even relative Kremlin moderates such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, are citing Trump’s tail-between-his-legs signing of the sanctions bill as proof that the U.S. establishment has blocked any hope for a détente between Washington and Moscow.

In other words, the prospects for advancing the neocon agenda of more “regime change” wars and coups have grown – and the neocons can claim as their allies virtually the entire Democratic Party hierarchy which is so eager to appease its angry #Resistance base that even the heightened risk of nuclear war is being ignored.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). 

No Country on Earth Fully Safeguards Labor Rights

by PETE DOLACK counterpunch.org

AUGUST 4, 2017

There is no country on Earth in which violations of labor rights do not occur. The best rating is for those which are merely “irregular violators of rights,” and only 12 countries managed that.

The International Trade Union Confederation, in its annual Global Rights Index report on the state of labor around the world, has once again provided sobering news. Sixty percent of countries exclude whole categories of workers from labor law, the ITUC report says, indicative that “corporate interests are being put ahead of the interests of working people in the global economy.” The ITUC’s general secretary, Sharan Burrow, said:

“Denying workers protection under labour laws creates a hidden workforce, where governments and companies refuse to take responsibility, especially for migrant workers, domestic workers and those on short term contracts. In too many countries, fundamental democratic rights are being undermined by corporate interests.”

Among the key findings of the report:

* More than three-quarters of countries deny some or all workers their right to strike.

* More than three-quarters of countries deny some or all workers collective bargaining,

* Eighty-four countries exclude groups of workers from labor law.

* The number of countries in which workers are exposed to physical violence and threats increased to 59 countries from 52 a year earlier.

* Unionists were murdered in 11 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mauritania, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Venezuela.

International labor standards

To assess the state of global labor, the International Trade Union Confederation, “a confederation” of national trade unions, sends questionnaires to its affiliates in 161 countries and territories representing 176 million workers, with the intention of covering as many aspects of the right to freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike as possible. The information collected is then used to assess whether a given country meets standards set by the International Labour Organization.

These standards are examined by answering “yes” or “no” to 97 indicators arranged in five categories: Fundamental civil liberties; the right to establish or join unions; trade union activities; the right to collective bargaining; and the right to strike. The reason for a binary “yes” or “no” rather than a gradated scale is because “this method reduces the normative subjectivity of the analyst who carries out the coding,” the ITUC said. Further, because each of the 97 indicators is based on “universally binding obligations,” companies and government are required to meet them in full.

When the ITUC first carried out this survey, in 2014, the highest score attained was 43, meaning that no country had even half of its questions answered with a “yes.” In other words, every country in the world flunked.

For the 2017 report, the ITUC did not indicate the range of country scores, but followed its previous format of grouping countries into five tiers. The top tier, in which countries merely “irregular violate” labor rights, consists of 12 countries, which are marked in green on the map below. Eleven are found in Europe, and one in Latin America, Uruguay. (Yellow represents the second tier, followed by progressively darker shades of orange and red, the worst violators.)

The rankings are as follows:

* 1. Irregular violations of rights: 12 countries including France, Germany and Sweden.

* 2. Repeated violations of rights: 21 countries including Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

* 3. Regular violations of rights: 26 countries including Australia and Chile.

* 4. Systematic violations of rights: 34 countries including Brazil, Britain and the United States.

* 5. No guarantee of rights: 35 countries including India, Mexico and the Philippines.

* 5+ No guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law: 11 countries including Burundi, Palestine and Syria.

U.S., Britain systematic violators of labor rights

The United States was also rated a “four” in 2014, while Britain has slipped from being ranked a “three” then. Once again, that means the U.S. and U.K. commit “systematic violations” of labor rights — so much for those governments’ endless attempts to assert moral authority over the rest of the world. The Trump and May governments are not likely to improve upon these rankings. In regards to U.S. deficiencies, the ITUC report says:

“Far from consulting with unions regarding labour law and policy, some states and U.S. politicians have taken deliberate steps to roll back workers’ collective bargaining rights. … The National Labour Relations Act (NLRA) and judicial decisions interpreting the law prohibit workers from engaging in sitdown strikes, partial strikes and secondary boycotts, and impose other restrictions on organisational or recognitional strikes.”

Embarrassingly for a country governed by a party calling itself a “Coalition of the Radical Left,” Greece is among the countries with a ranking of “five.” This ranking is due to harsh restrictions on collective bargaining that were implemented beginning in 2010 through several laws on orders of the “troika” — the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — which led to “a significant erosion” of labor rights.

Ironically, the Eurogroup president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, says that collective bargaining is a “best practice” of the European Union, but the EU continues to block any attempt by the Syriza government to restore labor protections. A proposed law to re-establish collective bargaining was not submitted to the Greek parliament because of troika disapproval.

A sobering reminder of what capitalism offers working people: A race to the bottom and more exploitation. Surely, the world can do better.

Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog and has been an activist with several groups. His book, It’s Not Over: Learning From the Socialist Experiment, is available from Zero Books.

Russian sanctions push EU from US

By George N. Tzogopoulos Source:Global Times Published: 2017/8/3

The rhetoric of Donald Trump during his presidential campaign and his open stance for collaboration with Moscow after his inauguration led a majority of analysts, journalists and scholars to predict a reset in the relationship, to be followed by a better understanding between the two sides.

Some pundits went even further, and said that Trump's plan was motivated by a desire to break the Sino-Russian partnership and move Russia away from China by promising a rapprochement with the US. 

To take the beginning of a new chapter in relations between Washington and Moscow for granted was risky from the beginning. No American president can decide policy alone as the Congress plays a critical role. 

The most recent example came only a few days ago. By overwhelming majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats voted in favor of new sanctions against Russia. In particular, the new legislation gives the Congress new power to block Trump from easing sanctions against Russia. It certainly ties the hands of Trump and is regarded by CNN a "tough message" to the president because it signaled bluntly that Republicans and Democrats do not trust him. Trump has no alternative but to sign the bill. 

Russia reacted strongly to the sanctions bill. President Vladimir Putin ordered the US to slash staff at its diplomatic missions in Russia by 755, or nearly two thirds, in retaliation. Now it is not clear who will stop working and if they will be Russian or American employees. Although some commentators believe that diplomatic reductions are among the simplest countermeasures possible, this is the harshest such diplomatic move since a similar rupture in 1986, in the waning days of the Soviet Union.

More importantly, the deterioration of relations between the US and Russia is not constructive, neither does it help international cooperation. As the two sides need to be reliable partners on a variety of issues such as the fight against terrorism, continuing mutual suspicion undermines potential joint efforts. 

During the recent G20 Hamburg Summit, Trump and Putin held their first meeting, in the presence of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The content of specific conversations has not been publicized but the relevant tweets of Trump signaled better days to come. But since then, signs of optimism are no longer evident. 

From another perspective, new US sanctions against Russia have also affected the transatlantic partnership. The provisions affecting Europe allow Washington to impose sanctions on Western businesses working with Russian energy companies. German companies could be among the first economic victims as long as they are cooperating with Gazprom for the construction of the so-called Nord Stream II pipeline. In an interview with Funke Mediengruppe, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries considers sanctions "as being against international law, plain and simple." She also encouraged the European Commission to look for countermeasures. 

The situation is perplexing. On the one hand, the EU is currently experiencing problematic cooperation with the US due to Trump's indifference toward European affairs. And on the other, the EU is in the process of intensifying its efforts to reduce its energy dependency on Russia. So, Zypries' request might cause new disagreements at the European level and discord between the European Commission and member states since a midway solution needs to be found to satisfy all parties. 

Subsequently, it will be interesting to see how Germany will combine the EU's energy priorities with its own business interests to construct Nord Stream II, while at the same time keeping a workable relationship with the US under the Trump administration. 

It seems unlikely for now that Germany will take sides with Russia in the wake of the new US sanctions adopted by the Congress. 

But certainly Moscow should not be regarded as being isolated at the international level - and this certainly refers to Europe. 

The author is a lecturer at the European Institute in Nice, France. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn Follow us on Twitter @GTopinion

México y las sanciones a Venezuela y Rusia

John Saxe-Fernández

La Jornada 3 de Agosto de 2017

¿Estos son los que van a negociar el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN)? Eso es lo que viene a mente cuando nos enteran y luego lo confirma el director de la CIA, que el gobierno de Enrique Peña Nieto y el de Colombia se adhieren a la narrativa diplomilitar de las sanciones esgrimidas por Estados Unidos contra Venezuela, parte de una vasta ofensiva golpista, lo que también aplica a la negociación del bloque energético anunciado hace dos semanas por Rick Perry, el secretario de Energía estadunidense. Avalar operativos clandestinos al margen de la normatividad internacional vigente, es inadmisible y riesgoso, máxime cuando el general John Kelly, ex jefe del Comando Sur (CS), quien hasta hace poco estuvo a cargo de la cartera de Homeland Security, acaba de ser nombrado Chief of Staff de la Casa Blanca. Kelly coordinó desde el CS la primera etapa de la operación clandestina Venezuela Freedom, seguida por Venezuela Freedom 2(disponible en redvoltaire.com) tratándose de un regime change multidimensional (económico, de violencia callejera encapuchada y criminal), repudiado en las urnas.

Un asentimiento explícito o implícito a la unilateralidad y extraterritorialidad de Estados Unidos es de alto riesgo. Es un desacierto avalar operativos de criminalidad de Estado, olvidando las guerras de agresión estadunidense por recursos naturales y posiciones estratégicas. Ya devastó Afganistán, Irak, Libia, Siria y realiza ataques parciales a Paquistán sin olvidar apoyos a la agresión contra Yemen o su complicidad golpista en Honduras y Paraguay. Si van a negociar el TLCAN, que no lo hagan bajo la premisa de que la oligarquía de Estados Unidos se guía por el mercado y su mano invisible. Se rigen con el puño visible del Pentágono y sus monopolios. ¿Por qué van por más bases al sur del Bravo? y ¿por qué ahora el aparato diplomilitarencabezado por Tillerson, ex gerente de Exxon, y el general Kelly, revela urgencia por el manejo directo de la vasta reserva fósil de Venezuela, si la narrativa oficial dice que gracias al fracking el vecinos del norte tiene gas y petróleo shale para 100 años?

Las sanciones a Rusia se relacionan directamente con intereses tanto en torno a los combustibles fósiles, que hoy calientan el planeta, como a metas geoestratégicas y a la codicia por el mercado europeo del gas natural, cuyo componente principal, el metano, está acelerando la carrera al abismo climático. Trump, el magnate promotor de la exportación de gas natural, ofreció a los polacos el acceso a fuentes alternativas de energía, para que ese país y sus vecinos nunca más sean rehenes de una sola alternativa. Desde entonces se tensó más la relación Estados Unidos-Unión Europea. Las sanciones afectan proyectos energéticos entre países, bancos y firmas europeas y Rusia, como el gasoducto North Stream, de mil 200 kilómetros, del Báltico ruso hasta Alemania con una capacidad de 55 mil millones de metros cúbicos anuales de gas natural y un agregado que la duplicaría. Esto contrasta con las poco más de 9 mil millas marítimas a la Unión Europea desde, supongamos, una eventual planta exportadora de gas natural liquido (GNL) en Galveston, Texas.

Por lo que Jean Claude Juncker, presidente de la Comisión Europea, dijo que las sanciones contra Rusia socavan la instauración de proyectos clave para la seguridad energética de la UE y para el mantenimiento y mejora de los gasoductos en Rusia que abastecen el sistema de transporte de gas ucraniano y los proyectos clave para la diversificación de las fuentes de energía, entre los que resalta el North Stream y una terminal rusa GNL de exportación. El titular de exteriores alemán y el canciller austriaco advirtieron no poder aceptar la amenaza de imponer sanciones ilegales extraterritoriales a compañías europeas que participan en los esfuerzos para expandir el suministro energético.

Las operaciones diplomilitares y de guerra no convencional se acompañan de vasta propaganda contra Caracas y Moscú desde los principales medios. Sobre Venezuela, dice Claudio Katz sólo transmiten en cadena denuncias macabras del gobierno. Han instalado la imagen de un dictador en conflicto con los demócratas de la oposición. Muestra, dato en mano, que es un discurso sin sustento. La gran mayoría de bajas fue por saqueos o confusas balaceras en el interior de las movilizaciones opositoras o de agresiones de francotiradores ligados a la oposición. Datos más recientes indican que el grueso de las víctimas perdió la vida por vandalismo o ajustes de cuentas (Ibid).

Mientras los medios se centran en Venezuela, nada sobre asesinatos en Colombia: 46 líderes sociales y 120 más en 14 meses. Entre 2002 y 2016 los paramilitares mataron 558 dirigentes. En dos décadas van ¡2 mil 500! Ni pío sobre México donde la violencia se disparó con la puesta en marcha en 2008 de la militarizada Iniciativa Mérida. Santiago Roel desde el Semáforo Ciudadanos ofrece reveladores datos con un robusto planteo por la paz en México.

jsaxef.blogspot.com

The Dawn of an Orwellian Future

July 28, 2017 consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry

It seems that The New York Times can’t let a good lie lie. Even after being pushed into running an embarrassing correction retracting its false claim that there was a consensus of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia hacked Democratic emails and made them public to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, the Times is back suggesting exactly that.

The Times’ current ploy is to say the Russian hacking claims are the “consensus” judgment of the U.S. intelligence community without citing a specific number of agencies. For instance, on Friday, the Times published an article by Matt Flegenheimer about the U.S. Senate vote to prevent President Trump from lifting sanctions on Russia and deployed the misleading phrasing:

“The Trump administration has opposed the sanctions against Russia, arguing that it needs flexibility to pursue a more collaborative diplomacy with a country that, by American intelligence consensus, interfered in last year’s presidential election.”

So, instead of explaining the truth – that the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” was the work of a small group of “hand-picked” analysts from three of the agencies under the watchful eye of then-CIA Director John Brennan and beneath the oversight of then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper – the Times opts to give its readers the misleading impression that there was a “consensus” within the U.S. intelligence community.

In other words, unless a Times reader knows the truth by having read it at a non-mainstream media outlet such as Consortiumnews.com, that reader would continue to believe that all 17 intelligence agencies were in agreement on this foundational point in the Russia-gate affair.

Marginalizing Dissent

And the continuation of this willful deception comes as the Times and other mainstream media outlets make progress in their plans to deploy Internet algorithms to hunt down and marginalize what they deem “fake news,” including articles that challenge the mainstream media’s power to control the dominant news narrative.

A report by the World Socialist Web Site found that “in the three months since Internet monopoly Google announced plans to keep users from accessing ‘fake news,’ the global traffic rankings of a broad range of left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights organizations have fallen significantly.”

Google’s strategy is to downgrade search results for targeted Web sites based on a supposed desire to limit reader access to “low-quality” information, but the targets reportedly include some of the highest-quality alternative news sites on the Internet, such as – according to the report – Consortiumnews.com.

Google sponsors the First Draft Coalition, which was created to counter alleged “fake news” and consists of mainstream news outlets, including the Times and The Washington Post, as well as establishment-approved Web sites, such as Bellingcat, which has a close association with the anti-Russia and pro-NATO Atlantic Council.

This creation of a modern-day Ministry of Truth occurred under the cover of a mainstream-driven hysteria about “fake news” and “Russian propaganda” in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

Last Thanksgiving Day, the Post ran a front-page article citing accusations from an anonymous Web site, PropOrNot, that identified 200 Web sites — including such Internet stalwarts as Truthdig, Counterpunch and Consortiumnews — as purveyors of “Russian propaganda.”

Apparently, PropOrNot’s standard was to smear any news outlet that questioned the State Department’s Official Narrative on the Ukraine crisis or some other global hot spot, but the Post didn’t offer any actual specifics of what these Web sites had done to earn their place on a McCarthyistic blacklist.

An Orwellian Future

In early May 2017, the Times chimed in with a laudatory article about how sophisticated algorithms could purge the Internet of alleged “fake news” or what the mainstream media deems to be “misinformation.”

As I wrote at the time, “you don’t need a huge amount of imagination to see how this combination of mainstream groupthink and artificial intelligence could create an Orwellian future in which only one side of a story gets told and the other side simply disappears from view.”

After my article appeared, I received a call from an NPR reporter who was planning a segment on this new technology and argued with me about my concerns. However, after I offered a detailed explanation about how I saw this as a classic case of the cure being far worse than the disease, I was not invited onto the NPR program.

Also, as for the relatively small number of willfully produced “fake news” stories, none appear to have traced back to Russia despite extensive efforts by the mainstream U.S. media to make the connection. When the U.S. mainstream media has tracked down a source of “fake news,” it has turned out to be some young entrepreneur trying to make some money by getting lots of clicks.

For instance, on Nov. 26, 2016, as the anti-Russia hysteria was heating up in the weeks following Trump’s election, the Times ran a relatively responsible article revealing how a leading “fake news” Web site was not connected to Russia at all but rather was a profit-making effort by an unemployed Georgian student who was using a Web site in Tbilisi to make money by promoting pro-Trump stories.

The owner of the Web site, 22-year-old Beqa Latsabidse, said he had initially tried to push stories favorable to Hillary Clinton but that proved unprofitable so he switched to publishing anti-Clinton and pro-Trump articles whether true or not.

While creators of intentionally “fake news” and baseless “conspiracy theories” deserve wholehearted condemnation, the idea of giving the Times and a collection of Google-approved news outlets the power to prevent public access to information that challenges equally mindless groupthinks is a chilling and dangerous prospect.

Russia-gate Doubts

Even if the Russian government did hack the Democratic emails and slip them to WikiLeaks – a charge that both the Kremlin and WikiLeaks deny – there is no claim that those emails were fake. Indeed, all evidence is that they were actual emails and newsworthy to boot.

Meanwhile, U.S. government accusations against the Russian network, RT, have related more to it covering topics that may make the Establishment look bad – such as the Occupy Wall Street protests, fracking for natural gas, and the opinions of third-party presidential candidates – than publishing false stories.

In some cases, State Department officials have even made their own false allegations in attacking RT.

The current Russia-gate frenzy is a particularly scary example of how dubious government conclusions and mainstream media falsehoods can propel the world toward nuclear destruction. The mainstream media’s certainty about Russia’s guilt in the disclosure of Democratic emails is a case in point even when many well-informed experts have expressed serious doubts — though almost always at alternative media sites.

See, for instance, former WMD inspector Scott Ritter’s warning about lessons unlearned from the Iraq debacle or the opinions of U.S. intelligence veterans who have questioned the accuracy of the Jan. 6 report on Russian hacking.

Perhaps these concerns are misplaced and the Jan. 6 report is correct, but the pursuit of truth should not simply be a case of grabbing onto the opinions of some “hand-picked” analysts working for political appointees, such as Brennan and Clapper. Truth should be subjected to rigorous testing against alternative viewpoints and contradictory arguments.

That has been a core principle since the days of the Enlightenment, that truth best emerges from withstanding challenges in the marketplace of ideas. Overturning that age-old truth – by today unleashing algorithms to enforce the Official Narrative – is a much greater threat to an informed electorate and to the health of democracy than the relatively few times when some kid makes up a bogus story to increase his Web traffic.

And, if this new process of marginalizing dissenting views is successful, who will hold The New York Times accountable when it intentionally misleads its readers with deceptive language about the U.S. intelligence community’s “consensus” regarding Russia and the Democratic emails?

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).