Conservative Turkish women are turning their backs on Erdogan ahead of vote

Shona BHATTACHARYYA

AFP
Fri, 28 April 2023

For a long time, conservative women have been central to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's electoral victories in Turkey. On this August 13, 2018 photo, veiled women look at a shop window in Istanbul. © Yasin Akgul, AFP

Istanbul – Turkey’s May 14 elections are looking uncertain for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid a sluggish economy, young Turks less enamoured with the ruling AKP and an opposition that is finally united. Support from conservative women, usually a pillar of his voting base, is also looking less robust ahead of the vote. FRANCE 24 reports.

"I liked him a lot, and I liked the party, as well," Emine* says, when asked why she has voted for Erdogan for the past 20 years. This housewife lives in the Basaksehir district in Istanbul, one of the many neighbourhoods transformed by the ruling AKP’s urbanisation policy. She was in her early 30s when then candidate Erdogan, who ran as an MP in a March 2003 by-election, emerged as a beacon of hope for women like her: veiled, conservative women who felt marginalised and even disregarded.

The “AKP opened up new areas for conservative women by removing the headscarf ban", Esra Ozcan tells FRANCE 24. The author of, “Mainstreaming the Headscarf: Islamist Politics and Women in the Turkish Media,” Ozcan cites the fact that veiled women can now serve as police officers, judges, university professors or elected political representatives – all of which was against the law unless they removed their headscarves until the AKP came to power.

“This is indeed a group that experienced an expansion of freedoms under [the] AKP,” says Ozcan, a senior professor of practice at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Murat Yetkin, a well-known Turkish editorialist, says one of the reasons that explains Erdogan’s extraordinary popular appeal in the early 2000s was the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling coalition at the time that employed openly anti-Islamic rhetoric targeting veiled women. By denouncing this trend, the young charismatic leader became the champion of conservative women who, from then on, formed an important base of his support.

But 20 years later, “Women have changed,” says Ozlem Zengin, vice president of the AKP bloc in the Turkish parliament.

Those who were among Erdogan’s most ardent supporters in the early years – Erdogan has been president of Turkey since 2014 – could turn their backs on him on May 14 for the country’s presidential and legislative elections.

Tradition and domestic violence

Erdogan often reminds the Turkish public of how he helped strike down the headscarf ban. He believes he has done more for women than many of his predecessors, although many deem that this measure alone was not enough.

Erdogan’s speeches reveal a traditional vision of women’s role in society: above all, a woman is a mother (to three children, if possible) who also takes care of the elderly. It is an ideal that remains unchanging even as the country experiences rapid urbanisation and modernisation.

In today’s Turkey, women – even those who wear the veil – want the same opportunities and working conditions as men.

When Erdogan pulled Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women in July 2021 it confirmed his anachronistic tendencies. In recent years, the Erdogan government has taken a strong stance in favour of traditional family values and against the LGBT “propaganda” embraced by the Western world and the “normalisation” of homosexuality.

With the upcoming elections likely to be Erdogan’s most contested yet, the decision to incorporate two Islamist parties into his coalition that have called for the annulment of a law protecting women from domestic violence is dividing members of the AKP, a rare feat.

Red line

Zengin, 53, did not mince her words when she stated that the passage of law 6284 would be a “red line”, a comment that attracted a fireball of criticism and threats coming from her own political party. She later tried to put out the flames. “We’re sorry. I don’t want to say anything more about this law. I’m tired. I am saddened when I see the situation of our community. I did not say that the law couldn’t be discussed. I only wish that we can discuss it in a more humane, decent and Islamic environment.”

Among those that supported Zengin is the Kadem Foundation. It, too, is affiliated with the AKP and its leader is none other than one of Erdogan’s daughters. But the foundation published a tweet denouncing “an insulting and misogynistic campaign” and reminded its followers that “half of the voters who will cast their ballots are women”.

In another sign that Turkish society is evolving on these issues, an episode of "Kızılcık Serbeti" (Cranberry Sorbet), one of Turkey’s most popular TV shows, ended last month with a veiled woman being killed by her husband. The country’s RTUK media regulatory council ruled that the scene “encouraged domestic violence”, demanding the producers pay a heavy fine and taking the show off the air for five weeks. Its fans were surprised to see a documentary on Islamophobia, notably featuring President Erdogan, airing on April 14 instead of the show.

At least 23 women killed in March

According to We Will Stop Feminicide Platform, 23 women were killed by men and 19 others died in suspicious circumstances in March 2023. The organisation itself is the target of a judicial inquiry and faces closure for “carrying out activities that are against the law and morality”. The last hearing took place in the beginning of April and was adjourned until September 13.

Conservative women are not a homogeneous voting bloc in Turkey. But Ozcan is confident that the AKP “has lost sections of it”.

“Young conservative women want to see [the] AKP… go,” she writes. “They have been very disappointed [by the] AKP’s transformation from former victim to a new oppressor. These women identify as Muslims and they don’t want to see Muslims as oppressors.”

When asked why she won’t vote for Erdogan on May 14, Emine responds simply, “Because I started to think with my head.” Still, that doesn’t mean the 54-year-old will be voting for the opposition. For the first time ever, she says she will abstain.

*Not her real name.

Turkey’s Erdogan cancels 3rd day of election appearances

yesterday

In this handout photo released by Turkish Presidency, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurates Turkey's first nuclear power plant via a video link, at the Presidential palace in Ankara, Thursday, April 27, 2023. Sitting behind a desk surrounded by Cabinet members, aides and political allies, the 69-year-old leader remotely presided over the event marking the delivery of the first fuel to Russian-built Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, in southern Turkey. (Turkish Presidency via AP)

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled his election appearances for a third day Friday after falling ill with what officials described as an intestinal infection.

Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for two decades as prime minister and then president, is seeking a third presidential term in Turkey’s May 14 elections. He had been due to appear at a bridge opening and a political rally in the southern city of Adana, but his schedule changed to show he would attend the opening ceremony via video link.

Erdogan spoke by phone Friday with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio on several matters, including the Ukraine-Russia grain and fertilizer deal they helped arrange, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. He said they discussed “how to guarantee the improvement, expansion and extension” of the deal, which expires May 18.

Erdogan became ill during a TV interview on Tuesday evening with what Health Minister Fahrettin Koca later said was a “gastrointestinal infection.” His election rallies planned for Wednesday and Thursday were canceled.

He looked pale Thursday as he inaugurated a nuclear power plant via video in his first public appearance since his illness. During his Friday video address Erdogan seemed well as he spoke for about 10 minutes from behind a desk.

Other officials sought to dispel concerns over the 69-year-old leader’s health ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections. Recent polls showed a slight lead for Erdogan’s main challenger amid an economic downturn and a February earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people.

Erdogan, who underwent intestinal surgery in 2011, has ruled Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and as president since 2014. He campaigned hard in recent weeks, attending several events across the country every day.

Turkey's Erdogan cancels events after falling ill on live TV



DW

April 27, 2023

Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared his calendar on Wednesday and Thursday after falling ill during a televised interview. The Turkish president is campaigning to extend his 20-year rule at next month's election.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled his appearances for a second day on Thursday after falling ill with a stomach bug.

On Thursday, he had been scheduled to appear at a rally in Mersin as well as to inaugurate Turkey's first nuclear power station — a facility on Turkey's southern coast that is built, owned and operated by Russia's state nuclear energy company Rosatom.

Instead, Erdogan addressed the nuclear plant opening via video link, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Erdogan boasted that he was "proud to be making the move that will place Turkey among the nuclear power countries of the world."

Putin described the plant as the "biggest project in the history of Turkish-Russian ties."
Erdogan falls ill mid-interview

Erdogan fell ill during a live TV interview on Tuesday while campaigning for the election next month.

The interview was briefly cut and a concerned voice could be heard in the background. Erdogan returned around 20 minutes later to finish the interview.

The Turkish president said on Wednesday that he would take some time off to "rest at home under the advice of our doctors."
What Turkish officials say about Erdogan's health

Late on Wednesday, Erdogan's communications director Fahrettin Altun shared screenshots of speculation that the president had suffered a heart attack and was in hospital.

"We categorically reject such baseless claims regarding the president about his health," Altun said.

Meanwhile, Vice President Fuat Oktay said Erdogan was doing well.

"We are in constant contact," he said. "He has caught a little cold."
The election campaign in Turkey

Erdogan has been campaigning frequently as part of his bid to continue a two-decade election-winning streak.

However, his popularity has fallen due to economic issues and the impact of February's earthquakes that claimed more than 50,000 lives.

He is now neck-and-neck in the polls with opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is backed by a coalition of secular, conservative and nationalist factions.

On Thursday, polls opened for Turks in Germany — the largest Turkish diaspora community numbering 1.5 million eligible voters — to cast their vote from overseas. The first round of the election in Turkey will be held on May 14.

zc/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters, dpa)

In New York, Canada's Trudeau takes veiled swipe at Trump

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau


By Doina Chiacu

Reuters
April 28, 2023

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday he was worried about the future of American democracy, taking a veiled swipe at former U.S. President Donald Trump during a visit to New York.

"You guys are the greatest democracy in the world," Trudeau said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Right now, it's not just that it's being taken for granted by so many citizens, it's actually being devalued."

Canada's Liberal prime minister did not refer to Trump by name but had harsh criticism for policies and practices closely identified with the former president, from isolationism to stoking voter anger.

In 2021, Trudeau blamed Trump as having incited his supporters to wage the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

On Friday, he said similar forces were running rampant in Canada and other democracies, with people feeling the system was rigged, and politicians were tapping into that anger and anxiety aimed at government and democratic institutions.

"Because amplifying anger is a very effective short-term mobilization policy, strategy for politics," Trudeau said. "The tougher challenge is to figure out how to roll up your sleeves and solve it."

Trudeau praised President Joe Biden, the Democrat who beat Trump in 2020 as working to address economic and other factors behind the political unrest that marked his predecessor's tenure.

Trump, a businessman turned reality television host, left behind a more polarized U.S. when he vacated the White House in January 2021, with the economy badly damaged and political violence on the rise after his false claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Abroad, Trump often invoked his "America First" agenda by dismantling or disrupting multilateral pacts, which alienated allies and spawned distrust in Washington's promises.

Trudeau acknowledged that people were left behind in the economic boom that followed global free trade pacts. He stressed it was politicians' responsibility to fix that, "not to burn it all down to attack our institutions to be isolationist protectionist, nativist."

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Josie Kao)

You Are Reading This Thanks to Semiconductors

by Vijay Prashad / April 28th, 2023

Koga Harue (Japan), Umi (‘The Sea’), 1929.

On 7 October 2022, the United States government implemented export controls in an effort to hinder the development of China’s semiconductor industry. An expert on the subject told the Financial Times, ‘The whole point of the policy is to kneecap China’s AI [Artificial Intelligence] and HPC [High Performance Computing] efforts’. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said:

In order to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the US has been abusing export control measures to wantonly block and hobble Chinese enterprises. Such practice runs counter to the principle of fair competition and international trade rules. It will not only harm Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests but also hurt the interests of US companies. It will hinder international sci-tech exchange and trade cooperation and deal a blow to global industrial and supply chains and world economic recovery. By politicising tech and trade issues and using them as a tool and weapon, the US cannot hold back China’s development but will only hurt and isolate itself when its action backfires.

As part of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research’s collaboration with No Cold War, we studied the implications of these export controls with a focus on semiconductors. Briefing no. 7 teaches us about the vitality of semiconductors and why their use in the New Cold War will not bear the fruits anticipated by Washington.

On 8 April, Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul was asked to explain ‘why Americans… should be willing to spill American blood and treasure to defend Taiwan’. His answer was telling: ‘TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] manufactures 90% of the global supply of advanced semiconductor chips’. The interviewer noted that McCaul’s reasoning ‘sounds like the case that [was] made in the 60s, 70s, and 80s of why America was spending so much money and military resources in the Middle East [when] oil was so important for the economy’ and then asked whether semiconductor chips are ‘the 21st century version’ of oil – that is, a key driver of US foreign policy towards China.

Semiconductor chips are the building blocks of the world’s most advanced technologies (such as artificial intelligence, 5G telecommunications, and supercomputing) as well as all modern electronics. Without them, the computers, phones, cars, and devices that are essential to our everyday lives would cease to function. They are typically produced by using ultraviolet light to etch microscopic circuit patterns onto thin layers of silicon, packing billions of electrical switches called transistors onto a single fingernail-sized wafer. This technology advances through a relentless process of miniaturisation: the smaller the distance between transistors, the greater the density of transistors that can be packed onto a chip and the more computing power that can be embedded in each chip and in each facet of modern life. Today, the most advanced chips are produced with a three-nanometre (nm) process (for reference, a sheet of paper is roughly 100,000-nm thick).

Charles Sheeler (United States), Classic Landscape, 1931.

The Semiconductor Supply Chain

The commercial semiconductor industry was developed in Silicon Valley, California in the late 1950s, dominated by the United States in all aspects, from research and design to manufacture and sales. From the outset, this industry held geopolitical significance, with early manufacturers selling upwards of 95% of their chips to the Pentagon or the aerospace sector. Over the subsequent decades, the US selectively offshored most of its chip manufacturing to its East Asian allies, first to Japan, then to South Korea and Taiwan. This allowed the US to reduce its capital and labour costs and stimulate the industrial development of its allies while continuing to dominate the supply chain.

Today, US firms maintain a commanding presence in chip design (e.g., Intel, AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA) and fabrication equipment (e.g., Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA). Taiwan’s TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer or foundry, accounting for an overwhelming 56% share of the global market and over 90% of advanced chip manufacturing in 2022, followed by South Korea’s Samsung, which holds a 15% share of the global market. In addition, the Dutch firm ASML is a critical player, holding a monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines needed to produce the most advanced chips below 7-nm.

The largest part of the semiconductor supply chain that lies outside of the control of the US and its allies is in China, which has developed into the world’s electronics manufacturing hub and a major technological power over the past four decades. China’s share of global chip manufacturing capacity has risen from zero in 1990 to roughly 15% in 2020. Yet, despite its sizeable developmental advances, China’s chip production capabilities still lag behind, relying on imports for the most advanced chips (in 2020, China imported $378 billion worth of semiconductors, 18% of its total imports). Meanwhile, China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, SMIC, only has a 5% share of the global market, paling in comparison to TSMC.

Giorgio de Chirico (Italy), Ettore e Andromaca (‘Hector and Andromache’), 1955–56.

The US Campaign against China

In recent years, the US has been waging an aggressive campaign to arrest China’s technological development, which it views as a serious threat to its dominance. In the words of US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Washington’s goal is to ‘maintain as large of a lead as possible’. To this end, the US has identified China’s semiconductor production capabilities as an important weakness and is trying to block the country’s access to advanced chips and chip-making technology. Under the Trump and Biden administrations, the US has placed hundreds of Chinese companies on trade and investment blacklists, including the country’s leading semiconductor manufacturer SMIC and tech giant Huawei. These restrictions have banned any company in the world that uses US products – effectively every chip designer and manufacturer – from doing business with Chinese tech firms.

The US has also pressured governments and firms around the world to impose similar restrictions. Since 2018, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have joined the US in banning Huawei from their 5G telecommunications networks while a number of European countries have implemented partial bans or restrictions. Importantly, in 2019, after more than a year of intense US lobbying, the Dutch government blocked the key firm ASML, which builds and supplies the most advanced chip-making machinery to the semiconductor industry, from exporting its equipment to China.

These policies do not only target firms; they also have a direct impact on an individual level. In October 2022, the Biden administration restricted ‘US persons’ – including citizens, residents, and green-card holders – from working for Chinese chip firms, forcing many to choose between their immigration status and their jobs. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a leading Washington, DC think tank, characterised US policy as ‘actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry – strangling with an intent to kill’ (our emphasis).

Alongside its containment measures against China, the US has ramped up efforts to boost its domestic chip-making capacity. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in August 2022, provides $280 billion in funding to boost the domestic US semiconductor industry and reshore production from East Asia. Washington views Taiwan’s role as the manufacturing hub of the semiconductor industry as a strategic vulnerability given its proximity to mainland China and is inducing TSMC to relocate production to Phoenix, Arizona. This pressure, in turn, is generating its own frictions in the US-Taiwan relationship.

However, US efforts are not infallible. Although China has suffered serious setbacks, it has intensified efforts to promote its domestic capacity, and there are signs of progress despite the obstacles imposed by the US. For example, in 2022, China’s SMIC reportedly achieved a significant technological breakthrough, making the leap from 14-nm to 7-nm semiconductor chips, which is on par with the global leaders Intel, TSMC, and Samsung.

Lu Yang (China), Delusional World – Bardo #1, 2021.

A Matter of Global Importance

It is important to note that the US is not only targeting China in this conflict: Washington fears that China’s technological development will lead, through trade and investment, to the dispersal of advanced technologies more broadly throughout the world, namely, to states in the Global South that the US sees as a threat. This would be a significant blow to the US’s power over these countries. In 2020, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee decried that China was facilitating ‘digital authoritarianism’ because it has ‘been willing to go into smaller, under-served markets’ and ‘offer more cost-effective equipment than Western companies’, pointing to countries under US sanctions such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe as examples. To combat ties between Chinese tech firms and sanctioned countries, the US has taken severe legal action, fining the Chinese corporation ZTE $1.2 billion in 2017 for violating US sanctions against Iran and North Korea. The US also collaborated with Canada to arrest Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 on charges of circumventing US sanctions against Iran.

Unsurprisingly, while the US has been able to consolidate support for its agenda amongst a number of its Western allies, its efforts have failed across the Global South. It is in the interest of developing countries for such advanced technologies to be dispersed as widely as possible – not to be controlled by a select few states.

Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopia), The End of the Beginning, 1972–73.

If you are reading this newsletter on your smartphone, then you should know that this tiny instrument has billions of miniscule transistors that are invisible to the human eye. The scale of the developments in digital technology is staggering. Earlier conflicts took place over energy and food, but now this conflict has heated up over – amongst other matters – the resources of our digital world. This technology can be used to solve so many of our dilemmas, and yet, here we are, at the precipice of greater conflict to benefit the few over the needs of the many.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

Anxiety as Socialism: AI Moratorium Fantasies

by Binoy Kampmark / April 27th, 2023

Rumours and streaks of hysteria are running rife about what such artificial intelligence (AI) systems as ChatGPT are meant to do. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy recently showed himself to be ignorant with terror about the search bot created by OpenAI. “ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn’t built into the model. Nobody programmed it to learn complicated chemistry. It decided to teach itself, then made its knowledge available to anyone who asked. Something is coming. We aren’t ready.”

Melanie Mitchell, an academic who knows a thing or two about the field, was bemused and tweeted as much. “Senator, I’m an AI researcher. Your description of ChatGPT is dangerously misinformed. Every sentence is incorrect. I hope you will learn more about how this system actually works, how it was trained, and what its limitations are.”

Murphy retorted indignantly that he had not meant what he said. “Of course I know that AI doesn’t ‘learn’ or ‘teach itself’ like a human. I’m using shorthand.” Those criticisms, he argued, had the intention of bullying “policymakers away from regulating new technology by ridiculing us when we don’t use the terms the industry uses.”

Like birds of a feather, Murphy’s intervention came along with the Future of Life Institute’s own contribution in the form of an open letter (the Letter). The document makes a number of assertions expected from an institute that has warned about the risks of supremely intelligent AI systems. Literally thousands digitally flocked to lend their names to it, including tech luminaries such as Elon Musk (a warning there), and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. (Currently, the number of signatures lies at 27,567.)

The letter makes the plea that a six-month moratorium is necessary for humanity to take stock about the implications of AI. “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization. Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders.” Emphatically, it continues: “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

The Letter is unimpressive, clumsy, and clear in its effort to manufacture anxiety. While there is much to be said about having considered debates on the way AI is developing, one must ask where this plea is coming from. When billionaires demand a halt in technological practice, scepticism should start tickling the conscience. Suddenly, such voices demand transparency, accountability and openness, the very things they have shunned through their money-making endeavours. And who are the unelected tech leaders in any case?

As for the level of anxiety, the powerful and wealthy will always have bundles of it. If there is one commodity they truly want to share with the rest of us – call it anxiety as socialism – it’s their own fears writ large and disseminated as our fears. AI is that perfect conduit, a case of both promise and terror, therefore needing strict control. “The only things that can oppress US billionaires,” muses the Indian journalist and writer Manu Joseph, “are disease, insurrection, aliens and paranormal machines, the reason they tend to develop exaggeration [sic] notions of their dangers.”

For Mitchell, the authors and backers had embraced an all too gloomy predicament of humanity in the face of AI. “Humans,” she wrote earlier this month, “are continually at risk of over-anthropomorphizing over-trusting these systems, attributing agency to them when none is there.”

The useful premise for the unnerved fearmongers yields two corollaries: the attempt to try to halt the changing nature of such systems in the face of innovation; and the selling factor. “Public fear of AI is actually useful for the tech companies selling it, since the flip-side of the fear is the belief that these systems are truly powerful and big companies would be foolish not to adopt them.”

Moratoria in the field of technology tend to be doomed ventures. The human desire to invent even the most cataclysmically foolish of devices, is the stuff of Promethean legend. Consider, for instance, the debate on whether the US should develop a weapon even more destructive than the atomic bomb. The fear, then, was that the godless Soviets might acquire a superbomb, a muscular monster based on fusion, rather than fission.

In the seminal document received by US President Harry Truman on April 14, 1950, fears of such a discovery are rife. Written by Paul Nitze of the US State Department’s Policy Planning Office, it warned “that the probable fission bomb capability and the possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union have greatly intensified the Soviet threat to the security of the United States.” The result of such a fear became the hydrogen bomb.

The more level headed pragmatists in the field acknowledge, as do the listed authors of Stochastic Parrots (they include Mitchell) published on the website of the DAIR Institute, that there are “real and present dangers” associated with harms arising from AI, but this is qualified by the “acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems. Regulatory efforts should focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labor practices.”

Perhaps, suggests Mitchell, we should aim for something akin to a “Manhattan Project of intense research” that would cover “AI’s abilities, limitations, trustworthiness, and interpretability, where the investigation and results are open to anyone.” A far from insensible suggestion, bar the fact that the original Manhattan Project, dedicated to creating the first atomic bomb during the Second World War, was itself a competition to ensure that Nazi Germany did not get there first.FacebookTwitterReddEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

The Growing Russia-India Relationship

by Ted Snider Posted onApril 28, 2023

The US has made much of its success in isolating Russia internationally. But that boast is hard to take too seriously when Russia is growing ever closer to the two largest countries in the world. While the world has been watching the "no limits" partnership between Russia and China grow into “a relationship that probably cannot be compared with anything in the world," Russia has been growing quietly closer to the second largest country in the world.

India has long been a close partner of Russia. In 2009, India and Russia signed the Joint Russian-Indian Declaration of Deepening and Strategic Partnership. In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia where the two sides agreed on a number of steps to enhance that partnership.

That partnership did not come apart under US pressure after Russia invaded Ukraine. Despite intense pressure from the US to "take a clear position" against Russia, India has refused to condemn Russia at the UN and has repeated Russia’s call to take "into account the legitimate security interests of all countries." India has also offered Russia an escape from sanctions by swelling from a country that once imported little Russian oil to a country that now has Russia as its top supplier of oil. India imported $41.56 billion from Russia in the last fiscal year, which is about five times its previous level. Before the war, Russia was India’s eighteenth largest import partner; since the war, Russia has become India’s fourth largest import partner.

And the partnership did not only not come apart, it grew stronger. On September 16, 2022, over half a year after the war in Ukraine began, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that "Relations between Russia and India have significantly improved." He called the friendship "extremely important." Seven months later, on April 16, 2023, Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the relationship with Russia had not changed, calling it "among the steadiest of the major relationships of the world in the contemporary era."

Russia’s March 31 new foreign policy concept states that "Russia will continue to build up a particularly privileged strategic partnership with the Republic of India in order to raise the level and expand cooperation in all areas."

And while the US is pushing a plan to ban all exports to Russia except those that are specifically exempted, India is defiantly following its independent path and continuing to strengthen its economic relationship with Russia. India and Russia have resumed discussions on a free trade agreement between India and the Russian led Eurasian Economic Commission that had been disrupted by COVID. The two countries are now engaged in "advanced negotiations" for a new bilateral investment treaty.

But the advancing relationship is not just based on trade. Beyond economics, Jaishankar said that India and Russia "share a commitment to a multi-polar world." The new Russian foreign policy concept also stressed that transforming "Eurasia into a continental common space of peace, stability, mutual trust, development and prosperity" necessitated the comprehensive strengthening of the SCO."

The SCO, or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, is a massive international organization that includes Russia, China, India and Pakistan. It is the world’s second largest international organization after the UN, and its primary purpose is to re-balance the US led unipolar world into a multipolar world.

Along with Russia and China, India is also a member of BRICS, another important multipolar organization. Contained within BRICS is the core RIC group that traces its roots all the way back to 1996. In their joint statement of February 4, 2022, Russia and China stressed strengthening, not only the SCO and BRICS, but specifically "develop[ing] cooperation within the ‘Russia-India-China’ format." India has also called, not only for the general "strengthening of the BRICS Identity," but specifically for discussions on "further strengthening of RIC trilateral cooperation."

This year, India will host the SCO summit. In a further show of the growing relationship between Russia and India, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to travel to India twice this year: once to the SCO summit and once to the G20 summit. The two countries expect to take advantage of the visits to make cooperation between them stronger. The visits make an additional statement following the International Criminal Court’s March 17 issuing of a warrant of arrest for Putin as a war criminal.

In a further evolution of the multipolar world, India seems interested in joining Russia and China in escaping from the hegemony of the US dollar. Speaking in India, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov expressed Russia’ interest in using "national currencies and currencies of friendly countries" for trade. Reuters reports that India, too, "has been keen on increasing the use of its rupee currency for trade with Russia." And, recently, India has begun purchasing some Russian oil in Russian rubles.

BRICS represents 40% of the world’s population, the SCO represents 43%, and both are growing. China and India make up more than a third of the population of the world. As Russia’s much discussed relationship with China and, importantly, its much less discussed relationship with India continue to grow, it is hard to take seriously the Western insistence that Russia is isolated and alone.

Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

US and South Korea Agree to Co-Design Nuclear Weapons Policy 5 Years After Panmunjom Declaration

by Andy Corbley Posted onApril 28, 2023

The US will work alongside South Korea to develop a strategic nuclear policy and frequently station nuclear weapon-armed submarines on the peninsula, according to an agreement announced by the White House marking the first visit of the new South Korean president to the US.

Released on Wednesday, before the East Room was festooned with guests watching President Yoon Suk-yeol sing The Day the Music Died karaoke style, it marks the first time that US nuclear warheads will be present on the Korean Peninsula since they were removed in 1991, and the first outright departure from commitments to reduce the reliance on deterrence with nuclear weapons.

It also came, unlikely by chance, on the 5-year anniversary of the signing of the Panmunjom Declaration between former President Moon Jae-in and Chairman Kim Jung-un.

That was the closest the Korean Peninsula had come to peace since the Korean War was concluded with a ceasefire in 1953, and the closest to a denuclearized Korea since the North first got the bomb sometime between when it left the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003, and its first detonation in 2006.

“US officials said the nuclear-armed submarines will only ‘visit’ South Korea and that the US won’t permanently deploy nukes to the country,” reports Antiwar news editor Dave DeCamp. “But under the deal, the temporary deployment of US strategic assets to the peninsula will become much more frequent”.

The deal stipulates that South Korea will not seek to individually obtain nuclear weapons, something which President Yoon mused about earlier in his presidency, but which the Blue House walked back.

Atoms for survival

The North Korean state is often referred to as “rogue” vis-à-vis the international community. But they aren’t madmen or fools. They knew the only way their regime could survive Washington’s unipolar moment following the collapse of their Soviet benefactors was to harness the power of the atom bomb.

The easiest comparison to make to understand their thinking is looking at the current North Korean dictatorship, which got nukes and is still around, and compare it to the Libyan dictatorship, which had chemical weapons, got rid of them around the same time that North Korea left the NPT to pursue nukes, and was overthrown by America under Obama.

South Korea on the other hand has for some time polled strongly in favor of establishing independent nuclear capabilities, and the New York Times suggests that Yoon is looking to assuage those in favor with this cooperative strategy with the US – amounting to what is essentially a carbon-copy of the NATO nuclear weapons sharing agreement.

South Korea is part of the NPT, so in principle there’s no reason to think public pressure could change the status quo there. North Korea is the only country that‘s ever left the NPT having first ratified it.

The bigger concern should be, with nuclear weapons coming in and out of harbor in the South, to what degree does this agreement escalate tensions, reduce the future chances for better North-South cooperation, and increase the risk of a nuclear accident?

There’s always a risk when nuclear weapons are present in a geopolitical conflict zone, but with the existing conventional forces aimed at the North, the deterrence against a disarming nuclear first strike by Kim Jung-UN remains high.

Countering Trump

What is always the biggest risk, and what Daniel Ellsberg details so well in his 2021 book The Doomsday Machine, is the risk in these situations for a nuclear accident, or an unauthorized launch, particularly in the midst of other crises and communications disruptions.

On this front, the greater presence of nuclear weapons on the peninsula will do nothing to make the peninsula safer for the North and the South.

Much was made at the White House about the date being the 70th anniversary of the first alliance between the South Koreans and the US.

What the deal more likely represents is an attempt to rubber-stamp the military-industrial complex’s rejection of former President Trump’s notion, a notion that was realized five years ago today, that the way in which the peninsula could be made safer is through reduced sanctions, reduced military drills and buildup, and more cross-Korean dialogue.

With Donald Trump and Joe Biden having already announced their candidacies for the 2024 Presidential Election, making the American people’s latest memory of the stalemate in Korea be Yoon singing karaoke after agreeing to allow more US military involvement in the peninsula, is how the Biden team believes they can erase any memories of what was certainly one of the most significant events in the Trump presidency – that like Alexander the Great, he was almost able to cut the Gordian Knot of the Korean War.

The pictures of Trump, President Moon, and Chairman Kim shaking hands and crossing the turquoise border on the DMZ, and the later images of Kim clasping hands with Moon in the Blue House, having just signed an agreement to formally end the Korean War and begin talks on a stepwise disarmament effort, were exceptionally powerful images that sat on the front pages of every major news outlet on the planet for a week.

It’s a legacy that Biden hoped no doubt to erase with this recent agreement. More his part, Biden made a point in a statement on the meeting that he remains committed to negotiation with the North, and invites them back to the table. But that’s a lie, or at least foolish to say, because he’s “committed” absolutely nothing to the effort; not as president, nor as a senator.

Andrew Corbley is founder and editor of World at Large, an independent news outlet. He is a loyal listener of Antiwar radio and of the Scott Horton Show. Reprinted with permission from World at Large.

The Myth Of Daniel Ellsberg As The ‘Good Leaker’

By Kevin Gosztola

April 28, 2023

Source: Shadowproof

(Photo: Christopher Michel)

Even as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg closes in on the end of an incredible and impactful life, the Washington Post and the pundit class still cannot resist using Ellsberg as a prop to misleadingly assert that he is history’s best example of a “Good Leaker.”

Devlin Barrett, a national security correspondent who covers the FBI and the United States Justice Department for the Post, spoke to Ellsberg and invited him to compare what he did to the leak of Pentagon documents, which were allegedly posted to a Discord chat group by Air National Guard reservist Jack Teixeira.

The framing somberly noted how Ellsberg faces terminal pancreatic cancer, and to him, the war in Ukraine is eerily similar to the Vietnam War he helped end. “I’m reliving a part of history I had no desire to live again. And I hoped I wouldn’t. And by the way, that makes it easier to leave,” Ellsberg declared.

But Barrett and the Post brought in Steven Aftergood, who is known in Washington, D.C., for his work with the Federation of American Scientists’ Government Secrecy Project, to comment on Ellsberg. Aftergood held up Ellsberg as the “archetypal” leaker of government secrets and pits him against many of the more recent whistleblowers, who Ellsberg himself has supported.

“He actually read and understood all of the material he released. He knew what he was doing. And he acted with thoughtful discrimination by withholding four volumes of material on diplomatic negotiations that he considered particularly sensitive,” Aftergood argued.

Aftergood added, “Government officials had told the public lies before, but rarely had they been exposed with such merciless clarity as they were in the Pentagon Papers.”

Furthermore, Aftergood described Ellsberg as an “example” because he “took responsibility” and “did not try to evade the consequences of his decisions.” That supposedly “won the respect even of his adversaries and critics.”

It is unclear who these “adversaries and critics” might be.

Henry Kissinger was secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, and he dubbed Ellsberg the “most dangerous man in America.” Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who commissioned the classified Pentagon Papers study, wanted to hurt Ellsberg “very badly.” Later in their lives, they never showed Ellsberg respect for facing the “consequences.” So, Aftergood cannot be referring to them.

Aftergood was obviously referring to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. A popular talking point promoted by President Barack Obama’s administration is that Snowden “fled into the arms of an adversary [Russia]” and that country engaged in a “concerted effort to undermine confidence in [US] democracy.”

Ellsberg has wholeheartedly backed Snowden. “In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material—and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago.”

What Aftergood, Barrett, and the Post did is similar to the tactic that prosecutors employed in the extradition proceedings against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange when Ellsberg took the stand to defend Assange.

Lead prosecutor James Lewis of the Crown Prosecution Authority emphasized that Ellsberg had withheld four volumes of the Pentagon Papers and made the same point that Aftergood made. But Ellsberg informed Lewis that he was wrong about the reason why Ellsberg did not disclose the volumes.

Ellsberg did not want to give the U.S. government an excuse during the war for breaking off negotiations to end to the conflict. It did not bother him at all if the names of U.S. intelligence sources were exposed.

As Ellsberg described, the 4,000 pages of original government documents that he disclosed contained thousands of names of Americans, Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese. There was even a clandestine CIA officer, who was named.

Nowhere in the Pentagon Papers was there an “adequate justification for the killing that we were doing,” Ellsberg recalled. “I was afraid if I redacted or withheld anything at all it would be inferred I left out” the good reasons why the U.S. was pursuing the Vietnam War.

Ellsberg was concerned about revealing the name of a clandestine CIA officer, though he mentioned the individual was well-known in South Vietnam. But he left it in the documents so no one in the government could get away with lying about redactions in the papers.

Just like U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who released entire databases on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, Ellsberg believed the public needed to have access to the complete record. (Needless to say, Manning is not a “good leaker” to Aftergood.)

In the extradition proceedings and in almost every instance where a whistleblower has courageously risked their livelihood, Ellsberg said the pundit class has used him as a “foil” against any “new revelations” of systematic government abuses of power. They have claimed certain leaks were different than his leaks to make it easier to discredit people who took great risks to reveal the truth.

The inconvenient fact is that many of these “Bad Leakers” from the past 50 years are individuals who Ellsberg has championed. But soon the media establishment and wider pundit class will no longer have to worry about a longtime person of conscience getting in the way of their narrative.

Ellsberg will no longer be around to correct them, and they will be able to focus on helping the FBI identify and hunt down leakers after they squeeze out all the scoops that they can from their disclosures.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/04/daniel-ellsberg-profound-voice-against.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/04/daniel-ellsbergs-ongoing-courage-april.html

Austria’s Communists Are Showing How Class Politics Is Done
By Adam Baltner

April 28, 2023
Source: Jacobin


In Sunday’s state elections in Salzburg, Austria, the Communist Party scored 12% of the vote. Their success mobilizing around housing issues shows that a focus on working people’s material needs can rally support even in long-conservative areas.

On Sunday, April 23, Austria’s political landscape was rocked by a true earthquake. In legislative elections in the state of Salzburg, where conservative and far-right parties combined currently control over 60 percent of the seats, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) won 11.7 percent and thirty-one thousand of the votes cast. This result put the party in fourth place, behind the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP, 30.4 percent), the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ, 25.7 percent), and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ, 17.9 percent) — yet ahead of the Greens, as well as NEOS, a libertarian party which missed the threshold to return to the state parliament.

This result is striking in many respects. The last and only time that the KPÖ had earned a mandate in a Salzburg state election was in 1945, off the back of the Allied victory in World War II, when it managed a modest 3.8 percent of the vote. In most Salzburg state elections since then, the Communists have not even cracked the 1 percent mark — when they have bothered to run at all. In the last election in 2018, they received a mere 0.4 percent and one thousand votes.

Yet the KPÖ’s success is not just unprecedented for Salzburg state. Before Sunday, the party had never managed a double-digit result in any Austrian state election. Even in Styria — for decades the only Austrian state with Communist representatives in its legislature — the party won 6 percent of the vote and two mandates in 2019, the most recent election year. Now it will likely control four of the thirty-six seats in the next Salzburg state legislature.

The KPÖ also gave a strong showing in the city of Salzburg itself — the fourth-largest in Austria, with over one hundred fifty thousand people. There, it came in second place with 21.5 percent of the vote, only three points behind the ÖVP. This result approaches typical KPÖ electoral performances in the Styrian capital of Graz, the Communists’ national stronghold, where local party chair Elke Kahr won a surprise victory with 28.8 percent of the vote in the 2021 municipal election. Since then, Kahr has served as the only Communist mayor of a major European city. Yet with the next Salzburg municipal election scheduled for 2024, there is already speculation in national media about whether a second Austrian state capital could soon be governed by a Communist.

A Surprise With a Long Prehistory

Many analyses of the KPÖ’s Salzburg surprise have focused on the young, charismatic candidate at the top of the party’s electoral list, the thirty-four-year-old historian and museum tour guide Kay-Michael Dankl. A native of Salzburg city who spent part of his teenage years in Tucson, Arizona, the plain-spoken Dankl comes off as authentic and genuine. According to the initial reactions on election night, he was especially successful in winning over voters who feel alienated from the political status quo.

Yet the fact that Dankl stood for election as a Communist was hardly inevitable. Dankl’s political career began during his time at the University of Salzburg, where he became active in the student organization of Austria’s Green Party. Later, from 2015–17, he headed the Greens’ party school in Salzburg and served as the leader of their national youth organization, the Young Greens. But when the Young Greens criticized the Greens’ lack of class politics and internal democracy several months prior to the 2017 Austrian parliamentary election, they were unceremoniously expelled from their mother party.

Instead of giving up, Dankl and the Young Greens decided to campaign with the KPÖ under the auspices of an electoral alliance named KPÖ PLUS (PLUS stands for Plattform Unabhängig und Solidarisch or Independent Solidarity Platform). At the time, the KPÖ had no more than a few thousand, mostly older members and virtually zero national relevance — think Democratic Socialists of America prior to 2016. Though it stood candidates in parliamentary elections, it rarely earned more than 1 percent of the vote.

Outside of Styria, there was little consistent activity between elections, apart from the odd standing meeting that some local chapters still held at the district office or pub. Nevertheless, for the young activists looking to engage in class politics, the KPÖ ultimately seemed like a good fit. And in light of Austria’s looming lurch to the right — which came to pass when ÖVP candidate Sebastian Kurz won the 2017 election and formed a coalition government with the FPÖ — they viewed precisely this kind of politics as the order of the day: according to the analysis of Dankl and other Young Greens at the time, “the rightward lurch in Austria can only be stopped by a strong movement from below.”

KPÖ PLUS only finished with 0.7 percent in the 2017 parliamentary election. However, the electoral campaign itself initiated a process of mutual learning between the old, historically aware Communist cadre and the young, motivated activists, paving the way for future cooperation. Shortly thereafter in 2018, the Young Greens refounded themselves as the Young Left. They also began receiving financial support from the KPÖ and now function as a de facto youth organization of the party.

In recent years, a number of current and former members of the Young Greens/Young Left — including Dankl — have also joined the KPÖ. The merging of these two milieus — of the knowledge and experience of the older generation with the energy and enthusiasm of the younger — has formed the basis of an emergent left-wing force that was desperately missing from the Austrian political scene. And now, the years of work that have gone into building this force are starting to bear fruit.

Styrian Model

The majority of the new KPÖ activists from Young Greens/Young Left circles are not from Styria and were not socialized politically in the Styrian party organization’s networks. Yet as most of them are too young to have firsthand experience of the infighting between the Styrian KPÖ and the national party leadership during the tumultuous 1990s, they have been able to more impartially adopt the far more successful approach of their Styrian comrades. Above all, this model entails a clear focus on issues that affect the day-to-day lives of all working people. Moreover, it’s maintained outside of election campaigns through a highly concrete and personal form of engagement.

This is precisely the model that Dankl has pursued in Salzburg since 2019, when he first ran in a municipal election in the state capital. Similar to former KPÖ Graz chairman Ernest Kaltenegger in the 1980s, Dankl focused his campaign predominantly on housing — a logical choice given that Salzburg has the second-highest rent prices of any Austrian city. In doing so, he managed to win 3.7 percent of the vote and a seat on the city council. This strategy was based on the simple recognition that the KPÖ can use the issue of housing not only to drive a wedge through local politics but also to attract strong support outside of the Left’s ever-dwindling core electorate.

As the only Communist member of the Salzburg city council, Dankl has placed great emphasis on grassroots work and personal contact with his constituents. Drawing on a long-established practice of the Styrian KPÖ, he holds regular office hours when people come by to discuss their everyday problems. Of the €1,800 he earns each month as a city councilmember, he donates €400 to a social fund set up to provide financial assistance to people in need.

Some leftists criticize this practice as a form of charity as opposed to politics. In fact, it is better understood as propaganda of the deed: by offering others concrete assistance with their own resources, KPÖ politicians have proven their credibility and earned voters’ trust. And although this practice will hardly bring about structural transformation in itself, it has helped Austria’s Communists in office understand which structural transformations are most urgently needed, which has in turn influenced the specific demands of the party’s electoral platforms.

By providing direct support in this manner and maintaining a focus on the issue of affordable housing over his four years as a city councilman, Dankl has made his name as a genuine champion of the interests of working people. To be sure, he and his party are far removed from having attracted the support of a broad majority of Austrians. Yet they have demonstrated that it is possible even in conservative regions to win people over to a left-wing project that unites reforms in the here and now with a vision of a different society. One can only hope that socialists elsewhere will take note.