Christian Malanga: New Government Could Free the Congo and Provide Vast Opportunity for Investors

Via The Daily Bell

When he ran as an opposition candidate for parliament in 2011, Christian Malanga, President of the United Congolese Party, was arrested just days before the election, and held prisoner for almost two weeks. Why?

Because I was preaching what was right, rule of law, reforming government, and bringing change to the Congo. It was the principles I believed in, and what I said, that the people are starving. I was trying to empower the women and young men, the youth, and the authority did not like that, they want people to be kept in the dark.

The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo tortured him. They beat him, and they tortured those close to him as well. He could hear his secretary scream as agents of the state raped her.

“Everyone that is supposed to help is watching you get tortured,” Christian Malanga told me, over a phone interview earlier this week. “I had no control over the situation. In front of me is a local judge sitting there, and a guy from the Secret Service, the Congo’s version of the Secret Service, and the head of police.”

But the Carter Center saved his life, and got him freed. When Christian was released from jail, the government offered him a position as President of the Youth Affairs. He declined. It would have gone against his principles to have been so obviously bought off, he said. It was only an effort to silence him.

Instead Malanga left the Congo and began putting together a group to take on the corruption, rape, and oppression inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Today, he is attempting to form a government in exile, to oust the current President Kabila, who refused to leave office when his term was up.

“The Congo is the rape capital of the world. Government forces use rape to destroy families, and bring villages under control.”

Malanga sent me a short video which sums up the problems facing the Congo.

For too long, it’s government has been supported by foreign leaders, including U.S. officials, who prop up a dictatorial regime, and allow genocide to pour over the border from Rwanda.

At least six, possibly ten million, people have been killed in the Congo since 1996. Government backed rebel groups rape, murder, and pillage the abundant natural resources found in the Congo, from diamonds to cobalt, copper and 64% of the world’s coltan, needed for electronics.

It is basically the same story from when King Leopold of Belgium destroyed the Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century. He made the people into slaves, and forced them to harvest rubber.

Now, countries funded by the U.S. are looting the resources from the Congo, taking advantage of a power vacuum in a lawless country where those in charge are the worst offenders of rights.

How Will Christian Malanga Save the Congo?

Christian Malanga talks of revolution, but this is no coup he has planned. A coup takes over a government, Malanga tells me, and there is no legitimate government inside the Congo to take over. The President has postponed elections in an attempt to stay in power.

Constitutionally [Kabila] is no longer president, the seat is empty. The parliament ended, so none of those people have legitimate power, they are holding power by force. In the Constitution of the Congo it says the people have the right to stand up, it gives the right to hold the President accountable for high treason.

I must admit, I was ignorant to the severity of the situation in the Congo. I knew that Christian Malanga was running for President of the Congo. But when I asked about the election, Malanga told me, “There will be no election… if I went back I would be arrested, you would not hear from me again, I would be dead, tortured and killed.”

So how does a man run for President when there won’t be an election, and he would be killed for stepping foot in his homeland?

Right now Malanga is in Brussels, talking with business and government leaders, putting together a group of investors, with insight from human rights organizations to take back the Congo.

I look at this as a business plan, or as a blueprint; how can we have clean water, how can we have electricity. The Congo has hydroelectric that can produce enough electricity for all Africa and eastern Europe, we have that much.

There is technology, for computers, for cell phones, the materials are coming from the Congo! But it’s badly managed. With great minds, we can do something and have nothing to lose. We need to craft something that can be profitable for the people, and our outside investors.

Throughout the interview, Christian Malanga always brought the conversation back to the women of the Congo, and their extreme mistreatment at the hands of the government and government backed rebel groups.

In a country where rape is used as a tool of power, Malanga says it is of utmost important to turn that completely around and put women in positions of power. They need to be the ones making decisions and calling the shots when the new government is formed, he says.

The value of a nation is found in how they treat their women. Our mother brings us to earth carried nine months in her belly; she goes through the pains of childbirth, and she raises us. But when it comes to decision making, we don’t involve them. But when you look in villages they are the ones who farm, who run the machinery, who hold together the economy.

If it goes the way we want it to go, we will have over two million women outside in the streets. We need to give them a voice. We want an operation that takes place with well trained friends, to extract the bad guys, and arrest them. In order for that to happen we are putting together a government in exile, and from that we will move it inside, because we want to see justice. We want justice done for all the people who have perpetrated crime against women.

Using America as an Example

Christian Malanga is 34 years old, and lived in the United States as a political refugee from 1998 until 2006.

It was his time spent in the United States which gave him an appreciation for the freedom Americans enjoy. He says no other country has provided the same opportunities for so many from every culture.

Oprah Winfrey, she wouldn’t be Oprah if she was in Africa, she wouldn’t be Oprah if she was in China, she wouldn’t be Oprah is she was in Russia. But she became Oprah because she was in America with an American system.

Economic freedom is especially important to Malanga who ran several small businesses during his time in the United States. He believes the lack of economic freedom in the Congo is why the country is so rich in resources but so poor in practice.

A lot [of my love for freedom] came from Founding Fathers, free thinkers who really changed things. Coming in as a political refugee and still having choice, still being able to be successful.

America has a universal culture; there are people from all walks of the Earth, every tribe and region and culture and nationality is found in USA. It is a melting pot, with all living under one law… There is a way of life where refugees can adapt and understand laws… how can such a large country be so peaceful while the small ones kill each other?

In 2006 Malanga returned to the Congo and joined the military, achieving the rank of Captain, with hundreds of men under his command. He said as a military officer, he tried to raise the morale of the troops by sharing the principles of freedom he learned in America.

Christian felt like a stranger in his own country, with such a different philosophy from the ideas of the Congolese army; basically giving badges and guns to criminals. The troops needed rule of law, because the military amounted to thugs in high ranks giving orders. Instead he focused the troops attention on the need to liberate the people; a lesson he says was learned from George Washington standing up to free the American people from England.

After he ran for parliament in 2011, being imprisoned and tortured for weeks, he fled the country once again, and has ever since been working to return triumphantly to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to free a people he says have been robbed of their culture, and their ancestry.

Moving Forward

I wanted to know what the time frame was for this new government to be installed. The way Christian was talking, it seemed like it would be some time before he was ready to go back into the Congo with enough outside support to oust the President, and allow for elections. I was surprised that he is ready for action.

“In 90 days we can accomplish anything, and we can come up with something right. 90 days is the minimum, five months is maximum. We can put a great team together; people with a vision.”

Malanga wants to run the Congo like a business, which opens up vast opportunities for investors in business as well as experimental government. Guided by the free market, Christian Malanga is willing to try anything that will work to bring the people out of poverty, and out of the dangers associated with dictatorial rule and hostile neighbor governments.

Our shareholders are the people, we are coming in as CEO, so how can we run this country right? I want to get the best economists, great ideas, new minds, not old minds, 21st century thinking; how can we change things in the country? And from there I want to get advice from the military side, who can say, ‘Christian this is how the military of the 21st century can look like to protect your people.’

If the melting pot of America is what made the country so great, Malanga intends to bring that diversity of ideas into forming a new government.

He is focused on using technology to augment fresh systems of government, and form a new type of society that is not only beneficial for the Congo, but a hallmark example for the rest of the world to follow.

Malanga is putting together a “surgical operation” to extract those in power, and hold them accountable for their crimes. He says that President Kabila is cut off from the world, has been told to step down by foreign nations, and has been sanctioned internationally.

It’s not too late to liberate people, lets go do this, because right now as we speak the power, the government is in the streets [oppressing people], so anyone who comes in with a great plan, we can have the support of the people…

We have the military on our back, we have the military, the government are not loved by anybody, nobody wants the government in place, everyone is looking for a leader.

Christian Malanga intends to be that leader, that will once and for all free the people of the Congo and usher in a new age of technological advance, modern economy, and prosperity that comes from freedom.

What he envisions for the Congo is what he loves so much about America; the diversity, the melting pot of cultures and ideas, and the free market to let the people prosper. He wants the Congo to be a place for vacation, a place for technology, clean energy, and a place for a new start for people from all over the world.

It is an open door for Western entrepreneurs, to Western investors that we open the doors to. Some people have ideas in development to see how we can transform the rape capital of the world into a little heaven, a mini paradise.

Malanga sees a thriving tourist industry from the snowy mountains to the tropical riverside jungles filled with exotic animals; he sees a fertile ground for emerging technologies, and he sees the Congo playing a key role in the future of environmentalism, hosting large swaths of rain forest important to the health of the worldwide ecosystem.

How can we bring the Congo into the world market for trade, how can we bring in housing? Right now it is a complete jungle, unbuilt, but if we bring together friends who see the future, the Congo can become a shining star in the hearts of Africa!

But it needs to be managed right, there’s not any book I can read that will tell me how to have a revolution or be president, everyday we improvise because there’s no guidance, there are no elders or ancestors who say this is how to do it. Right now we are creating our own path.

Our revolution is starting from outside; inside the people are ready, 90 million are ready and screaming for help, they are looking for a leader.

The Daily Bell will remain in constant contact with Christian Malanga, ready to break the news about his project. We will be exploring the details of the plan, so that if it looks promising, we can all become involved in helping to free the Congo. As opportunities arise for investors, you will be the first to know, and the first to have the chance to make a real difference.

This is an opportunity to form a new government unlike any other in existence. This could be a historical formation of an experimental government, the likes of which the world has not seen since the forming of America.

Join The Daily Bell email list to make sure you are on the front lines as new information emerges about this opportunity to invest in something that will make a true difference.

5 Maps That Show China's Biggest Limitations

Authored by George Friedman via MauldinEconomics.com,

As we wrote about in “China’s Strategy,” East Asia is split into four parts: The Pacific archipelago, the Chinese mainland, the Korean Peninsula, and Indochina. East Asia holds the second and third largest world economies: China and Japan. The relationship between them and the US define modern East Asian geopolitics.

China’s Power Can Be Seen from Outer Space

The above map shows the countries of East Asia lit up at night. It reveals much about the power dynamics in this region. The centers of Chinese wealth and power—including Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong—all hug China’s long coastline. Geographic features in the interior divide the country. The rest of the country is in darkness.

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are major industrial powers that border these waters along China’s coast. Much of the rest of East Asia is in darkness. North Korea’s darkness is particularly striking.

But relative to the bright lights of China’s coast and Japan, much of Indochina and inner China are also undeveloped.

Western China Is Nearly Uninhabitable

The below map shows population density in China with the 15-inch isohyet overlaid on top.

The area of China from this line to the coast gets enough rain to support a large population. North and west of the 15-inch isohyet, China is less populated and undeveloped.

Geography Limits China’s Expansion

The distance from Beijing to Kazakhstan is almost 2,500 miles through desert and mountains. The Himalayas box China in on the southwest. They also stop conflict between India and China.

Jungles on the border with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Thailand have always limited Chinese growth south.

It is hard for China to grow westward. When China’s power is ascendant, it can grow north, south, or east toward the Pacific. This is easier said than done. Japan continues to be the major regional power. China would still face certain defeat against Japan, especially with US support of the Japanese.

So, China is mainly focused on two things. Controlling its chaotic domestic political and economic situation as growth rates have slowed. And building its military. First for resistance and then for offensive action in the region.

The Chinese Navy Is in No Position to Take Action

The Chinese navy is still a decade away from exerting power over the islands, rocks, and shoals that limit China’s freedom to navigate along its coast.

Many countries around China have claims over these islands. The region’s other major players—Japan and South Korea—are both key US allies. They host large and permanent US military deployments. And like we recently mentioned, the Philippines recently welcomed back US forces to their bases.

This situation has created a stalemate. The US has no desire for a bad relationship with China. But it also doesn’t want any power to control the region. And China still cannot challenge US hegemony in the seas.

As we’ve discussed before, it talks of nationalism in the South China Sea mostly for domestic consumption. Japan and the other East Asian countries view China with increasing concern. They remain staunch US allies as a result.

North Korea Is China’s Bargaining Chip

When we wrote about the North Korean strategy, we said that North Korea appears dangerous with its nuclear weapons tests and its sly, bigoted strongman regime built around a top leader. Kim Jong Un is that leader and he has been consolidating his power.

North Korea happens to also be one of the few areas China is weak. The Chinese intervened in the Korean War when US forces neared the Yalu River on the border between North Korea and China.

North Korea’s unpredictable behavior gives China a big bargaining chip in its relations with the US and the region. So, China favors keeping the status quo.

China’s Limitations Determine the Future of East Asia

East Asia is the world’s most dynamic economic region. Strong countries surround bodies of water over which there is competition. These are some of the world’s most important sea lanes. Japan and China (in that order) are the region’s two most significant powers.

But as we wrote about last year, the most powerful country in the Pacific, the US, is far away. Its Navy patrols and keeps freedom of movement across the Pacific. At the center of this power struggle is China. China’s struggle against its domestic and geographic constraints is the key to understanding the future of this region.

*  *  *

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Trump's Budget A First Step Toward De-Politicizing Science

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

The Trump administration has released its proposed 2018 budget, and within it are some things worth cheering. Trump’s "America First budget" includes needed cuts to the regulatory state, defunds efforts to purchase more Federal land, eliminates funding for 19 minor government agencies, and makes significant cuts to a number of more significant ones — including the State Department, HUD, and Commerce. Unfortunately, the proposal also reflects the myth that America’s military is underfunded, calling for a $52 billion increase for the Pentagon and another $2.8 billion increase for Homeland Security. The budget also ignores America’s web of entitlement programs, the larger driver of the nation’s fiscal woes.

While the Trump budget, should it pass, would do little to change government spending as a whole, the targeted cuts would have a positive impact beyond the US debt clock. For example, the proposed cuts to the Energy Department, the EPA, and the National Institute of Health represent a significant step toward separating state and science.

It should go without saying that scientific research is a vital part of civilized society, allowing for technological breakthroughs that dramatically increase the quality of life for mankind as a whole. It is precisely because of its great importance that it should not be politicized by being influenced by politicians and government bureaucrats. The inherent problems of government"s inability to efficiently allocate scarce resources doesn"t change when the subject is science, so government research can suffer with the same issues of waste, fraud, and abuse that regularly haunt other programs. 

The National Institute of Health, one of the areas most impacted by the Trump budget, provides a number of examples of such questionable research. As Senator Jeff Flake documented last year, the National Institute of Health dedicated millions to such pressing research as the impact of cocaine on bees, testing sex steroids on goldfish, and studying the appearance of Jesus on toast. In its own version of Washington Monument Syndrome, the NIH then came back to Congress asking for more funds to dedicate to actual public health concerns.

Waste at the NIH isn’t just a concern for economists and attention-seeking politicians, Dr. Michael Braken, at Yale University School of Public Health, has argued that 87.5 percent of the organization"s research is waste.

For every 100 research projects, only half lead to published findings. Of those 50, half have significant design flaws, making their results unreliable. And of those 25, half are redundant or unnecessary because of previous work. That’s how you get to 12.5 percent.

Not only are the priorities of public research questionable, it can impact the science itself. We have seen this particularly in the case of climate science, one area which is targeted extensively in Trump’s budget.

Earlier this year Dr. John Bates, a former NOAA scientist, documented how climate data was improperly handled. The purpose, as Bates states, was:

[to put a] thumb on the scales — in the documentation, scientific choices, and release of datasets — in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Government-funded science was manipulated to push a government agenda.

Past administrations" concerns with warming have also led to programs incentivizing “alternative energy” sources, which can lead to all sorts of bad investments by private companies seeking public subsidy. One of the most prominent examples was the failure of Solyndra, the solar panel company that went bankrupt after receiving billions from taxpayers. These programs also take a hit in Trump’s budget.

Cuts to government research programs, however, should only be the first step toward making American science great again. The second part should come in the form of cutting taxes to the wealthiest Americans, and eliminating taxes for scientific investment. This is precisely what Murray Rothbard advocated in Science, Technology, and Government, and it would build upon a long standing American tradition of wealthy Americans playing a pivotal role in scientific innovation.

While it’s fair to debate whether Elon Musk is closer to Howard Roark or James Taggart based on his use of government subsidies, his SpaceX program has demonstrated the potential of privatizing space exploration — and the efficiencies that come with it. For those concerned about private interest in research without explicitly profitable ends, last year private non-profits provided $2.3 billion to basic research.

While his proposed budget is a solid first step toward de-politicizing science, unfortunately the increase in Pentagon spending means that military-related research will continue to enjoy the perks of government privilege. Resources that could have been dedicated to serving the wants and needs of the public will instead be allocated to building ever more expensive weapons for the world’s most powerful military (regardless of its actual performance).

As long as Trump continues to view the military-industrial complex as a sacred cow, he won’t make real progress in draining the swamp.

Marine Le Pen's Perfect Storm

Authored by Matt Purple via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Polls missed the last two nationalist tremors; they may miss a third

Think of François Fillon as a more polished and experienced Ted Cruz. He might have been president of France until everything came crashing down.

Fillon is a former French prime minister and admirer of Margaret Thatcher whose libertarian-influenced agenda includes a pledge to ax half a million civil service jobs. He was initially dismissed as an also-ran in the center-right Les Républicains presidential primary, up against the seasoned Nicolas Sarkozy and the moderate Alain Juppé. Instead, Fillon thrashed them both, and polls showed him an early favorite for the French presidency, backed by energized conservatives and the Catholic Right. Eschewing first-past-the-post, France holds a runoff election between its top two finishing presidential candidates if neither secures a majority, and forecasts last year showed the finalists would be Fillon and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. It was to be a rumble on the right, and Fillon was predicted to win in a rout as French leftists and centrists clothespinned their noses and voted to block the radioactive Le Pen.

Or at least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Instead, Fillon was quickly submerged in controversy as it came out that he’d funneled 900,000 euros in public money to his family, a scandal that became known as “Penelopegate” after his implicated wife. An investigation was launched and Fillon’s poll numbers sagged into third place, drawing an intervention from the omnipresent Sarkozy and whispers that Juppé might take over as nominee. But Juppé ultimately declined to run, cognizant of being a moderate beached in a year of fury, and Fillon remained defiant. He would only step down, an aide said, if a planned rally last Sunday turned out to be a dud. Lo and behold, tens of thousands of conservative faithful turned out, and he limped onwards.

France’s political dichotomy has thus been plunged into the unknown. The major parties are sidelined for now, with Fillon a boulder on the back of the center-Right Républicains and the center-Left Parti Socialiste floundering under the stewardship of detested current president François Hollande who is not standing for reelection. Amidst all this, the polling service Oxoda now finds Le Pen running neck-in-neck with another candidate, Emmanuel Macron, an independent whose En Marche! movement is serving as an outlet for the forlorn political center. Macron is a novelty in French politics: an investment banker who was appointed economic minister at the age of thirty seven and who’s still never been elected to public office in his life. He has a youthful charisma that this cliché-deploring writer only reluctantly describes as “Kennedyesque” and his rallies have grown exponentially in size since he entered the race.

The 2016 presidential election in the United States embodied the old versus the new, with Hillary Clinton the conventional and choreographed handmaiden of our hoary political consensus and Donald Trump the populist stick of TNT primed to blow underneath. Assuming present trends hold, the French election this April will be one step advanced, leapfrogging over the mainstream parties entirely and pitting against each other the two flavors of reform that are most likely to dominate Western politics in the years to come. Neither Macron nor Le Pen believes France can continue on its current track and both are proposing ambitious overhauls to the French social contract. After a year that’s seen economic stagnation and rowdy strikes, protests targeting abusive cops and demonstrations against immigration, terrorist attacks, soccer riots, and the southward seeping shock of Brexit, the only thing certain in France is that much has to change.

Le Pen’s appeal is obvious. She’s the Gallic Trump, France’s vessel for the West’s recent flirtation with populism. Head of the Front National, which had long been dismissed as bigoted until she vigorously resuscitated it and expelled its former leader and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, she’s successfully blended anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic politics with a dedication to the welfare state that isn’t shared by more established French conservatives like Fillon. The nut of her message is that French institutions, benefits, handouts, society, all of it, ought to be reserved for the French and not its newcomers. Because the European Union stands for the globalism and multiculturalism she abhors, she energetically backed Brexit and has promised to hold a referendum on France’s membership in the EU.

The parallels between her candidacy and the Trump Train are undeniable: French voters shrugging that they’ve tried everything else so may as well take a gamble on the neophyte, blue-collar workers ditching the socialists after decades of perceived neglect, immigration as a political keystone joining Left and Right in fury wrought from economic pain. In northeastern France, industrial workers battered by globalization and the shuttering of their blast furnaces—“cathedrals” they call them—are breaking for Le Pen. In the rural middle, farmers, their livelihoods buttressed by Brussels, are stomaching Le Pen’s anti-EU rhetoric in favor of her promise to displace their loathed political class. The cultural flashpoints touted by the Front National—like its pledge to ban the chaste “burqini” swimwear popular among Muslims; “France isn’t burqinis on the beach. France is Brigitte Bardot,” Le Pen told CBS News—have real resonance with both demographics.

Like Le Pen, Macron is also determined to discomfit the French political establishment, which he views as quiescent and self-serving, and he too repudiates traditional party labels, defining himself as “neither left nor right.” But once you place him off the traditional political grid, it becomes evident he’s Le Pen’s antithesis in nearly every other way. He’s a devotee of Europe who believes the solution to the EU’s woes is reform rather than the scrap heap. He advocates for refugees whom he says present an “economic opportunity” and have “remarkable qualifications.” He espouses that inchoate mixture of social liberalism and economic liberalization with which many young people functionally identify. He understands that France’s overregulated and hamstrung economy can’t continue to function as is. He warned President Hollande that a proposed 75 percent tax on millionaires would turn France into “Cuba without the sun.”

The Le Pen-Macron dichotomy, which in many ways runs orthogonal to traditional Left and Right, is far more representative of where the peoples of the West are right now than the mainstream party duopoly. The issues are many. Do economies function better open or half-closed? Is a job something portable and ephemeral or is it a singular and sturdy column of well-being rooted in place? Can the globalization genie be put back in the bottle? Are we citizens of nations or citizens of nations and the world? Should our cardinal civic virtue be tolerance or patriotism? Le Pen’s and Macron’s answers to those questions, splayed on their respective platforms, could not be more diametrically opposed.

France is thus a microcosm of the present, fraught, unsteady Western world, and her election could be a dress rehearsal for our coming political realignment. The conjecture on the lips of European elites is whether Le Pen, whose brand of disruption is far greater anathema to them than Macron’s, can win the presidency. Conventional wisdom dictates that this won’t happen, that Macron will crush Le Pen in the runoff election, flush with support from Socialistes and Républicains determined to obstruct the Front National. But don’t be so certain. Portents were to be found at that Fillon rally last weekend where, amidst pouring rain and wind, conservative activists brimmed with tea party-esque rage towards their own party grandees. “If Fillon is out,” one demonstrator warned, “many of us will vote extreme, I am convinced.” If Le Pen can shepherd those disgruntled Républicains foot soldiers into her fold for the runoff, her chances will improve significantly.

Of course, the polls show . . . but who really cares what the polls show? They failed to register the last two nationalist tremors and it’s entirely possible they’re about to miss another one.

China Prepares Countermeasures Against South Korea Missile Shield

The recent deployment by South Korea of the controversial US-made Terminal High Altitude Area ­Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in response to potential ballistic threats from North Korea, has led to a furious response by China, whose first-strike ability would be compromised under the existing military configuration.  And as BBC reports, "the deployment in South Korea of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system has been slammed by Beijing. Now the Chinese Communist Party is calling on its people to embrace their ill will towards their neighbours" and notes that as anti South-Korea fever sweep China, local school students chant "Boycott Sth Korea!", and smash South Korean appliances as the "communist Party unleashes anti-Korea spirit."

However, while eliciting up a traditional nationalistic response by China was to be expected, what is more troubling is that according to the South China Morning Post, China is set to deploy anti-radar countermeasures which will neutralize the South Korean THAAD. The THAAD system consists of a sophisticated radar and interceptor missiles designed to spot and knock out incoming ballistic missiles.

Speaking to retired PLA general Wang Hongguang, the SCMP reports that China knew it might not be able to stop Seoul deploying a US anti-missile system "and was prepared to counter with its own anti-radar equipment." The comments came as a South Korean court’s decision to uphold the impeachment of former president Park Geun-hye had fanned hopes Seoul might put plans for the Terminal High Altitude Area ­Defence system on hold.  Park supported the installation of the system to help protect South Korea against threats from North Korea, which Beijing says can peer through China’s defences. However, such a de-escalation does not appear to be imminent.

Wang, former deputy commander of the Nanjing Military Region, said China could not take the chance the next South Korean president would change policy and roll back the deployment, and added that Beijing had measures in place to neutralize THAAD’s radars.

“We will complete our deployment before THAAD begins operations. There is no need to wait for two months [before the election of the next South Korean president],” he said on the sidelines of the political sessions in Beijing. “We already have such equipment in place. We just have to move it to the right spot.”

Going even further, Yue Gang, a military commentator and former People’s Liberation Army colonel, said China could either destroy THAAD or neutralise it. However, he hedged by adding that “destroying [THAAD] should only be an option during wartime." However, China could and would interfere with the system’s functions through electromagnetic technology, he said. Yue said an ideal place to install the Chinese equipment was on the Shandong peninsula on the country’s east coast, opposite South Korea.

Quoted by SCMP, Fu Qianshao, an aviation equipment expert with the PLA Air Force, said China could also send planes – manned or unmanned – to fly close to THAAD to interfere with its radar signals. All the country’s armed forces had the capacity to interfere with radar signals, Fu said.

Wang said China’s chief concern was not just with South Korea’s deployment of the American system but also the United States’ broader potential to contain the region in a sophisticated web of missile defence systems in Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and even Taiwan.

Stated differently, the ongoing diplomatic escalation between China and South Korea over THAAD is really just China lashing out against the ongoing interefence by the US, which seeks to blanket its allies in the region in a mesh that would eliminate China"s tactical first strike advantage, in the process putting the precariouar nuclear balance of power in the region in jeopardy, the same way that the deployment of the US Aegis ashore anti-missile shielf system in Eastern Europe has put Russia on edge, as it too, has lost its first strike capabilities, if only for now.  The question, for both China and Russia, is what deterrence they will unveil in response, as a "game theoretical" layout in which two nuclear-armed superpowers suddenly finds themselves questioning their offensive supriority never leads to favorable outcomes, at least in (game) theory.

"Mystery Poison" Used To Murder Kim Jong Nam Revealed As VX Nerve Agent

What was until recently was a real-life reincarnation of the move "The International", just got a double dose of "The Rock" thrown in for good measure.

When yesterday we shared the most recent update in the bizarre assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of North Korea"s ruler, who was murdered in broad daylight inside Kuala Lumpur"s budget airline terminal, we reported that while the two women suspected in the fatal poisoning attack had coated their hands with "mystery" toxic chemicals which they then wiped on Nam"s face, a key question remained unanswered, namely what was the poison used to by the woman with the "LOL" shirt used to murder the North Korean scion.

As CBS reported previously, experts routinely tasked with finding answers in poisoning cases were stumped: what substance could have been used to kill the victim so quickly without sickening the women who apparently deployed it, along with anyone else nearby? Difficult, they said, but doable.

“It’s not an agent that could be cooked up in a hotel room. It’s going to take a lot of knowledge regarding the chemical in order to facilitate an attack like this,” said Bruce Goldberger, a leading toxicologist who heads the forensic medicine division at the University of Florida. He said a nerve gas or ricin, a deadly substance found in castor beans, could be possible. A strong opioid compound could also have been used, though that would likely have incapacitated the victim immediately.

“It would have to be cleverly designed in order to be applied in this fashion without hurting anyone else,” Goldberger said.

“The more unusual, the more potent, the more volatile a poison is, the less likely it is to be detected,” said Olif Drummer, a toxicologist at Australia’s Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine who has spent 40 years in the field. Khalid said the women knew they were handling poisonous materials and "were warned to take precautions." Surveillance footage showed both keeping their hands away from their bodies after the attack, he said, then going to restrooms to wash. Such details are unclear in video footage that has been released to media.

Well, moments ago the Malaysian police provided the answer, when it reported that the chemical substance used to kill Kim Jong Nam last week was the nerve agent right out of the movei "The Rock" called VX, which happens to be listed as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

Khalid Abu Bakar, Malaysia’s inspector general of police, said Friday in a statement that identification of the substance came from a preliminary report. He said swabs were taken from the eye and face of the victim.

VX is described by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “the most potent of all nerve agents”, with a large dose leading to loss of consciousness, paralysis and respiratory failure. Its only known use is as a chemical warfare agent. 

VX is banned under the UN Chemical Weapons Convention, to which North Korea is not a party.

The nerve agent, also known as ethyl N-2-Diisopropylaminoethyl Methylphosphonothiolate, was developed in the UK in the 1950s.

As the FT further adds, Malaysian police are seeking at least four North Korean suspects in connection with the murder, who are now believed to be back in Pyongyang. Two other North Korean nationals, including a diplomat in Malaysia, are wanted for questioning.

Police have detained a Vietnamese woman, an Indonesian woman and a North Korean man in connection with Kim’s death.

The murder has frayed relations between North Korea and Malaysia, which this week recalled its ambassador from Pyongyang.

In the aftermath of the fallout from North Korea"s ballistic missile launch and alleged orchestration of Kim Jong Nam"s murder, we reported earlier today that China, which last weekend announced it would ban all coal imports from North Korea, was preparing for "regime collapse" in North Korea, and would "take the necessary measures to safeguard national security in the event of the collapse of the neighbouring North Korean regime", a defence official said on Thursday. 

"We Respond To Respect": Iran To Conduct New Military Drill In Which "Rockets Will Be Used"

Two weeks after the White House unveiled new sanctions on two dozen Iranian entities in retaliation for a recent ballistic missile test, Iran"s elite Revolutionary Guard is set to conduct military drills next week, a senior commander announced Saturday, despite warnings from the United States not to engage in such activity and a warning from the White House which said it was putting Iran "on notice."

"The manoeuvres called "Grand Prophet 11" will start Monday and last three days," General Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the force"s ground units, told a news conference. He said "rockets would be used" without specifying which kind, according to AFP which first reported the drill.

Three weeks ago, Iran conducted drills involving short-range missiles at a time of heightened tensions with the United States, a test which was condemned as violating the terms of Obama"s nuclear treaty.  The Islamic republic said the exercises were aimed at demonstrating Iran"s "complete preparedness to deal with the threats" and "humiliating sanctions" from Washington. President Trump promptly slapped fresh, if largely meaningless, sanctions against Tehran"s weapons procurement network after the January 29 missile test.

"Iran would do well to look at the calendar and realise there"s a new president in the Oval Office. And Iran would do well not to test the resolve of this new president," Vice President Mike Pence said earlier this month. New Pentagon chief James Mattis, for his part, has branded Iran "the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world".

Meanwhile, speaking at the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Saturyda, Iran"s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told NBC News he dismissed the possibility of renegotiating the nuclear deal, saying there"s little appetite for opening "Pandora"s box."  "I believe the nuclear deal is going to last," the foreign minister said firmly, sentiment which numerous republicans - most prominently Paul Ryan - have echoed in recent weeks.

While as noted above, the White House recently said it was putting Iran "on notice" over the missile test, Zarif warned that Iran doesn"t "respond well" to such language and dismissed sanctions as ineffective.

"Threats do not work against Iran," Zarif told NBC News. "It would work much better if they decided to use the language of respect, the language of mutual interest."

Trump has repeatedly criticized the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers, having previously warned he would terminate the deal promptly after coming into office.

Zarif on Sunday criticized American implementation of the nuclear deal as "lackluster" and "slow" but stressed the importance of the deal and it"s mechanisms. "It"s a multilateral deal and multilateral deals cannot be reopened for negotiations because it would open a Pandora"s box," he told NBC News. Still, he said "Iran has many options" on the table if the U.S. opted to unilaterally withdraw and said he hasn"t and won"t rule out a meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson if the need arises for discussions about the nuclear deal.

"The possibility has not arisen, no request has been made," he added. "If a need arises to deal with the nuclear issue we have, we have mechanisms within the nuclear agreement for meetings of the ministers."

Zarif did not provide further details — but did weigh in on Trump"s controversial executive order temporarily banning Iranian citizens from entering the U.S: "It shows the hostility is towards all Iranians — even Iranian members of Parliament in Europe, because there are ministers, members of parliament in Europe who were born in Iran and they cannot enter the United States. This is absurd. What is the message that the United States Government is trying to send?"

However, Zarif was cautious when asked about a potential escalation of hostilities under the Trump administration. "Iran is not interested in conflict," he said. "I believe at the end of the day reason and rationality will prevail... There is no cause to be served and great cost to be paid.

* * *

In other news, on Saturday a senior official at Iran"s state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said that Iran has found shale oil reserves of 2 billion barrels of light crude in its western Lorestan province.

"Based on studies, it is estimated that the shale oil reserves in Ghali Koh in Lorestan amount to 2 billion barrels of oil in place,” Bahman Soleimani, NIOC’s deputy director for exploration, told the semi-official news agency Tasnim. "The oil is light." Soleimani said exploration was also being carried out for shale gas reserves in the area, and the studies were expected to be completed by October, 2017.

Iran"s proven oil reserves of about 160 billion barrels, almost 10 percent of the world"s total, rank it fourth among petroleum-rich countries.

Earlier on Sunday, Ali Kardor, managing director of National Iranian Oil, said that Iran plans to boost output to 4.7 million b/d by 2021, oil ministry news service Shana reports, and would reach 4mmbpd in output by mid-April, adding more pressure to OPEC (mostly Saudi Arabi) to extend, or even expand, it production cuts beyond the first half. As reported last week, the US found itself with a new all time high inventory glut of both crude and gasoline, as the much anticipated production rebalancing has so far failed to materialize as US shale companies boost output while gasoline demands tumbles, as discussed on Saturday.

Washington Post Admits Shutting Down 'Fake News' Will Move Us Closer To A Modern-Day '1984'

Submitted by Flemming Rose and Jacob Mchangama via The Washington Post,

Remember George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth? In his dystopian novel “1984,” its purpose was to dictate and protect the government’s version of reality. During the Cold War, Orwell’s book was banned behind the Iron Curtain, because readers perceived the novel as an allegory for their own repressive regimes.

It was a serious crime to distribute information defaming the Soviet social and political system. Such criminal laws were widely used by the Kremlin to silence dissidents, human rights activists, religious movements and groups fighting for independence in the Soviet republics. Similar laws were on the books in East Germany, Poland and other Eastern bloc countries.

Thankfully, today this landscape is much changed, but increasingly there are disturbing echoes of the past. Amid a debate about the rising influence of fake news and the danger it poses to the political and social order in the West, democratic politicians in Europe have proposed sanctions — and even prison terms — for those found responsible for distributing false information.

Euopean Union Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has warned tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter that if they don’t find ways to eliminate hate speech and combat fake news, a law mandating action may be necessary. Commissioner Andrus Ansip reinforced that threat last month, albeit in softer language, prompting social-media giants and traditional media to announce a flurry of initiatives aimed at combating fake news.

Italy’s antitrust chief, Giovanni Pitruzzella, has said that E.U. countries should set up a network of government-appointed bodies to remove fake news and potentially impose fines on the media. Pitruzzella doesn’t hide his political agenda — he wants to target his opponents on the populist left and right. “Post-truth in politics is one of the drivers of populism, and it is one of the threats to our democracies,” he told the Financial Times.

In Germany, politicians eager to counter Russian meddling and populist movements in upcoming parliamentarian elections have issued similar calls. Justice Minister Heiko Maas argues that authorities need the power to impose prison terms for fake news on social media. “Defamation and malicious gossip are not covered under freedom of speech,” Maas said. “Justice authorities must prosecute that, even on the Internet. Anyone who tries to manipulate the political discussion with lies needs to be aware [of the consequences].”

It is understandable that liberal democracies are deeply worried about disinformation, which tears at the fabric of pluralistic democratic societies. John Stuart Mill famously argued that free speech would help exchange “error for truth” and create “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” Yet this justification weakens considerably if lies and disinformation become indistinguishable from truth. In such an environment, “Democracy will not survive a lack of belief in the possibility of impartial institutions,” political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently wrote. “Instead, partisan political combat will come to pervade every aspect of life.”

That is indeed a nightmare scenario to be avoided. But using legal measures to counter disinformation is likely to be a cure worse than the disease. One does not need to go back to the Cold War to worry about what happens when governments become the arbiters of truth.

In the past two years, Egypt has sentenced six Al Jazeera journalists to death or long prison terms for, among other things, allegedly spreading false news. In 2013, Gambia — until the recent ouster of Yahya Jammeh, one of Africa’s worst dictators — introduced a punishment of up to 15 years’ imprisonment and hefty fines for those who spread “false news,” citing a need for stability and the prevention of “unpatriotic behavior” and “treacherous” campaigns. Russia, ironically the source of so much of the disinformation menacing liberal democracies, uses broad and vague anti-extremism laws to prohibit news that the Kremlin views as propaganda — including prison sentences for social-media users who insist that Crimea is part of Ukraine.

Of course, Europe’s established democracies have little in common with the Soviet Union or other illiberal regimes. But the legal tools proposed by European politicians to suppress fake news sound alarmingly like those used by authoritarian governments to silence dissent. This is dangerous. Not only are such measures incompatible with the principle of free speech, but also they set precedents that could quickly strengthen the hand of the populist forces that mainstream European politicians feel so threatened by.

Europe may soon find itself with populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders with real power. Such leaders would draw the line between fake news and free speech very differently than mainstream politicians — perhaps aiming them at the supposedly corrupt established media rather than websites, blogs and social media trafficking in “alternative facts.” It is also unlikely that the increasingly illiberal governments of Poland and Hungary would agree with the European Commission or German Chancellor Angela Merkel on what constitutes false information or fake news.

And while the First Amendment prevents the U.S. government from overtly limiting press freedom, it’s clear that President Trump’s definition of fake news is vastly different from what his opponents or the media have in mind.

Above all, rather than strengthening established media institutions, banning fake news might very well undermine them in the eyes of the public.

If alternative outlets are prosecuted or shut down, mainstream media risk being seen as unofficial propaganda tools of the powers that be. Behind the Iron Curtain, nonofficial media outlets had more credibility than official media in spite of the fact that not everything they published was accurate or fact-checked. The hashtag #fakenews could become a selling point with the public if it were banned rather than rigorously countered and refuted.

As White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon replied when asked whether press secretary Sean Spicer, after making irrefutably false statements, had damaged his credibility with the media: “Are you kidding me? We think that’s a badge of honor.”

U.S. Special Forces Deployed To 70% Of The World In 2016

U.S. Special Operations Command launched a raid in Yemen’s Baida Province on Jan 29, targeting Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The first high-profile special forces operation of Trump’s presidency, the raid resulted in the deaths of at least 14 Al Qaeda fighters, 20 civilians and Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. Three other Americans were reportedly wounded and an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft was destroyed by U.S. forces after it was heavily damaged in a forced landing. Over the past few days, it has emerged that al-Rimi survived the raid and he has subsequently released an audio message taunting President Trump.

As The Burning Platform"s Jim Quinn notes, special forces operations like the one in Yemen are nothing new. America’s elite troops have found themselves on the frontlines constantly since 9/11, conducting operations everywhere from the dusty back alleys of North Africa to the snow-capped mountains of Afghanistan. Even though they have made headlines for high-profile operations like the prison break near Hawija in Iraq or the raid on Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Afghanistan, the vast majority of special forces missions across the world involve training friendly soldiers to fight, mainly so Americans don’t have to.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Although US elite troops typically only appear in the media when an event of particular relevance (such as the capture and murder of Osama bin Laden in 2011), this does not mean that they are not active. As this infographic above shows, elaborated by Statista, these forces were present in 138 States last year or 70% of the world’s countries according to official Special Operations Command data published by TomDispatch. 55.29% of deployments were in the Middle East, a 35% decease since 2006. In Africa, deployments of elite U.S. forces skyrocketed 1,600 percent during the same timeframe.

China Daily: Tillerson's "Disastrous" Actions Would Set The Course For A "Devastating Confrontation"

We were surprised by how contained China was this morning after yesterday"s confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson, in which the former Exxon CEO said that a failure to respond to China had allowed it to “keep pushing the envelope” in the South China Sea and added that “we’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first the island-building stops and second your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed” and that putting military assets on those islands was "akin to Russia’s taking Crimea” from Ukraine."

Traditionally such a direct threat would be i) perceived as very undiplomatic and ii) prompt an immediate, and angry rebuke from Beijing, with China immediately shifting to the offensive.

“This is the sort of off-the-cuff remark akin to a tweet that pours fuel on the fire and maybe makes things worse,” Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra told Bloomberg. “Short of going to war with China, there is nothing the Americans can do.”

But not today: during his press conference earlier today, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang could barely muster the will to sound defensive, saying China has been acting within the limits of its sovereignty. “Like the U.S., China has the right within its own territory to carry out normal activities,” he said at a regular briefing in Beijing. When asked repeatedly about Tillerson"s comments on blocking access to islands, China"s foreign ministry spokesman said he couldn"t make any guesses as to what Tillerson was referring to and would not answer hypothetical questions, Reuters reported.

As it turns out, China may not have had time to digest what Tillerson said. After all his South China sea remark was toward the end of his nearly all day long hearing, and so many local media outlets may have simply missed it. However, they caught up today, and first China Daily, then its nationalist tabloid, the Global Times took turns to first mock, then attack Tillerson.

Here is the gist of the China Daily op-ed published earlier today: according to the Chinese daily mouthpiece, not only were Tillerson"s views "divergent from, even contrary to, those of Trump on some critical issues. He openly conceded he is yet to have a serious, in-depth discussion with Trump on foreign policy imperatives. These boil down to one simple point – his remarks at the Wednesday hearing, sensational as they were, turned out to be of little reference value except for judging his personal orientations."

Yet while China realizes that Tillerson"s bluster was intended for a specific audience, that does not make it any happier:

The backlash that has ensued is understandable. It is certainly no small matter for a man intended to be the US diplomat in chief to display such undisguised animosity toward China.  Tillerson labeled China"s reclamation projects in the South China Sea as "an illegal taking of disputed areas without regard for international norms," in obvious disregard of the essential truth that all those activities took place well within the country"s persistent, historical territorial claims.

Blaming the "extremely worrisome" state of affairs in the South China Sea on an "inadequate US response", the US secretary of state nominee even claimed China"s access to those islands should "not to be allowed". Which sounded intimidating; though he stopped short of elaborating how to achieve it. And like Trump, he blamed Beijing for "not being a reliable partner" in dealing with the Democratic People"s Republic of Korea.

And then, the not so subtle threats followed:

Such remarks are not worth taking seriously because they are a mish-mash of naivety, shortsightedness, worn-out prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies. Should he act on them in the real world, it would be disastrous.

As many have observed, it would set a course for devastating confrontation between China and the US. After all, how can the US deny China access to its own territories without inviting the latter"s legitimate, defensive responses?

Finally, the mocking of Tillerson as a clueless former company exec who does not have the faintest understanding of diplomacy: "Tillerson wanted a reality-based China policy that is "based on what we see and not based on what we hope". But what he presented was based more on what prejudice and arms-spurred self-righteousness make him believe and hope than on real-world realities. What happened on Wednesday shows that if and when confirmed, Rex Tillerson needs to first acquaint himself with the ABCs of China-US relations and diplomacy at large."

The Global Times approach was almost verbatim. First, the justification of Tillerson"s "bluster":

It is suspected that he merely wanted to curry favor from senators and increase his chances of being confirmed by intentionally showing a tough stance toward China.

Tillerson did not give details of how he would achieve his self-proclaimed goals. Nonetheless, he also mentioned that Chinese and American economic interests are deeply intertwined and that "China has been a valuable ally in curtailing elements of radical Islam." He noted that "We should not let disagreements over other issues exclude areas for productive partnership."

Motives aside, the GT then explained that China no longer views itself as America"s subordinate:

China has enough determination and strength to make sure that his rabble rousing will not succeed. Unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish. The US has no absolute power to dominate the South China Sea.

Following this, just like in the case of China Daily, there was the mocking:

Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories. Probably he just has oil prices and currency rates in his mind as former ExxonMobil CEO.

Next, the not so thinly veiled threat - again - aimed not so much at Tillerson but at Trump:

As Trump has yet to be sworn in, China has shown restraint whenever his team members expressed radical views. But the US should not be misled into thinking that Beijing will be fearful of their threats.

How does it all end according to China? Unless Trump"s diplomatic team changes course, the Times said "the two sides better prepare for a military clash."

Tillerson"s statements regarding the islands in the South China Sea are far from professional. If Trump"s diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash. South China Sea countries will accelerate their negotiations on a Code of Conduct. They have the ability to solve divergences by themselves without US interference.

And the conclusion:

Just as the Philippines and Vietnam are trying to warm their ties with China, Tillerson"s words cannot be more irritating.  It is hoped that Tillerson will desire a productive partnership with China more and his harsh words are just coaxing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But no matter what, China will always respond to various US diplomatic maneuvers.

As a reminder, all this has already happened and Trump isn"t president yet. We eagerly look forward to the president-elect"s next steps vis-a-vis an increasingly angry CHina and vice versa.

Former Lifelong Democrat Admits "Obama Is A Failed President"

Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

I’m a former lifelong Democrat, stating here a clear and incontestable fact: Barack Obama is a failed President.

It’s true not just because of the sad realities such as that «Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94 % Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time» — or, as the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz wrote in the original of that study: «94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements». («Alternative work arrangements» referred there to Americans who were involuntarily working only part-time jobs — they simply couldn’t find full-time, though that’s what they wanted.) In other words: Obama’s failure isn’t just because of America’s increasingly sales-clerk, and burger-flipping, workforce.

And Obama’s failure is also not just because «Poverty Rose In 96 % Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». (However, that reality turned out to be decisive in Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on November 8^th, as Nate Cohn pointed out in The New York Times on December 23rd, headlining, «How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump». Hillary was running on Obama’s poor record.)

Obama’s failure is also because of other important reasons. Among them is the uncounted thousands of people who were killed in, and the uncounted millions of people who became refugees from, the places where Obama (or else his installed regimes) bombed and caused the residents to either die or flee. George W. Bush’s destructions of Iraq and even Afghanistan were now being followed by the destructions of Libya by Obama and Sarkozy, and of Syria by Obama and Saud and Thani and Erdogan, who armed the tens of thousands of jihadists and sent them into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad — and Bush’s destructions were followed also by Obama’s keeping in power the barbaric junta-regime that replaced the democratically elected Honduran Presiden Manuel Zelaya on 28 June 2009 shortly after Obama entered the White House (and this junta-regime, in turn, caused Honduras’s murder-rate to soar 50% to become the world’s highest, which then caused hundreds of thousands of Hondurans to flee and become undocumented U.S. immigrants, against which Donald Trump campaigned).

The Obama regime has thus created far more misery outside America, than inside it. Failures such as those didn’t cost Hillary Clinton many (if any) votes (because most voters didn’t even know about these foreign-affairs matters), but those failures were actually even bigger than Obama’s failures in purely domestic U.S. policy matters (which voters do know about). Trump campaigned against ‘illegal immigrants’, but he never even called attention to those people’s fleeing the hells that the U.S. regime had created in not only Honduras but earlier in Guatemala and El Salvador — coups and U.S.-trained death squads.

In noting Obama’s failures, I’m not a Republican; I’m no one who is condemning Obama for his allegedly being a ‘Marxist" ‘Muslim’, or some other imaginary distraction from the reality (a reality which is too Republican for Republicans to be able to criticize — so, they’ve insteadignored that reality, and cited fake ‘reasons’ against him, including ‘death panels’ and other fabrications, which Republicans then forgot about after their fraudulent allegations against him became clear, to all but insane people, as being just Republican lies). 

Obama is a failure not because he wasn’t sufficiently conservative or ‘Christian" (as Republicans had constantly accused him of having been), but instead because he wasn’t sufficiently progressive (nowhere close to being a progressive) — and, in many ways, he was actually far more conservative than any of his duplicitous campaign-rhetoric had pretended him to be. He’s an extraordinarily gifted liar — he was phenomenally successful at that.

And I am not blaming Obama for congressional Republicans’ having been more obsessed with making him be a failed President, than they were interested in making America be a successful nation. Republicans lie at least as much as he does, just not nearly as skillfully. (They especially can’t feign compassion as skillfully as he.) This article thus does not blame him for what the overt Republicans were doing to cripple the little good he had actually tried to achieve — such as closing Guantanamo. It’s only about Obama’s failure.

Obama’s failure was all his own — it’s not because of the good things that Republicans had blocked him from doing; it is instead because of the horrible things (such as his failed TPP, TTIP and TISA trade-treaties, and his successful 2011 killing of Gaddafi, and 2014 coup in Ukraine) that were central to his actual agenda — a conservative, even reactionary, agenda, which favored the interests of the hundreds of billionaires who control U.S.-based international corporations, above the interests of the 300+ million American people, whom the U.S. President is supposed to be serving.

I voted for Barack Obama both times, because both of his opponents («Bomb bomb bomb Iran» McCain in 2008, and «#1 geopolitical foe» Romney in 2012) were clearly determined to focus America’s enormous military expenditures away from exterminating the jihadists and their Saudi funders, toward instead conquering Iran (McCain) and Russia (Romney), and also because Republicans — throughout at least the period extending from 1910 to 2010 — consistently had, in fact, produced a record of far less success with the U.S. economy, than did Democrats, and especially because neither McCain nor Romney had repudiated the very worst President in U.S. history (at least prior to Obama) and his atrocious record of lies and needless bloodshed and invasions: George W. Bush — Bush’s Party instead reaffirmed that monstrous President.

And, consequently, I never expected Barack Obama to turn out to have been, quite possibly, even a worse President than Bush. Nobody expected that — except Republicans, for whom Bush wasn’t bad enough to satisfy them (and certainly not bad enough for them to apologize for — so, they did not apologize for him).

Here, then, is Obama’s astounding record of failure:

«From a Democracy to a Plutocracy»

«Understanding President Obama’s Strategy to Force Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid»

«Obama Finally Lays His Cards on the Table»

«Barack Obama Is Now Completing His Long-Held Plan to Subvert the Democratic Party»

«Obama: ‘I Don’t Care About the Public’s Welfare’».

As that last one documented, the Obama ‘Justice’ Department scored an all-time low number both of financial institution fraud prosecutions, and of white-collar-crime prosecutions. Obama came into power immediately after an economic crash that was loaded especially with financial-institution frauds. He protected the banksters. So, financial-executive-fraud prosecutions didn’t soar, like they should have; instead they plunged. Like Obama told the Wall Street bigs, near the start of his regime, on 27 March 2009, in private, inside the White House: «My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. … I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you… I’m going to shield you». And that’s what he did. And, on 20 September 2016, Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s Future, headlined «Banks Used Low Wages, Job Insecurity To Force Employees To Commit Fraud», so there was no way that the employees could keep their jobs except to do the crimes that they were being virtually forced by their bosses to do.

The criminality was actually at the very top — where Obama had promised «I’m protecting you». So, the TARP’s Inspector General urged, on 26 October 2016 (since the President was refusing to prosecute those people), «that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization». The Special Inspector General of TARP, Christy Goldsmith Romero, was proposing this, as being the way to make prosecutions, of these top-level fraud-executives, so easy that the Obama Administration’s claims — that there was no top-level fraud that could be prosecuted — would be an even more blatant, absurdly false, lie, than it had been.

If this country were Ukraine, or even Russia, then Americans (trained by decades of a CIA-controlled ‘free press’) would say «Oh, of course those countries are corrupt, but America isn’t like that». But, at least under Barack Obama, ‘we’ were that. This was America — and ‘our’ President was protecting the elite fraudsters, instead of prosecuting them.

Nonetheless, anyone who would say that the American people are not better off now than they were at the end of Bush’s disastrous Presidency would be either misinformed or lying, because there’s lots of data showing that, finally, eight years after Bush, Americans are better off than they were at the end of Bush’s miserable eight years (even though not yet better off than Americans were prior to Bush’s 2007-2008 crash). And the Administration published on December 15^th its record of ‘successes’ «The 2017 Economic Report of the President» which was real but not adjusted for the fact that Obama came into office at the pit of the economic crash, which means that such ‘successes’ are almost inevitable, hardly a credit to Obama. But yet, the reality stands, that the Obama economic recovery was the weakest in the entire post-World-War-II period. Plus, the federal debt doubled on his watch, even while, as that Economic Report mentioned only in passing: «The United States has seen a faster increase in inequality in recent decades than any of the major advanced economies, and despite the historic progress made over the last eight years, the level of U.S. inequality remains high». Normally, after an economic crash, economic inequality reduces; but under Obama it remained at or near its pre-crash high. 

It was an economic record (and an invasion and coup record) of which any Republican President could justifiably have been proud (since conservatives favor inequality, a caste system) — but no Democrat could (except fake ones — such as Obama and the Clintons).