 NATO has started a massive air exercise over Germany. What is the message? It is sending as the Ukraine war heats up. The top U.S. securities regulator has launched a crackdown against cryptocurrency platforms in a move that can change the future of the crypto market. At least former prime minister and billionaire right-wing politician Silvio Berlusconi died on Monday. What is his legacy? Welcome to daily debrief. I am your host Shreya and we take a look at these stories today. NATO began what it calls its largest-ever air deployment over Europe in Germany. The air defender exercise 2023 is set to involve 10,000 participants and 250 aircrafts from 25 countries, meant to demonstrate the strength and unity of the Western military alliance set against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. What lies ahead? We ask Abdul Rahman, who joins us in studio. Welcome to the show, Abdul. So, first off, what is the objective behind this air exercise by NATO? Well, there is an official version, of course, according to which this is just an exercise. Of course, it is the largest ever, the unprecedented scale exercise and all, but it is not against any country. That is what the official NATO version is. But of course, if you see the place where it is happening, if you see the participation of the countries, the number of countries which are participating and in the context in which it is happening, of course, is primarily to prepare the NATO countries, the Western European countries in particular and there are lies outside the that region, which includes Japan, which is not even the member of NATO and Sweden, which is one of the applicants, not yet accepted as full members. If you see all of it, it is primarily targeted at Russians, given the fact that there is a war going on in Ukraine and NATO has been supporting the Ukrainian government, providing armaments, providing other support, including tanks and aircrafts. So, in that context, of course, it is basically getting ready for any eventuality against Russia. That is the primary objective. If you see this exercise is happening along with a naval exercise in the Baltics. Again, NATO countries, there are 25 countries are participating here, 19 countries are participating there and there is a quite overlap in terms of the number of countries participating. And this basically fits into the larger scheme. If you see NATO's statements in recent months, they have identified China and Russia as the primary threats to their quote-unquote collective security and the deployment of forces on the ground, on the borders with Russia has increased and there have been a number of exercises carried by NATO countries have also increased. So, this is part of that larger context. Right, Abdul. I mean, there is surely no need for reading between the lines here because even in the official version, they say that it's designed to be defensive. So, the context of this thing is very important. So, how do you see the war in Ukraine shaping up from here? Well, that is the central issue. If you see NATO members and particularly the US have been responsible for what is happening in Ukraine. That is an obvious fact. They basically created an atmosphere in which Russia, despite raising objections time and again, that expansion of NATO to its toward expansion of NATO is basically against the national security of Russians. And instead of pushing for that, NATO countries should basically stop their expansion and provide Russia some kind of security guarantee and so on and so forth. That was the primary demand apart from what is happening in Donetsk and in other Russian speaking reasons in Ukraine. These were the primary concerns which basically led to Russia basically starting the quote-unquote special military operation in Ukraine last year. But NATO did not address those concerns and instead, ever since the war has started, instead of finding ways to kind of resolve the conflict through dialogue and reconciliation, what we see that there is an attempted move to basically escalate the war. So, from a time when the US and the European countries, Western European countries, claiming that providing aircrafts will create escalation and so on to Ukraine, they have provided that. They have admitted Finland and now Sweden is on the verge of being admitted to NATO. So, expansion is happening. There are greater talks about Ukrainians being inducted into NATO formally. That all of this, if you see that it seems that this is a part of the larger geopolitical move which is happening vis-à-vis the insecurities, growing insecurities of the NATO countries, particularly the leaders of NATO US and vis-à-vis Russia and China in many ways, which basically is pushing such kind of aggressive behavior. And it is also, you can say it's a kind of a defensive move in a sense that they do not want any challenge to their military dominance in the global politics. NATO was considered to be when it was initially formed, at least theoretically it was a defensive alliance, but everyone knows that it is not a defensive alliance. It has been used during the Cold War against Soviet Union for initial five decades against Soviet Union. And now it is increasingly being used to basically reinforce the military hegemony and the dominance of US and its Western European allies. So, whether it is the war in Iraq, whether it is war in Afghanistan, whether it is war in Libya and in Yugoslavia, in different other places, NATO has been an aggressor and it is not a defensive alliance. So, we should see it in that particular context in which this particular exercise and is happening. If you see one last thing I think needs to mention that US also because it is feeling the rise of China economically militarily as well, it basically is trying to, it is difficult. Of course, the overall defense budget is almost $8 trillion, which is one of the highest in the world. If you include all 10 countries' defense budgets, that will be still less than what US spends alone. Despite that, it is not satisfied with this amount of more than 800 bases all across the world, so much expenditure being the leading country in the armed exports and everything. It wants the NATO countries, member countries, 31 member countries to also share the burden of defense. It means everyone, every country is expected to increase their defense expenditure. So, increased defense expenditure, greater deployment of troops on the eastern, on the western border of Russia, greater expansion of NATO towards Russia and other initiatives taken by NATO, all of this basically leads to the conclusion that there is a growing fear of some kind of challenge to their dominance in the global security arena. Right. So, overall it's a push for around the global militarization of sorts. Exactly. When the hegemons become insecure, this always leads to increased armament, increased confrontation, and greater emphasis on security and military expenditure, which means there are 31 members in NATO. Apart from that, Japan is going to join it, or there is a talk about it. There is all the part of the military exercise already. If you include all of it, of course, there is a push, greater push for larger armament in the world, and that means greater conflicts. If there are non-real conflicts, there are conflicts will be invented just like what we have seen in last one year at least. Thank you so much for that update. Abdul, we will be following the war in Ukraine with you and with People's Dispatch. Thanks for joining us. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, also known as SEC, has sued two major crypto exchange platforms, namely Coinbase and Binance, in what looks like a crackdown against the crypto industry. At the heart of these lawsuits is the question of whether crypto can be considered securities and be regulated by the SEC. So far, no crypto platform operates as a full-blown stock exchange. The SEC also this year sued Bixie Digital and Bitrex Incorporated for failing to register as an exchange. We go now to Bapasinha for more questions on this issue. Welcome to the show, Bapada. So, first off, what's happening? How do we understand these back-to-back lawsuits? Right. So, what SEC has done is charge both Binance and Coinbase, the two largest crypto exchanges, with securities violations. So, this is a change in position, right? For the longest time, there are many people who are wondering why cryptocurrencies were not categorized as securities and then come under securities laws. But finally, SEC seems to have woken up and categorized cryptocurrencies as securities and then sued these two companies for illegally trading securities, right? Basically, trading securities without registering with the SEC. So, this is, finally, the government waking up and trying to regulate the wild west of cryptocurrencies after, pretty much after the most of the fraud has already happened. But they have done that. Also, the SEC chairman has made a comment that other, the so-called all coins, right? Well, the statement he made was that we don't need any more cryptocurrencies, and what the market is interpreting that as the all coins, right? The main coins are Bitcoin and Ethereum. So, the coins other than them would likely face even more harsher regulations from the government. So, the coins like Solana and Cardano, and there is another coin which have taken a fairly large hit in the last week following the announcement by SEC. So, and I mean, there's a lot of talk about how this is likely to shape the future of the crypto market because like you mentioned, there's a change in the stance whether these are securities or not. So, what's your take on that? See, I think if this had happened, for example, last year, it would have been a much bigger news, right? Because the crypto market kind of peaked at the end of 2021. And through the last year, we saw some of the major crashes. Frankly, I think like in 2023, at least the mainstream media and people in the mainstream, they seem to have lost interest in crypto after like let's say Bitcoin collapsed from something like 65,000 to around 20,000. So, the general public's interest in crypto seems to have just dissipated, right? And after a series of fraud revelations which happened and many of the crypto coins collapsed and it kind of culminated with the bankruptcy of FTX, the space has kind of been given up, I think, by the general public. There are still some crypto diehards who continue to hold and trade crypto, but so these actions are kind of seem to be more like window-dressing, right? After the like, well, horse has left the barn, that's what seems to have happened. But finally, the government has woken up and it, we can only speculate, but it appears if these court cases are resolved in this favour, then the trading of cryptocurrencies through these exchanges will pretty much be banned, right? Right, Bapada. So, you mentioned how at this point of time, the crypto may not be so much of an interest for the audience, but can you tell us a little more about what happened last year? So, see the thing is the kind of Bitcoin, which is kind of the grandfather of the entire crypto market that got created, I think sometime in 2007, 2008 and basically at that point, with the global financial crisis and the kind of loss of faith in the banking system, there was a feeling in the people that you needed a coin which was outside of the banking system. You needed currency outside of the banking system and there have been many ups and downs in the market. The market really went crazy in around the time when the pandemic hit and when there was a rise across the board of risk assets and crypto just went crazy in that time, right? Like many of these coins went like 50 times, 100 times, 1,000 times from that time frame between, let's say, beginning of 2000 to middle to end of 2021. This was also the time of the ultra-lose monetary policy, interest rates were at zero, the Fed was cutting rates, quantitative easing was happening. Now, when that regime got reversed and the Fed started raising interest rates, quantitative tightening started happening and the risk assets in general started falling. Crypto being the riskiest of all these assets basically took a huge hit, right? And kind of all the predictions that this was the future of currency and the future of digital currency and they were calling it Web 3.0, future of Web 3.0, all that has come crashing down, right? And what we have discovered is it's pretty much a field for scamsters and Ponzi schemes and like most Ponzi schemes, they are also started to collapse. So it may survive in some form as a speculative asset but I think the predictions which were made that this was the future of Web and this was the future of currency, I think that is pretty much gone, right? And I don't think anybody has illusions about those anymore. Right, thank you so much for joining us today, Papada. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's former Prime Minister and billionaire right-wing politician died in Milan on June 12 at the age of 86. In a decades-long career, marred by financial and other scandals and prosecutions, the leader of the Forza Italia Party would assume the role of Prime Minister four times between 1994 and until he was forced to step down in 2011. He was also known for his platforming of the far-right and neoliberal anti-worker policies. We talk about the man and his life in politics with Prasanth. Thanks for joining us Prasanth. So Berlusconi, he has had a very interesting career in the sense when we talk about especially his politics of platforming the right. Can you quickly take us through this whole career of his which has spanned decades? Right, I think there are two or three things which we need to be very clear about Silvio Berlusconi in the sense that I think when a lot of orbits are written nowadays, especially of important politicians, often there is a lot of, oh, but there was also this great legacy, oh, this is interesting, etc. But we need to also often see what impact politicians like Berlusconi had on Italy, which was his ascent from 1994 onwards. And even when he was not in power, it marked a consistent rise of right-wing politics and a very concerted attack on leftist and progressive politics throughout those two or three decades. So that if you ask in one sentence what was Berlusconi's legacy, that's precisely it. Like I said, the platforming, you know, when again, platforming is a word which sort of seems a bit, it's more clear to say that basically he allied with the descendants or the successors of Italian fascism. And today if that party, the descendants of Italian fascism under Georgia, Meloni are in power. A key reason is the fact that Berlusconi, who was more of a mainstream political force, actually provided a cover for them. And it's not only Georgia Meloni and her party, it's also the League party of Matthew Salvini, again a very virulent right-wing party, again also got, you know, was part of those alliances, those combinations which in the last decades, the 20th century, in the first decades, the 21st century really gained legitimacy. And if you look at, for instance, his policies as well I think we have a report in People's Dispatch which chronicles some of that from some of our sources in Italy who talk about how there was a clear targeting of bills of provisions, for instance, which provided security to workers. There was a very concern that it made over time to sort of fracture the working class through various kinds of new laws that came up, for instance. So all this, you know, is part of very much part of what you would call the neoliberal framework, which many countries adopted. But Berlusconi also, you know, accelerated it, gave cover to the left, like I said. And also I think very important to note that there was this crisis in Italy in the early 90s which discredited a lot of the first 12 political parties, both of the center and the left. And Berlusconi was one of those people who came to the scene saying that he was an alternative. But the alternative he projected was very celebratory, celebratory driven, you know, alternative. It was one very much focused on himself and it was one which sort of made politics into a spectacle, right? And automatically went against or basically it said that, okay, some politicians were cut up, therefore, everything they represented, all the values of fighting against fascism of, you know, of welfare state, for instance, all of these are out to be junked as well. That was pretty much his line and the focus was, you know, that was basically became his focus. So I think his career is kind of a microcosm of what, you know, what happened to Italy over the past decades. Right, Prashant. So how do we see the Italy of today, its politics, its economics as a product of his career? That's a very good question because Italy is one of those countries today which is, you know, it's a pretty bad shape to put it very lightly. Workers, for instance, have seen their salaries either remain stagnant or declined for decades right now. And, you know, it's Italy is one of those countries which has been run often by very technocratic governments, say people who were IMF bureaucrats or World Bank bureaucrats, and there's been a lot of focus on that. There's been a whole discrediting of the political class and one reason for that has also been Berlusconi because he's faced so many charges in the number, a huge number of political cases against, in case of corruption, cases, not political cases, financial cases, cases of corruption, cases of fraud, etc., etc. So all these charges have also contributed to a very anti-political climate in the country and which has also been increased by the fact that he has sort of made himself the story throughout. Politicians like Berlusconi, for that matter, Trump or, you know, say even for that Modi who make themselves the center of all politics automatically also often create a very anti-political sentiment. And at that point people are like, okay, we need technocrats and what do these technocrats bring? These technocrats bring with them policies which basically destroy the welfare net that governments provide. These politicians bring, you know, steps which cut, you know, which increase taxes for instance, sorry, cut taxes for companies, which increase taxes on people. These politicians bring policies which prevent any more hiring. You know, all these policies are very much part of the technocrat playbook. So when we look at the poor economic situation Italy is in, when we look at the fact that a descendant of the fascists is in power in Italy today, all of this, like I said, is a result of these decades of Berlusconi's policies. So I think it's, you know, when we read the orbits, when we read of him as a versatile political player, which is how many characterize him. And, you know, internationally he had his moments. Let's be clear about that. But I think it's also important to remember that this part of his legacy is very, very central. Thank you for joining us today Prashant. And that's all we have for today. For more stories keep watching People's Dispatch.org. 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