Corporatism and Fascism

Japan's Weapons Industry
The potential consequences of Japan’s resumption of arms exports.
by Gavan Gray | Global Research.CA

Reforms being backed by the Japanese government are likely to see further easing of, if not an outright end to, Japan’s stringent restrictions on military arms exports. That this may well be a necessity due to current trends toward joint development of weapons systems between nations and corporations, should in no way be taken to mean it will not have major consequences for Japan. The Japanese arms industry currently exists to serve the Self Defense Forces but should its raison d’être change from national security to profit-making, Japan is likely to see a major increase in both governmental corruption and the ‘revolving door’ system of conflicts of interest, which have compromised the security of nations such as the UK and USA.  
 
Since the end of WWII the Japanese people have seen their country portrayed, by virtue of its constitution’s renunciation of war, as a uniquely peaceful and nonviolent nation. Yet, in the past decade the push to ‘normalize’ the country, and return to it the full variety of foreign policy options available to other major powers, has seen significant changes occur. Recently, the government has begun to relax a longstanding injunction against the export of weapons, something that will unleash some of the world’s leading industrial manufacturers on the international weapons market. In doing so, Japan greatly increases the influence the arms industry will have upon its national politics. This industry now exists solely as a provider for the Self Defense Forces but, should profitability take over from national security as its raison d’être, the state will, based upon the examples of the US and the UK, have to contend with increased levels of corruption and the promotion of an aggressively militaristic foreign policy.

Baez, Coyne, and Reed
All the Answers You'll Ever Need
By Fred Reed | Fred on Everything

Last night Vi and I watched for the first time a documentary, shot by my friend Jim Coyne, on Joan Baez and the movement against a war no one any longer remembers, far away, on another planet. It was lovely filmwork. Jim is a genius. I may have to stop having friends. I feel inferior to all of them. It gets depressing.

Of no interest to anyone but me, perhaps, it completely changed my understanding of Baez, whom I had regarded for forty years as just another pretty voice. No. Smart, tough, principled in a world that isn’t. I hereby apologize.

In that war—I forget what planet it was on—the freaks and professors and mothers and the simply decent finally managed stop the carnage, though only after the Pentagon had killed 60,000 American kids and a million or so Vietnamese, not to mention devastating Laos and bringing Pol Pot to power. God I’m proud. We’re such a force for democracy.

When the GIs left Asia in ’73, the commie peaceniks thought they had won. And they had, for ten minutes. The grip of the military on the country loosened briefly.

Unfortunately the soldiers learned. Not how to win wars, which they do poorly if at all, but how to keep a war going. Winning a war isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The promotions and contracts stop. When you are paid to do something, it is in your interest not to finish doing it.

The Pentagon’s first lesson learned was to avoid conscription, as the conscripted and their families will take to the streets. By using an army of volunteer suckers about whom nobody of importance cares, the military severs its wars from most of the country, which loses interest. The brass are then free to do as they choose.

The second lesson learned was that while defeating the enemy is not necessary, and perhaps not desirable, controlling the press is everything. And they did it.

So forty or so years after all the love-ins, the marches, the righteous dope (all of which may seem silly, but in my view preferable to watching a Cambodian mother screaming over the opened bleeding guts of her child) the Pentagon is at it again. Once more the jets howl over remote primitive countries, countries that did nothing to the US and couldn’t have, and promotions flow, and contracts, and generals demand more troops and more money to stop communism. Excuse me, terrorism. Soon, the Chinese, a better threat, coming to a theater near you. With the passing of years, one demon fades into another. Switching enemies is much easier now, what with search-and-replace. Read more.

The Cost of Empire
By John Feffer | Foreign Policy in Focus

When he travels abroad, Barack Obama is the consummate pitchman. He tells stories, he cracks jokes, he delivers mini-lectures with a light touch — all in the service of selling product. It's not an easy job. Imagine trying to sell GM cars after Ralph Nader's attack on its Corvair in the 1960s, or shilling for Nestlé after the infant formula boycott of the 1970s and 1980s. Obama's product — America — has taken a beating in the marketplace over the last eight years or so. The president has to do some serious rebranding.

Like any good ad-man, Obama does two things. He makes the audience feel good. But the people listening to him must also feel that something is missing in their lives, something that only Obama and his product can give them. If I get his product, the potential consumer thinks, perhaps I'll be as young, handsome, talented, and powerful as he is.

In his address over the weekend to the Ghanaian parliament, the president was careful to emphasize that "Africa's future is up to Africans." The United States is all about respecting self-determination. "America will not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation," he intoned. "The essential truth of democracy is that each nation determines its own destiny."

We're not telling you what to do, Obama insisted. But still, you have to get rid of your dictators, your corruption, and your bloody conflicts. And boy, do we have just the product for you!

Obama didn't "apologize for the CIA's role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966 to satisfy Cold War strategic interests," as Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Charles Abugre recommended in What Obama Should Say in Africa. "While he's at it," Abugre writes, "he should apologize for the role the CIA played in removing Patrice Lumumba from power in 1960 and the resulting mess that is today's Democratic Republic of the Congo."

Obama saw no need to apologize for past product defects. He's not peddling the ugly old empire that tortured people at the Guantánamo detention facility and the Abu Ghraib prison, meddled in elections past, and is embroiled in its own bloody and expensive conflicts. It's Empire 2.0.

Well, of course, he didn't say "empire." That's what rebranding is all about. Consider what the president had to say about one of the new services that Empire 2.0 offers: the Pentagon's new U.S. African Command (AFRICOM). "Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa, and the world," Obama said.

Partnership sounds nice. But as FPIF contributor Gerald LeMelle argues in Revealing the Real Africa Policy, the administration's Africa agenda make "no reference to the recent FY 2010 budget that doubles the size of AFRICOM's funds. Nor does it mention the doubling of financial support for counterterrorism projects throughout the continent — including increasing funds for weapons, military training, and education at a time when U.S. foreign aid money is stagnating." Read more.

The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda
By Richard W. Behan | AlterNet | Posted September 27, 2007
The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and they were set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001. That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my earlier work, for example.) Read more.

Dick Cheney - The Professional
By Michael Parenti

So the Cheney assasination squad story is getting more traction these days with added evidence and insider muttering, eh?

Well, Jean Luc Besson made a film in the 90's called "LEON - THE PROFESSIONAL" with Jean Reno. It's a story of a professional assassin who trains a young girl, whose family was murdered in New York, how to be a professional killer.

Mourn on the 4th of July
By John Pilger | New Statesman | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

Liberals say that the United States is once again a “nation of moral ideals”, but behind the façade little has changed. With his government of warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, Barack Obama is merely upholding the myths of a divine America...Credible polls have long confirmed that more than two-thirds of Americans hold progressive views. A majority want the government to care for those who cannot care for themselves. They would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone. They want complete nuclear disarmament; 72 per cent want the US to end its colonial wars; and so on. They are informed, subversive, even “anti-American”.

The monsoon had woven thick skeins of mist over the central highlands of Vietnam. I was a young war correspondent, bivouacked in the village of Tuylon with a unit of US marines whose orders were to win hearts and minds. “We are here not to kill,” said the sergeant, “we are here to impart the American Way of Liberty as stated in the Pacification Handbook. This is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks, as stated on page 86.”

Page 86 was headed WHAM. The sergeant’s unit was called a combined action company, which meant, he explained, “we attack these folks on Mondays and we win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays”. He was joking, though not quite. Standing in a jeep on the edge of a paddy, he had announced through a loudhailer: “Come on out, everybody. We got rice and candy and toothbrushes to give you.”

Silence. Not a shadow moved.

“Now listen, either you gooks come on out from wherever you are, or we’re going to come right in there and get you!”Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from 9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

Swiss ready to seize UBS data to stifle Washington
By BALZ BRUPPACHER, Associated Press Writer | Yahoo! News

Switzerland's government said Wednesday it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of American clients to the U.S. government, and would consider seizing documents to prevent that.

The statement was the strongest yet by Swiss authorities locked in a battle with the U.S. Justice Department over the identities of more than 50,000 American clients at UBS.

The case in the federal district court in Miami has become a focal point of Washington's efforts to crack down on tax evasion and the foreign banks that help wealthy Americans send money overseas. But UBS and the Swiss government say handing over the names would violate Swiss law and subject bank employees to criminal prosecution in Switzerland. Read more.

House Finance Committee Members Took $62.9 Million From Industry Interests
By Sam Stein | Huffington Post | H/T Liam Hughes

Members of the House Financial Services Committee, which is playing a critical role in restructuring the nation's reeling financial, banking and housing sectors, have received nearly $63 million in campaign contributions from the industries they oversee.

A new analysis of campaign finance data by Public Campaign Action Fund, which provided an advance preview to the Huffington Post, shows that financial, insurance and real estate interests donated a combined $62.9 million to the 71 members of the House Financial Services Committee.

The hefty donations reflect the extent to which key companies and individuals of the financial sector have attempted to exert their influence on legislative debates even before the recent economic collapse. For good-government groups, the findings also raise a bevy of questions over just how neutral lawmakers have been in crafting solutions toward getting the financial markets and Wall Street on more stable footing. Read more.

Click through to YouTube for more information and links.

by Linda Milazzo

This morning I received the following letter from President Barack Obama:

Medicare Fraud Strike Force Operations Lead to Charges Against 53 Doctors, Health Care Executives and Beneficiaries for More Than $50 Million in Alleged False Billing in Detroit | Press Release
Early Morning Takedown Leads to Arrests in Detroit, Miami and Denver

Fifty-three people have been indicted for schemes to submit more than $50 million in false Medicare claims in the continuing operation of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force in Detroit, Attorney General Eric Holder, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced today. The Strike Force in Detroit is the third phase of a targeted criminal, civil and administrative effort against individuals and health care companies that fraudulently bill the Medicare program.

Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire"
By Stephen Lendman

First written in 1972, it was updated in a 2003 edition that's every bit as relevant now - thus this review focusing on Hudson's new preface, introduction, and detailed account of the book's theme.

He revisited it in his 2008-09 Project Censored award- winning article titled: "Economic Meltdown - The 'Dollar Glut' is What Finances America's Global Military Build-up" in which he explains the following - the "inter-related dynamics" of:

• "surplus (US) dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers;"
• global central banks "recyl(ing) these dollar inflows (into) US Treasury bonds to finance the federal US budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the US media),"
• "the military character of the US payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit."

Stop Health Care Industry Fraud | Press Release | By Senator Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a member of the Senate health committee, said today that real health care reform must address the billions of dollars in fraud and abuse that comes from the major corporations in the health care industry.

“What we have seen for many years is the systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies, and private for-profit hospitals ripping off the American people and the taxpayers of this country to the tune of many billions of dollars,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said at a committee markup session.

Sanders cited example after example indicating that virtually all of the major hospital chains, private insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies have been involved in massive health care fraud over the past decade.

Cheney Worried That Iraq Withdrawal Will ‘Waste’ The Sacrifice By U.S. Troops
By Amanda Terkel | Think Progress

Tomorrow is the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, a date Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is calling a “great victory.” But in a new interview with Washington Times radio, Vice President Cheney was still pushing the U.S. to stay in Iraq, saying that withdrawal would “waste” the sacrifice of U.S. troops:

Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done.

“But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

“I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.“ Read more.

Color Revolutions, Old and New
By Stephen Lendman

In his new book, "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order," F. William Engdahl explained a new form of US covert warfare - first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. What appeared to be "a spontaneous and genuine political 'movement,' (in fact) was the product of techniques" developed in America over decades.

In the 1990s, RAND Corporation strategists developed the concept of "swarming" to explain "communication patterns and movement of" bees and other insects which they applied to military conflict by other means. More on this below.

Food Inc: Michael Pollan and Friends Reveal the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets
The new film Food Inc. is a shocking look at the health, human rights and the environmental nightmare that lands on our plate each meal.
By Tara Lohan | AlterNet

Watch the Food Inc. movie trailer.

It turns out that figuring out the most simple thing -- like what's on your dinner plate, and where it came from -- is actually a pretty subversive act.

That's what director Robert Kenner found out while spending six years putting together the amazing new documentary, Food Inc., which features prominent food writers Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation).

Warning: Food Inc. is not for the faint of heart. While its focus is not on the gory images of slaughterhouse floors and filthy feedlots, what it does show about the journey of our food from "farm" to plate is not pretty.

The story's main narrative chronicles the consolidation of our vast food industry into the hands of a few powerful corporations that have worked to limit the public's understanding of where its food comes from, what's in it and how safe it may be. Read more.

The Health Care Industry vs. Health Reform
By Wendell Potter | Center for Media and Democracy

I'm the former insurance industry insider now speaking out about how big for-profit insurers have hijacked our health care system and turned it into a giant ATM for Wall Street investors, and how the industry is using its massive wealth and influence to determine what is (and is not) included in the health care reform legislation members of Congress are now writing.

Although by most measures I had a great career in the insurance industry (four years at Humana and nearly 15 at CIGNA), in recent years I had grown increasingly uncomfortable serving as one of the industry's top PR executives. In addition to my responsibilities at CIGNA, which included serving as the company's chief spokesman to the media on all corporate and financial matters, I also served on a lot of trade association committees and industry-financed coalitions, many of which were essentially front groups for insurers. So I was in a unique position to see not only how Wall Street analysts and investors influence decisions insurance company executives make but also how the industry has carried out behind-the-scenes PR and lobbying campaigns to kill or weaken any health care reform efforts that threatened insurers' profitability.

I also have seen how the industry's practices -- especially those of the for-profit insurers that are under constant pressure from Wall Street to meet their profit expectations -- have contributed to the tragedy of nearly 50 million people being uninsured as well as to the growing number of Americans who, because insurers now require them to pay thousands of dollars out of their own pockets before their coverage kicks in -- are underinsured. An estimated 25 million of us now fall into that category.

What I saw happening over the past few years was a steady movement away from the concept of insurance and toward "individual responsibility," a term used a lot by insurers and their ideological allies. This is playing out as a continuous shifting of the financial burden of health care costs away from insurers and employers and onto the backs of individuals. As a result, more and more sick people are not going to the doctor or picking up their prescriptions because of costs. If they are unfortunate enough to become seriously ill or injured, many people enrolled in these plans find themselves on the hook for such high medical bills that they are losing their homes to foreclosure or being forced into bankruptcy. Read more.

The Bite of Bank Fees
Customers Pay More as Institutions Seek Ways to Cope With Revenue Squeeze
By Nancy Trejos and Jonathan Starkey | Washington Post

Your bank wants more of your money, and it's found a way to get it: by jacking up the fees on your account.

Customers are paying more to maintain a checking account and withdraw cash from an out-of-system ATM, and when they bounce a check. To make up for declining revenue, many banks are boosting fees and are requiring higher minimum balances for many accounts.

The institutions also have made it easier for customers to spend more than is in their accounts -- and then hit them with substantial fees, a practice so vexing to consumer advocates that the Federal Reserve is thinking of regulating it.

Bank revenue has plummeted on the back of foreclosures and rising credit card delinquencies. Now Congress has passed a law cracking down on arbitrary and excessive credit card fees. So the banks have been fighting back.

"There is an economic storm that has made revenue fall," said Michael Moebs, an economist and chief executive of Moebs Services, an economic research firm in Lake Bluff, Ill. "Fee income is basically where banks and credit unions can offset both loan- and investment-related losses." Read more.

Dissidents, Hate Speech, Free Speech and Propaganda
Szandor Blestman | American Chronicle

I saw Glenn Beck the other day talking about the shooting at the holocaust memorial. On this particular program he wasn´t so much reporting the facts of the case as he was regaling us with his opinion. It appears as if this man James von Brunn has set a tempest upon us with his despicable action. One man kills another and mainstream media personalities are suddenly condemning entire groups of people numbering in the hundreds of thousands if not the millions. One crazy, paranoid, violent old man, perhaps suffering from who knows what kind of brain disorder, takes it upon himself to murder someone in cold blood and suddenly he is not responsible, but shadowy groups of hate mongers must have been pulling his strings? One tragic incident and suddenly I´m hearing rumblings that one of humankind´s most cherished birthrights needs to be monitored by those in power, thus tarnishing the memory of thousands who died in defense of such rights.

Mr. Beck made a statement something to the effect that he felt "9/11 truthers" were dangerous, potentially violent people. He´s been saying things like that for some time. James von Brunn is a racist, angry, violent man whose actions may be judged as that of a madman. Mr. Beck used that man´s individual actions as an excuse to condemn many who are nothing more than peaceful activists or those trying to express a point of view that may seem unacceptable to the majority. Any affiliations James von Brunn may have had, be they with the 9/11 truth movement or with some kind of white supremacist organization, are incidental. Just because he went out and decided to initiate violence against others doesn´t mean that everyone else in all the organizations he was affiliated with are going to go out and start doing the same. Read more.

Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War writes:

Below is a translation of the attached Arabic language communication from the Federation of Oil Unions in Iraq (IFOU) regarding the announced plan of the Oil Ministry to open bidding to foreign corporations and award 20 year contracts for development of Iraqi oil fields.

The IFOU argues that opening bidding in this manner violates the Iraqi constitution and several laws that govern development policy. The note that the decision of the Minister of Oil to proceed with the awarding of contracts goes against the expert opinion and advice of management of the Southern Oil Company and other government officials, and is being done without the required impact reports.

FBI compounds mystery with secret justification of gag order
The FBI continues its secrecy binge by filing a classified justification of its use of a gag order on an ISP in the ongoing Doe v. Holder battle.
By Jon Stokes | Arstechnica

When the FBI uses a national security letter (NSL) to force the cooperation of an ISP or phone company in the surveillance of a suspect, the agency typically slaps a gag order on the service provider to prevent it from revealing the existence of the NSL. Civil liberties groups have successfully challenged the DOJ on these gag orders in the ongoing Doe v. Holder, and last month the Obama administration decided not to appeal a federal court ruling that the FBI must justify these gag orders by meeting a relatively high First Amendment standard.

The implication of the court's ruling was that the FBI would finally have to justify the gag order that it had placed on the John Doe in the Doe v. Holder case, so that the plaintiff could talk about the NSL. The FBI has now cooperated, and has given the court a justification of the gag order, in secret.

The classified declaration that justifies the gag order can't even be seen by Doe's attorneys at the ACLU. In a statement, the ACLU elaborated on the move: "The government did not even file a redacted version of its secret affidavit or even an unclassified summary of what the secret affidavit says. Basically, the government is asking us just to trust that the gag is justified." Read more.

Obama’s Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers and For-Profit Healthcare
By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report

The first Black president has racked up some impressive victories. Barack Obama has quarantined single-payer healthcare advocates, crushed dissent against the war in Congress, and transferred more money to the finance capital class than at any time in planetary history. Not bad for just five months in office. "At some point in the near future Barack Obama will become inextricably associated in the public mind with Big Capital – and deservedly so." The 'Obama Effect' has led to the near-total collapse of the Left."

As of this writing, the Progressives for Obama website still exists, a relic of Left delusion that should have died of embarrassment months ago. Barack Obama has, indeed, grown in the presidency – but not into the FDR-like figure of his leftish supporters’ imaginations. Nor has his presence in the Oval Office served to spur Blacks and progressives to dramatic action, creating the “push” that Left Obamites had predicted would allow their champion to act on his more “liberal” instincts. Quite the contrary. The “Obama Effect” has led to the near-total collapse of the Left– both its white and Black wings – and made the nation safe for rule by finance capital and militarists.

The military, finance capital and healthcare corporations (insurers are a branch of finance capital) are winning every important battle because, on fundamental issues, President Obama is on their side. It is he who crushed the anti-war bloc in the US. House; who silenced and marginalized single payer advocates, while fawning over health profiteers; who engineered the greatest transfer of wealth in human history to bankers, leaving them free to once again ruin themselves and the rest of us.

So let us give President Obama his due. He not only smashed the Left opposition, he humiliated them. Read more.

Risks battle rewards as Iraq opens up its oilfields
By Ahmed Rasheed | Yahoo! News | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

For the first time since the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, global oil firms will have a run at Iraq's vast oil resources when Baghdad auctions off contracts in its biggest fields this month.

The June 29-30 tender for service contracts in six already producing oilfields and two undeveloped gas fields is fraught with risk following a revolt in the state-run oil industry, and amid violence and political uncertainty.

Oil companies say they have no choice but to bid -- the allure of the world's third largest oil reserves, and of greater riches down the road from Iraq's under-exploited and under-explored oil resources is just too great.

"These fields are the jewels of the Iraqi oil industry," a senior executive at an international oil company planning to bid told Reuters. "Of course we'll be there. But it's a big risk to take. We can win the contract, but can we execute it? Who will approve the deals? Will the local partners cooperate?" Read more.