Surprise move by European Central Bank to speed up debt purchases

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank (ECB) will accelerate asset purchases under its €1.1 trillion quantitative easing program, in a clear sign of growing nervousness in financial circles over the turbulence that has hit global bond markets over the past month.

In a speech delivered on Monday night in London, Benoit Coeuré, a member of the ECB’s executive board, said the central bank would front-load some of its purchases of sovereign debt to May and June, to deal with an expected shortage of liquidity in July and August.

Coeuré cited concerns about the shifts in the market for euro zone debt and said the “rapidity” of a reversal in the price of German 10-year bonds, Bunds, was “yet another incident of extreme volatility in global capital markets showing signs of reduced liquidity.”

In the middle of April, the yield on the Bund—regarded as a key market indicator—fell to around 0.05 percent. However, earlier this month it came back to around 0.55 percent. This was a massive shift in a market where daily yield movements are usually no more than a few hundredths of a percentage point. The rise in the yield, which moves in an inverse relationship to the price of the bond, indicated there had been a major sell-off.

The “reduced liquidity” issues raised by Coeuré point to fears that there may not be sufficient buyers in the market for those who want to sell, possibly leading to a “rush for the exits” that could set off a chain reaction.

The instability in financial markets was underscored by criticism of the way in which the decision was released. Coeuré’s speech was delivered on Monday night but it was not published until Tuesday morning.

“It’s a bit strange that there’s such a delay between the speech and its disclosure,” Frederik Ducorzet, an economist at Crédit Agricole, told the Financial Times. “The ECB should try to avoid it in the future,” he said. “Especially in a market that remains very nervous.”

The ECB said it planned to publish the speech at the time it was delivered but an internal procedural error led to the delay.

The fall in the price of the Bund and the rise in its yield initially raised hopes that markets might be at a turning point—a “welcome outbreak of sanity,” as one headline put it—in conditions where the volume of bonds trading with negative yields had reached as high as $3 trillion.

These hopes have been short-lived. The ECB decision was motivated by the fear that a rise in interest rates and a move back to more normal rates—ending the “insanity” where speculators would receive a negative return if they held bonds to maturity—would spark a crisis.

Financial markets are extremely nervous about what will happen if and when the US Federal Reserve starts to lift rates, a prospect that has been pencilled in for later this year, and the consequences of any move by the ECB to slacken its pace of sovereign debt purchases.

Coeuré’s remarks were seen as aimed at countering concerns that the ECB would move to taper its purchases in the months ahead—a move that would see interest rates start to rise. ECB president Mario Draghi, in a statement last week, sought to dampen speculation that the bank would ease the pace of its bond purchases.

Bank of France governor Christian Noyer, who is also a member of the ECB’s governing council, indicated the central bank was prepared to go further than its initial decision. “The purchase program will continue until the end of September 2016 [its scheduled completion date] and beyond if we do not see and a sustained adjustment in the path of inflation,” he said.

Officially, quantitative easing is aimed at returning Europe’s inflation rate, at present close to zero, to the ECB’s target range below, but near, 2 percent. The real motivation is to provide massive supplies of cheap money to the banks and finance houses for their speculative activities.

The ECB announcement was welcomed by financial markets. European equities rose on the news and Wall Street’s Dow Jones industrial index closed at an all-time high. Other indexes, however, experienced a fall because of concerns that the Fed may move sooner than expected on interest rates. Market analysts pointed to a “lot of fear” about the impact of higher interest rates.

While the ECB respected the taboo on any mention of lowering the value of the euro to secure an advantage in world markets, the latest move is also another shot in the global currency wars.

Concerns have been expressed in the US that the dollar’s rise against the euro and other major trading partners is having an adverse impact on US transnational corporations in high-tech and pharmaceuticals, which derive much of their revenue from international operations. This led to the view that the Fed may delay any interest rate rise until next year, sending down the value of the dollar in recent weeks.

Now the ECB has responded. The euro experienced its second largest one-day fall in three and a half years on the back of Coeuré’s remarks. According to Brenda Kelly, head analyst at London Capital Group: “If there is one thing certain that is evident from today’s early activity, it’s that the ECB is determined to see the euro weaken.”

The ongoing market turbulence and the response and counter-response by the central banks is the daily expression of underlying fears of the consequences of any move away, even if only a small one, from the supply of ultra-cheap money to the financial system.

Writing in the Financial Times after the spike in Bund yields, economics commentator Gavyn Davies said the sudden reversal was a “salutary reminder of the much bigger shock that might occur when the central banks finally abandon their zero interest rate policies, though this still does not seem imminent.”

Davies pointed out that the rise in bond yields occurred at a time when global economic activity was weakening, “which is highly unusual.” In the US, the much-predicted second quarter uptick, following a growth rate of only 0.2 percent in the first three months of 2015, is not taking place, according to the most recent data. There are signs too that China’s growth rate is falling below the official projection of around 7 percent for this year.

Davies warned that some of the products of the “asset management industry” developed during the ultra-low interest rate regime “might pose a systemic threat to market stability when the central banks normalise policy.” The Bund “tantrum” could be “a warning of things to come, and on a much larger scale.”

Such is the state of financial markets that some of the world’s largest banks and finance houses, including HSBC, UBS and the BlackRock hedge fund, have warned that the low-interest rate regime is increasing the risk of instability. Issued under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, their statement called for the use of “macroprudential policies”—that is increased regulation rather than a reliance on interest rates—to address “over-exuberance within asset classes” such as real estate.

Anxious to protect their own interests, however, the finance houses said such measures had to be applied across the board, not merely to presently regulated institutions, otherwise money would shift to the shadow banking sector, increasing “systemic risk.” The statement argued that increased macroprudential regulation could become a source of systemic risk itself.

Such risk arises from the very efforts of the major banks and finance houses to develop methods to dodge the effects of regulation, either by devising more complex financial products or shifting activity into shadow banking.

The largely self-serving statement was bereft of any concrete measures to halt what even the finance chiefs recognise as a gathering crisis. However, it did serve one useful purpose. It underscored the fact that there are no such reforms available. The measures adopted by financial authorities in an attempt to counter one problem, at best only transfer it to another part of the system, where it can assume an even more malignant form.

Greece edges towards collapse as troika demands new austerity plan

Robert Stevens

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to meet Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Thursday, during a meeting of European Union leaders in the Latvian capital of Riga.

In the run-up to the meeting, European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker denied offering Greece a deal of around €5 billion in loans in exchange for a package of structural reforms.

On Monday, the Greek daily To Vima reported that the EC plan envisaged releasing €1.8 billion remaining in the EU’s portion of the outstanding loan agreement Greece has with the European Union, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), known as the “troika”. Greece would also receive €1.9 billion in profits from Greek bonds, purchased by the ECB in 2010, and around €1.3 billion in additional Greek bond profits the ECB will receive in July.

According to the report, Syriza would have to commit to a set of austerity measures less harsh than those demanded by the IMF and Eurogroup finance ministers. It also acceded to one of the Greek government’s demands for a lower primary surplus target for 2015.

The Financial Times states that an official involved in the talks said the other two bodies were “thunderstruck” about any deal with Greece on the terms being suggested.

Commenting on the reports Tuesday, Juncker said, “There is no Juncker plan. This rumour in the British and Greek press about a Juncker plan isn’t true.”

Asked if he thought an agreement could be reached with Greece, he replied, “Yes, toward the end of May, start of June.” He ruled out an agreement being concluded around the Riga summit.

Without further loans, Greece will be bankrupted. Its main banks are being kept afloat only with a trickle of loans from the European Central Bank’s high interest Emergency Liquidity Assistance.

The troika was unable to reach an agreement with the previous New Democracy government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras during its last few months in power. Within weeks of taking office, Syriza pledged to continue the overall austerity programme, due to expire on June 30, but has been unable to reach an agreement on the measures the troika is demanding. Elected on an anti-austerity platform, Syriza is seeking somehow to contain social anger over further job losses, wage cuts, attacks on pensions and a continuation of the hated property tax—while at the same time maintaining its commitment to implement the demands of the European banks.

No loans have been made to Greece from the troika for fully nine months, since August 2014. This includes €7.2 billion in loans conditioned on completing the existing austerity programme Syriza signed up to.

If this continues, Syriza will soon default on its overall debt of more than €300 billion. A default could occur within weeks if no agreement is reached, as the Greek state must pay back a further nearly €24 billion this year, including around €11 billion in July/August.

Tsipras was forced to write a letter, on May 8, just days before a €750 million payment to the IMF was due, to IMF chief Christine Lagarde, the ECB’s Mario Draghi and Juncker, telling them his government could not make the payment and would default without a release of emergency funds.Kathemerini said Tsipras also called US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to inform him of the situation. The payment was made only after the government took €650 million euros from a Special Drawing Rights account issued by the IMF—effectively borrowing from the IMF to pay the IMF.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Tsipras are playing up the possibility of an imminent deal, with Varoufakis stating on a TV show Monday, “I think we are very close…Let’s say… about a week.”

However, on Tuesday Labour Minister Panos Skourletis set a date of June 5 as a deadline, stating, “If a solution is not found financially by then, things will be difficult.”

On that date, a further €305 million has to be paid to the IMF. Die Weltreported on Sunday, based on comments from troika sources involved in the negotiations, “While there has been talk over the past few days of some progress in the negotiations, the sad reality is that the two sides continue to be separated by a sizeable gulf.”

It cited an official who said, “It is like the Titanic. The atmosphere is better now than it was earlier in the discussions. But what does it matter if the ship is sinking?”

According to officials briefed on a closed-door IMF meeting last week, at least one board member raised the possibility of presenting a “take it or leave it proposal” to Greece.

Speaking about the possibility of a further loan package to Greece beyond June, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, “It is possible for additional assistance to Greece, if Athens fulfils its obligations to the lenders.”

Leading figures within Merkel’s coalition government are opposed to any further large-scale loans to Greece. Volker Kauder, the head of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, told Die Welt, “We must not discuss a third package. The situation is very difficult. Greeks must show that they are walking on the agreed path.”

Leading figures in Syriza, including Tsipras, routinely cite supposed “red lines” that will not be conceded in the talks. The reality is that Syriza has done everything possible to ensure that all loans have been repaid to the troika and Greek treasury bill holders since it came to power in January.

The Syriza-led government has already made 14 separate debt repayments totalling €13.2 billion euros, or 1,200 euros for every man, woman and child in the country. On Monday, the Financial Times commented that Syriza had taken “extraordinary measures for Athens to scrape through the past fortnight,” including “plundering local government”.

The payments have been made largely by the government raiding the funds of every state asset available. In April, Syriza passed an authoritarian decree, without any vote in parliament, requiring all public authorities and corporations to make financial contributions to the Greek Central Bank and put them into the hands of the government. The decree was enforced after being demanded by the EU, ECB and IMF.

Every single cent belonging to the Greek state is being pillaged in order to make the repayments. Only this week Syriza demanded dozens of Greek embassies send back any unallocated funds and revenue from consular acts (such as issuing visas, proxies, etc). Even unused funds intended for stationery, cleaning products, etc. for the next two months must be returned.

With no access to external funding and its banks almost unable to function, Greece’s economy is now officially back in recession. The economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the first three months of the year, following a 0.4 percent contraction in the fourth quarter of 2014. An average of 59 small businesses closed daily during this period, with 95 percent of all applications for bank loans rejected.

This follows a collapse in GDP by more than 25 percent over the past four years.

According to the Hellenic Confederation of Commerce and Enterprise (ESEE), the economy needs €25 billion just to recover the losses it has incurred since December. It is bleeding €22.3 million a day, with 613 jobs lost every single day since Syriza took office—a total of around 18,000 during this period.

Only one in four workers worldwide has a stable job

Andre Damon

Only one quarter of the world’s working population holds a permanent and stable job, according to a new report published by the International Labor Organization (ILO) Tuesday.

Even as the number of unemployed people worldwide remains significantly higher than before the 2008 crisis, the few jobs that have been created in recent years have been disproportionately part-time, contingent and low-wage.

The ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook—Trends 2015 report found that three-quarters of workers are “employed on temporary or short-term contracts, in informal jobs often without any contract, under own-account arrangements or in unpaid family jobs.”

The report notes that worldwide more than 60 percent of workers do not have any sort of employment contract, with most of them working on family farms and businesses in developing countries. But even among those who earn wages or salaries, less than half—only 42 percent—are employed on a permanent basis.

In what are categorized as high-income countries, the share of workers employed on a permanent basis has declined in recent years, from 74 percent in 2004 to 73.2 percent in 2012. For males this decline has been even sharper, with the share working on permanent contracts falling from 73.1 percent to 71.2 percent during the same time.

The report likewise found a global rise in part-time employment. “In the vast majority of countries with available information, the rise in the number of part-time jobs outpaced gains in full-time jobs between 2009 and 2013.”

The ILO notes, “In France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the [European Union] more broadly, increases in part-time employment occurred alongside losses in full-time jobs—leading in some instances to overall job losses during this period.” Since 2009, the number of full-time jobs in the European Union fell by nearly 3.3 million, while part-time employment increased by 2.1 million.

Meanwhile, legal protections assuring workers a stable employment schedule have been slashed, with the ILO noting that, “labour protection has generally decreased since 2008.”

“The shift we’re seeing from the traditional employment relationship to more non-standard forms of employment is in many cases associated with the rise in inequality and poverty rates in many countries,” said Guy Ryder, Director-General of the ILO.

The report found “a shift away from the standard employment model, in which workers… have stable jobs and work full time. In advanced economies, the standard employment model is less and less dominant.”

This phenomenon was mirrored in developing countries where, “at the bottom of global supply chains, very short-term contracts and irregular hours are becoming more widespread.” As a result, “in emerging and developing economies, the historical trend toward more wage and salaried employment is slowing down.”

The report notes that “nearly eight years have passed since the first signs of crisis emerged in the global economy,” yet “the more recent period has seen global unemployment march higher” and has been “characterized by an uneven and fragile job recovery.”

The ILO estimates that the number of people unemployed worldwide hit 201 million last year, up by 30 million since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008. The report notes that, far from making any significant dent in the number of people unemployed worldwide, “providing jobs to more than 40 million additional people who enter the global labour market every year is proving to be a daunting challenge.”

The ILO notes that employment growth has largely stalled worldwide, with the number of jobs available growing by only 0.1 percent each year in developed countries since 2008, compared to a rate of 0.9 percent between 2000 and 2007.

This has corresponded with an overall slump in economic growth. For the “advanced economies” as a whole, growth in the period between 2007 and 2014 averaged about 0.7 percent per year, compared with an annual growth rate of two percent in the period before the crisis.

The report warned that falling wages and continued mass unemployment have contributed to a structural weakness in global demand, resulting in a further slump in the labor market. Director-General Ryder added, “These trends risk perpetuating the vicious circle of weak global demand and slow job creation that has characterized the global economy and many labour markets throughout the post-crisis period.”

The increasing prevalence of low-wage, part-time and contingent work has coincided with a massive enrichment of the financial elite. Since 2009, the wealth of the world’s richest 400 individuals has nearly tripled, from $2.4 trillion to $7.05 trillion in 2015, according to Forbes magazine. This massive growth of inequality has been the direct outcome of policies carried out by governments throughout the world, which responded to the 2008 crash by pumping trillions of dollars into the financial system while slashing social services and promoting poverty-wage employment.

The findings of the report constitute a scathing indictment of the capitalist system, which is incapable of addressing mass unemployment, poverty or any other social problem. Developing countries, robbed and exploited by imperialism, remain backward and impoverished, while in the “advanced” economies the ruling classes have carried out a relentless assault on jobs, wages and living conditions for the great majority of the population.

There is nothing in the 155-page report to indicate any prospect for improvement in the near future. This fact constitutes an implicit admission that soaring inequality, falling wages, mass unemployment and increasingly contingent employment constitute essential features of the present social order.

The fall of Ramadi and the criminality of US imperialism

Bill Van Auken

Nearly a year after the debacle suffered by US imperialism and the regime it imposed during more than eight bloody years of war and occupation of Iraq—the fall of the country’s largest city, Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—a similar collapse has unfolded in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, Iraq’s largest province.

Attempts by the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon to dismiss the events in Ramadi as a minor setback are either disingenuous or delusional. As in Mosul, Iraq’s US-trained and armed regular army largely melted away in the face of an offensive by the Islamist guerrillas. And once again, it has left behind large stores of US-supplied weaponry, ranging from dozens of armored cars and tanks to artillery and other armaments and vast quantities of ammunition, all of it now in ISIS hands.

Just as with Mosul, the fall of Ramadi has unleashed a new humanitarian catastrophe on the war-ravaged people of Iraq, with hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians killed and tens of thousands turned into homeless refugees. Those who remain face the threat of violence at the hands of ISIS as well as sectarian reprisals from the Shiite militias that are massing for a bid to retake the city.

This latest debacle has unfolded nearly 10 months into the Obama administration’s “Operation Inherent Resolve,” the title given to Washington’s latest military intervention in the Middle East. It has provoked criticism within ruling circles of US strategy, which has consisted of US airstrikes against both Iraq and Syria, the deployment of nearly 5,000 US ground troops in Iraq and the launching of a $500 million program to train and arm so-called Syrian “rebels.”

There is a growing drumbeat for sending greater numbers of US ground forces more directly into the fighting. The Washington Post published an editorial Tuesday charging that “the US lacks a strategy to fulfill President Obama’s pledge to ‘degrade and ultimately destroy’” ISIS. It demands that the administration commit US military units to “work with Iraqi forces on the ground.”

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal published a column urging “more ground operations by Special Operations forces” as well as the deployment of “Apache attack helicopters and transport planes,” along with an entire brigade “dedicated to improving operational command and intelligence support.”

It is no accident that amid this drive for the escalation of the ongoing US intervention another, thoroughly dishonest, debate has played out in the context of the 2016 presidential election campaign, over whether the launching of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a “mistake” or a justified response to what proved “faulty intelligence.”

The immediate impetus for this phony debate has been calls for Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush—and other Republicans—to account for the actions of the younger Bush’s brother, George W. The cynical aim of both the capitalist politicians and media, however, is to erase from the consciousness of the American people the bitter lessons of being dragged into a criminal war of aggression foisted upon them through scaremongering about “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda. Both were fabrications employed to promote a war whose real aim was securing US hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East.

That there is a difference between “faulty intelligence” and lies is self-evident, just as a “mistake” is not the same thing as a premeditated war of aggression, the principal crime for which the Nazi leadership was tried at Nuremberg.

Jeb Bush’s response has consisted in large measure of the undeniable assertion that not only did he and his brother support the war in Iraq, but that so did the Democratic frontrunner, former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, along with virtually the entire US ruling establishment. In short, there are no clean hands; everyone is implicated in a crime of historic proportions.

Nor, clearly, have these crimes stopped with either the end of the Bush administration or the 2011 withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. The US-NATO war that destroyed Libya was launched on the pretext of “human rights.” It was necessary, the public was told, to protect the people of Benghazi from imminent massacre. Today, much of Benghazi—and the entire country—has been reduced to rubble by fighting between rival militias. The death toll mounts daily and millions of Libyans have become refugees.

The predatory aims of this imperialist intervention have been further exposed by the recent revelation that Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, was promoting the Libya policy recommendations of former Bill Clinton aide Sydney Blumenthal, who was in turn working with a group of capitalist investors on schemes to exploit the oil-rich country’s wealth once its government was smashed and its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, murdered.

What incredible mayhem and destruction has been wrought upon the Middle East through the last dozen years of US military aggression! Promoted and defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, this criminal bloodletting has been carried out in the service of naked profit interests. Well over a million people have lost their lives, with millions more maimed or driven from their homes.

Entire countries have been destroyed. In the drive to overthrow and assassinate one secular Arab head of state after another—from Saddam Hussein to Gaddafi to Bashar al Assad—the Pentagon and the CIA have deliberately fomented sectarian tensions, pitting Sunnis against Shia in an even bloodier version of the old colonial strategy of divide and conquer. ISIS is the direct product of this process, spawned by the US intervention in Iraq and then strengthened by the proxy war for regime change in Syria, where it and similar Sunni Islamist militias were armed and funded by Washington’s regional allies, under the guiding hand of the CIA.

As one crime and debacle follows another, what is most remarkable is that no one is held accountable. Not only is no one involved fired from their posts—much less tried for war crimes—there are not even serious public hearings held to expose the decisions and policies that produced these disasters.

Every element of the ruling strata and every institution of American society are implicated, from the Bushes, Clintons and Obama to Congress, the profit-hungry corporations, the lying media and an overwhelmingly cowardly and self-satisfied academia.

The impunity they have all enjoyed after each criminal war only paves the way for even greater conflagrations. Preventing such global catastrophes is the task of the American and international working class, which alone can mount a genuine struggle against war and the capitalist system that produces it.

Forget About Wooing Korea on Indian Standard Time

Narendra Modi, who has visited 17 countries in the one year that he’s been Prime Minister, made his latest stop in South Korea at the end of a three-nation Asian tour that took him to China and Mongolia.

In Korea, he talked about ‘Make in India’. He talked about Asian Unity. He talked about defence cooperation. He talked about international institutions and the need to reform them. He talked about security dialogues.

India and Korea signed seven agreements, described in the MEA’s usual way as ‘wide-ranging’. But the question now is: What are they worth and will India meet Korean expectations, especially on the economic side?

If the past is anything to go by, the Koreans may well be in for a disappointment. After all, P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh in their time had also invited Korea’s small and medium scale firms to come and invest in India. To date, however, there are only 300 Korean firms functioning in India. Their number is growing, but at a snail’s pace.

Hare and tortoise

The main reason is that India and Korea have very different notions of time. One places very little value on it; the other thinks the only way to live is in a hurry, what they call palli, palli (jaldi, jaldi or seekram, seekram, as we might say in Hindi or Tamil).

For the past 40 years, the talk has been there but the walk is missing. Every time an Indian PM goes there, starting with Rao in 1993, to the latest by Narendra Modi, we hear all the right noises. Some progress, like on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, is even made.

But it all remains on paper, except perhaps in the field of education where the connections have indeed widened and deepened. In fact, the political, strategic and cultural dimensions of the India-Korea relationship remain almost at the same level where they were 30 years ago — in the realm of hope and possibilities.

There’s much that could be done if only we could get our act together. Nothing exemplifies this more than the POSCO fiasco. It has come to define the relationship.

The story is worth retelling. Korea came to India with a $12 billion investment proposal in 2005, the largest FDI project that any country had brought in till then. I was in Korea when the news broke and there was much excitement: the Koreans thought this would be their gateway to the 1.2 billion people Indian market for their goods.

They were in for a big surprise. They soon realised that the Indian system did not function in any way that they had ever encountered anywhere in the world. They simply could not fathom its ellipses.

They have waited patiently — and are doing so even now. But time is running out, just the way the MOU did. It came up for renewal in 2011 and the Koreans just let it slide.

If Modi really wants to send a message that India is serious about Korea – over-ruling the External Affairs ministry’s arrogance that the Koreans have no place else to go – he will switch to Korean time for the execution of whatever the two countries agree to do together. Indian standard time will simply not do.

For Koreans promises made must be kept. ‘Yaksok’ in Korean means both a promise and an appointment. Both are sacrosanct. Neither the promise nor the time schedule can be reneged upon.

Unfortunately the Indian style ‘vaada’ is only a verbal promise and like everything else can be changed to suit the context. In this case, India would be a big loser as the Koreans now have no dearth of countries waiting for their investments.

What nextNet-net, India has to get its act together on the economic side because this will then propel cooperation in other areas like marine technology, space technology, ship building, nuclear technology, green technology, R&D in defence and maritime security etc. They could pursue broader joint engagement in global forums like the WTO, G-20, the east Asia Summit, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, that Asean is floating as a free trade area for the Asean+6 countries, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and perhaps the Trans-Pacific Patnership (that currently excludes India) too.

Once Korea is convinced that India means business, they will support it in all forums including for a permanent position at the UN Security Council.

Let’s not forget how, when the going became good on the economic front, the Koreans went to great lengths to ferret out historical linkages between the two nations. They trotted out the story of an Ayodhya princess sailing to Korea and marrying a Korean king and starting an Indian bloodline; they spotted Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry; then came talk about Gandhiji’s influence and, the similarity between Tamil and Korean, not to mention the similarity in folk games like gilli-danda and Jachigi!

India’s turnPersonally speaking – and here I am in total sync with Modi – one area where I think we could greatly benefit from the Koreans is in acquiring professionalism. The commitment to deliver what has been promised and the lengths to which they can stretch themselves in order to adhere to an agreed time-frame is something worth emulating.

That said, it’s not been an entirely dreary story. India-Korea bilateral trade has grown from a mere $500 million in the early 1990s to about $18 billion now. Korean electronic products, mobile phone handsets and even cars have managed to push out many other giants, including Japanese ones, and grab a sizeable portion of the market through what they call their ‘nunchi’ power — the power to sense what the sangdaebang or ‘the other party’ wants.

But this is a case of been there, done that. Now the time has come to push the relationship further.

The responsibility for this is entirely India’s.

Nepal Earthquake: How Rescue Efforts Played Out

Hari Bansh Jha

What took centuries to build, the deadly 7.9 magnitude earthquake on April 25 destroyed in a few seconds. The multiplier effect of the earthquake is great. It will take us several decades to rebuild destroyed infrastructure. But thousands of lives will never be recovered.

According to United Nations, nearly 600,000 houses have been either completely destroyed or damaged in the earthquake. Latest estimate has it that 200,000 houses have been reduced to rubble. In Sindhupalchowk, there were 66,000 houses before the earthquake; only 1,000 are left standing. Nearly 45,000 private houses have been completely damaged in Gorkha district. In Bhaktapur, a quarter of the city has been razed; while a half of it is abandoned. As many as 10,718 government buildings have been devastated; while 14,741 have been partially damaged. The number of affected schools is close to 5,000. In Kathmandu, 80 percent of ancient buildings, temples and monuments are completely destroyed. In the big picture, of the 5.4 million houses in Nepal, 7.5 percent are completely damaged.

Unfortunately, tremors continue to rock the country even after ten days of the first earthquake. As per official figures, the earthquake death toll has now reached 7,557 (as of this writing). Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has said the death toll could reach 10,000. But there are experts who believe Koirala's estimates are "uninformed" and the real number of deaths could be around 26,000. On the basis of calculation of Max Wyss of the Geneva-based International Centre for Earth Simulation (ICES), the death toll in Nepal due to earthquake could cross 100,000.

Nepal's official version is that 14,536 people were injured. But here too experts estimate the number of injured between 94,000 and 321,000. Nearly eight million of 28 million Nepalis are directly or indirectly affected. Of the 1.7 million affected children, 260,000 have lost everything, including their homes, warm clothes and families. They need urgent help.

While a large number of children have been orphaned, many women have become widows. Others have lost their sons, daughters, parents and beloved ones. In this situation, the risk of uncared children and women getting abused or trafficked has intensified. Worse still is the situation of 126,000 pregnant women who are directly or indirectly affected by the quake.

Even among survivors, more than 25,000 are in dire need of immediate psychological intervention. They have become depressed. Serious mental health crisis caused by the death of near and dear ones have resulted in suicidal tendencies among different people. Additionally, in many parts of the country the stench from human corpses and dead livestock trapped under rubble has created potential public health disasters. As many people are compelled to live under tents or under open skies, they don't have access to even temporary latrines, water, food and medicines. Many of them defecate out in the open haphazardly. Garbage is yet to be collected from our houses and public places. As such, there has been spike in water-borne diseases like fever, diarrhea and pneumonia in all the affected regions. If we fail to take precautionary measures, other diseases might crop up as well.

Transporting goods overland is a major challenge as roads are blocked by landslides. In such a situation, rescue and relief operation have become Kathmandu-centric. All of the 12 worst-hit districts in Nepal—including Sindhupalchowk, Kavrepalanchowk, Dolakha and Gorkha—are still beyond the reach of rescue and relief teams. Even in Kathmandu valley, many people are still complaining that they are without any rescue and relief support.

In the meantime, prices of essential goods and services have skyrocketed partly due to the lack of supply and partly due to rampant profiteering. People's wrath against the government, political leaders, I/NGOs and other concerned organizations is growing for their failure to come to their aid on time. Media reports have it that mountains of rescue and relief materials are piling up at Tribhuvan International Airport and at Birgunj Customs, but to what effect?

Despite this crisis, custom authorities are yet to relax their strict customs restrictions in the inflow of relief materials from overseas. The government says that it wants to inspect goods coming into the country. But if that is so, how did "Beef Masala" enter Nepali territories? Even a child knows this is the most sensitive issue for the predominantly Hindu population.

Unfortunately, certain organizations are trying to serve their vested interests, at the cost of the quake victims. Again, as per media reports, certain western Christian missionaries are planning to convert more and more Nepalis, taking advantage of their helplessness after the earthquake.

Our politicians have not helped matters either. Some leaders of left parties have given irresponsible statements that the Indian rescue and relief missions posed security threat to the nation. To the contrary, India once again won the hearts of the Nepali people for the urgency with which it provided rescue and relief assistance to quake victims in different parts of the country. In fact, India performed where the Nepali leaders failed. Besides, saving lives of many from under the rubble, Indian teams not only helped evacuate their own nationals stranded in this country, but many foreign nationals from difficult places on humanitarian ground. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even vowed to wipe the tears of each and every Nepali as he felt that Nepal's pain was that of India as well.

Life of each citizen is important—no matter whether that person lives in Kathmandu or in the peripheries of the country. Therefore, every effort should be made to bail out the people from distress in all affected districts. But the government has instead immaturely asked foreign rescue and relief teams to return to their home countries. The situation is that Nepalis should be cautious of their own government for its inept handling of post-earthquake efforts while they have every reason to be thankful to the individuals and organizations that have extended their whole-hearted support at this difficult juncture.

The Red Line of Torture

John Kiriakou

After I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house arrest.

What happened to the torture program? Nothing.

Following years of waiting for the government to do something, I was heartened when I read in my prison cell — in a four-day-old copy of The New York Times — that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had finally released in December a heavily censored summary of its report on the CIA’s brutal “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

Finally, I thought, Congress will do something about our government’s shameful embrace of torture. It was big news — for two or three days.

I thought there’d be quick action by courageous members of both parties who respect human rights and civil liberties. I thought they’d work together to ensure that our collective name would never again be sullied by torture — that we’d respect our own laws and the international laws and treaties to which we’re signatories.

In retrospect, I was naïve, even after having served in the CIA for nearly 15 years and as a Senate committee staffer for several more.

Despite repeated efforts by the CIA to impede investigations into its conduct, the report confirmed that the program was even worse than most Americans had thought.

Take the case of Ammar al-Baluchi, who was arrested in Pakistan and sent to a secret CIA prison, where interrogators held his head under water, beat him repeatedly with a truncheon, and slammed his head against the wall, causing lasting head trauma.

This abuse wasn’t authorized by the Justice Department. So why weren’t the perpetrators charged with a crime?

Perhaps worst of all, CIA officers tortured as many as 26 people who were probably innocent of any ties to terrorism.

Sadly, the report’s release didn’t lead to any action by the White House or the Justice Department. The architects of the program haven’t been held accountable. Nor have those who clearly violated the law by torturing prisoners without any legal justifications. Why should the government have locked me up for telling the truth and given them full impunity?

But there’s still time for President Barack Obama to order the Justice Department to prosecute these perpetrators of torture. And there’s a clear precedent in how the government has confronted similar actions in the past.

In 1968, for example, The Washington Post published a photo of a U.S. soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. The Defense Department investigated the incident, court-martialed the soldier, and convicted him of torture.

Why should the Senate’s torture report elicit less response than a photograph? It was wrong in 1968 to commit torture. It’s still wrong — and prosecutable — in 2015.

Some current and former CIA leaders will argue that torture netted actionable intelligence that saved American lives. I was working in the CIA’s counterterrorism center at the same time they were, and I can tell you that they’re lying.

Torture may have made some Americans feel better in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. It may have made them feel that the government was avenging our fallen compatriots. But the report found that “the harsh interrogation methods did not succeed in exacting useful intelligence.”

Whether or not it ever gleans useful intelligence, however, is beside the point. The question isn’t whether torture works. Torture is immoral.

There has to be a red line: The United States of America must oppose torture and ban its use absolutely. That begins in the Oval Office, and Obama needs to belatedly do something about it.

Wars and Displaced Persons Camps in Ukraine and in Haiti

Roger Annis

While in Moscow three weeks ago, following a media tour to Donetsk, eastern Ukraine in which I participated, I had the pleasure of meeting Jon Hellevig, a regular writer at Russia Insider. Jon was in Donetsk a few weeks before our group, thanks to the efforts of the same Russian/German citizen group, Europa Objektiv, which organized our tour.

The second of Jon’s articles about his trip was published on April 21 and is titled, ‘Donbas endures’. The article describes one of the settlements in Russia of war refugees from eastern Ukraine. It is located across the border from southeastern Ukraine, on the road to the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. It’s also on the shoreline of Sea of Azov, prompting an evocative sub-title in Jon’s article: ‘Fleeing the bombs in eastern Ukraine to a room with a sea view’. Our group visited the same settlement several weeks later.

Jon explained, “I have not visited a refugee camp before.” I have, in Haiti. There are some parallels and warning signs between the two places, notably in the calls by the regime in Kyiv for international troops called ‘peacekeepers’ to enter eastern Ukraine.

Displaced by War in Eastern Ukraine

Jon writes, “Tatyana Bolshakova and her family from Donetsk used to travel to the seaside for holidays. They had always dreamt of a house with a sea view, she said, but she would never have thought this is how they’d come by one, pointing out through the window overlooking the Sea of Azov in the room that she and her family occupies at the Primorka refugee camp in Russia’s Rostov region.”

Like Jon, I was struck by how well Primorka was organized and how well the residents were received by their Russian hosts. The settlement is located in a former youth (‘pioneers’) camp dating from the Soviet era. Hence, the camp is known as ‘Pioneer’ camp. Primorka is a small town in an area of agricultural plains. The children attend local schools.

A local woman, Svetlana, had purchased the unused pioneers’ camp just before hostilities broke out in Ukraine last year. She and her husband planned to earn income by reopening it as a summer camp for children and families. Along came a war just across the border with Ukraine, a 45 minute drive to the west.

As victims of Kyiv’s war against Donbas began to flee to Russia for safety, the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian government began to requisition facilities such as the Pioneer camp in Primorka. It received its first displaced residents on June 5, 2014.

More than one million Ukrainians have fled to Russia to escape the war during the past year. We were told that in the Rostov region alone, there are close to 50,000 displaced Ukrainians, many of whom are living in some 30 camps. Hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians have obtained work visas and settled permanently or semi-permanently in Russia.

Svetlana showed no sign of resentment at her life being placed on hold. Or at least, no sign of blaming it on the people who have had to flee their homes in Ukraine. In fact, she has stepped up to manage the place. An easy and friendly relationship between her and camp residents was in evidence throughout our half-day visit. Likewise between residents and medical personnel on hand.

Ah yes, the medical personnel. A jovial doctor, Yuri, from the Russian medical system is assigned to care for the camp residents. It is one of two such camps where he serves, on top of his regular patient load. He is a pediatrician by profession, which is very good because he has lots of children to look after in the two camps in Primorka. There are some 65 at Pioneer camp. They are deeply traumatized by the war conditions they have witnessed.

Last summer, Yuri told us, Ukrainian forces came uncomfortably close to the Russian border. They were advancing through Donetsk in an effort to crush resistance to the seizure of power in February in Kyiv by pro-Europe politicians and oligarchs. As the Pioneer camp began to receive those fleeing the war, a request was made to Russian authorities to stop helicopter flights from passing near the camp. (These were fisheries patrols, I later learned.) The children took terrible fright at any sound of aircraft. Russian officials agreed.

I was impressed with how the camp residents organized themselves. The kitchen facilities are communal. Residents prepare and eat their meals together. The grounds have been landscaped and planted (my, how Donbas people love to plant roses!). Repairs to the buildings are ongoing as needed.

Some residents find jobs locally. But there is not enough work for everyone, and so some of the husbands are away from their temporary home for stretches at a time. Other husbands never left Donbas—they joined self-defense forces.

Notwithstanding the safety and relative comfort in which people are living, life is hard. That’s because of the uncertainties. Will peace return to Donbas? When will residents be able to return home? No one knows for sure, and this is a great source of frustration and anger–at Kyiv for starting a war, and Western governments for supporting it.

Some anger is reserved for Western media, too. One mother and camp resident told us, “We don’t know why our story is not being told. Only the smaller, alternative media in the West comes to speak to us or tell our story. The larger media simply tells the Ukrainian government’s side of the story.”

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have moved to Russia permanently. The residents still in displaced persons camps such as Pioneer aren’t quite ready for that wrenching change in life. “We hope for peace,” one told us. “Those of us still here have hope. We have homes that we don’t want to abandon or relatives remaining in Donbas who need our support.”

Overall, there is great uncertainty over the future of the homeland they call Donbas. It turns out, this is not an entirely new story. Many residents told us that the political crisis in Ukraine which came to a head in late 2013/early 2014 involves longstanding and unresolved issues.

The Donbas region became part of Ukraine several years after the Russian and Ukrainian revolutions of 1917-18. This was an effort by VI Lenin and the other revolutionary leaders to assist the development and self-determination of Ukraine. The idea was that the industrialized region of Donbas would bring more rounded economic development to the newly independent Ukraine, which was largely agricultural and economically underdeveloped.

That part of Ukraine’s history seemed to fade over the years. But the historic memory has remained (like the memory of the decision of the Soviet Union in 1954 to transfer Crimea to Soviet Ukraine authority). The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was founded in 1922. Soviet Ukraine was a founding member of the union. The USSR’s economy transcended national and language borders. Donbas, that is, southeastern Ukraine, became one of the most industrialized and prosperous regions of the USSR. Ukrainian became a state language and schooling was freely available in either Ukrainian or Russian (though Ukrainians suffered language and other discrimination in the several decades surrounding WW2).

Dissatisfaction with economic and social development in the Soviet Union grew in the 1980s, to the point where much of the population was indifferent to the dismantling of the state-owned economy that began in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Upon its second independence, in 1991, Ukraine became an officially unilingual state. Pioneer resident and mother Xenia told us that ‘Ukrainianisation’ policies which followed came to infringe on the rights of people in Donbas. For example, schooling in Russian became less available and more complicated to arrange. English became more difficult for students to learn because it began to be taught via the Ukrainian language.

Measures to promote Ukrainian language services in education and state services seemed overly zealous and wasteful. A galling example was that names in official documents such as passports were ‘Ukrainianized’, leading to endless and costly confusion and bureaucratic foul-ups, Xenia said.

We heard particular resentment over how historical interpretation changed in independent Ukraine. Xenia explained, “Since 1991, there has been a rewriting of history. My children began to be taught that Russia was an enemy. This was bound to erupt in trouble one day.”

A lot of bitterness came out in our conversations with residents. We learned that many felt deeply betrayed by Ukraine. They feel they gave independent Ukraine a fair chance since 1991, but now say bitterly, “What kind of a country and government bombs its own people?”

“I am Russian,” said one woman resident. “After 1991, they came to us with their plans to make Ukrainian the only language of government services Ukrainian. Why? We speak Russian, not Ukrainian. We never had any conflicts between Russian and Ukrainian people. Why did they want to start that up?”

What of Europe? The word brings sneers. One resident told us, “What sort of values does the European Union have? It supports a government in Kyiv that despises the Russian language.”

Refugee Camps in Haiti

I made two trips to the Caribbean island of Haiti during my ten years of advocacy and solidarity work for that country and people. My first trip was in 2007. I visited the capital city, Port au Prince, and the north of the country. The second visit was in June 2011, 17 months following the catastrophic earthquake of January 12, 2010.

The visit in 2011 confirmed our worst fears from abroad that the massive, international “aid” effort supposedly delivered on Haiti’s behalf following the earthquake was a massive failure. The aid was like a large band-aid pasted over all the existing social, economic and political inequalities and injustices that made Haiti so poor and so vulnerable to the earthquake in the first place. I described those pre-existing conditions, the results of Haiti’s exploitation by colonialism and then imperialism, in an article I co-authored in May 2011: Haiti’s humanitarian crisis: Rooted in history of military coups and occupations.

What confounded me already in 2007 and then became magnified one thousand fold upon visiting in 2011 was the glaring contrast between the incredible wealth and resources in North America and Europe which could assist Haiti’s development but which the governments there refuse to make available. The wealthy powers squander their wealth, devoting enormous resources to all manner of foreign political and military intervention. What could be more scandalous that the waste of resources devoted to military posturing and war in Ukraine and eastern Europe at a time of humanitarian and ecological emergencies?

Haiti is a rich country in human and natural resources. It has a proud history, one of the hallowed places on Earth where modern civilization, such as it is in its unfinished state, was forged through the sacrifices of its people. Haiti was the ‘Vietnam’ of its era when it won independence in 1804. It staged the first successful slave rebellion in modern history. Barefoot Haitians who barely spoke a common language rose up and defeated the largest empire of the day—Napoleon’s France. The final victory was won at Vertières (Cap Haitien) in northern Haiti in November 1803.

Yet there Haiti sits today, one of the most economically deprived countries on the planet, a mere 90 minute flight away from Florida. It is mired in the harsh and unequal world capitalist economic system. Every time the people there have tried to bring about progressive change, they have endured violent opposition from the wealthy countries of Europe and North America, including overthrows of their elected presidents and governments, economic embargos, “aid” with a million strings attached and all other manner of foreign intervention.

I was pleased to see in the Rostov region of Russia that aid to victims of human-made or natural catastrophes can be properly provided and administered. Granted, that is easier for Russia compared to countries with fewer means. But the U.S., Canada and Europe have far more resources than Russia. If they were to assist countries like Haiti and Ukraine, rather than trying to subjugate them, we would be moving towards a much better world. Instead, economically deprived countries are left to languish and eastern Europe threatens to become another theatre of permanent war, thanks to the same powers that are busily destroying the Middle East.

Among the pertinent lessons from Haiti for Ukraine today is that of the role of international ‘peacekeepers’. There is much talk from the Ukrainian government that an international ‘peacekeeping’ force should be sent into the east of the country. Maybe Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders have studied Haiti’s eleven-year experience with the United Nations Security Council peacekeeping mission (known as MINUSTAH). It is understandable that this would appeal to them.

MINUSTAH has been a mission of intervention and occupation, conceived for the express purpose of consolidating the overthrow of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in February 2004. He was overthrow in a coup by right-wing paramilitaries with the support of the U.S. government, Canada and Europe.

Since the 2004 overthrow and the creation of MINUSTAH several months later, Haiti’s social development has stalled and gone backwards. Even the catastrophic earthquake in January 2010 could not convince the big powers to change course, loosen their tight control over the country and allow some meaningful development to take place. [See Haiti's promised rebuilding unrealized as Haitians challenge authoritarian rule, by Roger Annis and Travis Ross, Jan. 12, 2015.] The most egregious of MINUSTAH’s sins was its reckless conduct in introducing a cholera epidemic to Haiti in October 2010. More than 8,000 people have died from it. To this day, the UN Security Council refuses to acknowledge its actions and take responsibility.

I am pleased that the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics are rejecting the idea of foreign military intervention into eastern Ukraine under the guise of ‘peacekeeping’. Intervention and war cannot bring meaningful development, not for Donbas and not for Ukraine as whole. Only deepgoing political and social change in favour of the working class majority of the country can do that. That requires breaking the stranglehold which the class of billionaires hold over the economy and ending the war they are waging.

The Lesser of Two Evils is Still Evil

John Halle

For a decade and half, the spoiler factor has been a third rail of progressive politics.

Some of those who have raised the issue are genuinely concerned with the prospect of a third party candidate enabling a far right victory.

But others are Democratic Party hacks who, in Matt Taibbi’s phrase“would triangulate their own mothers” to maintain their lock on power. Spoiling for them is a bad faith exercise in maintaining electoral politics as a bipartisan gated community from which left, populist candidates are excluded.

Fortunately, there are signs that its effects are beginning to wear off.

One factor has to do with Obama’s valedictory lurches to the right,drilling in the ANWR, attacking Elizabeth Warren for her opposition to the TPP as well as Seymour Hersh’s revelations of some of the most extravagant lies in the history of the presidency. These have shown that there’s very little left to spoil.

And so Democratic loyalists have to make ever more extravagant and ridiculous gestures to apply the spoiler label to those challenging the party’s three decades long neoliberal drift.

A good indication is a recent posting on the blandly illiterate Forward Progressives website which urges us to focus on “Sanders’ entrance into the presidential race (which) is already making it more likely that Republicans could win the White House in 2016.”

Worth noting here is the slippage in the definition of the concept “spoiler”. A decade ago, it applied to a candidate endangering the front runner by competing in swing states. Very quickly it would apply to competing even in safe states.

Now we have reached the point that those daring to compete in the primaries are “spoilers”.  Soon it will apply to those guilty of suggesting a possible alternative candidate to whoever the DP leadership anoints and eventually to any criticism of the “dear leader” at all-those doing so reflexively denounced as “Naderites.”

***

All this would be comical if it didn’t serve the underlying purpose of obscuring precisely what the Dems don’t want us to see.

And that is that the real spoilers are not those running third party campaigns, but the Democrats themselves. Again and again, they have shown that they care relatively little about winning elections when doing so would upset the business as usual in which they are comfortable operating.

This became apparent in the weeks before the 2000 election which found Jesse Jackson to our great surprise campaigning for local candidates in New Haven, as well as in New York, Boston and Chicago. He was everywhere but in Florida which was known to be a toss up and where his presence could have-and, as it turned out-would have mattered. But the Democrats chose instead to deploy him to drive down the Nader vote in states which Gore had already locked up rather than work to achieve a victory for their own candidate.

Another example relevant to the 2000 election was the Democratic legislature in Florida having some years before passed mandatory disenfranchisement of ex-felons, almost all poor, working class, and/or minority, hence disproportionately likely to vote Democratic. The result was the loss of 1.5 million potential voters, a factor never mentioned in the Florida debacle as doing so would shine a light on Democrats’ direct complicity in their own defeat.

A third example also involves New Haven and other cities where local Democratic machines make little effort to register voters. That is particularly the case in African American neighborhoods, where often less than 30 percent of potential voters are on the rolls, the overwhelming majority of whom would reliably vote Democratic. The absence of serious voter registration drives is due to the Democrats’ preference for low turn out as this makes their control of a few voting blocks (most notably the African American churches) disproportionately significant. So they are willing to sacrifice large numbers of voters and ultimately lose to the Republicans in state and national races rather than have to deal with a possible threat to their control which might emerge from greater participation.

Of course, the best known indication of Democrats’ blasé attitude to their own defeat was their having failed to contest the Republican theft of the election in Florida. But that could be attributed to fecklessness and incompetence, not cynicism and bad faith. It is the latter that defines the Democratic Party more so than the former.

The Democrats are more aware than anyone that the goods they have been selling for generations have passed their “sell by” date. They will continue in business only for as long as they are able enforce their monopoly. The spoiler charge is their main weapon in maintaining it. It is high time that the left recognize the spoiler charge for the exercise in empty sloganeering which it has long since become.

Libertarian Mythologies

Joshua Sperber

One modest benefit of the current recession is that politicians are less likely to declare how fortunate we are to live under capitalism. This was a common refrain during the 1945-1973 “Golden Age of Capitalism,” as politicians from Harold MacMillan to Lyndon Johnson upbraided “ungrateful” citizens by telling them that they “never had it so good.” Of course, the Global North’s general stability and relative affluence during the 1950s and 1960s dramatically contrasted with the violence and desperation of the preceding era’s world wars and depression and the Gilded Age before that. Since the 1973 global slowdown and particularly since the 2008 Great Recession, however, politicians have been savvy enough to not offend common sense by implying that people are lucky (politicians are instead far likelier to seek scapegoats for the majority’s deteriorating standard of living). Anyone who would now claim that we’ve “never had it so good” – thereby denying people’s experiences of being overworked and underpaid within an increasingly frenetic, toxic, and alienating society – would in fact lose all credibility if not appear delusional or perverse. But if office-seeking politicians are reluctant to seem obtuse, libertarians have no such reservations.

The Cato Institute-backed HumanProgress website recently tweeted a claim by Princeton Professor Angus Deaton that “Today, children in sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to survive to age 5 than were English children born in 1918.” Before addressing the intrinsic dishonesty of such comparisons in general it is worth noting the absurdity of this comparison in particular. 1918 was the final year of the First World War and the first year of the Spanish influenza. Decimated by war, England struggled to combat “one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history” as the flu killed 228,000 people during the summer of 1918. Of course, if your criterion for “progress” is that you aren’t currently being devastated by world war and “the mother of all pandemics” then the entire world has been progressing for all of human history and the socialist world was a veritable utopia. No matter, three cheers for Africa and capitalism.

Beyond HumanProgress’s dishonestly contrived segmentation of time is its dishonestly contrived aggregation of people. Libertarians’ assumption is that if sub-Saharan Africa is poorer than the Global North today it is merely because the former hasn’t yet “caught up” to the latter. But is this how capitalism developed and functions? Revealingly, HumanProgress measures progress in large part through income, which puts it in the uncomfortable position of defending colonialism. Their website notes, “Between the time of the European colonization in 1870 and African independence in 1960, a typical inhabitant of the African continent saw his or her income rise by 63 percent.” The fact that income rose during colonialism and the “Scramble for Africa” – in which the Belgians murdered 10 million Congolese among countless other European atrocities – might alert us to the fact that income hardly correlates to quality of life. Africans who were terrorized into wage labor had little initial need for income, and for the vast majority of human history people have survived without needing to sell their labor time for wages. But given that wage labor is the source of capitalist profit, colonial governments systematically undermined the indigenous population’s ability to support itself, destroying native economies and enclosing the lands on which people subsisted. This process, in which the North is enriched precisely through the impoverishment of the Global South, continues today and is depicted in the outstanding documentaries End of Poverty? and Darwin’s Nightmare.

The general rise in global income today (as usual, ironically skewed by the decidedly non-laissez-faire Chinese) does not reflect an increase in power and wealth but an increase in dependence. After all, who needs wages when you could get what you need without having to work at the mercy of a boss? Needless to say, HumanProgress makes no mention of the rising rents, among other “costs of living,” for which income must be used or the fact that the richest people do not earn income at all. That is, rather than enabling everyone to “escape” poverty “sometime in the future,” capitalism guarantees that those who produce wealth for private property owners now will only be excluded from it later.

The website goes on to peddle another libertarian canard: we are living in an age of increased leisure time, surely a surprise to anyone who isn’t rich and probably a surprise to many of the rich as well. Predictably, HumanProgress decries the onerous work of pre-industrial life (without noting that farmers worked seasonally and often had entire winters “off”) and ignores hunter-gatherer societies (in which people worked for four hours a day) altogether. The obvious and hopelessly ethnocentric presupposition is that modern humans wouldn’t want to trade places with their ancestors (how would we watch the NBA playoffs?), but it’s a fair bet that our ancestors wouldn’t want to change places with us (and would likely suffer multiple heart attacks upon encountering the relentless hyper-stimulation of contemporary city streets).

It doesn’t take long from there for our libertarian friends to rejoice at the technological gadgets that are responsible – thanks of course to capitalism – for granting us such unprecedented (you know what we mean) leisure. Yet, “time-saving” inventions (one thinks of email) only “save time” at the expense of generating new opportunities – which quickly become demands – for increased profit-production. How many modern inventions have there been over the past century? Yet a 10-hour workweek is the stuff of science fiction. In fact, thanks to “time-saving” inventions under capitalism, there is hardly a moment of our waking lives when we are not directly or indirectly producing profit for someone other than ourselves, whether through generating online content or dealing with Kafkaesque automated phone administrators so that we can receive “better service,” subjects of Craig Lambert’s Shadow Work.

HumanProgess inevitably credits capitalism for humans’ increased lifespans (“Tell that to Freddie Gray,” to paraphrase Roland Barthes), in part through invoking Steven Pinker’s dubious argument that warfare is declining in today’s supposedly more peaceful era. Betraying a failure of political imagination, such an argument interprets what has been over a half-century of US hegemony (characterized by enormous violence and near nuclear war though no “great power conflict”) as peace. However, threats to this hegemony’s inevitable, if not ongoing, decline are as likely as not to trigger a scramble for power that will remind everyone that the world wars failed to permanently resolve the imperial antagonisms that brought those catastrophes into being.

To be sure, warning of future horrors to condemn the present is just as silly as invoking past horrors to praise the present. Both acts reflect a failure to denaturalize contemporary reality and see it for what it is. But at least leftists fall into this trap because of their rejection of the degradation of everyday life and their desire to wake their contemporaries up. Libertarian cheerleaders for the status quo want us to stay asleep.