Budget 2016-17: As If Children Matter

Joseph Anthony Gathia

Earlier the Economic Survey 2015-16 and now the Budget 2016-17 gave impression that deprived sections of our country are going to get fair treatment but a careful analysis shows that there is crafty shift in resource mobilisation and the onus of the development funding has been shifted to the state governments , especially for health, nutrition, and education, which is likely to impact children who are 36.6 per cent of India’s total population .

Let us examine two important sectors: health and education in relation to the Economic Survey 2015-16 and the Budget 2016-17.

Education

Education plays pivotal role in social change and early childhood education is the key for overall well-being of a child. The biggest investment that is needed to ensure equitable and quality learning for all age groups must begin with investment in care and early childhood development services. The budget for Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) has declined marginally since last year and this will definitely impact plans to add quality to crèche and pre-school component of ICDS and turn Anganwadi Centres into ‘vibrant learning centres’

The one clear message of the Economic Survey 2015-2016 is that the quality of public provisioning of basic services, such as health and education, is declining and people are opting for services provided by the private sector. Government schools’ enrolment in rural areas dipped from 72.9 per cent in 2007 to 63.1 per cent in 2014, (Annual Status of Education Report or ASER, 2014).

Although the government funding for education in 2016-17 is Rs. 71,139 crore an increase of seven per cent since last year, but the allocation for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has seen a meagre hike. Though the decision to invest in building 62 new Navodaya Vidyalayas and plans for ten public and ten private institutions to emerge as world-class Teaching and Research Institutions is welcome, but this intervention cannot meet the current challenge of ensuring ‘quality with access and equity’ across 1445807 elementary (Grades I-VIII) schools in the country out of which 74.47 per cent are government schools catering to 118,973,934 children (DISE 2014-15). Investment in primary grades in capacity building of teachers, particularly to ensure that children learn to read and write is essential.

Disaggregated data shows that per student expenditure can be as low as Rs 37 and Rs 40 in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, respectively. The survey states that “an increase in expenditure per se may not guarantee appropriate outcomes and achievements” and efficiency of expenditure is equally important. However, without adequate investments, quality suffers. In rural government schools, the percentage of children who could do division in standard V halved from 41 per cent in 2007 to 20.7 per cent in 2014 (ASER 2014). In private schools also, the percentage of children who could do division in standard V declined from 49.4 per cent in 2007 to 39.3 per cent in 2014 in private schools. The survey admits that the ‘decline in enrolment in government schools and shift to private schools might be related to poor quality education in government schools’. Alarmingly, it surmises that the poor quality is because ‘it is free or offered for a nominal fee.’ Is the survey blaming the poor for availing of free education for the government providing bad quality education? Is it preparing the ground for ‘user fees’ by regarding free education as a ‘subsidy’? Therefore, while declaring that greater investments are needed in education, is it really questioning the need for universal free education?

Health

Like education, the expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP has remained less than 2 per cent. The survey acknowledges that in the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) index developed by the World Bank, India ranks 157th according to per capita government spending on health and 25th among leading countries with a serious hunger situation .

The survey admits that India has the second highest number of undernourished people at 194.6 million persons (FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2015,). In India, 37 per cent of children under five in 15 states were stunted (NFHS-4), showing a fall of just five percentage points in a decade. Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are the worst off, with 48 and 42 per cent respectively of children stunted. Unless children are provided the necessary micronutrients they need, they are unlikely to develop to the best of their potential. The fact that mid-day meal allocation has been increased by only Rs. 463.6 crore, or five per cent, and ICDS supplementary programme finds no mention in the budget, is a cause for concern.

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages is still far behind the target. For India to achieve this goal, it will have to reach the value of around 0.9 for its Health Index, which includes health status of population, quality of healthcare institutions and financial instruments for access to healthcare (insurance, etc.). Public expenditure on health in India has hovered around one per cent of the country’s GDP, and accounts for less than one third (33 per cent) of total health expenditure.

Though the budget has given a health cover of Rs 1,00,000 for each family which is welcome, this budget has not enhanced spending on health sector and both young children and adolescents are likely to be negatively impacted when it comes to out-of-pocket expenditure that the poorest families cannot afford.

Writing on the wall

Notwithstanding the dismal indicators of the well-being of the children, the survey limits the central government’s role to ‘policy making’, leaving the ‘gargantuan challenge’ of service delivery to the states.

Children’s wellbeing cannot be measured through ‘social infrastructure’ as the Modi Government seems to think, but by basic ‘human entitlements’. This requires a multi-pronged effort to counter multi-dimensional poverty by budgeting and providing for water, energy, food security, livelihood creation for the households, reducing vulnerabilities, ensuring equity and assuring a just governance framework.

The conclusion reached based on the Economic Survey and the Budget 2016-17 gives ample indication that Modi Government could not keep promises made to India’s largest segment of population.

Clinton, Trump take major steps toward US presidential nominations

Patrick Martin

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump greatly increased their leads in the contests for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations in primary voting in five states Tuesday: Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.

Clinton swept all five states, winning by sizable margins over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, narrowly in Illinois and Missouri.

Sanders’ failure to win a single state, after his upset victory in Michigan last Tuesday, was a significant blow, and his campaign did not even hold a rally with the candidate to watch the vote results come in.

While Sanders continues to attract widespread support among young people, with his calls for a “political revolution” and his claim to advocate “democratic socialism,” his campaign is an attempt to give a “left” gloss to a right-wing corporate-controlled political machine. From the beginning he has pledged to back Clinton in the event that she wins the nomination, which is now likely.

The Democratic Party cannot serve as the instrument of a progressive transformation of American society. On the contrary, its reactionary corruption and complacency only provokes the anger that helps fuel the campaigns of ultra-right demagogues like Trump.

Trump won four of the five states, losing only Ohio to the state’s incumbent governor, John Kasich. Texas Senator Ted Cruz finished a close second in Missouri and North Carolina, and a distant second in Illinois. Florida Senator Marco Rubio finished a distant second in his home state and announced he was suspending his campaign.

Kasich had campaigned in Ohio on the basis of the supposed economic revival of the heavily industrial state. He touted the creation of 400,000 jobs over the past five years, although median family income has plunged 16.1 percent since 2000. His comfortable margin over Trump came in part from a sizable crossover vote, as Democrats voted in the Republican primary, mainly to oppose Trump.

In terms of convention delegates required for nomination, each frontrunner has now passed the halfway mark. Clinton’s advantage is substantial, because under the rules of the Democratic Party more than 700 party officials hold automatic positions as convention delegates, and the vast majority have pledged their support to her.

Trump’s lead is more precarious, as he currently has less than 50 percent of the delegates selected, and he could well fall short of the 1,237 required for nomination. Cruz is unlikely to overtake Trump, and Kasich cannot do so, mathematically, making a contested convention with multiple ballots a real possibility.

It is increasingly likely that in the November presidential election the corporate-controlled two-party system will present the alternatives of Hillary Clinton, who as the wife of a president, senator and secretary of state embodies the American political establishment, and Donald Trump, a billionaire who personifies the criminality and viciousness of the financial aristocracy.

These repulsive alternatives only underscore the completely undemocratic and manipulated character of the US political system, where only candidates approved by or directly recruited from the Wall Street oligarchy need apply.

Trump would be the first candidate with a distinctly fascistic and authoritarian program to win the nomination of one of the two major big business parties. His vote is driven largely by economic and social despair. As the Washington Post noted in a recent report, Trump’s support tracks closely with those areas with the highest death rates and unemployment rates among middle-aged whites.

A profile in the New York Times Sunday of volunteers at a Trump campaign office in Tampa, Florida found a wide range of backgrounds, but one thing in common: all had faced economic ruin from the 2008 financial crash, either losing jobs, homes or businesses.

Trump’s main remaining rival in the Republican Party, Cruz, is an equally reactionary figure. His speech to supporters in Texas Tuesday night was a hysterical rant, denouncing Trump exclusively from the right, claiming he was soft on Iran, on support for Israel and on the appointment of ultra-right nominees to the Supreme Court.

In her remarks to campaign supporters Tuesday night, Clinton offered no alternative to the deepening social and economic crisis of American capitalism or the threat of these ultra-right demagogues. She paid lip service to the ongoing campaign for the Democratic Party nomination, but spoke as though the general election campaign had already begun, using the generalities that characterize the Democratic Party’s posturing as the vaguely “progressive” alternative to the Republicans.

Except for a pledge to “expand Social Security, not cut or privatize it,” Clinton made no specific statement on social policy. Significantly, this followed the declaration by Trump, at last week’s Republican debate, that he opposed any cuts in the federal retirement program.

Likewise on foreign and security policy, Clinton made only one specific statement, criticizing Trump for his open support for torture. Otherwise, she embraced the record of the Obama administration, with which she, as secretary of state for four years, is completely identified.

As soon as the Sanders challenge can be dispatched, the Clinton campaign will execute its long-planned pivot, shifting even further to the right, and seeking to win the favor of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus as the “responsible” alternative to the erratic and potentially explosive character of Trump.

Overcrowding in New York City Housing Authority fueled by lack of jobs and affordable apartments

Fred Mazelis

Amidst growing homelessness and soaring rent burdens facing millions of working class New Yorkers, the 400,000 tenants in the city’s public housing developments would seem to have an advantage.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) administers more than 325 separate complexes, totaling about 175,000 apartments. Rents are no more than 30 percent of household monthly income. The population in public housing, about 90 percent African-American and Hispanic, comprises many of the most oppressed sections of the working class.

While it beats living on the street or in the city’s notorious homeless shelters, New York’s housing projects have their own serious challenges. Tenants try for months and sometimes years to obtain basic repairs in buildings that are decades old, in most cases dating from the 1950s and 1960s. After many years of state and federal budget cuts, NYCHA has a massive $17 billion in unmet capital needs. The housing projects in which many of the city’s working people and working poor live are being allowed to crumble.

Despite all of this, such is the crisis of affordable housing in this city of billionaires and multimillionaires that an additional estimated 100,000 to 200,000 “off the books” tenants have squeezed into the approximately 175,000 units administered by NYCHA.

These people, in many cases the children or other relatives of existing tenants, must tread very carefully lest they be discovered and face eviction or other penalties. Most of them are working, and trying to save up for an apartment of their own, where a single bathroom does not have to be shared between four or five people and where they are not forced to sleep in the living room or on a folding cot. In many cases, however, weeks stretch into months and even into years, as the city’s housing becomes more and more unaffordable, even for those making $40,000 or even $50,000 annually.

The situation is even worse for these tenants who have a poor credit rating, and especially for the many who have criminal records after having been caught up in the notorious “war on drugs” and the consequent mass imprisonment, which disproportionately affected African-American and other minority youth.

In a recent feature on this situation, the online magazine Slate explains that the “illegal” tenants are often called “ghost tenants.” As one commenter onSlate ’s website observes, this is a term that applies more logically to the billionaires who have bought high rise apartments in midtown Manhattan as investments or as prestige pieds -a-tierre which they visit perhaps once or twice a year. The most expensive sale for an individual apartment was for more than $100 million, for a penthouse on West 57th Street.

The NYCHA’s Amsterdam Houses, where a young woman interviewed for theSl ate article lives, is less than half a mile away, next to the Lincoln Center performing arts complex. The image—of the actual “ghost” apartments barely a 10-minute walk from the deteriorating conditions facing low-paid workers—aptly sums up the irrationality and oppression of capitalism in the 21st century.

City authorities dispute the suggestion that as many as 200,000 additional tenants, 50 percent over the official total, are living in NYCHA buildings. There is little argument, however, that, as one official stated, “We acknowledge that there are likely more people residing in our developments than accounted for by our official tally.”

The phenomenon of people crowding into these apartments is not new, and has to some extent tracked the state of the economy. Today, eight years after the 2008 crash and amidst the virtual disappearance of decent-paying jobs even for many college graduates, it is probably higher than it has ever been. Observers who have studied housing in New York consider 100,000 additional residents to be a low estimate.

How does the city government under Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio intend to deal with the housing crisis and the problems of the city public housing in particular? According to a column last month by Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times, the mayor’s office suggests, in the columnist’s words, that public housing “could become an attractive beneficiary of charitable money.” The city government has created a nonprofit “Fund for Public Housing,” with the aim of raising $200 million over the next three years.

This scheme follows earlier proposals by de Blasio to deal with NYCHA’s enormous fiscal shortfall. These include plans to lease some ground-floor space to retailers, cut staff, offer parking spaces to nonresidents at market rates, and carve out sections of public housing property (Bellafante calls this “poorly used land”) for development by the real estate industry.

These plans to partially privatize public housing are only part of what the de Blasio administration has in mind. It promises a very inadequate total of 200,000 new or renovated housing units over the next decade, and much of this hinges on a forthcoming proposal, being discussed by the City Council, that would rezone a large area of Brooklyn for the benefit of the real estate industry, as long as it promises a meager percentage of “affordable housing” in return.

As for NYCHA, the authorities are well aware that wealthy would-be philanthropists—multimillionaires who put their names on new hospital wings and university buildings—may not be enthusiastic about public housing. “… [D]onors are often prompted to give when there is an emotional narrative to which they can respond,” writes Bellafante, “and drab, monolithic buildings don’t easily move people.”

NYCHA chairwoman Shola Olatoye even declared—in answer to the idea “that buildings might be renamed to honor the most magnanimous donors”—that “all options are on the table.” The idea is one of appealing to the top 1 percent in their own self-interest. The pitch that de Blasio and his administration intend to make includes the warning that they are sitting on a powder keg, and an explosion will put the vast fortunes of the super-rich at risk.

The actual conditions of life of millions of workers in the wealthiest city of the world, almost a decade after the Wall Street Crash of 2008, are finding expression in a growing political awareness among workers and youth.

De Blasio was put in office precisely to appease the anger of the working class without challenging the dictates of the ruling elite. The deep crisis of the capitalist system that he represents means that he has no genuine reforms to offer; on the contrary. The mayor can only come up with proposals that amount to chipping away at public housing itself, either in the form of direct handouts to private developers, or appeals for philanthropic donations that will wind up making the families in public housing even more directly beholden to the super-rich.

Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood

WSWS reporters spoke to residents at the Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn. Leona, who lives in this development along with her mother, explained that it wasn’t until this past year that the building they live in was brought up to code. Still, many repairs are badly needed. “They could spend money on fixing up the outside, the doors, the intercom system which never worked. Sometimes the buildings won’t get cleaned very often as they should be. It can get really messy out here. There’s trash all around on the grass outside the building. Meanwhile I see they put up these security floodlights at night while everything else is falling apart. I have no idea what the hell is going on.”

On the issue of overcrowding, Leona said that while she had no direct information, it is the norm for large families of three generations to all live in one apartment. She also pointed to the lack of alternatives for the working class in the neighborhood, where one bedroom apartments go for an average of $3,001 per month, according to the real estate firm MNS. “They keep making these luxury apartments for people moving from Manhattan, but it’s the same thing here now,” Leona stated. “Everyone is moving out because they can’t afford it. Right now me and my mom are actually making plans to move to New Jersey. My mom would like to stay close because she works by the [adjacent] Navy Yard, but I want to get out of the city.”

Leona at Ingersoll Houses in Brooklyn

On the report of de Blasio appealing for private funds to help public housing, Leona responded, “It shouldn’t be voluntary. Politicians always talk about how America is great but we’re screwing up with so many things: health care, infrastructure, housing. But for the rich it’s all about money. They don’t give a crap as long as they make money. Public health should be the number one concern.

“Countries and governments that did not take care of their people did not last very long,” she added. “That was the whole point of the French Revolution. The government didn’t take care of the people. It should be a national law to have the rich pay their fair share of taxes. End of story. They complain that they don’t want to lose money but they have more money then they know what to do with it anyway. Put it towards something that counts.”

Two youth, Darren and Jay, listed many upkeep problems in their buildings at Ingersoll. “It’s terrible. We’ve had no hot water,” Jay said. “Sometimes no heat when it’s cold outside. The elevator would be broken for a long time. They only come to fix things when they feel like it.”

Darren remarked, “The walls need repainting. When we take a shower sometimes there’s no hot water.”

Ronald, a long time NYCHA resident

Ronald, a long-time resident, offered his thoughts on de Blasio’s plan to raise funds from wealthy donors. “It won’t work. Look at how NYCHA was created. It was the federal, state and city government. The private sector wanted no part of it. Why would people donate money if they’re not going to make a profit off it? It’s the same with the transit system, the infrastructure, the post office.” He added that if de Blasio is successful in soliciting donations, it will be because he is promising something in return.

As for overcrowding and doubling up in apartments, he said, “I do know it goes on. People don’t want to live in shelters. What do you expect them to do? Live on the street? Many people can’t find jobs. Others may have other types of problems.

“The working class is being eliminated. Health care is being taken away from minorities. Abortion clinics are being closed down. Look at the last 10 years. People in the middle income have been wiped out. …They don’t care about where all the poor people go. They don’t care about people who have been here 50 or 60 years.”

Australian media whips up fear campaign against African youth

Richard Phillips

The Australian media and political establishment has seized on clashes between police and immigrant youth in the Victorian state capital of Melbourne last Saturday night, during the annual “Moomba” festival, to whip up a frenzied fear campaign about “riots” by “gangs” and “hoodlums” in the city centre, laced with a heavy dose of racism.

None of the accounts should be accepted as good coin. The initial police reports claimed that there had been a riot in the city’s Federation Square between two rival gangs—Apex and Islander 23, comprising African and Pacific Islander youth respectively. Later it turned out, according to revised police accounts, that the Islander 23 group was not there at all.

The “riot” occurred when police waded into a group of African youth—allegedly members of the Apex gang—using pepper spray to break them up. According to police, some young people fled down Swanston Street and began engaging in “riotous behavior,” including throwing metal chairs and “confronting” bystanders.

The number of “rioters” and “gang members” ranges widely in media accounts. While there are claims that up to 200 were involved, only four people were arrested—two for being drunk and another for allegedly carrying a stun gun. The fourth was the only one detained for violent behavior (assaulting a police officer).

Police claim that an examination of CCTV footage will produce more arrests. On Tuesday, the media provided more lurid coverage of heavily-armed Special Operations Group police arresting two alleged Apex gang members. The arrests, however, had no connection whatsoever to the alleged incidents on Saturday night.

In a statement yesterday, the South Sudanese Community Association declared: “We do not accept police or media exaggeration of the Apex gang comprising of as many as 150 youth of Sudanese origin. This is not true. The preliminary investigation from our end, at the community-leadership level, puts the offenders in this group at around six to 10 teenagers in the age group of around 14 and above. The rest of the youths were people who attended as spectators of the event, like many other people who attended the Moomba event on the night of March 12, 2016.”

Even more questions are raised by the initial police accounts of a brawl between rival gangs. On Sunday, the Age reported that Victoria Police had been tipped off by a Channel 7 reporter about a gang clash that had been organised on social media for Saturday night. Not only did senior police officers fail to take it seriously, but police numbers in Federation Square were unusually low. According to the Age, just six officers were present at one stage during the “violent rampage.”

Federation Square in central Melbourne, located opposite the city’s main rail station, is where many young people gather to meet on Saturday nights. With a scheduled Moomba fireworks display, the numbers would have been even higher. The obvious question is: were the police deliberately stood down in the expectation of a gang fight that could then be used as the pretext for a police crackdown and the ramping up of police numbers and powers?

Certainly the police media unit initially advanced the position that a major conflict between gangs had occurred. And police spokesmen have subsequently declared that the Saturday night rioting was “a line in the sand” moment and that resources would be re-prioritised to “tackle the problem.”

The state Labor government has backed the police to the hilt over the so-called “riot.” Premier Daniel Andrews held a press conference on Monday declaring that state authorities would be given the necessary resources to “smash” gang violence in Victoria. Those involved in the rioting had made an “evil choice,” he said, and “we will come after you.”

Under conditions where successive state governments, Labor and Liberal, have boosted police numbers, Andrews’ comments amount to a declaration of war against working class youth. Immigrant youth, in particular, from oppressed suburbs such as Dandenong, where the Apex gang allegedly originated, are already subject to routine police harassment and worse.

Andrews went on to declare that he would ignore anyone raising the issues of poverty and social disadvantage. “Let’s not have this as some sort of excuse,” he said. “It does not matter who you are, your circumstances, your background. If you break the law you feel the full force of the law… I’m not interested, and neither are Victorians, in these ‘poor me’ stories.”

These remarks reveal the contempt of the political establishment as a whole towards the working class, and particularly to young people. Suburbs like Dandenong have been savaged by decades of plant closures and job losses, and the gutting of essential social services, including youth workers, sports facilities and accessible entertainment, for which state governments are directly responsible. The official unemployment rate for adults in the area is 9.2 percent, and for 15-19 year olds, it was almost 26 percent in 2011.

Andrews’ comments are an open admission that the only answer the Labor government has to the immense social problems confronting working class youth is to flood these areas with more police to “smash” anything regarded as anti-social behaviour.

To back up his threats, the premier has also given the cue for the media to whip up a racist witch-hunt of immigrant youth. A flood of stories has appeared since Saturday about the “wild Moomba riot,” with hyperbolic claims that the city is now under siege from gangland “terror.” The events during Melbourne’s Moomba festival have been likened to gang activity in South Central Los Angeles. Editorial writers have gone into overdrive with demands for greater police powers and more equipment.

The Age—the pillar of what passes for the Melbourne liberal establishment—has joined the right-wing radio shock jocks and the hacks at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun tabloid in complaining that police have been reluctant to stop young Africans on the street because they could be “subjected to racism complaints.”

A disgusting editorial in yesterday’s edition declared: “Victoria Police have swung too far in the direction of appeasement, especially after the force was sued over racial profiling in the Flemington and North Melbourne areas… We also believe government authorities and some agencies have been over-indulgent towards some communities, without those same communities taking up the responsibility that rightly belongs with them.”

One thing is certain: the Victorian police force is not guilty of “appeasing” immigrant youth. On the contrary, it is notorious for racism, directed in particular against young Africans. In 2013, six Afro-Australian men sued the police for racial profiling and received a $3 million out of court settlement. In 2014, three police were sacked and other high-ranking officers, including an inspector, faced disciplinary proceedings over their production of blatantly racist items mocking African immigrants.

The Age editorial writer demanded that the government take a tough “law and order” stand: “Police must act swiftly to bring the offenders to court. Ultimately, for those on visas who are found guilty, the government must consider if the circumstances warrant deportation.”

The federal government, supported by the Labor opposition, has already amended the country’s immigration laws to allow the immigration minister to deport foreign-born residents who have “an association” with individuals or groups involved in criminal conduct and those deemed to be at risk of inciting “discord in the Australian community”.

The vilification of immigrant youth over “gang activity” goes hand-in-hand with the “war on terror” and the scapegoating of Muslims. Its purpose is to stoke racial hostilities, to divide workers—young people in particular—and to justify police state measures that will be directed against all those workers and youth who begin to enter into political struggle against the rapidly deepening economic and social crisis that they confront.

Rough-sleeping on the rise in England

Alice Summers

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets in England has risen by 30 percent in a single year, according to a new report from Crisis, a national charity for single homeless people.

The numbers of people making presentations as homeless across the UK has risen by 4 percent in the last year, with annual acceptances by local authority housing departments standing at 54,000. Since 2009/2010 this equates to an increase of 36 percent. The Homeless Monitor concludes that homelessness has worsened considerably in the last five years they have been producing reports.

The numbers of people that are included as part of informal homeless prevention and relief—including statutory homelessness acceptances dealt with by local authority case actions—stands at 275,000 for 2014/2015, a rise of 34 percent since 2009/2010. A third of all local authorities in England have reported an overall service demand for 2014/2015.

According to figures released at the end of February by the Department for Communities and Local Government, there were an estimated 3,569 rough-sleepers on any given night in autumn 2015. This is an increase of 825 people per night since the same period in 2014.

London is particularly affected, with rough-sleepers in the capital constituting 26 percent of the country’s total. Although this is down 1 percent as a proportion of the overall figure for England, in real terms London has seen a 27 percent rise in rough-sleeping, rising from 742 people per night in autumn 2014 to 940 per night in autumn 2015. The London Borough of Westminster is the area with the highest rough-sleeping count of the whole country, at an estimated 265 people. According to the figures, London had 0.27 rough-sleepers for every 1,000 households, compared with a rate of 0.14 per 1,000 in the rest of England.

It is likely that these figures severely underestimate the total number of homeless people sleeping in the streets. The figures are disputed, with the UK Statistics Authority concluding that the official Homelessness Prevention and Relief and Rough-sleeping statistics do not currently meet the required standards of trustworthiness, quality and value to be designated as National Statistics.

In its report, Crisis recognised stagnant real wages, soaring housing prices—particularly in the capital—and government welfare cuts as the principal causes of this dramatic upsurge in numbers of rough-sleepers.

Citing cuts to in-work and housing benefits, the Conservative government’s much-hated “Bedroom Tax” policy and welfare benefit sanctions as the main factors pushing vulnerable people onto the streets, the report is an indictment of years of relentless, vicious austerity measures carried out by successive Labour and Tory governments.

Crisis noted that with the reduction of the total welfare benefit cap introduced in the 2015 budget—to £23,000 a year in London and to £20,000 in the rest of the country—many families will find that “affordable” housing, both privately rented and social, is far beyond their means.

The new Universal Credit benefit system to be rolled out across the UK is expected to further increase homelessness, affecting those tenants in the private sector who have their rent benefits paid directly to them.

The problem of finding affordable accommodation is further aggravated by the government’s social housing privatisation policy. This has set into motion the forced sale of many high-value council properties, the long-term loss of properties via the government’s “Right to Buy” scheme and the reduced investment in new social housing. As indicated in the report, “While the Government has stated ambitions for this diminished stock to be targeted on those in greatest need, the interaction of their rent-setting and welfare policies runs directly counter to this aspiration.”

Labour’s shadow housing minister, John Healey, posturing as an opponent of the government’s housing policy and the homelessness crisis, said of the figures, “People will find it extraordinary that in England in the 21st century the number of people forced to sleep rough is going up.”

This is pure hypocrisy. Labour has been entirely complicit in imposing the Tory government’s austerity measures across the country, with the Labour-dominated local councils in Bristol, Brighton and Hove and Manchester reporting the second, third and fourth highest rough-sleeping counts after Westminster, at 97, 78 and 70 rough-sleepers per night respectively.

Even these shockingly high figures are a gross underestimation of the number of people actually affected by homelessness. Many people have been forced out of their own homes due to skyrocketing living costs and welfare cuts, but have so far avoided being driven onto the streets. According to Crisis, the vast majority of homeless people do not fall within the government’s narrow classification of being homeless. Many exist out of sight in bed and breakfasts and squats, or are concealed in the households of friends and family members, on the floors or sofas of these often overcrowded homes. Crisis calculates that approximately 2.35 million households in England contain concealed single persons in this way, and that an estimated 3.1 percent of households are overcrowded.

Many other homeless people can fall under the radar and not be included in official estimates, as it is common for rough-sleepers to conceal themselves as a matter of personal security. Rough-sleepers often fall victim to physical, verbal and sexual abuse if they spend the night in visible and exposed locations and so many choose to shelter themselves in places such as commercial recycling bins.

The number of homeless people found spending the night in commercial bins has risen dramatically, according to waste management firm Biffa. In the 12-month period between March 2014 and March 2015, the company found people sleeping in their bins on 93 separate occasions, up from 31 in the previous year. In the current year, which runs to the end of March, the figure already stands at 175.

Sleeping in recycling bins can have grave consequences. Spending the night in a commercial bin can lead to serious injuries and fatalities when the bins are emptied into collection trucks and the waste is crushed. According to the Environmental Services Association, there have been at least 11 fatalities since October 2010 as a result of rough-sleepers sheltering in commercial bins. Such gruesome deaths, allied with prolonged period of sleeping in the cold and damp and enduring a poor diet, are central factors in the average age of death for rough-sleepers being just 47.

Extra precautions have been implemented by many waste management companies in an attempt to prevent these tragic deaths. Most collection lorries now contain cameras inside their compactors that allow the driver to see what is being tipped into them; waste collectors are instructed to bang on the side of recycling bins to alert any rough-sleepers inside and to double-check the contents before allowing the bin to be emptied. Businesses and shops have a responsibility to lock their bins overnight and could be taken to court if they do not. Despite the terrible risks, the relative warmth and security of recycling bins can still be attractive to many rough-sleepers.

The Homeless Monitor report can be accessed here.

Russia announces partial withdrawal from Syria

Bill Van Auken

Some of the warplanes deployed in the nearly six-month-long Russian intervention in Syria arrived back on Russian soil Tuesday, the day after President Vladimir Putin announced that the “main part” of his country’s forces were being withdrawn from the conflict.

The central task undertaken by the Russian armed forces had “on the whole, been fulfilled,” Putin stated. “With the participation of the Russian military… the Syrian armed forces have been able to achieve a fundamental turnaround in the fight against international terrorism and have taken the initiative,” he added.

The Russian president said his country’s intervention had created the conditions for the initiation of the “peace process,” and that the withdrawal of its forces would send a “good signal” to both sides: the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and the so-called rebels who have been backed and armed by the US and its regional allies.

Putin’s announcement came nearly three weeks into a US-Russian brokered “cessation of hostilities” that has substantially reduced the level of armed conflict in the country.

Russia is maintaining its two main bases in Syria, its Hmeimim command center and air base in the northwestern province of Latakia, and its naval base, inherited from the Soviet Union, in the Mediterranean port of Tartous. It was reported in Russia that 1,000 Russian troops would remain in the country out of the roughly 4,000 that had been deployed there. Also remaining behind is Russia’s advanced S-400 air defense system.

Putin cast the Russian intervention as a struggle against “terrorism,” and Russian Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov, speaking Tuesday at a ceremony at the Russian airbase in Syria, said that those forces remaining in Syria “have the task of continuing to strike terrorist targets.”

It was reported Tuesday that Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes in support of Syrian troops advancing on Palmyra. The city, famous for its Roman ruins, fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) last May.

While both Moscow and Washington claimed that their respective interventions in Syria were aimed at combating terrorism, they were pursuing different and diametrically opposed aims. In the case of the Obama administration, the goal was regime-change. It sought the ouster of the Assad government and the imposition of a more pliant Western puppet regime in its place. In pursuit of this aim, it, together with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, funneled billions of dollars worth of aid and armaments to a “rebel” force that was dominated by the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, and related Islamist militias.

As for Moscow, its aim was to preserve its one remaining Arab ally in the Middle East. Of no small importance was the prospect that a Western puppet regime in Syria would bow to Qatari demands—rejected by Assad—to lend its territory for a gas pipeline directed toward Western Europe. Such a development would undercut the profit interests of Gazprom, Russia’s largest corporation, and the ruling class of capitalist oligarchs that Putin represents.

Also of concern to the Russian government was the participation in the ranks of al-Nusra and similar groups of thousands of Islamist fighters drawn from Russia’s Caucasus region. Moscow fears that a US-backed client regime in Damascus will help funnel such separatist forces back into Russia to serve as Western proxies in a campaign to destabilize and ultimately dismember the Russian Federation.

While there was a defensive element to Moscow’s intervention, which was directed at countering a concerted campaign by the US and its NATO allies to militarily encircle and subjugate Russia, there was nothing progressive about it in terms of resolving the Syrian crisis in the interests of the Syrian working class and oppressed.

Even in terms of Russia itself, Putin’s oscillation between military adventures and diplomatic entreaties to Washington has done nothing to impede US imperialism’s march toward global war.

Putin’s announcement of the staged withdrawal combined with his assertion that it was meant as a “signal” to both sides has prompted speculation that the military drawdown was directed at compelling the Assad government to subordinate itself to the “peace process” brokered by Washington and Moscow.

Talks have resumed in Geneva, with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura shuttling between meetings with Syrian government representatives and a “rebel” negotiating council cobbled together by the Saudi monarchy.

Differences between the Putin and Assad governments have begun to emerge in relation to the talks in Geneva. While Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, declared on the eve of the talks that Assad’s position as president was a “red line” for the government, and the president would not negotiate his status, it is far from clear that Moscow agrees. As long as a new regime in Damascus is amendable to upholding Russia’s regional interests, the Putin government is evidently prepared to accept Assad’s departure.

Friction was already evident over last month’s declaration by Assad that, regardless of a ceasefire, his forces would continue combating “terrorists” and that retaking all Syrian territory was “a goal we are seeking to achieve without any hesitation.”

That statement prompted something of a rebuke from Russia’s United Nations envoy, Vitaly Churkin, who declared in an interview with a Russian newspaper that Assad’s statement “obviously contradicts Russia’s diplomatic efforts.” Churkin warned that if Damascus failed to align its policies with these efforts “there will be a difficult situation, one that will also involve them.”

The Syrian government was anxious to dispel any notion that Putin’s decision to withdraw Russian forces was carried out unilaterally or as part of an attempt to pressure Damascus to compromise with the Western-backed forces. The state news agency SANA published multiple articles asserting that the drawdown had been “coordinated” between Putin and Assad.

Another potential factor in Putin’s decision to order a military drawdown is the increasingly tense situation created by Turkey’s intervention in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov charged Tuesday in a television interview that “Turkey has started to declare it has a sovereign right to create some safety zones on Syrian territory.” He said that Turkish troops are “digging in a few hundred meters from the border inside Syria” in what amounts to “a sort of creeping expansion.”

A longstanding supporter of the Al Qaeda-linked militias that form the backbone of the insurgency against Assad, Turkey has intervened with the aim of preventing Syrian Kurdish forces from consolidating their grip over an autonomous territory just south of the Turkish border.

Last November, Ankara organized the deliberate ambush of a Russian warplane carrying out airstrikes against Islamist militias south of the Turkish border, leading to the death of one pilot and posing the immediate threat of an armed conflict between the Russian military and a member of NATO. The incursion of Turkish forces into Syria only heightens that danger.

Youth Violence Solution?

Dave Lindorff

London and Philadelphia

Over three thousands miles and more than forty years in age separate anti-violence activists Bilal Qayyum and Noel Williams, yet each advocates a similar solution to ‘the problem’ they seek to solve in their respective cities located on separate sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Qayyum, 69, of Philadelphia, Pa and Williams, 25, of London, UK each see employment as the critical tool needed to counter violence among youth and young adults living in low-income communities.

“In all my years of working to reduce violence, it’s very clear to me that jobs are a major solution to reducing violence in low-income communities,” Qayyum said, speaking about his roots in violence-reduction efforts dating back to the 1970s when he was an anti-gang worker.

“Jobs, well-paying ones, give people a strong feeling of worth. Poverty breeds violence.”

Sadly, Williams and Qayyum each see the same roadblock on violence reduction: the persistent failure of public sector authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to fully engage community-based persons with the front-line experiences required to effectively resolve the “violence problem” that authorities proclaim they want to solve.

Williams, an ex-gang leader in southwest London turned university student, said, “Who comes to me and asks for advice? I know gangs. I know how it feels to be shot and how it feels to walk down the road feeling oppression from police.”

Williams bristles at the fact that authorities continually employ persons with no life-connection to violence as paid staff to lead violence-reduction initiatives.

“If you want to help people who’ve been to prison, why is it that people who’ve been in prison are never hired?” ex-inmate Williams asked.

“Yes, you need academics and people with college degrees, but you also need people who understand,” he explained.

Williams, who works with youth while attending a university outside of London, said, “Authorities are polite at meetings but they just don’t listen to us when it comes to the policies and programs they do.”

Both Williams and Qayyum said greater private-sector involvement is essential to reverse the crisis in unemployment among youth and young adults.

“Corporations have to buy into solving the jobs problem,” Qayyum said.

Connections between London and Philadelphia extend beyond William Penn, the London native who founded the American city in 1682.

Philadelphia has the highest level of poverty among America’s ten largest cities. The city’s poverty rate of 26.9 percent is statistically the same as in London, where 27 percent of the residents of that rapidly gentrifying city live in poverty.

In London, unemployment among 16-24 year olds is 2.5 times higher than among persons aged 25-64, according to the “London Poverty Profile” released in October 2015. In Philadelphia unemployment among 16-24 years olds is slightly less than twice that of persons aged 25-64.

Investigators often cite youth unemployment as a major factor underlying the August 2011 riots that rocked London and nearly a dozen other cities around England. That outburst followed the fatal police shooting of a young black man in the impoverished Tottenham section of North London.

The 2012 report from North London Citizens, an alliance of 40 civic institutions in the Tottenham area, found that 53.1 percent of the 700 people interviewed listed unemployment as the “key cause” of rioting in Tottenham. Another “major cause” of the rioting was poverty, according to 32.9 percent of those respondents.

An investigation into the 2011 riots by London’s Guardian newspaper in collaboration with the Social Policy Department of the London School of Economics found that 79 percent of the riot participants listed unemployment as a riot cause and 86 percent listed poverty as a cause.

While top officials of Britain’s national government and much of British media cited greed as the main motivation of rioters, riot participants interviewed during the Guardian/LSE investigation listed greed below seven other factors that included policing, government policy and the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, along with poverty and unemployment.

An inquiry into the 2011 riots commissioned by the British government also listed unemployment and poverty as underlying issues. But the government’s written response to its own inquiry declared: “It is not acceptable that poverty, race and the challenging economy were used as excuses for the appalling behavior we saw on our streets in August 2011.”

Dr. Jacob Whittingham, who operates a youth program in London that emphasizes education and entrepreneurship, said Britain’s national government, after the 2011 riots, seemingly focused on stiff imprisonment for rioters and budget cuts, including funding reductions for youth programs.

“Basically people give lip service. There was no attempt by the central government to understand why the riots happened,” Whittingham said. “There was no urgency to do something because people don’t listen.”

In 1985, an earlier riot seared Tottenham after the death of a woman during a police raid. The governmental inquiry into that earlier riot criticized unemployment and poverty in Tottenham along with abusive policing -– the same elements that drove the 2011 outburst that spread across England.

According to the 1986 report of the “Broadwater Farm Inquiry,” unemployment for “young Black men was a terrible 83%.” Over 90% of Tottenham adults interviewed during that inquiry saw “unemployment as a big problem.”

Veteran Tottenham rights activist Stafford Scott said the recalcitrance in Britain to earnestly addressing unemployment and poverty among non-whites is rooted in racism. That Broadwater report from three decades ago cites testimony Scott gave to the inquiry.

“White Britain does not accept racism in real time,” Scott said during a recent interview, “now there is an admission that racism existed in the 1980s. But back then when we raised the issue of racism, they told us to F – – k off.”

While Noel Williams and Bilal Qayyum have never met one anothe,r they have had experiences with the hometown of the other.

Williams visited Philadelphia in 2012, when he spent time in North Philadelphia, an impoverished area riddled with crime that is similar in some ways to his London community of Wandsworth.

“One big similarity I saw was we are all broke. We have no money,” Williams said. “In North Philadelphia there were no places for youth to socialize…there were few [recreation centers]. They are shutting down the [recreation centers] here due to government austerity and that puts young people out on the streets where they don’t need to be.”

Qayyum has never traveled to London but he vividly remembers a meeting with a group of young people from London years ago. Some in that interracial group that Qayyum met with had participated in gang activities.

“They all talked about the lack of opportunities and getting work,” Qayyum said. “They talked about dropping out of school and living in neighborhoods with high numbers of folks using drugs. Sounded like Philly.”

London activist Temi Mwale, 20, became engaged in anti-violence activities after the murder of a close friend five years ago.

“There is no chance to solve violence without ending the ‘state violence’ of poverty, hopelessness and police brutality,” Mwale said, criticizing government officials at local and national levels for failing the see the sources of that create violence.

Government officials, Mwale said, “don’t want to hear the deep story on youth violence. All they see is gangs as the problem, not the poverty that contributes to gang activity. One of my frustrations in dealing with government officials is they ask the same questions over and over. That shows they are not listening.”

A report released in January 2016 by the Centre For Crime and Justice Studies of Manchester Metropolitan University documented the inaccuracy of claims by British police, who declare that since young blacks dominate gang membership they are demonstrably the most violent thus deserve enhanced enforcement like Britain’s version of America’s infamous “Stop-&-Frisk.”

Police and court data cited in the Centre’s report document that black youth were not those responsible for the most serious youth violence.

In London for example, police list blacks as 72 percent of that city’s gang members. But official justice system data collected for that report found that non-blacks committed 73 percent of the serious youth violence in London.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, has made public pronouncements during recent months about his intent to address persistent race-based inequities.

While Cameron’s words may represent a step forward, Simon Woolley, Director of Britain’s Operation Black Vote, said the issue is holding the Prime Minister accountable when his government is meanwhile “undermining civil society,” particularly with austerity budget cuts that disproportionately impact non-whites.

Woolley remains critical of the national government’s lack of investments after the 2011 riots, for example in festering areas like unemployment among youth and young adults –- including young adults who have college degrees. That lack of investment arose from a consensus among the elite that the cause of the 2011 riots was “anti-social behavior with no connection to social and economic inequalities,” Woolley said.

Woolley warns, “There is a young underclass out there that can explode at anytime.”

America's Gestapo: The FBI's Reign Of Terror

John W. Whitehead

“We want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail.”—President Harry S. Truman

“Don't Be a Puppet” is the message the FBI is sending young Americans.

As part of the government's so-called ongoing war on terror, the nation's de facto secret police force is now recruiting students and teachers to spy on each other and report anyone who appears to have the potential to be “anti-government” or “extremist.”

Using the terms “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably, the government continues to add to its growing list of characteristics that could distinguish an individual as a potential domestic terrorist.

For instance, you might be a domestic terrorist in the eyes of the FBI (and its network of snitches) if you:

• express libertarian philosophies (statements, bumper stickers)
• exhibit Second Amendment-oriented views (NRA or gun club membership)
• read survivalist literature, including apocalyptic fictional books
• show signs of self-sufficiency (stockpiling food, ammo, hand tools, medical supplies)
• fear an economic collapse
• buy gold and barter items
• subscribe to religious views concerning the book of Revelation
• voice fears about Big Brother or big government
• expound about constitutional rights and civil liberties
• believe in a New World Order conspiracy

Despite its well-publicized efforts to train students, teachers, police officers, hairdressers, store clerks, etc., into government eyes and ears, the FBI isn't relying on a nation of snitches to carry out its domestic spying.

There's no need.

The nation's largest law enforcement agency rivals the NSA in resources, technology, intelligence, and power. Yet while the NSA has repeatedly come under fire for its domestic spying programs, the FBI has continued to operate its subversive and clearly unconstitutional programs with little significant oversight or push-back from the public, Congress or the courts.

Indeed, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the FBI has become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be easily corrupted and abused.

When and if a true history of the FBI is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America.

The FBI's laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property.

And that's just based on what we know.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans' phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government;recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation's secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss' dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.

As the FBI'spowers have grown, its abuses have mounted. 

The agency's National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the NSL program to be riddled with widespread violations.

The FBI's spying capabilities are on a par with the NSA.

The FBI's surveillance technology boasts an invasive collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls.  In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect's” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”

The FBI's hacking powers have gotten downright devious.

FBI agents not only have the ability to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world, but they can also control that computer and all its stored information, download its digital contents, switch its camera or microphone on or off and even control other computers in its network. Given the breadth of the agency's powers, the showdown between Apple and the FBI over customer privacy appears to be more spectacle than substance.

The FBI's reach is more invasive than ever.

Today, the FBI boasts an annual budget of more than $8 billion, employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI is also, according to The Washington Post, “building a vast repository controlled by people who work in a top-secret vault on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington. This one stores the profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime. What they have done is appear to be acting suspiciously to a town sheriff, a traffic cop or even a neighbor.”

If there's one word to describe the FBI's covert tactics, it's creepy.

The agency's biometric database has grown to massive proportions, the largest in the world, encompassing everything from fingerprints, palm, face and iris scans to DNA, and is being increasingly shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in an effort to target potential criminals long before they ever commit a crime. This is what's known as pre-crime.

As countless documents make clear, the FBI has no qualms about using its extensive powers in order to blackmail politicians, spy on celebrities and high-ranking government officials, and intimidate dissidents of all stripes.

It's an old tactic, used effectively by former authoritarian regimes.

In fact, as historian Robert Gellately documents, the Nazi police state was repeatedly touted as a model for other nations to follow, so much so that Hoover actually sent one of his right-hand men, Edmund Patrick Coffey, to Berlin in January 1938 at the invitation of Germany's secret police. As Gellately noted, “[A]fter five years of Hitler's dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI's seal of approval.”

Indeed, so impressed was the FBI with the Nazi order that, as the New York Times revealed, in the decades after World War II, the FBI, along with other government agencies, aggressively recruited at least a thousand Nazis, including some of Hitler's highest henchmen, brought them to America, hired them on as spies and informants, and then carried out a massive cover-up campaign to ensure that their true identities and ties to Hitler's holocaust machine would remain unknown. Moreover, anyone who dared to blow the whistle on the FBI's illicit Nazi ties found himself spied upon, intimidated, harassed and labeled a threat to national security.

So not only have American taxpayers been paying to keep ex-Nazis on the government payroll for decades but we've been subjected to the very same tactics used by the Third Reich: surveillance, militarized police, overcriminalization, and a government mindset that views itself as operating outside the bounds of the law.

This is how freedom falls, and tyrants come to power.

Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. These are the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime from the Roman Empire to modern-day America.

Yet it's the secret police—tasked with silencing dissidents, ensuring compliance, and maintaining a climate of fear—who sound the death knell for freedom in every age.