Our Economic Growth System Is Reaching Limits In A Strange Way

Gail E. Tverberg

Economic growth never seems to be as high as those making forecasts would like it to be. This is a record of recent forecasts by the International Monetary Fund:

Figure 1. World GDP Forecasts by the International Monetary Fund.

Figure 2 shows world economic growth on a different basis–a basis that appears to me to be very close to total world GDP, as measured in US dollars, without adjustment for inflation. On this basis, world GDP (or Gross Planetary Product as the author calls it) does very poorly in 2015, nearly as bad as in 2009.

Figure 2. Gross Planet Product at current prices (trillions of dollars) by Peter A. G. van Bergeijk in Voxeu, based on IMF World Economic Outlook Database, October 2015.

The poor 2015 performance in Figure 2 reflects a combination of falling inflation rates, as a result of falling commodity prices, and a rising relativity of the US dollar to other currencies.

Clearly something is wrong, but virtually no one has figured out the problem.

The World Energy System Is Reaching Limits in a Strange Double Way

We are experiencing a world economy that seems to be reaching limits, but the symptoms are not what peak oil groups warned about. Instead of high prices and lack of supply, we are facing indirect problems brought on by our high consumption of energy products. In my view, we have a double pump problem.

Figure 3. Double gasoline pump from Torrence Collection of Auto Memorabilia.

We don’t just extract fossil fuels. Instead, whether we intend to or not, we get a lot of other things as well: rising debt, rising pollution, and a more complex economy.

The system acts as if whenever one pump dispenses the energy products we want, another pump disperses other products we don’t want. Let’s look at three of the big unwanted “co-products.”

1. Rising debt is an issue because fossil fuels give us things that would never have been possible, in the absence of fossil fuels. For example, thanks to fossil fuels, farmers can have such things as metal plows instead of wooden ones and barbed wire to separate their property from the property of others. Fossil fuels provide many more advanced capabilities as well, including tractors, fertilizer, pesticides, GPS systems to guide tractors, trucks to take food to market, modern roads, and refrigeration.

The benefits of fossil fuels are immense, but can only be experienced once fossil fuels are in use. Because of this, we have adapted our debt system to be a much greater part of the economy than it ever needed to be, prior to the use of fossil fuels. As the cost of fossil fuel extraction rises, ever more debt is required to place these fossil fuels in use. The Bank for International Settlements tells us that worldwide, between 2006 and 2014, the amount of oil and gas company bonds outstanding increased by an average of 15% per year, while syndicated bank loans to oil and gas companies increased by an average of 13% per year. Taken together, about $3 trillion of these types of loans to the oil and gas companies were outstanding at the end of 2014.

As the cost of fossil fuels rises, the cost of everything made using fossil fuels tends to rise as well. Cars, trucks, and homes become more expensive to build, especially if they are intended to be energy efficient. The cost of capital goods purchased by businesses rises as well, since these too are made with fossil fuels. Needless to say, the amount of debt to purchase all of these goods rises as well. Part of the reason for the increased debt is simply because it becomes more difficult for businesses and individuals to purchase needed goods out of cash flow.

As long as fossil fuel prices are rising (not just the cost of extraction), this rising debt doesn’t look like a huge problem. The rising fossil fuel prices push the general inflation rate higher. But once prices stop rising, and in fact start falling, the amount of debt outstanding suddenly seems much more onerous.

2. Rising pollution from fossil fuels is another issue as we use an increasing amount of fossil fuels. If only a tiny amount of fossil fuels is used, pollution tends not to be much of an issue. Air can remain safe for breathing and water can remain safe for drinking. Increasing CO2 pollution is not a significant issue.

Once we start using increasing amounts, pollution becomes a greater issue. Partly this is the case because natural sinks reach their saturation point. Another is the changing nature of technology as we move to more advanced techniques. Techniques such as deep sea drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and arctic drilling have pollution risks that less advanced techniques did not have.

3. A more complex economy is a less obvious co-product of the increasing use of fossil fuels. In a very simple economy, there is little need for big government and big business. If there are businesses, they can be run by a small number of individuals, with little investment in capital goods. A king, together with a handful of appointees, can operate the government if it does not provide much in the way of services such as paved roads, armies, and schools. International trade is not a huge necessity because workers can provide nearly all necessary goods and services with local materials.

The use of increasing amounts of fossil fuels changes the situation materially. Fossil fuels are what allow us to have metals in quantity–without fossil fuels, we need to cut down forests, use the trees to make charcoal, and use the charcoal to make small quantities of metals.

Once fossil fuels are available in quantity, they allow the economy to make modern capital goods, such as machines, oil drilling equipment, hydraulic dump trucks, farming equipment, and airplanes. Businesses need to be much larger to produce and own such equipment. International trade becomes much more important, because a much broader array of materials is needed to make and operate these devices. Education becomes ever more important, as devices become increasingly complex. Governments become larger, to deal with the additional services they now need to provide.

Increasing complexity has a downside. If an increasing share of the output of the economy is funneled into management pay, expenditures for capital goods, and other expenditures associated with an increasingly complex economy (including higher taxes, and more dividend and interest payments), less of the output of the economy is available for “ordinary” laborers–including those without advanced training or supervisory responsibilities.

As a result, pay for these workers is likely to fall relative to the rising cost of living. Some would-be workers may drop out of the labor force, because the benefits of working are too low compared to other costs, such as childcare and transportation costs. Ultimately, the low wages of these workers can be expected to start causing problems for the economic system as a whole, because these workers can no longer afford the output of the system. These workers reduce their purchases of houses and cars, both of which are produced using fossil fuels and other commodities.

Ultimately, the prices of commodities fall below their cost of production. This happens because there are so many of these ordinary laborers, and the lack of good wages for these workers tends to slow the “demand” side of the economic growth loop. This is the problem that we are now experiencing. Figure 4 below shows how the system would work, if increasing complexity were not interfering with economic growth.

Figure 4. How economic growth works, if increased complexity is not interfering.

Also see my post, How Economic Growth Fails.

The Two Pumps Are Really Energy and Entropy

Unlike the markings on the pump (gasoline and ethanol), the two pumps of our system are energy consumption and entropy. When we think we are getting energy consumption, we really get various forms of entropy as well.

The first pump, rising energy consumption, seems to be what makes the world economy grow.

Figure 5. World GDP in 2010$ compared (from USDA) compared to World Consumption of Energy
(from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014).

This happens because the use of energy products allows businesses to leverage human labor, so that human labor can be more productive. A farmer with a stick as his only implement cannot produce much food, but a farmer with a tractor, gasoline, modern implements, hybrid seeds, irrigation, and access to modern roads can be very productive. This productivity would not be available without fossil fuels. Figure 4, shown earlier, describes how this increased productivity usually gets back into the system.

The second pump in Figure 3 is Entropy Production. Entropy is a measure of the disorder associated with the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and other energy products. Entropy can be thought of as a loss of information. Once energy products are burned, we have a portion of GDP in the place of the energy products that have been consumed. This is why there is a high correlation between energy consumption and GDP. As energy products are burned, we also have an increasing pile of debt, increasing pollution (that our sinks become less and less able to handle), and increasing wealth disparity.

Figure 6. Difference in US income growth patterns of the top 10% versus the bottom 90%. Chart by economist Emmanuel Saez based on an analysis of IRS data, published in Forbes.

Beyond the three types of entropy I have mentioned, there are other related problems. For example, the current immigration problem is at least partly a problem associated with increased complexity and thus increased wealth disparity. Also, low oil prices are a sign of a loss of “information,” and thus also a sign of growing entropy.

Our Energy/Entropy System Operates on an Energy Flow Basis

I think of two different kinds of accounting systems:

1.Accounting on a cash flow basis
2.Accounting on an accrual basis, such as GAAP

With respect to energy, we burn fossil fuels in a given year, and we obtain output of renewable energy devices in a given year. We eat food that has generally been grown in the year we eat it. There is virtually no accrual aspect to the way the system works. This is very different from the accrual-basis financial statements prepared by most large companies that allow credit for investments before the benefit is actually in place.

When it comes to promises such as Social Security benefits, we are, in effect, promising retirees a share of energy production in future years. The promise is only worth something if the system continues to work well–in other words, if the financial system has not collapsed, pollution is not too great a problem, and marginalized workers are not revolting.

Governments can print money, but they can’t print resources. It is the resources, particularly energy resources, that we need to run the economy. In fact, we need per capita resources to be at least flat, or perhaps increasing.

Figure 7. World energy consumption per capita, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2105 data.
Year 2015 estimate and notes by G. Tverberg.

Printing money is an attempt to get a larger share of the world’s resources for the population of a given country. Printing money usually doesn’t work very well, because if a country prints a lot of money, the currency of that country is likely to fall relative to currencies of other countries.

What Causes the System to Fail? Too Little Energy, or Too Much Entropy?

In an interconnected system, it is sometimes hard to understand what causes the system to fail. Is it too little production of energy products, or too much entropy associated with these energy products? Astrophysicist Francois Roddier tells me that he thinks it is too much entropy that causes the system to fail, and I tend to agree with him. (See also “Pourquoi les économies stagnant et les civilizations sʼeffondrent” by Roddier in Économie de l’après-croissance.) The rising amount of debt, pollution, and income inequality tend to bring the system down, long before “running out” of energy products becomes a problem. In fact, the low commodity prices we are now experiencing appear to be part of the entropy problem as well.

Can Renewable Energy Be a Solution?

As far as I can see, renewable energy, unless it is very cheap (like hydroelectric dams were many years ago), absolutely does not work as a solution to our energy problems. The basic issue is that the energy system works on a flow year basis. To match energy-in versus energy-out, we need to analyze each year separately. For example, we need to match energy going into making offshore wind turbines against energy coming out of offshore wind turbines, for each calendar year (say 2016). To keep the net energy flow positive, there needs to be an extremely slow ramp-up of high-cost renewable energy.

In a way, high-cost renewable energy is very close to entropy-only energy. Because of the high front-end energy consumption and the slow speed at which it is paid back, high-priced renewable energy generates very little energy, net of energy going into its production. (In some instances, renewable energy may actually be an energy sink.) Instead, renewable energy generates lots of entropy-related products, including increased debt and increased taxes to pay for subsidies. It also adds to the complexity of the system, because of the variable nature of its output. Perhaps renewable energy is less bad at generating pollution, or maybe the pollution is simply of a different type. Ultimately, it is a problem, just as any other type of supplemental energy is.

One problem with so-called renewable energy is that it can’t be expected to outlast the system as a whole, unless it is part of some off-grid system with backup batteries and an inverter. Even then, the lifetime of the whole system is limited to the lifetime of the shortest-lived necessary component: solar panels, battery backup, inverter, and the device the user is trying to run with the system, such as a water pump.

There are currently many stresses on our economic system. We can’t be certain that the system will last very long. When the system starts collapsing, it is likely to take grid-connected electricity systems with it.

What Is the Connection to Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI)?

If a person believes that energy is a one pump system (the left pump in Figure 3), then a person’s big concern is “running out.” If a person wants to maximize the benefit of energy resources, he will choose energy resources with as high an EROEI as possible. In other words, he will try to get as much energy out per unit of energy in as possible. For example, one estimate gives EROEI of 100 to 1 for hydroelectric, 80 to 1 for coal, and much lower ratios for other fuels. Thus, a mix that is heavy in hydroelectric and coal will stretch energy supplies as far as possible.

Another place where EROEI is important is in determining “net” energy, that is, energy net of the energy going into making it.

As I mentioned above, energy per capita needs to be at least level to keep the economy from collapsing. In fact, net energy per capita probably needs to be slightly increasing to keep the economy growing sufficiently, if “net” energy is adjusted for all of the effects that simultaneously impact the energy needs of the economy, apart from energy used in producing “normal” goods and services. (Most people are not aware of the economy’s growing need for energy supplies. For an explanation regarding why this is true, see my recent post The Physics of Energy and the Economy.)

In theory, EROEI analyses might be helpful in determining how much gross energy is necessary to produce the desired amount of net energy. In practice, there are many pieces that go into determining the total quantity of net energy required to keep the economy expanding, making the calculation difficult to perform. These include:

1.The extent to which population is rising.
2.The extent to which globalization is taking place, and with it, access to other, higher EROEI, energy supplies.
3.The extent to which the economy is getting more efficient in its use of energy.
4.The extent to which EROEI is falling for various fuels (on a calendar year basis).
5.The extent to which average EROEI is falling, because the mix of fuel is changing to become less polluting.
6. The extent to which it is taking more energy to extract other resources, such as fresh water and metals.
7.The extent to which it is taking more energy to make pollution-control devices, and workarounds for problems with energy.

Looking at Figure 5, it is not obvious that there is a need for a big adjustment, one way or another, to produce net energy from gross energy. Of course, this may be an artifact of the way GDP is measured. High-priced metals and water are treated as part of GDP, as is the cost of pollution control devices. People’s general standard of living may not be rising, but now they are paying for clean air and water, something they didn’t need to pay for before. It looks like GDP is increasing, but there is little true benefit from the higher GDP.

The one big take-away I have from Figure 7 is simply that if our goal is to get net energy to rise sufficiently, the best way to do this is to make certain that gross energy production rises sufficiently. World leaders were successful in doing this since 2001, through their globalization efforts. Of course, the new energy we got was mostly coal–bad from the points of view of pollution and workers’ wages in developed countries, but good from some other perspectives: low direct debt requirement, low complexity requirement, and high EROEI.

Figure 8. China’s energy consumption by fuel, based on data of BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015.

One issue with EROEI calculations is that they disregard timing, and thus are not on an energy flow-year basis. Ignoring timing also means the calculations give little information regarding the likely debt build-up associated with an energy product.

Conclusion

If a person doesn’t understand what the problem is, it is easy to come to the wrong conclusion. Part of our problem is that we need a growing amount of net energy, per capita, to keep the economy from collapsing. Part of our problem is that entropy problems such as rising debt, increased pollution, and increasing complexity tend to bring the system down, even when we seem to have plenty of energy supplies. These are the two big problems we are facing that few people recognize.

Another part of our problem is that it is necessary for common laborers to have good-paying jobs, and in fact rising pay, if the economy is to continue to grow. As much as we would like everyone to have advanced training (and training that changes with each new innovation), the productivity of workers does not rise sufficiently to justify the high cost of giving advanced education to a large share of the population. Instead, we must deal with the fact that the world’s economy needs large numbers of workers with relatively little training. In fact, we need rising pay for these workers, because there are so many of them, and they are the ones who keep the “demand” part of the commodity price cycle high enough.

Robots may be very efficient at producing goods and services, but they cannot recycle the earnings of the system. In theory, businesses could pay very high taxes on the output of automated systems, so that governments could create make-work projects to hire all of the unemployed workers. In practice, the idea is impractical–the businesses would simply move to an area with lower taxes.

Growth now is slowing because of all of the entropy issues involved. People in China cannot stand any more pollution. Too many laborers in developed countries are being marginalized by globalization and by competition with ever-more intelligent machines that can replace much of the function of humans. None of this would be a problem, except that we have a huge amount of debt that needs to be repaid with interest, and we need commodity prices to rise high enough to encourage production. If these problems are not fixed, the whole system will collapse, even though there seems to be a surplus of energy products.

New Zealand government plans further expansion of spy powers

Tom Peters

A government-commissioned review of New Zealand’s spy agencies, released this month, recommended the removal of restrictions on their ability to spy on citizens and residents.

The review, by former Labour government Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen and lawyer Dame Patsy Reddy, called for a de facto merger of the domestic agency, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), with the external agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). It proposed that the organisations, which together employ approximately 500 staff, be covered by the same legislation and operate out of the same building.

The integration of the spy agencies would enable the GCSB’s advanced technology, which includes the interception of communications via satellite and the tapping of undersea Internet cables, to be routinely used by both agencies to spy on New Zealanders for vaguely-defined “national security” purposes.

Cullen downplayed the recommendations, telling the media on March 9: “We are not proposing a vast extension of power.” It was “a clarification” of the existing law. Prime Minister John Key, however, admitted that the proposals would increase the GCSB’s powers. He flatly declared this was needed because “we live in a world of changing national security requirements, a world that presents a few more risks to New Zealanders.”

A New Zealand Herald editorial backed the plans, seizing on the bogus “war on terror” used by governments internationally to introduce unprecedented police and surveillance measures. It asserted that since the end of 2014, “the spectre of Isis terrorism [has prompted] all Western states to adopt stronger measures of surveillance and passport control.”

In reality, the proposals have nothing to do with combating terrorism. The review was released under conditions of soaring social inequality, the collaboration of New Zealand in the US-led war in Iraq and escalating threats of a US war against Russia and China. As in America, Europe and Asia, there are signs that the turn to austerity and militarism is producing a shift to the left among sections of workers and youth, including the large turnout at last month’s protests against the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership. The ruling elite is preparing to confront social and political opposition by erecting the foundations for a police state.

Claims by Cullen and Reddy that their proposals would strengthen “oversight” of the spy agencies are a sham. The GCSB and SIS would be permitted to spy on anyone if they obtained a warrant from the attorney-general and a judicial commissioner. When agencies decided that an operation must be conducted “urgently,” they would be able to conduct warrantless surveillance for 48 hours.

Spies would also be given “immunities from civil and criminal liability” if they broke the law during undercover operations. The GCSB currently has immunity when acting under authorisation and for “any act done in good faith to obtain a warrant or authorisation.” This would be extended to cover SIS agents. Immunity would also be given to “anyone required to assist the agencies, such as telecommunications companies” and “human sources.”

Until a law change in 2013, the GCSB was prohibited from carrying out any surveillance on New Zealanders. This expansion of powers triggered nationwide protests by thousands of people. It followed an admission that the GCSB had illegally spied on at least 88 people, including businessman and Internet Party founder Kim Dotcom.

The 2013 provisions allowed the GCSB to conduct surveillance of New Zealanders for the purposes of “cyber security” and to assist the police, the Defence Force and the SIS. It also allowed surveillance of anyone working for “a foreign person ... government, body or organisation.”

According to Cullen and Reddy, however, the 2013 legislation did not go far enough because it only allowed the GCSB to spy on citizens and residents in exceptional, albeit very broadly defined, circumstances.

Key’s National Party government aims to legalise the indiscriminate spying, which already takes place. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2014 that there is routine surveillance of New Zealanders by the GCSB. The information gathered can be accessed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other members of the Five Eyes alliance—the intelligence agencies of Australia, Britain and Canada.

Opposition Labour Party leader Andrew Little immediately indicated bipartisan support. He told the March 9 Herald that the Cullen-Reddy review contained “sensible recommendations in terms of having consistency in legislation and avoiding contradictions between the agencies’ powers.” Labour had told the government “we will cooperate on trying to get the best possible legislation.”

This underscores the fraud of Labour’s opposition to the 2013 legislation, which it voted against while making vague calls for a “review” of the GCSB’s operations. As soon as the 2014 election was out of the way, Labour backed legislation allowing the SIS to conduct warrantless spying for 24 hours in “emergency” situations. Now it is supporting even greater powers.

Successive Labour and National governments have overseen a vast expansion of the spy agencies’ powers and resources. They have also worked closely with Washington to integrate the GCSB into the Five Eyes alliance, as part of the overall strengthening of military and intelligence ties. Documents released by Snowden last year revealed that the agency spies on countries throughout Asia and the Pacific, including China, and shares the intelligence with the NSA. This represents a significant contribution to US imperialism’s preparations for war against China.

New Zealand’s ruling elite relies on its alliance with the US to protect its own neo-colonial interests in the Pacific and elsewhere. The Cullen-Reddy review declined to comment on the “accuracy of Snowden’s allegations in relation to New Zealand.” At the same time, it praised the Five Eyes as “by far New Zealand’s most valuable intelligence arrangement, giving us knowledge and capability far beyond what we could afford on our own.”

New legislation will be drawn up in close consultation with Washington. Key revealed that on March 14 that US National Intelligence Director James Clapper had just visited New Zealand for talks on intelligence matters, including the Cullen-Reddy review. Clapper held private discussions with both Key and Labour leader Little, who described his meeting as “very friendly.”

Key said General Clapper was in New Zealand on his way to a Five Eyes meeting in Australia. Clapper oversees 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA. His visit underlines the incorporation of New Zealand’s spying operations into the global network operated by the US.

UK teacher shortages on the rise

Tom Pearce

The failure of the Conservative-led UK government to achieve its target for teacher recruitment for the fourth year in a row is symptomatic of the crisis arising from dictatorial conditions and extreme governmental pressure.

Research by the National Audit Office found that over a 10-year period approximately 12 percent of newly qualified teachers left state-funded schools within one year of joining while 28 percent had left within five years.

The Department for Education’s (DfE) recruitment targets are not being met, with the recorded rate of vacancies and temporarily filled positions in schools doubling between 2011 and 2014. As a result, there have been cases of schools having to share staff and use unqualified teachers and support staff. This has led to further pressure on staff, with nine out of 10 saying it is generating a high level of workload.

The government claims it will invest £1.3 billion up to 2020 to attract new teachers where they are most needed. However, it is now harder to recruit teachers than 12 months ago, with a survey of 900 head teachers finding that 90 percent are finding it hard to recruit.

The situation is being exacerbated by teachers not just leaving the profession, but leaving the UK as well. Data from International School Consultancy (ISC) reveals that over the past year, 18,000 teachers left the UK to teach abroad. Statistics show that the number of teachers leaving the UK is on the rise. In 2013, the number was at 82,000 and during 2014-15 about 100,000 teachers left the UK.

The number is more significant if you compare this with the number of teachers that achieved qualified teaching status (QTS) in universities. According to the latest figures for the 2013-14 academic year, this was at 17,001. This is leading to an enormous staffing crisis as teachers are leaving the profession in higher numbers than are being trained.

The DfE responded to the staffing crisis with the same rhetoric, that it is “determined to continue raising the status of the profession.” The DfE claims it has “given schools unprecedented freedom over staff pay, to allow them to attract the brightest and the best.”

However, the effect of changes of funding to school budgets has led to schools using this freedom to refuse pay progression and cut services. This has led to the demotivation of staff that feel ignored and divided by performance-related pay. The pay change has led to some schools setting unrealistic targets for teachers to achieve pay increments. In some cases, middle leaders, i.e., heads of subjects, have been told their pay depends on the performance of other colleagues in their department. The teaching unions have overseen these measures.

The chief inspector of official schools inspectorate Ofsted in England, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has warned of a “teacher brain drain” at a time when schools across the country are already struggling to fill vacancies amid rising numbers of pupils.

He said teachers are “Lured by enticing offers of competitive, tax-free salaries, free accommodation and a warmer climate, teachers are taking their hard-earned qualifications to the Gulf states”.

This writer spoke to teachers in Cambridgeshire. One teacher had recently taken a post in Dubai. He decided to leave the UK because of “his interest in travelling but also for financial reasons with international schools offering a package that pays for accommodation and flights each year.” He added there was “less pressure on teachers in international schools” in sharp comparison to Ofsted government-set test targets.

Another teacher said, “The government’s target driven curriculum was putting too much pressure on teachers to mark and assess.” Many teachers spoken to had considered the idea of leaving the country in the past year with the main reasons for leaving being “stress and unnecessary pressures.”

Over the past decade, the grading standards that Ofsted use has been raised and schools are under immense pressure to be “outstanding”. As a result, teaching leaders have strived tirelessly for an outstanding verdict, placing incredible levels of pressure on their staff. In some cases, unreasonable standards of marking and assessment have been enforced on staff in the name of showing Ofsted that they are progressing towards the outstanding rating. Consequently, teachers are showing their disgust by rejecting these conditions and leaving the profession to find employment outside the UK.

Wilshaw has called in the past, and repeated again, the idea of financial incentives in the form of “golden handcuffs” to ensure trainees start their teaching career in areas where they are needed most. “As far as I’m concerned, that means Barnsley not Bangkok, Doncaster not Doha, and King’s Lynn not Kuala Lumpur.”

His reactionary and nationalist agenda is outlined in his damning view of international schools. He continued: “Is it fair that the offspring of overseas oligarchs are directly benefiting from UK teacher training programmes at the expense of poor children in large parts of this country?”

Wilshaw’s policy is largely welcomed by teachers’ leaders, including headteachers, principals, deputy heads and vice-principals. They suggest the government should write off teachers’ university tuition fees as an incentive to keep newly qualified teachers in English state schools. Leora Cruddas, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said, “The idea of ‘golden handcuffs’ to keep teachers in this country for a period of time is an interesting one which deserves more examination.”

The fact is teachers are not in the job to make large sums of money. Their pressurized working conditions are the main reason why teachers are leaving the profession and will continue to leave the country.

Ben Culverhouse, a teacher, writing in the Guardian believes the incentives “will do nothing to address the real problems afflicting our education system. These words of warning come from a man [Wilshaw] who was instrumental—along with Michael Gove [the Conservative governments’ former education secretary]—in creating the problems in the first place. Wilshaw was instructed by Gove to raise standards not long after he took office in 2012.”

Culverhouse fails to mention the process has been continued since the replacement of Gove in a 2014 cabinet reshuffle, which was championed by the teachers unions and the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party (SWP) as “an outstanding day for education”. The SWP called for workers to “come back in the autumn [2014] prepared to step up the fight to bury everything Gove stood for”. There has been no national strike action since that day.

The teaching union, National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), released a toothless statement on the latest staffing crisis figures, in which General Secretary Chris Keates, said: “This is another stark consequence of government policy. The public education service is haemorrhaging teachers, not just to go abroad; equal numbers are leaving teaching to go to other more financially competitive jobs in this country.” But all the NASUWT has proposed in response to the government’s policy is a ludicrous “action short of strike action”, which involves advice on what not to do in the workplace.

The policies of Gove have not been buried. The government has held a consultation on workload that is not worth the paper it is printed on. The pressures that have led to an exodus of teachers continue, with no solutions offered by teachers unions.

Honduran Government covers up involvement in murders of indigenous rights leaders

Andrea Lobo

Human rights and indigenous activists took to the streets of Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s capital, Wednesday to demand explanations for the murder of Honduran indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres and a halt to the rampant killing of activists throughout the country.

?Since, the March 3 killing of Cáceres, the Honduran government has continued to divert the blame back to the indigenous movement to cover up its own responsibility in allowing the murder to happen.

Less than two weeks earlier, Nelson García, a member of the organization led by Berta Cáceres, was shot four times in the head and killed as he arrived at noon at his mother-in-law’s house. That morning he had been helping families move their belongings out of the Río Chiquito community, where they were being evicted by the police, military police, and army.

Governing over the second poorest country in Latin America, Honduras’s oligarchical elite solidified its grip on the state after a 2009 US-backed military coup overthrew the elected government of President Manuel Zelaya. It has since made clear its commitment to fully opening up the country’s resources to corporate plundering by keeping popular discontent in check with a militarized campaign of fear. To that end, it has worked to obscure the systemic character of the assassinations of leading activists, putting up a façade of defending human rights and fighting against corruption.

The NGO Global Witness declared Honduras the “worst country to be an ecologist”, having “a climate of near total impunity” that contributed to the killing of 109 environmental activists between 2010 and 2015, the highest per capita rate in the world.

Billy Kyte, a Global Witness campaigner, commented: “Hondurans are being shot dead in broad daylight, kidnapped, or assaulted for standing in the way of their land and the companies who want to monetize it.”

Since 2009, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had asked for Cáceres’ protection, given the increased danger she was facing as a leading opponent of the 2009 coup and subsequent fraudulent elections.

At the head of the Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), Cáceres also led the fight against over 10 hydroelectric projects, primarily the Aguas Zarcas dam, to protect sacred and natural resource-rich lands inhabited by the Lenca, the largest indigenous population in the country. At Aguas Zarcas, the successful exposures of human rights violations made the Chinese transnational Sinohydro and the World Bank drop their funding and, thus, earned Cáceres the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize.

Cáceres stated that, days after the June 28 coup in 2009, concessions were given out for several rivers. According to the Goldman Prize organization, hundreds of hydroelectric and mining projects were approved, ceding about 30 percent of the country’s land through concessions.

Cáceres commented, “Capitalism is in a state of dementia to grab all goods left in nature, precisely because it can’t hold on any longer and needs to continue finishing and eating up the planet.”

The first president to be elected after the coup, Porfirio Lobo, reduced social spending by 20 percent, accepted $1.75 million from the US ambassador to support “efforts by Honduran law enforcement” and initiated an IMF structural adjustment program in return for for $202 million in credits.

These measures have exacerbated the country’s decades-long economic stagnation, with devastating social consequences. Since the coup, the poverty rate has soared, reaching a peak of 66.5 percent in 2012; 36 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, including a striking seven out of ten rural households.

The official unemployment rate saw a significant jump last year from 5.3 percent to 7.3 percent, and it has been estimated that close to a million young people are neither working nor studying. Impoverishment since the coup has fed rising gang membership, a 50 percent increase in the murder rate and increased numbers of children and mothers fleeing the violence to the United States.

The Obama administration has continuously acted in support of the regime’s violations of democratic rights, as indicated by Hillary Clinton’s assertion in her book Hard Choices that they worked to “restore order” in Honduras in a manner that would “render the question of Zelaya moot.” Cáceres herself had condemned Clinton for legitimizing the coup.

For 2016, the US government has allocated $1 billion to its Alliance for Prosperity with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. While overseeing the intensification of deportations and raids against Central American refugees living in the US, Washington continues to be responsible for the worsening conditions fueling the flight of refugees.

Last month, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández—under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the US embassy—put into effect Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih) and its executing arm, Operation Avalanche, supposedly to “win back the respect of the Honduran people and to become an essential piece in the democratic system.”

Instead of regaining any control in the deepening crisis of governability and lawlessness, by favoring certain organized criminal groups over others, the government has only intensified the lucrative and violent struggles between gangs and cleared the way for further corruption and impunity, leading to more violent deaths of activists.

A poignant expression of the danger and sense of powerlessness felt by many is that Cáceres’ eulogy, by coworkers in COPINH and other organizations, had been written “years before her death.”

The National Police has blamed Cáceres for rejecting their protection, allegations the IACHR and COPINH have denied. The day after the incident, the police arrested Aureliano Molina Villanueva, a COPINH member, as primary suspect, only to release him under vigilance a day later.

Shortly after Nelson García’s killing, the National Police released a statement insisting, without any evidence, that it was an isolated crime completely unrelated to the evictions that took place earlier that morning.

The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and Amnesty International (AI) have joined the denunciations of the government for attempting to cover up its responsibility. After President Hernández refused a meeting over Cáceres’ murder, AI Director for the Americas, Erika Guevara-Rosas, declared that “Honduran authorities say one thing and do the opposite.”

COPINH has blamed the government for attempting to “clean its own image at the national and international levels” by creating the illusion of a “crime of passion or personal crime.” By painting these crimes as subjective and by obscuring the objective connection between violent oppression against communities and their leaders and a greater opening to finance capital, the Honduran government is protecting its own interests which are bound up with increased militarization and US imperialist exploitation of the region’s workers and resources.

Kaiser Permanente nurses in Los Angeles on one-week strike

Marc Wells

Twelve hundred registered nurses (RNs) at Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center (LAMC) walked out March 15 on a one-week strike. The action was called by the National Nurses United (NNU), a coalition of three unions, the main component of which is the California Nurses Association (CNA), an AFL-CIO affiliate.

The walk-out follows strikes and protests over the last several years against Kaiser and other profitable health care providers. The policies of these providers have resulted in lower living standards for health care workers and professionals, as well as cuts in staffing that put patients’ safety at risk.

The nurses at the LAMC voted to join the CAN/NNU last July and are now looking for their first contract. The nurses have not seen a wage increase in six years. During that time, Kaiser has centralized a number of important specialty services in the Los Angeles location, resulting in seriously demanding shifts. LAMC is the regional center for services like Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation and for the treatment of young children with cancer.

Registered Nurse (RN) Roselle Gatdula, who has worked at the Los Angeles location for seven years, complained to the media that at times she has more than 30 patients on her floor needing her assistance, while having access to only two thermometers.

A major concern is understaffing. According to a press release from the CNA/NNU, coronary care unit RN Joel Briones pointed out that “Kaiser LAMC prides itself on being the tertiary flagship center for the Southern California region and has expanded services here in the past few years, but it is hard to provide quality care while we are constantly short staffed.”

He also noted that, “Our patients deserve better. With billions in profits, the nurses are insisting Kaiser settle a contract that reflects our role as patient advocates for the region.”

In 2014, Kaiser Permanente reported revenues of $56.4 billion and a net income of $3.1 billion, an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2013. In 2014 the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, provided an uptick in enrollment of more than 5.6 percent, or 510,000 new enrollees.

Last year, net income fell to $1.9 billion, while enrollment grew by 650,000. The decline was mainly due to Wall Street’s gyrations in 2015, which caused Kaiser’s investments to suffer a loss of $800 million.

The list of nurses’ grievances includes a wage freeze and back wages allegedly owed to nurses for the last six years, as well as opposition to Kaiser’s plan to open a medical school in Pasadena. The CNA claims that the school will divert funds from patient care at the LAMC.

None of the past actions or protests by the nurses’ unions have resolved any of the essential issues. On the contrary, nurses criticize worsening and dangerous conditions.

Kaiser continues to operate during the strike, hiring temporary employees through agencies like American Mobile Traveling Nursing. However, the temporary nurses are only oriented for a brief period, at times for one day, exposing patients to risk and the nurses to blame.

Last spring, the CNA called a strike as part of a maneuver aimed at recruiting thousands of dues-paying members when the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) lost official recognition at the LAMC location. In August 2015 the National Labor Relations Board certified the CNA.

Now, the union has organized a stunt strike to solidify its role as main negotiator with Kaiser. The company has played along, knowing the union will not jeopardize its profits. “We believe that contract negotiations should take place directly at the bargaining table and not on the street,” said Kaiser’s statement. It promised no reprisals for the one-week strike.

The CNA has deliberately called an isolated and toothless walk-out, hoping to wear down the nurses and “soften them up” for a rotten deal with Kaiser.

Last week nurses at the Newton-Wellesley Hospital in the Boston area, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which also belongs to the NNU, voted by more than 90 percent to strike. The strike vote is the second the nurses have taken in the past year. The union called off the first walkout.

The NNU has supported Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination from early on. In April 2015, Sanders voted for HR2, known as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, a bipartisan bill that represents a historic attack on Medicare. The bill’s basic goal is the slashing of Medicare spending and its reorientation toward barebones-type of coverage in the name of “waste cutting.”

It should be noted that such bill is perfectly in line with Kaiser’s business model, aimed at cutting costs in order to boost profitability: the result in both cases is reduced and inadequate health care, needless suffering and avoidable death.

More broadly, the NNU’s support for Sanders must be viewed within the context of the union’s orientation to economic nationalism, which form the foundation of Sanders’ campaign. He attacks pro-corporate trade deals like NAFTA not from the point of view of opposing big business, but as part of an effort to pit US workers against workers in other countries.

The CNA/NNU strategy works in favor of corporations like Kaiser. After a week of allowing workers to let off steam, the CNA will sit down at the negotiating table and attempt to engineer a contract that will satisfy corporate needs and also maintain its dues base, which makes possible generous salaries for union officials.

Sanders under pressure to quit from Democratic leaders, media

Patrick Martin

In the wake of five losses in five contests Tuesday, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is coming under mounting pressure from Democratic Party leaders and the media to abandon his presidential campaign and concede the Democratic nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Remarks by President Obama to Democratic Party donors at a fundraiser March 11 in Austin, Texas were leaked to the New York Times Thursday and confirmed by the White House. Obama called on Democrats to begin uniting behind the party’s prospective nominee, assumed to be Clinton.

The Times headline went even further than the actual content of Obama’s words: “Obama Privately Tells Donors That Time Is Coming to Unite Behind Hillary Clinton.” As quoted, however, Obama was careful not to name any names, so that White House spokesman Josh Earnest could confirm that Obama had discussed the presidential race with Democratic donors, while disavowing any explicit preference for Clinton.

The Times reported, “In unusually candid remarks, President Obama privately told a group of Democratic donors last Friday that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was nearing the point at which his campaign against Hillary Clinton would end, and that the party must soon come together to back her.”

The newspaper continued, “Mr. Obama chose his words carefully, and did not explicitly call on Mr. Sanders to quit the race, according to those in the room. Still, those in attendance said in interviews that they took his comments as a signal to Mr. Sanders that perpetuating his campaign, which is now an uphill climb, could only help the Republicans recapture the White House.”

This report touched off a flurry of commentaries along the same lines, citing either Obama or unnamed high-level Democratic Party officials. Typical headlines included:

· Slate magazine: “President Obama Gives Bernie Sanders a Subtle Push Toward the Exit”

· The Hill: “Obama privately urges Dems to rally around Clinton”

· US News & World Report: “Sanders Resists Pressure to Quit After Primary Losses”

· Fox News: “Sanders fights for life as Clinton wins another state, Obama turns screws”

Obama did not endorse Clinton overtly or name Sanders as the candidate who should step back in favor of the frontrunner, but the implication was clear, especially given the timing of the remarks—delivered before the March 15 Clinton primary sweep, but not made public until two days after the vote.

As Slate magazine commented: “Hillary Clinton’s five-for-five sweep of this past Tuesday’s Democratic primaries turned her into her party’s presumptive nominee. President Obama, though, appears to have come to that conclusion even before voting began during the Super Tuesday sequel, via the New York Times .”

Obama voted by absentee ballot in the Illinois primary, won narrowly by Clinton. The White House has refused to comment on which candidate he voted for, but his support for his former Secretary of State has been an open secret since last October, when Vice President Joe Biden decided not to enter the race.

The Clinton campaign has been more cautious than the White House in pushing for an early end to the primary race. In part this is the unavoidable result of Clinton’s own history: in her unsuccessful contest with Obama in 2008, she consistently rejected suggestions that she could not overtake Obama’s early lead in delegates, and she remained in the race to the very last primary and caucus.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook even conceded, in a memo released to the press Wednesday, that upcoming contests in a series of less populous states, mostly in the West, would likely favor Sanders. But he argued Clinton’s lead was insurmountable, and that “a string of victories by Sen. Sanders over the next few weeks would have little impact on Sec. Clinton’s position in the race.”

The upcoming contests include Arizona, Utah and Idaho March 22 and Alaska, Hawaii and Washington March 26, then a ten-day break around Easter, followed by Wisconsin April 5 and Wyoming April 9. All but Arizona and Wisconsin are caucus states, where the Sanders campaign has usually had the advantage.

The drumbeat from the Democratic Party establishment and the media amounts to a demand that Sanders carry out his assigned role in the presidential election: convincing his supporters, particularly among young people, to back Clinton in the general election, despite the widespread lack of enthusiasm, and in many cases open hostility, towards her right-wing record as a defender of Wall Street and advocate of American militarism, including the Iraq War.

Sanders’ spokesmen complained that the nomination campaign was only halfway completed, that there was still time for him to overtake Clinton’s lead of more than 300 convention delegates, and that millions more people should be given the opportunity to have a choice for the Democratic nomination.

But more significantly, Sanders emphasized that his campaign, win or lose, was good for the Democratic Party. “People want to become engaged in the political process by having vigorous primary and caucus process,” he said. “I think we open up the possibility of having a large voter turnout in November. That is exactly what we need.”

This statement demonstrates that Sanders is fully conscious of the role he plays in American politics, using “socialist” rhetoric and occasional calls for “political revolution” to attract youth and working people, only to trap them within the confines of the Democratic Party and insure that there is no political challenge to the corporate-controlled two-party system.

Impeachment drive accelerates amid expanding political crisis in Brazil

Bill Van Auken

The leadership of the lower house of the Brazilian Congress has moved to accelerate the impeachment process against the country’s President Dilma Rousseff amid continuing street demonstrations both against and in favor of her ruling Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT).

Friday saw demonstrations in every state of Brazil in defense of Dilma, as the president is universally known, and Lula, ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former metalworkers union leader who was a cofounder of the Workers Party over 35 years ago.

While the CUT trade union federation, one of the main organizers of the demonstration, claimed that 250,000 people rallied in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil’s financial and industrial capital, and another 50,000 reportedly took to the streets in Recife to the north, the demonstrations, dominated by the PT officialdom, the CUT, government-affiliated “social movements” and student federations, were far smaller than the protests held across the country last Sunday demanding the ouster of Rousseff and the PT.

Those demonstrations, like similar ones held a year ago, were dominated by better-off sections of the middle class who have been mobilized on an extremely right-wing basis. Participants included those calling for a reprise of the 1964 military coup that led to over two decades of military dictatorship. The crowd also included an openly fascist youth group as well as people calling for the fascistic American billionaire businessman Donald Trump, the leading candidate in the current Republican presidential primary, to rescue Brazil.

While Brazilian workers are not participating in significant numbers in these right-wing rallies, they are likewise not joining in any major way in the demonstrations in support of the PT, whose pro-capitalist policies and corrupt politics they blame for the Brazilian economy’s slide into its worst economic crisis since the 1930s, with continuing waves of mass layoffs combined with escalating inflation that is decimating living standards.

There was a brief clash at the rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista Friday when a small group of antigovernment protesters raised a banner demanding Rousseff’s impeachment, provoking a surge by the pro-Rousseff demonstrators, who were repulsed by Military Police using pepper spray.

In the early morning hours preceding the rally, police shock troops cleared the avenue, which had been blocked by protesters demanding the ouster of Rousseff. The cops employed tear gas, water cannon and stun grenades against the rather small band of demonstrators. Abandoning the street, they assembled in front of the Federation of Industries of São Paulo (FIESP), the country’s leading employers association, whose chief came out to greet them and subsequently provided them with lunch. FIESP gave its backing to last Sunday’s anti-Rousseff rallies.

Lula addressed the Sao Paulo rally Friday night, shouting repeatedly “There will be no coup!” and accusing Rousseff’s opposition of attempting to reverse the results of the 2014 election. He said he was rejoining the government to help Rousseff “reestablish peace.”

Anger on both sides of the impeachment debate was heightened—and the ranks of Friday’s rallies no doubt swelled—by the release on Wednesday of the contents of a conversation between Rousseff and Lula secretly recorded in a wiretap ordered by Sérgio Moro, the judge leading the Operation Carwash (Lava Jato) investigation into the ever-widening bribery and political kickback scandal surrounding the state-owned energy conglomerate Petrobras.

The wiretap recorded the Brazilian president telling her predecessor, Lula, that she would have a declaration of acceptance of his appointment as a government minister to be used in “cases of necessity.”

Moro and other investigators interpreted the statement as proof that Rousseff was prepared to make the appointment in order to block Lula’s prosecution in a criminal court and thereby forestall any conviction and possible jail time in connection with the corruption scandal. Ministers can be tried only by Brazil’s supreme court, which provides them with greater rights and proceeds much more slowly than a regular court.

Lula was briefly detained earlier this month for questioning in connection with the Petrobras scandal. He is accused by prosecutors of hiding his ownership of a seaside triplex apartment outside of São Paulo that was built by one of the construction firms accused of making political kickbacks in return for receiving lucrative contracts with the oil company.

Rousseff went ahead Thursday with the appointment of Lula as her chief of cabinet, denouncing Moro’s wiretap and the release of its content. She accused the judge of “dubious methods” and “deplorable practices” which she said violated the “principles and guarantees fostered in the constitution as well as the rights of our citizens. What’s more, it sets dangerous precedents. That’s how coup d’états begin.”

Making the release of the wiretap even more egregious was that the recording was made after the warrant authorizing it had expired.

Moro has defended the release of the wiretap evidence, comparing it to the US Supreme Court’s 1974 order that Richard Nixon turn over White House tapes to Congress.

Marco Aurélio Mello, a right-wing member of Brazil’s supreme court, described Moro’s leaking of the wiretap evidence to the media as “only a peccadillo” on his part that did not “invalidate the evidence.”

Meanwhile, an impeachment committee held its first meeting Friday as the lower house of Congress convened in a highly unusual Friday session. While Brazil’s deputies and senators habitually clear out of the inland capital of Brasilia on Fridays, not to return until Tuesday, the house speaker, Eduardo Cunha has vowed to convene sessions every weekday in order to more rapidly run out the clock on the 10 days that the constitution grants Rousseff to defend herself against impeachment charges.

The impeachment has been initiated on the basis of charges that Rousseff illegally manipulated the federal budget in order to maintain government spending in the run-up to the 2014 presidential election. Cunha, however, threw into the proceedings the charges made as part of a plea bargain by Delcídio do Amaral, the former PT leader in the Senate, that both Rousseff and Lula had actively participated in the Petrobras kickback operation.

The 65-member impeachment committee includes at least eight deputies who are themselves facing criminal charges before Brazil’s supreme court, while Cunha himself is a prominent suspect in the Petrobras scandal, accused of funneling tens of millions of dollars to his political allies and secretly depositing at least $5 million in Swiss bank accounts.

The deepening economic and political crisis has thoroughly discredited every major party and political institution in Brazil as the government veers ever closer to a full-blown constitutional crisis, with the executive, legislative and judicial branches each disputing each other’s powers.

In an ominous speech delivered to the Military Command of Amazonia in Manaus Friday, Gen. Eduardo Villas Bôas, commander of the Brazilian Army, said that he found it “regrettable that in a democratic country like Brazil, people find only in the Armed Forces a possibility of a solution to the crisis.”

European Union and Turkey reach deal to seal borders and expel refugees

Jordan Shilton

A summit between the 28 European Union (EU) heads of government and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu produced an agreement yesterday in Brussels aimed at hermetically sealing off Europe’s borders to the millions of refugees fleeing war zones in the Middle East and North Africa.

Unveiling the deal after two days of talks, EU Council President Donald Tusk declared it would apply to refugees arriving in Greece after March 20. Refugees arriving on the Greek islands by crossing the Aegean Sea will be returned to Turkey, following the completion of a farcical asylum procedure in Greece. In exchange, the EU pledged to accept one Syrian refugee via legal means for every Syrian sent back to Turkey from Greece. This process will commence on April 4.

On top of the €3 billion offered to Turkey thus far, the EU has agreed to pay an additional €3 billion to Ankara by 2018. Turkey will also be offered the prospect of visa-free travel within the 28-state bloc for its citizens and the opening of a new chapter in negotiations over Turkish membership in the EU.

The claim that the deal is aimed at securing protection for refugees according to international law is a fraud. Turkey, a state gripped by a low-level civil war, where democratic rights are trampled under foot and political opponents of the regime suppressed, is to be declared a “safe country”, even though it has not fully implemented the UN Refugee Convention. This makes the asylum procedure formally offered in Greece practically irrelevant, since all refugees can be rejected on the grounds that they must first seek asylum in Turkey.

Moreover, Syrian refugees will only be accepted into the EU to the extent that others are prepared to risk their lives crossing the Aegean, which is patrolled by NATO warships and where well over 300 refugees have already drowned this year.

Expressing the indifference of the ruling elite to the plight of the millions fleeing war and poverty, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated in a blunt message to the refugees, “Whoever sets out on the dangerous route is not only risking their life, they also have no prospect of success.”

The deal’s reactionary character was expressed in the fact that even the far-right Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, whose country has been sealed off by border fences since last year, praised it for placing no obligations on individual EU member states to accept refugees.

Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu also hailed the agreement as “historic.”

Even reports in the mass media acknowledged that the deal effectively means the abandonment of any commitment to the right to asylum. An Associated Press story noted that the EU-Turkey deal meant the “outsourcing” of refugee protection to Turkey. Whereas an earlier draft instructed Turkey to treat refugees in accordance with international law, the final agreement merely contained the provision that Ankara adhere to those legal standards deemed “relevant.”

Refugees who do make it to Greece will be put to the back of the line when they return to Turkey, making it virtually impossible for them to make it to Europe legally.

In an indication of what is to come, reports emerged on Friday that Turkish coastguard boats and helicopters had detained 3,000 refugees on their way to the Greek island of Lesbos.

The deal agreed to unanimously by all EU governments is a blatant repudiation of the basic democratic right to asylum. In the wake of World War II and the horrific crimes of the Nazis, the capitalist powers felt compelled to establish the right to asylum as a fundamental tenet of international law. The UN Refugee Convention passed in 1951 guaranteed refugees not only the right to seek protection from war, discrimination and persecution in another country, but to be provided with access to jobs, education and social services.

The EU has committed to accept a mere 72,000 refugees, under conditions where close to 3 million Syrians alone are stranded in Turkey, and up to half of Syria’s population are either internally displaced or have fled to other countries. This is a return to the policies of the 1930s when the so-called democratic countries of Europe and North America accepted a token number of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

Greek Interior Minister Panagiotis Kouroumblis directly compared the Idomeni camp on the Macedonian border with a Nazi concentration camp. “This is a modern Dachau, the result of the logic of closed borders,” said the member of the Syriza-led government in Athens, which has deployed troops to detain refugees and is acting as Europe’s gatekeeper.

Significantly, the final agreement contained the provision that when the number of 72,000 refugees is reached, the “one in, one out” mechanism will be suspended and no more refugees will be admitted to the EU from Turkey.

In 2008, when the global financial system stood on the verge of collapse, no expense was spared to bail out the banks and investors whose actions brought the world economy to the brink of collapse. But when it comes to providing for the basic necessities of life for millions of desperate refugees, no resources are forthcoming.

The catastrophic conditions that have created the mass of refugees now blocked at Europe’s borders are themselves the product of the actions of the imperialist powers. The NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, the NATO-led air war to topple the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011, and the ongoing regime change operation to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus—to mention only the most prominent examples—have resulted in the destruction of entire societies. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions have been forced to flee their homes.

The reliance on Turkey to block these refugees from reaching Europe will mean that they will be returned to the war zones they have sought so desperately to flee. Ankara is in the midst of a conflict with Kurdish separatists in the southeast of the country, where the Turkish army has launched a series of military operations resulting in hundreds of casualties. The Islamist government has also stepped up repression of journalists and the media, suppressing the Zaman newspaper, a publication critical of the government.

Notwithstanding the public pose of unanimity, the agreement on deterring the millions fleeing war cannot disguise the fact that deep differences remain within the EU itself. The closure of borders to keep out refugees, seen most recently with the decision by Austria and its Balkan neighbours to unilaterally impose border controls, threatened to tear the EU apart.

The deal was a “great success” for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to Die Welt. Merkel explicitly praised the deal because it embodied her demand for a “European solution” to the crisis. This call has nothing to do with any desire to assist refugees but is bound up with the interests of German big business to prevent the collapse of freedom of movement within the Schengen zone, from which it has been the main beneficiary over the past two decades.

For its part, France is less supportive of the concessions made to Turkey. French President Francois Hollande emphasised on Friday that Ankara would have to fulfill all 72 requirements before the removal of visa restrictions for Turkish citizens to travel within the EU would be implemented, according to Reuters.

Within the European working class, there is deep opposition to the sealing off of the EU’s borders and the patrolling of the surrounding waters by NATO warships. Significantly, in spite of the incessant right-wing propaganda by the media and established political parties, German daily Die Welt reported the results of a poll Friday that showed 51 percent of respondents in favour of opening the border at Idomeni.

There is no reflection in the political establishment of the widespread sympathy among working people for the refugees, however. The so-called “left” is fully on board with the anti-refugee policy. In Germany, the Left Party is backing Merkel’s policy, embodied in the deal with Turkey. In Greece, the Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras has joined hands with Davutoglu in upholding Fortress Europe.

Illegal Drugs, Race and the 2016 Elections

David Rosen

Illegal drug use in the U.S. is reaching epidemic levels.  In 2013, an estimated 25 million Americans were illicit drug users, about 9.4 percent of the population aged 12 or older; this is up from the 2002-09 rate of 7.9 percent.  The drugs used included marijuana/hashish, cocaine/crack, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants and prescription-type psychotherapeutics.  Among whites, illicit drug use increased to 9.5 percent from 8.5 percent in less then a decade.

Illegal drug use has evolved from an inner city (i.e., black) crime to a suburban (i.e., white) disease.  A 2015 Gallup poll of the use of “mood altering drugs” found that seven of the top 10 states with the highest level of abuse – the percent of those using “almost every day” – were red states located in the South: West Virginia (28.1%), Kentucky (24.5%), Alabama (24.2%), Louisiana (22.9%), South Carolina (22.8%), Mississippi (22.3%) and Missouri (22.2%).

The change in the character of illegal drug use is no better expressed than in the personal tragedies experienced of two former Republican presidential candidates, Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush.

“My husband, Frank, and I buried a child to drug addiction,” Fiorina said during the New Hampshire primary.  She was referring to her stepdaughter, Lori, who died in 2009 at the age of 35, having struggled for many years with marijuana, alcohol, prescription pills and bulimia.

Speaking to Bush, she noted, “The pot today is very different than pot Jeb just admitted to smoking 40 years ago.”  “So 40 years ago, I smoked marijuana and I admit it,” Bush said.  “I’m sure there are other people that might have done it.”  While Governor of Florida, Bush’s daughter, Noelle, suffered from drug addiction.  “She went through hell, so did her mom, and so did I.”

The National Institutes of Health found that from 2001 to 2014 the U. S. witnessed a threefold increase in deaths due to opioid pain relievers and a six-fold increase in heroin overdoses.  During the same period, overdose deaths from prescription drugs like Valium and Klonopin — sedatives called benzodiazepines — increased five fold.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) notes that overdoses (i.e., “drug poisoning”) are “the number one cause of injury-related death in the United States, with 43,982 deaths occurring in 2013.”  It found, based on data from 28 states, that the “death rate for heroin overdose doubled from 2010 through 2012.” Drilling down, it found there were 8,257 heroine deaths, most involving men aged 25–44 years.

In 2013, whites had the highest suicide rate in the country, at 14.2 per 100,000; American Indians and Alaska Natives were second with a rate of 11.7.  However, during 2005–2009, the highest suicide rates were among American Indian/Alaskan Native males with 27.6 suicides and non-Hispanic white males with 25.96 suicides.  Among women, non-Hispanic whites had the highest rate with 6.7 suicides.

Illegal drugs, the prison-industrial complex and the changing racial character of addiction – and suicide – surfaced a couple of times during the 2016 presidential race.  In New Hampshire and Colorado, Republican candidates, notably Fiorina and Bush, openly discussed it a personal experiences that would shape their practice.  However, illegal drugs and race remains little considered as a critical campaign issue.  The following summarizes the public position of the remaining candidates.

Republican candidates

A week or so after Nancy Reagan’s death, some of the Republican candidates have moved away her call to “Just Say No!”  The three candidates positions are as follows:

* Ted Cruz (Senator, TX) — he favors harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.

“When it comes to a question of legalizing marijuana, I don’t support legalizing marijuana.  If it were on the ballot in the state of Texas, I would vote no. But I also believe that’s a legitimate question for the states to make a determination…I think it is appropriate for the federal government to recognize that the citizens of those states have made that decision, and one of the benefits of it, you know, using [Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis’ terms of laboratories of democracy, is we can now watch and see what happens in Colorado and Washington State.”

* John Kasich (governor, OH) – he opposes the legalization of marijuana for medical and recreational purposes, but considers it a states’ rights issue.

“If I happened to be president, I would lead a significant campaign down at the grassroots level to stomp these drugs out of our country.”

* Donald Trump (tycoon, NY) – supports legalization of medical marijuana, but opposes legalization for recreational purposes.

“I say it’s bad.  … Medical marijuana is another thing, but I think [recreational marijuana] it’s bad. And I feel strongly about that.”  He also supports state’s rights to decide: “If they vote for it, they vote for it. But they’ve got a lot of problems going on right now, in Colorado. Some big problems.  But I think medical marijuana, 100 percent.”

Democratic candidates

The two Democratic candidates reflect a more nuanced stand on illegal drugs, each calling for a greater emphasis on prevention, treatment and recovery as well as revision of criminal prosecution.  The following quotes are from their respective websites.

* Hillary Clinton (former Sec. of State, NY) – has supported use of medical marijuana and for states to regulate recreational use.

“I do support the use of medical marijuana, and I think even there we need to do a lot more research so that we know exactly how we’re going to help people for whom medical marijuana provides relief.”

“I think that we have the opportunity through the states that are pursuing recreational marijuana to find out a lot more than we know today.”

* Bernie Sanders (Senator, VT) – has taken the most progressive stand on illegal drugs, calling for nonviolent drug offenders to receive treatment instead of incarceration.  He support medical use of marijuana and more study of Colorado’s recreational use of marijuana.  With regard to growing the heroin and opioid epidemic, he’s called for “preventative measures to increase education and rehabilitation in order to combat this epidemic.”

“Bernie supports the medical use of marijuana and the rights of states to determine its legality. He co-sponsored the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act in 2001.”

“Vermont voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana and I support that.”

* * *

The notorious “war on drags” has dragged on for nearly 50 years and is increasingly recognized as a failure.  A 2015 Pew Research survey found that more than half (53%) of respondents favor the legal use of marijuana, while 44 percent are opposed.  It also reported that nearly a decade ago, in 2006, just one third (32%) supported marijuana legalization, while nearly twice as many (60%) were opposed.

The war on drugs failed on two fronts: (i) it failed to halt supply, close down the drug pipeline; and (ii) it failed to quell demand, the popular desire/need for “illegal” drugs.  It is a replay of Prohibition, but in slow motion.  Over this near half-century, both Republican and Democratic leaders backed the war on drug at an estimated federal, state and local price tag of $1 trillion.

More troubling, about 2.3 million Americans are imprisoned today, a significant proportion for drug offenses.  In 1980, about 40,000 people were in U.S. jails and prisons for drug crimes; today, it’s about a half-million people, a disproportionate number African-Americans and other people of color.  According to one study, from 1980 to 2007, African Americans were arrested for drug law violations at rates 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than white arrest rates.

The growing perception that the war on drugs is a failure is leading two fundamental changes regarding drug policy.  First, an increasing number of states are legalizing marijuana for both medical purposes and for recreational use.  Currently, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized to one degree or another medical marijuana and three states (i.e., Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Alaska) and Washington D.C. have approved adult use of recreational marijuana; a dozen or so states may have recreational marijuana ballot initiatives or referendums in the 2016 elections.

Second, states and cities across the country are revising their drug laws, with drug busts being reclassified from felony crimes to minor offenses, accompanied by a citation and modest fine — and no prison time. Among the state reclassifying drug offenses are Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Texas.

The prison-industrial complex has proven to be a failure to address either drug trafficking and drug use.  It’s also proven to be unaffordable public expense that accomplished very little – other than enriching a handful of state bureaucrats and private corporations.  One can only hope the American electorate will act accordingly in the November elections.