Poverty in America: the Deepening Crisis

David Rosen

Bernie Sanders has put inequality at the center of the 2016 presidential elections.  However much the corporate media attempt to turn the election into a personality contest between Clinton and Trump, inequality will not go away as the defining domestic election issue.  Whoever are the two major party presidential candidates, they will have to address the deepening problem of inequality.

The Occupy insurgency of 2011 put inequality onto the American political agenda, redefining class struggle in terms everyone could understand – the 1% versus the rest of us.  Sadly, only one major political campaign has followed — the push for a $15 minimum wage – and it has been fought by grassroots campaigns at the local and state levels by labor unions, NGOs, community groups and ordinary workers.

The concept of inequality, of the 1% vs the 99%, is a powerful metaphor that makes clear the structure of wealth and power defining American life today.  Sadly, while framing the problem confronting the nation, the concept of inequality doesn’t delineate the forms of economic, political and moral tyranny impacting the lives of an increasing number of Americans.  To illuminate the deepening crisis the U.S. is undergoing as capitalism restructures its useful to reframe the notion of inequality in terms of poverty.

Often forgotten, a half-century ago Michael Harrington published The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962) that helped put poverty at the center of the national political agenda.  In his first State of the Union address following Pres. John Kennedy’s assassination, in January 1964, Pres. Lyndon Johnson called for an “unconditional war on poverty.”  He appointed Sargent Shriver, JFK’s brother-in-law and director of the Peace Corps, to lead the campaign.

Harrington called for a campaign to fight the systemic “culture of poverty,” the underlying racism and inequality, that institutionalized poverty.  Unfortunately, the Johnson administration adopted a more band-aid policy, targeting direct aid to those it identified as the most needy.  Nevertheless, over the following two decades, these efforts helped reduced by half the official level of poverty in America.  However, those days are long gone.

Poverty is a form of social powerlessness.  The poorer you are, the weaker you are, the harder your life; everything is about survival.  Poverty can be analyzed in two complementary ways – who and where.  By “who,” poverty refers to people based on their gender, race and age; by “where,” poverty refers to the location it is experienced, whether in cities, suburbs or rural areas as well as different parts of the country.  Both who and where are relative concepts reflecting the social structure of inequality.

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Poverty is an endemic feature of American capitalism.  As tracked by the Census Bureau in a September 2015 study, “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014,” the U.S. has witnessed 11 periods of “recession” over the last half-century, including: 1948-1949, 1953-1954, 1957-1958, 1960-1961, 1969-1979, 1973-1975, 1980, 1981-1982, 1990-1991, 2001 and 2007-2009.  One consequence of the capitalist boom-bust cycle is repeated upswings in the poverty rate.  According to researchers at the University of Michigan, the poverty rate hit 22 percent in the late-1950s, involving nearly 40 million Americans. The rate peaked in 1959, hiting 22.4 percent, the highest in the post-WW-II era.

The same year that Pres. Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, 1973, the poverty rate hit its lowest level over the last half-century – 11.1 percent, involving 23 million people.  Like a rollercoaster, the poverty rate increased to 15.2 percent in 1983, then fell to 11.3 percent in 2000, jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010 and has now flattened out at 14.8 percent.  In 1964, when Pres. Johnson called for a “war on poverty,” the rate was 19 percent.  Has the 15 percent poverty rate become the new normal?  Does this mean that a 0 percent poverty rate is no longer conceivable?

In 2014 median household income was 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the Great Recession hit.  In ‘14, the median household income was $53,657, unchanged from 2013; median household income peaked in 1999 at $57,843.  The U.S. economy has stagnated in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and income for a majority of Americas (57.1%) was flat during the period of 2009-2012.

In ’14, the poverty threshold was $24,000 and between 2009 and 2012, more than one third of the population (34.5%) suffered, in the Census Bureau’s word, “at least one spell of poverty lasting at least 2 or more months.”

So, which Americans suffer poverty the most and where do they reside?  According to the Census Bureau, in 2014 Asian households had the highest median income of $74,297; non-Hispanic white households was $60,256; African-American household income was $35,398; and Hispanic household median income was $42,491.

In terms of geographic location, households in the Northeast had the highest median household at $59,210 and the West at the $57,688; those with the lowest were in the Midwest at $54,267 and the South at $49,655.  Households within metropolitan areas but outside principal cities had the highest median income at $61,600, while households outside metropolitan areas had the lowest income at $45,482.

Sadly, full-time workingwomen earn about four-fifths (79%) of wages earned by male workers and nearly one third (30.6%) of female-headed households were in poverty; male workers are earning 2.2 percent less in 2014 than in 2007.  Most disturbing, in 2014 the poverty rate for children under 18 was 21.1 percent, while the rate for those aged 18 to 64 was 13.5 percent and the rate for people aged 65 and older was 10.0 percent.

The Census Bureau notes as an aside, “The official poverty thresholds developed more than 50 years ago do not take into account rising standards of living or such things as childcare expenses, other work-related expenses, variations in medical costs across population groups, or geographic differences in the cost of living.”  If such factors were included, poverty in the U.S. would be far worse.

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Capitalism is a system of plunder and those who suffer most are the poorest, the weakest, those least capable of defending themselves.  The few safeguards against domestic plunder that have emerged over the last century of reformism, be it government safety nets, union organizing or nonprofit programs, never fully protect those most vulnerable from the tyranny of wealth and power that determines American life.

The poor pay dearly for their poverty.  Most troubling, their lives are insecure, a constant struggle not simply to make ends meet but to live day-to-day.  Little can be taken for granted, whether a job, a home or one’s health.  Education is a luxury; obesity a common condition; drug use – and overdoses – a way to blunt the pain; suicide increasingly is a way out; and mortality rate for the poor are on the rise.

Poverty in America continues to be a hidden crisis, at once widespread, deepening and evermore painful.  In 1964, Pres. Johnson called for a “war on poverty” and now, a half-century later, one can only hope that Mrs. Clinton — if she wins in the November beauty contest — will champion a 21^st century “war on poverty,” but one that addresses what Harrington identified as the systemic “culture of poverty,” the underlying racism and inequality that institutionalizes poverty.

Somnolent Europe, Russia, and China

Paul Craig Roberts

In September 19, 2000, going on 16 years ago, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the London Telegraph reported:

“Declassified American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

“The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen. William J. Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.”

The documents show that the European Union was a creature of the CIA.

As I have previously written, Washington believes that it is easier to control one government, the EU, than to control many separate European governments.  As Washington has a long term investment in orchestrating the European Union, Washington is totally opposed to any country exiting the arrangement.  That is why President Obama recently went to London to tell his lapdog, the British Prime Minister, that there could be no British exit.

Like other European nations, the British people were never allowed to vote on whether they were in favor of their country ceasing to exist and them becoming Europeans. British history would become the history of a bygone people like the Romans and Babylonians.

The oppressive nature of unaccountable EU laws and regulations and the EU requirement to accept massive numbers of third world immigrants have created a popular demand for a British vote on whether to remain a sovereign country or to dissolve and submit to Brussels and its dictatorial edicts.  The vote is scheduled for June 23.

Washington’s position is that the British people must not be permitted to decide against the EU, because such a decision is not in Washington’s interest.

The prime minister’s job is to scare the British people with alleged dire consequences of “going it alone.”  The claim is that “little England” cannot stand alone.  The British people are being told that isolation will spell their end, and their country will become a backwater bypassed by progress.  Everything great will happen elsewhere, and they will be left out.

If the fear campaign does not succeed and the British vote to exit the EU, the open question is whether Washington will permit the British government to accept the democratic outcome.

Alternatively, the British government will deceive the British people, as it routinely does, and declare that Britain has negotiated concessions from Brussels that dispose of the problems that concern the British people.

Washington’s position shows that Washington is a firm believer that only Washington’s interests are important.  If other peoples wish to retain national sovereignty, they are simply being selfish.

Moreover, they are out of compliance with Washington, which means they can be declared a “threat to American national security.” The British people are not to be permitted to make decisions that do not comply with Washington’s interest. My prediction is that the British people will either be deceived or overridden.

It is Washington’s self-centeredness, the self-absorption, the extraordinary hubris and arrogance, that explains the orchestrated “Russian threat.” Russia has not presented herself to the West as a military threat.  Yet, Washington is confronting Russia with a US/NATO naval buildup in the Black Sea, a naval, troop and tank buildup in the Baltics and Poland, missile bases on Russia’s borders, and plans to incorporate the former Russian provinces of Georgia and Ukraine in US defense pacts against Russia.

When Washington, its generals and European vassals declare Russia to be a threat, they mean that Russia has an independent foreign policy and acts in her own interest rather than in Washington’s interest.  Russia is a threat, because Russia demonstrated the capability of blocking Washington’s intended invasion of Syria and bombing of Iran.  Russia blunted one purpose of Washington’s coup in the Ukraine by peacefully and democratically reuniting with Crimera, the site of Russia’s Black Sea naval base and a Russian province for several centuries.

Perhaps you have wondered how it was possible for small countries such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yeman, and Venezuela to be threats to the US superpower.  On its face Washington’s claim is absurd.  Do US presidents, Pentagon officials, national security advisors, and chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff really regard countries of so little capability as military threats to the United States and NATO countries?

No, they do not.  The countries were declared threats, because they have, or had prior to their destruction, independent foreign and economic policies.  Their policy independence means that they do not or did not accept US hegemony. They were attacked in order to bring them under US hegemony.

In Washington’s view, any country with an independent policy is outside Washington’s umbrella and, therefore, is a threat.

Venezuela became, in the words of US President Obama, an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” necessitating a “national emergency” to contain the “Venezuelan threat” when the Venezuelan government put the interests of the Venezuelan people above those of American corporations.

Russia became a threat when the Russian government demonstrated the ability to block Washington’s intended military attacks on Syria and Iran and when Washington’s coup in the Ukraine failed to deliver to Washington the Russian Black Sea naval base.

Clearly Venezuela cannot possibly pose a military threat to the US, so Venezuela cannot possibly pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the US.”  Venezuela is a “threat” because the Venezuelan government does not comply with Washington’s orders.

It is absolutely certain that Russia has made no threats whatsoever against the Baltics, Poland, Romania, Europe, or the United States.  It is absolutely certain that Russia has not invaded the Ukraine.  How do we know?  If Russia had invaded Ukraine, the Ukraine would no longer be there. It would again be a Russian province where until 20 years ago Ukraine resided for centuries, for longer than the US has existed. Indeed, the Ukraine belongs in Russia more than Hawaii and the deracinated southern states belong in the US.

Yet, these fantastic lies from the highest ranks of the US government, from NATO, from Washington’s British lackeys, from the bought-and-paid-for Western media, and from the bought-and-paid-for EU are repeated endlessly as if they are God’s revealed truth.

Syria still exists because it is under Russian protection.  That is the only reason Syria still exists, and it is also another reason that Washington wants Russia out of the way.

Do Russia and China realize their extreme danger?  I don’t think even Iran realizes its ongoing danger despite its close call.

If Russia and China realize their danger, would the Russian government permite one-fifth of its media to be foreign owned?  Does Russia understand that “foreign owned” means CIA owned?

If not, why not?  If so, why does the Russian government permit its own destabilization at the hands of Washington’s intelligence service?

China is even more careless.  There are 7,000 US-funded NGOs.  Only last month did the Chinese government finally move, very belatedly, to put some restrictions on these foreign agents who are working to destabilize China.  The members of these treasonous organizations have not been arrested.  They have merely been put under police watch, an almost useless restriction as Washington can provide endless money with which to bribe the Chinese police.

Why do Russia and China think that their police are less susceptible to bribes than Mexico’s or American police?  Despite the multi-decade “war on drugs,” the drug flow from Mexico to the US is unimpeded.  Indeed, the police forces of both countries have a huge interest in the “war on drugs” as the war brings them riches in the form of bribes. Indeed, as the crucified reporter for the San Jose Mercury News newspaper proved many years ago, the CIA itself is in the drug-running business. (See Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair)

In the United States truth-tellers are persecuted and imprisoned, or they are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-semites,” and “domestic extremists.”  The entire Western World consists of a dystopia far worse than the one described by George Orwell in his famous book, 1984.

That Russia and China permit Washington to operate in their media, in their universities, in their financial system, and in “do-good” NGOs that infiltrate every aspect of their societies demonstrates that both governments have no interest in their survival as independent states. They are too scared of being called “authoritarian” by the Western presstitute media to protect their own independence.

My prediction is that Russia and China will soon be confronted with an unwelcome decision: accept American hegemony or go to war.

Hillary Clinton and the End of the Democratic Party

Rob Urie

Friends with Benefits

Liberal incredulity at Charles Koch’s (Koch Bros.) recent (soft)endorsement of Hillary Clinton — assertions that is was either a non-sequitur or a ploy to discredit her, was to dismiss the endorsement without answering the question: what about Mrs. Clinton’s policies, or those of any other establishment Democrat for that matter, could inheritance babies, oil and gas industry magnates and long-term supporters of the radical Right like Mr. Koch possibly object to? Mr. Koch was simply saying out loud what anyone paying attention to American politics in recent decades already knows: the Democratic Party is the Party of Wall Street and of corporate America.

To the political inconvenience of said establishment Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Koch’s endorsement has content behind it. His charge (link above) is that establishment Democrats have the softer touch needed in present circumstance to sell Conservative policies like deregulation of industry and fiscal austerity. As Bill Clinton, whose policies Mr. Koch preferred to those of George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have demonstrated— it is socially liberal Democrats who have been the better proponents of Wall Street’s neo-capitalist takeover precisely because they accomplish with stealth economic policies what Republicans attempt more straightforwardly through politics.

In support of Mr. Koch’s assertions are secret documents leaked last week by Greenpeace on the TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) ‘trade’ agreement that illustrate the Democrat’s strategy of publicly supporting environmental and labor regulations while undermining them through ‘trade’ deals that give the power to regulate to multi-national corporations. The mechanisms for doing so, ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) provisions and their variants in these ‘trade’ agreements, limit state regulations in the public interest by forcing states to pay corporations for phantom ‘lost profits’ due to regulation. That Charles Koch personally benefits from these policies while Democratic Party loyalists pay for them illustrates who Democrats really answer to.

Weakened at Bernie’s

The Democratic Party’s efforts to install Mrs. Clinton as its nominee would be premature, bordering on pathological, had Bernie Sanders not signaled his willingness to bow out based on Mrs. Clinton’s demonstrated ability to garner less than 9% of the eligible votes (read on). Registered Democrats represent 31% of registered voters and 17% of eligible voters. Bernie Sanders has the support of approximately 50% of registered Democrats which leaves support for Hillary Clinton at 16% of registered voters and less than 9% of eligible voters (54% of eligible voters voted in the 2012 election). Contrary to the assertions of Democratic Party functionaries, it isn’t at all clear at this stage that Mrs. Clinton could be elected dog catcher, let alone President.

Source: Gallup.

The tactic of posing Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy as fait accompli via a rigged delegate count is to claim impermeability for the Democratic political establishment. In those historical moments when elections settle political matters this strategy ‘works’ to the extent that it de-legitimizes resistance. But with only a bit more than half of eligible voters voting in recent elections and well over half of those that do voting for ‘outsider’ candidates, claims of impermeability look a lot like the delusion of class privilege seen through a filter of self-sequestration. In terms of basic self-preservation for the ruling class, Bernie Sanders’ election would be the pressure-relief valve that might save the Washington establishment from itself.

This written, the electoral system in the U.S. works from the premise of political legitimacy to offer a choice between candidate A or B. Popular support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump doesn’t reduce to this ‘consumer choice’ theory of politics. Electing Mr. Sanders to better ‘manage’ the system of state-capitalism would quickly make visible a degree of systemic ossification that is unlikely to be resolved through electoral politics. The choice between the ‘incremental change’ of Democratic establishment fantasy and system change is of type, not degree. As Charles Koch’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton suggests, Mrs. Clinton’s role is to keep the unwashed masses in their place, not to affect substantive political ‘change.’

A Peasant Day in the Neighborhood

Viewed through the Liberal silos of ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ the Democratic establishment’s support for (and from) Wall Street is pragmatic, if distasteful from a public relations perspective, economic policy. Wall Street is a part of the economy (goes the logic), the economy benefits us all, and therefore ‘helping’ Wall Street benefits us all. The received ‘political’ wisdom is that Wall Street’s money ‘influences’ politics through funding political campaigns like Hillary Clinton’s. What hasn’t yet filtered into public understanding is that Wall Street’s existence is political— it is the premiere state-capitalist institution through its ability to exert political influence by its control over the financial economy. This was well-covered territory in Lenin’s The State and Revolution a century ago.

The ‘Washington Consensus’ that supports Wall Street, a/k/a the Democratic Party’s real platform, sees it as necessary imperial appendage, as the financial ‘carrot’ always held a few inches in front of the ‘stick’ of American militarism that supports corporate plunder. It is this neo-imperialist frame that unites neo-liberalism with neo-conservativism, the Western tendency toward muscular militarism, in the Democratic establishment ethos. Seen through this lens, Democrat Barack Obama’s decision to fully restore Wall Street from its near self-immolation in 2009 was a political act. It ties directly to his support for ISDS provisions in the ‘free-trade’ agreements he is pushing (link above).

When Hillary Clinton promises to ‘get tough on Wall Street’ her working premise is that Wall Street is necessary to this imperial project— most likely a different role than many of her supporters imagine for it. What was made evident in the housing boom and bust of the early-mid-2000s is that ‘we,’ the 99% on the outside of Washington’s imperial divide, are easy prey for Wall Street. Left unsaid is that the Democratic establishment’s ‘free-trade’ deals that Mrs. Clinton will ‘reluctantly’ support should she be elected are intended to hand regulatory powers over to the very same Wall Street that Mrs. Clinton is promising to ‘get tough’ on.

History Gets an Enema

Historical turning points are notoriously difficult to see as they unfold, partly because outcomes aren’t yet determined and partly because their significance is specific to the social forces that create them. To venture a view, the developed West, and particularly the U.S., is at a moment of historical inflection the direction of which will determine the broad social context in which people live their lives (or not) for decades to come. As was the case with the social possibilities unleashed and notable political failures of the late 1960s, an entrenched and now deeply dysfunctional political and economic establishment will fill any turn toward reflection and accommodation with more of the same.

Another term for universal health care coverage, high-quality public education, guaranteed jobs that pay a living wage and income security in old age is ‘civilization.’ The contortions of the (Charles) Kochian ‘maker / taker’ shit-logic that Hillary Clinton and her Liberaleconomists put themselves through to conclude that ‘we can’t afford civilization for the rest of you’ well-illustrates whose interests they serve. Insipid nonsense like economic ‘models’ that demonstrate that the universal healthcare, public education and living wages offered by other developed nations are Left-wing fantasies are declarations of class war launched by the Liberal class against the working classes and the poor.

Terms like ‘income inequality’ apply the illusion of natural distribution to the wholly predictable consequences of the class war launched in the 1970s by the well-funded radical Right (Charles Koch) in collusion with Liberal economists as the memory of the last domestic capitalist catastrophe— the Great Depression, faded from memory. In capitalist theory inequality of outcomes is the entire point because in that theory people earn in proportion to their economic contribution. That capitalism is more precisely a system of welfare for the rich was well understood by the New Deal Democrats of the 1940s and 1950s. And to be clear, with the bailouts and trade deals they support as evidence, it is well understood by plutocrat-loving establishment Democrats in the present. Assuring that this welfare for the rich continues is why Charles Koch hearts Hillary Clinton.

Looking Past the Bern

Bernie Sanders’ willingness to play by rules determined by ‘the graveyard of social movements,’ the Democratic Party, is more of the same anti-politics that has spelled defeat for the American Left since the 1960s. Hillary Clinton isn’t a centrist variant on the program that Mr. Sanders’ supporters find compelling, she is its antithesis. The sad irony is that Mr. Sanders’ capitulation is apparently based on the rigged delegate count, not on the popular will. Fear of being the ‘spoiler’ who elected Donald Trump requires ignoring that everything that comes from the Washington political establishment is bullshit anyway— it was Jimmy Carter’s turn hard-Right (see Paul Volcker and the ‘monetarist experiment’) that lost him re-election against Ronald Reagan in 1980, not a move to the Left as Democrat lore has it.

Part of Donald Trump’s appeal, for those to whom he has appeal, is that he is willing to take the Republican establishment down in flames rather than accede to its dictates. Were this inclination used to promote the political program of his supporters, rather than the prerogative of privilege applied to Mr. Trump’s personal ambition, it might be admirable. From the Washington political establishment’s perspective it is most certainly irresponsible. The question back for both Democrats and Republicans is: how responsible is it to put forward an ossified political order as the only choice in the face of its four decades of conspicuous political and economic failures? Hillary Clinton is the candidate of this failure— just ask Charles Koch.

Graphic: The Guillotine! A device capitalists should love, an ‘efficient’ machine for dispatching the Ancien Regime in the French Revolution. Hillary Clinton should love it also— it was sold as the ‘humanitarian’ method of separating former heads of state from their heads. It was a crucial part of the ‘Change You Can Believe In’ political campaign of 1789. Source: http://europeanhistory.about.com.

The Democratic Party will no doubt stumble on regardless of the outcome of the coming election. What Hillary Clinton’s candidacy helps clarify is its true nature as a reactionary force that poses itself as the Party of the powerless to better promote the interests of the powerful. By running as a Democrat Bernie Sanders consciously joined forces with those determined to crush any real Left political movement. For those democratic socialists who aren’t ready to roll over, Philadelphia can be hot and humid in the summer. Wear loose clothing and drink plenty of water. Should the Philadelphia Police Department decide to distribute free tear gas, be generous and ask yourselves: what would Hillary do?

Forty million Russians in debt

Clara Weiss

Western sanctions and the collapse of the price of oil have thrown Russia into a social and economic crisis, which finds stark expression in the indebtedness of 40 million private individuals.

The Russian economy has been in recession for two years. In its latest report on April 6, the World Bank projected an economic decline of 1.9 percent in 2016. The economy is only predicted to grow again in 2017, by a miserly 1.1 percent. The Moscow-based Higher School of Economics predicts a total decline in GDP between 2015 and 2019 of 8.1 percent.

The World Bank projection is based on an increase in oil prices in 2017 to $50 per barrel. The Russian economy and the state budget are heavily dependent on oil exports. Experts estimate that only with an oil price of $119 per barrel can the budget be balanced.

The sustained recession has led to a social crisis, which is made very clear in the figures of indebtedness for private households. Forty million Russians, almost a third of the population of 140 million, are currently indebted. Large sections of the working-age population are affected.

According to the national bureau of credit history, private debt has more than doubled since 2008. It currently stands at 10.2 billion roubles (roughly $159 billion). According to the New York Times, the percentage of unpaid debts increased by 50 percent in 2015, to reach $15 billion. In the same year, real wages decreased by 10 percent. The number of debtors in default, who have paid nothing in three months, rose from 6 million in March 2015 to 7.5 million in March 2016.

According to the New York Times, a large proportion of the debt is made up of short-term small loans amounting on average to just $125. The average interest rate on these loans is 2 percent per day. Those who have taken out loans are mostly workers whose families are forced to live on a few hundred dollars per month. Under such conditions, a layoff or illness quickly results in their entire economic existence being called into question.

Another important reason for growing impoverishment is the withholding of wages by employers. According to official statistics from Rosstat, the total amount of withheld wages rose in March by 1,186 million roubles to 4,471 million roubles.

On April 1, 78,000 people received no wages, according to official statistics. Of these, nearly half were in production industries, 23 percent in construction and 25 percent employed in transport.

In March, for the first time since 2008, more than half of all income was spent on foodstuffs and cigarettes. Under these conditions, a growing number of workers are compelled to take on short-term loans in spite of the horrendous interest rates.

Michail Karpenko, a lawyer in the Urals, where several impoverished industrial towns are located, told the Guardian, “In our region, the Tshelyabinsk oblast, the population is deeply indebted. The people simply fall into a black hole of debt and never come out again.”

Increasing numbers of indebted families are falling victim to the terror of debt collectors hired by small financial institutions. The victims rarely have anyone to turn to. Hardly anyone in Russia trusts the police, because their connections to criminal networks are widely known. Conditions are increasingly similar to those in the 1990s, which remain a traumatic experience for Russian workers. At that time, gangsters and mafia bands rampaged through the streets and did as they pleased, either being directly backed by the state or allowed to operate with impunity.

In December, a kindergarten in southern Russia had to be evacuated because debt collectors threatened to blow it sky high. The husband of one of the workers had not paid his debts.

A couple from Novosibirsk reported that debt collectors sent a false message to friends about the death of their daughter in January and uploaded the personal details of the woman on a site for prostitutes.

On January 27, a small child was severely injured in Ulyanovsk after debt collectors set light to a house with a Molotov cocktail. The reason for the arson attack was a loan of just $51 taken on by the child’s grandfather.

The terror employed by debt collectors against workers and their families is not new. In 2012, a 47-year-old woman in Podmoskovye committed suicide after collectors threatened to throw her out of her apartment due to an unpaid loan.

In October, the Russian government passed a law enabling individuals to declare bankruptcy. But this law will hardly help anyone. Declaring bankruptcy is only possible when total debt has reached 500,000 roubles, an amount that hardly anyone takes on.

The anger over the brutality of debt collectors compelled state television to report some incidents in detail. The first Russian television channel invited Natalia Gorbunova to a talk show on April 11. She was the victim of a campaign of severe telephone threats, before the collectors broke into her home, assaulted her son and raped her. The loan in question amounted to 5,000 roubles, around €60, which she had borrowed in September 2014. The daily interest rate was 2 percent, and her wage, which an entire family of five lived on, was 25,000 roubles, around €335.

Most of the other guests on the talk show—actors, lawyers and duma deputies—attacked the woman and humiliated her. They accused her of taking out the loan and not paying back her debts in time because she did not work enough. Several studio guests, including the well-known actress Ljudmilla Zvitkova, attacked the woman for lying about being raped. A Duma deputy criticised her 17-year-old son for not working to help his mother.

A YouTube video of the broadcast was commented on by hundreds of people. One user wrote, “The gangsters are protected by the law,” to which another responded, “I would not say by the law, but by the wealthy people in the country. Just look at the clothes worn by these walking moneybags in the studio.”

Another user was angered by the humiliating treatment of Gorbunova, writing, “The studio guests went too far. Not everyone can earn as much as Duma deputies or actors. With 25,000 roubles, a family cannot pay to feed the children, for education and for the husband’s medical care. Anyone can end up in such a situation if they have no money.”

Another comment read, “Our ‘elite’ live in a parallel universe, they don’t understand a thing about the problems of normal people.”

Several Duma deputies are now demanding, not for the first time, the banning of debt collecting firms. Duma elections are due in Russia in September and the Putin regime is increasingly nervous given the deepening social crisis. The terror practiced by debt collectors is currently one of the most widely discussed issues in Russia.

One victim of the debt collectors commented to the Guardian on the legal reforms proposed, “Laws that help the oligarchs are adopted within a week, but laws for [normal] people take years to pass. These draft laws are probably just PR.”

Young worker dies on Australian “work for the dole” scheme

Declan O'Malley

On April 19, Josh Park-Fing, an 18-year-old unemployed youth from the rural town of Meringandan, near Toowoomba, Queensland, died in an accident while being forced to work for the dole.

His death underscores the unsafe conditions imposed on jobless workers via the Australian government’s forced work scheme, which compels them to undertake unpaid labour in order to receive poverty-line welfare payments. This amounts to compulsory servitude in sub-standard and potentially dangerous conditions.

The tragedy also highlights the lack of workers’ compensation and insurance coverage for Work for the Dole participants.

The teenager was collecting rubbish at the local Toowoomba Showgrounds. It is believed that he was on a trailer being pulled by a tractor when it jolted. The jolt threw the young man from the trailer, and he suffered head injuries. Park-Fing died on the way to the hospital after attempts to revive him failed.

Park-Fing’s twin brother Jayden, siblings Matt, Locklyn and Jemma, and mother Jenny Fing were too distraught to speak to the media immediately. A friend and work colleague of Jenny Fing, Christabel Dodds, told reporters: “They don’t want this to ever happen to another family again, but at the moment all they’re focused on is grieving Josh’s loss.”

The local community has raised money to support the family because of the inadequate Work for the Dole insurance coverage. Whereas families of workers killed in the course of paid employment are eligible for up to $750,000, the families of unemployed workers forced into the Work for the Dole program are paid a maximum of $250,000.

Participants in the program are also denied workers’ compensation if injured. According to the government, they are not workers but volunteers and therefore not covered by WorkCover, the official agency that regulates occupational health and safety and work-related injury compensation.

There is nothing “voluntary” about Work for the Dole. As of July last year, everyone under the age of 50 who has been on unemployment benefits for more than six months is required to work for the dole for six months every year. People aged under-30 must perform 25 hours’ labour per week and those aged between 30 and 49 must do 15 hours. Unemployed workers aged over 50 can “volunteer” to take part.

Work for the Dole, first imposed in 1998 by the Howard Liberal-National Coalition government, was maintained by the Rudd and Gillard Labor Party governments from 2007 to 2013. Initially, it was limited to the long-term unemployed, but it was extended to nearly all unemployed workers last year, when the current Coalition government declared it would place 100,000 people on the scheme during 2015–16.

The Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU), which claims to represent Work for the Dole participants, has reported numerous cases of workers with chronic injuries being forced into strenuous physical labour on the program. If they do not comply, they are threatened with loss of Centrelink (welfare) benefits.

An unemployed worker, Nick Smart, told the media he was expected to dig holes and push heavy wheelbarrows despite chronic back problems. “I fell down a retaining wall and twisted my back pushing a wheelbarrow,” he said. “I’ve been told I have no access to WorkCover because technically I was not working—I was a Centrelink volunteer.”

In other cases, Work for the Dole workers had been denied toilet breaks. One worker reported being exposed to 40-degree plus heat and poisonous snakes at a Work for Dole site.

These conditions highlight the punitive character of the scheme. Far from being intended to help jobless workers gain experience and improve their job prospects—as successive governments have claimed—Work for the Dole is designed to harass and demoralise workers, while using them as a cheap labour force.

A study by the Australian National University Social Research Centre demonstrated that the scheme does little or nothing to improve participants’ job prospects. According to the research: “It is estimated that in the short term [work for the dole] resulted in an additional 2 percentage point increase in the probability of job seekers having a job placement (from a low baseline of 14 percent).”

Above all, with almost 750,000 workers officially unemployed, the program is intended to coerce them into seeking low-paid work on inferior conditions to avoid being compelled to work for nothing. By the official statistics, more than one million workers are also under-employed—that is, looking for more work. As of February, however, there were only 166,500 job vacancies. That meant that for every job vacancy there were more than 10 people seeking employment.

Initially, the scheme was limited to working for not-for-profit organisations, including local councils. This led to calls by business groups for private employers to be given access to the program as well. Last year, the scheme was extended to allow aged care providers to exploit participants, as a first step.

Last May, after this expansion was proposed in the 2015 federal budget, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told employers they would soon be able to “try-before-you-buy,” referring to unemployed workers.

This year’s budget, handed down by the Coalition government on May 3, took that expansion to a new level. In his budget speech, Treasurer Scott Morrison unveiled what he called “real work for the dole.” Over the next four years, 120,000 unemployed workers aged under-25 will be pushed into a nominally “voluntary” cheap labour scheme that enables businesses to employ them as government-subsidised “interns.”

Under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s new scheme, PaTH—which stands for Prepare Trial Hire—the unemployed will be expected to work up to 25 hours a week for private employers. For this, to supplement their pitiful unemployment benefits, they will receive $100 a week, effectively making their hourly rate just $4 an hour. To further sweeten the deal for business, employers will receive a $1,000 bonus and a wage subsidy of between $6,500 and $10,000 per year.

The Labor opposition has welcomed the new scheme, falsely claiming that it represents an improvement on Work for the Dole. But previous studies have shown that such programs lead to only 19 percent of the participants being offered paid employment. In other words, more than 80 percent of the participants will simply be exploited as low-wage “interns.”

The tragic death of Josh Park-Fing highlights the shocking conditions to which unemployed workers will continue to be subjected—conditions that will be increasingly imposed on all workers as the economic situation worsens globally and in Australia.

Australian government boasts of helping US kill its own citizens in Middle East

Mike Head

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his senior ministers this week welcomed the reported assassinations, via US airstrikes, of two young Australians in Iraq and Syria and declared that Australia was directly involved in targeting them.

Interviewed on Sky News on Thursday, Turnbull went further, warning that other Australians allegedly supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East “will be targeted” in the same manner.

Turnbull hailed the news as a “very positive development in the war on terror,” while Attorney-General George Brandis said “we should be gladdened by this news.”

These remarks—and Turnbull’s chilling threat of further assassinations—have not received the slightest criticism in Australia’s political and media establishment, even though they amount to sanctioning extra-judicial killings as a matter of government policy, without the pretence of any legal process.

This development demonstrates the readiness of Australia’s ruling elite to abrogate even the most fundamental legal and democratic rights as part of the fraudulent “war on terrorism.” Officially, the death penalty has been banned by Australian law for more than four decades, but these young people were summarily executed, without trial.

One victim, 24-year-old Neil Prakash, was said to have been killed by an American airstrike in Mosul, northern Iraq, on April 29. The joint media release of Brandis and Defence Minister Maris Payne said Prakash was targeted because he was a “terrorist recruiter” and “attack facilitator.”

Prakash was not accused of being an ISIS fighter, nor was he killed on a battlefield. Instead, he allegedly appeared in “propaganda videos” and “encouraged acts of terrorism.” These activities may have been crimes under the terrorism laws introduced since 2001, but Prakash was not charged or convicted of any offences. Instead, in the words of Brandis, he was “taken out.”

The other victim, Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad, a student believed to be in her 20s, was apparently even further removed from any military combat. According to the official media release, she was killed “near Al Bab, Syria, on 22 April 2016, along with her Sudanese husband,” Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani.

Both were said to be “active recruiters of foreign fighters” and “had been inspiring attacks against Western interests.” The only other fact cited to justify Mohammad’s murder was that she was the sister of Farhad Mohammad, a 15-year-old boy who was shot dead by police in Sydney last October after fatally shooting a police employee.

Despite offering no evidence of any involvement in fighting, Turnbull justified the killing of these two young people, both of whom grew up in Australia, declaring they were “enemies of Australia” who were “waging war against Australia.”

Turnbull indicated that other Australian citizens were on a death list. Asked if Prakash was specifically targeted, Turnbull replied: “Yes, and has been for some time.” While refusing to elaborate for “operational” reasons, he declared: “We are unrelenting in the war against terrorism … Australians will be targeted.”

This “war” has nothing to do with protecting people against terrorism. For more than 15 years, the “war on terror” has been waged by the US and its allies, with Australia in the frontline, to seek to establish American hegemony over the resource-rich and strategically-vital Middle East. Entire countries have been devastated—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria—fuelling the rise of ISIS. In fact, the US and its partners have funded and armed ISIS and similar militias linked to Al Qaeda in order to oust governments, and then exploited the atrocities of their proxies to escalate their predatory interventions.

Interviewed on Sky News, Brandis echoed the assertions of the Obama administration that the US president has the power to routinely select citizens for assassination. At least three American citizens have been killed so far, in flagrant breach of the US law and constitution: Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Brandis confirmed that Australia cooperated with the US in “the identification and location of Prakesh.” He insisted that it took “quite a while” to isolate a target in order to avoid “killing innocent people” and “family members of targets.” Australia took this responsibility, under international humanitarian law, “very, very seriously,” as did the US.

In reality, the targeting is based on unproven allegations, as well as family links. Moreover, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed throughout the Middle East by US drone attacks and Allied airstrikes.

The attorney-general pointed to the integration of Australia’s military and intelligence agencies into the global operations of the US, referring to the cooperation throughout the Five Eyes countries, which also include Britain, Canada and New Zealand. The joint US-Australian spy base at Pine Gap in central Australia plays a crucial role in pinpointing targets and coordinating US military operations across the region.

The Liberal-National government’s blatant celebration of the assassinations of Prakash and Mohammad marks an escalation of a bipartisan policy of placing Australian citizens on US hit lists. In April 2015, the Australian reported that an Australian citizen, Mostafa Farag, had been selected for drone execution in Syria, initially by the previous Labor government. A year earlier, another citizen, Christopher Harvard, and a dual Australian-New Zealand citizen, Muslim bin John, were killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

Significantly, Turnbull’s government proclaimed the two killings on the eve of calling a “double dissolution” election of both houses of parliament in an attempt to remove a political blockage to the imposition of deeply unpopular social spending cuts and other austerity measures. Once again, the fraudulent “war on terror” is being ramped up to try to distract the population and whip up support for militarism abroad and unprecedented attacks on basic democratic rights domestically.

In the media, Prakash has been demonised for alleged procurement of young Muslims to attempt a series of terrorist attacks in Australia. These unsubstantiated claims have been splashed throughout the media, prejudicing the trials of a number of teenagers whose cases have yet to get to court.

The allegations are also being utilised to bring forward another package of “anti-terrorism” laws, which will feature detaining and interrogating suspects, as young as 14, for up to 14 days without charge. These measures, agreed to by a meeting of federal and state leaders last month, will also include keeping prisoners convicted of terrorism offences incarcerated indefinitely after they have completed their sentences.

In his Sky interview, Brandis said “jihadists” had to be kept in prison beyond their sentences because they were “driven by ideology to violence.” This logic could be used against a wide range of supposed “extremists,” including political opponents, allegedly motivated by ideology.

These draconian laws, like the unlawful executions, have the full support of the Labor Party. The Greens, while previously professing opposition to aspects of the terrorism laws, have remained silent on the latest assassinations, as they were on the earlier ones.

This alignment behind the criminal activities of Washington goes far beyond killing Australians in Syria and Iraq and victimising vulnerable Muslim youth at home. It is a warning to workers and young people of the brutal methods that will be used by the political and security establishment to suppress opposition to the underlying agenda of war and austerity.

India opens talks with US on waging war on Chinese submarines

Deepal Jayasekera

The United States and India are stepping up their naval collaboration in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, targeting China, according to statements by military officials from both countries. This marks an important further step in US efforts to transform India into a “frontline” state in its drive to strategically encircle and prepare for war against China—what Washington euphemistically refers to as its “Pivot to Asia.”

US and Indian officials are holding talks about countering Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean, including collaborating in submarine-tracking and augmenting their anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities.

An anonymous senior US official, familiar with bilateral military ties with India, told Reuters: “These types of basic engagements will be the building blocks for an enduring Navy-to-Navy relationship that we hope will grow over time into a shared ASW capability.”

An Indian naval spokesman declined to comment on the issue, as New Delhi wants to cloak its growing military ties with US in secrecy because of fear of popular opposition.

An “Indian naval source” told Reuters that anti-submarine warfare will be the focus of the next round of joint Indo-US naval games, the Malabar exercises. The venue for those exercises, which will be staged in June, will be the northern Philippine Sea. This is near to both the South China Sea, where the US has launched provocations against China under the pretext of “freedom of navigation,” and the East China Sea, where Japan has moved to aggressively assert its claim to the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, which were annexed by Japan after the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War.

India recently invited Japan, the US’s most important strategic ally in Asia, to become a permanent third member of the annual Malabar exercises. The June event in the Philippine Sea will be joined by Japan, which has repeatedly deployed its navy to confront Chinese vessels in the vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Building on the Indo-US “global strategic partnership” forged by its Congress Party-led predecessor, India’s two year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has dramatically expanded its military-strategic cooperation with Washington. This has included parroting the US line on the South China Sea, which portrays China as an aggressor and a threat to “freedom of the seas,” when it is the US that seeks unbridled access for its warships off the Chinese mainland. New Delhi has also significantly increased bi-lateral and trilateral military-strategic cooperation with the US, and Washington’s other key Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

A key strategic aim of the US, including in its pursuit of ever-more comprehensive military alliances with Japan, Australia and India, is to prepare to impose a naval blockade on China in the event of a war crisis. By seizing control of Indian and Pacific Ocean “chokepoints,” Pentagon strategists calculate they can deny China access to the Indian Ocean shipping lanes that carry the oil and other raw materials that sustain its economy.

Confronted with the possibility of being denied access to the Indian Ocean, China has moved to increase its naval presence there, including by deploying submarines. This has in turn panicked India, which views a growing role in “policing” the Indian Ocean as vital to realizing its great-power ambitions.

India, which is the midst of a massive expansion of its navy, has moved aggressively to counter China’s growing economic interests in various India Ocean states. This has included, assisting the US in engineering the 2015 ouster of Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was deemed too close to China, and bullying the tiny Maldives to pledge that it will pursue “an India first foreign policy.”

The Indo-US naval talks come in the wake of a call from Admiral Harry Harris Jr., the head of the US Pacific Command, for joint US-Indian naval patrols across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and last month’s announcement that New Delhi and Washington have agreed “in principle” to a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA). The LEMOA will give the US military access to Indian military ports and bases for resupply, repair and rest and will invariably entail the stationing of US military personnel in India.

The US is also seeking to harness India to its predatory strategic agenda through partnerships to co-develop and co-produce advanced weapons systems, including aircraft carrier technology.

Washington is seeking to exploit Indian concerns about China's growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean to press New Delhi into collaboration in anti-submarine warfare. Reuters cites Indian naval officials as saying, “Chinese submarines have been sighted on an average four times every three months. Some are seen near India's Andaman and Nicobar islands that lie near the Malacca Straits, the entry to the South China Sea through which more than 80 percent of China's fuel supplies pass.”

Expressing the US military establishment's satisfaction with Washington’s success in enticing and cajoling India into closer military collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region, former US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jon Greenert told Foreign Policy: “Is this driven by China? I think so. I think clearly it is... The Indian Navy’s interest in moving further east in the Indian Ocean and coming into the Pacific to exercise is an indication of that.”

With US encouragement, the BJP has transformed India’s “Look East” policy, an economic and strategic outreach to East and Southeast Asia, into “Act East”—that is, a more aggressive intervention into that region in pursuit of India’s geo-political ambitions. Numerous US officials, from President Obama to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter have repeatedly boasted about the “convergence” between India’s “Act East” policy and the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” and pledged US help in India realizing “Act East.”

Nilanthi Samaranayake, a South Asia analyst at the US military's Center for Naval Analyses, noted that New Delhi is cautious not to be seen as an open ally of US against China: “India is always going to be hedging a little bit, because they don’t want to be seen as antagonizing China too much.” But she was quick to point to the possibilities an expanded Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean provide Washington to project Beijing as an “aggressor” and prod New Delhi into an even closer alliance. “If we actually see China be aggressive in the Indian Ocean,” said Samaranayake, “that could really help crystallize Indian policy toward China, and move the relationship with the US forward.”

Voicing the views of powerful sections of India’s elite who want a more aggressive stance against China, G. Parthasarathy, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, published a comment this week decrying China’s close relations with Pakistan, India’s historic rival, and arguing for this to “be countered by a robust relationship with China’s maritime neighbours such as Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines. Military exercises with the US, Japan, Australia and Indonesia in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean should be expanded.”

For his part, the former head of Indian Navy’s Eastern Command, retired Vice Admiral Anup Singh, has welcomed the growing naval partnership between the US and India. “Of course there has been a change in India’s strategic vision,” he told Foreign Policy. He added that the BJP government and the Indian military-security establishment are “all in favor of a solid handshake with the United States, because that is the only way to maintain the balance of power.”

Australia is also keen to collaborate with the India and the US in enhancing submarine warfare capabilities and policing the Indian Ocean. David Brewster, an Australian National University expert on the strategic rivalry in the Indian Ocean, has suggested that Australia, which has just ordered 12 new submarines, may eventually join that US-led AWS collaboration. He told Reuters, “We are likely to ultimately see a division of responsibilities in the Indian Ocean between those three countries, and with the potential to also share facilities.”

China has responded cautiously to the US-Indian talks on collaborating on anti-submarine warfare. Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said: “We hope that the relevant cooperation is normal, and that it can be meaningful to the peace and stability of the region.”

Whatever China’s hopes, US imperialism’s aggressive moves for developing military ties with India, including anti-submarine warfare, will further escalate geo-political tensions across the Indo-Pacific region and the danger of an all-out war among nuclear powers.

Islamophobic provocations on California campuses

David Brown

Towards the end of March the University of California (UC) board of regents unanimously adopted a resolution on intolerance that claimed a growing connection between anti-Zionism, opposition to the policies of Israel, and anti-Semitism. The move was hailed by pro-Israeli groups and anti-Muslim organizations. In mid-April, the far right David Horowitz Freedom Center launched a campaign of intimidation on five campuses, publicizing the names of students and teachers that they called “genocidal” and allied with “terrorists.”

Worldwide, the allegation of “anti-Semitism” is being used to silence critics of militarism and imperialism in the Middle East. The events in California are occurring in the middle of a purge of the British Labour Party of officials who have publicly criticized Israel. Although the UC regents presented their resolution as a tactful compromise that defends free speech and academic freedom, it consciously laid the framework for punishing opposition to Israel.

The resolution as adopted stated “Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semitic forms of Anti-Zionism, and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” This was a revision to a draft from January that called Anti-Zionism discriminatory without qualification. The adopted formulation was left intentionally vague to allow almost any opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine to be called anti-Semitic. In the comment period a letter signed by 130 UC faculty members described it as anti-Semitic when “legitimate criticism of Israel devolves into denying Israel’s right to exist.”

The Israel advocacy group StandWithUs hailed the regent’s resolution. Their CEO Roz Rothstein praised the regent’s decision claiming that “denying Israel’s right to exist and opposing the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland is racism, pure and simple.” The main target of the allegations of anti-Semitism is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement led by the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The SJP acts as a pressure group on the Israeli government, asking universities and businesses to avoid investing in Israel or selling Israeli products until Israel recognizes the right of Palestinian refugees to return, the end of the occupation of Palestine, and the equal rights of Arabs within Israel.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and co-founder of the Amcha Initiative, said that “BDS is in virtually all of its aspects anti-Semitic.” The Amcha Initiative follows the US State Department definition of anti-Semitism, which includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” and “denying Israel the right to exist.”

Rossman-Benjamin told the New York Times that “classic anti-Semitism merged with a new anti-Zionism,” on campuses and praised the regents for being the first to specifically recognize “that there are forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic.”

Within a few weeks of the UC Regents laying out the welcome mat for allegations of anti-Semitism, the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) staged a right-wing provocation against the SJP and the Muslim Student Association. The DHFC put up posters at five different campuses denouncing the BDS as “a Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign,” and listed the names of students and professors that they said “have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred.” The posters were a clear call for reprisals against specific critics of Israel.

The campuses targeted were UC Berkeley, San Diego State University (SDSU), UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles. The DHFC had used this tactic in isolation before, but hit all five campuses in mid-April. At SDSU a hundred students protested on April 27 after the university president, Elliot Hirshman issued a statement claiming that the posters were acceptable criticism of the SJP.

Hirshman wrote in part: “First, we recognize and fully support the rights of all parties to voice their positions on political issues, whether supportive or critical. We also understand that when parties adopt a specific political position they become responsible for their actions and these actions may produce criticism.”

In short, Hirshman felt that if the students did not want to be called terrorists, they should not voice political opinions. In a country whose government claims the right to indefinitely detain or kill without trial anyone who supports terrorism, that allegation can have particularly severe consequences.

On May 6, David Horowitz gave a speech at SDSU at the invitation of the College Republicans. He has been a regular speaker at California’s public universities over the years, usually at the request of campus Republican clubs. In his speeches are a combination of complaining that universities are dominated by leftists and denouncing student groups like the SJP as supporting terrorism and “Jew Hatred.”

Horowitz’s extreme positions are well within the norms of US politics. The presumptive Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, has called for a “total shutdown of Muslims” entering the United States. Within the Republican Party debates candidates sought to outdo themselves in their support for any outrage Israel might perpetrate against the Palestinians in the name of “Fighting terrorism.”

These positions are also found between both contenders for the Democratic nomination. In a speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on March 21, Hillary Clinton said: “Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement known as BDS. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate, and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.”

The same day Bernie Sanders agreed that “Israel has got to be defended, has a right to exist,” and that “there is some level of anti-Semitism” in BDS.

The World Socialist Web Site has irreconcilable class differences with BDS, which appeals to the Israeli government for a capitalist two-state solution, but to call opposition to Israel “anti-Semitic” is a fundamentally dishonest provocation. These slanderous accusations are being used in country after country to silence any criticism of imperialist policy in the Middle East.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the British Labour Party, he has suspended 18 party members following allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. The media frenzy and witch hunt following criticisms of Israel by some high-ranking members of the Labour Party are directed at the hundreds of thousands who voted for Corbyn imagining that as a self-described socialist he would oppose war and austerity. Instead, the pseudo-left Corbyn, like SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain, has willingly accepted every right-wing measure asked of him.