Ugly London: The Mayoral Race

Binoy Kampmark

What a disaster for the conservatives, though hardly a glory for British Labour either. Sadiq Khan, a Labour technocrat rinsed in the chummy spinelessness of the Blairite spin machine, won the London Mayoral election after a campaign that could only be described as vicious. The Tories had hoped to sink Khan over alleged extremist tendencies; Labour, in turn had to show that the Tories had their own problem with conservative religious practices.

The Tories were also hoping that disagreement within Labour’s ranks over what Prime Minister David Cameron has termed Labour’s “problem with anti-Semitism” would somehow render it unelectable in various constituencies. London was to be the prize, having been held by conservative, mostly clownish Boris Johnson for two terms.

The Achilles heel of anti-Semitism was given a rub by former Mayor Ken Livingstone, who opened his sizeably confident mouth again, coming to the defence of Naz Shah, an MP from Bradford West. Shah was suspended over designated anti-Semitic postings via social media.

On BBC Television’s Daily Politics program, Livingstone contended as a “historical fact” that, “Hitler’s policy when he first came to power was to move Germany’s Jews to Israel.” At stages, history does have a habit of discolouring under the Livingstone gaze.

The Labour Party’s response was swift: “Ken Livingstone has been suspended by the Labour Party, pending an investigation, for bringing the party into disrepute.” John Mann, another Labour MP, also attacked Livingstone with apoplectic determination, calling him a “Nazi apologist”.

The conservative campaign, fronted by Zac Goldsmith, attempted to capitalise. Goldsmith’s accusation – one can hardly call it an argument – was that Khan had given “platform, oxygen, and cover” to a host of political and religious extremists. Specific reference was made to the political flirting Khan had with south London cleric Suliman Gani.

The honours list of defences and associations also comprised such figures as Dr. Yusuf al-Qadarawi, a Muslim scholar accused of intellectualising the moral cause of suicide bombings, and Sajeed Abu Ibrahim, who operated a Pakistan camp that trained London 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan.

Such behaviour on Khan’s part would confuse unadulterated opportunism with genuine association, a point made by his attendance of an event hosted by the defunct Stop Political Terror in August 2004. For those interested in political trivia, the group did count among its supporters Anwar al-Awlaki of al-Qaeda.

Through his time, Khan has done what he is most characterised by: associate, garner, and cultivate votes, many from the conservative Muslim quarter. It was precisely this point that got some conservative commentators worked up, with The Economist recapitulating on Labour’s “ingrained problems of anti-Semitism” and its tolerance of “gender-segregated civic events”.

A campaign so filled with muck it was keeling over saw a range of attacks mounted against Khan on various grounds, though many conservatives were far from thrilled by this approach. Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff, for one, found it “outrageous” that Goldsmith had effectively argued that “people of conservative religious views are not be trusted, and you shouldn’t share a platform with them”.

Toby Young, writing in The Spectator, saw no reason for Goldsmith to apologise. Young found it regrettable that Labour’s spin on the campaign being a “dog-whistle” one in nature proved digestible even to Tories.

Did it have any effect on Khan’s chances of re-claiming the city for Labour? “Any Conservative candidate faced an uphill struggle getting elected in London, one of the only areas in the country where Labour did better in 2015 than in 2010.”

Goldsmith’s campaign was itself marred by ambiguities, despite having a potentially strong case in such areas as the environment. (He had formerly edited the Ecologist Magazine.) Rather than taking the road of painting Khan as an unreliable extremist that would mar his mayoral credentials while offering a slew of ameliorative policies for London’s escalating house prices, he resorted to some ducking, weaving and prevaricating.

While the Goldsmith manifesto did reflect on how there were “too many young adults still living in their childhood bedrooms trapped by London’s escalating house price,” the overall message fell away. A rather unimaginative campaign began casting light on Khan’s Muslim background in general, a point that was never going to sell well.

The other feature at play with Khan’s victory is how his cool relationship with British Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn will develop – or atrophy, as the more likely case is. Corbyn had maintained is distance from the political knife of Khan’s ambitions, preferring to spend time with Bristol’s newly elected mayor Marvin Rees instead of going to the London swearing-in ceremony.

Khan, who was never a fan of the Corbyn dynamo in Labour politics, could not have been expecting any favours from a man he ignored, only to then nominate as an outside contender for leader.

Not even waiting for the dust to settle, the newly elected leader trained his guns on Corbyn, thereby doing the conservative’s work for them. On the Andrew Marr Show, he claimed that, “we’ve got to stop talking about ourselves and start talking to citizens about issues that matter to them.” The Tories may not have reason to be disappointed for too long – the spin doctors getting ready to return.

Understanding Emerging Fascism In India

K.P. Sasi

In recent times, there has been so much of discussions against the agenda of the communal fascists on many recent events like the developments in FTII, twisted nationalism, increasing fabricated cases, human rights violations using draconian laws, developments in Chennai (IIT) against Dalits, beef debate, attacks on writers, moral policing, attacks on human rights activists, Rohit Vemula’s suicide and the subsequent Dalit students movement in Hyderbad University, the repressive policies of the Government on the students in JNU, growing attacks on writers, secular intellectuals, women, Dalits and Adivasis all over India, violations on freedom of expression and other such grave areas. All these incidents and many other incidents have brought in many private and public discussions and protests against the growing fascist forces in India. At the same time, there are also concerns on the limitations in identifying the meaning, character and agenda of fascism in many of these discourses.

During the Babari Masjid demolition and the following communal violence that happened in different parts of the country, some of my left friends had put forward that `class’ was the problem and these discussions often tried to reduce communalism on class terms. Much later, some of my Dalit friends had shared their analysis with me saying that `caste’ was the problem and some of them tried to reduce communalism to caste issue. There has been many efforts to view communalism from the perspective of women also. And now, my own friends in Kerala are arguing with me today that `religion’ is the main problem and a terminology called `religious fascism’ is being used more often in discourses. Though I have tried to grapple critically with the limitations of all these frameworks, I have always maintained my partial acceptance to all such analysis. Apart from such analysis, the term fascism was also used actively by many progressive people in India to describe the period of Emergency in India imposed between 1975 and 1977 in India. A section of activists in Kerala also try to view the violence used by political parties as fascism. Still another section would like to look at religious fundamentalism in any religion as fascism. Some of my own secular friends would like to see all religions as communal in an equal manner and it is being felt that an anti-communal or anti- fascist struggle should not associate with religious sections. All these descriptions of fascism have diverse meanings and connotations. Therefore, it is too important for any activist to understand the term fascism with much more clarity before it is being confronted.

There was a transition of Indian State from the pretensions of democracy into an `authoritarian’ State during Emergency. However, it was highly inappropriate to classify the State under Emergency as fascist, because the transition of the State was `purely from above’. The state of Emergency in India during the 70s was `imposed’ on the people, while fascism is evolved as mass movement, capturing the institutions of State power. Certainly, dictatorship is one important characteristic of fascism, but not the only one. Fascism brings changes in the character of State from `below’. If you analyse the immense mass support for Hitler during the emergence of fascism in Germany, this point can be easily understood. The repressive character of the State is definitely one of the characteristics of fascism, but not the only one. In any case, the repressive character of Emergency and the repressive character a fascist German State had major differences in terms of its intensity of horror on the nature of violence.

Those who analyse the political violence exhibited by any particular political party as fascism, must come to terms with the fact that though violence is certainly one of the important ingredients of fascism, fascism can not be analysed by expressions of violence alone. A political force India can be addressed as fascist if it expresses its fascist ideology and a process of fascist actions with the mass support they enjoy. In India, the violence exhibited by the Sangh Parivar on thousands of Muslims during the communal genocide in Gujarat or against the Dalit Christians and Adivasi Christians in Kandhamal can qualify such a classification. During the rule of Narendra Modi, we must remember the fact that there has been over 200 incidents of communal violence. Understanding the sheer difference between the character of political murders in Kerala and the character of a mass frenzy with a participation of hundreds of people in the communal violence initiated by Sangh Parivar is important in any analysis of fascism in India. It was with an open participation of hundreds of people running wild to execute the crimes of murder, rape and violence on thousands of innocent Muslims in Gujarat and Mumbai riots or the openly frenzied participation of 100s of people in the destruction of over 350 churches, 6500 homes in addition to murder, rape and loot on the population of Adivasi Christians and Dalit Christians in Kandhamal that such mass frenzy against a particular community is being classified as `fascist.’

As an atheist, I find it too simplistic when many secular friends view the growth of fascism in India as a response of religious conflicts. Many of them in Kerala still tend to confuse fascism with religious fundamentalism. It has to be understood that fundamentalism is there in all identities in India and not just among the religious identities. And certainly religious fundamentalism in any religion should not be encouraged, especially in the current historical context.
Fundamentalism is a principle of exclusion and exclusion creates disharmony in the diversity of cultures and therefore it must be resisted strongly. However, instead of trying to understand religious fundamentalism as the main pillar of fascism, I would request my secular friends to look at religious fundamentalism only as a facilitating agency for the development of fascism. More important is to understand the power hierarchies between the dominant religion and other religions and spiritualities and analyse how the Hindutva forces have been succeeding in suppressing marginalised religions, faiths and spiritualities in this sub-continent. The apparent potential conflict between Hindu and Hindutva vanishes from such a simplistic analysis of equating fascism with religious fundamentalism. Such an analysis can have dangerous repercussions in future.

Gujarat and Kandhamal were not religious conflicts or a war. In a religious conflict or a war, there is a pre-condition of two religious forces fighting with each other. But the Sangh Parivar is not a religious network. It is a political network using a majoritarian religious identity generating consistent hate campaigns against minority religions, building up a climate of violence, so that when mass violence is initiated on the religious minorities, it would be viewed as a `natural outcome’ of what the religious minorities in India really `deserved’ so far based on their own actions. Needless to say, the aggression and violence on the religious minorities in both Gujarat and Kandhamal was entirely one sided and such violence can not be described as a `religious conflict’. In both Gujarat and Kandhamal, many Hindus supported the victims and survivors instead of joining the violent mob unleashed by the fascist forces. Hence, it is too important under the present political context, to separate Hindu religion and Hindutva political force.

Some of these problems of correlating religion and fascism spring from a one dimensional perception of religion. No religion is one dimensional. They have many streams, often contradicting each other, sometimes a politically conscious section in one religion questioning the conservative fundamentalists within the same religion. Religions may also have a liberative potential within themselves, which need to be addressed actively during the struggle against fascism. The liberation theology in Christianity inspiring many Christian believers to devote their time and energy for their struggles of the marginalised in Kerala as well as in many parts in India during the 70s and eighties must not be forgotten in this context. The Islamic theologians of Malappuram and the regions of northern Kerala who inspired the Muslims to put up the first resistance in India against the colonial forces during the Portuguese invasion should also not be forgotten. These segments in the history of religion and politics may not be as powerful today as they were, but they still generate inspiration for a segment of imagination for the youth within religions in Kerala. The struggles of women within religions against the conservative patriarchal structure in their own religion in different parts of the country need more attention and support. The struggles of Dalits, Adivasis, Women and even Sexualy minorities within religions against the conservative, patriarchal and casteist structures of their own religions in different parts in India deserve more attention and support in the present historical context of attacks on the religious minorities by the fascist forces. It is too important to strengthen such forces during the struggle against fascism, instead of treating religion as per se as politically untouchable which unfortunately has become a trend in Kerala during the public conventions against fascism initiated by the secular forces.

From the writings of the early spiritual gurus of the Hindutva forces, it is very much clear that they were inspired by the notion of Aryan supremacy of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. Where did Hitler get the notion of Aryan supremacy? Was it just a figment of his imagination or did it have any historical roots? In the Indian context, the term `Aryan’ has always been used to describe the Brahmins and not the Adivasis, Dalits or OBCs. Even today, the Aryan restaurant means a Brahmin restaurant. If this is the case, the next obvious question is: How did the superiority of the Aryan/Brahminical world get established over the indigenous communities, Dalits, Adivasis and Dravidians?’ Is this assertion of superiority of power just a figment of imagination of the Dalit intellectuals in India? Here we find a definite correlation between fascism in Germany and India in their deep conviction on Aryan supremacy. The racial element within the ideology of fascism can not be ignored.

Yet the emerging fascism in India can be different from the development of fascism in Germany or Italy. But we can not deny the similarities. The Nazi hatred on religious as well as sexual minorities, extreme patriarchal consciousness, militarisation of mass organisations, suppression of dissent, creation para military organisation, hatred on communists, anti-intellectualism, rejection and reduction of spaces for democratic thinking, redefining morals and values, rejection of diversities, national expansionism and national chauvinism and redefining history from the perspective of the above notions have its parallels among the emerging Sangh Parivar in India. The fascist forces in India deciding what should be spoken and what should be not, what should be written and what should be not, what should be performed and what should be not, what should be painted and what should be not, what should be eaten and what should be not and what should be screened as films and what should be not, also had their counter parts in Nazi Germany. Both the Nazis and the Sangh Parivar systematically manipulated the unconscious, inverting truth, morals, history and a potentially explosive sexually repressed sub conscious mind.

A clear understanding of fascism requires a recognition that there is a growing phenomenon in India using the superiority of the mainstream identities of caste, class, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, language, region, race etc along with a might of mass physical power, mainstream media, and all the institutions of State. The obvious victims are Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis, women, children, sexuality minorities, marginalised nationalities and marginalised languages . The emerging strength of Indian capital at a global level is the key to facilitate the growth of such fascism. To that extent, globalisation and the emerging fascism function as two sides of the same coin. The frenzy in which Narendra Modi is travelling all over the world is ultimately to facilitate such a process. The attacks on the working class will emerge as a major phenomenon, the moment the working class organisations become a real threat to this agenda of the fascist forces. Till then, the organisations of the marginalised identities and the left, secular and democratic forces will be on the forefront.

The organised mass as well as State terrorism is already taking a new shape in the present history. Any attempt of activism against fascism without encompassing and involving the grave reality of marginalisation diverse sections by the above forces, could become counter productive. Those who are involved in the anti-fascist struggle will have to ask themselves, who are the immediate victims of fascism and what is the relationship of themselves with the existing as well as potential future victims and survivors during such a political struggle. Such questions among ourselves may indicate an answer to fascism in the long run, upholding the values of democracy, justice, peace and harmony.

Hundreds die in Indian heat wave

Kanda Gabriel

Record-high temperatures across India have killed more than 300 people in recent weeks, almost all of them agricultural laborers and other poor people. The most affected states are Telangana (249 dead) and Andhra Pradesh (45 dead).

Many of the victims died because they had no choice but to work outside in blistering conditions, with temperatures routinely well over 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). One 12-year-old girl in the drought-stricken western state of Maharashtra died from the heat while fetching water.

Broad masses of industrial and construction workers and farm laborers suffering from the heat are faced with an impossible choice: they cannot stay inside, because their families depend on their daily wages; however, if they go to work they have no protection from the heat and are rapidly faced with heatstroke.

There has been scant news coverage of this disaster, in part because few news organizations are ready to dispatch their journalists to the remote rural villages where the majority of the deaths are occurring.

A major problem is the shortage of water. Ten of India’s 29 states have declared a state of drought, following two years of below-average monsoon rains.

“We are getting water supply once in 20 days and taking a bath even once a week is a luxury,” said Manik Kadam, a farm activist from Madhya Pradesh. He told reporters that police are taking charge of filling pots to avoid water wars; villagers get water for only 20 minutes per day.

Soaring temperatures have compounded ongoing drought conditions, with water shortages threatening to affect as many as 330 million people across the country. That is a quarter of India’s population. There are 42,829 affected villages in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, 29,077 villages in the eastern state of Orissa and 22,759 in Karnataka in the south.

The heat wave is harming crops, which will drive up crop prices, imposing even greater misery on the population. Heat wave conditions now prevail across northwest India, affecting cereals, horticulture, and livestock. In Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, in western and southern India, the delay in the monsoon has prevented farmers from planting paddy, cotton, pulses, and millet.

Tens of thousands of farm animals have died, depriving their owners of resources that are critical to survive—a situation that often provokes farmers to commit suicide. According to a report from Al-Jazeera, in the Deccan Plain, eastern Maharashtran region of Marathwada, more than 1,100 farmers committed suicide last year, and a further 216 took their lives in the first three months of this year

The Indian authorities, both the national government led by Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party and the various state governments, have responded to the heat wave and drought in the Indian ruling class’s customary desultory fashion.

According to the media, authorities in some Indian states have belatedly issued warnings for people to stay indoors, banned construction during the hottest times of the day and ordered some schools to extend their summer holidays so that children are not exposed to the heat. However, these public health warnings do not reach broad sections of the population in more remote areas. Moreover, no compensation is offered to workers for whom the loss of a day’s pay may well mean that they and their families have to go hungry.

Last year, a heat wave claimed 2,422 lives in India, the highest heat-related death toll in more than two decades. The Indian national and state governments expressed perfunctory concerns, but the death toll was forgotten once the heat wave faded away. Ignoring this and previous such disasters, the authorities failed to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of this year’s intense and prolonged heat.

Once again, people are being left to fend for themselves. The business oligarchs and affluent sections of the middle class live in spacious homes with air conditioning. Industrial workers and the urban poor, on the other hand, must endure the heat in cramped quarters. Due to the high cost of air conditioners, even among middle-class households, only half had air conditioning as of 2013.

As for the drought, its impact is greatly magnified by the failure to develop modern irrigation. Of an estimated 142 million hectares of land cultivated annually, less than half, some 64 million hectares, have assured access to irrigation. Many irrigation projects have languished for decades as successive Indian governments have prioritized the infrastructure projects favored by domestic and international capital.

While the western media celebrates the purported rise of India, the stark truth is Indian capitalism is utterly incapable of meeting the basic social needs of the country’s largely impoverished population of 1.2 billion people.

In the nearly 70 years since India became independent from Britain, the Indian capitalist class has failed to develop decent health care and public infrastructure for the broad masses of the working class and rural people.

Sixty-nine percent of the Indian population lacks access to adequate sanitation facilities. The Indian state, all levels combined, spends less than 6 percent of GDP on health care and education.

Only 0.5 hospital beds exist per 1,000 population, as compared to 9.1 in Russia and 3 per 1,000 in China. Only 0.21 percent of total infrastructure investments in India are in the health sector, according to an analysis of government data by IndiaSpend.

Though Indian Finance Minister Jaitley announced a 700-billion-rupee ($11.3 billion) hike in Indian government spending on infrastructure in the 2015-16 fiscal year, the Indian government is slashing social spending in many areas. The allocation for health care including health research and AIDS control is to be cut by 15 percent to just Rs. 331.5 billion ($5.4 billion) and for education by 16 percent.

Highest-earning US hedge fund managers raked in $13 billion last year

Niles Niemuth

The top 25 US hedge fund managers received nearly $13 billion in earnings last year, according to an annual survey released Tuesday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

Even though 2015 was a year of low or negative returns for many hedge funds, fund managers’ earnings were up 10 percent over 2014, when the top 25 hedge fund managers pulled in a measly $11.6 billion, their worst earnings since the 2008 housing crisis.

The lowest earner on this year’s list took in $135 million, while the average income was $517.6 million, up from the previous year, but down 40 percent from 846 million in 2013.

The incomes of the top 25 hedge fund managers place them all comfortably in the top 0.1 percent of society, who live in a world of private jets, luxury hotels, and multiple homes and penthouses scattered around the planet. It means little to these modern plutocrats to toss around tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in order to purchase art, luxury yachts, and the services of both the Republican and the Democratic parties.

Citadel’s Kenneth Griffin and Renaissance Technologies’ James Simons topped this year’s list, both pulling in $1.7 billion. Following close behind were Raymond Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world with more than $160 billion in assets under management, and Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper who both brought home $1.4 billion. The top five was rounded out by Millennium Management’s Israel (Izzy) Englander who earned a slim $1.15 billion.

Griffin, who has a net worth of $7.3 billion, has been in the top 25 for the last 14 years. He is a noted art collector and supporter of right-wing, Republican politicians. Earlier this year Griffin purchased Willem De Kooning’s 1955 painting Interchanged for $300 million and Jackson Pollock’s Number 17A for $200 million from the private collection of fellow billionaire David Geffen.

A self-styled Reagan Republican, Griffin backed the 2012 presidential campaign of multi-millionaire Mitt Romney. He endorsed Senator Marco Rubio in his failed run for the 2016 Republican nomination and gave $100,000 to a pro-Rubio super PAC. He also gave $100,000 each to Super PAC funds supporting the presidential campaigns of Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.

Meanwhile Simons, with a net worth of $15.5 billion, has made the list for the last 15 years, earning a total of $23.46 billion over the last decade and a half. Simons used a small sliver of this wealth in 2008 to purchase the Archimedes, a 222-foot super yacht valued at $100 million, which can accommodate 8 guests and 10 crew members.

Through his firm, Renaissance Technologies and Euclidean Capital, Simons has donated generously to both the Democratic and Republican campaigns. According to public filings, Renaissance provided more than $13 million to support the failed presidential bid of Republican Senator Ted Cruz, while Euclidean has given more than $7 million to support the presidential bid of Democrat Hillary Clinton. Simons was one of the largest individual donors in the 2012 campaign, giving more than $9 million to pro-Democrat and pro-Obama super PACs.

To give a sense of what the income of the top hedge fund managers in 2015 represents, consider:

* The West African country of Togo, with a population of 7.5 million people, has a GDP less than $12 billion.

* The top 25 hedge fund managers’ incomes could pay for a majority of the federally-funded National School Lunch Program which provided low-cost or free lunches to more than 31 million school aged children in the US at a cost of $20 billion in 2015.

* The combined income of Griffin and Simons is nearly enough to pay for the $3.5 billion annual budget of K-12 public education in the state of Mississippi. Their income could cover the education costs for approximately 500,000 students, including the salaries of more than 32,000 teachers in more than 1,000 schools.

* $6.1 billion would cover the entire 2015-2016 budget of the University of Wisconsin, which includes the operation of the UW system’s 13 universities and 13 two-year colleges, and cover the education costs for more than 182,000 students. The public university system recently had its state funding slashed by $300 million, plunging the institution into a crisis.

* $1.5 billion would be enough to pay for the replacement of all lead pipes in Flint, Michigan and fix the city’s poisoned public water system.

* Chicago State University, which recently laid off 300 employees due to a shortage of state funds, has an annual operating budget of approximately $6 million. This sum could be paid for more than 2,100 times over by the income of the highest earning hedge fund managers.

A substantial share, if not the majority, of the wealth appropriated by these billionaires is derived from criminal operations. A case in point is SAC Capital Advisors, one of the most profitable hedge funds in history, which pled guilty to security and wire fraud charges in 2013. The entire operation was revealed to have been based on an illegal insider trading operation “on a scale without known precedent.” The firm was required to pay a relatively small $1.8 billion settlement.

Despite being implicated in one of the largest insider trading cases in US history, SAC’s owner and manager, Steven A. Cohen, escaped any criminal charges and remains one of the richest individuals in the world. His current net worth is somewhere around $12 billion.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that fewer than two months after a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission banned him from serving as a hedge fund executive, he now owns a hedge fund called Stamford Harbor Capital across the street from his old fund SAC Capital, and the two share many of the same executives. The fund claims that while Cohen is the owner, he does not play a “supervisory role.”

The story of SAC capital, while particularly egregious, exemplifies the relationship between the criminal financial oligarchy that dominates society and the government bodies that nominally supervise them. The Federal Reserve, Securities Exchange Commission, Congress, and the judiciary serve not to restrain the criminality of the financial elite, but to facilitate it and hide it from the public.

This basic state of social relations is on full display in the 2016 presidential elections, in which the Republican Party has put forward Donald Trump, a semi-fascistic billionaire, as their candidate, while the Democratic Party has settled upon Hillary Clinton, a lifelong defender of Wall Street who sees nothing wrong with receiving a six-figure “speaking fee” for a single appearance.

Syria, ISIS, and the US-UK Propaganda War

Eric Draitser

With the war in Syria raging in its fifth year, and the Islamic State wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East and North Africa, it’s clear that the entire region has been made into one large theater of conflict. But the battlefield must not be understood solely as a physical place located on a map; it is equally a social and cultural space where the forces of the US-UK-NATO Empire employ a variety of tactics to influence the course of events and create an outcome amenable to their agenda. And none to greater effect than propaganda.

Indeed, if the ongoing war in Syria, and the conflicts of the post-Arab Spring period generally, have taught us anything, it is the power of propaganda and public relations to shape narratives which in turn impact political events. Given the awesome power of information in the postmodern political landscape, it should come as no surprise that both the US and UK have become world leaders in government-sponsored propaganda masquerading as legitimate, grassroots political and social expression.

London, Washington, and the Power of Manipulation

The Guardian recently revealed how the UK Government’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit (RICU) is involved in surveillance, information dissemination, and promotion of individuals and groups as part of what it describes as an attempt at “attitudinal and behavioral change” among its Muslim youth population. This sort of counter-messaging is nothing new, and has been much discussed for years. However, the Guardian piece actually exposed the much deeper connections between RICU and various grassroots organizations, online campaigns, and social media penetration.

The article outlined the relationship between the UK Government’s RICU and a London-based communications company called Breakthrough Media Network which “has produced dozens of websites, leaflets, videos, films, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and online radio content, with titles such as The Truth about Isis and Help for Syria.” Considering the nature of social media, and the manner in which information (or disinformation) is spread online, it should come as no surprise that a number of the viral videos, popular twitter feeds, and other materials that seemingly align with the anti-Assad line of London and Washington are, in fact, the direct products of a government-sponsored propaganda campaign.

In fact, as the authors of the story noted:

One Ricu initiative, which advertises itself as a campaign providing advice on how to raise funds for Syrian refugees, has had face-to-face conversations with thousands of students at university freshers’ fairs without any students realising they were engaging with a government programme. That campaign, called Help for Syria, has distributed leaflets to 760,000 homes without the recipients realising they were government communications.

It’s not hard to see what the British Government is trying to do with such efforts; they are an attempt to control the messaging of the war on Syria, and to redirect grassroots anti-war activism to channels deemed acceptable to the political establishment. Imagine for a moment the impact on an 18-year-old college freshman just stepping into the political arena, and immediately encountering seasoned veteran activists who influence his/her thinking on the nature of the war, who the good guys and bad guys are, and what should be done. Now multiply that by thousands and thousands of students. The impact of such efforts is profound.

But it is much more than simply interactions with prospective activists and the creation of propaganda materials; it is also about surveillance and social media penetration. According to the article, “One of Ricu’s primary tasks is to monitor online conversations among what it describes as vulnerable communities. After products are released, Ricu staff monitor ‘key forums’ for online conversations to ‘track shifting narratives,’ one of the documents [obtained by The Guardian] shows.” It is clear that such efforts are really about online penetration, especially via social media.

By monitoring and manipulating in this way, the British Government is able to influence, in a precise and highly targeted way, the narrative about the war on Syria, ISIS, and a host of issues relevant to both its domestic politics and the geopolitical and strategic interests of the British state. Herein lies the nexus between surveillance, propaganda, and politics.

But of course the UK is not alone in this effort, as the US has a similar program with its Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) which describes its mission as being:

…[to] coordinate, orient, and inform government-wide foreign communications activities targeted against terrorism and violent extremism… CSCC is comprised of three interactive components. The integrated analysis component leverages the Intelligence Community and other substantive experts to ensure CSCC communicators benefit from the best information and analysis available. The plans and operations component draws on this input to devise effective ways to counter the terrorist narrative. The Digital Outreach Team actively and openly engages in Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, and Somali.

Notice that the CSCC is, in effect, an intelligence hub acting to coordinate propaganda for CIA, DIA, DHS, and NSA, among others. This mission, of course, is shrouded in terminology like “integrated analysis” and “plans and operations” – terms used to designate the various components of the overall CSCC mission. Like RICU, the CSCC is focused on shaping narratives online under the pretext of counter-radicalization.

It should be noted too that CSCC becomes a propaganda clearinghouse of sorts not just for the US Government, but also for its key foreign allies (think Israel, Saudi Arabia, Britain), as well as perhaps favored NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or Doctors Without Borders (MSF). As the New York Times noted:

[The CSCC will] harness all the existing attempts at countermessaging by much larger federal departments, including the Pentagon, Homeland Security and intelligence agencies. The center would also coordinate and amplify similar messaging by foreign allies and nongovernment agencies, as well as by prominent Muslim academics, community leaders and religious scholars who oppose the Islamic State.

But taking this information one step further, it calls into question yet again the veracity of much of the dominant narrative about Syria, Libya, ISIS, and related topics. With social media and “citizen journalism” having become so influential in how ordinary people think about these issues, one is yet again forced to consider the degree of manipulation of these phenomena.

Manufacturing Social Media Narratives

It is by now well documented the myriad ways in which Western governments have been investing heavily in tools for manipulating social media in order to shape narratives. In fact, the US CIA alone has invested millions in literally dozens of social media-related startups via its investment arm known as In-Q-Tel. The CIA is spending the tens of millions of dollars providing seed money to these companies in order to have the ability to do everything from data mining to real-time surveillance.

The truth is that we’ve known about the government’s desire to manipulate social media for years. Back in February 2011, just as the wars on Libya and Syria were beginning, an interesting story was published by PC World under the title Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda which explained in very mundane language that:

…the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn’t like. It could then potentially have their “fake” people run smear campaigns against those “real” people.

Close observers of the US-NATO war on Libya will recall just how many twitter accounts miraculously surfaced, with tens of thousands of followers each, to “report” on the “atrocities” carried out by Muammar Gaddafi’s armed forces, and call for a No Fly Zone and regime change. Certainly one is left to wonder now, as many of us did at the time, whether those accounts weren’t simply fakes created by either a Pentagon computer program, or by paid trolls.

A recent example of the sort of social media disinformation that has been (and will continue to be) employed in the war on Syria/ISIS came in December 2014 when a prominent “ISIS twitter propagandist” known as Shami Witness (@ShamiWitness) was exposed as a man named “Mehdi,” (later confirmed as Mehdi Biswas) described as “an advertising executive” based in Bangalore, India. @ShamiWitness had been cited as an authoritative source – a veritable “wealth of information” – about ISIS and Syria by corporate media outfits, as well as ostensibly “reliable and independent” bloggers such as the ubiquitous Eliot Higgins (aka Brown Moses) who cited Shami repeatedly. This former “expert” on ISIS has now been charged in India with crimes including “supporting a terrorist organisation, waging war against the State, unlawful activities, conspiracy, sedition and promoting enmity.”

In another example of online media manipulation, in early 2011, as the war on Syria was just beginning, a blogger then known only as the “Gay Girl in Damascus” rose to prominence as a key source of information and analysis about the situation in Syria.The Guardian, among other media outlets, lauded her as “an unlikely hero of revolt” who “is capturing the imagination of the Syrian opposition with a blog that has shot to prominence as the protest movement struggles in the face of a brutal government crackdown.” However, by June of 2011, the “brutally honest Gay Girl” was exposed as a hoax, a complete fabrication concocted by one Tom MacMaster. Naturally, the same outlets that had been touting the “Gay Girl” as a legitimate source of information on Syria immediately backtracked and disavowed the blog. However, the one-sided narrative of brutal and criminal repression of peace-loving activists in Syria stuck. While the source was discredited, the narrative remained entrenched.

And this last point is perhaps the key: online manipulation is designed to control narratives. While the war may be fought on the battlefield, it is equally fought for the hearts and minds of activists, news consumers, and ordinary citizens in the West. The UK and US both have extensive information war capabilities, and they’re not afraid to use them. And so, we should not be afraid to expose them.

The Leicester City Miracle: Playing Against the Statistics

Binoy Kampmark

“The biggest sporting shock of my lifetime, and it’s only my team.”

— Gary Lineker, May 8, 2016

Being bored witless by the spectacle of gouty monarchs doing battle is exactly what most modern football is about. (The battle, of course, is waged by physically fit titan bought by those with deep wallets.) One is left to admire the specifics of individuals who are never able to justify just how much their actual value is worth. Detached from reality and inflated by the market, the latter becomes the illusion by which talent is assessed, players auctioned, and success measured.

In that particular erroneous equation, one person’s celebrated Christiano Rinaldo is as good as any other Lionel Messi, both being the grand figures in a broader game of power, capital and statistics. They represent huge clubs that take centre stage and strangle the game as a grand corporate venture rather than an emotional team experience.

English football has been particularly susceptible to the “cash flow” injection, the flood of money and the purchase of foreign players and clubs by entrepreneurs. It has meant a concentration of capital at the top end clubs, each season characterised by the next round of extortionate prices.

This season saw something quite different. Leicester City Football Club, which avoided relegation last season by six points, placing 14^th, bucked rule and trend. On Monday, victory was assured after rivals Tottenham Hotspur drew with Chelsea 2-2. Leicester itself shot three into the Everton goal at the King power stadium. A stunning story, in any one’s book of footballing romances. Frequently, the odds of the bookies for the club winning the English Premier League trophy were invariably fantastic.

An entire article in the Daily Mirror was dedicated to the subject of improbable victory. Ladbrokes, it noted, were offering odds of 5000-to-1 that the club would win. The odds for Sir Alex Ferguson to win Strictly Come Dancing? A more credible 1000-to-1.

The absurd odds put bookmakers out of pocket by $15 million. This prompted Cork Gaines to call the odds a sham, a sensible remark given that “no team in a 20-team professional league should ever be 5,000-to-1 to win the championship, even in the typically top-heavy Premier League.”[1] (By way of contrast in another competition, the Cleveland Browns are currently 200-to-1 to triumph in the Super Bowl.) Serves them right. Their ploy to earn ruddy cash in such a measure dramatically sunk them.

Even former England footballer and Leicester-born Gary Lineker bought into the odds, suggesting that he would present Match of the Day “in just my undies” should the club win the trophy.

Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and N’Golo Kante became weekly utterances of awe. They captured the interest of characters for the media opportunists, be they the vile Piers Morgan (“No superstars. No money. No fancy stadium. No excuses. No fear.”), or the British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Not all of Leicester City’s triumph was self-grown and self-directed. Its professionalism, working alongside Claudio Ranieri’s tactical acumen, has been unquestioned, but it has found itself battling failing foes. Chelsea suffered a decline; Arsenal proved erratic when it mattered most; while Manchester United remains a scarecrow. Evidently, money cannot always buy stability. Only the raw Tottenham seemed, right to the last match, to be a credible threat.

Leicester City, however, remains a beautiful aberration in sports. Michael Lewis’s Moneyball (2003) took a hard look at the story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball club, and decided that such factors as instinct, luck and team bonding should be abandoned before the cool crispness of numbers. This led to an obsession with money and statistical gurus, along which a good deal of passion was shed.

In the UK, this saw efforts made by such number crunchers as Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski to do the same in Soccernomics (2009). They found an 89 percent correlation between the income of teams in the Premier League with their rankings between 1998 and 2007, a sort of money bag junta.

The authors also decided to do their own bit of statistical speculation, drawing the erroneous conclusions that experience, wealth and population would inevitably lead to domination. Forget Africa as a footballing power continent, they suggested. Poverty, smaller numbers, and less experience to mine there. Focus, instead, on the US, China and India, the future football super powers.

With such thinking dominating the reading of football and its success, Leicester City’s success is even richer. But it was not something those, from the bookies to the pundits, wanted to believe. They always felt that the Leicester story was more fairy tale than miracle.[2] And they got it wrong.

Notes. 

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/leicester-city-odds-were-a-sham-2016-5?r=US&IR=T

[2] http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/soccer-fc-yahoo/leicester-city-still-enjoying-unexpected-success-224348609.html

We Overpopulated The Planet Because We Could

Lionel Anet

Life’s purpose is to multiply and increase its scope wherever it can. The population of individual species are maintained and controlled by a combination of mainly cooperative and competitive interactions. Competition is wasteful and destructive; therefore, it’s avoided and is an indirect motivation for the multitude of species and the wide range that life covers. It’s what has enable life to be always in a process of changing to a balanced state for an average best condition for itself. Life therefore ventures in all direction to find a foothold.

The appearance of an upright postured ape with hands that could then carry and do things necessitated and supported an expanding brain that could usefully use hands that gradually moved its thump to oppose its fingers. Brain size always follows the ability to manipulate otherwise it’s a waste of energy. That chance coincidence of an animal that had hands like apes and gradually stood upright to walk took a few million years to evolve into modern people. It gave us an unchallengeable advantage over other life, a feat never attained before. Nevertheless, hunter-gatherers in the main manage to control their reproduction to be in balance with their local resources.

So we kept on populating by spreading all over the planet, which coincided with global warming, that ended the ice age, however, people weren’t responsible for that warming. The change in the climate raised the oceans by a global sea level of more than 120 metres, drowning land, as the vast ice sheets of the last Ice Age melted back. This melt-back lasted from about 19,000 to about 6,000 years ago, meaning that the average rate of sea-level rise was roughly 1 metre per century. It’s hard to imagine the turmoil that loss of land created, it left very few options but to grow one’s food if they were on fertile land that had enough rain or other water source.

Agriculture led to private property and the domination of nature

Agriculture introduced the separation of people from other life, which gave us this exceptionalism ideology to justify the exploitation of other life forms and ourselves. But its private property that agriculture gave us that changed the way we think and interact within ourselves, other life, and the physical world. For the first time in human history food, artefact, and people could be stolen as they are now private property and depending on the resources of the area those stolen people became the slave of agricultural societies. It produced statuses, hierarchy, and organised thievery of land, produce, and people that we maintained to this day in a variety of forms.

The competition for property, which includes land, people, and anything, that’s regarded of value, is a strong motivator for an insatiable need for even more stuff and people. That growth in produce and people needed specialisation that’s slaves to do the hack work, tradesman, oversees, and so on the ladder of domination. Life in cities is the outcome, which we call civilisation.

The glory of civilisation

Civilisation’s purpose and therefore its makeup are to facilitate the fewest number of individuals to control the largest number of people to extract the maximum wealth from the riches resource on the vastest area of land. How that’s accomplished depend on the location, the level of technology achieved, and the history of that society, its ecology, and the climate that it functions in. The result since the use of fossil fuels is reaching catastrophic proportions.

There’s more than enough evidence of the impossible life our young ones will face due to the unwillingness, mainly from journalist, the highly educated, the economist, and warriors to face up to the falsehoods that established civilisation. Also the pretence that democratic governments represent its people when the information they get is to maintain a system that uses people to take far more from nature than it gives to nature until its completely drained. Worst still, it’s an economy that not only must grow its population and commerce infinitely, but it’s our master. The economy demands more people and trade.

The available information on the state of our planet is overwhelmingly depressing. Yet we don’t show the concern for today’s young’s future when they will be living on a much degraded planet because of our need to satisfy the system of economics and population growth. Billionaires and their lackeys have deceived themselves in thinking that they would be immune, as it would only be that multitude of losers that would perish. Even the most concerned atmospheric scientist can only think within the civilised capitalist system, it’s our culture we know no other, but it’s our culture of more, that is destroying our planet- the life of present children’s future.

How we overcame famines by sacrificing future life

England spearheaded the energy from fossil fuel, which led to overpopulate Europe that produced the mass migration. The steam engine, particularly James Watt’s engine took England off its complete dependence on solar energy from plants and those plants to feed animals including less fortunate people, also wind, and water power as they have a large component of solar energy. A little later with George Stevenson’s locomotive, which made travel a possibility for every one and it brought goods where it was needed. This should have equalised life and increased economic security, but under that civilised economic system it expanded the disparity in wealth and health. But worst still instead of giving a better and easier life the extra energy was used to increase the population and help the powerful to conquer the world.

The use of coal to heat water to produce a variation in the pressure of the steam to that of the atmosphere to do work was the major instigator in establishing the basic of science, which’s thermodynamics. The adherence to it, when convenient within a capitalist economy, has produced our modern world of science, which enabled that economy to grossly overpopulate nations.

We mustn’t take more from nature than it can sustain, but within that limit we can have a very large population with a small foot print from individuals or fewer people with a larger footprint. There is a limit to how large societies’ footprint can be and a limit to the fewest people we can have for a sustainable life. The obvious safest size population to have on the planet would be the one to ensure the best life our children can have in a sustainable manner. It could be a population of less than two billion people, which would give us all a very comfortable sustainable and safe life. That, sustainable way of life, can’t be attained in our civilised capitalist world no matter how much we revere civilisation, it on the other hand, is bringing life to the brink of our extinction. A system that’s geared to grow can’t reduce our population, or our consumption and we are wasting valuable time expecting any progress in that line. We don’t have any other choice but to abandon that socioeconomic system if our children are to survive.

To survive, we must unlock our social genetic makeup

To reduce to that sort of population and with a comparative tiny economy, we would need a very different socioeconomic way of life to be able to cope with such drastic measures and give us all a better life. The social life that our hunter-gatherers forebear had is a good model of socialness of the highest order, but only seen last century in a few harsh areas where competition was unknown. They lived in very social groups of cooperative people of a population that their environment could easily sustain safely. The security attained in those societies, especially for children, is impossible for civilised people to imagine. Children like adults would belong to the group, who are all responsible for each other, when able. That meant a child would have multiple mothers and siblings of older and younger age helping each other. Our biggest obstacle to that life is our mind set, not the numbers of people or our technical reliance.

We need a way of life that can give a satisfying live to everyone at the same time as we have a reduction in population and consumption per capita. Doing that would make life easier, as there would be more houses without building more, we would have more choice of where to live and grow our food in the best areas.

The joy of children is not diminished by sharing them, but any stress of nurturing children is reduced by sharing that responsibility. Also, all children would grow up in fair societies because they would all have the same multiple mothers and fathers and would experience the same age position as they grew up. Loneliness for young and old could then be a thing of the past. But this set up can’t function well in an alien milieu of capitalism; nevertheless, it’s our original way of life that our hunter-gatherers live for million years. Our gens are still oriented for social living it’s our way of life the contradiction is adopting private property as our master.

Economic competitiveness of wealth is very different to competitive tennis, as winning a game doesn’t place that player in a stronger position for the next game. Competition for wealth is extremely unfair and dishonest as winning the first round increases the winner’s position for the second go. It’s more like martial arts where a severe blow to one participant makes the contest unequal; it’s like the competitive economy. The game is to annihilate opponents. Striving for equal opportunity in a competitive based economy is divisive, unfair and dishonest. As chance and location can give an advantage that can easily grow and those who have gained that advantage can’t see the need to share fairly. So they will not relinquish their privilege to attain fairness in society. On the other hand, by increasing the awareness of societies wealthiest to the disaster they are also facing, and that, their only saving strategy is to unite people in a drastic reduction in output, consumption, and babies, which will enable everyone to survive. To strive for fairness because it’s the right way to live is utopian, but we must have fairness to survive, and that can unify us all, as survival is the primary instinct for all life. Starting that journey will also give us more than survival; it will start us on the way to have an assured and satisfying life.

With a reduction in the need for private property, we would also see a lessening importance of inheritances, a major unfairness of civilisation. Without the need to compete for position and stuff we can have an increasing cooperative society that involve participation instead of compulsion in a world where life is safe and secure - to venture- able to take challenges.

Facebook Manipulates Its Trending News Module

Lauren McCauley

Image: Esther Vargas/cc/flickr

Revelations that Facebook may have regularly "blacklisted" conservative stories from the platform's "trending" news section was met with outrage on Monday from journalists across the political spectrum who found the company's alleged abuse of power "disturbing" and potentially dangerous.

After speaking with several former "news curators," Gizmodo technology editor Michael Nunez reported Monday that the social media platform routinely censored stories "about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users."

The contracted employees also said they were "instructed to artificially 'inject' selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all," and were specifically asked to exclude "news about Facebook itself in the trending module."

"I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news," said one former curator, who was kept anonymous but identified by Gizmodo as "politically conservative."

This practice of "imposing human editorial values," as Nunez put it, flies in the face of the company's claim that the section is simply displaying "topics that have recently become popular on Facebook."

Indeed, Nunez notes, Facebook's trending bar "constitutes some of the most powerful real estate on the internet and helps dictate what news Facebook’s users—167 million in the U.S. alone—are reading at any given moment."

Right-wing media was predictably incensed after the news broke. But for journalists who fall elsewhere on the political spectrum, the revelations were an alarm bell warning against the social media network's growing power—and desire—to influence.

"Aside from fueling right-wing persecution, this is a key reminder of dangers of Silicon Valley controlling content," Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote on Twitter.

Similarly, Guardian national security reporter Spencer Ackermann said, "You don't have to be a conservative to find this chilling & gross, as Facebook increasingly rules the news business."

San Jose Mercury News technology columnist Troy Wolverton agreed. "Whatever your political views, this is disturbing. Facebook needs to stop this—or be more transparent about it," Wolverton wrote.

Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm raised similar concerns last month after an internal poll asked if Facebook should "help prevent President Trump in 2017."

At the time, Timm wrote, "the extraordinary ability that the social network has to manipulate millions of people with just a tweak to its algorithm is a serious cause for concern."

He continued:

To be sure, many corporations, including broadcasters and media organisations, have used their vast power to influence elections in all sorts of ways in the past: whether it’s through money, advertising, editorials, or simply the way they present the news. But at no time has one company held so much influence over a large swath of the population – 40% of all news traffic now originates from Facebook – while also having the ability to make changes invisibly.

...

But one organisation having the means to tilt elections one way or another a dangerous innovation. Once started, it would be hard to control. In this specific case, a majority of the public might approve of the results. But do we really want future elections around the world to be decided by the political persuasions of Mark Zuckerberg, or the faceless engineers that control what pops up in your news feed?

Responding to Monday's news, Timm added: "Those dismissing Facebook's suppression as 'oh, so they're just like other media orgs?' are really missing the point."

"The first half of the digital news revolution that began in the mid-1990s was defined by disaggregation," Dan Kennedy, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, wrote recently.

"The second half has been defined by re-aggregation at the hands of Facebook. And that trend is only accelerating," he continued. "Mark Zuckerberg is not just the unimaginably wealthy founder and chief executive of the world’s largest social network. He also exercises enormous control [...] over how we receive the information we need to govern ourselves in a democratic society. That is an unsettling reality, to say the least."

For its part, Facebook sidestepped the allegations, telling reporters that they have "rigorous guidelines" that "do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another."