Freedom From Fear

Sheikh Javaid Ayub

Oxford English dictionary defines fear as a strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger, or threat. As a countable noun it means a phobia, a sense of fear induced by something or someone. Islamophobia is an undue fear of Islam, so is Westernophobia a growing sense of insecurity and fear of the West. Fear makes minorities feel vulnerable about their minority hood. Fear of communal violence and rightist ideology may make Indian Muslims vote for secular parties, especially for the Congress. Despite constituting 14 percent of the total population of India, Indian Muslims, it is stated, are deliberately being kept out of the Indian parliament. In the 2014Lok Sabha elections Muslim representation hit an all time low of just 22 MPs, with UP despite its substantial Muslim population, not returning a single Muslim candidate to the Lok Sabha. The parties are finding it difficult to field Muslim candidates for fear of consolidating the majority vote.

Politics – both international and domestic is shaped by fear. The anarchical world order can create fear among the nation state so do the US hegemony. Fear of losing statehood put the nation states on the path of armamentation. From conventional arms to nuclear bombs, fear has largely been a motive in this mad race of arms. The idea of the military utility has been a key driver for the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The fear of Fascism galvanized into the Second World War and the fear of Communism produced the Cold War. Cold War was a war of build up Vs build up. The two superpowers were so massively engaged in a nuclear race that they were in possession of more than 70000 weapons by the US and the Soviet Union during 1970s and 1980s. However, today’s nuclear world is very different from the bipolar world of the Cold War dominated by nuclear rivalry between the two superpowers. The centre of gravity is relentlessly shifting from Europe to Asia Pacific. Fear is thus mother of all wars and all weaponry. China’s presence as a nuclear power in the neighborhood provides a powerful reason for India to detonate its own, irrespective of being among the world’s poorest countries. According to the annual report of Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, India is home to 194.6 million undernourished people, the highest in the world. Despite being in such a killer poverty trap it manages its nukes. India’s bomb gave reason for Pakistan to have her own. Making of bomb kills so do its use.

Living with nuclear bombs has made us believe that possessing such beasty bombs will secure us through nuclear deterrence. Believing in the logic of deterrence is to live in a fool’s paradise. Deterrence is the buzz word of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks – claiming to have known human nature in its totality; perhaps not, because no one can claim a mastery over understanding the human nature. Ask Hobbes and he will claim human nature to be selfish, egoistic, quarrelsome, timid etc. Ask Locke and Rousseau they will opine that humans have a natural tendency of degeneration which is sufficient for men to wage wars and go for a rampant killing.

The theory of nuclear deterrence, we are told, prevented the Cold War from turning into a ‘Hot War’. True, the Cold War remained cold till it ended but there are lots of hidden truths that need to be unearthed. Neither states nor the statesmen have saved the world at the most dangerous moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet Submarine Officer who blocked an order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes, at the tensest moment of the crisis, when the submarines were under attack by US destroyers. A devastating response would have been a near certainty, leading to a Total War.

In a nuclear world it is not dying that we must fear, but living. It is folly to believe that nuclear bombs are deadly only if they are used. But the fact is that their very presence is cancerous for our existence. Setting of a tradition of using nuclear bomb, the US has put the whole world on a nuclear volcano which can burriest any time anywhere. The day it burriest, will surely be a dooms day for the mankind. Ours is a risk society and nuclear risks cannot be overlooked.

Barak Obama became the first serving US president to visit Hiroshima on May 27 of this year. The visit is mostly looked as reflecting obama’s conviction about a nuclear free world. Although he did not make an apology for dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945, but he returned to the nuclear disarmament agenda, stating that new and destructive technologies need a moral revolution. He called for moral courage to escape the ‘logic of fear’ in order to pursue a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. But he forgot to mention that the US has announced an ambitious plan to spend $1 trillion for modernization of its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades. Neither did he say that the US still maintains the right of ‘first use of nuclear weapons’ though limited to extreme circumstances.

Fear, if well articulated, can become a handy tool for keeping hegemony intact and can provide a kind of free license to intervene, attack and control nation states. Consolidation of power need creating and countering perceived threats to the society. Threats are created and solved in such a fashion that people relinquish their sovereign powers and surrender before propagandist state apparatus that virtually present herself as the guardian and protector of individual. People are made do think in the terms state wants them to think, there is no thinking beyond that, and no truth beyond the truth that is articulated by the state. Truth is what the hegemon calls truth! The fear of Al-Qaida can become enough reason for invading Afghanistan. In the same fashion the fear of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction become a valid reason for bombarding Iraq and eliminating Saddam Hussain.

The fear is seen everywhere. It is politicized, manipulated, mutilated, manufactured and removed – only to be replaced by a more intense one. The presence of seven lakh troops, backed by draconian laws is a glaring example of India’s fear of losing Kashmir. The presence of such a huge number of armed personnel has domesticated fear in every house hold with every Kashmiri. The fear hounds them as do ghosts in the dark dreadful nights. They are feeling dwarfed with their manhood lost. Their voices chocked and their individuality crushed. What they really need is freedom from fear.

Let the fears are done with and the much needed peace and tranquility be restored for human happiness and human progress.

It Is Expensive To Be Poor

Vidyadhar Date

Mumbai: A man murdered a woman in Mumbai recently because he was afraid she was going to deprive him of his job as a temporary watchman. This shows the crisis of employment in Mumbai. And this is a city which among all places in India is supposed to provide the maximum employment opportunity.

And the watchman security industry is one of the few industries which has seen a big job growth in the last few years. If jobs are not easily available even here then it is a serious situation. So far one of the few jobs available for the poor is of security guards in housing societies . There is a big demand for the jobs even though these are very poorly paid. I talk with these people sometimes while taking a walk to Joggers Park and find that many of them work in two shifts, each of 12 hours, day and night. This is because the pay for one shift is not enough even for subsistence. Many of them sleep at night and it is easy to blame them if one does not take into account the working conditions. Doing two jobs is the only way they can tackle their problem of homelessness.

Mumbai’s municipal commissioner recently talked of two items on top of his agenda - providing houses for the poor and to create jobs. But then Mumbai is mainly creating poorly paying jobs and there is not the faintest chance of these poor people ever being able to afford even the most miserable dwelling. And the government has not the slightest credibility in the scheme of providing houses to slum dwellers as this is aimed mainly at enriching the builders. Those not having access even to a slum have little future.

Chief minister Antulay brought about a legislation in the early eighties to provide security of employment to security guards and to regulate the industry of security agencies often run by retired cops or armymen. It worked for some time and then was scuttled by subsequent administrations.

The food needs of the watchmen have led to a new industry. Last night I saw two men on a motor cycle stopping in front of every building handing out plastic parcels to watchmen. This was their dinner of dal, chawal and sabji for Rs. 35. That comes to nearly Rs. 2000 per month for two subsistence meals a day. That may be one dinner expense in a restaurant for a better off person. But when a man makes Rs. 6000 doing a total of two jobs per day for a month, this is very unaffordable. There are other expenses and he has to send money home in U.P. or Bihar..

I also saw a couple of young men with their own motor cycles in front of a chemist shop handing out a home delivery of medicines. Such job creation is all right for survival but does not reflect a healthy economy. Clearly, the claims that India is the fastest growing economy in the world can hardly impress those who experience reality.

The laziness of the rich is creating a demand for home delivery. People want home delivery even from a shop in front of their house. This is leading to the creation of agencies which offer home delivery for a range of products from groceries to electric appliances. But this job creation has little value.

Besides, so many jobs are not only poorly paid but also hazardous. Three workers were suffocated to death while cleaning a drain pipe in the posh Palava city township coming up on the outskirts of Mumbai near Dombivali. Most such workers are denied basic protective measures in the hazardous job. Just as the railway network in the U.S. and Canada is said to be laid on the graves of workers killed during construction, our rich would be living on the graves of the poor who are killed while laboring for building the luxurious apartments for the rich.

It is expensive to be poor as the famous American novelist James Baldwin and researcher Barbara Ehrenreich have pointed out. I know of a domestic help who pays Rs. 3000 per month for a shelter in a slum while an extremely rich man enjoying the protection of the old Rent Act may be living in a sprawling house in a posh area in Mumbai paying much less than that.

For everything the poor have to pay more than the rich in proportion to their income. Since, the poor do not have a proper dwelling address, they do not get basic services. The rich who clog the streets with their cars do not realizing that the congestion is driving up the expense of an ordinary man who takes an auto rickshaw or a taxi in an emergency.

The system does not care for the poor as the rich with their supreme ignorance and prejudice universally believe that the poor are to blame for their lot, not the system.

Ordinary people it seems do not deserve basic amenities at public spaces even when they are paying for the services and even when they are engaged in boosting the economy. On the other hand the rich get preferential treatment.

So, one notices that it is safer to get a heart attack at the Mumbai airport than anywhere else. A front page report in the Times of India said so earlier this month. One can be assured of treatment within three minutes with the use of electronic equipment installed at over 100 points.

Fine. But how come it is difficult or almost impossible to get even first aid at our suburban or mainline railway stations or bus depots ? Many more people travel by trains than planes but it took a case in the high court to force the suburban railway system to agree to provide first aid boxes at railway stations in the last couple of years. And travelling by overcrowded trains is far more stressful and hazardous than planes. So the need here is much more. Besides chances of mishaps occurring at railway stations are much higher. Only two days ago, a slab on a drain collapsed at Vasai railway station and several people were injured and they fell into the slush.

No one expects the posh ambience of airports at railway stations or bus depots. But how can the authorities discriminate between two sets of service users when it comes to basic amenities ? One has never noticed uncomfortable seats at airports. Toilet and drinking water facilities are all over and easily accessible. Can one imagine an airport where passengers wait in heat and rain without a roof over their head ?

Medical tourism is cited as a reason for good medical facilities at the airport. But then so many ordinary people also travel by train and buses to get medical treatment. They may not be big consumers for five star hospitals. But they are travelers for a medical treatment though they are not tourists. The main reason for the discrimination is the extreme callousness of the political class and the upper class which think they can get away without providing even basic amenities to common people.

Some top industrialists in Mumbai recently went out of their way to seek better surfacing of Marine Drive and wrote a letter to the municipal commissioner making a bitter complaint. If only they thought about the neglect of other areas, life would be better.

There is a wider issue regarding railway stations and bus depots. These are prime public spaces used by lakhs of people. If only these are maintained well, if the authorities set a good example, it will help create a more social mindset, people will learn to use public spaces better, join in keeping them clean.

It's Time To Ditch Industrial Agriculture

Andrea Germanos

If you can count as successes increased greenhouse gases, ecosystem degradation, rises in hunger and obesity, and unbalanced power in food systems, then industrial agriculture has done one heck of a job.

That's according to a panel of experts, whose new report, From Uniformity to Diversity: A paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems (pdf), calls for breaking the chains that lock monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots to the dominant farming systems in order to unleash truly sustainable approaches—ones that use holistic strategies, eschew chemical inputs, foster biodiversity, and ensure farmer livelihoods.

As the authors write, "The evidence in favor of a major transformation of our food systems is now overwhelming."

The new publication from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), released Thursday, compares the two opposing methods of agricultural systems; looks at why, given the negative outcomes of outcomes of industrial agriculture, it remains in place; and suggests paths for how to move towards widespread adoption of agroecological systems.

"Many of the problems in food systems are linked specifically to the uniformity at the heart of industrial agriculture, and its reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides," stated Olivier De Schutter, former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and leader of the panel. "Simply tweaking industrial agriculture will not provide long-term solutions to the multiple problems it generates."

For example, the report notes that food systems are responsible for about one-third of all GHGs, "Aquifer exploitation and water table depletion are now occurring at alarming rates, particularly in industrial cropping zones such as the U.S. Midwest," and pesticide exposure has been linked to numerous health problems.

Among the factors keeping the dominant system in place, the report notes, is the flawed "feed the world" approach that frames industrial agriculture as the solution while ignoring power relations and poverty, as well as policies that keep fossil fuels cheap and short term political thinking that demands immediate results.

As De Schutter added: "It is not a lack of evidence holding back the agroecological alternative. It is the mismatch between its huge potential to improve outcomes across food systems, and its much smaller potential to generate profits for agribusiness firms."

Among the key messages, as noted by IPES-Food

>> Today's food and farming systems have succeeded in supplying large volumes of foods to global markets, but are generating negative outcomes on multiple fronts: widespread degradation of land, water and ecosystems; high GHG emissions; biodiversity losses; persistent hunger and micro-nutrient deficiencies alongside the rapid rise of obesity and diet-related diseases; and livelihood stresses for farmers around the world.

>> Many of these problems are linked specifically to ‘industrial agriculture’: the input-intensive crop monocultures and industrial-scale feedlots that now dominate farming landscapes. The uniformity at the heart of these systems, and their reliance on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and preventive use of antibiotics, leads systematically to negative outcomes and vulnerabilities.

>> Industrial agriculture and the ‘industrial food systems’ that have developed around it are locked in place by a series of vicious cycles. For example, the way food systems are currently structured allows value to accrue to a limited number of actors, reinforcing their economic and political power, and thus their ability to influence the governance of food systems.
"We must change the way we set political priorities," De Schutter said. "The steps towards diversified agroecological farming are steps to democratize decision-making and to rebalance power in food systems."

The new publication, presented at the invite-only Trondheim Conference on Biodiversity in Norway, follows a call in November 2015 by United Nations expert Hilal Elver to ditch industrial agriculture.

"There is a need for a major shift from industrial agriculture to transformative systems such as agroecology that support the local food movement, protect small holder farmers, respect human rights, food democracy and cultural traditions, and at the same time maintain environmental sustainability and facilitate a healthy diet," she said at the time.

School closed in remote Australian indigenous community

John Davis

Queensland’s state Labor government last month withdrew teachers and shut down the only school in the remote Aboriginal township of Aurukun, blaming violence by local youth, while boosting the number of police in the town from five to 21. It was the second time within weeks that the school was closed, depriving all the local students of the basic right to attend an education.

This repressive approach to the social crisis in Aurukun was backed by the federal Liberal-National government, as well as Noel Pearson, a high-profile Aboriginal figure whose organisation took over the school to operate as the “Aurukun Academy” in 2010.

Aurukun is in far north Queensland, on the west coast of Cape York, 811 kilometres from the nearest major town, Cairns. Home to about 1,400 people, it is one of the most economically oppressed and impoverished localities in Australia.

Like many other indigenous communities in Queensland, Aurukun was originally a paternalistic church mission. Aboriginal people were relocated from a large surrounding area, many against their will, to the mission settlement. Later it was placed under authoritarian state government control, then handed to a local Aboriginal council in 1978.

Since then, the chief beneficiaries have been a thin layer of indigenous businessmen, bureaucrats and lawyers. The economic and social conditions remained blighted and deprived of basic government funding. Aurukun’s power supply is intermittent, blackouts are common and the local sawmill and butcher have long closed.

Joblessness has plagued Aurukun for decades. According to federal Department of Labour statistics, the unemployment rate in December 2015 was 57.6 percent, jumping up from 37.4 percent three months earlier.

Unemployment is nearly back to the level of 69.6 percent in 2010. That was the year in which the then state and federal Labor governments handed school control over to Pearson’s right-wing, pro-business Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, which also runs the area’s government-funded employment services.

Since 2010, the community has been turned into a social laboratory for the “welfare reform” agenda pursued by successive federal Liberal-National and Labor governments. Families are threatened with being cut off payments if their children fail to attend the “academy.”

The school was halted at Year 7 two years ago. Pearson declared that offering classes to Year 10 was “extended child-minding” and had no value to students who did not wish to participate. The closest high school is a three-hour drive north to Weipa, a bauxite mining town. The other options are distant education courses operating out of Cairns, or far-away boarding schools.

Media reports have played up the allegations of violence against the academy principal and teachers. On May 8, the staff was evacuated after the principal’s car was reportedly stolen and he was confronted by a group of teenagers.

Some teachers returned after a week but were withdrawn again after further incidents on May 23 involving reported car thefts, stones being thrown on the roofs of the academy and teachers’ accommodation and other threats of violence.

In media interviews, Pearson backed the closure and complained that he previously asked the state government to send more police to the town. He contemptuously described Aurukun as “the Afghanistan of teaching,” where “the buildings are dilapidated … and unfit for the teachers that live in them.”

Yet, Pearson claimed that Aurukun school “inspired a movement here and dozens of schools over the country to adopt the program that we have running in that school.” He said “the school has never been as good as it has been in these past five years.”

In reality, a report by Cape York Academy, released in 2014, showed that Aurukun’s student attendance rate had sunk to 58 percent, down from previous years. Aurukun and other Cape York Aboriginal Academy Schools at Hope Vale and Coen became testing grounds for a Direct Instruction (DI) program.

First developed in the United States during the 1960s for teaching disadvantaged students, DI is a strict instructional-type education that follows a step-by-step, lesson-by-lesson approach, placing intense pressure on students through constant assessment. It features repetitive teaching, a narrow curriculum and passive learning. What the teachers say and do is prescribed and scripted.

Participation in this program has been enforced by “welfare reform” measures, for which Pearson has been a vocal advocate. The Australianexplained that Aurukun became a blueprint for “quarantining” welfare benefits. A Family Responsibility Commission would take control of a person’s welfare payments if they were “convicted in a magistrate’s court, breached a public housing tenancy agreement, were the subject of a child notification order or didn’t send their child to school.”

Pearson’s program also directs youth who leave school into low-wage exploitation. The Australian reported that Pearson’s “scheme has put eight Aurukun young people to work fruit-picking and in a South Australian abattoir.” Pearson said the program should be widened to cover the “shadow group” of youth who were at the centre of the recent “security scare.”

“We just need to scale it up by 10,” Pearson told the newspaper. “Instead of eight, we need 80. And after six months of fruit-picking or on a harvest trail or in an abattoir … you will then have the basis for entry-level labourers to go on to work in a mine or in a fulltime job.”

Pearson is an archetypal representative of a privileged Aboriginal elite, cultivated by the political and corporate establishment over the past few decades. In the name of “economic empowerment,” his schemes serve to prepare a layer of indigenous people to become business operators, often exploiting Aboriginal youth and workers as cheap labour.

The situation in Aurukun is an acute expression of the broader crisis facing many other remote communities, as well as other working-class areas. Youth in these areas face a lack of decent, well-paid employment, woefully inadequate health, education, housing and recreational services, and incessant police harassment. Among the results are alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence and other endemic social problems.

None of the underlying causes of the social and economic difficulties in Aurukun have been addressed in the corporate media. The truth is that the capitalist system, based on private profit, has nothing to offer most people in these communities except a lifetime of destitution and poverty.

Scotland’s RISE electoral coalition descends into crisis

Steve James

Last year saw the launch of the self-proclaimed “Scottish Syriza,” the RISE (Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism) coalition. RISE leaders intended to emulate the “success” of their Greek role-model, which had formed a government pledged to oppose austerity.

No sooner had RISE launched, however, than its components were forced to distance themselves from their Greek role model which, just one month earlier, had betrayed a massive anti-austerity mandate and signed up to all the brutal measures demanded by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Nevertheless, RISE aspired to return eight Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) at the next Scottish general election, calculating that they would need about 16,000 votes per region, 128,000 in total. Colin Fox, co-leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), RISE’s main component together with the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), said the Labour Party’s “existential crisis” meant that the task of providing effective opposition to the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) would fall to RISE.

Things turned out differently. The group did not win a single regional list seat and polled 10,911, 0.5 percent of the vote, or less than 10 percent of their target. RISE was even outpolled by former SSP leader Tommy Sheridan’s crisis-ridden Solidarity Scotland, which won 14,333 list votes across Scotland. Taken together with the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the fragmented and feuding pseudo-left groups polled 28,864 regional and constituency votes. By contrast, in 2003, a year whose results RISE were hoping to emulate, the SSP alone polled 245,735 regional and constituency votes and elected six MSPs.

Dominant in Scotland for decades, in 2003 the Scottish Labour Party held the vast majority of Westminster seats, formed a minority government in Holyrood and dominated local government. Over the intervening 14 years, in line with the collapse of Labour in Britain and social democratic parties worldwide, Scottish Labour has suffered a rout due to its pro-business and warmongering policies. The main beneficiary has been the Scottish National Party (SNP), however. Today, Labour polls less than half the vote of the SNP and has just one Westminster seat, 24 in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, less than the Tories, and is likely to lose its remaining local authorities. Although the SNP-led “Yes” campaign decisively lost the 2014 referendum, SNP membership is now many times that of Labour.

The SNP won all but three of 59 Westminster seats and won the recent Scottish election, albeit with a reduced vote thanks to a low turnout in working class areas due to its imposition of cuts. In power since 2007, the party is forming a minority government, its third government in succession, in order to advance an anti-working class legislative program.

Commenting on RISE’s electoral humiliation in the nationalist blog Bella Caledonia, reprinted in the Pabloite International Viewpoint, RISE organiser Jonathan Shafi, of the RIC and formerly of the International Socialist Group and the Socialist Workers Party, complained, “By the time [RISE] had launched, the energy of the referendum had been incubated in the SNP.”

“[W]e convinced ourselves of their being political space for the far left in an election where the SNP, Labour and the Greens were all competing for the radical vote,” he continued. “In 1999 and 2003 when the SSP broke through, the space for the radical left was much more accessible.”

Shafi offered no explanation of the pseudo-left’s decline and the SNP’s rise. But the pseudo-left's central achievement has been precisely to ensure that the main beneficiaries from the collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland is the SNP—a tax-cutting, neo-liberal, pro-NATO, pro-European Union (EU) party. The SSP, latterly alongside the RIC and Solidarity Scotland, have worked year after year to portray Scottish nationalism as a progressive answer to pro-business, Conservative and Labour, austerity governments in Westminster, which the SNP successfully exploited by judiciously employing a little leftist rhetoric.

RISE is led by an aspiring middle class layer of academics and commentators seeking to build their careers through the creation of a new Scottish capitalist state. To this end they have offered their services as allies of the SNP in presenting its right wing nationalist project, directed towards breaking up the working class and fragmenting the social provision on which it depends, in vaguely socialist-sounding terms.

During the 2014 referendum, the SNP worked with the RIC and SSP, using them and Solidarity to mobilise for a “Yes” vote in working class areas. Solidarity now calls routinely for an SNP vote, with Sheridan hoping to secure a position for himself in the party.

All three groups hoped for a quid-pro-quo after the referendum, However, the SNP membership ballooned, expanding from less than 25,000 to over 100,000 in a matter of weeks. Presented with tens of thousands of new members, the SNP concluded it had little need of its varied suitors.

An additional consideration is the political unreliability of all three groups—in particular with regard to the SNP’s key aim of supporting EU membership in the June 23 Brexit referendum in line with its desire for EU membership for Scotland after any independence referendum. SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon proposed herself as one of the leading lights in the “Remain” camp.

RISE, however, were unable to come to a unified position, with the SSP determinedly pro-EU while others such as academic Neil Davidson and former SNP leading light Jim Sillars calling for a “Leave.” Solidarity also supports the “Leave” camp.

RISE’s central election pitch was for a second Scottish independence referendum. Entitled “Another Scotland is possible,” their manifesto called for a new independence poll “within the Lifespan of the Next Holyrood Parliament, with or without Westminster’s Permission.” This is not currently much use to the SNP either, which wants another independence vote only under more favourable economic and political conditions.

As a consequence, RISE and Solidarity Scotland were both unable to convince the SNP to encourage its supporters to give them their second preference vote.

Their disastrous performance raises the possibility of RISE breaking apart. While its founding meeting was attended by over 700 people, a conference in late May drew a mere 40. There are said to be sharp divisions within the SSP over continuing participation. In the SSP’s Scottish Socialist Voice, party leader Colin Fox complained ruefully “Our ‘2nd vote for a 2nd referendum’ message simply did not resonate with Yes voters in the way we had hoped.”

The common conclusion of the RISE leadership is that their main mistake was to be overly critical of the SNP. Writing in the National, Carolyn Leckie, formerly an SSP MSP, declared, “I voted RISE,” but warned that “it really does need to tone down some of the over-the-top rhetoric that some of its activists directed towards the SNP.”

RISE official Jamie Maxwell was happy to concur, telling Bella Caledonia, “Bluntly accusing the SNP of being rightwing wasn’t smart. The Greens struck a more constructive tone and were rewarded for it.”

For his part, Shafi called for a RISE to focus on building a new “extra-parliamentary movement” to build a “broad movement for independence again.”

Taken together, these positions amount to a call to end all but the most loyal criticism of the SNP and to work alongside it once again as nationalist apologists for austerity, dictatorship and war.

British pensioners over 75 increasingly likely to live in poverty

Trevor Johnson

A report by Independent Age, a charity for the elderly, reveals that 1.6 million older people live in poverty in the UK, with an increasing proportion of them over 75 years of age.

Around 950,000 or one fifth of pensioners over 75 live in poverty, compared to 14 percent of younger pensioners and 14 percent of working age adults. There are 11.8 million pensioners living in private households in the UK, of whom 4.8 million are aged 75 and over.

The average income of pensioners aged over 75 is £59 a week less than younger pensioners, and £112 a week less than working age adults. Just under a quarter (24 percent) of single pensioners are living in poverty.

Pensioners renting with private landlords are even more likely to be living in poverty—around a third, after housing costs are taken into account. This is the case for both younger and older pensioners.

While the amount of wealth going to pensioners has increased overall, it has primarily benefitted the wealthy, leaving large numbers of pensioners out. A disproportionate number of those left out are over 75.

A quarter of the over-75s have no savings at all. The maximum state pension is a derisory £119.30 a week, or around £6,200 a year. Those fortunate enough to have an occupational pension, invested in the stock market, have an average pension pot of around £60,000, giving an annuity worth only around £3,200.

Many over 75 (around a third) refuse to apply for means-tested benefits such as pension credit, even though they would qualify if they did. This is mainly because they see the process of means-testing as degrading.

Much has been made of the Conservative government’s “triple lock” on yearly increases in the state pension (ensuring it increases by the higher rate of inflation, average earnings or a minimum 2.5 percent). However, the lock does not apply to benefits relied on by an increasing number of pensioners: Pension Credit, Attendance Allowance or the winter fuel payment.

Almost one fifth (19 percent), or 350,000 single female older pensioners, live below the poverty threshold, and that goes up to a quarter (26 percent) before taking housing costs into account. More than one quarter (26 percent) of women over 75 receive Pension Credit and one quarter (25 percent) receive disability benefits. Among older pensioners, women tend to have lower incomes than men, and single pensioners have lower incomes than couples.

Those over 75 are most likely to have lived in poverty within the last four years, and are most likely to remain in poverty for the longest.

The report highlights the case of Jack, an 86-year old widower, who told the researchers he does not spend as much money now as he used to, nor does he buy any new clothes or go to the pub. He told them, “I know I have to [spend less] … the thought of being without a penny would be terrible. I wouldn’t ask anyone for help... I’ve got enough in the bank to bury me [and] pay for all the bills, so my daughter doesn’t have to do it”.

One in 10 pensioners is materially deprived, based on the criteria of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Despite being on a lower income on average, those aged 75 and over are no more likely to report material deprivation than younger pensioners, according to government statistics. However, this is likely to be the result of the way the questions on material deprivation are asked.

If someone reports not having access to one of the items on the deprivation checklist (for instance, having working heating, electrics and plumbing) they are asked why, with answers to be selected from a range between “cannot afford” and “do not want”. Those over 75 appear the most likely to explain their lack of basic items as the result of not wanting them, even if they have no money to pay for them.

Pensioners over 75 are more likely than younger pensioners to go without holidays. They are also less likely to go out socially once a month or more, and less likely to have access to a car or taxi when they need one.

One of the reasons that older pensioners have lower incomes is the lower levels of pension savings they were able to make during their working lives. Another factor is that incomes tend to decline as people age.

Age UK (a charity for the elderly) gives another reason why pensioners can be hit by government rules—namely, that pensions are reduced by time out of employment, caused by such issues as caring responsibilities, disability or unemployment.

The report shows up the fraud of the “generational divide”—claims that the younger generation is suffering because the older generation are getting more than their “fair share”.

This myth ignores the actual conditions facing many elderly people and the fact that wealth is as unevenly distributed among the elderly as it is among the population at large. The “generational divide” is another attempt to create divisions in the working class and distract attention from the reality of the class divide—which has become an ever-widening chasm.

The authors of the report do not intend to draw attention to class issues—the words “working class” and “inequality” are noticeable only by their absence. It makes a long list of recommendations for changes, none of which will be carried out as government policy heads in the opposite direction.

After claiming to have “ring fenced” pensions for the last few years, sections of the ruling class have recently become more vocal in calling for a direct assault on the elderly as part of their programme of imposing austerity on the working class.

The discussions around the selling of British Home Stores and Tata Steel’s UK operations—in which the rights of those who paid into occupational pensions have been used as a bargaining chip, with a fall in payments of up to 10 percent being envisaged—show that pension arrangements are slated to be ripped to shreds as the economic crisis begins to bite deeper.

US economy adds fewest jobs in five years

Evan Blake

In another indication of a deepening slump in the US economy, the Labor Department reported yesterday that the US economy added only 38,000 jobs in May, the lowest monthly job growth since September 2010.

The report was released merely two days after US President Barack Obama declared in a speech in Elkhart, Indiana that the belief, widespread in the US population, that the economy is doing poorly is a “myth.”

“By almost every economic measure, America is better off,” Obama declared.

The latest figures sharply contradict such claims. Summarizing the findings of the report, Laura Rosner, an economist at BNP Paribas, told the Associated Press, “The shockingly low payrolls gain in May provides further evidence that the economy is showing clear signs of slowing.”

In addition to the dismal rate of payrolls growth, the Labor Department said a massive 459,000 people left the workforce last month. In other words, 12 times more people gave up looking for work than got a job last month. Simultaneously, the Labor Department reported the number of people working part-time, but who would prefer to have full-time work, increased by 468,000 in May.

The labor force participation rate decreased by 0.2 percentage points, after an earlier 0.2 percent decline in April, to a nearly four-decade low of 62.6 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised downward the figures for March and April, which overestimated job growth by a combined 59,000 jobs. Together, the number of jobs created each month between March and May was 116,000, a marked decline from last year’s monthly average of nearly 230,000.

According to the Labor Department, the construction sector lost 15,000 jobs last month, mining and logging industries lost 11,000 jobs and the manufacturing sector lost 10,000 jobs. As with previous months, the jobs added were centered in the low-wage service sector.

The past several quarters have shown slow economic growth in the US. Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of just 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016, down from 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

The Institute for Supply Management also released a report Friday that rated the US non-manufacturing index as falling to 52.9 from 55.7 in April.

Many major US department store chains, including Macy’s, Kohl’s, JCPenney and Nordstrom, reported sharp declines in sales and profits during the first quarter of 2016.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, meets again on June 14-15. Many had anticipated that the Fed would raise the benchmark federal funds rate, but May’s unexpectedly poor jobs report makes it more likely that the Fed will hold off on raising interest rates until at least its next meeting in late July.

The employment figures were released just days before the crucial California Democratic Primary. In recent weeks, Bernie Sanders has narrowed the gap with frontrunner Hillary Clinton, trailing by only one point among eligible voters in a Thursday Los Angeles Times poll.

Throughout the primary campaign, Clinton has upheld Obama’s legacy as President and maintained that she will continue his economic policies.

Even aside from the most recent jobs report, Obama’s claim that “almost every economic measure” has improved under his administration is a patent absurdity.

In reality, the US working class has experienced an unrelenting assault on its living standards over the past eight years. The so-called economic “recovery” under Obama has entailed the creation of part-time and poverty-wage jobs, the slashing of employee benefits, and a continuation of mass unemployment.

A report published earlier this year by Princeton University and the RAND Corporation found that all job growth in the US over the last decade was accounted for by the growth of “alternative work arrangements,” or people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract agencies or on-call. Such jobs usually entail minimal job security, health benefits and vacation days.

Between 2005 and 2015, the percentage of the workforce in such contingent arrangements rose from 10.1 percent to 15.8 percent, placing nearly one in six full-time workers in a contingent status. Of these contingent workers, a staggering 32 percent are forced to hold multiple jobs to make ends meet, due to the lack of job security and benefits.

The growth of poverty-wage employment, particularly for young people, has resulted in sweeping demographic changes. A Pew report released last week found that for the first time in 130 years, Americans aged 18-24 are more likely to be living at home than with a spouse or partner.

As a result of eight years of near-zero interest rates, bank bailouts, and “quantitative easing” money printing operations, the wealth of the US financial oligarchy has soared, and social inequality has widened dramatically. Under Obama, 95 percent of all income gains have gone to the richest 1 percent of society, while median household income has declined by thousands of dollars.

In one of the starkest indications of social distress, the death rate in the US increased last year for the first time since 2005, fueled by increases in the rate of death from Alzheimer’s, heart disease, drug overdoses and suicides.

These figures make clear that, far from being a “myth,” working people have seen an enormous reversal in their living standards during the Obama presidency. For all the declarations by Obama and the Democrats that things are better than ever, the vast and pervasive economic distress felt by millions of people is fueling the growth of political opposition, expressed in the ongoing popular support for the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a socialist, as well as the growth of social struggles by the working class, such as last month’s strike by nearly 39,000 communication workers at Verizon.

Economic nationalism and the growing danger of war

Nick Beams

By every measure, the world economic and political situation is increasingly coming to resemble the 1930s—a decade marked by social devastation, economic conflicts and rising geo-political tensions that led to the explosion of war in 1939.

The global economy is moving further into “secular stagnation,” a term first coined in reference to the Great Depression to characterise a situation where global demand persistently falls below output, leading to glutted markets and “over production.”

Nearly eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the euro zone economy remains mired in deflation and has only this year returned to the levels of output reached in 2007. The US has experienced the slowest “recovery” in the post-war period, while productivity is set to fall for the first time in more than three decades.

Japan, the world’s third largest economy, remains mired in low growth and deflation, while China, the second largest, is experiencing a marked slowdown, together with vast job losses and mounting concerns over its level of debt accumulation.

One of the most striking parallels with the conditions of the 1930s is the growth of economic nationalism and the rising trade war tensions as each of the major powers seeks to shove the effects of the global stagnation onto its rivals. The beggar-thy-neighbour policies of that earlier period produced devastating consequences as international trade contracted by more than 50 percent between 1929 and 1932, after which the world divided into currency and trade blocs leading up to World War II.

The intensifying struggle for markets is bringing the return of the kinds of measures that characterised the Great Depression, as seen in the decision by the US International Trade Commission (ITC), acting at the behest of US Steel, to launch an investigation into 40 Chinese companies, with a view to imposing increased tariffs.

As Professor Simon Evenett, the head of Global Trade Alert, an organisation that monitors protectionist measures, has warned, the ITC case should set off “alarm bells” and is a move towards a “nuclear option.” His words have more than a metaphorical or rhetorical significance: rather, they point to the inseparable connection between economic nationalism and outright military conflict.

Not only are old forms of protectionism being revived, new ones are being developed. Having virtually scuttled the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks under the World Trade Organisation last year, the US is pursuing its own nationalist agenda through the formation of exclusivist trade blocs under the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIV).

The TPP, which despite its name, excludes China, the world’s second largest economy. Washington’s objectives have been spelled out by President Barack Obama who declared it is aimed at ensuring that America, not China, writes the global rules of trade for the twenty-first century.

Beyond the present administration, the rising tide of US economic nationalism is expressed in the strident “America first” campaign of the presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump and his pledge to “make America great again.”

Trump’s campaign, however, is only a particularly violent and crude manifestation of deep-rooted tendencies within the entire political establishment, including the trade union bureaucracy. Notably, the statement issued by US Steel welcoming the ITC decision to investigate Chinese companies, pointed to the support for its case from “our union brothers and sisters.”

It would be a great mistake to think that these tendencies are confined to the United States. The turn to economic nationalism is ever-more visible in the political establishment of every major capitalist power.

In Britain, both sides of the official campaign over Brexit—the referendum of June 23 which is to decide whether the UK leaves or remains in the European Union—are advancing their positions on the basis of what is best for the country’s national interests.

On the European continent, the German political establishment demands the imposition of ever-increasing austerity measures over the whole of Europe, and vehemently opposes any stimulus measures. It fears that such actions would weaken the position of German banks and financial interests in the face of increasing competition from their international rivals, particularly the US finance houses. At the same time it insists Germany cannot confine itself to Europe, but must play an increasing role on the global arena, not least by military means.

Likewise, the Japanese government of Shinzo Abe is seeking to push down the value of the yen in order to boost its exports in a contracting world market. At the same time it has all but scrapped the so-called pacifist post-war constitution as Japan seeks to play an increased military role in world affairs.

The inseparable connection between the rise of economic nationalism and military conflict was the subject of far-reaching analysis by the revolutionary and Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky of the objective conflicts, rooted in the very structure of the capitalist mode of production, that led to the outbreak of World War I.

Pointing to the downturn in the European economy in 1913, he noted that the productive forces had run up against the limits fixed for them by capitalist property and capitalist forms of appropriation.

“The market was split up, competition was brought to its intensest pitch, and henceforward capitalist countries could seek to eliminate one another from the market only by mechanical means,” Trotsky wrote. “It was not the war that put a stop to the development of productive forces in Europe, but rather the war itself arose from the impossibility of the productive forces to develop further in Europe under conditions of capitalist management.”

Today it is not only a question of the inability of the productive forces to further develop in Europe, but globally under the regime of private ownership and private profit in the framework of the world economy riven by national-state and great power divisions.

The very phenomenon of “overproduction” is the expression of these contradictions. There is not overproduction of steel, industrial and agricultural products—all of which confront glutted markets—in relation to human need. All that can be produced by the world’s working class, whether in China, Japan, the US, Europe and elsewhere, could be more than productively employed in a rationally-planned socialist global economy.

Such an economy, however, can only be realised through the overthrow of the capitalist profit and nation-state system, by means of the seizure of power by the working class. This is the foundation of the program of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

This strategy is, of course, dismissed by all the pseudo-lefts and short-sighted opportunists as “not practical,” “unrealisable” and so on. But what alternative do they have to offer? Nothing but the descent into war, with potential nuclear consequences, threatening the very future of civilisation itself.

The material force for the realisation of world socialism is emerging with the rising tide of the struggles of the international working class. The crucial task is the building of the world party of socialist revolution, the International Committee of the Fourth International, to provide the necessary guidance in these struggles by imbuing the working class with the conscious understanding of the great historical task it has before it.

Economic conflicts threaten global trade war

Nick Beams

The ongoing stagnation in the global economy, marked by falling investment and the emergence of overproduction in key basic industries, is fuelling the rise of trade war protectionist measures by the major powers, above all the United States.

Last week, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) launched an investigation into Chinese steel mills which have been accused by the United States Steel Corp of stealing secrets and conspiring to fix prices.

Chinese industrial overcapacity, especially in steel, will be on the agenda of the “strategic and economic” dialogue to be held between the US and China in Beijing next week. The US treasury undersecretary for international affairs, Nathan Sheets, recently called for China to allow its industries to “better reflect capacity and global demand conditions.” In other words, China should cut back production.

Overproduction in the Chinese steel industry has been blamed for an increase in cheap exports and the loss of jobs and plant closures in both Europe and the US.

Recent tariffs on imports of steel have boosted American prices, but authorities are looking for further measures. Industrial overcapacity was important “for the global economy and we hope to make some progress on it” in Beijing, Sheets told a meeting at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The issue is fraught, however, with contradictions because many industrial companies in the US are dependent on cheap steel imports for their business models. Stuart Barnett, the head of the Chicago-based Barsteel Corp which supplies a range of manufacturers said the government had done a “pretty good job” of keeping out the cheapest steel imports. “But now the greatest fear we have is that China keeps cheap steel for itself and makes products that undercut other industries,” he said.

In other words, suppression of the increasingly ferocious struggle for markets and profits in one area of the industrial economy will see it resurface in another.

Pressure from the US for China to cut back production and exports were met with a sharp response from the Chinese government.

Speaking at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Zhu Guangyao, China’s vice-finance minister, said: “Trade disputes between China and the US should be addressed in accordance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) principles. We are opposed to abusive trade remedy measures.”

There was an even stronger reaction from China’s Hebei Iron and Steel Group, the country’s largest steel producer. In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, it denounced the investigation by the US ITC.

“The protectionist behaviour taken by the US on purely groundless accusations by US Steel has seriously broken WTO rules, distorted the normal world steel trade and damaged the essential interests of Chinese steel mills and US steel users,” it said.

US Steel filed the complaint a month ago, claiming it was the victim of a Chinese computer hacking incident in 2011. The ITC has now taken up the case, identifying 40 Chinese steelmakers and distributors as being the subject of investigation.

Baosteel, China’s second-largest steelmaker, the world’s fourth-largest and a target for the ITC probe, said the US was in breach of WTO rules and urged the Chinese government to take all necessary measures to ensure the country’s steel industry received fair treatment.

The ITC case has raised concerns it could be the start of far broader measures, possibly including a wholesale ban on Chinese steel imports, according to Simon Evenett, a professor of international trade at University of St Gallen in Switzerland, who is engaged in monitoring protectionist measures.

“The big thing is really the potential scale of this case versus the pinpricks that we have seen unleashed over the past nine months,” he told the Financial Times. “This should be setting off alarms bells. It is really a nuclear option.”

The conflicts go beyond steel and extend to the entire functioning of the WTO, the international body in charge of regulating the global trading system. They are being fuelled by an aggressive push by the United States on two fronts.

Last week, the US told other WTO members it was vetoing the reappointment of Seung Wha Chang, a respected South Korean expert on international trade law, to a second term on the organisation’s appellate body which adjudicates on international trade disputes. Reappointment for a second term has been standard procedure in the past.

Washington cited several decisions that have gone against the US as a pattern of what it called “overreaching” and arriving at “abstract” decisions.

“The appellate body is not an academic body that may pursue issue simply because they are of interest to them or may be to certain members in the abstract,” the US declared. “It is not the role of the appellate body to engage in abstract discussions.”

Other members of the WTO, including Brazil, Japan and the EU say the US veto risks undermining the independence of the appellate body and the entire system. The EU said the US actions are unprecedented and pose “a very serious risk to the independence and impartiality of current and future appellate body members.”

The US move prompted a highly critical editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Financial Times. The newspaper noted that in the wake of the collapse of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations last year—largely as a result of the US decision to walk away from further discussions—the last thing the WTO needed was another blow to its authority. With the end of the WTO’s role in negotiating global trade deals, its only real remaining function was to adjudicate between governments over existing trade rules and order “miscreants to bring policies into compliance.”

“The fact that the US is now trying to subvert it by removing a judge who happens to disagree with the American viewpoint is seriously disturbing,” it said.

The episode, it continued, also vindicated, at least in this instance, “those critics of the US who say Washington favours global cooperation only insofar as it controls the international institutions that run it. This is a serious charge to which the US remains exposed.”

The issue of the appellate body is linked to another brewing conflict within the WTO. Following its ascension to WTO membership in 2001, China is this year seeking to be accorded “market economy status,” which would make it more difficult to prosecute Chinese companies for alleged dumping, i.e. selling goods at artificially low prices.

The US is reported to have been lobbying hard for the upgraded status not to be granted, against opposition from at least some European powers, as well as Britain. The British government has portrayed itself as China’s “best friend” in the West, as financial interests in the City of London seek to profit from expanded Chinese investment and financial activity. Britain has said that if China is accorded full market status, dumping charges could still be dealt with under WTO rules. But this does not appear to have had any impact on the push by the US to prevent its status being raised.

Under conditions of global overcapacity, persistently suppressed demand, and warnings of a productivity slowdown in major developed economies, global conflicts over trade are deepening, and, together with the endless promotion of economic nationalism, threaten a global trade war similar to that which emerged in the 1930s. In that period, the growth of protectionism served as the antechamber to world war.

Today, the growth of economic nationalism under conditions of another persistent world slump is likewise fuelling conflicts that threaten to erupt into another global conflagration.

The US elections and the criminalization of American politics

Patrick Martin

With the US primary campaigns drawing to a close, the two parties of the US ruling elite, Democrats and Republicans, are preparing to nominate candidates who may be subject to criminal indictment between now and the general election.

The Republicans have as their presumptive nominee Donald Trump, a man who made his billions through various scams and insider dealings. US newspapers have been filled this week with details of the fraudulent methods he employed to enhance his fortune. Court documents in the lawsuit joined by numerous former students at Trump University allege that the supposed training in real estate provided by the school was a fiction.

It was a fraud on two levels. At an enormous price, up to $35,000 for the “Gold Elite” program, students were told little more than “buy low” and “sell high.” As many as 5,000 students paid a total of $40 million for the worthless instructions, most of which could be obtained, according to press accounts, through a simple Internet search.

As for the claim that Trump would be personally involved in sharing his supposed real estate expertise, with instructors who “are handpicked by me,” the documents show that Trump played no role in the “education” program except allowing his name and face to be used to promote the venture, and then cashing the checks—his cut of loot was at least $5 million.

New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman, appearing on two television interview programs Thursday morning, said, “We have laws against running an illegal, unlicensed university. This never was a university. The fraud started with the name of the organization.” He added, “It was really a fraud from beginning to end.”

While Trump U. accounts for only a small fraction of the real estate mogul’s personal wealth, the methods used were representative of his “business model” as a whole, and for that matter, of his presidential campaign, which has been focused largely on appealing to increasingly desperate sections of workers and the lower middle class, offering Trump’s billionaire persona as the solution to deepening economic afflictions.

There is something extraordinary in the fact that one of the principal parties of the ruling class is preparing to choose an individual like Trump as its presidential candidate. Despite the initial hypocritical criticisms of his vulgar and racist pronouncements, nearly all Republican Party leaders have now reconciled themselves with Trump, culminating in Thursday’s statement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he will support his candidacy.

This can only explained in relation to broader social tendencies that have produced an immense degradation of American politics. Trump personifies the descent of corporate America into every more brazen methods of speculation, swindling and outright theft, which culminated in the economic crash of 2008. Over the past 40 years, the operations of the American ruling class have taken on an ever more parasitic character, with a mass of financial operations covering over a long-term industrial decline.

On the Democratic Party side, Hillary Clinton is currently under investigation for conducting all her government communications while Secretary of State on a private email server, an arrangement clearly intended to keep her correspondence under her control, regardless of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Later this summer she is expected to be interviewed by the FBI, which could lead to criminal charges over the mishandling of classified materials or perjury.

Clinton represents a more polished version of the same social processes that have created Trump. Bill and Hillary Clinton have accumulated a personal fortune topping $150 million by serving as speechmakers to corporate audiences, backed by their “fundraising” work at the Clinton Foundation, which connects corporate donors and charitable organizations in return for lucrative fees.

The foundation has become the center of a web of international influence-peddling that keeps the Clintons in front of their real constituency, the world’s billionaires, making them fabulously wealthy in the process.

Clinton is also more directly associated with the crimes of the state and the military-intelligence apparatus. The criminalization of the American financial aristocracy has found its reflection in foreign policy—in the casting aside of all legality and the adoption of torture, assassination and “preemptive war” as principal means for asserting the interests of the ruling class abroad.

It is significant that as the viability of her candidacy is being called into question as a result of the continued successes of her rival, Bernie Sanders, Clinton decided to focus a major speech in San Diego California on a critique of Trump’s foreign policy views. Clinton made her pitch to the military, based on the argument that she, and not Trump (or Sanders, or some other candidate) would be the most effective “commander-in-chief” of US imperialism.

Clinton focused her speech on the decision by President Obama and his top military and foreign policy advisers, including Clinton herself, to authorize the Navy Seal Team 6 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. She made no reference to the foreign policy debacle with which she is most closely identified, the US-NATO bombing of Libya, although it “accomplished” the same end. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was murdered in his home town of Sirte by US-backed rebels, an event that Clinton celebrated at the time with the infamous wisecrack, “We came, we saw, he died,” touching off gales of laughter among her claque of traveling aides.

Trump and Clinton are both products of the same process: the criminalization of the American ruling elite, as the methods of the mafia have come to predominate in both the operations of Wall Street and the practice of imperialist “statecraft.”