German government steps up anti-refugee agitation

Johannes Stern

The established parties are responding to their catastrophic result in the Berlin state election Sunday with a sharp shift to the right. While the SPD, Left Party and Greens are preparing to continue the programme of austerity, anti-refugee agitation and a build-up of the state apparatus at home and abroad within the framework of a red-red-green coalition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is ever more explicitly adopting the programme of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) used her party’s historic low election result to distance herself from the position of a “welcoming culture” for refugees, which was falsely attributed to her. Speaking to media representatives in Berlin, she made clear that her statement “We can do this” never had anything to do with solidarity towards refugees. “Much” was “interpreted or even decoded from this common statement of daily life. So much that I would almost prefer not to repeat it again,” the chancellor said.

Referring to the right wing of her own party and the constant criticism from the Bavarian sister party CSU (Christian Social Union), Merkel added, “Some felt themselves provoked by the sentence—and that was of course never the intention with the short sentence.” Then she went on, “This situation should never be repeated like we…had last year, with an at times uncontrolled and unregistered influx—I am fighting precisely to prevent that from being repeated… Nobody wants this situation to be repeated, myself included.”

Merkel openly acknowledged her disappointment that the government had proven incapable of preventing the refugees from the war zones in the Middle East from reaching Germany from the outset. If she could, she would have liked to turn back time by many, many years, “so that I, together with the whole government and all of those in positions of responsibility could be better prepared for the situation that hit us in the late summer of 2015,” Merkel stated. Then she provocatively added that she wanted to make an offer to the AfD voters.

Merkel has increasingly adopted the rhetoric of the far right within and outside the CDU/CSU over recent weeks. According to a report in Die Welt, she told a parliamentary group meeting at the beginning of September that the most important thing now was to deport asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected. “Over the coming months, the most important thing is repatriation, repatriation and, once again, repatriation,” the conservative paper cited the chancellor as saying. A few days later, Merkel was cited as having stated, “Germany will remain Germany. With everything that is dear and valued to us.”

While the bourgeois press is talking of “a new tone” from the chancellor (Tagesschau), or even a “change of course” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Merkel in reality represented a right-wing, inhumane refugee policy from the outset. Merkel and the grand coalition have been working feverishly with the support of large sections of the Left Party and Greens over the past year for a “joint” European solution in order to prevent new refugees from reaching Europe and brutally deport those who have already arrived.

Significantly, the CDU Bundestag (federal parliament) Berlin deputy and Merkel supporter Karl-Georg Wellmann boasted in an interview with Deutschlandfunk on Tuesday, “The flow of refugees has stopped. Why is nobody saying that already this year over 60,000 refugees have returned to their homes? Why is nobody saying that 100,000 deportations have taken place?”

The “Bratislava Declaration,” passed last Friday at the EU summit, gives an indication of Merkel’s reactionary refugee policy. The section titled “Migration and external borders” calls for a strengthening of fortress Europe, denies refugees from wars the right to asylum and demands further mass deportations of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. The paper calls on the EU “Never to allow return to uncontrolled flows of last year and further bring down the number of irregular migrants” and to “ensure full control of our external borders.”

As concrete measures, the paper calls for a “full commitment to implementing the EU-Turkey statement as well as continued support to the countries of the Western Balkans.” In addition, a number of EU states had promised “to offer immediate assistance to strengthen the protection of Bulgaria’s border with Turkey, and continue support to other frontline states.”

In a summit in March, the EU states secured commitments from the Turkish government to completely close the borders for refugees and intercept boats before they can even leave Turkey in exchange for money and diplomatic concessions. The right-wing Balkan governments built border fences and mobilised the military so as to hermetically seal off the so-called Balkan route to refugees.

This apparently does not go far enough for Merkel and the EU. By the end of the year, the EU must ensure “full capacity for rapid reaction of the European Border and Coastguard” and negotiate agreements with third countries “to lead to reduced flows of irregular migration and increased return rates.” In other words, the notorious border protection agency Frontex and other state security forces will launch even more major operations against refugees on Europe’s external borders. At the same time, the EU intends to expand its collaboration with the authoritarian regimes in North Africa and Turkey to deter refugees and to deport them immediately without any bureaucratic hurdles if they manage to reach Europe.

Merkel’s statements and the EU paper underscore the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the German government and the EU’s claims to defend “European values” such as freedom and democracy against racism and nationalism. In reality, they pursue an anti-refugee policy that is hardly distinguishable from that of France’s National Front, the UK Independence Party or the AfD and plays directly into the hands of the far right.

The brutal approach to refugees by the ruling elite is directly bound up with the militarisation of Europe at home and abroad, which is above all being pushed by Berlin. The Bratislava Declaration also included “concrete measures” for the imposition of Europe’s geopolitical and economic interests against its global competitors. “In a changing political environment” the European Council should “decide on a concrete implementation plan on security and defence” at its December meeting, the declaration stated.

Already prior to the meeting, German Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen and her French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian called in a six-page paper for an implementation of the new “EU global strategy for foreign and security policy.” This required “a stronger Europe in security and defence affairs, European strategic autonomy and a credible, rapid, effective and reaction ready” European military policy, which must “now be rapidly translated into concrete plans of action.” Among other things, the German-French paper proposes the construction of an autonomous “European defence industry,” as well as “a permanent EU HQ for military and civil missions and operations.”

The European working class must decisively reject the agitation against refugees. It must counterpoise to the politics of nationalism, militarism and war, which enjoy the full backing of the entire ruling elite, their own independent strategy: the construction of an international movement against capitalism and war and the unification of Europe on a socialist basis.

Polish government strengthens the far right

Clara Weiss

As part of its preparations for war against Russia, the Polish government is deliberately strengthening the far right.

Since the Law and Justice Party (PiS) entered government last autumn, the number of attacks of a racist or xenophobic character has risen to its highest level since 1989. This was revealed by investigations by the NGO Nigdy Więcej (Never Again).

Currently, there are almost daily incidents of violent attacks by right-wing forces.

Widespread attention was given recently to an assault on Jerzy Kochanowski, a history professor at Warsaw University. A drunk right-winger insulted and struck Kochanowski on a tram because he was speaking German with a colleague from the University of Jena. He received virtually no assistance from fellow passengers and was forced to have a head wound treated in hospital.

On the same day, two women of Asian origin fell victim to right-wing violence. In an open letter, university students announced their solidarity with the professor and opposed the growth of racist and nationalist sentiments.

The PiS government is consciously encouraging this development. It is stoking racism and strengthening the influence of the far right with state measures.

In April, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo abolished the Council for the Struggle against Racism and Discrimination, which was established under the previous government. At the same time, she is integrating radical right-wing groups into the state apparatus.

The most well-known example is the ONR (National Radical Camp), whose members have been responsible for several attacks on foreigners and homosexuals. In August, ONR members attacked the leaders of the Komitet Obrony Demokracji (KOD) opposition movement, sending them to the hospital.

Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz has been planning, since the beginning of the year, the integration of the ONR into a new territorial defence unit, which is being expanded into a second army under the direct control of Macierewicz and the PiS government.

Both in terms of its name and programme, the ONR stands in the tradition of the organisation of the same name in the 1930s, which belonged to the so-called Endecja under Roman Dmowski and became a training ground for Polish fascist paramilitary units.

These units were not only responsible for anti-Semitic assaults and attacks on Jewish businesses, but also at times collaborated with the Nazis in the persecution of the Jews during the German occupation of Poland.

Militant anti-Semitism and racism continue to be key planks of the ONR’s programme today. Some of their members have been prosecuted for using the Hitler salute. Like its predecessor organisation in the 1930s, the ONR finds support today among academics: their current leader is 27-year-old Aleksander Krejckant, a graduate of European studies.

Another prominent figure is Justyna Helcyk, who has a degree in chemistry.

Catholic priests have repeatedly organised joint events with ONR members over recent years. Jacek Międlar, a priest from Wrocław, is an open supporter of the ONR. He compared the organisation, according to Newsweek Polska, to “chemotherapy for a malignant tumour that has affected Poland and the Poles.”

In the Sejm, Poland’s parliament, the government also cooperates indirectly with the ONR. The ONR is part of the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy, RN), which supported the Kukiz’15 party in the election and was therefore rewarded with five of its 42 seats. This party collaborates closely with the PiS in parliament.

The PiS is itself closely tied to the extreme right. Macierewicz was a leading member for many years of various ultra-right formations and published a radically nationalist and anti-Semitic newspaper, before joining PiS in 2005. After the PiS election victory and assumption of power for the first time in 2005, many members of the right-wing coalition Liga polskich rodzin (LPR, League of Polish Families) joined the PiS, including Jan Olszewski, the official adviser to former President Lech Kaczyński, who died in 2010.

In addition, the right-wing Catholic radio station Radio Maryja is a firm backer of the PiS government. The station has its main influence over sections of the rural population in the east of the country. It is led by priests and media mogul Tadeusz Rydzyk. Rydzyk has enjoyed the official support of the Vatican since the time of Pope Benedict XVI, even though he has repeatedly made anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist statements.

The strengthening of the radical right is part of the militarisation of Polish society with which the PiS government is preparing for war with Russia and a brutal suppression of social protests from the working class.

During its first year in power, the PiS has taken major steps towards the construction of a police state and encouraged a nationalist revision of history. The PiS has increased the defence budget, which had already risen to 2 percent of GDP under the Citizens Platform (PO) government, to 3 percent of GDP. The PiS plans to spend a total of €16.3 billion in the coming years on rearming the military.

Poland will therefore be one of the most important arms markets in Europe, together with the Baltic states, which are also rearming swiftly against Russia. According to arms expert Ben Morris from Jane ’s, the arms are above all “heavy military equipment like tanks that are planned for use in a conventional war on its eastern border.”

The US, Poland’s most important international ally, and NATO support the military buildup and the right-wing forces imposing it.

In the lead-up to the NATO summit, which took place in Warsaw in July, six former Polish defence ministers closely aligned to the opposition PO called for the resignation of Macierewicz. But the conference, where Obama shook his hand, adopted measures closely corresponding to those proposed by Macierewicz.

Macierewicz was therefore able to significantly consolidate his position in the government. After PiS head Jarosław Kaczyński, observers view Macierewicz as the most influential politician in Poland.

In an interview with the opposition-aligned newspaper Polityka, General a. D. Janusz Boronowicz said that Macierewicz had more power than any other defence minister prior to him. “Essentially he can do what he likes. In my view he is the first civilian leader of the armed forces.” Boronowicz has played a leading role in the Polish army for close to two decades and was influential in interventions in Afghanistan and Syria. He resigned from the army early this year out of protest at the reforms introduced by Macierewicz.

The interview with the general in Polityka sheds light on the sharp tensions being produced within the ruling elite by the PiS government’s political agenda. Boronowicz accused Macierewicz of being responsible for leaving the army leaderless and dividing the army leadership.

With direct reference to Germany’s invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, he said, “The situation is totally unacceptable. And in the event of a potential conflict it is preparing the way directly to a repetition of the defeat of September 1939. We are on the best path to repeating all of the mistakes of the past.”

This general and the liberal opposition fear that the PiS’ politics are dividing Polish society to such an extent that the stability of the state could be at stake in the event of a war or a social movement of the working class.

The editor of Newsweek Polska and a well-known supporter of the opposition, Tomasz Lis, accused Andrzej Duda (PiS) of being the weakest president since 1989. He warned, “Since 1989, Poland has never needed a real president more than it does now, at a time when the position of the state is at risk and the community is more fragile than perhaps ever before.”

Kremlin party wins parliamentary elections amid low voter turnout

Andrea Peters

In an election with notably low turnout, Russia’s ruling party has won a supermajority in the country’s parliament. In Sunday’s contest, United Russia (UR) saw its number of Duma representatives rise from 238 to 343, giving the party, which is allied to President Vladimir Putin, control of over three-quarters of the votes in the 450-seat body.

UR garnered just over 54 percent of the total ballots cast. The party’s control of the parliament is a product of the fact that election laws were recently changed such that half of the seats are no longer allotted proportionately, but rather in first-past-the-post contests in which UR candidates dominated. Compared to 2011, the ruling party saw its vote rise by just 5 percent. It is down by about 10 points compared to 2007, the final year of the Putin-era economic boom.

The Stalinist Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), led by Gennady Zyuganov, and the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), under the control of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, each commanded about 15 percent of the vote and won 42 and 39 seats respectively. In a major reversal of fortunes, the KPRF lost 50 spots and the LDPR 17 relative to 2011. Speaking of his party’s poor performance and near-equal level of Duma representation now with the LDPR, Zyuganov declared, “This is not just deception, it’s a dangerous aberration, which will inevitably end up undermining stability.”

The LDPR and KPRF were trailed by A Just Russia, which now has 23 representatives in the Duma, along with a handful of other groups that collectively have three seats. Constituting a loyal “opposition,” all of these organizations have worked hand-in-glove with UR and the Kremlin for years to pass right-wing policies and promote Russian nationalism to shore up the government.

In a rebuke of the free-market, pro-Western policies of the country’s leading liberals, the two most well known such outfits, Yabloko and PARNAS, commanded less than 1 and 2 percent of the vote respectively, failing to cross the minimum threshold to enter parliament.

Despite securing a significant win, United Russia’s supermajority does not indicate the existence of deep-seated support for the Kremlin. Overall, turnout fell by about 12 points, falling to just shy of 48 percent from 61 percent just five years ago. It is the lowest it has been since the start of the 2000s.

Indicating widespread disaffection in Russia’s economic and political centers, participation was worst in the country’s two major cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where just 28.7 and 25.6 percent of the electorate respectively went to the polls. Turnout in the country’s capital has collapsed in the last five years. In the previous parliamentary cycle in 2011, after which anti-government protests erupted, 66 percent of voters cast ballots in Moscow.

UR’s popularity in that city is also much lower than in outer-lying regions. This year the Kremlin party won just 38 percent of the vote, far less than the overall total.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov declared that the supermajority meant that the government had received a “vote of confidence” from the population. While acknowledging that the level of support in the big cities was “a bit lower,” he insisted that turnout in European elections is usually below that witnessed in Russia this year.

A political scientist speaking to the Russian news outlet TASS sought to make a similar argument, insisting that the fall in voter participation was simply the country catching up to broader “global trends.”

Putin, however, sounded a more cautionary note. “Things are tough but people still voted for United Russia. It means that people see that United Russia members are really working hard for people even though it doesn’t always work,” he said.

Sergei Mironov of A Just Russia declared that the turnout problem lay in a lack of “faith in the electoral system,” such that “people think their vote won’t count.”

The far-right nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovksy of the LDPR, denounced the population for abstaining. “More than 57 million people didn’t go and vote. It’s a disgrace,” he declared.

Mikhail Kasyanov, the leader of PARNAS, said, “Citizens had no faith in elections as an institution. This is the result of government policies. It’s their fault.” His party, however, was repudiated by the electorate, unable to win voters dissatisfied with the Kremlin’s policies. Allegations of voter fraud have surfaced. In Moscow, opposition leaders reported so-called carousel voting in which people move from one place to another, casting multiple ballots. YouTube videos taken in some southern Russian cities appear to show ballot stuffing.

In other locales, soldiers not registered to vote were seen lining up in large numbers regardless. One opposition leader claimed that in the Siberian mountain region of Altai, young people were casting ballots in place of older, registered voters. In Dagestan, youth attacked a voting place in anger over alleged ballot stuffing on the part of officials. Issues have also been reported of voting taking place on open tables, as opposed to in curtained booths. The election rights organization GOLOS says it has received over 2,000 complaints.

Ella Pamfilova, the recently appointed head of the Russian Election Commission and a well-established human rights figure, indicated that some investigations were underway. According to her, there are three regions where the vote may be invalidated. The elections were monitored by 264,000 observers, including international representatives.

At the Russian embassy in Ukraine, dozens of right-wing protesters sought to interfere with Russian citizens who came to cast ballots. At least one voter was assaulted. The European Union and the virulently anti-Russian, pro-US government in Ukraine are refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the Russian parliamentary vote in Crimea. Moscow absorbed the peninsula after a popular referendum held there in the aftermath of the February 2014 coup in Kiev supported unification with Russia.

K.U. Leuven University Full PhD Scholarships for Developing Countries 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 13th November 2016 for the programme beginning 1st October 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): Katholieke Universiteit in Flanders, Belgium

Eligible Fields of Study: Doctoral or pre-doctoral programmes in the Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences, Science, Engineering and Technology, or Biomedical Sciences.  The research topics proposed by the KU Leuven Doctoral Schools can be found on their respective websites.

About the Award: The programme is organised and managed by IRO, the University’s Interfaculty Council for Development Cooperation. This programme is intended for the student to do his or her whole research at KU Leuven; therefore, any other type of agreement (e.g. Sandwich programmes, etc) are not envisioned.

Over the past ten years, the IRO Doctoral Scholarships Programme has supported over a hundred PhD graduates.  Having obtained their doctoral degree from KU Leuven, the PhD holders are now utilising their expertise back in their home countries either at a university (by doing academic research), government bodies, civil society organisations or in various sectors of the industry.

Eligibility: 

1. The applicant must be a citizen of one of the countries on the OCDE DAC table that are considered as: Least Developed Countries, Low Income Countries or Low Middle Income Countries.
2. The applicant may not possess a citizenship from an EU country. The applicant may not posses a long-term EU residence permit.
3. The candidate’s latest master’s degree must have been awarded no more than ten years prior to 1 October 2017 (including the ongoing calendar year).
4. The candidate must hold an academic qualification at least equivalent to a high distinction. Degrees obtained with a final score equivalent to second class second/lower division will not be taken into consideration.
5. The research project must have excellent academic quality, with a special focus on the development relevance of the proposal.
6. The vacancies that are published on the KU Leuven website are already funded and thus, cannot participate for this scholarship.
7. The candidate must demonstrate a development-oriented motivation.
8. The candidate must be supported by a KU Leuven promoter.
9. The candidate must be supported by a local co-promoter at the candidate’s home country to ensure embeddedness of the research within the country’s context.
10. The candidate must be supported by excellent recommendations from relevant referees.
11. The candidate must follow the application procedure and complete his file before 13 November 2016.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Tuition fee, Health and Life Insurances, partner and child allowances, monthly stipend, travel.

Duration of Scholarship: 

• PhD: 48 months (4 years)
• Predoctoral programme: 12 extra months (1 year)

How to Apply: If you meet the eligibility conditions, you will need to complete the online application form following the online application instructions.

It is important to visit the official website (link found below) to access the application form and for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: K.U Leuven

Celebrating the One Percent: Is Inequality Really Good for the Economy?

Michael Hudson

To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone complains about inequality, but nobody does anything about it.

What they do is to use “inequality” as a takeoff point to project their own views on how to make society more prosperous and at the same time more equal. These views largely depend on whether they view the One Percent as innovative, smart and creative, making wealth by helping the rest of society – or whether, as the great classical economists wrote, the wealthiest layer of the population consist ofrentiers, making their income and wealth off the 99 Percent as idle landlords, monopolists and predatory bankers.

Economic statistics show fairly worldwide trends in inequality. After peaking in the 1920s, the reforms of the Great Depression helped make income distribution more equitable and stable until 1980.Then, in the wake of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in the United States, inequality really took off. And it took off largely by the financial sector (especially as interest rates retreated from their high of 20 percent in 1980, creating the greatest bond market boom in history). Real estate and industry were financialized, that is, debt leveraged.

Inequality increased steadily until the global financial crash of 2008. Since then, as bankers and bondholders were saved instead of the economy, the top One Percent have pulled even more sharply ahead of the rest of the economy. Meanwhile, the bottom 25 percent of the economy has seen its net worth and relative income deteriorate.

Needless to say, the wealthy have their own public relations agents, backed by the usual phalange of academic useful idiots. Indeed, mainstream economics has become a celebration of the wealthyrentier class for a century now, and as inequality is sharply widening today, celebrators of the One Percent have found a pressing need for their services.

A case in point is the Scottish economist Angus Deaton, author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. (2013). Elected President of the AEA in 2010, he was given the Nobel Economics Prize in 2015 for analyzing trends in consumption, income distribution, poverty and welfare in ways that cause no offense to the wealthy, and in fact treat the increasingly inequitable status quo as perfectly natural and in its own kind of mathematical equilibrium. (This kind of circular mathematical reasoning is the criterion of good economics today.)

His book treats the movie The Great Escape as a metaphor. He deridingly pointed out that nobody would have called the movie “The prisoners left behind.” Describing the escapers as brilliant innovators, he assumes that the wealthiest One Percent likewise have been smart and imaginative enough to break the bonds of conventional thinking to innovate. The founders of Apple, Microsoft and other IT companies are singled out for making everyone’s life richer. And the economy at large has experienced a more or less steady upward climb, above all in public health extending lifespans, conquering disease and pharmaceutical innovation.

I recently was put on the same stage as Mr. Deaton in Berlin, along with my friend David Graeber. We three each have books translated into German to be published this autumn by the wonderful publisher Klett-Cotta, who organized the event at at the Berlin Literaturfestival in mid-September.

In a certain way I find Deaton’s analogy with the movie The Great Escape appropriate. The wealthy have escaped. But the real issue concerns what have they escaped from. They have escaped from regulation, from taxation (thanks to offshore banking enclaves and a rewriting of the tax laws to shift the fiscal burden onto labor and industry). Most of all, Wall Street banksters have escaped from criminal prosecution. There is no need to escape from jail if you can avoid being captured and sentenced in the first place!

A number of recent books – echoed weekly in the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page – attribute the wealthiest One Percent to the assumption that they must be smarter than most other people. At least, smart enough to get into the major business schools and get MBAs to learn how to financialize corporations with zaitech or other debt leveraging, reaping (indeed, “earning”) huge bonuses

The reality is that you don’t have to be smart to make a lot of money. All you need is greed. And that can’t be taught in business schools. In fact, when I went to work as a balance-of-payments analyst at Chase Manhattan in 1964, I was told that the best currency traders came from the Brooklyn or Hong Kong slums. Their entire life was devoted to making money, to rise into the class of the proverbial Babbitts of our time: nouveau riches lacking in real culture or intellectual curiosity.

Of course, for bankers who do venture to “stretch the envelope” (the fraudster’s euphemism for breaking the law, as Citigroup did in 1999 when it merged with Travelers’ Insurance prior to the Clinton administration rejecting Glass-Steagall), you do need smart lawyers. But even here, Donald Trump explained the key that he learned from mob lawyer Roy Cohn: what matters is not so much the law, as what judge you have. And the U.S. courts have been privatized by electing judges whose campaign contributors back deregulators and non-prosecutors. So the wealthy escape from being subject to the law.

Although no moviegoers wanted to see the heroes of the Great Escape movie captured and put back in their prison camp, a great many people wish that the Wall Street crooks from Citigroup, Bank of America and other junk-mortgage fraudsters would be sent to jail, along with Angelo Mazilo of Countrywide Financial. Little love is given to their political lobbyists such as Alan Greenspan, Attorney General Eric Holder, Lanny Breuer and their hirees who refused to prosecute financial fraud.

Deaton did cite “rent seekers” – but in the sense that his predecessor Nobel prizewinner Buchanan did, locating rent seeking within government, not real estate, monopolies such as pharmaceuticals and information technology, health insurance, cable companies and high finance. So any blame for poverty falls on either the government or on the debtors, renters, unemployed and not-wellborn who are the main victims of today’s rentier economy.

Deaton’s Great Escape sees some problems, but not in the economic system itself – not debt, not monopoly, not the junk mortgage crisis or financial fraud. He cites global warming as the main problem, but not the political power of the oil industry. He singles out education as the way to raise the 99 Percent – but says nothing about the student loan problem, the travesty of for-profit universities funding junk education with government-guaranteed bank loans.

He measures the great improvement in well-being by GDP (gross domestic product). Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs notoriously described his investment bank’s managers and partners of being the most productive individuals in the United States for earning $20 million annually (not including bonuses) – all of which is recorded as adding to the financial sector’s “output” of GDP. There is no concept at all that this is what economists call a zero-sum activity – that is, that Goldman Sachs’s salaries may be unproductive, parasitic, predatory, and the rest of the economy’s loss or overhead.

Such thoughts do not occur in the happy-face views promoted by the One Percent. Deaton’s praise-hymn to the elites assumes that everyone earns what they get, by playing a productive role, not an extractive one.

An even more blatant denial of rent-seeking is a new book by one of the founders of Bain Capital (Mitt Romney’s firm), Edward Conard,The Upside of Inequality attacking the “demagogues” and “propagandists” who claim that the winnings of the One Percent are largely unearned. Curiously, he does not include Adam Smith, David Ricardo or John Stuart Mill as such “propagandists.” Yet that is what classical free market economics was all about: freeing economies from the unearned rental income and rising land prices that landlords make “in their sleep,” as John Stuart Mill put it. This propaganda book thus misrepresents the program that the major founders of economics urged: public ownership or collection of land rent, natural resource rent, and pubic operation of natural monopolies, headed by the financial sector.

For Conard, the reason for the soaring wealth of the One Percent is not financial, real estate or other monopolistic rent seeking, but the wonders of the information economy. It is Josef Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” of less productive technology, by hard working and dedicated innovators whose creativity raises the level of everyone. So the wealth of the One Percent is a measure of society’s forward march, not a predatory overhead extracted from the economy at large.

Conard’s policy conclusion is that regulation and taxation slows this march of economies toward prosperity as led by the One Percent. As a laudatory Wall Street Journal review of his book summarized his message: “Redistribution – whether achieved through taxation, regulatory restrictions, or social norms – appears,” he asserts, “to have large detrimental effects on risk-taking, innovation, productivity, and growth over the long run, especially in an economy where innovation produced by the entrepreneurial risk-taking of properly trained talent increasingly drives growth.” His solution is to lower taxes on the rich!

My friend Dave Kelley notes the policy message that is being repeatedad nauseum these days: the assertion that “progressive moves like taxation end up hurting the economy rather than helping it. This ‘I would feed you but you might become dependent on food’ theory is central in showing how consumer societies like ours are returning to feudal distributions of wealth.” This seems to be the policy proposal of the three leading candidates for U.S. President – in our modern post-Citizens United world where elections are bought in much the way that consulships were back in the closing days of the Roman Republic.

Kashmir: Tired Revolution

Altaf Bashir

The journey of young people in Kashmir from childhood to adulthood nowadays is rumbling around Prison. These young people are meeting on this journey with probation officers, instead of teacher; they are going to court dates instead of class; they are emerging from their 20s not with degrees in business and science, but with criminal records.

In Kashmir peaceful protestors are considered as ‘communal’ or ‘anti-national’ and are picked up by para-military forces on the streets, beat, and maim them up. Moreover, break into houses, shatter windowpanes, harass men, and molest women without accountability of the state to take into consideration that security is meant to protect civilians not to beat or harass them.

State violence is not new, in 2008-9-10 more than 120 young people were killed after controversial Amarnath Land row, where marchers were fired leading to the deaths and injuries since then this cycle of violence is unstoppable.

Normally, young people are expected to hold pen in hand and write their own ‘destiny’ of progress and development, but in Kashmir they hold stones in hand to hurl at police personnel, to take avenge of people whose blood spilled across Kashmir region, and presume, fighting for the cause to liberate Kashmir from the hands of Indian occupation will set everything in order.

Interestingly, there are two themes discussed in various online debates between revolutionary young people who supposedly ‘run parallel government’ by closing down entire business establishments after Friday prayers in Kashmir and,of those who are attending college regularly, claims to have meaning or sense of life by entering into ‘bureaucracy’ as one of career options.

There is one thing in common among these two groups, both can become leaders in their work, and aspire to fight for equal rights of people, for dignity, but there is slight difference, one group is appreciated and other is demoralized& dehumanized.

Since, there are no rules of resistance, nor does for stone pelting. Stone Pelters have seen almost unbelievable idiocy of political leadership in Kashmir – those revered political leaders of yore are viewed today with contempt. The besotted young people aims ‘to burn down’ all the colonial structures / or and military barricades to free land of saints from Indian occupation reveals bankruptcy of state while maintaining ‘law and order’ in Kashmir.

These young people have always yearned for direction from religious leaders, inventing political philosophies of ‘hartal’ as a way of ‘resistance’ and ‘stone pelting’to align various kinds of ideologies as a support for their ‘mission’ to ‘decolonize Kashmir’ from India.

This generation is often called ‘miscreants’ or ‘frustrated unemployed youths’ who have started stone pelting from scratch and now are the vanguard of resistance movement in Kashmir, most of them are the products of middle class families and majority of them have survived from direct attacks, physical violence and tortures, soldiers have bruised their body but their ideology remain unchanged.

In this age of mass media that has remained alien to highlight ‘woes’ of stone-Pelters, who often take refuge of technology and social media to spread their message of resistance to gather support of various people across J&K and of the world, took inspiration from various ‘revolutionary’ situations of Middle East, West Asia, that has plunged world currently in an utter chaos; spinning in a frenzy warfare,young people are looking for meaning or sense of life.The ‘sense’ that will legitimatize their struggle, and free them from all woes to see new dawn of ‘free land’ from Indian occupation.

These young people believe that In this complex modern world where every situation is unpredictable makes no sense for someone to make riches or starts a venture with huge capital thatinvolves pageant of pleasure and generate employment to signal returning of peace in valley or to build a modern city for the tourists to ensure prosperity and neglecting the core political problem of the state.

What ‘sense’ does it makes when season of reaping dividends from trade and commerce arrives in valley, protests erupt all of sudden and makes Kashmiri economy ‘vulnerable and dependent’. Leaving hundreds of people on welfare lines for ‘packages’ ‘relief’ before corrupt ruler who in the name of Democracy, Autonomy and Self-rule beguile them.

These young people wants to make ‘sense’ and command our attention because an understanding of their thought is essential for anyone who consider him or herself a revolutionary and wants to make ‘sense’ of life, who wishes to do away with the exploitation, suffering and violence that is built in this oppressive state system where laws are inimical to human lives which young people sought to uncover and tell the world that people of Kashmir are oppressed and treated as cattle’s, caged for months together without food and water.

The current misrule of Indian state by killing more than 60 Kashmiri and wounded more than 7000people after Burhan Wani’s death exposes the state’s inhumane treatment towards civilians who are subjected to torture and arbitrary arrests without fair trails.

The government has failed to understand aspirations of young people, and failed to handle situation with heart and used brutal force to kill and maim civilians unabated. Government in Kashmir is visible at the time of election and voting and when it comes to protect civilians, they start blaming union of India for promoting violent means of actions against peaceful protestors.

Hence, present generation wants to make sense of life, they do not want corrupt officials in governmental departments, they do not want police to harass them, they do not want interference of state into their affairs, they want freedom from governmental policies first then from Indian occupation.

They want ‘plebiscite’ which state of India has promised them in the beginning of the ‘grand bargain’ under which Kashmir acceded to India in 1947. Until that happens, Kashmir will witness more tense situations and public demonstrations.

Regional dispute erupts over arrest of Fijian opposition leaders

John Braddock

Fiji’s prime minister, former military commander Frank Bainimarama, last week hit out at “interference” in the country’s domestic affairs by Australia and New Zealand. Bainimarama was responding to comments on the arrest of six leading Fijian opposition figures for criticising the country’s 2013 constitution at a political forum. The police claimed the forum did not have an official permit and breached a public order decree.

Bainimarama made the remarks while opening the Joint Fiji-Australia, Fiji-New Zealand business councils meeting at Pacific Harbour, near Suva. After expressing gratitude for New Zealand’s and Australia’s continuing trade relations and assistance following Tropical Cyclone Winston, he raised the issue of the arrests: “Why is the spotlight being turned on Fiji simply because it insists on its laws being upheld? Why all the unwarranted expressions of concern from foreign governments and organisations?”

Five opposition figures were detained on the weekend of September 10-11 and kept in custody overnight. They were 1987 coup leader and current head of the SODELPA Party, Sitiveni Rabuka, National Federation Party (NFP) leader Biman Prasad, academic Tupeni Baba, Fiji Council of Trade Unions general secretary Attar Singh, and Jone Dakuvula from the organisation Pacific Dialogue, which called the meeting. Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry, a former prime minister, later handed himself into police.

Following the arrests, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he was keeping a “watch” on the situation and warned the Fiji government against doing anything “silly.” Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Concetta Fierravanti-Wells declared that her country took “freedom of assembly and freedom of speech seriously” and would also be watching closely. NZ Labour Party foreign affairs spokesman David Shearer said Bainimarama’s forthcoming state visit to New Zealand should be “quietly put on hold.”

Bainimarama told the business audience that Key had been “disrespectful” and “condescending.” He accused Australia and New Zealand of being hypocritical toward Fiji. “We have not lectured to you about the allegations of human rights abuses in your own countries,” he said. “These include the extreme disadvantage suffered by indigenous people in New Zealand, and Australia, and in the case of Australia, the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers.” Bainimarama claimed that it was up to Fiji’s Director of Public Prosecutions to make a decision on the case and the courts would deal with the issue “independently” if the DPP decided to prosecute.

Bainimarama continued his boycott of the Pacific Islands Forum, which met the same weekend as the arrests. Bainimarama demands the expulsion of Australia and New Zealand from the regional body. Last week Fiji also announced its withdrawal from negotiations for the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (Pacer Plus), citing backtracks on commitments by Australia and New Zealand.

In June, Bainimarama lambasted Canberra and Wellington, almost scuttling Key’s visit to Suva, the first by a NZ prime minister in 10 years. At the official welcome, Bainimarama reminded Key that he won Fiji’s 2014 election with an overwhelming majority. “It is on that basis I stand before you tonight,” he declared. “Not as a coup maker or dictator, as some in your country would still have it, but as a properly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji.”

The Fiji government still rests directly on the military, which carried through Bainimarama’s 2006 coup. The 2014 election, in which Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party purportedly won 60 percent of the ballot, was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition parties. The government is anti-working class and authoritarian, ruling largely through fear and intimidation.

The Public Order Amendment Decree, under which the opposition figures were detained, was issued in 2012 by the military dictatorship. Government permits are required for any political meeting, and opposition meetings can be deemed threats to “public order.” It is not yet clear whether charges will be laid against the arrested men, but if they are convicted it could prevent them from contesting the next election.

Earlier this year, Bainimarama’s government used its numbers in parliament to suspend an opposition MP, the NFP’s Roko Tupou Draunidalo, for more than two years after she allegedly called a minister a “fool.” The NFP last week boycotted the president’s address for the opening of the new term of parliament. The party said the move was “in protest over the continuing political persecution and intimidation of the opposition and the draconian muzzling of free expression and assembly in Fiji.”

Interviewed by Radio NZ on September 13, Chaudhry described Fiji as “a dictatorship.” The former prime minister said “you don’t require a permit for forums of that nature where it is not a political meeting.” He said the prime minister and the attorney-general had been invited to the forum, but declined to come. “We want to live in a free society, not where there are restrictions on free speech,” he said.

The intervention of Australia and New Zealand, however, has nothing to do with defending democratic rights in Fiji. They have supported coups in Fiji as long as the resulting regime lines up with their neo-colonial interests. Speaking to Radio NZ on September 13, Key did not a actually condemn the arrests, claiming they were “legally authorised.”

The diplomatic strains are a sign of rising geostrategic tensions in the Pacific. At stake are deepening concerns about alleged Chinese influence. After the regional powers imposed sanctions on Fiji following the 2006 coup, Bainimarama turned elsewhere, primarily to China and Russia, for trade, aid and military equipment. Australia and New Zealand remain determined to ensure their dominance in the southwest Pacific as part of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia and the US-led drive to counter Beijing and prepare for war.

On Radio NZ on September 14, Auckland-based strategic analyst Paul Buchanan described Fiji as the “tip of a spear of Chinese influence projected into the South Pacific.” China’s presence, facilitated by its growing economic and military association with Fiji, was increasingly “assertive.” Unless China was pushed back, the South Pacific was “going to become like a Chinese lake,” supposedly “like the South China Sea.”

In fact the principal aggressor in the Pacific is not Beijing, but US imperialism. US Vice President Joe Biden used his visit to the region in July to restate Washington’s determination to maintain its economic and strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific. In a thinly veiled warning of reprisals against any country intending to preserve ties with China at the expense of the US, Biden declared: “It’s never a good bet to bet against the United States.”

US Aid Deal Gives Green Light To Israel’s Erasure Of Palestine

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: The announcement last week by the United States of the largest military aid package in its history – to Israel – was a win for both sides.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast that his lobbying had boosted aid from $3.1 billion to $3.8bn a year – a 22 per cent increase – for a decade starting in 2019.

Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his government’s repeated affronts to the White House.

In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last year’s nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews.

American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s candidate to succeed Obama in November’s election.

In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.

In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.

Netanyahu’s agreement to such terms has incensed Israeli loyalists in Congress such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been fighting Netanyahu’s corner to win an even larger aid handout from US taxpayers. He accused the Israeli prime minister on Friday of having “pulled the rug from under us”.

As Ehud Barak, Netanyahu’s former defence minister, also pointed out in a series of TV interviews in Israel, the deal fails to take into account either inflation or the dollar’s depreciation against the shekel.

A bigger blow still is the White House’s demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.

Netanyahu preferred to sign the deal now rather than wait till the next president is installed, even though Clinton and her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, are expected to be even more craven towards Israel. That appears to reflect Netanyahu’s fear that the US political environment will be more uncertain after the election and could lead to long delays in an agreement, and apprehension about the implications for Israel of Trump’s general opposition to foreign aid.

Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed military largesse – in the face of almost continual insults – inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even the New York Times has described the aid package as “too big”.

Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israel’s military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israel’s economic success.

But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, Israel has been a US “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.

Almost no one implicates the US in Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria, however, would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own large nuclear arsenal.

In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the country’s most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.

The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December – their various components produced in 46 US states – will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.

Israel is also a “front-line laboratory”, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.

The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome – which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation – it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyber­warfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.

But the clearest message from Israel’s new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash with Israel and its loyalists in Congress over Palestinian statehood.

Some believe that Obama signed the aid agreement to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Netanyahu into making peace.

Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate the unity necessary to confound critics of the aid deal.

If Obama really wanted to pressure Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.

Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal – he can act again the Palestinians with continuing impunity and lots of US military hardware.

Germany: Right-wing mob hounds refugees in Bautzen, Saxony

Katerina Selin

The right-wing policies of the establishment parties and the incessant incitement against refugees are encouraging right-wing forces to open violence. This was evident in the last few days in the town of Bautzen in Saxony. On Wednesday evening, about 80 far-right hooligans gathered on the Kornmarkt in Bautzen and provoked a violent confrontation with 15 to 20 young asylum seekers.

Eyewitness Andrea Kubank, who is active in “Bautzen is colourful,” told theTagesspiegel that the refugees were gathered on the square, as always in the evening, when a right-wing mob formed. When police officers then asked the refugees to leave the Kornmarkt, they resisted. According to Kubank, the right-wingers then attacked the refugees, shouting racist slogans such as “Foreigners out,” This is our Bautzen” and “This is our Nazi-hood.”

The situation escalated into violence and there was a pogrom atmosphere. The young refugees were chased through the city by the right-wing mob as they ran back to their asylum accommodation. In the ensuing fight, Mehdi, an 18-year-old Moroccan, was injured with a knife and needed to be taken to hospital. Brawling right-wingers pelted the ambulance with stones, forcing the paramedics to abort their rescue mission. The injured could only be taken away under police protection.

The next day, Mehdi told Zeit Online that the right-wingers had hurled abuse at him, and other refugees had opposed this. “The police attacked me with pepper spray, suddenly I couldn’t see anything.” Then he was injured with a knife.

Zeit Online also interviewed some of those belonging to the right-wing mob. “We just wanted to make them [the asylum seekers] a bit afraid and show that this town belongs to us,” one of them said openly, while another lamented that he had “arrived too late at the chase yesterday.”

According to eyewitness Kubank, police escalated the situation. Other statements by witnesses, who refused to identify themselves for fear of right-wing violence, described a similar situation.

The official version of events presented by the police and most of the media, however, is quite different. The Bautzen police director, Uwe Kilz, said the refugees were responsible and downplayed the violence of the right-wing mob. He spoke of “circa 80 persons who were mainly of German origin, made up of younger age groups, women and men, including those who had come specifically into the town in advance and who had already drunk this or that amount of beer.”

There had been a “sort of conflict” with the “UMAs” (unaccompanied minor asylum seekers). “The UMAs, who then threw stones and beer bottles in the direction of this group, were then, understandably, also verbally attacked from the other side and the attempt was made to take control of these unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.”

The police and politicians responded to the events not by taking action against the provocative extreme right-wingers, but by immediately punishing the underage asylum seekers with a ban on alcohol consumption and a curfew from 7 p.m. Four so-called “ringleaders” of the refugees were relocated to other accommodation outside Bautzen.

On the other hand, the police took no personal details from any of the neo-Nazis. A spokesman for the authorities justified this on the grounds that “the operation was fully designed for security purposes.”

In this context, the statement by Görlitz Director of Police Klaus-Jörg Mehlberg, that “our message” is now to show “zero tolerance” and not to allow “a legal vacuum,” can only be understood as a warning to the refugees. Representatives of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) declared that action must now be taken against violence on all sides—left, right and foreigners—and to ensure “security and order” through a greater police presence in Bautzen.

A comment in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also presented the events as if there had been merely an overheated atmosphere, which was stirred up by all sides. A climate had arisen “in which years ago the NSU [neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground] came into being,” wrote Jasper von Altenbockum. It was not only the “radical right” who let themselves be incited, but also asylum seekers. “Even the prejudices that come from cultures that do not stand for de-escalation encourage violence—not only on New Year’s Night,” he claimed.

Leniency towards Nazis has something of a tradition in Saxony. Right-wing networks and neo-Nazi groups such as the National Socialist Underground have been built up and funded for years by the state apparatus. Especially in Saxony, the security agencies are riddled with right-wing forces.

For German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU), Saxony serves as a “forward-looking model” for the new “police watch force.” By the end of this year, some 250 members of this police watch force are due on duty, recruited on a lower standard than normal police officers, and who are given a baton, pepper spray and service pistol after just three months’ training. Among other things, this police watch force will take over guarding asylum seeker centres and could quickly become a horde of right-wing elements. The training centre for the new police watch force is located in Bautzen, of all places!

According to a secret service report in December 2015, the Bautzen district was a “regional focus” for extreme right-wing meetings last year. Until June of this year, former German National Party member Daniela Stamm sat on the Bautzen Town Council for “The Right Party.” The far-right scene has acted increasingly more provocatively and confidently this year. In February, 20 to 30 right-wing onlookers had watched with undisguised pleasure as a planned refugee camp in Bautzen burned down.

Long-time employee of the Saxony Cultural Office Markus Kemper has closely observed the development of the far-right scene. In an interview with the MDR, he explained that in Bautzen, “an organised neo-Nazi structure” existed, “which has shown itself to be very militant for quite some time.” Far-right and sometimes relatively new groups such as Stream BZ, the National Front Bautzen and an offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood are active there.

On Thursday evening, a day after the violence against the refugees, 350 right-wing extremists again gathered for a demonstration on the Kornmarkt. Kemper assumes that this involved “not only those from Bautzen, but also probably [people] from other regions such as Sächsische Schweiz or from Dresden.”

Drunk and aggressive demonstrators shouted down the mayor, Alexander Ahrens, and chanted right-wing slogans. Three people are said to have given the Nazi salute and one journalist was injured. About 25 counter-demonstrators were also there, but the situation did not escalate into violence. The police afterwards expressed satisfaction that there had been “no ugly scenes.”

There are currently 2,600 asylum seekers accommodated in the Bautzen district, including about 180 minors, of whom only 30 live in Bautzen, a town with a population of nearly 40,000 people.

The state of Saxony is ruled by a grand coalition of the Social Democratic Party and CDU, which has dramatically tightened its asylum policy in recent months. So-called voluntary departures are promoted, and the number of deportations has increased significantly compared to last year. While in 2015 a total of 1,725 people were deported from Saxony, in the first seven months of 2016, 2,398 refugees had already been expelled.

The Saxon State Interior Ministry also announced a number of measures to make “forced deportations more efficient in the future.” These include the “creation of a detention centre and a departure custody facility in Saxony” and “increasing the staff available for the Central Immigration Authority.”

UK steps up repression of migrant workers

Alice Summers

At least 35 migrant workers were arrested at the start of July in a series of immigration raids across 15 restaurants of the Byron Hamburgers chain in London.

A statement from the Home Office confirmed the arrests of the 35 workers, although witnesses of the event interviewed in the Spanish language El Ibérico estimated the figure at closer to 50, with another 150 managing to avoid the raids and who are now allegedly in hiding.

The workers, mostly of Brazilian, Albanian, Nepalese or Egyptian origin, were arrested after being called into work by their manager, under the pretext of having to take part in mandatory training activities. However, according to witnesses, within minutes of their arrival immigration officers appeared at the restaurants and proceeded to read out the names of workers who they then arrested and interrogated.

Although the government has even now not confirmed the fate of all the arrested migrants, a chef at one of the Byron restaurants interviewed by the Guardian stated that “around 20” were taken straight to an immigration holding centre after the raids and 25 workers are known to have already been deported.

The ambush met with protests from many workers and youth across the capital. At the beginning of August, the Holborn branch of the restaurant chain was forced to temporarily close after around 200 people protested outside the building, carrying placards and banners denouncing the company. Protesters have also called for the boycott of the chain, and two branches were forced to temporarily close after protesters released hundreds of live insects into the restaurants. According to El Ibérico, many Byron workers staged a strike on the day of the raids out of solidarity with their work colleagues who were affected.

Despite denying that the supposed training activities were a set-up, Byron confirmed that it facilitated the raids, with a Home Office spokesperson declaring that the raids were “intelligence-led” and conducted with “the full co-operation of the business.” As a result, the burger chain will not face any prosecution for illegal employment practices, the Home Office confirmed.

In the interview with El Ibérico , one worker at Byron who witnessed the event explained that the company undoubtedly knew the migration status of the workers. They described the exploitative conditions that they therefore faced, as management knew that their employees could do little to protest their conditions without risking being reported to the authorities: “The bosses know the situation of these people. We work hard and we don’t say anything. If we have to do 60 hours a week, well we shut up and we do it. The people at the top of the company know this and so they hire these people.”

Expressing the precarious situation faced by many undocumented migrant workers across the country, the worker described how migrant workers lived in constant fear of raids by immigration officers, both at work and at home, and stated, “In the street and at home we always run the risk of them catching us.”

This incident is far from unique. Since the raids of Byron restaurants in July, tens or even hundreds of migrant workers have been detained in immigration raids across the country, including the arrest of two Indian men at a construction site in Liverpool in August, as well as the September arrests of four Bangladeshi workers in Wales, and of another two workers, also of Bangladeshi origin, at an Indian restaurant in Scotland. Six of these eight workers are now being held at immigration detention centres awaiting deportation.

According to data released in a Freedom of Information request in July 2016, immigration raids have increased by 80 percent over the last five years. In the capital alone, there were 19,853 immigration raids from 2010 to 2015, almost 11 a day.

The number of raids in London peaked in 2014, at 4,703 across the year, up from 2,531 in 2010. The figures dropped slightly in 2015, although there were still 4,573 raids. If information and intelligence gathering expeditions are also included in the figures—in addition to raids to arrest and detain migrants—the number of “visits” in London rockets up to 12,026 in 2014, or approximately 33 per day.

The areas worst affected by these repressive immigration raids were the London postal codes E15 (1,396), E6 (776), E7 (637), SE1 (554) and SE18 (540). These correspond to the boroughs of Newham, Southwark and Greenwich, whose Labour Party-dominated local councils have been determined to step up their vicious attacks on migrant workers.

In 2013, Newham Borough Council became the first local authority in Britain to introduce a mandatory licensing scheme for private landlords renting out properties. Although this legal measure is nominally intended to prosecute rogue landlords who let out substandard properties, the people most affected are often migrant workers living in these properties.

Last November, Newham Council’s housing enforcement team raided a property suspected of being overcrowded, leading to the arrest of two Bangladeshi migrants on suspicion of immigration offences. The property, which hosted five adults and two children, broke health and safety regulations about space and had evidence of bedbugs in the bedrooms.

In July, in the London Borough of Brent, housing enforcement officers discovered 17 people living in a three-bedroom terraced house with no hot water or heating. According to Brent Council’s Private Housing Services, “[O]fficers from Immigration Enforcement were also present to investigate the immigration status of the tenants as legally required.”

In March, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, police and immigration officers found 70 people living in four severely overcrowded properties. Although figures are not available to assess how often immigration officers are present at housing raids, a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Race Relations revealed that “in 12 of the 20 local authorities that provided data, on at least some visits tenants would have had to answer to the police and/or UKBA [The UK Border Agency].”

Landlords are able to terminate a tenancy agreement when their tenants’ right to remain in the UK finishes, and they are also encouraged to check the immigration status of potential tenants before offering them a tenancy agreement.

Conservative Party MP Kris Hopkins stated, “No one should be profiting from illegal immigration, and that includes landlords . ” In reality, rather than being intended to crack down on landlords who “profit” from illegal migration, housing raids are primarily a repressive measure targeted at poor and ethnic minority communities and aimed at clamping down on the migrants themselves.

Unannounced raids are largely ineffective as a tactic to combat bad conditions for which landlords are responsible, as it is unusual for landlords to spend much time in the properties they rent out. If the reason for the raids really were to protect tenants from slum conditions and overcrowding, there would be little reason to conduct surprise visits, as tenants would be unlikely to hide their real living conditions.