Digital Information Warfare: WikiLeaks, Assange and the US Presidential Elections

Binoy Kampmark

In all disproportion to size and physical heft, WikiLeaks has managed to throw bombs of digital worth into various political processes with marked effect. While its critics and detractors deny and attempt to dispel its influence, the authorities are still concerned. So concerned, in fact, that they have attempted, over the years, to curb the reach and access to the website, and its chief publisher, Julian Assange.

Within these asymmetrical power relations between the publishing outfit and state actors lies Assange, assiduously engaged in activities that have already proven historical in value. They, in the main, have taken place without molestation from the Ecuadorean authorities who front as hosts for him in the London compound.

Hardly having the warmest set of relations with Washington, Ecuador has generally kept the issues it might have with Assange at arm’s length. It was not a state of affairs that would last. Assange has been particularly hot in the current US presidential campaign, with the release of email exchanges connected with the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s own emails and the latest Podesta files.

On Saturday, WikiLeaks released the contents of three speeches made by the Democratic nominee for the White House to Goldman Sachs. Clinton was handsomely remunerated, a point that should permanently disable any notion about partiality in the context of regulating Wall Street and its more resilient demons.

Ever since the Clinton campaign started springing more leaks than a refugee vessel, its frazzled managers have been attempting to guard the content of those deliveries with fanatical, if misplaced dedication. Inconsistencies and worries have been flagged, all of these available in email exchanges from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

This week, it became clear that other factors were at play, with Ecuador acknowledging that Assange’s internet access had been restricted. The Ecuadorean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility found itself having to fend off suggestions that Washington had been breathing heavily down the neck of its officials. The emphasis was, rather, on untrammelled sovereignty – the country, after all “does not cede to pressures from other countries”.

To that end, “Ecuador, exercising its sovereign right, has temporarily restricted access to part of its communications systems in its UK embassy.” The stance of not bowing to pressure was less than convincing given the prefacing comments noting how WikiLeaks had “in recent weeks […] published a wealth of documents, impacting the US election campaign.” Furthermore, the country respected “the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states” including “external electoral processes”.

WikiLeaks itself claimed that “multiple US sources” had informed it that US Secretary of State John Kerry “asked Ecuador to stop Assange from publishing Clinton docs during FARC peace negotiations.”

The digital conflict has also thrown up desperate turns. Podesta, whose political impotence in this has been near total, decided last week to take a rather vulgar approach against Assange. It came soon after his own Twitter account had been hacked to display a pro-Trump message. “I bet the lobster risotto,” tweaked Podesta to Assange as he can be seen preparing the dish, “is better than the food at the Ecuadorean embassy.” The snappy response was immediate. “Yes, we get it,” went WikiLeaks. “The elite eat better than the peasants they abuse.”

The digital war that has unfolded during the course of this presidential election is one for narrative and reality. The effort from the Clinton campaign to foil access, seek vengeance on the whistleblower, and draw Russia into the debate has reached maniacal proportions. Some on the Right of US politics have even gone so far as to grace WikiLeaks with their blessings, among them Rep. Jeff Duncan, who even thanked the divine for publisher’s work in frustrating the meek efforts of mainstream media.

Another limb in the campaign that has unfolded in the last few days features efforts to remind the humble reader, and possessor, of stolen documents connected with WikiLeaks, how the intrusive arm of the law might well interfere.

Chris Cuomo of CNN got busy claiming with faux paternalism how “it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us.” Keeping it mainstream; keeping it tepid; and most importantly, keeping it unreal.

That effort to control access and frame the means which such emails and data can be distributed flies in the face of US jurisprudence. On several occasions in US legal history, courts have noted that the First Amendment protects both the media and the general public, including instances of distributing illegally obtained material.

In New York Times Co. v Sullivan, 376 U.S., 265-6 (1964), the bench laid heavy emphasis on the “persons who do not themselves have access to publishing facilities” as having equal entitlements to those who did. In Bartinicki v Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), privacy gave way to the interest in publishing matters of public importance, notwithstanding that the phone call intercepts in that case were obtained illegally, then distributed.

Even the less legally aware would note the case of New York Times Co. v United States, 403 U.S. 713, which famously disregarded the fact that the documents in question had been stolen by a third party. What mattered was the nature of the stolen documents’ character and consequences of public disclosure.

As the Clinton campaign emphasises the stolen character of the data in a hope of some miraculous rite of purification, WikiLeaks remains committed in refocusing attention on one of the least attractive contenders for the White House in US political history. Substance does sometimes count more than form, and the messages are there to prove it.

Retaking Mosul: The Illusion Of Peace

Binoy Kampmark

Forging certainty in the dust of Middle Eastern plays of power is an impossibility its participants never wish to accept.  The imminent defeat of Islamic State forces in Mosul – deemed imminent, at least, by the forces assaulting the stronghold – provide a suggestion that there will be greater stability in the region.  Nasty fundamentalist forces will be banished, paving the way for a peaceful order.

This naïve, even outrageous suggestion, is fairly standard.  A new force of contention, backed by a slew of shady forces and finances, will come to the fore, only to then vanish and reconstitute itself as a different actor. The bones of one grave will simply be moved to another.

A glance at the geographical slicing of the Middle East – the Sykes-Picot colonial order repudiated by Islamic State – does much to assist in this distortion. Removing or expelling an invader from one province simply rustles an already disturbed terrain. Tribal loyalties and religious groups attempt to consolidate with each insurrection, often violently.

The forces involved in the retaking of Mosul suggest the complexity of what awaits after the operation.  On October 17, some 18,000 Iraqi Security Forces, accompanied by 10,000 armed Kurds, thousands of police forces, and an assortment of Shia and Sunni fighters, commenced military operations.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi felt this moment of battle to be historic (is there ever anything else?), a true reckoning.  “I am announcing today the beginning of these heroic operations to liberate you from the brutality and terrorism of ISIS.”

Operations against ISIS in June 2014 were not quite so heroic, and demonstrated the amphibian qualities of the defenders. The winds were blowing somewhat differently as Iraqi forces, funded by Washington’s deep pockets, capitulated in spectacular fashion to the marauders.

Even the current operation is beset by more than a whiff of sectarian and ethnic tension.  This is additional to the complexities on the ground, packed with the traditional guerrilla nasties of improvised explosive devices and booby traps, not to mention the frequent use of civilians as human shields.

Institutional stability has been much of a dream in Iraq in the bloody aftermath of 2003.  A good deal of this strife was occasioned by atrocious planning on the part of the US-led coalition, the arrogance of imperial incompetence, and the inability by the viceroys to see the obvious.

The same speculation is now taking place regarding Mosul.  There are comments from such figures as Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy claiming that Mosul will withstand a sectarian split once ISIS is expelled; that there will be some form of civil society in place to buttress any internal ruptures. “The liberation of Mosul,” he suggests with crystal ball confidence, “will go better than you think.”[1]

Given the record of ISIS in the context of reducing their occupied cities to rubble on retreat, this is fanciful talk at best.  The cities of Falluja, Tikrit and Ramadi were all left in various degrees of crippled devastation.[2]  As such forces near defeat, the infrastructure is despoiled, atrocities multiply and the age of the recruits drops.

Much of the aftermath becomes a conjecture on a board of races and balancing.  The constitution of the city, having changed in the last two years, presents its own challenges for those various ethnic groups (the Turkmen, the Yazidis, amongst them) who will be attempting to return.

The convoluted and complex strategic picture also means that each of the combatant groups, be they the Shia and Sunni Arabs, or the Kurds, will want a dominant, controlling part of the northern Iraq pie.  For the Kurdish peshmerga forces, this chance is nothing short of one to create an autonomous area of self-governance, a point that will rile Ankara and planners in Baghdad.

The problem is further complicated by an Iraqi government that is Shia dominated.  They can count on Iranian support in their attempts to bring Mosul back under government control, including militia elements that have proven their mettle in battles against Islamic State forces.

But such forces as the Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militia have shown themselves ruthless in dispending with foes in their battles against Islamic State.  One of its spokesmen, Karim Nuri, was even confident that no foreign assistance was needed in the operation.  “We do not need Saudi soldiers, or Turkish soldiers, not even Iranian soldiers or American soldiers.  We are able to defeat Daesh on our own, alone.”[3]  Grim local housekeeping is in order.

The Sunni forces see a chance to re-establish influence in Mosul, in alliance with the Kurdish troops on an operational level, though the Kurdish president, Masoud Barzani, has made it clear that his forces will not set foot in the retaken city.

The scene, in short, is set for a violent re-capture, followed by a sorting out of scores, mostly at the end of the gun.  The pattern was set in the retaking of Fallujah last spring.  Iranian-backed Shiite forces joined the Iraqi government forces, enthused by the prospect of victory.  Even before the dust had settled, summary executions by the hundreds had taken place.  In such a retributive climate, the lust for hot blooded vengeance will continue being strong.

Libya: Five Years After Gaddafi’s Brutal Murder

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Five years after the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s overthrow and brutal murder (on October 20, 2011) the situation is now far worse than it was five years ago, as rival militias fighting for control.

Libya has been split between rival parliaments and governments, each backed by a loose array of militias and tribes. Now five years on, Libya is caught between two rival governments, with the western recognized parliament forced into exile in the eastern city of Tobruk in 2014, following a military uprising from the opponent group known as ‘Libyan Dawn’, who have since set up parliament in the capital, Tripoli.

While accurate figures are hard to ascertain, estimates suggest tens of thousands have died in Libya as a result of the conflict since 2011.

Libya’s conflict has left 1.9 million people with serious health needs in a country that lacks medical professionals, medicines and vaccines, according to the World Health Organization.

CIA-Backed General Khalifa Haftar Seizes Control Of Libyan Oil Fields (The African Globe)

In a dramatic development, on September 12, 2016, forces loyal to CIA-backed General Khalifa Haftar took control of two key oil ports. His troops seized Al Sidra and Ras Lanuf terminals on Libya’s Mediterranean coast and hoped to seize a third terminal, Al Zueitina, said Brigadier General Ahmed Al Mosmary, a spokesman for General Haftar’s forces.

General Haftar, has refused to endorse a UN-backed national unity government in Tripoli and remains loyal to the rival administration based in the east of the country.

His forces took the Ras Lanuf and Al Sidra terminals, together capable of handling 700,000 barrels of oil per day, from a militia loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA). The majority of Libya’s oil exports went through the three terminals before the militia, known as the Petroleum Facilities Guards, seized them more than two years ago.

If the terminals are operational again and oil exports resume, the revenues, together with a continuing political impasse, could provide the eastern region an extra incentive to declare self-rule.

Following the capture of the oil ports, the House of Representatives has promoted Haftar from general to field marshal.

General Haftar was a military chief under Muammar Gaddafi before turning against him and calling for his overthrow from exile in the United States. In 2011, General Haftar returned to Libya and commanded some of the rebel units that defeated Gaddafi, aided by Nato air power.

According to The New Yorker, as military commander of the Salvation Front, he plotted an invasion of Libya—but Gaddafi outflanked him. The C.I.A. had to airlift Haftar and three hundred and fifty of his men to Zaire and, eventually, to the United States. Haftar was given citizenship, and remained in the U.S. for the next twenty years.

Leaked tapes expose Western support for renegade Libyan general

General Haftar enjoys the support of several Arab nations, including Egypt, the UAE and Jordan, as well as others in the West.

General Haftar’s air force commander, Saqr Geroshi, was quoted as saying by the UAE newspaper The National in July, that along with 20 French personnel, small units of British and American Special Forces were also deployed with the Tobruk army at Benghazi’s Benina airport.

A multinational military operation involving British, French and US forces is coordinating air strikes in support of a renegade general battling militia groups from a base near Benghazi in eastern Libya, according to air traffic recordings obtained by Middle East Eye reveal.

The leaked tapes appear to confirm earlier reports suggesting the existence of an international operations centre that is helping General Khalifa Haftar in his campaign to gain control of eastern Libya from groups he has declared to be “extremists”.

The leaked tapes feature pilots and air traffic controllers speaking in Arabic and English. British, American, French and Italian accents can be heard.

The presence of foreign special forces in Libya has been known for several months, but until now they were thought to be working only with the western recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). In May, the Pentagon confirmed it had units advising local forces. Pro-GNA militias from Misurata have said British special forces were helping them to capture the extremist group’s main base in the town of Sirte. What is new is that western Special Forces are also on the ground supporting General Haftar.

The French connection

In July last, it was reported that three French special forces operatives killed in Libya were working with General Khalifa Haftar.

France first admitted that its units were in the country. Hours later president Francois Hollande said three operatives on a “dangerous reconnaissance mission” had been killed in a helicopter crash there the previous.

French newspaper Le Monde has reported that the three men were not soldiers but agents from its elite intelligence service, Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE).

The Associated Press reported that France had launched air strikes on the militia that claimed to have shot down the helicopter, the Benghazi Defense Brigades, killing at least 14 fighters.

Five years after Muammar Gaddafi’s brutal murder the situation is now far worse than it was five years ago. While accurate figures are hard to ascertain, estimates suggest tens of thousands have died in Libya since 201,1as a result of the NATO’s intervention to depose Gaddafi.

The militants attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012 remains a burning issue among Republicans, who hold the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, partially responsible for the deaths of four Americans, including the ambassador John Christopher Stevens.

Libyan strongman met an undignified and horrific end that was deliberate to send a strong message to the western client leaders in the Muslim world that they can meet the same fate as Gaddafi and the Iraqi President Saddam Hussain who was hanged on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, December 30, 2006.

Official U.S. Gov’t. Documentation That Saudi Gov’t. Funds Al Qaeda

Eric Zuesse

As Liz Goodwin and Michael Isikoff noted on 11 October 2016 regarding a recent wikileak:

The Clinton email states: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region.” 

That email from Hillary Clinton, https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/7243, was sent on 17 August 2014.

Any reference to the Saudi government is a reference to the Saudi royal family, who own the Saudi government — it’s their fiefdom.

I reported on 17 February 2016 that:

On 30 December 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a cable (subsequently released to the public by wikileaks) to America’s Ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Pakistan, headlined, “Terrorist Finance: Action Request for Senior Level Engagement on Terrorism Finance.” 

She told those Ambassadors to make clear to the given nation’s aristocrats that, under the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, there would no longer be any allowance for continuation of their donations to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups that attack the United States.

It opened, “This is an action request cable,” meaning that the operations of the local U.S. Embassy in the given nation would be monitored for compliance with the Secretary of State’s “request.”

Despite her assertion, there was no accountability; yet she has continued to complain to them in private about those royals’ financing of terrorist groups.

On 11 February 2015, I headlined “Al Qaeda’s Bookkeeper Spills The Beans” and reported, with links to the U.S. courtroom documentation, that:

Zacarias Moussaoui was the bookkeeper and bagman (money-collector) for Al Qaeda, but the U.S. intelligence services have been keeping this fact secret as much as they can, because what he knows about the crucial financial backers of Al Qaeda can be very damaging to the U.S. aristocracy, which is heavily oil-based and closely allied with the Saudi royal family, which created Al Qaeda in order to please the Saudi clerics, who are Wahhabist Muslims who constantly threaten the royals with exposure of their economic and sexual corruption unless the royals finance the spread of the Wahhabist sect (such as by Al Qaeda), and thereby finance the spread of those clerics’ own international influence and power.

Or, so says the former bookkeeper of Al Qaeda, who was selected by Al Qaeda’s military chief, Abu Hafs (also known as “Mohammed Atef”), to serve Osama bin Laden in that capacity: Zacarias Moussaoui. This is his testimony, in brief.

Moussaoui swore in court, that he collected multimillion-dollar cash donations to Al Qaeda from“Waleed — Waleed bin Talal, Prince — Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, Prince — Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, Prince Mohammed Al Faisal Al Saud” and other Saudi royals. He was asked how important this was to Al Qaeda, and he replied: “It was crucial. I mean, without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” This courtroom testimony remains suppressed to the present day, virtually entirely ignored in the press — and without the 9/11 families having pushed the legal issue, this testimony never would even have occurred at all.

On 10 September 2016, I reported on ‘the missing 28 pages’, which were actually 29 pages, which till recently were kept secret, expurgated actually, from the congressional study on the origin of the 9/11 attacks, and noted that:

what that document actually showed, and proved (and cited FBI investigators who could then have testified in public, if requested), was the opposite of unimportant: that the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud (who was known in Washington as “Bandar Bush,” because of his closeness to the Bush family), had secretly been paying the Saudi handlers of at least two of the 15 Saudis among the 19 9/11 hijackers, and that Bandar’s wife and other relatives were also paying those hijackers-to-be, and their families — thus enabling the future hijackers to obtain the necessary pilot-training etc., for the 9/11 attacks.

Why, then did U.S. President Barack Obama, who is oath-bound to the U.S. Constitution and to the American people, veto a bill that Congress finally passed allowing the 9/11 families to sue the Saudi government — the Saudi royal family — for 9/11?

Whom is Obama protecting, and why? Does anyone publicly ask this question of him?

NOTE: This same person, Obama, who protects the Sauds, says as follows about the non-sectarian, separation-of-church-and-state committed, anti-jihadist, leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, whom the U.S. and Saudi governments back Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups in Syria in order to overthrow: As the Wall Street Journal headlined on 19 November 2015, “Obama Says Syrian Leader Bashar al-Assad Must Go” and they reported his argument: “It is because it is unimaginable that you can stop the civil war here when the overwhelming majority of people in Syria consider him to be a brutal, murderous dictator. … He cannot regain legitimacy.” Obama says that Al Qaeda in Syria and other such jihadists (whom he calls ‘moderate rebels’) there should overthrow Assad (and would presumably be more ‘legimate’ there). But, in reality, even Western-sponsored polls have consistently shown that Assad is the only person in Syria whom more than 50% of the Syrian people actually want to be their leader, and that the U.S. itself is loathed there because it is viewed by 82% of Syrians as being to blame for the tens of thousands of jihadists who have been imported into Syria (paid for by the Sauds and militarily trained by the Americans) causing immeasurable misery there for the Syrian people. Why are American Presidents impeached for extramarital sex but not for being traitors and for supporting America’s actual enemies, against the interests of the 9/11 victims and of the rest of the American people? Is America’s government against the interests of the American people? If so, whom does it really represent? And why?

Report documents hunger across the Pacific

John Braddock

In its State of the Environment Report for Oceania (2016), the Catholic aid agency Caritas has found widespread hunger across the Pacific in 2015–2016. The report, Hungry for Justice, Thirsty for Change, shows how extreme weather events combined with vast climatic changes are depleting food and water supplies throughout the region.

Released this month, the report documents cases of children eating cassava roots softened with paracetamol in Fiji and people in Papua New Guinea (PNG) suffering severe malnutrition during last summer’s drought. A powerful El Niño weather pattern contributed to food and water shortages affecting an estimated 4.7 million people across 13 Pacific countries, leading to widespread suffering and many deaths.

Record-breaking temperatures around the globe in 2015-2016 hit the Pacific hard. Caritas found evidence of multiple social and humanitarian disasters following the impact of Cyclone Pam the previous year. In February,Cyclone Winston, the strongest storm recorded in the southern hemisphere, devastated large parts of Fiji. The report comments that El Niño “brought drought, poor harvests, frosts and fires, and wiped out food and cash crops that people had been relying on for their sustenance and future.”

Drought and cyclones have increased rates of malnourishment in Vanuatu and Fiji, with a shortage of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish intensifying extensive malnutrition. Doctors in Vanuatu reported children dying because inadequate food left them too weak to fight illnesses. Tonga’s Ha’apai island group remains in food security stress from Cyclone Ian, which hit in January 2014 and the El Niño drought.

Extreme weather events impact health, education and daily life in the impoverished Pacific islands, where a large percentage of the population exists on subsistence agriculture. Food has become scarce in many places where it had previously been abundant.

El Niño has brought changes to fish migration patterns, affecting a major traditional source of food. The deterioration of water and foodstuffs has prompted Caritas to elevate its assessment for “lasting and sustained” negative environmental effects to “severe” this year, up from “high” in 2015.

While describing the unfolding humanitarian disaster, the report endorses the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) last December. Caritas falsely claims the agreement offers “much hope” and that it will “change the world” if implemented fully. In fact, the document promises little more than the previous 20 annual conferences which failed to alter carbon emissions and demonstrated the impossibility of addressing climate change within the framework of the capitalist nation-state system.

COP 21 explicitly sidestepped the challenge brought by the governments of Pacific island nations, which told the conference their countries were “bearing the brunt” of global warming. Pacific leaders said rising sea levels were laying waste to broad parts of Oceania. Three low-lying nations—Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands—are already faced with submersion.

The nonbinding target agreed to by the US and the other major powers at the conference, which COP 21 does not enforce, is nowhere near what is scientifically necessary to protect humanity from the worst consequences of climate change.

Coastal communities across Oceania are already losing land as a result of coastal erosion, flooding and a sea level rise. Traditional staples such as coconuts are lost to king tides, storm surges and flooding. Rising saltwater is contaminating water supplies and killing off vegetation.

In the Carteret Islands, locals are moving from offshore atolls threatened by rising seas. One community leader said: “We’ve had women dying because they do not have the strength to carry on their everyday activities in supporting their children to survive, their families to survive. There are children who are also dying on the island because they don’t have enough food.”

Parts of Tonga suffer extensive flooding whenever there is a high tide or excessive rain. Families who cannot afford to reclaim land are subject to seawater intrusion into their homes. Severe rainstorms hit the island of Tongatapu in June, but there are no official plans to relocate families living along the coastline. Coastal erosion is widespread in Samoa since a tsunami hit the south coast in 2009 compounded by a long-term sea-level rise.

Extreme weather events have exacerbated social crises. PNG has the highest percentage of people in the world—60 percent—living without access to safe water. At the height of the drought, people were walking long distances in search of food and fresh water. Many fell ill and died. At the peak of El Niño an estimated 2.7 million people in PNG were affected with water shortages, food insecurity and disease.

Cyclone Winston devastated large areas of Fiji in February. It killed 44 people, affected 40 percent of the population and destroyed or damaged at least 31,000 houses. The cost of the damage has been estimated at $US1.4 billion.

The island of Taveuni lost 90 percent of its buildings and 100 percent of its crops, including large numbers of coconut trees and kava, the main cash crop. On Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, water tanks ran dry, and people were struggling to cultivate staple foods. Due to the relatively high cost of meat and tinned fish, there is now little protein in people’s diets. Caritas noted similar reports from the Solomon Islands.

The report underscores that the Pacific is among the most geographically exposed and socially impoverished regions on the planet. Underlying the consequences of weather events and natural disasters is widespread poverty, compounded by governments that are ill-equipped to plan for such events or fund essential defensive measures.

The report also notes that the Pacific was once the site of nuclear tests by Britain, France and the US, and comments that it is now a centre of experimental deep sea mining, with oil companies “circling Pacific shores” and mining conglomerates lining up to explore or mine the seabed, potentially damaging entire ecosystems.

The world’s first commercial seabed mine had been scheduled to get underway by 2018 at the “Solwara (salt water) 1” site in PNG’s Bismarck Sea. The PNG government is a 15 percent partner with Nautilus Minerals Inc. Exploration for deep sea minerals by a Chinese company began in the waters east of New Britain in August.

The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, come in for some criticism in the report. Caritas says they are “still doing less than their fair share to minimise emissions” or take practical steps “towards inclusive, global development that cares for both the earth and the poor.” The respective governments have, it says, failed to provide “climate finance” additional to other overseas development funding, which “still falls short of international commitments.”

In reality, the predatory relationship of Canberra and Wellington to the Pacific was highlighted when they seized on the disaster caused by Cyclone Winston to send warships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to Fiji in March to advance their own, and Washington’s, geo-strategic interests against growing rivalry with China.

Over 20 patients die in Indian hospital fire

Arun Kumar

The absence of elementary safety standards has led to the death of 22 patients and the injury of 105 after a major fire erupted at the Institute of Medical Sciences & SUM Hospital in Odisha state on October 17. The privately-owned health facility is located in the Khandagiri area of Bhubaneswar, the state capital. Most of the victims were in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

The tragedy is a damning indictment of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) state government, the national government and the entire Indian ruling elite for failing to provide or maintain basic safety standards at hospitals catering for millions of patients throughout India.

The fire, which began on the first floor of the four-storey hospital building, is believed to have been caused by electric short circuit in the dialysis ward. Several patients noticed smoke at about 6.30 p.m. and informed hospital authorities. Their warnings were ignored and the fire worsened over the next hour with carbon monoxide fumes and smoke spreading through air conditioning ducts. The blaze eventually engulfed the first floor and began to spread to upper floors, trapping over 500 people inside the hospital.

Many patients were rescued through broken windows while attendants were forced to jump from the first floor. Over 100 patients were move out by ambulances and have been admitted to other hospitals in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

In an attempt to cover up their own responsibility, SUM hospital management declared that the fire was “an accident” and insisted that “prompt action [was taken] to douse the fire and evacuate patients.” Eye-witness accounts reported in the Times of India directly contradict these claims.

Jaspal Singh, who managed to shift his 78-year-old father, Tirath Singh, by wheel-chair from the third floor told the newspaper: “Patients and attendants were kept in dark [about the fire] till very late.” He praised nursing staff for their exemplary courage, putting their own lives at risk in helping to evacuate as many patients as possible.

Anil Patra, whose mother, Rajani Patra, 46, died in the Intensive Care Unit, said: “There was commotion among hospital security staff after smoke was noticed on the first floor around 6.30 p.m. The hospital staff and security personnel, who were supposed to ensure a smooth evacuation, had no coordination leading to a chaotic situation. This delayed the process. As a result, people died.”

Arpit Senapti used a wheel-chair to shift his mother, Sarojini, 86, from the fourth floor to the ground. He said hospital staff kept re-assuring patients and visitors that nothing would happen. “Finally they asked us to take her away on a wheel-chair. We exited using the fire exit ramp. After that it was agonising wait of more than an hour outside the hospital before an ambulance shifted her, [even] though my mother was on ventilator.”

In the face of growing anger over the lack of elementary safety at the facility, four hospital officials—Medical Superintendent Pusparaj Samantsinhar, Electrical Maintenance Engineer Amulya Sahoo, Fire Safety Officer Santosh Das and Junior Engineer (Electrical) Malay Sahoo—were suspended and arrested.

Odisha Director General of Police (Fire Service) Binay Behera told the media that the SUM hospital had failed to implement basic safety standards, including 10 basic requirements made after a 2013 fire audit of the facility. He said: “Upon an inspection of the mishap site, it was found that the majority of the suggestions had not been complied with.”

Hospital authorities did not obtain a valid fire safety certificate. The facility did not have a 25,000-litre water tank, a functional sprinkler system or operating alarms. There was no external fire escape staircase and the fire hydrant system did not operate.

While the Odisha state government has feigned concern over the tragedy it is directly complicit. Director of Medical Education and Training Prakash Chandra Mohapatra admitted this week that out of the 568 fully-operational private hospitals and nursing homes in Odisha, only three hospitals—in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Puri—had fire safety certificates.

The National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers (NABH) certificate for the SUM facility lapsed last August. The NABH inspection report pointed to “serious deficiencies in almost every chapter pertaining to patient safety” and “overall intent of the [SUM] hospital.”

The NABH accreditation committee concluded by deciding that the hospital would no longer carry the NABH tag. Despite its blatant violations, state government authorities failed to shut down the hospital thus allowing Monday’s disaster to occur.

In an attempt to contain public anger and divert attention over his government’s role in the disaster, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik declared that the fire was “very tragic.” He announced an “official” investigation and directed all government and private hospitals to treat the SUM hospital patients.

Others shedding crocodile tears for the victims, included Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who tweeted that he was “deeply anguished by the loss of lives in the hospital fire in Odisha …”

SUM hospital management have provided meagre compensation payments of 500,000 rupees ($US7,500) to the next of kin of those killed and said it would pay for all those injured.

The disaster in Odisha is the direct political responsibility of successive central and state governments—whether led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Congress—that are callously indifferent to fire and other basic safety requirements and have drastically cut funds for the health sector, forcing people into private, profit-making hospitals.

Under the Modi-led BJP government, healthcare funds have been slashed almost 20 percent. Health ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 60 billion rupees ($US948 million) had been cut from their budget allocation of around $5 billion for the financial year ending on March 31.

Indian governments spend only one percent of the GDP on healthcare. This is less that many other countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan and Maldives. Even the tiny, impoverished state of Nepal spends 5.5 percent of the GDP on healthcare.

Almost 80 percent of government hospitals in Delhi, the national capital, lack basic fire safety measures. According to A.K. Sharma, former director of Delhi Fire Services, the hospitals have not taken adequate measures “to prevent spread of smoke and fire from one section to another” and had “unreliable fire management systems.”

The absence of these basic safety measures in government and private health sectors has led to series of fire tragedies in recent years.

In late May a fire erupted in the cardiology department at the state-run SCB medical college and hospital in Cuttack, Odisha.

Over the past five years, there have also been serious fires at the Advanced Medicare & Research Institute (AMRI) hospital and Murshidabad Medical College in Kolkata and at Mumbai’s Gokul Hospital. The AMRI blaze, which erupted in late December 2011, killed over 90 patients and staff members.

British press witch-hunt refugee children from Calais

Robert Stevens

The British media and right-wing politicians have unleashed a filthy campaign against juvenile refugees and asylum seekers that have been granted permission to enter the UK.

Since the beginning of the week, two small groups of unaccompanied children have arrived in the UK from the Calais “Jungle” in northern France. The camp, “home” to up to 10,000 people, is set to be demolished by the French authorities.

The children are entitled to move to the UK from France under existing European Union asylum law, due to their having family ties to relatives already in the UK, but have been prevented from doing so up until now by the Conservative government.

After fleeing the war zones of Syria and Afghanistan and then suffering months of degradation and humiliation at the hands of the French authorities, the children arrived at an immigration centre in Croydon, south London. They faced the humiliation of a crowd of press reporters who stuck cameras in their faces and took photos in order to demonise them in Wednesday morning’s newspaper editions and online.

A howl of collective outrage demanded that they should be barred from entering the UK because, they claimed, some were really adults. The Daily Mail, Daily Express, and The Sun all front-paged the story with provocative banner headlines. The Sun published a photo of one of the refugees alongside a strapline reading, “Migrant ‘children’ look 40”. One had “crows feet” on his face, it claimed. The Mail reported that one of the refugees was “rated by a facial recognition program as having the features of a 38-year-old.” The Times, the Sun’s sister paper owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch, headlined its article “Migrants’ scam”.

Each repulsive story had the words children and minors in quotation marks.

Conservative MP, Ranil Jayawardena, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, told The Sun, “I think the British public will be very surprised to see that, instead of primary school-aged children arriving, we are finding young men, perhaps even adults, coming across our border.”

The Sun’s main banner headline was “Tell us the tooth”—a reference to the calls by a number of MPs to establish the age of the children by forcing them to undergo dental tests. Such an act would be illegal, as any such checks on a child require parental consent. Leading the calls was Conservative MP David Davies. Davies tweeted, “These young men don’t look like minors to me. They are hulking teenagers who look older than 18... We should invite anyone who wants to come to the UK to take dental tests.”

The British Dental Association stated, “We are vigorously opposed to the use of dental X-rays to determine whether asylum seekers have reached 18.”

Ruth Allen, the Association’s chief executive, said, “We are talking about young people, children, of course adults as well, who have often been through incredible amounts of trauma, torture and abuse. Intrusive medical tests are not necessarily going to be at all appropriate and would be considered to be very intrusive and would be retraumatising.”

In his comments, Davies piously declared, “I hope British hospitality is not being abused.”

What sickening hypocrisy! There has been no “hospitality” offered by the government to those suffering in Calais, or anywhere else. A grand total of just 14 children arrived in Croydon from Calais Tuesday. A further 14 arrived on Wednesday. At most around 200 children from Calais will be accepted into the UK. The Tory government has only accepted, very reluctantly, a tiny number of people who have fled homelands decimated as a result of wars in which British imperialism has played a central role.

More than a year after former Prime Minister David Cameron promised to settle a paltry 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, only 2,800 have arrived in Britain. This is just over half the rate of 4,000 a year needed to meet the commitment, under conditions where there are more than 4.8 million refugees from the war-torn country.

Those trapped in Calais face a perilous existence and many have perished trying to escape. This week, a man described as an “illegal immigrant” by theDaily Mirror was found suffocated, covered head to toe in plastic film under the weight of baby clothes catalogues in a HGV truck. The corpse was discovered when the truck arrived in England after passing through Calais. Last week an Eritrean died and his wife was injured in an accident involving a British driver on a motorway near Calais. He was the fourteenth person to lose his life in the Calais area this year. In September, a teenage Afghan boy was killed while trying to climb on to a lorry heading to the Channel Tunnel.

Whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria has been a staple of the right-wing media in Britain for more than two decades. It is integral to the justification of British imperialism’s predatory wars, legitimising the assault on democratic rights under the umbrella of the “war on terror” and in providing a scapegoat for the imposition brutal cuts to vital social services. However, the filth now being slung at the young refugees and asylum seekers also has an immediate political aim. During the referendum campaign leading to the narrow June 23 vote to leave the EU, xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment united both the Leave and Remain camps. For Remain, Cameron promised to secure agreement with the EU to ensure Fortress Europe would keep out migrants, while the Leave campaign made its central appeal to “take back control of our borders.”

As parliament returned after the summer recess, Prime Minister Theresa May, who campaigned for Remain but is now pledged to a “hard Brexit”, declared that her government would insist on tighter immigration controls in any negotiations with the EU. Davies is a hardline Eurosceptic and supporter of the extreme right Freedom Association.

Any opposition to the depiction of asylum seekers as a threat is treated as heresy. Just prior to the arrival of the children from Calais, the pop singer Lily Allen visited the Jungle camp and was visibly distraught at what she witnessed. Allen was filmed by the BBC speaking to a 13-year-old boy who had been in the camp for two months. Moved to tears, she told the boy, after he had related his traumatised recent past to her, “It just seems that, at three different intervals in this young boy’s life, the English in particular have put you in danger. We’ve bombed your country, put you in the hands of the Taliban and now put you in danger of risking your life to get into our country. I apologise on behalf of my country. I’m sorry for what we have put you through.”

For this truthful statement, Allen was pilloried. Colonel Richard Kemp, a British commander in Afghanistan in 2003, joined in, stating, “What is she doing there? She clearly does not have any understanding of the situation.”

Responding to the onslaught against her, Allen said the attacks were “being used to support the xenophobic rhetoric and narrative that we are currently experiencing, especially in the mainstream press.”

On Wednesday, speaking to Radio 4, Davies declared, “We must not be naive about this. It's no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it—we need to be quite hard-nosed here.”

With the news that the boy Allen spoke to was one of those who arrived in the UK on Wednesday, The Sun made a point of stating that he “claimed to be 13 but looked far older…”

Egyptian junta cultivates Russia and China as a counterweight to the US

Jean Shaoul

General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi’s military dictatorship in Egypt, which has long functioned as a key US ally, is to hold joint military exercises with Russia on Egyptian territory for the first time later this month.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the drills, called “Protectors of Friendship-2016,” would include 500 troops, 15 planes and helicopters and 10 military hardware units. It described the exercises as “anti-terrorist,” adding, “The airborne delivery by parachute of several Russian airborne troops’ сombat vehicles to the desert climate of Egypt will occur for the first time in history.”

While the Soviet Union posted hundreds of “military advisers” in Egypt during the Cold War, this is the first time that the two countries will participate in joint land-based military exercises. Last year Russia and Egypt held their first-ever joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean, which included the Black Sea fleet’s flagship Moskva missile cruiser.

The latest announcement follows Russian media reports that Egypt is discussing the possibility of allowing Russia to use military bases across the country. Russia is seeking to renovate a former Soviet naval base in the coastal town of Sidi Barani, close to the border with Libya, for use as an air base by 2019, thereby strengthening its presence in the Mediterranean. The announcement came just days after Moscow announced that it was beefing up its Tartus naval base on the Syrian coast, with an S-300 air defence missile system.

Last week, Egypt opposed a French-sponsored UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to all aerial bombardment and overflights of Aleppo by Russian and Syrian government aircraft, and backed the Russian resolution calling for a ceasefire without mentioning the French clause. Both resolutions failed to get a majority.

Egypt’s Ministry of Electricity has also announced that it would sign a comprehensive contract with Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in the area of al-Dabaa, while the two countries are negotiating the resumption of tourist flights, which halted after an explosion downed a Russian plane over the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015.

Reflecting the increasingly tense relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Petroleum declared that Aramco, the Saudi state-owned oil company, had suspended its oil aid to Egypt—although the five-year agreement to provide 700,000 tonnes of refined oil products monthly, signed last year, remained in effect.

El-Sisi’s controversial and deeply unpopular agreement with Riyadh last April to transfer the two Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia has been the subject of a bitter court battle that has infuriated the Saudis. At the end of last month, an Egyptian court overturned a previous ruling opposing the redrawing of the maritime boundary between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. However, this ruling can still be appealed.

The transfer of the two islands was in return for a financial rescue package for the military junta, which has been kept afloat with billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia in forms of grants, loans and trade deals since el-Sisi led the 2013 coup against Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi.

Another bone of contention with Riyadh is Cairo’s refusal to cooperate in the war to unseat Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

At the same time, Egypt has signed a $20 billion agreement with the China Fortune Land Development Company (CFLD) to construct the second and third phases of the new $45 billion administrative capital, due to start after June 2018, when the first phase of the project is due to be finished. Egypt hopes that this will attract a further $15 billion in direct foreign investment.

Cairo had originally intended to award the contract for the project to an Abu Dhabi-based company, but turned to China when this fell apart. Little of this ambitious project has been completed.

El-Sisi made state visits to China in 2014 and 2015 and President Xi Jinping visited Cairo earlier this year to agree on 15 projects worth $10 billion. These include three power plants, a rail link between Cairo and 10th of Ramadan City, a station at the Alexandria port, glass and leather factories and the electrification of the Alexandria to Abu-Qir railway link. China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is reportedly providing the Central Bank and Egypt’s state-owned banks with at least $1.7 billion in financing.

External debt has risen under el-Sisi’s watch from $44.8 billion in July 2014 to $53.4 billion in January 2016, while the country’s currency reserves shrank to just $15 billion. The blood-soaked dictatorship has only been able to stave off insolvency as a result of $50 billion of cash injections, loans and oil guarantees from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf petro-states as international revenues from the Suez Canal, tourism and remittances from Egyptians working abroad have plummeted. Moreover, an international conference at Sharm el-Sheikh failed to deliver on its promises of further aid injections.

Egypt is widely expected to announce a further devaluation and partial flotation of its currency as part of the recent agreement with the IMF to implement a savage austerity programme in return for a $12 billion loan that will largely go to shoring up Egypt’s currency. The devaluation of the Egyptian pound last March and the introduction of capital controls, including limits on transferring currency abroad and withdrawing money for overseas travel overseas, have prevented companies from importing basic commodities, including wheat upon which Egypt depends and exacerbated the political, economic and social crisis.

Any further devaluation will increase the rate of inflation, already running at 15 percent a year, under conditions where 27 percent of the population live below the official poverty line and nearly 50 percent of young people are unemployed or underemployed.

Last month, angry mothers demonstrated demanding baby formula milk, while a Facebook page Revolution of the Poor has called for national demonstrations for November 11.

Egypt’s turn to Russia and China is a desperate attempt to play off Washington, which provides $1.3 billion a year in military aid, its Gulf allies, and Moscow and China against each other in a bid to stave off bankruptcy.

El-Sisi calculates that the importance of maintaining stability in Egypt will prevent Washington and Riyadh seriously curtailing aid, since turmoil in Egypt would undoubtedly have a knock-on effect on the entire region, including the Gulf monarchies. Five and a half years after the eruption of mass revolutionary struggles in Egypt that brought down long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, his successor fears another social explosion or a pre-emptive military coup, under conditions where the international financial press have lambasted his handling of the situation.

The petty-bourgeois pseudo-left forces in the Revolutionary Socialists (RS), a part of the International Socialist Tendency, have criticised the el-Sisi regime and its support for the Russian resolution at the UN from a thoroughly nationalist, pro-imperialist and pro-war position.

The RS played a crucial role in bringing the counterrevolutionary military regime to power in 2013, which it initially welcomed as a “second revolution,” facilitating the counterrevolutionary terror that has gripped Egypt ever since. Today, their opposition to the dictator and Egypt’s support for the Russian UN resolution is virtually indistinguishable from the CIA-Pentagon line. One of their most prominent members, Gigi Ibrahim, has been campaigning for the pro-war Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections.

One out of two Americans in facial recognition databases

Shelley Connor

Over 117 million Americans—half of the adult population—are in facial recognition databases used by law enforcement, according to a report released by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology. The report, which the authors call “the most comprehensive survey to date of law enforcement face recognition,” took a year to complete.

The report--titled “The Perpetual Lineup”--opens with a hypothetical situation. “There is a knock on your door. It’s the police. There was a robbery in your neighborhood. They have a suspect in custody and an eyewitness. But they need your help: Will you come down to the station to stand in the line-up?”

Most Americans would find such an occurrence bizarre, and would accordingly object. Police lineups generally are composed of individuals with a criminal record. Due to facial recognition software and databases, though, the report contends, half of American adults unwittingly participate in a never-ending virtual lineup.

The authors proceed to outline the methods that law enforcement agencies throughout the US use to obtain and store photographic images of wide swaths of citizens, regardless of their criminal history.

Facial recognition software exists, along with fingerprinting and DNA evidence, on a continuum of what is known as biometric data. Biometric data uses the physical features of a person’s body to identify them. As the report points out, though, facial recognition algorithms and photographic storage differs significantly from fingerprinting or other biometrics. These differences make the gathering and storage of photographic images both uniquely useful for law enforcement and distinctly problematic for the American public.

Fingerprints can only be left by a person who has actually deigned to touch an item. Photographs, by contrast, can be obtained by surveillance cameras, smart phones, social media sites, and driver licenses, in situations wherein individuals have no choice, and in most cases, no knowledge that their photographs are even being taken. “Face recognition isn’t just a different biometric,” the report states; “those differences allow for a different kind of tracking that can occur from far away, in secret, and on large numbers of people.”

This is not, as the report makes clear, ‘business as usual.’ Taking peoples’ photos without their consent or even knowledge represents a threat to constitutional rights. The practice allows for serious incursions against the First Amendment rights to peaceable assembly and freedom of speech, as well as Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure.

Police have already begun using facial recognition software, geolocation, and other real-time data in ways that violate the spirit of both the First and Fourth Amendments.

Earlier in October, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement on the cooperation between Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and a private company called Geofreedia, in which Geofreedia supplied police with information from private citizens’ Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, during the protests and vigils following the police murder of Freddie Gray in 2015. Information supplied included protesters’ photographs, locations, and hashtags.

While both police and Geofreedia have insisted that these data were used in order to monitor and proactively address growing unrest, the BPD used facial recognition software alongside information Geofreedia supplied in order to search for people with outstanding warrants amongst the protesters. Such practices provide pretexts for the effective curtailment of freedom of assembly.

Baltimore is not the only municipal government to use such a service. Denver, Los Angeles, and New York have all admitted to using either Geofreedia or similar searches. Several social media sites, including Twitter, ended their agreements with Geofreedia earlier in the week due to fallout from the ACLU report.

In addition to the novel and problematic use of facial recognition software to do real-time surveillance, the secretive way which law enforcement agencies use this technology raises questions.

The Government Accountability Office revealed earlier this year that 16 states allow the FBI to use state driver license photos in facial recognition searches. These states handed over their citizens’ photographs without obtaining their consent or informing them.

It should be assumed that state and municipal governments are taking even greater liberties with facial recognition technology behind the public’s back. In response to requests for information on its use of facial recognition algorithms, New York Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department simply refused to cooperate with the Center for Privacy and Technology’s researchers. Other police departments, notably Baltimore and Denver, acknowledged that they used the technology but would not give specific instances of its use.

Law enforcement increasingly seeks, against overwhelming public opposition, to extend its reach well beyond its constitutional limits. The use of deadly force, the use of “resisting arrest” as reason in and of itself to arrest citizens, and tortuously attenuated interpretations of probable cause all signify a growth of law enforcement’s power in direct contravention of constitutional principles.

US Social Security Administration announces effective cut in benefits

Fred Mazelis

The US government announced this week that Social Security beneficiaries would receive an insulting 0.3 percent cost-of-living adjustment in their monthly checks for 2017, amounting to about $4 for the average recipient, a cut in real income.

The $4 monthly increase is less than a round trip bus or subway fare in many major cities. It follows no increase at all for 2016. For the years 2010 and 2011, there were also zero cost-of-living adjustments, based on official claims of no inflation. As the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said in a statement, “Over the past eight years, the current COLA formula has led to average increases of just over one percent” annually.

The average annual benefit for the 65 million in the US currently receiving Social Security is less than $15,000. The notion that the cost of living for these recipients has increased by only 1 percent per year for the past period is preposterous on its face. In New York City, for instance, the cost of a subway or bus fare has risen by more than 20 percent since 2009 ($2.25 to $2.75). Rent-stabilized apartments in New York have seen increases averaging significantly more than 1 percent annually, even after zero increases in the past two years.

In addition to keeping Social Security increases below the actual rate of inflation, the upcoming 0.3 percent increase will be entirely eaten up by increases in the Medicare Part B premiums (currently $104.90 for most Medicare beneficiaries) that are automatically deducted from Social Security checks.

The new premiums have not yet been officially announced but are projected as significantly more than a 0.3 percent hike. According to a “hold harmless” rule, which forbids an actual cut in Social Security benefits, however, the increase in Medicare premiums will be capped for about 70 percent of the 56 million people receiving Medicare. These relatively “lucky” beneficiaries will see their Social Security frozen while living costs continue to go up.

For about 30 percent of those on Medicare, however, premiums will go up much more. These include those eligible for Medicare for the first time, those enrolled in Medicare but not receiving Social Security, and those subject to Medicare surcharges because they did not enroll in the first year of their eligibility. These millions of recipients will see an absolute reduction in their net income for 2017.

In addition to the Medicare premium increases, Medicare trustees have also projected a sizable jump in the annual deductible before recipients can begin receiving their benefits. This is now $166 for the year and is projected to increase to $204. This increase alone is nearly as great as the average cost-of-living adjustment of about $48 annually.

Finally, the Social Security Administration has also announced a rise in the ceiling on wages subject to payroll taxes for Social Security, from the current level of $118,500 to $127,200. This change, at first glance not unreasonable, will in fact hit many working class two-income families where after-tax earnings do not leave much left over after mortgage and car payments, college tuition and other major expenses. The super-rich and the upper middle-class layers, who have incomes well into the six figures, will easily absorb what is a very small increase in their tax liability.

The continuous chipping away at retirement benefits is no small matter for the great majority on Social Security. Millions have already been forced to remain in the workforce well past the expected retirement age because their benefits do not begin to cover basic necessities. Now, those who face a modest increase in rent of $50 a month, for instance, will have not a penny in increased Social Security to meet the added expense. They will have to find some other way to cut their already meager standard of living.

The official Consumer Price Index (CPI) understates inflation by allocating a far smaller percentage of costs to such items as housing, medicine and transportation. Some advocacy groups call for the use of CPI-E, an experimental index that increases the weight of such items as housing and health care. Even this would leave most retirees far short of an adequate income.

The latest attack on the working class and especially on its most vulnerable sections highlights the grotesque character of the 2016 election campaign. The issue of Social Security never arose at the first two presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The candidates were too busy dealing with sex scandals and the importance of getting tough on Russia to discuss working class living standards.

According to a report in the Huffington Post, in fact, a retired government worker in North Carolina submitted a question to the Open Debate Commission for the “town hall” debate format at the second meeting between Trump and Clinton. According to Huffington Post, “Ellen Pleasant…struggles to make ends meet on her monthly check of $996 and a monthly state pension benefit of $299. She has declared bankruptcy twice in recent years, because she was not able to make her mortgage payments and ‘do the things I need to live.’”

Pleasant’s question about whether the candidates “support expanding, and not cutting, Social Security’s modest benefits…was the third most popular question based on readers’ votes, but the debate moderators never raised it.”

Both Trump and Clinton have issued vague promises to defend Social Security. Clinton’s more detailed proposals have been advertised as strongly supportive of the program, but a New York Times editorial on October 19 praises the candidate for “allow[ing] for compromise with Republicans who favor cutting benefits to keep the system viable.” Clearly, no matter which candidate wins on November 8, attacks on Social Security and Medicare will escalate.