Drowning The World In Oil

Michael T. Klare

Trump’s Carbon-Obsessed Energy Policy and the Planetary Nightmare to Come 

Scroll through Donald Trump’s campaign promises or listen to his speeches and you could easily conclude that his energy policy consists of little more than a wish list drawn up by the major fossil fuel companies: lift environmental restrictions on oil and natural gas extraction, build the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, open more federal lands to drilling, withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan, revive the coal mining industry, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.  In fact, many of his proposals have simply been lifted straight from the talking points of top energy industry officials and their lavishly financed allies in Congress.

If, however, you take a closer look at this morass of pro-carbon proposals, an obvious, if as yet unnoted, contradiction quickly becomes apparent. Were all Trump’s policies to be enacted — and the appointment of the climate-change denier and industry-friendly attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests the attempt will be made — not all segments of the energy industry will flourish.  Instead, many fossil fuel companies will be annihilated, thanks to the rock-bottom fuel prices produced by a colossal oversupply of oil, coal, and natural gas.

Indeed, stop thinking of Trump’s energy policy as primarily aimed at helping the fossil fuel companies (although some will surely benefit).  Think of it instead as a nostalgic compulsion aimed at restoring a long-vanished America in which coal plants, steel mills, and gas-guzzling automobiles were the designated indicators of progress, while concern over pollution — let alone climate change — was yet to be an issue.

If you want confirmation that such a devastating version of nostalgia makes up the heart and soul of Trump’s energy agenda, don’t focus on his specific proposals or any particular combination of them.  Look instead at his choice of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state and former Governor Rick Perry from oil-soaked Texas as his secretary of energy, not to mention the carbon-embracing fervor that ran through his campaign statements and positions.  According to his election campaign website, his top priority will be to “unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves.”  In doing so, it affirmed, Trump would “open onshore and offshore leasing on federal lands, eliminate [the] moratorium on coal leasing, and open shale energy deposits.”  In the process, any rule or regulation that stands in the way of exploiting these reserves will be obliterated.

If all of Trump’s proposals are enacted, U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will soar, wiping out the declines of recent years and significantly increasing the pace of global warming.  Given that other major GHG emitters, especially India and China, will feel less obliged to abide by their Paris commitments if the U.S. heads down that path, it’s almost certain that atmospheric warming will soar beyond the 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial levels that scientists consider the maximum the planet can absorb without suffering catastrophic repercussions.  And if, as promised, Trump also repeals a whole raft of environmental regulations and essentially dismantles the Environmental Protection Agency, much of the progress made over recent years in improving our air and water quality will simply be wiped away, and the skies over our cities and suburbs will once again turn gray with smog and toxic pollutants of all sorts.

Eliminating All Constraints on Carbon Extraction

To fully appreciate the dark, essentially delusional nature of Trump’s energy nostalgia, let’s start by reviewing his proposals.  Aside from assorted tweets and one-liners, two speeches before energy groups represent the most elaborate expression of his views: the first was given on May 26th at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, North Dakota, to groups largely focused on extracting oil from shale through hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the Bakken shale oil formation; the second on September 22nd addressed the Marcellus Shale Coalition in Pittsburgh, a group of Pennsylvania gas frackers.

At both events, Trump’s comments were designed to curry favor with this segment of the industry by promising the repeal of any regulations that stood in the way of accelerated drilling.  But that was just a start for the then-candidate.  He went on to lay out an “America-first energy plan” designed to eliminate virtually every impediment to the exploitation of oil, gas, and coal anywhere in the country or in its surrounding waters, ensuring America’s abiding status as the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels.

Much of this, Trump promised in Bismarck, would be set in motion in the first 100 days of his presidency.  Among other steps, he pledged to:

• Cancel America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs
• Lift any existing moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
• Ask TransCanada to renew its permit application to build the Keystone Pipeline
• Revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies
• Save the coal industry

The specifics of how all this might happen were not provided either by the candidate or, later, by his transition team.  Nevertheless, the main thrust of his approach couldn’t be clearer: abolish all regulations and presidential directives that stand in the way of unrestrained fossil fuel extraction, including commitments made by President Obama in December 2015 under the Paris Climate Agreement.  These would include, in particular, the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, with its promise to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired plants, along with mandated improvements in automotive fuel efficiency standards, requiring major manufacturers to achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon in all new cars by 2025.  As these constitute the heart of America’s “intended nationally determined contributions” to the 2015 accord, they will undoubtedly be early targets for a Trump presidency and will represent a functional withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, even if an actual withdrawal isn’t instantly possible.

Just how quickly Trump will move on such promises, and with what degree of success, cannot be foreseen.  However, because so many of the measures adopted by the Obama administration to address climate change were enacted as presidential directives or rules promulgated by the EPA — a strategy adopted to circumvent opposition from climate skeptics in the Republican-controlled House and Senate — Trump will be in a position to impose a number of his own priorities simply by issuing new executive orders nullifying Obama’s.  Some of his goals will, however, be far harder to achieve.  In particular, it will prove difficult indeed to “save” the coal industry if America’s electrical utilities retain their preference for cheap natural gas.

Ignoring Market Realities

This last point speaks to a major contradiction in the Trump energy plan. Seeking to boost the extraction of every carbon-based energy source inevitably spells doom for segments of the industry incapable of competing in the low-price environment of a supply-dominated Trumpian energy marketplace.

Take the competition between coal and natural gas in powering America’s electrical plants.  As a result of the widespread deployment of fracking technology in the nation’s prolific shale fields, the U.S. gas output has skyrocketed in recent years, jumping from 18.1 trillion cubic feet in 2005 to 27.1 trillion in 2015.  With so much additional gas on the market, prices have naturally declined — a boon for the electrical utility companies, which have converted many of their plants from coal to gas-combustion in order to benefit from the low prices.  More than anything else, this is responsible for the decline of coal use, with total consumption dropping by 10% in 2015 alone.

In his speech to the Marcellus Coalition, Trump promised to facilitate the expanded output of both fuels.  In particular, he pledged to eliminate federal regulations that, he claimed, “remain a major restriction to shale production.” (Presumably, this was a reference to Obama administration measures aimed at reducing the excessive leakage of methane, a major greenhouse gas, from fracking operations on federal lands.) At the same time, he vowed to “end the war on coal and the war on miners.”

As Trump imagines the situation, that “war on coal” is a White House-orchestrated drive to suppress its production and consumption through excessive regulation, especially the Clean Power Plan.  But while that plan, if ever fully put into operation, would result in the accelerated decommissioning of existing coal plants, the real war against coal is being conducted by the very frackers Trump seeks to unleash.  By encouraging the unrestrained production of natural gas, he will ensure continued low gas prices and so a depressed market for coal.

A similar contradiction lies at the heart of Trump’s approach to oil: rather than seeking to bolster core segments of the industry, he favors a supersaturated market approach that will end up hurting many domestic producers.  Right now, in fact, the single biggest impediment to oil company growth and profitability is the low price environment brought on by a global glut of crude — itself largely a consequence of the explosion of shale oil production in the United States.  With more petroleum entering the market all the time and insufficient world demand to soak it up, prices have remained at depressed levels for more than two years, severely affecting fracking operations as well.  Many U.S. frackers, including some in the Bakken formation, have found themselves forced to suspend operations or declare bankruptcy because each new barrel of fracked oil costs more to produce than it can be sold for.

Trump’s approach to this predicament — pump out as much oil as possible here and in Canada — is potentially disastrous, even in energy industry terms.  He has, for instance, threatened to open up yet more federal lands, onshore and off, for yet more oil drilling, including presumably areas previously protected on environmental grounds like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the seabeds off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.  In addition, the construction of pipelines like the embattled one in North Dakota and other infrastructure needed to bring these added resources to market will clearly be approved and facilitated.

In theory, this drown-us-in-oil approach should help achieve a much-trumpeted energy “independence” for the United States, but under the circumstances, it will surely prove a calamity of the first order.  And such a fantasy version of a future energy market will only grow yet more tumultuous thanks to Trump’s urge to help ensure the survival of that particularly carbon-dirty form of oil production, Canada’s tar sands industry.

Not surprisingly, that industry, too, is under enormous pressure from low oil prices, as tar sands are far more costly to produce than conventional oil.  At the moment, adequate pipeline capacity is also lacking for the delivery of their thick, carbon-heavy crude to refineries on the American Gulf Coast where they can be processed into gasoline and other commercial products.  So here’s yet one more Trumpian irony to come: by favoring construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump would throw yet another monkey wrench into his own planning.  Sending such a life preserver to the Canadian industry — allowing it to better compete with American crude — would be another strike against his own “America-first energy plan.”

Seeking the Underlying Rationale

In other words, Trump’s plan will undoubtedly prove to be an enigma wrapped in a conundrum inside a roiling set of contradictions.  Although it appears to offer boom times for every segment of the fossil fuel industry, only carbon as a whole will benefit, while many individual companies and sectors of the market will suffer.  What could possibly be the motivation for such a bizarre and planet-enflaming outcome?

To some degree, no doubt, it comes, at least in part, from the president-elect’s deep and abiding nostalgia for the fast-growing (and largely regulation-free) America of the 1950s.  When Trump was growing up, the United States was on an extraordinary expansionist drive and its output of basic goods, including oil, coal, and steel, was swelling by the day.  The country’s major industries were heavily unionized; the suburbs were booming; apartment buildings were going up all over the borough of Queens in New York City where Trump got his start; cars were rolling off the assembly lines in what was then anything but the “Rust Belt”; and refineries and coal plants were pouring out the massive amounts of energy needed to make it all happen.

Having grown up in the Bronx, just across Long Island Sound from Trump’s home borough, I can still remember the New York of that era: giant smokestacks belching out thick smoke on every horizon and highways jammed with cars adding to the miasma, but also to that sense of explosive growth.  Builders and automobile manufacturers didn’t have to seriously worry about regulations back then, and certainly not about environmental ones, which made life — for them — so much simpler.

It’s that carbon-drenched era to which Trump dreams of returning, even if it’s already clear enough that the only conceivable kind of dream that can ever come from his set of policies will be a nightmare of the first order, with temperatures exceeding all records, coastal cities regularly under water, our forests in flame and our farmlands turned to dust.

And don’t forget one other factor: Trump’s vindictiveness — in this case, not just toward his Democratic opponent in the recent election campaign but toward those who voted against him.  The Donald is well aware that most Americans who care about climate change and are in favor of a rapid transformation to a green energy America did not vote for him, including prominent figures in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who contributed lavishly to Hillary Clinton’s coffers on the promise that the country would be transformed into a “clean energy superpower.”

Given his well-known penchant for attacking anyone who frustrates his ambitions or speaks negatively of him, and his urge to punish greens by, among other things, obliterating every measure adopted by President Obama to speed the utilization of renewable energy, expect him to rip the EPA apart and do his best to shred any obstacles to fossil fuel exploitation.  If that means hastening the incineration of the planet, so be it. He either doesn’t care (since at 70 he won’t live to see it happen), truly doesn’t believe in the science, or doesn’t think it will hurt his company’s business interests over the next few decades.

One other factor has to be added into this witch’s brew: magical thinking.  Like so many leaders of recent times, he seems to equate mastery over oil in particular, and fossil fuels in general, with mastery over the world.  In this, he shares a common outlook with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on harnessing Russia’s oil and gas reserves in order to restore the country’s global power, and with ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, said to be Trump’s top choice for Secretary of State and a long-term business partner of the Putin regime.  For these and other politicians and tycoons — and, of course, we’re talking almost exclusively about men here — the possession of giant oil reserves is thought to bestow a kind of manly vigor.  Think of it as the national equivalent of Viagra.

Back in 2002, Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the matter succinctly: “Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes.  Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and international politics… [It is] a determinant of well being, national security, and international power for those who possess [it] and the converse for those who do not.”

Trump seems to have fully absorbed this line of thinking.  “American energy dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of the United States,” he declared at the Williston forum in May.  “We will become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests.”  He seems firmly convinced that the accelerated extraction of oil and other carbon-based fuels will “make America great again.”

This is delusional, but as president he will undoubtedly be able to make enough of his energy program happen to achieve both short term and long term energy mayhem. He won’t actually be able to reverse the global shift to renewable energy now under way or leverage increased American fossil fuel production to achieve significant foreign policy advantages.  What his efforts are, however, likely to ensure is the surrender of American technological leadership in green energy to countries like China and Germany, already racing ahead in the development of renewable systems.  And in the process, he will also guarantee that all of us are going to experience yet more extreme climate events.  He will never recreate the dreamy America of his memory or return us to the steamy economic cauldron of the post-World War II period, but he may succeed in restoring the smoggy skies and poisoned rivers that so characterized that era and, as an added bonus, bring planetary climate disaster in his wake.  His slogan should be: Make America Smoggy Again.

Starving Yemeni Children, Bloated US Weapons Makers

Medea Benjamin

While the world is transfixed on the epic tragedy unfolding in Syria, another tragedy—a hidden one—has been consuming the children of Yemen. Battered by the twin evils of war and hunger, every ten minutes a child in Yemen is now dying from malnutrition, diarrhea and respiratory-tract infections. A new UNICEF report shows over 400,000 Yemeni children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Without immediate medical attention, these children will die. The situation is so dire that over half of the entire nation’s 25 million people lack sufficient food.

Why are so many of Yemen’s children going hungry and dying? Since 2014 Yemen has been wracked by a civil war, a war that has been exacerbated by outside intervention from Saudi Arabia.  In March 2015, the Saudi government became involved in the internal conflict in neighboring Yemen because it was worried that a more pro-Iran faction—the Houthis—would take over the government. Since then, with U.S. weapons and logistical support, the Saudis have been pounding Yemen. This 20-month-old Saudi bombing campaign has not only killed thousands of innocent Yemenis, but sparked a severe humanitarian crisis in the poorest country in the Middle East.

Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, and the war, including a Saudi naval blockade and bombing of the country’s main port, has made it difficult to import food and sufficient humanitarian supplies. The war has left millions of people unemployed and over two million displaced. These families don’t have income to buy food, while food prices have soared because of the shortages.

UN and private relief organizations have been mobilizing to respond to the crisis, but a staggering 18.8 million people need humanitarian assistance, and the situation is only getting worse. At the same time, the UN Refugee Agency has received less than half the funds it needs.

The nation’s health system is on the verge of collapse. Less than a third of the country’s population has access to medical care and only half of the health facilities are functional. Local health workers have not been paid their wages for months and aid agencies are struggling to bring in lifesaving supplies.  Diseases such as cholera and measles are spreading, taking a heavy toll on children.

The only way to end the humanitarian crisis is to end the conflict. That means pushing harder for a political solution and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The Yemen crisis should also serve as a prime moment for the U.S. government to reconsider its alliance the Saudi regime. Ever since the founding of the kingdom in 1932, US administrations have allied themselves with a government that beheads non-violent dissidents, forces women to live under the dictates of male guardians, treats foreign workers like indentured servants, and spreads the intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world. Today, Saudi Arabia is also a regime that funds Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Iraq, crushes democratic uprisings in neighboring countries like Bahrain, and is waging a catastrophic war in Yemen.

Despite the repressive nature of the Saudi regime, US governments have not only supported the Saudis on the diplomatic front but militarily. Under the Obama administration, this has translated into massive weapons sales of $115 billion. While Yemeni children are starving in large part because of Saudi bombings, US weapons makers, including General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, are making a killing on the sales.

Concerned over the high rate of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi bombings in Yemen, on December 12 the White House took the rare step of stopping a Raytheon sale of 16,000 guided munition kits valued at $350 million. This is a great step forward, but it represents only a small fraction of total US weapons sales to the Saudi regime. In fact, at the same time the White House announced it was blocking this $350 million sale, the State Department announced plans to sell 48 Chinook cargo helicopters and other equipment worth $3.51 billion.

The US military is also supporting the Saudis in a variety of other ways, including providing intelligence, weaponry and midair refueling, as well as sending U.S. warships to help enforce a blockade in the Gulf of Aden and southern Arabian Sea. The blockade was allegedly to prevent weapons shipments from Iran to the Houthis, but it also stopped humanitarian aid shipments to beleaguered Yemenis.

Moreover, while an executive order stopping a weapons deal is a positive move, a Trump administration might well restore all sales. That’s why it’s important for Congress to step forward and take a stand.

Congress has the right to stop any weapons sales authorized by the State Department but normally lets the deals go forward uncontested. Congress came close to stopping a Saudi purchase of cluster bombs, a particularly egregious weapon banned by the international community, with a vote of 204 for the ban and 216 against it. President Obama eventually called for a halt to the cluster bomb sales and soon thereafter, the only US company still producing cluster bombs, Textron, announced it would stop production.

In September 2016, the Senate, led by Senators Chris Murphy and Rand Paul, introduced a bill to stop a $1.15 billion sale of hundreds of U.S.-made tank structures, machine guns, grenade launchers and armored vehicle structures. Only 27 Senators voted in favor of the ban.

It’s clear why U.S. weaponsmakers want to keep selling weapons to the Saudi regime. For them, it is all about profits. But the US Congress should take a moral stance. Selling weapons to a repressive regime should never be allowed. And today, when these weapons are leading to the death of a Yemeni child every ten minutes, the sales are simply unconscionable. The time to stop them is now.

Mainstream Assumptions: The CIA, Presidential Elections, And The Russian Connection

Binoy Kampmark

Intent and causation are important features in the course of history.  The former envisages motive and hope, irrespective of outcome; the latter envisages consequence.  Often, these get muddled in the jumbled process of reasoning.  An intervention in the affairs of another state goes awry; a historical incident goes belly up with ferocious consequences.  Suddenly, in the aftermath, we are wise, we knew better, and we can categorise plans as venal and characters as wicked.

In a world of Clinton-Trump machinations, distinctions about intent and causation have fallen into a soup of conjecture. The stakes to win in November were so high for either candidate, mendacity and assumptions were bound to take centre stage.

From fake news to false modesty, from traditional deception to the exotica of dissimulation, it was a contest that furnished the US political landscape with greater punch and interest than anything offered since the infant days of the Republic.

Central to one allegation of the 2016 presidential election was that Russian hacking efforts, supposedly directed by Moscow’s intelligence managers, had a direct effect on the outcome of the election.  WikiLeaks had been roped into the cause, and was duly accused of being a Russian front, or an infatuate of Trump.

Trump has done his bit, as is his wont, to sink these propositions.  To begin with, he told Time that he did not believe them as credible.  “I don’t believe [Russia] interfered.”   Nor did he find CIA assessments in general that credible.  He specifically pointed out CIA incompetence, notably in its assessment of Iraq’s famed, and subsequently non-existent stockpile of weapons prior to the invasion of 2003.  “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

Behind him is Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn.  The CIA, according to Flynn in an interview with the New York Times in October 2015, “lost sight of who they actually work for.  They work for the American people. They don’t work for the president of the United States.”  In its declining utility, the organisation had become “a very political organisation”.

The intelligence cognoscenti were quick to wonder whether his presidency would be more than troubling for the 16 spying agencies he will have to cope with.  “Given his proclivity for revenge combined with his notorious thin skin,” claimed Paul Pillar, former deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism centre, “this threatens to result in a lasting relationship of distrust and ill will between the president and the intelligence community.”

This, at best, is a claim of the disgruntled, but it is one that has attracted its adherents.  Linked to the causation argument is the notion that Russia’s Vladimir Putin envisaged the electoral outcome, backing a more sympathetic horse in a far from sympathetic race.

The impact of these claims has been furthered by unquestioning media outlets now termed, euphemistically, the mainstream.  These mainstreamers have been keeping a rather pedestrian line on matters, taking a few choice notes from various official sources to build an empire of speculation.

The Washington Post delved out one example last week, engaging in what Glenn Greenwald regarded as “classic American journalism of the worst sort”.  This entailed claims from “unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.”

With one step, possibly two removed from the official CIA report, we were left with the view that the agency had  “concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system.”

This aptly perverse manoeuvre suggests that the very outlets keen to condemn fake news sites themselves become the incubators, and unquestioning disseminators, of unreliable material.

Within the intelligence community, the material on hacking – in so far as it pertains to goals – has also been questioned.  Not all have jumped onto the CIA assisted narrative that the Kremlin was dabbling in its own gambling variant of regime change.

According to the Office of the Director of National intelligence (ODNI), more is needed. Yes, there may well have been hacking, but the issue of a Moscow-directed drive to benefit Trump over Clinton in the presidential race would require more heft.

According to Reuters, which similarly adopted the Washington recipe in interviewing three unnamed American officials on Monday, albeit more sceptical ones, “ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent. Of course they can’t, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow.”  At the very least, such views add a sliver of needed context.

The CIA conclusion had a broader context to it, suggesting a pattern of hacking and penetration that was far from specific to Clinton.  In other words, it was, again in the words of one of the three officials, a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked.”  It was, to that end, “a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment.”

When all these factors are considered, Trump’s dismissiveness of the intelligence community, while seemingly flippant, makes that much more sense. Predictably, it has been done by the wave of the hand, a contemptuous move that we will come to see as normal in due course. The intelligence bunglers will be having to do much more to earn their keep.

Bangladesh: Rekindling The Spirit Of independence

Farooque Chowdhury

The Battle Cry: Independence is humanity’s yearning. Independence is humanity’s lifeline. Independence is bud for humanity’s blooming. Rangalal Bandyopadhyay, a poet from Bengal under British boot, affirmed the position with two questions: Shaadheenataa-heenataay ke baacheete chay …? Daashatta-sreenkhal balo ke pareebe pay …, is there anyone liking a life without independence? is there anyone willing to have a shackled life? (“Shaadheenataa-Sangeet”, Padmini Upakhayan, 1858) [FC welcomes suggestion on this translation.] These make independence humanity’s battle cry.

Independence is a political question on the bedrock of conflicting economic interests as the issue is within human society segmented by classes, fragments and factions of class(es), and by socio-economic parts yet to get developed as class. Role and capacity of classes related to the issue determine character of independence: real or pseudo, free from imperialist clutches or neo-colonial, forward looking or in appeasement with vestiges of decaying socio-economic forces. It was impossible, as for example, to attain full independence by the bourgeoisie in pre-1947 India because of its ties with imperialists. The transfer of power by the imperialist British Empire was organized in the shape of two states neo-colonial in character. The battle cry for full independence continued to reverberate across the concerned lands pregnant with aspirations of nationalities.

Pakistan, a neo-colonial state, being steered by an alliance of comprador-bureaucrat capital and traces of feudalism had no power to colonize East Bengal/Poorba Baanglaa, which was christened as East Pakistan by the Pakistan rulers. The Pakistan state, as a mere underling in the world imperialist system, was exploiting East Bengal, today’s independent Bangladesh. The imperialist capital was appropriating profit, and its orderlies were taking their share. Process to maximize profit made exploitation of East Bengal ruthless. Immaturity and incapacity of the orderlies further animalized the already bestial exploitation process. Rate of profit of the capital involved, and violent acts, measured on a scale, the state machine carried in East Bengal are two of the indicators for identifying the extent of brutish exploitation process. These sharpened related contradictions, which were identified by a part of political leadership, and ignored and not understood by another. The later group’s destiny was a pure failure, although the group failed to foresee its failure in waiting – a problem with blissful ignorance.

The group waiting to face its destiny of failure had to rely on a political process mechanical in appearance – unrestrained use of force in the shape of total curtailment of all rights tax payers and surplus value producers are allowed to live with for the sake of reproduction of capital in East Bengal/East Pakistan. It was retrenchment of free expression and free movement, and demolishing of peaceful way of living, safety, security and life of an entire population in an entire land, East Bengal; it was segregation and hate-politics, a form of indignity imposed; it was indiscriminate loot and arson at mass scale targeting ordinary tax payers, whose nod is needed to have legitimacy by rulers; it was killing at mass scale, which ultimately was organized as a genocide in the land; it was an organized act to impose dishonor and indignity on an entire people of East Bengal, today’s Bangladesh. It was a show of stupid arrogance. And, it was part of a process of failure.

The failure was of the concerned capital steering the politics, which had no capacity to resort to any process other than the imposition of the process of suppression and repression of the people in East Bengal. The failure was in imposing capital’s will on the people of the land – the Baangaalees. The capital failed to find out or devise mechanism and arrangement for non-use of violent force, for resorting to peaceful means, for winning over the already trampled and throttled down people. The capital’s capacity was up to that level – a historical incapacity. This historical limit in capacity and the extent of failure was embodied in the persons, especially the military officers with limited or no-knowledge about calculus of politics, which is different from logarithms used in warfare, in game with guns.

There was imperialist capital in the alluvial land – East Bengal. There was the exigency to secure that capital as the people had already got radicalized to many extents. Imperialism had its global strategy, which covered the land also. Therefore, imperialism firmly stood by its sentinels of interest in the entire act of using brute force, a tactical act, for the purpose of imposing capital’s will, a strategic necessity, on the Baangaalees – the people in Bangladesh. An unbridgeable gap emerged as a tactical act was being imposed to fulfill a strategic necessity. Moreover, imperialism assessed that a sharp strike would demobilize the “coward” Baangaalees, which was totally a wrong assessment built on archaic imperialist propaganda.

But, the people in the plains inundated by annual floods, the people living on the shores of the magnificent Ganga-Paddaa (also spelled Padma), on the mighty Meghnaa (also spelled Meghna), on the meandering Brahmaputra-Jamoonaa (also Jamuna) defied the dictates of the lords of the day. Resistance grew organically in the face of the powerful war machine unleashed against the peace-loving people. The resistance was an act of defiance. It was also politics. It was politics by the people with the intent of handling a few contradictions, it was politics of resistance. In front of rolling tanks on city streets, in front of charging guns, the resistance seemed pebbles at first sight.

But, the pebbles were part of the rock named dignity, the rock named defiance. Those were the pebbles of people’s politics, which the powerful ignore most of the time. There in rustic communities, in urban hovels, in middle class neighborhoods, sense of dignity kindled up as the common persons in millions rose in resistance, as they found the lifeline in their yearning for independence, as they stood up with arms to defend honor of all the people.

The question of dignity and honor is not of a few hundred thousand. That was the question of dignity and honor of all the people as dignity and honor is not determined by mathematical number, not by number of mothers and sisters, as dignity and honor of a single mother or a single sister is the dignity and honor of all the people. Killing of a single child is an act of dishonor. Killing of a single toiler is an act of dishonor. The rationale is: Life can’t be killed, can’t be dishonored, can’t be disgraced, can’t be pushed into a state of indignity; life isn’t an object to demolish wantonly or in a motivated method; citizens’ lives are not that cheap that can be trampled by boot of ruler. The common people felt in the way. Their sense of dignity and honor was not waiting to get kindled till a huge number arrives. Rather, the act of inflicting dishonor, not dependent upon number, by the tormentors emboldened the sense of dignity among the people.

The reality enlivened the battle cry: Independence. The reality that emerged was: assault on rights and life. Rights and life are connected to the question of dignity. Dignity is knifed out whenever any right and life of citizens are curtailed. There’s no dignified life with any curtailment of any right flowing out of the fountain of humanity. The people in Bangladesh took that stand in 1971 that defends life, rights, and, as a whole, dignity.

Their stand grew more glorified and dignified as imperialism was opposing them; and a stand that makes imperialism assess opposed is equal to standing in defense of world humanity as imperialism is opposed to humanity.

Dignity: The spirit of independence that gained momentum in Bangladesh in the blood-soaked year of 1971 was the question of dignity as (1) a people pinioned is void of dignity; (2) a nation pushed to the ground by occupiers’ boots is void of dignity; (3) an exploitation-ridden, poverty-tormented life is void of dignity; (4) a life submerged in ignorance and backwardness, and without the light of knowledge is void of dignity; (5) a life languishing with diseases, and slumbering in slums is void of dignity; (6) a life void of democracy is void of dignity as democracy creates sphere for participation to take decisions centering life of people; (7) a life haunted by fear and insecurity is void of dignity. Bengal’s Tagore sang: Mookta karo voy, get rid of fear. A life, a people is not crowned with dignity while fear of ruler, fear of state machine and torture, fear of dishonor and indignity, fear of hunger, unemployment, begging pity, uncertainty, losing face, segregation and exclusion overwhelm life and the people. The people in Bangladesh stood against these fears in 1971, the historical period of initiating the splendid War for Liberation. It was the period the people defied plots hatched by imperialism.

The people handled existing contradictions in their own way. There were contradictions within the neo-colonial state and the society, and with imperialism. The people had to resort to the force of arms as hostile forces armed to the teeth was demolishing people’s self-evident rights for a dignified life, as the people found no alternative in self-defense. It was a development in the contradictions existing at that historical time.

A few of the contradictions were settled while a few remained unsettled. That was the reality, material foundation, on which the spirit – dignity – dwelled. As the contradictions were being handled by the people to some extent leadership by class and the leading politics of the class in the endeavor was there with big questions, a few of which are puzzling while the rest are amazing. Seemingly baffling equations emerged in the realm of class leadership beginning from tiny villages to hot theater of geopolitics.

A calculus:  With a perspective different from 1971, rekindling the spirit of independence (RSI) requires assessment of class forces, alignments and alliances these have made/entered into, historical capacities and limitations these bear. The dominating capital, its internal and external relations, its role and limitations are also to be assessed. Democracy and role of imperialism are two other fundamental issues to be examined.

There’s no scope even at miniscule level to ignore the question of imperialism while planning or pondering with RSI as imperialist capital allows none to have senses of self-respect, dignity and honor, to have sovereignty, to have politics, institutions/organizations, tools capable of determining and shaping self-destiny, to have appropriate form of democracy. To imperialist capital, its interest is the only and best interest, its definition is the only and correct definition, it’s the only moral judge with its decadent morality, its logic and rationality are the only yardstick, it’s the single mirror to reflect, it’s the only power to own the single grinding stone to reshape everything on this Earth, it’s the only master with dignity.

All social, economic, political moves require leadership of class. Capacity of the class determines success or failure of any of the moves. Which class shall lead the task of the RSI is a fundamental question as RSI is a political issue, as it’s connected to economic interests, and there are similar other basic issues related to the question. Decadent part(s) of a society/class(es) is/are incapable of carrying out a forward looking task. These also decline (incapable also) to carry forward any economic task that come into conflict with its interest but are necessary for materializing the RSI as RSI is not merely an issue connected solely to emotion. A few of the tasks are in direct conflict with imperialist capital, and class(es) with economic ties to imperialist interest shall not carry on the tasks. It’s, rather, an economic and political issue capable of inspiring and mobilizing an entire people; and all economic and political issues are in coherence with a certain group of class interests while are in conflict with others. Issues capable of inspiring and mobilizing an entire people are in conflict with economic interests that thrive and prosper on appropriating and disenfranchising people, and hurting/harming/undercutting their interests. This fact of coherence-conflict is one of the factors determining the RSI process.

Rest of the RSI issue – ideological/educational/cultural/social, etc. – will be determined by the class, its related contents, and the contradictions these generate. A forward-looking class with the capacity to move forward and its allies can make an onward move with the task of materializing the RSI. Forward-looking all political programs turn into a mere paronomasia, and float on thin air of emotion in absence of the moves by the class, and political-economic interests leas away from people profit from the emotion, and utilize the emotion to boost legitimacy.

[The article was originally published in New Age, Dhaka it its Victory Day Special issue on December 16, 2016 celebrating victory of the Bangladesh War for Liberation in 1971, the day the occupying Pakistan army surrendered.]

Volvo to lay off 500 workers at Virginia truck plant

Ed Hightower

On Tuesday, Volvo Trucks announced its intention to lay off 500 workers, comprising the entire second shift, at its Dublin, Virginia plant. The layoffs will take place in early February. The announcement comes on top of 300 layoffs in September and another 500 in February.

Volvo cites decreased demand for its trucks as the reason for the latest round of layoffs at the plant, a claim that is belied by the fact that they are requiring the very workers they will terminate in February to come in to work overtime shifts this Saturday.

One Volvo worker, a member of United Autoworkers Union (UAW) Local 2069, told the World Socialist Web Site that workers might call in sick for the Saturday shift, a tactic called a “sick out.”

Asked what the UAW was doing to prevent the job losses, the worker became angry and said quickly, “It sets up perfectly for the union. They are holding their local elections in March, right after the layoffs take effect. If you are laid off the union doesn’t tell you when you can vote. So they exclude the workers who are most affected by their sellouts policies from being able to vote them out.”

The worker had been on the second shift at Volvo for several years, and had witnessed the results of previous UAW-brokered contracts. He added, “The union said the [March 2016] contract had 80 percent approval or something like that, but nobody voted for it. It was ratified in April 2016, but we didn’t even get the full contract in September, as people were being laid off.

“The union was so unserious about the contract that, back in March right before the old contract expired, they told me to watch the news to see if we would be on strike or not! I was at work the day it was set to expire and only heard a half hour beforehand that there was an agreement and we were to keep working when the shift ended.”

He added, “The UAW trailer sits on site, with 5-15 people sitting in there smoking cigarettes, doing nothing, but getting full pay. It is locked with a punch code. When I went in there to ask about a contract, they all jumped out of their seats and pulled out their printed contracts, pretending to do something.”

The worker described a recent exchange with a UAW shop steward about the pending layoffs:

“I asked him, ‘Can you name one person who got money from the union after the [September 2016] layoffs?’ He replied, ‘How would we do that? We give to organizations that do good things in the community.’

“I said, ‘Why not have a soup kitchen for laid off workers? Have you helped anyone? How much of my dues went to Hillary? None of my dues goes to my fellow workers who are laid off. Will any come to me?’”

At that point the shop steward walked away.

UAW Local 2069 has nothing on its Facebook page about either the upcoming layoffs or those in September. The most recent post promotes the thinly coded antidemocratic nostrum of “fake news” impacting the 2016 US presidential election.

Asked what exactly Local 2069 does, the worker replied, “They do something about veterans riding motorcycles to Washington and they have a fish fry at the Veterans Affairs hospital. They supported Clinton. The reps went to Florida after the [March 2016] contract was signed for a rally for Clinton.”

Finally, the worker described the pool of unemployed workers that Volvo maintains:

“All of the local ‘get a job’ programs are bogus. They don’t want you to get another job. They move paper around. In the New River Valley, it is hard to get another job because employers think you may be hired back at Volvo. You get put in a Volvo stack because you are addicted to this place and you will go back. They know you don’t want to lose your hire date and status. This place is a noose around everybody’s neck to keep them in there building trucks.”

Volvo workers should immediately take steps to defend their jobs by building rank-and-file factory committees tasked with unifying workers of all tiers within the plant against job cuts. Ties to auto and other workers across the continent and internationally must be built to coordinate action against giant transnational corporations like Volvo, Freightliner and their parent companies.

Most importantly, such a struggle to unite the working class must be set on socialist and internationalist foundations in opposition to the pro-corporate, nationalist orientation of the UAW.

Report documents widespread failure of US communities to test water for lead

Shannon Jones

A new study by USA Today shows that millions of people in the United States are living in smaller communities that do not regularly test for lead contamination in their water supplies. About 100,000 people are served by water systems that were found to have unsafe levels of lead, but where authorities failed to treat the water in order to remove it.

Journalists reviewed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) records and visited communities across the United States.

The report further underscores pervasive and widespread lead contamination of water supplies across the United States, despite formal EPA rules mandating testing and lead abatement measures.

These latest revelations come in the wake of the lead-in-water crisis in Flint, Michigan where more than 100,000 residents were exposed to lead-tainted water after city officials switched the city’s water supply from the Detroit water system to the Flint River in order to cuts costs.

According to USA Today, some four million US residents live in communities where authorities failed to conduct mandated lead testing or did the testing improperly. In 2,000 communities lead testing was skipped more than once. Several hundred did not conduct lead tests for five or more years.

The report noted that small water systems were likely to escape close monitoring by the EPA. US regulations exempt small, poorly-funded water systems from stringent water testing requirements. Instead of providing federal resources to help these struggling communities, often in rural areas such as Appalachia, residents are left to fend for themselves.

The results are many times tragic, with residents, including particularly susceptible children, exposed to dangerous levels of lead that can stunt growth, cause permanent mental impairment and lead to other health issues.

There are about 850 local water systems with a documented history of lead contamination where there has been no proper lead testing since 2010.

The USA Today report cited the example of the community of Coal Mountain, West Virginia where the water treatment process consists of occasionally pouring bleach into the old wellhead that serves as a water supply for residents.

State officials labeled 12 water systems in West Virginia “orphans,” because it was not clear who was in charge, and warning letters were ignored year after year.

In Ranger, Texas the family of a two-year-old boy found that their son had elevated lead levels in his blood. They learned later from USA Today that their tap water had lead levels 28 times the federal limit. This all happened while city officials were aware of the lead-in-water problem in their community, but took no corrective action nor alerted residents.

The requirements to run a small water system are often extremely low. For example, the state of Texas requires only a high school diploma or GED and a training course in basic water operation. “You might have to get more training to run a hot dog stand than a small water system,” Paul Schwarz with the Campaign for Lead Free Water told USA Today.

About 350 of the water systems cited by the USA Today report serve schools or day care centers. At an elementary school in Ithaca, New York one sample tested was 5,000 parts per billion (ppb), the EPA threshold for hazardous waste. Investigators found 600 water systems where tests showed tap water continuing at more than 40 ppb, more than double the EPA’s limit, which itself is unrealistically high.

At the Orange Center School near Fresno, California local officials let children keep drinking the water for years despite tests that showed excessive levels of lead. The school skipped testing for nine years after a finding of high lead levels in 2003. In 2012 tests showed elevated lead levels, but school officials let children continue drinking the water. Two years later the state ordered the school to stop using the water and began shipping bottled water to students until the district connected to the Fresno water system.

The problem is not limited to small cities or rural areas. In April, water testing in the city of Detroit revealed that 19 public schools had elevated levels of lead or copper. One water sample at Brown Academy showed lead levels of 1,500 ppb, 100 times the EPA limit of 15 ppb.

Despite the pressing urgency, the amount of money available for water system upgrades is tiny compared to the need. The EPA estimated in 2013 that some $64.5 billion is needed over the next 20 years to maintain small water systems. In 2016 the revolving fund allocation for water systems of all sizes was less than $1 billion.

In the wake of the USA Today report federal, state and local officials went into damage control mode, feigning shock and outrage at the disastrous state of US water infrastructure. While calling for tightening lead testing standards and notification, none of the proposed legislation actually provides additional funding for water infrastructure, particularly for small, cash-strapped communities in impoverished areas.

In relation to the Flint water crisis, the US Senate approved legislation this week appropriating a token $170 million to address needed infrastructure upgrades in the city. The money is a relative drop in the bucket compared to the estimated cost of replacing lead pipes in the city, which by some calculations will reach up to $1.5 billion.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court on Friday ruled that the State of Michigan must make regular water deliveries to homes in Flint that do not have a working lead filter. The administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder has ignored two previous court rulings mandating the delivery of bottled water, claiming the cost would be prohibitive and that it is unnecessary since the city’s tap water now meets federal standards.

Activist Melissa Mays of the group Water You Fighting For? told a press conference Tuesday that she questions the methods state officials are using to determine if Flint water is safe to drink. She said that many residents had results coming in above the federal action level of 15 ppb—in at least one case, as high as 1,700 ppb. She wanted every home in Flint tested.

“We have too many vulnerable people slipping through the cracks right now and there are too many high numbers … I don’t care if it seems unrealistic because it’s unrealistic to us to think that everything’s OK when there’s not the data to back it up,” Mays remarked.

US companies win greater access to lucrative Pacific fisheries

John Braddock

Pacific island fisheries officials and the United States government have signed a six-year extension to a 27-year-old fisheries treaty confirming American-flagged fishing vessels have continuing access to lucrative Pacific fishing grounds. The signing took place at a meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fishery Commission (WCPFC) in Fiji on December 4.

The South Pacific Tuna Treaty is the US’s most important commercial, aid and trade pact within the region. The treaty governs access to the world’s biggest fishing grounds, within the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of 17 mostly small Pacific Island states dispersed over vast areas of ocean. The US State Department negotiates access on behalf of American fishing companies, which operate the biggest purse seine (large netting) fleets in the Pacific.

The agreement was hammered out after 18 negotiation rounds over seven years. It almost broke down early this year when Washington notified Pacific island governments of its intention to withdraw from the treaty unless agreement could be reached on new financial terms and increased access.

Washington had agreed to pay $US89 million for its 2016 fishing rights, but reneged on the deal. Unless it was renegotiated, the treaty stood to expire next month, with devastating consequences for jobs and livelihoods, as well as government revenues, in Pacific states. For small countries like Tuvalu, fishing rights generate as much as 50 percent of total revenue.

Last month, in the lead-up to the WCPFC meeting, the US fishing companies ramped up their pressure. The San Diego-based American Tunaboat Association (ATA) cynically demanded, among other things, a “level playing field” for US companies and the “protection of US fishing rights on the high seas.”

ATA executive director Brian Hallman, accompanied by a group of ATA members, attended the WCPFC meeting to push the industry’s demands. Tri Marine International, which has a fishing fleet based in the American Samoa capital Pago Pago, supported by the territory’s government officials, called for more fishing days for the US fleet, claiming previous restrictions affected fish delivery to the canneries in American Samoa.

Under the new six-year Multilateral Treaty on Fisheries, the amounts to be paid to the Pacific states are a pittance compared with the enormous profits due to be reaped by the fishing companies. The western and central Pacific tuna fishery is valued at over $5 billion annually.

The deal allows US vessels to choose the number of fishing days to purchase, at a rate of $12,500 per fishing day. Hallman said the ATA was particularly pleased with a guaranteed four-year term for fishing days and their cost.

In addition, an industry payment of $45 million per year and US government fisheries aid of $21 million annually will go to members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency that signed the agreement. The “aid” is the total extent of the US government’s financial assistance to the poverty-stricken region, which it regards as its own backyard. Washington is meanwhile spending billions of dollars to extensively militarise the Pacific in order to confront China.

In a statement, the US State Department claimed the revised treaty would generate higher economic returns for Pacific countries, “while supporting the continued viable operation of the US fishing fleet in the region.” However, American Samoa’s Commerce Department Director Keniseli Lafaele told the Samoa News that while the treaty secures “continued access to the fishing grounds” by the US-flagged purse seine vessels, it gives “no special recognition or benefit to the American Samoa tuna industry.”

According to Lafaele, the deal “will not make much difference” in saving the local industry. Tri Marine International’s Samoa Tuna Processors closed its canning operation on December 11, eliminating 800 jobs. StarKist Samoa is also considering more intermittent closures of the country’s only other major cannery, blaming poor fish supplies. The international fishing companies, chasing higher profits and lower costs, are increasingly transferring their processing operations to Asian-based plants.

American Samoa, a designated “unincorporated” US territory with a population of just 55,000, is deeply impoverished. A 2009 study found its poverty rate running at 57.8 percent. A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on December 2 identified $5.67 as the minimum wage needed for a local family of six to afford to live. This exceeds the hourly minimum wage for cannery workers by $0.51, according to the GAO.

Under duress from the companies, local authorities have opposed moves to tie the minimum wage to the US federal rate of $7.25 per hour. Though they make millions on their operations, the canneries have previously threatened to relocate if the minimum wage is raised. They pay no tax and Asian fishing companies avoid US import tariffs on processed fish. In 2014, the territory governor’s office urged against minimum wage rises, calling a scheduled 2015 increase a “prescription for total economic ruin.”

Throughout the Pacific, there is opposition to the rapacious activities of the fishing companies. The environment advocacy group, the Pew Charitable Trusts, called for a two-year ban on fishing for bluefin tuna before the WCPFC meeting. The Pew organisation said independent surveys showed stocks had been critically depleted to just 2.7 percent of the levels that existed before the advent of commercial fishing in the Pacific.

The director of Pew’s tuna conservation campaign, Amanda Nickson, said there had been four years of “delays and lack of adequate action” by key agencies such as the WCPFC and governments, and a moratorium on commercial fishing was urgently needed to allow stocks to regenerate.

In the Cook Islands last month many people turned up at a presentation by the European Union and Spanish fishing industry to oppose a controversial purse seining agreement the government entered into with the EU. Under the agreement the Cook Islands will receive $7 million for allowing four European purse seiners to fish for skipjack tuna. Traditional leaders organised the opposition, declaring they did not want “mega-rich Spanish fishing companies” plundering the Cook Islands’ “most important resource.”

Conservation measures for depleted tuna stocks have polarised the WCPFC. According to Radio NZ, WCPFC executive director Feleti Teo said it was proving “extremely difficult” to reach a consensus on protecting depleted tuna stocks.

Management of bluefin tuna is controlled by a sub-group within the WCPFC called the Northern Committee. It is made up of countries located above 20 degrees north latitude, essentially Asian member countries, which have been accused of a complete failure to manage the stock. The WCPFC itself has been accused of not reining in the distant water fishing nations.

Australia: Testimony details abuse in youth detention centres

Oscar Grenfell 

Testimony last week at royal commission hearings in Darwin has shed further light on the systemic abuse of vulnerable children in Australian youth detention centres.

Under successive Labor and Country Liberal Party governments in the Northern Territory (NT), children in detention, many of Aboriginal descent, have been subjected to treatment branded as “cruel,” “inhuman” and “degrading” by the United Nations.

The royal commission was called as part of a damage control response by the federal Liberal-National government of Malcolm Turnbull to widespread outrage over footage broadcast by an ABC “Four Corners” program in July of boys being assaulted and tear-gassed by detention guards.

The program documented the illegally prolonged detention of children in isolation, repeated instances of guards assaulting inmates, including stripping them naked and pinning them to the ground, and footage of Dylan Voller, then 17, strapped in a “mechanical restraint chair” with his head covered by a “spit hood,” reminiscent of images from the US military prison at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

On Monday, Voller, now 19, testified at the commission. The week before his testimony, Voller’s mother said he feared retribution from guards at the Darwin adult prison, where he is currently incarcerated.

On December 8, the NT’s Labor government sought to prevent Voller and 13 other witnesses from giving evidence, warning that the testimony could “have potentially damaging consequences for the reputations of individuals or for the NT government.” The unsuccessful move underscored the nervousness of the entire political establishment over the revelations of abuse.

In his testimony, Voller detailed years of abuse suffered since he was first incarcerated at the age of 11 in the regional centre of Alice Springs. Among the punishments meted out to Voller and other child detainees were deprivation of food and water, the removal of bedding and clothes and prolonged isolation as forms of punishment. Voller’s testimony included the following allegations:

* From the age of 11 or 12, he was routinely strip-searched by guards at the Alice Springs youth detention centre. Voller was not told why he was being searched, and said he did not understand what was taking place. In later years, at the Don Dale detention centre, south of Darwin, he was strip-searched whenever he went to the toilet or left his cell.

* Cells at the Alice Springs facility did not have toilets or water. Voller and other inmates would have to press a button to ask for water, and would sometimes be left waiting for hours.

* Children at the Alice Springs facility were sometimes denied access to toilets as punishment. On one occasion, Voller said: “I had been asking for at least four or five hours and they just been saying no. And I ended up having to defecate into a pillow case, because they wouldn’t let me out to go to the toilet.”

* Don Dale centre guards charged inmates daily rent, deducting payments from their small allowances. Voller and other inmates were also denied meals and water as punishment for swearing and other minor misbehaviour.

* At Don Dale, Voller and other inmates were repeatedly held in isolation, had their mattresses and all their clothes taken, and were left naked in bare concrete cells, sometimes for an entire night.

* Voller was subjected to sensory abuse. In one instance, he was left in a cell without any clothes with cold air conditions. On other occasions, guards switched on a bright light and left it on for the entire night, preventing any sleep.

Voller also commented on an incident in August 2014, when officers from a nearby adult prison stormed the “Behaviour Modification Unit” of the Don Dale facility, armed with shields, gas masks, tear gas and batons after a minor disturbance. The officers indiscriminately released capsicum-spray in the small and enclosed area. Voller said: “I thought I was going to die. My heart was racing because of the tear gas. My eyes were burning.”

Voller spoke of being tied up in the “mechanical restraint chair” on three occasions. The chair had arm and leg straps, completely immobilising him. He also had a “spit hood”—a cloth bag—placed over his head. Voller was left in the chair for hours on end. He commented: “I was defenceless at that time. Felt like there was nothing I could do, and I was telling them the whole time that it was hurting. I even ended up getting sick and vomiting in my mouth a couple of times. They didn’t care.”

On Tuesday, Antoinette Carroll, a Central Australian Legal Aid Service youth justice advocacy project coordinator who has worked with Voller since he was 11, gave evidence. She noted that as a young child, he had first been sentenced to 18 months in detention for minor offences.

Carroll said Voller had been “set up to fail” by the “youth justice system,” noting that his formal education ended at the age of 10. She stated: “It just became very evident from the get-go that there would be a punitive approach taken to Dylan as he travelled through the system.”

Russell Goldflam, a NT Legal Aid Commission lawyer, pointed to the culpability of the political establishment in his testimony on Wednesday. He quoted former NT Attorney-General John Elferink who denounced Don Dale inmates as “the worst of the worst” and declared that the government would “crack down on them.” Goldflam said the law and order rhetoric of the government “created a political space that made it more likely that children could be assaulted in detention.”

The Northern Territory has been a testing ground for punitive measures, including mandatory sentencing for minor offences, for the past 30 years. Aboriginal people, who comprise the most oppressed section of the working class, have been severely affected. In the NT, close to 90 percent of adult inmates are indigenous, up from 69 percent in 1991. The rate of imprisonment of Aboriginal women rose by 72 percent from 2002 to 2012.

The conditions confronting Aboriginal communities in the NT have been likened to third-world countries by Amnesty International and other charity organisations. Basic necessities such as running water and medical care are often lacking. Unemployment and poverty are endemic.

However, the practices revealed in the NT are not isolated, nor are they confined to indigenous prisoners. For years, reports have documented bashings, isolations, “lockdowns” and deaths in jails and juvenile prisons across the country. The abuses in the NT reveal the increasingly brutal methods being used more broadly against working-class youth, who confront high levels of unemployment and under-employment, insecure work, prohibitive housing costs and crippling tuition fees and debts.

Labor Party politicians have adopted a false posture of moral outrage in response to the abuses revealed in the NT. In reality, Labor was in office from 2001 to 2012 when many of the abuses occurred.

Labor governments in other states are no less culpable. In Victoria, the Labor government recently moved 40 children accused of “rioting” in a youth detention facility to an adult jail. In Queensland, media reports have exposed efforts by the Labor government to cover up abuses of boys in both juvenile and adult prisons, including assaults, solitary confinement and use of “spit hoods.”