U.S. Special Operations Forces Deploy To 138 Nations, 70% Of The World’s Countries

Nick Turse

They could be found on the outskirts of Sirte, Libya, supporting local militia fighters, and in Mukalla, Yemen, backing troops from the United Arab Emirates.  At Saakow, a remote outpost in southern Somalia, they assisted local commandos in killing several members of the terror group al-Shabab.  Around the cities of Jarabulus and Al-Rai in northern Syria, they partnered with both Turkish soldiers and Syrian militias, while also embedding with Kurdish YPG fighters and the Syrian Democratic Forces.  Across the border in Iraq, still others joined the fight to liberate the city of Mosul.  And in Afghanistan, they assisted indigenous forces in various missions, just as they have every year since 2001.

For America, 2016 may have been the year of the commando.  In one conflict zone after another across the northern tier of Africa and the Greater Middle East, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) waged their particular brand of low-profile warfare.  “Winning the current fight, including against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other areas where SOF is engaged in conflict and instability, is an immediate challenge,” the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), General Raymond Thomas, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last year.

SOCOM’s shadow wars against terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIL) may, ironically, be its most visible operations.  Shrouded in even more secrecy are its activities — from counterinsurgency and counterdrug efforts to seemingly endless training and advising missions — outside acknowledged conflict zones across the globe.  These are conducted with little fanfare, press coverage, or oversight in scores of nations every single day.  From Albania to Uruguay, Algeria to Uzbekistan, America’s most elite forces — Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets among them — were deployed to 138 countries in 2016, according to figures supplied to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command.  This total, one of the highest of Barack Obama’s presidency, typifies what has become the golden age of, in SOF-speak, the “gray zone” — a phrase used to describe the murky twilight between war and peace.  The coming year is likely to signal whether this era ends with Obama or continues under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

America’s most elite troops deployed to 138 nations in 2016, according to U.S. Special Operations Command.  The map above displays the locations of 132 of those countries; 129 locations (blue) were supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command; 3 locations (red) — Syria, Yemen and Somalia — were derived from open-source information. (Nick Turse)

“In just the past few years, we have witnessed a varied and evolving threat environment consisting of: the emergence of a militarily expansionist China; an increasingly unpredictable North Korea; a revanchist Russia threatening our interests in both Europe and Asia; and an Iran which continues to expand its influence across the Middle East, fueling the Sunni-Shia conflict,” General Thomas wrote last month in PRISM, the official journal of the Pentagon’s Center for Complex Operations.  “Nonstate actors further confuse this landscape by employing terrorist, criminal, and insurgent networks that erode governance in all but the strongest states… Special operations forces provide asymmetric capability and responses to these challenges.”

In 2016, according to data provided to TomDispatch by SOCOM, the U.S. deployed special operators to China (specifically Hong Kong), in addition to eleven countries surrounding it — Taiwan (which China considers a breakaway province), Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Laos, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan.  Special Operations Command does not acknowledge sending commandos into Iran, North Korea, or Russia, but it does deploy troops to many nations that ring them.

SOCOM is willing to name only 129 of the 138 countries its forces deployed to in 2016. “Almost all Special Operations forces deployments are classified,” spokesman Ken McGraw told TomDispatch.  “If a deployment to a specific country has not been declassified, we do not release information about the deployment.”

SOCOM does not, for instance, acknowledge sending troops to the war zones of Somalia, Syria, or Yemen, despite overwhelming evidence of a U.S. special ops presence in all three countries, as well as a White House report, issued last month, that notes “the United States is currently using military force in” Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, and specifically states that “U.S. special operations forces have deployed to Syria.”

According to Special Operations Command, 55.29% of special operators deployed overseas in 2016 were sent to the Greater Middle East, a drop of 35% since 2006.  Over the same span, deployments to Africa skyrocketed by more than 1600% — from just 1% of special operators dispatched outside the U.S. in 2006 to 17.26% last year.  Those two regions were followed by areas served by European Command (12.67%), Pacific Command (9.19%), Southern Command (4.89%), and Northern Command (0.69%), which is in charge of “homeland defense.”  On any given day, around 8,000 of Thomas’s commandos can be found in more than 90 countries worldwide.

U.S. Special Operations forces deployed to 138 nations in 2016.  Locations in blue were supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command.  Those in red were derived from open-source information.  Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia are not among those nations named or identified, but all are at least partially surrounded by nations visited by America’s most elite troops last year. (Nick Turse)

The Manhunters

“Special Operations forces are playing a critical role in gathering intelligence — intelligence that’s supporting operations against ISIL and helping to combat the flow of foreign fighters to and from Syria and Iraq,” said Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in remarks at the International Special Operations Forces Convention last year.  Such intelligence operations are “conducted in direct support of special operations missions,” SOCOM’s Thomas explained in 2016.  “The preponderance of special operations intelligence assets are dedicated to locating individuals, illuminating enemy networks, understanding environments, and supporting partners.”

Signals intelligence from computers and cellphones supplied by foreign allies or intercepted by surveillance drones and manned aircraft, as well as human intelligence provided by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has been integral to targeting individuals for kill/capture missions by SOCOM’s most elite forces.  The highly secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), for example, carries out such counterterrorism operations, including drone strikes, raids, and assassinations in places like Iraq and Libya.  Last year, before he exchanged command of JSOC for that of its parent, SOCOM, General Thomas noted that members of Joint Special Operations Command were operating in “all the countries where ISIL currently resides.”  (This may indicate a special ops deployment to Pakistan, another country absent from SOCOM’s 2016 list.)

“[W]e have put our Joint Special Operations Command in the lead of countering ISIL’s external operations.  And we have already achieved very significant results both in reducing the flow of foreign fighters and removing ISIL leaders from the battlefield,” Defense Secretary Ash Carter noted in a relatively rare official mention of JSOC’s operations at an October press conference.

A month earlier, he offered even more detail in a statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

”We’re systematically eliminating ISIL’s leadership: the coalition has taken out seven members of the ISIL Senior Shura… We also removed key ISIL leaders in both Libya and Afghanistan… And we’ve removed from the battlefield more than 20 of ISIL’s external operators and plotters… We have entrusted this aspect of our campaign to one of [the Department of Defense’s] most lethal, capable, and experienced commands, our Joint Special Operations Command, which helped deliver justice not only to Osama Bin Laden, but also to the man who founded the organization that became ISIL, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.”

Asked for details on exactly how many ISIL “external operators” were targeted and how many were “removed” from the battlefield by JSOC in 2016, SOCOM’s Ken McGraw replied: “We do not and will not have anything for you.”

When he was commander of JSOC in 2015, General Thomas spoke of his and his unit’s “frustrations” with limitations placed on them.  “I’m told ‘no’ more than ‘go’ on a magnitude of about ten to one on almost a daily basis,” he said.  Last November, however, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration was granting a JSOC task force “expanded power to track, plan and potentially launch attacks on terrorist cells around the globe.”  That Counter-External Operations Task Force (also known as “Ex-Ops”) has been “designed to take JSOC’s targeting model… and export it globally to go after terrorist networks plotting attacks against the West.”

SOCOM disputes portions of the Post story.  “Neither SOCOM nor any of its subordinate elements have… been given any expanded powers (authorities),” SOCOM’s Ken McGraw told TomDispatch by email.  “Any potential operation must still be approved by the GCC [Geographic Combatant Command] commander [and], if required, approved by the Secretary of Defense or [the president].”

“U.S. officials” (who spoke only on the condition that they be identified in that vague way) explained that SOCOM’s response was a matter of perspective.  Its powers weren’t recently expanded as much as institutionalized and put “in writing,” TomDispatch was told.  “Frankly, the decision made months ago was to codify current practice, not create something new.”  Special Operations Command refused to confirm this but Colonel Thomas Davis, another SOCOM spokesman, noted: “Nowhere did we say that there was no codification.”

With Ex-Ops, General Thomas is a “decision-maker when it comes to going after threats under the task force’s purview,” according to the Washington Post’s Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Dan Lamothe.  “The task force would essentially turn Thomas into the leading authority when it comes to sending Special Operations units after threats.”  Others claim Thomas has only expanded influence, allowing him to directly recommend a plan of action, such as striking a target, to the Secretary of Defense, allowing for shortened approval time.  (SOCOM’s McGraw says that Thomas “will not be commanding forces or be the decision maker for SOF operating in any GCC’s [area of operations].”)

Last November, Defense Secretary Carter offered an indication of the frequency of offensive operations following a visit to Florida’s Hurlburt Field, the headquarters of Air Force Special Operations Command.  He noted that “today we were looking at a number of the Special Operations forces’ assault capabilities.  This is a kind of capability that we use nearly every day somewhere in the world… And it’s particularly relevant to the counter-ISIL campaign that we’re conducting today.”

In Afghanistan, alone, Special Operations forces conducted 350 raids targeting al-Qaeda and Islamic State operatives last year, averaging about one per day, and capturing or killing nearly 50 “leaders” as well as 200 “members” of the terror groups, according to General John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in that country.  Some sources also suggest that while JSOC and CIA drones flew roughly the same number of missions in 2016, the military launched more than 20,000 strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria, compared to less than a dozen by the Agency. This may reflect an Obama administration decision to implement a long-considered plan to put JSOC in charge of lethal operations and shift the CIA back to its traditional intelligence duties. 

World of Warcraft

“[I]t is important to understand why SOF has risen from footnote and supporting player to main effort, because its use also highlights why the U.S. continues to have difficulty in its most recent campaigns — Afghanistan, Iraq, against ISIS and AQ and its affiliates, Libya, Yemen, etc. and in the undeclared campaigns in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine — none of which fits the U.S. model for traditional war,” said retired Lieutenant General Charles Cleveland, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command from 2012 to 2015 and now a senior mentor to the chief of staff of the Army’s Strategic Studies Group.  Asserting that, amid the larger problems of these conflicts, the ability of America’s elite forces to conduct kill/capture missions and train local allies has proven especially useful, he added, “SOF is at its best when its indigenous and direct-action capabilities work in support of each other. Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq and ongoing CT [counterterrrorism] efforts elsewhere, SOF continues to work with partner nations in counterinsurgency and counterdrug efforts in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.”

SOCOM acknowledges deployments to approximately 70% of the world’s nations, including all but three Central and South American countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela being the exceptions). Its operatives also blanket Asia, while conducting missions in about 60% of the countries in Africa.   

A SOF overseas deployment can be as small as one special operator participating in a language immersion program or a three-person team conducting a “survey” for the U.S. embassy.  It may also have nothing to do with a host nation’s government or military.  Most Special Operations forces, however, work with local partners, conducting training exercises and engaging in what the military calls “building partner capacity” (BPC) and “security cooperation” (SC).  Often, this means America’s most elite troops are sent to countries with security forces that are regularly cited for human rights abuses by the U.S. State Department.  Last year in Africa, where Special Operations forces utilize nearly 20 different programs and activities — from training exercises to security cooperation engagements — these included Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, among others.

In 2014, for example, more than 4,800 elite troops took part in just one type of such activities — Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) missions — around the world.  At a cost of more than $56 million, Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operators carried out 176 individual JCETs in 87 countries.  A 2013 RAND Corporation study of the areas covered by Africa Command, Pacific Command, and Southern Command found “moderately low” effectiveness for JCETs in all three regions.  A 2014 RAND analysis of U.S. security cooperation, which also examined the implications of “low-footprint Special Operations forces efforts,” found that there “was no statistically significant correlation between SC and change in countries’ fragility in Africa or the Middle East.”  And in a 2015 report for Joint Special Operations University, Harry Yarger, a senior fellow at the school, noted that “BPC has in the past consumed vast resources for little return.”

Despite these results and larger strategic failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the Obama years have been the golden age of the gray zone.  The 138 nations visited by U.S. special operators in 2016, for example, represent a jump of 130% since the waning days of the Bush administration.  Although they also represent a 6% drop compared to last year’s total, 2016 remains in the upper range of the Obama years, which saw deployments to 75 nations in 2010, 120 in 2011, 134 in 2013, and 133 in 2014, before peaking at 147 countries in 2015.  Asked about the reason for the modest decline, SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw replied, “We provide SOF to meet the geographic combatant commands’ requirements for support to their theater security cooperation plans.  Apparently, there were nine fewer countries [where] the GCCs had a requirement for SOF to deploy to in [Fiscal Year 20]16.”

The increase in deployments between 2009 and 2016 — from about 60 countries to more than double that — mirrors a similar rise in SOCOM’s total personnel (from approximately 56,000 to about 70,000) and in its baseline budget (from $9 billion to $11 billion).  It’s no secret that the tempo of operations has also increased dramatically, although the command refused to address questions from TomDispatch on the subject.

“SOF have shouldered a heavy burden in carrying out these missions, suffering a high number of casualties over the last eight years and maintaining a high operational tempo (OPTEMPO) that has increasingly strained special operators and their families,” reads an October 2016 report released by the Virginia-based think tank CNA.  (That report emerged from a conference attended by six former special operations commanders, a former assistant secretary of defense, and dozens of active-duty special operators.)

A closer look at the areas of the “undeclared campaigns in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine” mentioned by retired Lieutenant General Charles Cleveland. Locations in blue were supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command.  The one in red was derived from open-source information. (Nick Turse)
The American Age of the Commando

Last month, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Shawn Brimley, former director for strategic planning on the National Security Council staff and now an executive vice president at the Center for a New American Security, echoed the worried conclusions of the CNA report.   At a hearing on “emerging U.S. defense challenges and worldwide threats,” Brimley said “SOF have been deployed at unprecedented rates, placing immense strain on the force” and called on the Trump administration to “craft a more sustainable long-term counterterrorism strategy.”  In a paper published in December, Kristen Hajduk, a former adviser for Special Operations and Irregular Warfare in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called for a decrease in the deployment rates for Special Operations forces.

While Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. military as a whole is “depleted” and has called for increasing the size of the Army and Marines, he has offered no indication about whether he plans to support a further increase in the size of special ops forces.  And while he did recently nominate a former Navy SEAL to serve as his secretary of the interior, Trump has offered few indications of how he might employ special operators who are currently serving. 

“Drone strikes,” he announced in one of his rare detailed references to special ops missions, “will remain part of our strategy, but we will also seek to capture high-value targets to gain needed information to dismantle their organizations.”  More recently, at a North Carolina victory rally, Trump made specific references to the elite troops soon to be under his command.  “Our Special Forces at Fort Bragg have been the tip of the spear in fighting terrorism. The motto of our Army Special Forces is ‘to free the oppressed,’ and that is exactly what they have been doing and will continue to do. At this very moment, soldiers from Fort Bragg are deployed in 90 countries around the world,” he told the crowd.

After seeming to signal his support for continued wide-ranging, free-the-oppressed special ops missions, Trump appeared to change course, adding, “We don’t want to have a depleted military because we’re all over the place fighting in areas that just we shouldn’t be fighting in… This destructive cycle of intervention and chaos must finally, folks, come to an end.”  At the same time, however, he pledged that the U.S. would soon “defeat the forces of terrorism.”  To that end, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a former director of intelligence for JSOC whom the president-elect tapped to serve as his national security adviser, has promised that the new administration would reassess the military’s powers to battle the Islamic State — potentially providing more latitude in battlefield decision-making.  To this end, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon is crafting proposals to reduce “White House oversight of operational decisions” while “moving some tactical authority back to the Pentagon.”   

Last month, President Obama traveled to Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base, the home of Special Operations Command, to deliver his capstone counterterrorism speech.  “For eight years that I’ve been in office, there has not been a day when a terrorist organization or some radicalized individual was not plotting to kill Americans,” he told a crowd packed with troops.  At the same time, there likely wasn’t a day when the most elite forces under his command were not deployed in 60 or more countries around the world.

“I will become the first president of the United States to serve two full terms during a time of war,” Obama added.  “Democracies should not operate in a state of permanently authorized war.  That’s not good for our military, it’s not good for our democracy.”  The results of his permanent-war presidency have, in fact, been dismal, according to Special Operations Command.  Of eight conflicts waged during the Obama years, according to a 2015 briefing slide from the command’s intelligence directorate, America’s record stands at zero wins, two losses, and six ties.

The Obama era has indeed proven to be the “age of the commando.”  However, as Special Operations forces have kept up a frenetic operational tempo, waging war in and out of acknowledged conflict zones, training local allies, advising indigenous proxies, kicking down doors, and carrying out assassinations, terror movements have spread across the Greater Middle East and Africa.

President-elect Donald Trump appears poised to obliterate much of the Obama legacy, from the president’s signature healthcare law to his environmental regulations, not to mention changing course when it comes to foreign policy, including in relations with China, Iran, Israel, and Russia.  Whether he will heed advice to decrease Obama-level SOF deployment rates remains to be seen.  The year ahead will, however, offer clues as to whether Obama’s long war in the shadows, the golden age of the gray zone, survives.

Job losses continue in Australia amid stalling economic growth

Terry Cook

The destruction of full-time jobs in Australia continues because of global stagnation, corporate restructuring and stalling growth in China, the destination for the largest portion of the country’s commodity exports. Companies from mining and manufacturing to retail are laying off workers and shuttering operations.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) official jobs survey, which seriously understates the real level of joblessness, shows the number of people looking for work has persisted at more than 720,000. On average, there are 18 persons for every known vacancy.

The ABS survey counts anyone working for just one hour a week as employed. Even so, ABS recent figures show unemployment rose to 5.7 percent in November from 5.6 percent in October. Youth unemployment stood at over 12 percent.

Such levels of joblessness underscore the fraud of the Liberal-National government’s claim in the July 2 federal election that its policies would deliver “jobs and growth.”

While the ABS survey claims that 39,300 full-time jobs were added in November and 200 part-time jobs lost, the result does not reverse the underlying casualisation of the workforce.

To September, the total number of hours worked in part-time jobs climbed 5.3 percent this year, whereas full-time hours increased by just 0.33 percent, well down from the more than 5 percent pace of five years ago.

Despite the surge in part-time jobs, overall employment growth so far this year has averaged just 4,300 per month, a sharp decline on the average of 28,600 recorded in the 12 months to November last year. This does not keep pace with the population increase, let alone the employment needs of young people, including school, college and university leavers.

Research agency Roy Morgan—based on a broader interview process than that used by the ABS—estimates that the jobs situation is far worse. By its measure, unemployment in November was 9.2 percent. Underemployment, people in a job but wanting more hours, was 8.4 percent. In other words, 17.6 percent of the workforce, or a total of 2.299 million people, were either unemployed or underemployed.

Key economic indices point to a worsening jobs situation ahead. Australia’s economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the September quarter, the worst result since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Reflecting the unwinding of the mining infrastructure boom, the value of engineering construction fell by 3.8 percent to $20.3 billion, down from 23.2 percent in the same quarter in 2015.

Major resources projects, including a series of liquefied natural gas (LNG) platforms, have been completed or are near completion. Thousands of workers employed in the construction stage of the projects, such as Chevron’s $54 billion Gorgon LNG project off northern Western Australia, completed in March, have been laid off.

In September, Ichthys LNG project in Darwin in the Northern Territory entered its final construction phase. At the peak of construction the project employed around 8,000 workers but this will fall to about 350 to 400 once it becomes operational.

Figures released by the ABS in September showed that investment in onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration in Australia fell by almost two thirds over the previous two years to its lowest level since the first quarter of 2006.

Mining sector job losses continue as companies cut costs to compete for market share and cash in on iron ore and coal price increases that are likely to be temporary. Iron ore prices have roughly doubled this year to around $US80 a tonne, as have the metallurgical coal prices, which are now up to $300 a tonne.

In November, reports emerged that mining giant Rio Tinto plans to axe 500 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce, across its iron ore division in Western Australia. The cull is on top of 170 jobs shed by the company in March.

Anglo American will axe 82 jobs at its German Creek coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin after the Fair Work Commission approved forced redundancies, despite 32 of the sacked workers being on strike at the time.

Peabody Energy announced plans to close its Moorvale open-cut coking coal mine in Queensland as part of a major restructure. The mine employs 250 people, including contractors.

In December, Canadian company Kirkland Lake Gold suspended underground mining operations at its Stawell operations in western Victoria, axing 150 jobs.

Flow-on effects of the mining slump are still being felt. In November, mine equipment manufacturer Hastings Deering shed 40 jobs at its Rockhampton and Mackay offices in Queensland. The company axed 400 production jobs from Bowen Basin workshops in July, on top of 200 in June 2013.

At the end of October, rail haulage company Pacific National (PN) announced it will cut 120 jobs across its New South Wales (NSW) operations. The majority of the losses will be train crew positions at PN’s Port Waratah coal-haulage operation in Newcastle.

Other data released last month points to further job cuts and company failures in the troubled retail sector. The ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index fell by 4.4 points to 113.4, the lowest level since May and is now only fractionally above its long-run average of 112.8.

Last year electronics retailer Dick Smith closed its operations at the cost of 3,300 jobs, Woolworths announced plans to close or sell off hardware business Masters, threatening 1,700 job losses, and children’s clothing retailer Pumpkin Patch announced the closure of its stores by February at the cost of 1,600 jobs across Australia and New Zealand.

Administrator Ferrier Hodgson announced in December that Payless Shoes would also close in February, destroying 700 jobs across its 132 stores and online outlets nationally. The shoe retailer has been in administration since 2015 after chalking up losses of more than $10 million in 2014 and 2015.

Further public sector job cuts were announced in November and October. Government-owned Airservices Australia, which is responsible for air traffic control, airway navigation and airport emergency services, announced plans to shed 900 backroom support jobs.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will shed up to 150 jobs. The NSW state government will cut 200 jobs at State Transit, which operates buses in the Sydney area, while state-owned NSW power distributor Essential Energy will shed 600. The Western Australian state government will shed 10 jobs at its tourism department, Tourism WA, reducing the current workforce by 10 percent.

US Senate report details price-gouging by pharmaceutical companies

Zaida Green

A recently-released US Senate investigation found that four major pharmaceutical companies operated like hedge funds and followed specific business models to monopolize drugs for rare, life-threatening conditions.

The companies—Turing Pharmaceuticals, Retrophin, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Rodelis Therapeutics—targeted decades-old, off-patent drugs, monopolized both their production and distribution, and held dying patients and their health care providers hostage as they hiked prices, often overnight, by tenfold or greater. All four companies were headed by veteran hedge fund traders and were run as such.

The investigation by the Senate Special Committee on Aging began in November 2015, encompassing three hearings, numerous interviews, and the review of more than one million pages of documents subpoenaed from the companies. The companies adhered to a basic five-point business model to maximize profits, acquiring the rights to produce these drugs only if they met specific criteria which would guarantee profits.

First, all the drugs had to have only one manufacturer in the US, so that monopoly production could be guaranteed. Second, all the drugs had to be the best available treatment for their condition, so that physicians would be compelled to prescribe them even in the face of massive price-hikes. Third, the drugs had to serve only small, isolated patient populations incapable of organizing effective opposition to the price-gouging.

The companies then manipulated the markets by controlling access to the drugs to prevent competitors from obtaining samples from which they could develop generic drugs, or cornering high-value patients with highly restrictive “patient assistance programs” that would leave competitors only the least attractive patients, the poor and uninsured. The companies confidently hiked the prices of these drugs, raking in net profits in excess of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in a single year. None of the four companies invested a penny into the further research and development of the drugs they acquired.

In one case, the pharmaceutical company in question monopolized both the best available treatment for a disease and its best alternative treatment. In 2010, Valeant Pharmaceutical acquired both Cuprimine (penicillamine) and Syprine (trientine hydrochloride), the two best available treatments for Wilson disease, a rare genetic disorder—there are 3,000 cases at most in the US—that renders the body unable to process copper. If untreated, Wilson disease can cause severe brain damage, liver failure and death. The prices of a month’s supply for the two drugs in 2010 were $445 and $652, respectively. By the end of July 2015, the price rocketed to $26,200 and $21,300, respectively—price increases of over 3,000 percent.

Families, faced with rising health care costs as insurance companies increase premiums and out-of-pocket costs, are forced to skip doses or hoard pills in fear of the next price-hike or other disaster. Charitable grants could run dry, financial aid applications to the company-run patient assistance programs could be denied, and insurance companies could simply drop coverage of the drug from their plans. Some patients and physicians expressed their fear that speaking out would lead to the companies to stop manufacturing the drugs entirely.

One of the victims of this price-gouging was Patrick Melvin, a young father diagnosed with Wilson disease in July 2014. He had lived a normal life taking Syprine until his health insurance company reduced coverage of the drug and left him with a co-pay of $20,000 for a month’s supply. Melvin went without the drug for weeks, impairing his cognitive function and ultimately crippling him, forcing him out of employment and onto disability benefits. He had to delegate to his mother the task of submitting financial aid applications to Valeant’s patient access program, which was complicated by his changing employment status. Melvin died in September 2015 after suffering a massive stroke.

Then-CEO of Valeant, Michael Pearson, admitted to a Senate committee hearing that his “free market system” of holding patients’ lives hostage was a factor in the company’s decision to acquire and spike the price of Syprine.

Many of the companies were headed by Wall Street alumni. Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals were both led by Martin Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager and self-described “capitalist”. Shkreli’s hand-picked successor at Turing was Ron Tilles, another investment broker who had worked with Shkreli in Retrophin, before Tilles was ousted by Retrophin for raiding company resources to enrich himself and pay off investors from a previous hedge fund.

In the case of Rodelis Therapeutics, the Senate’s investigation admitted that the boundaries between it and its largest investor, Avego Healthcare Capital, were “practically invisible.” The companies even shared a mailing address at one point. Senior management used an Avego email address to negotiate drug acquisition, and analyses on Rodelis’s target markets were ordered under Avego’s name.

The companies were operated like hedge funds, presenting analyses to investors describing how well the drugs they targeted fit each aspect of their five-point business model. Shkreli, in an email to investors regarding Turing’s overnight price-hike of Daraprim (pyrimethamine), wrote, “I think it [revenue] will be huge. We raised the price from $1,700 per bottle to $75,000. … So 5,000 [patients] paying [for] bottles at the new price is $375,000,000—almost all of it is profit, and I think we will get 3 years of that or more. Should be a very handsome investment for all of us.”

Daraprim was developed in 1953 and treats toxoplasmosis, an infection that can lead to brain and organ damage, blindness and death in infants and adults with compromised immune systems, such as AIDS sufferers. Turing sells Daraprim for $750 a pill. Outside of the US, it can cost as little as 10 cents a dose. Turing’s analysis of the drug reported that physicians would be “at a loss to think of an appropriate alternative” to Daraprim. Another pre-acquisition report stated that the drug could generate 30 times their annual revenue, an estimated $180 million.

Pharmaceutical companies established patient assistance programs in calculated efforts to control and maximize market share, running these programs like customer retention departments. For example, vouchers were distributed to insured patients to help cover their insurance co-pays, discouraging patients from publicly criticizing the drugs’ inaccessibility and ensuring continued revenue from the insurance company, which picked up the rest of the bill. The pharmaceutical industry spent $7 billion on co-pay assistance in 2015, compared to $1 billion in 2010. In Valeant’s case, their patient assistance program actively monitored social media to mitigate negative publicity.

Pharmaceutical companies skirted federal regulations that require them to provide discounted prices to certain pharmacies and other health care providers that serve patients on state-funded health care programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare. Turing executive Michael Smith instructed employees to start disputing such claims for Daraprim. Rodelis commissioned a presentation from the consulting firm Avalere Health, which gave advice on “limiting 340B exposure”.

Nearly 60 percent of Americans, and 90 percent of seniors, many of whom are on fixed income, take prescription drugs. In 2016 alone, $328 billion was spent on prescription drugs, with $50 billion in patient out-of-pocket costs. Spending on prescription drugs increased by 11.5 percent in 2012, in contrast to the average 1.8 percent annual increases in the previous nine years. Hospitals, also burdened with rising drug prices, have been forced to experiment with alternative treatments and develop new protocols as they stock less of their preferred drugs. Not-for-profit hospitals have been forced to cut community health programs to offset budget shortfalls, or to close entirely.

The report ends with toothless proposals to “keep the marketplace competitive” by establishing an expedited process to approve generic drugs, or to allow certain drugs to be imported temporarily. None of the companies or their executives have been found criminally liable for financially—and in some tragic cases, physically—crippling hundreds of the sick and dying.

Generic drugs, which make up 89 percent of the prescriptions dispensed in the US, are also not immune from price-hikes from pharmaceutical companies. At least 300 generic drugs doubled in price from 2009 to 2014, and 48 of those drugs increased in price by at least 500 percent.

Indonesian military suspends “cooperation” with Australia

James Cogan

A representative of Indonesia’s armed forces, the TNI, confirmed on Tuesday that overall commander General Gatot Nurmantyo had ordered the “suspension” of all cooperation with the Australian Defence Forces (ADF). A flurry of diplomatic activity has resulted in statements of “clarification” from the Indonesian government, to the effect that only minor cooperation will be temporarily affected.

The incident nevertheless sheds light on the deep concerns in the highest echelons of the Indonesian military over the prospect of the country becoming embroiled in, and destabilised by, a confrontation with China by the US and its key allies such as Australia.

The rift was triggered by complaints in November by an Indonesian military language instructor who was on exchange in Perth to teach Indonesian to Australian special forces.

The complaints include:

•  A paper authored by an Australian officer in which the Indonesian province of West Papua was referred to as part of Melanesia and should be given independence.
  
•  References by Australian personnel to the 1999 independence of East Timor from Indonesia, which was overseen by an Australian-led United Nations force.
  
•  An incident in which former TNI general Sarwo Edhie Wibowo was referred to as a “mass murderer” for his central role in the US and Australian-backed 1965–66 Indonesian coup, during which at least 500,000 alleged Communist Party members and supporters were massacred. In 1989, just prior to his death, Sarwo Edhie asserted that the actual number of victims was closer to three million. His daughter is married to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s president from 2004 until 2014.
  
•  A laminated sheet on which “Pancasila,” the “five principles” of Indonesian independence, had been rewritten as “Panca-gila”—or the “five crazies.”

From the standpoint of the Indonesian military, the allegations have been interpreted as reflecting the underlying imperialist arrogance and contempt within their Australian counterparts. In November, an exchange of letters occurred at the highest levels of both militaries, with the ADF apologising, pledging to carry out a “full investigation” and reportedly reprimanding at least one Australian officer. Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne was informed of the controversy but made no public statements.

The Australian actions clearly failed to satisfy General Gatot, a vocal Indonesian nationalist with a record of expressing the resentment of the Indonesian elite, particularly within the TNI, over Australia’s history of neo-colonial intrigue in the country. On several occasions, he has accurately labelled Australian and US support for East Timorese independence in 1999 as a “proxy” operation to secure Australian ambitions over the oil and gas resources of the Timor Sea. Prior to 1999, Australian governments had fully supported Indonesia’s annexation of East Timor and brutal rule over its population.

Since 2014, Gatot has also stated that international education institutions, non-government organisations, Islamic extremists and drug dealers are examples of “proxies” of unnamed “foreign powers”—implicitly linking them to countries such as Australia and the US—that are being used to destabilise Indonesia and threaten its territorial unity.

Gatot was appointed as TNI commander by current President Jokoko Widodo in June 2015. He has presided over a major military build-up by Indonesia to entrench its control over the Natuna Islands group and their rich gas resources, to the south of disputed islands in the South China Sea. The Natunas are not claimed by China, but would be transformed into part of a war zone if conflict broke out, above all by the operations of US and Australian warships and aircraft.

At the same time, Gatot and the TNI, along with police units, have been directing an ever more brutal crackdown against unrest and separatist agitation in West Papua. More than 500 people were arrested during a protest for self-determination on December 18.

Gatot first aired the latest tensions with Australia in a speech in November, in which he asserted that Indonesian officers sent on exchanges to Australia had been “recruited” in the past and would “certainly be recruited” in the future—presumably as agents and spies. Indonesian suspicion of Australian espionage has been intense since the 2013 leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed Australian intelligence was, in 2009, tapping the phone calls of the country’s then President Yudhoyono, Yudhoyono’s wife and a number of other leading political figures.

In the same speech, Gatot also raised concern over the rotational basing of US marines in Darwin, northern Australia, just 800 kilometres from resource-rich West Papua, declaring that the TNI had to “wonder what it’s all about.”

In a speech in December, he referred to the complaint over West Papuan independence and declared he had “pulled the teacher” out of Australia and received an apology from the ADF. On December 29, despite the apologies, he sent a cable instructing all elements of the TNI to cease exchanges and training with the ADF.

Gatot’s statements and actions coincide with the tremendous uncertainty across Asia over the policies that will be pursued by the Trump administration in the US, and their economic and political impact. Since the Obama administration launched its anti-China “pivot” to the region in 2011, the Indonesian elite has sought to maintain a stance of impartiality and not aggravate relations with either Washington or Beijing. Such balancing is becoming increasingly difficult, under conditions in which the incoming US president is threatening to impose tariffs that will plunge the entire region into economic turmoil and heightening the danger of war.

Figures such as Gatot are well aware that Indonesia, the most populous state in southeast Asia, with 240 million people, is viewed in Washington and Canberra as strategically and economically crucial. The military apparatus is also acutely conscious that the country is rent by class antagonisms, social inequality, democratic grievances among ethnic minorities, sectarian divisions and political conflicts that can be exploited to try and threaten and pressure the Indonesian ruling elite to line up behind the imperialist powers—or to plunge Indonesia into turmoil if it does not.

Currently, Indonesian politics is dominated by a bitter power struggle between rival camps of the ruling class ahead of major provincial-level elections this year. Protests, laced with sectarian and anti-Chinese rhetoric, have been held by Islamist parties and organisations demanding the prosecution of Jakarta’s ethnic Chinese and Christian governor and ally of President Widodo, Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, for alleged “blasphemy” against Islam.

In response, in November, General Gatot had the TNI mobilise thousands of uniformed soldiers to take part in a 30,000-strong rally in support of “inter-faith unity,” waving ribbons in Indonesia’s national colours. He has labelled the anti-Basuki and implicitly anti-Widodo protests as “dangerous” and ominously declared that the TNI would wage a “jihad” for national unity.

The sensitivity of the TNI commander to any denigration of Indonesian nationalism within the Australian military underscores the growth of political tensions in Indonesia compounded by intensifying geo-political rivalries throughout the region.

German interior minister demands centralisation of intelligence agencies

Ulrich Rippert

Two weeks after a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) is demanding a fundamental restructuring and centralisation of the security apparatus. The Federal Criminal Agency (BKA) requires strengthening, the various state domestic intelligence agencies must be dismantled in favour of a federally administered organisation and a genuine federal police force must be built, he argued.

De Maizière published a detailed guest commentary on Tuesday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung titled “Outlines of a strong state in difficult times.” In it, he proposed a new structure for internal security that calls into question the entire structure of the Federal Republic.

The Interior Minister justified his proposal by stating that Germany had to assume a “leading role” in Europe. “But this obligation begins by putting our house in order, in our country,” de Maizière wrote. This required the federal state to have more competency to manage all security agencies in combatting terrorism as well as deporting rejected asylum seekers and tackling cyber crimes.

The key outlines of a strengthening of the domestic state apparatus include the following:

A “strong state” requires strong federal agencies. The federalism of the past was not appropriate for the security challenges of the day. “Security in the federation must be managed by the federal state.” Wherever “the federal state and the states cooperate on issues of federal security, the federal state must have management competencies over all security agencies.” The previous powers available to the BKA were “too narrowly defined” and should be significantly expanded, he said.

“We should discuss in the domestic intelligence agencies shifting all tasks to a federal administration.” The state offices for domestic intelligence should be integrated into a federal administration, he went on.

“We need more effective police stop and search powers.” The current restriction for the federal police to an area of 30 kilometres from the border is no longer acceptable. The federal police required comprehensive powers of search. “The federal police should be gradually transformed into a real federal police force.”

He stressed the need for more federal police officers to be sent to Europe’s external borders, adding that it was of central importance to know who is responsible for overseeing the external borders of the Schengen Zone for the benefit of Europe’s security. The statement “we want to know who is coming to us” is correct, he claimed. But for Europe, it is better to apply the sentence to Europe’s external borders. “We don’t want a permanent re-erection of internal borders, but rather a strong Europe of freedom, security and of law.”

The establishment of a registry for arrivals and departures (EES) at the European level is currently under consideration. “The EES should be able to be expanded so that it can identify all travel movements across the external borders,” he added.

As far as the German army, he said, it also needs to be permitted to deploy domestically. Already today, the army is a “recognised partner in disaster response.” If the police reach their limits of capacity, “the German army should also find its place there,” he continued. The earlier debates on this had been understandable. “Now, that is no longer the case.”

He further insisted that a strong state must be armed and entrusted with the most modern technology. “Terrorist organisations use all available options to communicate: mobile and landline telephones, Skype, emails or instant messengers like WhatsApp,” he claimed. Therefore, he said, there should be no restrictions on surveillance by the security authorities. “We will therefore be combining the technical capabilities for the creation of IT tools for cyber surveillance this year organisationally into the Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector (ZITis).”

De Maizière connected the domestic strengthening of the state and centralisation of the intelligence agencies with a stepped-up campaign against refugees and asylum seekers. He wrote, “Given the anticipated rise in those who must depart following the completion of all asylum procedures, we require a national pooling of resources on the issue of repatriation.”

To implement this “national pooling of resources” against asylum seekers, a “joint centre to support repatriation in Berlin” is to be established and “further improvements made to cooperation between the state and federal authorities in the area of operational repatriation.”

Further, it must be made easier to take rejected asylum seekers into custody. “We must significantly increase the current limit of four days for detention prior to departure,” he said. Sufficient places had to be created for deportation detention and departure custody. “Departure centres are already legally possible and could preferably be established close to German airports.”

The initiative from de Maizière, which was explicitly backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, is aimed at dismantling the entire federal structure and division of powers within the security apparatus. The separation of the police and intelligence services codified in Germany’s Basic Law and the restriction of the police to the state level were based on fundamental lessons drawn from the Nazi dictatorship. This is now to be done away with. The structures of a police state are becoming ever more apparent, which will not only view all foreigners, but also citizens, as potential enemies of the state and place them under surveillance.

The Interior Minister cited the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market as justification for his proposal. The attack cost a dozen people their lives and seriously injured 50 more. At the same time, de Maizière declared that a large number of his security outlines had been worked out long before. This raises extremely troubling questions.

Since the horrific attack, a growing quantity of information about the close ties between the security agencies and the suspected perpetrator has come to light. It is now known that Anis Amri, who was shot while fleeing in Italy, carried out his attack quite literally under the noses of the police and intelligence agencies. He was placed under intense surveillance and categorised as unusually dangerous in a profile just days prior to the attack.

According to a report by Hans Leyendecker and Georg Mascolo in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, on 14 December, five days prior to the attack, the security agencies produced “the latest version of a personal profile, in which they gathered all intelligence about Amri.” It described “a man whose career which contains numerous similarities with previous perpetrators acting on behalf of the terrorist group Islamic State.”

According to the report by Leyendecker and Mascolo, the intelligence agencies knew almost everything to know about Anis Amri: his activities as a petty criminal who was detained as a youth in Italy, and who allegedly committed theft in a German asylum accommodation centre; his connections with an Islamist cell and the preacher Abu Walaa, whose leaders were arrested in November last year; all eight identities used by Amri and his frequent changes of address and residency.

The fact that the interior minister is exploiting the attack to implement an intensification of domestic security and cooperation between the police and intelligence agencies that violates the Basic Law raises the question: was the attack seen as a means to legitimise precisely this policy of the strengthening of domestic state structures?

Nobody in official politics or in the media dares to examine this question seriously, despite the clear indications that the Christmas market attack and the huge police buildup in Cologne on New Year’s Eve have been used for the strengthening of the domestic state apparatus.

The reason for this reluctance is that all parties agree on the restriction of citizens’ rights, the strengthening of the police and the centralisation of the intelligence agencies, including the Social Democrats as part of the government and the opposition Left and Green parties, which are striving for a government coalition with the SPD.

De Maiziere identified the real reason for the strengthening of the state apparatus when he spoke of the “German leading role” in Europe. In the face of the rapidly deepening economic, social and political crisis in Europe, which has been intensified still further since the election of Donald Trump in the US, the ruling class is preparing for major conflicts.

The intention to intervene more as a leading power in Europe and throughout the world is deeply opposed by the population. The government is not only responding to this with an intensive propaganda campaign, but with the strengthening of the security apparatus and the buildup of the state. The return of German militarism thus goes hand in hand with the construction of a police state, whose powers increasingly recall those of the Nazi secret police (Gestapo).

WikiLeaks data reveals close cooperation between German intelligence and NSA

Sven Heymanns

The German foreign secret service (BND) has not only delivered data to the US intelligence services on a massive scale, it has also worked directly with the NSA in developing detection software. This has been confirmed by extensive data published by the WikiLeaks platform at the beginning of December. It documents the close cooperation between German and American intelligence agencies and reveals new details.

The data contains about 90 gigabytes of information. It consists of a total of 2,420 files, which were forwarded in 2015 to the German parliamentary committee that is currently investigating the activities of the intelligence services. According to WikiLeaks, the data originates from several German federal authorities, including the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection (BfV) and the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI).

How WikiLeaks acquired the data is unknown. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung immediately held Russia responsible. The paper alleges that it had been informed by “security circles” that the data could have stemmed from a hacker attack on the Bundestag in the spring of 2015 for which Russia was responsible. There was a “high plausibility” for this thesis because none of the documents had been digitized after January 2015. Furthermore, the documents were of the lowest degree of secrecy for circulation within the Bundestag.

But there is no independent confirmation of these accusations against Russia.

The close collaboration between the BND and the NSA is no secret. It was already clear in June 2013 from the material released by Edward Snowden. Snowden revealed that both intelligence services use the XKeyScore software to filter and search worldwide mobile and internet traffic.

The latest publications show that the BND not only used the software, but was also involved in its development. An internal document from June 2013, which reports on cooperation with the US intelligence agencies, shows that a BND employee had been seconded “to programme and manage XKeyScore for a period of two years.”

The BND was also aware of the spying activities of numerous US companies located in Germany. An email from the German chancellery in January 2014 names Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Edward Snowden had last worked for the latter. Both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also cooperated with British intelligence services, “according to intelligence reports.”

The documents now published throw light onto the activities of the German parliamentary Investigation Committee as well as the reaction of the BND and the Registrar’s Office to the material released by Snowden and the inquiries undertaken by the Bundestag committee. A closer examination of the files gives some sense of how the “deep state” operates.

The immediate reaction of the BND to the revelations of Snowden was marked by panic. Countless frantic emails in rapid succession, all with short response times, are evidence of how concerned the secret services were to minimise public knowledge of the true extent of worldwide espionage.

Many of these emails dealt with the information that was to be provided to Germany’s relevant parliamentary committees. There is discussion about “speakers’ notes” to be given to representatives of the secret services in order to be prepared for all conceivable questions. Answers to queries from Bundestag representatives, following the first press reports, were checked and edited by the BND and the chancellery before publication. The answers were brief, noncommittal and generally worthless.

It is not only the intelligence services themselves that are concerned to preserve secrecy about their illegal practices and worldwide spying activities. It is remarkable how hostile the opposition parties in the Bundestag have been towards the WikiLeaks revelations.

Martina Renner, the Left Party deputy in the NSA Investigation Committee, complained that the committee would now have less insight into the secret documents necessary for its work. The intelligence services had always argued that the committee was a risk because information could reach the public. “The current leak gives further impetus to such attacks.”

With her comment Renner practically admitted that the “parliamentary control” of the secret services was based on parliamentarians themselves becoming part of the secret service conspiracy.

The representative of the Greens in the committee, Konstantin von Notz, argued similarly. On Twitter he wrote: “Anyone who releases such things deliberately torpedoes the information gathering and the necessary control of the services.”

In fact, the pretence of parliamentary oversight is torpedoed by the fact that the secret services work completely independently of any control, and all the Bundestag parties are interested in maintaining this situation. Against a background of intensifying political and social tensions, the ruling elite is more than ever dependent on an authoritarian security apparatus.

Macy’s, Sears announce mass layoffs, hundreds of store closings across the US

Niles Niemuth

US department stores Macy’s and Sears announced thousands of layoffs and hundreds of store closures on Wednesday following dismal holiday sales and declining yearly revenues.

Macy’s said that it will eliminate more than 10,000 jobs and will move forward with the planned closure of 68 stores by the middle of this year. The closures are part of 100 announced in August, representing a loss of nearly 14 percent of the 730 stores operated by Macy’s in the US and its territories.

The company reported that it will seek to maintain profits by eliminating a number of management positions across the company, cutting 6,200 people from the workforce. On top of this, 3,900 Macy’s store employees will lose their jobs, though the company indicated that some could be reassigned to other stores.

Macy’s reported that its sales during the holiday months of November and December had fallen 2.1 percent from the previous year. Retailers rely on sales at the end of the year to pad out revenue and profits.

Sears Holdings also announced on Wednesday that it was planning to shutter 150 stores by April; 108 of its Kmart locations and 42 Sears stores. The closures represent 13.5 percent of the 801 Kmart locations remaining at the end of 2016 and 6 percent of the 676 remaining Sears locations.

Holiday sales at Kmart and Sears stores in November and December were down by between 12 and 13 percent from 2015.

On top of the layoffs and closings, Sears announced that it was raising funds to prop up its operations by selling its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black and Decker for $900 million. Even before the onset of the 2008 economic crisis Kmart and Sears had begun to hemorrhage thousands of jobs and close hundreds of locations.

Sears Holdings was created in 2005 after Kmart emerged from bankruptcy and merged with the floundering Sears, Roebuck & Co. for $11 billion. Despite the efforts to salvage both companies, Sears has seen its total sales cut in half since 2007.

Other major US retailers, including Kohls, L Brands and American Eagle, also announced declining holiday sales but have yet to announce any layoffs or store closures. Kohls closed 18 stores and laid off more than 1,500 employees in 2016.

The closings and layoffs are an indication of the actual state of the economy, more than seven years after the beginning of the supposed economic “recovery.” The large traditional retailers have also come under immense pressure the growth in sales through online retailers such as Amazon over the last decade.

As American workers have seen their wages either stagnate or decline, they have increasingly turned to online retailers that offer goods at lower prices than the department stores and also offer the convenience of home shipping.

Amazon dominated the online holiday sales in November and December, accounting for 38 percent of all transactions. Meanwhile, the company reported that it shipped a total of 1 billion items worldwide in 2016.

Amazon has been able to capture an increasing share of the retail market by exploiting its workforce through low wages, imposing high productivity demands and implementing robotic automation.

A worker classified as an order picker at one of its massive fulfillment center warehouses earns less than $12.00 an hour. Amazon warehouse employees walk between 7 and 15 miles every work day and must pass through an airport-style security inspection when leaving to go home.

As part of efforts to shorten delivery times and keep up with growing demand, the company will open a number of new warehouses throughout the country. It was announced in December that Amazon would construct a 1 million square foot fulfillment center in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, on the site of a former General Motors plant, reportedly providing 1,000 full-time positions.

It is impossible to review the economic conditions in all of hundreds of areas which will be impacted by the latest store closures, but a small sampling gives a sense of the social conditions that prevail across the US.

The original Kmart store opened in 1962 in Garden City, Michigan, just south of where Amazon will open its new Livonia warehouse, and is one of those slated to be closed by April. Approximately 11 percent of the city’s population lived in poverty in 2015.

Jasper, Alabama, a city of approximately 14,000, will also lose its Kmart. The city, located in the northwestern Appalachian region of the state, formerly one of the leading coal producers in the United States, has been hit hard by the collapse in the global demand for coal. North American Coal Corporation closed its Jasper operations in 2015, leading to the elimination of 118 jobs.

Rochester, New York will lose the Macy’s department store, which serves as an anchor for its Marketplace Mall. In 2013, a third of the city’s residents lived below the poverty line, more than half of children lived in poverty, and an astounding 16 percent of the population lived at less than half of the federal standard for poverty.

The latest round of retail store closings and layoffs are only an indication of what is to come in the next four years under the Trump administration, which is being staffed by billionaire oligarchs, Wall Street bankers and generals. As corporate taxes and regulations are cut, even more jobs will be sacrificed and wages will be slashed in order to further boost profits.

Line (Out) of Control?

Joy Mitra

The Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan is witnessing a fresh spiral of violence post the Indian “surgical” strikes of 29 September 2016. The spike in violence seems to suggest that the ceasefire agreement of 2003 between the two countries no longer holds water. Some within and outside government circles have begun speaking in terms of ‘war’ and the general impression created is that the agreement has lost its sanctity. This may however be jumping the gun too soon given that the ‘dialogue of violence’ is not happening along the entire stretch of the LoC and there are more conventional threshold levels to be crossed. The risks to general stability in the region, however, remain entrenched in the dynamics of the conflict and could lead to an uncontrollable conflict trajectory.

Sanctity of the 2003 Ceasefire-Agreement

It must be noted that even before the Uri attack and the Indian strike back, certain sectors along the LoC were witnessing higher concentration of violent incidents. Post the Indian strike back the first repercussions were more an increase in the intensity of violence along those sectors and not a general escalation of the conflict along the LoC. Therefore, the ceasefire accords had value until the first spatial threshold was crossed with the attack at the Indian military base close to the Jammu border, which India refers to as the ‘international border’and Pakistan as the ‘working boundary’. This may still not be a general breach of the geographical threshold on the military escalation ladder given that the current spate of violence is still confined to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and ceasefire violations do not necessarily imply a ceasefire breakdown. The intensity of violations may however go up at a certain spatial and temporal location.

Probable Escalation Dynamics

Additionally, while both sides have resorted to heavy artillery and mortar shelling, neither has vertically escalated in terms of introduction of air assets or other platforms. The pattern of attacks clearly demonstrate that military installations are the prime targets. A qualitative threshold can be breached here in terms of the choice of targets. This will lead to a geographical expansion of the threat-perception and spread the Indian security forces thin.

The prospects for any horizontal escalation could entail attacks south into Punjab. Going by the history of previous such episodes, this escalation should not happen. India and Pakistan seem to have systematised a periodic bout of violence along the LoC into their relationship that ebbs and flows conditional on the political milieu associated with it. In 2013, a similar episode of violence saw the ‘Mutually Hurting Stalemate (MHS)’ reached before any spatial escalation.

Subjective Stalemates

It is not necessary for an objective MHS to be realised. The stalemate could be a dynamic normal with both sides not necessarily sustaining equal measure of losses, albeit it is the perception of this normal that matters. MHS can be reached if both sides believe that neither can escalate to victory and a negotiated solution is possible, i.e. both sides perceive the other to be willing to negotiate. Additionally, the victory condition can also be subjective.

At present, the dynamic normal that exists between India and Pakistan may seem like an objective MHS to neutral observers but the rhetoric on the Indian side suggests that it believes it has established escalation dominance. This seems to be part of the victory condition that India has defined: escalation dominance which goes in conjunction with diplomatic efforts to internationally isolate Pakistan. Without going into the merits/demerits of the policy objective, it is reasonable to assume that the politico-military leadership believes it can achieve this victory condition and this translates into unwillingness to consider a negotiated settlement, when a better outcome can be achieved by coercive bargaining.

In Pakistan, public attention is occupied with events in the domestic polity. The civilian arm has made attempts to negotiate, and this option would not have been pursued without blessings from their security establishment. Even if Pakistan believes that the MHS has been reached, it is then left with the choice of preventing India from achieving its victory condition, only by sustaining the conflict long enough to impress upon India that a negotiated outcome is the only way to avoid the loss-loss scenario of a prisoner’s dilemma.

Unpredictable Conflict Trajectory

The Nagrota attack seems to be a demonstration of Pakistan’s intent to continue the mutual hurt if not in the form of a stalemate. This could also be a consequence of increased risk propensity due to loss perception that Pakistan might have because of cumulative losses it has incurred in diplomatic, military and reputational terms. The existence of loss perception can lead to increased propensity to continue the conflict, perhaps even escalate in the sub-conventional domain. Pakistan’s intent to continue the mutual hurt may however have consequences for public perception in India and not necessarily in favour of restraint because public perception is a double-edged sword. A sustained campaign to inflict losses can generate enough vitriol to bind the government to its rhetoric and could lead to uncontrollable consequences. 

In conclusion, periodic bouts of such violence, combined with loss perception in Pakistan and aggressive rhetoric in India despite the existence of an objective MHS, can take a trajectory which may not be in either side's control.

University of Bedfordshire Scholarships for Students from Africa and Other Regions 2017/2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): UK

Type: Undergraduate and Masters

Eligibility: 

• To be eligible for the International Scholarships, students must be classified as international or , must have applied for a course of study and hold an unconditional offer for a course at the University of Bedfordshire.
• If you wish to be considered for this scholarship you will need to apply for admission into the University. Candidates cannot apply for the scholarship before being offered a study place at the University of Bedfordshire.
• For undergraduate students after the first year of study with us standard published fees for 2016/2017 will apply for future years of study at the University of Bedfordshire.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: 

• £2,000 for some countries and £1,000 for some other countries. It is important to check the eligibility requirements for your country before applying.
• There is also a £500 merit scholarship available for those scoring 60% and above marks in their academic subjects with an average IELTS score of 6.0 with 5.5 in each band.
• There will also be a £750 Prompt Payment Discount available for continuing students progressing to their next year of study when full fees are paid on or before registration.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: follow these easy steps to apply to Bedfordshire.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Bedfordshire.

Imperial College Forté Foundation MBA Scholarships for Outstanding Women 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 17th March 2017

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): UK

Type: MBA

Eligibility: The Fellowships are open to all women applying to the MBA programme.

Selection Criteria: Successful candidates will demonstrate strong leadership skills through academic achievement, or in roles as team or community leaders, and show a commitment to helping women achieve their career potential through personal mentoring or community involvement.

The scholarships will be awarded to applicants based on the following criteria:

• The information supplied in your original application to the programme, including a strong academic background, a high and well-balanced GMAT score, and an excellent track record of professional achievement
• Your performance during the admissions process, where academic and professional merit will be judged
• A demonstrable track record of leadership in in your field
• Commitment to Forté’s mission of launching women into fulfilling, significant careers through access to business education, opportunities, and a community of successful women
• Your professional references

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: £23,500

In addition to the financial support provided, Forté Fellows have access to a number of unique resources from Forté Foundation including:

• Participation in the annual Forté MBA Women’s Leadership Conference held at the Amazon headquarters in Seattle
• Access to exclusive networking groups of Forté Fellows, Forté Fellow Alumnae and sponsor companies on social media and through Forté Fellow listservs
• Special e-introductions to Forté sponsor companies and inclusion in the Fellow résumé book, which is distributed to all sponsor companies
• Free lifetime Forté Foundation Premium Membership

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply: Female candidates who apply before 17 March 2017 and receive an offer for the Full-Time MBA programme commencing in September 2017 will automatically be considered. All candidates should address the requirements of the scholarship in their personal statement.

Apply for the MBA

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Forté Foundation

Imperial College Future Leaders MBA Scholarship for International Students 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 5th May 2017

Offered annually? Yes

To be taken at (country): UK

Type: MBA

Eligibility: Successful applicants will demonstrate the ability and passion to become a visionary business leader. To be considered for this scholarship, you must display leadership qualities and exceptional career potential in your application.

The scholarship will be awarded to applicants based on the following criteria:

• A strong academic background, a high and well-balanced GMAT score, and an excellent track record of professional achievement
• Your performance during the admissions process, where academic and professional merit will be judged
• Your professional references
• Under six years’ postgraduate work experience preferred

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: Scholarships of up to £23,500 are available.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 Year

How to Apply: Candidates who apply before 5 May 2017 and receive an offer for the Full-Time MBA programme commencing in September 2017 will automatically be considered. All candidates should address the requirements of the scholarship in their personal statement.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Imperial College