Climate Change Threatens Uninhabitable Conditions for the Middle East and North Africa

Lina Yassin

Climate change means colder winters, heavy rains and lots of environmental hazards for many people. But for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), climate change means uninhabitable weather conditions, forced migration and loss of traditional income. It is a real threat that might make the region uninhabitable.

The MENA region is considered the world’s driest region: it is the home to six percent of the world’s population yet it contains 12 countries that face extreme water scarcity – including Tunisia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Algeria.

According to The World Bank, the MENA region has less than two percent of the world’s water supply.

Climate change is already affecting the MENA region in dire ways, but it is expected that climate change will cause extreme heat to spread across more of the land for longer periods of time.

This will make some countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia uninhabitable because it will create humid heat conditions at a level incompatible with human existence.

It will also play a major role in reducing growing areas for agriculture – which is one of the most important sectors in the region.

The rising temperatures will keep increasing the pressure on crops and water resources, which will eventually lead to an amplified level of migration and risk of conflict.

The MENA region has experienced a tremendous amount of environmental hazards due to climate change effects.

Between 2006 and 2010, Syria experienced extreme droughts that turned 60 percent of the country into dry desert, making large regions to become economically impoverished.

In 2013 heavy and continuous rains in most of Sudan have led to floods that destroyed 25,000 homes and left hundreds of thousands of people with no work, home, or even family.

The UAE has also suffered a lot from climate change effects: in 2008 at least three people were killed and 350 injured in a horrific 60 vehicle pile-up due to heavy fog.

In 2016, Tunisia’s rainfall dropped by 30 percent causing agricultural losses of nearly two billion dinars.

It is clear now that the MENA region has no option but to go “green”. Adaptation along with mitigation measures will be essential to build up the resilience needed to cope with the changes.

There is an urgent need for governments to invest in new clean-energy innovations that will effectively reduce greenhouse gases emission and halt rising temperature.

Morocco has been a good example on this by making climate change adaptation a national priority and setting the country on a path to green growth.

The country made a strategy called Green Morocco Plan which is focused on agricultural adaptation and sustainable water and land management.

Tunisia is another good example of a country that is well on its way, since it recently decided to include the protection of environment in its new constitution.

Bahrain opened its first solar plant factory this year which shows the government interest in renewable energy investments.

MENA’s climate is ideal for renewable energy technologies, the abundant sunshine and open spaces could be a perfect source for sustainable power sources such as solar and wind power.

Some countries in the region are setting good examples and moving forward with their plans for a better environment.

Others are still depending on fossil fuel industries as their main source of energy, with the leading role for this part going to Saudi Arabia, holding a large part of the region from tackling the issue in a proper way.

The people who have little to no contribution in the issue of climate change are the one suffering the most from its effects.

Therefore, tackling climate change should be every countries’ first priority, because by standing up against climate change we are laying the foundations for a more stable future and less poverty.

This is absolutely necessary if we want to make sure the next generation will have a chance to live in a good environment.

The Deadly Results of a DEA Backed Raid in Honduras

Alexander Main & Annie Bird

It was a dark, moonless night. A small passenger boat had nearly reached the end of its six-hour journey upriver when helicopters appeared overhead and another boat came into view. Shots were fired, hitting several passengers. As terrified men, women and children leapt into the water, they were fired on again by a machine-gunner perched in a helicopter. Four people were killed, two of them women, another a 14-year-old boy. Several more were injured.

It could have been another tragic scene of carnage from Syria, South Sudan or some other war-torn place. But this grisly incident occurred in the otherwise peaceful Miskito indigenous community of Ahuas, Honduras, during a May 2012 counternarcotics mission involving agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, a United States-vetted Honduran police unit and machine-gun-equipped State Department helicopters.

The D.E.A. and Honduran police said that the passenger boat carried drug traffickers who fired first. Local residents told a different story, of a water taxi carrying unarmed travelers with no links to drug trafficking.

Weeks later we traveled to Ahuas and worked with local human rights defenders to piece together the boat passengers’ accounts. A grieving mother described how her teenage son was shot dead before her eyes. A nurse told us about her deceased pregnant sister and her struggle to care for her orphaned niece and nephew.

The testimonies we compiled indicated that the passengers were on the river for legitimate reasons. Multiple eyewitness accounts suggested D.E.A. agents played a leadership role in the operation.

Back in Washington, D.E.A. and State Department press officers insisted that the operation had been “Honduran led” and counternarcotics agents had fired in self-defense.

Five years later, United States officials’ version of events has been wholly refuted by a government review examining the Ahuas shootings and two other “deadly fire incidents” in Honduras.

The 424-page review, released in May by the inspectors general of the Departments of State and Justice, offers a startling glimpse into the tightly sealed world of United States security assistance in Central America.

The review found no credible evidence showing that the boat passengers opened fire. The D.E.A.’s “witness testimony” suggesting otherwise was completely unreliable, as officials knew.

The United States-vetted Honduran police unit wasn’t “highly trained and vetted,” as officials claimed, and D.E.A. agents “maintained substantial control” over the mission. A Honduran helicopter door-gunner opened fire only after United States agents ordered him to do so.

Further, the review found that officials from the D.E.A. and State Department knowingly misled Congress and continued to cite alleged evidence supporting their claims after they were aware that this evidence was compromised. They also refused to cooperate with State Department investigators trying to establish the facts around the Ahuas shootings.

The review, while shedding devastating light on the wrongdoing of United States law enforcement agents and government officials, also leaves some big questions unanswered.

First, do the review’s findings reflect broader patterns of behavior in United States institutions focused on the war on drugs abroad

Though the units involved in the Ahuas mission have been dissolved, many of the egregious actions documented in the review implicate senior and midlevel American officials. For example, the Department of State’s current assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs pushed back hard against D.E.A. cooperation with investigators and discussed putting the investigation “back into the box.”

Second, how effective is the heavy-handed, militarized approach to security and counternarcotics that the United States supports in the region?

Given the secrecy surrounding many security programs, it is nearly impossible to evaluate their effectiveness. Hundreds of millions of United States taxpayer dollars have been channeled to the region through the opaque Central America Regional Security Initiative; little is known regarding the final destination and impact of these funds. Now security aid to Central America is likely to become even more militarized and less transparent, with the current administration seeking to shift funding and responsibilities from the State Department to the Pentagon.

And while there’s scant evidence that the current approach has stemmed the flow of drugs or reduced violence and other drivers of Central American migration to the United States, there is little doubt that it has contributed to tremendous human suffering.

A ProPublica investigation has just revealed that a 2011 D.E.A. operation triggered dozens of killings in Allende, Mexico, after sensitive information about a drug cartel was shared with a notoriously leaky United States-vetted Mexican police unit. The D.E.A. itself has yet to investigate the incident.

More broadly, increased United States security spending in Central America has been accompanied by further militarization and reports of security forces’ involvement in organized crime and appalling human rights abuses. This is particularly true in Honduras, where even the country’s minister of security is accused of being involved in drug trafficking and United States-trained military officials were recently implicated in the murder of the renowned environmental activist Berta Cáceres. Dozens of United States legislators have called for suspension of all security aid to Honduras.

It is time for Congress and the American public to take a closer look at security assistance and reconsider the policies driving the costly United States “war on drugs” in the region. The questions raised by the inspectors general’s review are a good starting point. Congress should conduct its own thorough review of the effectiveness of United States security programs in Latin America as well as the system of United States-vetted units. Legislators should also demand more detailed information about regional security initiative and other opaque programs and require that metrics measuring the impact of these programs be made public.

Finally, Congress should consider further investigations of the D.E.A. and State Department cover-up around the May 2012 shootings and ensure that accountability mechanisms are in place to prevent officials from dodging scrutiny. The survivors and families of the deceased should receive reparations. And sanctions should be considered against those who tried to keep Congress and the public in the dark about what really happened that night in Ahuas.

On American Revolution

Paul Street

My fellow U.S.-Americans, we’ve never had a revolution.

It’s true that slaveowner Thomas Jefferson’s July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence (DOI) articulated the revolutionary notion that the people have the right to dissolve a government that no longer serves their interests.  But the “American Revolution” was a national independence movement led by wealthy landowners, slaveowners, and merchants who feared uprisings from below.  They wanted more breathing space to develop further systems of racial oppression, territorial conquest, and class rule.  For them national independence was required among other things to prevent social revolution.  The last thing the nation’s wealth aristo-republican Founders wanted was a world turned upside down.

One of the grievances the signers of the DOI raised against the British king was that “he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.”  Another purported sin of King George was that he “endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”  This vicious charge against the Native Americans was a total inversion of reality. It was the Euro-American invaders and settlers, not the Indigenous inhabitants, who practiced genocide.

The U.S. Constitution that the Founders enshrined thirteen years after breaking off from their capitalist parent and mentor England was a shining monument to the privileging of property rights – the rights of the propertied Few – over human rights and democracy. In the Constitutional Convention debates that produced this most un- and anti-democratic charter, the leading Framer and slaveowner James Madison backed an upper U.S. legislative assembly (the Senate) of elite property holders to check a coming “increase of population” certain to “increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.”

Who were “the people” in the early U.S. republic? White male owners of substantive property holdings. This left out: Blacks, most of whom were branded and exploited as chattel slaves; Native Americans, reviled as “savages;” women of all races; much of the white population, which was considered too poor to be trusted with citizenship (though they were welcome to give their lives to fight the British).

American Independence was a calamity for the nation’s Indigenous people.  The British had antagonized the North American settlers by setting some limits on the colonists’ territorial expansion.  With Independence, the violent white North American predators were released to push First Nations’ people considerably further out from the eastern seaboard than before.  It’s not for nothing that the Iroquois gave America’s revered “revolutionary war” genera; and first president the title “Town Destroyer.”

Independence was an atrocity for the Black population as well.  Lands stolen from the Native Americans were open for cultivation with slaves. The chances for West Indies-style insurrection faded as new land opened for dispersal of the slave population and for the dilution of the Black-white population ratio with the immigration from Europe. With the rise of cotton and the industrial revolution, the racist torture regime that was U.S. slavery would become the key to the United States’ emergence as a major economic power in the world.

Seventy-six years after the DOI, the great Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered perhaps the greatest oration in U.S. history, titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.”  By the reckoning of Douglass, himself an escaped slave, the great national holiday was “a day that reveals to [the slave], more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.” Further:

“To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

There was of course, the Civil War, which the Progressive Era historian Charles Beard famously called “America’s Second Revolution.”  It led to the formal end of Black chattel slavery in the U.S. South during and after a great sectional conflict that forced the North to enlist Black soldiers to defeat the Slave Power, the southern Confederacy.  But emancipation emerged less out of principle than from military necessity. De facto slavery and Black bondage was reinstated in various forms in the war’s aftermath.  Meaningful and radical “reconstruction” and concerns for racial equality were abandoned as the nation entered a new age of capitalist industrialization in which Blacks were still subjected to backbreaking cotton toil. Millions of new European immigrants crowded into giant tyrannical mines, mills, factories, and slaughterhouses owned by Robber Baron capitalists who joined with leading financiers in buying up national politics, resources, and media, and turning government into their own private for-profit fiefdom.

As the nineteenth century came to an end, the racist United States armed forces were already exhibiting in the Philippines and Cuba what would be one of its key roles in the coming century: suppressing national independence and social revolution in other and poorer nations around the world.  The American Empire would serve as the enemy of revolution and national self-determination again and again, from Mexico to Russia, the Caribbean, South America, Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and even Western Europe.

Reflecting on the plutocratic essence of the corporate-managerial capitalism that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the leading American philosopher John Dewey noted in 1932 that U.S. politics was “the shadow cast on society by big business.” Things would stay that way, Dewey prophesied, as long as power resided in “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by commend of the press, press agents, and other means of publicity and propaganda.”

It might seem that Dewey spoke too soon. Between the 1930s and the 1970s, a significant reduction in overall economic inequality (though not racial inequality) and an increase in the standard of living of millions of working class Americans occurred in the United States. This “Great Compression” occurred thanks to the rise and expansion of the industrial workers’ movement (sparked to no small extent by Communists and other radical left militants), the spread of collective bargaining, the rise of a relatively pro-union New Deal welfare state, and the democratic domestic pressures of World War II and subsequent powerful social movements.

By the early 1950s, the claim was even seriously advanced in Readers’ Digest that post-WWII America had replaced capitalism and its old class distinctions with “mutualism,” “industrial democracy,” “distributism,” “productivism,” and/or “economic democracy.” This was quite naïve.

No revolution occurred.  Not even close. Dewey’s point held. Core capitalist prerogatives and assets – Dewey’s “private control” and “business for profit” – were never dislodged.  This was consistent with New Deal champion Franklin Roosevelt’s boast that he had “saved the profits system” from radical change. The gains enjoyed by ordinary working Americans were made possible to no small extent by the uniquely favored and powerful position of the United States economy (and empire) in the post-WWII world. When that position was significantly challenged by resurgent Western European and Japanese economic competition in the 1970s and 1980s, the comparatively egalitarian trends of postwar America were reversed by the capitalist elites who had never lost their critical command of the nation’s core economic and political institutions. Working class Americans have paid the price ever since. For the last four decades, wealth, income, and power have been sharply concentrated upward, marking a New or Second Gilded Age of abject oligarchy.  Along the way, and intimately related to the neoliberal regression, US and global capitalism have pushed the environment to the edge of a grave, possibly irreversible catastrophe.

We need a revolution now, a first American Revolution. The United States is a corporate-oligarchic nation where: the top tenth of the upper 1 Percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent; ordinary people have essentially no political representation while the wealthy corporate and financial few get pretty much whatever they want from government; 15 million children – 21% of all U.S. children – live at less than the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level (more than 1 in 10 U.S. children ages 0-9 is living at less than half that level); half the population is poor or near-poor and without assets; millions drink from poisoned water systems; an imperial military devours more than half of all discretionary federal spending and accounts for nearly half the world’s military spending; more people are incarcerated (in extremely racially disproportionate ways) than in any nation in history (a curious achievement for the self-described homeland and headquarters of “liberty”); a deeply entrenched and carbon-addicted corporate and financial sector is leading the world over the environmental cliff through the championing of endless growth and attendant “anthropogenic” (really capitalogenic) climate destruction.

The last problem mentioned is arguably the greatest and most urgent. The U.S.-headquartered, growth-addicted global profits system is speeding humanity to a lethal, Antarctic-dissolving 500 carbon parts per million by 2050 if not sooner. That’s “game over” for livable ecology. If environmental catastrophe, rooted in Dewey’s system of “business of private profit through private control,” is not avoided in the very near future, then none of the things decent people care about beyond livable ecology are going to matter all that much.

The new royal brute, the Twitter-addicted orange-haired beast and malignant narcissist called Donald Trump, appointed a militant climate change denier who is dedicated to tearing down the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) to head… the EPA. EPA chief Scott Pruitt wants to “empower” the 3% of Earth scientists who question the existence of “anthropogenic climate change.”

That is a call for the capitalogenic extermination of the human species – a transgression that will make the worst crimes of homo sapiens so far pale by comparison.  It is also a call for revolution.  “The uncomfortable truth,” Istvan Meszaros rightly argued 15 years ago, “is that if there is no future for a radical mass movement in our time, there can be no future for humanity itself.” It’s “socialism or barbarism if we’re lucky” at the current stage of capitalist-led ecocide.

Nowhere is the need for such a movement urgent than what is still the world’s leading and most powerful capitalist state, the U.S.

There is one piece of good news here: young adults. A recent Harvard University survey finds that 51 percent than half of U.S. Millennials (18-to-29-year-olds) “do not support capitalism.”

Good. Let’s work with that and build our forces for a first American Revolution.

Unite And Rule: EU As NATO’s Auxiliary Economic Alliance

Nauman Sadiq

According to a recent infographic by New York Times, 79,000 US troops have currently been deployed in Europe out of 210,000 total US troops stationed all over the world, including 47,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 17,000 in the rest of Europe. By comparison, the number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan is only 8,400 which is regarded as an occupied country. Thus, Europe is nothing more than a backyard of corporate America.

Both NATO and EU were conceived during the Cold War to offset the influence of Soviet Union in Europe. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that consolidated the European Community and laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992.

The basic purpose of the EU has been nothing more than to lure the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of the Schengen Agreement that allowed the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.

No wonder then, the neoliberal political establishments, and particularly the deep state of the US, are as freaked out about the outcome of Brexit as they were during the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars of loan package offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.

In this regard, the founding of the EU has been similar to the case of Japan and South Korea in the Far East where 45,000 and 28,500 US troops have currently been deployed, respectively, according to the aforementioned infographic.

After the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of geographically-adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman Administration authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and also to send a signal to the leaders of the Soviet Union, which had not developed their nuclear program at the time, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in Europe.

Then, during the Cold War, American entrepreneurs invested heavily in the economies of Japan and South Korea and made them model industrialized nations to forestall the expansion of communism in the Far East.

Similarly, after the Second World War, Washington embarked on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with an economic assistance of $13 billion, equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars in the current dollar value. Since then, Washington has maintained its military and economic dominance over Western Europe.

Notwithstanding, there is an essential stipulation in the European Union’s charter of union according to which the developing economies of Europe that joined the EU allowed free movement of goods (free trade) only on the reciprocal condition that the developed countries would allow free movement of labor.

What’s obvious in this stipulation is the fact that the free movement of goods, services and capital only benefits the countries that have a strong manufacturing base, and the free movement of people only favors the developing economies where labor is cheap.

Now, when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, they try to protect the interests of their biggest donors by shares, i.e. the developed countries.

Regardless, while joining the EU, Britain compromised on the rights of its working class in order to protect the interests of its bankers and industrialists, because free trade with the rest of the EU countries spurred British exports.

The British working classes overwhelmingly voted in the favor of Brexit because after Britain’s entry into the EU and when the agreements on abolishing internal border checks between the EU member states became effective, the cheaper labor force from the Eastern and Central Europe flooded the markets of Western Europe; and consequently, the wages of native British workers dropped and it also became difficult for them to find jobs, because foreigners were willing to do the same job for lesser pays.

Hence, raising the level of unemployment among the British workers and consequent discontentment with the EU. The subsequent lifting of restrictions on the Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the European Union in January 2014 further exacerbated the problem and consequently, the majority of the British electorate voted in a June 2016 referendum to opt out of the EU.

The biggest incentive for the British working class to vote for Brexit has been that the East European workers will have to leave Britain after its exit from the EU, and the jobs will once again become available with better wages to the native British workforce.

Although the EU’s labor provisions ensure adequate wages and safeguard the rights of workers, but the British working class chose to quit the EU on the basis of demand and supply of labor. With East European workers out of the country, the supply of labor will reduce hence increasing the demand. The native British workforce can then renegotiate better terms and conditions from the owners of industries and businesses, and it will also ensure ready availability of jobs.

Regardless, instead of lamenting the abysmal failure of globalization and neoliberal economic policies, we need to ask a simple question that why do workers choose to leave their homes and hearths, and families and friends in their native countries and opt to work in a foreign country? They obviously do it for better wages.

In that case, however, instead of offering band aid solutions, we need to revise the prevailing global economic order and formulate prudent and far-reaching economic and trade policies that can reduce the imbalance of wealth distribution between the developed and developing nations, hence reducing the incentive for immigrant workers to seek employment in the developed countries.

Free movement of workers only benefits a small number of individuals and families, because the majority of workforce is left behind to rot in their native developing countries where economy is not doing as well as in the developed world, thanks to the neoliberal economic policies. A comprehensive reform of the global economic and trade policies, on the other hand, will benefit everyone, except the bankers, industrialists and the beneficiaries of the existing neoliberal world order.

More to the point, the promotion of free trade by the mainstream neoliberal media has been the norm in the last several decades, but the implementation of agreements to abolish internal border controls between the EU member states has been an unprecedented exception.

Free trade benefits the industrialized nations of the EU, particularly Germany and to some extent the rest of the developed economies of the Western Europe; but the free movement of labor benefits the cheaper workforce of the impoverished Eastern and Central Europe.

The developed economies of the Western Europe would never have acceded to the condition of free movement of labor that goes against their economic interests; but the political establishment of the US, which is the hub of corporate power and wields enormous influence in the Western capitalist bloc, must have persuaded the unwilling states of the Western Europe to yield to the condition against their national interests, in order to wean away the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe from the Russian influence.

Had there been any merit to the founding of the EU, the Western Europe would have promptly accepted Turkey’s request to join the EU. But they kept delaying the issue of Turkish membership to the EU for decades, because with a population of 78 million, Turkey is one of the most populous countries in Eurasia.

Millions of Turks working in Germany have already become a burden on the welfare economy of their host country. Turkey’s accession to the EU would have opened the floodgates of immigrant workers seeking employment in the Western Europe.

Moreover, Turkey is already a member of the NATO and a longstanding and reliable partner of the Western powers; while the limited offer to join the EU, as I have already described, serves as an inducement to the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe to forswear their allegiance to Russia and to become the strategic allies of the Western powers.

Thus, all the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and equality of opportunity aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the Western military alliance against the erstwhile Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to isolate the adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policy as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.

Finally, the fabled divide-and-rule policy that has been deployed by imperialist powers to weaken resistance movements against imperialism in their former colonies is a historically proven fact, but at the same time, neocolonial powers also use unite-and-rule strategy to create friendly alliances and to institute a centralized command and control structure in order to buttress the global neocolonial world order.

India – US Relations

Masood Ali Mir

The World War Second was a source of big, deep and far reaching changes in the international power structure. All the super powers of the pre-war multi-polar power structure  like Britain, France, Spain , Italy, Germany, Japan , Portugal, Austria etc. became very weak as a result of the heavy losses that they suffered during the War (1939-1945). So the World War Second ended the traditional power structure and the alliance system and ushered a new power structure in which the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged as the most powerful and dominant super powers of the world .

The peace restored after the World War Second was shaky, risky and tense peace because it was accompanied by the tensions and strained relations which developed between the Capitalistic world led by USA  and the Socialist world headed by the USSR mainly on ideological grounds. The tensions and strains that developed in the post-War international politics between the Socialist world and the capitalist one in general and the USA and the USSR in particular came to be collectively characterized as the Cold War. In international politics Cold War indicates, a state of constant conflict and strife, suspicion and mistrust and antagonism and hostility maintained and perpetuated without a direct confrontation between adversaries i.e. USA and USSR .

India achieved its independence in the mid August (15th of August) 1947, so it opened its eyes as an independent country  in the midst of  Cold War and in the era of bloc politics. As an independent country it was very hard for India to choose a particular super power in a vertically divided world of  bloc politics.

The relationship between the United States of America and India originated in this international power paradigm. In this power scenario, on one side when  the USA was trying its best to extend its influence all over the world by cementing its super power status, India on the other side  was very determined to serve its interests by maintaining its sovereign character through the Non Aligned Movement.

During the last seven decades , the relationship between the United States and India have had an interesting story of  both differences and cooperation hence has been uneven i.e. at times good and at times bad. In order to have a clear understanding of this relationship, we have to divided it into two phases i.e, Cold War phases (1947-1991) and Post –Cold War phase i.e. 1991 onwards.

In the Cold War phase the relationship between the two countries was not cordial although there was a big role of US in revolutionizing the Indian agriculture ( Rock Feller Foundation) which led to the Green revolution in India in early 1970s. Although the two countries were never in a direct confrontation but their world vision and approach for future world was totally different. A number of factors were responsible for this negative phase of relationship like:  a)  India’s role in  the foundation of Non Aligned Movement and its active propagation of Non- Alignment in international forums and as a basic principle of its foreign policy. b) Socialist planning of Indian economy through five year plans by socialist leadership like Nehru etc.  c) India’s Closeness  to USSR and the Peace Treaty of 1971 between the two countries.  d) India’s Nuclear proliferation programme and its non- commitment to sign the international non- proliferation treaties like the NPT and the  CTBT. e)  Recognition of Communist China by India (December 1949). f) Pakistan’s closeness to USA. g) United States  stand on Jammu and Kashmir in the United Nation’s Security Council. h) and its military ( Weapon) assistance to Pakistan. These points alienated the position of the two countries in the policy making circles of each other and  created a sense of mistrust and suspicion which remained there up to the end of the Cold War.

The end of cold war and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union changed the whole world scenario, so changed the mindset of United States and India towards each other. In the post- Cold War era India opened its  economy and market  under the process of liberalization, globalization and privatization and integrated it with the rest of the capitalist world led by USA, China’s emergence as an economic power in our part of world and its close proximity with Pakistan and India’s open and full support to the Bush administration when it started its war against Terror following the 9/11 Attacks changed the whole status of Indo-Us relationship.

Since the 1991 the two countries began to evolve a new relationship hence inched toward the friendship and cooperation. The two countries signed a lot of treaties and agreements for the better relations among them, the most prominent being the 123 Agreement between  the Bush and Man Mohan Singh government. Every year the leadership of the two countries visit each other which makes this relationship more viable and relevant . In 2010 the then President of USA , Barack Obama visited India  and acknowledged the emergence of India  at the world stage as an emerging power  “ India is not emerging but has emerged as a leader at the international level  and it would be in the interest of USA to have close ties with it”. In 2015 Barak Obama visited India again as Chief guest at the Republic day of India.

Now the recent visit of Narender Modi has cemented  this relationship more along with the new President, Donald Trump,  in which a lot of agreements were signed and in Indian foreign policy it is considered  a big forward push for the Modi’s vision of new Bharat at international level. The present relationship between the  two countries has been described  as “ at its best” by none other than the US President himself.

Although the relationship  is at its climax but  the statements of the two leaders during their latest joint press conference were a bit confusing and does lack clearity. In  their joint  Press Conference  the American President focused more on trade while the Indian Prime Minister  stressed more on  counter Terrorism  although the energy  too featured  in their statements

There is  a counter opinion to this Indo- US relationship in the diplomatic circles all around the world.  Those who do believe in this counter opinion, criticizes the recent joint ventures between India and the USA on the lack of clear vision . A good number  of the people do believe that the current heads of the USA and India  ( Donald  Trump and Narender  Modi ) are the result of mobocracy and radicalization instead of democracy and tolerance in the most diverse and plural nations of the world. The two leaders lack the world vision and are mostly unaware of the ethos and ethics of their nations in particular and of the  international power structure in general. The former Home Minister and a well reputed statesman of India  P. Chidambaram  has  raised his voice about the double standard of Donald Trump and the gross error of Indian Prime Minister to not recognize this, as in the press conference, the US administration has on one side,  registered  supreme leader of Hizbul Mujahedeen,  Syeed Sallah-U- Din,  in the list of global terrorist, and on the other side, the official statement referred the Jammu and Kashmir as the Indian Administered Kashmir hence recognized its disputed nature.

When the farmers in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh etc. are starving and are protesting in Andhra Pradesh, Utter Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab etc. for their survival. When the Naxalism is gaining its prominence due to the failures of government to provide the basic necessities and liberties to the people of affected areas .  When the big portion of people all over India suffer due to price rise, unemployment, poverty, malnutrition etc. when the Chinese good are making more inroads  in the Indian market due to the low price tags rather than the quality and when there is a genuine reluctance to the market aspirations of the USA on the above mentioned points, the  American Trump administration wants to control and hegemonies the Indian Market and consumer.

It is an established fact that the United States has been most unsuccessful  nation to counter terrorism in its own  patchy areas like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria  etc and in the rest of the world. Instead of controlling it, when the USA has been accused of fueling it more most importantly in the Muslim World, the BJP’s Modi wants to get help  from America to counter its terrorism that too against the Pakistan which has been a close ally of USA in its War against Terror since the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The two countries wants to have each other’s assistance in those areas, where  both had been unsuccessful .  It will be interesting to see the future of this relationship in the real sense of international politics, where there are no permanent friends and foes and beyond the myths of media hype.

Exploiting Hate in the World’s Largest Democracies: Violence for Gain

Arshad M Khan

The well-known journalist, Seymour Hersch, has published an article in the German newspaper Die Welt refuting President Trump’s assertions blaming the Syrians for the chemical incident at Khan Shaykhun on April 4th. Worse, it accuses him of ignoring the intelligence that supported the Syrian and Russian version of events. Mr. Hersch’s source(s)? Senior U.S. intelligence operatives.

The subsequent bombing of Syria (after informing them and the Russians of the target) was mostly theatrical although lauded at home. In the eyes of many, it made Trump president.

The episode reprises his cynicism and an ability to ride a wave, as in the notorious ‘birther movement’ contesting President Barack Obama’s birthplace. And the same character flaw was apparent in the election as Mr. Trump shamelessly exploited a fear of the other to secure victory. The result has been a climate of hate and an exponential increase in hate crimes.

So it was that the meeting this week with Prime Minister Modi of India became a meeting of like minds for Mr. Modi’s party, the Bharataya Janata Party (BJP), has profited greatly from demonizing the other. While not much happened during the brief visit, other than the signing of previously agreed arms contracts, the peripatetic Mr. Modi got his photo-ops for the audience back home before flying off to the Netherlands next day.

Perhaps it was the missiles to Syria with dessert for the Chinese leader; perhaps it was Mr. Trump’s one-upmanship in keeping Mr. Xi Jinping and his wife waiting. Of course, the arms sales to India and the obvious partnering against China could not have helped. Whatever the reason, Mr. Modi returned to a Chinese military attack in India’s Sikkim province. Two border posts were destroyed by the Chinese.

Meanwhile, the epidemic of lynchings and beatings of minorities and lower caste Hindus like Dalits continues to expand faster after the cattle slaughter restrictions imposed by the Modi government. The attack on four young brothers on a train as they returned to Madhura from Delhi, after a holiday shopping trip before the Eid festival, has struck a chord and protest demonstrations have been organized. Taunted as beef eaters and beaten mercilessly, they got no help from any of the other passengers. Junaid, just 16 years old, died of stab wounds. The photo of the young teen lying bloodsoaked on the pavement, head pillowed in his brother’s lap, as life ebbs away has gone viral.

Mr. Modi finally decided to deliver a speech (last Wednesday) against the violence and the cow vigilantes but the genie is already out of the bottle. Barely 12 hours later on Thursday, paying no heed to Mr. Modi, cow vigilantes lynched a man in the village of Bajratar in Jharkhand. Alimuddin Ansari was a meat trader. He was attacked by a mob, dragged out of his van and killed, and his van torched. Worth noting that on Tuesday two days earlier a dairy farmer accused of killing a cow was also lynched in Jharkhand.

Needless to say, the new rules are jeopardizing the $10 billion meat industry, rendering more people jobless and worsening poverty. These cattle sale restrictions are also hurting farmers, already suffering through globalization and climate conditions, because when necessary they could sell old draft animals for slaughter through middlemen, a practice now prohibited. Their situation is so dire that more than 300,000, or over 12,000 each year, have committed suicide since agrarian ‘reforms’ in 1991.

Images of poverty, dirt and hatred broadcast across the world have dulled the gloss on Mr. Modi’s carefully crafted picture. That and Mr. Trump’s habitual falsehoods keep reminding us of how democracies falter when the demos fails to participate with careful deliberation.

Two Disasters-Two Countries-Two Peoples: Britain And Bangladesh

Taj Hashmi

Consecutively on 13th and 14th June, major disasters hit Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. On the morning of 13th, landslides killed more than 150 people, and four army personnel, in Chittagong and Chittagong Hill Tracts districts of Bangladesh. And in the early hours of the 14th, a fire in a 24-storied apartment complex, the Grenfell Tower, killed around 80 people in London. Both the disasters killed poor and marginalized people. In Bangladesh, the dirt-poor victims were “nameless” as well.

While faulty fire-alarm system, and inflammable building materials may be attributed to the London fire; massive illegal deforestation and “hill-cutting” led to the landslides in Bangladesh. Sadly, most Bangladeshis had other “more important” problems to address than doing anything to the landslide victims. However, there’s more to the story. While the poor are inert and indifferent to disasters (beyond the immediate vicinity), the rich aren’t forthcoming with financial support and empathy with the victims.

As it appeared on British media reports, including BBC, for the first few days, more than 80 per cent of the news coverage was about the Grenfell Tower disaster. Even more than two weeks after the disaster, British media, politicians, members of the civil society, intellectuals, and ordinary people were mourning the “avoidable” deaths, empathizing with the victims, helping them generously, and condemning the various government departments for negligence, which led to the disaster. The Queen, Prime Minister Theresa May, national leaders, including local MP Jeremy Corbyn, London mayor Sadiq Khan, and thousands of people visited the disaster zone. Jeremy Corbyn has gone to the extent of asking the Government to requisition homes of the rich for fire survivors – like Churchill did to rehabilitate survivors of German bombings during World War II. Fifteen victims of the fire met the Prime Minister at her residence. There was also a one-minute silence observed at the Buckingham Palace; and on Monday 18th June, the whole nation observed one-minute silence, to show respects to the victims.

While Bangladeshis who understand, and enjoy cricket, were busy watching the live telecast of the ICC cricket competition from Britain, which ended on the 18th June; and within hours of the disaster, the Prime Minster went to her scheduled overseas trip to Sweden. Within 48 hours, people seemed to have forgotten the disasters that befell poorest of the poor. However, had the victims been members of the urban rich, Bangladesh would have mourned their deaths longer. One may cite the example of elite and government responses to the Holey Artisan Bakery attack last July, in this regard. Poor villagers, urban squatters, and slum dwellers in Bangladesh are much more fragmented, isolated, inert, introvert, and as “sack of potatoes” – to paraphrase Marx – don’t take “political” decisions (in the broad sense of the term) on their own, and need outsiders, often their own class enemies, to lead them or take decisions on their behalf. Hence this collective neglect of the poor by people who “matter”, and those who don’t, across Bangladesh!

The bulk of the poor urban and rural squatters in Bangladesh – many totally landless – come from the typical fragmented and faction-ridden peasant communities, having strong patron-client relationship, where the powerless clients having very low self-esteem, work only for their patrons, not for society or the nation at large. To the bulk of these poor, society is made of immediate clan members or uprooted fellow proletarians; the state and nation seem to be too remote and abstract to understand, let alone integrate into. They only know their local patrons, the village elders or matbars, “tribal chiefs”, and “mafia bosses” who’re well-connected to local MPs, powerbrokers, and ministers, who could be ruthless and benign at the same time. The ubiquitous Matbar-MP-Minister nexus, not nationalism of any sort, determines the politics of Bangladesh. Thus, the environment-unfriendly Rampal power plant, rapes and abductions of poor women, and all disasters beyond their immediate neighbourhood are too distant and irrelevant to the bulk of the population. Why so?

We know, the East-India Company added certain new elements to Bengal’s administration, land system, and culture. It was the new land-system called the Permanent Settlement aka the Zamindari system of 1793, which radically moulded the administrative machinery, and the popular and political culture of what is now Bangladesh. The Zamindari system fragmented the rural community and the budding urban society by establishing neo-feudal relationship and patron-client relationship. Surprisingly, Paschim Banga (erstwhile West Bengal), which also had similar land system, but elites, middle and working classes there have been very assertive and uncompromising. They empathise with victims of natural and manmade disasters, and don’t shy away from questioning and challenging the authorities.

One may impute this to the rise of Western educated upper, and middle classes in and around Kolkata since late 18th century, mainly emerging out of the direct beneficiaries of the Zamindari system. Members of these Hindu Bhadraloke classes have been urbane, capitalist, and some even active leaders of trade unions, socialist and communist movements. Again, unlike Bangladesh, less dependency on agriculture – due to the urbanization and industrialization process that started in late 18th century in and around Kolkata – have weakened peasant and pre-capitalist production relations, and patron-client relationship in Paschim Banga.

Bangladesh, which was rural and agrarian hinterland of West Bengal up to 1947, has still remained more rural and peasant, at least culturally. Hence the collective indifference of the people and their government to the suffering of the common people across Bangladesh. One may attribute this “alienation-indifference syndrome” to “post-colonialism”, which renowned British-Pakistani sociologist, late Hamza Alavi has used in the pejorative sense of the expression. As Alavi has argued, having over-developed bureaucracy and military, and under-developed civil society, ruling classes in post-colonial Pakistan and Bangladesh lack much sense of belonging to the state or patriotism, which may be translated into colonial hangover, mass alienation from people, and absence of empathy/sympathy with the ordinary people. The culture of unaccountability of the ruling/rich classes – never been that synonymous till the rise of Ershad autocracy – has also turned the ordinary people apathetic to others’ sufferings, as they have their own grievances to redress.

Now, is it necessary or possible to compare the behaviour of the British government and people with their Bangladeshi counterparts vis-à-vis the recent disasters that befell their countries in mid-June? We simply can’t compare countries with accountable governance having well-entrenched democratic, urban, and egalitarian values with a “postcolonial”, “soft state” like Bangladesh, which lacks these values. Bangladesh being a fractured post-colonial state – not a well-knit nation state – where the ruling elites and ordinary people are segregated vertically, on political and economic lines; and the ordinary people are separated from each other horizontally, on factional, religious, political, and economic lines.

Interestingly, many poor countries, including India, manage disasters more efficiently than Bangladesh. It’s not lack of resources that impedes disaster management, but it’s lack of national solidarity, accountable governance, and mass empathy with people in distress. Surprisingly, “Baby-Boomers” (born between 1946 and 1960) – the generation that took part in the Liberation War – and “Millennials” (born between mid-1980s and early 2000s) of Bangladesh (both supposed to be articulated, brave, and liberal), to put it mildly, also seem to be apathetic and opportunistic, even during times of national emergencies.

Venezuelan government moves against dissenting chavistas

Alexander Fangmann

On June 27, hours before the Venezuelan Supreme Court stripped the dissenting attorney general, Luisa Ortega Diaz, of her powers to investigate human rights violations, a helicopter piloted by a police officer mounted a suspicious attack on the court, dropping four grenades and firing shots before flying away.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro released a statement branding the helicopter incident as a terrorist attack and “part of the escalation of the coup,” exploiting the incident to distract from the anti-democratic measures it is carrying out.

The government’s statement identifies the attacker as Óscar Pérez, and says he is under investigation for his links to the CIA. Numerous reports have described him as a 36-year-old former police investigator and part-time actor. A captain in the Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigation Service Corps (CICPC), Venezuela’s largest national police agency, Pérez also co-produced and acted in the 2015 film titled Suspended Death (Muerte Suspendida), in which he plays a role based on his real life. The film even contains scenes of Pérez firing shots from a helicopter.

A video released on YouTube the day of the attack features Pérez, appearing to be flanked by two masked men with an assault rifles, and what looks to be two mannequins. In the video, he claims to be part of a “a coalition of members of the military, policemen, and civilians” that is “nationalist, patriotic and institutionalist,” and which is looking to reestablish “stability in opposition to this temporary and criminal government.”

There has been widespread dissent within the Venezuelan military, especially among the lower officer ranks. Reports indicate that at least 65 army officers have been arrested, with 14 charged with rebellion and treason. The chavista government relies heavily on the military, with military officers heading up around a third of the country’s ministries and comprising half the country’s governors.

Many high-ranking officers and generals, a key component of the boliburguesia, have enriched themselves enormously through chavismo by their control of military-owned companies. There are no doubt layers of the officer corps who feel blocked from advancement and feel they can do better at managing Venezuela.

Nevertheless, despite the accusations of the Maduro government, it does not appear that the Pérez incident is connected with a wider conspiracy in the armed forces. There appears to have been one other person with him in the helicopter, holding a sign reading “Art. 350, Libertad,” referring to the Venezuelan constitution’s article 350, which encourages people to “disown any regime, legislation or authority that runs counter to democratic principles and guarantees, or that undermines human rights.”

Venezuelan security forces said they found the helicopter used in the attack near the northern coast of Venezuela in Vargas State, but with so sign of Pérez.

Although members of the right-wing opposition parties were initially supportive of what they took to be part of a wider rebellion among the armed forces, enthusiasm died down as it became clear that coverage of the incident was drowning out the attention being paid to government moves against Luisa Ortega Diaz, the chief prosecutor who has come out against the Maduro government. The incident also bolsters government claims that the right-wing opposition, heavily supported by US imperialism, is trying to foment a coup.

One of the figures charged in the government’s statement with alleged links to Pérez, Miguel Rodríguez, the former minister of the interior and intelligence chief for Maduro, as well as a high-ranking former general, told Reuters he was “not at all convinced by the helicopter incident,” and asked rhetorically, “Who gains from this? Only Nicolas for two reasons: to give credibility to his coup d'etat talk, and to blame Rodriguez.”

The action taken by the Supreme Court later on the same day of the attack broadened the power of the government ombudsman, allowing the holder of that office, Tarek William Saab, to carry out investigations of crimes connected to human rights, normally the prerogative of the chief prosecutor, Ortega Diaz. This was an escalation against Ortega Diaz, and indeed, two days later the government banned her from leaving the country and froze her assets. She faces a further hearing on July 4.

In recent months, Ortega Diaz has broken from the government, particularly over its attempt to convene a Constituent Assembly that would rewrite the constitution in order to sideline the opposition-controlled National Assembly. In claiming that the calling of the Constituent Assembly is unconstitutional, Ortega Diaz has cut through government claims to be operating on firm legal principles, a key pillar of its rhetoric against the right-wing opposition.

She has also put forward numerous accusations of government human rights violations, and has prosecuted soldiers and policemen for their roles in the killing of protesters. Ortega Diaz has blamed the government for 23 protest deaths and 853 injuries, which would amount to around a fourth of the total protest deaths.

Just two days after the helicopter incident, she charged Antonio Benavides, former head of the national guard, with systematically violating the human rights of protesters. Ortega Diaz’s concentration on this question of “human rights” has made the darling of US-based and opposition media, which sees it as providing a justification for the intervention of US imperialism. Maduro had reassigned Benavides last week from the national guard to government head of the capital district.

Regardless of the actual origin of the helicopter attack, it illustrates the depth of the crisis gripping ruling layers. The working class of Venezuela can place no trust in any section of the bourgeoisie. A change of government achieved either through a CIA-backed coup or an independent power grab by sections of the military would mean a redoubling of the ongoing attacks on basic rights and social conditions. Venezuelan workers must prepare themselves to put forward their own socialist and internationalist program, independent of all factions of the bourgeoisie.

Concerns grow over Fed interest rate policy

Nick Beams

A further fall in the US inflation rate announced last Friday is certain to fuel growing concerns in financial circles about whether the Federal Reserve should continue with its policy of tightening interest rates.

Following a rise in the base rate in June, the Fed is set to lift rates again before the end of the year and has laid out a policy for winding down its holdings--$4.5 trillion worth of government and corporate bonds largely accumulated through its program of massive asset purchases following the financial crisis of 2008.

But with inflation showing no sign of meeting the Fed’s target rate of around 2 percent, opposition is being voiced to further increases.

The latest data shows that the core personal consumption expenditures index, which excludes food and energy prices and is regarded by the Fed as its key price metric, rose at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in May, down from 1.5 percent the previous month and well below the 1.8 percent for February.

While short-term interest rates have lifted, in the expectation that the Fed will stick to its policy of rate rises, long-term bond rates, which tend to indicate the views of investors on the longer term prospects for the economy, have been falling.

This has given rise to what is known as a “flattening of the yield curve,” in which the short and long rates converge, possibly leading to an inversion of the yield curve, with the long-term rate falling below the short-term yield. Such a situation is regarded as a reliable indicator of recession. The last such occurrence was at the end of 2007.

Last week, Joachim Fels, an economic adviser for the $1.5 trillion global bond trading firm Pimco, issued a note warning that, while the Fed was lifting rates in order to have some ammunition to fight a future recession, “the risk is that by raising rates too fast and too far, the Fed brings about exactly what it is so afraid of--the next recession.”

He wrote that the US economy was only “one major adverse shock away from a serious deflationary scare,” and that there was a “substantial risk that the Fed’s opportunistic tightening campaign is a hawkish mistake.”

In an editorial comment last week, the Financial Times added its voice to those disagreeing with the Fed’s present agenda. “As the Federal Reserve marches on with its slow but steady campaign of increases in interest rates, the bond markets are sending a warning about the risks of advancing further,” it said, noting the flattening of the yield curve.

“One by one, sound arguments for the Fed continuing its expected series of rate rises are falling away. Real growth in the economy has been weaker than expected of late. Core inflation, and inflation expectations, remain stubbornly below the Fed’s target. And now a relatively reliable indicator of future recession is sounding an increasingly strident warning siren.”

The Fed’s rationale for pressing on with interest rate rises in order to return to what is regarded as a more normal monetary policy is based on an economic model known as the Phillips curve. First developed in 1958, this purports to show a relationship between the unemployment rate and inflation. As unemployment falls, it argues, the push for wage rises increases, leading to a lift in inflation.

The Fed, as the central financial instrument of the corporate-financial elite, is concerned above all with preventing a surge in wages as the labor market tightens and workers feel themselves in a stronger position to resume their struggle for better wages and working conditions. The explosive growth of stock prices and corporate profits over the past several decades, and the record increase in the ratio of corporate profits to labor income over this period, have depended on a relentless offensive against the working class, carried out by the entire political establishment, Democratic no less than Republican.

In this, the trade unions have played the central role, artificially suppressing the class struggle through their unbroken efforts to prevent strikes and isolate and sabotage them when they break out, while maintaining the political domination of the capitalist two-party system over the working class. To this point, despite being widely despised by workers, the trade union apparatuses, acting on behalf of the ruling class, have been able to continue to hold back the working class, as reflected in the continued stagnation in wages.

However, fears are mounting within ruling class circles that this long period of suppressed class struggle is coming to an end, with signs of intense social anger and political radicalization of working people increasing.

According to the Phillips model, with the official US unemployment rate at the historically low level of 4.3 percent, wages and inflation should now start to rise and interest rates should be lifted, if only at a slow rate. The Fed maintains that the absence of price increases is due to temporary factors and therefore “looks through” the present data to what it regards as longer-term processes that will eventually push up inflation.

But this view ignores that the fact that what were regarded for a long period as “normal” economic conditions and relations no longer exist. Price changes are, to be sure, affected by temporary fluctuations--a fall in cell phone charges has been cited as a cause of the most recent price slowdown--but the overall trend is down.

Furthermore, there has been no significant increase in wages, with pay levels continuing to fall in real terms. As the International Monetary Fund noted in its most recent assessment of the US economy, more than half of US households have a lower real income today than they did in 2000.

And the unemployment rate no longer signifies what it once did. This is because any newly created jobs are increasingly low-paid, part-time, casual and contract employment, not the full-time jobs which prevailed when the Phillips model was developed in the midst of the post-war capitalist boom.

The breakdown of the Phillips curve, on which the Fed seeks to base its decisions, points to far-reaching changes in the very structure of the US economy.

In analysing these changes, it must always be borne in mind that the driving force of the capitalist economy is not the expansion of economic output as such, but profit. And the mode of profit accumulation has undergone vast changes in recent decades--a process that began with the rise of financialisation in the 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s, and then took a further leap in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

Increasingly, the profits of major corporations are no longer derived from direct investment in productive activities, involving the employment of more workers, leading to wage increases, but through the appropriation of wealth produced elsewhere.

This takes place by two means: the siphoning off of wealth by financial means, and the monopolisation of scientific advancements via the establishment of so-called intellectual property rights by hi-tech firms such as Google, Apple and others, and by giant pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies.

At the heart of this process stand the banks, the investment funds and hedge funds, which dominate the shareholdings of major corporations. It has been calculated that whereas in 1990 the 10 biggest financial conglomerates controlled 10 percent of US assets, they now control 75 percent.

These financial behemoths do not directly produce surplus value--they appropriate it from other areas of the economy in a form of parasitism.

And just as in biology the parasite depends on the flow of life resources from the host, so these corporations depend, in the final analysis, on the flow of surplus value from other areas of the economy. Hence their very mode of accumulation--in which money seems to simply beget money--results in an ever more frenzied drive for the extraction of additional surplus value from the areas of the economy on which they feed, through the lowering of wages, more intensive exploitation and the destruction of previous working conditions.

The restructuring of the US economy to meet these demands has shattered the so-called Phillips curve and all other nostrums on which the Fed and other major policy-making bodies based themselves.

But even more significantly for the working class, it means that political perspectives of the past, based on the possibility of some kind of reform of the capitalist system, have been ground to dust. This poses the objective necessity for a socialist program, starting with the struggle for political power, the bringing of the “commanding heights” of the economy under public ownership, and the complete reorganisation of economic relations to meet human needs.