The Conference to Save the Environment

David Swanson

To my knowledge, and I very, very much hope I am wrong, this upcoming conference will be the very first environmental conference in the United States to take on the single gravest threat to the world’s natural environment and to the natural environment right here within the United States. May many more conferences and actions follow!

With some drugs, we have learned that we must take on the demand as well as the supply, and that we must treat that demand as an illness when harmful. Not so with petroleum. Thus far we have been more than content to go after the pipelines, while the consumer is let off the hook entirely. I use the singular term “consumer” purposively.

There is one entity in the United States that alone consumes more petroleum than most entire countries. The same entity primarily demolishes the natural environment far from these shores and on an unimaginable (and carefully unimagined) scale, but it is also the producer of 69% of U.S. environmental disasters that have been named Superfund sites by the EPA. It is also the third greatest polluter of U.S. waterways, despite its concentration on polluting other waters. It is the greatest producer of nuclear waste and threat, and the only institution intentionally spreading nuclear waste far and wide in the open air. It is the greatest proliferator of tools for destroying the natural environment abroad as well. Unlike any other entity on earth, it has displaced entire populations and rendered entire islands and other territories uninhabitable for millennia to come. And yet, as a problem worth focusing on, it has thus far escaped the attention of big environmental organizations.

This is like taking on racist buffoon politicians except Donald Trump, or oil companies except ExxonMobil, or nasty media outlets except Fox News. Who does such things? How to make sense of them?

The conference I am referring to is #NoWar2017: War and the Environment, happening in Washington, D.C. on September 22-24, and preceded by a September 17th flotilla to the Pentagon. You can sign up for either one at WorldBeyondWar.org. If you’re still waiting in suspense, the entity I am referring to is, of course, the United States military.

What America’s Aristocracy Want

Eric Zuesse

The American aristocracy want inequality of rights, with two basic polar-opposite classes: the ‘elite’, with themselves at the top of everything, and everybody else below them, as subjects to be ruled by them, in such ways as they (themselves, and their fellow ‘elite’) can agree to do. They are convinced that they have earned their high status, in one way or another, and they compete ferociously amongst themselves, to rise even higher within the aristocracy.

Many of the aristocrats think that they are ‘elite’ because they are the richest; many think instead that the ‘elite’ are the smartest or the most cunning; and, a third group think that the ‘elite’ are the “well-born” who descended from ’superior’ people — they believe in an inherited elitist version of Hitler’s generic racist vision, of the ‘Aryans’ versus the ‘non-Aryans’. Instead of being such racists, however, this third category are simply classists, who define their aristocratic rights as being inherited from their ancestors — so, they’re similar to racists, insofar as they are obsessed with geneaology (like racists are), but their obsession is focused instead upon their own family, not upon any “race” at all. They ‘come from the right family’, not from ‘the right race’. This third type of aristocrat believe in inherited rights and obligations. They believe that they possess an inherited right to control the public — the non-aristocrats (the ‘lower class’).

In whichever of the three ways that a member of the ‘elite’ might happen to see ‘the elite’ as being constituted, they all agree together, that an ‘elite’, which includes themselves, should rule (and should have more rights than) the ruled, and that everyone else (the public) should obey, or else be punished for not doing ‘their duty’ to obey, their ‘superiors’.

All of the aristocrats thus favor the aristocracy against the public. It is their solidarity, which binds them together, and which causes them to relate personally only to others of their type, and to view everyone else as being either their agents, or else their enemies — but not part of the aristocracy.

This hierarchical view has been the case for the aristocracy, ever since the dawn of civilization, and it is the case also today. Aristocrats are continually “social-climbing”: they can never have enough power, and enough authority, to satisfy themselves. What food and air are to everyone, power and authority additionally are to aristocrats — they are people who need power and authority just like everyone needs food and air. Non-aristocrats aren’t necessarily concerned at all about dominance-submission, but a person can’t be and behave as an aristocrat unless the person’s ideology is dominance-submission, inequality of rights. Aristocrats view themselves as being especially ‘entitled’.

Here, then, is a small example, in America, of how this universal system, of maintaining hierarchy and a corresponding inequality of rights, works:

Ron Unz, the publisher of the American Conservative magazine and of the news-and-commentary site, unz.com, republished on Labor Day, September 4th, his liberal article, which the neoliberal-neoconservative New America Foundation (which will be discussed here) had originally published on 19 November 2012, “Raising American Wages…By Raising American Wages”. This is an ordinary liberal article, not a neoliberal one; so, it struck me as being out-of-place, and I looked up Unz at that Foundation’s site and discovered that this article has been his only contribution there, and that, unlike other writers there, he was assigned no title there, not even “intern.” He’s listed under “Our People,” but with no information regarding how he’s one of “Our People,” other than that he wrote this article (which isn’t even present now at the Foundation’s website — just the title of it is posted there, along with his name, under “Our People”).

In 1994, Unz competed in the California Republican Gubernatorial primary against the incumbent Republican Governor Pete Wilson, who won. Unz claims an IQ of 214, and he believes strongly that the elite should consist of the most-intelligent people (such as he considers himself to be); so, he’s at odds against the pure libertarians or neoliberals, who believe instead that the elite should be the most-successful, the winners, the wealthiest people, the billionaires, who are presumed (by libertarians) to be the hardest-working people, and also to be the most intelligent ones (regardless whether by inheritance or otherwise).

The Foundation’s Board of Directors is entirely neoliberal-neoconservative (that being the global aristocracy’s ideology, in our time: today’s version of conservatism). The two co-Chairs are Reihan Salam, Executive Editor of National Review; and, Jonathan Soros, Chief Executive Officer of JS Capital Management LLC, which started on 16 June 2017. Prior to that, Jonathan had been at his father, George Soros’s, Soros Fund Management. National Review was created by William F. Buckley Jr., the eldest son of oil company lawyer turned oil tycoon William F. Buckley Sr. Of course, Jonathan Soros is a son of the billionaire George Soros. So: at the very top of the Foundation are two individuals who either descended from great wealth, or else were selected by people who were. This is standard practice for how aristocratic organizations are run: totally top-down, with as little input from employees as possible.

The other two top members of the Board include:

Anne-Marie Slaughter, President & CEO of New America: “From 2009–2011, she served as director of policy planning for the United States Department of State. … Dr. Slaughter is a contributing editor to the Financial Times and writes a bi-monthly column for Project Syndicate. She provides frequent commentary for both mainstream and new media and curates foreign policy news for over 140,000 followers on Twitter. Foreign Policy magazine named her to their annual list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.” As The Nation magazine (which is liberal, with a bit even of progressivism) described on 2 May 2014 the aptly named Slaughter, she was “a former State Department official [who] says that the way to stop Putin in Ukraine is to bomb Syria.” She thinks that the Syrian public — who overwhelmingly believe that the U.S. Government is their nation’s main enemy and the chief government responsible for bringing tens of thousands of jihadists into their country to overthrow their Government — need to be bombed more by America. She thinks that we’re not bombing Syria enough (to overthrow their sovereign Government). However, Slaughter’s type of thinking — neoconservatism, specifically — is almost universal amongst the American aristocracy; and, so, they choose individuals such as she, to run their political operations (including think-tanks). This is the way a Foundation wins the necessary big donations, such as from the top stockholders in Lockheed Martin. For example, Bernard Schwartz sold his company to Lockheed Martin for $9.1 billion in 1996, and thereby became perhaps the top investor in Lockheed Martin, and he was listed in the 2013 New America Foundation annual report as having donated “$250,000-$999,999” during 2012. The top donors during 2015, each having donated at least a million dollars that year, included the Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Soros’s Open Society Foundation, and three separate foundations that had each been established by Eric Schmidt and his Google Inc. Starting in 2011, Schmidt had assisted Hillary Clinton’s State Department (including Anne-Marie Slaughter) to plan the coup that in 2014 overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President, and thereby provoked the breakaway of Crimea and Donbass, two former regions of Ukraine, which had voted, respectively, 75% and 90%, for the President whom U.S. President Obama had just overthrown. They refused to be ruled by a U.S. stooge-regime. (Obama then slapped sanctions against Russia for assisting those people.) On 30 August 2017, the New York Times bannered “Google Critic Ousted from Think Tank” and reported that when Schmidt complained about that critic of Google, an employee at New America Foundation, Dr. Slaughter fired the individual. However, the employee refused to go quietly. The Foundation’s donors-list includes almost all of the U.S. Bilderbergers and Trilateralists — the proponents of control, over the world, by the U.S. aristocracy, a global Pax Americana, with the U.S. military serving as ‘the policeman for the world’ (in the interests of America’s aristocracy, of course), and, consequently, lots of weapons-sales for U.S. firms. It’s the neoliberal neoconservative jobs-plan for the American public.

David G. Bradley, Secretary of New America: “Mr. Bradley is chairman of Atlantic Media Company, whose holdings include The Atlantic, Quartz, National Journal, National Journal Daily, The Hotline, Government Executive Media Group, and Atlantic Media Strategies. At the age of 26, he launched his first company, the Advisory Board Company, a for-profit think tank ultimately serving 4,000 corporations, financial institutions, and medical centers around the world.” His particular specialty is sales-promotion for U.S. ‘defense’ contractors (of which Lockheed Martin is #1) — that’s to say: war-promotion.

A number of the other top people (Board members) at New America Foundation, are strong proponents of ‘an aristocracy of merit’ instead of just wealth. Reihan Salam, who was born to educated middle-class immigrants, is one. Another of the regular Directors, the financier and scholar Zachary Karabell, likewise “worked his way up,” and consequently is a prominent proponent of the liberal goal of an elite who are not only well-educated but also natively exceptionally smart. So too is Ron Unz, who founded a movement at Harvard to “abolish college tuition” and to admit all students on the basis of pure ‘merit’ (such as themselves — persons who didn’t get admitted as “legacy” or alumni-family admittees).

Among the other regular Directors of New America are: David Brooks, Fareed Zakaria, Walter Russell Mead, and James Fallows.

All of the Board, so far as I am aware, are both neoliberal and neoconservative, and there is no one on the Board who opposes America’s being, by far (as is widely believed around the world), “the country that represents the greatest threat to peace in the world today”.

In other words, what America’s aristocracy want is to conquer the entire world. Destroying Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, isn’t enough for them. But in order to do that, they first need to conquer the American public, such as by preventing a progressive, or even Bernie Sanders, from becoming, or serving as, the U.S. President. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic aristocrats want that, at all.

And, Google’s Eric Schmidt served as the brains behind Hillary Clinton’s entire Presidential campaign (though John Podesta is widely credited in the aristocracy’s ‘news’media as having done that). On 22 November 2016, Forbes reported, in praise of the neoliberal-neoconservative son-in-law of Donald Trump, “‘Jared Kushner is the biggest surprise of the 2016 election,’ adds Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, who helped design the Clinton campaign’s technology system. ‘Best I can tell, he actually ran the campaign and did it with essentially no resources.’” Schmidt himself knew better — he knew that Stephen Bannon, who had been supplied to Trump’s campaign by Trump’s earliest and biggest two donors, Robert Mercer of Cambridge Analytica, and Peter Thiel of Palantir Technologies, ran Trump’s data-analysis and strategy operation; and that, as Carole Cadwalladr of Britain’s Guardian reported on 7 May 2017, Eric Schmidt’s daughter had introduced the head of SCL Elections, to Thiel’s Palantir Technologies. Robert Mercer’s daughter Rebekah was also important, as the person who was the most directly involved with selling Trump on Bannon, to become his strategist. This is how Mercer and Thiel set Bannon up with the expertise and systems of both Mercer’s and Thiel’s companies, Cambridge and Palantir, through daughters of two billionaire IT investors, the Democrat Schmidt, and the Republican Mercer. (As for SCL’s contribution, that company was founded and is run by Nigel Oakes, whose specialty is deceiving people about everything including himself; so, SCL’s contribution to Trump’s campaign, other than that of Cambridge Analytica itself, which is jointly owned by both Mercer and Oakes, isn’t at all clear. What is clear has been best summarized in this passage from Jane Mayer’s 27 March 2017 New Yorkerarticle, “THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY: How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency”:

As far back as 2012, Bannon was the Mercers’ de-facto political adviser. Some people who have observed the Mercers’ political evolution worry that Bannon has become a Svengali to the whole family, exploiting its political inexperience and tapping its fortune to further his own ambitions. It was Bannon who urged the Mercers to invest in a data-analytics firm. He also encouraged the investment in Breitbart News, which was made through Gravitas Maximus, L.L.C., a front group that once had the same Long Island address as Renaissance Technologies [the stellar hedge fund co-led by the math geniuses James Simons and Robert Mercer]. In an interview, Bannon praised the Mercers’ strategic approach: “The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution. Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs.”

Last summer, Bannon and some other activists whom the Mercers have supported — including David Bossie, who initiated the Citizens United lawsuit — came together to rescue Trump’s wobbly campaign. Sam Nunberg, an early Trump adviser who watched Mercer’s group take over, said, “Mercer was smart. He invested in the right people.”

Bannon and Rebekah Mercer have become particularly close political partners. Last month, when Bannon denounced “the corporatist, globalist media” at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in his first public appearance since entering the White House, Rebekah Mercer was part of his entourage. Bannon supports some initiatives, such as a major infrastructure program, that are anathema to libertarians such as Robert Mercer. But the Wall Street Journal has described Bannon joking and swearing on the deck of the Mercers’ yacht, the Sea Owl, as if he were a member of the family. Bannon assured me that the Mercers, despite all their luxuries, are “the most middle-class people you will ever meet.”

Bannon understands the difference between authentic populism, which Bernie Sanders was leading, and which would have won the U.S. Presidency if the Democratic National Committee hadn’t stolen the primary contest for Hillary Clinton to become the Party’s nominee — stolen the race during the primaries — versus fake ‘populism’, such as Bannon himself was running, in order to get Trump ‘elected’. (He was running, that is, the type of ‘populism’ that can attract some of the heavy thumbs on the scale for their side, in this ‘democracy’, courtesy of America’s most-cunning billionaires.)

America’s aristocracy buy ‘news’media in order to prevent such outcomes as an authentic populist (a progressive) winning the Presidency. So, that hasn’t happened since the time of FDR, after the great Republican Crash of 1929. Today, the U.S. is more like the world’s leading fascist nation than like one of the world’s leading anti-fascist ones. Fascism is among the many fake forms of ‘populism’, and cannot exist at all without huge secret and financial support from the aristocracy. In the modern world, after the end of feudalism, all that the aristocracy want is fascism. In the old days, it was feudalism they wanted; but, now, it’s fascism.

And, they are even willing to endorse outright nazism — racist fascism — when it serves their purpose. Such circumstances, however, rarely occur.

Empirical studies in the social sciences show generally that the richer and more successful a person is, the more he/she tends to be psychopathic. There is nothing exceptional about America’s aristocracy, except that it tends to be the richest and the most successful one of all.

CLARIFICATIONS: A reader-comment elsewhere, that’s full of misunderstandings of this article, stated:

There is nothing populist about fascism. Fascism is a form of totalitarian socialism that eschews public ownership of the means of production but rather co-opts industry to do its bidding without the ruling thugs having to bother with the details of production and commerce. Thus, the aristocrats (moneyed interests) do not want fascism because that means they would be at the beck and call of the ruling thugs. No. What they want is crony capitalism in which, as now, they hold the whip hand. To think of government (or the people) as calling the shots now is be out of touch.

This article doesn’t assert that fascism is populist, but fascism is fake-‘populist’; and, the original Nazi Party’s constant emphasis upon the German “Volk” or “People,” was a prominent example of that ‘populism’. Of course, every fascist party is actually, as Mussolini himself acknowledged, “corporationist,” and therefore represents the aristocracy, not the public. Furthermore, saying “the aristocrats (moneyed interests) do not want fascism because that means they would be at the beck and call of the ruling thugs,” entails two misunderstandings. First, “the aristocrats (moneyed interests” are, themselves, “the ruling thugs,” who control the front-people or “politicians.” Secondly, any aristocracy, in the modern world, wants fascism, because what feudalism was to the agrarian era, fascism is to the industrial era: the aristocracy’s (the billionaires’) control of the government. Fascism is merely the modern form of feudalism. Whereas in feudalism, the aristocracy aimed for control over physical land (“landed estates”), it now aims for control over international corporations — which, in turn, control the aristocracy’s government, and thereby also strongly influence foreign governments. And, of course, if a country is democratic (ruled by the public) instead of fascistic, then the aristocracy doesn’t control it. But today’s America is a fascism, not a democracy.

Cultural Imperialism And The Seeds of Catastrophe: Ripping Up The Social Fabric of India

Colin Todhunter

Foreign capital is dictating the prevailing development agenda in India. The aim is to replace current structures with a system of industrial agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns (see this). The plan is for a fraction of the population left in farming working on contracts for large suppliers and large chain supermarkets offering a diet of highly processed, denutrified, genetically altered food based on crops soaked with chemicals and grown in increasingly degraded soils according to an unsustainable model of agriculture that is less climate/drought resistant, less diverse and unable to achieve food security.

Unfortunately, India’s political elites seem to be hellbent on capitulating to the needs of foreign players and their mindset that implies ‘poorer’ nations must be helped out of their awful ‘backwardness’ by the West and its powerful corporations and billionaire ‘philanthropists’. As with Monsanto and the Gates Foundation in Africa and the ‘helping’ of Africans by imposing a controlling system of agriculture, there is more than a hint of ethnocentricity and the old colonialist mentality at work.

The type of ‘development’ or ‘globalisation’ being rolled out by Washington and the World Bank is based on a need to homogenise cultures, production and consumption across the world because powerful transnational corporations’ business models rely on fast profits and global uniformity.

We need look no further than farming to see this at work. To understand what has happened to agriculture, whether in the West or in India, we must begin with the most basic element: how seeds have become increasingly uniform, less genetically diverse and subject to the control of corporate interests.

Eradicating seed diversity

In his report for The Ecologist, Oliver Tickell notes that for millennia, cereals were grown as ‘landraces’. Every field would include maybe half a dozen separate cereal species, divisible into as many as 200 varieties. Each would embody considerable genetic diversity. During the 19th century, however, farmers began to pick out specific lines that yielded higher returns under ideal agronomic conditions. Then, in search of greater stability and uniformity, crop breeders selected single seeds from these lines, bulked them up over successive plantings, then named and marketed them as distinct varieties.

Shortly before the first world war, these named varieties were hybridised in search of the ideal combination of agronomic qualities, putting together, for example, traits for large seed heads and short straw to increase yields yet further (under ideal conditions) and increase profitability for ‘efficient’ farmers.

As a result, plant breeders eradicated genetic diversity. As crops are genetically uniform, they can no longer evolve in the field to withstand insects and fungi and have to be constantly sprayed with pesticides. Moreover, the short straw length means that more of the plants’ energy goes into the grain – but then they can’t grow up above the weeds, so the system relies on repeated use of herbicides.

The use of these proprietary seeds and synthetic chemical inputs used to make them develop is a huge money-spinner for agribusiness companies. While in certain cases, yields have increased, there have been massive environmental, social and economic costs for the type of Green Revolution agriculture that has been rolled out, not least in terms of bad food and diets, degraded soils, water pollution and scarcity, poor health and the destruction of formerly largely self-sufficient rural communities and an increasing dependence on fossil fuels (transportation of food across greater distances, reliance on oil/hydrocarbon-based inputs) with all the implications that entails for climate change.

And as for climate change, genetically diverse crops are now needed more than ever; crops that have evolved to meet changing conditions, producing reliable yields all the time, rather than maximum yield when everything is just right but with the risk of total crop failure when you get flood, or drought, or some new insect or fungus or virus.

The eradication of seed diversity went much further than merely prioritising corporate seeds: it deliberately sidelined traditional seeds kept by farmers that were actually higher yielding. For example, the scientist R.H. Richharia was the director of the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack at the time of the Green Revolution in India.

Richharia’s research showed that several indigenous rice varieties gave high yields without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Unfortunately, these traditional varieties were ignored in favour of the newer corporate seeds. These traditional different varieties are ideal needed for different conditions. Richharia documented the existence of indigenous high-yielding varieties, early-maturing varieties, drought-resistant varieties, scented varieties, special flavour varieties and the like.

Once we began to see genetic diversity being eradicated in the field, what we also saw was a change in farming practices towards chemical-intensive monocropping, often for export or for far away cities rather than local communities, and ultimately the undermining or eradication of self-contained rural economies, traditions and cultures.

Cultural imperialism and the eradication of indigenous culture

Green Revolution technology and ideology imported from the West has merely served to undermine an indigenous farming sector that once catered for the diverse dietary needs and climatic conditions of India and it has actually produced and fuelled drought, degraded soils, illnesses and malnutrition, farmer distress and many other issues.

Environmental scientist Viva Kermani locates India’s traditional farming practices within the framework of deep-seated cultural and spiritual meaning. She notes that centuries before the appearance of the modern-day environmental movement, the shruti (Vedas, Upanishads) and smruti (Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, other scriptures) instructed people that the animals and plants found in India are sacred; that like humans, our fellow creatures, including plants have consciousness; and, therefore, all aspects of nature are to be revered.

The Vedic deities have deep symbolism and many layers of existence. One such association is with ecology. Surya is associated with the sun, the source of heat and light that nourishes everyone; Indra is associated with rain, crops, and abundance; and Agni is the deity of fire and transformation and controls all changes. There was also Vrikshayurveda – an ancient Sanskrit text on the science of plants and trees. It contains details about soil conservation, planting, sowing, treatment, propagating, how to deal with pests and diseases and a lot more.

On the other hand, Kermani notes that the Western religions, especially Christianity, viewed this nature worship as paganism, failing to recognise the scientific and spiritual basis of the relationship between man and nature and how this is the only way to sustain ecological balance.

Similarly, Vandana Shiva outlines the traditional knowledge of women and the biodiversity that protects the earth are threatened by the monocultures, intensive chemical input, and large processing factories that come with GM Mustard – the next push in the treadmill of Green Revolution technology. Women’s caretaking of the seed, food and sacredness of mustard is to be stripped away, while local oil mills are shut down and corporations take over the value chain from seed-to-oil.

In trying to displace a traditional pre-existing system of production with one that is controlled by Western corporations (which, as Kermani implies, regards nature as something to be dominated and subjugated by corporations in a quest for power and profit), there is an underlying assumption that the Indian farmer is backward, ignorant and in need of ‘help’. This type of cultural hegemony helps legitimise the increasing economic domination of Indian food and agriculture by foreign interests.

But nothing could be further from the truth. As described in this paper in the Journal of South Asian Studies, for thousands of years farmers experimented with different plant and animal specimens acquired through migration, trading networks, gift exchanges or accidental diffusion. By learning and doing, trial and error, new knowledge was blended with older, traditional knowledge systems. The farmer possesses acute observation, good memory for detail and transmission through teaching and story-telling.

Moreover, the papers’s authors Marika Vicziany and Jagjit Plahe argue that smallholder farmers (the backbone of Indian agriculture) have traditionally engaged in risk minimising strategies. They took measures to manage drought, grow cereals with long stalks that can be used as fodder, engage in cropping practices that promote biodiversity, ethno-engineer soil and water conservation, use self-provisioning systems on farm recycling and use collective sharing systems such as managing common resource properties.

Farmers know their micro-environment, so they can plant crops that mature at different times, thereby facilitating more rapid crop rotation without exhausting the soil. By contrast, the authors argue that large-scale industrially-based agricultural production erodes biodiversity by depleting the organisms that live in soil, and making adverse changes to the structure of the soil and the kind of plants that can be grown in such artificially-created environments.

Vicziany and Plahe note that many of the practices of small farmers which were once regarded as primitive or misguided are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate. For instance, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90 percent of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

It is no surprise that various high-level reports have thus called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in order to achieve global sustainable food security. Instead, what we see is (despite progress in Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh) the marginalisation of organic agriculture by corporate interests, not least in India by the powerful agrochemical lobby.

The authors conclude that traditional food production systems depend on using the knowledge and expertise of village communities and cultures in contrast to prioritising imported, industrial–commercial inputs. The widespread but artificial conditions created by the latter work against the survival of traditional knowledge, which creates and sustains unique indigenous farming practices and food culture.

Given that India is still very much an agrarian-based economy with the majority still employed in agriculture or agriculture-related activities, what we continue to see in India is an attack by foreign capital on the social, economic and cultural fabric of the nation.

Whether it is fuelled by Bill Gates, the World Bank’s neoliberal-based rhetoric about ‘enabling the business of agriculture’, or The World Economic Forum’s ‘Grow’ strategy, the implication is that the world’s farmers must capitulate to the West and its powerful corporations and a globalised, corrupt system of capitalism that will funnel profits to these companies while hooking farmers on a chemical treadmill.

What we currently see is the capturing of markets and global supply chains for the benefit of transnational corporations involved in food production. We see the destruction of natural habitat in Indonesia to produce palm oil. We see the use of cynical lies (linked to palm oil production) to corrupt India’s food system with genetically modified seeds. We witness the devastating impact on farmers and rural communities. We see the degradation of soils, health and water resources.

And, in places like India, we also see the transnational corporate commercialisation and displacement of localised productive systems: systems centred on smallholder/family farms that are more productive and sustainable, produce a healthier and more diverse diet, are better for securing local and regional food security and are the life-blood of communities.

Farms worked by farmers who Viva Kermani says have “legitimate claims to being scientists, innovators, natural resource stewards, seed savers and hybridisation experts are being reduced to becoming recipients of technical fixes and consumers of the poisonous products of a growing agricultural inputs industry.”

The same farmers whose seeds and knowledge was stolen by corporations to be bred for proprietary chemical-dependent hybrids, now to be genetically engineered.

We also see the ripping up of India’s social fabric all for the bottom line of corporate profit.

Climate Change Could Be Fatal: An Open Letter To Canada’s Business Community

Bill Henderson

This third essay on my new metaphor for effectively treating climate change is about climate change being potentially fatal for all we know and love, potentially fatal for civilization as we know it, maybe even for humanity itself. Do we need to consider a major disruption in our society and economy for effective treatment of what could be a fatal disease?

Cancer, without treatment, is almost always a terminal disease.  A diagnosis of cancer is not something easily accepted; not something that rests easily on your mind. This could be fatal. In fact, depending upon the cancer and how early/late it has been diagnosed, it might prove fatal no matter how vigorously treatment is begun. Senator McCain’s brain cancer, for example, is predicted to kill more than 90% of those unfortunate enough to get it despite treatment. Fortunately, today the majority of  cancers can be treated successfully.

During my cancer treatment this summer, David Wallace-Wells published a very scary essay called ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ at New York magazine. In reaction there was a storm of controversy about how accurately he had interpreted the climate change science followed by many essays about communicating the doom and gloom aspect of the building climate problem. I’m going to try and pass on the best of that debate within what I think are the key factors for analyzing the risk of potential climate fatality for civilization, humanity and other forms of life, and why I think getting to effective treatment quickly must be top of mind for everybody on the planet – especially the business community.
First of all, Wallace-Wells wrote about the suite of climate change dangers that pose existential, fatal risks to civilization, if not humanity itself.  He wrote with emotion and urgency in keeping with the cancer-like threat. Most climate change commentary focuses upon temporal and spatial frames where climate change is merely inconvenient: extreme weather today, sea-level rise in the short term, effects on crops or ocean acidification or desertification, and where adaption is possible in our presently configured world. Only so-called ‘doom and gloom’ commentators venture into writing about possible dangers such as methane feedbacks or abrupt climate change that are possible but low probability, at least until temperatures rise more substantially.
These possible fatal dangers have for several decades been labeled as dangerous climate change and have been the subject of international treaties going back to the Rio Summit in 1992. Just as it is possible for newly diagnosed cancer victims to study up on how possibly fatal their particular cancer is, those concerned – because you could now consider climate change as a possible fatal problem for everybody – can and should study up on the climate science and commentary concerned with dangerous climate change. But unlike cancer, there is a lot of uncertainty, because human caused climate change has never happened before; scientists use proxies from paleo-history and models predicting how warming will play out, but climate change is an experiment that has never been run before, and the risk of fatality will never be as knowable as cancer.

What is known is that there is substantial reason for concern and Wallace-Wells wrote up scary scenarios that deserve attention.  Unfortunately, he made both factual and analytic mistakes, and climate scientists such as Michael Mann and others wrote pointing this out, and questioning whether his pessimistic focus was useful or detrimental in enlightening interested readers on a subject that the public isn’t well informed about.

Wallace-Wells wrote about heat death and an uninhabitable Earth. James Lovelock made a prediction more than a decade ago that warming would leave only a few hundreds of millions of humans clustered around the still liveable poles. But most climate scientists see this as at best only a very long term risk and only if climate mitigation continues to be ineffectual. Wallace-Wells wrote up a worst case vision of methane from melting permafrost and clathrates where the state of the art climate science predicts only gradual and minor carbon feedbacks from such sources, unless or until temperatures rise more than the 2-4C rise expected this century. He postulates agricultural, economic and global security concerns that are valid as climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’. As climate scientist Kevin Anderson has expressed:  a 4C rise in temperature, which is possible in the second half of the century with projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is incompatible with civilization as we know it. 

‘Sam Carana’s’ 10C rise in temperature by 2026 is another example of exaggerating the science and foreshortening timeframes – while maybe possible theoretically, in reality there is an extremely low probability of such a rise in temperature happening so fast. Wallace-Wells mistakenly over-exaggerated at least the degree of danger to humanity in the short term. To his credit he acknowledging that. But his essay drew massive attention to the possibility that climate change could be fatal to civilization and humanity, maybe even to most of the life on the planet.  Many experts wrote to defend if not his text scientifically, at least his vision of how serious a threat climate could get to be.

Going back at least to Rio in 1992, and central to the agreement at COP 21 in Paris in 2015, our governments have agreed to limit green house gas emissions and landuse change so that temperature rise would be kept below a reasonable ‘guardrail’ to limit the possibilities of dangerous climate change. The guardrail was to stay under a 2C rise in temperature, under  a 1.5C rise if possible. But what if this guardrail is too high?

Personally, after decades of reading and learning as a climate activist, I find James Hanson and colleagues have had the best insight into climate change as a possibly fatal problem requiring urgent treatment. After the unprecedented ‘Big Melt’ of the Arctic icecap in 2006, Hansen and co. published papers including Atmospheric Targets: Where Should Humanity Aim? that used paleo-climate studies and modelling to suggest that a melting Arctic icecap and, hence, even a 1C rise, would eventually push us out of the Holocene Era that has been the cradle for civilization since the end of the last ice-age 10,000 years ago. With potentially fatal consequences.
Our climate is a system, and follows common system dynamics. Climate change  is non-linear and there are feedbacks and tipping points and points of no return. Small changes in Earth’s orbit and inclination – Milankovitch cycles – instigate latent CO2 feedbacks that have been instrumental in whipsawing the very dramatic changes we see in the paleo record of the past 100,000 years of ice age / warming cycles.  Human caused GHG emissions threaten similar feedbacks and urgent action to return to below 350 ppm is needed to protect the planet’s ice sheets and present carbon sinks before it is too late.
Hansen’s warning is very much like a cancer diagnosis where the cancer is treatable until it begins to migrate through the body and metastasises upon a vital organ. The past decade of extraordinary temperature increase in the Arctic is to many climate scientists ever increasing evidence that the Arctic is the ‘vital organ’ in danger and that because we haven’t done the emission reduction heavy lifting that should have been done to limit and warming, climate change should now be regarded as an emergency.

To me, Hansen”s science and warning gets more alarming every year of melting icecaps and ineffective mitigation. Rising temperatures – even a 2C rise – could lead to Wallace-Wells scary fatal scenario.  It would be on par with a person like myself with a cancer diagnosis, aware that time is vital and that the danger is growing, but blocked from effective treatment.

So, we must get back below a 1C rise in global temperature before the polar icecaps melt irreversibly. Canada and the world have agreed only to stay as far under 2C as possible.  But pledges to date will leave us far above 2C. Canada, for example, has a 30% of 2005 levels by 2030 target (which most experts expects us to fail to meet).  Furthermore, the carbon budget left to burn before we cross a 2C increase is shrinking rapidly due to advancing climate science (for example, Rogelj et al,Tan et al, MacDougall et al, Friedrich et al, Proistosescu et al, and Schurer et al) and continuing emissions of just under 10GT per annum. Therefore emissions must decline by something like 100% by 2030 to even stay under the 2C guardrail.

The present mitigation strategy relies upon decarbonization aided by carbon pricing to do the heavy lifting. Decarbonization requires a long timeframe such as the now obsolete 2050 of the Kyoto Accord era. Fossil fuel use still accounts for over 80% of global energy use to at least 2040 in informed projections (US Energy Information Administration, for example). The decarbonization strategy is clearly not the necessary treatment for what looks more and more like a possibly fatal problem. Market driven decarbonization which allows continued unregulated fossil fuel use is clearly pretend mitigation. If we treated cancer this way I and millions of others would just die. We have decarbonization and not effective mitigation because only market friendly mitigation is allowed.

A scheduled wind-down of all fossil fuel production and use, responsibly and fairly regulated in accordance with carbon budget science is a last chance to keep us safe from the suite of dangers we know imminently threaten. A scheduled wind-down could be not only effective – the best path to reducing GHG emissions at a scale now needed – but also the best mitigation path using and protecting our market-based governance.

I am addressing this open letter to Canada’s business community (and business globally, especially within the US) as the particular group in our society that has done the most to obstruct effective climate mitigation. Business organizations and leaders have repeatedly led in financing and spreading climate denial and have repeatedly used their powerful influence with governments to block any and every climate initiative that they thought might get in the way of business. Whether it was ideology or fear of potentially negative financial consequences, no one group has done more to keep us from effective treatment than business.  (Of course, there has always been businesspeople providing climate leadership, but only a minority and within business constraints.)

One of my favourite books is WHY STATES FAIL (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012) which explains why ‘Goldilocks’ sized government – big enough to protect property rights and the rule of law, but not powerful enough for elites to seize the gains from innovation/investment virtuous circles – enabled the industrial revolution and the exponential growth that led to our incredibly wealthy and complex modern society. Except that Acemoglu and Robinson don’t mention how business elites have captured governance globally in our present era, and are stymieing mitigation of escalating problems such as climate change. Governments everywhere nurture business and put on the Golden Straitjacket to protect investment and innovation for good reason, but effective treatment now requires draconian regulation of fossil fuels.

Business leadership needs to recognize climate change as a rapidly building threat to all of society, to all we love and care about, and recognize the need for effective mitigation. Business has to get itself out of government’s way for everybody’s sake. Otherwise climate change could be fatal.

Gauri Lankesh Assassination: Attempt In Establishing Rule Of Sword

T Navin

One of the English phrases says that “Pen is mightier than the sword”. The attempt by sword to put down pen is purely a result of fear that Pen has created. Starting from Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh, the series of attempts to put an end to their lives is a result of this fear. Each of them had taken on the conservative rightwing forces – aiming towards ending irrationalism and superstition, re-interpreting the historical figures in a secular light, building in rationalism into literary work and taking fight with the Hindutva forces. These very ideas of rationalism & scientific temper, secularism, respect for pluralism goes against the basic values of the rightwing. They believe in power of the sword and re-establishing the power of Sword was their natural necessity. A pen taking up fight with a sword was something unacceptable for them.

Establishing a fascist regime in society demands an imposition of new social norms. The new social norms seek to reduce the democratic spaces to those using pen and increasing spaces to those using sword. It depends on the ideological side one represents. In this despotic society, some are more powerful than the other whether in terms of religion, caste, class, race or region. An ideology based on supremacy of the few is sought to be imposed through use of the Sword. Sword
represents an effort in this direction. Those using pen and representing rational voices are sought to be crushed through the Sword. The democratic spaces available to those using pen are sought to be ended.

Lankesh represented a rational voice in society. She was highly critical of Hindutva forces and sought to expose them. She strongly opposed the communal politics of Sangh Parivar. In 1992, Lankesh voiced against the polarization that took place following Babri Masjid demolition. In 2003, she opposed the Sangh Parivar campaign to hinduise the Sufi shrine Guru Dattatreya Baba Budan Dargah located at Baba Budan giri. She headed Koumu Souharda Vedike, a forum for promotion of communal harmony. She openly campaigned against caste system and exposed the double standards of Hindutva groups.

Lankesh carried forward the legacy of her father in the form of the tabloid ‘Lankesh Patrike’. It ran without any dependence on advertising money. Following the death of his father, she carried the legacy in the name of ‘Gauri Lankesh Patrike’. The paper was vocal on issues of secularism, communalism, and the rights of the Dalits and downtrodden. Her editorials were a reflection of her strong political views carried under the title ‘Kanda hage’ (As I saw it). Her last editorial dealt on the fake news propagated by the rightwing and the efforts undertaken by alternative news sites to expose them.

Combining activism with journalism, she went on to expose the rightwing through her paper. She also participated in various rights and justice issues. Her support to social movements and struggles across is well known. Lankesh also supported the movement carried out in JNU and Gujarat following Una. She considered Kanhaiya Kumar, Shehla Rashid, Umar Khalid and Jignesh Mevani as her adopted children. She was increasingly being perceived as a threat by right wing forces for exposing them.

The assassination of Lankesh is an attempt at crushing viewpoints that go against Sangh Parivar brand of politics. The act of imposing power of the sword is an integral part of training provided by the saffron forces. The shakhas rather than preaching the usage of pen and its related attributes like debating and discussion, seek to provide training in usage of arms, thrishuls, sticks, guns to their upcoming cadres. In one sided lectures around the greatness of the past, critical discussions are hardly allowed. It is natural that devoid of rationality and logic and an emotion built around religion interpreted in its extremities, such people go on to commit acts which result in such incidents.

While the act of ending lives of rationalists may at first look as an attempt at instilling fear by those who took up the act, on the other hand it is only a result of the fear that has filled the spine of the rightwing forces. A BJP member had even went on to state that Gauri Lankesh faced death for being critical of BJP. Internet trollers who support BJP even went on to use abusive language against her through their tweets.

Inclusive of the lynching incidents, the acts of killing rationalists, the targeting of intellectuals are a means adopted by the BJP regime to impose the power of the sword. It is thus natural that more than on focus on pens, it is the tanks which is sought to be brought into Universities. More than extension of support to progressive groups, it is the lynch mobs who acquire an important space in the current regime. More than Social activists, it is the Bajrang activists who are given a free reign.

The assassination of Gauri Lankesh is sad. But it should also be an alarm call to all those who want to protect the idea of plural, secular and democratic India. It also needs to go beyond that to have a just and egalitarian India. It is only by bringing back the might of the Pen through protecting people such as Lankesh, that a fascist India can be prevented from emerging.

Visions Of Europe: Macron In Athens

Binoy Kampmark

The myth can have a greater effect than an untruth, and those who are in the business of manufacturing and building them never go out of business.  France’s President Emmanuel Macron has, for months, busily promoted a new myth: that of being European saviour, the man with healing visions and supportive panaceas, a counter weight to the toxicity of Trumpland.

Things, however, have been rocky. The sheen is coming off, as it was bound to. He is slumming at approval ratings similar to the man he replaced, François Hollande, at around the same time of his tenure. (That is hardly surprising, given that his victory over Marine Le Pen was very much a vote against her, rather than a full hearted endorsement for the youthful opportunist.)  He is overseeing a salad-days assembly of freshly elected candidates that make the radical project for renewal less than smooth.

This has led to such cosmetic gestures as the speech on Pnyx Hill in Athens, delivered with the note of warning we have come to expect from the former banker.  “In order not to be ruled by bigger powers such as the Chinese and the Americans, I believe in a European sovereignty that allows us to defend ourselves and exist.”  So, from this ancient summit of previous assemblies conveyed in antiquity, Macron reflected and even directed.

Central to this is a collective, even civilizational one: Europe, together, wary and ready to combat any threatened sandwiching, or even absorption, by other powers.  “Are you afraid of this European ambition?” he asked rhetorically.

One way of doing so is to draw out the populist sentiment, the cynics, the sceptics, and anyone who feels that the European bloc has begun to drift into bureaucratic, self-imploding oblivion.  “I don’t want a new European treaty discussed behind closed doors, in the corridors of Brussels, Berlin or Paris.”

When a crisis develops and takes hold, the managers and public relations terms counter with a “road map”. This is Macron’s hope: to generate some form of plan that will convince European leaders to open the floodgates to public debate.  Gather, insists Macron, the views of European citizens on the bloc.

The European vision Macron insists on pushing is a turbocharged version of centralisation, integration and consolidation, coated with a good amount of liberal market philosophy. It breathes and sings (in so far as visions can) to the same song sheet that populists have trashed and suspected. It panders to a market vision in a manner that edges out, rather than brings in, the social welfare softening that might dull revolution.

His proposed reforms also entail bowing, in some small measure, to the critics Europe’s mobility principle, which he feels has been unduly exploited.  The European Commission’s “posted” workers directive, for instance, permitting companies to dispatch employees to other EU countries while still paying taxes and benefits in their own country, is being flagged for reform. To totally remove it would be tantamount to violating a key feature of the EU bloc, so Macron and his tacticians prefer what might euphemistically be termed tightening.

The reason for this, claims Macron, is that cheap labour from member states located in the east – the old story of the European integration project – tends to flow to affluent western states.  The result is, horror of horrors, unfair competition and spectre of unemployment in the west.

This issue became the basis of an indignant exchange between France and Poland in August, one that showed the European family is a far from happy one.  Macron has taken it upon himself to strut the European theme bossily, lecturing eurosceptics and nationalists with enthusiasm.  The Polish government that took office in 2015 was one such target last month.  As he claimed in the company of his Bulgarian hosts, “Poland is not defining Europe’s future today and nor will it define the Europe of tomorrow.”

As part of his central and eastern Europe visit, Macron deemed Europe “a region created on the basis of values, a relationship with democracy and public freedoms which Poland today is in conflict with.” Conflict, in so far as Poland has shrugged off suggestions that it should accept migrants from the Middle East.

Poland’s Prime Minister, Beata Szydło, preferred to turn the tables on the French upstart on the topic of such values, suggesting in no small part that the French president, not Warsaw, was intent on disrupting European unity: “I advise the president that he should be more conciliatory… Perhaps his arrogant comments are a result of a lack of (political) experience.”

Closer to home, the troubles are not better for Macroland and its adherents.  One political thorn, and getting thornier by the day for the Macron project, is that figure of the French left, Jean-Luc Mélechon. His La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement, it can scant be forgotten, received a respectable 20 percent of the vote.

For him, Macron is the target, to be repelled and contained by means of an insurrection.  Some voters, if one is to take the polling of Paris Match and Sud Radio seriously, suggest that Mélechon is even more of a formidable obstacle than the Front National. Should he going with any degree of impassioned enthusiasm, Macron may well find himself not only short changed but outdone.

Children Can’t Wait: Taking Steps Towards Their Protective Present

Mahima Sukheja

On a Sunday morning, I woke up to a plethora of messages on social media about the increased outrage amongst parents in Gurgaon against a top school of India. The issue concerned the murder after an attempt to sexual assault of a 7 year old child within the school premise by a bus conductor. With no other available option, I had to browse through media channels to get the latest update. For a minute I wondered, if the haste could be shown by the media and society at large on these issues during normal times as well.

Nevertheless, my point here is not to comment on the functioning and ethics of news channels but on the trajectory a society follows whenever an issue is popped up. Looking at the past incidences, I am not really confident of a continuous public discourse on children’s issues. I hope I am proven wrong here.

The magnitude of Child protection issue and sexual abuse in particular hasn’t surfaced recently in our country, but gained attention now largely because of availability and accessibility of internet and instant message sharing amongst people and in ways through passage of POCSO Act and subsequent guidelines by government andawareness campaigns by NGOs.

For those not much acquainted with the magnitude of the issue, quoting Women and Child Development Ministry’s data from Study on Child Abuse in 2007, India has the world’s largest number of Child Sexual Abuse cases; for every 155th minute a child less than 16 years is raped, for every 13th hour a child under 10, and one in every 10 children sexually abused at any point of time. While a previous UNICEF’s survey stated that in India, every second child is being exposed to one or the other form of sexual abuse and every fifth child faces critical forms of it, a recent survey of a sample of 45,844 respondents by World Vision India an NGO, also reiterates one in every two children in the age group of 12-18 years is a victim of child sexual abuse and one in five don’t feel safe due to the fear of being sexually abused. It is also crucial to note that in majority of cases, the child is known to the perpetuator and there may remain underreporting of the cases.

The incident in question brings into limelight the risks that children face and a larger issue of “Schools being safe spaces for children”. While parents look for the ‘best’ schools for their children, this best is mostly defined in terms of available facilities, quality learning and environment and the school’s performance in board exams. The participation of parents is (willingly) reduced to attending PTA meetings or to the most following up on home assignments leaving their children to the mercy of school taking management decisions. The school is itself not forthcoming on including the diverse voices. Unfortunately, the relationship has become more power and money driven in majority of the institutions. The situation is worse in low cost private schools which not only don’t have quality learning but suffer from unsafe physical infrastructure. The comprehensive concept of safe schools is yet to arrive in these mushroomed schools. The State government schools are no better with narratives of physical beating and humiliation being quite common amongst children despite a blanket ban on corporal punishment under the RTE Act 2005.

While the current case demands timely justice, if there is at all for the parents; this case along with others which were not highlighted in the media but took place on similar days, such as rape of a 5 year old girl in East Delhi or a school bus that crushed 6 year old girl after dropping her home should stay as nerve wrecking in the minds of individuals and must remain a starting and an active milestone for individuals and community to bring about and push for the changes at their and at the systemic level. I have heard similar response or rather a question by people, on what they could do with these cases.In fact, each stakeholder has a vital role to play in protection and responding to the rights and needs of children for Children Can’t Wait.

Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules, 2007 mandates every school to abide by guidelines issued by the Centre and the states for the prevention of sexual abuse of children. Even now, the schools remain unaware of the guidelines. The State thus not only needs to make aware and disseminate the guidelines to the schools but also make sure that the guidelines are adhered with. The monitoring committee needs to be made active not only on paper but in its true spirit and functioning.

State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), set up in each State to promote, protect and defend child rights needs to monitor the set of rules established by the State to be followed in schools. And if there is none, it is their mandate to provide the ‘recommendations’ for the necessary action to be taken. SCPCR should be open in taking the support of the NGOs to be their extending hand for disseminating awareness on children’s issues, bring up cases of abuse to them.

Schools need to form ‘child safeguarding policy’, build mechanism for its implementation and strengthen the capacity of its staff (teaching and non-teaching), children and parents and associated stakeholders (vendors) on the awareness and the usage of the policy. Specific sessions on abuse prevention and reporting should be a part of life skills/sports/arts classes. Little interventions such as ‘buddy system’, ‘anonymous suggestion/complain boxes’ have shown multi-faceted effectiveness. Schools taking these steps, though low investment can help build and maintain their repute and sensitivity towards children.

Parents of their school going children independently or if a part of school management committee need to make an extra effort of monitoring the school functioning and raising collective voices regularly. An open atmosphere at home for discussion and sharing on issues by children needs to be created. Gone are the days when discussion on sex was considered a strict no-no.

Last but more importantly, NGOs and civil society groups such as child rights lawyers are important stakeholders since they play multifaceted roles due to their positioning and influencing power and capacity in the society. From being the watchdog of the implementation of guidelines/protocols, raising awareness amongst communities on preventing child abuse, to raising issues and pushing for the State agencies to bring culprits to justice, it is important for all the NGOs, working directly on children or without to keep the ‘protection issue’ at the core of their development spectrum strategy than bucket it for other specialized child rights NGO to take the momentum forward.

For the present case, society and media at large needs to maintain a hue and cry to keep the issue burning, bring into forefront through narratives, pictures and complaints of cases that may have gone unnoticed, hold discussions in your welfare associations/community groups to bring measures for ensuring child protection in your area. In my organization’s words, DO ANYTHING WHAT IT TAKES TO REACH TO THE LAST CHILD. SINCE CHILDREN CAN’T WAIT.

British Columbia NDP government abandons $15 minimum wage pledge

Roger Jordan 

After less than two months in office, British Columbia’s New Democratic Party (NDP) government has junked its election pledge to raise the province’s minimum wage to $15 over the next four years, i.e., by 2021.

The NDP’s failure to enact this meager reform—which would still leave minimum-wage workers well below the poverty line— thoroughly exposes the fraudulent claims peddled by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups like Fightback and the International Socialists (IS) that the installation of an NDP government in Victoria represents a step forward for workers.

Labour Minister Harry Bains made the announcement after the government was criticized by the Green Party for stipulating a four-year timeline for the wage increase. The NDP, which holds 41 out of the 87 seats in the BC Legislative Assembly, is dependent on the support of three Green MLAs to govern. Andrew Weaver, the Greens’ leader, insisted that a so-called Fair Wages Commission, which will undoubtedly be stuffed with representatives of big business, be given full authority to determine the timeline for future minimum wage increases.

Bains quickly fell into line, telling the Vancouver Sun less than two weeks after publicly committing the government to the four-year timeline, “I think Mr. Weaver made a pretty good point. We’re going to work with him. He’s saying that we should not be prescriptive of the Fair Wages Commission and I agree with him. I think we should give them the authority and mandate to decide when we reach $15, and how we reach $15.” As if to underscore the point, Bains added that the timeline could be “anything they come back with.”

The fact that the NDP is incapable of implementing such a meagre reform speaks volumes about the anti-working class, pro-big business character of this party. After 16 years of Liberal rule, in which public services and social spending were cut to the bone, Premier John Horgan has repeatedly boasted that his government will enforce the Liberals’ reactionary fiscal framework, as enshrined in their most recent budget, including by presenting “balanced” budgets for at least the next two years.

The NDP has already quietly dropped other parts of its election program. Its first Throne Speech, delivered last Friday, made no mention of a promised $10 per-day province-wide childcare system, saying instead that the government would work to provide an “accessible and affordable" daycare program.

A promise to give a $400 rebate to renters, who are being hard-hit by massive rent increases in Metro Vancouver and Victoria, was also conspicuously absent. In August, Horgan also softened the government’s tone significantly on its opposition to the environmentally destructive Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion.

Not surprisingly, the NDP’s about-face on the minimum wage has been warmly welcomed by the corporate elite. Ian Tostenson, head of the BC Restaurant and Food Services Association, a body representing employers in a sector where workers are ruthlessly exploited for low pay, enthused, “It’s a good sign for the government to say let’s have some flexibility on how we get there. I think they really truly want to have a process where they can work with industry.”

Even if a $15 minimum wage were adopted tomorrow, it would hardly begin to address the widespread poverty in British Columbia, which has the highest poverty rate of any province in Canada at over 12 percent. In Vancouver, the living wage, i.e. the minimum wage for a worker to avoid living below the poverty line, is over $20.

The NDP’s pseudo-left cheerleaders, who declaim incessantly on the need to push the party to the “left” and even claim that it can serve as an instrument to fight for socialism, have responded to the BC government’s abandonment of the minimum wage timeline with an embarrassed silence. IS, which applauded the NDP’s four-year timeline announced in mid-August as “undoubtedly a win for the larger Fight for $15 in Canada and the United States,” has not published any article addressing how and why this “win” could so quickly vanish into thin air. Instead, IS continues with its desperate efforts to cover the NDP’s exposed posterior by urging its members to participate in the upcoming federal NDP leadership contest.

The BC Federation of Labour, which pumped vast resources into election ads targeting Liberal leader Christy Clark and promoting the NDP, found the time to release a statement on the NDP’s Throne Speech which noted vaguely that the union federation wanted to see the minimum wage increase “as soon as possible.” The NDP’s retreat from its election promise did not stop the union bureaucrats from applauding the government for advancing a “new approach that puts people first.”

The “new approach” which is being so enthusiastically welcomed by the unions and pseudo-left organizations is the integration of their leading personnel into government committees and commissions, and even in some cases into government office.

Horgan made clear during his first meeting last month with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he is fully committed to close cooperation with the big business Liberal federal government, which enjoys close ties with the union bureaucracy.

Bitter experience across Canada has shown that workers’ lives will see no improvement under an NDP government. Rather it will serve as an instrument of big business in enforcing the ruling-class agenda of austerity and war. Whenever Canada’s social democrats have held power during the last four decades, they have come into headlong conflict with the working class, including by slashing public services, imposing wage-austerity and breaking strikes. In neighbouring Alberta, where the NDP has governed since 2015, it has offloaded the economic crisis caused by the oil-price collapse onto the backs of working people, while maintaining the low-tax rates for big business and the wealthy for which the province has long been notorious.

The NDP’s record in power underscores that even the most immediate demands raised by workers to resist the never-ending assault on their jobs, living conditions, and social rights can be realized only in struggle against all of the pro-capitalist parties and their defenders. Workers cannot shield themselves from the capitalist crisis, let alone reverse the years of concessions and cutbacks, by pressuring the NDP politicians or union bureaucrats, but must rather fight for wage increases, job security, a vast increase in public spending, and access to social and cultural services as part of a broader struggle to bring to power a workers’ government committed to socialist policies.