Why Blacks and Hispanics Benefit From Low Unemployment

DANIELLA ZESSOULES & DEAN BAKER

Two years ago, in August of 2015, the national unemployment rate stood at 5.1 percent. This was at or below widely accepted estimates of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment or NAIRU. This meant that if these estimates were right, the inflation rate would start to increase if the unemployment rate fell further or possibly even if it stayed at its 5.1 percent level.

As it turns out, the unemployment rate has continued to fall and stood at 4.3 percent in August of 2017. Inflation has remained steady or even fallen slightly. By all measures, it is below the 2.0 percent rate targeted by the Federal Reserve Board.

Many economists, including some at the Fed, wanted to raise interest rates enough to prevent any further decline in unemployment out of concerns over inflation. Fortunately, the Fed did not go along with this position.

While the further 0.8 percentage point decline in the unemployment rate itself implies a substantial benefit for millions of workers, it is important to recognize that it is disproportionately the most disadvantaged groups that benefit from lower unemployment.

Figure 1 below shows the increase in employment rates (the percentage of people over age 16 who are employed) for whites, blacks, and Hispanics over the last two years.

While the employment rate for whites increased by 0.5 percentage points over this two year period, it increased by almost 1.4 percentage points for Hispanics and by 1.7 percentage points for blacks. These groups have been disproportionate beneficiaries of the drop in unemployment over this period.

Figure 2 shows the same story from a slightly different perspective. It shows the ratios of the blacks and Hispanic unemployment rates to the white unemployment rate. As can be seen, this ratio moved down over this period from both groups. It started at over 1.5 to 1 for Hispanics, dropping to 1.3 to 1 in the most recent month’s data. For blacks, the decline was 2.1 to 1 to just under 2.0 to 1.

It is important to keep these patterns in mind as the Fed considers its interest rate policy going forward. Further declines in unemployment will disproportionately benefit the most disadvantaged groups in society. This should be a strong argument for the Fed to be very cautious in raising interest rates. While inflation can be a problem, that is not the case now and does not seem likely to be the case in the foreseeable future. In this situation, the Fed should focus on trying to get the unemployment rate as low as possible so that the groups who have thus far been denied the benefits of the recovery will have a chance to get jobs.

Modi Goes to Bollywood

GERRY BROWN

Modi is probably not a fan of Shakespeare plays.  But that doesn’t stop him from taking the Bard’s “The world is a stage” to historic height in politics. The Hindutva leader’s tool of trade is “make believe”.

For decades, Bollywood movies have brought tremendous joy to hundreds of millions of viewers in India. The flicks have also made them forget temporarily daily deprivations such as a life without toilets,  and constant fears of their young daughters and sisters getting  brutally gang-raped.

Instead of actors and actresses, Modi has a jingoistic national press and a cyberarmy dubbed ModiMob to troll the social media. They swarm the Twitter and  Facebook pages of political parties, groups and printed media, local and foreign, critical of Modi’s policies. Their antagonistic and vile remarks routinely set off cyber battles between keyboard warriors.

The jingoistic press in India, more than its counterpart in any other country, is afflicted by collective delusion and hysteria. They are capable of seeing victory in defeat, weaknesses as virtues, black as white. They declared victory upon withdrawal from the border standoff with China, BRICS naming Pakistan terror groups as triumph over both China and Pakistan, the disastrous demonetisation as unmitigated success…

The same make-believe affects the top army commanders. India’s defence chief repeated the army’s readiness to fight wars on two fronts with China and Pakistan, even before the ink is dry on the BRICS Declaration issued days earlier. Fact is the Indian forces would have their nose bloodied fighting just the Chinese army PLA, let alone a two-front war with Pakistan as well.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in his meeting with Modi on the sidelines of BRICS Summit last week, saw fit to reiterate the need for peaceful co-existence and non-aggression. Judging by the Indian defence chief’s two-front war rhetoric, Modi seemed not to have taken Xi’s friendly reminder to heart. There’s this uneasy feeling by observers that India is begging for war. That would turn a Trojan horse, as India is widely regarded as one in BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Forum, into cannon fodder on the battlefield as well.

On the international front, his embrace of America sets India up as a proxy in regional conflicts. His counting on the empire and its minions like Japan to come to the aid of New Delhi in hours of need is likely to be a wet dream turned nightmare. That would be all too late for him and India. Like the first Indian premier Jawaharlal Nehru, who died a broken man shortly after India’s ignominious defeat in the  war with China in 1962, Modi would be lucky if he didn’t get lynched by a disappointed and disillusioned ModiMob of his own creation.

The Genocide Of The Rohingya: Big Oil, Failed Democracy And False Prophets

Ramzy Baroud

To a certain extent, Aung San Suu Kyi is a false prophet. Glorified by the west for many years, she was made a ‘democracy icon’ because she opposed the same forces in her country, Burma, at the time that the US-led western coalition isolated Rangoon for its alliance with China.

Aung San Suu Kyi played her role as expected, winning the approval of the Right and the admiration of the Left. And for that, she won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991; she joined the elevated group of ‘The Elders’ and was promoted by many in the media and various governments as a heroic figure, to be emulated.

Hillary Clinton once described her as “this extraordinary woman.” The ‘Lady’ of Burma’s journey from being a political pariah in her own country, where she was placed under house arrest for 15 years, finally ended in triumph when she became the leader of Burma following a multi-party election in 2015. Since then, she has toured many countries, dined with queens and presidents, given memorable speeches, received awards, while knowingly rebranding the very brutal military that she had opposed throughout the years. (Even today, the Burmese military has a near-veto power over all aspects of government.)

But the great ‘humanitarian’ seems to have run out of integrity as her government, military and police began conducting a widespread ethnic cleansing operation that targeted the ‘most oppressed people on earth’, the Rohingya. These defenseless people have been subjected to a brutal and systematic genocide, conducted through a joint effort by the Burmese military, police and majority Buddhist nationalists.

The so-called “Cleansing Operations” have killed hundreds of Rohingya in recent months, driving over 250,000 crying, frightened and hungry people to escape for their lives in any way possible. Hundreds more have perished at sea, or hunted down and killed in jungles.

Stories of murder and mayhem remind one of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people during the Nakba of 1948. It should come as no surprise that Israel is one of the biggest suppliers of weapons to the Burmese military. Despite an extended arms embargo on Burma by many countries, Israel’s Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insists that his country has no intentions of halting its weapons shipments to the despicable regime in Rangoon, which is actively using these weapons against its own minorities, not only Muslims in the western Rakhine state but also Christians in the north.

One of the Israeli shipments was announced in August 2016 by the Israeli company TAR Ideal Concepts. The company proudly featured that its Corner Shot rifles are already in ‘operational use’ by the Burmese military.

Israel’s history is rife with examples of backing brutal juntas and authoritarian regimes, but why are those who have positioned themselves as the guardians of democracy still silent about the bloodbath in Burma?

Nearly a quarter of the Rohingya population has already been driven out of their homes since October last year. The rest could follow in the near future, thus making the collective crime almost irreversible.

Aung San Suu Kyi did not even have the moral courage to say a few words of sympathy to the victims. Instead, she could only express an uncommitted statement: “we have to take care of everybody who is in our country”. Meanwhile, her spokesperson and other mouthpieces launched a campaign of vilification against Rohingya, accusing them of burning their own villages, fabricating their own rape stories, while referring to Rohingya who dare to resist as ‘Jihadists‘, hoping to link the ongoing genocide with the western-infested campaign aimed at vilifying Muslims everywhere.

But well-documented reports give us more than a glimpse of the harrowing reality experienced by the Rohingya. A recent UN report details the account of one woman, whose husband had been killed by soldiers in what the UN described as “widespread as well as systematic” attacks that “very likely commission of crimes against humanity.”

“Five of them took off my clothes and raped me,” said the bereaved woman. “My eight-month-old son was crying of hunger when they were in my house because he wanted to breastfeed, so to silence him they killed him with a knife.”

Fleeing refugees that made it to Bangladesh following a nightmarish journey spoke of the murder of children, the rape of women and the burning of villages. Some of these accounts have been verified through satellite images provided by Human Rights Watch, showing wiped out villages throughout the state.

Certainly, the horrible fate of the Rohingya is not entirely new. But what makes it particularity pressing is that the west is now fully on the side of the very government that is carrying out these atrocious acts.

And there is a reason for that: Oil.

Reporting from Ramree Island, Hereward Holland wrote on the ‘hunting for Myanmar’s (Burma) hidden treasure.’

Massive deposits of oil that have remained untapped due to decades of western boycott of the junta government are now available to the highest bidder. It is a big oil bonanza, and all are invited. Shell, ENI, Total, Chevron and many others are investing large sums to exploit the country’s natural resources, while the Chinese – who dominated Burma’s economy for many years – are being slowly pushed out.

Indeed, the rivalry over Burma’s unexploited wealth is at its peak in decades. It is this wealth – and the need to undermine China’s superpower status in Asia – that has brought the west back, installed Aung San Suu Kyi as a leader in a country that has never fundamentally changed, but only rebranded itself to pave the road for the return of ‘Big Oil’.

However, the Rohingya are paying the price.

Do not let Burmese official propaganda mislead you. The Rohingya are not foreigners, intruders or immigrants in Burma.

Their kingdom of Arakan dates back to the 8th Century. In the centuries that followed, the inhabitants of that kingdom learned about Islam from Arab traders and, with time, it became a Muslim-majority region. Arakan is Burma’s modern-day Rakhine state, where most of the country’s estimated 1.2 million Rohingya still live.

The false notion that the Rohingya are outsiders started in 1784 when the Burmese King conquered Arakan and forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Many of those who were forced out of their homes to Bengal, eventually returned.

Attacks on Rohingya, and constant attempts at driving them out of Rakhine, have been renewed over several periods of history, for example: following the Japanese defeat of British forces stationed in Burma in 1942; in 1948; following the takeover of Burma by the Army in 1962; as a result of so-called ‘Operation Dragon King’ in 1977, where the military junta forcefully drove over 200,000 Rohingya out of their homes to Bangladesh, and so on.

In 1982, the military government passed the Citizenship Law that stripped most Rohingya of their citizenship, declaring them illegal in their own country.

The war on the Rohingya began again in 2012. Every single episode, since then, has followed a typical narrative: ‘communal clashes’ between Buddhist nationals and Rohingya, often leading to tens of thousands of the latter group being chased out to the Bay of Bengal, to the jungles and, those who survive, to refugee camps.

Amid international silence, only few respected figures like Pope Francis spoke out in support of the Rohingya in a deeply moving prayer last February.

The Rohingya are ‘good people’, the Pope said. “They are peaceful people, and they are our brothers and sisters.” His call for justice was never heeded.

Arab and Muslim countries remained largely silent, despite public outcry to do something to end the genocide.

Reporting from Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, veteran British journalist, Peter Oborne, described what he has seen in an article published by the Daily Mail on September 4:

“Just five years ago, an estimated 50,000 of the city’s population of around 180,000 were members of the local Rohingya Muslim ethnic group. Today, there are fewer than 3,000 left. And they are not free to walk the streets. They are crammed into a tiny ghetto surrounded by barbed wire. Armed guards prevent visitors from entering — and will not allow the Rohingya Muslims to leave.”

With access to that reality through their many emissaries on the ground, western government knew too well of the indisputable facts, but ignored them, anyway.

When US, European and Japanese corporations lined up to exploit the treasures of Burma, all they needed was the nod of approval from the US government. The Barack Obama Administration hailed Burma’s ‘opening’ even before the 2015 elections brought Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to power. After that date, Burma has become another American ‘success story’, oblivious, of course, to the facts that a genocide has been under way in that country for years.

The violence in Burma is likely to escalate and reach other ASEAN countries, simply because the two main ethnic and religious groups in these countries are dominated and almost evenly split between Buddhists and Muslims.

The triumphant return of the US-west to exploit Burma’s wealth and the US-Chinese rivalries is likely to complicate the situation even further, if ASEAN does not end its appalling silence and move with a determined strategy to pressure Burma to end its genocide of the Rohingya.

People around the world must take a stand. Religious communities should speak out. Human rights groups should do more to document the crimes of the Burmese government and hold to account those who supply them with weapons.

Respected South African Bishop Desmond Tutu had strongly admonished Aung San Suu Kyi for turning a blind eye to the ongoing genocide.

It is the least we expect from the man who stood up to Apartheid in his own country, and penned the famous words: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

Destabilizing Egypt; Ethiopia’s Nile River Dam

Thomas C. Mountain

Ethiopia’s new “ Grand Renaissance Dam”, scheduled to be completed next year, will take close to half (40%) of the Nile River’s water every year for the next 5 years as it fills up. How is Egyptian President Al Sisi going to survive for the next 5 years without almost half the Nile’s water when the country is presently suffering serious water and hydroelectric shortages, never mind crippling inflation, growing hunger and a terrorist insurgency?

So far the world thinks that somehow, some way, Egypt, almost 100 million people and growing, already on shaky ground economically, will find a way to survive something that the country has not faced in over two thousand years, almost a half less water from the river Nile for 5 years straight. And what if a drought hits the Ethiopian highlands, the source of the Nile River, with chances are this happening at least once in the next 5 years with the accelerating global warming trend, and Egypt loses over half of its water?

If international opinion turns out to be wrong, and that cutting Egypt’s water by nearly half for 5 years is not survivable, then an enormous explosion is brewing in Egypt, the Arab world’s biggest country, this huge explosion being brought about by the construction of Ethiopia’s massive dam generating 6,000 MW of electricity, something that Ethiopia doesn’t even have the infrastructure to use.

If Ethiopia can’t even distribute this new source of electricity for its people to use due to an almost complete absence of any national power grid, let alone local level infrastructure, than why has the country gone so deeply into debt to build a dam that will do so much damage to its northern neighbor, Egypt?

Those in the know are asking this question, for a potential catastrophe could be in the making in Egypt with a hunger driven popular explosion of rage against the rule of President Al Sisi and fundamentally threaten the Egyptian military’s ability to hold the country together. As in Syria and Iraq, ISIS is sure to take advantage of the resulting chaos to spread its insurgency across the country and all of this could lead to an Egyptian failed state situation.

Such a scenario has directed attention towards the likelihood of the Egyptian military attacking Ethiopia’s new dam if the situation starts to deteriorate domestically. Cutting the Niles water will be a devastating blow to Egypts ability to feed itself and cutting off its ability to produce food for export causing the loss of desperately needed foreign currency.

Will the Egyptian people be able to endure such a dramatic increase in their hunger and hardships for 5 years without an inevitable explosion? Will Al Sisi be able to hold the Egyptian military together and prevent the government from collapsing as a result of such a major water shortage and inevitable mass hunger?

The origins of the very idea of Ethiopia daming the Nile are found at the World Bank, majority owned by the USA. The World Bank, whose policy for many disastrous decades was to push dam construction in some of the most vulnerable areas of the planet was the first to raise the “grand dam” idea, to harness the waters of biblical proportions for a “Greater Ethiopia”.

The problem, again, is that 70% of Ethiopians don’t have access to government electricity, almost 70 million people. The Ethiopian government has gone so deeply into debt building this new 6,000 MW dam there is nothing left over to build the electrical distribution network the country so desperately needs. So all that new electric power will not go towards uplifting the lives of Ethiopians, “for a Greater Ethiopia”, but be sold on the East African market to pay the
onerous debt incurred in building the damn thing.

The needs of Ethiopia for many years in the future could have been met by building a series of smaller, much less expensive dams that would not cause such a drastic interference in the Nile River’s flow.

Yet thanks to the World Banks persistence, Ethiopia went ahead with its “grand dam” and the result could be an explosion of popular anger in Egypt that could threaten much of the worlds economy, being that Egypt controls the Suez Canal, through which the largest trading partners in the world, Asia and Europe, do 90% of their business. It is Egyptian troops, whose salaries are paid for by the USA, that control the Suez Canal and if the Egyptian military loses control of
the country in a popular uprising similar to which brought down Mubarak, than the continued reliability of the army to control the Suez Canal comes into question. Of course, there is always the Israeli Army waiting in the wings, ever ready to step in and occupy the first Great Canal in Suez.

Could it be that having Egypt and Ethiopia, two out of three of Africa’s largest countries, at each others throats is in the national interests of the USA, that wants at all costs to prevent African unity, neither economic or political?

Again we find the USA’s policy of “crisis management” behind the scenes in this brewing conflict, as in create a crisis and then manage it to divide and conquer, the better to loot and plunder African resources with as little resistance as possible.

The American Military Uncontained , Out Everywhere And Winning Nowhere

William Astore

When it comes to the “world’s greatest military,” the news has been shocking. Two fast U.S. Navy ships colliding with slow-moving commercial vessels with tragic loss of life.  An Air Force that has been in the air continuously for years and yet doesn’t have enough pilots to fly its combat jets.  Ground troops who find themselves fighting “rebels” in Syria previously armed and trained by the CIA.  Already overstretched Special Operations forces facing growing demands as their rates of mental distress and suicide rise.  Proxy armies in Iraq and Afghanistan that are unreliable, often delivering American-provided weaponry to black markets and into the hands of various enemies.  All of this and more coming at a time when defense spending is once again soaring and the national security state is awash in funds to the tune of nearly a trillion dollars a year.

What gives?  Why are highly maneuverable and sophisticated naval ships colliding with lumbering cargo vessels?  Why is an Air Force that exists to fly and fight short 1,200 pilots?  Why are U.S. Special Operations forces deployed everywhere and winning nowhere?  Why, in short, is the U.S. military fighting itself — and losing?

It’s the Ops Tempo, Stupid

After 16 years of a never-ending, ever-spreading global war on terror, alarms are going off in Asia from the Koreas and Afghanistan to the Philippines, while across the Greater Middle East and Africa the globe’s “last superpower” is in a never-ending set of conflicts with a range of minor enemies few can even keep straight.  As a result, America’s can-do military, committed piecemeal to a bewildering array of missions, has increasingly become a can’t-do one.

Too few ships are being deployed for too long.  Too few pilots are being worn out by incessant patrols and mushrooming drone and bombing missions.  Special Operations forces (the “commandos of everywhere,” as Nick Turse calls them) are being deployed to far too many countries — more than two-thirds of the nations on the planet already this year — and are involved in conflicts that hold little promise of ending on terms favorable to Washington.  Meanwhile, insiders like retired General David Petraeus speak calmly about “generational struggles” that will essentially never end.  To paraphrase an old slogan from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” as the U.S. military spans the globe, it’s regularly experiencing the agony of defeat rather than the thrill of victory.

To President Donald Trump (and so many other politicians in Washington), this unsavory reality suggests an obvious solution: boost military funding; build more navy ships; train more pilots and give them more incentive pay to stay in the military; rely more on drones and other technological “force multipliers” to compensate for tired troops; cajole allies like the Germans and Japanese to spend more on their militaries; and pressure proxy armies like the Iraqi and Afghan security forces to cut corruption and improve combat performance.

One option — the most logical — is never seriously considered in Washington: to make deep cuts in the military’s operational tempo by decreasing defense spending and downsizing the global mission, by bringing troops home and keeping them there.  This is not an isolationist plea.  The United States certainly faces challenges, notably from Russia (still a major nuclear power) and China (a global economic power bolstering its regional militarily strength).  North Korea is, as ever, posturing with missile and nuclear tests in provocative ways.  Terrorist organizations strive to destabilize American allies and cause trouble even in “the homeland.”

Such challenges require vigilance.  What they don’t require is more ships in the sea-lanes, pilots in the air, and boots on the ground.  Indeed, 16 years after the 9/11 attacks it should be obvious that more of the same is likely to produce yet more of what we’ve grown all too accustomed to: increasing instability across significant swaths of the planet, as well as the rise of new terror groups or new iterations of older ones, which means yet more opportunities for failed U.S. military interventions.

Once upon a time, when there were still two superpowers on Planet Earth, Washington’s worldwide military posture had a clear rationale: the containment of communism.  Soon after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 to much triumphalist self-congratulation in Washington, the scholar and former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson had an epiphany.  What he would come to call “the American Raj,” a global imperial structure ostensibly built to corral the menace of communism, wasn’t going away just because that menace had evaporated, leaving not a superpower nor even a major power as an opponent anywhere on the horizon.  Quite the opposite, Washington — and its globe-spanning “empire” of military bases — was only digging in deeper and for the long haul.  At that moment, with a certain shock, Johnson realized that the U.S. was itself an empire and, with its mirror-image-enemy gone, risked turning on itself and becoming its own nemesis.

The U.S., it turned out, hadn’t just contained the Soviets; they had contained us, too.  Once their empire collapsed, our leaders imbibed the old dream of Woodrow Wilson, even if in a newly militarized fashion: to remake the world in one’s own image (if need be at the point of a sword).

Since the early 1990s, largely unconstrained by peer rivals, America’s leaders have acted as if there were nothing to stop them from doing as they pleased on the planet, which, as it turned out, meant there was nothing to stop them from their own folly.  We witness the results today.  Prolonged and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Interventions throughout the Greater Middle East (Libya, Syria, Yemen, and beyond) that spread chaos and destruction.  Attacks against terrorism that have given new impetus to jihadists everywhere.  And recently calls to arm Ukraine against Russia.  All of this is consistent with a hubristic strategic vision that, in these years, has spoken in an all-encompassing fashion and without irony of global reach, global power, and full-spectrum dominance.

In this context, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the full scope of America’s military power.  All the world is a stage — or a staging area — for U.S. troops.  There are still approximately 800 U.S. military bases in foreign lands.  America’s commandos deploy to more than 130 countries yearly.  And even the world is not enough for the Pentagon as it seeks to dominate not just land, sea, and air but outer space, cyberspace, and even inner space, if you count efforts to achieve “total information awareness” through 17 intelligence agencies dedicated — at a cost of $80 billion a year — to sweeping up all data on Planet Earth.

In short, America’s troops are out everywhere and winning nowhere, a problem America’s “winningest” president, Donald Trump, is only exacerbating.  Surrounded by “his” generals, Trump has — against his own instincts, he claimed recently — recommitted American troops and prestige to the Afghan War.  He’s also significantly expanded U.S. drone strikes and bombing throughout the Greater Middle East, and threatened to bring fire and fury to North Korea, while pushing a program to boost military spending.

At a Pentagon awash in money, with promises of more to come, missions are rarely downsized.  Meanwhile, what passes for original thinking in the Trump White House is the suggestion of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, to privatize America’s war in Afghanistan (and possibly elsewhere).  Mercenaries are the answer to Washington’s military problems, suggests Prince.  And mercs, of course, have the added benefit of not being constrained by the rules of engagement that apply to America’s uniformed service members.

Indeed, Prince’s idea, though opposed by Trump’s generals, is compelling in one sense: If you accept the notion that America’s wars in these years have been fought largely for the corporate agendas of the military-industrial complex, why not turn warfighting itself over to the warrior corporations that now regularly accompany the military into battle, cutting out the middleman, that very military?

Hammering a Cloud of Gnats

Erik Prince’s mercenaries will, however, have to bide their time as the military high command continues to launch kinetic strikes against elusive foes around the globe.  By its own admission, the force recent U.S. presidents have touted as the “finest” in history faces remarkably “asymmetrical” and protean enemies, including the roughly 20 terrorist organizations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations.  In striking at such relatively puny foes, the U.S. reminds me of the mighty Thor of superhero fame swinging his hammer violently against a cloud of gnats. In the process, some of those gnats will naturally die, but the result will still be an exhausted superhero and ever more gnats attracted by the heat and commotion of battle.

I first came across the phrase “using a sledgehammer to kill gnats” while looking at the history of U.S. airpower during the Vietnam War.  B-52 “Arc Light” raids dropped record tons of bombs on parts of South Vietnam and Laos in largely failed efforts to kill dispersed guerrillas and interdict supply routes from North Vietnam.  Half a century later, with its laser- and GPS-guided bombs, the Air Force regularly touts the far greater precision of American airpower.  Yet in one country after another, using just that weaponry, the U.S. has engaged in serial acts of overkill.  In Afghanistan, it was the recent use of MOAB, the “mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon the U.S. has ever used in combat, against a small concentration of ISIS fighters.  In similar fashion, the U.S. air war in Syria has outpaced the Russians and even the Assad regime in its murderous effects on civilians, especially around Raqqa, the “capital” of the Islamic State.  Such overkill is evident on the ground as well where special ops raids have, this year, left civilians dead from Yemen to Somalia.  In other words, across the Greater Middle East, Washington’s profligate killing machine is also creating a desire for vengeance among civilian populations, staggering numbers of whom, when not killed, have been displaced or sent fleeing across borders as refugees in these wars. It has played a significant role in unsettling whole regions, creating failed states, and providing yet more recruits for terror groups.

Leaving aside technological advances, little has changed since Vietnam. The U.S. military is still relying on enormous firepower to kill elusive enemies as a way of limiting (American) casualties.  As an instrument of victory, it didn’t work in Vietnam, nor has it worked in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But never mind the history lessons.  President Trump asserts that his “new” Afghan strategy — the details of which, according to a military spokesman, are “not there yet” — will lead to more terrorists (that is, gnats) being killed.

Since 9/11, America’s leaders, Trump included, have rarely sought ways to avoid those gnats, while efforts to “drain the swamp” in which the gnats thrive have served mainly to enlarge their breeding grounds.  At the same time, efforts to enlist indigenous “gnats” — local proxy armies — to take over the fight have gone poorly indeed.  As in Vietnam, the main U.S. focus has invariably been on developing better, more technologically advanced (which means more expensive) sledgehammers, while continuing to whale away at that cloud of gnats — a process as hopeless as it is counterproductive.

The Greatest Self-Defeating Force in History?

Incessant warfare represents the end of democracy.  I didn’t say that, James Madison did.

I firmly believe, though, in words borrowed from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that “only Americans can hurt America.”  So how can we lessen the hurt?  By beginning to rein in the military.  A standing military exists — or rather should exist — to support and defend the Constitution and our country against immediate threats to our survival.  Endless attacks against inchoate foes in the backlands of the planet hardly promote that mission.  Indeed, the more such attacks wear on the military, the more they imperil national security.

A friend of mine, a captain in the Air Force, once quipped to me: you study long, you study wrong.  It’s a sentiment that’s especially cutting when applied to war: you wage war long, you wage it wrong.  Yet as debilitating as they may be to militaries, long wars are even more devastating to democracies.  The longer our military wages war, the more our country is militarized, shedding its democratic values and ideals.

Back in the Cold War era, the regions in which the U.S. military is now slogging it out were once largely considered “the shadows” where John le Carré-style secret agents from the two superpowers matched wits in a set of shadowy conflicts.  Post-9/11, “taking the gloves off” and seeking knockout blows, the U.S. military entered those same shadows in a big way and there, not surprisingly, it often couldn’t sort friend from foe.

A new strategy for America should involve getting out of those shadowy regions of no-win war.  Instead, an expanding U.S. military establishment continues to compound the strategic mistakes of the last 16 years.  Seeking to dominate everywhere but winning decisively nowhere, it may yet go down as the greatest self-defeating force in history.

Western Australian budget slashes thousands of public sector jobs

Oscar Grenfell 

The Western Australian (WA) Labor Party government of Premier Mark McGowan delivered its first budget last Thursday. The budget demonstrated that Labor will impose the austerity measures demanded by the corporate elite, amid a sharp fall in state revenues resulting from the collapse of the mining boom.

The budget eliminated 3,000 public sector jobs, building on a sweeping restructure announced in May. According to modelling by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the budget also will increase the cost of living by up to $1,000 a year for working-class families.

Labor came to office in March, in a state election characterised by massive swings against the former Liberal Party government of Colin Barnett, which lost a third of its primary vote compared to the previous election. Labor formed government holding 41 of the 59 seats in the state parliament’s lower house.

The result was spurred by widespread hostility to the Barnett government’s spending cuts and mounting opposition to the federal Liberal-National Coalition government of Malcolm Turnbull. Labor cynically combined populist denunciations of Barnett’s cuts with assurances that a McGowan government would return the budget to surplus by slashing social spending.

As a down payment on these pledges, the budget outlines $1.7 billion in “savings” in the public sector over four years, with $355 million extracted by destroying 3,000 jobs.

In a bid to stifle workers’ opposition, the government claimed it would seek the cuts through “voluntary” redundancies. Regardless of how the job cut is imposed, it will intensify the social crisis confronting the working class, coming on top of tens of thousands of sackings throughout the mining and resources sector.

Treasurer Ben Wyatt declared he wanted the redundancies to be pushed through in the 2017–2018 financial year. “I don’t want this to carry over into 2018–19,” he stated. This indicates that forced redundancies are on the agenda, along with further sweeping cuts in next year’s budget.

The government plans a “voluntary targeted separation scheme,” with redundancies sought in departments under the government’s axe. What is being prepared is a campaign of intimidation, aimed at forcing out staff members.

In May, less than two months after Labor took office, it announced that the number of public sector departments would be reduced from 41 to 25. It also introduced an effective four-year pay freeze across the public sector. Wage increases were capped at $1,000 per annum, resulting in a real pay cut when inflation is taken into account. A wave of resignations reportedly followed, as public sector workers recognised that forced sackings were on the agenda.

Having campaigned for a Labor government, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has signalled it will assist with the public sector restructure, deepening the unions’ role as an industrial police force of successive governments and big business.

WA CPSU secretary Toni Walkington responded to the amalgamations in May by telling ABC Radio: “Some of our members believe this is an opportunity to get things right in the delivery of government services.” She claimed the cuts would affect only the “upper echelons” of the public sector, but the budget proves otherwise.

The union’s latest statements, feigning shock at the job cuts, are a fraud, aimed at channeling anger behind impotent appeals to the McGowan government. The CPSU has likewise suppressed opposition to major attacks on wages and conditions imposed by the Coalition government in the federal public sector.

Throughout the election campaign, Labor postured as an opponent of plans to privatise the state-owned electricity service and other assets. In its budget, however, Labor indicated it will continue the sell-off of public utilities, which have been spearheaded by Labor governments across the country.

The budget will force state-owned utilities, Synergy, an energy provider, and the Water Corporation, to make payments to the treasury of $473 million over the next four years. The dividend will deepen the corporatisation of both utilities, while creating the conditions for attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions.

Other budget measures that will hit workers and the poor include an annual increase in power bill fees of $169, public transport fare hikes averaging $80 per commuter each year and a rise in water, drainage and sewerage fees of almost $100.

At the same time, the government donned the “law and order” mantle. The budget earmarked $83.5 million to hire another 100 police and 20 state intelligence officers, on the pretext of combatting the growing use of crystal methamphetamine. The measure is a warning that the government will respond to the social distress caused by its policies, and mounting opposition in the working class, with police measures.

While the financial press generally welcomed the budget’s attacks on the working class, some commentators bemoaned the government’s “betrayal” of its pledge not to increase business taxes.

In reality, the budget measures would scarcely touch the bottom-line of the major corporations, including the mining companies that have extracted billions of dollars in profits over the past decade. Payroll taxes would increase by just 0.5 percent for corporations with annual payrolls of up to $1.5 billion, and 1 percent for larger businesses. Gold royalties would rise from 2.5 percent to 3.75 percent next year.

These marginal tax increases may not even pass the parliament’s upper house, where the government lacks a majority. Even if they do, they will make little difference to the state’s growing debt crisis.

According to the budget forecasts, public debt will rise to $43.8 billion in 2020–21, with budget deficits of over a billion dollars each year until then. The government’s claims of a return to surplus in 2020–21 are based on fanciful predictions of economic growth, flying in the face of warnings that the debt-fuelled national property bubble could implode.

The WA budget exposes the fraud of Labor’s attempts to posture as an opponent of social inequality and as a party of “working people.” A federal Labor government headed by Bill Shorten would be just as committed to imposing the austerity demands of the corporate elite.

South Asian floods: Death toll climbs to 1,300

Arun Kumar 

While floods have partially receded in the Indian states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, the death toll from the disaster is now 1,300, with an estimated 45 million people affected throughout South Asia.

Aid agencies report that 30 to 40 percent of those killed were children. Entire villages and vast tracts of agricultural land have been destroyed, along with crops and cattle. Tens of thousands of homes, schools and hospitals have been inundated and damaged.

Millions of flood victims in rural and urban areas face a desperate plight, trying to recover from the loss of their homes, crops, livestock, livelihoods and property. This situation is worsened by a deepening health crisis caused by infected water and the spread of mosquito- and water-borne diseases.

Ray Kancharla from the Indian branch of Save the Children warned of a massive increase in dengue, malaria, chikungunya and other mosquito-borne diseases this year. “These risks are huge,” he said, “especially for children and women.” Save the Children estimates that 17 million children in India urgently require humanitarian assistance, including basic nutritional support, health care and education.

While government authorities and the media constantly refer to the floods as a “natural disaster,” these catastrophes are entirely predictable and generally occur each year during the monsoon season, between June and September.

According to the UN, over 32 million people have been affected by the floods in India. In the eastern state of Bihar, 514 people have been killed and 17.1 million impacted, while in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, about 2.5 million have been affected and 109 killed.

Between June and July, heavy floods in the western state of Gujarat took 224 lives. In the eastern state of West Bengal, at least 152 were killed and 2.7 million people affected. The West Bengal government estimates the total damage in that state to be 140 billion rupees ($US2.2 billion).

On August 29, Mumbai, India’s financial capital, received 331.4 mm of rainfall in nine hours, the highest in a decade, producing chaotic conditions, inundating thousands of buildings and resulting in the loss of five lives.

In Bangladesh, at least 140 people have perished, with more than 700,000 homes destroyed and vast areas of farm lands ruined, posing the risk of long-term food shortages. More than 8 million people, including about 3 million children, have been displaced and about 2.4 million hectares of cropland have been ruined.

According to the Bangladesh International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, around 13,000 people are suffering from diarrhea, with officials warning that the infection rate is serious.

At least 23 people, including seven children, were killed by flooding in the Pakistani port city of Karachi when wide areas were engulfed on September 1, following prolonged rainfall that began on August 30.

In Nepal 160 people were killed, 25 are missing and 1.5 million homes, along with schools, hospitals and bridges, were destroyed. One UNICEF official reported: “The people are very poor here and houses are made of mud. So when floods came, it washed away their houses, and in some places, the water came so quickly, [and] with such force, that one village I saw looked like [it had been] hit by a tornado or cyclone.”

The Indian government and its respective state authorities are indifferent to the plight of millions of residents. Despite countless warnings from weather forecasters and disaster planning experts, successive governments have refused to implement basic mitigation measures to deal with flooding.

After major flooding in 2005, Mumbai authorities were warned they had to improve drainage systems, develop early warning systems, widen waterways and riverbeds and amend building codes. Twelve years on these demands largely have been ignored.

A recent report by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General, an official body that audits government spending, revealed that only 349 of India’s 4,862 large dams have emergency disaster action plans, and tens of millions of dollars in flood management funds remain unspent.

The Indian government has offered a pittance in emergency relief to flood victims. While total recovery costs for the flood-affected northeast states are estimated at 300 billion rupees, the government is providing only 23.5 billion rupees.

By contrast, New Delhi, in pursuit of geo-political interests, is spending billions of dollars on advanced military weapons in preparation for war, thus threatening the lives of millions throughout the region.

India recently issued a “request-for-information” to Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries for an estimated $8 billion contract to supply six advanced submarines.

New Delhi’s offer to provide 400 million Nepali rupees to the landlocked country of Nepal in flood relief is not driven by humanitarian concerns but motivated by the Indian elite’s hegemonic ambitions. The ruling elite, which is engaged in strategic rivalry with China over influence in Nepal, regards the poverty-stricken, mountainous country as part of its backyard.

Large wildfires continue to spread in US Northwest

Hector Cordon

Twenty-seven large wildfires are currently active throughout Washington and Oregon. Roughly 700,000 acres are in flames, stretching nearly 600 miles from the Diamond Creek Fire in the Okanagon National Forest adjacent to the Canadian border, south to the Miller Complex Fire on the California border.

According to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, of the 27 large fires (defined as 100-plus acres of woodland or 300-plus acres of grassland), 16 are uncontained. Another 8 smaller fires are active in the region as well.

An extended dry spell—due to a strong high-pressure ridge, which saw minimal precipitation in a normally wetter June to August—had primed the vast Northwest forests for multiple incidents of wildfires. On September 4 and 5, a combination of low humidity, high temperatures and winds gusting to 55 mph intensified many fires, which then expanded rapidly.

One of the two biggest fires is the Diamond Creek Fire in northern Washington, with 105,750 acres burning and which grew by 250 acres overnight while expanding into Canada. Three structures have been lost and $12.4 million spent so far fighting that fire. In southwestern Oregon, the Chetco Bar Fire, covering 182,284 acres, has caused 30 lost structures and has been 5 percent contained by more than 1,500 firefighters, with $42.6 million expended since July 12.

Across the entire western states of California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, over 80 large wildfires are burning 1.4 million acres. Nearly 28,000 firefighters and support personnel are involved in suppressing these fires. This is a huge increase since last month, nearly double the amount of large fires in August. From Monday to Tuesday, the large wildfires grew an additional 12,581 acres.

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), based in Boise, Idaho, has raised the National Preparedness Level to 5, the highest level. According to the NIFC, this indicates “a high level of wildfire activity and a high level of commitment of wildfire suppression assets (i.e., firefighters, aircraft and engines) to wildfires. Weather and fuel conditions are predicted to continue to be conducive to wildfire ignitions and spread in most of the western US through September and in parts of the Northern Rockies and California through October.”

The situation has become so dire that the NIFC on September 5 requested 200 active-duty military personnel from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington “to assist with firefighting efforts.” After three days of training, all 200 were to be deployed September 10 to fight the 30,000-acre fire in the Umpqual National Forest, 50 miles east of Roseburg, Oregon.

The Eagle Creek Fire, located 40 miles east of Oregon’s largest city, Portland, began September 2 and then rapidly expanded from 3,200 acres to a current 35,600. So far, the fire is 11 percent contained, slightly changed from late last week, with 1,000 firefighters battling to protect thousands of homes and structures. Approximately 2,000 people have been evacuated, while four homes have been destroyed.

Ash from these fires drifted to the Pacific Coast in some places and blanketed both Seattle and Portland. Meanwhile smoke-filtered sunlight was transformed into a murky orange. Residents, particularly those with health problems, were warned by the National Weather Service to avoid outdoor activity and to stay indoors with the air conditioning on, advice that the considerable homeless populations of both cities would have found difficult to follow. In Spokane, the Air Quality Index reached “hazardous,” the worst of six levels.

Governors of both states, Democrats Jay Inslee of Washington and Kate Brown of Oregon, declared states of emergency, allowing the use of the National Guard to join the firefighting efforts. States of emergency due to large wildfires had been announced previously in Montana, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Washington and Oregon had been approved in April and August, respectively, for federal disaster assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency due to the winter’s extensive damage by storms, floods, landslides and mudslides.

In Oregon, responding to the initial containment of the Eagle Creek Fire, Coast Guard officials Sunday reopened the Columbia River, a major economic artery for the movement of marine traffic. Meanwhile, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) continued its closure of a 54-mile length of Interstate 84, shut down September 4, from Troutdale east to Hood River. Officials anticipate another week until the highway will be allowed to reopen, as workers remove thousands of burned trees and falling rock debris.

The Eagle Creek Fire is alleged to have been started by a 15-year-old boy tossing fireworks from a bridge down a cliff.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has warned that climate change will affect the western United States with higher average annual temperatures than “for the planet as a whole.” The numbers of large wildfires (which they define as over 1,000 acres) has almost doubled since the 1980s, from 140 then to 250 in the 2000-2012 period. In addition, the fire season has grown from five months then to seven months today.

As in every major disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the response of the various levels of government has ranged from minimal to outright indifference. Oregon’s official state web site encourages donations of money to fund “voluntary organizations” to assist victims of the fires. The federal government’s budget proposal under President Trump has called for a $350 million cut in funding from the US Forest Service’s wildfire fighting and prevention programs. Additionally, a 23 percent cut in federal funding for volunteer fire departments nationally has been proposed.

UK parliament approves sweeping executive powers under Brexit bill

Julie Hyland

The so-called Great Repeal Bill, incorporating European Union (EU) legislation into British law, passed its second reading in parliament early Tuesday morning, with a government majority of 36.

Now known as the EU Withdrawal Bill, it is the first step in legally removing the UK from the EU—scheduled for March 2019—following the Leave vote in last year’s referendum. It provides for sweeping “Henry VIII clauses,” massively extending executive powers, which the government claims are necessary to “provide for a smooth and orderly” Brexit.

No Tories voted against the bill, but seven Labour MPs defied the party whip to vote with the government, including Frank Field, Ronnie Campbell, Kate Hoey and Dennis Skinner. Caroline Flint abstained.

Labour’s amendment, criticising “ handing sweeping powers to Government Ministers allowing them to bypass Parliament on key decisions,” was defeated by 318 votes to 296. A vote on the timetable for parliamentary scrutiny of the bill at committee stage also passed by 318 votes to 301.

The debate was steamrollered through parliament, with only Thursday and Monday set aside for MPs to speak. Just eight days have been allocated for “line by line” scrutiny at committee stage, for a bill described as the largest legislative venture undertaken in British history, concerning some 12,000 EU regulations.

Labour is seeking to join forces with Tory MP’s critical of the measures, together with the Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, to submit “sensible amendments.” On Tuesday, MPs tabled 136 amendments, mainly aimed at prolonging British membership of the EU customs union and single market, and for MPs to vote on a final Brexit deal.

No credibility can be given to such parliamentary manoeuvres. Henry VIII powers date back to the 1539 Statute of Proclamations, which enabled the King to rule by decree. Under the bill, hundreds of items of legislation—including concerning workers’ rights—can be amended by ministerial order.

The report by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution described the executive powers conferred by the Bill as “unprecedented and extraordinary,” raising “fundamental constitutional questions about the separation of powers between Parliament and Government.”

The bill contains multiple powers investing the executive with the ability to make “any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament.” In this way, it “weaves a tapestry of delegated powers that are breath-taking in terms of both their scope and potency,” and that “raise fundamental concerns from a rule of law perspective. The capacity of the Bill to undermine legal certainty is considerable,” the committee stated.

In 2008, David Davies resigned from the Tory shadow cabinet in protest at the Labour government’s assault on democratic rights, and subsequently joined forces with then leading Labour “left,” Tony Benn, to support the civil liberties organisation, Big Brother Watch. As the government’s Brexit Secretary, in charge of negotiating exit terms with the EU, he now denounces opposition to the bill as an “attempt to thwart the democratic process.”

The support for executive powers was made explicit in the debate by Tory MP Edward Leigh, who joked that Henry VIII was a bastard, “but he was my kind of bastard.” The government hopes to secure a majority on all standing committees concerning the bill, despite leading a minority government that was only secured through a £1 billion deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

This power-grab must be seen in the context of the authoritarian turn underway across Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is seeking to buttress emergency laws as he attempts to push through labour reforms overturning workers’ legal protections.

In Germany, all the main parties are advocating a massive expansion of the police and intelligence agencies. The German bourgeoisie was central to Google’s decision to change its search algorithm’s so as to censor the World Socialist Web Site and silence opposition to the revival of German militarism. Last month, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière ordered the shutdown of the left-wing website linksunten.indymedia.org, one of the two German subsidiaries of the global media site Indymedia.

In Britain, ministers had made no secret of their desire to use Brexit to carry out a “bonfire” of workers’ rights. In addition, the government is trying to use the UK’s extensive military-intelligence apparatus as a bargaining chip with the EU to extract favourable terms for Brexit. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that the UK’s “commitment to European security is undiminished” after Brexit, citing Britain’s role in NATO-led provocations against Russia.

This agenda of austerity, militarism and war, which is deeply unpopular and cannot be carried through democratically, is the real impulse for the resort to executive powers.

Labour has made no effort to mobilise popular opposition to these plans, despite the influx of new members under Jeremy Corbyn. This is because its own amendments to the bill are motivated less by concern for civil liberties than its attempts to limit executive powers in determining the terms of Brexit and any transitional arrangements put in place.

While officially accepting that Britain will leave the EU, Labour is committed to maintaining access to the single market and customs union for an undefined “transitional” period. But leading Labourites have made clear they want to overturn the leave vote.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair heads this campaign, arguing that Brexit will do irreparable damage to the interests of British imperialism and the City of London. He has called for a second referendum and is proposing draconian anti-immigration policies are adopted to facilitate this. Blair’s former policy adviser Lord Adonis, said Labour would end up backing another referendum, which he described as a “first referendum on the exit terms.”

This has the support of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), whose annual conference began this week. Speaking on Monday, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady claimed that continued membership of the EU single market was the best way to protect workers interests. Her speech came after the TUC General Council issued a statement in favour of remaining in the single market.

Labour’s own amendment to the bill included the commitment to “ full tariff-free access to the European single market. ” It was signed by Corbyn, along with deputy leader Tom Watson, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer and Stephen Kinnock. The latter were instrumental in the attempts to remove Corbyn as leader, citing his lack of “enthusiasm” for the Remain campaign in last year’s referendum he was meant to be leading as a primary factor.

Corbyn had dropped his long-standing opposition to the EU on becoming Labour leader, but he voted with Prime Minister Theresa May after the leave vote to begin negotiations on Britain’s withdrawal from the single market and customs union. He now states that the UK should keep EU membership for as “short as possible but as long as necessary.”

Quizzed by the BBC on his response to Blair’s anti-immigration proposals, Corbyn refused to take a position, saying only that he had listened to Blair’s interview “with interest.” Corbyn has already committed Labour to limiting freedom of movement within the EU, arguing that this is needed to ensure “proper regulation of the labour market.”