Trump deploys troops to central Africa following disputed Congo election

Eddie Haywood

In the wake of a hotly contested poll December 30 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Trump administration has deployed a contingent of troops to nearby Gabon, for the purpose of “protecting US assets from possible violent demonstrations” following the election to determine a successor to longtime leader Joseph Kabila. Election results which had been expected to be released Sunday by election officials have been delayed indefinitely due to a delay counting all ballots.

Trump sent a letter to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday informing Congress that he had ordered the indefinite deployment of around 80 troops to Gabon to protect US citizens and embassy officials in the DRC. Trump’s letter noted that the first soldiers arrived in the country on Wednesday with the “appropriate combat equipment and supported by military aircraft.” The letter also stated that more troops could be deployed to Gabon, the Republic of Congo and the DRC “as needed.”

By deploying troops to the region, Washington is making it clear that it intends to install a pliant government in Kinshasa that will ensure that America’s economic interests in the country are secured. Trump’s proclamations of “America First” in foreign policy does not mean a retreat from the intervention in the affairs of other nations or the flowering of peace; rather it means the naked pursuit of American imperialist geopolitics by economic and military means against adversaries and allies alike.

The military operation must also be understood within the framework of America’s imperialist aims in Africa of reasserting America’s geopolitical dominance despite its economic decline relative to its global rivals. To this end, Washington has escalated its military operations in nearly every corner of Africa with the key aim of neutralizing Beijing’s vast economic influence on the continent.

Washington’s latest military maneuver puts into practice the strategy laid out in a speech delivered last month by Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton in which he identified the entire African continent as a field of “great power” competition between the United States and its two main competitors, China and Russia, which have been increasing their investments in many Africa countries. Bolton denounced Beijing and Moscow for “predatory practices” that “threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for US investment; interfere with US military operations; and pose a significant threat to US national security interests.”

In recent years, Kabila has run afoul of the US and Europe by developing closer economic ties to Beijing, hammering out several economic investment agreements worth billions of dollars, something which the imperialist strategists in Washington regard as intolerable.

Also fueling the western imperialists’ lack of confidence has been the inability of the government to secure the Eastern provinces, long wracked by paramilitary skirmishes, home to the greatest concentration of the country’s immense mineral wealth. According to recent estimates, the DRC has $24 trillion in untapped raw resources, including cobalt and coltan, two metals that are critical to the growing smartphone and electric vehicle industries.

Last month’s poll in the DRC came after a two-year delay in holding elections to determine the successor of President Joseph Kabila, who postponed elections before his term expired in December 2016, which set off a series of demonstrations and social unrest in the capital city Kinshasa and across the country.

Kabila, who came to power in 2001, has backed his ruling party’s candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary to be his successor. Washington in contrast has favored Shadary’s opponent, wealthy businessman Martin Fayulu, a former oil executive educated in the United States and France.

Both Shadary and Fayulu belong to the tiny layer of parasitic elites that make up the Congolese bourgeoisie, hoarding the massive resource wealth of the Congo among themselves and cutting lucrative contracts, while the Congolese masses experience widespread social misery, with the majority existing on little more than $1 per day.

As the Minister of the Interior and Security under the Kabila government, Shadary was tasked with carrying out the regime’s violent repression of demonstrators and political opponents, in particular the recent bloody campaign in Kasai province, in which his forces carried out crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, and numerous indiscriminate killings.

Fayulu was employed by American oil giant Exxon-Mobil from 1984 to 2003, first as an auditor, then promoted to director-general, from which he oversaw the company’s operations across the African continent. After resigning from Exxon-Mobil, Fayulu returned to Kinshasa and won a parliament seat in 2006.

The presidential contest comes amid an explosion of political and social tensions rocking the central African nation, with recent protests against the deeply unpopular Kabila government, and ongoing rebel skirmishes in the eastern provinces. Adding to this toxic mix is a renewed outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in recent weeks.

On the day before the poll, Kabila provoked an eruption of social anger as scores of protesters poured into the streets of Kinshasa and various cities after the president’s last-minute decision to arbitrarily bar 1 million people from participating in the poll, on the absurd claim that voters afflicted with Ebola could infect hundreds of people participating in the polls.

On Saturday, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), the official body tasked with counting the vote, announced that the results of the poll will be postponed for another week. As of late Sunday, reports suggested that Fayulu had taken a clear lead in the poll.

International election observers have voiced concerns for the potential of irregularities in the vote tally, along with the fear that by postponing the tally the Kabila government is stalling to provide time to ensure a victory for Shadary. The Catholic church, which wields significant power within the Congo, has warned of a large-scale uprising if the poll appears fraudulent.

In the run-up to the poll on Sunday, the Catholic Church organized and placed 41,000 election observers at polls around the country. The church, in rebutting the government’s proclamation of a delay, stated to the media that they had determined a clear winner.

Although the Church did not publicly announce Fayulu by name, according to the Washington Post a senior Western official and a presidential adviser stated that the Catholic Church had indeed concluded that Fayulu was the victor.

In an interview Friday presidential adviser Kikaya Bin Karubi condemned the Church’s conclusion of the tally, and ominously warned the Church was “breaking constitutional and election laws and are looking to start a popular revolt that they will be responsible for.”

Tensions with Washington and Europe reached a crescendo on December 29 when Kabila, facing immense pressures from Western governments to step aside peacefully, defiantly booted the European Union ambassador from the country.

For its part, the EU, under an initiative begun by Washington during the Obama administration, has imposed sanctions and travel bans on several key figures in the Kabila government, including Kabila himself, along with freezing the assets in European banks held by several Kabila officials.

The extreme breakdown and deterioration of relations between Washington and Europe and the Kabila government was made clear when during a media interview in the days before the poll, Kabila was asked what advice he would impart to his successor, to which he answered, “The biggest recommendation is that he listen to the voice of the Congolese and not follow that of the United States, Europe or elsewhere."

China’s moon landing to exacerbate tensions with US

Peter Symonds

China’s landing of a scientific probe on the far side of the Moon has led to a rash of media speculation, in the US in particular, about a new international space race amid heightened tensions between the two countries over economic issues, including trade, and a massive American military build-up in Asia against China.

Washington reacted with shock when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and in 1961 became the first country to put a human being into space. Yuri Gagarin completed one full orbit in his Vostok spacecraft and successfully returned to Earth. The United States poured billions into the NASA space program, recognising that at stake was not only national prestige but vital military applications. As a result, the US became the first nation to put someone on the Moon—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969.

China has now achieved a space first of its own. While probes have previously been landed on the Moon, China’s Chang’e-4 was the first to make a soft landing on the side that is perpetually facing away from the Earth—the so-called far side of the Moon. According to the China National Space Administration, the probe landed at 10.26 a.m. Beijing time after hovering to allow a suitable site to be located. A photo—the first close-up image of the Moon’s far side—was beamed back to Earth via a relay satellite previously positioned 80,000 kilometres from the Moon.

The first close-up image of the far side of the moon Credit: China National Space Administration

China’s space agency declared that the mission’s success had “opened a new chapter in humanity’s exploration of the moon.” The instruments aboard Chang’e-4 and its lunar rover include cameras, ground-penetrating radar and spectrometers that provide data that will assist in understanding the Moon’s geology. The lander also carries biological experiments to see if seeds will germinate and silkworm eggs will hatch in the Moon’s low gravity.

In an article entitled “The space race is back on—and China is in the lead,” Guardian journalist Mary Dejevsky commented: “The first response of the US space agency, NASA, was generous, as scientists to scientists: what China had managed was a ‘first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment.’ The response in political and military quarters in Washington, as in Moscow, however, is likely to reflect trepidation.”

In 2003, China became only the third country after the US and Russia to successfully put astronauts into space using its own rockets. Since then, it has sent 11 astronauts into space so far, and in 2016, two of them spent 30 days in China’s own space station. Last year, China launched 36 rockets into space—more than any other country, including the US which launched 30.

Moreover, China’s space agency has ambitious plans. Another Moon landing of the Chang’e-5 is scheduled later this year. By 2022, China is aiming to have its third space station fully operational. It plans to begin building a base on the Moon in 2025 and to man it by 2030. Probes to Mars are also planned. While the budget for the China National Space Administration is still significantly less than for NASA, it is greater than any other country.

China’s space program has already provoked considerable nervousness in Washington. While profitable business opportunities are involved, the concern above all is that the US could be eclipsed by China in military applications, which are inherent in any space program. Large multi-stage rockets, accurate guidance systems and stable communications are just the most obvious developments that have potential military spin-offs.

The US press has highlighted the China’s ability to shoot down satellites, which it demonstrated in 2007 when it destroyed one of its own satellites. China is also developing a global navigation system, BeiDou, with clear military significance, independent from the operational American, Russian, and nearly operational European ones. BeiDou has a high-precision mode only available to the Chinese military, and will be fully operational globally by 2020.

Washington, however, is the chief driver of military rivalry in space. In September 2016, a congressional sub-committee convened a hearing, entitled “Are we losing the space race to China?” which criticised the Obama administration for not devoting the necessary resources to winning the race. President Trump signed a new space-policy directive in December 2017 outlining plans for manned missions to the Moon and Mars. The US is aiming to return to the Moon by 2023.

The renewed US space effort is explicitly connected to military plans. Last year the Trump administration announced the establishment of a new branch of US armed forces by 2020 to be known as Space Force, which will operate independently of the other branches—the army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard. In a clear indication that it will get congressional approval, $12 billion was allocated this year for its establishment.

In making the announcement, Vice President Mike Pence declared that the Space Force would be an “elite group of war fighters specializing in the domain of space.” A huge space command already exists within the US Air Force. Established in 1982, it is headquartered at the Peterson Air Force base in Colorado and oversees 30,000 personnel. It includes the Space and Missile Center, monitors ballistic missile launches and manages the Defense Department’s satellites.

In an emphatic declaration, Pence insisted, “We must have American dominance in space, and so we will.” In the sphere of manned space flight, the US has ground to make up after its space shuttle program had to rely on Russian launches. When the International Space Station in which the US and Russia have collaborated is decommissioned—Trump has mooted ending funding by 2025—China’s space station could be the only one in orbit.

At the same time, China’s space program suffered a major setback with the failed launch in 2017 of the Long March 5, a new heavy lift rocket needed for its more ambitious projects.

A worried editorial in the Financial Times yesterday, entitled “China and the US should be allies, not foes, in space,” suggested “greater collaboration between all space powers would be far preferable to the secretive rivalry that characterised the early US-Soviet space race.” While noting Trump’s plans for a Space Force, the newspaper put the onus on China “to show it commitment to global co-operation” so as to defuse “legitimate concerns about the militarisation of space.”

In reality, it is the US that has sought to isolate China from US-led space programs. None of the astronauts sent to the International Space Station has been Chinese. In 2011, US legislation specifically excludes scientific exchanges with China involving NASA. Its sponsor, Republican Frank Wolf, slammed China, declaring: “We don’t want to give them the opportunity to take advantage of our technology, and we have nothing to gain from dealing with them.”

Wolf’s comments are today the basis of the deepening US trade war with China, in which the Trump administration has made alleged Chinese intellectual property theft and its drive for technological advances, as part of the “Made in China 2025,” the main bones of contention. Far from collaborating with China in space projects, the US space program is intimately connected to an escalating arms race. Under conditions in which the US is aggressively preparing for war with China, the current undeclared “space race” is even more ominous than the previous rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.

US shutdown could leave millions without food stamps

Kate Randall

As the US government shutdown continues, millions of Americans face the prospect of being cut off from food stamps. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides benefits that allow some of the nation’s poorest households to buy food.

More than 19 million households, or about 39 million people in the US, currently receive food stamps. The average monthly benefit is $245. Now even this minimal aid stands to be withdrawn—partially in February and completely in March—if the government shutdown drags on.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has furloughed approximately 95 percent of employees in Food and Nutrition Services, the office that oversees the SNAP program. So as USDA workers go without pay, food stamp recipients’ benefits may also be slashed.

Come February, the SNAP program faces a $1.8 billion shortfall. If this were spread out evenly across the 19 million households that receive SNAP benefits, each would see a cut of about $90 per month, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

If the shutdown that began December 22 stretches into March, current SNAP recipients would receive no money. Even if the Trump and administration and Congress come to an agreement to end the shutdown by February, households could experience a substantial delay in receiving their benefits due to operational and bureaucratic challenges at the USDA.

The average monthly SNAP benefit—which could easily be spent by any one of the millionaires in the White House or Congress for a single meal at an upscale restaurant—can mean the difference for food stamp recipients between going hungry or just getting by. Many of these households now face the threat of taking a further hit to their budgets, forcing families to choose between food and making payments for rent, utilities, health care or other basic necessities.

Small businesses would also feel the pinch. According to an April 2018 CBPP report, in fiscal year 2017, SNAP recipients redeemed about $63 billion in benefits at about 260,000 retailers. About 80 percent of these retailers were considered small businesses, including local convenience stores and small independent grocers. Those businesses serving low-income neighborhoods would be particularly hard hit.

As one of the last remaining vestiges of the safety net for workers and the poor, the food stamp program has come under bipartisan attack over the last decade. In 2014, President Obama signed legislation that cut $8.7 billion in food stamp benefits over the next decade, causing 850,000 households to lose an average of $90 a month. The Obama administration considered this to be an acceptable compromise with House Republicans’ demands to slash between $20.5 billion and $39 billion from the program.

The Trump administration sought but failed to pass far-reaching changes to the SNAP program in the farm bill passed in December. House Republicans’ version of the bill could have forced states to impose work requirements on SNAP beneficiaries ages 49 to 59. Those proposals would have resulted in benefit cuts for up to 1.1 million households, according to an estimate by Mathematical Policy Research.

Trump’s proposals also targeted SNAP participants ages 18-49 who are not raising minor children in their homes. The average income of this group of food stamp recipients is just 33 percent of the poverty line, placing them among the poorest of the poor. Trump proposed scrapping work requirement waivers for this age group of SNAP recipients.

Under a particularly harsh, longstanding provision of SNAP law, 18- to 49-year-old without children are limited to receiving just three months of benefits out of every three years for those months in which they are not employed at least 20 hours a week. While participation in a training program counts toward fulfilling this requirement, states are not required to provide work training to these individuals—and most don’t.

Due to the extremely harsh nature of this rule, beginning in 1996 SNAP law also included a provision that lets states seek waivers from the USDA from this three-month cutoff in areas where unemployment is high. Trump’s proposal would have eliminated the most commonly used waivers, further punishing those individuals who cannot find work or job training by cutting off their food benefits.

Having failed to pass these draconian changes, the Trump administration is now seeking to implement them through executive action.

Abel Visiting Scholar Program 2019 for Mathematics PhD Scholars in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 1st April, 2019 for research visits between September 1, 2019 – December 31, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

About the Award: The program is designed for post doctoral mathematicians in the early stages of their professional careers.   It is designed to offer the opportunity for a ‘research sabbatical,’ a necessary complement to teaching and other academic duties for mathematicians desiring to also sustain a viable research program.

Type: PhD

Eligibility: Applicants must

     1.   hold at the time of application a PhD in Mathematics,

     2.   be based in a developing country at the time of application

     3.   hold a position in a university/ research institution

     4.   be in the early stages of their professional careers, more precisely: the applicants  should

            4. 1) not yet be of full professorial rank but have a working contract in a university/ college

            4. 2) be under 40 years of age at the day of the application deadline.

The maximum age may be increased by up to three years in the case of an individual with a broken career pattern (applicants who wish to apply for the April 30, 2017 deadline should be born on or after August, 31, 1974). This should be noted in the application together with the reason for the broken career pattern.

 Applications from women mathematicians are strongly encouraged.

Selection Criteria: The selection criteria is based on the the quality of the project and the benefit/added value for the home institution/country.

Selection: A selection committee decides which applications are successful.

The Selection Committee consists of

• • a) a member chosen by the Abel board

• • b) a member chosen by CDC

• c) a third member chosen by the IMU EC

The time of members of the committee is three years for the members b) and c) with a maximum of two periods. The Abel Board decides for a).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The grant can cover for one month and only for the applicant:

1. travel costs to the host institution (economy flight or equivalent) Please note that the flight will be booked and directly paid by the IMU Secretariat.
2. accommodation expenses (monthly rent should not exceed 1,200 USD – in case you expect higher accommodation cost, please explain in your application the expected higher cost)
3. travel health insurance
4. Basic living cost  (daily allowance based on living cost of the visiting country/city, This amount includes the cost for public transport and all other living costs). For a list please go here.
5. visa costs

The total maximum amount is 5,000 USD per grantee.
Family expenses and any other costs cannot be covered.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 month. In case the length of the visit exceeds one month, the candidate should provide evidence of financial support from the host institution to cover the living expenses beyond the first month.

How to Apply: Each application must include:

1. The completed Online Application Form
2. A curriculum vitae including a list of recent publications
3. A research plan for the visit
4. An official invitation from the institution of the international research partner
5. One letter of recommendation If the letter of recommendation is not written by the international research partner (the host), the application should include a statement from the host approving the research plan.
6. A copy of the PhD certificate
7. A statement about the current employment status/ position in the home institution signed and stamped by your employer. The statement should include the duration of your employment
8. A budget estimation. Please, use the Tentative Budget Form. (for more information see ‘Financial Support’)
9. In case you are planning to stay for more than one month you must attached a proof of the matching funds for your living costs from the host institution
10. Please submit the completed bank information form in order to receive your funds.

Please merge all required documents into one (1) PDF file.
Please always send your application form cc to “cdc.grants@mathunion.org”.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Ignorance is Power in a Casteist System

Prerna S

With the recent surge of sheer “ignorance” about what is Brahmanical patriarchy and treating it as a concept that never existed before the discussion that took off on Twitter, it is perhaps important to see where exactly does this ignorance configure in a casteist system. Jaahil, ganwar, dehaati[1]: these were three words that I often heard in my Brahmin upbringing whenever my lower-caste grandmother’s family was referred to. They were used to not only remind everyone that my grandmother is indeed from a shudhra family, lucky enough to be married to my Iyer grandfather, but also to refer to my grandmother’s own ignorant ways of being and living as a consequence of her caste. Her ignorance was deemed as not only the result of but symptomatic of her caste—a defining characteristic to be lower caste is to be lowly, ignorant and not know the best ways of life. Ignorance and caste was taught to me as simultaneous: if you find someone ignorant, ask them their caste—they are probably not Brahmins. Ignorance thus, has always been a primary way of perpetuating a casteist system and reinforcing it through various modalities of unknowing.

Knowledge and power has always been thought to inform each other, like it did in my Brahmanical household: to be a Brahmin is to be the knower- to be knowledgeable and learned was the job of the Brahmin and hence the stakeholder of knowledge resources was a Brahmin (and a Brahmin male). However, with the preoccupation of understanding power relations with knowledge, we have often not considered the ways in which ignorance produces and reinforces power. Ignorance has recently been studied as socially produced, managed, cultivated and systematically perpetuated as a state of being. What theorists like Proctor and Schiebinger shown us is that ignorance can also be “deliberately engineered” to perpetrate dominant regimes of knowledge. Epistemologies of ignorance and racial privilege have thus been studied in order to understand this oft ignored connection between wielding power through systematic ignorance. To understand ignorance in this way is to see it as processual—as constantly being produced and pervasive. Caste too, needs to be read through the forms of ignorance that reinforce its hold on the society.

Caste is not determined by the colour of one’s skin or any unsubtle physical aspect of the body; it does get written on the body but not through it. Physicality is attached to caste as an afterthought as it is not intrinsic to caste to be physically visibilized in order to function: it often forms the various ways in which caste gets justified although it is not the criteria through which it gets created. This is not to say caste is much more complex than race wherein epidermal visibility, or as Fanon would put it: epidermalization of inferiority plays a part; it is to state that caste is always in the state of unknowing: you won’t know a person’s caste until you know their surname, their occupation, their identification in the reservation system while on the admission list in a college. In other words, caste isn’t known naturally but asks for active knowing. In this inquiry lies its most entrenched discrimination.

In this structure of active knowing, ignorance takes different forms in the caste system. First of the most frequent kind is seen in those sectors which commend merit over social categories as their system of differentiation. Gopal Guru in his essay on the corporate sector talks of this “veil of ignorance” which in fact reproduces caste system that it claims to have no engagement with. By focusing on merit as the ultimate deciding factor for recruitment and promotions, corporate sector also creates the category of demerit. This demerit is what Gopal Guru argues, “is the result of a historical disadvantage and exclusion of dalits from the opportunity structures.” Merit is also a product and not an intrinsic value that is tapped onto, and this active ignorance towards caste doesn’t translate to eradicating the prejudices of the caste system, or rising above it: it functions well within and through its core.

Second kind could be to not know until one knows, which may sound like any progress from ignorance to knowledge. However, within the precincts of caste system this linear progression towards knowing someone’s caste from the state of unknowing is where the systematic play of discrimination becomes clear. To know someone belongs to the untouchable caste is to not always already know they are untouchable: caste needs to be spelled out first in order to know the status of untouchability. Historically, this has been determined through someone’s occupation wherein those regarded as untouchables did menial jobs for the upper caste. Cleaning after the upper caste has always been the occupation of those who are seen as unclean and impure, and ignoring their caste is dangerous as it means to clean up for oneself. In other words, caste is asked when assigning certain kinds of work deemed as appropriate for that particular caste, lest one has to do menial jobs by themselves. Caste system requires this inquiry: it may not always be a direct question but also works through presumption, yet it indicates how caste functions not on visual perception but on mental cognition: it has to be asked for, inquired into, categorised and systematically produced. Hence, in this manner, caste is always unknown until it is made known.

Another layer is opened by the question: who does not know their caste? The answer to this is simple: nobody. Everyone knows their caste, even those who claim to not know or function through its classifications. Akhil Katyal writes in a poem:

One day, when he was about ten or twelve, he asked his mother,
“What is my caste?
Some boys in the school were asking, I didn’t know what to say.”
The mother, got up in the middle of her supper,
“Beta, if you don’t know it by now, it must be upper.”

Ignorance about your caste thus isn’t lack of knowledge but indeed, knowledge of its own kind. Not knowing one’s caste is perhaps because structures of life have not compelled one to know it: one’s life is built around privileges of being generic and indeed, general. Caste does not jumpstart when being general turns into the (reservation category of) General: one needn’t enter actively into the reservation system to function in a caste system. To be generic/General is to have the privilege of leading one’s life having to not know their social standing. Unknowing here is the privilege of not having to know one’s status as upper caste: it is the lower castes who need to be reminded, and these reminders translate into a natural sedimentation of the position and privilege of upper caste persons. Knowledge of one’s caste is not always a powerful phenomenon: indeed, knowing one’s caste is the first step to knowing which opportunities will remain inaccessible throughout life.

Yet another manifestation is not having to know, not wanting to know and yet functioning in and through the state of this unknowing. This spells out how caste system is perpetuated by those who do not know their acts are casteist, and when told, claim to not see caste. Ignorance of caste here is touted as innocence, as complete non-knowledge stemming from unworldliness when it comes to evils like caste. Being educated within a casteist system while not having heard the word caste in relation to oneself or having learnt it as a story of the past, one leads oneself to believe that the blame of casteism comes in a world they had deemed as always-already post-caste. Dhrubo Jyoti in their response to a young boy jazz band’s name “Bhangijumping” spells the insidiousness of this ignorance clearly:

Your “honesty” is already winning accolades because to be caste-aware is apparently to say “Oh I didn’t know”, without seeing that your ignorance is what killed our foremothers, and made us slave in your house while you fiddled with your playstation.

To have the power of engaging in an act without knowing its casteist origin or implication, to be ignorant of the casteism in everyday acts shows how casual ignorance can be the most dangerous form of casteism. To not know one’s casteism is to practice it vehemently: ignorance here is thus not lack of knowledge but a tool through which caste needn’t have visible acts of horror committed to be reproduced.

Caste thus functions through unknowing and its various indices: it is reminded to those who can only go about their life if they know their caste. This helps those at the higher echelons to function without having to know their own caste on a daily basis. Unknowing in its present continuous form is how caste manifests itself: it is contiguous, continuous and is a processual tussle between those who have to know and those who need not. In reminding my grandmother her caste through her assumed and reinforced characteristic of ignorance was to produce the power of my structural ignorance: to not know her lack of knowledge of the best ways of life is indeed produced by those who control the access to knowledge. To name her as always already ignorant was to produce the privilege of my Brahmin grandfather and parents who could do the constant calling, the naming without having to be called and named.

Social media and violation of human rights

Sheshu Babu

Advancement of technology, more than benefiting masses, is becoming dangerous in the hands of miscreants. Increase of smart – phones and computers have spread the use of social media platforms. Instead of using the platforms for messaging information or decent discussion, it is becoming a medium to spew hatred, upload incidents of human rights violations mostly by perpetrators themselves with impunity and almost open consent of political parties or communal groups or organizations.

Use of social media

Incidents of hate crimes have risen sharply in the last few years and most of these crimes have been recorded live. “The rise of hate crimes in india – cow related violence and lynchings – has been coupled with extensive use of social media. While fake news and fake videos have often helped spark communal violence, they have also been ‘ celebratory’ in nature: participants bragging about being a part of the mob involved in the lynchings and the violence” . ( Lynching as a Public Spectacle, by Prabhir Purkayastha 4 Jan 2019, newsclick.in ). The article further says, ” For a number of commentators, it is the tool – social media and therefore technology – that is the root of the disease of communal violence and mob lynching, not the political forces behind the violence. ” Many blame cell phones as the heart of the problem.

Impact on people

Social media has huge impact. Research conducted by Perse.ly shows that the life expectancy of a story posted on the web is 2.6 days compared to 3.2 days when the story is shared on a social media. That’ s a difference of 23% which is significant when considering billions of people using internet daily.( What is the Real Impact of Social Media?, Maryanne Gaitho , September 12, 2018, simplilearn.com). A new study from Pew Research claims that 62 percent of people get their news from social media with 18% of them very often. The longer the information is in circulation, the more discussion it generates and greater the impact of social media.

Rights violations

When contents posted on social media pose danger to society, the need to regulate arisesand responsibility of people as well as those posting it becomes important. In India, more than 20 crore use WhatsApp and even more Facebook. Thus, false news rumours can be spread easily. Even real incidents posted on social media have caused several deaths of innocent persons. The brutal lynching of a 26 year old man on suspicion of child lifting made rounds on social media. On May 25, 2018 in Karnataka, the video showed the victim being dragged by two men in the streets of Bengaluru ‘s Chamrajpet area. In the same way, a video surfaced purportedly showing a mob beating up a man and forced him to confess cow slaughter on June 19, 2018. ( 16 lynchings in 2 months. Is social media the new serial killer?,Prabhash K Dutta, July 2, 2018, indiatoday.in). The brazen uploading of videos showing gross human rights violations reflect apathy of the administration and fearlessness of criminals in committing horrors and shamelessly load them on social media. The famous Pehlu Khan lynching was posted on social media. This is a case of human rights violations.

Future

Therefore, social media is being used by the hindutva forces to garner votes by spreading rumours, glorifying murders on social media and different groups. Even the government sometimes adds by announcement of mass surveillance. Human rights violations and exploitation have been under scanner. The government should try to stop people from posting content and videos with gross rights violations like murders and sexual abuse. Steps must be taken to promote healthy content and not hate speech or messages that hurt marginalised sections. Religious fanaticism of any religion should not be available on social media. Real news, views which promote harmony and enhance spread of knowledge must be encouraged on social media to develop healthy society and peaceful existence.

Australian stripped of citizenship despite being made stateless

Mike Head 

Aided by the complicity of the opposition Labor Party, Australia’s unstable Liberal-National Coalition government began the political new year by revoking the citizenship of an Australian-born young man, Neil Prakash, 27, even though he lacks citizenship rights anywhere else. That annulment can be extended to his three infant children, reportedly born in Syria.

Prakash, still awaiting trial in Turkey on terrorism-related charges, has become the 12th person to be stripped of Australian citizenship since the Labor Party backed the introduction of new arbitrary revocation powers in 2015. His case has set a further far-reaching precedent because the government has proceeded despite authorities in Fiji rejecting Canberra’s declaration that Prakash is a Fijian citizen on the basis that his father was Fijian.

Once again, the fraudulent “war on terrorism” declared by the US and its allies in 2001 has been invoked to overturn fundamental democratic rights—in this case, the right to citizenship itself, which carries with it essential civil and social rights such as voting, residence and access to healthcare and welfare. Without any kind of trial or due process, Prakash has been rendered stateless, in violation of international treaties.

When the Coalition and Labor pushed the draconian amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act through parliament in 2015, they claimed that the provisions were restricted to dual citizens—those who were “a national or citizen of a country other than Australia.” That itself posed a potential threat to an estimated six million dual citizens—about a quarter of the country’s population.

By revoking Prakash’s citizenship, the Australian government has taken a lead in an anti-democratic drive that has implications far beyond the supposed fight against terrorism. Similar powers have been introduced in the allied countries, including the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, that fuelled the rise of terrorism by invading and laying waste to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton this week defended the cancellation of Prakash’s citizenship after the director of Fiji’s Immigration Department, Nemani Vuniwaqa, declared that Prakash was not, as claimed by Dutton, a Fijian citizen. Interviewed by the Fiji Sun, Vuniwaqa confirmed Prakash had never entered the country or applied for citizenship. Nor had his father applied on his behalf.

Nevertheless, Dutton insisted the revocation of Prakash’s citizenship was legally sound, while refusing to detail the government’s legal advice. In a display of contempt for legal rights, including Prakash’s prospect of a fair trial in Turkey, Dutton declared he would “do whatever I can neutralise that threat” of “terrorists” returning to Australia and Prakash “should rot in jail in Turkey.”

Every aspect of the Prakash case highlights the reactionary and politically-driven character of the citizenship-stripping powers. Dutton announced the move on December 29, as part of a fresh government scare-mongering offensive on the issues of “national security” and anti-refugee “border protection.” Yet the Australian reported that the decision was actually made in August and Prakash was notified in late December, more than four months later.

This secrecy underscores the trashing of basic legal rights involved in the citizenship revocation process. Without any hearing, due process or even notice to the citizen, the government simply announces the decision, acting on a recommendation of a shadowy Citizenship Loss Board, made on the basis of unreliable material supplied by intelligence agencies. No appeal is permitted, except to the High Court or Federal Court after the decision has been made already, and then only on the legality of the process, not the facts or evidence. For someone in Prakash’s situation, locked in a Turkish prison cell, such an appeal is virtually impossible.

Prakash, who appeared in Islamic State (IS) propaganda videos, has been accused of going to Syria to fight with IS, of being an IS member and of being involved in two alleged terrorist plots in Australia. How unreliable the intelligence allegations are likely to be, however, is highlighted by the fact that the US and Australian agencies twice celebrated killing Prakash. In May 2016, then Attorney-General George Brandis said US officials had confirmed that a US bomb strike killed Prakash in Mosul. Two months later, the US Central Command said four civilians had died in a strike targeting Prakash during April of that year.

As for the Citizenship Loss Board, it is not even mentioned in the legislation. It operates without any legal power or regulation. No protections against arbitrary government power, such as jury trials, the presumption of innocence and procedural fairness, apply. Even the board’s membership remained secret until a Guardian freedom of information application revealed limited details.

As of 2016, the members included seven senior officials of the immigration department (now the home affairs department), plus the prime minister’s counter-terrorism coordinator, and high-ranking officials from the foreign affairs and attorney-general’s departments, and the Australian Crime Commission. They were joined by unnamed representatives of the defence department, Australian Federal Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS) and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

Until 2015, no one’s citizenship could be revoked, unless it was obtained by proven fraud. Now, governments can unilaterally cancel citizenships in three ways, via sections 33 to 36 of the Australian Citizenship Act.

First, a person is deemed to “renounce by conduct” their citizenship if the home affairs minister is “satisfied” they participated in certain terrorist-linked or “hostile activity” overseas. Second, an individual “ceases” to be a citizen by “fighting for” or “being in the service of” any organisation listed by government decree as terrorist.

Third, a person “ceases” to be a citizen if jailed for more than six years for any of a long list of terrorism and politically-motivated offences, including “advocating terrorism,” assisting an “enemy” of Australia, “foreign incursions and recruitment” and leaking security information. The list also includes offences that were redefined and expanded in last year’s “foreign interference” legislation—treason, treachery, sabotage and espionage, and foreign incursions and recruitment.

Because of the sweeping definition of terrorism in the post-9/11 laws, a person could lose their citizenship, for example, for supporting the right of individuals, whether in Syria or any other country, to resist a US-led invasion. And the extended “foreign interference” crimes could affect anti-war and anti-government activists.

While defending the Prakash decision, Dutton foreshadowed further such actions. He said the government was working with Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US to get “evidence or intelligence” on others.

News of Prakash’s annulment came after the government, supported by the Labor Party, unveiled further amendments last November to make it even easier to revoke citizenship. Ramping up the government’s nationalist propaganda against “violent radical Islam,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared that “extremists” would be stripped of citizenship and deported, regardless of their status in any other country. If no other country would take them, they would be detained indefinitely.

The new provisions would apply regardless of whether a person is actually entitled to another citizenship. The home affairs minister would only have to be “reasonably satisfied” that the person was a “national” of another state. In addition, the requirement of a six-year prison sentence would be removed from most of the offences for which citizenship automatically “ceases.”

After the Fijian objection to the Prakash edict, the Labor Party accused Dutton of proceeding rashly in a manner that could undercut the 2015 legislation. Labor’s immigration spokesman, Shayne Neumann, stated: “National security is too important an issue to be played with flippantly, and Labor supports the right of any government to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship to protect the Australian people.”

This is consistent with Labor’s record of supporting every measure since 2001 to bolster the powers of the state apparatus.

Throughout the media coverage of Prakash’s plight there has been no mention of the fact that IS is largely a creation of the US-led wars in the Middle East, the real aim of which is to ensure US control over the resource-rich region and the entire Eurasian landmass, where Washington confronts Russia and China.

Likewise, there has been no reference to the economic and social conditions that enable Islamic fundamentalists to recruit vulnerable youth. In Australia’s working-class suburbs, young people from immigrant backgrounds face high levels of unemployment, poor educational and social facilities and constant police harassment.

Prakash grew up in the Melbourne southeast suburb of Springvale South, largely raised by his Cambodian mother, who suffered mental illness. He did not finish school, nor a mechanic’s apprenticeship. He reportedly became involved in youth gangs before exploring Buddhism and then Islam.

Now the political establishment that created those conditions is stripping him of all rights and setting a dangerous precedent for use against others.

Growing signs of Australian economic fragility

Oscar Grenfell 

A rapid fall in the east coast’s inflated housing market, a sharp decline in the currency, slowing economic growth and stagnant wages—these are among the indicators of Australian capitalism’s fragility, amid mounting global turbulence.

Indices covering all those sectors have prompted nervous warnings that 2019 could see the Australian economy wracked by recessionary tendencies.

End of year figures released by CoreLogic showed that median house prices across the country fell by 4.8 percent in 2018. It was the largest annual decline since the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. The group’s analysts predicted that the trend would intensify in 2019.

Commentators noted that the figure obscured how precipitous the fall has been on the east coast, which has been at the centre of a frenzied investment-fuelled property bubble.

Sydney’s median property price fell by around 10 percent in 2018, equivalent to roughly $100,000 per dwelling. This took the total fall since the city’s market peak in early 2017 to 11.1 percent, the sharpest correction in over 35 years. The annual decline in Melbourne was 9.1 percent, or an average of about $75,000 per property.

The figures indicated an acceleration of the downturn, with Sydney and Melbourne median prices falling by over 4 percent, or more than a third of their total annual decline, in just the final three months of 2018.

In a sign of dwindling investor confidence, property purchases across the country by foreign-based buyers plunged by 11 percent over the year.

Mortgage rate rises by three major banks—Westpac, ANZ and the Commonwealth Bank—in the last half of 2018 were also a factor in the price declines. They increased the difficulties of working people seeking to buy a home, amid a soaring cost of living and stagnant or declining wages.

Figures for the September quarter, released late last year, showed that price declines were beginning to affect the middle and lower segments of the Sydney and Melbourne markets, not just more expensive dwellings, as previously had been the case.

The property market downturn is one aspect of broader uncertainty surrounding the Australian economy. The dollar fell to 67.49 US cents on Thursday, its lowest level in a decade, before rebounding to close to 70 cents later in the day. That volatility demonstrated the vulnerability of Australian capitalism to global economic headwinds.

Thursday’s sharp fall, following declines last year, was bound up with moves by international traders away from currencies perceived as risky. Their concerns were intensified by figures this week showing a decline in the pace of Chinese manufacturing output, reflecting the initial fallout of the US Trump administration’s trade war measures against Beijing, and Apple’s announcement of major China-related losses, which prompted a 7.45 percent fall in its share price. China is Australia’s largest trading partner and export market.

The currency decline is one expression of a broader recessionary trend. Australian gross domestic product (GDP) figures released last month showed seasonally adjusted growth of just 0.3 percent for the quarter to September.

The rate was the lowest in two years and well below forecasts of 0.6 percent. The fall was driven by a sharp downturn in construction, indicating the broader economic impact of the property slowdown, as well as decreased household spending.

The figure was artificially boosted by government spending, especially in large infrastructure projects geared to the profit interests of big business, which added 0.2 percent to real GDP.

The confluence of potential flashpoints for a new financial crisis, including ongoing turbulence on the Australian and global share markets, has intensified the dilemmas confronting the ruling elite.

Last month, the Reserve Bank maintained its official cash rate at the record low figure of 1.5 percent. The bank had foreshadowed possibly raising the rate over the next couple of years. Last month, however, Guy Debelle, the bank’s deputy governor, told business executives that further rate cuts and unprecedented quantitative easing-style measures could be on the agenda.

This would be a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy. It would clash with the move toward interest rate increases in the US and Europe, and the winding back of quantitative easing there as well. The major private banks, moreover, are under pressure to increase their own lending rates, in line with hikes on the international markets, where they borrow their funds.

Debelle’s comments reflected fears within the ruling elite that having promoted the frenzied property market, through low interest rates and government incentives to investors, including negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, any move to rein in the market could lead to a credit crunch and recession.

Indicating the extent to which the property bubble has been based on an orgy of speculation and reckless lending, cosmetic regulatory measures introduced last year appear to have contributed to the housing slowdown.

In December, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), a regulatory body, lifted restrictions introduced at the beginning of 2018, which had stipulated that less than 30 percent of banks’ new residential mortgage holdings consist of “interest-only loans.” Such loans are considered especially risky, because for a fixed period, usually seven years, the mortgage holder is not required to make any repayments on the principal. At the end of this period, borrowers face a steep increase in their repayments, which they may be unable to meet.

APRA’s introduction of the regulation in early 2018 resulted in a 57 percent fall in new interest-only loans over the following months. It decided to scrap the rule after warnings by the Reserve Bank, Australia’s central bank, of a potential credit squeeze with broader implications.

The Australian economy largely has been propped up since 2012 by the property market, following the collapse of the mining boom, on top of the post-2008 slump in manufacturing and retail.

The unravelling of the property bubble has created the conditions for a new financial crisis. Mortgage debt accounts for over 60 percent of the assets of most major banks, and 30 percent or more of their holdings are interest-only. These loans are expected to mature over the next two years, prompting warnings of a sharp increase in defaults.

Already, an estimated one million households are suffering mortgage stress—their household income is insufficient to cover ongoing expenses. Modelling has indicated that some 60,000 of these households are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages over the next year.

Analysis by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in September found that a mere 0.5 percentage point interest rate rise would increase the proportion of households suffering mortgage stress from around one in four, to one in three. A 2 percent rate increase would send half of mortgaged households into stress.

Protests against poverty, housing evictions and repossessions spread across Ireland

Steve James

Protests and occupations have been held in Ireland against impossible housing prices, high rents and homelessness. On December 1, around 15,000 people marched through central Dublin. The march was in remembrance of Jonathan Corrie, a homeless man who froze to death in 2014 outside Leinster House, home of the Irish parliament.

Figures released by the Department of Housing last July showed that nearly 10,000 people in Ireland are living in emergency accommodation. Housing campaigners suggest the real figure is double that. According to the Simon Community, some 81,000 people were living in insecure accommodation. Three hundred more people, including 86 children, were made homeless in November alone.

Testifying to pervasive levels of poverty in the city, some 3,000 people, including many elderly and children, queued December 20 for Christmas food parcels outside Dublin’s Capuchin Centre.

In Cork, 328 adults were in emergency accommodation in July. This represented the highest monthly number of adults in emergency accommodation—an increase of 32 percent in 12 months and a rise of 59 percent in two years.

Rural Ireland is gripped by the same social tensions. Since April this year, the Irish Farmers Association has been operating a land sale boycott against sales imposed to extract debts from farmers. Some 2,500 farmers are said to be affected.

On December 11, two brothers and a sister, all in their 50s and 60s, were forcibly evicted from their farm in Strokestown, County Roscommon. This was in pursuit of £300,000 in debts, said to be owed to the Belgium-based KBC Bank of Ireland and dating to 2009. The move followed a High Court judgment for debt enforcement.

The eviction was peacefully but unsuccessfully opposed by local supporters of the family. Videos posted online showed uniformed security guards manhandling to the ground one of those being evicted. Sixty-four-year-old David McGann suffered bruises and lacerations while Gardai (police) looked on.

The security guards were reported to be from a Northern Ireland-based security company with Loyalist connections.

Five days later, in the early hours of the morning December 16, the security guards still in occupation of the house were themselves thrown out. Unidentified supporters of the family mobilised en masse. A number of the security guards were beaten and their vehicles burnt out. The McGanns are now back in their home.

The family have broad sympathy. As many as 1,200 people demonstrated in support of the family the following week in Strokestown. Protesters denounced the Gardai, the banks—including KBC—the Fine Gael government and its Fianna Fail prop. One placard compared the evictions with the actions of the despised Black and Tans—military veterans recruited by the British government after World War I. The Black and Tans became infamous for burning Irish villages and murdering civilians.

Protests were also staged against KBC Bank.

“Yellow Vest” type protests have emerged involving hundreds of people, emulating the larger protests in France. On December 22, hundreds of Yellow Vests marched around Dublin opposing evictions, high rents, bank bailouts, climate change and the high costs of living. One week later, a smaller group marched through the Port Tunnel in Dublin, blocking all traffic. One protester carried a banner reading, “Ireland, probably the most corrupt country on earth.”

Behind the protests lie the extreme daily pressures being exerted on workers, sections of the middle class, farmers and small businesses by the banks, corporations and hedge funds that dominate Ireland.

House prices are unaffordable for many. Dublin is one of the highest priced cities for accommodation in the world. Average house prices in the city are now as a high as €370,400, while even in Limerick the average is now €194,200—up 9.8 percent in just one year.

The banks and hedge funds, backed by the government, are seeking to maximise returns on thousands of mortgage debts in long-term arrears. Some of those date to the financial crash of 2008, in which the European Union, at the behest of the Irish government, bailed out Ireland’s banking system to the tune of €62.7 billion. To claw this back, years of savage austerity measures were imposed on the working class by successive Fianna Fail and Fine Gael governments.

Attention has focused on the role of so-called “vulture funds.” These are hedge funds or private equity firms that buy up “distressed” sovereign or property-related debt from governments and banks at a fraction of the nominal value of the debt. The funds make a quick return on their investment, before selling on the debt.

In Europe, after 2008, particularly in Ireland, Greece and Spain, hundreds of thousands of ordinary mortgage holders found themselves unable to pay back loans on property whose value had collapsed, and for which the market had disappeared.

According to the Debt and Development Coalition Ireland, in 2014 there was an estimated €879 billion worth of distressed debt across Europe, mostly in the form of bad property loans. Of this, some €233 billion was held by “bad banks”, such as Ireland’s state-owned National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), which originally took on €73 billion worth of debt.

NAMA and the now defunct Irish Banking Resolution Corporation (IBRC)—the nationalised remains of Anglo-Irish Bank—sold on vast sums of bad debt to the vulture funds. In 2013 and 2014, NAMA and the IRBC accounted for over one third of all assets, €36 billion, sold to vulture funds such as Lone Star Capital, Cerberus, Oaktree Capital, CarVal and Marathon. Lone Star also acquired Lloyds Bank’s entire book of mortgages—some 4,000 accounts. Permanent TSB Group Holdings (PTSB), also mostly state-owned, dumped subprime mortgages onto Mars Capital Ireland.

Irish banks were recently forced by the European Union to accelerate these transfers. Earlier this year, PTSB confirmed another loan portfolio worth €1.3 billion had been sold to Lone Star. Through these sales, PTSB has reduced its non-performing loans from €9 billion to €5 billion. The portfolio includes 7,400 owner occupier mortgages, a quarter of which have been in arrears for more than 40 months. Subsequently Ulster Bank sold 5,200 mortgages to Cerberus.

Overall, according the Irish Central Bank, of a total 728,000 mortgages in Ireland. 64,500 were in arrears. Of these 45,200 had over 90 days arrears.

Homeowners behind with their mortgage to vulture funds are more likely to face eviction than if the mortgage had stayed with a state-owned bank. In total, vulture funds now hold 13 percent of all mortgages over 90 days in arrears and 17 percent of those over 720 days in arrears, a total 28,100.

As night follows day, housing repossessions have sharply increased, with all the signs that more are to follow. Irish-based affiliates of CarVal, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank racked up £32.7 million of debt enforcement judgments in their favour in one eight-day period at the end of September alone.

Enforcements registered by vulture funds in 2018 to date are already more than five times the entire 2017 total. Enforcement allows the distressed borrowers’ assets to be seized. One hundred sixty-one homes were repossessed in the third quarter of 2018.

This brutal policy has been determinedly upheld by Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s government. In a recent interview Varadkar, who postures as socially liberal, complained about the use of the term “vulture fund.” Defending their policies, Varadkar was “reluctant” to use the term because “you’ll know, from the numbers, that they’re often better at write-downs of loans than our own banks are.”

Report: 452 child workers died in the US from 2003 to 2016

Jessica Goldstein

About 452 child workers died in the United States from 2003 to 2016, according to a December 20 analysis by the Washington Post. Over 16 percent of those, or a total of 73, were children aged 12 years and younger. The age groups with the next highest number of deaths were 16- and 17-year-olds, with 110 and 145 deaths during those years, respectively.

A child worker is recognized by the US government as any worker under 18 years of age. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act—a set of federal laws which set age, hours worked, wage and safety requirements for minors in the US—14 is the minimum age for most non-agricultural work.

However, there are many exemptions to the law. In the US, children are legally allowed to deliver newspapers, perform in radio, television, movies or theatrical productions at any age. They are also allowed to work in businesses owned by their parents (except in mining, manufacturing or what are deemed to be “hazardous jobs”), perform babysitting or minor chores around a private home, and work as homeworkers to gather evergreens and make evergreen wreaths.

The majority of child deaths from 2003 to 2016—52 percent, or a total of 235—occurred in agriculture, although agricultural workers account for less than one-fifth of the total number of child laborers in the US. The disproportionate number can be attributed to the fact that the agricultural, forestry, fishing and hunting sector, which accounted for over 11 percent of total workplace deaths in 2017, is one of the most dangerous occupations in the US.

Another cause is that small family farms are exempt from most government regulations of child labor in the US. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal organization that regulates workplace safety, states that “youths of any age may work at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parent or person standing in place of their parent.”

Children younger than 14 are allowed to work on a farm with their parents’ permission. Children younger than 12 can work only on farms so small that they’re not required to pay the minimum wage. Children are prohibited from working during school hours, which means they must work either in the early morning or evening hours. In some seasons, these are the hours with the least amount of sunlight, meaning that they make working conditions more dangerous.

Farmworkers 15 and younger are prohibited from operating a combine harvester or most larger tractors, using dynamite or other explosives, or performing other hazardous tasks. But there are exceptions for children who have been trained on certain tasks and machinery in a program such as 4-H. Children younger than 15 may and regularly do operate smaller vehicles, like tractors and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), on family farms.

According to a 2018 report by the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, the number of youth worker fatalities in agriculture has been higher than in all other industries combined since 2009. In 2015, child workers were 44.8 times more likely to be fatally injured in agriculture when compared to all other industries combined.

Transportation incidents were the most common fatal event, with tractors and ATVs being the primary vehicles involved. Transportation incidents also cause the most workplace fatalities in the entire US labor force, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2017.

The high number of child deaths in agriculture can be traced to the reactionary policies of the Obama administration enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, in order to serve the profit interests of the major corporations and big banks and to suppress the class struggle.

In addition to stripping back health and safety regulations during his two presidential terms, Obama’s Labor Department in 2012 refused to enact proposed regulations that would have forbidden children younger than 16 years of age from completing “agricultural work with animals and in pesticide handling, timber operations, manure pits and storage bins.” The regulations also would have forbidden farm workers under the age of 16 from handling most “power-driven equipment” and from contributing to the “cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco.”

Outside of agricultural work, the Washington Post report shows that children died working in construction (56), administrative and support and waste management (28), restaurants, hotels and retail (39 total) and several other occupations.

There is no way to know exactly how many children work in the US at any given time, as no official data is available for the total number in agriculture, family businesses and household work, including babysitting and housekeeping work for pay.

Data for employment of 15- to 17-year-olds show that 2.5 million children in this age group were working during the summer of 2017, and the number fell to less than 2 million for the rest of the year, when school is in session in the US. Both statistics are the highest level of employment recorded for this age group in the post-2008 period.

According to the report, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Childhood Agricultural Injury Survey separately found about 524,000 children worked on farms in 2014. The survey found about 375,000 ‘working household children’ that same year. Two-thirds of them were 14 or younger, according to the [Government Accountability Office’s] analysis.”

The number of children working and killed at work in the United States exposes the stark reality of the capitalist system: Even in one of the most advanced capitalist economies in the world, child labor is not eradicated, nor will it be unless the profit system is replaced with a planned economy based on fulfilling social need.

That so many children are working points to the fact that living standards for the working class have fallen so low that children are going to work at younger ages out of economic necessity, evoking images of children in the Victorian era who risked their lives in dangerous factory and mine work in order to support their families.

Small farmers are especially susceptible to pressure to use child labor, with a general lack of capital making production costs exceedingly high when compared to the economic gain.

Unless the working class intervenes with its own strategy to take control of the means of production, not only will child labor continue to exist in the US, but conditions for child laborers in the US will begin to fall closer to those faced by children on the continents of Asia and Africa, where it is much more common.

Betsy DeVos, current education secretary in the Trump Administration and one of the few cabinet members who has not been fired or resigned, has been a member of the board of the Action Institute. This right-wing think tank advocates the abolition of mandatory schooling and the loosening of child labor restrictions, as illustrated by one of its blog posts from early November 2016, titled “Bring back child labor.”

None of the trade unions in the United States, including the United Farm Workers of America, have lifted a finger to fight against the exploitation of children in dangerous work in the US.

The working class needs its own strategy, independent of the two capitalist parties and their allies in the trade unions, putting forward a socialist program and linking up with workers around the world in the fight for a safe workplace for all workers and to put an end to child labor worldwide.