The Greatest Scam in History: How the Energy Companies Took Us All

Naomi Oreskes

It’s a tale for all time. What might be the greatest scam in history or, at least, the one that threatens to take history down with it. Think of it as the climate-change scam that beat science, big time.

Scientists have been seriously investigating the subject of human-made climate change since the late 1950s and political leaders have been discussing it for nearly as long. In 1961, Alvin Weinberg, the director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, called carbon dioxide one of the “big problems” of the world “on whose solution the entire future of the human race depends.” Fast-forward nearly 30 years and, in 1992, President George H.W. Bush signed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), promising “concrete action to protect the planet.”

Today, with Puerto Rico still recovering from Hurricane Maria and fires burning across California, we know that did not happen. Despite hundreds of scientific reports and assessments, tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers, and countless conferences on the issue, man-made climate change is now a living crisis on this planet. Universities, foundations, churches, and individuals have indeed divested from fossil fuel companies and, led by a 16-year-old Swedish girl, citizens across the globe have taken to the streets to express their outrage. Children have refused to go to school on Fridays to protest the potential loss of their future. And if you need a measure of how long some of us have been at this, in December, the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC will meet for the 25th time.

Scientists working on the issue have often told me that, once upon a time, they assumed, if they did their jobs, politicians would act upon the information. That, of course, hasn’t happened. Anything but, across much of the planet. Worse yet, science failed to have the necessary impact in significant part because of disinformation promoted by the major fossil-fuel companies, which have succeeded in diverting attention from climate change and successfully blocking meaningful action.

Making Climate Change Go Away

Much focus has been put on ExxonMobil’s history of disseminating disinformation, partly because of the documented discrepancies between what that company said in public about climate change and what its officials said (and funded) in private. Recently, a trial began in New York City accusing the company of misleading its investors, while Massachusetts is prosecuting ExxonMobil for misleading consumers as well.

If only it had just been that one company, but for more than 30 years, the fossil-fuel industry and its allies have denied the truth about anthropogenic global warming. They have systematically misled the American people and so purposely contributed to endless delays in dealing with the issue by, among other things, discounting and disparaging climate science, mispresenting scientific findings, and attempting to discredit climate scientists. These activities are documented in great detail in How Americans Were Deliberately Misled about Climate Change, a report I recently co-authored, as well as in my 2010 book and 2014 film, Merchants of Doubt.

A key aspect of the fossil-fuel industry’s disinformation campaign was the mobilization of “third-party allies”: organizations and groups with which it would collaborate and that, in some cases, it would be responsible for creating.

In the 1990s, these allied outfits included the Global Climate Coalition, the Cooler Heads Coalition, Informed Citizens for the Environment, and the Greening Earth Society. Like ExxonMobil, such groups endlessly promoted a public message of denial and doubt: that we weren’t really sure if climate change was happening; that the science wasn’t settled; that humanity could, in any case, readily adapt at a later date to any changes that did occur; and that addressing climate change directly would wreck the American economy. Two of these groups — Informed Citizens for the Environment and the Greening Earth Society — were, in fact, AstroTurf organizations, created and funded by a coal industry trade association but dressed up to look like grass-roots citizens’ action organizations.

Similar messaging was pursued by a network of think tanks promoting free market solutions to social problems, many with ties to the fossil-fuel industry. These included the George C. Marshall Institute, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute. Often their politically motivated contrarian claims were presented in formats that make them look like the scientific reports whose findings they were contradicting.

In 2009, for instance, the Cato Institute issued a report that precisely mimicked the format, layout, and structure of the government’s U.S. National Climate Assessment. Of course, it made claims thoroughly at odds with the actual report’s science. The industry also promoted disinformation through its trade associations, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

Both think tanks and trade organizations have been involved in personal attacks on the reputations of scientists. One of the earliest documented was on climate scientist Benjamin Santer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who showed that the observed increase in global temperatures could not be attributed to increased solar radiation. He served as the lead author of the Second Assessment Report of the U.N.’s prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, responsible for the 1995 conclusion that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human impact on the climate system.” Santer became the target of a vicious, arguably defamatory attack by physicists from the George C. Marshall Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, who accused him of fraud. Other climate scientists, including Michael Mann, Jonathan Overpeck, Malcolm Hughes, Ray Bradley, Katharine Hayhoe, and, I should note, myself, have been subject to harassment, investigation, hacked emails, and politically motivated freedom-of-information attacks.

How to Play Climate Change for a Fool

When it came to industry disinformation, the role of third-party allies was on full display at the House Committee on Oversight hearings on climate change in late October. As their sole witness, the Republicans on that committee invited Mandy Gunasekera, the founder and president of Energy45, a group whose purpose, in its own words, is to “support the Trump energy agenda.”

Energy45 is part of a group known, bluntly enough, as the CO2 Coalition and is a perfect example of what I’ve long thought of as zombie denialism in which older players spouting industry arguments suddenly reappear in new forms. In this case, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the George C. Marshall Institute was a leader in climate-change disinformation. From 1974-1999, its director, William O’Keefe, had also been the executive vice president and later CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. The Marshall Institute itself closed in 2015, only to re-emerge a few years later as the CO2 Coalition.

The comments of Republican committee members offer a sense of just how deeply the climate-change disinformation campaign is now lodged in the heart of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans as 2019 draws to an end and the planet visibly heats. Consider just six of their “facts”:

1) The misleading claim that climate change will be “mild and manageable.” There is no scientific evidence to support this. On the contrary, literally hundreds of scientific reports over the past few decades, including those U.S. National Climate Assessments, have affirmed that any warming above 2 degrees Centigrade will lead to grave and perhaps catastrophic effects on “health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth.” The U.N.’s IPCC has recently noted that avoiding the worst impacts of global warming will “require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy… infrastructure… and industrial systems.”

Recent events surrounding Hurricanes Sandy, Michael, Harvey, Maria, and Dorian, as well as the devastating wildfire at the ironically named town of Paradise, California, in 2018 and the fires across much of that state this fall, have shown that the impacts of climate change are already part of our lives and becoming unmanageable. Or if you want another sign of where this country is at this moment, consider a new report from the Army War College indicating that “the Department of Defense (DoD) is precariously unprepared for the national security implications of climate change-induced global security challenges.” And if the Pentagon isn’t prepared to manage climate change, it’s hard to imagine any part of the U.S. government that might be.

2) The misleading claim that global prosperity is actually being driven by fossil fuels. No one denies that fossil fuels drove the Industrial Revolution and, in doing so, contributed substantively to rising living standards for hundreds of millions of people in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia. But the claim that fossil fuels are the essence of global prosperity today is, at best, a half-truth because what is at stake here isn’t the past but the future. Disruptive climate change fueled by greenhouse gas emissions from the use of oil, coal, and natural gas now threatens both the prosperity that parts of this planet have already achieved and future economic growth of just about any sort. Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the foremost experts on the economics of climate change, has put our situation succinctly this way: “High carbon growth self-destructs.”

3) A misleading claim that fossil fuels represent “cheap energy.” Fossil fuels are not cheap. When their external costs are included — that is, not just the price of extracting, distributing, and profiting from them, but what it will cost in all our lives once you add in the fires, extreme storms, flooding, health effects, and everything else that their carbon emissions into the atmosphere will bring about — they couldn’t be more expensive. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the cost to consumers above and beyond what we pay at the pump or in our electricity bills already comes to more than $5 trillion dollars annually. That’s trillion, not billion. Put another way, we are all paying a massive, largely unnoticed subsidy to the oil, gas, and coal industry to destroy our civilization. Among other things, those subsidies already “damage the environment, caus[e]… premature deaths through local air pollution, [and] exacerbat[e] congestion and other adverse side effects of vehicle use.”

4) A misleading claim about poverty and fossil fuels. That fossil fuels are the solution to the energy needs of the world’s poor is a tale being heavily promoted by ExxonMobil, among others. The idea that ExxonMobil is suddenly concerned about the plight of the global poor is, of course, laughable or its executives wouldn’t be planning (as they are) for significant increases in fossil-fuel production between now and 2030, while downplaying the threat of climate change. As Pope Francis, global justice leader Mary Robinson, and former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon — as well as countless scientists and advocates of poverty reduction and global justice — have repeatedly emphasized, climate change will, above all, hurt the poor. It is they who will first be uprooted from their homes (and homelands); it is they who will be migrating into an increasingly hostile and walled-in world; it is they who will truly feel the heat, literal and figurative, of it all. A fossil-fuel company that cared about the poor would obviously not be committed, above all else, to pursuing a business model based on oil and gas exploration and development. The cynicism of this argument is truly astonishing.

Moreover, while it’s true that the poor need affordable energy, it is not true that they need fossil fuels. More than a billion people worldwide lack access (or, at least, reliable access) to electricity, but many of them also lack access to an electricity grid, which means fossil fuels are of little use to them. For such communities, solar and wind power are the only reasonable ways to go, the only ones that could rapidly and affordably be put in place and made available.

5) Misleading assertions about the costs of renewable energy. The cheap fossil fuel narrative is regularly coupled with misleading assertions about the allegedly high costs of renewable energy. According to Bloomberg News, however, in two-thirds of the world, solar is already the cheapest form of newly installed electricity generation, cheaper than nuclear, natural gas, or coal. Improvements in energy storage are needed to maximize the penetration of renewables, particularly in developed countries, but such improvements are happening quickly. Between 2010 and 2017, the price of battery storage decreased a startling 79% and most experts believe that, in the near future, many of the storage problems can and will be solved.

6) The false claim that, under President Trump, the U.S. has actually cut greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans have claimed not only that such emissions have fallen but that the United States under President Trump has done more to reduce emissions than any other country on the planet. One environmental reporter, who has described herself as “accustomed to hearing a lot of misinformation” about climate change, characterized this statement as “brazenly false.” In fact, U.S. CO2 emissions spiked in 2018, increasing by 3.1% over 2017. Methane emissions are also on the rise and President Trump’s proposal to rollback methane standards will ensure that unhappy trend continues.

Science Isn’t Enough

And by the way, when it comes to the oil companies, that’s just to start down a far longer list of misinformation and false claims they’ve been peddling for years. In our 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, Erik Conway and I showed that the strategies and tactics used by Big Energy to deny the harm of fossil-fuel use were, in many cases, remarkably similar to those long used by the tobacco industry to deny the harm of tobacco use — and this was no coincidence. Many of the same PR firms, advertising agencies, and institutions were involved in both cases.

The tobacco industry was finally prosecuted by the Department of Justice, in part because of the ways in which the individual companies coordinated with each other and with third-party allies to present false information to consumers. Through congressional hearings and legal discovery, the industry was pegged with a wide range of activities it funded to mislead the American people. Something similar has occurred with Big Energy and the harm fossil fuels are doing to our lives, our civilization, our planet.

Still, a crucial question about the fossil-fuel industry remains to be fully explored: Which of its companies have funded the activities of the trade organizations and other third-party allies who deny the facts about climate change? In some cases, we already know the answers. In 2006, for instance, the Royal Society of the United Kingdom documented ExxonMobil’s funding of 39 organizations that promoted “inaccurate and misleading” views of climate science. The Society was able to identify $2.9 million spent to that end by that company in the year 2005 alone. That, of course, was just one year and clearly anything but the whole story.

Nearly all of these third-party allies are incorporated as 501(c)(3) institutions, which means they must be non-profit and nonpartisan. Often they claim to be involved in education (though mis-education would be the more accurate term). But they are clearly also involved in supporting an industry — Big Energy — that couldn’t be more for-profit and they have done many things to support what could only be called a partisan political agenda as well. After all, by its own admission, Energy45, to take just one example, exists to support the “Trump Energy Agenda.”

I’m an educator, not a lawyer, but as one I can say with confidence that the activities of these organizations are the opposite of educational. Typically, the Heartland Institute, for instance, has explicitly targeted schoolteachers with disinformation. In 2017, the institute sent a booklet to more than 200,000 of them, repeating the oft-cited contrarian claims that climate science is still a highly unsettled subject and that, even if climate change were occurring, it “would probably not be harmful.” Of this booklet, the director of the National Center for Science Education said, “It’s not science, but it’s dressed up to look like science. It’s clearly intended to confuse teachers.” The National Science Teaching Association has called it “propaganda” and advised teachers to place their copies in the recycling bin.

Yet, as much as we know about the activities of Heartland and other third-party allies of the fossil-fuel industry, because of loopholes in our laws we still lack basic information about who has funded and sustained them. Much of the funding at the moment still qualifies as “dark money.” Isn’t it time for citizens to demand that Congress investigate this network, as it and the Department of Justice once investigated the tobacco industry and its networks?

ExxonMobil loves to accuse me of being “an activist.” I am, in fact, a teacher and a scholar. Most of the time, I’d rather be home working on my next book, but that increasingly seems like less of an option when Big Energy’s climate-change scam is ongoing and our civilization is, quite literally, at stake. When citizens are inactive, democracy fails — and this time, if democracy fails, as burning California shows, so much else could fail as well. Science isn’t enough. The rest of us are needed. And we are needed now.

What’s Ailing The Economy?

Mansoor Durrani

When the chief investment officer (CIO) at one of the world’s largest asset managers, PIMCO, publically admits what you have been saying and writing for the past 10 years then it is both a time of worry and hope.

Worry: because when the present economic system – built on greed, deception and speculation – will collapse then it will spread social and economic mayhem beyond our imagination.

And Hope: because a more balanced, equitable and just socio-economic order is long overdue. So whenever it is ushered in at a global scale, it is likely to bring much needed respite to those 99% who have been hammered to the bottom of the economic pyramid as a result of rampant globalization fueled by unlimited debt and heavy speculation.

PIMCO’s CIO Dan Ivascyn manages US$ 1.5 trillion in assets. At a Global Investment Summit in New York recently, he acknowledged “the impact of globalization, wealth inequality and climate change creating political uncertainty over the next five to 10 years.” I have been in the corporate banking business for well over two decades. Having built and managed a multi-billion dollar portfolio, I have seen from close quarters in the financial markets how “financial creativity” and “over leveraging” enhances economic risks which inevitably leads to social tension.

Every crisis has some early warning indicators. This is why we must not rush to the market to buy fire extinguishers after the fire sets in. More so when the price of that imminent crisis is expected to be global and catastrophic. And at the moment, we are seeing a much gloomier scenario than what the numbers looked like on the eve of 2008 global financial crisis. The US government debt has doubled since the 2008 financial crisis. While the global debt stands at US$ 188 trillion – the biggest debt bubble the world has ever seen. This numbers, which is equivalent to 230% of world output, has risen by US$ 24 trillion in just the last 3 years. On this amount, global financial elites are extracting US$ 500 billion annually in interest income alone. That is the singular reason why rich are getting richer (and poor, poorer) at an extremely alarming pace over the last 10 years.

Post 2008 crisis, I wrote in a piece “This is Not a Credit Crisis” in The Banker’s magazine that ‘a financial system based on justice and fairness will survive now and thrive in future’. And I highlighted the fact that ‘there is no “financial economy” in Islam, only real economy. Islam does not permit debt to be traded, discounted or securitized.’ Similarly, speculative trading is completely prohibited under the system which invariably results in high level of economic volatility. For instance, we often witness billions of dollars of investors wealth wiping out in a matter of hours in stock markets.

At a time, when civil unrest is gathering pace like a wildfire from Hong Kong and Beirut to Chile and beyond, another high profile player of the present financial system, Michael Novogratz, the hedge fund manager turned crypto-currency and blockchain investor expresses deep concerns about the future and admits “we’re waiting till the new narrative shows up.” Well the new (and more stable) narrative is already up and running. There are over 500 Islamic banks across five continents managing over two trillion dollars in Islamic financial assets – covering banking, capital markets, and Islamic insurance products. This industry is primarily catering to the faithful for the past four decades. The time is fast approaching when it will need to step up and serve the humanity, in general. The template is ready.

But idealism apart, the global elites who have been benefiting from the existing financial system will not allow “an orderly transition” at any cost. So practically speaking, the social unrest is likely to grow and envelope a much larger territory than what we see today. For weathering through such turmoil, it may be advisable to minimize personal investments in financial assets and maximize investments in hard assets – preferably small plots of agriculture lands that serve basic human needs like food and dairy products. Because survive we must, to experience better times!

Imperialist imprint in Bolivia coup

Farooque Chowdhury

Imperialist imprint in the just carried out Bolivia coup is visible. Donald Trump, the US President, has said in a statement: “The United States applauds the Bolivian people for demanding freedom and the Bolivian military for abiding by its oath to protect not just a single person, but Bolivia’s constitution.”

Who these “people” are? The fascists, the rich, the appropriators, and the lumpen elements money of the rich hired. They are not the poor, the dispossessed, the humble, the sections of the Bolivian society with whom Evo Morales was striving to organize a humane society.

And, the “military”? Leadership of which is mainly and broadly tied to imperialist masters although constitutionally bound to uphold and safeguard interests of the people of Bolivia, as it’s the people that pay salary to the armed body. The bayonets the armed body fixes on its rifles, the bullets the body uses to intimidate the people are purchased with the people’s money. The armed forces’ act of “protecting the constitution” was compelling a constitutionally elected leader with majority of the people’s verdict to renounce presidency.

What’s the character of “freedom” being secured through the coup? It’s freedom of capital, national and imperialist, to appropriate and loot the people and natural resources. And, it’s the freedom to tie the country into imperialist war-plan – strategic and tactical – against the peoples of Latin America.

The White House issued the US presidential statement that began with the following sentence: “The resignation yesterday of Bolivian President Evo Morales is a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere.”

The “democracy” that is cherished in the statement has been ensured through the forced exit of an elected president. The election sought people’s verdict. And, the majority of the people expressed their will – Evo – with a more than 10 percent majority. Now the imperialist power finds “democracy” in forced, and obviously, unconstitutional ouster of elected leader. The “democracy” the imperialism is marketing and imposing at opportune moments on countries convenient to it is the “democracy” of imperialism. Only fools, and lackey of imperialism run and beg to imperialism for this variety of “democracy”. The type of “democracy” imperialism loves is for the rich, for the exploiters, for the plunderers. And, these type of lackeys are not only in Bolivia and Venezuela. They reside and engage with politics in other countries also. And, they, with auxiliary role played by a certain type of NGOs, depend on imperialism for their type of “democracy”. In some countries, a group of “left” elements joins them.

The US Presidential statement issued on November 11, 2019: “Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.”

Can anyone claim the forced – unconstitutional – ouster of an elected president preserves democracy? Can anyone cite a single example of trampling a people’s verdict lets people’s voices heard in any country, from any page of history-book, from real life experience? Shall any imperialist state accept such act within its political mechanism? No, and never.

What was the “people’s” voice heard in Bolivia on its streets, in front of and in elected official’s residences? For weeks, the streets were blocked. The streets saw vandalism with full force, mob violence to its extreme. Elected officials, at least one of them was women and from indigenous community, were threatened, howled at, beaten, assaulted, dragged out of office, humiliated. A part of media has carried those photos. At least one people’s representative, a woman, was confined in a town hall while the hall was set on fire. She was allowed to leave the alighted building after the fire raged around. Even, this “people” – a fascist gang – set the residence of Evo’s sister on fire. Even, Evo’s residence has been vandalized and looted.

Shall any elected or, imperialism-backed dictator, without people’s mandate, accept – allow the vandals – to carry out a small fragment of such acts in any part of their country, with any of their elected officials? Shall they allow this in any case of any sibling or offspring of any of their the elected officials? Shall any imperialist state allow burning of governors’ houses within their country or within their legal jurisdiction? Residences of two governors in Bolivia have been burnt by blood-hounding mob, fascist in character, hired with money. Imperialism doesn’t consider legal jurisdiction. Unilateral decision and declaration about deployment of US forces in and actions of the forces around the oil fields in the Kurdish region of Syria is the latest example of imperialist way of “respecting” or “abiding” by law – domestic and international. Has imperialism heard and accepted the voice raised on the floor of the UN General Assembly, only days ago, on the question of US imposed economic blockade against Cuba? It’s the longest ever economic blockade by the most powerful country against a geographically small island-country. The UNGA vote was overwhelmingly against the imperialist act. Only three member-states of the UN including the US voted against the resolution. Audience of global media knows the way Jane Fonda was arrested in Washington DC. She stood for climate – a climate within which people can breathe, can live, and shall not have to abandon their homes, hospitals, schools, agricultural lands and mangrove forests, and cases, cities. Was the voice been listened?

Now, imperialism is delivering sermon – hear “people’s” voice! Is this – the mobocracy and the imperialismocracy in Bolivia over the last few weeks – the way to let people’s voice heard?

The US President’s statement – “Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding the Resignation of Bolivian President Evo Morales” – signaled: “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail.”

The recent political developments in Bolivia are a strong signal, no doubt. It’s a strong signal to, as the statement identifies, “illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua”.

And, the US President said with a confident tone: “We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.”

Coup against Evo by imperialism pulls imperialism, a mighty machine, closer to democracy! It’s not paradox. It’s contradiction and contradictory in real sense. A mighty machine motivated to subjugate the world is against a man committed to organize a humane life for the exploited people in his country. The machine is so powerful that it was failing to proceed to its cherished “democracy” because of a man, a revolutionary. Does it show might of the machine? The machine knows its weakness.

That’s the reason the machine had to conspire with elites, the most minor part of the society, and a few armed officers commanding an armed force, but having no people’s mandate and depending on the people to pay for their salary, and for arms and ammunition with which these armed persons are trying to trample the people.

Thus, the imperialism imprints its intervention in Bolivia, in the life of the people of the commoners of the Andean country.

The Hill has said the truth with the following heading: “Trump celebrates resignation of Bolivia’s president” (by Brett Samuels, November 11, 2019). It’s celebration, to imperialism! What’s the cause of the celebration? Evo is absent. But, Evo’s absence is for today only. Tomorrow he will come back with his people.

The report said:

“President Trump on Monday hailed the ouster of Bolivian President Evo Morales as a ‘significant moment for democracy’ even as Morales’s supporters and some U.S. lawmakers likened it to a coup.

“Trump issued a statement approving of Morales’s resignation.”

A military act, an act-unconstitutional, is being hailed by a leader of a state, which claims to be a democracy! The bourgeois democracy – centuries-old, an advanced bourgeois democracy – has found one of its best contemporary theoreticians to uncover its character. Shall the bourgeois democracy accept such act in its case, within its state machine, or in case of its imperialist allies?

The Washington Post has said in its report on the coup in Bolivia: The heads of the armed forces and police withdrew their support for the government in recent days amid escalating protests.

Shall the WaPo accept such move by leaders of the armed forces in cases where its interests sleep?

What democracy they are dreaming?

It’s coup-plotters’ democracy. It’s planned to be a democracy of elites, the rich. So, the coup-project is being led by a businessman, Bolivia’s Guaido and Bolsonaro.

The coup-machine – has already started moving through the near-empty streets of La Paz and of other cities. Activists are being hauled, hands cuffed, blindfolded, kneeled, arrested. A Reuter’s photo captioned: “Members of the security forces patrol a street, at the Murillo square, in La Paz”. Enough to perceive the situation.

Before the coup formally unfolded, the coup plotters unleashed hoards of lumpen elements, and those petty-soldiers were kidnapping people, engaging with arsons, threatening political leaders, blocking roads. Shall the Empire allow this in its own territory? Never, never.

What’s in view now there in Bolivia? The Camacho and Mesa duo have spelled out nothing clearly. Their current agenda is repressing the Evo-supporters. They are still relying on violence with their armed goons, and the armed forces and police.

The ringleader in this coup is Bolivia’s Guaido-Bolsonaro – racist, misogynist Camacho – with heavy fortunes in his own pockets and in family coffer. His family is connected to secessionist and far-right anti-democratic activities and enterprises in Bolivia. Imperialism has correctly appointed its orderly in Bolivia – a rich appropriator.

There are the famous NED and IRI, the long arms for imposing Washington-designed “democracy”, activities in countries. US Dollars, millions as their reports show, have been channeled in Bolivia over the years to “seed” their “democracy”. Who knows about activities of their brother “Enterprise” and “Free Labor Unions” to organize their friendly businesspersons and a group of “labor” leaders, lumpen in character? All they do is: Promote rightist agenda.

There are reports of conversations between the Empire leaders and the coup soldiers.

One side, imperialism and its orderlies, thus, are there in Bolivia.

On the opposite, there is Evo. He said during resigning his post: “My sin is being a union leader, indigenous.” He led in imbibing the people with a sense of dignity. He led in the initiatives to lift up 3 million people out of the pit of poverty. The country was the region’s fastest growing economy. He nationalized sectors/enterprises lucrative to imperialism. And, he kicked out US military bases. He represented the commoners.

His is the class war camp of the exploited. Evo’s moves, political and economic, are enough to make imperialism his enemy. So, imperialism has intervened in Bolivia. It may turn more forceful. Nevertheless, the intervention will, hopefully, stumble; because of the state of politics the people there are pursuing since long.

Are other countries including a number of South Asian countries free from similar intervention-possibility? Not at all; not even in any dream. Rather, probably, in some rooms in the Empire’s palace, similar conspiracies for intervention are being hatched, and preparations are going on in full swing.

Death of Secular And Democratic India

Swapna Gopinath

Ayodhya Verdict unravels a new sensibility and a distinctly different social reality, in several diverse ways. One aspect to be mentioned here is the extraordinary rush of appeals for peace in the country. With large battalions of police force deployed throughout the nation, the government and mass media and the social media sent out appeals again and again. The verdict was pronounced and of course, peace prevailed. But the sense of dread has grown phenomenally. The silences are scary especially when the prime minister himself responds to the verdict, when he had remained silent on numerous occasions of national importance.

India has always been walking on thin ice: a fragile democracy kept in place by several institutions intended to help each other uphold the values of democracy. The challenges were manifold: the plurality of religious identities being a prominent one. The economic backwardness faced by every colonial nation added to the woe. Another major hurdle was the widespread illiteracy; of course, democracy requires a basic civil sense and understanding of human rights about which the illiterate Indian had little knowledge. Yet the country stayed strong, though the period of Emergency did unsettle it slightly, the voices of resistance were strong and powerful. Indian Express dared to carry a blank editorial page as a protest against the gagging of press. Leaders were jailed but the protests gained in momentum and Indira Gandhi had to bite dust in the next elections. As the country moved towards adopting a neoliberal economy, shifts in paradigms, social and cultural, were bound to happen. As the waves of globalization swept through the nation, and the markets got crowded with commodities, social sensibilities too began to evolve. The new India was slowly gaining traction and the old India died a natural death.

The new India is a scary one: neoliberal norms have eased the new Indian into a world where the individual is of supreme importance, her identity is defined by the market: collectives and communities no longer matter. The fiercely competitive society demands from the individual huge sacrifices, and in return gets pulled into the affective world of commodities and desires. This individual finds herself increasingly isolated, yet competing with others, on an imaginary journey towards success. The thought processes of this individual are quite complex, and the losing significance of communities, and the nation as a welfare-state add to the woe of the post-global Indian. She sees the inequality, she lives through the frustration of unfulfilled desires and provides the perfect ground for forces of Hindutva to grow undeterred.

For the millions of middleclass, urban Indians, Hindutva is the magic potion, that can change their world. From the feeling of helplessness to a state of being powerful and arrogant, the Hindu happily devours the stories of othering and marginalization where the Muslim and the Dalit emerge as targets. Hate works well in the mind of the person who feels she is a loser in the world of the superrich whose visibility is extremely high, with the media capturing their moments of glory and luxury.  For the rural poor, Hindutva again proves to be a powerful tool, empowering them through the violent power over the Others. Mob lynching and moral policing is hailed by the rightwing forces, the criminals involved in these extreme acts of violence are honored, thus validating such acts of violence.

The recent verdict sealed the deal in favor of Hindutva, a militant political Hindu identity that is distinctly different from Hinduism as a religion. The verdict was not a surprise for many, since the country has been witnessing partisan rulings and verdicts at all levels of administrative and judicial interventions.

Why is this a death knell for democracy in India?

1. The silence of the majority in issues of grave importance, especially when te victims are Muslims or Dalits or other minorities. The secular principles upheld in the constitution is no longer a viable option by a large section of Indian society as is witnessed through the terrifying silence.
2. The acceptance of the verdict by the Muslims has been very stoic. In a democracy that carefully considered the minorities through constitutional provisions thought out and executed so brilliantly, this stance of the Muslim community is a sign of the fear and insecurity that threatens them as a community.
3. The many voices, arrogant and powerful that are plain threats against the minorities. When political leaders speak with such wantonness the atmosphere of fear and suspicion gets stronger day by day.
4. Kashmir and now this verdict, along with the national registry, the target is quite clear. Such targeting of minorities cuts the very lifeline of democratic principles so carefully enshrined in the constitution. While the first term of office of BJP did not witness such major revamp of the nation’s identity, the second term threatens to turn the nation into a totalitarian regime with minorities silenced and voices of dissent attacked or ignored.
5. Aiding the forces of Hindutva is the media that thrives on money and corporate support. Media, unlike in the times of crisis during Emergency, prefers to support the forces of divisiveness and hatred. Since the autonomy of the mass media is severely curtailed through the processes of production that require huge investments, we see them as lapdogs to the powers of authority and arrogance.

India is in a crisis; and Indians, a huge majority of them, refuse to comprehend this reality. The mass mediated images of an invincible leader who can lead the nation to great heights have percolated into the society and offers the illusion of hope to millions who feel abandoned and helpless against the onslaught of the neoliberal market; as consumers and as producers. This sense of impotency acts as the fertile ground to a toxic masculine Hindutva agenda that is set to destroy the secular and democratic structure of India.

Social inequality in Early Bronze Age Europe

Philip Guelpa

The causes of and processes whereby egalitarian societies based on a hunting and gathering economy, which characterized the overwhelming majority of human existence, were transformed into stratified, class societies based on agriculture constitute one of the fundamental questions to be addressed in the study of human cultural evolution.

Bronze Age Tools: Bronze pins, an awl, a knife, a chisel and an axe - The City of Prague Museum (Credit: Zdenek Kratochvil)

Agriculture was developed independently in a number of separate locations around the world (e.g., the Near East, Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, the Andean region) almost simultaneously (in geologic terms) at the end of the last Ice Age (the Pleistocene), roughly 10-12,000 years ago. At first, farming communities remained small and the social structure relatively egalitarian, as it had been during the preceding hundreds of thousands of years when humans relied on hunting and gathering. However, over the next few thousand years, the economies of these societies changed—agriculture became more productive, technology more complex, interregional trade expanded, and populations grew in size. Some villages became towns, and some towns became cities.

As part of this process, the division of labor within society became more complex. Individuals could no longer undertake all of the productive and social tasks required to carry out normal life, as had been the case previously. Administrative control over land and productive forces gradually became alienated to a small segment of the population. And, due to this control, the elite was able to arrogate a disproportionate share of society’s wealth to itself. In short, classes with different roles and interests emerged. By the period known as the Bronze Age in Europe and the Near East, beginning around 3300 BC, highly developed civilizations were emerging in a number of locations, including Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Egypt.

There is still much to be learned about this process of social differentiation and class formation. How did hierarchical relationships develop out of pre-existing egalitarian social structures based on kinship? Did wealth disparities grow within families or between families, or both? Was the gradual weakening of kinship ties between members of the same social group, which had entailed obligations of reciprocal support, the only mechanism of class formation?

Recent research into Bronze Age populations in Germany provides some insight into a certain aspect of class formation, which may be more broadly relevant. In Europe, aside from the Aegean area, such civilizations did not develop in the same manner as in the territories to the east, with their high degree of urbanization and intensive, often irrigation-based, agriculture. Nevertheless, the process of social differentiation and class formation was under way.

Archaeological and biological indicators of social stratification in agricultural societies are evident in Bronze Age Europe dating from roughly 3200 to 600 BC.

Evidence of class differences between a wealthy elite, exemplified by “princely” burials with lavish grave goods, and a large peasant population was already clear. Marked social stratification has been documented in the central German Unetice Culture (2200-1600 BC), located in a region of especially fertile soil, which was characterized by near-state-level social organization with established armies. However, the peasantry, which constituted the bulk of the population, has generally been viewed as an undifferentiated class of small farmers, in which kinship ties remained the basis of social organization within a single class.

New research reveals that social differentiation existed within the peasantry during this period, at least in one region of Germany, with some members of the population occupying roles based on other than familial ties, such as servants or even slaves. Such “small-scale” stratification may provide clues to an understanding of the origins of the larger-scale class structure.

An article recently published in the journal Science, “Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe” (Mittnik et al., 10 October 2019), presents a detailed analysis of genetic and archaeological data from the German Lech River valley derived from sites spanning a 700-year period during the Early Bronze Age, marking the economic and social transition from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age period (from roughly 2750 BC to 1300 BC).

Based on assessment of genetic relatedness between 104 individuals buried in 45 local farmstead cemeteries plus additional data, the study finds that in a set of nearby farming communities there existed core groups of families centered on resident male-based lineages (patrilocality), with women from other communities marrying in (female exogamy).

Individuals buried at the same site were more closely related genetically than those buried at different sites, indicating both long-term residential stability of families (more residential mobility would result in greater genetic diversity) and a stable subsistence system that could reliably sustain these communities through time.

Archaeological evidence in the form of grave goods indicates the relative wealth of the resident “core” family, based on the quantity and quality of burial offerings. The more numerous (presumably more prosperous) families tended to have the richer grave furniture.

A correlation in wealth and status was also seen in genetically identified parent/child relationships, indicating a pattern of inheritance. Perhaps most tellingly, this holds true for subadults, demonstrating that wealth and status were ascribed by inheritance rather than being achieved by the individual’s actions in life. Closely related individuals tended to be buried in proximity to each other, further emphasizing status differentiation. At one site, the high-status individuals were interred in burial mounds.

It is notable, however, that both males and females in these core family groups were interred with significant quantities of grave goods, suggesting a degree of social equality between the sexes.

Significantly, two components of the burial populations in these communities do not conform to this model of stratified, kin-based social organization. The first consists of burials of female individuals unrelated to the local families and with indications of having grown up outside the region who, nevertheless, were interred with significant quantities of grave goods, indicating relatively high social status. Their role in the community is unexplained, but their presence suggests some sort of specialization.

The other group consists of individuals also unrelated to the local families, though not of different general ancestry, but this time interred with only poor grave goods. The authors conclude, “Considering both grave furnishing and kinship, people of different status and biological relatedness likely lived together in the same household, which should therefore be seen as complex and socially stratified institutions.” Again, the specific roles of these individuals are unknown, but their position outside of the kinship structure and their low social status, marked by a paucity of grave goods, suggest a subservient position, resembling a domestic servant or farm hand.

In effect, such individuals would represent, in incipient form, a kind of servant or slave class, distinct from the landed peasantry. Their labor would have contributed to the wealth of the core family, with little or no benefit to themselves, at least as indicated in the archaeological record. The use of “supplemental” labor beyond the members of the kin group suggests that new forms of more labor-intensive agriculture, such as use of the plow, may have been introduced during the Early Bronze Age, necessitating an augmentation of the labor force.

How these “outsiders” came to be functionally part of these households, but yet remained distinct, as revealed by treatment at death, is unknown and worthy of further research. Possibly they were war captives (evidence of warfare exists during this period) or they were members of other families that had fallen on hard times, causing their kin group to dissolve, leaving these individuals homeless and without support.

Notably, weapons were found with significantly higher frequency in the graves of males belonging to the core family than in those of the outsiders, suggesting differential socially sanctioned use of force.

The Science authors conclude that “The EBA [Early Bronze Age] households in the Lech valley…seem similar to the later historically known oikos, the household sphere of classic Greece, as well as the Roman familia, both comprising the kin-related family and their slaves.” This suggests that social differentiation and inequality had deep historical roots in early European farming communities.

This study is impressive in its use of detailed genetic analysis to reconstruct multi-generational family trees, which can then support comparisons between distinct family-based social units drawn from a sufficiently large sample size. This, in conjunction with the analysis of grave goods and the spatial positioning of the interments, provides a fine-grained reconstruction of the social and biological structure at a time when these farming communities were approaching a period of dramatic change.

The ability to conduct such studies relies on the collaborative efforts of a variety of specialists. This would not be possible, however, without the collection of data from numerous sites that form the basis for comparative studies, emphasizing the need for the excavation of such sites before they are destroyed by development.

Germany: Berlin rent cap—a deceptive manoeuvre

Tino Jacobson & Markus Salzmann

At the end of October, the Berlin Senate (state executive), consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Left Party and Greens, agreed on a law to regulate rent limits, the so-called rent cap. It is set to be passed at the beginning of next year by the House of Representatives (state legislature), where the three government parties have a majority, and will be valid for five years after comes into force.

While it is still largely unclear whether the rent cap will actually be implemented in practice, as some lawsuits are pending, it cannot conceal three things:

Firstly, in recent years, rents in almost all major German cities have skyrocketed, leading, on the one hand, to poverty and homelessness, and on the other, to the shameless enrichment of greedy real estate speculators. The frontrunner is Berlin, where rents have risen by more than 106 percent in 10 years.

Secondly, the responsibility for this lies with the SPD and the Left Party in the federal capital, who, like the Greens, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the other states, have created the political conditions for this development.

Thirdly, the rent cap eliminates neither the acute housing shortage nor the horrendous profits of the real estate companies. For example, the real estate giant Vonovia, which owns and manages almost half a million apartments, 10 percent of which are in Berlin, expects its total rental income to fall by less than 1 percent as a result of the “cap.”

If passed, the law would apply to around 1.5 million apartments that were ready for occupancy for the first time before 2014. This means that all new buildings constructed after 2014 will already fall out of the rent cap. Furthermore, apartments “in publicly subsidised housing construction and living space in a residential facility” are excluded.

The rent cap is intended to freeze the net monthly rents paid up to the cut-off date of June 18, 2019. This regulation also applies to graduated and index-linked rents. In the case of the first letting of an apartment built before 2014, the upper rent limit may not be exceeded, and in the case of a new letting, the net rent of the previous tenant may not be exceeded.

Under the new law, the rent ceilings, or the so-called rent table, are regulated depending on the fittings and age of the dwelling. From 2022, rents may then be increased by up to 1.3 percent annually as compensation for inflation, up to a maximum of the upper rent limit. Also, when dwellings are modernised, the net rent may rise by €1 per square meter. Particularly high rents, also known as “usurious rents,” which are 20 percent or more above the upper rent limit, may then be capped at 120 percent of the upper rent limit. However, this cap on usurious rents will not come into force until the end of 2020.

The CDU, FDP and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which form the opposition in the Berlin House of Representatives, protested vehemently against the rent cap and threatened to sue. CDU Member of Parliament Jan-Marco Luczak raved against the alleged “planned economy” and called the rent cap a “massive and unconstitutional encroachment on private property.” The AfD faction denounced it as a “socialist rental policy,” and FDP Deputy Christoph Meyer called it a “debate of envy.” CDU faction leader Burkhard Dregger declared, “We will sue in any case.”

Of course, there was also an outcry from the real estate industry. The greedy real estate companies, which have been able to realise fabulous profits in Berlin and other large cities in recent years, see even the smallest restrictions as an inadmissible curtailment of their profit interests. Twenty-three landlord associations appealed to the Senate in a joint open letter, warning of “massive negative effects on the economy”—i.e., on their profits.

The open letter points out that only 55,000 new apartments were built in Berlin between 2012 and 2017, despite an influx of 287,000 new residents. “With the rent cap, however, the housing industry will drastically reduce its investments in existing housing by up to 90 percent,” the letter says.

The problem of unaffordable rents will not disappear with the rent cap—should it come into force—even if the “red-red-green” (SPD-Left Party-Green Party) Senate says so. The SPD and the Left Party in particular, which together formed the Senate from 2002 to 2011, bear the responsibility for this with their devastating policies.

The red-red Senate has sold 150,000 of 400,000 state-owned apartments to real estate sharks for the purpose of “debt reduction.” This left only 250,000 apartments in state ownership in 2009. For the most part, the apartments were sold off to real estate companies for less than 25 percent of the market value at the time. Since then, the average value of Berlin apartments has more than doubled. The then governing mayor, Klaus Wowereit (SPD), declared in 2011 that “calling rising rents a malaise” was “an old reflex.”

The red-red Senate made €21.6 billion available to rescue the banks in the state of Berlin and pursued brutal austerity measures, which negatively affected all areas of life and caused poverty in the capital to rise sharply. In 2003, Berlin withdrew from the federal and state governments’ employers’ association in order to reduce wages in the public sector by up to 12 percent and cut the number of employees by one third.

While the red-red Senate sold off publicly owned flats, its housing policy permitted the building of more and more expensive luxury flats, especially in the city centre, and led to sharply increased rents. The consequence of this policy was the displacement of tenants into the suburbs. Unaffordable rents meant many apartments were forcibly vacated, leading to increasing homelessness.

According to the estimates of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Wohnungslosenhilfe e.V. (Federal Association for the Assistance of the Homeless, BAGW), there were 650,000 people without housing in Germany in 2017. In Berlin, about 40,000 people are homeless and about 10,000 of them are forced to live on the streets. Especially now, with the cold weather returning, warm emergency shelters are a vital necessity. The city of Berlin spends around €5.6 million on helping the homeless, €1.4 million more than in 2010. However, the number of homeless people has more than tripled since then.

This year and last, there were mass protests in Berlin against constantly rising rents. In April 2018, 25,000 people demonstrated against exorbitant rents, although the organisers had expected only about 4,000 participants. One year later, 40,000 people demonstrated in Berlin under the motto “Expropriate German housing companies.” In 19 other cities, almost 60,000 people took to the streets.

The Left Party and its pseudo-left appendages officially supported the justified demand for expropriation of the real estate companies. In reality, they never intended to stop the speculators’ orgy of enrichment. As Left Party leader Bernd Riexinger stressed at the time, it was “not about expropriation without compensation.” The party wanted to buy back the apartments, which it had sold to the speculators for a song between 2001 and 2011, for around €7 billion, almost 17 times as much.

In view of the massive protests and disastrous election results for the SPD and the Left Party, the rent cap is to serve as a fig leaf for an anti-social housing policy. But it will not stop the enrichment of the rent sharks, provide affordable housing for all, or hide the right-wing and anti-social policies of the parties controlling the Berlin Senate.

Australian aged care report: “A shocking tale of neglect”

Cheryl Crisp

The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety interim report was titled “Neglect.” The report states: “Left out of sight and out of mind, these important services (aged care) are floundering. They are fragmented, unsupported and underfunded. With some admirable exceptions, they are poorly managed. All too often, they are unsafe and seemingly uncaring. This must change.”

Yet the report’s “urgent” recommendations do nothing to address the underlying reasons for these appalling conditions, which governments, Liberal-National Coalition and Labor, municipal councils, corporations and trade unions have known about and presided over for decades.

The three recommendations are “to provide more Home Care Packages to reduce the waiting list for higher level care, to respond to the significant over-reliance on chemical restrain in aged care and to stop the flow of younger people with a disability going into aged care.”

No numbers or time frames are given for these recommendations. There is no indication how they will be implemented without a significant influx of funds by governments or the corporations that run most aged care facilities. In short, the recommendations are a sop, which the royal commission has no intention or means of enforcing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the inquiry in September 2018 to head off the public outrage over media revelations of abuse, malnourishment and neglect of many elderly residents of nursing homes. It was a calculated attempt to defuse this anger while avoiding any commitment to increase funding after years of budget cuts by Coalition and Labor governments alike.

The shocking revelations outlined in the interim report are based on evidence presented in over 6,000 submissions from residents, families, staff and service providers, 12 public hearings, nine community forums and roundtable consultations with nursing home operators. However the report concedes that the commissioners heard nothing different from the previous 18 inquiries held since 1997—almost one a year for more than two decades. The commissioners found that many of the previously identified failings remained widespread.

What is revealed is that virtually no aspect of the aged care system is uniformly accessible, transparent and affordable, let alone safe, caring and adequately funded or staffed. The report notes that the first step in seeking aged care services is via a telephone- and internet-based system called My Aged Care that “many people in their eighties and nineties find frightening, confronting and confusing.” The report states: “Unfortunately, useful information is the exception, not the rule.”

The average waiting time for a Home Care Package, which provides funding for people to stay in their home, is between one and three years. Many people die while waiting.

Payments for residential aged care services consume 85 percent of the aged pension plus hundreds of thousands of dollars as a security bond, often derived from the sale of the family home. Only a portion of this bond is refunded to the estate on death.

Once deemed eligible for an aged care service, the old and frail are subject to a cost-cutting, budget-driven framework in what is now a multi-billion dollar a year industry.

According to the report, as at June 2018 more than 1.2 million people in Australia received some form of aged care service—847,534 had home support, 116,843 received home care and 241,723 were in permanent residential aged care. Half the residents in permanent residential care had been diagnosed with dementia.

Increasingly, governments have relinquished their responsibility to provide for older people, handing over this task to the corporate and “not-for-profit” charitable, community-based and religious organisations. Only 9 percent of aged care facilities are managed by governments, with 58 percent by the not-for-profit sector and 33 percent by companies.

The privatisation of this rapidly expanding industry has led to staff reductions and casualisation, the rationing of basic necessities and a precipitous decline in standards. The three largest companies running aged care facilities—BUPA, Opal and Allity—collectively made $15.8 billion, after tax, in 2017.

The chronic under-staffing levels condemn nurses, carers and residents to a system where the physical, psychological and medical needs of the residents are sacrificed for profit. The consequences are clear, predictable and damning.

Up to half the residents in aged care facilities suffer from malnutrition as a result of inedible and non-nutritious food or the lack of enough staff to assist residents who cannot feed themselves. Testimony was presented of some providers budgeting less than $7 per day per resident for food.

More than three quarters of residents suffer incontinence, with the majority in the most dependent category. Daily restrictions on the number of incontinence pads and nappies per resident result in distressed and agitated people sitting for hours in wet and soiled nappies.

Evidence was presented of the widespread use of “chemical restraints” to control residents suffering multiple forms of behavioural problems. “[R]esearch involving 150 residential aged care facilities found that 61 percent of residents were regularly taking psychotropic agents, with 41 percent prescribed antidepressants, 22 percent prescribed antipsychotics, and 22 percent prescribed benzodiazepines,” the report states.

“An Australian Department of Health expert clinical advisory panel estimated that psychotropic medication is only clearly justified in about 10 percent of cases in which they are prescribed in residential aged care.”

The use of such drugs, which are known to cause increased falls and injuries, is a direct product of under-staffing. A 2017 Medical Journal of Australia study found that preventable deaths in nursing homes had increased fourfold over a decade. The study reported 3,291 premature deaths, from potentially preventable causes, between 2000 and 2013.

The situation facing staff tasked with caring for the most vulnerable, defenseless and ailing members of society is almost impossible. Despite the growing number of people entering aged care and the increased complexity of their health conditions, the proportion of registered nurses has decreased from approximately 21 percent in 2003 to 14.9 percent of aged care staff. In their place, unskilled or poorly trained personal carers are hired at a rate of around $21.50 per hour.

Aged care nurses are paid, on average, 10 percent lower than their counterparts throughout the health industry, and personal carers are paid 15 percent less. Surveys were presented of unsustainable workloads. One Assistant in Nursing said she had 15 minutes each morning allocated to each high-care dementia patient to shower, dress and attend to their needs.

The interim report in no way challenges the basis on which the aged care industry is run. On the contrary, it blames the population as a whole, stating: “As a nation, Australia has drifted into an ageist mindset that undervalues older people and limits their possibilities.” The budget cutting of Coalition and Labor governments alike, which has created this dire situation, is not indicted. Promises by Prime Minister Morrison that funding will increase are belied by the government’s budget statements that spending will be restricted to the slowest growth in 50 years.

The government projects it can slow growth in health funding, after inflation, to just 0.7 percent a year over the next four years despite an aging population and a broken private health insurance system.

Increasingly, the elderly are regarded by capitalism as a burden, an encumbrance and a cost for which governments are not willing to pay. Despite working their entire lives, contributing to society and providing for and raising families, the retired workers are treated as if they should die to save the cost to society.

The royal commission is continuing. But the outcome is already clear. It will follow the previous 18 inquiries and act as a cover for those responsible for the disgraceful conditions faced by those who are forced to live and work in the aged care industry.