Uruguay Turns to the Right

Bob Scofield

The country some consider the world’s most liberal has taken a turn to the right after a center-right candidate was declared the winner of an extremely close presidential election. For the last 15 years, Uruguay has been run by presidents from Frente Amplio (Broad Front), a collection of socialist, communist, left-wing, and Christian left wing parties. The president best known and respected throughout the world was Jose Mujica.

Uruguay has become famous for, among other things, its legalization of marijuana sales and gay marriage. It is a secular society where, unlike the case with its Rio Platense cousin Argentina, the Catholic Church has no power. On the whole, FA governments have improved the economy. Things have not gone as well under the current administration. Companies like Proctor and Gamble and Fleischmann’s Yeast have recently left the country. Under the FA poverty was dramatically reduced to 8.1%, but people have become concerned over crime, economic stagnation, and the corruption of a vice president who had to resign. The vice president, Raúl Sendic, had puffed up his resume and misused a credit card tied to the state petroleum company, as I recall. I once explained to an FA supporter that I was very critical of Sendic because I felt that, given the propaganda generally coming from conservative sources, a leftist has to hold to a higher standard. The FA supporter almost became indignant stating that what Sendic did was nothing compared to what the other side does.

In the October election the FA candidate, Daniels Martinez, received more votes than any other candidate, but not a majority. Most of the other votes in the October election went to Luis Lacalle Pou of The National Party (the Blancos), who came in second, and Ernesto Talvi of the Colorado Party, who came in third. Other parties received smaller percentages of the vote with a new far-right party, Cabildo Abierto, receiving a surprising 11%. (I’ve seen “Cabildo Abierto” translated as “Open Forum.” My vote is for “Open Council.”)

Lacalle Pou had attacked the present FA administration led by president Tabaré Vasquez, pointing out that unemployment has risen to 9.2% and more than 50,000 jobs have been lost in recent years. Some have been critical of Uruguay’s consistent support for Cuba and Venezuela. In September Uruguay left the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) because the organization had agreed to impose sanctions against persons and organizations linked to the president of Venezuela. Before it left the organization Uruguay was the only country to vote against the sanctions.

Lacalle Pou seeks to impose an austerity plan. He wants to lay off thousands of government workers. My prediction is that this will counter FA’s reduction of poverty in the country with a resulting increase in crime. This leads to what I call “the conservative’s dilemma.” Conservatives do not want to spend money on social programs, but the result can be increased in poverty and crime. When crime goes up conservatives have no problem in spending a lot of money on police and prisons. (I exclude from the dilemma clear-thinking conservatives such as you find among some of the American paleo-conservatives. I also have a “liberal’s dilemma,” but that is beyond the scope of this short report.)

Cabildo Abierto’s goals were to reduce public spending and deal with public security. Included was the goal to reduce the size of Parliament. The party wanted a war on drugs that would reduce the crime problem in only a few months. The party program mentioned the possibility of building more jails including one with greater maximum security areas to house dangerous criminals. This jail would be under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Defense. The party also wanted to abrogate the law allowing the sale of marijuana. CA’s presidential candidate, Guido Manini Rios, also wanted to create a “parallel army” consisting of retired military and police officers and young people who have dropped out of school. This parallel army would patrol the streets as volunteers. And the party wanted to put restrictions on the right of workers to strike.

The presidential runoff was held on November 24^th, but the race was so tight that it was not settled until November 28^th when Martinez conceded. While the vote count had not been finalized the outcome was clear. The election was closer than that predicted by the polls. Lacalle Pou took approximately 48.71 percent of the vote and Martinez took approximately 47.51 percent. The polling had Martinez with a slight edge in Montevideo with Lacalle Pou leading in the interior. Historically the Blancos have been closely tied to the rural areas of Uruguay. Some believe the election was so close because of moderates who became concerned that rhetoric coming from the far right was reminiscent of that of the dictatorship which ruled from 1973 to 1985. This takes us back to Cabildo Abierto.

To me, the biggest surprise in the Uruguayan elections is the 11% CA got in the October election. With my somewhat stereotypical view of Uruguay I would have predicted that Calbildo Abierto would have come in at 1%.

Manini Rios recently left his position as the head of the Uruguayan military to become involved in politics. One controversy that arose in the campaign was a photo of Manini Rios with a few people, one of whom was a young man wearing a shirt with Nazi symbolism.

Manini Rios is even now an influential figure. After the October election, Lacalle Pou created a “multicolor” coalition uniting the National Party, the Colorado Party, CA, and other parties. It was this unity that was able to get more votes for Lacalle Pou than Martinez. One of the things the multicolor coalition agreed to was putting soldiers on the street to check people’s Ids. This is part of the effort to combat crime. It appears that CA will get the cabinet positions of Minister of Public Health and Minister of Housing and Environment.

One thing that irritates Lacalle Pou is that the state does not extend to certain parts of the country. I take this to refer to the fact that the police do not regularly patrol certain parts of Montevideo. I’ve read that to enter certain parts of the city the police use armored vehicles. I’ve been told that while the police will enter barrio Marconi in an emergency, they will not regularly patrol it because if they do, they’ll be shot at by drug traffickers. It’s the drug traffickers that prevent the extension of the state into all parts of Montevideo.

It will be interesting to see where the soldiers will be checking people’s identification. If it’s barrio Marconi that’s one thing. But if this occurs in the barrios of Centro, or Ciudad Vieja, or Pocitos, the tourists are not going to like it. Uruguay has drawn “political tourists;” leftists who find the country interesting, especially given the Mujica tradition. I’ve seen political American tourists and Brazilian Mujica fans in Montevideo. Soldiers checking Ids in the streets of Montevideo will not comport with the image Uruguay has had since Mujica. Of course, most Montevideans regardless of barrio will not want to be stopped by soldiers.

I return to the claim that some believe the election tightened because of the far-right rhetoric surfacing right before the runoff. Even before the appearance of this rhetoric some of the moderates in the Colorado Party had moved to support FA out of fear of right-wing elements in the mulitcolor coalition. But right before the runoff things got very bad. CA expelled one of its members for posting on social media a call for volunteers for a death squad. As I understand it, the death squad was to be used to rid society of undesirable elements. Manini Rios appeared in a controversial video urging soldiers to vote against FA. After Manini Rios’ video, there was a disturbing editorial in Nation Magazine, which is edited by retired military personnel. While the magazine is not an official military publication it was mailed from the military headquarters. Nation Magazine is an official publication of an armed forces credit union. The editorial said that Marxism must begin to be removed from “the horizon of our national destiny.” It attacked FA and called for the elimination of the right to strike.

Lacalle Pou will be installed as president on March 1, 2010. It will be an interesting next five years for the country ranked by an entity associated with The Economist as the 15^th most democratic in the world with a classification of “full democracy.” By contrast, the United States is ranked 25^th with a classification of “flawed democracy.”

Global Health Crisis and Pesticides

Colin Todhunter

The UK-based Independent online newspaper recently published an article about a potential link between air pollution from vehicles and glaucoma. It stated that according to a new study air pollution is linked to the eye condition that causes blindness.

The report explained that researchers had looked at vision tests carried out on more than 111,000 people across Britain between 2006 and 2010 and cross-referenced results against levels of air pollution in their neighbourhoods. Those living in areas with higher amounts of fine particulate matter were at least 6% more likely to have glaucoma than those in the least polluted areas.

Glaucoma affects half a million people in the UK and can cause blindness if left untreated. However, the study cited by The Independent, published in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, was unable to prove that air pollution was a trigger.

Following the article, environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason put together a 20-page report on glyphosate and has sent it out to key public health officials and media outlets, including The Independent’s editor. In her report, she states that the European Chemicals Agency classifies glyphosate as a substance that causes serious eye damage and is toxic to aquatic life with long lasting effects. But she claims that the media still remains silent on the matter. Even in UK towns and cities, glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide is still being sprayed on weeds and super-weeds which have become Roundup-resistant.

Mason implores The Independent and other mainstream media outlets to write with honesty about the use and harmful effects of glyphosate-based weedicides and other agrochemicals. She quotes the UN expert on Toxics, Baskut Tuncak, who in 2017 urged the EU to put children’s health before pesticides. Children form the most vulnerable part of the population as pesticides can adversely affect their development.

Offering insight into the incidence of cataracts in England, Mason notes that annual rates of admission for cataract surgery rose 10‐fold from 1968 to 2004: from 62 episodes per 100,000 population to 637. A 2016 study by the WHO also confirmed that the incidence of cataracts had greatly increased: in ‘A global assessment of the burden of disease from environmental risks’ it says that cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Globally, cataracts are responsible for 51% of blindness. An estimated 20 million individuals suffer from this degenerative eye disease.

Mason discusses long waiting lists for cataracts in England. Because the NHS cannot cope with the pressure, private companies are cashing in. The growing demand for cataract operations is forcing the NHS to send increasing numbers of patients to be treated privately.

In Wales, where Mason resides, 35,000 patients are at risk of going blind from macular degeneration and glaucoma while on the NHS waiting list. All the municipal councils in Wales use glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate now accounts for about 50% of all herbicide use in the US. About 75% of glyphosate use has occurred since 2006, with the global glyphosate market projected to reach $11.74 billion by 2023.

Figures for the use of glyphosate in the UK show a similar trend, which Mason has documented in her many reports. And let us not forget at this point that the current Conservative government regards Brexit as an ideal opportunity to usher in crops that have been genetically engineered to withstand the application of glyphosate or similar chemicals. The agrochemicals sector stands in the wings salivating at the prospect. This has nothing to do with boosting yields or ‘feeding the world’ as Boris Johnson asserts (claims which fail to stand up to scrutiny) but has everything to do with facilitating industry ambitions.

Never in history has a chemical been used so pervasively. Glyphosate is in our air, water, plants, animals, grains, vegetables and meats. It’s in beer and wine, children’s breakfast cereal and snack bars and mother’s breast milk. It’s even in our vaccines.

Of course, the power of the pesticides companies has been well noted. In 2017, global agrochemical corporations were severely criticised by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver. A report presented to the UN human rights council accused them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions.”

The report authored by Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak says pesticides have “catastrophic impacts on the environment, human health and society as a whole”, including an estimated 200,000 deaths a year from acute poisoning. Its authors said: “It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”

Hilal Elver says:

“Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger.  According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are able to feed nine billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”

Elver said many of the pesticides are used on commodity crops, such as palm oil and soy, not the food needed by the world’s hungry people:

“The corporations are not dealing with world hunger; they are dealing with more agricultural activity on large scales.”

Mason notes that chronic exposure to pesticides has been linked to a range of diseases and conditions and that certain pesticides can persist in the environment for decades and pose a threat to the entire ecological system on which food production depends. The excessive use of pesticides contaminates soil and water sources, causing loss of biodiversity and destroying the natural enemies of pests. The impact of such overuse also imposes staggering costs on national economies. Moreover, the use of neonicotinoid pesticides is particularly worrying because they are linked to a systematic collapse in the number of bees around the world. Some 71% of crop species are bee pollinated.

Mason goes on to describe the various lawsuits in the US against Bayer (which bought Monsanto) and the tactics used by Monsanto to conceal glyphosate-based Roundup’s carcinogenicity, including capturing regulatory agencies, corrupting public officials, bribing scientists and engaging in scientific fraud to delay its day of reckoning.

Following the court decision to award in favour of Dewayne Johnson, attorney Robert Kennedy Jr said the following at the post-trial press conference:

“… you not only see many people injured, but you also see a subversion of democracy. You see the corruption of public officials, the capture of agencies that are supposed to protect us all from pollution. The agencies become captured by the industries they are supposed to regulate. The corruption of science, the falsification of science, and we saw all those things happen here. This is a company (Monsanto) that used all of the plays in the playbook developed over 60 years by the tobacco industry to escape the consequences of killing one of every five of its customers… Monsanto… has used those strategies…”

There is now also a good deal of scientific evidence linking glyphosate to obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease and brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10. Researchers also peg glyphosate as a potent endocrine disruptor, which interferes with sexual development in children.

The compound is also a chelator that removes important minerals from the body, including iron, magnesium, zinc, selenium and molybdenum. Roundup disrupts the microbiome destroying beneficial bacteria in the human gut and triggering brain inflammation and other ill effects.

Neurotransmitter changes in the brain have been detected due to exposure to glyphosate. This is why, according to Mason, there are so many mental health and psychiatric disorders, depression, suicides, anxiety and violence among children and adults. It is even found in popular breakfast cereals marketed for UK children.

And this says nothing about the cocktail of pesticides sprayed on crops. The Soil Association and PAN UK have indicated that exposure to mixtures of pesticides commonly found in UK food, water and soil may be harming the health of both humans and wildlife. A quarter of all food and over a third of fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain pesticide cocktails, with some items containing traces of up to 14 different pesticides.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment has identified the rights threatened by environmental harm, including the rights to life, health, food and water and has mapped obligations to protect against such harm from private actors. In effect, where pesticides are concerned, the public are being denied the right to a healthy environment.

But it’s not just the powerful pesticides lobby that is to blame here. Rosemary Mason says the British public (and indeed people across the world) have a right to information. However, she concludes that the public have been denied this because mainstream media outlets have on the whole for too long opted to remain silent on the pesticides issue.

From Standard Oil To Google: Can We Control Monopolies?

Arshad M Khan

One of the very first investigative journalists, Ida Tarbell went after the “throttling hand” of Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.  By 1880, his company owned 90 percent of US oil, its transport and its sale.

Writing a series of articles over a two-year period, Tarbell’s expose led to a Supreme Court ruling in 1911 ordering the dissolution of Standard Oil — so massive, it was broken up into 34 corporations.

John D. Rockefeller who called the journalist Miss Tar Barrel — echoes of Donald Trump here — was the country’s first billionaire.  If he spent his later years giving away much of his fortune to found universities and fund research, he had been in his younger days a ruthless competitor.

Monopolies controlling markets can set prices to their own liking.  They can raise them to increase income or cut them to stifle competition.  In effect, they are interfering with the free market forces so ardently espoused by University of Chicago economists.  On this issue conservatives and liberals have common ground, but the question is what to do with monopolies.  There is break-up and there is regulation.

Utilities are regulated but if one has been exposed to utility bills in many parts of the country, one has to wonder how well.  The renowned economist George Stigler in a landmark study covering 60 years of electricity regulation (1900-1960), in regions with varying degrees of regulatory oversight, found the differences in prices to be negligible.  The finding surprised economists, and it, added to Stigler’s enormous output, garnered him a Nobel Prize, the Nobel citation specifically noting the work.

If monopolies damage free-markets, there is an issue staring us in the face today:  the digital colossi Google, Facebook and the aptly named Amazon.  Then there is Apple with an iPhone monopoly. The market has been unable to check their increasing power.

The University of Chicago’s Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State has recently cast its gaze on the issue.  A Stigler Center group headed by Yale economist Fiona Scott Morton analyzed the market structure of these digital behemoths.  And last May she delivered its recommendation to the US Senate as part of a hearing on digital advertising and competition policy.

It is an interesting case because far from extracting high prices from a hapless public, two of the firms offer their products/services free, the third prides itself on the cheapest prices, at-home shopping and convenient delivery.  Apple is a more conventional case holding sway over about 45 percent of cell phone users in the US through proprietary hardware and software.

In such a diverse environment what could the study group come up with but a regulatory body, a digital authority to regulate the industry — and a supreme irony given the major research finding of regulatory  ineffectiveness from the man (George Stigler) whose name heads the Center shepherding their effort.  Other economists also have been skeptical calling it the wrong tool to address a nonexistent problem.  Yet the problem is not difficult to see.

There is a chilling nature to these websites and platforms as they follow your surfing, offering ads, purchase suggestions, other sites of interest, a looming presence behind your right shoulder.  Something is not quite right when so much power is concentrated in so few corporations.  Forget the invisible hand of free markets, there is an invisible hand guiding your clicking finger.

Thousands of teachers strike in Croatia

Markus Salzmann

Thousands of teachers have been on strike in Croatia for over a month. They are demanding increased wages and improved working conditions in schools and colleges, as well as better facilities for schools. The teachers’ strike is the biggest labor dispute in Croatia since the emergence of the state following the breakup of Yugoslavia almost 30 years ago.

According to the teachers’ union, 90 percent of publicly employed teachers are currently taking part in the strike. Last week around 20,000 teachers protested in the capital city of Zagreb, and their representatives have announced they intend to continue the strike until the government meets their demands. Initially, the strike was limited to a few days and focused on selected cities and towns. When the government failed to respond, however, teachers extended their protest to the entire country on November 19.

The Croatian prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, from the right-wing HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), declared that he was prepared to negotiate, but no agreement has yet been reached. Last Friday, the unions rejected a government offer to increase salaries by 10 percent in four stages beginning next year.

Teachers protest low salaries in the main square of Zagreb, Croatia [Credit: AnderArmor, Reddit]

A total of 68,000 are employed in the education service and 240,000 in the entire public sector. Average wages for teachers are about 1,200 euros per month, and it is virtually impossible to provide for a family on such a salary. The cost of living in Croatia has become comparable to that of Germany after the country joined the EU, and this is why the strike is receiving broad public support. The rally last Friday was attended by many other public employees. Parents of students are also supporting the teachers’ demands, because their children are suffering from the miserable conditions prevailing in the schools.

It is the education sector which has suffered most from the series of spending cuts introduced in the past years and decades. Teachers are even worse off than other public sector employees. Successive governments in Croatia have implemented the same neoliberal policies aimed at dismantling social services and public services and institutions.

In the run-up to the entry of Croatia into the European Union in the summer of 2013, the EU laid down a series of demands in line with the austerity program it had pursued following the global economic crisis of 2008. The result was the almost complete destruction of social networks, and deindustrialization and privatisation on a grand scale.

The trade unions played a central role in this development. The country’s major unions have worked together with the government to impose cuts to services and jobs, and have nipped every protest in the bud. These organisations maintain close ties to the various right-wing and pro-capitalist parties in Croatia, and have only now called a strike following massive pressure from teachers.

Fresh talks between the government and the trade unions took place last weekend, aimed at ending the strike quickly. The unions are working together with the extreme right-wing government, which is hostile to the teachers. The HDZ was founded in 1989. It pursued an extreme nationalist course under its leader at that time, Franjo Tudjman, which plunged the former Yugoslavia into a bloody civil war. Despite all the party’s protestations that the HDZ has become a mainstream conservative party, this spirit of nationalism continues to prevail.

The government is carrying out a particularly brutal policy against refugees. Currently, about 8,000 refugees are stranded in Bosnia because Croatia either prevents them from entering its territory or illegally forces them over its border with Bosnia. According to the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), Croatian police and border guards have repeatedly used firearms against refugees. In mid-November, a police officer in Croatia shot and severely wounded one refugee.

According to the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the worst conditions in the country prevail “in the improvised tent camp Vucjak, which is located on a former rubbish dump near Bihac. Hundreds of people have been stranded there in crowded tents without electricity and hygienic facilities since July. Their only food is supplied by the Red Cross and private activists.”

Despite this intolerable situation, all of the country’s political parties and candidates participating in the presidential election due on December 22 are putting forward right-wing policies. Croatia’s acting president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović from the HDZ, is standing for a second term. Other candidates include former the social democratic prime minister Zoran Milanović and a prominent folk musician, Miroslav Škoro. The former HDZ politician has the support of ultra-right forces, and all of the candidates for the presidency are discussing the use of the military at the border.

The strike by Croatian teachers is not an isolated incident. Strikes and protests against intolerable living and working conditions imposed by a corrupt, reactionary ruling class are taking place with increasing regularity in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, most recently in Serbia, Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. In neighbouring Slovenia, postal workers went on strike in November. According to the postal union, almost all of the country’s post offices were affected by the strike. Employees are demanding a pay rise of 10 percent and the hiring of 300 new employees. Currently Slovenian post offices employ around 6,300 workers.

At the beginning of October, about 600 workers at the Djuro Djaković industrial enterprise went on strike in Croatia after failing to receive their wages for the month of September. The company produces freight cars, tanks and other military equipment and has been in financial difficulties for some time. The government is currently negotiating with US and EU companies about possible new investors. Workers at the company are demanding the payment of outstanding wages and the resignation of the management.

Nearly 700,000 to lose food stamp benefits under new Trump Administration rule

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

The Trump administration has announced a new rule aimed at depriving several hundred thousand American citizens of critical food stamp benefits. The Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) is currently providing critical federal assistance to over 36 million Americans.

Under existing rules, all able-bodied adults without dependents can receive SNAP benefits only for three months over a three-year period, unless they are working or enrolled in an education or training program for at least 20 hours a week. However, states have been able to waive the work requirement and ensure access to SNAP benefits beyond the time limit given challenging economic conditions. The new rule severely limits the ability of states to apply such waivers.

From April 2020 onwards (when the new rule will take effect), only states that have an official unemployment rate of 6% or above can apply for work waivers. As a comparison, under the current system regions with unemployment rates as low as 2.5% were included in the waived areas. It is anticipated that the new rule will affect about 7% of SNAP recipients, those designated as “Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents” (ABAWD).

Volunteers sort through a box of bread at the Greater Boston Food Bank in Boston, March 17 [Calvin Shamoon]

The rule aimed at limiting work waivers is tied to two other proposals—one capping deductions for utility allowances, and the other aimed at cutting SNAP benefits for working-class families. A study by the Urban Institute estimates these three proposals combined would cut 3.6 million people from SNAP benefits per month, reduce monthly benefits for millions more, and lead to 982,000 students losing access to reduced-cost or free school meals.

Each of these proposals has been presented by the Trump administration and its supporters as an essential trimming of a bloated federal budget, and a gesture of respect to hard-working taxpayers. Given the passage of the biggest Pentagon budget as yet, vast amounts spent on the war against immigrants and the massive tax-cuts granted to corporations, this claim holds no water.

Discussing the new rule with reporters on a conference call, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue used typical right-wing logic: “Americans,” he declared, “were generous people who believe it is their responsibility to help their fellow citizens when they encounter a difficult stretch.” However, it was time to restore “the original intent of food stamps … moving more able-bodied Americans to self-sufficiency.”

Perdue reiterated this claim in an op-ed published yesterday in the Arizona Daily Star. Entitled “The dignity of work and the American dream,” the piece reads like a grotesque caricature of the reality faced by millions of working-class Americans. The economy, Perdue claims, is booming primarily due to “President Trump’s policies … [which are] putting people back to work and increasing wages.”

If there was any issue, Perdue insisted, it’s simply that “there are more job openings than there are people to fill those spots thanks to President Trump’s actions to cut taxes and remove strangling regulations.” Thus, limiting waivers granted to SNAP recipients would serve the very important purpose of filling those openings and “restore the dignity of work to a sizable segment of our population, while also respecting the taxpayers who fund the program.”

Almost every single statement made in the op-ed—cloaked in nauseating reassertions of the “exceptional generosity of Americans,” for whom Perdue claims to speak—is a willful and blatant misrepresentation of the facts. Claims of a booming economy brought about single-handedly by the visionary President would ring hollow to a majority of the population, except the extremely wealthy who have undoubtedly benefited from the Trump administration’s policies. The unemployment figure of 3.6 percent, touted ad nauseum by the administration and its supporters, is itself highly questionable given that it excludes those who have simply given up any hope of finding jobs. And while jobs have been added to the American economy, these have tended to be lower-paying, hourly wage positions without benefits, forcing working class adults to work multiple jobs in order to eke out a bare existence.

Brandon Lipps, the USDA deputy undersecretary for food nutrition and consumer service, told reporters that the new rule would not affect children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and people over the age of 50. Its target was the ABAWD in the 18–49 age group, 74 percent of whom the USDA estimates are not working. As to why this might be the case, Lipps, following his boss’s script, seemed to suggest that it was an absence of desire “to enter and re-enter the workforce.” The new rule, he claimed, rested on the belief that the situation can be changed “so that [the currently unemployed] can know the dignity of work.”

The claim that workers who desperately need a social welfare safety net, primarily because of the predatory policies pushed by the ruling class, somehow need to be taught about the “dignity of work” is perhaps the most offensive of all the falsifications put forth by the USDA. Perdue concluded his op-ed by claiming that people on assistance “need to take responsibility for themselves.” Coming from a member of an administration that embodies the irresponsible, rapacious greed of the capitalist class in its crudest form, this advice would be laughable but for the fact that it is tied to a new assault against the already precarious food security of nearly 700,000 working-class adults.

NATO summit dominated by growing inter-state conflicts

Alex Lantier

Explosive conflicts over trade and military policy between Washington and its main European allies erupted this week at the NATO summit in London. Intended to mark 70 years since NATO’s foundation in 1949, after the United States had emerged from World War II as the dominant imperialist power, the summit instead descended into mutual recriminations and threats to impose billions of dollars in trade war tariffs between Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron.

A new stage has been reached in the collapse of international institutions that long governed the affairs of world capitalism. Three years ago, divisions inside NATO surged as Britain voted to exit the European Union (EU), Berlin and Paris launched attempts to build an independent EU army, and Trump began to threaten Europe with trade war. Today, it is clear that NATO has no perspective to reduce, let alone overcome, these intractable internal divisions. It is instead escalating policies that pose an acute danger of world war.

Before the summit, the press was dominated by controversy over French President Emmanuel Macron’s interview in Britain’s Economist magazine, in which he declared NATO was “brain-dead” and called US policy on Russia the product of “hysteria.” Macron fueled the controversy, after a crisis meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Friday in Paris, by stating that NATO should not make enemies of Russia and China. Instead, Macron proposed to wage a “war on terror”—the pretext for France’s neocolonial war in Mali and its police-state repression at home.

President Donald J. Trump attends the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plenary session Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019 outside London [Credit: White House]

When Trump arrived in London, he launched a noisy tirade against his ostensible French ally, dismissing Macron’s remarks as “nasty” and “very insulting.” He then tried to whip NATO into line around a policy of military escalation targeting Russia.

On the eve of today’s French public sector strike, Trump also related Macron’s statement on NATO to “yellow vest” protests against the French president’s deeply unpopular austerity agenda. He said: “You look at what’s happening with the yellow vests... They’ve had a very rough year, and you just can’t go around making statements like that about NATO.”

Ultimately, the summit communiqué pledged NATO to hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending increases, more missile deployments in Europe targeting Russia, the war in Afghanistan, surveillance of China, and maintaining nuclear weapons.

This intensifies not only the danger of war, but also the crisis inside NATO itself. Underlying this crisis are objective, historically rooted conflicts between the imperialist powers that twice in the 20th century erupted into world war between. Indeed, Macron’s Economist interview summarized widely held objections in European ruling circles to America’s constant resort to war to offset its growing economic weakness, in the decades since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union deprived NATO of its original common enemy.

Macron made clear that, as when Berlin and Paris opposed the unilateral US-led invasion of oil-rich Iraq in 2003, he sees US policies as a threat to European economic and military interests. He called Middle East policy an “enormous problem for NATO,” after the defeat of NATO proxy forces in Syria, and Turkey’s invasion of the country to attack US-backed Kurdish militias.

Above all, he called for closer ties to Moscow: “If we want to build peace in Europe and rebuild European strategic autonomy, we must reconsider our position towards Russia.” Macron stressed that a key concern of his outreach to Russia was the imminent danger of global war, and that he aimed to “build relations to prevent the world from going up in a conflagration.”

President Donald Trump meets French President Emmanuel Macron at Winfield House, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, in London. [AP Photo/ Evan Vucci]

The French president traced NATO’s bankruptcy not to this or that tactical error, however, but to policies pursued over decades. Though an avowed opponent of socialism, he attacked the pro-capitalist propagandists’ “End of History” argument that the Kremlin’s dissolution of the Soviet Union spelled the final defeat of socialism and the triumph of liberal capitalist democracy. He admitted to the Economist that this false conception set the stage for unpopular NATO wars across the Middle East.

Macron said: “There was a pervasive conception that developed in the 1990s and 2000s, around the idea of the End of History, an endless expansion of democracy, that the Western camp had won and would universalize itself. It was the history we were living until the 2000s, when a series of crises showed that it was not true... Sometimes we committed mistakes by trying to impose our values and change regimes without getting popular support. It is what we saw in Iraq and Libya, and maybe what was planned for Syria, but it failed. It is an element of the Western approach, I would say in generic terms, that has been an error since the beginning of this century.”

Whatever his differences with Macron, Trump recently made a similar point on America’s wars in the Middle East. He tweeted: “The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE… IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.”

NATO’s decision yesterday to nonetheless escalate militarist policies constitutes a warning to the working class. The basic contradictions of capitalism identified by the great Marxists of the 20th century, above all between world economy and the nation-state system, are explosively asserting themselves. Caught up in crises for which they have no solution, aware of their own political bankruptcy and criminality, and fearing growing opposition from below, the imperialist ruling classes are headed, eyes closed, towards a military catastrophe of horrific dimensions.

The key question facing workers and youth is the building of an international antiwar movement in the working class. Two years ago, analyzing the growing conflicts inside NATO after Brexit and Trump’s election, the WSWS wrote: “The force that will emerge as the alternative to the collapse of bourgeois politics is the international working class. It is being driven into action by intolerable conditions of life, mass unemployment, and social misery after decades of austerity and war.”

Two years later, this analysis has been vindicated by a resurgence of the class struggle. Today, France will erupt in the largest strike wave of Macron’s presidency.

Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Asia have gone on strike as part of a broad, international upsurge of political protest against social inequality and military-police repression. There have been mass strikes or antigovernment protests in Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan, India, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Chile, Catalonia in Spain and Puerto Rico.

This upsurge of class struggle forms the social base for opposing the war drive of the ruling elites. The necessary response to the imperialist war danger is to unify these growing struggles of the working class through the construction of a united, international socialist antiwar movement.

Samoa: Death toll mounts in devastating measles epidemic

Tom Peters

Every day the death toll from measles increases in Samoa, a small Pacific island country with about 200,000 inhabitants. The outbreak began in mid-October. So far 55 people have died—up from 14 on November 17—the vast majority of them children. As of today, over 3,800 have become sick. Scientists at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, predict that before Christmas the death toll will reach 70 and the number of infected will pass 6,500, more than 3 percent of the population.

A tragedy of terrible proportions is unfolding. The government of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi declared a state of emergency on November 15. Schools, universities, swimming pools and night clubs have been closed and gatherings of children banned. Streets in the capital Apia are largely deserted and many Christmas events have been cancelled.

Some families have lost more than one child. The Guardian recently reported that Tu’ivale Luamanuvae Puelua and his wife Fa’aoso have buried three children, all aged under four. Puelua said: “Your mind becomes empty and you are speechless because there are no words on this earth to describe how my wife and I feel having to say goodbye to our children.”

The outbreak is a man-made disaster. Measles is a preventable disease, but Samoa’s vaccination rate is extremely low: about 30 to 40 percent among young children according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), down from 84 percent four years ago, which is still too low to prevent an outbreak.

Vaccinations plummeted after two babies died in July 2018 from contaminated doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Two nurses were prosecuted and jailed for negligent manslaughter for mistakenly diluting the powdered vaccine with a deadly dose of anaesthetic instead of water.

The government responded by suspending all MMR immunisations until April 2019, a period of eight months. This extraordinary delay was nothing less than a criminal act of negligence by the state: it left thousands of infant children unimmunised. Radio NZ reported on December 2 that many Samoans say the government “suspended the program for far too long… A lot of people saw this problem coming and there’ll be many questions asked.”

The crisis has been compounded by pernicious, unscientific anti-vaccination campaigns emanating from the US, Australia and other countries. The Washington Post noted that anti-vaccine activist “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, visited [Samoa] in June” and met with Australian Samoan anti-vaccine activist Taylor Winterstein.

Some faith healers and conmen have reportedly sought to profit from Samoa’s epidemic by selling bogus treatments and dissuading people from seeking medical care.

About a third of Samoans have been immunised in recent weeks, but hundreds of new cases are appearing nearly every day, with children most at risk. Measles is less fatal in adults, but poses serious risks including pneumonia, encephalitis and weakened immunity to other illnesses. It can lead to pregnant women giving birth prematurely or miscarrying.

Hospitals are under immense pressure. On November 28, Red Cross health worker Karen Page told Radio NZ Samoan hospitals urgently needed “qualified ICU general and paediatric nurses just to cope with the workload.” Most government departments will shut down on December 5 and 6 so staff can help vaccinate people.

The resurgence of measles is a global phenomenon. During the first six months of 2019 there were more cases worldwide than in any year since 2006, according to the WHO, due to falling vaccination rates. The lies of the anti-vaccination movement have certainly played a role, but the main factor is the lack of well-funded public health services and vaccination programs.

Samoa’s outbreak is suspected to have originated in New Zealand, where, according to the NZ Ministry of Health, immunisation coverage for two-year-olds is 91 percent. This is below the 95 percent threshold needed for what is known as herd immunity, to avoid an outbreak. New Zealand has recorded more than 2,000 measles cases this year.

NZ’s Immunisation Advisory Centre had been predicting the outbreak for years, but governments ignored requests for a “catch-up” immunisation campaign. The decline in vaccinations is particularly bad in rural areas, such as Northland, and in working class South Auckland, which has a large Samoan community and drastically overstretched health services. There is a nationwide shortage of nurses, doctors and other healthcare professionals due to decades of funding cuts.

As well as Samoa, measles has spread from New Zealand to Tonga, where more than 400 people caught the virus but no deaths have been reported. On November 29, Fiji had confirmed 14 cases of the disease.

New Zealand also bears responsibility for the poorly resourced health system in Samoa. The islands were a NZ colony from 1914 to 1962, a period which left a legacy of poverty and economic backwardness. NZ still maintains neo-colonial domination over Samoa, Tonga and other impoverished Pacific countries, which rely heavily on foreign aid to fund public services.

New Zealand and Australia’s ruling elites have invested billions of dollars in diplomatic and economic projects in the Pacific region, and on militarisation, as part of the US imperialist-led effort to counter China’s growing influence in the region. Meanwhile the basic health needs of Pacific people have been neglected.

On November 13, Dr Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccine specialist at Auckland University, told Radio NZ she was frustrated with New Zealand’s slow response to the Samoan epidemic. The virus was spreading “like a wildfire that is burning now out of control” and an urgent mass immunisation campaign was needed.

Dr Petousis-Harris explained that Samoa has had “a sustained, very low uptake of measles vaccines for years.” Even before the suspension of vaccinations in 2018 an outbreak “was always on the cards.” The regional imperialist powers, Canberra and Wellington, had done nothing to fix the immunisation gap.

The Labour Party-led government in New Zealand waited until November 19, several weeks into the outbreak, before sending an initial team of 10 doctors and nurses to Samoa. There are now 54 NZ medical personnel in the islands, and teams from the UK and French Polynesia.

On December 2, Radio NZ journalist Lisa Owen asked Foreign Minister Winston Peters whether there had been any discussions with Samoan officials earlier in the year to warn them about the potential threat from New Zealand’s outbreak. Peters replied that “conversations were going on,” but gave no details.

Peters admitted that New Zealand had “not been as efficient as we should have been” in vaccinating people, before declaring that now was not the time for the media to be “pointing fingers.”

The deadly outbreak is a damning indictment of successive governments in Samoa and New Zealand, which ignored repeated warnings about the danger posed by low immunisation rates, while starving health services of funds.

Iranian government kills hundreds in bid to suppress the worst protests in decades

Jean Shaoul

According to reports from international rights organizations, opposition groups and local journalists, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s security forces have killed more than 400 people since the eruption of mass protests by workers and youth on November 15. The upheavals were triggered by an overnight hike in gas prices and widespread economic hardship. A further 2,000 people have reportedly been wounded and 7,000 arrested during the government crackdown.

Given the government’s five-day internet blackout and the hostility of the Western media towards Iran, it is difficult to know how accurate these figures are and the veracity of the claims and counterclaims as to who was behind the brutal suppression of the protests.

The government acknowledged that 12 people had been killed after three days of protests, while Amnesty International claimed that at least 161 people had been killed across 10 provinces, mostly as a result of live fire. According to the New York Times, which has close links to the US military and security apparatus, the death toll from the government’s crackdown during the last two weeks was between 180 and 450.

Interior minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that 731 banks, 140 public spaces, nine religious centres, 70 gasoline stations, 307 vehicles, 183 police cars, 1,076 motorcycles and 34 ambulances were attacked and damaged. He said that there had been protests in 29 out of 31 provinces and 50 military bases had been attacked. If true, it implies a level of coordination unseen in previous demonstrations in 2009 and 2017-18, or indeed elsewhere in protest movements in the Middle East.

Hamed, an actor living in a suburb in west Tehran, speaking to the Financial Times about the protesters carrying out the attacks, said, “They were like a gang, marching in the streets with faces covered, destroying specific targets like banks” and they looked like “professionals with sophisticated tools.” He added that some of them “must have been led by foreign forces.” The IRGC claimed that some of the protesters were carrying tools not normally available in Iran. But others suggested the attacks could only have taken place if the IRGC had directed at least some of the protesters in order to provide a pretext for the clampdown.

While the protests began in response to a new rationing system that allows just 60 litres (16 gallons) per month to each passenger vehicle (more for taxis and commercial vehicles) for 15,000 rials per litre—a 50 percent increase, and 30,000 rials per litre, a 300 percent increase on purchases over the 60 litres—they soon spread to encompass broader social, economic and political demands. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets, setting up roadblocks.

With Iran’s petrol prices among the cheapest in the world, many people use their cars as unofficial taxis to earn extra cash to supplement their meagre incomes that have been eaten away by inflation following Washington’s unilateral imposition of sanctions and—crucially—the threat of secondary sanctions against countries trading with Iran. Since then, sales of crude oil have fallen from 2.8 million barrels a day (bpd) to less than 500,000 bpd, gutting foreign exchange earnings.

This, together with years of austerity, imposed by successive governments with the support of all factions of Iran’s political establishment, has led to soaring inflation, mass unemployment, shrinking incomes and ever-deepening social inequality. It has driven many young people out of the city centres into the outer suburbs and satellite towns, where most of the unrest took place. It highlights the utterly reactionary character of the bourgeois clerical regime that has escalated its attacks on the working class as it has sought to reach some accommodation with the imperialist powers.

At first, the government claimed the price rise was necessary to combat smuggling and was in line with IMF recommendations. Although Iran’s central bank had denied that it has sought a loan from the IMF, it soon switched tack when the scale of the protests became apparent. Conceding that there was popular and justifiable anger, government ministers insisted that the real purpose of the gas price hike was to provide greater financial support for impoverished families via a system of monthly cash payments, initially introduced in 2011, that would ultimately benefit nearly 60 million people, more than 70 percent of Iran’s 82 million population.

There are evidently enormous divisions and nervousness within the ruling elite over how to handle the protests. Initially, some of Rouhani’s social conservative rivals opposed the price hikes, but after Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed his support for Rouhani, they backed down.

Khamenei described the violence as the work of a “very dangerous conspiracy,” while Rouhani’s government blamed “thugs” linked to Iranian dissidents in exile and the country’s main external enemies—the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), set up in 1979 to defend the country’s bourgeois clerical regime, said that the US had supported the protests by deploying “psychological warfare” and “local mercenaries” in an effort to exert maximum pressure on Tehran.

Some of the worst violence reportedly took place in the southern city of Mahshahr in Khuzestan Province, close to Iran’s largest industrial petrochemical complex and gateway to Bandar Imam, a major port, where IRGC forces surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators—mostly unarmed young men—in a marsh where they had sought refuge. Mohamad Golmordai, the city’s member of parliament, angrily attacked the government in an outburst that led to a fight in the parliament that was broadcast on Iranian state television and went viral on social media. He said, “What have you done that the undignified Shah did not do?” This was a reference to the bloody suppression of the protest movement in 1978 that brought down the Shah’s tyrannical regime the following year.

Mir Hussein Moussavi, leader of the opposition green movement and presidential candidate in the 2009 election blamed Khamenei for the killings. Moussavi had claimed that the election results had been rigged, triggering mass demonstrations, and has been under house arrest since 2011. He too compared the repression to the 1978 massacre by the Shah’s forces.

There is no doubt that the US, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies and Israel are seeking to exploit the escalating crisis confronting Iran. The stated objective of the US “maximum pressure” campaign of unilateral sanctions, amounting to an economic blockade, is to drive the country’s oil exports down to zero, while denying it access to the world banking system. This economic act of war is designed to secure the downfall of Iran’s nationalist regime, reduce its influence in the region and install a government that will take its orders from Washington, thereby isolating China and Russia.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however has been pressing the Trump administration for months to take a more militaristic stance against Iran.

The White House announced that President Donald Trump had spoken to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone on Sunday to discuss Iran and other regional issues. This was only the second time the two have spoken since Netanyahu’s far-right-wing religious bloc failed to win an overall majority in Israel’s September 17 election, the second this year.

In October, Netanyahu accused Iran of “seeking to tighten its grip in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen and in the Gaza Strip. It is incessantly arming itself, equipping its offshoots with dangerous weaponry, assaulting freedom of navigation in international shipping lanes. It has downed a large American unmanned aerial vehicle and carried out a blatant and unprecedented attack on oil fields in Saudi Arabia.” He added that Israel will “always remember and follow the basic rule that guides us: Israel will defend itself by itself in the face of every threat.”

Several high-ranking US military officials have either visited Israel or held discussions with their counterparts in the Israeli army over Iran and the growing tensions over Tehran’s role and influence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Netanyahu is hoping to secure a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Lisbon later this week. Last week, Pompeo threatened to impose further sanctions on Iran for “human rights” abuses in suppressing the protests.

His threat follows the remarks of US Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, who claimed that, despite the US build-up of military might in the Gulf, the threat from Iran continued to increase. Such remarks, which have no basis in reality, point to the rising danger of a war in the region that would draw in all the major powers.

Ten trillion dollars of US corporate debt set off alarm bells

Nick Beams

Alarm bells are starting to be rung over the increase in corporate debt in the US and other major economies, fueled by the policies of major central banks in supplying ultra-cheap money to financial markets.

The Washington Post published an article on Saturday noting that US corporate debt had reached almost $10 trillion, an amount equivalent to 47 percent of gross domestic product. It warned that 10 years after the global financial crisis the debt surge “threatens to unleash fresh financial turmoil.”

The newspaper commented that the danger was not “immediate,” but cited regulators and investors who said the borrowing “could send financial markets plunging when the next recession hits.”

This year, the “weakest firms” had accounted for most of the debt growth. It was being used, not to finance investment in plant and equipment, but rather for “financial risk-taking such as investor payouts and deal making.”

One of the most significant features of the debt binge is the purchase by companies of their own stock in order to boost share market valuations. According to Federal Reserve data, US companies have spent more than $4 trillion since 2009 for this purpose, much of it in the past five years.

The quality of the debt is deteriorating, with a rapid rise in lower grade corporate bonds, rated just above junk status. Investors now hold $4 trillion of such bonds, including $2.5 trillion issued by US firms, according to the Standard and Poor’s rating agency.

The article cited comments by Emre Tiftik of the Institute of International Finance, a major finance industry association, who warned: “We are sitting on the top of an unexploded bomb and we don’t really know what will trigger the explosion.”

The rise in corporate debt was highlighted by the International Monetary Fund in its Global Financial Stability Report issued in October, in which it said that “corporate debt vulnerabilities” were “significantly elevated” in a number of countries. The fear is that these “vulnerabilities” could set off a crisis if there is a downturn in the global economy.

“In a material economic slowdown half as severe as the global financial crisis, corporate-debt-at-risk (debt owed by firms that are unable to cover their interest expenses with their earnings) could rise to $19 trillion--or nearly 40 percent of total corporate debt in major economies--above crisis levels,” the IMF said.

The IMF said very low interest rates, which have seen the amount of bonds with negative yields rise to $15 trillion, were “prompting investors to search for yield and take on riskier and more illiquid assets to generate targeted returns.”

Despite the warnings of the dangers, money is continuing to pour into the financing of riskier assets because of the low interest rate regime of the world’s central banks. According to one fund manager cited by the Washington Post, companies were doing the “rational thing,” and that “if you tell them they can borrow cheap and borrow long, they will take advantage of it.”

This is because there is big money to be made. In an article published last week on the warning signs flashing in the US debt market, the Financial Times noted that an index of junk-rated debt run by Ice Data Services has returned almost 12 percent this year as “bullish fund managers look lower down the credit spectrum in pursuit of income.”

The present situation brings to mind the infamous comments by the former head of Citigroup, Chuck Prince. Asked in July 2007, on the eve of the financial crisis, about the group’s continued commitment to leveraged buyout deals, even as danger signs were emerging, he replied, “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”

An article published in the Financial Times last week by the senior investment manager at Pictet Asset Management, Galia Velimukhametova, pointed to the rise of “zombie” companies in the major economies. These are firms whose interest costs are in excess of their annual earnings and which are kept alive only because of the low interest rate regime.

“Bank of America Merrill Lynch estimates that there are 548 of these zombies in the OECD club of mostly rich nations against a peak of 626 during the crash,” she wrote, noting that there are five times more zombies today than in the late 1990s, when interest rates were significantly higher.

Velimukhametova pointed to the worsening situation in the quality of corporate debt extending over the past two decades. In the 1990s, the median corporate debt rating from S&P Global was solidly investment grade. Now it is just above junk status. There had been a sharp deterioration in Europe.

“As recently as 2011,” she wrote, “virtually all European corporate loans were issued with solid covenants--the minimum financial thresholds that help ensure a company will be able to meet its obligations. Now more than 80 percent of debt sold by the largest companies is classed as ‘covenant lite,’ offering negligible protection to creditors.”

The US Federal Reserve has also become concerned about the rise in corporate debt and its implications for the stability of the financial system. According to the minutes of its rate setting committee at the end of October, “several officials” warned that “imbalances” in corporate debt had grown during the current phase of economic expansion.

They also raised concerns that “deteriorating credit quality could lead to sharp increases in risk spreads in corporate bond markets,” and this could “amplify the effects of an adverse shock to the economy.”

The Washington Post was more direct. Citing investors and money managers, it said that if the “junk market were to be sufficiently disrupted, companies could be forced to default on their debts.” It added, “That would likely force massive layoffs and sharp reductions in business investment, turning the financial market’s headache into a punishing economic ill.”

Canada’s Human Rights Tribunal condemns government’s treatment of indigenous children

Janet Browning & Roger Jordan

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) has sharply rebuked the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau for its refusal to negotiate the payment of compensation to poor indigenous children and their families. The HRT’s public criticism comes after the Liberals filed a legal challenge to the Tribunal’s ruling that the government must pay $40,000 in compensation to every child in the on-reserve welfare system since January 1, 2006, due to the systematic and massive under-funding of on-reserve child welfare services by successive federal governments.

The original Tribunal order, released in September, said the federal government “willfully and recklessly” discriminated against indigenous children living on reserve by failing to provide funding for child and family services equivalent to the funding provided by provincial governments to children in other areas.

Provincial governments in Canada are generally responsible for funding child welfare services. However, the federal government is responsible for funding on-reserve child welfare services. The government’s failure to live up to its obligations resulted in a “worst-case scenario” under the Canadian Human Rights Act, the HRT concluded.

The Tribunal also ruled that the government knew about the damage the under-funding of the on-reserve child welfare system was having on First Nations children as far back as 2000, but willfully did nothing. The ruling declared, “Canada’s conduct was devoid of caution with little to no regard to the consequences… Canada was aware of the discrimination and of some of its serious consequences… Canada focused on financial considerations rather than on the best interests of First Nations Children.”

The Trudeau Liberal government responded to the ruling by refusing to enter negotiations to arrange the practicalities of the compensation payouts with the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the two organizations that filed the initial human rights complaint in 2007. Instead, the government filed a legal challenge to the ruling in Federal Court on October 4, disputing the Tribunal’s authority to order compensation payments in the case.

Although the HRT ordered all parties to present proposals for making compensation payments by December 10, the Liberals have refused to hold a single meeting on the matter with the Caring Society and the AFN.

In a letter published Tuesday announcing an extension of the deadline until January 29, 2020, the HRT said it appeared that the government intends to do nothing to fulfill its order, pending the outcome of Ottawa’s Federal Court challenge.

“With the December 10, 2019 date approaching,” wrote the HRT, “and the indication from parties that Canada has not entered into discussion with them… Canada has potentially opted for non-compliance with the Tribunal’s order until the Federal Court has ruled on the motion… The panel viewed the process as collaborative between the parties and understands that this is not the case at the moment.”

The political wrangling over the compensation payouts, which could amount to some $8 billion if all 50,000 First Nations children are fully compensated, underscores the political elite’s callous contempt for Canada’s impoverished indigenous population. Despite the case’s exposure of horrific social conditions both on- and off-reserve, the Liberals are not concerned with doing anything substantive to change them.

Social conditions for indigenous people on-reserve in Canada resemble those in the world’s most underdeveloped countries. Many First Nations people do not have access to clean drinking water, decent housing, and basic public services like education, healthcare, and social welfare.

Overall, 47 percent of First Nations children live in poverty, more than two-and-a-half times the national rate. That figure rises to 53 percent for First Nations children living on reserves. Those responsible for tabulating Canada’s official poverty statistics do not even examine the situation on reserves except during census counts. Moreover, the Liberal government’s newly adopted national poverty line, which is used to track the effectiveness of the government’s poverty-reduction plan, isn’t calculated on reserves.

High rates of poverty on reserves drive young indigenous people to cities, where they are vastly over-represented among the homeless population.

In statistics reported by the federal Indigenous Services Department in 2018, it was revealed that the life expectancy of First Nations people is 15 years shorter than the population as a whole. Infant mortality is between two and three times higher, while the rate of young indigenous people graduating high school on-reserve is only half that of the general population. When they reach adulthood, indigenous people are more than twice as likely than other Canadians to die from avoidable causes, including injuries, alcohol and drug abuse, and treatable diseases like tuberculosis.

According to figures from Statistics Canada based on the 2016 census, four out of every five reserves have median incomes below the official poverty level. A total of 27 reserves reported having median incomes of less than $10,000.

Far from expanding social and economic support for indigenous Canadians, the federal Liberals are focused on cultivating ties with a tiny privileged indigenous elite, so as to facilitate the expansion of energy projects on First Nations’ land and open the reserves to capitalist private enterprise. At the same time, they are imposing social spending cuts. In a report in October, the Parliamentary Budget Office said that federal funding for off-reserve indigenous households would be slashed over the next 10 years to only half of what was provided over the previous decade.

In its ruling, the Tribunal stated that in addition to children, parents and grandparents should be compensated if they had to leave their homes to access welfare services, or those who were denied services under the policy known as “Jordan’s Principle.” Under “Jordan’s Principle,” the needs of a First Nations child requiring a government service are meant to take precedence over jurisdictional issues over who should pay for it.

“These parents and grand-parents experienced pain and suffering of the worst kind,” noted the Tribunal.

In 2003, the Caring Society carefully documented the overrepresentation of First Nations Children in Canada’s child welfare system and how this neglect led to the death of many such children.

Both NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May responded to the HRT ruling by saying that if they led the government it would offer compensation at the level ordered by the Tribunal. Nobody should take such bogus promises seriously. Both politicians spent the recently-concluded federal election campaign pledging to prop up a minority Liberal government and portraying the Liberals as a “progressive” alternative to the Conservatives. There could be no more damning refutation of this monumental fraud than the treatment of Canada’s indigenous population by this and previous Liberal governments.