Isn’t It Time to Ban the Bomb?

Lawrence Wittner

Although the mass media failed to report it, a landmark event occurred recently in connection with resolving the long-discussed problem of what to do about nuclear weapons. On August 19, 2016, a UN committee, the innocuously-named Open-Ended Working Group, voted to recommend to the UN General Assembly that it mandate the opening of negotiations in 2017 on a treaty to ban them.

For most people, this recommendation makes a lot of sense. Nuclear weapons are the most destructive devices ever created. If they are used―as two of them were used in 1945 to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki―the more than 15,000 nuclear weapons currently in existence would destroy the world. Given their enormous blast, fire, and radioactivity, their explosion would bring an end to virtually all life on earth. The few human survivors would be left to wander, slowly and painfully, in a charred, radioactive wasteland. Even the explosion of a small number of nuclear weapons through war, terrorism, or accident would constitute a catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude.

Every President of the United States since 1945, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, has warned the world of the horrors of nuclear war. Even Ronald Reagan―perhaps the most military-minded among them―declared again and again: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Fortunately, there is no technical problem in disposing of nuclear weapons. Through negotiated treaties and unilateral action, nuclear disarmament, with verification, has already taken place quite successfully, eliminating roughly 55,000 nuclear weapons of the 70,000 in existence at the height of the Cold War.

Also, the world’s other agents of mass destruction, biological and chemical weapons, have already been banned by international agreements.

Naturally, then, most people think that creating a nuclear weapons-free world is a good idea. A 2008 poll in 21 nations around the globe found that 76 percent of respondents favored an international agreement for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and only 16 percent opposed it. This included 77 percent of the respondents in the United States.

But government officials from the nine nuclear-armed nations are inclined to view nuclear weapons―or at least their nuclear weapons―quite differently. For centuries, competing nations have leaned heavily upon military might to secure what they consider their “national interests.” Not surprisingly, then, national leaders have gravitated toward developing powerful military forces, armed with the most powerful weaponry. The fact that, with the advent of nuclear weapons, this traditional behavior has become counter-productive has only begun to penetrate their consciousness, usually helped along on such occasions by massive public pressure.

Consequently, officials of the superpowers and assorted wannabes, while paying lip service to nuclear disarmament, continue to regard it as a risky project. They are much more comfortable with maintaining nuclear arsenals and preparing for nuclear war. Thus, by signing the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968, officials from the nuclear powers pledged to “pursue negotiations in good faith on . . . a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” And today, nearly a half-century later, they have yet to begin negotiations on such a treaty. Instead, they are currently launching yet another round in the nuclear arms race. The U.S. government alone is planning to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years to refurbish its entire nuclear weapons production complex, as well as to build new air-, sea-, and ground-launched nuclear weapons.

Of course, this enormous expenditure―plus the ongoing danger of nuclear disaster―could provide statesmen with a powerful incentive to end 71 years of playing with their doomsday weapons and, instead, get down to the business of finally ending the grim prospect of nuclear annihilation. In short, they could follow the lead of the UN committee and actually negotiate a ban on nuclear weapons as the first step toward abolishing them.

But, to judge from what happened in the UN Open-Ended Working Group, a negotiated nuclear weapons ban is not likely to occur. Uneasy about what might emerge from the committee’s deliberations, the nuclear powers pointedly boycotted them. Moreover, the final vote in that committee on pursuing negotiations for a ban was 68 in favor and 22 opposed, with 13 abstentions. The strong majority in favor of negotiations was comprised of African, Latin American, Caribbean, Southeast Asian, and Pacific nations, with several European nations joining them. The minority came primarily from nations under the nuclear umbrellas of the superpowers. Consequently, the same split seems likely to occur in the UN General Assembly, where the nuclear powers will do everything possible to head off UN action.

Overall, then, there is a growing division between the nuclear powers and their dependent allies, on the one hand, and a larger group of nations, fed up with the repeated evasions of the nuclear powers in dealing with the nuclear disaster that threatens to engulf the world. In this contest, the nuclear powers have the advantage, for, when all is said and done, they have the option of clinging to their nuclear weapons, even if that means ignoring a treaty adopted by a clear majority of nations around the world. Only an unusually firm stand by the non-nuclear nations, coupled with an uprising by an aroused public, seems likely to awaken the officials of the nuclear powers from their long sleepwalk toward catastrophe.

Controlling Africa With Western “Democracy”

Thomas C. Mountain


The west uses “democracy”, as in elections, to control Africa. This has resulted in over half a century of murder and mayhem because all but one African country is a mixture of different ethnicity’s and nationalities with tribalism dominant in African societies.

Elections mean tribal winners and tribal losers and no in between, or consensus based governance. This has been a recipe for disaster, as in tribal conflict, since the end of direct western colonial rule and the imposition of neocolonialism after WW2.

Its called “divide and rule” and towards this end western style “democracy” has been a big hit in Africa as far as Pax Americana and its western minions are concerned.

In more recent times “crisis management” has been the de facto policy, as in create a crisis (tribal conflict in the run up to an election) and then manage the crisis to better rape and pillage African resources. As long as the “native tribes” are killing each other the less chance of any sort of “united front against Imperialism” as in independent, nationalist African governments demanding a fair share of Africa’s wealth.

Western “democracy” is all about controlling Africa for western benefit, something crucial to the ability of the western leaders maintaining the support of their population by being able to deliver the goods, economically speaking, in the form of higher standards of living. It is African blood that pays for the rich lifestyles of the western populace, and African blood that pays for social peace in western societies.

The western elites don’t care if it is buy, rig or steal when it comes to African elections as long as “my bastards” win everything is copacetic. Election instigated tribal violence is so standard that when an election is fixed without an outbreak of murder and mayhem it comes to be a cause of wonderment in the western media. The very first thing Pax Americana and its vassals demand after any African crisis are “elections”. And sure enough, another crisis is brewing.

Western “democracy” is really American “democracy” for the system used in Europe, and most of the rest of the world, originated in the United States of America. The amazing job of brainwashing that has been done to convince both Americans and their acolytes internationally is that somehow American Democracy was ever something progressive.

The historical fact is that the war for independence by the British colonies in North America was a counterrevolution for the purpose of preserving slavery. That’s right, Washington, Jefferson et al were fighting for independence for the British colonies to preserve slavery, the most criminal, inhumane and barbaric crime against humanity the world has ever known, the enslavement of Africans in subhuman bondage.

Thanks to cutting edge historians such as Dr. Gerald Horne, amongst others, there is indisputable historical evidence to convict the founding fathers of the USA of waging war to preserve slavery, which, with the help of the slave owning French aristocracy, succeeded in doing so for almost another century in the USA.

Britain had outlawed slavery in the British Isles and Washington, Jefferson et al saw the handwriting on the wall, that their way of life based on the barbaric exploitation and degradation of Africans could only be preserved by independence from Britain. So they formed the Colonial Congress and carried out their counterrevolution with its goal to preserve their barbarism, for the system of slavery they enforced so viciously can hardly be considered civilization.

The historical record of the form of barbarism practiced by the slave owning leadership of the newly independent USA is most powerfully exemplified by what is probably the only reliable first hand account of how that “Founder of American Democracy”, Thomas Jefferson treated “his” Africans.

“After dinner the master [Jefferson] and I went to see the slaves plant peas. Their bodies dirty brown rather than black, their dirty rags, their miserable, hideous half-nakedness, these haggard figures, this secretive anxious air, the hateful timorous looks, altogether seized me with an initial sentiment of terror and sadness that I ought to hide my face from. Their indolence in turning up the ground with the hoe was extreme. The master [Jefferson] took a whip to frighten them, and soon ensued a comic scene. Placed in the middle of the gang, he menaced, and turned far and wide [on all sides] turning around. Now, as he turned his face, one by one, the blacks changed attitude; those whom he looked at directly worked best, those whom he half saw worked least, and those he didn’t see at all, ceased working altogether; and if he made an about-face, the hoe was raised to view, but otherwise slept behind his back”. (Thanks to “The Many Headed Hydra…” for the previous quotation)

This first hand account is from a founding member of the French “Society for Friendship with Blacks”, the first French antislavery organization. His name was Constantine Volney and he was the author of that African-Centered classic historical work, “Ruins; Or, Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires” in 1791. It is a fascinating account about his visit to Africa’s Nile Valley as a part of Napoleon’s scientific team before the last major desecration’s began.

Being an honest, antiracist historian, Volney believed, based on what he saw with his own eyes in the Egyptian tombs and temples, that civilization began in Africa, on the banks of the Nile River.

In his own words; “It was there that a people, since forgotten, discovered the elements of science and art, at a time when all other men were barbarous, and that a race, now regarded as the refuse of society, because their hair is wooly and their skin is dark, explored among the phenomena of nature, those civil and religious systems which have since held mankind in awe”.

“Ruins” was one of the most widely read historical texts of the late 18th and early 19th century. It was published in 6 languages in over 15 editions.

Volney was eventually driven from the USA by the forerunner of the Undesirable Aliens Act, passed by a slave owner Congress still having difficulties achieving a good nights sleep, haunted by dreams of the revolution in Haiti and the slaughter of their fellow slave owners by their erstwhile captives, Toussaint and his fellow Africans.

Thomas Jefferson was the author of the Constitution of the United States of America which with its hypocrisy drenched words of “All men are created equal” is supposed to be the template for the governance of African societies?

Its bad enough that whites and asians accept this falsehood but that it is essential that we in Africa must do so as well?.

Any wonder why western “democracy” has brought about so much murder and mayhem in Africa? That a system that was created by a society that treated Africans so barbarically should only result in barbarism in Africa when forced upon the people here?

It is more that a little ironic that the very structure used to govern the newly independent slavery dominated USA was plagiarized from the League of the Iroquois, the federation of American Indian nations whose grand council and democratic processes were adopted almost without change by the original author of what became the Constitution of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson’s mentor.

Can you tell me of anyone, scholar or laymen in the USA, or its acolytes internationally, who know this fact, that the supposedly barbaric American Indians were the very people whose method of governance was adopted and distorted to become the basis of the system of governance known today as American “democracy”?

The League of the Iroquois was composed of nation “states” which had jurisdiction over affairs of the “state” only. Each “state” had its own elected legislature, which, as in Franklin’s Constitution, chose a number of “electors” to the “federal” League of the Iroquois. These “electors” were accorded to each “state” based on the individual “states” population. The “electors” met regularly in the sacred hall for their deliberations. This “grand council” (the name Franklin used in the original draft of the Constitution for what came to be the Congress of the USA) was unicameral, as was Franklin’s original white settler “council”, later Congress, of the former British colonies.

This Grand Council of the League of the Iroquois declared war and negotiated peace treaties, sent and received ambassadors, decided on the new members joining the League and in general acted as a “federal” government whose decisions superseded those of the “states” in affairs of the “nation”.

As in Franklin’s Constitution, in the League of the Iroquois, the electors could not be serving in the military while holding office. In both cases an electorate chose the electors and could recall their choice at anytime. One of the main differences between the structures of the two “democracies” was that in the League of the Iroquois the electors were reserved for men but ELECTED BY THE WOMEN. That’s right, in the League of the Iroquois the women elected the leadership, something much more “democratic” than the actual minority of men who made up the electorate in the USA.

The League of the Iroquois maintained a national state that stretched from New England to the Mississippi River that existed in conditions of internal peace for a thousand years or more.

Africans, like the American Indians, traditionally practiced a more consensual form of democracy, not a winners and losers system of divide and rule. The introduction of American “democracy” was critical to the success of neo colonialism in Africa and it’s implementation is responsible for most of the conflict and destruction wracking Africa today.

Western “democracy”, a system adopted by slave owners and redesigned to enable the preservation of a system of barbarism, maintained by force and violence, which has been forced on Africa, with this foreign infection subsequently proving to be critical in the continuing subjugation of the African continent by the western powers.

It’s all about controlling Africa with western “democracy” and like Cuba in Latin America, there is only one country on the African continent that rejects this system of exploitation, the small climate disaster wracked nation of Eritrea. Here in Eritrea we prefer to build our own system of “democracy” based on a peoples liberation war of 30 years and a culture of unity despite religious and ethnic differences that has withstood invasion, sanctions and climate disaster without faltering in our commitment to building a “Rich Eritrea without Rich Eritreans”, in other words Socialism. The west can have its so called “democracy” as far as we Eritreans are concerned.

Israel’s Bogus Civil War

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Is Israel on the verge of civil war, as a growing number of Israeli commentators suggest, with its Jewish population deeply riven over the future of the occupation?

On one side is a new peace movement, Decision at 50, stuffed with former political and security leaders. Ehud Barak, a previous prime minister who appears to be seeking a political comeback, may yet emerge as its figurehead.

The group has demanded the government hold a referendum next year – the half-centenary of Israel’s occupation, which began in 1967 – on whether it is time to leave the territories. Its own polling shows a narrow majority ready to concede a Palestinian state.

On the other is Benjamin Netanyahu, in power for seven years with the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. On Friday he posted a video on social media criticising those who want to end the occupation.

Observing that a Palestinian state would require removing hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers currently living – illegally – on Palestinian land, Netanyahu concluded: “There’s a phrase for that. It’s called ethnic cleansing.”

Not only did the comparison upend international law, but Netanyahu infuriated the Obama administration by implying that, in seeking to freeze settlement growth, the US had supported such ethnic cleansing. A spokeswoman called the comments “inappropriate and unhelpful” – Washington-speak for deceitful and inflammatory.

But the Israeli prime minister is not the only one hoodwinking his audience.

Whatever its proponents imply, the Decision at 50 referendum is about neither peace nor the Palestinians’ best interests. Its assumption is that yet again the Israeli public should determine unilaterally the Palestinians’ fate.

Although the exact wording is yet to be decided, the referendum’s backers appear concerned solely with the status of the West Bank.

An Israeli consensus believes Gaza has been free of occupation since the settlers were pulled out in 2005, despite the fact that Israel still surrounds most of the coastal strip with soldiers, patrols its air space with drones and denies access to the sea.

The same unyielding, deluded Israeli consensus has declared East Jerusalem, the expected capital of a Palestinian state, as instead part of Israel’s “eternal capital”.

But the problem runs deeper still. When the new campaign proudly cites new figures showing that 58 per cent support “two states for two nations”, it glosses over what most Israelis think such statehood would entail for the Palestinians.

A survey in June found 72 per cent do not believe the Palestinians live under occupation, while 62 per cent told pollsters last year they think Palestinians have no rights to a nation.

When Israelis talk in favour of a Palestinian state, it is chiefly to thwart a far bigger danger – a single state shared with the “enemy”. The Decision at 50 poll shows 87 per cent of Israeli Jews dread a binational conclusion to the conflict. Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service and a leader of Decision at 50, echoed them, warning of an “approaching disaster”.

So what do Israelis think a Palestinian state should look like? Previous surveys have been clear. It would not include Jerusalem or control its borders. It would be territorially carved up to preserve the “settlement blocs”, which would be annexed to Israel. And most certainly it would be “demilitarised” – without an army or air force.

In other words, Palestinians would lack sovereignty. Such a state exists only in the imagination of the Israeli public. A Palestinian state on these terms would simply be an extension of the Gaza model to the West Bank.

Nonetheless, the idea of a civil war is gaining ground. Tamir Pardo, the recently departed head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, warned last month that Israel was on the brink of tearing itself apart through “internal divisions”.

He rated this a bigger danger than any of the existential threats posited by Mr Netanyahu, such as Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb.

But the truth is that there is very little ideologically separating most Israeli Jews. All but a tiny minority wish to see the Palestinians continue as a subjugated people. For the great majority, a Palestinian state means nothing more than a makeover of the occupation, penning up the Palestinians in slightly more humane conditions.

After many years in power, the right is growing in confidence. It sees no price has been paid, either at home or abroad, for endlessly tightening the screws on the Palestinians.

Israeli moderates have had to confront the painful reality that their country is not quite the enlightened outpost in the Middle East they had imagined. They may raise their voices in protest now but, if the polls are right, most will eventually submit to the right’s realisation of its vision of a Greater Israel.

Those who cannot stomach such an outcome will have to stop equivocating and choose a side. They can leave, as some are already doing, or stay and fight – not for a bogus referendum that solves nothing, but to demand dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people.

Water Wars Come To Bangalore (And Soon, The World)

Vijay Kundaji

I am not sure where each of you is, in your own reading and assessment of the situation, but I am now more or less convinced that life as we ‘know’ it, both here in ever ’emerging’ India, and worldwide, is going to change very rapidly in an unprecedented direction – and very possibly we will all experience this directly in our own lifetimes.

Natural resource degradation, contamination and depletion through human over-exploitation – that is, by our ever growing and consuming population – plus climate change, are going to completely redefine our lives and that of our kids. We can remain ostrich-like and convince ourselves that derivatives traders, financiers and technologists will keep the ‘economy’ – as we have been brainwashed into understanding it – afloat and will keep providing endless ‘returns’ on paper money through this idea of compound interest. But, the distress in the natural world today is too immense – and too real – that it is about to breach all our lives and assumptions.

From my chance vantage point, closely observing a small 3-acre piece of land near Thally in the penumbra of Bangalore and industrial Hosur, I have literally seen with my own eyes the degradation of the ecosystem and how water has vanished. If I had a time lapse movie made out of it (and speed-run 20 years of visuals in a few minutes), you would see verdant landscapes, pale in front of your eyes and eventually go brown, scores of lakes brimming with water shrink to a pond first, and then become a dry bed, and borewells that were on average 70 to 100 feet deep, go dry today at 1500 feet. Plastic and industrial trash blows around in the wind on what was once food-yielding agricultural land and is now essentially waste land waiting for an Audi-seeking, dream-peddling real estate developer to snatch it up. Paddy fields below the bunds of abundant lakes now sound like historic fiction and food crop agriculture has been decimated and replaced by a scrappy brand of greenhouse, cash-crop farming by those with the capital to sink multiple 1500 foot borewells and suck what remains dry to convert it into money.

For millennia, the population in that area had been self-sustaining in all resources and especially in water. But, two years ago, after it was clear that the water was vanishing in the area, all the villages in the Thally area were put on ‘the grid’ and connected to a pipeline from the Cauvery via the highly controversial Hogenakkal water project. (We have a water reservoir just outside our piece of land – although we don’t get any of that water ourselves).

So what becomes of the Cauvery now? And even if the Gods are kind and somehow the monsoon switches back on, then in the days and years ahead? Where will those highly contested “cusecs” come from? Is some smart technologist going to invent them in a glass and concrete building with VC money?

I am sorry – but things are truly grim.  And 1 out of 6 humans in the world is crammed into the political boundaries of India.

Elsewhere the tides are rising (coastal erosion from Saurashtra all the way around to the Sundarbans), coasts are churning and rivers flooding (see Bihar/UP/Assam, N. Karnataka, Maharashtra and the wild fluctuations from conditions of drought to floods in a few weeks), while glaciers are receding rapidly in the Himalayas (as is happening worldwide).

The ‘comforting notion’ that some smart people sitting somewhere will solve all this with the help of technology, friends, is just that … a notion.  It’s not happening.  A lot of our problems have, in fact, been created by our resource gobbling and energy crazy, carbon heavy way of life.  We are hurtling as humans towards the irreversible 2 degree temperature rise when ‘climate change’ will hit a new trajectory (The Paris climate talks, etc if you read about them, were a joke).

I’ll stop my diatribe.  And fervently hope that my angst is completely misplaced.  Even though my own experience suggests otherwise.  I hope to be an ostrich (“Je suis une autruche”- to use a clause that got popular in a different, distressing context !)

India and the US: Inching Towards an Informal Alliance

Chintamani Mahapatra

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent visit to India, along with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, to participate in the second Strategic and Commercial Dialogue with their Indian counterparts, and Indian Defence Minister Parrikar’s visit to Washington to meet with US Secretary of Defence to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation have made it appear as if India and the US are inching towards shaping an informal alliance relationship.

Alliance was taboo terminology in India’s approach towards the world during the four decades of the Cold War era. The politically correct phrase was non-alignment. India never felt comfortable with alliance politics indulged in by the US and the former Soviet Union. Successive governments in New Delhi promoted non-alignment as a credible foreign policy strategy and backed the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) consisting of the vast majorities of developing countries. Indian ideologues became defensive when critics described India’s closer defence and security ties with the former Soviet Union as antithetical to its profession of non-alignment policy.

The Indian government did not formally abandon NAM even after the end of the Cold War, although non-alignment slowly disappeared from the lexicon of Indian foreign policy and international relations. As and when Indian policy-makers came to terms with the new realities of the post-Cold War era marked by a sole superpower world order, the new mantra chanted by Indian strategic analysts came to be “strategic autonomy.”

As India was accused by critics of compromising its non-alignment by maintaining closer defence ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, it faced similar reproach of compromising its “strategic autonomy” when India began to forge a strategic partnership with the US in the post-Cold War era.

However, the demands of the time, politico-security developments in  the post-Soviet world order, rise of non-state actors as effective challengers of state sovereignty, nuclear capability of state sponsors of terrorism, meltdown of the Middle Eastern political order, end of the era of peaceful rise of China, among others, have required a new kind of strategic collaboration between India and the US.

The new strategic partnership project between India and the US that began since President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000 has gone through its varying pace and intensity from time to time, but after about fifteen years of its evolution, one may safely contend that there is no going back. The civil nuclear technology cooperation agreement, growing trade in arms and other military hardware, regular military exercises, new initiatives for co-production and co-development of defence items as part of the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) have cemented the strategic partnership between the two countries.

However, 'strategic partnership' is not a well-defined term and many commentators have actually come to joke about it. India has strategic partnerships with many countries, including China. What then is the brand of the Indo-US strategic partnership? Detailed examination will, of course, show the qualitatively different brand of India’s strategic partnership with the US than that with China.

The notable distinctiveness of the Indo-US strategic partnership consists of defence trade, technology transfer, military-to-military cooperation and most recently, the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA). This is one of the four fundamental agreements that have been under negotiation between the two countries. That it took so long to ink this agreement need not surprise anyone, since both the US and India are vibrant democracies and all stakeholders are allowed to participate in decision-making on critical issues. Now that LEMOA has been concluded, other agreements will be taken up for discussion.

Significantly, the discourse in India on Indo-US defence and security cooperation has matured to an extent where hardly any one raised serious opposition to LEMOA. As is in the US, a broad consensus seems to have been developing in India for robust defence and strategic ties with the US. 

FSI and Myanmar: More Clarity Required

Preet Malik

To try to evaluate a democratic process on a uniform framework is fraught with problems of a structural nature. Just by way of an example, in a farewell call on the then Malaysian prime minister in August 1990, he  remarked that “in India, we had too much democracy.” 

He was referring to the fact that the opposition could hold up the process of governance in India. In Malaysia, such possibilities were then contained by strong governmental action against any form of opposition to its policies. Myanmar is a case in point. How do you reflect in measureable terms the graduated move towards a democratic system that has to be viewed in positive terms and thus to be shown as an improvement over the past when the military held Myanmar in its authoritarian clasp, while the constitutional construct continues to place major hurdles in the way of attaining full democracy. The issue would remain as to how would one establishes a purely scientific basis for measuring this change.

The 2008 constitution is the basis on which the system of administration that Myanmar today enjoys. The fact that today there is a non-military elected government in place is a very positive development; particularly as this is the first such government in place after 1962. However, this positive is constrained by the provisions of the constitution that places the Myanmar Armed forces as central to preserving the unity and integrity of the nation while significantly placing them outside the control of the civilian authority; and the home or interior ministries are headed by a nominee of the armed forces, ensuring that both domestic and external security remains in the domain of the military.

Accordingly, any measurement of the actual functioning of democracy would have to factor in the overwhelming controls that the military continues to enjoy in the governance of the country. The elected government has flexibility to determine the course of the economy within its programmes for socio-economic development. It has control to a large extent over the direction that it would take on foreign policy and of course the place of Myanmar in international and regional discourse.  However on key domestic policy areas like the Rohingya issue, the general issue of communal peace and harmony, reconciliation process with ethnic groups that fall within the purview of security, and on areas of strategic determination, the overbearing role of the armed forces remains centred around the veto over changes or policies that they disagree with.

The question therefore for the FSI is as to how it would determine accurately the weightage it would need to give to the different aspects of the technically limited democracy that has come to prevail in Myanmar. The essential fact is that while accepting the progress made, full democracy is far from being restored to Myanmar. Another significant negative is that the ethnic minority issue remains a key factor to which a solution is still to emerge. This poses a threat to the stability of the country and could become an excuse as it did in the early 1960s to prevalence of democracy.

The union governments, whether democratic or authoritarian, have so far failed to meet the demands and aspirations of the ethnic groups who have claimed that there has been a consistent failure to meet the provisions of the Panglong Agreement in letter and spirit. This has led to armed resistance and exploitation of the situation, particularly by China. The Thein Sein regime succeeded in bringing the groups to the negotiating table with a universal ceasefire as a key component of the negotiations. Significantly, it also succeeded in including the Karens to join the process. However, there are certain key groups that have continued their armed insurrection, encouraged by China. Suu Kyi's recent visit to China has now resulted in the possibility of these groups also joining the process that the present government is following under the Panglong nomenclature. The key issue is the demand for structural changes that would establish a true federal structure with a significant undertaking on autonomy. This would involve amendments to the constitution that can only happen if the armed forces accept that changes pose no threat to the security and integrity of the country. Again, to satisfy the demands of autonomy, the role of the armed forces in the governance of the states would have to be curtailed if not eliminated. This could pose a serious problem in evolving a solution that would satisfy the ethnic groups.

To conclude, the negatives in Myanmar to a large extent still continue to override the positives. Any true index would have to reflect that the situation remains far from ideal. The challenge posed by the ethnic groups and the systemic change that would have to take place to meet it is an area that imposes itself on any analysis of the direction in which Myanmar is moving. The 2016 FSI has taken these factors into account but the weightage that it would apply to these developments is not quite clear.

UK government pledge to expand grammar schools signals escalation of selective education

Robert Stevens

Conservative Education Secretary Justine Greening yesterday announced the government’s plans to reintroduce grammar schools in England.

This followed a speech Friday by Prime Minister Theresa May, her first focussing on domestic policy. This outlined plans to allow all schools in England, including existing state comprehensives and academies, the right to apply to select pupils by ability. Alongside this, the remaining grammar schools will be allowed to expand.

May’s policy overturns that of her predecessor, David Cameron, and that of the 1997-2010 Labour government, which imposed a statutory ban on the expansion of grammar schools in 1998.

Some £50 million is to be allocated to fund expansion. Within days of May’s speech, five councils have already drawn up plans to open new grammar schools.

Grammar schools were first introduced following the 1944 Education Act. At that time children sat exams at 11 years of age (the 11 plus) that creamed off the top achievers for grammar schools while the majority of pupils attended secondary moderns. At their height in 1964, 1,300 grammar schools educated a quarter of all pupils.

During the 1960s and 70s, with the advent of the comprehensive state school system, the majority of grammar schools closed. By 1988, no grammars were left in Wales and by 2014, just 163 remained in England (mainly in counties without major urban locations).

The attack on comprehensive education has been proceeding apace, so that the majority of secondary schools are now academies and free schools (state-funded but privately run). But the latest announcement is a decisive shift to selection.

May’s grammar school policy is a direct pitch to a section of the middle class—dressed up with claims of a commitment to a “meritocratic society.” She stated that present education policy does not benefit those “who can’t afford to move house or pay for a private education,” with government, “saying to parents who want a selective education for their child that we won’t let them have it.”

The wealthiest social layers in Britain send their children to fee-paying “public schools” (private schools, also known as independent schools). However, these 242 schools, which charge fees at an average £23,000 per annum, educate only seven percent of the total number of schoolchildren in England. These schools are well out of the financial reach for large sections of the middle class. May noted in her speech, “Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose four times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33 percent since 2008.”

“I want to relax the restrictions that stop selective schools from expanding, that deny parents the right to have a new selective school opened where they want one, and that stop existing non-selective schools to become selective in the right circumstances and where there is demand,” she said.

After the vote to leave the European Union in June’s referendum, “Everything we do will be driven, not by the interests of the privileged few”, she claimed. “Not by those with the loudest voices, the special interests, the greatest wealth or the access to influence.”

Her speech referenced eight times the struggles and hardship facing the “working class”, “who made real sacrifices after the financial crash in 2008, though they were in no way responsible… I want Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow.”

May’s cynicism is boundless. A right-wing Thatcherite, she portrays the expansion of selective schools as a means to enhance social mobility—able to take “a proportion of pupils from lower income households, so that selective education is not reserved for those with the means to move into a catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test.”

In reality this ideologically driven offensive will only reinforce class divisions and social inequality. The claim that grammar schools enable social mobility is a myth. Thanks to their greater opportunities—a more stable home environment, access to the arts, a culture of academic attainment, ability to pay tuition—selection overwhelmingly benefits students from better off families.

It is for this reason that streaming by attainment in the state sector has been the policy of successive governments over the past two decades. By 2011, research published by the Institute of Education has revealed that one in six children is allocated a stream by the age of seven.

There is overwhelming evidence proving that grammar schools from their inception have primarily benefited the more socially privileged layers. Researchers from the University of Bristol, the University of Bath and the Institute of Education, University of London, found that those who failed to pass the 11-plus to enter grammar schools were left at an “immediate disadvantage” in terms of future earnings. Grammars lead to a widening of the income gap between rich and poor.

The survey, based on the average pay of the top and bottom 10 percent of the workforce born between 1961 and 1983, found that in areas with a grammar school system, top earners are likely to earn £16.41 an hour more than those on the lowest incomes (around £30,000 a year based on a 35-hour week). In areas where the education system was fully comprehensive, the salary gap was £12.33—a quarter less.

In a report issued Monday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted, “Children from deprived backgrounds are much less likely to attend existing grammar schools than are better off children. Only about three percent of pupils at existing grammar schools are eligible for free school meals (a widely used indicator of poverty in schools), which compares with about 17 percent of pupils in grammar school areas as a whole.”

May announced a series of other reactionary proposals designed to eliminate comprehensive education—including private schools supporting/sponsoring state schools in return for maintaining their charitable status. Universities will be obliged to sponsor a state school or set up a new Free School. In exchange, they will be encouraged to charge higher tuition fees.

These policies are being introduced under condition in which the vast majority of graduates leave university burdened with tens of thousands of pounds of debt due to sky-high tuition fees.

It is not primarily lack of educational attainment that is having the greatest adverse impact on the young, but a deepening economic crisis. A recent study found that having a degree today in Britain is ever less likely to secure a decent, well-paid job. The Intergenerational Foundation revealed that Britons between ages 15 and 35 are at risk of being the first modern generation to earn less than their predecessors are over the course of their working lives. The burden of student debt repayment will wipe out any “graduate premium” for most professions, typically costing in total £282,420 over 30 years.

There are divisions in ruling circles as to the efficacy of expanding the grammar system. One senior minister told the Sunday Telegraph: “With such a small majority [of 12 MPs in parliament], now is not the time to be picking a fight like this.”

The Financial Times editorialised that grammars were the “wrong solution”, warning, “it is worrying that Mrs May has chosen to begin by reviving such a divisive, totemic policy.”

To avert this danger, the nominally liberal Guardian stepped forward to issue words of praise for the government. “England’s school system is at last working pretty well,” it asserted. May was “helping social mobility,” but should not therefore return to a policy “that was abandoned 50 years ago because it had failed.”

Calls for Canada to develop cyberwar capabilities

Dylan Lubao

Canada’s spy agencies and military should be upgraded to better carry out offensive cyber warfare attacks against “foreign adversaries,” a strategy paper published in July by a Canadian military think tank argued.

Titled “Canada and Cyber Warfare,” and written by retired Major General John Adams for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI), the paper urges that Canada improve its capability to infiltrate, disrupt and destroy the computer networks of its foreign rivals.

Adams is the former head of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country’s signals intelligence service. He has been a leading spokesman for the drive to expand the domestic and foreign powers of both CSE and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s domestic spy agency. Adams has previously boasted of CSE’s deep integration in the US National Security Agency’s illegal spy operations, with the aim of “mastering the internet.”

The basic arguments Adams puts forward in his paper have been used time and again to push for greater powers for the spy agencies and sweeping attacks on democratic rights. Vague and unsubstantiated claims are made about cyberattacks on sensitive computer infrastructure by foreign governments or terrorist groups—attacks which are supposedly difficult for Canada to fend off due to outdated equipment or legal barriers.

Other high-ranking former members of Canada’s national security apparatus have also weighed in. Ray Boisvert, a former Assistant Director of CSIS, has complained that Canada’s cyber warfare capabilities remain “rudimentary at best” and woefully underfunded.

The mounting demands for Canada to develop offensive cyber warfare capabilities are rooted in the growing tensions between the major powers internationally and the realization within Canada’s ruling elite that to assert its imperialist interests it must prepare for war.

In recent years, the United States has frequently resorted to claims of cyberattacks from hostile countries to stoke tensions with its geopolitical rivals, above all Russia and China. President Obama unveiled a vast array of new cyber policing powers last year to tackle alleged threats, while earlier this year Germany established a new department in its Defence Ministry and created a new branch of its military to wage cyberwar, including offensive operations.

Adams’ paper defines cyberspace as a domain comprised of the internet and other network infrastructure used by governments, militaries, corporations, and other organizations to maintain the ever-expanding scope of “modern civilization.” It notes that cyberspace has “become the centre of gravity for the globalized world ... including military operations.”

It goes on to state that cyberspace has “become an emerging theatre of operations,” with successful attacks capable of crippling “the ability of states to function.” Adams presents cyber warfare as inherently “cheaper, cleaner and less risky for an attacker” and so capable of crippling target infrastructure that it may soon supersede physical warfare.

Cyber warfare is typically defined as falling into one of three categories:

• Computer network attacks: designed to disrupt, deny, degrade or destroy computer networks or the computers themselves
• Computer network exploitation: seizing intelligence-grade data
• Computer network defence: measures taken to protect one’s networks from cyberattacks

Adams, Boisvert and others are emphasizing the need to provide the spy agencies and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with the resources and the mandate “to direct offensive action, in the form of cyber attacks,” something Adams laments they have lacked up to now. Failure to do so, warns

Adams, would be “neglectful beyond belief.”

Adams’ CGAI paper is directed at influencing the government’s Defence Policy Review, which in its “public consultation” paper itself raises the issue of how Canada should respond to the growing importance of cyber warfare.

Launched at the beginning of April, the review is the first in more than two decades. It is being used by the Trudeau Liberal government, the military-security establishment, and the corporate and financial elite to push for major hikes in military spending, the procurement of a vast array of new warplanes, battleships, submarines, and high tech weapons, and more aggressive use of the military to secure Canadian imperialism’s predatory interests.

In their ten months in office, the Liberals have dramatically expanded Canada’s participation in all three of Washington’s major geostrategic offensives—in the Middle East, where the US is seeking to overthrow Syria’s government as part of its drive to secure unchallenged domination of the world’s most important oil producing regime; against Russia; and against China.

In July, Trudeau announced that Canada would take the leadership and provide the bulk of the troops for one of four new NATO battalions being deployed on Russia’s borders in Eastern Europe. Under Trudeau’s government, Canada has also repeatedly voiced its support for the US’ provocative stance on the South China Sea dispute and expanded military-security ties with Washington’s closest ally in the Asia-Pacific, Japan

By posing the question of the type and size of investments required for cyber warfare systems, and the need to maintain interoperability with “key allies,” the Defence Policy Review consultation paper makes clear that the Liberals are also dead set on rapidly arming the spy agencies and military for offensive cyber warfare operations.

An example of the type of cyber warfare operations being considered is provided by the example of the 2010 Stuxnet virus, which was developed and deployed by a joint US-Israeli espionage team to target the computer-controlled gas centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant. The virus reportedly caused hundreds of the centrifuges to self-destruct.

As one of the closest military allies of the US, Canadian cyber warfare units would undeniably be on the front lines in a war between Washington and its current main rivals, Russia and China.

While levelling accusations of cyber espionage against its rivals, the Pentagon established its own Cyber Command in 2010 for the express purpose of carrying out cyberwar against them.

As for the claims that Canada’s cyberwar capabilities are defence-oriented and inadequate, nothing could be further from the truth.

CSE has been integrated with the NSA for decades, playing a critical role in eavesdropping on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, CSE boasted of its role in providing crucial military intelligence to the CAF.

More recently, CSE was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a main auxiliary of the NSA in spying on foreign governments. Through the agency’s LANDMARK software, CSE can hack thousands of foreign computers in a matter of hours and remain essentially untraceable.

In 2013, it was revealed that CSE established covert off-shore sites at the request of the NSA to conduct surveillance on at least 20 “high-priority” countries. Among the foreign governments surveilled were Brazil, over its disputes with Canadian corporations, and Kenya, in which a cellphone network was infiltrated at the request of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy agency.

Former NSA executive Thomas Drake summed up one of the reasons CSE is a valued NSA partner: “Think of certain foreign agreements or relationships that Canada actually enjoys that the United States doesn’t, and under the cover of those relationships, guess what you can conduct?”

Also being planned is deeper integration of CSE, CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the CAF. Under a five-year plan initiated in 2013, these four entities are to be brought under the umbrella of the Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), the CAF’s central command and control hub. CJOC directs both domestic and foreign missions, and is involved in cyber support for all three branches of the military.

German government plans massive expansion of spy services

Sven Heymann

The German government is planning to massively expand its intelligence agencies. Funding for the Federal Agency for Constitutional Protection (BfV) is to increase by 18 percent in the coming year, while the foreign intelligence service (BND) will receive a 12 percent rise. This was revealed by the research of public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitungdaily.

The expansion of the German intelligence agencies is part of a major buildup of the state apparatus at home and abroad. According to interior minister Thomas de Maizière (Christian Democratic Union), 7,000 new positions are to be created at the federal police alone between 2016 and 2020. During his speech on the budget debate last Tuesday in the parliament (Bundestag), Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble announced, in addition to increases to the defence budget, a “significant increase in spending on internal security, up to €2.2 billion more than in the previous financial plan.”

This buildup is officially justified with reference to security deficits and gaps in the struggle against terrorism. In fact, the goal of these comprehensive measures is the most wide-ranging surveillance of the population possible and the construction of a police state.

Under conditions of increased opposition to the war drive of the major parties, growing social inequality and the sustained economic crisis, the ruling elite is making conscious preparations for the outbreak of open class struggle.

Secret budgetary documents obtained by the Süddeutsche Zeitung make clear the extent of the domestic security buildup. The BfV will receive a funding increase in the coming year of €45 million. With a budget of €307 million, this amounts to an 18 percent increase in just one year.

The BND is also to be strengthened significantly. Its budget will increase by 12 percent to €808 million, as the newspaper reported. This corresponds to an increase of some €86 million.

Among other things, the BND is planning to intercept, filter and process so-called non-standard communications. This will include messenger services like Whatsapp, which have increasingly replaced text messages in recent years. According to a Focus magazine article from February this year, more than a billion people around the world now use Whatsapp, sending more than 42 billion messages daily.

BND’s “Project Panos” is to be employed to crack the partially encrypted messages. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported, the BND can currently read only 10 of the 70 messenger services used worldwide. To end this, €21.5 million has been set aside in the budget. According to the report, the BND is not only concerned with metadata, but also the content of the chat messages exchanged. If required, external firms could be contracted to carry out the decoding.

A programme called “Zerberus” is to help the BND intercept discussions on satellite telephone. The tapping of cables at key domestic data points is also to be stepped up, as Tagesschau.de reported. In addition, a further €55 million has been made available for the “essential technical modernisation” of the BND.

The BfV’s concrete plans are not detailed in the secret documents. Nonetheless, the direction of the BfV is more than clear. The domestic intelligence service has significantly higher levels of staff than in the past, adding 470 positions already this year, and a further 100 are planned for 2017. The BfV has thus grown rapidly over recent years. If the budget is approved, the BfV’s budget will have trebled since 2000, Tagesschau.de pointed out.

The additional resources have been aimed at deepening ties between the federal agencies and the internal security agencies in the states. In this context, the BfV is to move “in the medium term into the role of a central agency” for the state surveillance agencies, it was stated. In addition, the databases of the BfV are to be linked with those of the central register of foreign nationals (AZR). Cyberdefence is also to be strengthened.

The spying on the population is not only to be conducted via electronic means. For the expenses and paying of informants, the BfV has made available €2.8 million.

The strengthening of the domestic intelligence agency also has an important foreign policy component. The BfV has been to date heavily dependent on cooperation with the US intelligence agency NSA, including the use of its XKeyScore software, as the revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden showed in 2013. The current developments, according to Tagesschau.de, point “to an emancipation from the US agencies. In the longer term, the German agencies are clearly planning to be capable of operating more independently.”

The Left Party and Greens support the construction of a police and surveillance state. Any critique of the government’s plans to strengthen the state apparatus comes from the right.

“It was actually the opposition that demanded more police,” said Dietmar Bartsch, the co-chair of the Left Party’s parliamentary group, as he sought to claim credit for de Maizière’s initiative. At the same time, he accused the grand coalition in parliament of being “responsible for a failed policy of personnel and budget cuts.” They had made the police a “victim of austerity” and, since 1998, “eliminated 17,000 police jobs.” What was necessary was “a state capable of action,” and that included “well-equipped and well-trained people in the public service, particularly in the police.”

Turbulence returns to financial markets

Nick Beams

Volatility is returning to global bond and equity markets amid growing concerns over how much longer the flood of cheap money from the US Fed and other major central banks can continue to fuel their rise.

Last Friday, the Dow Jones index fell by almost 400 points following the European Central Bank decision the previous day not to further lower it base interest rates and its silence on whether to extend its quantitative easing program, which has already seen €1 trillion injected into financial markets, beyond March 2017.

Even more significant than the slide on the share markets was the shift in bond markets as yields began to rise and their price fell (the two bear an inverse relationship to each other).

Over the past year the flood of cheap money into financial markets, coupled with the lowering of interest rates, has seen the creation of a massive bubble such that $13 trillion worth of government bonds are now trading at negative yields. This means that their price is so high that an investor purchasing a bond and holding it maturity would make a loss.

This phenomenon means that the international market has been turned into a giant casino in which bonds are purchased on the basis that their price will rise still further and speculators will be able to make capital gains. However, if prices fall and yields begin to increase, they will incur significant losses.

That was in evidence on Friday. The yield on the US 10-year treasury bonds rose to 1.67 percent compared to a low its low of 1.46 percent it had reached several weeks earlier. In the past few days, the yield has increased by 0.15 percentage points, a significant movement. In Europe, yields on some German bonds, which had been negative, moved into positive territory for the first time in several months.

Another factor in Friday’s share market slide was remarks from members of the Fed’s open market committee that sets its base rate indicating they were in favour of an increase. Consequently all eyes on Monday were focused on a speech by Federal Reserve governor, Lael Brainard, a voting member of the open market committee. Brainard is considered to be a “dove,” that is, favouring a cautious approach on lifting rates, and so a turn by her would have almost certainly have sent the markets falling.

In the event, Brainard stuck to her previous line and the markets got the comment they wanted to hear, with the Dow Jones up by 239 points and recovering more than half of its losses on Friday. After reviewing the economic and financial situation and deflationary pressures in Europe and Asia Brainard said: “Today’s new normal counsels prudence in the removal of policy accommodation.”

Immediately after her comment, the futures market priced in a 15 percent chance of a rate rise when the Fed next meets on September 21, down from 24 percent two days earlier.

Significantly, the yield on bonds did not fall. One reason may have been a prediction by Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest bond market traders, that prices could fall further, with yields rising to 2 percent by the beginning of 2017. A rapid increase implies major losses for speculators who have gambled on their continuing decline as a result of central banks policies.

Apart from its immediate impact on the share market, Brainard’s speech was significant because of the picture it painted of the US and global economy and the growing perplexity at the top levels of the financial establishment over what to do next in view of the evident failure of the policies adopted since the financial crash of 2008 to end what is being recognised as ongoing stagnation.

Dealing with a series of interrelated phenomena, dubbed the “new normal”—other observers, such as former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, point to “secular stagnation”—she began by noting that a “sustained period” of undershooting the Fed’s inflation target of 2 percent could not be ruled out “along with global deflationary pressures that are weighing on inflation expectations.”

Labor market slack on the US had been greater than anticipated, she said, pointing to the lower participation rate in the labour force, which could be an expression of the “very slow recovery in job opportunities and wages.”

Financial transmission from foreign markets was strong and the disinflationary pressures and weak demand from abroad “will likely weigh on the US outlook for some time to come,” with “fragility” in global markets poising risks for the American economy.

Japan remained “greatly challenged” by weak growth and low inflation as is Europe and the experience from these economies highlighted the risk of becoming trapped in a “low-growth, low-inflation” environment. “Downside risks” were also present in emerging markets and growth in China was slowing.

Turning to the US economy, Brainard said it has been becoming increasingly clear that the so-called neutral rate of interest—the rate which neither stimulates the economy nor depresses it—remained “considerably and persistently lower than it was before the crisis.”

Highlighting the shift that has taken place, she said given the underlying relationships that prevailed at the time it would have seemed inconceivable ten years ago that with the Fed rate at or near zero, growth and inflation could have remained as low as they have.

One of the factors contributing to lower growth, and hence a fall in the neutral rate, is the sharp fall in productivity growth. In the years from 1950 to 2000 productivity, Brainard noted, had risen at an annual average rate of 2.5 percent. In the past five years it had only increased on average at a rate of 0.5 percent.

Brainard concluded her remarks with a discussion of policy options. Under the “new normal,” with interest rates near zero and likely to return there because of the lower neutral rate, the measures available to the Fed, were asymmetric. In other words, while the Fed can use interest rates to lower demand, they cannot be employed to lift it.

Neither Brainard nor any other members of the financial establishment have any alternative economic or financial measures to counter the present situation and so are continuing to fuel financial markets with cheap money, even as they know that this will create the conditions for ever greater turbulence and potentially another crisis.

Hunger and the social catastrophe facing America’s youth

Kate Randall

Two reports released this week cast a sharp light on the social catastrophe in the United States and its impact on America’s youth.

“Impossible Choices: Teens and Food Insecurity in America” (Urban Institute) and “Bringing Teens to the Table: A Focus on Food Insecurity in America” (Feeding America), both based on joint research conducted by the two organizations, detail the widespread hunger and the catastrophic choices young people are making in an effort to feed themselves, their families and their friends.

In 2015, 12.7 percent of US households were food insecure, meaning they had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. Among these 40 million people struggling to have enough to eat in America are an estimated 6.8 million young people ages 10 to 17, including 2.9 million who have very low food security, according to one food insecurity expert.

The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

Researchers conducting the study spoke to teenagers in 10 focus groups in low-income communities throughout the country over the course of three years. The young people researchers spoke to—of varying races and backgrounds—live in communities where jobs are scarce, and those jobs available pay low wages, offer inadequate hours, or require skills that the teens’ parents do not have.

Due to decades of cuts in social programs and the lingering impact of the Great Recession, many parents struggling to feed their families begin running out of food by the middle of the month. Under these circumstances, teenagers, especially those with younger siblings, feel a responsibility to help out. “I will go without a meal if that’s the case,” a teenager interviewed in Chicago said. “As long as my two [younger] siblings [are] good, that’s all that really matters.”

Many of these families face a perfect storm of food insecurity. Grocery stores selling affordable, nutritious food are scarce, and the cost and time of traveling to better stores is prohibitive. Teens must often settle for food at local fast-food restaurants, drug stores, gas stations and convenience stores. “When you’re broke, you get the dollar menu,” said a boy from San Diego.

Some food insecure teenagers look for work in order to contribute to the family food budget, but find they must compete with adults for a limited number of low-skill, low-paying jobs at fast-food restaurants or in retail. It is when these possibilities do not pan out that some teenagers turn in desperation to make money “outside of the legal economy,” according to the researchers.

Food-insecure teenage boys interviewed reported stealing and selling drugs as one strategy for earning money to pay for food and other necessities, subjecting them and others to personal and legal risks. “Drugs, alcohol, everything,” said a teenage girl in rural Oregon. “Bad things people used to just do in high school has spread to the junior high and down to the elementary school.”

Food insecure teens, and girls in particular, are vulnerable to another type of insidious risk: sexual exploitation. Teens in all of the study’s locations spoke of girls having sex for money to pay for food and other needs.

This often takes the form of “transactional dating,” in which the teen regularly sees and has sex with someone, usually an older man, in exchange for food, meals, cash or other material goods. “It’s really like selling yourself,” said a teenage girl in Portland, Oregon. “You’ll do whatever you need to do to get money or eat.”

A smaller number of teens resort to the strategy of purposefully getting arrested to ensure continued access to food—in prison.

Drug dealing, stealing, voluntary incarceration, sexual exploitation—these are the “choices” significant numbers of teenagers in America are undertaking out of the material need to put food on the table for themselves and their families. This tragic reality for the generation born in the new century speaks volumes about the violent and socially unequal state of class relations in America in 2016.

In a rational world one would expect banner headlines and a national debate on strategies to combat hunger among young people. But in the current political climate, dominated by the election contest of the two big business parties, it has received scant attention. There is no mention of this crisis by the Clinton and Trump camps, where the social catastrophe confronting the working class in 21st century America is routinely ignored. Nor is there particular concern for horrific circumstances poor girls are forced into from the upper middle class practitioners of identity politics around the Democratic Party.

Indeed, the catastrophic state of social life in the United States—of which the two reports published this week are only a partial snapshot—is the outcome of decades of social counter-revolution carried out by both big business parties. The Clintons bear particular responsibility, as it was the administration of Bill Clinton that gutted the welfare system in the US and ensured a vast increase in poverty and hunger as a consequence.

As for Obama—who has repeatedly proclaimed that life is “pretty darn great” in America—his administration has overseen $8.6 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), the food stamp program. A report earlier this year predicted that 1 million people across the US could lose their benefits in 2016 due to the work requirements for SNAP included as part of the Clinton administration’s welfare “reform.”

Working families are told that there is “no money” to extend food assistance. Rather these and other social programs must be slashed to fund the Pentagon’s war budget, as the US government-military apparatus prepares new wars. Whatever individual occupies the White House following next January, he or she will be dedicated to imposing even deeper social cuts and austerity.

A society should be measured by the health and welfare of its most vulnerable citizens, particularly the young. Children and teenagers in a just society should be nurtured by having nutritious food in adequate supply, a decent roof over their heads, quality education, and the opportunities to explore the arts, sports and other interests as they prepare for their place in the workforce. These are inalienable social rights that should be guaranteed.

While the media and the political establishment choose to ignore this latest study on food insecurity and the suffering and perils it poses to American teenagers, workers and young people need to recognize it as a particularly noxious sign of the outmoded and barbaric capitalist profit system.