Celebrating the One Percent: Is Inequality Really Good for the Economy?

Michael Hudson

To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone complains about inequality, but nobody does anything about it.

What they do is to use “inequality” as a takeoff point to project their own views on how to make society more prosperous and at the same time more equal. These views largely depend on whether they view the One Percent as innovative, smart and creative, making wealth by helping the rest of society – or whether, as the great classical economists wrote, the wealthiest layer of the population consist ofrentiers, making their income and wealth off the 99 Percent as idle landlords, monopolists and predatory bankers.

Economic statistics show fairly worldwide trends in inequality. After peaking in the 1920s, the reforms of the Great Depression helped make income distribution more equitable and stable until 1980.Then, in the wake of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in the United States, inequality really took off. And it took off largely by the financial sector (especially as interest rates retreated from their high of 20 percent in 1980, creating the greatest bond market boom in history). Real estate and industry were financialized, that is, debt leveraged.

Inequality increased steadily until the global financial crash of 2008. Since then, as bankers and bondholders were saved instead of the economy, the top One Percent have pulled even more sharply ahead of the rest of the economy. Meanwhile, the bottom 25 percent of the economy has seen its net worth and relative income deteriorate.

Needless to say, the wealthy have their own public relations agents, backed by the usual phalange of academic useful idiots. Indeed, mainstream economics has become a celebration of the wealthyrentier class for a century now, and as inequality is sharply widening today, celebrators of the One Percent have found a pressing need for their services.

A case in point is the Scottish economist Angus Deaton, author of The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. (2013). Elected President of the AEA in 2010, he was given the Nobel Economics Prize in 2015 for analyzing trends in consumption, income distribution, poverty and welfare in ways that cause no offense to the wealthy, and in fact treat the increasingly inequitable status quo as perfectly natural and in its own kind of mathematical equilibrium. (This kind of circular mathematical reasoning is the criterion of good economics today.)

His book treats the movie The Great Escape as a metaphor. He deridingly pointed out that nobody would have called the movie “The prisoners left behind.” Describing the escapers as brilliant innovators, he assumes that the wealthiest One Percent likewise have been smart and imaginative enough to break the bonds of conventional thinking to innovate. The founders of Apple, Microsoft and other IT companies are singled out for making everyone’s life richer. And the economy at large has experienced a more or less steady upward climb, above all in public health extending lifespans, conquering disease and pharmaceutical innovation.

I recently was put on the same stage as Mr. Deaton in Berlin, along with my friend David Graeber. We three each have books translated into German to be published this autumn by the wonderful publisher Klett-Cotta, who organized the event at at the Berlin Literaturfestival in mid-September.

In a certain way I find Deaton’s analogy with the movie The Great Escape appropriate. The wealthy have escaped. But the real issue concerns what have they escaped from. They have escaped from regulation, from taxation (thanks to offshore banking enclaves and a rewriting of the tax laws to shift the fiscal burden onto labor and industry). Most of all, Wall Street banksters have escaped from criminal prosecution. There is no need to escape from jail if you can avoid being captured and sentenced in the first place!

A number of recent books – echoed weekly in the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page – attribute the wealthiest One Percent to the assumption that they must be smarter than most other people. At least, smart enough to get into the major business schools and get MBAs to learn how to financialize corporations with zaitech or other debt leveraging, reaping (indeed, “earning”) huge bonuses

The reality is that you don’t have to be smart to make a lot of money. All you need is greed. And that can’t be taught in business schools. In fact, when I went to work as a balance-of-payments analyst at Chase Manhattan in 1964, I was told that the best currency traders came from the Brooklyn or Hong Kong slums. Their entire life was devoted to making money, to rise into the class of the proverbial Babbitts of our time: nouveau riches lacking in real culture or intellectual curiosity.

Of course, for bankers who do venture to “stretch the envelope” (the fraudster’s euphemism for breaking the law, as Citigroup did in 1999 when it merged with Travelers’ Insurance prior to the Clinton administration rejecting Glass-Steagall), you do need smart lawyers. But even here, Donald Trump explained the key that he learned from mob lawyer Roy Cohn: what matters is not so much the law, as what judge you have. And the U.S. courts have been privatized by electing judges whose campaign contributors back deregulators and non-prosecutors. So the wealthy escape from being subject to the law.

Although no moviegoers wanted to see the heroes of the Great Escape movie captured and put back in their prison camp, a great many people wish that the Wall Street crooks from Citigroup, Bank of America and other junk-mortgage fraudsters would be sent to jail, along with Angelo Mazilo of Countrywide Financial. Little love is given to their political lobbyists such as Alan Greenspan, Attorney General Eric Holder, Lanny Breuer and their hirees who refused to prosecute financial fraud.

Deaton did cite “rent seekers” – but in the sense that his predecessor Nobel prizewinner Buchanan did, locating rent seeking within government, not real estate, monopolies such as pharmaceuticals and information technology, health insurance, cable companies and high finance. So any blame for poverty falls on either the government or on the debtors, renters, unemployed and not-wellborn who are the main victims of today’s rentier economy.

Deaton’s Great Escape sees some problems, but not in the economic system itself – not debt, not monopoly, not the junk mortgage crisis or financial fraud. He cites global warming as the main problem, but not the political power of the oil industry. He singles out education as the way to raise the 99 Percent – but says nothing about the student loan problem, the travesty of for-profit universities funding junk education with government-guaranteed bank loans.

He measures the great improvement in well-being by GDP (gross domestic product). Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs notoriously described his investment bank’s managers and partners of being the most productive individuals in the United States for earning $20 million annually (not including bonuses) – all of which is recorded as adding to the financial sector’s “output” of GDP. There is no concept at all that this is what economists call a zero-sum activity – that is, that Goldman Sachs’s salaries may be unproductive, parasitic, predatory, and the rest of the economy’s loss or overhead.

Such thoughts do not occur in the happy-face views promoted by the One Percent. Deaton’s praise-hymn to the elites assumes that everyone earns what they get, by playing a productive role, not an extractive one.

An even more blatant denial of rent-seeking is a new book by one of the founders of Bain Capital (Mitt Romney’s firm), Edward Conard,The Upside of Inequality attacking the “demagogues” and “propagandists” who claim that the winnings of the One Percent are largely unearned. Curiously, he does not include Adam Smith, David Ricardo or John Stuart Mill as such “propagandists.” Yet that is what classical free market economics was all about: freeing economies from the unearned rental income and rising land prices that landlords make “in their sleep,” as John Stuart Mill put it. This propaganda book thus misrepresents the program that the major founders of economics urged: public ownership or collection of land rent, natural resource rent, and pubic operation of natural monopolies, headed by the financial sector.

For Conard, the reason for the soaring wealth of the One Percent is not financial, real estate or other monopolistic rent seeking, but the wonders of the information economy. It is Josef Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” of less productive technology, by hard working and dedicated innovators whose creativity raises the level of everyone. So the wealth of the One Percent is a measure of society’s forward march, not a predatory overhead extracted from the economy at large.

Conard’s policy conclusion is that regulation and taxation slows this march of economies toward prosperity as led by the One Percent. As a laudatory Wall Street Journal review of his book summarized his message: “Redistribution – whether achieved through taxation, regulatory restrictions, or social norms – appears,” he asserts, “to have large detrimental effects on risk-taking, innovation, productivity, and growth over the long run, especially in an economy where innovation produced by the entrepreneurial risk-taking of properly trained talent increasingly drives growth.” His solution is to lower taxes on the rich!

My friend Dave Kelley notes the policy message that is being repeatedad nauseum these days: the assertion that “progressive moves like taxation end up hurting the economy rather than helping it. This ‘I would feed you but you might become dependent on food’ theory is central in showing how consumer societies like ours are returning to feudal distributions of wealth.” This seems to be the policy proposal of the three leading candidates for U.S. President – in our modern post-Citizens United world where elections are bought in much the way that consulships were back in the closing days of the Roman Republic.

Kashmir: Tired Revolution

Altaf Bashir

The journey of young people in Kashmir from childhood to adulthood nowadays is rumbling around Prison. These young people are meeting on this journey with probation officers, instead of teacher; they are going to court dates instead of class; they are emerging from their 20s not with degrees in business and science, but with criminal records.

In Kashmir peaceful protestors are considered as ‘communal’ or ‘anti-national’ and are picked up by para-military forces on the streets, beat, and maim them up. Moreover, break into houses, shatter windowpanes, harass men, and molest women without accountability of the state to take into consideration that security is meant to protect civilians not to beat or harass them.

State violence is not new, in 2008-9-10 more than 120 young people were killed after controversial Amarnath Land row, where marchers were fired leading to the deaths and injuries since then this cycle of violence is unstoppable.

Normally, young people are expected to hold pen in hand and write their own ‘destiny’ of progress and development, but in Kashmir they hold stones in hand to hurl at police personnel, to take avenge of people whose blood spilled across Kashmir region, and presume, fighting for the cause to liberate Kashmir from the hands of Indian occupation will set everything in order.

Interestingly, there are two themes discussed in various online debates between revolutionary young people who supposedly ‘run parallel government’ by closing down entire business establishments after Friday prayers in Kashmir and,of those who are attending college regularly, claims to have meaning or sense of life by entering into ‘bureaucracy’ as one of career options.

There is one thing in common among these two groups, both can become leaders in their work, and aspire to fight for equal rights of people, for dignity, but there is slight difference, one group is appreciated and other is demoralized& dehumanized.

Since, there are no rules of resistance, nor does for stone pelting. Stone Pelters have seen almost unbelievable idiocy of political leadership in Kashmir – those revered political leaders of yore are viewed today with contempt. The besotted young people aims ‘to burn down’ all the colonial structures / or and military barricades to free land of saints from Indian occupation reveals bankruptcy of state while maintaining ‘law and order’ in Kashmir.

These young people have always yearned for direction from religious leaders, inventing political philosophies of ‘hartal’ as a way of ‘resistance’ and ‘stone pelting’to align various kinds of ideologies as a support for their ‘mission’ to ‘decolonize Kashmir’ from India.

This generation is often called ‘miscreants’ or ‘frustrated unemployed youths’ who have started stone pelting from scratch and now are the vanguard of resistance movement in Kashmir, most of them are the products of middle class families and majority of them have survived from direct attacks, physical violence and tortures, soldiers have bruised their body but their ideology remain unchanged.

In this age of mass media that has remained alien to highlight ‘woes’ of stone-Pelters, who often take refuge of technology and social media to spread their message of resistance to gather support of various people across J&K and of the world, took inspiration from various ‘revolutionary’ situations of Middle East, West Asia, that has plunged world currently in an utter chaos; spinning in a frenzy warfare,young people are looking for meaning or sense of life.The ‘sense’ that will legitimatize their struggle, and free them from all woes to see new dawn of ‘free land’ from Indian occupation.

These young people believe that In this complex modern world where every situation is unpredictable makes no sense for someone to make riches or starts a venture with huge capital thatinvolves pageant of pleasure and generate employment to signal returning of peace in valley or to build a modern city for the tourists to ensure prosperity and neglecting the core political problem of the state.

What ‘sense’ does it makes when season of reaping dividends from trade and commerce arrives in valley, protests erupt all of sudden and makes Kashmiri economy ‘vulnerable and dependent’. Leaving hundreds of people on welfare lines for ‘packages’ ‘relief’ before corrupt ruler who in the name of Democracy, Autonomy and Self-rule beguile them.

These young people wants to make ‘sense’ and command our attention because an understanding of their thought is essential for anyone who consider him or herself a revolutionary and wants to make ‘sense’ of life, who wishes to do away with the exploitation, suffering and violence that is built in this oppressive state system where laws are inimical to human lives which young people sought to uncover and tell the world that people of Kashmir are oppressed and treated as cattle’s, caged for months together without food and water.

The current misrule of Indian state by killing more than 60 Kashmiri and wounded more than 7000people after Burhan Wani’s death exposes the state’s inhumane treatment towards civilians who are subjected to torture and arbitrary arrests without fair trails.

The government has failed to understand aspirations of young people, and failed to handle situation with heart and used brutal force to kill and maim civilians unabated. Government in Kashmir is visible at the time of election and voting and when it comes to protect civilians, they start blaming union of India for promoting violent means of actions against peaceful protestors.

Hence, present generation wants to make sense of life, they do not want corrupt officials in governmental departments, they do not want police to harass them, they do not want interference of state into their affairs, they want freedom from governmental policies first then from Indian occupation.

They want ‘plebiscite’ which state of India has promised them in the beginning of the ‘grand bargain’ under which Kashmir acceded to India in 1947. Until that happens, Kashmir will witness more tense situations and public demonstrations.

Regional dispute erupts over arrest of Fijian opposition leaders

John Braddock

Fiji’s prime minister, former military commander Frank Bainimarama, last week hit out at “interference” in the country’s domestic affairs by Australia and New Zealand. Bainimarama was responding to comments on the arrest of six leading Fijian opposition figures for criticising the country’s 2013 constitution at a political forum. The police claimed the forum did not have an official permit and breached a public order decree.

Bainimarama made the remarks while opening the Joint Fiji-Australia, Fiji-New Zealand business councils meeting at Pacific Harbour, near Suva. After expressing gratitude for New Zealand’s and Australia’s continuing trade relations and assistance following Tropical Cyclone Winston, he raised the issue of the arrests: “Why is the spotlight being turned on Fiji simply because it insists on its laws being upheld? Why all the unwarranted expressions of concern from foreign governments and organisations?”

Five opposition figures were detained on the weekend of September 10-11 and kept in custody overnight. They were 1987 coup leader and current head of the SODELPA Party, Sitiveni Rabuka, National Federation Party (NFP) leader Biman Prasad, academic Tupeni Baba, Fiji Council of Trade Unions general secretary Attar Singh, and Jone Dakuvula from the organisation Pacific Dialogue, which called the meeting. Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry, a former prime minister, later handed himself into police.

Following the arrests, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he was keeping a “watch” on the situation and warned the Fiji government against doing anything “silly.” Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific Concetta Fierravanti-Wells declared that her country took “freedom of assembly and freedom of speech seriously” and would also be watching closely. NZ Labour Party foreign affairs spokesman David Shearer said Bainimarama’s forthcoming state visit to New Zealand should be “quietly put on hold.”

Bainimarama told the business audience that Key had been “disrespectful” and “condescending.” He accused Australia and New Zealand of being hypocritical toward Fiji. “We have not lectured to you about the allegations of human rights abuses in your own countries,” he said. “These include the extreme disadvantage suffered by indigenous people in New Zealand, and Australia, and in the case of Australia, the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers.” Bainimarama claimed that it was up to Fiji’s Director of Public Prosecutions to make a decision on the case and the courts would deal with the issue “independently” if the DPP decided to prosecute.

Bainimarama continued his boycott of the Pacific Islands Forum, which met the same weekend as the arrests. Bainimarama demands the expulsion of Australia and New Zealand from the regional body. Last week Fiji also announced its withdrawal from negotiations for the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (Pacer Plus), citing backtracks on commitments by Australia and New Zealand.

In June, Bainimarama lambasted Canberra and Wellington, almost scuttling Key’s visit to Suva, the first by a NZ prime minister in 10 years. At the official welcome, Bainimarama reminded Key that he won Fiji’s 2014 election with an overwhelming majority. “It is on that basis I stand before you tonight,” he declared. “Not as a coup maker or dictator, as some in your country would still have it, but as a properly elected, freely chosen leader of Fiji.”

The Fiji government still rests directly on the military, which carried through Bainimarama’s 2006 coup. The 2014 election, in which Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party purportedly won 60 percent of the ballot, was held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition parties. The government is anti-working class and authoritarian, ruling largely through fear and intimidation.

The Public Order Amendment Decree, under which the opposition figures were detained, was issued in 2012 by the military dictatorship. Government permits are required for any political meeting, and opposition meetings can be deemed threats to “public order.” It is not yet clear whether charges will be laid against the arrested men, but if they are convicted it could prevent them from contesting the next election.

Earlier this year, Bainimarama’s government used its numbers in parliament to suspend an opposition MP, the NFP’s Roko Tupou Draunidalo, for more than two years after she allegedly called a minister a “fool.” The NFP last week boycotted the president’s address for the opening of the new term of parliament. The party said the move was “in protest over the continuing political persecution and intimidation of the opposition and the draconian muzzling of free expression and assembly in Fiji.”

Interviewed by Radio NZ on September 13, Chaudhry described Fiji as “a dictatorship.” The former prime minister said “you don’t require a permit for forums of that nature where it is not a political meeting.” He said the prime minister and the attorney-general had been invited to the forum, but declined to come. “We want to live in a free society, not where there are restrictions on free speech,” he said.

The intervention of Australia and New Zealand, however, has nothing to do with defending democratic rights in Fiji. They have supported coups in Fiji as long as the resulting regime lines up with their neo-colonial interests. Speaking to Radio NZ on September 13, Key did not a actually condemn the arrests, claiming they were “legally authorised.”

The diplomatic strains are a sign of rising geostrategic tensions in the Pacific. At stake are deepening concerns about alleged Chinese influence. After the regional powers imposed sanctions on Fiji following the 2006 coup, Bainimarama turned elsewhere, primarily to China and Russia, for trade, aid and military equipment. Australia and New Zealand remain determined to ensure their dominance in the southwest Pacific as part of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia and the US-led drive to counter Beijing and prepare for war.

On Radio NZ on September 14, Auckland-based strategic analyst Paul Buchanan described Fiji as the “tip of a spear of Chinese influence projected into the South Pacific.” China’s presence, facilitated by its growing economic and military association with Fiji, was increasingly “assertive.” Unless China was pushed back, the South Pacific was “going to become like a Chinese lake,” supposedly “like the South China Sea.”

In fact the principal aggressor in the Pacific is not Beijing, but US imperialism. US Vice President Joe Biden used his visit to the region in July to restate Washington’s determination to maintain its economic and strategic dominance in the Asia-Pacific. In a thinly veiled warning of reprisals against any country intending to preserve ties with China at the expense of the US, Biden declared: “It’s never a good bet to bet against the United States.”

US Aid Deal Gives Green Light To Israel’s Erasure Of Palestine

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: The announcement last week by the United States of the largest military aid package in its history – to Israel – was a win for both sides.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast that his lobbying had boosted aid from $3.1 billion to $3.8bn a year – a 22 per cent increase – for a decade starting in 2019.

Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his government’s repeated affronts to the White House.

In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last year’s nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews.

American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party’s candidate to succeed Obama in November’s election.

In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.

In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn – if Congress’s assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.

Netanyahu’s agreement to such terms has incensed Israeli loyalists in Congress such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been fighting Netanyahu’s corner to win an even larger aid handout from US taxpayers. He accused the Israeli prime minister on Friday of having “pulled the rug from under us”.

As Ehud Barak, Netanyahu’s former defence minister, also pointed out in a series of TV interviews in Israel, the deal fails to take into account either inflation or the dollar’s depreciation against the shekel.

A bigger blow still is the White House’s demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.

Netanyahu preferred to sign the deal now rather than wait till the next president is installed, even though Clinton and her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, are expected to be even more craven towards Israel. That appears to reflect Netanyahu’s fear that the US political environment will be more uncertain after the election and could lead to long delays in an agreement, and apprehension about the implications for Israel of Trump’s general opposition to foreign aid.

Nonetheless, Washington’s renewed military largesse – in the face of almost continual insults – inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even the New York Times has described the aid package as “too big”.

Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israel’s military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israel’s economic success.

But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, Israel has been a US “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.

Almost no one implicates the US in Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq and Syria’s nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria, however, would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own large nuclear arsenal.

In addition, Israel’s US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the country’s most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.

The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December – their various components produced in 46 US states – will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.

Israel is also a “front-line laboratory”, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.

The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome – which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation – it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyber­warfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran’s civilian nuclear programme.

But the clearest message from Israel’s new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash with Israel and its loyalists in Congress over Palestinian statehood.

Some believe that Obama signed the aid agreement to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Netanyahu into making peace.

Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate the unity necessary to confound critics of the aid deal.

If Obama really wanted to pressure Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.

Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal – he can act again the Palestinians with continuing impunity and lots of US military hardware.

Germany: Right-wing mob hounds refugees in Bautzen, Saxony

Katerina Selin

The right-wing policies of the establishment parties and the incessant incitement against refugees are encouraging right-wing forces to open violence. This was evident in the last few days in the town of Bautzen in Saxony. On Wednesday evening, about 80 far-right hooligans gathered on the Kornmarkt in Bautzen and provoked a violent confrontation with 15 to 20 young asylum seekers.

Eyewitness Andrea Kubank, who is active in “Bautzen is colourful,” told theTagesspiegel that the refugees were gathered on the square, as always in the evening, when a right-wing mob formed. When police officers then asked the refugees to leave the Kornmarkt, they resisted. According to Kubank, the right-wingers then attacked the refugees, shouting racist slogans such as “Foreigners out,” This is our Bautzen” and “This is our Nazi-hood.”

The situation escalated into violence and there was a pogrom atmosphere. The young refugees were chased through the city by the right-wing mob as they ran back to their asylum accommodation. In the ensuing fight, Mehdi, an 18-year-old Moroccan, was injured with a knife and needed to be taken to hospital. Brawling right-wingers pelted the ambulance with stones, forcing the paramedics to abort their rescue mission. The injured could only be taken away under police protection.

The next day, Mehdi told Zeit Online that the right-wingers had hurled abuse at him, and other refugees had opposed this. “The police attacked me with pepper spray, suddenly I couldn’t see anything.” Then he was injured with a knife.

Zeit Online also interviewed some of those belonging to the right-wing mob. “We just wanted to make them [the asylum seekers] a bit afraid and show that this town belongs to us,” one of them said openly, while another lamented that he had “arrived too late at the chase yesterday.”

According to eyewitness Kubank, police escalated the situation. Other statements by witnesses, who refused to identify themselves for fear of right-wing violence, described a similar situation.

The official version of events presented by the police and most of the media, however, is quite different. The Bautzen police director, Uwe Kilz, said the refugees were responsible and downplayed the violence of the right-wing mob. He spoke of “circa 80 persons who were mainly of German origin, made up of younger age groups, women and men, including those who had come specifically into the town in advance and who had already drunk this or that amount of beer.”

There had been a “sort of conflict” with the “UMAs” (unaccompanied minor asylum seekers). “The UMAs, who then threw stones and beer bottles in the direction of this group, were then, understandably, also verbally attacked from the other side and the attempt was made to take control of these unaccompanied minor asylum seekers.”

The police and politicians responded to the events not by taking action against the provocative extreme right-wingers, but by immediately punishing the underage asylum seekers with a ban on alcohol consumption and a curfew from 7 p.m. Four so-called “ringleaders” of the refugees were relocated to other accommodation outside Bautzen.

On the other hand, the police took no personal details from any of the neo-Nazis. A spokesman for the authorities justified this on the grounds that “the operation was fully designed for security purposes.”

In this context, the statement by Görlitz Director of Police Klaus-Jörg Mehlberg, that “our message” is now to show “zero tolerance” and not to allow “a legal vacuum,” can only be understood as a warning to the refugees. Representatives of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) declared that action must now be taken against violence on all sides—left, right and foreigners—and to ensure “security and order” through a greater police presence in Bautzen.

A comment in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also presented the events as if there had been merely an overheated atmosphere, which was stirred up by all sides. A climate had arisen “in which years ago the NSU [neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground] came into being,” wrote Jasper von Altenbockum. It was not only the “radical right” who let themselves be incited, but also asylum seekers. “Even the prejudices that come from cultures that do not stand for de-escalation encourage violence—not only on New Year’s Night,” he claimed.

Leniency towards Nazis has something of a tradition in Saxony. Right-wing networks and neo-Nazi groups such as the National Socialist Underground have been built up and funded for years by the state apparatus. Especially in Saxony, the security agencies are riddled with right-wing forces.

For German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU), Saxony serves as a “forward-looking model” for the new “police watch force.” By the end of this year, some 250 members of this police watch force are due on duty, recruited on a lower standard than normal police officers, and who are given a baton, pepper spray and service pistol after just three months’ training. Among other things, this police watch force will take over guarding asylum seeker centres and could quickly become a horde of right-wing elements. The training centre for the new police watch force is located in Bautzen, of all places!

According to a secret service report in December 2015, the Bautzen district was a “regional focus” for extreme right-wing meetings last year. Until June of this year, former German National Party member Daniela Stamm sat on the Bautzen Town Council for “The Right Party.” The far-right scene has acted increasingly more provocatively and confidently this year. In February, 20 to 30 right-wing onlookers had watched with undisguised pleasure as a planned refugee camp in Bautzen burned down.

Long-time employee of the Saxony Cultural Office Markus Kemper has closely observed the development of the far-right scene. In an interview with the MDR, he explained that in Bautzen, “an organised neo-Nazi structure” existed, “which has shown itself to be very militant for quite some time.” Far-right and sometimes relatively new groups such as Stream BZ, the National Front Bautzen and an offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood are active there.

On Thursday evening, a day after the violence against the refugees, 350 right-wing extremists again gathered for a demonstration on the Kornmarkt. Kemper assumes that this involved “not only those from Bautzen, but also probably [people] from other regions such as Sächsische Schweiz or from Dresden.”

Drunk and aggressive demonstrators shouted down the mayor, Alexander Ahrens, and chanted right-wing slogans. Three people are said to have given the Nazi salute and one journalist was injured. About 25 counter-demonstrators were also there, but the situation did not escalate into violence. The police afterwards expressed satisfaction that there had been “no ugly scenes.”

There are currently 2,600 asylum seekers accommodated in the Bautzen district, including about 180 minors, of whom only 30 live in Bautzen, a town with a population of nearly 40,000 people.

The state of Saxony is ruled by a grand coalition of the Social Democratic Party and CDU, which has dramatically tightened its asylum policy in recent months. So-called voluntary departures are promoted, and the number of deportations has increased significantly compared to last year. While in 2015 a total of 1,725 people were deported from Saxony, in the first seven months of 2016, 2,398 refugees had already been expelled.

The Saxon State Interior Ministry also announced a number of measures to make “forced deportations more efficient in the future.” These include the “creation of a detention centre and a departure custody facility in Saxony” and “increasing the staff available for the Central Immigration Authority.”

UK steps up repression of migrant workers

Alice Summers

At least 35 migrant workers were arrested at the start of July in a series of immigration raids across 15 restaurants of the Byron Hamburgers chain in London.

A statement from the Home Office confirmed the arrests of the 35 workers, although witnesses of the event interviewed in the Spanish language El Ibérico estimated the figure at closer to 50, with another 150 managing to avoid the raids and who are now allegedly in hiding.

The workers, mostly of Brazilian, Albanian, Nepalese or Egyptian origin, were arrested after being called into work by their manager, under the pretext of having to take part in mandatory training activities. However, according to witnesses, within minutes of their arrival immigration officers appeared at the restaurants and proceeded to read out the names of workers who they then arrested and interrogated.

Although the government has even now not confirmed the fate of all the arrested migrants, a chef at one of the Byron restaurants interviewed by the Guardian stated that “around 20” were taken straight to an immigration holding centre after the raids and 25 workers are known to have already been deported.

The ambush met with protests from many workers and youth across the capital. At the beginning of August, the Holborn branch of the restaurant chain was forced to temporarily close after around 200 people protested outside the building, carrying placards and banners denouncing the company. Protesters have also called for the boycott of the chain, and two branches were forced to temporarily close after protesters released hundreds of live insects into the restaurants. According to El Ibérico, many Byron workers staged a strike on the day of the raids out of solidarity with their work colleagues who were affected.

Despite denying that the supposed training activities were a set-up, Byron confirmed that it facilitated the raids, with a Home Office spokesperson declaring that the raids were “intelligence-led” and conducted with “the full co-operation of the business.” As a result, the burger chain will not face any prosecution for illegal employment practices, the Home Office confirmed.

In the interview with El Ibérico , one worker at Byron who witnessed the event explained that the company undoubtedly knew the migration status of the workers. They described the exploitative conditions that they therefore faced, as management knew that their employees could do little to protest their conditions without risking being reported to the authorities: “The bosses know the situation of these people. We work hard and we don’t say anything. If we have to do 60 hours a week, well we shut up and we do it. The people at the top of the company know this and so they hire these people.”

Expressing the precarious situation faced by many undocumented migrant workers across the country, the worker described how migrant workers lived in constant fear of raids by immigration officers, both at work and at home, and stated, “In the street and at home we always run the risk of them catching us.”

This incident is far from unique. Since the raids of Byron restaurants in July, tens or even hundreds of migrant workers have been detained in immigration raids across the country, including the arrest of two Indian men at a construction site in Liverpool in August, as well as the September arrests of four Bangladeshi workers in Wales, and of another two workers, also of Bangladeshi origin, at an Indian restaurant in Scotland. Six of these eight workers are now being held at immigration detention centres awaiting deportation.

According to data released in a Freedom of Information request in July 2016, immigration raids have increased by 80 percent over the last five years. In the capital alone, there were 19,853 immigration raids from 2010 to 2015, almost 11 a day.

The number of raids in London peaked in 2014, at 4,703 across the year, up from 2,531 in 2010. The figures dropped slightly in 2015, although there were still 4,573 raids. If information and intelligence gathering expeditions are also included in the figures—in addition to raids to arrest and detain migrants—the number of “visits” in London rockets up to 12,026 in 2014, or approximately 33 per day.

The areas worst affected by these repressive immigration raids were the London postal codes E15 (1,396), E6 (776), E7 (637), SE1 (554) and SE18 (540). These correspond to the boroughs of Newham, Southwark and Greenwich, whose Labour Party-dominated local councils have been determined to step up their vicious attacks on migrant workers.

In 2013, Newham Borough Council became the first local authority in Britain to introduce a mandatory licensing scheme for private landlords renting out properties. Although this legal measure is nominally intended to prosecute rogue landlords who let out substandard properties, the people most affected are often migrant workers living in these properties.

Last November, Newham Council’s housing enforcement team raided a property suspected of being overcrowded, leading to the arrest of two Bangladeshi migrants on suspicion of immigration offences. The property, which hosted five adults and two children, broke health and safety regulations about space and had evidence of bedbugs in the bedrooms.

In July, in the London Borough of Brent, housing enforcement officers discovered 17 people living in a three-bedroom terraced house with no hot water or heating. According to Brent Council’s Private Housing Services, “[O]fficers from Immigration Enforcement were also present to investigate the immigration status of the tenants as legally required.”

In March, in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, police and immigration officers found 70 people living in four severely overcrowded properties. Although figures are not available to assess how often immigration officers are present at housing raids, a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Race Relations revealed that “in 12 of the 20 local authorities that provided data, on at least some visits tenants would have had to answer to the police and/or UKBA [The UK Border Agency].”

Landlords are able to terminate a tenancy agreement when their tenants’ right to remain in the UK finishes, and they are also encouraged to check the immigration status of potential tenants before offering them a tenancy agreement.

Conservative Party MP Kris Hopkins stated, “No one should be profiting from illegal immigration, and that includes landlords . ” In reality, rather than being intended to crack down on landlords who “profit” from illegal migration, housing raids are primarily a repressive measure targeted at poor and ethnic minority communities and aimed at clamping down on the migrants themselves.

Unannounced raids are largely ineffective as a tactic to combat bad conditions for which landlords are responsible, as it is unusual for landlords to spend much time in the properties they rent out. If the reason for the raids really were to protect tenants from slum conditions and overcrowding, there would be little reason to conduct surprise visits, as tenants would be unlikely to hide their real living conditions.

Markets too dependent on central banks, BIS warns

Nick Beams

Two crucial meetings of central bank governing authorities take place on Wednesday, both of which could have major consequences for the international financial system, in the short and longer term.

The US Federal Reserve will decide on its interest rate policy, while the Bank of Japan will discuss a review of its quantitative easing program, under which it annually buys 80 trillion yen ($US785 billion) worth of bonds and other financial assets.

The US Fed is generally expected to again keep its base interest rate on hold, after increasing it by 0.25 percentage points last December. The main focus will be on the statement of its open market committee and remarks by chairwoman Janet Yellen as to the future direction of policy.

Financial markets are less sure about what may emerge from the meeting of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) policy board. It will consider a comprehensive review of its monetary policy in the face of its evident failure to meet its stated objective of lifting inflation toward 2 percent. According to data from financial markets, inflation is expected to remain close to zero for the indefinite future.

BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda has insisted that his policies will lift Japanese inflation toward 2 percent on a sustainable basis by the end of his term in 2018. He will push to maintain the ultra-easy monetary policy, and will likely attribute its failure to uncontrollable external factors, such as the fall in oil prices and slowing Chinese growth. But the policy board is divided on the issue, and any sign of tightening could have an impact on international bond and other financial markets.

If markets believe that monetary policy could be tightened, even if only slightly, this could send bond yields rising and bond prices falling (the two move in opposite directions), leading to losses for speculators who have banked on the continuation of ever-cheaper money. In the past week or so, bond yields have started to rise on the basis that the policies of the major central banks are running out of steam.

The two meetings are being held in the wake of the quarterly review issued by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle, sometimes referred to as the central bankers’ bank. It repeated earlier warnings that markets are too dependent on the actions of the major central banks.

The BIS said central banks had “reasserted their sway over financial markets in recent months, after two quarters punctuated by bouts of sharp volatility.” While markets had proven “resilient” to a number of political developments, in particular the Brexit vote, “questions lingered as to whether the configuration of asset prices accurately reflected the underlying risks.”

In other words, the rise in both equity and bond markets could be creating the risk of the sharp downturn and market turbulence.

In presenting the review, Claudio Borio, the head of the BIS monetary and economic department, said it was “becoming increasingly evident that central banks have been overburdened for far too long.”

“A more balanced policy mix is essential to bring the global economy into a more robust, balanced and sustainable expansion,” Borio said. The BIS, one of the few financial institutions to warn of the build-up of risks before the 2008 crisis, has long expressed the view that excessive dependence on monetary policy has only boosted financial asset prices, while doing little or nothing to increase activity in the real economy.

Borio said the continuing decline of bond yields and the flattening of the yield curve, as longer-term bond yields move toward those at the shorter end, was a “tell-tale sign of low growth.”

“Adding to the sense of gloom,” the BIS official continued, “was talk of the prospect that the global economy would be stuck in low gear into the distant future. And similarly discouraging were discussions of the need for permanently lower interest rates to counter secular weakness.”

Borio said there had been a “distinctly mixed feel” to the recent rise of share markets, with “more push than pull, more frustration than joy. This explains the nagging question of whether market prices fully reflect the risks ahead. Doubts about valuations seem to have taken hold in recent days. Only time will tell.”

In its review, the BIS pointed to the apparent “dissonance” between record low bond yields and sharply higher stock prices with subdued volatility, which “cast a pall over such valuations.” Before the financial crisis, low bond yields pointed to lower growth or a recession, while high stock prices pointed to economic expansion.

“Banks’ depressed equity prices and budding signs of tension in banking funding markets added another sobering note,” the BIS review stated.

The BIS also pointed to rising concerns over the stability of the Chinese financial system. It said that the “credit to GDP gap” in China had reached 30.1, the highest level to date. This is well above levels reached before the Asian financial crisis that broke in 1997, and above levels reached in the US before the sub-prime mortgage bubble led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Commenting on the growth of Chinese debt, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the international business editor of the UK-based Daily Telegraph, noted: “Outstanding loans have reached $28 trillion, as much as the commercial systems of the US and Japan combined. The scale is enough to threaten a worldwide shock if China ever loses control.”

The problems facing Chinese authorities are being compounded by low global growth and the apparent slowing of the US economy.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that US imports from China dropped “sharply” in July, “in the latest sign that that the engine of growth for the world’s developing economies is sputtering.”

According to figures from the US Federal Reserve, US merchandise imports from China have been contracting in value terms since March and in volume terms since April.

Elissa Braunstein, an economist at the UN Conference on Trade and Development, described the result as “extraordinary,” given that reports of US growth and a higher dollar should boost the American demand for imports.

“It is going to be much harder in future [for emerging market exporters]. If exports are going to deliver the growth they promised, you really need external demand,” she said.

NATO sends 4,000 combat troops to Poland and Baltic states

Johannes Stern

NATO will deploy an additional 4,000 soldiers in Poland and the Baltic states in May 2017, with some units sent to Eastern Europe in advance. This was confirmed by a NATO spokesman after the US-led military alliance held consultations in Split, Croatia at the weekend.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, about 1,000 American soldiers from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment are to be relocated to Poland in April from their German base in Vilseck. The German Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) will take command of a 1000-strong battalion in Lithuania. The UK and Canada will provide about 1,000 soldiers each in Estonia and Latvia.

The sending of additional NATO troops to Eastern Europe is part of preparations for war against Moscow laid out in early July at the NATO summit in Warsaw. This includes the establishment of a NATO missile defence system in Romania and Poland and the formation of a 5,000-strong rapid reaction force (Very High Readiness Joint Task Force—VJTF), agreed at the NATO summit in 2014.

As the imperialist powers escalate their intervention in the Middle East, and the US-led coalition bombs Syrian government troops, these measures increase the risk of a direct clash with nuclear-armed Russia. Leading NATO generals have left no doubt that the planned deployments are not a routine exercise, but part of a wider NATO military offensive against Russia.

The Wall Street Journal quoted the Czech General Petr Pavel, who said: “This force is to serve as a deterrent and if necessary as a fighting force.” The rules of engagement differ from those of other units in the region, since they are not “exclusively about a training presence”, he said.

Currently, the VJTF is preparing for possible war operations against Russia. Since the beginning of September, 4,000 NATO troops from 14 nations are training for an “emergency situation” with around 500 vehicles on the military training area at Senne, near Paderborn, as part of the large-scale manoeuvre titled “Venerable Gauntlet.”

In a report titled “NATO manoeuvres in the Senne dust”, a local journalist from the Lippe Zeitung describes the exercise: “High-tech drones circle in the sky, snipers spy out the situation from the thickets, and in the middle of the Senne, a tank guards the area. The sun beats down on the parched grass, when suddenly hell breaks out on the Senne. Artillery fire breaks the silence, explosions hurl sand and pieces of grass several hundred feet into the air, and on the ground, tank tracks roll through the Senne dust.”

The units, operating under British command, had “half a million rounds of ammunition available.” From January 2017, “the NATO Rapid Reaction Force” is to “defend the territory of NATO members from any enemies’ military.”

One can only assess the full seriousness of the situation by reviewing the circumstances in which the NATO manoeuvres are taking place. At a visit to the Baltic at the end of August, American Vice President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had promised to support the Baltic states in the event of conflict with Russia.

At a joint press conference on August 24 in Tallinn, with Estonian premier Taavi Rõivas, Merkel said, “We are pleased that we can offer mutual support in relation to Air Policing according to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. We have jointly supported the decisions in Warsaw. Germany will be the framework nation in Lithuania. … I think that means we are showing that in the NATO alliance we stand up for each other.”

Just a day before, following a meeting in the Latvian capital Riga with the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Biden had assured them, “We are committed absolutely, thoroughly, 100 percent to our NATO obligations, including and especially Article 5.”

The words of Merkel and Biden have far-reaching consequences. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty stipulates, “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” and that “if such an armed attack occurs, each of them … will assist the Party or Parties … including the use of armed force.”

To put this plainly: If one of the extreme anti-Russian governments in the Baltics provokes a border conflict with Russia, Washington, Berlin and the other NATO powers are committed to go to war against Moscow.

When Biden vowed in Latvia to do this on the United States’ “sacred honour”, the WSWS asked: “What would a war between the United States and Russia look like? What is the likelihood that such a conflict would entail the use of nuclear arms, given the fact that the US maintains its right to the ‘first strike’ use of nuclear weapons, and Russia has stated it will respond to incursions into its territory by all means at its disposal, including the use of its nuclear arsenal? How many millions of people in Russia, the US, Europe and beyond will die in such a conflict?”

Although Western politicians and the military know well that their aggressive actions against the world’s second-largest nuclear power could trigger a nuclear World War III, they are advancing their war plans behind the backs of the population.

According to an official report by the Bundeswehr, 25 European army chiefs met last week with representatives of the United States and NATO at the invitation of the German Inspector of the Army, Lieutenant General Jörg Vollmer. They discussed “the decisions of the NATO summit in Warsaw and their impact on the various land forces”. Other topics discussed included “the presence of NATO in the Baltics and in Poland and contingency planning for the southern flank of the Alliance.”

What is meant by “contingency planning” can be read in the studies and papers produced by Western think tanks and governments. A study by the Institute for National Strategic Studies states that it believes “defence strategists need to refocus on a possible confrontation and a conflict with Moscow. ... This applies to conventional, nuclear and missile forces of NATO.”

The “Civil Defense Guideline”, which German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière presented at the end of August in Berlin, calls on the population to prepare for attacks using biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

What is the significance of a red-red-green coalition in Berlin?

Christoph Vandreier

Following the Berlin state election on Sunday, Mayor Michael Müller (SPD) announced coalition talks would start with the Christian Democrats (CDU), Left Party, Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) on Wednesday. Even though SPD-CDU-Green or SPD-CDU-FDP coalitions are mathematically possible, the most likely outcome is a coalition between the SPD, Left Party and Greens.

Politicians at the state and federal levels of all three parties have spoken out positively about such a coalition. “The Left Party in Berlin contributed to the budget being balanced,” SPD Bundestag parliamentary group chairman Thomas Oppermann told Deutschlandfunk. “I think it could be a model for Berlin.”

The election result on Sunday showed the growing opposition and anger of a majority of the population to the entire political establishment. The so-called people’s parties, the SPD and CDU, which had governed Berlin in a coalition, were punished at the polls with both achieving their worst election results in the entire post-war era. In this situation, the Left Party and Greens stand ready to continue the hated programme of austerity and the buildup of the state apparatus at home and abroad within the framework of a red-red-green coalition.

Green Party lead candidate Ramona Pop spoke out in favour of an SPD-Green coalition on election night, claiming that it was the coalition that a majority of Berliners wanted. The Left Party was even louder in its calls for a red-red-green coalition. The Berliner Zeitung commented, “Klaus Lederer can barely be held back. The Left Party leader would like most of all to “take the rebellious momentum” in the capital city “to change something on the federal level from Berlin.”

A red-red-green coalition would not be a coalition of the “majority” or of the “rebellious.” It would be a coalition of bankrupts, who are in favour of sweeping attacks on democratic and social rights, and are widely hated among the population. Since the reunification of Germany, the three parties have always held a majority in the Berlin state House of Representatives, but they have never won so few votes as they did on Sunday.

Compared to the 2011 election, the three parties together lost over 5 percent of the vote. Although the Left Party gained 3.9 percent, it fell well short of the results of its predecessors, the PDS in 2001 and PDS-WASG in 2006. In 2011, the SPD and Greens could have formed a coalition without the Left Party, but the SPD opted for a coalition with the CDU.

In the 10 years prior to this, the SPD and Left Party formed the so-called red-red Senate in Berlin and carried out sweeping social austerity. After they rescued the Berliner Bankgesellschaft state bank with billions in guarantees, the SPD and Left Party imposed more brutal cuts than any state government in the history of the German Federal Republic.

They exited the Municipal Employers’ association so as to cut wages by some 10 percent in the public sector. They acted similarly at the state-owned Berlin transport companies. They privatised over 100,000 apartments, drove up rent prices and cut university and school budgets.

With these right-wing policies, the SPD and Left Party paved the way for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). The right-wing extremist party won a disproportionate number of votes among workers in the east of the city. These are areas where the Left Party has dominated politics and administration since reunification, and once again lost a significant number of votes. In the Left Party stronghold of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, the AfD even finished as the largest party.

According to a poll by Infratest Dimap, only 26 percent of AfD voters voted for the party because they were convinced by its programme. By contrast, 69 percent gave their reason as disappointment with the other parties. Despite their overall increase in votes, the Left Party lost 12,000 votes to the AfD.

The AfD was also strengthened by the fact that its right-wing programme has been adopted and made respectable by the three nominally “left” parties. While the SPD bears direct responsibility for the inhumane living conditions of refugees in Berlin and has deported thousands, the Left Party and Greens have repeatedly criticised these policies from the right.

Sahra Wagenknecht, who appeared at Left Party election campaign events in Berlin, denounced refugees earlier this year, declaring, “Whoever abuses the right to hospitality has forfeited the right to hospitality.” She went on to speak of “significant problems” which were bound up with the integration of refugees and contained “potential dangers.” Similar statements came from Green representatives like Boris Palmer.

On the issue of the buildup of the state apparatus, the positions of the SPD, Left Party and Greens are virtually indistinguishable from those of the AfD. All three parties agree that the police force has to be strengthened and expanded. In its election programme, the Left Party demanded “sound training and equipping” of the security forces and the hiring of “more police officers.”

Nothing could better sum up the character of a red-red-green coalition than this unanimous demand for a strong state. Such a coalition would continue with austerity policies and brutally suppress all opposition. But red-red-green would not simply be a repeat of the red-red Senate. It would be a model for a coalition at the federal level between the SPD, Left Party and Greens. The Left Party is signalling to the ruling class that under conditions of a deep capitalist crisis, it is the force most capable of defending German imperialism’s interests at home and abroad.

In the week leading up to the election, Left Party parliamentary group chairman Dietmar Bartsch attacked the grand coalition in the Bundestag. He called for a “state capable of action” and accused the federal government of having “weakened, humiliated and neglected the police.” He directed a warning to SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel, adding, “Europe’s crisis was never greater than today. And it’s not only Brexit. Look at what the situation is in the member countries! It is, I believe, the greatest crisis that Europe ever had. That’s why we need a political shift here in Germany.” And, “Yes, the Left Party wants to take responsibility for this political change in government. Just so that is clear for everyone!”

This can only be understood as a warning: In foreign policy, a red-red-green coalition would mean not less, but more war and an even more aggressive German foreign policy. Already during the election campaign, Gregor Gysi, the former Left Party parliamentary group chairman and the public face of the party, told the conservative Die Welt that he had “never demanded that Germany has to leave NATO.” “An agreement could be reached” with foreign minister Steinmeier and the SPD on foreign policy issues like the war in Syria, he added. Prior to this, in the summer interview on public broadcaster ARD, Wagenknecht reassured listeners that Germany “will of course not exit NATO on the day we enter government.”

The coalition being sought with the parties of Hartz IV social attacks and unabashed German militarism underscores the reactionary character of the pseudo-left groups that function either within the Left Party or in its environs. Marx 21, Socialist Alternative (SAV) and the Revolutionary International Organisation (RIO) conducted an election campaign for the Left Party not in spite of, but because of its right-wing politics. They are therefore already fully responsible for the anti-working class policies of a red-red-green coalition!

The moves towards a red-red-green coalition underscore the significance of the election campaign of the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (PSG, Socialist Equality Party). The PSG participated in the election in order to build an international movement against capitalism and war. However, from the outset, the PSG emphasised that this required a struggle against the right-wing politics of the SPD, Greens and Left Party, and all of their pseudo-left hangers-on.

The Blind Men of Hindostan

Vijay Shankar

In coming to grips with threats and challenges that confront a nation, the lines that demarcate the traditional; by which is meant those that demand a military response, from non-traditional is blurred. The confusion renders discernment problematic as very often one morphs to the other leaving little trace of what first causes were. It also places leadership in a quandary of comprehension as to what nature the threat is and what combination of tools from the State’s armoury of national power would be appropriate to confront it. The dilemma is analogous to a story in primary English text of my days titled “The Six Blind Men of Hindostan.” The tale is told of six blind men who came upon an elephant: each felt and sensed different parts of the pachyderm; the first wrapping his arms around a leg swore it was as the trunk of a tree; the second ran his fingers along the torso exclaimed, no it is like a wall; while the third holding the tail vouched it was more like a rope; the fourth stroking its head and feeling the swish of the elephants ear deposed, forsooth it’s like a fan; while the fifth and sixth grasped the tusk and the trunk and vowed it must be akin to a spear or related to a snake. But, as we know, the truth in its entirety is composed of all six vital elements that made the elephant. The same may be said of the various threats that speakers thus far addressed; each one’s subjective narrative is true, but it is limited by the inability to account for the totality of truth, that is the elephant-of-state is an integrated whole of all those elements and the State can be destabilised by trauma to any one of them.

Contemporary history of the Anglo sphere has had disproportionate influence on structuring world order and defining economic and societal values. Driven by the philosophic motivation of free will and a belief of liberal laws delivering what is best for mankind it does not make an attempt to transform the dangerous inequities amongst nations, the tyranny of the carbon economies, the domination of military power or indeed the ‘emperor of challenges’, climate change. The last is intertwined with all other threats, traditional or non-traditional, whether in the political, economic, demographic or military dimension. And therefore it is to climate change that I shall focus your attention.

Amongst Mahatma Gandhi’s many pronouncements on the ills of mercantilism and industrial capitalism the one that was prophetic in its sweep and profundity were his lines written in December 1928 for Young India: “God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism in the manner of the West. If an entire nation of 300 million [sic] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.” Gandhi intuitively came to the conclusion that industrialisation was designed for inequity and an anarchic carbon economy was untenable as we quickly snuff-out life on the planet.

There is today no doubt that the climate predicament has been accelerated by the manner in which the carbon economy has evolved. Its impious upshots have the world’s people’s finger prints on it for its impact has broadened and intensified while its sway on politics and society comes at a time when politically the global perspective is more diffused and society blinkered in its view of development. The November 1970 Bhola cyclone that hit the entire coast of erstwhile East Pakistan is one of the deadliest natural disasters of living memory; the official death toll was estimated at 500,000. The storm surge partially inundated the Sundarban island of Bhola, displacing millions unleashing mass migrations the effects of which were political, military as well as demographic. The consequences are apparent even today. One of the chief causes of the disaster was global warming, melting ice-caps and rising sea levels; these are manifest in the increased periodicity of calamitous climate events and the scale of disasters.

The on-going civil war in Syria has left 250,000 people dead and millions either displaced within the country's borders or have sought refuge abroad. And, while the proximate causes were largely political, new perspectives argue that climate change helped to trigger Syria's descent into violence. The recent Syrian drought is the worst in 500 years. The dry spell, which has lasted about 15 years, has caused farms to fail and livestock to perish. The continuous collapse of harvests forced as many as 1.5 million citizens to migrate to the urban centres of Homs and Damascus. The drought had displaced Syrians long before the conflict began, and what is alarming is that we completely missed it. Climate change, displacement and war are the trinity that have changed the face of sub-Saharan Africa, Libya and Iraq. It has set into motion violent demographic dynamics as the planet has not seen before.

There is another foundational problem that is linked to the system that we live and labour in. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) established a new system of political order in central Europe, based upon the concepts of coexisting sovereignty; balance of power and non-interference. As European influence spread through imperial conquests, these principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to prevailing world order. The scheme of nation states is structured to channelise political energies towards nationality, sovereignty and the urge for domination rather than concentrating on new ideas to relieve and reconstitute the relationship between States such that uncertainty and turmoil that currently obtains is replaced by the larger reality of common destiny. However, the awkward irony is that these principles that came into acceptance among and within what was essentially a cohesive entity, are at odds with the globalised world that we live in. Perhaps the time has come when the Westphalian model itself requires a critical review for the ‘emperor-of-challenges’ is provoking man to think of an alternate way to exist.

In this belligerent milieu of nation against nation and nations feeling the heat of relations within and without; illusions of world order stand in denial of reality. Some of the symptoms that have emerged are an increased and vicious securing of spheres of power and economic influence; competition between autocracy, liberalism and collectivism; an older religious struggle between radical Islam and secular cultures; and the inability to regulate the anarchic flow of technologies and information. As these clashes are played out the first casualty is the still born hope of an enlightened order that comes together to face its common destiny. Sovereign democratic processes have feeble impact on the challenges ahead be it the carbon economy, climate events or in restructuring the system we live in. Communications which can serve as the vehicle that catalysis the spread of new ideas of the larger reality has failed us, finding satiation in egocentric intrusiveness. The reason for the inability to mobilise collective action are amply clear, for it is the spiritual nature of the quest for development to the exclusion of all else that blinkers political philosophy to things ‘as they are rather than what they could be.’

So why has the political domain remained unaffected by the many crises that antagonise man? Is it myopia or a self-destruct lemming-like impulse? If it is the latter then our destiny is sealed if the former then there is at least the hope of the corrective lens of statesmanship that may generate a future more benevolent, less bigoted, more tolerant and clear eyed about man’s common destiny and a philosophical passage from the individual to kinship.

The WADA Hack: Transparency And The Uneven Playing Field

Binoy Kampmark 

The disclosure of confidential material has its own sometimes fraught ethics.  When it comes to medical information, assumptions abound that confidentiality comes first.  Not, however, in international sports, a notorious field where the corrupt rub shoulders with the desperate; where perspectives of the supposedly level playing field meet unevenness and disadvantage.  In such a case, disclosures can be both political and financial weapons.

The hack by the cyber espionage group Fancy Bears of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) data storage system has, to that end, produced a range of reactions.  Transparency supporters have given it a good wink and in some cases, even a dismissive shrug.  Germany’s discus thrower and 2012 Olympic Champion Robert Harting was content to tweet that, “We don’t hide anything. Go transparency!”

Australian Jock Bobridge, who had been prescribed prednisolone and glucocorticoids over a five-year period, explained that such prescriptions for rheumatoid arthritis were permissible.  “Regarding the WADA hacks and ‘leaks’ of my personal information I’d like to make it clear I have no problem with this info becoming public.”

That transparency drum has also been beaten by three-time Tour de France winner, Chris Froome, who insisted that nothing leaked on the issue of taking therapeutic use exemptions was particularly shattering.  “I’ve openly discussed my TUEs (therapeutic use exemptions) with the media and have no issues with the leak which confirms my statements.”

Other individuals such as tennis figure Petra Kvitova revealed that she received therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) for hydrocortisone, and initially the banned anabolic agent DHEA, subsequently revoked by WADA.

The reaction from a spokesperson for two time Grand Slam winner Kvitova and the Czech tennis federation was all anger at the disclosure, arguing that her asthma condition had been “no secret”.  “To say that Petra Kvitova suffers from asthma,” shot back Karel Tejkal with highbrow propriety, “is the same revelation as saying she’s won Wimbledon.”

The picture emerging from the disclosure is that of top athletes who have been battling range of illnesses and lingering ailments within various rules of demarcation set out by WADA and general sports officialdom.

Venus Williams, who netted silver in the mixed doubles at the Rio Olympics, could not hide the fact that she was suffering from the energy-draining disease Sjogren’s Syndrome, a condition that necessitated her seeking exemptions. Those exemptions, she explained, had been established by the Tennis-Anti-Doping Program.

Sports officialdom had to race out explanations and clarifications in the wake of the disclosure.  After all, athletes had tested positive for an assortment of goodies that may well have fallen foul of the establishment but for the fact that they were permitted by medical certificate.  Delle Donne was certainly far from conflicted by this, expressing a round of thanks for the hackers “for making the world aware that I legally take a prescription for a condition I’ve been diagnosed with, which WADA granted me an exception for it.”

The often righteous Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) similarly noted that various exemptions were bound to be legitimate.  “Despite the efforts of the hackers to twist these assumptions to prove foul play, in obtaining a TUE, the athletes have operated entirely within the rules of clean, fair sport.”  Various conditions were legitimately treated by TUEs.

Gymnast Simone Biles, to reassure those watching the unfolding saga, insisted that she did “believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport”.

Biles, having tested positive for methylphenidate after four tests conducted on Aug 11, 14, 15 and 16, had been issued certificates from the International Gymnastic Federation for the daily use of the drug in quantities of 15 mg, and therapeutic use over the year period from September 2012.

It is precisely such behaviour that did not impress Russian president, Vladimir Putin.  “It seems,” urged Russia’s suspicious leader, “as if healthy athletes are taking drugs legally that are prohibited for others, and people who are clearly suffering from serious illnesses, major disabilities, are suspected of taking some kind of substances and banned from the Paralympic Games.”

The hack has not merely revealed the way transparency can, inadvertently, create an economy of openness in a world that tends to lack it. It also shows the complexity, and unevenness of the drugs regime, where sports figures suffering from illness were still permitted various approved medications to effectively manage impairment and debilitation.

This stands in total contrast to the supposedly “war-like ideology” adopted by anti-doping agencies, which has struck some scholars as being akin to “the public discourse sustaining international efforts against illicit drugs.”  False assumptions about fairness in sports and the “level playing field” have been made in such a belligerent quest.

A crude form of social Darwinism has evidently been abandoned in certain, specific instances, where the doctor dispenses the certificate of medical mercy to enable a top performer to continue.  Much has been left to WADA to explain in that regard.  Such exemptions, in other words, may well be legal, but do they square with the evangelical world of the anti-dope crusader?