Can the American People Defeat the Oligarchy That Rules Them?

Paul Craig Roberts

Aren’t you surprised that Hillary and the presstitutes haven’t blamed Putin for FBI director Comey’s reopening of the Hillary email case? But the presstitutes have done the next best thing for Hillary. They have made Comey the issue, not Hillary.

According to US Senator Harry Reid and the presstitutes, we don’t need to worry about Hillary’s crimes. After all, she is only a political woman feathering her nest, just as political men have done for ages. Why all this misogynist talk about Hillary? The presstitutes’ cry is that Comey’s alleged crime is far more important. This woman-hating Republican violated the Hatch Act by telling Congress that the investigation he said was closed is now reopened. A very strange interpretation of the Hatch Act. During an election it is OK to announce that a candidate for president is cleared but it is not OK to say that a candidate is under investigation.

In July 2016 Comey violated the Hatch Act when he, on orders from the corrupt Obama Attorney General, announced Hillary clean. In so doing, Comey used the prestige of federal clearance of Hillary’s violation of national security protocols to boost her standing in the election polls.

Actually, Hillary’s standing in the polls is based on the pollsters over-weighting Hillary supporters in the polls. It is easy to produce a favorite if you overweight their supporters in the poll questions. If you look at the crowds attending the two candidate’s public appearances, it is clear that the American people prefer Donald Trump, who is opposed to war with Russia and China. War with nuclear powers is the big issue of the election.

Hillary’s problem has the ruling American Oligarcy, for which Hillary is the total servant, concerned. What are they going to do about Trump if he wins? Will his fate be the same as John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace? Time will tell. Or will a hotel maid appear at the last minute in the way that the Oligarchy got rid of Dominique Strauss-Kahn?

All of the American and Western feminists, progressives, and left-wing remnant fell for the obvious frame-up of Strauss-Kahn. After Strauss-Kahn was blocked from the Presidency of France and resigned as Director of the IMF, the New York authorities had to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn. But Washington had succeeded in putting its French vassal, Sarkozy, in the presidency of France.

This is how the American Oligarchy destroys those it suspects might not serve its interests. The corrupt self-serving Oligarchy makes sure that it owns the government and the media, the think tanks and increasingly all of the major universities, and, of course, through the presstitutes, Americans’ minds.

The Oligarchs are now hard-pressed to rescue Hillary as US president, so let’s see if the Oligarchs can once again deceive the American people.

While we wait, let’s concern ourselves with another important issue. The Clinton crime syndicate in the closing years of the 20th century allowed a small handful of mega-corporations to consolidate the US media in a few hands. This vast increase in the power of the Oligarchy was accomplished despite US anti-trust law. The media mergers destroyed the American tradition of a dispersed and independent media.

But really, what does federal law mean to the One Percent. Nothing whatsoever. The One Percent’s power makes them immune to law. Hillary’s crimes might cost her the election, but she won’t go to jail.

Not content with 90% control of the US media, the Oligarchy wants more concentration and more control. Looks like they will be getting it, thanks to the corrupt US government. The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to enforce US anti-trust law. Instead, the federal agency routinely violates US anti-trust law by permitting monopoly concentrations of business interests.

Because of the failure of the federal government to enforce federal law, we now have “banks too big to fail,” unregulated Internet monopoly, and the evisceration of a dispersed and independent media.

Not so long ago there was a field of economics known as anti-trust. Ph.D. candidates specialized in and wrote dissertations about public control of monopoly power. I assume that this field of economics, like the America of my youth, no longer exists.

Rahul Manchanda explains that “yet again another huge media conglomerate is being swallowed and acquired by another huge media conglomerate, to create another gargantuan media outlet, in another consolidation of the enormous power, money, wealth, intimidation, conspiracy and control” that eviscerates the US Constitution and the First Amendment.

Living in a 5G World: Wireless Pollution is Getting Out of Control

Lynne Wycherley

In Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, the late geneticist Dr Mae-Wan Ho – a visionary voice who opposed GMOs – identified pollution from wireless technologies as a pressing issue of our times.

Noting evidence for “DNA damage … cancers, microwave sickness, [and], impairment of fertility”, she concluded: “Evidence is emerging that the health hazards associated with wireless microwaves are at least comparable to, if not worse than, those associated with cigarette smoking.”

Since the advent of radar, followed by mobile phones and dense WiFi networks, such anthropogenic radiation has sky-rocketed. Although it is non-ionising, and does not destabilise molecules directly, evidence of other harm has been growing since 1950s studies on radar workers.

According to the updated Bio-initiative Report (2012+) by 29 precautionary scientists, effects on biology feature in several thousand, peer-reviewed papers. Yet troubling new findings rarely filter into the media. Or global Green discourse.

Though many studies have reported ‘no significant effect’, research by University of Washington biology professor Henry Lai, and others, reveals that wireless-industry funding is far more likely to yield such findings.

“Toujours ils créent doubte” (‘they are forever creating doubt’), explains former Luxembourg Green MP Jean Huss, whose research on the wireless industry inspired the Council of Europe to call for many precautions (2011), including protection of warning scientists, and wired internet in schools.

But wireless-product marketing has a loud voice. Few of us realise that genetic effects and free radical damage – both disease risks over time – are the most common, cautionary findings. Device-crowded spaces, such as our peak commuter trains or all-wireless classrooms, may be creating a subtly toxic environment.

Wide-ranging, oxidative harm to animals has been found from WiFi sources. And linked pre-diabetic and pre-cancerous changes. Ground-breaking work by biochemistry professor Martin Pall, Washington State University – winner of eight international awards – reveals a viable mechanism for such harm. But as with other ‘inconvenient truths’, it is going unheard.

Bee-whispers: the sensitivity of life on Earth 

Life’s exquisite electro-physiology is still being discovered. Researchers at Bristol University reported in May that bees’ hairs are highly sensitive to flowers’ delicate EMFs. In controlled trials in Switzerland, bees reacted to mobile-phone signals with high-pitched ‘piping’: a cue to desert a hive.

Other studies show that mitochondria, the tiny power houses in our cells, are at risk from our new EMFs. And that even DNA, in its delicate antenna-like structure, may be frequency-sensitive.

The long-term, ecological implications of our new, anthropogenic radiation are not known. But peer-reviewed studies revealing harm to birds, tadpoles, trees, other plants, insects, rodents and livestock, offer clues.

Biology professor Lukas Margaritis, at Athens University, for example, uncovered harm to fruit flies from just a few minutes’ exposure to our everyday wireless devices, including cordless phones, Bluetooth, and even digital baby monitors. Reviewing research, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests warned that sensitive habitats may need some protection.

The UK’s Digital Economy Bill, about to receive its final seal, has sensible proposals for increasing country-wide access to fibre broadband: a technology that does not, in itself, stoke microwave pollution, though wireless add-ons do so. But probe beyond the bill to Ofcom’s 5G consultations, and new EMF exposures emerge: part of global trend.

The worldwide rush towards 5G or ‘fifth generation’ wireless rollouts is set to raise our pulsing pollution to new levels. Untested, high microwave frequencies are being lined up to increase bandwidth, automation, and usage – at great profit to the industry.

These millimetre and centimetre waves, though too weak to heat us, may pose possible risks to our skin, and deeper surface tissue, including that of plants. High-density transmitters are envisaged. A troubling prospect for the many hundreds of patients seen by professor Dominique Belpomme‘s clinic in Paris: patients whose disabling symptoms from wireless technologies are supported by new brain scans and blood tests.

A delegation of scientists have petitioned for such electrosensitivity to be recognised as an environmentally-induced illness, with an International Disease Code (2015).

Rip-tides: when profits outpace caution 

Pushing for fast rollouts, the wireless industry is also in conflict with the Internatonal EMF Scientists’ Appeal to the United Nations. Signed by 223 scientists from 41 nations, it calls for remedial action – such as new safety limits, wave-free zones, and education of doctors – to protect our DNA, fertility, and nervous systems, plus children and pregnant women, from growing wireless exposure. And from rising, mains-electricity fields.

Signs that such caution may be needed are growing. The pulsed, polarized, microwaves used by wireless technologies pose more biological risks than smooth or natural waves. Weak millimetre waves have a known potential to increase antibiotic resistance: what ecological effects might they risk, perhaps, if used universally?

Studies also reveal a risk to skin pain receptors. Published associations between radio–masts and skin cancers, though at lower frequencies, plus mobile-phone masts and EMF-sensitive cancers (Adilza Dode, Minas Gerais University 2013), raise further questions.

In his summer press conference, Tom Wheeler – former head of the CTIA, the vast telecoms lobby- group, and controversial chair of the Federal Communications Commission – proposed unbridled “massive deployment” of commercial 5G transmitters, taking off in 2020.

Anticipating “tens of billions of dollars” of economic growth, with US telecoms “first out of the gate”, he warned “Stay out of the way of technological development! Turning innovation loose is far preferable to expecting … regulators to define the future”.

With no mention of health-testing, carbon costs, or corporate responsibility, the FCC voted unaminously to go ahead by releasing swathes of untested high frequencies for private sector exploitation – so setting a trend. To questionable ends: added to other issues, how will our communities be affected by addiction to 5G multi-stream videos? How will it impact our spiritual communion with Nature?

Many American health activists, and cautioning scientists, are aghast. Dr Joel Moskowitz, director of community health studies at the University of California, warns “precaution is warranted before 5G is unleashed on the world”.

Former government physicist Dr Ron Powell points out the plans “would irradiate everyone, including the most vulnerable to harm from radiofrequency radiation: pregnant women, unborn children, young children…the elderly, the disabled, and the chronically ill… It would set a goal of irradiating all environments”.

Fracking the air? Fault-lines in safety 

This drive to mine the electromagnetic spectrum come-what-may has echoes of fracking, and other headlong trends. In Captured Agency, the Harvard ethics report on the FCC, and the wider wireless industry, Norm Alster exposes ruthless “hardball tactics”, supported by “armies of lawyers”, at expense to our health.

Microwaves, Science and Lies (2014), filmed by Jean Hêches across Europe, exposes similar patterns that are driving our pulsed radiation to risky levels. Western “safety limits”, based only on high levels that heat tissue, far exceed those of Russia, China, and some other nations.

Professor Yuri Grigoriev, long-serving chair of Russia’s non-ionising radiation protection body (RNCNIRP), warned the UK’s Radiation Research Trust “ionising radiation is monitored…[but] levels of non-ionising radiation are constantly increasing and ubiquitous: it is out of control … Urgent action is needed”.

Stealthy pollution-raisers, such as the 5G Internet of Things – with 30 billion tiny transmitters forecast for 2020 – and also, sadly, wireless smart-meters [1, 2*], vetoed by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, may run counter to a cherished Green goal: that of nurturing healthy environments.

Can we manage our energy, perhaps, in more bio-sensitive ways? Court claims for wireless-meter health harm, supported by medical testimonies – including by neurology professor Andrew Marino (Louisiana) – are sweeping America. Professor Pall explains such meters’ “high intensity” microwave pulses may be more toxic than we realise: “We know from the nanosecond studies these can be very damaging”.

Data obtained by a judge revealed all-hour, house-piercing pulses every few seconds. New data-over-wiring innovations (if free of “dirty electricity”) may offer inspiring, alternative ways forward.

Chrysalis: a paradigm in waiting

To create – in Wheeler’s phrase – a global ‘5G ecosystem’ of wireless super-saturated environments, at insidious risk, over time, to living ecosystems, not least our own bodies, is dysfunctional. And spiritually disturbing. It suggests a mindset deeply at odds with the orchid-like beauty of the Earth.

But cleaner innovations, such as LiFi, ‘eco-dect-plus’ phones, and the latest fibre-optics, suggest a wiser course. A new paradigm – safer connectivity, plus more balanced use – is emerging. And reminds of other step-changes in awareness. From pesticides to organic, from smoke-filled to smoke-free.

We can accede, if we wish, to our rising, planetary smog. To safety limits as high as the moon, in many scientists’ eyes. And to wireless rollouts’ growing carbon costs. Or taking pause, we may begin to call the industry to account – plus governments lulled by it.

We may air helpful new findings, such as risks from tablet-like exposures (Alexander Lerchl, Jacob Bremens University, 2015). And stark risks from passive exposure, bared by Leif Salford, medical professor at Lund University. We may defend DNA, if we wish, from ionizing and published non-ionizing risks, just as we defend our planet.

And alongside French Green Party MPs Laurence Abeille and Michèle Rivasi, plus the international Baubiologie movement, we can explore electromagnetic hygiene. Uplifting possibilities for a safer, cleaner world.

Of Uprising And Unrest in Kashmir

Basharat Shameem

As we head well into the Himalayan autumn, the bloody season which began in Kashmir in July is still going on unabated. In its enduring bloody history, it can be stated with few doubts that this season is neither the first of its kind nor the last in Kashmir. However, what may be different about this particular uprising is the magnitude of public anger and the vastly disproportionate response of state in the form of unprecedented atrocities. Quite ironical, the unprecedented anger on the streets has been matched with unprecedented state oppression when on the contrary, there should have been steps taken to alleviate this anger through engaging political steps. But as it goes, things have gone totally out of order and to an abysmal level where it seems that the oppression seems to have been institutionalized in Kashmir. As if the last 25 years of pain and suffering have not been enough, tragedy after tragedy has unfolded in the form of 90 killings, 100s of blinded youth, 1000s of amputated teenagers, and much more in the form of raids,tortures,ransom, vandalisation, etc.

One could say, we have just simply lost the count. This is how the state has responded which is completely bereft of sense and reason. The state now finds itself totally discredited and hugely repulsive in the eyes of the masses and has paved the way for situation to aggravate to dangerous levels. All the arguments of an ISI engineered disturbance as put forward by the state is just a frivolous evasion from facing the real issues. Had it been so, valley’s minorities like Sikhs, Pandits and Rajputs would not have joined the mass protests as has come to the fore recently. The atmosphere is now characterized by lockdown, confrontation and fear instead of efforts of reconciliation and redressal. Imagine the lives of the besieged populace in such circumstances. This writer was a witness to this siege in having spent over 100 days in curfew and e-curfew in a much maligned South Kashmir village. Having now finally been able to access the internet in Srinagar after a hiatus of 115 days, I was wondering about the sudden drought in the flowing Ganges of Digital India.

As disturbing as it can get, numerous reports are indicating that the forces also target the very livelihood of rural population—the vandalisation of apple and paddy harvest, alongwith the targetting of ambulances and electricity transformers. The state institutions have totally been exposed through their ineptness. The police and other security agencies have acted with impunity and utter lack of regard for law and life. Instead of ensuring security of the common people, the police has turned into a bandit force invoking awe and fear among the people. On a professional level, it is not able to tactfully handle a crowd of 50 teenagers or even save its own service rifles. Despite having been accustomed to this kind of a situation for last two decades, it still doesnot know how to handle a small law and order problem or a hostile community. Ironically, the police with its close affinity to the local psyche and sensitivities should have been more adept in handling this kind of a situation but it has been appalling.

On the contrary, there have been many instances, to few of which this writer has been a witness, where the police and paramilitary forces have actually themselves provoked and instigated the people to break the law by unwarranted raids, tear-gas shelling, vandalization and ransom in peaceful localities. One is obliged to ask the powers at the helm that is this really the way to redress the anger of your populace when at the rhetorical level, you talk about political engagement and solution? One is not able to fathom that how the much abused ‘normalcy’ is going to be restored in such circumstances? This clampdown is doing greater harm than one can simply imagine. Besides the obvious suffering and pain, the clampdown is strengthening the radical constituency which is going to further complicate and aggravate the matters. All through these previous years, people who had begun to understand the efficacy of politics of reconciliation and pacifism are now fast losing their faith again. Kashmiris are flabbergasted at how Secularism and Democracy, two sublime concepts that the Republic of India purports to offer to the Kashmiris, have gone to rack and ruin in the past four months. Because they saw on Eid, how Eid prayers and joys were not allowed while on the other side of the Pir Panjal, armed Hindutva volunteers were allowed and even facilitated to march freely in sensitive areas as in Doda and Kishtwar, and Cow Rakshaks were allowed to burn trucks and shops on a false rumour in Rajouri.

One is worried, this current impasse may usher in a new violent phase by throwing up a new breed of radicalized militants. One can only hope, not. But as it seems, no one is really bothered to care about where we are heading. In this respect, the apathy and indifference of the state has to be castigated in full measure, even more than the intransigent politics of the separatist camp. On their part, the separatists need to come out of their obstinate positions to ponder over workable solutions to the political problems the state is facing. Kashmiris are mature enough to make it a point that notwithstanding the massive importance of political struggle to their lives, the struggle for bread is equally important. How to cut a balance between the two, people at the forefront of the agitation never ponder which then results in the gradual wilting of the public sentiment. As is obvious, the working class has once again borne the brunt of the current turmoil because like all previous instances, it finds itself at the forefront. Most of the dead, blinded and amputated youth belong to this class. Not only these sacrifices, this class also finds itself cornered on the front of livelihood. While public servants are drawing salaries as normal and big businessmen conducting their businesses more or less with minor hiccups, it is the daily earners, labourers, stall wallahs, small shops, auto wallahs, drivers, etc who have not been able to earn a penny in the last 4 months. Their condition gets too worse when one sees them under the burden of heavy interest bank loans. Imagine the lives of these people in such conditions; the prolonged popular agitation threatens their livelihood and the state repression threatens their life. Either way, there seems no respite. So how do we address their problems besides the long overdue political problems? There must certainly be an answer but one has to leave it to the powers that matter to answer.

Western Leaders Grow Deaf To Israeli Abuses

Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Israel has just emerged from its extended, three-week high holidays, a period that in recent years has been marked by extremist religious Jews making provocative visits to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Many go to pray, in violation of Israel’s international obligations. Most belong to groups that seek the mosque’s destruction and replacement with a Jewish temple – and now enjoy support from within the parliament, including from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party.

A rash of such visits last autumn outraged Palestinians and triggered a wave of so-called “lone-wolf” attacks on Israelis. The attacks only recently abated.

Taking advantage of the renewed quiet, Israel allowed a record number of ultra-nationalists to visit the mosque, figures released last week show. Parties of Israeli soldiers are also now entering the site.

The police, whose recently appointed commander is himself from the extremist settler community, has recommended too that restrictions be ended on visits by Jewish legislators who demand Israel’s sovereignty over the mosque.

Israel’s treatment of this supremely important Islamic holy site symbolises for Palestinians their powerlessness, oppression and routine humiliation. Conversely, a sense of impunity has left Israel greedy for even more control over Palestinians.

The gaping power imbalance was detailed last month at special hearing of the United Nations security council. Hagai El-Ad, head of B’tselem, which monitors the occupation, termed Israel’s abuses as “invisible, bureaucratic, daily violence” against Palestinians exercised from “cradle to grave”.

He appealed to the international community to end its five decades of inaction. “We need your help. … The occupation must end. The UN Security Council must act. And the time is now,” he said.

Israeli politicians were incensed. El-Ad had broken one of Israel’s cardinal rules: you do not wash the country’s dirty linen abroad. Most Israelis consider the occupation and Palestinian suffering as purely an internal matter, to be decided by them alone.

Netanyahu accused B’tselem’s director of conspiring with outsiders to subject Israel to “international coercion”.

With the US limply defending El-Ad’s freedom of speech, Netanyahu found a proxy to relaunch the attack. David Bitan, chair of his party, both demanded that El-Ad be stripped of his citizenship and proposed legislation to outlaw calls for sanctions against Israel in international forums.

Unsuprisingly, El-Ad has faced a flood of death threats.

Meanwhile, another UN forum has been considering Israel’s occupation. Its educational, scientific, and cultural body, Unesco, passed last month a resolution condemning Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian holy sites, and especially al-Aqsa.

Again, Israelis were enraged at this brief disturbance of their well-oiled machinery of oppression. The abuses documented by Unesco were overshadowed by Israeli protests that its own narrative, one based on security paranoia and Biblical entitlement, was not the focus.

While Israel exercises ever more physical control over Palestinians, its moral credit is rapidly running out with foreign audiences, who have come to understand that the occupation is neither benign nor temporary.

The rise of social media has accelerated that awakening, which in turn has bolstered grassroots reactions like the boycott (BDS) movement.

Aware of the dangers, Israel has been aggressively targeting all forms of popular activism. Facebook and Youtube are under relentless pressure to censor sites critical of Israel.

Western governments – which joined the chorus of “Je suis Charlie” after ISIL’s lethal attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine last year – have cracked down on the boycott movement. Paradoxically, France has led the way by outlawing such activism, echoing Israeli claims that it constitutes “incitement”.

And leftwing social movements emerging in Europe face loud accusations that any criticism of Israel is tantamount to an attack on all Jews. Notably, a British parliamentary committee last month characterised as anti-semitic parts of the opposition Labour party under its new leader Jeremy Corbyn, a champion of Palestinian rights.

In these ways, European governments – fearful of upsetting Israel’s patron in Washington – have been trying to hold in check popular anger at a belligerent and unrepetant Israel.

Illustrating that caution, Uneso was forced last week to vote a second time on its resolution, this time removing the word “occupation” and, against normal practice, giving equal status to the occupier’s names for the sites under threat from its occupation.

Even with the resolution neutered, Unesco’s usual consensus could not be reached. The resolution – pushed by the Palestinians and Arab states – passed by a wafer-thin majority, with European and other governments abstaining.

Israel and its enablers have successfully engineered a hollowing out of official discourse about Israel to blunt even the mildest criticism.

Gradually, as the Unesco vote and Corbyn’s experiences in the UK highlight, western powers are accepting Netanyahu’s doubly illogical premises: that criticising the occupation is anti-Israel, and criticising Israel is anti-semitic.

Incrementally, western leaders are conceding that any criticism of Netanyahu’s policies – even as he tries to ensure the occupation becomes permanent – is off-limits.

El-Ad called for courage from the UN security council. But his words have fallen on deaf ears.

Vertebrate species populations in dramatic decline

Philip Guelpa

An alarming new study, the Living Planet Report 2016, prepared by researchers from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, projects that by the year 2020, little more than three years from now, the population abundance of vertebrate species around the world will have dropped by two-thirds from what it was in 1970.

This dramatic decline encompasses species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Invertebrates and plants are, undoubtedly suffering similar effects, as demonstrated by the recently reported death of a large portion of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, a 2,300-kilometer-long system of coral reefs, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and has existed for 25 million years.

The rate of decline shows no sign of slowing. Between 1970 and 2012, a span of 42 years, the overall vertebrate population abundance (the total numbers of animals for each species) dropped by 58 percent, according to the study. By 2020, only another eight years, that figure is expected to reach a 67 percent decrease. If this pace were to continue, total extinction (a decrease of 100 percent) would be reached by the middle of the 21st century. These figures are based on a large data set, the Living Planet Index (LPI), derived from the monitoring of 14,000 animal populations that encompass 3,700 species. While some level of uncertainty is to be expected when attempting to assess such a large and complex phenomenon, the general trend is clear.

This dramatic decline is mainly attributed to a combination of climate change, environmental pollution, the human-facilitated spread of diseases, over-exploitation, and habitat destruction. Vertebrate populations are clearly under tremendous stress, as indicated by the substantial decreases in population sizes. The report identifies freshwater environments—rivers and lakes—as being the hardest hit, with an 81 percent decline in species abundance between 1970 and 2012. Terrestrial species abundance has fallen by 38 percent and marine species abundance by 36 percent.

Living Planet Report 2016 is but one of many studies in recent years that have identified a dramatic trend toward species decline and extinction.

The scale of the devastation documented in the 2016 LPR, occurring over a span of only 50 years, is on a trajectory to rival the five previous mass extinctions of life on earth. However, whereas the previous events were caused by a variety of natural processes, this impending sixth extinction is conclusively attributable to the anarchic development of the capitalist economy, which mindlessly pursues profit without regard to the consequences to society or nature.

In attempting to explain the forces driving these dramatic animal population declines, the Living Planet Report refers only to empirical trends such as human population growth, increases in carbon dioxide emissions and fertilizer consumption and the like, and offers only vague remedies such as the adoption of an “Earth system perspective.” No reference is made to the fact that decisions regarding industrial growth, resource exploitation, the development of more efficient technologies, and a whole range of other economic issues that affect the environment are made by the financial and corporate elites, a tiny minority of the world’s population, to protect their own interests.

The effects of unplanned development, undertaken with little or no scientific assessment of potential impacts to the environment, did not begin in 1970. Human activities have caused disruption of natural communities for thousands of years, beginning with the development of agriculture. However, these effects have accelerated dramatically in scope and scale over the last several centuries, with the development of capitalism and the industrial revolution. The rate of change has now reached a qualitative transition, reaching a pace never before seen. The consequences of this hyper-acceleration cannot be precisely predicted, but will undoubtedly cause substantial disruption of both natural ecosystems and human communities.

Biological communities exist as complex, dynamic systems of interaction between a whole range of organisms, from top vertebrate predators to microorganisms, as well as the components of the physical environment in which they exist. The rapid removal, both quantitatively and qualitatively (i.e., by extinction) of growing numbers of species from this dialectical relationship renders such systems increasingly unstable and prone to catastrophic collapse.

This fundamental shift is now being officially recognized by the scientific community. Based on research spanning over two centuries, scientists have developed a chronological framework to study the development of life on earth. Successive periods of evolutionary change are defined, at least in part, by the existence of more or less distinct groupings of organisms, reflecting significant changes in the earth’s fauna. The most recent major subdivision, the Cenozoic, termed the Age of Mammals, spans roughly the last 65 million years (i.e., since the extinction of the dinosaurs). It, in turn, is comprised of a series of smaller units (each spanning millions of years). The latest three are the Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene, which encompass the evolution of human beings. The Pleistocene alone lasted roughly 2.5 million years.

The Holocene, characterized by the existence of the modern suite of mammals, began only 12,000 years ago, following the end of the last ice age. Therefore, compared to the length of previous periods, it has barely begun. Nevertheless, using the same procedure of defining geologic periods based on assemblages of species, some scientists have in recent years proposed that the Holocene has now ended and that a new period, the Anthropocene, has begun. The use of the prefix “anthro,” the Greek word for man, in the name, is intended to indicate that humans have now become a major factor in both biological evolution and the linked process of climate and environmental change.

Human science and technology have reached the point at which we now have an unprecedented capacity both to develop a much deeper understanding of the complexities of natural ecological systems and rationally plan an economy that takes this understanding into account in order to substantially reduce its impact on the natural world while, at the same time, meeting human needs.

However, unless capitalism is replaced by a planned socialist economy, and in relatively short order at that, the extreme negative effects of anarchic development make it highly likely that the natural systems which are fundamental to the maintenance of a livable planet will suffer drastic, and perhaps irreversible, degradation. Efforts by the rival capitalist nation states to address climate change and environmental degradation have been feeble and ineffective. The LPR 2016 report is a warning that the future of life on earth hangs in the balance.

The pseudo-left and Brazil’s municipal elections: A trial run for mass betrayal

Miguel Andrade 

The expected debacle suffered by Brazil’s former ruling Workers Party (PT) in the first round of nationwide local elections on October 2 reduced the party’s control to just 40 percent of the municipalities it won in the last elections in 2012. The election, characterized by record rates of abstention and spoiled ballots, has further exposed the deep crisis of the whole Brazilian political establishment, and of the country’s pseudo-left in particular.

Last Sunday saw run-offs in more than 50 cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants in which no candidate was able to win an outright majority in the first round. The first round had seen the PT reduced to half of its historic vote in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, where the incumbent mayor was the party’s candidate. It was also completely routed in its birthplace, the so-called “red belt” of industrial cities and towns on São Paulo’s outskirts, as well as in historically left-leaning regions such as the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul.

This rout in most cases benefited populist right-wingers, most notably in São Paulo where the regional-chauvinist João Doria, dubbed the Brazilian Donald Trump, was able to win an outright majority in the first round-–the first time any candidate was able to do so in the city.

In the second round, however, the country’s attention was focused on the election in Rio de Janeiro. In the country’s second city and former capital, state representative and former PT member Marcelo Freixo, running on the PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party, a parliamentary split-off from the PT), was defeated by the first-round frontrunner, the Christian fundamentalist Marcelo Crivella, of the Republican Party, a right-wing former ally of the PT government.

The elections unfolded amid Brazil’s worst economic crisis in a century and with the PT hard hit by the right-wing campaign that removed it from office in September with the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on trumped-up charges of budget manipulations. She has been replaced by her former vice-president Michel Temer of the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), who has been brought in to implement a full restructuring of class relations in Brazil.

The PT was unable to mobilize support within the working class against impeachment due to its longstanding record of social attacks and its political alliances while in government with the same reactionary forces which moved to impeach Rousseff. The party all but disavowed the largely middle-class demonstrations against the impeachment, appealing instead to the Organization of American States and Brazilian bankers and businessmen for its defense.

In this context, the race in Rio was pushed to the forefront due to the large vote won by PSOL, PT’s main nominal left opposition, in the first round. A number of left-leaning youth flocked to the city to join Freixo’s one-month run-off campaign, in a process reminiscent of the recent Bernie Sanders campaign in the United States.

This was the second run for mayor of Rio by Freixo, a prominent human rights lawyer and activist, former PT member and PSOL founder. This time around, his vote totals fell substantially in Rio’s working class, industrial northern sector, and the campaign was oriented from start fundamentally to the upper-middle class southern zone of the city, which includes the world-famous districts of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon.

In the face of the PT’s nationwide debacle in the first round, there was a closing of ranks around Freixo’s candidacy by the whole of the pseudoleft, including most notably the PSOL currents which had previously criticized him, the “green” REDE party and the Morenoite PSTU and MAIS, which were joined by both factions of the Communist Party, the PT itself and the Liberation Theology-linked faction of Rio’s Catholic Church. In short, mobilized behind his candidacy was the whole range of anti-Marxist forces that founded and later supported the PT since 1980.

Freixo’s campaign was a case study in pseudo-left hypocrisy. It was initially centered on populist criticisms of the tax structure in the city, mild opposition to the privatization of hospitals, transport and schools, as well as overtures to big business, with the promise of a city-controlled development bank.

Significantly, the campaign made little mention of the city’s recent bitter experiences with the World Cup and the Olympics, which were accompanied by the crudest forms of dispossession of the city’s most oppressed layers, through expulsions and widespread police aggression in name of property development.

This already empty platform was reduced to nothing more than an anti-corruption campaign. One week before the second-round election, Freixo issued his now infamous “Letter of Commitment to Rio.” This missive was openly aimed at reassuring big business and attracting ruling class support in the face of corruption scandals dogging his opponent, Crivella. He promised a technocratic government and the review of privatization contracts in search of any irregularities – abandoning any opposition in principle to the privatizations. The letter was met with a unanimous reaction from the pseudo-left: “Vote for Freixo in order to push him to the left.”

This end of Freixo’s “left” pretensions was entirely predictable given not only the history of PSOL, but the development of his campaign, which exposed the party’s bottomless opportunism.

Pressed time and again by the press and the right wing on his position regarding the impeachment, Freixo ran away by saying he didn’t want to “nationalize” Rio’s elections. Accused of “Bolshevism” by Crivella, he tried to disavow his own party, declaring to Folha de São Paulo that “it is not PSOL which will run Rio.” Unmoved by Freixo’s opportunism, the pseudo-left brought his “popular councils,” reminiscent of the anti-Marxist “municipal communism” currents of post war Europe, to the forefront as a left cover.

One of the most revealing episodes was Freixo’s capitulation to the right wing’s slanderous accusations of anti-Semitism directed against his campaign, which were reminiscent of the slanders against Jeremy Corbyn in the recent Labour leadership contest in Britain. Freixo, who had strong support among Rio’s small, largely secular and left-leaning Jewish community, had declared his support for a two-state solution confined to the 1967 borders, a toothless declaration to the right even of the “official” discussions inside the larger Jewish-Brazilian community.

Nonetheless, he came under attack, most significantly from the Catholic and Evangelical right, after a small current inside PSOL published an obituary of Shimon Peres, citing his involvement in the many internationally recognized crimes of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people. The group which published the obituary was disavowed by both Freixo and the PSOL leadership.

The pseudo-left’s closing of ranks around Freixo’s campaign serves as a damning political self-indictment. Claiming to oppose the PT from the left, these organizations have done everything in their power to prevent the working class from breaking with the forces which founded and supported the PT for almost four decades, including the Catholic Church and the unions.

Their support for Freixo was accompanied by a complete abandonment of any discussion on how the nominal left could suffer such an enormous defeat in São Paulo and its surroundings, one of the largest working class concentrations in the world and one of the world’s most unequal regions.

The real attitude of these layers has been made clear by elements like the anti-Marxist Guilherme Boulos, who appeared on Freixo’s platform in Rio. A fixture at pseudo-left protests, he has dismissed São Paulo’s middle classes as “fascist” and its working class as “alienated and consumerist.”

Along similar lines was an October 7 column by PSOL philosophy professor Vladimir Safatle, who wrote that “the political axis of the country” had moved from São Paulo to Rio (or more precisely its well-heeled southern zone) due to the virtues of Freixo’s campaign.

For more than a year now, Safatle has described the 40-million strong state of São Paulo as a homogeneously conservative, self-indulging, parallel-reality in Brazil. The PT and its main right-wing opposition, the PSDB, are “São Paulo products,” he wrote, adding that they are politically exhausted because the state is politically exhausted. Freixo, he argued, shows the way out by proposing nothing less than “a transmutation of forms of government,” by way of “direct democracy” through the “popular councils.”

More than a year after Syriza’s betrayal of the Greek working class, the pseudo-left forces in Brazil are insisting, as their counterparts in Greece and Europe generally did before them, that Brazilian workers and left-leaning middle-class layers must go through the experience of rule by the likes of PSOL and Freixo in order to build true socialist alternatives. This claim, bound up with the rejection of the fight to build a genuine revolutionary leadership, only betrays their own contempt for the working class. Above all, they are determined to prevent workers and young people from drawing any real lessons from the debacle of the PT, instead attempting to repeat the experience, with what will inevitably be even more disastrous results.

South Korea’s president in crisis over corruption scandals

Ben McGrath

South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s administration has been thrown into turmoil by a series of scandals that last week forced her to remove key secretariat officials. Protests have also broken out, with demonstrators demanding she resign or be impeached. According to media polls, the president’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level since coming to office in February 2013.

The woman at the centre of the crisis, Park’s long-time confidante Choi Soon-sil, was detained on Monday after returning from Germany to answer allegations of corruption and exerting inappropriate influence in state affairs. Choi, 60, arrived at the supreme prosecutor’s office in Seoul on Tuesday morning in handcuffs, a surgical mask and a dark coat, escorted by correctional officers.

Prosecutors said they are investigating whether Choi used her friendship with the president to gain access to classified documents that enabled her to influence government matters and benefit personally through non-profit foundations. Prosecutors have asked eight banks for documents related to Choi’s financial transactions, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

Park, 64, and Choi have known each other for decades. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, controlled South Korea for 18 years after seizing power in a military coup in 1961. Park senior was murdered in 1979 by the head of the country’s spy agency, which accused Choi’s father and family of holding undue influence over the dictator.

Last Friday, Park ordered 14 of her top secretaries to submit their resignations, although not all were accepted. The reshuffle included the removal of Woo Byung-woo (U Byeong-u), the senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, and An Jong-beom, senior presidential secretary for policy coordination. Both men have faced corruption allegations. An, in particular, has been accused of involvement in the scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil. Three other secretaries believed to be associated with Choi—Lee Jae-man, Jeong Ho-seong and An Bong-geun—were also removed from their positions.

The allegations involving An Jong-beom and Choi Soon-sil emerged as part of an audit into the activities of Woo, who was involved in a bribery case with online gaming company Nexon, and other government figures. At the end of September, Noh Woong-rae (No Ung-rae), a member of the opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), released transcripts of An Jong-beom directing the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) on the amount of money they should “donate” to two non-profit corporations, Mir and K-Sports. That these allegations became public is an indication of the intensity of the conflict within the South Korean bourgeoisie.

Choi was reportedly behind the creation of Mir and K-Sports, which collected 80 billion won ($72 million) from 53 major companies in just a few months. The foundation of the two organizations—in October 2015 and January 2016, respectively—was approved in just a single day, a process that usually takes weeks. An Jong-beom has been accused of using the FKI to pressure corporations into giving money.

Choi has also been accused of being involved in deciding policy matters. Lee Sung-han, the former secretary-general of Mir, told the Hankyorehnewspaper that closed-door meetings over the shutdown of the Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea, for example, were led by Choi.

Park admitted in an apology on October 25 that Choi had assisted in writing her speeches. Choi, who has held no official position in government, is the daughter of Park’s one-time mentor Choi Tae-min, who headed a cult known as the Church of Eternal Life. The elder Choi died in 1994.

On Saturday, as many as 20,000 people in Seoul gathered to call for the president’s resignation, with similar protests in cities like Busan. Significantly, participants included high school and university students. Foreign workers also took part. The official opposition parties used the protests as platforms to advance themselves as alternative administrations.

“Park has lost her authority as president and showed she doesn’t have the basic qualities to govern a country,” Jae-myung Lee, from the Minjoo party and the mayor of the city of Seongnam, told protesters from a stage on Saturday.

Corruption scandals in South Korea are typically used to settle political scores, as bribery and influence peddling are commonplace. Park is not just unpopular with the population; she faces concerted opposition within her own Saenuri Party, where a strong anti-Park faction exists.

About 50 Saenuri legislators demanded the party leadership, comprised of mostly pro-Park figures, give up their positions at the head of the party. Rep. Hwang Yeong-cheol stated: “The current party leadership is responsible for failing to properly stop Choi’s involvement in state affairs.” They are calling for a “neutral” leadership, with more positions for the anti-Park lawmakers.

A strong anti-Park faction solidified in the 2000s around Lee Myung-bak, who touted his experience as Hyundai Engineering’s CEO to win support from big business. However, many of Park’s backers had closer links to her father’s military dictatorship. Bitter infighting took place before Lee defeated Park in the conservative party’s primary, and then became president in 2008. Four years later, Park secured the nomination.

The investigation into Park’s secretaries and confidantes has nothing to do with fighting corruption. It is an intensification of the struggle over who will be elected president in 2017, as the incumbent is limited to one, five-year term. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, is believed to be favored by the pro-Park faction. Kim Mu-seong of the anti-Park faction is also considered a potential candidate.

Facing deteriorating economic conditions globally, the South Korean elite has launched an austerity offensive against the working class. The economy last year grew by only 2.6 percent, and nearly half of that came from the production of unsold goods. Unemployment is growing, particularly among youth. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs in the shipping and shipbuilding industries.

In ruling circles, Park Geun-hye is increasingly under fire for not fully pushing through the “labor reform” demanded by big business. These measures are aimed at creating a low-paid, casual workforce, furthering the attack on lifelong employment begun under President Kim Dae-jung following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

With Park’s presidency in crisis, the official opposition parties are offering themselves as more reliable instruments for implementing the corporate agenda. The Wall Street Journal noted in an opinion piece on October 18 that neither the Minjoo Party nor the People’s Party, the two “left” parties in the political establishment, are “fundamentally opposed to reforms, and both are likely to propose their own variations on labor reform as the December 2017 presidential election draws near.”

Indonesia and Australia discuss joint naval patrols in the South China Sea

Peter Symonds 

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop yesterday confirmed that Australia and Indonesia are considering joint naval patrols in the South China Sea. Her comments followed a four-day visit to Indonesia last week, during which she met with Indonesian President Joko Widido and senior Indonesian ministers.

Speaking to Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio, Bishop sought to portray the mooted patrols as a routine part of the Australian navy’s operations. “This is a regular part of what our navy does,” she said. “This is part of our engagement in the region and this is in accordance with Australia’s right of freedom of navigation, including in the South China Sea.”

Such military exercises would be anything but routine, however. Indonesian naval vessels have already been involved in clashes with Chinese fishing trawlers allegedly fishing illegally inside the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. Sharp diplomatic exchanges between Jakarta and Beijing resulted.

While China does not dispute Indonesian sovereignty over the Natunas, its extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea intersect with the EEZ around the island group. Joint Australian-Indonesian naval exercises in the area risk an incident involving Chinese fishing boats that could draw in the Chinese coast guard or navy.

Following a clash in June, President Widodo travelled to the Natunas to underscore Indonesia’s determination to assert its maritime claims. The Indonesian armed forces has been expanding its presence on the Natunas and last month staged its largest-ever air force exercise in the area, involving more than 2,000 personnel with fighter jets.

An Indonesian defence ministry spokesman told the media that no agreement had been reached to conduct joint naval patrols with Australia. However, the issue was clearly discussed at the annual “2+2” talks involving Bishop and Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne with their Indonesian counterparts last Thursday.

Their joint communiqué emphasised “the importance of maritime security.” It noted that the two countries were “natural maritime partners” and would take “practical steps to deepen and broaden bilateral maritime engagement.” The Indonesian and Australian navies have already carried out joint patrols in the Timor Sea, between the two countries.

The communiqué underlined “the importance of maintaining peace, security and stability, freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea.” It emphasised the “importance of non-militarisation” and backed Indonesia’s push for a code of conduct between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China in the South China Sea.

These diplomatic code-words are in line with the Obama administration’s aggressive intervention over the past six years in longstanding territorial disputes between China and its South East Asian neighbours. Washington has repeatedly criticised China’s “militarisation” of its atolls and “expansionism” in the South China Sea. The US navy last month conducted a fourth “freedom of navigation operation” that provocatively challenged Chinese maritime claims in the area.

The Australian government has been under intense pressure from Washington to authorise its own “freedom of navigation” incursion into Chinese-claimed territory—a move that Canberra has so far resisted amid deep divisions in the Australian political establishment. Sections of the ruling elite are fearful of the economic impact of a deterioration of relations with China, Australia’s biggest trading partner.

The communiqué referred to the need to resolve disputes in accordance with international law, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In July, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague ruled in favour of a US-backed Philippine challenge under UNCLOS to Chinese maritime claims. The subsequent tilt by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte toward Beijing has blunted Washington’s ability to exploit the PCA ruling to ramp up the pressure on Beijing over the South China Sea.

After discussions with Bishop, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said last Wednesday she would seek clarification from the Philippines—in other words, to add to US pressure on Duterte to fall back into line. Duterte has called for an end to joint US-Philippine military exercises and the removal of US troops from the southern island of Mindanao.

In her remarks yesterday, Bishop suggested that the proposal for joint patrols came from Indonesia. Whether that is the case or not, closer defence ties and strategic collaboration between Australia and Indonesia, along with joint operations in the South China Sea, are fully in line with US efforts to build a web of alliances and strategic partnerships as part of its “pivot to Asia” directed against China.

A report appraising the US-Australian alliance published last month by the US Studies Centre at Sydney University included among its recommendations that Canberra “midwife closer US-Indonesia ties.” Written by Richard Fontaine, a visiting fellow and prominent figure in the US foreign policy establishment, the report suggested that closer ties should be forged also with other countries, including India, to boost maritime surveillance and operations in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.

Bishop clearly had a brief—not only to strengthen Indonesian-Australian military ties but to draw Indonesia more fully into the US “pivot” against China. Echoing the reaction in Canberra and Washington to the proposal for joint Australian-Indonesian naval patrols, analyst Euan Graham from the Sydney-based Lowy Institute told the Financial Times: “This is a very significant development. It sends a message to Beijing that not all South East Asian countries are kowtowing to it over the South China Sea.”

The communiqué from last week’s talks in Bali also underscored closer Indonesian-Australian collaboration in regional forums such as ASEAN summits and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), which also took place last week in Bali. IORA was formed in 1997, comprising countries from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. It is assuming growing significance as the Indian Ocean becomes the focus of rising geo-political rivalry.

Closer Indonesian-Australian ties are underscored by the planned trip by President Widodo to Australia next week, during which he is slated to address the Australian parliament.