At least five dead as extreme drought, wildfires ravage southeastern US

Zaida Green 

Dozens of wildfires have burnt more than 156,000 acres across the southeastern US since the beginning of November. The region is suffering a now five-month-long drought, the worst it has experienced since 2007. The states hit the hardest are Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Thousands of people have been evacuated, over a thousand are sleeping in Red Cross shelters and tens of thousands of people remain in their homes without power.

At least five deaths have been caused by the fires, including the death of one on-duty firefighter in Kentucky. Four of the biggest active fires have burnt more than 10,000 acres.

One of the most devastated communities is the tourist town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where at least three people have been killed. Some 14,000 people were evacuated from the town alone, which has a permanent population of just over 4,000. Fire winds hit peak speeds of 80 miles per hour, and sustained at 30-40 miles per hour for over 10 hours on Sunday night.

“We were watching it, but we didn’t really know how bad it was until somebody said we had to leave,” Shari Deason, a Gatlinburg resident told the Knoxville News Sentinel. Deason, her boyfriend, Daniel and her 14-month old son, William, had moved to Tennessee from Mississippi and were living in a motel room. “I didn’t cry last night, and I didn’t cry this morning, but the more I see of all this, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know if we’ve got a room to go back to. I don’t know if we’ve got anything to go back to.”

Gatlinburg’s median household income is $32,500, which is $5,000 less than what it was in 2000. The high cost of land coupled with the low-wage jobs in the tourist industry had already left the future uncertain for the town’s residents before the wildfires. A number of the town’s tourist destinations, including Westgate Resorts and Black Bear Falls cabins, have been destroyed by fire. Firefighter Bobby Balding described both sides of Gatlinburg’s downtown as an “apocalypse.”

Fire departments throughout the region, insufficiently equipped and understaffed, are struggling to combat the blazes. “Most of these fire departments are volunteer,” Tennessee Fire Deputy Chief Randall Lockhart told WRCB-TV. “They have a regular job, then they go out and help fight this fire the rest of the night.”

Firefighters from as far as Alaska and Puerto Rico have been deployed to the region to assist in containment efforts. In Dade County, Georgia, at least 27 prison inmates have been deployed to clear combustible materials around evacuated residences. The governors of South Carolina and Tennessee have declared a state of emergency and mobilized the National Guard to assist in debris-clearing and dousing efforts.

FEMA has authorized federal funds to later reimburse 75 percent of firefighting and evacuation costs in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kentucky.

Fire investigators throughout the region believe that most of the fires have been caused by human activity, through either careless behavior or arson. However, the extreme weather conditions in the region are what have made them so severe.

According to the US Drought Monitor, the southeastern US has suffered moderate drought conditions since May and severe drought conditions since June, with decreased rainfall and increased transfers of water from the land surface to the atmosphere. Conditions have intensified—since the beginning of November, most of the region has suffered extreme to exceptional drought.

Exacerbating the drought is the La Niña phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, which produces drier, warmer winters in the southern US.

This year has been one of the driest in several North Carolina counties in 105 years, according to state records. The Tennessee Valley Authority has had to throttle hydroelectric power generation to conserve water. Autumn and winter crops are failing to germinate, creating a higher risk of erosion and flash flooding when the region does see precipitation.

Cattle producers have been forced to feed their livestock hay due to a dearth of pasture, or sell off the animals prematurely.

The head of forecast operations at the National Climate Prediction Center, Matthew Rosencrans, observed that the current drought was not as severe as the two-year drought in 2007, but warned, “Droughts like to beget droughts; once you are in one it is very hard to get out of one.” At one point in the 2007 drought, the city of Atlanta had less than 90 days of water supplies left. The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts high odds of below-normal precipitation in the Southeast for the next three months.

A report published earlier this year by the US Environmental Protection Agency pointed to the impact of climate change on conditions in the region. It noted that since 1970 average annual temperatures in the region have increased by about two degrees Fahrenheit.

Amazon worker attempts suicide at Seattle headquarters

Jerry White

A distraught employee leaped off the rooftop of Amazon’s Seattle, Washington headquarters in a suicide attempt Monday morning. The unidentified worker was hospitalized in critical condition after miraculously surviving the 12-story fall from the Apollo building, one of several structures at the South Lake Union campus where 20,000 employees of the online retail giant work.

Before trying to take his life, the worker sent an email seen by hundreds of co-workers and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos criticizing the way the company handled his request to transfer to a different department, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke to Bloomberg News .

The worker had recently put in the request but was placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), a status that means likely termination in three months or less for not meeting work quotas and other company demands. In the email, the worker “hinted that he might harm himself,” the person who asked not to be identified told Bloomberg.

Amazon officials would not reveal the content of the email and issued a cursory statement to the media, saying, “Our thoughts are with our colleague as he continues to recover. He’s receiving some of the best care possible and we will be there to support him throughout the recovery process.”

While many details are still unknown and conditions are relatively different, the tragedy cannot but remind one of the suicides of Chinese workers facing unbearable conditions at electronics manufacturing firm Foxconn. After an international furor following 14 deaths in 2010, the maker of Apple and Samsung phones installed netting and forced workers to sign pledges that they would not kill themselves.

Monday’s event in Seattle sheds light on the realities of the “new economy” in the United States and the working conditions at Amazon, which employs 268,000 full- and part-time employees worldwide and plans to hire another 120,000 temporary workers in the US for the holiday season.

“The suicide attempt is terrible,” Michael Subit, an attorney in Seattle who has handled unfair termination cases brought by Amazon workers, told the World Socialist Web Site. “Certainly being put in the Performance Improvement Plan frequently leads to termination in a couple of months. Sometimes a worker succeeds, but more often than not they are let go.

“I am not a medical doctor, but for someone who has legally represented workers for 25 years I know that work is so fundamental to how workers define themselves. The prospect of losing their livelihoods also means the prospect of losing themselves, and it could trigger serious emotional responses from workplace violence to attempted suicide.”

In 2015, Amazon reached $100 billion in revenue for the first time, and it currently has a market capitalization of nearly $300 billion. Company CEO Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $66 billion and is number two on the Fortune 400 list for America’s richest people. He added $20 billion to his net worth over the 12 months through September 2016.

Bezos has championed the use of technology and data collection not only for determining the buying habits of consumers but also for imposing a relentless drive to sweat more output from warehouse workers, delivery drivers and office workers.

Conditions inside of Amazon’s giant “fulfillment centers” are notorious, with “pickers” expected to pull 100 items or more per hour and walk more than 12 miles over the course of a shift to fill orders. The handheld scanners workers use to locate items in the warehouses allow managers to track precisely how long it takes to fill an order, with those failing to “make rate” subject to losing their jobs. In 2011 it was revealed that workers at an eastern Pennsylvania center were working in 100-degree heat, with ambulances waiting outside to take away those collapsing from exhaustion.

In August 2015, the New York Times did an exposé of conditions facing developers, engineers, finance specialists and other office workers who regularly labor 80-85 hours a week and face cutthroat competition to retain their jobs and positions. In its offices, “Amazon uses a self-reinforcing set of management, data and psychological tools to spur its tens of thousands of white-collar employees to do more and more.”

“The company is running a continual performance improvement algorithm on its staff,” Amy Michaels, a former Kindle marketer, told the Times.

“Even many Amazonians who have worked on Wall Street and at start-ups say the workloads at the new South Lake Union campus can be extreme: marathon conference calls on Easter Sunday and Thanksgiving, criticism from bosses for spotty Internet access on vacation, and hours spent working at home most nights or weekends.”

Office workers are subjected to monthly “business reviews” where they are criticized for not meeting “team goals.” Workers are encouraged to use the “Anytime Feedback Tool” to inform on co-workers in comments only management reads. Because team members are ranked, and those at the bottom eliminated every year, “it is in everyone’s interest to outperform everyone else,” the Times reported.

Every year there is an Organizational Level Review where managers debate the rankings of their subordinates, assigning and reassigning names to boxes in a matrix projected on the wall also known as “stack ranking” or “rank and yank.” The newspaper noted, “As the hours pass, successive rounds of managers leave the room, knowing that those who remain will determine their fates.”

In addition to these annual cullings—referred to as “Purposeful Darwinism” by one former top Amazon human resource director—the company regularly threatens to terminate workers who take time off because of illness, pregnancy, caring for elderly parents or other pressing family needs.

“A woman who had breast cancer was told that she was put on a ‘performance improvement plan’—Amazon code for ‘you’re in danger of being fired’—because ‘difficulties’ in her ‘personal life’ had interfered with fulfilling her work goals,” the Times wrote. Another female worker who suffered a miscarriage was put on a PIP, telling the Times, “I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life” only to be told her performance would be monitored “to make sure my focus stayed on my job.”

Subit said he is now working on a class action case brought by Amazon delivery drivers against the company and its subsidiaries. “This is a significant issue regarding the ‘Gig Economy,’ because the company is avoiding classifying its drivers as employees. The complaint charges that Amazon.com and Amazon Logistics are misclassifying drivers as ‘independent contractors’ so they don’t have to pay minimum wages and overtime.”

These conditions are not limited to the US. According to a BBC report, Amazon drivers in the United Kingdom are forced to speed, and some had to urinate or defecate in their trucks, in order to meet the company’s demanding delivery schedules.

Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, wields significant political power. Last May he was a guest at the White House, where he joined the Obamas in announcing Amazon’s plan to hire 25,000 veterans and military spouses. A vocal critic of Donald Trump, Bezos quickly congratulated the Republican after the election, tweeting, “I for one give him my most open mind and wish him great success in his service to the country.”

Last week, a US District judge in Cincinnati ordered a halt to a strike by pilots for Air Transport Services Groups, which hauls packages for Amazon.com. Two hundred and fifty pilots struck November 22 to protest manpower shortages.

Granting ABX Air’s request for a temporary restraining order during Amazon’s peak sales period—from Thanksgiving through so-called Cyber Monday—US District Judge Timothy Black declared, “The public expects that purchases and shipments will be delivered in a timely fashion. Absent an injunction, ABX, its customers and the public will suffer immediate, irreparable harm. Imagine Christmas without Amazon!”

Trump forms a Wall Street government to attack health care and workers’ rights

Patrick Martin

Major US newspapers reported Tuesday night that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Steven T. Mnuchin, a former Wall Street banker who served as Trump’s campaign finance chairman, to be the next secretary of the treasury, the most influential cabinet position in terms of economic policy and the jobs and living standards of working people. The appointment is to be formally unveiled on Wednesday.

This follows Trump’s appointment of Representative Tom Price of Georgia, a leading right-wing Republican and opponent of Medicare, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. This department oversees Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which account for the vast bulk of domestic social spending by the federal government.

There were also press reports that the much-rumored nomination of billionaire speculator Wilbur Ross as secretary of commerce would be announced shortly, and that Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a cabinet member in the George W. Bush administration, would be named as secretary of transportation.

Trump has already named another billionaire, school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos, wife of Amway heir Dick DeVos, to be secretary of education.

With these appointments, the general outlines of the new administration’s domestic policies are clear. Far from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would “drain the swamp,” the corrupt nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever.

In many ways, the Trump administration represents the fusion between the two, with prominent members of the financial aristocracy, including three of the 500 or so US billionaires—Trump, Ross and DeVos—taking leading positions in the nation’s capital.

Every non-billionaire cabinet appointment announced by Trump is a millionaire or multi-millionaire. These include Senator Jeff Sessions, Representative Tom Price, Elaine Chao and, of course, Mnuchin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs worth upwards of $50 million.

Mnuchin is not the first Goldman Sachs veteran—and campaign insider—that Trump has named to a top position. Stephen Bannon, the campaign CEO and former head of the ultra-right Breitbart News, may be said to represent the fascist wing of Wall Street, while Mnuchin represents its more conventional establishment wing.

In selecting a Goldman Sachs alumnus to head the Treasury, Trump is following the example of George W. Bush, who appointed Henry Paulson, and Bill Clinton, who appointed Robert Rubin. Mnuchin’s father and brother had long careers at the firm, but Mnuchin left soon after becoming a partner, first working for billionaire George Soros (a prominent Clinton backer in 2016), then going west to make millions as a Hollywood financier, backing some highly profitable action films, including the X-Men franchise, as well as Avatar, Gravity and the execrable American Sniper .

One of his more controversial financial operations on the West Coast involved the takeover of the failed California mortgage lender IndyMac in 2009. He headed a group that bought IndyMac from government receivers, renamed it OneWest, pushed ruthlessly to foreclose on borrowers, and so improved the balance sheet that he sold the company to CIT in 2014 for more than twice the purchase price. Fair housing groups filed discrimination charges against OneWest for refusing to lend or refinance in certain minority areas.

When Mnuchin agreed last summer to head Trump’s fund-raising operation, he was widely criticized in Hollywood and Wall Street circles, which largely backed Democrat Hillary Clinton. Mnuchin himself had donated mainly to Democratic candidates, but knew Trump from previous business dealings. As he told Bloomberg Businessweek at the time, “Nobody’s going to be, like, ‘Well, why did he do this?’ if I end up in the administration.”

It is a virtual certainty that a Mnuchin Treasury will scrap the pretense of regulating Wall Street that was mounted by the Obama administration and the Democrats through passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking bill. The only institutional change accomplished by Dodd-Frank, and a minor one, the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is likely to be reversed.

While the Trump administration gives Wall Street free rein, it will deepen the attacks on health care for working people that have already reached a new level under the Obama administration. This is the significance of the nomination of Representative Price as secretary of health and human services.

As one headline put it, “Gutting Obamacare might be the least controversial part of Tom Price’s health care agenda.” A former orthopedic surgeon and six-term House member from the same wealthy Atlanta suburbs that elected Newt Gingrich, Price favors a completely market-based health care system, in which no one would be “entitled” to health care unless he or she had the money to pay for it, perhaps with the aid of a totally inadequate government voucher.

Like Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, a close ally whom he succeeded as chairman of the House Budget Committee, Price seeks to take advantage of the unpopular and reactionary character of Obamacare to launch a frontal assault on all federal health care programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, which underwrite health care for 130 million people, including the elderly, the poor and those suffering from the worst illnesses.

Under a program that the Republican-controlled Congress would likely enact, Trump would sign into law, and Price would administer, Medicaid would be ended as a federal entitlement program and transformed into separate block grants for each of the 50 states, which would be entirely free to reduce benefits and standards. Medicare would become a voucher program, similar to the Health Savings Accounts offered by many employers, with the federal contribution to purchase private insurance limited to a maximum of $3,000, leaving the bulk of the cost of health care to fall on the elderly.

Planned Parenthood, women’s rights groups, and gay and lesbian groups all denounced the Price nomination as a signal of the reactionary direction of the Trump administration, warning that it proposed to go back decades, or even half a century, in terms of family planning, abortion rights and other social issues.

Price is an adamant opponent of abortion under all circumstances. He introduced legislation to defund Planned Parenthood programs and as well as a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. According to one report, he was so hostile to the idea that some women require financial assistance to pay for birth control that he challenged a reporter to “bring me one woman” who struggled to afford contraception.

He will be in charge of a department that sets policy on issues such as who can receive survivor’s benefits under Social Security, whether drugs like Plan B can be sold over the counter, and whether health insurance policies should cover birth control and abortion services.

These cabinet selections demonstrate the absurdity of all attempts by the Democrats to paint Trump in positive colors. This is to be a government of reaction all down the line, from extreme militarism in foreign policy to vicious attacks on jobs, living standards, social programs and democratic rights at home.

The two-faced character of the Democratic response to Trump was typified in comments by incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. He denounced the naming of Representative Price to run Health and Human Services, saying Price “has proven to be far out of the mainstream of what Americans want when it comes to Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood.” At the same time, he hailed the selection of Elaine Chao to run the Department of Transportation, praising her “long history of service to our country.”

Schumer added, “Senate Democrats have said that if President-elect Trump is serious about a major infrastructure bill, backed by real dollars and not just tax credits and without cutting other programs like health care and education, that we are ready to work with his administration.” Actually, the Democrats are ready to work with Trump under all circumstances, and if they cannot find anything “positive” to support, they will invent something.

How I Produce Fake News for Russia

David Swanson

Apparently I’ve written “fake news” on behalf of Russia without ever receiving a dime from Russia or realizing what I was doing. It took the intrepid reporting of the Washington Post to alert me to what I have been engaged in. My “fake news” has been published in at least 18 Russian propaganda outlets included on the Washington Post-endorsed Enemies List.

They are ahtribune.com, off-guardian.org, opednews.com, antiwar.com, beforeitsnews.com, blackagendareport.com, ronpaulinstitute.org, rt.com (that one is actually Russian), consortiumnews.com, countercurrents.org, counterpunch.org, globalresearch.ca, truth-out.org, truthdig.com, informationclearinghouse.info, washingtonsblog.com, mintpressnews.com, and nakedcapitalism.com.

Since everything I write is also at davidswanson.org it’s a safe bet that that’s a Russian propaganda site as well, even though I hadn’t realized it.

In all seriousness, there is very likely Russian propaganda to be found somewhere, since Russia tried to hire me a-year-and-a-half ago to produce it. I turned them down and blogged about their offer. Quite likely not everyone turns them down. But even voter fraud or intelligent Washington Post articles can be found eventually if you look hard enough.

I have also turned down all invitations to conferences in Russia, due to colleagues’ fears of false accusations that it turns out arrive anyway. I have also repeatedly gone on Russian media and denounced actions by the Russian government, due to the fact that that was what I thought of those actions.

And yet somehow I’ve produced a veritable flood of Russian propaganda, most of it not even mentioning Russia at all. I’ve given some thought to how this has happened. Here’s my best explanation:

I sit in front of my computer. I think about the world. I move my fingers in such a manner that words appear on the screen.

Does that help explain it?

Here, I’ll demonstrate:

It is my belief that the president of the United States is Barack Obama. If this is true, then blaming a pipeline in North Dakota on Donald Trump is a chronological error. Admitting that bizarre error doesn’t make Trump one iota less racist or sexist or authoritarian, since it’s a statement about a completely different topic.

It is my belief that any thaw in the new U.S.-Russian Cold War created by the Obama regime will be a good thing, above all because a nuclear holocaust would be horrible. Agreeing with this does not guarantee that Trump will bring it about. Nor does it suggest that Vladimir Putin is a saintly humanitarian. Nor does it constitute a claim that all U.S. presidents should be white males. This is because it is a comment about a completely different topic from those ones.

It is my belief that dozens of things went wrong with the recent U.S. election, none of which eliminate any of the others. Here is a partial list.

The Democratic Party stacked the primary against its politically and morally superior candidate — in ways that we always knew, ways that we know now, and in other ways that many of us suspect.

The propaganda-free U.S. Corporate Media of Freedom stacked the Republican primary against anyone other than Donald Trump by giving Trump billions of dollars worth of free air time.

The Republican governments of several swing states stripped 7 million disproportionately racial minority voters from the voting rolls.

Donald Trump encouraged voter intimidation.

States provided too few voting machines in racial minority precincts.

Prisoners and felons were stripped of their voting rights.

Residents of U.S. territories were not allowed to vote.

The popular vote winner was denied the win.

Congress was determined largely by gerrymandering.

Winner-take-all systems without ranked-choice voting blocked options.

Votes were counted on unverifiable machines that produced the usual suspicious red shift away from exit-poll results.

The media and the presidential debates “commission” shut out candidates, views, and useful questions.

There was no serious reporting on what the candidates would do if elected about climate change, military spending, wars, or poverty.

Serious scandals were passed over in favor of obsessing with lesser scandals.

Among serious scandals that were passed over I would include near the top of the list: Hillary Clinton took money into her family foundation from foreign governments and weapons makers, and then supported weapons sales from those companies to those governments, resulting in massive death and destruction.

Among serious scandals that were passed over I would also include near the top of the list: Donald Trump encouraged racism, bigotry, hatred, and violence, and threatened to “kill families” in wars aimed at “stealing oil.”

Among the lesser scandals that ate up air time, I would put near the bottom: Without any proof, Trump was accused of being an agent of Russia, and Russia was accused of interfering in the election.

Tokenism was, once again, promoted as meaningful.

I believe that every population that has U.S. troops on or within its borders should have a vote in the U.S. presidential election. When Russians or anyone else in the world are pleased by the outcome, I take that to be a good thing. My taking that to be a good thing does not erase any negative aspects of that outcome, because one thing is not identical to lots of other things.

Why did people vote for Trump? For the most part they did not. He got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, who herself got fewer votes than either of the two candidates in recent U.S. presidential elections. But some voted for Trump for the same reason they backed Bernie Sanders: they wanted to reject the establishment, no matter what form that rejection took. Some voted for him because they bought into his racism, bigotry, and scapegoating. Some simply couldn’t stomach any more Clintons. Some wouldn’t vote for a woman. Some mistakenly believed that Trump would help them. But these groups overlap, as do these reasons.

Why is it acceptable in the United States to make fun of poor white people, to mock their speech and their dentistry, to condemn them in ways that are simply forbidden with other groups? Why is there no Trailer Park Studies Department? Why does the very idea sound ludicrous, while ethnic studies departments of all non-white varieties are very serious institutions? One justification for this is that poor rural white people are racist, and that it is perfectly fine to be cruel to racists. That is simply false and horribly misguided; it is not simply fine to be cruel to anyone. And that fact does not mean that racism and sexism are acceptable, because that would be a completely different claim.

A vicious cycle can be produced in which people who perceive anti-racist and anti-sexist campaigns as directed against them consequently embrace their racism more strongly, resulting in more opposition to their racism and to them. This can be compounded by the usual delusions to the effect that government assistance hurts people, while tax cuts for billionaires help people. This can be reinforced by systems of government assistance that do not benefit everyone, as would a basic income, or single-payer healthcare, or free college, or free job training, or guaranteed vacation, or sustainable infrastructure, instead of systems designed merely to aid and stigmatize the very poorest.

Recognizing the blind spots of identity politics or the madness of the new McCarthyism do not mean that election results are always all to be blamed on liberals, since that conclusion would require erasing numerous other problems listed above.

Imagining that elections carry as much or more importance than building a nonviolent movement for revolutionary change is a deep mistake made by most people on earth, including in Russia.

‘The Coral Was Cooked’: 2016 Deadliest Year On Record For Great Barrier Reef

 Nika Knight

The Great Barrier Reef suffered through the worst coral die-off in recorded history this year, scientists found, with unusually warm ocean water and record-setting bleaching events killing a stunning 90 percent of all coral in the worst-hit area.

Those were the conclusions of a study published Monday by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

“One of the worst-hit areas is around Lizard Island in Far North Queensland, where around 90 percent of the coral has died,” reports the BBC. “Dr. Andrew Hoey, whose team charted the area, said the impact was far worse than feared after an initial survey in April.”

“It’s devastating to get in the water somewhere you’ve been coming for almost 20 years, and it’s just knocked it on its head,” Hoey told the BBC. “There’s very little coral cover left there. It was dominated by the acropora—the branching corals—but we lost most of them.”

The BBC reports on what caused the mass coral death:

In February, March and April, sea surface temperatures across the Great Barrier Reef were the hottest on record, at least 1ºC higher than the monthly average.

“Some of the initial mortality was down to heat stress,” said study leader Professor Terry Hughes.

“The coral was cooked.”

Far more has been lost through gradual starvation, after the coral expelled the colourful algae zooxanthella, which turns sunlight into food.

This is what leads to the white, skeletal appearance of the coral, which is left without its main source of energy.

The study also found that the coral which survived the bleaching have now come under greater threat from predators such as snails and crown of thorns starfish.

However, researchers also discovered that corals in the southern areas of the Great Barrier Reef fared better, with the central region of the reef showing only six percent of corals dying off.

“The good news is the southern two-thirds of the Reef has escaped with minor damage. On average, six percent of bleached corals died in the central region in 2016, and only one percent in the south. The corals have now regained their vibrant color, and these reefs are in good condition,” said Professor Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre, who took part in the research.

For the dead coral in the Great Barrier Reef’s northern region, though, recovery seems a dubious prospect, as climate change appears to only be accelerating.

“The trajectory is not good,” Dr. Anne Hogget, a scientist who works at a research station on Lizard Island, told the BBC. “We keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and this happened absolutely because of that.”

What Has Neoliberal Capitalism Ever Done For India?

Colin Todhunter

When India ushered in neoliberal economic reforms during the early 1990s, the promise was job creation, inclusive growth and prosperity for all. But, some 25 years later, what we have seen is almost 400,000 farmers committing suicide, one of the greatest levels of inequality out of all ‘emerging’ economies, a trend towards jobless ‘growth’, an accelerating and massive illegal outflow of wealth by the rich, and, as if that were not enough, now we have the sequestration of ordinary people’s money under the euphemism ‘demonetization’.

Data from the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index indicates that 20 years ago, India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan), but now it has the second worst position, ahead only of Pakistan. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India.

The neoliberal model of development has moreover arguably seen the poverty alleviation rate in India remain around the same as it was back  pre-independent India, while the ratio between the top and bottom ten percent of the population has doubled since 1991. According to the Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development, this doubling of income inequality has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies.

Neoliberalism in India has been underpinned by unconstitutional land takeovers and population displacement, with the state using military and para-military forces in the process alongside the suspension of various democratic rights and the wide scale abuse of human rights. For supporters of cronyism, cartels and the monopolization of markets by private interests, which to all extents and purposes is what neoliberalism thrives on in India (and elsewhere), there have been untold opportunities for well-placed individuals to make an under-the-table fast buck from various infrastructure projects and privatisation sell offs.

But PM Modi interprets all of this in a different way, which comes as little surprise, given harsh the reality – not the media misrepresentations – of what he ‘achieved’ in Gujarat as Chief Minister. He recently stated that India is now one of the most business-friendly countries in the world. The code for being ‘business friendly’ translates into a willingness by the government to facilitate much of what is outlined above, while reducing taxes and tariffs and allowing the acquisition of public assets via privatisation as well as instituting policy frameworks that work to the advantage of foreign corporations.

In agriculture, for instance, we are seeing the displacement of a pre-existing productive system. Small and medium-sized enterprises are obliged to produce for global entities, state enterprises are being run down or (semi)privatised and independent agricultural producers are impoverished. The tragedy is that model that is intended to supplant the existing one is based on Cargill/Monsanto’s environment- and livelihood-destroying business models for corporate profit which have become synonymous with the ‘national interest’.

Unfortunately, people like Aruna Rodrigues and Vandana Shiva and certain NGOs who criticise this and offer credible alternatives are regarded by elements of the state as either working against the interest of the nation or colluding with ‘foreign interests’ – when the reality is that the state is doing exactly that!

Seeds, mountains, water, forests and biodiversity are being sold off. The farmers and tribals are being sold out. And the more that gets sold off, the more who get sold out, the greater the amount of cash and credit goes into corporate accounts and the easier it is for the misinformed to swallow the lie of ‘growth’. As the state abdicates it redistributive role and facilitates the World Bank’s agenda, India is suddenly labelled capitalism’s ‘economic miracle’.

The opening up of India to foreign capital is supported by rhetoric about increasing efficiency, job creation and boosting growth. According to the neoliberal ideologues, foreign investment is good for jobs and good for business. But just how many jobs actually get created is another matter, as is the amount of jobs destroyed in the first place to pave the way for the entry of foreign corporations.

For example, Cargill sets up a food or seed processing plant that employs a few hundred people, but what about the agricultural jobs that were deliberately eradicated in the first place or the village-level processors who were cynically put out of business so Cargill could gain a financially lucrative foothold? Hundreds of millions of livelihoods are in danger as foreign corporations and capital smells massive profits on the back of the World Bank-backed commercialisation of rural India

India’s much-lauded economic growth in recent times has been built on consumer and corporate debt. Corporate subsidies and (real estate) investment bubbles have given the impression of economic prosperity. And it is merely an ‘impression’. For instance, consider the amount of tax breaks and handouts given to the corporate sector and what little it has achieved in return in terms of jobs or exports. And consider too the massive amount of corporate debt written off by state-owned banks, while farmers kill themselves en masse because of debt, partly due to Monsanto’s capture of the cotton sector and partly because of economic liberalisation and increasing exposure to rigged markets courtesy of the WTO.

And so to the latest heist – ‘demonetization’. According to Binu Mathew, banks in India were facing a liquidity crisis and parts of the debt-inflated economy were in danger of imploding. In this respect, Modi’s outlawing of almost 90% of India’s cash notes overnight is basically a bail-out/windfall for the corporate elites/real estate speculators.

This tactic neatly removed the danger of creating inflation by merely printing money. You can forget about Western-style bank bailouts and subsequent ‘austerity’, the Indian government decided to sequester the public’s money directly in an attempt to keep the neoliberal crony capitalism ponzi scheme on course.

As Mathew says:
“The banks will lend out the money ‘confiscated from you’. Who will benefit? Not the poor farmers who are committing by their thousands every month. Not the children who are dying of malnutrition in several parts of the country. Not the small manufacturers who are struggling to keep up their businesses? Who will benefit? The crony capitalists that props up the Modi regime. This demonetization is the biggest crony capitalist neo-liberalist coup that has ever taken place in India. Never doubt it, India will have to pay a heavy price for it.”

As in the US, the undermining of a productive economic base – in India’s case, a failure to boost industrial manufacturing performance and jobs and pumping up the economy with credit, while at the same time dismantling its greatest asset – the agrarian base – can only lead to a dead-end. Courtesy of its compliant politicians, India has hitched a ride aboard the wholly corrupt neoliberal bandwagon to nowhere.

Warning Of Global Havoc As Possible Arctic ‘Tipping Points’ Pile Up

 Jon Queally

What is happening in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic.

In an ominous (though not hopeless) report published Friday, researchers warn that as many as 19 various ‘tipping points’ could be triggered by the increasingly warm temperatures in the world’s northern polar region.

The Arctic Resilience Report, produced under the auspices of the Arctic Council by an international team of researchers from multiple institutes and universities, is the first comprehensive assessment of its kind, looking at the unique region from a combined social and ecological perspective. By surveying and synthesizing a large body of previous research on how both communities and natural systems are responding to global warming, the report offers a worrying conclusion.

“The warning signals are getting louder,” Marcus Carson of the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the lead authors of the new report, told the Guardian. “[These developments] also make the potential for triggering [tipping points] and feedback loops much larger.”

The signs of dramatic change, the researchers found, are everywhere in the Arctic. “Temperatures nearly 20°C above the seasonal average are being registered over the Arctic Ocean,” the report states. “Summer sea-ice cover has hit new record lows several times in the past decade. Infrastructure built on permafrost is sinking as the ground thaws underneath.”

The fear of tipping points—which occur when natural systems hit limits that force dramatic, cascading, and often irreversible changes—have long been held among scientists studying the dynamic impacts of human-caused global warming and climate change. Referred to as “regime shifts” in the report, the concept is the same.

“One of the study’s most important findings is that not only are regime shifts occurring, but there is a real risk that one regime shift could trigger others, or simultaneous regime shifts could have unexpected effects,” said Johan L. Kuylenstierna, executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, which contributed to the study.

Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and co-chair of the project, added: “How regime shifts interact with one another is poorly understood. If multiple regime shifts reinforce each other, the results could be potentially catastrophic. The variety of effects that we could see means that Arctic people and policies must prepare for surprise. We also expect that some of those changes will destabilize the regional and global climate, with potentially major impacts.”

What the scientists observed in their research, according to a summary of the report, were “large, persistent, often abrupt changes in the Arctic’s natural systems” which they came to classify as regime shifts. The report explains how “these shifts are having large impacts on wildlife, the stability of the climate, and on Arctic peoples’ sense of place and well-being.” The 19 specific shifts identified take many forms, including:

• Loss of Arctic sea ice
• Collapse of the Greenland ice sheet
• Ocean hypoxia
• Collapse of fisheries
• Transformation of landscapes: from bogs to peatlands; from tundra to boreal forest or steppe
• Shifting river channels.

Citing these and other worrying trends, the report, like so many others coming from the scientific community in recent years, urges immediate action by both regional interests and the world community. “The potential effects of Arctic regime shifts [or tipping points] on the rest of the world are substantial, yet poorly understood,” the report states. “Human-driven climate change greatly increases the risk of Arctic regime shifts, so reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to reducing this risk.”

With a focus on resiliency and community-led response, the report says that reducing the risks of further destruction and destabilization in the Arctic, especially given the region’s crucial role in regulating the planet’s climate, depends on global action driven by local concerns and knowledge.

The hope, according to the scientists involved, is that efforts to stem the damage in the Arctic can also provide guidance for the rest of the world.

“How we manage and respond to the rapid changes in the Arctic,” the researchers suggest, “could be a blueprint for how we meet future climate challenges.”

Deepening social crisis underpins South Korean protests

Ben McGrath

Over the past five weeks, millions of people have poured onto the streets in South Korea to demand the resignation or impeachment of President Park Geun-hye over a scandal involving her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil. Choi, with the aid of presidential secretaries, has been accused of creating a slush fund for Park, as well as taking part in deciding policy matters despite holding no governmental office.

The crisis reflects deep divisions within the political establishment, including Park’s ruling Saenuri Party, opened up by the worsening global economic slump and rising geopolitical tensions. For those taking part in the protests, however, the hostility to Park is being fuelled not only by the various allegations of corruption but more broadly by her administration’s sustained attack on working and living conditions.

The crisis of global capitalism has gripped South Korea no less than other countries. Last quarter, the economy grew by just 0.7 percent. The Bank of Korea is predicting that growth this year will reach only 2.7 percent and 2.8 percent next year. Exports fell to 3.2 percent in October from a year ago, generating worry in business circles. Exports to China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, have declined for 16 consecutive months. These trends are a far cry from the economic expansion South Korea once enjoyed as one of the supposed Asian “miracles” with annual growth rates of over 10 percent.

That high growth was extracted through the extreme exploitation of workers under the former military dictatorship. As workers fought back, the political establishment turned to so-called democrats like Kim Dae-jung to further their agenda. Since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998 both the democrats and conservatives have privatized national industries, leading to massive job losses, and casualized the labor force, turning positions into low-paid, part-time jobs.

Big business has been demanding deeper inroads into the social position of the working class, particularly greater “labor flexibility”—that is, the ability to fire workers and slash wages without restriction. However, the Park administration has been unable to force through her plans for this so-called labor reform.

At a recent event hosted by the Korea Economic Research Institute and the Korea Economic Association, participants attacked workers for “low productivity” and resort to strike action. “In the South Korean labor market, which is characterized by the lack of ease of employment and dismissal, some militant labor unions are engaged in irrational labor movements these days to affect the majority of workers,” said Jo Jang-ok, head of the Korea Economic Association.

For the working class, though, conditions are becoming unbearable. In the struggling shipbuilding industries, massive job cuts are underway. At the three largest manufacturers, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Samsung Heavy Industries, 20,000 jobs have already been slashed as the companies undergo restructuring. An additional 20,000 workers are expected to be sacked by the end of the year. At the same time, the government is planning to bail out the companies to the tune of $9.6 billion through 2020.

While the so-called militant unions in the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) have staged some token strikes, in reality they have accepted the job cuts, with unions at smaller shipbuilders being in “harmony mood” with the companies.

Last month the unemployment rate reached 3.4 percent, according to Statistics Korea. For young people, the rate was 8.5 percent. However, the statistics do not take into account those who have stopped looking for work or are underemployed in part-time positions. The total real unemployment rate is likely around 10 percent, while according to Lee Jun-hyup of the Hyundai Research Institute, one in three young people aged 15-29 can be considered unemployed.

South Korean students spend long hours studying to enter top universities in the hope of finding employment after graduating, only to face a dwindling job market. There are 653,000 people currently preparing for jobs, the highest number ever. They are not counted among the unemployed, but are working toward passing exams or gaining additional licenses and certificates to improve their chances of finding a job.

Many students have expressed anger toward Park and Choi, who used her connections with the government to secure placement for her daughter at the Ewha Womans University, one of the country’s top institutions. For working class students, entry to these elite schools is already barred by high tuition fees and the cost of after-school academies and tutors necessary to pass the entry exams.

The top-ranking Seoul National University (SNU) has witnessed a sharp decline in the number of students accepted from regular high schools, that is, those without special or elite status. The proportion of SNU students from these schools fell from 56.43 percent in 2010 to 42.5 percent in 2014.

In 2012, only 1 percent of students from the lowest-income bracket were enrolled at elite schools like SNU, Yonsei University, Korea University and Ewha Womans University. The average for all four-year universities was 3.2 percent.

For working families, education is just one major cost driving up household debt, which reached an historic high of $1.1 trillion at the end of June, and is still growing. Housing under South Korea’s rental system demands people take out large loans nearly equal to the value of an apartment. While the government plans to implement a debt service ratio indicator to protect banks, as interest rates are likely to rise, households will be left on their own.

People are also increasingly cancelling installment savings accounts before reaching maturity as they can no longer afford to put money aside for the future. In September, cancellation of these savings accounts at six major banks stood at 45.2 percent, up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year.

“Installment savings accounts are the last bastion of protection and people tend to hold them until the last minute,” a bank official told the Korea Times. “The rise in the early cancellation rate can be seen as an indication that households are facing more difficult financial situations.”

Poverty is widespread, particularly among the elderly. In February, the Korea Herald cited a Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs report which found that poverty rates were rising for households with breadwinners aged 34 or under, and with breadwinners over 65. For the elderly, the rate increased from 63.1 percent in 2006 to 63.8 percent in 2014—the highest of any advanced industrialised country.

None of the establishment parties has any answers to this deep social and economic crisis. The main opposition Minjoo (Democratic) Party of Korea, the People’s Party, and the Justice Party are all directing the public’s anger toward Park in the hopes of boosting their chances in next year’s presidential election. This includes their supporters in labor unions like the KCTU. Their denunciations of Park are to obscure the fact that the current conditions in South Korea are not the product of a single corrupt leader, but of the bankrupt capitalist system.

Colombian government signs revised peace deal with FARC

Andrea Lobo 

The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas celebrated a new peace accord last Thursday in a sober ceremony in the capital, Bogotá. President Juan Manuel Santos’s promises that the culmination of the five-year peace talks will bring the country “progress, wellbeing, peace and concord” have already been discarded as frauds by a majority of the population.

On October 2, a previous and only slightly different peace agreement was narrowly voted down in a national referendum, with 19 percent of the total electorate voting against it and 63 percent abstaining.

The Colombian far right, dominated by ex-president Álvaro Uribe, has been strengthened as the most organized and intransigent opposition to the accord, saying that the new document remained virtually unchanged. “What will we tell the 3,5000 criminal organizations?” he asked, calling the agreement, “the worst example for the future of the country.”

Throughout his decades in positions of power, Uribe has defended the interests of the landed aristocracy that prefers to finish off or imprison the decimated FARC guerrillas, who today reportedly number 6,000, only a third of their strength under Uribe.

In spite of the continued opposition by the official “no” campaign, the FARC and the Santos administration decided to go ahead with the ceremony, hoping that “the process of consultation will be approved through the course of the next week” in Congress, where the ruling coalition holds a majority of the seats.

Recognizing that a popular vote could again reject the document, president Santos, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the peace talks, declared: “The most convenient and legitimate way to consult the new accord is through Congress. It is there that all laws of the Republic ought to be discussed and approved.”

Four days after the new agreement was initially reached two weeks ago, two FARC fighters were killed and one gave himself up to government armed forces, leading the government’s top negotiator, Humberto De la Calle, to warn that the ceasefire, “is indeed fragile!”

In spite of these expressions of concern and with a year left before the 2018 elections, the Liberal Party and the others in the ruling coalition are chiefly seeking to provide a political cover for the much more unpopular measures they will implement to deal with the country’s current budget crisis and economic stagnation. Since their beginning in 2012, the peace talks have been used as a smokescreen.

On the day before the ceremony, the Ministry of Economy presented the first stage of a regressive tax reform urged by the IMF and Wall Street credit agencies, increasing the added-value tax from 16 percent to 18 percent. Economy Minister Mauricio Cáceres reported on Thursday that the IMF was highly pleased with the proposal, and that it had demanded Congress approve it by the end of the year.

These short-term measures to deal with the current budget deficit will further undermine the country’s production and its limited reductions in poverty. Over the last decade, the oil reserves were severely depleted, allowing the country to grow at an average annual rate of over 5 percent. This, however, led to an increased dependence on oil exports and shrank the manufacturing sector and labor productivity, according to a 2015 study by the Levy Economics Institute, “Finance, Foreign Direct Investment, and Dutch Disease: The Case of Colombia.”

While this growth allowed for minimal assistance programs, a small financial elite in the country got obscenely rich, turning away investments from the real economy further.

The drop in oil and other commodity prices has contributed to a 35 percent drop in export earnings since June 2015, along with the widespread deterioration in agriculture and manufacturing caused by oil exploitation and the associated free trade agreements signed by Santos with the US, the European Union and others. Now, the government is struggling to deal with massive trade and accounts deficits and a crisis in public finances.

International heads of state and other top figures, who had been enthusiastic about the peace accord before the “no” vote, have supported the new agreement with sobriety and some reluctance. One of the main backers, US Secretary of State John Kerry, pledged support, while declaring, “After 52 years of war, no peace agreement can satisfy everyone in every detail.”

The London-based Financial Times expressed great skepticism about the new accord, predicting that Uribe’s party will gain strength and “have a strong footing from which to challenge for the presidency in the 2018 election.”

“Many Colombians feel hatred towards the FARC, viewing them as drug traffickers and human rights abusers,” adds the FT. Given the surprising referendum result, which demonstrated how useless the peace deal is to give legitimacy to the current administration’s attacks against social conditions, the dominant imperialist and national bourgeois forces in Colombia are pivoting towards Uribe’s bonapartist means of imposing the costs of public debt and economic stagnation onto Colombian workers and peasants.

Donald Trump’s election and the greater challenges posed to the Colombian economy by his proposed nationalist economic policies, along with likely higher interest rates, are also feeding into a greater support among the bourgeoisie for Uribe’s ultra-reactionary program, which includes massive tax cuts for the corporations and the rich, widespread social cuts and an escalation of the war against peasants to take their lands.

The anti-deal Uribistas are hopeful for a sharp change after Trump’s election. The Democratic Center senator, José Obdulio Gaviria, said that Marco Rubio, who is allegedly close to Uribe, will try to influence Trump in what he called “the new scenery of the anti-terrorist alliance.” Gaviria then hinted at the potential extradition of 50 FARC “narco-terrorists” with pending arrest warrants.

After Trump’s election, Álvaro Uribe was quite direct and tweeted, “Congratulations to President Trump; Colombia’s narco-terrorism and Venezuela’s tyranny are the greatest enemies of our democracy.”

During his speech on Thursday, the leader of the FARC, Rodrigo Londoño, also known as Timochenko, stated: “We welcome Donald Trump’s election as the new US president, and we hope that his administration can play a leading role in favor of world and continental peace.” So far, this is the most blatant demonstration of the political bankruptcy, subservience to imperialism and right-wing character of the FARC and the future, nominally left party it proposes to found.

The current situation of economic crisis and a strengthened far-right was prepared by all the previous governments together with the current administration, which sold out Colombia’s resources, attacked jobs and wages, exempted corporations from taxes and gave the military and paramilitary units a free rein to commit atrocities across the country. The widespread unpopularity of the current government has been severely increased due to their efforts to prop up the discredited leadership of the FARC as a left cover for the government.

Ultimately, both leading political factions of the Colombian ruling class, the center-right Santistas and the far-right Uribistas, agree on social austerity and cutting import tariffs and taxes for transnational corporations and banks that exploit the country’s resources and cheap labor. They also agree that if an incorporation of the guerrillas into official politics happens, the state will still move ahead with its plans to militarize the country and the region and to continue undermining democratic rights.

One of the more significant points of the new agreement will be its separation from the Constitution, giving flexibility for its implementation. Under a “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” the accord also gives impunity to military and business elements that were involved in the conflict and leaves the option for FARC members accused of crimes to avoid sentences by making amends to the victims.

In terms of political participation, it still gives the FARC leaders and even those accused of war crimes party financing and a chance to run for public office, but it will eliminate the 10 automatic legislative seats that the previous agreement granted them. It also sets a six-month period for disarmament.

In terms of land grants, the accord reasserts the “current authority” and “constitutional rights” that protect the private property of the rural landowners. The agreement promises to use 3 million hectares for redistribution among landless peasants and war victims, under the cloak of “investments in the countryside with an entrepreneurial vision.”

Among the larger changes made in the revised, 310-page document is a further elaboration of the process of listing assets of the guerrillas that will be used for reparations, along with a detailed description of the “agricultural colonies” which are to serve as special prisons for the FARC members found guilty of crimes.