Condemned to Repeat It History as Rerun

Jason Hirthler

European essayist George Santayana famously wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is repeated, as it just has been, ad nauseum as various persons (like yours truly) attempt to claim the mantle of wisdom. But the past is being deliberately repeated by those that do remember. By those that engineered the history we forget. Here are several ways in which history is repeating itself–on purpose–led by the capitalist deep state, their political servants, and the media monopolies that front its agenda to the general population.

Capitalism Prefers Fascism to Communism

People on social media red with ire rage about the double-standard applied to both the left anti-fascist protestors, the antifa anarchists, and the white supremacist marchers. Numberless voices rant about how the police protected the free speech of the white supremacists, but actively cracked down on anti-fascists. Now the government is moving to label antifa groups as domestic terrorists while doing nothing to apply the same tag to violent fascist racists. Some fairly argue that antifa are not the same as the majority of anti-fascist protesters. The former are violent, the latter peaceful. But the violence of antifa will be used to brand the entire progressive left with the stigma of domestic terrorism. The right will largely be left alone.

But this is nothing new. Capitalists and fascists have always had a symbiotic relationship. Before World War Two, historians blame insufficiently strident capitalist politicians like UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for “appeasing” the Nazis, as though they miscalculated the threat of fascism. What is forgotten is that they appeased the Nazis on purpose. Western capitalists rebuilt the German military and funded the rise of National Socialism after World War One. After all, the real threat to capitalism is communism, not fascism. As prolific and fearless author Michael Parenti writes, “fascism is nothing more than a final solution to the class struggle, the totalistic submergence and exploitation of democratic forces for the benefit and profit of higher financial circles.”

The capitalist West hoped that the Nazis would attack Russia and destroy the burgeoning communist revolution there. Fourteen nations from the west had attacked Russia in 1918-1920 in an attempt to foreclose communism, but they failed. The effort was revived with the Nazis as the military vanguard. Only when the Nazis attacked western capitalist interests, did the west intervene against Germany. After the war, many fascists that had served in military, intelligence, and civilian capacities were left in place. Operation Gladio was designed to leave NATO forces behind in liberated countries to ensure these countries, like Italy, Spain, and Greece, did not ‘go communist’ but subjected themselves to semi-fascist proto-democratic forms of social organization. Gladio generated a “strategy of tension” with campaigns of false flag terrorism designed to discredit the communists and drive the population into the arms of proto-fascist democratic forces.

We Were Weaned on Fake News

For more than a year we’ve been told we now live in a new era—an era of fake news. The claim has been trotted out again and again, in places high and low. It is largely used by neoliberals to defame Donald Trump. But fake news is what you grew up on. Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission brainwashed a somewhat pacifist population into drooling contempt for the “Hun”. Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP brethren spoke in glowing terms of the ability of western media concerns to condition the American mind. The CIA has long infiltrated western media. A journalist wrote a book about the compromise of European journalists. MI5 has been long said to be running journalists.

Here American media rooms generally need not be ‘infiltrated’, not that this hasn’t been relentlessly done (then buried). Yet the effect of decades of fake news promoting American exceptionalism and excessively demonizing all non-capitalists has produced several generations of robotic groupthinkers that have internalized the values of power. Rarely must such journalists even be instructed what to say; they already know what to say; they already know how to balance a story, how to under-report, how to deprioritize, how to frame, how to produce dead ends, how to terminate a train of thought, and how to remove responsibility from active agents using the passive tense. The techniques are myriad.

Modern newsrooms are full of such obsequious zombies. Former FCC Commissioner and Iowa law professor Nicholas Johnson noted four types of journalists. First, the young maverick who pens a thrillingly muckraking piece only to have it shelved by his or her prudent editor. Second, the cautiously optimistic journalist who runs the idea for a new exposé past his editor before thinking better of trying to write it. Third, the rather more skeptical journalist that kills the sensational investigation himself and doesn’t bother airing it with his superiors. Fourth, the perfectly assimilated journo to whom the truth-to-power story never even occurs. You might add a fifth kind, when the journalist becomes the editor himself and inaugurates the process all over again with some fledgling hire.

The story of what Parenti calls the “free-market holocaust” is never written about in the mainstream press. Only a few courageous souls, toiling alone and in obscurity, publish the truth. Given recent stirrings, we should reflect on the two million North Koreans, or twenty percent of its population, killed by the west during the Korean War. Three million in Vietnam. The million-plus in Iraq. The legions in Afghanistan. The half million in Syria. The tens of thousands in Libya. The half million Iraqi children killed by western sanctions. Add that to the millions of displaced and exiled refugees internal and external to their countries. Add to that thousands of drone kills. Then there is the current slaughter in Yemen conducted by Saudi Arabia, our Islamofascist ally, using weapons we sold them, intelligence we give them, and military strategies we devise for them. We mustn’t forget the Indonesian slaughter of East Timorese we greenlit and supported. Throw in Ronald Reagan’s hysterical blood work in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Thousands more in Chile, Haitia, Brazil, Zaire, Panama, Hondorus, Colombia, Laos, Cambodia, and many more unlucky locations. Some have estimated the U.S. is, directly and indirectly, responsible for 20 million deaths since the end of World War Two. Add to that the millions lost annually to lack of social services that communist nations provided but that are stripped away under neoliberal capitalist regimes. One will encounter the western propagandists’ dubious tabulation of the tens of millions in one-hundred-foot advertisements on the sides of buildings walking through Times Square, but never catch the slightest glimpse of U.S. war crimes adorning any of that pricey ad space.

Few ever hear of these considerations. But take a roll call of major propaganda campaigns foisted on the American populace by its own media: we were treated to the Red Scare before and during World War One, the McCarthyite drama after the Second World War, the post-Vietnam revivification of the Soviet phantoms by Ronald Reagan, a man deeply imprinted by the McCarthy era. And that’s just a shortlist. Now the Democrats have reanimated the corpse of the Russian scare thanks to NATO’s steady absorption of the former nations of the Warsaw Pact, Barack Obama’s relentless demonization of Moscow, and the Clinton clans’ cynical use of Russian hacking to deflect attention from their own corruption.

Now, thanks to the neoliberal ideology that insists everything be privatized including public utilities, we are subject to the ideological whimsy of Google and Facebook and YouTube as they tweak their manic algorithms to suppress anti-capitalist thought, otherwise known as free speech. They do this in the name of democracy and maintain their democratic base by promoting diversity on the surface, while they quietly use H-1B migrants to exclude competent American minority workers, sacrificing native diversity for profits.

Reforms Are Holding Actions

“I’m a free-market guy,” wrote Barack Obama in his pre-presidential The Audacity of Hope. Indeed he was. Obama liked to talk about how social change was always “incremental” and that we must be patient. Doubtless he was talking to the downtrodden peasants of capitalism, not the wealthy privileged sector of neoliberals who are doing fabulously by the present system. Or not. Rather than use his bully pulpit to press—no, to fight—for single payer insurance, he revised right-wing Romneycare and proferred it as his own personal Great Society contribution. To be clear, the largely unaffordable Affordable Care Act (ACA) above all produced a guaranteed revenue stream of taxpayer monies for the corporate profiteers that are literally the insurance problem itself. But the ACA was a futile dodge of the question of universal care; it will eventually unravel as the inexorable demands of shareholder capitalism overwhelm it.

But men like Obama never look back. They get in lockstep with the forward march of corporate profits for pampered few. But the general proposition sprinkled through our newspapers is that we are all of us on a march of progress, and that uplifting social events like the Civil Rights Movement and Feminism and such are markers on the path to an expanded human consciousness. All smart propaganda contains a germ of truth, and these indeed were heroic efforts that achieved considerable breakthroughs. But what is presented as clearing the ground for democracy is anything but, and never has been.

Capitalist investment prefers structural adjustment programs (SAPs) by the IMF that lend money to strapped economies on condition that they reduce social spending, which incidentally reduces revenues and slows the economy, at which point these bewildered, or perhaps comprador, governments are encouraged to sell off national patrimonies such as resources and utilities and industry to elite capital interests abroad. None of this increases domestic industrialization or self-sufficiency on any level. It creates nations of debt serfs completely dependent on the beneficence of western lending regimes, who can posture as liberal magnanimous cosmopolitans in front of capitalist media. Once said country is properly looted, the cameras click off, the globalists lose interest in the country, abandon it to unsustainable debt service, and move on to the next victim. This is not unlike the process by which lenders securitized toxic mortgages in exotic financial instruments and quickly sold them off to pension funds and other unwitting investment groups. Like passing a time bomb around the room.

What does modern research tell us? Thomas Piketty spent 700 pages telling us that capitalism increases inequality by design. He then proposes a few tepid transaction taxes on capital so he doesn’t get blackballed from academia. Reforms like these are simply holding actions by ruling class elites in order to stem growing discontent. Although one of the greatest eras in American history, the New Deal reforms of FDR were intended to save capitalism, as FDR himself admitted. They stemmed the tide of labor militancy. Immediately following their implementation, elite capital begin a war to roll back these social advances.

In the so-called developing world, slums boom and become a permanent feature of the urbanscape, genuine “poverty traps” rather than short-lived purgatories on the path of progress. Because of the liethat economic socialism didn’t work in the Soviet Union, we happily ignore the performance of socialist development models when they exceed the neoliberal “Washington consensus,” which, to be honest, is designed to fail for the majority. Naturally, in an imperial state, those who have success rallying people to this truth are quickly ostracized or, if necessary, liquidated. And so Martin Luther King, Jr. is slain just as he draws the connection between racism, poverty, and war. Likewise Malcolm X, Eugene Debs, and so on down the line of those who stepped out of line.

It’s Always Been Class War

The reality is, class war continues apace around the globe. The frightful sight of the working classes lifting their heads is a perpetual menace to the ruling class, and must be fought and put down by the henchmen of private capital, as it was in Paris after 1871, Vietnam in the Sixties and the al-Fateh Libyan Revolution in 1969, Nicaragua after 1979, and numerous other locales distant and near. Looking back shows that the present moment is but the echo of a forgotten past.

The destabilization, coming partition, and alienation of Syria is class war writ large. The socialist and secular Assad government is being brutally dismembered by western globalism, a ruling class construct aimed at the delegitimization of independent states, which elites understand are the last barricade behind which powerless populations defend themselves. Once sovereignty is diluted, a transnational superstructure of investor rights agreements will assume the character of a kind of global Hammurabi’s Code. Rights, resources, and wealth will accrue to the one percent investor class, a sampling of crumbs from the banquet table will fall to the globalized professional classes, which will gratefully support the elite cabal, and the remaining global majority, some seven billion people, will subsist in conditions of rapid decline. The Human Development Index will fall precipitously and the income gap between rich and poor will be supplanted by a mortality gap that will contrast the long, comfortable lives of the rich with the truncated lives of desperation endured by the “unpeople” of the world, to use a Noam Chomsky phrase. This end varies only slightly, as one moves from continent to continent.

What we are witnessing in Venezuela is also a class war. A phalanx of highly motivated, pro-violence, anti-democracy elitists, acting as a fifth column given their superb backing by Washington, are squared off against the country’s majority, a generally Chavista populace energized to reify the gains made under the Chavez government (and who hold four of five branches of government). But the minority opposition has the trump card of Western violence to call upon, if all else fails. Is it a coincidence that Syria and Venezuela and Libya were secular socialist independent states, two of which were actively organizing their continents to be self-sustaining without the debilitating conditionalities of IMF and World Bank loans? Without handing one’s economic power over to Washington? Without adopting the petro-dollar? Without inviting CentCom into your region like a Trojan Horse? It’s not a coincidence. It’s a strategy.

If we see relentless propaganda in our own era on the planet, why would we think the popular historical record from the 20th century any more reliable than it is now? Like Santayana, Karl Marx thought history repeated itself, although first as tragedy and then as farce. How true. There’s little more absurd than a populace of imperial subjects happily rehearsing the discredited platitudes of its monopoly media, thinking they are freedom’s flagbearers and an irresistible force for good in the world. Too often ignorance is bliss for Americans—and affliction for everyone else.

On the Road to Extinction: Maybe it’s Not All About Us

Elizabeth West

It is crystal clear—unlike the smoky skies where I live–to most of us who are willing to consider the facts: this summer’s ‘natural’ disasters have been seeded anthropogenically.  Wildfires in the northwestern United States and Canada, in Greenland, and in Europe are often referred to in the media as ‘unprecedented’ in size and fury. Hurricanes and monsoons, with their attendant floods and destruction, are routinely described as having a multitude of ‘record-breaking’ attributes. No one reading this is likely to need convincing that humans –our sheer numbers as well as our habits—have contributed significantly to rising planetary temperatures and thus, the plethora of somehow unexpected and catastrophic events in the natural world. I’d like to include earthquakes, particularly those in Turkey (endless) and Mexico (massive), in this discussion, and while intuition tells me that there is a connection between them and climate change, research to support this supposition is just emerging, so for the nonce I will leave the earthquakes out of it.

Our proclivity for advancing our own short-term interests has made a mess of things from the beginnings of this current iteration of civilization. Irrigating the Fertile Crescent, which was not very fertile prior to the ingenious innovation of bringing water from the mountains down into the dusty plains, opened the way for a massive increase in food production and a concomitant population rise. Cities grew and became kingdoms. After a reasonably good run, though, irrigation led to salination of the soil and ultimately left it sterile and useless (for agriculture) once again. Many people and their livestock starved or were forced to migrate in large numbers. Great idea, irrigation.

The internal combustion engine seemed a brilliant response to the need to move more commodities more efficiently as the Industrial Revolution created both increased product and demand. Though not necessarily so intended, the automobile initially offered humans wildly expanded freedom and ease. It also led to pumping the innards out of the Earth, filling the atmosphere with CO2, and oil-grabbing wars that left hundreds of thousands of people dead.  Another great idea with a few minor issues that did not get worked out ahead of time.

Plastic.  Now there is an incredible invention. Tough, pliable, lightweight, eternal…this stuff filled a myriad of needs. And conveniently, it could be produced using the fossil fuels we were already extracting for those internal combustion engines. Sadly, we never imagined it would come to microscopic plastic filaments in our drinking water, our sea salt, and even our beer. Not to mention in the bellies of just about anything that lives in the Earth’s oceans.

The list of creative inventions designed to make our lives better is long and varied, but almost inevitably, given enough time, our interference (or improvements, if you prefer) upon the natural state of things comes back to bite us.  And hard.  Fukushima could easily head up that list; most of us would have no trouble adding to the tally of follies flowing from Homo sapiens’ clever life hacks.

If you delve into the motivation behind these ‘advances’ there is generally a desire on the part of people to make life safer or more comfortable or easier in one way or another.  Maybe for themselves and their tribe, or their class, or their nation, but still—the impetus does not tend to flow from a place of malignity. We simply use our big brains to see what is adversely impacting our species (or sub-group thereof) and devise a fix for it. How could that possibly go so wrong?

Hindsight, they say, is always more acute than foresight. Could this be because we do not understand fully how our world works?  Is it possible that we lack a lot of critical information about the ways in which this planet’s life forms and forces are interwoven and connected?  Maybe our superior intelligence, while it has been billed as a powerhouse in the problem-solving department, does not really have the scope of vision that would ensure that problems—solved–stay solved?  Hmmm…might there be an issue with hubris here?  And how do we solve that?

What appear to be straightforward challenges that should yield to linear corrections are in fact predominantly multifaceted and many layered. We see only what we see—because we do have limits in terms of perception– and we act upon that. No real fault there. But you do something over and over and over and get consistent results, you keep being bitten by your brilliant solutions. Quick gains, long-term disasters: this is a pretty common human story. Are we capable of examining it? Even acknowledging it?  Of recognizing that our anthropocentrism and self-assurance may be doing us more harm than good despite (or possibly because of) our fêted cognitive capacities?

So here we are: the summer of 2017 with the arctic ice melting, the temperatures rising, the oceans rising and acidifying, our non-human companions on the planet going extinct like nobody’s business. We thought about ourselves from the get-go.  From the beginning of known human history, we wanted better lives, longer lives, happier lives. For ourselves. We used our gifts to reach for what we wanted, like toddlers, with no sense of the bigger world around us, no notion of the consequences of our actions. No awareness of the unfathomable complexity and the perfection of balance represented by the environment we inhabit.

Or, no will to act from that awareness. Because in all fairness, someone has always pointed to it. Not everyone thought situating nuclear power plants on earthquake faults was a bright idea. And no doubt there was someone back in Sumer who advised stridently against the moving of mountain waters to the fields in the valley.  But the collective, or the powers that own the collective, were not interested in anything that thwarted short-term gains.

We have careened along, from one improvement to another, many of them requiring their own fix a bit down the road.  Now we look at super-storms and mega-fires and what do we see?

Unfortunately, as is almost always the case, we see our own interests and little else.  I have been perusing reports and commentary from a wide variety of sources and there is a lot of factual information: the size of the fire, how many miles per hour the winds are blowing, how many acres are still uncontained, or in thrall to the winds and rain. Then, there are stories about losses. Photos and videos and details about homes destroyed, businesses wiped off the map, human injury and death.

But do we talk about the other life forms affected by these human-accelerated events in nature?  In nature, I repeat.  Do we read or talk or hear about the animals who die?  The trees lost? The sea life and habitat ruined? Yup, there are bits and pieces about the animals that belong to us, which are, like our houses and businesses and automobiles, more possessions.  Pets, livestock, even zoo animals are considered.  How do we shelter the cheetah at the Miami Zoo?  Or what about the Cuban dolphins airlifted out of danger to a safe place on the opposite side of the island? Heartwarming, I suppose, and good for those dolphins, but what happened to the wild ones in the sea?

Here is the thing: we helped make these disasters because we always thought about ourselves and neglected to consider the balance of life.  Because our needs were far and away more important to us than the spotted salamanders’.

And maybe that is true. Maybe our lives are more valuable than all the other lives. Who am I to say?  I too am human and subject to the same hubris and shortsightedness as everyone else.

Still…if something is not working, I ask: why keep doing it?  Even if you have no natural affinity for the pine martens who die in the fires or the sandpipers who are flung to their deaths in the monsoons, pragmatism would suggest a change in practice.

We can’t prevent the suffering and dying of wild life, and the Earth herself, when confronted by the unleashed forces of fire and water, but we can include them in our assessment of the cost. We might even grieve for them. Their losses are indeed ours, and if we do not see them or their importance to our lives, if we continue to either ignore and/or dominate all other life on this planet, it won’t be long till we join them.

This piece of writing is, in a ridiculously small way, an attempt to acknowledge those losses that have gone unseen. It isn’t much, but I invite you to join me in taking a few minutes to honor and mourn those who have died in this summer’s conflagrations and deluges. We won’t know much about most of them, but we do know that they lived and we know that they died.  And that we are all diminished by their deaths.

The Climate Catastrophe We’re All Ignoring

Jeremy Lent

Imagine you’re driving your shiny new car too fast along a wet, curvy road. You turn a corner and realize you’re heading straight for a crowd of pedestrians. If you slam on your brakes, you’d probably skid and damage your car. So you keep your foot on the accelerator, heading straight for the crowd, knowing they’ll be killed and maimed, but if you keep driving fast enough no-one will be able to catch you and you might just get away scot-free.

Of course, that’s monstrous behavior and I expect you’d never make that decision. But it’s a decision the developed world is collectively taking in the face of the global catastrophe that will arise from climate change.

With daily headlines pivoting from the unparalleled flooding from Harvey in Houston to the devastation caused by Irma in Florida, it might seem like the United States has its hands full just dealing with our own climate emergencies. In the short term, that’s true. Harvey is estimated to have caused $180 billion of destruction, damaging some 200,000 homes, while Irma’s havoc is still being assessed.

But meanwhile, multiply the damage from Harvey and Irma a hundredfold and you’ll get a feeling for the climate-related suffering taking place right now in the rest of the world. In India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, an estimated 40 million people have been affected by massive flooding, with over 1,200 deaths. More than one third of Bangladesh’s land mass has been submerged. As if that’s not enough, Africa has been suffering its own under-reported climate disasters, with hundreds of thousands affected by flooding in Nigeria, Niger, Congo, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Although the regime in the White House is doing its best to ignore it, these global weather extremes are clearly exacerbated by climate change, and have been predicted by climate scientists for decades. What is so disturbing is that we’re experiencing this wave of disasters at a global temperature roughly 1°C above historic norms. It’s a virtual certainty that we’re going to hit 1.5° before long—perhaps in the next ten years—and unless we do something drastic to transform our fossil fuel-based society, we could be hitting 2°C as early as 2036. By the end of the century—when half the babies born this year should still be alive—conservative estimates have global temperatures hitting 3.3°C above baseline, based on the commitments that formed the 2015 Paris Agreement at COP21. And that’s not including potentially devastating feedback effects such as methane leaking from permafrost, which could lead to temperatures way higher, causing an earth that would literally be uninhabitable for humans in many regions.

The likely effects on our civilization are dreadful to contemplate. Because most cities have grown up around oceans, half the world’s population currently lives within fifteen miles of the coast. The devastation we’ve been seeing from flooding and storm surges offers only a hint of the impending catastrophe. In the Global South, beleaguered by massive poverty and inadequate infrastructure, cities will be overwhelmed. Reduction in river flows and falling groundwater tables will lead to widespread shortages of potable water. Flooding and landslides will disrupt electricity, sanitation, and transportation systems, all of which will lead to rampant infectious disease. Meanwhile, even as these cities strain beyond breaking point, devastating droughts will cause agricultural systems to collapse, forcing millions of starving refugees into the cities from rural areas.

Eventually, even the most strident climate denialists will have to adjust to the facts raining down from the sky. Even Rush Limbaugh was forced to evacuate his Palm Beach home after claiming Irma was a conspiracy. But when they do, you can guarantee their response will be parochial. Wealthier cities will begin massive investments in building barricades, improving infrastructure, even moving to higher land, to defend themselves against the climate cataclysm. That’s known in climate change circles as “adaptation.” In more rational parts of the rich world, cities such as London and Rotterdam are already doing it.

However, effective adaptation isn’t an option for the megacities of the Global South, which are already floundering from inadequate resources, and where hundreds of millions are forced to subsist, undernourished and vulnerable, in shanty towns. A central part of the Paris Agreement, which Trump recently rejected, was a Green Climate Fund that is supposed to receive $100 billion annually by 2020 from developed countries to aid the rest of the world in mitigating and adapting to climate change. So far, only $10 billion has been pledged, $3 billion of which is the US portion that Trump has vowed not to increase. It’s hard to see even a small fraction of that $100 billion annual payment actually coming through.

Yet it’s the developed world that created this climate mess in the first place. With just 15% of the world’s population, developed countries have been responsible for 58% of human-caused greenhouse gases. All that fossil fuel energy is what permitted them to industrialize and thus become “developed,” to the point that they’re now consuming 80% of the world’s resources, leaving the poorest three billion in the Global South to survive on less than $2 per day. That doesn’t leave much change for climate adaptation.

That’s why the inadequate response of the rich world to climate disruption is like that driver choosing to plunge straight into the crowd rather than swerving and risk damaging their shiny new car. What would it take to put the brakes on in time to avoid climate catastrophe?

There is hopeful news about the spectacular rise of renewables, surprising experts with the speed with which they are replacing fossil fuels around the world. But while that’s an essential part of a solution, modern renewables still account for just 10% of global energy production, which in turn contributes no more than 25% of total greenhouse emissions. Halting the slide to disaster requires something far more extensive: a complete transformation of our current economic system.

After Pearl Harbor, when the United States faced an existential threat, President Roosevelt announced a military production plan to Congress and the American people that seemed unachievable. Yet, not only did the country meet those plans, it overshot them as a result of the wholesale transformation of society towards a single goal. This kind of mobilization is what would be required today to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change: a Climate Mobilization.

In this case, though, it’s a different kind of mobilization that’s required. The threat we’re facing comes, not from enemies at war with us, but from the results of an economic system designed to exploit the earth and the most vulnerable humans living on it at an ever-increasing pace. As long as we measure ourselves and others by how much we consume, we’re complicit in fueling the global system that’s rapaciously devouring the earth.

The good news is that there’s a short window of time when a fundamental shift in our economic, social, and political priorities could still prevent global catastrophe. Alternative economic models exist that offer ways to conduct commerce sustainably. Ultimately, a flourishing future requires moving away from the growth-based, consumption-obsessed values of global capitalism, and toward a quality-oriented approach that could allow all of us to live on the earth in dignity. It’s even possible to draw down much of the carbon that’s already been emitted—the potential is there but it requires a choice to be made: a shift in our society’s values toward caring for others alive right now, and for future generations.

Will there be enough collective willpower to act and transform our society before it’s too late? That depends on the lessons learned from Harvey, Irma, and the climate disasters still to come. Suppose, as you’re racing toward that crowd in the road, that you managed to brake in time, get out of the car and join them. And then imagine your surprise when you discover the road you were speeding on came to an abrupt end around the next curve and was leading you directly off the precipice. Ultimately, the climate catastrophe we’re ignoring will become all humanity’s catastrophe unless we start acting on it now.

The Blue Whale Challenge

Muhammad Muzamil Kumar

Blue Whale Challenge has now become the grist for the gossip mill, the tech savvy adolescents are often seen ruminating about the same and many of them even try to download this rumoured deadly suicide game from the play store application of their smart phones. Little do they know that it exists only in closed groups and private message conversations. Trying to Google it, discussing the possibilities of downloading it and even mere talking about it is in itself an indication that our adolescents are tempted towards this social network challenge.

It is believed that after anyone accepts the tag to the Blue Whale Challenge, the group administrator hack’s the personal information of the user and assigns him/her a series of disturbing tasks like listening to very depressing music, carving out a specific phrase on the hand, waking up in the middle of the night, watching psychedelic horror videos, making cuts on the whole body, cutting the lips, doing secret tasks, making length wise cuts on the arms, sitting down on a roof with legs dangling over the edge and ultimately the more sinister step of committing suicide. After completion of every task, a video or photographic proof of the completion has to be provided to the administrator.

The game originated from Russia in 2013 and is attributed to Philipp Budeikin, a former psychology student. Budeikin has stated that his purpose was to clean the society by pushing to suicide those he deemed as having no value. As per unconfirmed media reports, about 130 people have lost their lives while winning the game. The psychology behind the blue whale challenge involves finding of victims and creating an emotional bond with them through a stepwise process of control and manipulation, thereby landing them in the death trap in a thrilling manner. True, that everyone who plays it will not go to the extent of committing suicide but at the same time vulnerable sections like those with high suicidal ideation can easily do so. Suicidal ideation involves thoughts about how to kill oneself, which can range from a detailed plan to a fleeting consideration of the same.

Rakhshanda Ahad & Dr. Shawkat Ahmad Shah from Department of Psychology, University of Kashmir, carried out a study on suicidal ideation in 2015 on a sample group of 364 adolescents selected randomly from 9 higher secondary schools of Srinagar district with age ranging from 15 to 17 years. On analysis of data, they found that 14.8% of the participants have high levels of suicide ideation and almost 11% of them had attempted suicide.

Experts in the field believe that the ongoing conflict in the valley directly or indirectly has fuelled the tendencies to suicide among the residents herein. Such an alarming situation combined with the fact that the game has got a wide publicity over the internet gives us a signal to take various preventive measures like proper guidance to youth at the right time, monitoring of their electronic devices by guardians, exploring their signs of distress and taking measure for their amelioration.

As schools are in a more strategic position to provide guidance than colleges and universities, the issue can be raised and explained during the morning assemblies. Very recently, the alert issued by the education department to all the schools is a welcome step in this regard and teachers apart from raising awareness regarding this life threatening game should conscientiously remain vigilant towards picking up the cues regarding the telltale signs of any student taking the challenge. Some corners of thought doubt that discussing the game will lead to its wider publicity but psychiatrists are of the opinion that it has been already discussed threadbare & staying mute on this issue defies logic.

Pertinently, in a bid to shield the vulnerable sections of the society, we need to demystify the blue whale challenge before it turns our faces red. Apart from this in order to build a healthy society there should be joint efforts on behalf of the policy makers and all other stakeholders to initiate research and develop comprehensive frameworks for promotion of mental health in Kashmir, insensitivity towards incorporating research evidences into the policy making is in itself a bigger challenge than the blue whale.

The Bomb Banned: By and For the NNWS, For Now

Manpreet Sethi


As the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), popularly referred to as the Ban Treaty, opens for signature on 20 September 2017, it is most likely that it will garner the 50 endorsements that are necessary for its entry into force. After all, it was adopted in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 7 July 2017 by a vote of 122 in favour with one against (Netherlands) and one abstention (Singapore). But having entered into force, would the treaty, as Ambassador Elayne Gomez of Costa Rica, president of the Conference negotiating the instrument said, bring the world “one step closer to the total elimination of nuclear weapons”? Will the treaty facilitate universal nuclear disarmament? 

The answer, at this juncture, is not a clear yes since all nuclear weapon possessors have shunned the treaty. The US, UK and France have even described themselves as “persistent objectors” to the treaty, expressing that they do not “intend to sign, ratify, or even become party to it”. The three have accused the treaty of creating “even more divisions at a time when the world needs to remain united in the face of growing threats.” China and Russia too have voiced similar objections and rue the absence of a feasible, comprehensive, verifiable and enforceable nuclear disarmament regime.

Given this response of the nuclear weapon states (NWS), the ability of the treaty to further the cause of universal elimination of nuclear weapons is doubtful. The treaty prohibits development, testing, production, manufacture, acquisition, transfer, possession, stockpiling of nuclear weapons as well as their use or threat of use. But only the non-possessors seem to be accepting its mandate. For the states possessing nuclear weapons, it is fairly certain that the dawn of 21 September will be no different from those before. These countries have made it clear that they cannot yet visualise a world without nuclear deterrence. Rather, each one is engaged in updating, upgrading or modernising its nuclear arsenal in view of the growing rifts in their relationships – US-Russia; US-China; US-North Korea; Russia-France; China-India; India-Pakistan – none of the nuclear dyads is in a comfortably stable situation right now. The salience of nuclear weapons appears to be at an all-time high since the end of the Cold War. Who then amongst these is interested in the Ban Treaty?

Supporters of the treaty, however, emphasise that it would increase normative pressure on the NWS, especially in forums such as the NPT RevCon or at the UN High Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament due in 2018. However, any such impact is yet to be seen. In fact, nearly all nuclear weapon possessors have pretty much bandied together in criticising the treaty for being low on details on how to bring about a real elimination of nuclear weapons. For instance, the treaty lays down that a NWS could join it so long as it agrees to remove its nuclear weapons “from operational status immediately and to destroy them in accordance with a legally binding, time-bound plan...for the verified and irreversible elimination of that State Party’s nuclear weapon-programme, including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear weapons related facilitates.” Legal eagles have already punched holes in these statements. How, they ask, does one define "operational status," "destruction of nuclear weapons," "legally binding, time bound plan of elimination," and who would determine and enforce it? For the NWS, these issues are of major concern. Given that these countries consider nuclear weapons as central to national security, it becomes difficult for them to envisage their elimination in the absence of definitely laid out processes and mechanisms that would enforce necessary verifications. 

Non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) supporters of the treaty respond to this criticism by saying that the treaty has only created a framework and that it should now be the task of the NWS to flesh in the details. However, at this juncture, none of the NWS appears in a mood to do so. In the immediate future then, it appears that the entry into force of the Ban Treaty will be hailed and celebrated by the scores of NNWS who voted for it at the UNGA as also the non-governmental organisations and civil society movements that put their weight behind it. Meanwhile, states with nuclear weapons and those under the nuclear umbrella are likely to ignore the development and carry on their business as usual for now. 

The next RevCon in 2020, however, might be the first major battleground where the relationship between the NWS and NNWS and the normative strength of the Ban Treaty will be tested. The interaction between both sides on the matter to stop their divide from deepening and threatening the NPT will be something to watch out for.  For the sake of stability and survival of the NPT, it is necessary that both sides find a way to work together on furthering nuclear disarmament. The significance of the Ban Treaty, the first multilaterally negotiated legally binding instrument with the objective of eliminating nuclear weapons, cannot and should not be discounted. However, the treaty would be able to live up to its promise only with the cooperation of the nuclear weapon possessing states. 

Therefore, it is in the interest of the NNWS supporting the treaty to find ways of engaging with the NWS to gradually bring them on board. Meanwhile, if non-proliferation has to be sustained in the coming decades, the NWS must heed the concerns of the NNWS and discover pathways to a nuclear weapons-free world. The future depends on the sagacious and patient interaction of these two sets of states. Are they up to the task? More importantly, do they understand how important it is for them to bridge the divide? Otherwise, the Ban Treaty will be successful enough to enter into force, but end up banning the bomb for only those who anyway do not have them.

Greece: Syriza touts for investors and fêtes Macron

Katerina Selin

In Greece, the parliamentary summer break is over, and in the weeks and months ahead, a new round of cuts will begin, which will inevitably lead to fierce class battles.

On Monday, representatives of the troika—European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund—returned to the country to check on the progress of the government’s austerity measures.

“Tsipras faces a hot autumn,” was the headline of a leading German business daily Handelsblatt in its August weekend edition. The government of the pseudo-left Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), under Prime Minister Tsipras, has been tasked to carry through a further 113 reforms and austerity measures by August 2018, which were agreed with the country’s international creditors. Only then will Greece be provided with the financial means it needs to pay its debts.

Tsipras has promised to push through 90 different cuts by the end of the year. Further social cuts, limitations on the right to strike, stricter controls on hiring public sector workers and the implementation of a series of privatizations, represent just a few of the attacks that the working class will face.

Tsipras is preparing for his “hot autumn” and seeking solidarity from the European and international bourgeoisie. Last weekend, he used the annual trade fair in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, to tout Greece as a haven for foreign capital and a reliable partner for the geo-political interests of the great powers. The fair attracts entrepreneurs and bankers from all over the world; this time there were more than in previous years, mainly from the host country, China.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Thessaloniki for rallies and protests against the business summit, which was protected by about 4,000 officers from special police units.

In his opening speech, Tsipras kowtowed before the international financial and business elite. No one could deny the enormous “interest from investors in our country,” he enthused. “Greece’s image” had fundamentally changed in recent years, “for the positive.” He then forecast a growth in Gross Domestic Product of almost 2 percent for 2017.

Based on current economic data from the Greek statistics authority (Elsat), the prime minister calculated that Syriza had transformed the country into an economic paradise for foreign investors, and resorted to a clumsy play on words, declaring that the country had gone from “Grexit” to “Grinvest.”

This had only been possible, he said, through the “winning back” of international recognition and Greece’s geo-political position. These important steps included the recent visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, the visit of former US President Barack Obama and the Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his own visits to China. In this way, Greece had once more become a “strategic partner” for significant international economic powers.

Tsipras went on to boast, “Even if some still condemn us as enemies of business, we have developed very concrete initiatives and carried these through on the way to improving the business climate.” For example, 11,000 businesses had benefited from a simplification of licensing procedures; the financial sector had also made a positive development, and the largest agreement so far had been concluded with the European Investment Bank, in order to improve Greece’s liquidity. With French support, Greece was planning the establishment of its own development bank.

In the second part of his speech, Tsipras claimed that economic growth would also benefit the majority of the population. He attempted to substantiate this open lie by listing the social measures introduced by Syriza, including the creation of new jobs, the improvement of access to health care and the reforms in education. However, given the massive social attacks that Syriza has carried out—contrary to its own election promises—the measures listed are nothing more than crumbs, handed out to try and prevent a social explosion, or that will prove, on closer inspection, to be nothing but illusions.

For example, according to Savvas Rombilis, Scientific Director of the Institute for Work of the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE), and honorary professor at Pantheon University in Athens, just over half of those hired in 2016 now work part-time. Where Elsat talks of a fall in unemployment to 21.5 percent, actual unemployment stands at about 31.5 percent, according to a study by the European Central Bank.

In continuing his austerity measures, Tsipras is relying on the close collaboration of the other European governments. A week ago, he received a visit from French President Macron, who was accompanied to Athens by a phalange of French business leaders and bankers. Macron praised Tsipras and his “reforms” to the skies and used the Athens trip to seek support for his own attacks on French workers’ rights.

The Syriza leader, who three years ago posed as the voice of opposition, rolled out the red carpet for the former investment banker. Macron delivered a long and florid speech on the Pynx at the foot of the Acropolis. As twilight fell, he spoke of the “future” of Europe, with no shortage of platitudes about the heritage of ancient democracy.

The French president proposed the extension and redirection of the European institutions, and stressed: “In order not to be dominated by great powers such as the Chinese or Americans, I believe in a European sovereignty that permits us to defend and assert ourselves.” He also called for debt relief for Greece, and for the US-dominated IMF to withdraw from the Greek debt programme, something Germany strictly opposes.

Essentially, Macron seeks the strengthening of the European Union as an imperialist counter-weight to the US, and as a bulwark against the European working class. This is also Syriza’s perspective.

Tsipras posted photos of himself with his “friend” Macron on Twitter, and wrote: “We support initiatives for a new economic and financial architecture of the EU towards a more democratic and social Europe.”

He declared that his country had “opened a new chapter” and assured Macron that he would “not regret investing in Greece.” Macron was accompanied by several French businesses that hope to profit from the purchase of Greek state-owned enterprises. Energy company Total is extracting oil and gas in the Ionian Sea, and is interested in resources in the Mediterranean. An international consortium with French participation recently took over the running of the port at Thessaloniki. The Suez conglomerate is interested in taking over the water supply in both Athens and Thessaloniki.

A member of the French delegation told the German newsweekly Der Spiegel that contracts would be agreed for the Greek purchase of French military hardware in the next months.

In the mainstream Greek media and government circles, Macron was treated like a superstar. In an interview with the state news agency ANA-MPA, vice foreign minister Giorgos Katrougalos (Syriza) gushed, “The visit of Macron was a great political event, not just for the two countries’ bilateral relations, but also for the future of Europe.” That Macron had brought the “leaders of the French business world” was a “confirmation of the transformation of the Greek economy towards growth.”

According to Katrougalos, Tsipras and Macron would share the view that the economic policy of the euro zone had to be “democratized.” The Greek premier had even proposed the appointment of a European “minister for social cohesion.” “Growth and social cohesion” were the precondition for the “new social model of just development that our government is already pursuing.”

Katrougalos, who was minister of labour from 2015 to 2016, knows exactly whereof he speaks. The “new social model of just development” is a euphemism for the aggressive austerity policies that have led, in recent years, to an unparalleled redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in Greece. The call to make this the example to follow throughout Europe should be understood by European workers as an unconcealed threat.

Australia: New “learning precinct” ties public schools to business

David Cohen

In a precedent-setting move that will undermine both public schools and their teaching staff, the state Labor government in Victoria is amalgamating several public schools in Melbourne’s inner-west, under the banner of the “Footscray Learning Precinct.”

The “national first” is aimed at directly tying every level of education, from kindergarten to university, to the needs of businesses and corporations.

This agenda is proceeding behind the backs of ordinary teachers, students and families in the area. Sham “community consultation” events have been held, including “pop-up” stalls in local shopping centres. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, everything is being worked out by the state government, in collusion with the Australian Education Union, on the basis of the pro-business conclusions of the “Review into Government School Funding,” issued by former Premier Steve Bracks in December 2015.

The Victorian government has already spent $15 million on initial planning for the development of three northern, central and southern “hubs” of the Footscray Learning Precinct.

According to the publicly announced proposals, several schools in Footscray will be effectively merged across several campuses over the next three years. Footscray City College, now a Year 7–12 school, will be redeveloped as a senior Year 10–12 school. The Gilmore College for Girls, currently a girls-only Year 7–12 school, will be effectively shut down, with the site and facilities used for a new co-educational Year 7–9 school. Another, smaller, multi-storey Year 7–9 high school is planned for construction on a small plot of land in the area. Footscray City Primary School will be expanded, and a new kindergarten centre opened nearby.

Victoria University is a prominent part of the proposed Learning Precinct” and will supposedly help establish a new Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Learning Centre, available for use by schools in the precinct. The advance of STEM is connected to the promotion of new tech industries in Melbourne’s inner-west, as well as the wider agenda of developing new military technologies.

How much of these plans eventuate remains to be seen. Many details of the project remain open to revision, and, crucially, the government is yet to invest the necessary infrastructure funding. A change in government at the next state election, or a stepped up austerity drive by the current administration, could trigger the scrapping of the entire scheme.

The state Labor government is nevertheless making grandiose claims about the Footscray project. Education Minister James Merlino declared earlier this year: “The Learning Precinct is an Australian-first that will transform education in the inner-west … giving families access to a first-class education from early childhood to university.”

In reality, the government’s perspective has very little to do with the quality of education being provided to children. Its primary concern is the quality of its relationship with the financial and corporate elites.

This was made clear last April, in the “Footscray Learning Precinct Feasibility Report” prepared for the government by the Aurecon transnational corporate consulting firm. The report is saturated in business jargon, reflecting the underlying agenda. It outlined how the government and local council could “maximise the return on investment of all assets [i.e., schools]” by “making better use of existing and under-utilised sites.”

“Maximising returns” is code for failing to invest the necessary public money into constructing the new schools required in the rapidly growing area.

Severe shortages of public school places are already emerging, and forecast to rapidly worsen in the next years. The government’s own feasibility report for the precinct found that Footscray is set to “experience a population boom in the next 25 years,” increasing from 17,000 to 46,000. This 170 percent population growth is lower than the forecast rise in the number of school-aged children in the area, with a 266 percent increase in the number of 5–11 year-olds anticipated over the same period.

In Footscray, as across Australia, state and federal governments have deliberately done nothing to plan, develop and construct the necessary new public schools to meet population growth. This failure in public policy has become another mechanism for promoting the expansion of the private school system.

In Melbourne’s inner-west, existing schools will be crammed with ever-greater numbers of students. The one new school planned for Footscray, a Year 7–9 school on Pilgrim Street, will be a so-called “vertical school.” Rather than invest the necessary resources to purchase adequate land for the new school, the government has commissioned the construction of a multi-level tower, with students denied access to adequate open-air playing and physical exercise areas.

The Aurecon report’s conclusions detail the longer term calculations of the business world, beyond its immediate budget concerns.

Parts of western Melbourne have been devastated by deindustrialisation in recent decades, with the pending shut down of the car industry set to further exacerbate unemployment and poverty. While tens of thousands of working-class families in these areas have been abandoned and thrown onto the unemployment scrapheap, the Footscray Learning Precinct is being geared towards providing new opportunities for a select layer of the children of a new upper-middle class in Melbourne’s gentrifying inner-west.

The state government has outlined a perspective of establishing the inner-west as a new centre for the technology and tertiary education industries. The architectural firm responsible for the new infrastructure in the “Learning Precinct,” claimed that the aim was to “transform Footscray from an industrial city to a knowledge city.”

The Footscray Learning Precinct Feasibility Report underscored the way in which public education will be narrowed to the immediate needs of big business.

The document emphasised that the new precinct would “create greater alignment between the skills demanded by employers and those taught in education and training,” with a “high technology focus.” It would allow for greater curriculum specialisation, “based around future industry and employment demands.” This would, the report concluded, “deliver a community service that meets community and industry needs that may not be commercially viable using other private provider models.”

The learning model will focus on the “collection and sharing of student data” with literacy and numeracy being “enhanced across all curriculum areas.” In other words, the agenda will involve an even greater focus on NAPLAN standardised test results.

Such a regressive, profit-driven model for school education runs directly counter to the democratic conception that all children have the right to an all-rounded, high quality, intellectual, physical and cultural education.

Another report, “A Future Focused Learning Framework for the Footscray Learning Precinct,” commissioned by the government, detailed the pressures that will face teachers who work there. It showcased the work of education academic, Yong Zhao, and his concept of an “Entrepreneurial Mindset.” Yong, who addressed a “Pedagogy Working Group” convened by the government for the Footscray Learning Precinct, has elsewhere explained that an “Entrepreneurial Mindset” should be taught in schools because “massive changes brought about by population growth, technology, and globalisation not only demand but also create opportunities for ‘mass entrepreneurship.’”

The state Labor government’s plans for the precinct make clear that any barriers to an extension of the corporate reach into public schools in the area will be torn down.

The Feasibility Report insisted that the “private sector and organisations that have not historically been considered as partners for education organisations must be considered” in order to “forge greater integration of educational services and facilities, and build a culture of collaboration in the community.” It explained that the Precinct would provide the opportunity to “support strategic alliances and partnerships between Maribyrnong City Council, Victoria University, education providers, communities and businesses [to] support schools, with resources to increase services delivered ‘inside the school gate.’”

These measures are aimed at making Footscray public school students and teachers the guinea pigs for a wider restructuring of the education system.

The education agenda underlying the new Learning Precinct was detailed in the Bracks review into school funding. This major document, endorsed by the state government and the Australian Education Union, recommended that a new “Learning Partnerships Challenge Fund” be created to “encourage and enable collaboration between schools, other service providers and business, in areas of shared interest.” Bracks added that the government had already “made it easier for businesses to support and make donations to Victorian Government schools,” but complained that existing policies were too “restrictive in the government sector, making it difficult for partnerships to strategically engage with education authorities.”

While classroom teachers across multiple Footscray schools have been kept in the dark about their local Learning Precinct, the Australian Education Union has been integrated into the project’s development from the very beginning. Union bureaucrats were among the first to be officially consulted when the Learning Precinct plan was first unveiled.

The ramping up of the Footscray school amalgamations comes just months after the union rammed through a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement covering Victorian public school teachers. After refusing to hold a single mass meeting, while at the same time orchestrating a campaign of lies and censorship promoting its deal with the government, the union imposed an agreement that not only worsened teaching conditions, but explicitly endorsed further pro-business “education reform.”

The Footscray Learning Precinct provides a foretaste of the further government assault on the public education system that is being actively prepared.