Quit Worrying About Russia in Borderless World

Sheldon Richman

Is American society so fragile that a few “divisive” ads, news stories, commentaries, and even lies — perhaps emanating from Russia — threaten to plunge it into darkness? The establishment’s narrative on “Russian election meddling” would have you believe that. On its face, the alarm over this is so ridiculous that I doubt any of the fearmongers really believe their own words. They’re attempting to provoke public hysteria for political, geopolitical, and financial gain. There’s no more to it than that.

While we the people are not deemed worthy of being shown the evidence that “Russia” — which I take to mean Vladimir Putin — was behind the so-called meddling, even if we grant it just for the sake of argument, what does it amount to? Where’s the existential threat to America that justifies the fevered rhetoric and bizarre policy proposals that are the staple of cable news? There is none. All I can say is, if that’s the worst the Russians can do, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over them.

And even if we ignore the fact that the material in question amounted to drops in the vast ocean of information Americans encounter every day, the establishment’s narrative and proposals are outrageous. Let’s state the obvious: we live in an increasingly borderless world — and that’s a good thing (no matter what the demagogue and ignoramus Donald Trump says). Information — and, yes, misinformation — flow more easily and cheaply than ever, making access nearly universal. It can’t be controlled. That’s a good thing. It does not justify panic.

To grow up is to cultivate methods of separating the wheat from the chaff in what we see and hear. Early on we learn to discount — if not disbelieve — the claims we hear in television commercials because we understand the role interest plays in describing goods and services. We also learn (one hopes) to treat the claims of politicians, the traditional targets of American ridicule, the same way.

There is no substitute for this sort of skepticism; it’s is a sign of maturity. A government effort to protect us from misinformation in the name of preserving “our democratic institutions” would be a contradiction, not to mention a “cure” far worse than the alleged disease. The best protection against one-sided, erroneous, even dishonest assertions is competition, the universal solvent.

Most people understand this but in too narrow a way. In every election season we are deluged with questionable, false, and even crazy claims. This didn’t start with the internet. It’s as old as politics. In fact, most campaigns today are more civil than in the past, when candidates’ alleged extramarital affairs and illegitimate children were fair game. We have all heard of — or looked at — fringe websites that traffic in political stories even the National Enquirer might reject. But a call to shut down those sites would be rejected by most people — unless the sites were suspected of being Russian.

Why should that make a difference? If a story is true, who cares who tells it? And if it is exaggerated or false, can’t the people be trusted to exercise the same skepticism they are expected to exercise when the source is American? If not, why does anyone praise democracy? Isn’t it odd for proud small-d democrats to lack that confidence in the people?

Knowing the identity of the source doesn’t indicate if a story is true. (The New York Times said — falsely — that Iraq had WMD and that all 17 intelligence agencies verified that Russia hacked the DNC.) Virtually all the material supposedly posted by Russians was authentic. (Much of it was redundant. Which bright Russian schemer thought it worthwhile to tell the people of Ferguson, Missouri, about police and racial issues there?) Were voters better or worse off because that material was made available? Was the American political system imperiled by RT’s coverage of third-party candidates or fracking? Fans of democracy who worship the “informed voter” can’t seriously say they were worse off.

Whether or not “the Russians” did what they are accused of doing, we need to be skeptical about what we see and hear, and we need to demand evidence rather than take the government’s word on faith. That also goes for what we get from the established news outlets, which have a financial interest in marginalizing alternative media.

In other words we need to be adults and quit worrying about Putin’s alleged plans to sow chaos in America.

What we don’t need is government regulation, a blunt instrument that would produce horrendous consequences, intended and unintended. One suspects that the social-media moguls have belatedly jumped on the anti-Russian bandwagon because some members of Congress have read them the riot act: get on board or else. But if who really thinks that scapegoating Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (!), and YouTube, and burdening them — us! — with regulations, would protect Americans from political untruths and exaggerations? A false sense of security is worse than no sense of security at all.

I see more than a little irony in the fact that those who would use the state to shield us from “Russian influence” also urge us to trust the “intelligence community” — in the absence of any evidence — when it (more precisely, a group of handpicked analysts) says Russia is working night and day to destroy America. The threat to peace and liberty is homegrown and resides largely in Washington, D.C.

Families worse off under Australia’s privatised disability scheme

Max Newman

As Australian governments roll out the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), hundreds of thousands of people with a disability are facing worsening services, poorer funding and reduced essential support programs.

Launched in 2012 by the Gillard Labor government, the NDIS has been fully supported by the Liberal-National Coalition and the Greens. Labor’s scheme was heralded by the trade unions, as well as the corporate and media establishment, as a progressive “once in a lifetime” reform.

As the World Socialist Web Site warned from the outset, the NDIS is a pro-business scheme designed to dismantle public services and slash government spending via a voucher-based system. Participants must now “buy” services from private operators, with their funds set by care plans imposed by a cost-cutting government agency.

The most crucial component of the NDIS is the privatisation of services, creating a disability “market” with private operators competing to make profits by gutting programs and cutting the wages and conditions of disability workers.

Across the country, services are being shut down, including residential disability support facilities that have for decades provided support for people with complex and multiple disabilities. The residents are being forced into under-funded group homes, often run by charity organisations.

Many families are now reporting they are worse off under the NDIS. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), the agency overseeing the scheme’s implementation, has taken a slash and burn approach. Mandated annual plan reviews have seen people’s funding cut severely.

Kathryn Gilbert, a mother of three children with disabilities in Sydney’s west, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) she had her funding cut by half for her seven-year-old son. “The review was a horrible experience,” Gilbert said. “I was told we would have four hours to go over everything he needed but we only had 45 minutes. He lost his community support placement … [and] therapy support. It was all cut.”

Briana Blackett, a single mother of two children with autism, said the review process was highly distressing. “You have to focus on all the worst parts of my life and all the things I’m not able to do anymore over and over and over again,” she said.

For Blackett and her children the NDIS led to a massive cut in their funded support services. Speech therapy and behavioural therapies were ripped away. Such therapies are essential. They are evidence-based early intervention programs for children with a disability. If these supports are not provided for children, particularly those diagnosed with autism, it severely limits their lives, leading to isolation and lack of social engagement.

Participants have no basic right to challenge or correct their plan before it is imposed. The first time they see their plan is after it has already been approved by the NDIA. A survey by National Disability Services (NDS), the body representing disability service providers, found that 25 percent of NDIS participants felt that they were worse off under the scheme.

NDS also reported a high rate of casualisation of the workforce in NDIS-funded services, estimating that about four in ten workers are casual. Previously, most services were staffed with full-time and permanent workers, providing continuity and experience.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) is the first territory or state to have completed the full NDIS roll out. In the process, the ACT Labor-Greens government has forced out 350 public sector workers and overseen the dismantling of essential respite services. Three of the four respite services in Canberra have shut their doors.

Under the NDIS price guide, which determines the costs for all services, 24-hour respite is charged at a fixed rate of $501.71 per client per night. Tracey Hall, acting CEO of Marymead, a disability service that was forced to stop providing respite, told the Canberra Times that the rate “assumes one staff member can care for three children at a time but, for those needing one-on-one care, the cost is at least double that NDIS rate.”

Lives are already being lost. In 2013, as part of the NDIS takeover, the New South Wales (NSW) state Liberal-National government announced the closure of the Stockton Centre in Newcastle by 2018. Earlier this year, two former Stockton Centre residents who were forced to transfer into a group home died after being taken to hospital. It was suspected that they suffered from dehydration. A third ex-resident was sent to hospital after developing pneumonia.

In Victoria, the state Labor government is overseeing the shutdown of state-run homes, affecting potentially 4,500 disability workers and thousands of people with a disability.

The trade unions covering disability workers supported the introduction of the NDIS and have assisted this destructive process.

Last month, the Health and Community Services Union (HACSU) announced a protest campaign, including a rally in Melbourne, to appeal to the Victorian Labor government to “make things right” and “protect disability care.” The rally was summarily called off after the government entered “high-level discussions” with the union and agreed to four weeks of “intensive” negotiations, chaired by the Fair Work Commission, the federal industrial tribunal.

These negotiations will do nothing for the public sector workers or the people depending on disability services. The HACSU helped bring the Labor government to office in 2014, and joined unions nationally in backing the NDIS and disguising its pro-market agenda.

The political and corporate elite’s enthusiastic support for the NDIS flows from the fact that it is paving the way for further privatisation of basic public services. The basic social right people with a disability, their families and carers to have access to free and high-quality health care and support is being sacrificed for corporate profit.

European Union intervenes in Maldives

Rohantha De Silva

Late last month a European Union delegation visited Maldives and held separate meetings with government leaders and representatives of the opposition coalition, who are engaged in intense political infighting ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The trip followed a European Parliament (EP) resolution on October 5 calling on its member states to impose sanctions on Maldives. The strategically located nation has a total population of about 400,000 people, spread over 1,000 coral islands and covering 35,000 square miles of the Indian Ocean.

The resolution declared that the sanctions were in response to “the deteriorating political and human rights situation in the Maldives and the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Abdulla Yameen.” It called on Maldivian authorities to reform the judiciary, release political prisoners and guarantee the constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly.

The resolution also voiced concerns about reintroduction of the death penalty, the growing number of Maldivians joining extremist groups, the suspension of one-third of licensed lawyers and harassment, intimidation and arrest of elected members of parliament. It declared that the situation had worsened since a 2015 December resolution, which urged EU members to freeze assets and impose travel bans against top Maldivian leaders.

The Maldives foreign ministry issued a statement on October 6 in response to the EP resolution, denouncing it as “highly motivated by one-sided political rhetoric and contains inaccuracies, contradictions, misrepresentations and baseless allegations.”

Contrary to its “human rights” posturing, the real aim of the EU intervention is to secure the domination of western powers over the Maldives and facilitate a regime-change election defeat of the current pro-Chinese president, Abdulla Yameen.

On October 29, the EU delegation met with a group of opposition parliamentarians, including those from the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of former President Mohammed Nasheed, the Jumhooree Party (JP) and the Adhaalath Party.

Prior to the meeting, the MDP issued a statement complaining that next year’s election could not be free and fair “while opposition leaders are under arrest or serving sentences on trumped-up charges, designed to disqualify them from the elections.” It also demanded the government “immediately release all political leaders and political prisoners, and drop all charges against opposition lawmakers.”

The opposition group has denounced Yameen government moves to frame-up and jail Nasheed, JP leader Qasim Ibrahim and several other leading opposition politicians and thus stop them running in next year’s elections.

On October 30, the EU delegation met with Foreign Minister Dr Mohamed Asim, President Yameen and Attorney General Mohamed Anil. The Maldivian foreign ministry claimed that the talks focused on “environment and climate change, counter-terrorism and violent extremism, socio-economic development, strengthening governance and democratic framework.”

Yameen’s office issued a statement saying he was committed to maintaining “judicial independence, democracy, rule of law and human rights, and in continuing to cooperate with international partners in upholding the standards of good governance.”

Notwithstanding Yameen’s claims, his government is stepping up its repressive measures. Government-sponsored legislation to establish a new media regulator that will be able to impose hefty fines, and even temporarily shut down newspapers and television stations, is currently before the parliament.

The EU is supporting former President Nasheed and spearheading the current opposition campaign. A stooge of the US and other western powers, Nasheed was released from jail in January last year by Yameen’s government, following pressure from Washington and Britain. He had been sentenced to 13 years’ jail in March 2015.

To safeguard its increasingly fragile rule, the Yameen government has stepped up its repression of the opposition. It was only able to stop an opposition no-confidence motion against parliamentary speaker Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed on July 24 by deploying Maldives National Defence Force officers and police to prevent opposition MPs entering the parliament on that day. The government crisis is by no means over.

In early October, 56 lawyers were suspended by judicial authorities for accusing the courts and other institutions of not upholding the rule of law. The lawyers had submitted a petition to the attorney general complaining that courts were conducting cases behind closed doors. The government responded by claiming the petition was illegal and those signing it were in contempt of court.

The political warfare within the ruling elite of this tiny archipelago is fueled by Washington’s aggressive military-strategic offensive against Beijing and involving India and other western powers. While German and French economic and political interests are not exactly the same as the US, they are anxious to undercut China in the region.

Beijing’s relations with the Maldives are part of its “String of Pearls” and “Silk Road Economic Belt” strategy, which envisage a massive infrastructure development linking the Eurasian landmass, as well as Africa, to counter Washington’s efforts to isolate and encircle China. Diego Garcia, America’s principal Indian Ocean base is 800 miles south of the Maldive capital, Male.

The Maldives is located close to important sea-lanes linking the Middle East and Africa to East Asia, South East Asia and Australia and which provide China, Japan, South Korea and India with Middle Eastern oil. An estimated two-thirds of the world’s oil and half of its container shipments passes through the region.

In September, US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Alice Wells presented a submission to Congressional sub-committee on Asia and the Pacific on “Maintaining US Influence in South Asia: The FY 2018 Budget.” The document expressed concerns about “the state of rule of law and democracy” and “the growth of Islamic extremism” in the Maldives. US concerns about Islamic extremism in the Maldives and elsewhere are thoroughly bogus.

Wells called on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee to provide $US440,000 in foreign assistance to the Maldives for maritime security cooperation over “narcotics trafficking, piracy in the Indian Ocean, and seaborne trade in illicit materials of potential use for terrorist activity.” This finance will be used by Washington to strengthen its relations with Maldivian security forces, on which Yameen is currently relying to secure his rule.

The “democratic” posturing of the western imperialists is a complete fraud. Its purpose is to undermine Chinese influence and establish a pro-western government in the Indian Ocean nation. With the US President Donald Trump stepping up US political and economic threats against China and North Korea, the region is being drawn into an explosive geo-political conflict.

India’s 1-percent grabs nearly a quarter of all income

Saman Gunadasa & Kranti Kumara

The corporate press around the world have long depicted India as a rising economic star whose population, or at least a sizeable portion of it, is benefiting from rapid capitalist growth. Hundreds of millions, or so we have been told, are on the cusp of “middle class” incomes.

A recent report from French economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty debunks this distorted and cynical picture, showing that the economic development of the past three decades has overwhelmingly benefited the top 10 percent and especially the top 1 percent of Indian income-earners.

Chancel and Piketty present their analysis in a 50-page report, Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?, the updated version of which was released in September.

Using tax data, beginning with 1922, the year the colonial overlords of British India introduced an income tax, Chancel and Piketty show that income inequality is greater today than any time in the last century.

The top 1 percent of income-earners capture 23 percent of all income, nearly quadrupling their income share from the early 1980s, and the top 10 percent garner well over half of all income, 55 percent.

Meanwhile, the poorest 50 percent of Indians must make do with an income share of just 15 percent, eking out their existence on an average annual income of US $705.

The income data analyzed by the authors covers India’s adult population, defined as persons 20 years and older and estimated in 2014 to number about 780 million out of a total population of 1.26 billion. India it should be noted has the world’s largest number of child workers aged between 5 and 14 years of age.

According to the report, increasing inequality has been the defining characteristic of India’s “growth story” since the late 1980s, when Congress Party Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi initiated a turn to “free-market,” “investor-friendly” policies.

But it is after 1991—when the Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao demonstratively broke with the state-led economic development strategy the Indian bourgeoisie had pursued since independence in 1947 and embraced a “new economic policy” aimed at transforming India into a cheap-labor haven for global capital—that income inequality truly surged.

Nothing illustrates more strikingly the extreme inequality of India’s income distribution than the preceding chart. It plots the average annual income for the different strata of the country’s adult-population in 2014. The figures are shown in both Indian rupees and in US dollars with the latter displayed in red.

The top 0.1 of Indians (approximately 778,000 people) have average incomes of just under $200,000 with the richest of them, the 0.001 percent (some 7,780 people) earning on average $4.3 million per year. The bottom 90 percent on the other hand struggle to survive in dire poverty, with the average income even in the so-called “middle 40 percent”—i.e. those in the 50-90 percent of highest income earners—amounting to just $1400.

Even the annual income of those in in the top 10 percent (some 77.8 million people) is less than $12,500, meaning the majority, while living in circumstances vastly superior to those of ordinary Indian workers and toilers, are far from wealthy. Any family calamity (loss of a job or illness) could soon plunge them into poverty.

The following table provides more details of the data from which the first graph was drawn.

Several things stand out from this table. The lowest income threshold to fall within top 10 percent in annual income is a mere Rs. 191,713 which was US $3,100 dollars in 2014. For the bottom 50 percent the lowest threshold is no income and the highest income is around Rs. 63,000 which means the bottom 50 percent subsist on incomes ranging from zero to about $1,000!

For the next 40 percent, income figures in US dollars range from $1,000 to $3,100 per annum.

Thus, for 90 to 95 percent of adult workers the situation can only be described as an unequal division of poverty, while for the bottom 50 percent the situation is nothing short of desperate.

At the other end of the spectrum, the concentration of income is correspondingly intense with the top 1 percent and especially the top 0.1 percent living a life of luxury.

The authors emphasize that income inequality actually decreased during the three decades starting from 1950.

Led by the Congress Party, the Indian bourgeoisie suppressed the mass anti-imperialist movement that convulsed South Asia during the first-half of the 20th Century, and agreed to a deal with the British in 1947 under which they took hold of the colonial state apparatus and the subcontinent was communally partitioned into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly “Hindu” India.

However, the Congress did carry out some piecemeal reforms, such as liquidating the largest zamindari (feudal) landholdings in the interests of capitalist development, and in the face of militant worker struggles and social unrest was forced to make limited social-welfare provisions.

But by 1991, the bourgeoisie’s state-led development project, which aimed to promote Indian capitalism through import-substitution and widespread state ownership, had shipwrecked. Working in close concert with the IMF, the Indian elite began implementing neo-liberal policies—deregulation, privatization, tax cuts for big business and the rich, the rolling back of subsidies, slashing of public services, etc.—wholesale.

Since then, income inequality has risen exponentially, while the vast majority remain mired in poverty and face increased economic insecurity, due to the gutting of public and social services.

The following three charts display the contrasting trends from 1951 through the early1980s and the subsequent decades.

The first chart shows the collective income accruing to the “middle 40” rose to just over 45 percent by the early 1980s, while that of the top 10 percent declined from about 37 percent in 1951 to 30 percent. After 1990 the two trends reverse. The top 10 percent garnered more than 55 percent of all income in 2014, almost double its share in the early 1980s, while the middle 40 percent’s share fell to just over 30 percent.

The second chart “Bottom 50 percent Income Share in India: 1951-2014” shows the collective income share of the bottom 50 percent reaching about 23 percent in the early 1980s then falling sharply, especially after 2000, to just 15 percent in 2014.

The third and final chart displays the income trend for the top 1 percent from 1922.

Chancel and Piketty summarize their chief conclusions as follows:

1. There was a marked decrease in inequality in the early forties.

2. There was a noticeable reduction in top income shares from 1950 to the early 1980s, but a significant increase from the mid-eighties onwards.

3. Income inequality in contemporary India is much higher than during the late pre-independence period and the highest in at least a century.

Then the authors make the following striking observation about the so-called Indian middle-class:

“This result should help us better characterize what has been termed as ‘the rise of India's middle class.’ From the perspective of our new income inequality dataset, “Shining India” corresponds to the top 10percent of the population (approximately 80 million adult individuals in 2014) rather than the middle 40 percent. Relatively speaking, the shining decades for the middle 40 percent group corresponded to the 1951-1980 period, when this group captured a much higher share of total growth (49 percent) than it did over the past forty years. It is also important to stress that, since the early 1980s, growth has been highly unevenly distributed within the top 10percent group.” [Emphasis added]

The gross social inequality and poverty documented in From British Raj to Billionaire Raj are a searing indictment of Indian capitalism and the entire political establishment, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP to the twin Stalinist parliamentary parties, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM and the Communist Party of India or CPI.

The Stalinists have systematically suppressed the class struggle, dismissing socialism “as a far off cry,” while claiming that it is possible to pursue neo-liberal reform “with a human face.” From 1991 through 2008, the Stalinists supported a succession of Indian governments, most of them Congress-led, which implemented the bourgeoisie’s “new economic policy” and developed close ties to Washington. And in the states where they have held office, the CPM and CPI have imposed what they themselves call “pro-investor” policies, including banning strikes, slashing social spending, and using police and goon violence to suppress peasant opposition to the land expropriations for big business development projects.

Amazon’s CamperForce program exploits elderly workers

Evan Blake

Across the US, thousands of workers living in mobile homes—many of them in their 50s, 60s and 70s—have begun grueling, months-long temporary jobs at Amazon facilities as part of the company’s “CamperForce” program. Launched in 2008, CamperForce targets the growing population of elderly migrant workers that have been forced to live in mobile homes after losing their homes, retirement and life savings in the 2008 housing crisis and ensuing economic recession.

Currently, Amazon is accepting applications for CamperForce positions in Shephardsville and Hebron, Kentucky, with wages listed at $11 per hour and “up to $11.50” per hour, respectively. Both applications claim, “Associates will also be entitled, during the term of employment, to such paid time off, medical, and other employee benefits as the Company may offer from time to time, subject to applicable eligibility requirements.”

The poverty wages, paltry benefits that the company “may offer” and the highly unstable living and working conditions faced by these workers exposes the lie that there has been an economic “recovery” for the vast majority of the American population. Recent studies have found that all job growth in the US between 2005 and 2015 stems from temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and so-called independent contractors. This sub-class of highly-exploited and disposable workers have become a central pillar for companies such as Amazon, which announced last month that it intends to hire an estimated 120,000 temporary workers for its upcoming holiday season of peak sales.

Among seniors, 2008 had a devastating impact, with thousands losing their homes and life savings as part of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Inequality between wealthy and low-income seniors in the US has grown steadily, to the point where the gap is now greater than in all but two of the thirty-five OECD member nations—Chile and Mexico.

This growth of inequality has led directly to declining life expectancy among seniors, as documented in the Society of Actuaries’ annual mortality improvement scale, which found that life expectancy for 65-year-old men and women declined from 85.8 and 87.8 years to 85.6 and 87.6 years respectively between 2014 and 2015, the first year-over-year increase since 2005.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 12 percent of those 70 or older are still working today, compared to 6.7 percent in 1985, while the AARP reports that 80 percent of Baby Boomers expect to continue working in retirement out of necessity.

In her recently published book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, author Jessica Bruder details the experiences of a variety of workers who have either chosen or been forced to abandon their traditional homes and live their lives in mobile homes, or so-called “recreational vehicles” (RVs).

Bruder devotes a chapter of her book to the plight of CamperForce workers and the role that Amazon plays in exploiting this section of the workforce. This chapter details the lives of Chuck and Barb Stout, now 73 and 60 years old, respectively.

Both Chuck and Barb were devastated by the 2008 financial meltdown, losing their homes and entire life savings, and being forced to purchase an RV from Barb’s brother for $500. They became migrant laborers, following temporary work across the country and living from paycheck to paycheck.

In the mid-2000s, as Amazon expanded its business into an all-encompassing online marketplace, the company established their network of warehouses and distribution centers to store their immense variety of merchandise. Every year, they proved unprepared for the annual growth in sales surrounding the Cyber Monday and Christmas holidays, what came to be known as “peak season.”

Thus, amid the housing crisis in 2008 Amazon tried hiring a team of migrant RVers to work at a facility in Coffeyville, Kansas. This venture proved successful, so the following year the company expanded the program to warehouses in Campbellsville, Kentucky, and Fernley, Nevada, and since then they’ve expanded to over a dozen states across the US.

As part of the CamperForce program, Amazon hires workers on temporary contracts from early October until December 23, paying them near minimum wage while covering the expenses of staying in an RV park, excluding the cost of propane. In blog posts, some who have gone through the experience compare the campsites to the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression.

The company targets older workers, who they believe have a stronger work ethic than their younger counterparts. Bruder reports that Kelly Calmes, a CamperForce representative, states in one online recruiting seminar: “We’ve had folks in their eighties who do a phenomenal job for us. […] You guys have put in a lifetime of work. You understand what work is.”

Like all other Amazon warehouse workers, the mostly elderly CamperForce workers are forced to labor under sweatshop conditions, often walking upwards of 13 miles a day throughout the warehouse.

Barb and Chuck began their first CamperForce job in Fernley, Nevada in 2013. In her book, Bruder reports, “Chuck and Barb found that they had a lot in common with their fellow workers, who came from all corners of the United States. Many had seen their retirement savings vanish in the stock market or had lost homes to foreclosure. Others had watched businesses go under or grappled with unemployment and ageism. A larger number had become full-time RVers or vandwellers because they could no longer afford traditional housing—what they called ‘sticks and bricks.’ They talked about how Social Security wasn’t enough to cover the basic necessities and about the yoke of debt from every imaginable source: medical bills, maxed-out credit cards, even student loans.”

Bruder notes, “On days off, many of Barb and Chuck’s coworkers were too exhausted to do anything but sleep, eat, and catch up on laundry. […] As the season wore on, people complained of plantar fasciitis, tendinitis, and repetitive stress injuries, including a condition called trigger finger, which came from using a handheld scanner gun over and over.”

In the face of these and other ailments, the only medical support provided by Amazon involves bare-bones first aid stations with “free generic pain relievers on offer in the warehouse.”

The Stouts continued working for CamperForce the following two peak seasons, including at a warehouse in Haslet, Texas in 2015, at which point Chuck was 71 and Barb was 58. This time, they had to camp 34 miles from the facility, and were forced to wake up at 4am to make it to their 6am shift on time, due to traffic. “We went to work in the dark, and we came home in the dark,” Chuck told Bruder.

In Haslet, Chuck worked as a “water spider,” a position similar to that of a janitor. Bruder writes, “He was in constant motion, walking about 15 miles per shift, pausing only on rare occasions. One such occasion came when a box flew off a conveyor belt and knocked him flat on the ground. The sound of his head hitting the concrete floor was terrifyingly loud; in an instant, he was surrounded by worried coworkers and an Amazon medic. The medic held up a finger, asking Chuck to watch as he moved it slowly back and forth. Soon he had good news: Chuck hadn’t sustained a concussion. So he went back to work. (Amazon declined to comment on the incident.)”

While the Stouts and thousands of other elderly workers are forced to spend their golden years in toil and economic hardship, the social layer of Wall Street banker and swindlers responsible for their poverty has amassed unfathomable wealth since 2008. Over the past year alone, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by 17 percent, or nearly $1 trillion, surpassing a total of $6 trillion.

Amazon’s 53-year-old CEO Jeff Bezos embodies the process of wealth redistribution that has taken place since 2008, with Bezos having accrued nearly all of his estimated $94.6 billion since the 2008 financial crisis. By targeting low-income and socially devastated regions as prime locations for its immense warehouses, Amazon has emerged from the rubble of the economic crisis as the world’s preeminent online retail giant and the largest source of all retail growth worldwide.

As thousands of CamperForce and other seasonal temporary workers join the ranks of Amazon’s year-round workforce, their labor is further propelling the company’s stock value on an unprecedented upswing.

Last month, Bezos became the richest person in the world after he amassed $10.4 billion in a single day, riding an Amazon stock boom. Since the 2008 crash, his wealth has grown by over $85 billion, enough money to both end homelessness in the US and provide water and sanitation services for the entire global population.

If Bezos’ total wealth were divided among all 120,000 of Amazon’s temporary workers this holiday season, each would receive a bonus of $788,333, more than enough to buy a nice home and live out their lives in comfortable retirement.

Deposed Catalan premier hands himself in to Belgian police

Alex Lantier 

Bitter conflicts erupted inside the European Union (EU) this weekend over Spain’s suspension of the elected government of Catalonia after the October 1 Catalan independence referendum and the flight of deposed Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont to Brussels. As Madrid escalates its repression in Catalonia after General Fernando Alejandre threatened the region with military intervention, a historic political crisis is shaking the EU to its foundations.

Puigdemont handed himself in to police officials yesterday in Belgium, where he fled as Madrid suspended his government, after the capital issued a European warrant for his arrest and extradition back to Spain. “We are prepared to fully cooperate with Belgian justice following the European arrest warrant issued by Spain,” Puigdemont wrote on Twitter.

Amid growing criticisms of Madrid in official Belgian circles, prosecutors said they would examine the warrant, which Puigdemont’s lawyers will contest, opening the prospect of a lengthy extradition trial. “We will study it, and put it in the hands of an investigating judge,” the spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, Eric Van Der Sijpt, told AP. “That could be tomorrow, the day after or even Monday... We are not in any hurry.”

This came as lawyers for eight Catalan ministers jailed in Spain filed complaints over their handling by Spanish police. According to attorney Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, officers stripped two of the ministers naked, handcuffed the ministers behind their backs, and had them listen to a repeating loop of the Spanish national anthem on their way to jail. Deposed Catalan Justice Minister Carles Mundó reportedly suffered injuries due to the handcuffs. The ministers were treated “as if they were drug dealers,” Alonso-Cuevillas told Catalan public television Saturday.

Madrid’s drive towards dictatorship, which has for a month received the EU’s full support, is deeply reactionary and must be opposed. All political prisoners in Spain must be released, and the working class across Europe must be politically mobilized in struggle against the rising danger of military-police rule. In this struggle, workers must act independently from and against forces in the European ruling elite working with the Catalan nationalists, who speak for factions of the Catalan bourgeoisie, and are hostile to the working class and to democratic rights.

Behind Belgian prosecutors’ reluctance to rapidly extradite Puigdemont lie concerns in ruling circles that the Catalan crisis has exposed the entire EU’s shift to police-state rule and could provoke explosive popular opposition. Strike action is called in Catalonia for November 8, and protests are also being held in the Basque country and southern France, including in Toulouse and Perpignan.

After a decade of imposing deep austerity and police repression at the behest of the financial aristocracy, with millions unemployed in Spain and across Europe, the EU is deeply discredited. Videos of the brutal police crackdown on peaceful voters during the October 1 referendum shocked millions worldwide. The major EU powers backed Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy, however; Berlin, London and Paris issued statements stressing that they saw Rajoy as their only partner in Spain.

Since October 1, the major European powers have given a green light at every turn to the most aggressive forces in the Spanish ruling class. Alejandre, who listed Catalonia as a possible target of military action and hailed Spanish soldiers “of all epochs”—thus including fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s 1939 invasion of Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War—made clear that Madrid is reacting by legitimizing its fascist heritage to prepare mass repression. He also said that Spain’s NATO allies are all making similar plans.

After Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) officials last week warned that working-class suburbs of Barcelona are a “powder keg,” however, some EU officials fear that an immediate military clash with Catalonia might have dangerous consequences, provoking uncontrollable opposition across Europe. They are asking whether, now that Spanish troops and Guardia Civil are seizing infrastructure and state buildings across Catalonia, a deal with the Catalan nationalists might be possible.

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon, whose Flemish separatist New Flemish Alliance (NVA) sent observers to the October 1 Catalan referendum, criticized Madrid’s policy on VTM. He said, “now the Spanish government will act in the place of a democratically elected government, of members of a government who are jailed… What did they do wrong? They only tried to act on the mandate they received from their electors. So I’m asking myself questions.”

Criticisms of Madrid extended beyond the Flemish separatists, however. Elio di Rupo of Belgium’s opposition francophone Socialist Party said: “I oppose Puigdemont’s politics, but I would be shocked if the Belgian justice system jailed him. Let’s have a minimum of dignity. Let’s oppose secession but remain democratic. Puigdemont abused his position, but Rajoy behaved like an authoritarian Francoite. Let us find the path to a more federal Spain.”

The French Socialist Party’s (PS) 2007 presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, also raised questions on RTL radio. “Anyone can see how strange it is for people to be jailed, in the heart of Europe, for carrying out an ideological struggle,” she said. Royal added that this represents “a dysfunction of Europe. European institutions, the commission or the parliament, must provide a forum for negotiation.”

These comments were a response to Puigdemont’s appeals last week to the EU for support. In an interview with Belgian RTBF radio on Friday night, he repeated these appeals and made clear that they aim to prevent the eruption of a confrontation between the workers and the Rajoy government. Offering to run from Brussels in the December 21 elections being held in Catalonia under the jackboot of Madrid, Puigdemont called the events in Catalonia a “European crisis.”

Asked if there was a danger of a new “eruption” in Catalonia, he replied: “Precisely, I am here to prevent a new wave of violence.” He warned that this eruption “depends on the choice of the Spanish state. I have always called for dialogue, for nonviolence.” Puigdemont also offered to meet Rajoy in Brussels, adding: “I have always been inclined to have such dialogue.”

Workers must be warned: what Puigdemont and his allies in the Belgian and French ruling elite are proposing is not a democratic policy after Madrid’s repression in Catalonia. They are not opposed to Madrid’s turn towards police-state rule or the legitimization of fascism. Royal helped oversee the state of emergency in France by the PS government, which invited neo-fascist National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée presidential palace for talks.

As for the NVA, its ties to Flemish neo-Nazis and Jambon’s sympathies for the Belgian collaboration with the Nazi Occupation during World War II are well known.

Rather, Puigdemont and his EU allies are closing ranks with Madrid against the workers, accepting the December 21 elections called by Madrid after it suspended the Catalan government, and asking Rajoy for talks even as Madrid seeks to impose a dictatorship. A Rajoy-Puigdemont deal brokered by the EU could only be at the expense of the workers, based on stepped-up repressive measures and continuing EU austerity.

Broad sections of the Catalan capitalist class principally fear the working class and would enthusiastically support such an antidemocratic deal. This was underscored by the Catalan business federation Foment del Traball’s decision to present today a lawsuit to block strike action on November 8. It claimed the strike’s motives are “not labor issues” and that the strike organizers “aim to hide the political motives” of the action, that is, to express opposition to Madrid.

The only way forward to defend democratic rights and prevent a further turn towards police-state forms of rule in Spain and across Europe is the independent mobilization of the working class across the continent. Workers cannot defend their interests inside the rotten political set-up created by Madrid’s suspension of the Catalan regional government and its turn to dictatorship, backed by the EU. Rather, the working class must take up the defense of their social and democratic rights as a struggle for socialism, based on a revolutionary and internationalist perspective.

The turn towards military-police forms of rule cannot be opposed based on the bankrupt perspective of the various Catalan nationalist parties, which aim to set up an independent capitalist state in Catalonia allied to the EU. This orientation, which divides the working class and blocks the unification of workers’ struggles against austerity and police-state rule, is reactionary. It aims to leave the Catalan bourgeoisie in power, even as it turns ever more directly against the workers.

This is in particular the role of the Catalan petty-bourgeois Candidacies of Popular Unity (CUP), which is working out its strategy in the December 21 elections based on appeals to Puigdemont. “We want to know where the [Catalan] Government is going. And we want determination. Whether here or in Brussels,” said CUP deputy and Pompeu Fabra University professor Mireia Boya.

Such appeals only underscore the impotence of the CUP, which demands “determination” from Puigdemont even as he seeks to open talks with Rajoy to muzzle working-class opposition to Madrid.

Lebanese crisis bound up with war drive against Iran

Bill Van Auken

The resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, announced Saturday in Riyadh over Saudi state media, marks a further escalation of the US, Saudi and Israeli preparations for military confrontation with Iran.

After becoming prime minister for a second time in 2016—he previously held the office from 2009 to 2011—Hariri, the leader of the Lebanese Sunni Future Movement party, headed a so-called national unity government in which the Iranian-backed and Shia-dominated Hezbollah movement played a prominent role.

In his resignation speech, which he read out over the Saudi Al-Arabiya television, Hariri issued a virulent denunciation of both Hezbollah and Iran, rhetoric that echoed that of the Saudi monarchy. “Wherever Iran is found, we find disputes and war,” he asserted, adding that “we will cut any hand that causes harm in our region.”

“I point very clearly to Iran which spreads destruction and strife wherever it is, and witness to that its interventions in the internal matters of the Arab countries, in Lebanon and Syria and Bahrain and Yemen,” Hariri said.

Hariri’s sudden and unexpected resignation came on the same day that Riyadh was rocked by the summary arrests of close to a dozen Saudi princes and dozens of current and former state ministers on charges of corruption. Among those arrested—and who are being detained in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel rather than any Saudi jail—is Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah and head of the National Guard. Also detained was the billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose Kingdom Holding company has extensive interests in the US and Europe.

Corruption is endemic to the Saudi monarchical system, providing a convenient pretext for the arrests. Their real purpose is to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who heads up the “anti-corruption” campaign, and ensure his succession to the throne.

The arrests may also, however, have a direct connection to Hariri’s resignation. The Saudi royal family has been roiled in recent months by divisions over the protracted and bloody US-backed war in Yemen, with which Bin Salman is most closely identified. The arrests may be aimed at quelling any dissent in relation to both the war and the continuing escalation of Riyadh’s anti-Iranian crusade, which is being carried out in alliance with both Washington and Tel Aviv.

There is every indication that Hariri’s resignation was staged at the behest of and in direct collaboration with the Saudi regime.

A key role in the affair has been played by the Saudi Minister of State for Persian Gulf Affairs Thamer al-Sabhan, who last Sunday had publicly taken Hariri’s government to task for its “silence” on Hezbollah’s “war” against the Persian Gulf monarchy. He demanded that Hezbollah be “confronted by force,” adding, “All of those who work and cooperate with it politically, economically and through the media should be punished,” a category that clearly would include Hariri.

Hezbollah has increasingly drawn the ire of the Saudi regime for the role it has played in helping the government of Bashar al-Assad defeat the collection of Al Qaeda-linked Islamist “rebels” who laid waste to Syria with the aid of billions of dollars in arms and money provided by Riyadh and the other Sunni Gulf oil sheikdoms in collaboration with the CIA.

The Shia-based movement, which emerged in response to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, succeeded in driving the US out of Lebanon in 1983 with the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, and forced Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Again in 2006, it fought the Israeli military to a standstill in a month-long war.

While Hezbollah is a bourgeois movement, which upholds the interests of Lebanese Shia capitalists and merchants, its resistance to Israel and its populist appeals to the “oppressed” have won it support beyond its Shia base.

Two days after Sabhan’s implicit denunciation of his collaboration with Hezbollah, Hariri flew to Saudi Arabia, where his family’s multi-billion-dollar construction firm is based. He holds dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship. There, he met with both Crown Prince Bin Salman and Al-Sabhan.

Afterwards, he went on Twitter to report his “extended meeting with his dear friend Sabhan,” while Sabhan himself tweeted that they had discussed “many issues concerning the well-being of Lebanon” and that “God willing, what is coming is better.”

What was coming, of course, was Hariri’s resignation, throwing Lebanon’s fragile sectarian-based political system into crisis and raising the specter of the country plunging once again into civil war.

Hariri, in explaining his resignation and his presence in the Saudi capital, claimed that there were threats to his life and that he feared a return to the environment in which his father was killed in 2005. The Saudi media amplified on this theme, claiming that there had been a botched assassination attempt on the Lebanese prime minister. Lebanese security forces roundly denied the existence of any such attempt or existing plots. Lebanese President Michel Aoun said he would not accept Hariri’s resignation until he returned to Beirut.

Hariri, while having long bitterly opposed Hezbollah, blaming the movement for the assassination of his father, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, had backed the selection of Hezbollah’s ally Aoun for president, and accepted the nomination to form a government together with the powerful Shia-dominated movement in what was seen as a break in Lebanon’s protracted political impasse. He had also previously praised Hezbollah for its role in driving Al Qaeda-linked militias from the Syrian-Lebanese border.

What has changed is the ratcheting up of the campaign against Iran waged by Washington in alliance with both Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Trump administration has signaled its willingness to upend the Iranian nuclear agreement, which would place it on path to war with Tehran, while the US Congress last month enacted a new series of sanctions against Hezbollah, including the placing of multimillion-dollar bounties on the heads of two of its officials.

Lebanon, which suffered a civil war that bled the country from 1975 to 1989, is threatened with being turned into a field of battle in the drive by US imperialism to destroy Iran as an impediment to establishing hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. To this end, the US administration has deliberately sought to fan the flames of sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Muslims, with potentially catastrophic implications for Lebanon.

The Israeli regime has made no attempt to conceal its glee over Hariri’s actions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the Lebanese prime minister’s resignation and statements in Riyadh as “a wake-up call for the international community to act against Iranian aggression.”

The country’s thuggish Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman went on Twitter to write: “Lebanon=Hezbollah. Hezbollah=Iran. Lebanon=Iran. Iran is dangerous to the world. Saad Hariri has proved that today. Period.”

The Jerusalem Post was even more explicit, stating, “Now, it seems that Hariri has given Israel more legitimacy for a full-scale and uncompromising campaign against Iran and Lebanon, not only Hezbollah, should a war in the north break out.”

It approvingly quoted Yoav Gallant, a member of the security cabinet and former Israeli general, who vowed that should war begin, “Israel will bring Lebanon back to the stone age.”

Over 25 killed in mass shooting in Texas

Trévon Austin

At least 25 people have been killed, and many more injured, in a mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a small town about 30 miles east of San Antonio. Devin Kelley, a 26-year-old male, walked into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs and opened fire, marking one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history, and the largest in Texas history.

The shooting wounded nearly everyone inside the church that attended the service, about 50 people, in a town of just a few hundred. Among those killed, 23 people died inside the church, two outside the building, and one person died after being transported to a hospital, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The ages of the wounded and dead ranged from 5 to 72, authorities said.

Freeman Martin, regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the shooter was dressed in all black, tactical-type gear, when he opened fire on the church. “He was seen dressed in all black. He started firing at the church,” he said. “He moved to the right side of the church and continued to fire, then he went in the church.” He was “dressed all in black tactical type gear and was wearing a ballistic vest.”

According to Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office spokesman Robert Murphy, the shooter was killed after a brief chase. It is not known whether or not Kelley shot himself, but one report claims that a citizen inside of the church confronted Kelley.

He “grabbed his rifle and confronted the suspect,” who was armed with a “Ruger AR assault type rifle,” according to heavy.com. The unidentified citizen was then reported to have chased Kelley, who attempted to flee in a vehicle and ran off the road. Kelley was found dead in the vehicle with a gunshot wound.

“We don’t know if it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound or if he was shot by our local resident who engaged him with gunfire,” authorities said.

A witness, a cashier at a gas station across the street from the church, told CNN she heard about 20 shots being fired in quick succession while a church service was underway around 11:30 a.m. local time.

David Flores, a local resident, told CNN, “My dad saw the gunman run into the church building and then he heard shots and saw people running.” Flores told CNN. “People covered in blood and screaming. It was pandemonium everywhere.”

According to both witness accounts and official reports, pregnant women and young children were among the victims in the shooting, including the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter Annabelle, and a two-year-old toddler, according to reports by KNES5.

“There were several children injured,” Flores told CNN. “I know three, personally, who are in critical condition.”

San Antonio police reportedly raided Kelley’s home on Sunday evening.

In the aftermath of the shooting, FBI authorities searched Kelley’s Facebook profile and found a posted picture of a rifle Kelley called a “bad bitch.” His profile picture showed two children as well. His Facebook account has since been removed.

According to the Daily Beast, “Kelley was married and Kelley’s mother-in-law listed a P.O. box in Sutherland Springs as a mailing address." It is also reported that he briefly taught at a summer Bible school.

Authorities have revealed that Kelley was part of the US Air Force after high school, from 2010 to 2014. CBS News reported that “Kelley is a former US Air Force member who served from 2010 to 2014. He was dishonorably discharged and court martialed in May 2014.”

The tragedy that unfolded Sutherland Springs marks the 307th mass shooting—defined as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed—in the United States this year, according to information compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.

An article published by the Guardian after the mass shooting in Las Vegas reported that 1,516 mass shootings had occurred within the last 1,735 days, with 1,719 killed and 6,510 injured. Using data from Gun Violence Archive, the Guardian concluded “there is a mass shooting ... every nine out of 10 days on average.”

India-China Border Agreements: Political Negotiation Needed

Amit Ranjan

The border disputes between India and China have their roots in the colonial history of the geographical area. Whenever there is a stand-off on the border, historical records are (re) interpreted to express or refute claims territorial claims of respective countries. 

In recent times, one such border stand-off that led to a churning of historical records of the territory occurred in 2017, when China laid a territorial claim over Doklam/Doko-La (or Donglong) in Bhutan. The border remained tense for a month, following which India and China agreed to disengage their personnel from that site on 28 August 2017. However, a few days after the disengagement, The Indian Express reported that around 1000 Chinese troops were seen on the plateau, a few hundred meters from the faceoff site. This was not endorsed by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, whose spokesperson stated that “We have seen recent press reports on Doklam. There are no new developments at the face-off site and its vicinity since the August 28 disengagement. The status quo prevails in this area. Any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect." 

The territory in focus was a plateau of approximately 89 square kilometres, which lies at the tri-junction of India, China and Bhutan. It is close to India’s 'Chicken's Neck', the Siliguri Corridor.The Chinese government claims that the land is located on their side of border as per the 1890 'Convention between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet' and that therefore they are free to construct a road near the site. However, on 29 June 2017, in a press release, the Bhutanese government stated that “the construction of the road inside Bhutanese territory is a direct violation of its agreements with China.”

 

Article 1 of the 1890 Convention states that, “The boundary of Sikkim and Tibet shall be the crest of the mountain range separating the waters flowing into the Sikkim Teesta and its affluents from the waters flowing into the Tibetan Mochu and northwards into other Rivers of Tibet. The line commences at Mount Gipmochi on the Bhutan frontier, and follows the above mentioned water-parting to the point where it meets Nipal [Nepal] territory.”

 

Although the boundary line was demarcated between Tibet and British India, Tibet was not a party to it. Moreover, Tibet was not a party to the 1893 'Agreement between Great Britain, China and Tibet Amending Trade Regulations in Tibet'. Therefore, Tibet did not recognise either of the two conventions. For instance, under the 1893 Agreement, a trade mart was to be "established at Yatung on the Tibetan side of the frontier," and that would "be open to all British subjects for purposes of trade from the 1st day of May, 1894." But that did not materialise. Parshotam Mehra writes that “they [Tibetans] built walls on their side to prevent anyone from meeting the British!  No wonder that the trade regulations, though admirable on paper, remained a dead letter in practice.”

 

On physical limitation of the border, using the British maps in his piece on The Wire, Manoj Joshi argued that “The problem is locating Gipmochi. An 1861 British map shows Gipmochi near the tri-junction but within Bhutan. Many old maps show the beginning of the border from a place called Gyemochen.” This means the two may be same place but, as Joshi writes, “that’s where we run into trouble. A modern data base, the one created and maintained by the US shows Gipmochi/Gyemochen to be at least 5 kms east of where the earlier Gipmochi/Gymochen are designated.”

 

Another historical issue between India and China is the status of McMahon line. This line was product of the 1914 'Convention Between Great Britain, China, and Tibet', also known as the Simla Accord. It divided Tibet into two regions: Inner Tibet, which would be under Chinese control and Outer Tibet, which would be autonomous. In Article 2 of the Convention, China agreed that the region would be under Chinese suzerainty but it would not convert Tibet into a Chinese province; Great Britain agreed to never annex Tibet or any portion of it. However, two days after Chen I Fan, the Chinese representative, signed the document, his government repudiated his signature.

Before and after the Convention was concluded, the Chinese kept on presenting “counter-proposals,” but they were ignored by Sir Henry McMahon. About it, A.G. Noorani writes that “Every single Chinese document objecting to that convention confined the objections only to the border between Inner and Outer Tibet. Not once was the Indo-Tibetan border mentioned. This was true of Chinese objections before the [C]onvention was concluded on April 27, 1914, as well as those sent thereafter.”

 

In the absence of Chinese approval, the McMahon line was not endorsed by the British government. However, New Delhi altered its earlier position in 1930s because of growing Chinese assertiveness in Tibet. An incident which angered the British was the arrest of British botanist Frank Kingdon-Ward in 1935, during the investigation of which it was found that the Tawang tract - via which Kingdon-Ward had entered Tibet - had been ceded to British India as per the 1914 Simla Convention. 

 

Meanwhile, in October 1960, Burma (now Myanmar) and China settled their boundary dispute. Their agreed boundary almost follows the McMahon line, albeit China calls it the “traditional customary line.” To conclude, interpretation and re-interpretation of historical documents are complicated processes, and therefore, a solution based on them will have to be politically negotiated.