Google’s alliance with the military: The ruling class responds to social unrest in America

Andre Damon

Last week, Google confirmed that it has provided artificial intelligence software to assist the United States military and intelligence apparatus in analyzing data as part of its drone war and assassination program in the Middle East and beyond.

The website Gizmodo, which first broke the story, reported that the military program using Google is called Project Maven. A military report announcing the project last year said it “focuses on computer vision—an aspect of machine learning and deep learning—that autonomously extracts objects of interest from moving or still imagery.”

Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, identified as the “chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Operations Directorate-Warfare Support,” said at the time that the US is “in an AI arms race,” and noted that “Eric Schmidt [executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet] is calling Google an AI company.”

The revelations directly implicate Google in the criminal activities of the US government all over the world. They also further expose the intimate relationship between the giant internet and telecommunications companies and the repressive apparatus of the state.

A revolving door has been established between the workforces of the technology monopolies and military and intelligence agencies. At a hearing in January, a spokesman for Facebook bragged that, in doubling its army of censors, which will hit 20,000 at the end of this year, the company is prioritizing hiring “former intelligence and law-enforcement officials” who had previously “worked in the area of counterterrorism.”

Schmidt himself has become an advisor to the Pentagon and the chair of its Defense Innovation Advisory Board. A private/military joint partnership called the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) has been established just minutes from Google’s main headquarters.

These developments have the most far-reaching and sinister implications for democratic rights within the United States. Imperialist war and domestic repression are two sides of the same ruling class policy.

Over the course of the past two years, Google, Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies, in close coordination with the government, have moved extremely rapidly to censor content online through the manipulation of search results and news feeds. Carried out within the CIA-Democratic Party’s campaign over “fake news” and “Russian meddling,” the purpose of these measures is to silence, suppress and criminalize domestic opposition.

Google’s censorship of its search algorithms, first unveiled last April, was followed by alterations in Facebook’s news feed to promote “trusted” news outlets—such as the New York Times—over independent news organizations that advance “alternative viewpoints.” More aggressive measures are being planned and implemented.

The World Socialist Web Site has been a principal target of a campaign that has affected a wide array of left-wing, anti-war and progressive web sites.

The corporate and financial elite is terrified of the growth of working class struggle, which poses the greatest threat to its drive to control the world and its preparations for a global conflict with large powers, including Russia and China.

This mortal threat is evident in the spreading wave of social unrest in the United States, which is beginning to break free of the institutions of the capitalist state—including the trade unions. The strike by West Virginia teachers, which took the form of an incipient rebellion against the unions, has been followed by demands for strike action from teachers and other sections of the working class throughout the country.

Social media is playing a critical role in allowing workers to communicate with each other within the United States and beyond its borders. The corporate media is taking note. The New York Times commented worriedly earlier this week that “West Virginia teachers found ways to organize and act outside the usual parameters of traditional unionism. Teachers and service workers across the state aired their frustrations in an enormous Facebook group.”

The Los Angeles Times warned of “social media’s influence on the labor unrest,” pointing to the fact that teachers throughout the country, from West Virginia to Oklahoma, were using Facebook to coordinate their struggles.

What the ruling elite fears above all is the emergence of a revolutionary socialist movement that will challenge the two-party system and the financial oligarchy that it represents. It is highly cognizant of the role of the WSWS, which is seeing a rapid growth in readership with the escalation of the class struggle. The ruling class already had in 2015 the experience of the rebellion of auto workers against the UAW, with tens of thousands of workers reading and sharing WSWS articles on social media.

Standing upon a social powder keg, the ruling class is desperately seeking to gain control of information. Whatever tools the military develops for use abroad, moreover, will be extended to the “total army” of police and intelligence agencies at home. And capitalist ruling elites throughout the world are taking similar measures.

The alarm must be sounded! Opposition to censorship must be connected to the fight against imperialist war and the mobilization of the working class—in the United States and internationally—against inequality and exploitation. The fight against the assault on free speech and a free internet is at the same time a fight to overthrow the capitalist system, abolish the military-intelligence agencies and transform the giant telecommunications companies and other major corporations into publicly-owned and democratically-controlled utilities.

Dozens of fatalities during European cold snap

Tom Pearce & Robert Stevens

Across Europe there have been many fatalities following extreme weather conditions, due to a “polar vortex” over the past month. The AFP news agency reported this week that more than 60 people have perished across the continent.

Among the lives claimed were those of rough sleepers and the homeless, whose numbers have rocketed due to cuts in government funding to vital support organisations.

Most deaths have occurred in Poland, with at least 29 fatalities. Many of the victims were rough sleepers. Four people died of hypothermia last Friday alone, according to the PAP news agency. The Krakow Post reported that the numbers of deaths increased in 2018, writing, “In comparison, 13 people froze to death in February 2017, and just four in February 2016.”

Deaths were reported in the UK (ten by March 2), Slovakia (seven), Czech Republic (six), Lithuania and France (five each), and Spain (three). Italy, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia reported two deaths each. At least one death was reported in the Netherlands, in Sweden, and in Norway.

In Spain, one of the three victims was a homeless man, who had been sleeping in an abandoned truck. In France, a homeless man died in an abandoned house in Lens of smoke inhalation, after lighting a fire to stay warm.

The horror stories continued in Scandinavia. An 84-year-old woman was found buried in snow in Denmark. The authorities reported that “she left her home Wednesday evening and was found Thursday in a park in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen.”

In the UK—where the cold weather front was dubbed the “Beast from the East”—a storm in its immediate aftermath compounded the crisis. The list of weather-related deaths included a 52-year-old homeless man, known locally as Ben, found dead on February 27 in a tent in Retford, Lincolnshire. The body of a 75-year-old woman was found underneath a car near her home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the same day. A care worker, Elaine McNeill, was found dead in the snow on February 28 in Glasgow. She had been walking to the homes of clients in the Milton area of the city when she collapsed on Kippen Street. In Kent, two died, as well as one in Devon and one in East Lothian, Scotland.

On March 2, several people died in car accidents in the north of England. The day before, a seven-year-old girl died after a car crashed into a house in Cornwall. Troops were called out in several areas to rescue trapped people, with a major rescue operation required in the county of Hampshire.

Across Britain, some 1,000 schools were forced to close, while hospitals cancelled non-urgent operations and appointments.

Up to 3,500 vehicles were stuck on motorways, leading to passengers having to sleep in their cars overnight. The effects were widespread, with people left stuck on trains for more than 15 hours. Some fire services were trapped in the heavy snow and refuse collections were cancelled by councils.

Tens of thousands of people were left without water in the UK, including 12,000 households in London, after water pipes burst when they thawed out. Thames Water was forced to distribute water to queues of people from a supermarket in Balham, south London. In Hampstead, north London, crates of water were driven to residential streets for distribution by Thames Water employees from their own cars.

Welsh Water reported that burst pipes affected 4,500 homes.

The situation was so severe that Severn Water had to request Jaguar Land Rover—one of the main auto manufacturers in the UK—cease production at its Solihull car plant near Birmingham. This was so water supplies could be targeted to hospitals and schools. Production at the Cadbury’s Bourneville chocolate plant was also halted.

Even before the cold snap took place, many homeless people perished of exposure. In France, 11 people sleeping rough died in the six weeks between January 1 and February 12. The figures were compiled by the Les Morts dans la Rue group (Deaths in the Street). Across the greater Paris region of Ile-de-France, a total of 18 deaths took place in the same period.

The devastation wreaked by the cold weather in the UK, with its terrible human cost, took place despite the government being warned a month ago by the Meteorological Office’s chief long-range forecaster that a spell of extremely cold weather would arrive.

A lack of planning for energy demands was evident. On March 1, the UK’s National Grid issued a “gas deficit warning,” which resulted in gas prices reaching their highest level for more than two decades. No doubt this will be passed onto the consumer.

Peter Smith, the director of policy for the National Energy Action, a charity campaigning to end fuel poverty in Britain, said the recent extreme cold would likely see an average of as many as 100 people per day perishing in cold homes this winter. This compared with a five-year average of 80 people per day. Based on these figures, the final death tally in the UK could be more than 2,300.

Israel imprisons Eritrean asylum seekers who refuse deportation orders

Jean Shaoul

Last month, Benyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud-led coalition government sent the first seven Eritrean asylum seekers who refused to be deported to Rwanda to be detained indefinitely in Saharonim prison in the Negev desert.

Around 750 of the 1,000 asylum seekers detained at the adjacent Holot Open Detention Centre, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, began a hunger strike in support of the seven, refusing food and water for several days.

The government, in an unprecedented deportation operation, has begun serving notices on 600 male African asylum seekers a month. They have 60 days to choose between deportation back to their home country or a so-called safe country, assumed to be Rwanda or Uganda, with a cash inducement of $3,500, or face indefinite imprisonment in Saharonim.

Some of the asylum seekers could be deported in early April, during the Passover holiday, which celebrates the biblical story of the Hebrews’ flight from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

There are around 40,000 African migrants and asylum seekers in Israel, mostly fleeing civil strife and repression, according to data from the Interior Ministry. The number has fallen from 60,000 four years ago, following deportations and practices aimed at forcing refugees to leave “voluntarily.”

About 72 percent are from Eritrea, which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared a country in humanitarian crisis, and 20 percent from Sudan, which has seen ongoing strife in the Darfur region in western Sudan, since 2003. Most arrived between 2006 and 2012, before Israel built the notorious fence across the Sinai desert to prevent them entering Israel.

Israel, despite being a signatory to the International Refugee Convention of 1951, refuses to grant refugee status to those who flee persecution. Of the 15,613 requests for asylum, just 11 have been granted refugee status.

Last December, the Israeli parliament, which designates asylum seekers as “infiltrators,” approved an “Infiltrators Bill” mandating the closure of the Holot detention centre—with the 1,000 Africans detained there required to leave Israel by April or face indefinite imprisonment—the forced deportation of Eritreans and Sudanese starting in March—and increased restrictions on them.

This comes on top of harsh financial restrictions aimed at making life in Israel unaffordable to African asylum seekers and getting them to leave voluntarily. In September, the High Court ruled that employers had to pay a 20 percent tax on African migrant wages, as they did for other short-term foreign workers like Filipino caretakers or Thai agricultural workers. It followed a requirement in May for employers to deposit 16 percent of African workers’ pay into a closed account only to be released when he or she left Israel. The workers themselves must put 20 percent of their wage packet into this fund, drastically reducing their already meagre pay.

In January, Netanyahu announced that Israel was seeking to get at least 600 Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to leave the country each month, making a total of 7,200 a year, and 20,000 by 2020. “Safe countries” would be paid around $5,000 to take them.

According to Israel’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority, there are 92,000 foreigners, mainly from the former Soviet Union, living illegally in Israel, without threats of deportation or imprisonment. They are referred to as “tourists” not “infiltrators.” The government even amended the Law of Return in 1970 to widen the definition of a Jew to enable Russian immigration to Israel. However, it took until 1975 before Israel recognised the right of Jews from Ethiopia to immigrate to Israel, many of whom to this day experience racist discrimination and poverty.

Thousands within Israel and beyond have protested against Israel’s plans to deport African asylum seekers.

Twenty thousand demonstrators came from all over Israel at the end of February to the Central Bus Station in south Tel Aviv, home to many asylum seekers, migrants and poor Israelis. The location meant the demonstration had a very different character than those normally held in downtown Tel Aviv. Togod Omer, an asylum seeker from Darfur, Sudan, who spoke at the rally said, “When we came, they gave us a one-way ticket to the new Central Bus Station.

“We are all victims in this story, both the asylum seekers and the veteran Israelis,” referring to those living in Tel Aviv’s poor southern neighbourhoods. “We’re all living here together and they are always trying to get us to hate one another.”

Speaker after speaker said they would rather go to prison than be deported, saying at least they would be fed in prison. This is a reference to the experiences of deportees in Rwanda and Uganda, where they had their documents confiscated and are reportedly living on the streets, without work and barely surviving. Some have even been arrested for not having the right papers.

Gabi Doron, an Israeli who had lived in south Tel Aviv for 30 years, said, “It’s nice to see black and white faces demonstrating together.”

Dror Sadot of Israel’s Hotline for Migrants and Refugees, which provides legal aid and other support to asylum seekers and migrants, told the World Socialist Web Site, “It is outrageous what the government is doing to people asking for asylum. This is amid the world’s biggest refugee crisis. Israel is throwing away all its legal obligations to asylum seekers. It has granted just 11 asylum seekers refugee status.”

She said that other NGOs were coming forward to help and oppose the government.

The US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Societies (HIAS) appealed to Netanyahu to drop his plans, stressing that some migrants leaving Israel had drowned at sea en route to Europe, or had been tortured by traffickers.

The semi-official Jewish Agency has joined a growing number of Jewish organisations, mainly in the US, that have called on the government to abandon its plans to deport the asylum seekers. Its governors published a resolution following a three-day meeting, asking the Israeli government to grant legal status to just 500 African asylum seekers who arrived in the country years ago as unaccompanied minors.

Given that they were housed, fed and educated in youth villages run by the Jewish Agency and the Ministry of Education, the resolution said, “Therefore, it is right that they be granted legal status.” It called on the government to ensure that “every migrant has an opportunity to apply for asylum and receive transparent due process in the examination of their application.”

Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, while rejecting any equating of the plight of African migrants with the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust, said that the issue requires “as much compassion, empathy and mercy that can possibly be marshalled. The experiences of the Jewish people over the ages underscore this commitment.”

None of the major parties, except Meretz, have opposed the deportations. Many legislators of the Zionist Union, of which the Labour Party is a member, supported the new law. Most politicians,if not actively supporting the measures, have remained largely silent, demonstrating the depth of support within the ruling class for anti-democratic forms of rule.

The authorisation of a regime of mass indefinite detention, as is now being carried out in both Israel and its chief ally, the US, is an existential threat to workers of all national origins, regardless of immigration status, and will inevitably be used against Israeli workers as well.

Turkish government escalates crackdown on opposition as toll of Afrin invasion mounts

Halil Celik

As the toll of Ankara’s invasion of the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin rises, along with popular anger over growing poverty, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, led by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has further escalated its police-state crackdown.

Last Friday, the Turkish police detained an additional 154 people, including 16 navy officers, 66 teachers and 72 unionists over alleged links to the July 15, 2016 attempted coup that was defeated by a mass movement, in which more than 240 people were killed by putschists.

This came a day after a prosecutor in the Istanbul 13th Criminal Court demanded 13-year prison sentences for executives and employees of the broadcaster Hayatin Sesi (Voice of Life), accused of “successively propagating for terrorist organizations”. According to the indictment, the defendants made propaganda for the Islamic State (IS), the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), because they broadcast scenes of bomb attacks in Ankara and Istanbul in 2016.

On February 28, the Istanbul 26th Criminal Court imposed an additional jail term of five years and 11 months against the prominent journalist Ahmet Altan for “making propaganda for a terror organization” and “insulting the president,” stemming from an article he wrote for a news website years ago.

The court punished Altan because of his description of Ankara’s “Trench Operations” against the PKK two years ago, during which 14,048 special army and police forces largely destroyed the Kurdish-populated towns of Sur, Silopi, Cizre and Nusaybin, killed at least 1,300 Kurds and forcing more than 90,000 people, or 22 percent of the population, to leave their towns.

Having attended the hearing via video conference from prison, Altan gave a strong answer to the accusation that he depicted the PKK as being innocent, when he wrote about “children” digging trenches to fight Turkish soldiers.

“You are trying me for saying that 13- or 14-year-old Kurdish children who clashed with soldiers in the Sur district [of Diyarbakır] are children. I won’t ask you what I should call them,” he said.

The verdict was denounced in an open letter signed by 38 Nobel laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro and J.M. Coetzee, published by Britain’s Guardian. Addressed to the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the open letter reiterated the warning made by the Council of Europe commissioner for Human Rights on February 15, 2017 that “The space for democratic debate in Turkey has shrunk alarmingly following increased judicial harassment of a large strata of society, including journalists, members of parliament, academics and ordinary citizens, and government action which has reduced pluralism and led to self-censorship.”

In an essay published by the New York Times on the same day, Ahmet Altan wrote, “We will spend the rest of our lives alone in a cell that is three meters long and three meters wide. We will be taken out to see sunlight for one hour a day. We will never be pardoned and we will die in a prison cell.”

On February 16, Altan, his brother, Mehmet Altan, a self-described “Marxist-liberal” professor of economics and former newspaper editor and four other journalists were given aggravated life sentences for alleged links to the movement led by the US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, and accusations that they had been behind a failed coup attempt in July 2016.

The sentencing came on the same day another Turkish court ordered the release of Deniz Yücel, as a result of bargaining between Berlin and Ankara. The German-Turkish journalist spent over a year in pre-trial detention without an indictment,

According to the Stockholm Center for Freedom, in Turkey there are more than 200 journalists held behind bars, while more than 2,500 journalists have lost their jobs following a media purge in which the government closed hundreds of magazines, newspapers and radio stations under the state of emergency declared after the failed 2016 coup attempt.

Under this continuing state of emergency, more than 110,000 public employees have been dismissed, and hundreds of media outlets, associations, trade unions, foundations, private hospitals and educational establishments have been shut down by governmental decrees. Meanwhile, at least 50,000 people with opinions different—or even contrary—to those of the ruling AKP have been arrested and remain in prison over stereotyped accusations of being a member of, or propagating for, this or that “terrorist organization.”

This also includes members of parliament. Enis Berberoğlu, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was formerly sentenced by a court to 25 years’ imprisonment for providing the daily Cumhuriyet a video of weapons supplied by Turkish intelligence to Syrian “rebel” groups.

The main target, however, is the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). On Thursday, a Turkish court sentenced HDP deputy Dilek Ocalan to two years and six months in prison because of her speech at a funeral. On Wednesday, a provincial court in Antep upheld the decision by a lower court that sentenced HDP deputy Selma Irmak to 10 years in prison for “being a member of a terrorist organization” and “making terrorist propaganda.”

Meanwhile, following the approval of the sentences in criminal proceedings against them, on Tuesday, HDP deputies Ahmet Yıldırım and Ibrahim Ayhan lost their parliamentary seats. Ayhan was sentenced to one year and two months in prison for “insulting the president”, and Ayhan to one year and three months for “spreading terrorist propaganda” on social media accounts.

So far, nine members of the HDP have been stripped of their parliamentary status. The HDP now has 50 seats in the Turkish parliament, down from the 59 it gained in the last elections on November 1, 2016, with 10 deputies in prison. Thousands of lower-level local Kurdish politicians are behind bars.

Arrest warrants have been issued for dozens of people who opposed the Afrin invasion and who are accused of “insulting officials,” “inciting hatred and enmity among people,” “insulting the president,” “overtly humiliating the Turkish people, government and the military organization” and “promoting terrorist organizations”. Hundreds of others have already been arrested.

In the largely Kurdish-populated southeast, the Turkish government took control in 89 municipalities won by the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), HDP’s sister party in the region, and suspended their democratically elected co-mayors on the basis of claimed suspicion of terrorism offenses, with at least 70 of them jailed.

In late January, 11 members of the Turkish Medical Association’s (TTB’s) central council were detained because they issued a statement, titled “War is a Matter of Public Health”, opposing the war.

More than 170 intellectuals, including former ministers, MPs, journalists, actors and representatives of non-governmental organisations, signed a letter to members of parliament calling for an end to the Afrin operation and for resolution of existing problems through dialogue.

The witch-hunt against the TTB began immediately after Erdogan accused the association of “treason” and denounced them as “terrorist lovers” in his speech at the Extended Provincial Chairs Meeting at the AKP Headquarters on January 29. “Believe me, they are not intellectuals at all, they are a gang of slaves. They are the servants of imperialism”, he said.

Underlying the escalation in the crackdown on the opposition is the growing fear of the Turkish ruling elite that mounting unrest over conditions within the working class could merge with the opposition to the Syrian war and Turkey’s invasion.

Mental health crisis descends on Puerto Rico’s working class

Ali Abu Elhassan

As the six-month anniversary of Hurricane María approaches, a deadly mental health crisis has emerged on the island of Puerto Rico. Health officials are reporting endemic levels of trauma related emotional disorders. Many Puerto Ricans are showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), experiencing extreme anxiety and depression for the first time in their lives. The severity of the crisis is most sharply expressed in the rise in suicides, which has seen a disturbing 30 percent spike since the storm made landfall.

The reports of PTSD are a testament to the reality of life for the working class in Puerto Rico as the disorder is most popularly associated with soldiers who experience trauma in war zones. The sudden and long-term loss of access to basic necessities of life such as running water and electricity, homes left destroyed and roofless with residents still occupying the structures, the covering up of a massive death toll, the destruction of public utilities, school buildings, education and jobs, as well as an increase in policing has had a traumatic impact on the island’s population.

Thousands of people with preexisting mental health problems have been unable to obtain their needed medications and therapy, causing marked deteriorations in their conditions, especially among the elderly who are particularly vulnerable. Storms and rain produce anxiety and paranoia in children and adults who become worried that there will be more flooding.

Symptoms of PTSD include irritability, mood swings, anxiety, depression, repeated and vivid memories of the event, which lead to physical reactions, confusion or difficulty making decisions, sleep or eating disorders, fear of the event being repeated, an increase in conflict or a more withdrawn and avoidant personality, and physical symptoms such as headaches, nausea, and chest pain. These responses can vary widely depending on the individual, the environment, and the event.

The only suicide hotline in Puerto Rico, Linea PAS, has been dealing with a surge in calls, up nearly 70 percent, from people contemplating suicide.

In an interview with Univision Noticias, the director of Linea PAS, Monserrate Allende Santos, relayed that between the months of October and December 2017 the program received 9,000 suicidal phone calls; 6,733 calls were from callers with suicidal thoughts, while 2,206 were from people who had actually attempted suicide.

A member of the hotline’s call-taking staff told the New York Times, “Sometimes I cannot find the words. Because how can I tell someone to keep calm when they don't have a place to sleep.”

Linea PAS’ staff, many of whom have experienced their own hardships, patiently try to console, reassure, and talk suicidal hurricane survivors who have lost all hope out of ending their lives. Another staff member is heard in a Times video telling a caller, “the situation of not having light in your house, the situation of being dark, of not having resources, this is temporary.” For some, however, it is not certain that this assertion is true.

How many Puerto Ricans will die due to criminal government indifference?

In an interview with Newsweek, Kenira Thompson, who heads mental health services at the Ponce Health Sciences University, stated that for the people in rural areas, “It’s as if the storm hit last week.”

“Mental health issues will not stop,” Thompson explained, “if you think about the next hurricane season will start again [soon]. We will have chaos when the first storm is announced on the news. Hopefully, it’s not another storm like María.”

When María made landfall on the island in September, it descended upon a population already in the grip of extreme poverty and depressed living standards. Having been in recession since 2006, half the population stood below the official poverty rate while the official unemployment rate stood at 16 percent. A staggering 60 percent of eligible workers did not participate in the labor force, instead relying on food stamps or working in the “underground economy.”

In the wake of the hurricane this already precarious situation dramatically worsened. Hundreds of people perished or died in the aftermath from lack of basic necessities. Hundreds of thousands of homes and basic infrastructure have been destroyed, leaving, to this day, 150,000 homes and businesses without electricity and much of the island in ruin.

While it’s common for people to experience stress in the immediate aftermath of such an event, the American Psychological Association (APA) stresses that recovery is dependent on one’s ability to resume functioning as they did prior to the disaster and to engage in healthy behaviors, such as a healthy diet, establishing routines, and seeking getting help from a licensed mental health professional.

Healthy behaviors cannot develop when countless homes remain destroyed, when people are trying to live without roofs or are forced to join relatives in overcrowded, unsafe conditions. The establishment of routines is not a possibility in circumstances where people are chronically living without electricity, are struggling to find food and clean water and are unable to travel on closed roads to frequent, or work, in closed businesses and attend closed schools.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided a paltry $3 million for the mental health division of the Puerto Rican Health Department. The failures and crimes of FEMA, and the US government more generally, against the working class of Puerto Rico are innumerable.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, ports that import about 85 percent of the island’s food supply were shut down under the draconian hundred-year-old Jones Act, which the government only reluctantly lifted weeks later. Another outrageous episode was when Tribute Contracting LLC, awarded a $156 million contract to deliver 30 million meals, only managed to deliver 50,000. The criminality of the US government is best exemplified, however, by the efforts to undermine and ultimately privatize the island’s resources and infrastructure, currently the education system and the public electric power company.

This inadequate provision of social and psychological services by the government has compelled universities to send teams of students, social workers and other volunteers out in a piecemeal effort to meet the needs of the population. These students and workers have made their way to the worst hit areas inland, which have become isolated and hard to reach due to the poor recovery efforts. They go door to door and visit emergency shelters where the newly homeless are crowded in order to conduct physical and psychological screenings and deliver food and water.

Observers and health experts have drawn parallels between the aftermaths of hurricanes Katrina and María: From the physical and social devastation they visited upon New Orleans and Puerto Rico, respectively, to the inadequate governmental response marked by gross negligence and arrogance, the long term physical and psychological trauma their victims are suffering, and the fact that these are both climate-change related catastrophes.

In a report published last year titled, “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance,” psychologists with the APA found that 12 years after Hurricane Katrina, survivors developed mood disorders, saw rates of suicide and suicidal thoughts double, and one in six met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Psychiatrists have since stressed the importance of immediate access to mental health care for the victims of natural disasters to help mitigate these types of outbreaks.

At the 10-year mark of Hurricane Katrina, the WSWS published an analysis of the source of the catastrophe that is no less apt at describing the one facing Puerto Rico today: “The sudden shock of Hurricane Katrina exposed the rot at the heart of American capitalism. Decades of social neglect, the staggering growth of social inequality, the putrefaction of American democracy, and the domination of every facet of social life by a narrow and parasitic layer of financial speculators was laid bare before a shocked American and world public. For millions of people around the world, already horrified by American imperialism’s criminal adventure in Iraq, Katrina demonstrated that the American ruling class was no less hostile towards its own working class.

“This rot has spread geometrically in the years since then. Since the onset of the 2008 recession, the attitude of the ruling elite towards Katrina, which saw it as an opportunity to open up further opportunities for profit, has been replicated in every facet of American life. Instead of responding to the recession with a public works program or other measures to alleviate the distress of the working class, American, and, indeed, world capitalism, with Obama at the head, has responded with a fundamental restructuring of class relations, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of every gain made by the working class in over a century of bitter struggle.”

Democrats embrace major cut in corporate taxes

Patrick Martin

Congressional Democratic leaders issued their policy proposals for the 2018 midterm election campaign Wednesday, effectively embracing the bulk of the tax cuts for big business and the wealthy enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in December.

None of the policy proposals will actually be submitted as legislation, since Republicans control the agenda of both the House and Senate. That means the Democrats were free to propose anything they pleased, not limiting their program to what could plausibly pass this year. Therefore it is all the more revealing that the Democrats are proposing to retain nearly all the tax breaks for the wealthy that they denounced verbally while they were being passed late last year.

In particular, the Democrats propose to set the corporate income tax rate at 25 percent, up slightly from the 21 percent set by the Republicans, but well below the 35 percent rate that prevailed until December. In effect, the Democrats are proposing to retain 10 percent of the 14 percent cut enacted by the Republicans, more than two-thirds of the bonanza for corporate America.

The Democrats would restore the estate tax to what it was before December, applying to estates over $5.6 million rather than $11.2 million, but there would be no increase in the tax rate. They would also restore the top rate for the highest income households to 39.6 percent rather than the current 37 percent.

Many other tax changes incorporated in the huge tax cut bill, largely written by corporate lobbyists, would not be repealed by a Democratic Congress, including the lower taxes for business partnerships and S corporations, as well as the tax holiday for giant companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and General Electric, which can repatriate hundreds of billions in profits held overseas to avoid taxes while paying only a nominal rate.

This olive branch to the wealthy follows the vote by a large number of Senate Democrats to loosen the weak regulations on major banks enacted after the 2008 Wall Street crash. The bill, drafted by Republicans with considerable input from Democrats, would raise the threshold for bank oversight provisions under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion, effectively exempting several dozen banks from even limited supervision.

While press accounts describe these financial institutions as “midsize,” they include such giants as American Express, Ally Financial, Barclays, SunTrust and BB&T. These would now be exempted from annual “stress testing” by the Federal Reserve and regulation under the “too big to fail” provisions of Dodd-Frank.

A group of right-wing Democrats, including Mark Warner of Virginia (a tech multi-millionaire), Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, have been in protracted talks with Republican Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, culminating in an agreement Wednesday on 200 pages of detailed legislative text.

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brought the bank deregulation bill to the Senate floor Tuesday for a procedural vote, 17 Democrats joined with all the Republicans to support it. The vote was 67-32, the first time that a contested measure has received unanimous Republican support and significant Democratic support since Trump entered the White House.

Senator Jon Tester of Montana, one of the right-wing Democrats who is up for re-election in November, denied that fear of Republican attacks was a factor: “This election has nothing to do with this; we were working on this five years ago. … This has everything to do with access to capital and making sure rural America remains strong moving forward.” He praised McConnell, saying: “I think everybody wins on this. I think Mitch McConnell can go back and say, ‘See, the Senate is functioning.’”

According to figures tabulated by the Center for Responsive Politics, Tester, Donnelly and Heitkamp are the top three Senate recipients of campaign contributions from commercial banks in this election cycle. While they moan and groan about the supposed privations of “community banks,” they are really doing the bidding of financial giants just below the level of the Wall Street super-banks like Citibank and JP Morgan Chase.

Only 15 financial institutions will remain subject to the most stringent of regulations under Dodd-Frank, although these regulations are more of an annoyance than a constraint to rampant speculation and financial manipulation.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer voted against the bill but supported the Democrats who backed it, saying, “People will have to make their own judgment whether the community-bank-positive parts outweigh the others.”

2018 US Nuclear Posture Review: Intent and Implications

Shivani Singh

Earlier this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board announced their decision to move the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight. Around the same time, the US Department of Defense released the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) – these two developments draw from the same global security environment but are in stark contrast to each other in the faith they place in nuclear weapons. Amongst a slew of modernisation measures that the new NPR proposes, two stand out: development of low-yield nuclear warheads and an expansion of the scope of nuclear weapons use by the US against an adversary.

According to the new NPR, the US plans to deploy "low-yield sea-launched ballistic missile nuclear (SLBM) warheads" and re-commission a "modern nuclear armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM)," again with a low-yield nuclear option. Introducing a low yield nuclear option is a form of ‘tailored deterrence’ that the US has been contemplating for quite some time now, especially vis-à-vis Russia. Russia has been known to allegedly lower the nuclear threshold by increasing its repository of non-strategic nuclear weapons, also commonly known as tactical nuclear weapons, thus bringing back US concerns about limited nuclear use. Russia currently possesses 4,500 nuclear warheads of which 2,000 are believed to be non-strategic.

Quoting Russia’s modernisation drive as one of the primary reasons for US policy change, this move is likely to close the gap between Russian and US nuclear capabilities in terms of their non-strategic nuclear weapons. However, it can be considered militarily inexplicable for one important reason. Russia’s decision to modernise its military with non-strategic nuclear weapons was to compensate for its lacking conventional military strength, in which domain the US is far superior.

The rationale behind US deployment of a low-yield nuclear option as mentioned in the NPR hinges on its so-called ability to contain a possible limited nuclear escalation by countries like Russia. However, escalation control only makes for a credible theoretical framework and has slim chances of any practical implementation. A low-yield, non-strategic nuclear warhead can cause enough damage to invite a full-scale nuclear response.

On one hand, the NPR document emphasises measures like "decreasing misperception and miscalculation and avoiding destabilising nuclear arms competition," while at the same time proposing the re-introduction of a nuclear-tipped SLCM (which was decommissioned in 2011) in the long-term. This is likely to increase the chances of an accidental cataclysmic nuclear exchange precisely because of the ability of a cruise missile to disable any interception or detection, leading to potential miscommunication between two adversaries. 

The NPR text also expands the circumstances that can lead to a possible use of nuclear weapons by the US against an adversary by introducing a new and rather ambiguous category of "non-nuclear strategic attacks." This could include a host of possibilities from cyber warfare, conventional attacks on civilian population and infrastructure, to a chemical or biological weapons attack. The text goes on to say that “It remains the policy of the United States to retain some ambiguity regarding the precise circumstances that might lead to a US nuclear response.”

Employing ambiguity in a country's nuclear doctrine is not new; the French nuclear doctrine, for example, maintains vagueness as to what constitutes 'national interests'. Nonetheless, lack of transparency in explicitly stating the circumstances that would justify a nuclear strike against an adversary, especially if the US uses non-strategic nuclear weapons, can create space for a pre-emptive strike from the adversary due to uncertainty about a possible first strike.

In its definition of the "extreme circumstances" that would invite a nuclear response, the document includes non-nuclear strategic attacks on the US and its allies; even a conventional attack on one of its allies’ strategic infrastructure could qualify for US nuclear first use. This change has to be seen in consonance with the US decision to modernise its Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) system that facilitates the deployment of a nuclear weapon in times of crisis, thus justifying a nuclear response at the slightest suggestion of even a miscalculated or misinterpreted early warning assessment. This eventuality leads to the question about whether ambiguity, in this particular case, can actually serve to enhance deterrence. '

The NPR uses the "uncertain international security environment" and Russia’s muscle-flexing as justifications for significantly modernising its existing nuclear arsenal. Although it claims to be responding to changing strategic necessities, it is also true that as the Doomsday Clock nears midnight, in many ways the NPR carries the potential of doing further disservice to nuclear non-proliferation, and making the global security environment more perilous.

Can Australian Democracy Dull Chinese Sharp Power?

Rachael Strogoff Australian professor Clive Hamilton’s book, Silent Invasion: China’s influence in Australia recently arrived in bookstores, following the withdrawal of three previous publishers. The challenges preceding its publication corroborate the book’s premise: how foreign influence operations have targeted Australian political, academic, and media sectors to create an environment favourable to the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Ever since China opened under Deng's reforms, Australia has benefited from the inward flow of Chinese university students, workers, and investments, and China became its largest export market in 2009. But the CCP’s 21st century strategic pursuit of soft power - the ‘peaceful rise’ Hu Jintao promised through mutually beneficial economic and cultural exchange - does not resemble Joseph Nye’s formulation. Instead, Australian institutions are feeling the impact of what Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig describe as 'sharp power'. Soft power comes from persuasive appeal of a nation’s culture and politics, and CCP’s ideology and closed society hold no attraction for a democracy. In contrast, sharp power exploits the asymmetry of openness, penetrating democratic institutions abroad to monopolise messaging, cutting away at dissent and distracting from criticism to shape states’ policies in its favour. Cross-sectoral spending in Australia allowed Beijing to pursue its interests using the familiar tools of censorship and propaganda. With debates over proposed legislative reforms targeting foreign interference and espionage, Australia faces the challenge of defending its interests and sovereignty against the authoritarian reach of its most important trading partner. Buying into Australian PoliticsLoose regulations regarding foreign political funding enabled easy access to Australian politics. Donations flowed through CCP-linked individuals friendly with Australia’s power brokers in Canberra and beyond. One such individual, Chinese real estate mogul Huang Xiangmo, caught the attention of Australian intelligence for his spending, and in December, revelations of his ties to Labor's Sam Dastyari forced the senator's resignation. While Huang covered the legal bills and trips to China, Dastyari repeatedly confronted defence officials in parliament with questions that reflected a pro-Beijing stance and personally sought approval of Huang's citizenship application. When Huang threatened to withdraw his AUD 400,000 donation due to a Labor official’s criticism of China’s South China Sea activities, Dastyari appeared by his side at a press conference to reassure Chinese media that it was not Australia’s place to get involved in the dispute. Across the political aisle, former Liberal Party Trade Minister Andrew Robb received a campaign donation from Huang the day he signed the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Months later, Robb retired from politics to take a high-paying position as economic advisor to Landbridge Group, a CCP-linked firm granted a 99-year lease to operate Australia’s Darwin Port. Darwin had been chosen to host a joint training facility for Australian and US troops in 2011. But ex-Foreign Minister Bob Carr, who remains influential in policymaking as director of the Australia China Research Institute (ACRI) established with a $1.8 million donation by Huang, dismissed criticism and pointed to the US response to the deal as true foreign interference. Huang and the politicians benefiting from his largesse did not violate Australian law. However, the lack of disclosure breaches voluntarism fundamental to Nye’s formulation of soft power, as voters were not allowed to judge for themselves whether Chinese funds had influenced domestic politics. Producing PropagandaACRI opened in 2014, replacing the defunded independent China Research Centre. Its work illustrates how the CCP exercises sharp power through co-opting or exploiting academic and policy institutions. A vocal critic of Australia’s military alliance with the US, Carr rejects security concerns about Chinese acquisitions of Australian infrastructure - seen in the Darwin deal and the Turnbull administration’s veto over the sale of Australia’s largest electrical grid - as paranoid Sinophobia and nationalism. Unlike its academic predecessor, ACRI operates as a think-tank promoting a “positive and optimistic view of Australia-China relations,” with the mission and funding sources of a corporate, not university, entity. Sinologists and Chinese dissidents question the neutrality and rigour of its research. Media Monopoly The CCP retains influence or control over virtually all Chinese Australian media outlets. A Chinese consular advertising budget is directed to newspapers willing to publish editorial layouts produced in China. The regime has deals to provide Australian mainstream media outlets with Chinese language content, even delivering its official China Daily insert in newspapers. Media outlets that cover issues sensitive to Beijing - Tiananmen Square, allegations of organ harvesting in prisons, Tibet - face the loss of advertisers and subscribers susceptible to commercial and political pressures from the party. Even Western institutions are not immune to self-censorship, as shown by the three publishers who rejected Clive Hamilton’s book. Hamilton’s response to Chinese authoritarian interference perhaps provides a blueprint for confronting sharp power within a democratic framework. The ethics professor exercised his civil rights and academic freedom to raise public awareness, conducting media interviews, publishing articles, appearing at a literature festival as an author without a book, and submitting research to parliament that informs ongoing debates. His approach carries personal and professional risks, and Hamilton already stands accused of stoking dangerous nativist elements on shaky evidentiary grounds. Still, Beijing’s attempts to monopolise its narrative abroad instead provoked a domestic uproar and drew international attention to Chinese interference, demonstrating that sharp power can appear dull in the daylight of democracy.

Korean Government Scholarships for Bachelors, Masters & PhD for Developing Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: Applicants submit their applications either to the Korean Embassies around the world or to the partnering universities in Korea.

Applications (Embassy, University) are expected from:

• Graduate: February 2018 to  March 2018
• Undergraduate: September 2018 to October 2018 (To open in September 2018)

Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Subject Areas: Courses offered at one of the 60 participating Korean higher institutions

Eligible Countries: The scholarships are open to students from the following countries:
China, Japan, Russia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Chinese Taipei, Uzbekistan, Turkey, USA, Ethiopia, Colombia, Nepal, Senegal, Bangladesh, Ukraine, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Azerbaijan, El Salvador, Egypt, Tanzania, Germany, France, Dominica, Chile, Iran, Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Pakistan, Gabon, Romania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Czech, Guatemala, Ecuador, Algeria, Yemen, Uganda, Belize, Honduras, Italy, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Poland, Ghana, Georgia, Greece, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Republic of South Africa, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Rwanda, Libya, Lithuania, Moldavia, Bahrain, Barbados, Bahamas, Venezuela, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Brunei, Serbia, Seychelles, Sudan, Sweden, Slovenia, Armenia, Argentina, Haïti, Ireland, Afghanistan, Angola, Oman, Austria, Uruguay, Iraq, Israel, Zambia, Cameroon, Qatar, Kenya, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Panama, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Fiji, Hungary, Australia, Jordan
About Scholarship: The Korean Government Scholarship Program (KGSP) is offered to international students who want to pursue Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees in Korean Universities. The scholarship is aimed to provide international students with an opportunity to conduct advanced studies at higher educational institutions in Korea, to develop global leaders and strengthen Korea-friendly networks worldwide.

Eligibility Criteria
Citizenship

• Candidates and their parents must hold non-Korean citizenship.

Age

• KGSP-G: under 40
• KGSP-U: under 25

Health

• Candidates must be physically and mentally healthy for their studies in Korea.

Degree Requirements

• KGSP-G: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree
• KGSP-U: High school diploma

Grades

• The cumulative grade point average (CGPA) must be 80% or higher; or
• The CGPA must be 2.64/ 4.0, 2.80/ 4.3, 2.91/ 4.5, or 3.23/ 5.0 or higher.

Number of Scholarships

• KGSP Undergraduate: around 170 grantees will be awarded annually
• KGSP Graduate: around 800 grantees will be awarded annually

Scholarship Benefits: Flight | Tuition | Stipend | Medical Insurance | Settlement Allowance | Completion Grants

Selection Procedure:
1st Selection: Applicants submit their applications either to the Korean Embassies around the world or to the partering universities in Korea. The embassies and universities select the successful candidates among the applicants in the 1st round of selection. The applicants of the successful candidates will then be forwarded to NIIED
2nd Selection: The NIIED selection committee selects the successful candidates among those who passed the 1st round.
3rd Selection: Among the successful candidates who have passed the 2nd round, the applications of those who applied through the Korean Embassies will be reviewed by universities for admission. Successful candidates must get admission from at least one of the universities.

Duration:

• 1 year Korean language course +2 year Associate degree
• 1 year Korean language course + 4 year Bachelors degree
• 1 year Korean language course+ 2 years of Master’s degree
• 1 year Korean language course + 3 years of Doctoral degree

To be taken at: Korean Universities.

How to Apply: Applicants can only apply for the scholarships through the Korean Embassy in their home country or a participating Korean University.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details about this scholarship. Also check here

Sponsors: The Korean Government, National Institute for International Education (NIIED)

Wall Street Sells Subprime History

Aidan O’Brien

Like a glossy real estate magazine the bimonthly Foreign Affairs attracts the eye. And so like a mortgage salesman the Council on Foreign Relations pitches the Dream without mentioning the Nightmare. Its high class narrative on the primacy of “private property” (the US kind) at home and abroad baits the reader before switching to the lowest ideological standards there are. Conclusion: the Empire – like the mortgages – rests on an intellectual foundation of sand.

The January/February edition of Foreign Affairs epitomizes this bait and switch – this glossy sandcastle – that condemns its fraudulent take on the world.

The words “the undead past” on the cover of the illustrious magazine piques the curiosity. The expectation when opening the pages is one of deep historical questioning. Unsettling words about a “living history” provoke a dialectical framework. One that can only make the status quo nervous. But Foreign Affairs is the status quo. So what the fuck?

The opening “ghost story” is good though. It’s believable. White supremacy is an undead issue in America. The legacy of America’s founding fathers lives on. The social structure which the long dead slaveowners created is still present. The fact that it is necessary today to point out that Black Lives Matter proves the point.

The author – a Harvard academic – cares about America. She reveals a truth that pains her. Indeed she wants her country to live up to its founding ideals. Her agenda is pro-America even if its critical of America.

The Council on Foreign Relations however has another agenda. It is pro-America too but in the imperial sense. Its raison d’être is to make foreigners obey America. It can absorb criticism of America once that criticism is inside out – once it respects or idolizes America’s institutions.

White supremacy therefore can be discussed once the goal is to make America “stronger” – ironically, of course, this means making the white establishment stronger but that’s another ghost story.

For the Council on Foreign Relations America’s relationship with the world is a zero-sum game. There’s no give and take. There’s no nuanced interpretation – as there is in the interpretation of white America. Its winner takes all on the world stage. Its the American Empire and the wealth that comes with it über alles.

This imperial prism or ideology devalues the Council’s viewpoint. It may to a certain degree be objective and insightful at moments when it looks inside America. But it is subjective, prejudiced and downright deceitful when it looks outside.

And in this imperium “the dead” are fair game. Indeed it is the familiar business of the Holocaust Industry – keeping the memory of the dead alive so as to make a political killing.

And wouldn’t you know it – on the cover of the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs is the fucking “Holocaust of holocausts”. A photo of “Jewish stepping stones” is served up as eye candy.

Its a classic Freudian slip – since this is exactly what the Council on Foreign Relations are doing: walking all over the dead – the Jewish dead included. Instead of the “undead past” the headline should read “let’s exploit the dead” for ideological purposes. Again.

After the white supremacy story the Council’s con job kicks in: whitewash America and its allies and blacken its enemies. And it does so by shamelessly using the dead of Russia and China. And the dead of Rwanda and Germany are there too – as ammunition – in the Council’s hatchet job.

The zombie stories in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs concerning Russia and China are a numbers game. The kind that’s meant to blind. Millions, billions and zillions of revolutionary dead are conjured up to de-legitimize the current governments of Russia and China. It’s a case of the “Holocaust Industry” being put to use by the “Regime Change Industry”.

Compared to the careful consideration of the American Revolution and its white supremacist legacy – the Council’s considerations of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions and their respective Stalinist and Maoist legacies are child like and hysterical.

Whereas Foreign Affairs handles with gloves the structural problems of the US – the historical problems of Russia and China are butchered. Which makes one wonder if Russia and China had a problem to begin with?

The real problem in the eyes of Foreign Affairs – of course – is the contemporary independence of Russia and China. And the only shit it can throw at Moscow and Beijing today – it seems – are the revolutionary “problems” of yesterday: the “holocausts” or as Foreign Affairs puts it “the evils of history”.

According to the establishment’s magazine of choice the governments of both Russia and China are incapable of remembering the “dead” of Stalin and Mao. This judgment is meant to question everything about these governments. In particular the humanity of both.

The Council’s lesson for the world is: if Russia and China today don’t recall Stalin and Mao the way America recalls Stalin and Mao then the governments of Russia and China deserve zero respect. To be a legitimate member of the “international community” means agreeing with America’s version of evil. Or at least the version of it that’s propounded by Foreign Affairs.

The Council on Foreign Relations fears nothing more than a Marxist Revolution. So much so that even the memory of a Marxist Revolution is feared by the “venerable” Council. And its willing to bulldoze history in order to expunge un-American memory: ie. Marxism.

However the fundamental point for all concerned is that the Council (a key part of the US state) is also willing to bulldoze – in the here and now – any country or government that doesn’t conform to America’s political memory.

By dehumanizing the ability of Russia and China to “remember correctly” Foreign Affairs (the US establishment) is firing a warning shot (another one) across the bow of the Russian and Chinese states.

Knowledge is not just power – its also war. However like any weapon knowledge can backfire – memory can backfire. And in an overstretched Empire – such as the American Empire today – knowledge and memory can be overstretched to the point where it is counterproductive.

By going on and on about the millions, billions and zillions of dead in Russia and China (and elsewhere) the US establishment exposes not it’s empathy but it’s politics. The memory of Foreign Affairs is overtly political. It condemns a priori anything good about Stalin and Mao. Because it condemns a priori the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.

And so it condemns itself to ridicule. Even when the Russians and Chinese have respect for Stalin and Mao the US thought police insist that they are wrong – as if the US thought police (the Council on Foreign Relations) speaks Russian and Chinese or lives in Russia and China.

The bottom line is that the Council on Foreign Relations is Wall Street. It is as Laurence H. Schoup writes – Wall Street’s think tank. It is diametrically opposed to the working class and peasants who supported and still support Stalin and Mao. Indeed it knows nothing of the reality of revolutionary Russia and China.

The supremacy of Red Russia or Red China in the past and the bits that remain today were not and are not evil or holocaust based. To dismiss them as such is pure ideology. Its the ideology of millionaires, billionaires and zillionaires. Its the ideology of the white supremacists.

Its an ideology that’s not based on fact but on fiction – the fiction that Stalin and Mao had in the past and have in the present no popular base. Stalin’s defeat of Nazi Germany and Mao’s defeat of landlordism were and still are extremely popular. Not popular in Wall Street but in the backstreets of Russia and China.

Our wager is that Stalin and Mao are remembered correctly by the people and governments of Russia and China. The industrialization of Russia and the cultural revolution in China were complicated but definitely not evil experiences. The mass production of tanks and atomic bombs saved Russia from the white supremacists of Germany and America. And the repression of Confucianism and those “elites” attracted to it and capitalism kept the search for revolutionary justice in China alive.

In all of this recent history people did die and must be remembered. However the remembrance must take into account real history and real popular revolutions. Reality though is a foreign concept in Wall Street. There was little or no reality behind the mortgages that collapsed the Western economic system in 2008. And likewise there’s little or no reality behind the “history”  being sold in Wall Street today.

This dumbing-down of history reflects the dumbing-down of economics (and indeed the dumbing-down of politics) that is now undermining the West. To keep the West going as a project requires – it seems – that the West be dumb. If that’s the case then the West and Wall Street – with or without the white supremacy – has no future. And who knows – the supremacy of the Reds might return. Not just in Russia and China but everywhere.