The resignation of General Mattis and America’s crisis of class rule

Bill Van Auken

Thursday’s resignation of US Defense Secretary James Mattis has provoked a reaction of panic and near hysteria from leading members of both major political parties, the media and former top military and intelligence officials.

Mattis, a former four-star Marine Corps general, made his resignation announcement in a letter that represented an open rebuke of President Donald Trump’s policies, essentially accusing him of failing to support the US alliances established by Washington in the post-World War II era or sufficiently counter “malign actors and strategic competitors,” i.e., China and Russia.

Before making the letter public, Mattis reportedly had 50 copies printed and distributed to top brass within the Pentagon.

The immediate trigger for the resignation was Trump’s order, made public Wednesday, to withdraw all 2,000-plus US troops from Syria and his reported decision to draw down at least half—approximately 7,000 soldiers—of the US forces still waging a more than 17-year-long war in Afghanistan.

Trump had campaigned in 2016 on his “America First” program, calling for an end to the protracted US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. This rhetoric played a substantial role in winning the billionaire real estate speculator popular support against his presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the favored candidate of Wall Street and the CIA, whose career was bound up with past US wars and advanced preparations for an escalation of the Syria intervention as well as a direct confrontation with Russia.

Trump’s decision to act on these campaign pledges now are bound up with the deepening crisis of his presidency, which is besieged by multiple scandals and investigations that are themselves driven by the bitter conflicts within the American ruling class, particularly over foreign policy.

If Trump has played this card, it is because he knows that bringing troops home from the Middle East and Central Asia will enjoy broad support, well beyond the far-right base he has attempted to cultivate with anti-immigrant chauvinism and his incessant demands for a wall along the US-Mexico border.

Within the US working population there is deep hostility to the never-ending wars waged by US imperialism for more than a quarter-century. Justified in the name of defending against “weapons of mass destruction,” waging a “global war on terror” and upholding “human rights” these wars have killed well over one million people, demolished entire societies and cost trillions of dollars.

What does Washington have to show for it? After 17 years of fighting in Afghanistan, the Taliban controls more territory than at any time since 2001, and the US has been forced to pursue talks with Taliban representatives in the UAE, including on the withdrawal of US and other foreign troops from the country.

Iraq remains crisis-ridden and deeply divided along sectarian lines as a result of the US war launched in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. Libya, where the US-NATO war for regime-change ended in the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, is in shambles, racked by continuous fighting between rival militias. And in Syria, the attempt of the US and its allies to overthrow Bashar al-Assad by arming and funding Al Qaeda-linked militias has failed, while claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands and creating millions of refugees.

Gen. Mattis, who earned the nickname “Mad Dog” for leading the bloody US campaign to retake the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 and boasted to his troops during his command of US forces in Afghanistan that “it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot” Afghans, is now being hailed as an American hero, a rock of stability and sanity whose departure has set the ship of state adrift.

The Washington Post published an editorial Friday titled “With Mattis leaving, be afraid.” It noted that the defense secretary’s departure “followed a pair of precipitous and reckless decisions by President Trump: the removal of all US forces from Syria and a 50 percent force reduction in Afghanistan,” and added that “Mr. Trump appears unhinged and heedless of the damage he might do to vital interests.”

Similarly, the New York Times ’ editorial carried the scare headline: “Jim Mattis was right: Who will protect America now?” It condemned Trump for having “overruled” Mattis and other national security advisors by “ordering the rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 American ground troops from Syria.”

Democratic Party leaders virtually wept over Mattis’ resignation and voiced virulent opposition to any end to the US wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted, “as we've seen with the President's haphazard approach to Syria, our national defense is too important to be subjected to the President's erratic whims.”

What is he saying? National defense is too important to be determined by an elected president. The president should instead obediently follow the orders of the “deep state” of unelected military and intelligence officials.

Members of past Democratic administrations were even more vociferous in their support for Mattis and opposition to Trump’s troop withdrawals. Former CIA director, defense secretary and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta was quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “We're in a constant state of chaos right now in this country. While it may satisfy Trump's need for attention, it's raising hell with the country.”

Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, infamous for her intervention in Ukraine to promote a fascist-led anti-Russian coup, declared: “With his decision to withdraw all US forces from Syria, President Donald Trump hands a huge New Year’s gift to President Bashar Assad, the Islamic State, the Kremlin and Tehran.”

For whom do these Democrats and ex-state officials speak? Certainly not for the American people, who are overwhelmingly opposed to the ongoing US wars.

None of them make any reference to the criminal character of these military interventions. In Syria, where they claim US troops are a “stabilizing force,” the illegal intervention—launched without congressional approval, UN sanction or the permission of the Syrian government—has destroyed entire cities and exacerbated sectarian tensions.

Its purpose is not to defeat ISIS, but rather to carve out a US protectorate consisting of one third of Syria’s territory and, most importantly, the country’s oil and natural gas fields. Unable to overthrow the Assad government, the US has continued bleeding Syria white while confronting Russian and Iranian-backed forces that have supported the Damascus government.

The Democrats and the media are openly appealing to the military and the intelligence agencies to act against Trump. NBC news Friday stated that US military commanders were “outraged” by Trump’s decisions, while the Washington Post quoted an unnamed “former senior administration official” who stated, “There’s going to be an intervention. Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow.” This is the language of military coups.

Anyone who believes that Trump’s decisions regarding Syria and Afghanistan signal a new era of peace in the Middle East or anywhere else on the planet is in for rude shocks.

Trump’s “America First” policies are themselves an expression of the protracted crisis of US and world capitalism and, in particular, the loss of US global economic hegemony and failure of a quarter-century of military aggression to reverse the decline of American capitalism on world markets.

Trump approaches US foreign policy on an entirely transactional basis. He sees the military interventions in Syria and Afghanistan as ineffective from a cost-benefit standpoint. But he is fully prepared to employ the US war machine in prosecuting his trade war policies against China, with the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait the most likely arenas for the eruption of a major new war.

That Trump and his fascistic anti-immigrant advisor Stephen Miller—who appeared on CNN denouncing US wars involving “generation after generation, spilling American blood”—are able to posture as antiwar to win support for their reactionary, anti-working class agenda is thanks to the absence of a mass antiwar movement.

That such a movement does not exist is due in no small measure to the role played by the various pseudo-left organizations, from the Democratic Socialists of America to the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and others, which have supported US militarism, particularly in Syria. These groups have promoted CIA-backed Islamist militias as spearheading a “democratic revolution,” while invoking “human rights” and opposing “Russian imperialism.”

The resignation of Mattis leaves these elements high and dry. Reflecting the social interests of a privileged layer of the upper-middle class, whose rising incomes have been tied to the stock market and the fortunes of US imperialism, they will inevitably step up their defense of US wars, invoking the fate of the Kurds and other pretexts.

In a sign of what is to come, Mia Farrow, the godmother of the #MeToo movement, tweeted out: “As Trump pulls troops out of Syria, we must acknowledge the enormity of the world’s failure to halt a humanitarian catastrophe. US exit benefits Russia, ISIS—still active—Iran & Assad.” She added, “General Mattis was our last source of comfort that there was one ethical person in the Trump administration.”

The pseudo-left has no political independence whatsoever from the ruling class. Seeking to influence the Democratic Party, it inevitably lines up behind imperialist war.

The working class must chart its own course in the face of the deep divisions and crisis gripping the capitalist ruling class, developing an independent strategy to stop the drive toward world war. The most urgent task is the creation of an international antiwar movement of the working class based on socialist principles, and the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections as the revolutionary parties to lead it.

Anita Borg Systers Pass-It-On (PIO) Awards 2019 for Women in the Fields of Technology

Application Deadline: 21st March, 2019

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Online

Eligible Field of Study: Fields of technology

About the Award: The cash awards, funded by donations from the Systers Online Community and others, are intended as means for women established in technological fields to support women seeking their place in the fields of technology. The program is called “Pass-It-On” because it comes with the moral obligation to “pass on” the benefits gained from the award.

Type: Awards

Eligibility: 

• Pass-it-on Award applications are open to any woman over 18 years old in or aspiring to be in the fields of computing.
• Awards are open to women in all countries

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Award: Awards are open to women in all countries and range from $500.00 to $1000.00 USD. Applications covering a wide variety of needs and projects are encouraged, such as:

• Small amount to help with studies, job transfers or other transitions in life.
• A broader project that benefits girls and women.
• Projects that seek to inspire more girls and women to go into the computing field.
• Assistance with educational fees and materials.
• Partial funding source for larger scholarship.
• Mentoring and other supportive groups for women in technology or computing.

How to Apply: APPLY NOW

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: Anita Borg Institute

Ecocide as Creative Destruction

Rob Urie

According to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), since 1970 60% of the mammals, birds, fish and reptiles on the planet have been driven to extinction. To the extent that the WWF has it right, climate change accounts for less than 10% of these losses (graph below). As important and logistically complex as resolving climate change is, it is but one of a host of environmental ills in equal or greater need of resolution.

Habitat degradation and loss and animal exploitation (e.g. trawl-net fishing) explain most of this animal extinction. Habitat loss is primarily due to deforestation to feed factory farm animals. According to the Guardian, these animal losses would require 5 – 7 million years to recover from. But as of today, the causes of extinction continue unabated with no plausible plans being put forward by national governments to address it.

Graph: Of the mass extinction of animals that the WWF is reporting, most comes from habitat loss and degradation. Climate change explains less than 10% of the losses. The point isn’t to downplay climate change, but to express the breadth of the environmental crisis that the world now faces. While the role of global warming will increase in time, mass extinction is at present a related but separate crisis in need of resolution. Source:wwf.org.uk.

As reported here and here, the animal extinction isn’t anomalous. Over approximately the same time frame, 60% – 80% of insects have also been made extinct. The precise balance of causes is debatable, but putting climate change forward as the primary cause re-frames the concept of a ‘carbon budget’ in wildly alarming terms. If the one-degree Celsius warming experienced to date explains the insect extinction, where does that leave the IPCC’s 1.5 degree warming ‘budget?’

Most of the relation of climate change to mass extinction is based on an analogy. The ‘Great Dying’ extinction of 250 million years ago resulted from global warming caused by volcanic emissions of greenhouse gases. It mainly affected marine life through oxygen depletion. While there is a logical relationship between marine, animal and insect extinction— they are all extinctions, to date, oceanic oxygen depletion has more direct causes in agricultural runoff.

The appeal of assigning climate change as the cause of mass extinction is that solving climate change would in theory solve it. However, Raj Patel of the University of Texas-Austin is one of a number of environmental theorists who argue that industrial agriculture— including deforestation, monoculture planting and the use of pesticides, explains the insect and animal extinctions quite well. That oceanic dead zones ring industrial economies supports the interpretation that they are caused by agricultural runoff.

Graph: Oceanic dead zones, the product of runoff from industrial agriculture and industrial pollution, track American industrialization and the export of the American industrial model. The red circles surrounding industrial economies represent dead zones. Following WWII, the U.S. exported American-style capitalism to Germany and Japan through the Marshall plan. The U.S., Germany and Japan also feature prominently as cumulative emitters of CO2. Source: nasa.gov.  

The point here is analytical and tactical, not semantic. If industrialization is narrowly at fault for related environmental crises— say through greenhouse gas emissions, then ‘green growth’ is at least theoretically plausible through some combination of reduction and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. But this isn’t the case. The insect and animal mass extinctions appear to be related to climate change through a shared cause— industrialization.

The social, political and economic challenge is that ‘green growth’ is to tweak the status quo, whereas broader environmental resolution requires fundamentally reconsidering everything about capitalist modernity. Now. It is ultimately irrelevant that doing so has been a goal of some Left political programs for years and decades. There is no plausible exit from the current predicament emanating from the established order. The status quo is untenable, not a haven.

The habitat loss and degradation that substantially explains the insect and animal mass extinctions ties directly to animal agriculture— land is being cleared for animal grazing and to grow feed crops for factory farms. The crops grown are genetically engineered (GMO) to allow them to withstand systematic, late-stage applications of pesticides and herbicides. This agricultural ‘process’ is industrial from start to finish.

The industrial logic at work illustrates the conundrum. Factory farms are ‘efficient’ in the narrow sense of favoring commodity animals by decimating populations of non-commodity animals. This is done through monoculture planting of feed-crops to exclude / decimate non-feed crops. This decimation is accomplished using pesticides and herbicides that eliminate ‘losses’ to non-feed plants and insects. Annihilation is the point, not an accident.

The realm of interest— commodity production, excludes consideration of broader environmental relationships. Rendering each step of the agricultural process efficient assumes that the total process is efficient. Another way to say this is that what isn’t known— the unquestioned and unexplored reciprocal of this efficiency in nature, is assumed to be irrelevant, and therefore benign, by intent. Environmental destruction can be hidden by industrial food production until total extinction becomes inevitable.

This last point requires elaboration. Local, regional and global food chains are webs of relationships that once destroyed, take millions of years to regenerate. Through causing mass extinction, industrial agriculture leaves no ‘plan B’ in place. By the time that industrial food systems begin to fail, alternatives to it will have been destroyed. As of now, a return to pre-industrial agriculture is possible. However, technology will never replace large, complex and barely understood natural relationships.

In the 1980s pesticide and herbicide resistant GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) crops and a new class of neonicotinoid pesticides were introduced. It took twenty years for some of the causal mechanisms behind insect extinction to be linked to neonicotinoid pesticides. Early on GMO crops were planted next to non-GMO crops, guaranteeing cross contamination. This recklessness reflects a logic: industrial efficiency is the reciprocal of the broader relationships at work.

This is one possible explanation for the insect extinction measured in Puerto Rico despite a drop in the quantity of pesticides used there. Neonicotinoid pesticides can destroy the reproductive capacity of ‘non-target’ insects, meaning that they can adversely affect entire populations rather than just exposed insects. Amongst honeybees, Queens produce honeybees for the hive— the power to reproduce isn’t generally distributed. This particularity is antithetical to the commodity (generic) conception of industrial agriculture.

Recognizing that type and quantity are separate issues, the EU (European Union) is moving to ban the outdoor use of neonicotinoids linked to colony collapse in honeybees and mass die-offs of birds and bats. However, and here is the rub— with full knowledge of the adverse consequences of earlier pesticides, manufacturers promoted neonicotinoid pesticides with little to no understanding of their long-term consequences. For twenty years neonicotinoids were sold as the safe alternative to earlier pesticides.

The commercial logic behind this ‘product development’ strategy is that the narrower the research into adverse consequences, the lower the production costs and the lower the likelihood that adverse consequences will be found. This is more than a case of perverse incentives. Neonicotinoids were developed to replace earlier pesticides that also took twenty years for their adverse consequences to become known. In other words, the research process was known to be a serial failure before neonicotinoids were introduced.

The principle that ‘markets’ determine the ultimate social utility of products is even less probable. Ninety-nine-point nine percent of ‘consumers’ have no idea what pesticides are used in the production of the food they eat. Industrial farmers— corporations, care about crop yields. Until these are impacted, they have no reason to look further. The industrial scientists who create new pesticides answer questions derived from earlier problems. At no relevant point are adverse consequences known when ‘consumer’ decisions are made.

Industrial pesticides might even be ‘adequately’ tested, meaning to the full extent of what is knowable within the given logic. But ‘true’ knowledge of their impact has followed a predictable path. Earlier pesticides and herbicides produced unintended consequences despite being tested. In other words, adverse consequences are the predictable outcome of this production logic regardless of which methods are used to predict them. The evidence: neonicotinoids were (1) tested and (2) followed this same pattern of producing unintended consequences.

Graph: Every recession since WWII has been intentionally caused by the U.S. Federal Reserve raising interest rates to limit wage demands. ‘Recessions’ are another term for ‘degrowth.’ In other words, capitalists love degrowth when it serves their purposes. This is why economists on the Left tend to reflexively oppose degrowth. But if recessions are necessary to the proper functioning of capitalism, isn’t the problem capitalism? Source: St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Given the environmental stakes, arguing against the logic of capitalism would be pointless without bringing it back to environmental logic. Whether it is cause, effect or iterative, capitalism is deeply embedded in the social complexity that defines modernity. Most in the West buy their food in a store and have no idea how to produce it. This largely explains why market relations define so much of the realm of available social logic. Phrased differently, climate change and mass extinction strongly suggest that something is missing from the available social logic.

This social complexity— deeply interwoven social, political and economic relationships that make even small changes to the existing order dangerous for large numbers of people, constitutes a doomsday device of sorts given the environmental reckoning that is underway. Agricultural complexity— systems that billions of people rely on for sustenance, can be left to collapse on their own or their unwind can be planned. Lest this seem unduly alarmist, insect, animal and marine mass extinctions are already far along.

Question: if a group of people proposed killing 60% – 80% of the animals, insects and marine life on the planet while emitting enough gases into the atmosphere to cook the planet, should their stance as ‘centrists’ be taken seriously? And possibly more to the point, does it make a difference that until around 1980 they didn’t know they were doing so, and after they were told they accelerated the damage caused? The term ‘sociopaths’ seems more descriptively accurate.

Because animal agriculture is so resource intensive, were it to be abandoned, existing food production would greatly exceed what is needed to sustain people. This would facilitate a move away from industrial agriculture toward local, small scale and regenerative agriculture. It would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% – 50%, depending on whether deforestation is included in the calculation.

Otherwise, environmental problem solving begins with identification of the problems and then steps are taken to bring them to resolution. What doesn’t work is to spend decades ignoring and understating problems and then proposing half-measures under the theory that something is better than nothing. Half-measures proceed from the assumption that danger comes from action, rather than inaction. Mounting evidence suggests that this isn’t the case.

Another way to frame this is that problem solving can come through technological innovation, which has a long history of producing unanticipated adverse consequences, or through stopping doing what is causing problems. With the latter, the consequences are largely known— the problems are ended. To the extent that basic material needs could be met through ending animal agriculture and militarism, the capacity to resolve mounting crises exists even if the political will doesn’t.

According to decades of polls, most people want to do the right thing when it comes to the planet. This illustrates the divide between political and economic democracy. Economic concentration is used to crush political democracy. Without suggesting there are any simple or easy answers, breaking economic concentration is a necessary step to restoring the power to resolve environmental crises. Additionally, it would remove the logic of accumulation that is killing the planet.

Finally, the term ‘creative destruction’ in the title was conceived by Joseph Schumpeter to glorify the revolutionary nature of capitalism as replacement through innovation. With climate change and mass extinction at hand, what is being replaced is life on the planet. It’s good to know that there is a theory that ties to the process, although I’d hope for a better epitaph.

A Shift: Repudiating War on Yemen

Kathy Kelly

Twenty years ago, a small delegation organized by Voices in the Wilderness lived in Baghdad while U.S. cruise missiles attacked more than 100 targets in Iraq. Following four days of bombing, known as “Operation Desert Fox,” our group visited various Iraqis who had survived direct hits. One young girl handed me a large missile fragment, saying “Merry Christmas.”

An engineer, Gasim Risun, cradled his two-week old baby as he sat in his hospital bed. Gasim had suffered multiple wounds, but he was the only one in his family well enough to care for the infant, after an unexploded missile destroyed his house. In Baghdad, a bomb demolished a former military defense headquarters, and the shock waves shattered the windows in the hospital next door. Doctors said the explosions terrified women in the maternity ward, causing some to spontaneously abort their babies while others went into premature labor.

In December 1998, U.S. news media steadily focused on only one person living in Iraq: Saddam Hussein. With the notable exception of Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times, no mainstream media focused on U.N. reports about the consequences of U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. One of Kinzer’s articles was headlined: “Iraq a Pediatrician’s Hell: No Way to Stop the Dying.”

The hellish conditions continued, even as U.N. officials sounded the alarm and explained how economic sanctions directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children under age five.

Now a horror story of similar proportions is playing out in Yemen.

In November 2018, The Guardian reported that up to 85,000 Yemeni children under age five  have died from starvation and disease during the last three years. Mainstream media and even governments of large and wealthy countries are finally beginning to acknowledge the anguish suffered by Yemeni children and their families.

Stark and compelling photos show listless, skeletal children who are minutes or days away from death. Reports also show how war plans have deliberately targeted Yemen’s infrastructure, leading to horrifying disease and starvation. Journalists who have met with people targeted as Houthi fighters, many of them farmers and fishermen, describe how people can’t escape the sophisticated U.S. manufactured weapons fired at them from massive warplanes.

One recent Associated Press photo, on page one of The New York Times for December 14, shows a line of tribes people loyal to the Houthis. The youngest child is the only one not balancing a rifle upright on the ground in front of him. The tribes people bear arms, but they are poorly equipped, especially compared to the U.S.-armed Saudis.

Since 2010, according to The New York Times, the United States has sold the Saudis thirty F-15 multi-role jet fighters, eighty-four combat helicopters, 110 air-to-surface cruise missiles, and 20,000 precision guided bombs. Last year, the United States also sold the Saudis ten maritime helicopters in a $1.9 billion deal. An American defense contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, “earned tens of millions of dollars training the Saudi Navy during the past decade.”

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—along with his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed—seemed untouchable. He was feted and regaled by former Presidents, Oprah, Hollywood show biz magnates, and constant media hype.

Now, the U.S. Senate has passed a resolution holding him accountable for the gruesome murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Several U.S. Senators have said they no longer want to be responsible for bloodshed he has caused in Yemen. U.N. negotiators have managed to broker a fragile ceasefire, now in effect, which will hopefully stop the fighting that has raged in the vital port city of Hodeidah. One message which may have prompted the Saudis to negotiate came in the form of a Senate vote threatening to curtail the support of U.S. armed forces for the Saudi-led Coalition’s war on Yemen.

I doubt these actions will bring solace or comfort to parents who cradle their listless and dying children. People on the brink of famine cannot wait days, weeks, or months while powerful groups slowly move through negotiations.

And yet, a shift in public perception regarding war on Yemen could liberate others from the terrible spectre of early death.

Writing during another war, while he was exiled from Vietnam, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh imagined the birth of a “Peace Child.” He ends his poem by calling on people to give both their hands for the chance to “protect the seeds of life bursting on the cradle’s rim.”

I think of Iraqi mothers who lost their babies as bombs exploded just outside their maternity ward. The shift in public perception is painfully too late for innumerable people traumatized and bereaved by war. Nevertheless, the chance to press with all our might for a continuing and growing shift, repudiating war, could point us in a new direction.

The war in Yemen is horrific and ought to be ended immediately. It makes eminent good sense to give both our hands and all the energies we can possibly summon, to end the war in Yemen and vow the abolition of all war.

Groomed to Consume

Anja Lyngbaek

With Christmas coming up, household consumption will soon hit its yearly peak in many countries. Despite homely pictures of tranquility on mass-produced greeting cards, Christmas is more about frenzied shopping and overspending than peace on earth or quality time with family and friends. As with so much of our lives, the holidays have been hijacked by the idea that satisfaction, even happiness, is only one more purchase away.

Two generations ago, my Norwegian grandmother was overjoyed as a child when she received one modest gift and tasted an imported orange at Christmastime. In the modern era of long-distance trade and excess consumption, nobody gets even mildly excited by tasting a foreign fruit or receiving a small gift. Instead, adults dive into a cornucopia of global food (typically followed by a period of dieting) while children expect numerous expensive gifts – with designer clothes and electronic toys, games, and gadgets topping the list.

This comparison is not meant to romanticize the past or demean the present: it’s just a small example of how consumption has come to replace the things that give real meaning to our lives– like creating something with our own hands, or sharing and interacting with others. In the process, we have been robbed of the ability to take pleasure from small wonders.

Most of us are aware that excessive consumption is a prime feature of modern life, and that it is the cause of multiple social and environmental problems. We are living in a so-called “consumer culture” – a rather fancy title for something that has more in common with an abusive affliction, like bulimia or alcoholism, than it does with real living culture.

Rampant consumerism doesn’t happen by itself: it is encouraged by an economic system that requires perpetual economic growth. When national economies show signs of slowing down, citizens are invariable called upon to increase their consumption, which in a country like the US represents 70 percent of GDP. Curiously, when talk turns to the downside of consumerism – resource depletion, pollution, or shoppers trampled at Wal-Mart – it is the greed supposedly inherent in human nature that gets the blame. Rather than look at the role of corporate media, advertising, and other systemic causes of over-consumption, we are encouraged to keep shopping – but to do so “responsibly”, perhaps by engaging in “green consumerism”, a galling oxymoron.

I have no doubt that consumerism is linked with greed – greed for the latest model of computer, smartphone, clothes or car – but this has nothing to do with human nature. This sort of greed is an artificially induced condition. From early childhood our eyes, ears and minds have been flooded with images and messages that undermine our identity and self-esteem, create false needs, and teach us to seek satisfaction and approval through the consumer choices we make.

And the pressure to consume is rising, along with the amount of money spent on advertising. It is forecast that global advertising expenditure will hit $568 billion for 2018, a 7.4 percent increase over 2017. According to UN figures, that amount of money would be sufficient to both eradicate extreme poverty and foot the bill for measures to mitigate the effects of climate change worldwide.

Instead, we are “groomed to consume”. In the US, this means that the average young person is exposed to more than 3,000 ads per day on television, the internet, billboards and in magazines, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. While the figure may be lower in other countries, people everywhere are increasingly exposed to advertising – particularly through the internet, which now has over 4 billion users globally. In fact, half of the global “consumer-class” can now be found in the developing world. Although per capita consumption in China and India remains substantially less than in Europe, those two countries now consume more in total than all of Western Europe.

Marketing strategies – advertising, celebrity trend-setting, product placement in movies and TV shows, marketing ties-in between media and fast food franchises, etc. – have evolved to target an ever younger audience, all the way down to the one-year old, according to sociologist Juliet Schor. In her book Born to Buy, she defines “age compression” as the marketing to children of products that were previously designed for adults. Examples include makeup for young girls, violent toys for small boys, and designer clothes for the first grader. Schor’s research shows that the more children are exposed to media and advertising, the more consumerist they become; it also shows that they are more likely to become depressed, anxious and develop low self-esteem in the process.

However, children can become victims of the corporate-induced consumer culture even without direct exposure to advertising and media, as I learned during a year spent in my native Denmark, together with my then 12-year old son. Prior to our stay in Denmark, we lived in rural Mexico with limited exposure to TV, internet and advertising, and surrounded by children from homes with dirt floors, wearing hand-me-down clothes. The need for designer wear and electronic gadgets had therefore never entered my son’s mind.

However, after a few months of trying to fit in with Danish children, he became a victim of fashion, exchanging his usual trousers for the trend of the time – narrow sleek pants with diaper bottoms that impeded proper movement. Soon, style alone wasn’t enough: the right brand name of clothes was added to the list of things required for happiness. The same process was repeated in other parts of life: in Mexico, play would consist of an array of invented games, but a month in Denmark was sufficient for my son to feel too ashamed to invite anyone home because he didn’t own an Xbox. During that year, he cried bitter tears over the absence of things that he had never lacked before – video games, Samsung galaxies, iPads and notebooks.

This rapid conversion of a unique individual into a global consumer wasn’t a direct result of advertising, but of the indirect influence of corporations on our minds and lives. The other children were as much victims as my own child, having to a large extent been robbed of the possibility to develop their own (corporate-free) identity and the imagination and creativity that comes with childhood.

Shifting away from a model based on ever increasing consumption is long overdue. On a personal level, we can take positive steps by disengaging from the consumer culture as much as possible, focusing instead on activities that bring true satisfaction – like face-to-face interaction, engaging in community and spending time in nature.

In our very small rural community in Mexico, we have tried to do just that in our daily lives. Christmas for us is a communal celebration running over several days, which includes lots of homegrown, cooked and baked foods, music, dancing and playing, both indoors and outdoors. A major part of the celebration is a gift exchange that celebrates our skills and creative powers. Rather than buying a multitude of gifts, we make one gift each to give to another person. Who we give to is decided in advance in a secret draw of names, not revealed until the exchange. For a month in advance, our community is buzzing with creative energy, as everybody – children and adults alike – is busy planning and making amazing gifts. Presenting our gift is the highlight of our celebration, even for the youngest. Thus the coin has been flipped from consumption to creation and from receiving to giving.

However, while personal changes like this matter, it is not enough to turn the tide: structural changes are also required.

Despite dwindling natural resources, increasing levels of pollution and CO2 emissions, and the many social costs of consumerism, no nation-state has yet been willing to renounce the economic growth model. This will not change until people pressure their governments to disengage from this economic model and to put the brakes on corporate control. This may sound undo-able, but the current system is man-made and can be unmade. The trade treaties and agreements that favor corporations over nations, global over local, profit over people and planet, can be revoked and transformed. All it may take is an alliance of a few strategic countries willing to say “STOP”, to start a movement of nations willing to reclaim their economies.

When Jorge Mario Bergoglio was ordained Pope Francis, he came out with a public critique of the prevailing economic system that still rings true:

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world… This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

Yet, the blind belief in the economic growth model is waning, as ever more people realize that the present economic model is playing havoc with people and planet. Even the strongest proponents of the current system are finding it harder to repeat the “more economic growth is the solution” mantra.

So let’s downscale consumption this Christmas and celebrate creativity, community and our shared home – planet earth. Rather than commit to dieting in the new year, let’s commit to joining the call for systemic change – away from a destructive global casino economy that concentrates power and wealth, towards place-based economies operating under democratic control and within ecological limits, with global well-being in mind.

Anti-government protests continue in Hungary

Markus Salzmann

Protests against the right-wing government of Premier Victor Orbán have continued this week. Thousands had taken to the streets in Budapest and other big cities last week. The demonstrations were triggered by a new law that increases the number of overtime hours that employers can demand from their workers from 250 to 400 per year.

The protests are also directed against a judicial reform decided at the same time, which opens the way for new government-controlled administrative courts. Another target of the protests are the xenophobic and antisocial policies of the Fidesz government.

Last Sunday witnessed the largest demonstration so far, with 15,000 protesting against the government’s “Slave Law.” Slogans on banners included “Orbán, get lost!” “Strike, strike, strike” and “We have had enough!” The protests drew from virtually all layers of the population, with more and more students taking part. The initial protests were met with the widespread use of tear gas by the police, but the more recent protests have remained largely peaceful.

On Sunday, demonstrations took place outside the main building of the state television station, MTV. The broadcaster is under government control and is known for its one-sided government propaganda. A group of opposition MPs had gained access to the building Sunday night and occupied it for 24 hours.

In Szombathely, western Hungary, 1,000 people marched to the editorial offices of the local newspaper, Vas Nepe, to protest against the pro-government line taken by the paper. In Hungary, the government controls a large part of the press and independent media outlets are muzzled.

The government has maliciously denounced the demonstrators. Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman of Fidesz, claimed in the New York Times that the protests have “no popular support.” The leaders of the protests are “desperate” opposition politicians and “celebrity activists,” he said.

In reality, support for Orbán is plummeting. According to a new poll, 80 percent reject the new labour law. Two thirds of those who formerly voted for Orbán oppose the law, with workers fearing layoffs if they refuse to work overtime.

Orbán has governed the country with an absolute majority since 2010 and gradually erected authoritarian state structures in Hungary. He owed his majority not to any broad support on the part of the population but rather to profound discontent with all the other establishment parties, most notably the Socialist Party (MSZP). Last Wednesday, when parliament passed its labour law, the pent-up anger spilled out onto the streets.

According to a poll by IDEA this month, only 34 percent support the governing party. That is 3 percent less than in the previous month. According to the same poll, the second-ranked party in parliament, the far-right Jobbik, is only supported by 8 percent. In 2014, Fidesz was polling at over 50 percent. This means that support for these two parties has almost halved since 2014. In 2019, European and local elections will be held in Hungary, and all of the parties fear massive losses, especially Fidesz.

The reformed labour law primarily serves the interests of international corporations, in particular the European auto industry. At the beginning of his term in office, Orbán restricted the right to strike, and Hungary now has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the EU. Until now, Orban could rely on the tacit support of the trade unions, but they are currently threatening to call a general strike in the new year.

“We say yes to the general strike. This is our last chance to demonstrate our power,” a union representative told the German Handelsblatt newspaper. He made clear that this was solely due to massive pressure from the workforce. “Some of our members are asking us to shut down the country,” he admitted. Workers in the auto industry earn on average between €900 and €1,000 per month for a working week of over 40 hours.

The unions are growing increasingly fearful that the protests could spread to the factories and lead to strikes. The rate of trade union organisation in the factories is traditionally low, averaging between 10 and 20 percent. Hungary is a favoured location for the auto industry. In addition to low wages and low taxes, the trade unions have always faithfully followed the line of government and big business.

The German carmaker BMW recently announced plans to build a new auto factory in the eastern region of Debrecen, where more than 1,000 employees are expected to produce up to 150,000 cars each year. It is understandable that some critics have called the new labour legislation the “BMW law.”

Sixteen different unions are currently discussing a possible strike in January. Last year, workers at Tesco stores went on strike in Hungary and there were strikes in the car industry in other parts of eastern Europe, including Volkswagen in Slovakia and Fiat in Serbia.

The Hungarian economy is currently growing due to the activities of these international companies and a gross domestic product increase of 3.8 percent is expected this year. The Hungarian government has predicted annual growth of between 4 and 4.2 percent by 2022. However, this has brought little in the way of benefits for the vast majority of the Hungarian population.

Both the government and opposition parties fear that the current protests could spread. While the opposition MSZP is teaming up with the far-right Jobbik, the government is preparing a brutal crackdown on the protests. Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, accused protesters of showing “open anti-Christian hatred.” He said that citizens had the right to protest only as long as no laws are broken. At the same time, the government announced Wednesday that it would make no concessions regarding its “Slave Law.”

UK government announces draconian Brexit immigration policy and deployment of troops

Robert Stevens

The day after the government announced it was putting 3,500 troops on standby, amid business organisations saying they were “watching in horror” at the implications of a no-deal Brexit, proceedings in Parliament Wednesday descended into farce.

Rather than debating the crisis wracking Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government, and an emergency motion to discuss the government’s plans to accelerate planning for a “no-deal” Brexit, priority was allotted to debating whether or not Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had called May a “stupid woman” under his breath during Prime Minister’s Question time.

Instead of refusing to entertain an entirely choreographed debate on this, Corbyn returned to Parliament at the request of the Speaker to make a pathetic statement: “I did not use the words ‘stupid woman’ about the Prime Minister or anyone else and am completely opposed to the use of sexist or misogynist language in absolutely any form at all.”

The farcical events in Parliament were meant to conceal the extraordinarily dangerous and reactionary course being pursued by the government. The possibility of mobilising troops on the streets is justified by reference to the uncertainties posed by a no-deal Brexit and their remit is being kept deliberately vague. But this is a response to heightened political and social tensions in the UK that exist independently of whatever course is taken by Brexit negotiations. And the chief target of any such deployment is the working class, with the aim of quelling the social unrest provoked by worsening austerity.

Underscoring the contempt for any democratic accountability, the government said the Cabinet had agreed to ready the troops, with Defence Minister Gavin Williamson telling Parliament only that the government “will have 3,500 service personnel held at readiness, including regulars and reserves, in order to support any government department on any contingencies they may need.”

The Financial Times noted that the 3,500 have been “set aside for no-deal contingencies under a plan code named ‘Operation Yellowhammer’” and are “in addition to 5,000 troops kept on standby to help cope with a UK terror attack…”

While the government have refused to divulge details as to what end the troops are to be used, senior figures within the police and military have acknowledged in recent months that industrial action by workers is specifically being targeted. In September, a leaked document from the National Police Co-ordination Centre warned that there was a “real possibility” that soldiers would be deployed and that police leave would have to be cancelled around the Brexit exit date next year. It warned that a shortage of medicine could “feed civil disorder” and a rise in the price of goods could see “widespread protest which could then escalate into disorder.”

Last month, head of the Armed Forces General Sir Nick Carter told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that plans were being developed to deploy the military, “Whether it’s a terrorist attack or whether it’s a tanker drivers’ dispute, industrial action or whatever else it might be.”

Corbyn, busy giving pathetic statements in Parliament refuting accusations that he was a misogynist, has said nothing about the plans to mobilise thousands of soldiers to be used against the working class.

It was left to pro-EU Blairite provocateur Ian Austin to respond to the government. While stating, “This is the reality of a no-deal Brexit: soldiers on the streets; medicines being stockpiled in the NHS; and airports and ferry terminals grinding to a halt. This is scary tactics, pure and simple.” He did not oppose the mobilisation in any way.

Ever since the referendum vote, everything has been done by the contending pro- and anti-Brexit factions of the ruling class to exclude the interests of the working class, as they have fought out their opposing programmes as how best to further the strategic global interests of British imperialism.

With the working class unable to articulate its own independent interests, a crisis-ridden government is moving to rapidly enact its reactionary Brexit agenda.

On Wednesday, just 100 days from the date of Brexit, the government announced a white paper on an immigration policy to be enacted following the Brexit transition period, currently set as January 2021. However, the policies could be imposed as early as next April if May fails to get her EU exit deal agreed by Parliament.

Proposed is a permanent end to the free movement of people to the UK, as “Everyone will be required to obtain a permission if they want to come to the UK to work or study.” The UK will introduce a new temporary 12-month visa for EU nationals of all skill levels and a proposed minimum salary threshold of £30,000 for “highly skilled” migrants. To enter Britain they will also need to be sponsored by an employer.

Low-skilled workers will be banned from applying for visas and will only be able to enter the UK from a “low-risk country” for a maximum of 12 months. There will be a cooling-off period of a further 12 months, aimed at preventing these workers from having the opportunity of working in the UK permanently.

All migrants to the UK are to be refused access to free National Service Health care and social services. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said that no one allowed to enter the UK under the new system will have the “right to access public funds, or to settle permanently in the UK.”

EU citizens already settled in the UK and who wish to stay will be forced to register for a new “settled status.” EU nationals who wish to join family members in the UK post-Brexit “will need permission to do so, normally in the form of an electronic status, which must be obtained before coming to the UK.”

Sections of business are opposed to such a high pay threshold, fearing it will deny them access to a vital low-paid workforce. Mike Cherry, the national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said, “A £30,000 threshold for those coming to the UK could severely restrict access to the right skills in many sectors: construction, retail and care to name just a few.”

Labour, whose official immigration policy is opposing the free movement of labour and support for “managed migration” did not oppose the white paper in principle, but on the basis that it would damage an economy heavily reliant on millions of poorly paid workers.

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott complained, “The Government has disgracefully labelled workers on less than £30,000 as low-skilled. Our economy and public services are kept ticking by this majority of workers.”

The government, she added, were not prioritising “our economy and our society,” but “using an income-based system which allows derivatives traders free movement but which excludes nurses, social care workers and other professions in which we have severe skills or labour shortages.”

Abbott saw no reason to be embarrassed by such an admission that vital sectors of the economy, including healthcare, would collapse without continued low pay. But it is the political responsibility of Labour and the trade unions that the employers and the state have been able to create a society in which social inequality and super-exploitation are the norm.

US steps up offensive against China with more “hacking charges”

Mike Head

Further escalating its economic and strategic offensive to block China from ever challenging its post-World War II hegemony, the US government yesterday unveiled its fifth set of economic espionage charges against Chinese individuals since September.

As part of an internationally-coordinated operation, the US Justice Department on Thursday published indictments of two Chinese men who had allegedly accessed confidential commercial data from US government agencies and corporate computers in 12 countries for more than a decade.

The announcement represents a major intensification of the US ruling class’s confrontation against China, amid a constant build-up of unsubstantiated allegations against Beijing by both the Republican and Democrat wings of Washington’s political establishment.

Via salacious allegations of “hacking” on a “vast scale,” every effort is being made by the ruling elite and its media mouthpieces to whip up anti-China hysteria.

The indictment’s release was clearly politically timed. It was accompanied by a global campaign by the US and its allies, accusing the Chinese government of an illegal cyber theft operation to damage their economies and supplant the US as the world’s “leading superpower.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen immediately issued a statement accusing China of directing “a very real threat to the economic competitiveness of companies in the United States and around the globe.”

Within hours, US allies around the world put out matching statements, joined by declarations of confected alarm by their own cyber-warfare and hacking agencies.

The Washington Post called it “an unprecedented mass effort to call out China for its alleged malign acts.” The coordination “represents a growing consensus that Beijing is flouting international norms in its bid to become the world’s predominant economic and technological power.”

The Australian government, the closest ally of the US in the Indo-Pacific region, was in the forefront. Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton explicitly accused the Chinese government and its Ministry of State Security (MSS) of being responsible for “a global campaign of cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property theft.”

Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the Chinese cyber campaign “shocking and outrageous.” Such pronouncements, quickly emblazoned in media headlines around the world, destroy any possibility of anything resembling a fair trial if the two men, named as Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong, are ever detained by US agencies and brought before a court.

The charges themselves are vaguely defined. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused the men of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Zhu and Zhang acted “in association with” the MSS, as part of a hacking squad supposedly named “APT1o” or “Stone Panda,” the indictment said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray called a news conference to issue another inflammatory statement against China. Pointing to the real motivations behind the indictments, he declared: “China’s goal, simply put, is to replace the US as the world’s leading superpower, and they’re using illegal methods to get there.”

Coming from the head of the US internal intelligence agency, this further indicates the kinds of discussions and planning underway within the highest echelons of the US political and military-intelligence apparatus to prepare the country, ideologically and militarily, for war against China.

Washington is determined to block President Xi Jinping’s “Made in China 2025” program that aims to ensure China is globally competitive in hi-tech sectors such as robotics and chip manufacture, as well as Beijing’s massive infrastructure plans, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, to link China with Europe across Eurasia.

The US ruling class regards these Chinese ambitions as existential threats because, if successful, they would undermine the strategic position of US imperialism globally, and the economic dominance of key American corporations.

Yesterday’s announcement seemed timed to fuel tensions between Washington and Beijing, after the unprecedented December 1 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, in Canada at the request of the US.

Last weekend, US Vice President Mike Pence again accused China of “intellectual property theft.” These provocations came just weeks after the US and Chinese administrations agreed to talks aimed at resolving the tariff and trade war launched by US President Donald Trump.

The Trump administration is demanding structural changes to China’s state-led economic model, greater Chinese purchases of American farm and industrial products and a halt to “coercive” joint-venture licensing terms. These demands would severely undermine the “Made in China 2025” program.

Since September, US authorities have brought forward five sets of espionage allegations. In late October, the Justice Department unsealed charges against 10 alleged Chinese spies accused of conspiring to steal sensitive commercial secrets from US and European companies.

Earlier in October, the US government disclosed another unprecedented operation, designed to produce a show trial in America. It revealed that a Chinese citizen, accused of being an intelligence official, had been arrested in Belgium and extradited on charges of conspiring to commit “economic espionage” and steal trade secrets.

The extradition was announced days after the Pentagon released a 146-page document, titled “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States,” which made clear Washington is preparing for a total war effort against both China and Russia.

Trump, Pence and Wray then all declared China to be the greatest threat to America’s economic and military security. Trump accused China of interfering in the US mid-term elections in a bid to remove him from office. In a speech, Pence said Beijing was directing “its bureaucrats and businesses to obtain American intellectual property—the foundation of our economic leadership—by any means necessary.”

Whatever the truth of the spying allegations against Chinese citizens—and that cannot be assumed—any such operations would hardly compare with the massive global intrigue, hacking, regime-change and military operations directed by the US agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and its “Five Eyes” partners.

These have been exposed thoroughly by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Leaked documents published by WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA has developed “more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses and other ‘weaponized’ malware,” allowing it to seize control of devices, including Apple iPhones, Google’s Android operating system, devices running Microsoft Windows, smart TVs and possibly the control of cars and trucks.

In an attempt to broaden its offensive against China, the US government said that along with the US and its Five Eyes partners, such as Britain, Canada and Australia, the countries targeted by the alleged Chinese plot included France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland.

Chinese hackers allegedly penetrated managed services providers (MSPs) that provide cyber-security and information technology services to government agencies and major firms. Finance, telecommunications, consumer electronics and medical companies were among those said to be targeted, along with military and US National Aeronautics and Space Administration laboratories.

Sections of the Chinese regime responded belligerently to the accusations. An editorial in the state-owned Global Times branded them “hysterical” and a warning sign of a “comprehensive” US attack on China.

The editorial asked: “Assuming China is so powerful that it has stolen technological information for over a decade that is supposedly worth over a trillion in intellectual property, as the US has indicated, then how is it that China still lags behind the US in so many fields, from chips to electric vehicles, and even aviation engines?”

The Global Times declared that “instead of adhering to a low-profile strategy, China must face these provocations and do more to safeguard national interests.”

The promotion of Chinese economic and militarist nationalism by a mouthpiece of the Beijing regime is just as reactionary as the nationalist xenophobia being stoked by the ruling elite of American imperialism and its allies. The answer to the evermore open danger of war is a unified struggle by the international working class to end the outmoded capitalist profit system and nation-state divisions and establish a socialist society.

ENS de Lyon Ampère Scholarships 2019/2020 for International Students – France

Application Deadline: 10th January, 2019 11.59 pm (Time at Lyon – France)

Offered Annually?  Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries where the CEF procedure applies (See list below)

To Study at (Country): France

Field of Study: All Masters programs in the Exact Sciences, the Arts, and Human and Social Sciences (except FEADép Master’s programs).

Type: Masters

Eligibility: Eligible candidate must:

• be a foreign national
• be 26 years old maximum at the application deadline (born after 11 January 1992).
• Candidate for admission in Masters Year 1: provide proof that you have obtained a Licence (equivalent to 180 ECTS European credits) or an equivalent diploma/level recognized by the ENS deLyon.
• Candidate for admission in Masters Year 2: provide proof that you have successfully reached Masters Year 1 level (equivalent to 240 ECTS European credits) or have attained an equivalent diploma/level recognized by the ENS de Lyon (e.g. MPhil).

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship:  1,000€ a month during one or two academic years

List of Eligible Countries: Algeria, Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mali, Marocco, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, Vietnam.

How to Apply: Interested candidates are to complete and submit the online application forms and upload supporting documents by

January 10, 2019 11.59 pm (Time at Lyon – France)

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details