UK defies UN deadline to hand over Chagos Islands/Diego Garcia to Mauritius

Jean Shaoul

The UK has ignored a United Nations General Assembly deadline for Britain to withdraw from the Chagos Islands, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

It refuses to allow the islands to be reunified with Mauritius or the islanders to return to their homes, from which the British government evicted them in the 1970s. The Mauritian prime minister, Pravind Jugnauth, branded the UK “an illegal colonial occupier.”

The Foreign Office insisted on Britain’s sovereignty over the islands, which it said “has been under continuous British sovereignty since 1814. Mauritius has never held sovereignty over the BIOT and the UK does not recognise its claim.”

Map of Chagos Islands

The Chagos Islands are of geostrategic significance. Britain leases Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Indian Ocean archipelago, to the United States. The US uses the site to house one of its largest airbases, with 4,000 US as well as British troops, as a launching pad for its criminal operations in the Middle East.

Britain allowed the CIA to use Diego Garcia as a “dark site,” where it detained and tortured people and also refueled extraordinary rendition flights, recently extending the lease on the islands to 2036.

The UN meeting in May condemned Britain’s occupation of the Chagos Islands and endorsed February’s non-binding ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), calling on the UK to relinquish its hold on the territory within six months (by November 22, 2019) to complete the process of decolonisation. The ICJ’s ruling implied that the UK’s leasing Diego Garcia to the US is also illegal.

The UN’s decision was overwhelming, with only the US, Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives supporting Britain—reflecting Britain’s diplomatic isolation and the diminished stature of the US on the world arena.

The UK, determined to hold onto its remaining 14 colonial possessions and to support the US, which has 5, rejected the ICJ’s ruling and the UN’s order. It fears claims from the Mauritian government for compensation and the implications for other sovereignty disputes, including with Spain over Gibraltar and Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas.

This is not the first time Britain has defied the UN. In February 2016, Britain rejected a UN human rights panel ruling that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who sought asylum inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London due to his persecution by the Swedish and British authorities, had been subjected to “arbitrary detention.” This is in line with a broader assault, led by the US, on the institutional arrangements established in the aftermath of World War II viewed as an unacceptable constraint on the pursuit of predatory imperialist interests.

The Chagos Islands are situated halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. For more than five decades, Britain has carried out one crime after another against the Chagossians, using every trick in the book—lying, ignoring court decisions, invoking Royal Prerogative and then covering up its actions.

The Chagossians’ struggle for their rights began more than 50 years ago, when the Labour government granted Mauritius independence in 1968—but only after separating the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, in breach of UN resolution 1514 passed in 1960 banning the breakup of colonies before independence.

The UK denied the 1,344 islanders their right to return to their homeland, and handed it over as a military base, free of local residents, to the US. The government signed a sordid deal with Washington—kept secret from both Parliament and the US Congress—granting Washington a 50-year lease on Diego Garcia in return for an $11 million discount on the US-made Polaris nuclear weapons system, which Labour had pledged to scrap when in opposition.

The UK forcibly evicted and deported the islanders to Mauritius and the Seychelles, another former British colony, where they have lived in impoverished conditions and where the Chagossians say they are subject to xenophobia and denied education and employment opportunities. Some were allowed into Britain.

None of the promises of support and compensation were kept. Many of the islanders were simply abandoned when they landed. The promised compensation payments arrived five years late and were soon eaten up by inflation. The islanders, as a condition of accepting Britain’s derisory offer of compensation in the 1980s, were required to renounce their right to return. When the money did arrive, the Chagossians received much less than reported figures, with many receiving little or no compensation to this day.

Investigative journalist John Pilger first brought their plight to the world’s attention with his film Stealing a Nation in 2004.

The islanders and their descendants in Britain, who now number about 3,500 and are mainly resident in Crawley, West Sussex, have campaigned for their rights against a conspiracy of silence, obfuscation, temporising and lies. The British government has even attempted to deport third-generation Chagossians on the grounds that though their grandparents had been entitled to UK residency, they are not. E-mails, released under Freedom of Information requests, show that they have faced a lengthy campaign in Crawley denying them social housing and putting pressure on them to leave the country, paralleling the Windrush scandal.

In 2009, Gordon Brown’s Labour government issued an order turning the Chagos archipelago into a “marine reserve,” aimed at making resettlement impossible and denying Mauritian fishermen the right to fish in the archipelago’s waters.

In 2010, WikiLeaks exposed the real reasons behind this, publishing a batch of secret cables from the British government in 2009, reassuring the Americans that “the former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos were a marine reserve.”

For this and so much else, Wikileaks’s founder Julian Assange earned the undying hatred of the British government.

After the WikiLeaks revelations, the Chagossians and later Mauritius began legal proceedings against the UK government, with Mauritius winning a ruling at The Hague that Britain had acted illegally over the Chagos Islands and criticising London for failing to consult over the marine reserve. This changed nothing. In 2016, after years of delays, the Foreign Office finally announced that Chagos islanders would not be given the right of return to resettle, arguing that the cost and US objections made it impossible.

The islands are close to some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, with two-thirds of global petroleum exports traversing the Indian Ocean. India has for several years sought economic and, to a lesser extent, military expansion in and around the ocean, including creating military bases in Mauritius and the Seychelles. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has financed infrastructure in the littoral countries, including Gwadar port in Pakistan and its first overseas military base in Djibouti.

India, China, Japan, the US, Britain, France, Australia and Pakistan have competing and overlapping military and economic alliances. Marking a shift from its earlier focus on the Pacific, the US has renamed its regional military hub, the “Indo-Pacific Command.”

French courts sabotage probe of official financing of Islamic State terrorism

Francis Dubois

The Paris appeals court dropped charges of complicity in crimes against humanity targeting the Lafarge corporation just before the fourth anniversary of the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris and the conclusion of an investigation by anti-terror magistrates. On that date, deadly attacks by the Islamic State (IS), which was receiving funding from Lafarge with state complicity, claimed 130 lives and wounded 413 people.

Lafarge, an industrial company specializing in building materials, financed IS to the tune of at least $13 million while a wave of terrorist attacks devastated Europe from 2014 to 2016. This financing continued after the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015.

The court ruling is line with Lafarge lawyers’ demands. In March 2019, charges were dropped against former LafargeHolcim director Eric Olsen—which, L’Express noted, “began the defense lawyers’ counterattack.” Charges were scaled back against a key defendant in the affair, Lafarge security chief Jean-Claude Veillard, and Frédéric Jolibois, the director of Lafarge’s Syrian plant starting in 2014, was released from preventive detention. Le Monde wrote that this scaling back of charges would “automatically knock major ‘holes’ in this complex legal case.”

The appeals court kept accusations of “financing terrorism,” “violating an embargo,” “endangering the lives” of former workers at Lafarge’s Jalabiya, Syria plant.

The charge of “complicity in crimes against humanity” was the most serious and had the broadest scope, however. The dropping of this charge limits the scope of investigations and effectively blocks a trial that would reveal the state’s actions between 2012 and 2016, and their repercussions with deadly attacks in France, Belgium, Germany, Britain and Spain.

Unlike the investigating magistrates, the appeals court demanded investigators prove not only that Lafarge financed crimes against humanity, but that Lafarge intended to commit such crimes.

Investigators had argued that Lafarge’s “intention” was proved by the fact that it was aware of IS crimes and contributed to them by financing IS. Courts “do not insist that someone guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity ‘share the same ideologically hegemonic policy as the main actors.’ Nor is it necessary for an accomplice to ‘know the precise crime being planned,’” they wrote in a note. The UN and the European Parliament reported IS war crimes and crimes against humanity in 2015 and 2016.

In October, prosecutors threw out four civil plaintiffs from the case, preventing any intervention by the public. Prosecutors settled on “throwing out all the legal briefs that non-governmental associations had filed,” wrote the Sherpa association, one of the plaintiffs, adding that without the civil plaintiffs “this case would not exist.”

Another civil plaintiff, the Chredo (Coordination of Christians in danger in the Orient), accused the state of “not respecting the obligation to mention Lafarge among the entities financing terrorism, though it was known to be doing so.”

This dropping of charges impedes the organization of a trial that would expose the imperialist policy of the French government and its NATO allies in Syria and the role of Western intelligence agencies during the deadly attacks of 2014-2016. In the war for regime change they launched against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, the NATO imperialist powers used Islamist terrorist militias like IS as proxy forces.

A key aspect of the affair was the ties between Lafarge’s financing and terror attacks in Europe. The Life in Paris association, which represents victims of the November 13 attacks and their relatives, had been allowed to file charges in January 2018. Investigating judges ruled it was “established” that “the overall size and duration” of Lafarge financing allowed IS to “plan and carry out violent attacks in Syria and abroad, including in France.”

L’Express wrote in May 2018: “According to judicial sources, ‘bank notes found in the pockets of Abaawud [the suspected organizer of the November 13 attacks] or of others could have come from Lafarge.”

According to investigating magistrate Charlotte Bilger, “nothing allows us to rule out the hypothesis that funds that Lafarge could pay to terrorist groups would have helped to finance the terror attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015.” Nevertheless, the Paris prosecutor’s office opposed allowing the association to be listed as a plaintiff in the case, claiming the charges were outside the association’s legal competence.

In a May 7, 2018 article, “Lafarge, the shadows of November 13,” L’Express noted: “According to judicial customs officials investigating for the investigating magistrates, Lafarge paid funds until 2015 to various terrorist organizations, including IS. The date is critical: indeed, on January 9, 2015, Amédy Coulibaly committed crimes, targeting a municipal policewoman in Montrouge and a kosher market in Vincennes in the name of IS, formally establishing the link via a posthumous video.”

The magazine added, “Investigators set up a chart of payments made to intermediaries known to be close to terrorist elements, and it seems that these payments continued after IS first claimed responsibility for attacks waged in France. … Thus, a line in this chart titled ‘payments, supplies’ notes that seven suppliers of raw materials established in Raqqa … received from Lafarge the equivalent of $3 million between 2010 and February 2015—which executives like Frédéric Jolibois downplayed during their interrogations.”

One row in this “chart describes ‘payments made to intermediaries’ between December 4, 2013 and January 31, 2015 for a total of $240,000. … Clearly this was not enough to embarrass certain executives of Lafarge, who thus continued to pay their ‘alms,’ as one of them put it, to the organization,” continued L’Express.

It is now established in particular that Veillard was in contact with the Elysée presidential palace, in “October or November 2014” by his account, to “make clear that this factory could serve as a base in the context of a deployment of French military forces.” Lafarge also established permanent contacts with France’s General Directorate of Interior Security (DGSI) regarding its ties and payments to IS—contacts which, according to a declassified DGSI report, continued until 2016.

The questioning of former minister for Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius, who denied all knowledge of any aspect of the case, reinforced suspicions that the Elysée and the foreign ministry were perfectly well informed.

Though it is also under investigation, the DGSI was allowed access to the case files. In October 2018, Lafarge lawyers accused it of “bias” and “conflict of interest.” The DGSI participated in searches of Lafarge facilities, participated in interrogations of suspects, and wrote up reports and summaries for the judges.

US Government TechWomen Program 2020 for Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Fields

Application Deadline: 15th January, 2020 09:00AM PST (GMT-08:00)

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe.

To be taken at (country): USA

Eligible Field of Study: Any STEM fields

About the Award: From the moment the Emerging Leaders arrive, they are immersed in the innovative, constantly evolving culture of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Emerging Leaders work closely with their Professional Mentors to design meaningful projects while exploring the San Francisco Bay Area with their Cultural Mentor and fellow program participants.
TechWomen Emerging Leaders will:

• Challenge themselves with new questions and concepts
• Collaborate with like-minded women in their fields on an innovative project
• Network with influential industry leaders
• Discover their own innovative leadership style
• Create meaningful friendships with women from all over the world
• Explore the diverse communities of the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C.
• Inspire the next generation of women and girls in their home countries

Type: Training, Fellowship

Eligibility: Applicants must

• Be women with, at minimum, two years full-time professional experience in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. Please note that internships and other unpaid work experience does not count toward the two-year professional experience requirement.
• Have, at minimum, a bachelor’s degree/four-year university degree or equivalent.
• Be proficient in written and spoken English.
• Be citizens and permanent residents of Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe at the time of application and while participating in the program.
• Be eligible to obtain a U.S. J-1 exchange visitor visa.
• Not have applied for an immigrant visa to the United States (other than the Diversity Immigrant Visa, also known as the “visa lottery”) in the past five years.
• Not hold U.S. citizenship or be a U.S. legal permanent resident.

Preference will be given to applicants who

• Demonstrate themselves as emerging leaders in their chosen professional track through their work experience, volunteer experience, community activities and education.
• Are committed to return to their home countries to share what they have learned and mentor women and girls.
• Have limited or no prior experience in the United States.
• Have a proven record of voluntary or public service in their communities.
• Have a demonstrated track record of entrepreneurialism and commitment to innovation.
• Demonstrate a willingness to participate in exchange programs, welcome opportunities for mentoring and new partnership development, and exhibit confidence and maturity.

Selection: TechWomen participants are selected based on the eligibility requirements above. Applications are reviewed by independent selection committees composed of industry leaders and regional experts. Semifinalists may be interviewed by United States Embassy personnel in their country of permanent residence.

Number of Awardees: 100 women

Value of Scholarship: International travel, housing, meals and incidentals, local transportation and transportation to official TechWomen events are covered by the TechWomen program. Participants are responsible for the cost of any non-program activities in which they wish to partake, such as independent sightseeing and non-program-related travel.

Duration of Scholarship: The 2020 TechWomen program will occur over five weeks from September – October 2020. Due to the fast-paced nature of the program, arrival and departure dates are not flexible.

How to Apply: CLICK HERE TO APPLY

• Interested TechWomen participants should apply based on the application requirements in link below.

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Middle East and North Africa MENA Scholarship Programme (MSP) 2020 for Students to Study in The Netherlands

Application Deadline: December 2019

Offered annually? The MSP November 2019 deadline is de last deadline. The current contract ends on 31 December 2019. More information will be available at the end of 2019.

Eligible Countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia. 


To be taken at (country): The Netherlands

Accepted Subject Areas: You can use an MSP scholarship for a number of selected short courses in one of the following fields of study:

• Economics
• Commerce
• Management and Accounting
• Agriculture and Environment
• Mathematics
• Natural sciences and Computer sciences
• Engineering
• Law Public Administration
• Public order and Safety
• Humanities
• Social sciences
• Communication and Arts

About Scholarship: The MENA Scholarship Programme (MSP) enables professionals from ten selected countries to participate in a short course in the Netherlands. The overall aim of the MSP is to contribute to the democratic transition in the participating countries. It also aims at building capacity within organisations, by enabling employees to take part in short courses in various fields of study.
There are scholarships available for short courses with a duration of two to twelve weeks.

Target group:  The MSP target group consists of professionals, aged up to 45, who are nationals of and work in one of the selected countries.
Scholarships are awarded to individuals, but the need for training must be demonstrated within the context of the organisation for which the applicant works. The training must help the organisation develop its capacity. Therefore, applicants must be nominated by their employers who have to motivate their nomination in a supporting letter.

Selection Criteria: The candidates must be nationals of and working in one of the selected countries.

Who is qualified to apply:

• must be a national of, and working and living in one of the countries on the MSP country list valid at the time of application;
• must have an employer’s statement that complies with the format EP-Nuffic has provided. All information must be provided and all commitments that are included in the format must be endorsed in the statement;
• must not be employed by an organisation that has its own means of staff-development. Organisations that are considered to have their own means for staff development are for example:
  • multinational corporations (e.g. Shell, Unilever, Microsoft),
  • large national and/or a large commercial organisations,
  • bilateral donor organisations (e.g. USAID, DFID, Danida, Sida, Dutch ministry of Foreign affairs, FinAid, AusAid, ADC, SwissAid),
  • multilateral donor organisations, (e.g. a UN organization, the World Bank, the IMF, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, IADB),
  • international NGO’s (e.g. Oxfam, Plan, Care);
• must have an official and valid passport (valid at least three months after the candidate’s submission date);
• must have a government statement that meets the requirements of the country in which the employer is established (if applicable);
• must not be over 45 years of age at the time of the grant submission.

Number of Scholarship:  Several

Value: A MENA scholarship is a contribution to the costs of the selected short course and is intended to supplement the salary that the scholarship holder must continue to receive during the study period.

The following items are covered:

• subsistence allowance
• international travel costs
• visa costs
• course fee
• medical insurance
• allowance for study materials.

The allowances are considered to be sufficient to cover one person’s living expenses during the study period. The scholarship holders must cover any other costs from their own resources.

How to Apply: You need to apply directly at the Dutch higher education institution of your choice.

1. Check whether you are in the above mentioned target groups.
2. Check whether your employer will nominate you.
3. Contact the Dutch higher education institution that offers the course of your choice to find out whether this course is eligible for an MSP scholarship and how to apply.

It is important to go through the application information details on the Scholarship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Reports of War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan Highlight the Failures of Both Wars

Patrick Cockburn

The alleged bid by the British government and army to close down investigations into torture and murder in Iraq and Afghanistan appears to be the latest aspect of a widespread desire in the UK to forget all about these failed wars. Joining the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is commonly blamed on Tony Blair, but there is little interest in the desperate situation into which British troops were plunged post-invasion, first in southern Iraq and then, three years later, in Helmand province in Afghanistan.

The gravity of the miscalculations in each case is not in doubt. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador in Kabul at the time, wrote in his memoirs that the worst mistake made by the Foreign Office in the previous 30 years was the invasion of Iraq, and the second worst was “its enthusiastic endorsement of Britain’s half-baked effort to occupy Helmand in 2006”.

The allegation that war crimes were committed – to be claimed in a BBC Panorama programme on Monday evening – is in keeping with Britain’s dismal record in these conflicts.

The ICC has said it is considering opening an investigation into the claims, based on leaked documents. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said the allegations are unsubstantiated.

After the capture of Baghdad, the British army stayed in the south of Iraq, mostly in and around Basra, apparently under the impression that this would be quieter than the Sunni Arab provinces that had more strongly supported Saddam Hussein.

It swiftly became clear that, while the Shia population of the south was glad to be rid of Saddam, they were not about to accept a British occupation. An ominous sign of this came on 24 June 2003 when six British Royal Military Police were shot dead in a town called Majar al-Kabir near the city of Amara.

They died because they were advising local police at the same moment as British paratroopers were carrying out an aggressive patrol in another part of the same town and had had an exchange of fire in which several locals had died. The RMPs were killed soon afterwards in a revenge attack.

The incident sums up the fatal contradiction facing the British expeditionary force in Iraq. Their numbers and dispositions were suitable for a country in which most of the population was friendly, but if the opposite were true, as it certainly was, then the soldiers were vastly outnumbered and in danger. British officers used to annoy their American counterparts by claiming prior expertise in this type of warfare, drawing on British experience in Malaya and Northern Ireland. A captain in military intelligence stationed for a year in Basra later said that “I kept trying to explain without success to my superiors that in Malaya and Northern Ireland we had local allies while in Basra we had none”.

The weakness of the British position was exposed in detail by the Chilcot Report in 2016, but its findings were masked by the media obsession with finding a “smoking gun” that would prove the culpability of Tony Blair and by the shock result of the Brexit referendum that had taken place at the same time.

The report explains that by 2007 the British forces in Basra had run out of ideas and “it was humiliating that the UK reached a position in which an agreement with a militia group [the Mahdi Army], which had been actively targeting UK forces, was considered the best option available.”

According to Chilcot, the one consistent British strategy between 2003 and complete withdrawal in 2009 was “to reduce the level of deployed forces” and to do so without offending the US. The means of doing so was to redeploy the troops to Afghanistan, which was supposedly safer, but where they arrived just as the Taliban were restarting their guerrilla war and where 405 British troops were to be killed in the coming years.

Those who may have committed war crimes in these conflicts have been investigated, even if they were not prosecuted. It would be good if those responsible for these doomed military forays should also be held responsible for their actions.

Colonialism and Academic Knowledge Production

Debasish Hazarika

Colonialism and knowledge production:

Colonialism is much more than establishing colonies in the non-western world to exploit raw materials for the western metropolitan centres. It is a system of hegemonic power and domination of the colonized by the colonizers, economic, physical as well as psychological. Colonialism is a product of ‘western’ civilization who is obliged for its internal reason to extend in the world scale, the competition of its antagonistic economic dimension. Colonization doesn’t involve innocence and impunity. Rather it involves brute force in its true nakedness. It involves striping of societies from its essence, undermining of institutions, confiscating land, destruction of art and wiping out of all the possibilities for a better future. But the Colonizers prefer to write a different story. A story where they talk about progress, how they cured diseases and helped in raising the standard of living in the colonies as if they are on a civilizing mission of all the non-western peoples. What this story propagates is an image of a world divided into binaries of civilized Europe and savaged others. It is based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between Europe and other. Historically speaking, knowledge production is a political process. The notion of knowledge has gone through transformations in our time and this shapes our understanding of how knowledge is created and used. The most important aspect of knowledge production is the linkages between power and knowledge. The intimate relationship between Power and Knowledge has been mentioned in the works of classical writers like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim but it is Michel Foucault who provided some excellent work on this intimate relationship.

One important link between power and knowledge in the context of this commentary would be the relationship of legitimation shared by them. Power and knowledge both needs legitimation and that legitimation or the claim to credibility is given by each other to each other. So we can say that knowledge production always revolves around the political status of science and the ideological function it could serve. European modernity after the Enlightenment establishes western sciences with its deductive logic as the torchbearer of rationality and reason. Now it was time for its global export and imposition. Wherever Europeans set their feet, they bring with them their modernity, their science, and their reason. Therefore, we have to understand colonialism as a discourse to understand the systematic discipline by which the Europeans successfully was able to manage and produce the ‘Other’, politically, sociologically, Ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively during the post enlightenment era.

Anthropology as a discipline in the context of colonialism:

To understand knowledge production in the context of ‘colonialism’, before discussing the discipline of Anthropology, we should try to understand the roles played by the so-called non- scientific works, prior to the development of Anthropology as a ‘scientific’ discipline.
Those ‘travelers’ tales, trader’s endeavors and many other ‘unscientific’, anecdotal ways of explaining the ‘undiscovered other’ played a crucial part in the construction of ‘others’ by the west. Their romanticized, highly biased, an ethnocentric account of the adventures worked well for their personal gains back home but these informal accounts eventually shaped the emergence of institutionalized and formalized ways for getting information about the indigenous world and it accommodated the ideological underpinnings of colonialism.

Now let’s move on to the institutionalized and ‘scientific’ way of studying the non-western world. This institutionalized and ‘scientific’ ways of understanding non-western societies played a crucial role in institutionalizing racist theories based on which the construction of the
‘savaged other’ was possible. Anthropology as a discipline was organized in that context.

Anthropology was devoted to descriptions and analysis of non- European societies dominated by European power. The long-range goal of anthropology was basically the discovering of the general law of the nature of mankind. The circumstances of its founding, that is western expansionism and the ‘discovery’ of the non-western world, meant that there laws and proposition were based on a close study of the ‘Newly discovered primitives’. Since they were working under newly developed power relation i.e., colonialism, which accompanied domination and exploitation of the non-western world by the west, anthropologists were often called for information and advice or specially deployed in its effort to control and manipulate the non- western world. Therefore Anthropology can be considered as rooted in unequal power encounters between the west and the third world. This encounter gives Europe access to cultural and historical information of the third world which they have dominated. This helps in reaffirming the generalizations and re-enforcing the inequalities between the west and the other.

The information and perceptions developed by such disciplines as anthropology are acquired and used by the colonialists for exploitation. Most of the colonial anthropological pursuits were fueled by colonial power structure which made the accessibility of their objects safe and methodology fluid. Their fieldworks reflected one-sided overviews and as a result, they often contributed, sometimes not directly, to the maintenance and reproduction of colonial power structure.

On the theoretical level, anthropology’s love affair with functionalism played an important role in the confirmation of biased perceptions of the ‘other’, as well as the advancement of colonial agendas. This resulted in too much focus on empirical evidence thereby leading to ignorance of hidden relations and forms in the studied societies. This empiricist philosophy was plagued by ethnocentrism as their concepts like acculturation, assimilation didn’t have room for domination and exploitation.

Anthropology in the inter-war period was different in its approach. It was defensive of the weaker cultures and societies, their way of life, languages, religious practices, native modes of production, and economic rationality. They provided a moral and intellectual defensive of native’s dignity as human- beings by negating evolutionary racist theories of the earlier arm- chair anthropologists. They also questioned the monopolization of the moral judgments by the ruling community. But colonial officialdom started questioning the validity and practicality of their work. This started a trend whereby the anthropologists started defending their work by insisting to be a ‘proper science’. When it comes to science the colonialist always viewed it as a symbol of great western achievement and its application on the natives looked encouraging.

To fall in the line of ‘proper science’ the anthropologist started shifting towards more dispassionate, objective study of people and claiming to yield proper information for the officialdom and the planners. This definitely helped in getting the fundings from the sponsoring authorities. Sponsorship or funding played a big role in developing anthropology in different lines. In different phases of colonialism, officials wanted a different kind of information and they influenced anthropological research through funding mechanisms to a large extent. By and large, we can say that knowledge produced by Anthropology as a discipline was uncritical of colonialism as a system of exploitation and domination. But with a gradual breakdown of colonialism, the position taken by anthropologist changed. Initially the handmaiden of colonial administration, anthropologists increasingly started writing sympathetically of the ‘others’.

A case for decolonization:

Research is a search for knowledge and truth. It is a systematic way of producing knowledge. But what is the truth? And what is knowledge? depends on the epistemological and ontological position of the researcher and researched. The methodology is the logic behind the approaches to doing the research. This logic makes the difference between natural sciences and social science. In social science, we study humans and the results of their interrelation. Initially social science was being developed in the line of natural sciences with its deductive logic i;e, Positivism. But the division happened with Wilhelm Dilthey and Max Weber taking social science to a more interpretative direction.

In colonial times, social science was dominated by the positivist approach. It was before social sciences took the famous ‘linguistic turn’. So to study the ‘non-western’ societies, anthropologists applied this positivist approach. This resulted in the objectification of human
beings as if they were not human beings with feelings, emotions and a thinking brain. As I discussed earlier through this ‘Othering’ of fellow human beings through the various mechanisms of discursive powers West has successfully created this ‘other’ to suit their bloody imperialist adventures.

The earlier 18th and 19th-century colonialism with its economic, cultural and scientific implications have ended. The empires changed their skins, readjusted their shares. The whole mechanism of looting and toying with the ‘others’ have changed. Democracy has become the new ride with Big-capital as the fuel. Colonizers have officially left but having their institutions remained at the right place. So we need to Decolonise and it should not be about only the handing over of colonizers governing instruments but it should be about total divesting of their cultural, bureaucratic and psychological implications. The academic knowledge production too needs to be decolonized by shunning the colonial methodologies and adopting more organically developed and reflexive indigenous methodologies. Only then our production of knowledge will be able to come out of the shadow of our colonial history.

Fighting For America’s Soul

John Scales Avery

Democratic institutions are in danger

Today there is a deep split in public opinion in the United States. Democratic institutions are in danger from racism and neo-fascism. Progressives are fighting to save the values and institutions on which their country was founded. They are fighting to save America’s soul.

Racism, discrimination and xenophobia

Progressives today would like to eliminate all forms of discrimination, whether based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender. They are opposed by white nationalist groups, especially in rural areas and among white industrial workers and evangelicals, who fear that their own groups will soon be outnumbered by those who differ from them in ethnicity, race or religion.

Donald Trump has appealed to these fears using rhetoric similar to that of Hitler. According to the testimony of his first wife, he kept a book Hitler’s speeches beside his bedside and studied it diligently. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany probably would not have occurred had it not been for the terrible economic stress produced by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Working-class white Americans are similarly stressed, and they have chosen a similar leader.

Excessive economic inequality

The United States today is characterized by excessive economic inequality. As Senator Bernie Sanders said, “There is no justice, and I want you to hear this clearly, when the top one-tenth of 1 percent – not 1 percent, the top one-tenth of 1 percent – today in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.”

Such exaggerated inequality is bad in itself, but it also leads to governmental corruption. Since Citizens United, corporations have been able to make enormous donations to the campaigns of politicians, essentially buying their support. Studies have shown that at present, the wishes of voters matter little in comparison to the wishes of the corporate sponsors of politicians. Because of this, the United States is not a democracy but an oligarchy. Progressives are fighting to change this. They are fighting to save “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. They are fighting for America’s soul.

The military-industrial complex

In his famous farewell address, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about the power of the military-industrial complex. He said “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In another speech, Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Today the United States has bases in almost every country of the world, and spends almost a trillion dollars every year on armaments, or more than a trillion, depending on what is included. Aggressive foreign wars, and regime change coups have produced untold suffering, as well as a refugee crisis.

Progressives are fighting to change this. They are fighting for a more  peaceful America. They are fighting for America’s soul.

Secrecy and democracy are incomparable

John Adams wrote: “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”

According to the Nuremberg Principles, the citizens of a country have a responsibility for the crimes that their governments commit. But to prevent these crimes, the people need to have some knowledge of what is going on. Indeed, democracy cannot function at all without this knowledge.

What are we to think when governments make every effort to keep their actions secret from their own citizens? We can only conclude that although they may call themselves democracies, such governments are in fact oligarchies or dictatorships.

We do not know what will happen to Julian Assange. If he dies in the hands of his captors he will not be history’s first martyr to the truth. The ageing Galileo was threatened with torture and forced to recant his heresy, that the Earth moves around the Sun. Galileo spent the remainder of his days in house arrest.

Giordano Bruno was less lucky. He was burned at the stake for maintaining that the universe is larger than it was then believed to be. If Julian Assange becomes a martyr to the truth like Galileo or Bruno, his name will be honored in the future, and the shame of his captors will be remembered too.

Edward Snowden’s revelations showed us the extent of government spying, and the extent of the deep state. Progressives are fighting to make the American government more truthful and open. They are fighting for America’s soul.

A new freely downloadable book

I would like to announce the publication of a book entitled “FIGHTING FOR AMERICA’S SOUL” It describes the efforts of US progressives to save the values and institutions on which their country was founded. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:

Fighting-for-Americas-Soul-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Rising seas threaten US Pacific nuclear dump

John Braddock

According to reports from the Marshall Islands, plutonium is leaking into the Pacific Ocean from a massive concrete bunker the United States built in the 1950s to dispose of nuclear waste. A potential disaster is looming.

Situated mid-way between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands has a population of 53,000 people. The island chain was occupied by Allied forces in 1944 and placed under US administration in 1947. It achieved nominal independence in 1986 under a so-called Compact of Free Association.

Between 1946-1958, Washington carried out 67 atmospheric and underwater nuclear explosions and a series of biological weapons tests in the Marshall Islands. Irradiated soil from the Enewetak and Bikini atolls, used as “ground zero” for the tests, was poured into a crater left from the detonations, mixed with concrete and covered with a shallow concrete dome.

Called the Runit Dome, the 18-inch thick structure holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet of radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. The Los Angeles Times reported on November 10 that climate change is breaking open the aging and weathered dome as it “bobs up and down with the tide,” threatening to spill nuclear waste into the ocean.

Throughout the Pacific, rising sea levels pose an existential threat as they inundate low-lying islands. The Marshall Islands is likely to see many of its 29 atolls under water within 10 to 20 years. On Enewetak atoll, tides are creeping up the sides of the US nuclear dump, advancing higher every year, while cracks are appearing in the dome.

According to Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, debris from the dome is already seeping into the nearby lagoon. Following a visit to the White House in May, accompanied by the presidents of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, Heine told Reuters she “saved her breath” rather than futilely try to persuade US President Trump of their concerns about climate change.

According to the LA Times, the Marshall Islands government lobbied Washington for help, but American officials declared the dome is the responsibility of the Marshallese government.

Based on documents and interviews with US and Marshallese officials, the LA Times found that the American government withheld key pieces of information about the dome’s contents and its weapons testing program before the countries signed the 1986 Compact which released the US from liability.

The US did not reveal that in 1958 it shipped 130 tons of soil from atomic testing grounds in Nevada to the islands. Washington also did not inform the Marshall Islands authorities that a dozen biological weapons tests had been conducted on Enewetak, including experiments with an aerosolized bacteria designed to kill enemy troops. Over 600 people currently live on parts of the atoll.

Over a period of five visits to the Marshall Islands, LA Times reporters documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms, as well as major disease outbreaks such as dengue fever. Michael Gerrard from Columbia University’s law school told the paper that “the Marshall Islands is a victim of the two greatest threats facing humanity—nuclear weapons and climate change,” for which the “United States is entirely responsible.”

Scientists from Columbia University released a report in July concluding that radiation levels across the islands were “significantly” higher than at Fukushima and Chernobyl. On Bikini atoll, plutonium concentrations were “up to 15–1,000 times higher than in samples from areas affected by the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters.”

The report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), said soil samples from four uninhabited islands had concentrations of gamma radiation “well above” the legal exposure limit established in agreements between the US and the Marshall Islands.

The team examined contamination levels in food sources, as well as the levels and composition of radioactive isotopes. The food study showed a mix of high and variable levels of contamination on fruit tested on Bikini, Naen and Rongelap islands. The fruit contained radiation higher than the safety levels established by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Japan, which have more stringent standards for limiting ingestion of radioactive particles than the US.

The nuclear tests left widespread contamination. Although six percent of US nuclear-bomb testing occurred there, the detonations and mushroom clouds generated more than half the total energy from all US testing. The largest, the Castle Bravo bomb detonated in March 1954, was 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki in Japan.

US authorities relocated people living on Enewetak and Bikini in the late 1940s. Those in Rongelap and Utirik, more than a 100 miles from the testing sites, were removed three days after they were showered by fallout from Castle Bravo. The fallout caused skin burns, hair loss, nausea and, eventually, cancer in many of the people exposed.

Washington has repeatedly asserted that locals now face little risk from radioactivity. However, Marshallese continue to distrust US assurances. At Bikini and Rongelap, residents initially returned to their islands after the US told them it was safe. The resettlement was a disaster. Cancer cases, miscarriages and deformities multiplied. By 1967, 10 years after the test, 17 of the 19 children who were younger than 10 and on the island the day Bravo exploded had developed thyroid disorders and growths. One child died of leukaemia.

Several imperialist powers occupied large tracts of the Pacific and used it for nuclear testing after World War II. The United Kingdom exploded atomic and hydrogen bombs at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in 1957-1958. A total of 193 tests were carried out by France on Fangataufa and Mururoa Atolls in French Polynesia from 1966-1996, including one thermonuclear device in 1968.

Tahitians and other Pacific islanders, as well as British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen suffered radiation exposure. Widespread opposition developed to the horrific activities of the arrogant major powers. In a brutal attempt to forestall protests at the Mururoa test site in 1985, French secret service agents blew up the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, killing a crewman.

Hundreds of Marshall Islanders were meanwhile exiled across the Pacific, impoverished, their homes devastated and health imperiled. An international tribunal concluded in 1988 the US should pay $2.3 billion in claims, but Congress and US courts refused. Documents cited by the LA Times show the US has paid just $4 million.

Today, the Marshall Islands is again assuming geo-strategic importance as part of Washington’s intensifying confrontation with China. In August Mike Pompeo became the first secretary of state to visit Micronesia, to negotiate an extension to a security agreement that gives the US military exclusive access to the vast airspace and territorial waters of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. This was necessary, he declared, to face off “Chinese efforts to redraw the Pacific.”

Historically low number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits due to increasing restrictions

Jacob Crosse

Seemingly every week a new report is released extolling the strength of the US economy and the recovery since the Great Recession, which took place from 2007 through 2009. Those who seek to uphold the current social order invariably point to historically low job unemployment numbers and inflated earnings reports and valuations from various Wall Street firms and banks as proof of their assertions.

At the height of the Great Recession the unemployment rate in the US reached double digits for the first time in a generation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with over 13.52 million workers or 10 percent of the labor force unable to find adequate full-time work.

A decade later bourgeois economists from the New York Times to the Washington Post agree that the recovery is complete, pointing to the same department’s current unemployment statistics; as of October 2019 the BLS reports that the unemployment rate in the United States is at 3.6 percent, with approximately 5.85 million workers in the US currently searching for full-time work.

However, the official percentage of unemployed workers is misleading, as workers who have ceased to regularly look for work are not counted, nor does the rate reflect workers who are forced to accept part-time work instead of full-time work. As is the case with millions of workers in the US, many are forced to work multiple jobs to scrape together enough earnings to survive, inflating the jobs total, devaluing the number of unemployed workers calculated searching for work and decrease the unemployment rate.

Unemployment insurance varies from state to state, but generally the employer contributes approximately six percent in payroll taxes to fund the insurance should a business decide it is in their interests to layoff employees or shut down without notice. These funds guarantee if a layoff or shutdown occurs, an employee, through no fault of their own, is not left without any income as they search for a new job or seek to get rehired.

Until recently, those eligible would expect to receive weekly paychecks for up to twenty-six weeks. These weekly checks, much less than what an employee could expect to make if they worked a regular full-time shift, would help pay for living expenses as a worker searched for a new job.

This “safety net” is woefully inadequate to survive on, with weekly payouts in almost every US state on average being less than $400 per week, or 20 to 25 percent of a worker’s typical take-home pay. During and after the Great Recession, millions of Americans were forced to rely on unemployment insurance as their only source of income for months at a time.

Due to chronic under-funding, several states, including North Carolina, Michigan and Alabama were obliged to borrow money from the federal government to pay out unemployment insurance to eligible workers. In order to pay back these borrowed funds, several states enacted tougher regulations to prevent future eligible workers from receiving benefits, instead of properly funding the program or raising taxes on businesses.

While state and federal legislatures allowed Wall Street criminals to collect exorbitant bonuses as millions of Americans lost their homes and jobs, state legislatures, no matter what party, and the Obama administration proceeded to pass tougher rules and restrictions, not on the ones responsible for the recession, but instead on those who were suffering the brunt of the ruling class’ criminal financial chicanery. These new rules included passing stringent drug testing procedures meant to prevent laid-off workers from accessing much needed benefits.

While the CEOs of hedge funds, banks, and corporations have yet to submit a urine sample in connection with their theft of billions of dollars, workers across multiple states are having to submit to invasive and unconstitutional drug testing in order to be eligible to receive meager financial assistance.

The first of these new rules were codified in the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, which also included amendments to the Social Security Act. On October 4, 2019, after being directed by the Trump administration, the Department of Labor enacted the Final Rule change, which in the department’s own words, “allows states and employers a more flexible” approach in deciding how drug testing procedures would be implemented.

Drug testing procedures went into effect on November 4, 2019 and give states and the corporations that operate within them broad discretion in determining who gets tested and for what. These new rules further incentivize employers, who might not have previously drug tested employees to begin such procedures.

In addition to drug testing recipients, ten states passed laws limiting the twenty six week period during which one could collect benefits. A new law passed by the Alabama state legislature and taking effect in 2020 will reduce the term period a worker could receive insurance by 12 weeks, from 26 to only 14. In rare circumstances, a worker may be eligible for an additional week of benefits if they complete certain job training requirements or programs. These programs can take hours to complete, and are generally unpaid.

Five more states adopted stricter work-search requirements, forcing applicants to apply for jobs, even if they had no intention of working there or were unqualified, in order to still receive benefits. Job searchers are forced to keep logs, in many cases physical and digital, which must be updated or the benefits will be terminated. Finally, several states also trimmed the percentage employers would be obliged to contribute while also adopting measures forcing employees to contribute to their own insurance if they wanted to remain eligible.

The aim of these initiatives is not to root out “fraud” as is claimed. Dozens of studies and investigations have proven that unemployment insurance fraud is extremely hard to perpetrate and the benefits are obviously minimal.

Instead these new regulations were implemented to deter those that were eligible from even applying in the first place. Last year only 28 percent of those that applied for unemployment benefits were accepted, down from 37 percent in 2000. Unemployment insurance claims hit a 49 year low in April 2019 of this year. Only 192,000 applications were received, the lowest in a single week since September 1969.

The state of North Carolina has seen a drastic decrease in percentage of benefits paid out following the passage of stricter laws in 2012 and 2013. While nearly twenty-five percent of eligible Carolina workers received benefits in 2012, only 10 percent received benefits in 2018.

While North Carolina is one of the worst states as far as percentage of eligible workers receiving benefits, several other southern states also rank near the bottom regarding weekly payout of benefits and percentage of workers receiving any form of assistance. According to 2018 statistics compiled by the Department of Labor, Tennessee has the lowest weekly payout of any state, with the average worker only receiving $144 a week in benefits, or roughly $576 a month. Mississippi and Louisiana are the second and third lowest weekly payout respectively, with Mississippi paying out $206 on average a week and Louisiana not far behind with only $210 paid out per week.

The decline in workers receiving unemployment pay is not a sign of a “strong economy, humming along,” but instead a warning signal that millions of workers are not receiving the resources they need in order to survive or find a new job.

Another indicator of a “strong economy” which capitalist economists frequently cite is the strength of the “job market.” This strength, we are told, is expressed in the US economy adding jobs every month for 109 straight months. This “growth” coupled with an increase in employees quitting their jobs voluntarily, from a low of 1.3 percent in 2009, to nearly 2.3 percent in 2019, is further “proof” that workers are so secure in their living situation, compared to a decade ago, that they are able to freely quit and find new rewarding work.

Neither of these, however, are an accurate portrayal of the economic reality facing the vast majority of the US working population, or that the economic “recovery” has left millions worse off than they were ten, fifteen or twenty years ago.

Wealth inequality in the United States has continued to grow while the corporations that control the political system and both parties have continued to wage a counterrevolution against any and all economic and social gains made in previous generations including the bipartisan assault on unemployment insurance benefits.

OECD cuts global growth forecast

Nick Beams

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has cut its forecast for global growth for both this year and next year, warning that a low-growth trend could set in unless governments take urgent action to lift their economies.

The 36-member organisation of the world’s major economies made the warning in its latest update on the state of the global economy issued on Thursday. It said companies were holding back on investment in buildings and machinery as well as new technology due to economic uncertainty and trade tensions and that growth was at its lowest level since the global financial crisis.

A man walks by an electronic stock board of a securities firm in Tokyo [Credit: AP Photo/Koji Sasahara]

Speaking on the report, OECD chief economist Laurence Boone said, “Things are not really moving. What we are seeing is investment stalling, paving the way for growth to stay at this very low level.” She warned that if the “sluggish performance” continued there was a danger it could become “entrenched.”

Boone said the rise on financial markets suggested that investors believed the worst of the downturn was over. But buoyant markets “do not mean we are reversing the tide.”

The organisation forecast global growth of 2.9 percent this year and the same next year, with only a marginal pick-up to 3.1 percent in 2021. This represents a significant reduction from its forecast of 3.5 percent made just a year ago.

The OECD said investment had weakened as a result of the trade war between the US and China and the “erosion of a rules-based global trading system.”

In a separate report, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) indicated that this deterioration goes beyond the US and China. It found that members of the G20, comprising more than 80 percent of the world economy, had continued to impose restrictions on imports in the six months to October, with more than $460 billion worth of goods affected. This is the second highest figure for a six-month period on record.

The WTO’s director-general Roberto Azevedo said, “We need to see strong leadership from G20 economies if we want to avoid increased uncertainty, lower investment and even weaker trade growth.”

The OECD called for a priority to be placed on international cooperation, predictability in trade policy and an end to the “surge in trade-restricting measures” in order to revive growth. Boone said countries should develop national investment funds to promote more spending on new technology and the shift to green energy.

“The lack of policy direction to address climate change issues weighs down investment,” she said, and without the necessary public investment “businesses will put off investment decisions, with dire consequences for growth and employment.”

Boone told the Wall Street Journal that while an interim trade deal between the US and China would be welcome, it was just the “tip of the iceberg” and would not resolve the deeper problems—a reference to US demands for greater protection for intellectual property by Beijing and the cutting back of subsidies to state-owned enterprises, the issues at the heart of the conflict.

Former International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde also addressed the issue of global growth in her first major speech as president of the European Central Bank (ECB). Speaking at a banking conference in Frankfurt on Friday, she called on European governments to boost public investment to shift the euro zone’s orientation away from exports towards domestic demand.

Continuing the commitment of her predecessor Mario Draghi to the financial markets, Lagarde said that the ECB would “continue to support the economy and respond to future risks,” but she repeated Draghi’s insistence that monetary policy “cannot and should not be the only game in town.”

She noted that euro zone public investment remained “some way below pre-crisis levels.” The share of what she called “productive investment,” which, in addition to infrastructure included spending on research and development and education, had fallen in nearly all euro zone economies since the financial crisis.

Lagarde began her remarks on the future of the euro economy by pointing to the “challenge” posed by the shifts in international trade. “Ongoing trade tensions and geopolitical uncertainties are contributing to a slowdown in world trade growth, which has more than halved since last year,” she said. “This has in turn depressed global growth to its lowest level since the great financial crisis.”

This had impacted the euro area, where growth is expected to be just 1.1 percent this year, some 0.7 percentage points below the level expected a year ago.

Besides the trade conflicts, there were structural changes at work, with emerging market economies shifting away from investment and manufacturing. This suggested that the “high rates of trade growth that we are used to seeing are no longer an absolute certainty.”

Another significant structural change was in the advanced economies, which “are in the midst of a long-term deceleration in growth rates, which have roughly halved since the late 1980s,” with labour productivity growth falling “by almost two-thirds in advanced economies since the early 1990s.”

The former chair of the US Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, speaking at the World Business Forum in New York on Thursday, described the US economy as in “excellent” shape, but then went on to note a number of developments that pointed in the opposite direction.

The US-China tariff war was having a detrimental impact on both businesses and consumers, she said. While she thought there would not be a recession in the coming year, she added that “the odds of a recession are higher than normal and at a level that I am not comfortable with.”

This was under conditions where, because of the Fed’s three interest rate cuts this year, there was “not as much scope as I would like to see for the Fed to be able to respond to that. So there is good reason to worry.”

In her remarks, Yellen pointed to the growing fears in ruling circles as to the social and political consequences—with or without a recession—of the growth of social inequality. She noted a “very worrisome long-term [trend] in which you have a very substantial share of the US workforce feeling like they’re not getting ahead. It’s true, they’re not getting ahead.”

This is a serious economic and social problem because it “leaves people with the feeling that the economy is not working for them, a sense of social discontent that is extremely disruptive.”