Détente And The New Cold Wars, A Global Policy Perspective

Karl Meyer

The essential key to addressing real threats to international security and peace, as well as to resolving smaller wars and regional conflicts, is to reverse the present trend toward Cold Wars with Russia and China. The world needs active cooperation among the United States, Russia, China and other influential countries, through agreement and cooperation within the United Nations framework. We need to return actively to the vision set forth in the United Nations Charter, and abandon the fantasy of unipolar world domination.

The possibility of war between nuclear armed powers is returning as a real threat to the security of people all over the world. Climate change, waste of limited resources, and the economic pressures of excess population growth on the carrying capacity of Earth are fueled by military spending. These threats are felt first by the most economically vulnerable regions and countries. They also drive local civil wars and regional resource and territorial wars.

In our view, the expansionist exceptionalism of United States neo-imperialist policies is the principal driver in the renewal of Cold War hostilities among the United States, Russia and China.

To solve these problems will require agreement and cooperation among all affected countries, with strong leadership by the world’s major powers. Given the present Charter structure of the United Nations, this means, at the very least, the five permanent members of the Security Council.

The policy fantasy that stands in the way of addressing major world problems cooperatively is the idea among ignorant or venal politicians that the United States can retain and expand the boundaries of “sole superpower” domination that was achieved briefly after the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union. The most damaging foreign policy error of Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, all foreign policy novices, was that they yielded to entrenched bureaucratic military/ industrial/ Congressional/governmental establishment advice and pressure to take advantage of temporary Russian weakness, and the less developed military strength of China, in order to extend the military umbrella of NATO membership into Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They pushed to ring the frontiers of Russia with new alliances, missile sites and military bases, and to extend military alliances and bases around the Pacific perimeter of China. These actions have sent a very aggressive and threatening message to the governments of Russia and China, which are getting stronger every year, and are pushing back.

A second harmful error of the Bush and Obama regimes has been their belief that they could take advantage of popular unrest and revolts in Middle Eastern countries to knock off dictatorial governments and, by aiding oppressed rebel groups, establish friendly client governments in these countries. They failed to secure a stable, reliable client government in Iraq, in fact brought in a government more influenced by Iran. They are well on the road to a similar failure in Afghanistan. They failed miserably in Libya, and are failing in a terribly tragic way in Syria. How many successive tragic failures do U.S. policy elites have to experience before learning that they have neither the right nor the capability to control the future political development of these countries. Each country must sort out political and economic arrangements according to its unique balances of power and social context, without excessive outside interference. Those forces that have the strength and organization to prevail do not intend to become subservient neo-colonial clients of the United States, once their temporary need for patronage has been resolved.

United States policy must stop poking and provoking Russia and China along their frontiers, and return to a strategy of seeking negotiated peaceful coexistence, and balancing of regional interests among the major powers, the United States, Russia and China, with appropriate respect for the interests of secondary powers, India, Pakistan, Iran, Brazil, Britain, Germany, France, Indonesia, Japan, etc. (Incidentally, in spite of their horrible, homicidal record of brutalizing the people of weaker countries, Nixon and Kissinger were balance-of-power realists who advanced a strategy of détente, and negotiated weapons control treaties with Russia and China, and Reagan acceded to Gorbachev’s initiatives, leading to the end of the earlier Cold Wars. These gains have been undermined by the policies of succeeding administrations.)

With active cooperation among the great powers and large reductions in wasteful competitive military spending, all countries could cooperatively address the threats from climate change, water shortages, regional underdevelopment, and economic pressures caused by population growth. They might also resolve civil wars and smaller scale regional wars (such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine/Israel and Ukraine) through unified international pressure for negotiated settlements based on power sharing among all major political factions and forces within each country.

Peace movements and civil society movements cannot dictate the policies of governments or multi-national corporations. Our role, through agitation and education, is to restrain their abuses of power as much as may be possible, and to influence the political context of their decision making as much as may be possible, through mass organization and mobilization.

A Coherent Explanation of Obama's Foreign Policy

Eric Zuesse

Foreign policy is both economic and military. An interpretation of U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy will be presented here that explains both his economic and his military decisions to-date, and that shows he's been carrying out the policies of his predecessors in office.

On economic matters, he has turned out to be the most ambitious ‘free-trader' of any U.S. President: he has proposed three gigantic international-trade treaties, two with North Atlantic countries (TTIP for products and TISA for services), and one with Pacific countries (TPP), not only in order to serve America's aristocracy at the public's expense (an international “race-to-the-bottom” in terms of workers' wages, and race to the top in terms of stockholders' profits and executive pay) (like NAFTA on steroids), but in order to extend the NATO military alliance against Russia, to include now these trade treaties as a companion economic alliance against Russia (to reduce Russian trade with Russia's biggest market, which is Europe).

Obama's economic initiative with North Atlantic countries is even more intensive than his one with Pacific countries, because his TTIP & TISA would be economic treaties that would extend the North Atlantic Treaty, or NATO, directly from the military realm into the economic realm. With his TTIP & TISA, Obama is pursuing, essentially, a NATO economic  alliance to complement the military one — virtually the same members as NATO. TPP is less important, because that treaty attempts to isolate China, not Russia — and Russia is to be conquered before a conquest of China can be even seriously considered (in some future U.S. Presidency, though Obama is also ratcheting-up the military hostility against China).

NATO was formed in the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty as being nominally an anti-communist mutual-defense treaty against the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union and its communism, and that communist group's equivalent of the NATO mutual-defense treaty, their Warsaw Pact, all disbanded in 1991, NATO continued on, now as being a purely anti-Russian military alliance. In 1990, the representatives of U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had told Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union that NATO wouldn't expand eastward toward Russia, wouldn't try to do to Russia what Nikita Khrushchev had tried to do to the U.S. in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (place nuclear missiles right next door), and Gorbachev accepted those assurances and disbanded the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact on that basis, but GHW Bush had actually lied there, and NATO not only continued on, it went right up to the very borders of Russia — exactly what the GHWB Administration had promised that the U.S. would never do. 

U.S. President Bill Clinton continued this GHWB policy of conquering Russia bit-by-bit by bringing into NATO the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland — a direct violation of Bush's verbal promise to Gorbachev. However, Bush had actually intended  this violation: Bush had told both Helmut Kohl of Germany and Francois Mitterrand of France that the promise made to Gorbachev was only a lie, and that as far as fulfilling it, “To hell with that — we prevailed, they didn't!” Clinton — and his successors — merely followed through on Bush's lie. Bush's son George, in 2004, brought into NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

And that brought us to Obama's Presidency, which is increasing this assault and threat against Russia to reach now a red-hot, no longer merely Cold, War. The bloody battlefields in this war so far have been in the countries that had been allied with Russia: Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. But the Cold War against Russia became hot in Ukraine first. That's where Obama crossed Vladimir Putin's red line.

Russian leader Putin had long set as his red line that the U.S. mustn't extend its NATO to include Ukraine, which has the longest border with Russia of any European country: 1,576 kilometers. If the U.S. is going to attempt a blitz-attack against Russia from next door, then Ukraine would be the most-dangerous country from which to launch it, and NATO membership for Ukraine would be the key to such success.

In February 2014, Obama arranged a coup that overthrew the Russia-friendly and democratically elected President of Ukraine and replaced his government by one that's headed by the rabidly anti-Russian Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Obama's operative who selected Yatsenyuk, Victoria Nuland, during the buildup to the coup, explained that, “Since 1991 [the breakup of the Soviet Union] .. we've invested over five billion dollars to assist Ukraine” to “build democratic skills and institutions” (which Ukraine already had, and which Obama — via her — was now tearing down). When she mentioned “1991,” she was thereby acknowledging  that GHWB had actually begun the overthrow of Ukraine. It was an exceedingly bloody coup d'etat in Ukraine, and Putin had always said that if Ukraine were to be added to NATO, that would be totally unacceptable — but now it was already in the process of happening.

Immediately, the nuclear-arms race was resumed. This was very good for America's ‘defense' contractors such as Lockheed Martin, but not only for them. Right behind Nuland on the platform when she spoke of “1991” (see that video) was the “Chevron” sign; and Chevron was the American oil-and-gas company that bought the rights to explore for oil and gas in western Ukraine — the area of Ukraine that had voted the most strongly against  the man whom Obama overthrew. (Chevron thus bought the safest  gas-rights. The locals there were happy to have a U.S. company exploring there.) Subsequently, a son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden became appointed by the Ukrainian owner of Ukraine's largest gas-exploration company in eastern Ukraine, to become a board-member. (That area was extremely hostile towards the United States, angry against the overthrow, and the residents there demonstrated against that company's fracking and wanted to shut them down.) The American VP didn't object that his son might become a billionaire from America's Ukrainian coup — this was considered acceptable by the Obama regime and the aristocracy that it served (most of the U.S. public were never even informed of the now-booming Ukrainian-U.S. corruption).

The overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected President (who had been corrupt himself, just as all  of Ukraine's post-Soviet leaders had been) was an effort by Obama not only to take over Ukraine but to further isolate Russia, virtually all of whose former Warsaw Pact allies were by now now firmly in the anti-Russian NATO camp.

However, Obama had actually been preparing for a renewed war against (now) Russia (no longer against the Soviet Union and communism), ever since he first became President in 2009, when his Administration responded to Syria's drought-provoked 2008 request for food-aid not with food but with scheming to overthrow also that ally of Russia. And, then, Obama dusted off an old CIA plan from 1957, which had been drawn up by the mastermind of the successful 1953 overthrow of Iran's freely and democratically elected progressive President Mohammed Mossadegh (replacing him with the brutal Shah); and, in this 1957 plan for Syria, the secular Ba'athist Party that ruled Syria was to become replaced by Saudi-allied Sunni fundamentalists — but this plan was placed on-hold until an appropriate time, which finally arrived during the Obama regime, when the widespread ‘Arab Spring' demonstrations added fuel to the fires of Syria's drought.

That 1957 plan was itself a part of a longstanding CIA program.

After Putin responded to those recent foreign invasions of Syria by Saudi-backed jihadists, by Russia's starting on 30 September 2015 an all-out bombing-campaign against those tens of thousands of foreign invaders, Saudi Arabia and its fundamentalist-Sunni ally Turkey tried to draw the United States directly into an all-out invasion of Syria against both the Assad government and its now-committed Russian ally.

In response, the Saud family teamed up with their Sunni-fundamentalist ally-and-NATO-member Turkey, to seek Obama's support for an all-out ‘Western' invasion of Syria to defeat both Assad and Russia, as well as to defeat two other allies of Assad: Iran and its Hezbollah ally in Lebanon.

President Obama then reached out to the leaders of various European NATO member-nations, to seek at least one of them to join with the U.S. in making this not only a fundamentalist-Sunni invasion to overthrow and replace Syria's Ba'athist government — the only remaining secular government in the Mideast. Thus far, Obama has failed to find any; and he seems unwilling to join the Sunni-Islamic countries as the only non-Islamic invader. However, Obama's Secretary of State, John Kerry, is threatening to complete the 1957 CIA plan without Europe's participation, if there's no other way to do it. And the aristocracy's Council on Foreign Relations recently headlined, “Divide and Conquer in Syria and Iraq; Why the West Should Plan for a Partition.” That ‘partition' or breakup of Syria is the 1957 CIA plan. But that threat seems likely to be pure bluff from Kerry. After all, Kerry himself also says,“What do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia? Is that what you want?” He doesn't want that. And he wasn't bluffing when he said that he doesn't. And Obama seems to recognize that the U.S. and NATO need at least several more years in order to have all the pieces in place for it to be launched.

As regards Ukraine, Obama seems to have given up there, too. Ukraine is being left to rot, into perhaps sequences of regime-replacements and spiraling chaos: it's a wrecked country.

The end-result of Obama's foreign policies, thus far, is to turn Russia's allied nations into failed states. Whether his successor as the U.S. President will be satisfied with that (after all: it does hurt Russia), or else will ‘go for the gold' (as Obama has thus far unsuccessfully tried to do) and resume the active quest to conquer Russia, might depend upon whether Obama can get his ‘trade' deals passed and implemented; because, if that effort fails, then one would be hard-pressed to see any way in which the 1990-Bush-initiated war against Russia will be won, short of some sort of desperate nuclear invasion, for which Russia might be sufficiently well prepared so that whomever the survivors of that war would be (including even the top stockholders in firms such as Lockheed Martin) would wish they weren't survivors. After all: what would any currency be worth then? Maybe enough to buy a gun and bullet to finish oneself off. Even for those corporate CEOs, their golf-days would be over, and only grim days would remain. But that's when the true stature of such American Presidents as GHWB, Clinton, GWB, and Obama, would likewise become clear — to those survivors, or at least to the ones that don't have the gun, or the bullet, or otherwise haven't yet expired. It's like the recognition-of-truth that people such as Palestinians, or Auschwitz-victims, or ISIS-victims, might have in their final moments. But here it would be happening even to the few aristocrats who cause such things to occur. Wouldn't that be “a refreshing change”? After everything is said and done, and no one is around to enjoy it? But, anyway: it would be a change, and it would also be ironic. However, no one would be around to enjoy even the irony of it.

Obama has been carrying out a bipartisan Republican-and-Democratic foreign policy; it's the policy of America's aristocracy. Its results have been horrible for the world, but they'll be even worse if it succeeds. Not only will there then no longer be democracy (but instead a global government by international corporations), but if it succeeds all the way, there won't even be much of anything except universal misery and mass-death. It is, unquestionably, an extremely ambitious foreign policy. Thus far, it seems to be entirely in accord with the foreign policy of the Saud family. However, that may be about to change: perhaps Obama, and the United States, will simply quit its alliance with the Sauds, and separate from them. But, will Europe separate from NATO? If not, then the anti-Russia policy will continue even if the Sauds' alliance with the U.S. comes to an end.

Perplexity and divisions mark G-20 meeting

Nick Beams

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G-20 group of countries, covering more than 80 percent of the global economy, have started a two-day meeting in Shanghai, China, amidst the worst economic outlook since the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

The meeting takes place against the backdrop of fears that any semblance of economic stimulus provided by an ultra-low interest rate regime and quantitative easing, through which central banks have pumped more than $5 trillion into the global financial system, has run its course and the spread of negative interest rates is making a bad situation worse.

Consequently, in the lead-up to the summit, a series of economic institutions have called for a switch in policy, with an emphasis on government spending on infrastructure projects to make up for the shortfall in investment, which is running well below pre-2008 levels in all the major economies.

Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) pointed to the need for such measures. It was joined Wednesday by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which called for “bold multilateral action” to boost growth and contain risks in a briefing note issued for the G-20 meeting.

In its summary of the overall situation, the IMF said “the global recovery has weakened further amid increasing financial turbulence and falling asset prices”. Economic activity slowed towards the end of 2015, and the valuation of risky assets dropped sharply, increasing the likelihood of a further weakening of the outlook. The IMF did not revise down its estimates for global growth, but it indicated this was likely at its April meeting.

It voiced concerns about what it called “China’s transition to more balanced growth”—a reference to the slowdown in the Chinese economy—and pointed to “signs of distress” in other large emerging market economies, particularly as a result of falling commodity prices.

“These developments,” it said, “point to higher risks of a derailed recovery, at a moment when the global economy is highly vulnerable to adverse shocks.” To counter these dangers, it said the G-20 had to “act now” to implement growth strategies and plan for coordinated demand programs to boost public investment.

An even gloomier analysis of the world economy was set out in a column by Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf on Wednesday. He began by noting that “the world economy is slowing, both structurally and cyclically.” In other words, on top of a downturn in the business cycle, there are also longer-term processes which are lowering economic growth.

Wolf cited the OECD report, which pointed out that the global economy was growing at the lowest pace in five years. “Behind this is a simple reality: the global savings glut—the tendency for desired savings to rise more than desired investment—is growing and so the ‘chronic demand deficiency syndrome’ is worsening.” In other words, no amount of financial stimulus is going to boost investment in the real economy.

In fact, from the very outset, despite the assertions that cheap money would provide a boost to growth, its real aim was to shore up the position of the speculators and banks who brought the world economy to the point of meltdown in 2008 and enable them to continue the vast looting operation that has transferred trillions of dollars into the hands of the ruling financial elites at the expense of the working class.

There is now a growing realisation that these massive money-printing operations have done nothing to boost global growth but have only fuelled the growth of socially-destructive parasitism and speculation, creating the conditions for another financial crisis, the consequences of which would be even more serious than that of 2008–2009.

Reflecting the growing perplexity in ruling circles over economic policy, Wolf commented: “No simple solution for the global economic imbalances of today exist, only palliatives.” Given that “palliative” care is most often associated with someone suffering from a terminal disease, placed in a hospice with no prospect for a cure, this is a revealing assessment of the state of global capitalism.

Warning that the effect of further quantitative easing would be to lower currency exchange rates as each country sought to increase its exports, in a policy that is “bound to blow up,” he insisted the only alternative was fiscal policy, that is, increased government spending to boost demand. This meant a break from what he called the “lunatic” obsession with austerity.

In reality, the actions of the global policymakers arise from the insanity of the present social order based on the profit system and the division of the world into rival and conflicting nation-states. Indeed, even as the IMF and OECD call for international economic cooperation, all the global powers, led by the United States, are sharply expanding military spending in preparation for global military conflict with their rivals.

This is why the calls by the IMF and other bodies for a coordinated policy will fall on deaf ears as each of the major powers pursues its own interests, insisting that the global crisis is the responsibility of its competitors.

The tone was set by US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. He discounted an emergency G-20 response, calling for China to do more to boost domestic consumption and for countries in Europe running a surplus, in particular Germany, to carry out fiscal stimulus.

“These last few months have made clear that weakness in demand globally is a problem that can’t be solved just by everyone looking to the United States,” he said, declaring that real economies were doing better than financial markets thought. “This is not a moment of crisis. Don’t expect a crisis response in a non-crisis situation.”

Likewise, all the other major powers look to their own interests. The German ruling elite is strenuously opposed to fiscal stimulus in Europe, arguing that such demands from the US will lead to a weakening of its financial system and thereby strengthen the position of American banks against their German rivals.

A Japanese official warned that, while financial markets needed “something refreshing,” there was little prospect of a global deal and “no magic bullet.” The Japanese government would like to see further stimulus, but in the rest of the world, not in Japan where the debt to gross domestic product ratio is among the highest in the world. China, too, would like to see further stimulus but is constrained at home by mounting debts and the instability of its financial system. And so the list goes on.

The austerity program is not a product of defective thinking on the part of the ruling elites as all the would-be reformers of global capitalism claim. It is a class policy imposed in the interests of definite social forces. Directed by the ruling corporate and financial elites, it is aimed at weakening the position of the working class, through unemployment, wage cuts and attacks on social conditions as one of the central mechanisms for increasing profits.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the G-20 meeting, and whatever declarations to take action emerge from Shanghai, this program will be intensified in the coming period as the crisis of the global capitalist system deepens and the divisions between the major powers widen.

Tens of thousands homeless in Fiji cyclone disaster

Oscar Grenfell

The death toll from Cyclone Winston, the category five storm that struck Fiji last Saturday, has risen sharply in the past days as authorities have made initial contact with outlying islands and remote areas that were the hardest hit.

This morning, the official death count stood at 44, but is expected to continue to increase. Many people remain unaccounted for, and entire regions have been left with virtually no assistance. According to media reports, at least 122 people were injured during the storm, with around 45 hospitalised.

The cyclone, the worst-ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere, has created a mounting humanitarian catastrophe, with up to 45,000 people homeless or staying in temporary evacuation centres. That is nearly 5 percent of the country’s entire population of one million.

According to Radio New Zealand, a spokesperson for the Fijian government, Ewan Perrin, indicated that the official number of people displaced by the storm had risen by 20,000 on Wednesday alone, as contact was established with heavily affected areas. Perrin said some 22,000 people were living in evacuation centres in the country’s Western Division, another 16,000 in the Central Division, 4,000 in the Northern Division and 3,000 in the Eastern Division.

People are being housed in makeshift and often overcrowded accommodation in schools and churches, which are ill-prepared to meet their most basic needs. There is little prospect they will be able to return to their flattened homes in the near future.

Entire districts were levelled by the cyclone, with hundreds of homes decimated and basic infrastructure down. In Rakiraki district on the north coast of the main island, Viti Levu, over 1,000 homes were destroyed.

Villages have been wiped out on many of the smaller islands. In at least one village on Koro, among the worst affected islands, all 90 houses and structures, including a church, school and local administration building, were demolished.

Joseph Hing, a UNICEF worker, wrote that Koro “looked like someone took a torch and just burnt from one side to the other.” Describing his team’s approach to the island on Tuesday, he said: “As we sailed closer, we started to smell the dead carcasses of livestock that were floating past the ships. When we smelt those, we knew that this disaster was really, really bad.”

Thousands of people are now endangered by a lack of clean drinking water, potential food shortages and the threat of disease. In many areas, power and running water have yet to be restored, and roads are badly damaged. Wells, which are a primary source of water for many villages, have been contaminated with mud and debris, while the structures that cover outdoor latrines have, in many cases, been torn off by the gale-force winds.

Aid organisations have warned of the threat of an outbreak of disease, including Dengue fever and the incurable Zika virus. Both are spread by mosquitoes, which are proliferating in pools of stagnant water from the storm.

The cyclone has had a devastating impact on the impoverished country’s economy. Finance Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said yesterday the storm has resulted in more than $1 billion in damage. In some areas, as many as 100 percent of crops have been destroyed, threatening longer-term food supplies and livelihoods. The sugar industry, which employs 200,000 people, is expected to lose $83 million from the disaster, with industry figures saying it is too late to replant damaged crops.

There is reportedly growing anger over the social crisis and lack of assistance. Vinesh Naidu, whose home was largely destroyed in northern Viti Levu, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday he is living in one leaky room with his wife, daughter and mother. Two of his fingers will need to be amputated as a result of injuries suffered during the storm.

Naidu expressed frustration over a lack of government aid. “We can see helicopters are coming, just making rounds and going but there is no help,” he commented. “At least if they can give us some water. Even if we don’t eat we can at least drink water and fill our stomach.”

The humanitarian catastrophe in Fiji, a British colony from 1874 to 1970, intersects with the growth of geo-strategic tensions in the region, stemming from the US-led military build up throughout the Asia-Pacific. As in previous such disasters, Australia and New Zealand, the two regional imperialist powers, are using the havoc wrought by the cyclone to test out an expanded military presence in the region.

On Thursday, the Australian government announced it would dispatch to Fiji the HMAS Canberra, the country’s first amphibious assault vessel, launched in November 2014. Four Globemaster cargo planes, helicopters, Orion surveillance aircraft and 32 Australian defence personnel were sent to Fiji earlier in the week. New Zealand sent a C-130 Hercules military plane and surveillance aircraft.

The Australian Defence Magazine described the deployment of the HMAS Canberra as “a huge test for the Navy’s new amphibious ... asset.” In 2013, the Australian Strategic and Policy Institute, a government-funded think-tank, noted that the development of vessels with amphibious capabilities was critical for Australian operations in the South Pacific, given that countries in the region “often have low-grade infrastructure, especially in terms of ports, wharves and cranes, let alone airports.”

Washington, and its junior partners in the region, Australia and New Zealand, have previously registered their hostility to Fiji’s close ties with China, and media commentators have expressed concern over two Russian shipments of arms to Fiji this year. In a show of support, China gave $100,000 to the Fiji Red Cross, making it the first country to send aid, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

The Australian ruling elite is using the latest disaster as a dry-run for future operations throughout the South Pacific. It is also undoubtedly watching to see if the havoc created by the cyclone will produce a political crisis for the military-backed Fijian government of Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, which has had tense relations with Canberra.

An article in the Diplomat on Thursday pointedly noted: “Last year, Cyclone Pam made a direct hit on Vanuatu, devastating the country. In the months after the storm, Vanuatu’s political system nearly imploded, with a quarter of the parliament jailed on corruption charges.”

The newly-released Australian Defence “White Paper” which calls for a dramatic expansion of military expenditure, labelled a “secure nearer region” in the South Pacific as one of Australia’s core “Strategic Defence Interests.” It warned: “Instability in our immediate region could have strategic consequences for Australia should it lead to increasing influence by actors from outside the region with interests inimical to ours”—a clear reference to China and Russia.

US social crisis overshadows 2016 presidential election

Patrick Martin

The primary campaigns to select the presidential candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties move into the decisive stage over the next four weeks, when two-thirds of all state primaries and caucuses will be completed. Eleven states have primaries on Tuesday, March 1, followed by Michigan and Mississippi on March 8 and Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio on March 15.

The American media gives round-the-clock coverage to the minutiae of capitalist politics—the insults and smears and lies hurled back and forth between the various representatives of big business seeking the nominations of the two parties. But very little attention is being paid to the conditions of life facing the working-class majority of the American population.

The reality of life in America for working people is drastically at odds with the official picture of a society in the seventh year of a slow but steady economic recovery, in which the population is generally prosperous and certainly not in desperate straits. The seething anger among working people, expressed in only a very limited and distorted way in the presidential campaign, is the product of intractable and deepening economic and social tensions.

Numerous reports released during the first two months of 2016 document the staggering dimensions of the social crisis facing working people in the United States. A majority of Americans have too little savings to pay for an emergency expense of $1,000. One in four US adults is burdened by debts caused by medical expenses. More than one million working people are being cut off food stamps. One million retirees face pension cuts dictated by the Obama administration.

Of all these social disasters, only the lead poisoning catastrophe in Flint, Michigan has become an issue in the presidential campaign, for the most cynical of reasons—to present the crisis, falsely, as a race issue, rather than one facing the entire working class, white, black and immigrant.

Another report on the social crisis was publicized Thursday on the front page of the New York Times. A study by a recently established think tank, the Economic Innovation Group, found that more than 50 million Americans live in communities—defined by postal ZIP codes—that are severely distressed economically.

The study used measures of education, poverty rate, unemployment, housing vacancy rate, median income and trends in employment and business formation to calculate figures for economic distress, showing that tens of millions “continue to feel left behind by the economic recovery.”

It identified the ten worst urban areas, in terms of economic distress, as (in order): Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, Toledo, San Bernardino, Stockton, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Memphis and Cincinnati. The state of Texas had the largest number of people living in distressed ZIP codes, 5.2 million, while the state of Mississippi had the highest proportion of its population living in distress, 40 percent.

In the most distressed 20 percent of ZIP codes, the study found, “nearly a quarter of adults have no high school degree, over half of adults are not working, and the median income is only two-thirds of the state level.” Since the 2008 Wall Street crash, these ZIP codes lost on average 6.7 percent of their jobs and 8.3 percent of their businesses. Their housing stock was on average more than 50 years old.

Contrasting the economic conditions in the distressed areas with those in high-income, high-growth areas (ZIP codes located mainly in the centers of finance and high technology, including New York City, Boston, Dallas and the San Francisco Bay Area), EIG executive director Steve Glickman observed, “It’s almost like you are looking at two different countries.”

Other studies document the failure of the state and federal governments to provide a social “safety net” adequate to meet the needs of working people. The majority of those who receive some form of public assistance have jobs, many of them full-time, but they earn so little that they cannot make ends meet. A majority of low-paid workers, those making $12 an hour or less, depend on some form of public assistance, principally food stamps and Medicaid.

Wages for the working class as a whole are stagnating. For the last quarter of 2015, total employment costs, the broadest measure of wages and benefits, rose a paltry 0.6 percent, bringing the total increase for the year to 2.1 percent. Only the plunge in oil prices, which has sharply reduced the cost of getting to work, has offset the impact of rising prices for necessities like food, education and medical care.

Extreme social distress has gone hand in hand with an immense growth in social inequality. The policies of the Obama administration have ensured a virtually unlimited stream of cash into the banks and financial system, and the wealth of the top 1 and 0.1 percent of the population has returned to pre-crisis levels.

Summing up data that has previously been reported on the WSWS, a recent article in Foreign Affairs noted, “[T]he share [of wealth] owned by the top 0.1 percent [increased] to 22 percent from nine percent three decades ago. In 2011, the top one percent of US households controlled 40 percent of the nation’s entire wealth.”

The states voting during the month of March include virtually the whole of the South, the most impoverished region in the United States. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia hold primaries March 1, while Kentucky and Louisiana do so four days later. Later in the month come Mississippi, Florida and North Carolina.

Billionaire Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—herself a multimillionaire with close ties to Wall Street—are favored to sweep the Republican and Democratic primaries in the South. Yet these representatives of the American financial aristocracy are separated by an unbridgeable economic and social gulf from the working people of that region.

Trump, Clinton and the other big business politicians will jet from rally to rally, and spend tens of millions on campaign advertising. Meanwhile, the appalling living conditions faced by millions in the South were put on display as a series of major storms ravaged the region, destroying flimsily-built homes, particularly in impoverished rural areas where manufactured homes and trailers are commonplace.

The recent closures of Wal-Mart stores across the region will reportedly create three new “food deserts,” neighborhoods where residents “will lack any place that sells fresh produce and meat once the last of the Wal-Mart stores slated for closure turns off the lights.” This includes parts of Arkansas, where Clinton was once first lady and served on the board of directors of the retail giant.

No section of the political establishment, from Trump to Democratic Party candidate Bernie Sanders, has any solution to the social crisis confronting the vast majority of the population. Both Trump and Sanders have in different ways sought to appeal to immense social anger—the former by promoting anti-immigrant and racist bigotry, the latter by calling for a “political revolution” that boils down to promoting the Democratic Party, which for the past seven years has presided over a historic transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich.

Indian ruling elite in economic bind

Kranti Kumara & Keith Jones

In the run-up to next Monday’s budget speech, longstanding tensions between India’s hard-right Bharatiya Janata Party-led government and the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), over how to revive India’s flagging economy have intensified.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi routinely boasts that India’s 7 percent-plus annual growth rate is the highest of any of the world’s large economies. But his claims that India is on a high-growth trajectory are belied by numerous key economic indicators, causing many economists and even RBI head Rahuram Rajan to question the veracity of the growth numbers.

Figures relating to capital investment, exports, industrial production, agricultural output, and bank profits all paint a picture of an economy that is severely stagnating or in decline.

India’s merchandise exports have, for example, fallen for 14 months in a row. During the first 10 months of the current 2015-16 financial year, which commenced April 1, 2015, India’s total exports suffered a precipitous decline, falling to $218 billion from $264 billion for the same period in 2014-15.

That the real situation differs sharply from the government hype about a resurgent India is also demonstrated by the clamour from big business, especially manufacturers, for both monetary and fiscal stimulus.

The BJP government has itself been pressing for the RBI to lower interest rates to stimulate growth. Moreover, in recent weeks, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has strongly hinted that the government will exceed its deficit target of 3.5 percent of GDP for the 2016-17 fiscal year, so as to boost public sector investment in transport, power generation, and other infrastructure projects. “When you fight a global slowdown, public investment has to lead the way,” declared Jaitley last month.

This has further strained relations with Rajan, a former senior IMF official, and the RBI.

Rajan’s fear is that a low interest rate policy and/or a “pause” in the government’s “fiscal consolidation” program could provoke capital flight, causing the rupee to tank. This would in turn drive up the real interest rates on Indian corporations’ large dollar-denominated debt, threatening the viability of many of India’s major business houses, and thereby further imperilling India’s troubled banking system. The possibility that such a scenario could become reality was demonstrated in 2013, when the rupee rapidly depreciated in response to signals from the US Federal Reserve Board that it might soon end quantitative easing and raise interest rates.

The rupee has already come under heavy pressure in recent months, due to major capital outflows and heavy domestic demand for dollars from banks and businesses. It is currently trading at more than 68 rupees to the dollar, very close to the all-time low of 68.85 set in August 2013.

India’s business houses are, for their part, desperate for quick growth so that they can reduce debt and shore up their balance sheets. So severe is their debt load, many are already technically in default. As a result, 14 percent of the assets of India’s public banks were deemed “stressed” in September, up from 6 percent in 2011.

According to press reports, Rajan has sent a “clear-message” to the BJP government that it shouldn’t look to the RBI to provide economic stimulus through lower interest rates. Rather, it should concentrate on getting its “math right” in the upcoming budget, i.e., on meeting or at least not deviating significantly from its original deficit target of 3.5 percent of GDP.

After its first bimonthly monetary policy meeting of the year in early February, the RBI released a statement that tied any further cuts in interest rates to a budget that delivered further pro-investor reforms, while continuing to cut social spending. “Structural reforms in the forthcoming union budget that boost growth while controlling spending,” declared the RBI, “will create more space for monetary policy to support growth.”

The RBI did not stipulate the requisite “structural reforms.” But domestic and international capital have formulated a long list of “big bang” neo-liberal measures, including the shifting of more of the tax burden onto working people through a regressive national goods and services tax, further privatizations, the gutting of labour law restrictions on plant closures and mass layoffs, and pro-business amendments to the 2013 Land Acquisition Act.

Rajan has previously urged the dismantling of regulatory and policy barriers to the entry of speculative capital, including eventually opening up the government bond market. Prior to becoming RBI governor, he also urged the removal of all interest-rate ceilings, claiming that this would make bank lending “more efficient.”

The RBI’s early February statement also noted that despite it having reduced its base lending rate, the “RBI repo-rate,” by 1.25 percent over the past 13 months, the banks have refused to pass the reductions on to borrowers. This is because the banks, already heavily burdened by bad loans, are anxious to increase their profit margins on new loans so as to make up for the losses from the non-performing loans already on their books.

Shortly before the RBI’s early February meeting, Rajan delivered a lecture in New Delhi where he warned the government against taking on more debt to kick-start growth through increased government investment in infrastructure. He cited the example of Brazil, which is mired in economic slump, after artificially boosting its growth through massive debt-financing over the past decade.

“Brazil’s experience suggests,” said Rajan, “the enormous costs of becoming an unstable country far outweigh any small growth benefits that can be obtained through aggressive policies. We should be very careful about jeopardizing our single most important strength during this period of global turmoil, macroeconomic stability.”

International capital is largely supportive of Rajan’s stance. Moody’s, in a statement issued this week, said that even if the government sticks to its deficit reduction plan, “India’s fiscal metrics will remain weaker than rating peers in the near term, because of the relatively high level of India’s state and Central government deficits and debt.”

While the RBI and international capital are pressuring the government not to go deeper into debt to boost capital spending, the major domestic business lobby groups, including the Confederation of Indian Industries or CII are.

Said CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee, “Considering that broad-based revival of private investment is being constrained on account of a weak order book situation, resulting in capacity overhang, there are hopes and expectations that the budget (will) increase spending by the government, public sector and by quasi-government bodies.”

Capital investments by Indian businesses, including government-owned Public Sector Units, have declined precipitously since the 2011-12 financial year, and are now some 60 percent below the level of five years ago; falling from US$73 billion (Rs. 3.7 trillion) in 2011-12 to US$58.7 billion (Rs. 3.1 trillion) in 2012-13, US$45.7 billion (Rs. 2.7 trillion) in 2013-14 and just $30 billion (Rs 1.9 trillion billion) in the 2014-15 financial year. According to all projections, the fiscal year ending this April 1 will see yet another capital spending decline.

T here are also mounting political pressures on Modi and his BJP, which won election 21 months ago by promising to deliver high growth and jobs to India’s tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed, to t a ke measures to stimulate the economy.

The government’s room to do so, however, is constrained by a multiplicity of other factors. These include: the need to inject money into India’s banks to shore up their balance sheets; the government’s commitment to vast new military expenditures, in keeping with the Indian bourgeoisie’s ambition to be a major player in world geopolitics, especially in the Indian Ocean; and the recent recommendation of the decennial Pay Commission to raise central government workers’ wages and allowances (benefits) by more than 20 percent.

Assocham, one of the country’s major business lobby groups, has already urged the government to take the virtually unprecedented step of trashing the recommendations of its own Pay Commission, so as to funnel money via infrastructure projects to corporate India. Denouncing the Pay Commission report as economically unsupportable and a trigger for a private sector “wage spiral,” Assocham Secretary-General D.S. Rawat echoed the aforementioned plea of the CII director for the government to bail out big business. “Economic revival,” said Rawat, is contingent upon (capital) investment which should be spearheaded by the public finance given the fact that the private sector is reeling under a heavy leverage (i.e. large debts and poor balance sheets).”

Strike at 200 Further Education colleges in England

Margot Miller

Thousands of lecturers, librarians and cleaners at 200 FE (Further Education) colleges in England took strike action Wednesday to protest a freeze in their pay. Some FE staff have suffered a reduction in pay by as much as 17 percent after years on lower than inflation pay rises.

This is the second joint walkout of Unison and University and College Union(UCU) members over pay, following a 24-hour strike in November.

The strength of feeling was evident in the ballots, which recorded 68 percent of Unison members in favour of strikes, while for the UCU it was 74 percent. In both cases, this was more in favour than the previous ballot. The vote took place after most of the more than 200 FE colleges refused a pay increase of £1 per hour for all staff.

FE colleges, as distinct from universities, offer intermediate qualifications necessary for university entrance, as well as a whole range of high-quality technical vocational courses geared toward a specific career path. Courses are open to anyone over 16 and can give working class students, who are more likely to fail first high school qualifications, a second chance.

These colleges also teach students with learning difficulties as well as ESOL students (English for speakers of other languages).

Last year’s Tory budget cuts saw a 4 percent reduction in ESOL spending, which has a national waiting list of 3,000, while spending for adult education was slashed by 25 percent. Over the last five years, FE adult education has been cut by close to 50 percent, which according to the UCU could lead to the loss of 400,000 college places.

While some colleges are hiring new employees on inferior contracts, in effect creating a two-tier system, teaching vacancies have increased from 70 percent in 2010 to over 82 percent in 2014.

Not all who work in FE have experienced erosion in their pay, however. There has been a threefold rise in the number of college principals earning an annual income of over £200,000.

As part of the continually revised target of eliminating the budget deficit by 2018, to cut costs in education the Cameron government is planning area reviews with the aim of merging FE and Sixth Form Colleges (which cater for 16- to 18-year-olds). The government admits this will lead to a “rationalised curriculum,” and in place of funded ESOL, Access and Adult Education will be courses for only those who can afford to pay. The focus will be more on apprenticeships and the needs of business. Thousands of teaching jobs could go as well as access to a broad curriculum in these new so-called super colleges.

A similar review of colleges in Scotland resulted in the number of colleges reduced from 43 to 26, with thousands of jobs and student places cut.

The FE employees join a growing number of workers, including junior doctors, who are determined to oppose the worsening austerity being imposed by the Conservative government. While workers have shown their willingness to fight, their struggles have been repeatedly sabotaged by the trade unions.

Addressing UCU and Unison members during the strike in London, UCU leader Sally Hunt said, “This is not the end. If we have to do this again, then we do this again”. She added, “The UCU [striking] on its own, or Unison on its own, isn’t going to make a difference. What is going to make a difference is if we start building an alliance with public sector unions, education unions, and others in our sector that are willing to say that the funding situation in further education is beyond what is reasonable.”

The record of the trade unions since the Tories came to power in 2010 is one of dividing workers and opposing any joint offensive of their members to defeat the governments’ offensive.

In 2011, FE staff were among 2 million public sector workers who took strike action against attacks on their pensions. After this enormous turnout, the unions, including Unison and UCU, called only single days of action on a regional basis, eventually making separate deals on a union-by-union basis. Workers in the public sector now have to pay in more and work longer to get a reduced pension. It is these bosses’ organisations that pseudo-left groups, including the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party, insist workers should turn to defend their living standards.

The leaders of the FE unions openly admit that the purpose of the day of strike action is to pressure the Association of Colleges (AoC) employers’ organisation to include them in talks. Unison Head of Education Jon Richards said the strike was held “to get the Association of Colleges back around the table and in meaningful negotiations.”

The role of the unions is to provide a safety valve for dissipating the anger of their members in limited single days of action, to isolate groups of workers and facilitate the government and employers in imposing their attacks.

A strike scheduled for February 2 by staff at the Open University (OU) was recently suspended by the UCU. OU bosses want to close seven regional centres and cut 500 jobs. The Open University, a distance learning institution, is the biggest university in the world in terms of student numbers.

The Labour Party’s primary fear, as with the trade unions, is the development of an independent movement of workers and youth, in opposition to the escalating destruction of their working conditions and living standards.

During the November strike rally, FE workers were addressed by Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. Labour under new leader Jeremy Corbyn remains as committed to defending capitalism and imposing cuts as the Tories and the 1997-2010 Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Last year McDonnell said regarding Labour’s economic policies, “Labour is committed to eliminating the deficit and creating an economy in which we live within our means.”

Prior to the latest FE strike, on February 6, Corbyn addressed a UCU conference and pleaded with the employers to settle the dispute in talks with the unions. “It’s up to colleges to recognise the insecurity of employment in FE, recognise the very hard work that [their staff] do and recognise the long-term cut in pay compared to other sectors, and to come up with a reasonable offer on this,” he said. He warned, “I understand the unions’ position on this…And my message to the government and the colleges is: get around the table now to avoid the strike” (emphasis added).

Just days later Corbyn said of the junior doctors’ dispute, as the government stated it would impose an inferior contract on them, “More strikes now look likely. If that happens, it will be clear that the blame lies with the government, not the doctors. Even at this late stage, I appeal to Jeremy Hunt to go back and negotiate with the BMA.”

Strike at Chinese steel plant points to impact of global slump

John Ward

A week-long strike by several hundred workers at a stainless steel factory in Guangzhou, southern China, ended on Wednesday after riot police were called and the workers were threatened with arrest. The strike, which closed the factory of 2,000 workers, highlights the growing resistance of Chinese workers to attacks on jobs, wages and conditions.

The industrial action broke out at Ansteel Lianzhong Stainless Steel, which is one of the top three suppliers of stainless steel in China, with a capacity of two million tonnes per year. The workers demanded redundancy payments and a new contract after the company announced on February 15 it would institute a “performance-based pay system” that would have significantly reduced workers’ pay.

The union covering the factory, part of the state-run All China Trade Union Federation, agreed to the deal without the consent of workers. As the strike developed, a large number of police wearing riot gear arrived with buses for mass arrests and blocked the factory gates.

On the third day of the stoppage, the strikers rejected a union offer to return to the previous wage system. One worker told the Chinese Labour Bulletin: “How can we trust the company now? How do we know they won’t do these things again?”

On Tuesday this week, the police issued a notice declaring the strike illegal and warning of arrests, saying the workers had been “incited and seduced.” The company gave written warnings to 100 workers. At the same time, the management agreed to abandon the new pay system and offered a temporary bonus of 100 yuan ($US15) per day for those who resumed work. Workers returned to their jobs the following day.

The factory opened in 2006 with, according to the company’s web site, “the world’s most advanced cutting edge technology.” It is the only integrated stainless steel facility in southern China. The plant, however, has failed to make sufficient profits and last year its owner, the Taiwan-based E United Group, sold a controlling stake to China’s state-owned Ansteel Group.

The new owner started with layoffs and enforced annual leave, paid at 80 percent of the statutory minimum wage of 1,895 yuan ($295) per month. A worker, quoted in the Washington Post, said: “You just can’t live in Guangzhou on the money they are paying… if you were to get a bowl and beg under the overpass, you would earn more.”

The strike at Lianzhong is part of a rising tide of industrial disputes across China. The China Labour Bulletin, which tracks the limited publicly-available information, reported 503 strikes in January. That was a sharp increase from 421 strikes last December, which was itself part of a rising trend. There were 2,774 strikes and protests during 2015, compared with 567 for all of 2011 and 2012 combined. Most conflicts are over non-payment of wages, a practice now spreading from the construction industry to manufacturing, mining and services.

Mass layoffs throughout the steel and coal industries are now government policy. The State Council, China’s equivalent of a government cabinet, announced a plan in January to shed a million jobs over three years. Before the announcement, Ernan Cui, a Beijing-based researcher at Gavekal Dragonomics, suggested: “[I]t is not implausible that these two sectors [coal and steel] could lay off one million workers in 2016.”

These job cuts come on top of an estimated 1.44 million jobs lost in those industries since 2013, eliminating many of the jobs created in the Beijing government’s stimulus-driven boom following the 2008 global financial breakdown.

To deal with the proposed layoffs, the government has announced it will set aside 30 billion yuan ($US4.6 billion) for “training and job seeking” over the next two years. Beijing fears a mass movement of the working class in reaction to its program of austerity and further pro-market restructuring.

The cuts in steel and coal are part of a government move against so-called state-owned zombie companies, which have millions of employees but are not generating profits. Yang Weimin, deputy director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, told a forum in Beijing last year: “The pain is inevitable, but it is a necessary part of the leadership’s shift to supply-side reform next year.”

“Supply-side reform” is the term used for attempts to reduce overcapacity in key industries which is driving down prices and profits. In the case of steel, China produces over 800 million tonnes per year, or almost 50 percent of world output. Prices for steel products have halved since 2013 on the back of a world glut, with global production running at only 69.7 percent of capacity. Last year, Chinese steel companies lost 64.5 billion yuan, more than double the 22.6 billion yuan in profits they had made in 2014.

The situation is similar in coal mining. World prices have dropped by half from their peak in 2011. The China Coal Industry Association estimates that more than 90 percent of Chinese operators are running at a loss. China has 11,000 coal mines, capable of producing 5.2 billon tonnes per year, according to the Xinhua news agency, but produced only 3.2 billion tonnes last year.

One of the Ansteel Lianzhong Stainless Steel strikers, quoted by the Washington Post, summed up the prospects confronting Chinese workers. “I thought if I could keep working hard, I could get a decent job and have my kid with me. My dream is just to be together with my family. But now even that dream is clouded with uncertainty.”

While the riot police ultimately were not used in this strike, the Beijing regime is on a collision course with the working class as it seeks to impose the burden of the global slump on workers, pay off mounting debts and maintain profitable returns for investors.

More mass shootings in the US

Niles Williamson

Since Jason Dalton, a 45-year-old insurance adjuster and Uber cab driver, randomly opened fire on eight people, killing six, in multiple locations in Kalamazoo, Michigan last weekend, at least three additional mass killings have occurred in the US. Shootings in Kansas, Washington state and Arizona have resulted in the deaths of 14 people.

On Thursday evening, Cedric Larry Ford, 38, went on a shooting spree, killing three people and injuring fourteen others in an area approximately 35 miles north of Wichita, Kansas. The attack ended when Ford was killed by police after he opened fire inside the Excel Industries lawn equipment factory in Hesston, where he was employed in the paint shop.

According to the official police account, the shooting spree began around 5 p.m. when Ford fired on two vehicles at an intersection in the city of Newton, injuring one of the drivers. He then drove towards Hesston, opening fire on oncoming vehicles until he and another motorist crashed in a ditch. Ford proceeded to shoot the other driver in the leg and drove his vehicle to the Excel factory, where he carried out the assault on fellow employees.

Workers described a scene of confusion as Ford, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and a hand gun, first shot an employee in the Excel parking lot and then entered the factory. He fired on those in the front office area of the facility, killing three people and wounding 12 others.

“I heard some popping noises, but I thought it was just a drill,” Tim Kasper, a laser operator, told the Wichita Eagle. “Then I heard a three-round burst and I knew it was something real. I got out of there quick. People were running and panicking. It was chaos.”

Kasper reported that his friend and coworker, with whom he had just been chatting, was killed after being shot in the head by Ford. “It’s pretty unnerving,” Kasper stated. “Things can change fast. It was just a normal day before that.”

Jason Hershberger, a worker on the plant’s mower assembly line, recounted to the Wichita Eagle how he and other workers placed a fellow worker who had been shot in the back by Ford onto a wooden pallet and drove the worker out of the factory on a motorized cart.

The attack ended approximately half an hour after it began when a Hesston police officer opened fire on Ford, killing him inside the factory.

According to police, Ford’s rampage began after he had been served with a protection of abuse order requiring him to stay away from his girlfriend, who had accused him of assault. In a petition for the restraining order filed in Sedgwick County court on February 5, a woman who described herself as Ford’s live-in girlfriend, described how Ford had placed her in a chokehold after an argument. “He is an alcoholic, violent, depressed,” she wrote. “It’s my belief he is in desperate need of medical & psychological help!”

Photos apparently posted by Ford on Facebook show him posing with a handgun and an AK-47. A video posted on social media shows Ford firing dozens of rounds from an AK-47 into an empty cornfield.

Ford, originally from Miami, Florida, had a long history of encounters with the police and criminal convictions dating from the time he was a teenager. When he was 18 years old, Ford was charged with carrying a concealed firearm.

Over the next several years of his life Ford was convicted on charges of battery, drug possession, grand theft and multiple parole violations. He received a misdemeanor conviction for engaging in a brawl in 2008.

Mass shootings happen with such regularity that the horror in Kansas was met by a perfunctory statement from President Barack Obama warning that Americans “cannot become numb” to such violence.

On Friday, police in Belfair, Washington responded to a 911 emergency call from a man who reported that he had killed his family. According to the police, the man shot and killed himself after hours of negotiations. When police entered the home, they found the man and four of his victims. A twelve-year-old girl survived the attack and was taken to a local hospital.

A neighbor told the Associated Press that he heard gunshots the previous night. He also told the press that his neighbor had operated a heating and air conditioning contractor business.

Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, 26-year-old Alex Buckner was shot and killed by police in Phoenix, Arizona after shooting and killing his father, mother and two sisters and setting their home on fire. Buckner had previously been arrested for public intoxication and shoplifting sleeping pills. A family member told the Arizona Republic that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, so far this year there have been 34 mass shootings, defined as incidents in which more than four people have either been killed or injured by a person with a firearm. At least 51 people have been killed and a further 135 injured in such incidents.

Another count by the Gun Violence Archive found at least 191 incidents in which at least one person was injured or killed by gunfire so far this year.

That such mass shootings and killings take place with such regularity in the United States is a reflection of a society riven by economic inequality and mired in a deepening social crisis, compounded by endless cuts in welfare programs and mental health services. The mounting social contradictions of American society, amplified by a sclerotic, right-wing and antidemocratic political system and the absence of any mass organizations that speak for working and oppressed people, leads highly vulnerable and psychologically damaged individuals to crack and resort to irrational individual violence directed against themselves as well as others.