Walmart to cut 7,000 back-office jobs in the US

Jessica Goldstein

Walmart announced on September 1 that it will be cutting about 7,000 back-office jobs in its stores across the US. The jobs to be eliminated are positions in accounting and invoicing, which will be automated or centralized going forward, according to the company. According to the Wall Street Journal, the types of jobs being cut are usually held by long-term employees at a higher pay rate than the average Walmart store employee. Most workers in these positions are earning on average $13.38 per hour and are employed full-time, compared to the average part-time Walmart sales associate who earns just $10.58 per hour in the US.

Although they earn a relatively high wage compared to the average Walmart worker, these workers in back-office positions still earn on average far less than the average hourly wage in the US of $20.43 per hour. The fact that Walmart is cutting its already low-wage jobs in order to stay on the very top of a market that is rapidly turning digital is a damning indictment of the destructive measures being taken by giant corporations to satisfy their insatiable drive for short-term profits at the expense of society as a whole. Walmart recorded gross annual profits of $131.69 billion in April, enough to pay each of its 2.2 million workers in the US a wage of $28.78 per hour.

Employees who are losing their jobs will be given the “opportunity” to transition into other jobs with the company, the majority of which are lower-paying, part-time customer service positions. Though employees technically have the ability to apply for higher-paying, full-time positions in store management, those jobs are few compared to low-paying customer service jobs, and often require experience that those in accounting and invoicing positions may not have.

The so-called transitioning program paints employees into a corner: either they take a more than likely lower-paying position, without status, or they must quit and seek employment elsewhere. This strategy serves two purposes, both for the benefit of Walmart and its shareholders. First, it allows the company to manipulate its job creation statistics with the aim of increasing its share price, since it says that it will have more positions available for those losing their jobs. Second, Walmart will most likely avoid paying unemployment benefits for the workers being cut, since the company is not laying off or firing workers, but “transitioning” them to other roles.

The cuts—or transitions, as they are being called—are expected to last through 2017. A pilot program in June of this year tested the transition program with back-office workers in 500 locations, in stores located mainly in the western US. According to a report by CNN, Walmart failed to provide exact data on how many of the affected employees chose to remain with the company after the pilot cuts.

The situation faced by Walmart workers paints a nightmarish picture of the lack of control that workers in the US have over their jobs. Accounting and invoicing is an essential part of the daily functions of all retail establishments, yet through automation even these essential jobs are rendered obsolete in the name of increasing share prices for short-term gains.

Less than two weeks before the cuts were announced, Walmart stock shares were traded at a yearly high of $74.30. The spike came after the August 8 announcement of Walmart’s acquisition of online retailer Jet.com for $3.3 billion.

According to the announcement published by the Wall Street Journal on September 1, the cuts are a part of a new program aimed at putting more employees in customer-facing positions in order to provide better service to consumers. However, in light of Walmart’s recent financial activity, these claims will all too soon be revealed to be false. The layoffs of higher-paid, full-time workers will also offset the costs of Walmart’s decision to raise its starting pay rate, which was announced in February.

Walmart stock continued to slide in the days before the layoffs were announced, but saw a brief spike to $72.84 on September 1, the day of the announcement. Despite the spike, share prices were still well below their previous high. Since then, share prices of the retailer have been more or less on a decline. The announcement of the cuts has done little, if anything, to restore profitability after the acquisition announcement.

In addition to the Walmart announcement, Sears Holding Corp. announced on September 16 that it would shutter another 64 of its Kmart discount retail stores, on top of the 68 closings it announced in April. Macy’s announced in August that 100 of its stores are set to close their doors in early 2017, in addition to the 38 that it closed this spring. According to a report by Credit Suisse, a total of 37,000 US retail jobs are set to be slashed by the end of this year, more than double the amount lost last year.

The reason for mass layoffs and closings, according to many of the retailers, is the competition posed by online retailers such as Jet and Amazon.com. However, the stores are not closing because of lack of need for the products they stock, but for a lack of profitability. Online retailers do not require salespeople or merchandisers in the way that brick-and-mortar establishments do. Some online retailers, such as Amazon, have replaced workers with drones used to catalog and manage inventory in their warehouses as well as to deliver orders. Walmart announced in June that it will be testing a drone program to catalog and manage inventory in its 190 US distribution centers, and will also begin to test drones for online deliveries as well.

Walmart is the largest retailer and the largest employer in the US. It is the number-one employer in 20 states in the US and employs about 1% of the US workforce. The mass layoffs planned for the largest employer in the world’s most powerful capitalist economy are an expression of the utter state of decay of American capitalism. They point to an intensely bitter period of struggle ahead for the working class.

Slowdown in growth of trade highlights global economic stagnation

Nick Beams

Reports issued this week by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) point to worsening stagnation in the global economy and a consequent rise of nationalist tensions.

The WTO forecast that global trade would grow by only 1.7 percent this year, compared to the already low rate of 2.8 percent it had predicted in April. In the analytic chapters of its latest “World Economic Outlook” (WEO) report, the IMF warned that “broad-based” low inflation and outright deflation could lead to a full-blown deflationary cycle in which lower prices, combined with falling investment, lead to a further economic contraction.

“Disinflation has been taking place across a broad range of countries and regions,” the report stated. “By 2015 inflation rates were below medium-term expectations in more than 85 percent of a broad sample of 120 economies—20 percent of which were actually experiencing outright deflation.”

The WTO report focused on the rapid downturn in global trade, particularly over the past three years. Since the 1980s, world trade has grown at a rate 1.5 to 2 times faster than the growth in global gross domestic product. This year, the trade growth rate will only be 80 percent of GDP, the first time trade growth has dipped below GDP growth since 2001 and only the second time since 1982.

“The dramatic slowing of trade growth is serious and should serve as a wake-up call,” said WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo. Having earlier pointed to the rise of protectionist measures, especially by major countries, the WTO again raised its concerns over this issue. It was necessary to ensure that the slowdown did not “translate into misguided policies that could make the situation much worse, not only from the perspective of trade but also for job creation and economic growth and development.”

“This is a moment to heed the lessons of history and recommit to openness in trade, which can help to spur economic growth,” Azevêdo said.

The reference to the “lessons of history” was an allusion to the experience of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when all of the major economic powers reacted to a contraction in world markets by imposing increased tariff barriers and forming currency blocs, further exacerbating the downward spiral and contributing to the conflicts that erupted in 1939 in the Second World War.

His remarks were echoed in a speech delivered by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde in Chicago yesterday. She said the world economy faced the danger of constrictions on trade and increased protectionism.

“Restricting trade is a clear case of economic malpractice,” she said. Limiting economic openness was “sure to worsen the growth outlook for the world,” and it was necessary to “reverse the trend toward protectionism and restore a climate that supports a rebound in trade.”

The IMF drew attention to the slowdown of trade in its WEO report, noting that it was a symptom of sluggish growth. “Empirical analysis suggested that up to three-fourths of the shortfall in real trade growth since 2012 compared with 2003-2007 can be traced to globally weaker economic growth, notably subdued investment.”

The decline in investment is particularly significant because investment is the driving force of economic expansion in the capitalist economy. Investment is carried out in the expectation of future profits, leading in turn to higher employment and greater demand for raw materials and industrial goods, thereby promoting broader economic expansion. But as profit expectations decline, investment falls, bringing about economic contraction and a turn to financial speculation and manipulation to boost profits.

The IMF warned that the “quantitative easing” measures of central banks, carried out with the rationale that low interest rates will lift inflation and stimulate investment in the real economy, but in reality only boosting speculation, were reaching their limit. It said “bold policy actions” were needed to avoid the risk of chronically undershooting inflation targets and eroding the credibility of monetary policy, especially in the advanced economies.

The IMF has been calling for some time for increased government spending on infrastructure programs in order to provide an economic boost.

This call was repeated by Lagarde in her Chicago speech. She said governments with so-called fiscal space, such as Canada, Germany and South Korea, had to more aggressively pursue government spending. She also called for greater coordination among major countries. The IMF has been regularly making such calls at meetings of the G20 in the recent period, but has failed to elicit any concrete action.

“No doubt, the current situation is different from the 2008 crisis, which required a prompt, massive and coordinated fiscal response,” Lagarde said. “But as our ‘new mediocre’ is less acute, it is also more divisive and subtle than a full-blown crisis, and it could prove just as toxic as the recovery has so far proven elusive.”

She said if all countries worked to stimulate their own growth, this would bring “positive spillovers” that would “reinforce each other” and benefit the world economy as a whole. While such an approach might appear to be in accord with logic and reason, however, it runs into the objective obstacle of the division of the world into rival great powers with conflicting interests. All the major powers are in favour of such action, provided someone else does it.

The US, for example, wants to see increased spending by Germany to boost the European economy, thereby benefiting American exporters and investors. Germany, on the other hand, fears that such measures will weaken its financial position to the benefit of US banks and investment houses.

Consequently, rather than increased collaboration, the world economy is marked by increased national tensions and rivalries. The rise of protectionist measures—initiated in the main by the advanced economies—is accompanied by outright economic warfare, expressed most sharply in the European Union’s demand for a €13 billion back tax payment from Apple, the sinking of the US-based Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership by Germany and France, and the US Justice Department’s $14 billion fine against Deutsche Bank, which threatens to send the German banking giant into bankruptcy.

The intractable contradictions gripping the world economy were highlighted in another part of the IMF’s WEO analysis, where it called for China to pull back from “unsustainably high growth targets” by reining in credit growth. China has responded to the global economic slowdown by increasing credit by 13 percent this year—the fastest expansion since the 2008 financial crisis.

But with the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio at 250 percent and rising, these measures could set off a financial crisis. The IMF called for a comprehensive plan to address “vulnerabilities” in the financial sector. “A disorderly deleveraging … could trigger contagion in emerging market financial markets,” it said.

Thus, while calling for increased global growth, the IMF wants the world’s second largest economy, where the growth rate of 6.5 percent is far higher than most of the rest of the world, to cut back on stimulus lest this set off a financial crisis with global repercussions.

The remarks by both Lagarde and Azevêdo point to fears in policy-making circles that the world economy is increasingly riven by nationalist tensions which, despite their warnings, they are unable to reduce.

There are other, related concerns, generally referred to somewhat euphemistically as a “backlash” against globalisation. At heart, this is a reference to mounting social opposition to the growth of social inequality and hostility to the entire political and corporate establishment, a phenomenon reflected in contradictory ways in the support for Bernie Sanders in the US presidential race, the Brexit vote in the UK, the crisis of the traditional ruling parties and rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe, and the elevation of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate in the US.

Fear is mounting within the international capitalist class of this opposition taking the form of a conscious struggle by the working class on the basis of a socialist perspective. Some of what is being discussed behind closed doors was revealed in an editorial published earlier this month by the British Economist magazine, which warned that the present economic climate bore a striking similarity to the “backlash” that led to the Russian Revolution.

A century later, the Economist wrote, what may be taking place is a return to “1917 and all that.”

Jeanne Sauvé Public Leadership Programme 2017-2019 for Young Leaders – Canada

Application Deadline: Friday, 21st October, 2016, MIDNIGHT GMT-4.

Eligible Countries: All

To be taken at (country): Montreal, Canada

Eligible Fields of Study: Candidates between 25 and 30 years of age with backgrounds in the arts, advocacy, communications, journalism, education, engineering, governance, law, politics, security, social innovation and other fields related to public leadership are invited to apply.

About the Award: The Jeanne Sauvé Public Leadership Programme represents the beginning of a lifelong personal and professional development journey, as well as an opportunity to join a global community of public leaders.

For the 2017-19 Jeanne Sauvé Public Leadership Programme, a new cohort of Fellows will collectively explore how focusing on strategies of inclusion can help public leaders respond to the complex challenges facing culturally diverse societies.

The two-year program begins with a full-time residential experience in Montreal with a dozen select Public Leadership Fellows. This is followed by a field phase, in which Fellows return to their respective communities and countries in order to apply the skills and new ideas developed during the residential phase.

Fellows benefit from intensive leadership development training and support during the residential year and some ongoing support from one another and the Foundation during the field year. Thereafter, Fellows are encouraged to remain active members of an emerging community of Jeanne Sauvé public leaders who hail from over 50 countries around the world.

The theme of the 2017-19 Public Leadership Program is Public Leadership for Culturally Diverse Societies: The Inclusion Imperative.

Type: Fellowship

Selection Process: The Selection Committee will consider supporting documents (this is entirely optional) such as third party evidence of leadership or published works if they are submitted before the application deadline. Applications will be processed as they are received. Applications uploaded early in this period are therefore encouraged.

Number of Awardees: 12

Value of Programme:  Full-time residential leadership experience in Montreal with a dozen select Public Leadership Fellows. This is followed by a field phase, in which Fellows return to their respective communities and countries in order to apply the skills and new ideas developed during the residential phase. Fellows benefit from intensive leadership development training and support during the residential year and some ongoing support from one another and the Foundation during the field year.

Duration of Programme: 2 years

How to Apply: Any application that does not include all of the above elements by the application deadline will be deemed incomplete and will not be considered by the Selection Committee.

The Selection Committee will consider supporting documents (this is entirely optional) such as third party evidence of leadership or published works if they are submitted before the application deadline. These can be submitted directly by the applicantbefore the application deadline.

1. Application documents submitted by the applicant and uploaded to the Reviewr Platform:
   1. Complete Application Form
   2. Scanned passport photo page
   3. Scanned academic transcripts
2. Three recommendation forms, submitted directly by the applicant’s three recommenders:
   1. Professional Recommendation
   2. Academic Recommendation
   3. Personal Recommendation

Apply here

Visit Programme Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Jeanne Sauvé Foundation

Important Notes: Any application that does not include all of the above elements by the application deadline will be deemed incomplete and will not be considered by the Selection Committee.

University of Wollongong Visiting International Scholar Awards (VISA) Programme 2017/2018

Application Deadline: 10th October 2016

• Applicants notified of outcome: By late November
• Awards commence: From January 2017

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Australia

About the Award: The Vice Chancellor’s Visiting International Scholar Awards aim to provide funding to support internationally based, outstanding midcareer researchers to visit UOW for a period of 2 to 6 months to enhance the University’s research performance by:

• Collaborating on research projects;
• Building new linkages and connections with high quality international research institutions.

The program will run from 2015-2019, and a total of 40 Visiting International Scholar Awards (VISAs) will be offered during that period.

Type: PhD/Visiting Research Scholarship

Eligibility: Successful applicants will have a highly competitive track record relative to opportunity and propose an innovative, collaborative research program with the potential to make a significant contribution to the University’s research profile and priority research areas. Applicants must:

• currently hold a continuing appointment at their host institution
• have been awarded a PhD more than 5 years ago, and
• have not previously received a UOW Visiting International Scholar Award

Selection Criteria: Applications will be assessed and ranked by the relevant Faculty or Institute, with funding recommendations referred to a sub-committee of the University Research Committee for final determination. Applicants should ensure that their proposal can be easily understood by academics from outside of their discipline area. Selection will be based on the following criteria:

• 1. The research track record (e.g. publications, research achievements, awards etc) and reputation of the proposed visiting international scholar.
• 2. The proposed collaborative research project/program and how this will build new linkages and connections with high quality international research institution(s). Applications proposing new research directions and or interdisciplinary partnerships will be given preference.
• 3. Strategic benefits and alignment of the proposed scholar and research collaboration with the host Unit and nominated UOW priority research area(s).
• Outreach activities proposed during the visit, e.g., public lectures and presentations to relevant research groups, postgraduate research students and early career researcher (ECR) workshops and mentoring, or other similar activities.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Programme: Funds are available to support the costs of economy class airfares, accommodation and living expenses for each visiting scholar, including their families (up to a total of $10,000 per VISA).

Duration of Programme:  2 to 6 months

How to Apply: Applications consist of three parts:

• Application form: completed in full and signed
• Curriculum Vitae: including qualifications, academic awards and significant contributions to the research field, competitive research funding and publications list for the past 5 years. No more than 5 pages.
• Description of Proposed Visit & Outcomes: no more than 3 pages, plus references. Suggested sections include:
  • Aims, Significance and Outcomes Outline of the collaborative research the candidate proposes to undertake during their visit to UOW, including a brief description of the project aims, significance, background, timeline, expected outcomes and how this will influence and involve host unit researchers, ECR’s and postgraduate research students.
  • Strategic Benefits and Alignment Describe the strengths and strategic benefits of the collaboration, including alignment of the proposed candidate and project to the Host School/Unit, Research Group(s) and UOW priority research area(s).
  • Potential for Continuing Collaborations How this project will lead to activities that will sustain an ongoing collaboration, such as competitive funding applications, co-authored publications, joint research student supervision etc.
  • Outreach Activities Proposed outreach activities during the visit, such as public lectures and presentations, early career researcher (ECR) and postgraduate research student workshops, mentoring activities and any other activities.
  • Evidence of Support How the candidate and project will be supported by the UOW host Unit.

Applicants should use the application form available at: http://www.uow.edu.au/research/researchgrants/visaprogram/index.html

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: University of Wollongong

AfyaBora Fellowship in Global Health Leadership for African Medical Practitioners

Application Deadline: 1st December, 2016

• Interviews Mid-December 2016 – March 2017
  Some applicants will be contacted for an interview
• Notification of Acceptance March-April 2017
  Accepted applicants will be notified
• New Trainee Orientation in Africa June 24-27, 2017
  New trainee participants will be brought together for a 3-day orientation. Immediately following the orientation there will be three 1-week course modules that will be held in the same country.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda or the US

To be taken at (country): Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda or the US

Eligible Field of Study: Meet ONE of the following education requirements:

1. Medical applicants with a M.D. or MBChB with a MMed, MPH or Masters degree in related field.
2. Nursing applicants with a Masters degree in Nursing, Public Health or a related field (PhD or DNP preferred).
3. Other Public Health professionals with a PhD in Public Health or a related field.

About the Award: The Core Curriculum for the AfyaBora Fellowship is taught at the African partner institutions and brings together each new cohort of African and U.S. trainees. The Core Curriculum consists of eight one-week didactic modules.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: In order to be eligible to apply for the AfyaBora Fellowship, all applicants MUST meet the following criteria:

1. Be a citizen or permanent resident of Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda or the US
   AND
2. Meet ONE of the following education requirements

• Medical applicants need to have a M.D. or MBChB with a MMed or Masters degree in related field.
• Nursing applicants need to have a Masters degree in nursing, public health or a related field (PhD preferred), or substantial work experience.
• Other public health professionals (those without a clinical degree) must have a Doctoral degree in public health or a related field.

Number of Awardees: 20

Value of Fellowship: 

African trainees

• Airfare from home to training sites of the AfyaBora Fellowship
• Monthly stipend equivalent to $1500 per month
• Evacuation insurance if stationed outside home country
• Accommodations and per diem up if attending didactic sessions and meetings outside of home country
• Housing allowance of up to $750 per month if placed outside of home country
• Reimbursement for other selected fellowship-specific activities in Africa (i.e. travel to rural sites, visa, etc.)

US Trainees

• Monthly stipend based on NRSA NIH stipend levels (stipend cap is at 2 years post-doctoral level)
• Roundtrip airfare from home city-Africa
• Airfare within Africa to attachment site placement and modules
• Per diem when attending didactic sessions and meetings
• Housing allowance of up to $750 per month
• Support request for an NIH loan repayment up to $35,000 for one year (only postdoctoral applicants are eligible to apply)
• Reimbursement for other selected fellowship-specific activities in Africa (i.e. travel to rural sites, visa, etc.)

Duration of Fellowship: 12 months

How to Apply: 

1. Online Application for Training
2. Institution Nomination Forms and Institution Nomination Letters (at least 2)
3. Curriculum Vitae

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: AfyaBora Fellowship is sponsored by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Office of AIDS Research (OAR), a unit of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

How We Could End the Permanent War State

David Swanson

My remarks are related to the problem of media as a factor in the war system but not focused primarily on that. I have experienced first hand as a journalist and as an author how the corporate news media hews to a set of well-delineated lines in the coverage of issues of war and peace that systematically block out all data that conflict with those lines. I’d be glad to talk about my experiences especially in covering ran and Syria in Q and A.

But I am here to talk about the larger problem of the war system and what is to be done about it.

I want to present a vision of something that has not been discussed seriously in many, many years: a national strategy to mobilize a very large segment of the population of this country to participate in a movement to force the retreat of the permanent war state.

I know that many of you must be thinking: that is a great idea for 1970 or even 1975 but its no longer relevant to the conditions we face in this society today.

It’s true that this is an idea that seems, on first thought to harken back to the days of the Vietnam War, when anti-war sentiment was so strong that even Congress and the news media was powerfully influenced by it.

We all know what has transpired over the past few decades to made make permanent war “the new normal”, as Andrew Bacevich as so aptly put it. But let me tick off five of them that are obvious:

* the draft has was replaced by a professional army, taking away a dominant factor in the surge of anti-sentiment during the Vietnam era.
* the political parties and Congress has been taken over completely and corrupted by the military-industrial complex.
the war state exploited 9/11 to accumulate enormous new powers and appropriate far more of the federal budget than before.
* The news media are more warlike than ever before.
* The powerful anti-war that was mobilized in this country and around the world in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was demobilized over a few years by the inability of activists to have any impact on either Bush or Obama.

* You all can probably add even more items to this list, but all of these are interrelated and interactive, and each of them which helps explain why the landscape of anti-war activism has seemed so bleak for the past decade. It is pretty obvious that the permanent war state has achieved what Gramsci called “ideological hegemony” to such a degree that the first expression of radical politics in generations – the Sanders campaign – did not make it an issue.

Nevertheless I am here to suggest to you that, despite the fact that the war state with all its private allies appear to be riding as high as ever, the historical circumstances may now be favorable to a frontal challenge to the war state for the first time in many years.

First: the Sanders campaign has shown that a very large proportion of the millennial generations do not trust those who hold power in the society, because they have rigged the economic and social arrangements to benefit a tiny minority while screwing the vast majority – and especially the young. Obviously the permanent war state’s operations can be convincingly analyzed as fitting that model, and that opens up a new opportunity to take on the permanent war state.

Second: U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been such obvious disastrous failures that the present historical juncture is marked by a low-point in support for interventionism reminiscent of the late Vietnam War and post-war period (late 1960s to early 1980s). Most Americans turned against Iraq and Afghanistan about as fast as they had against the Vietnam War. And the opposition to military intervention in Syria, even in the face of overwhelming media coverage that encouraged support for such a war was overwhelming. A Gallup poll in September 2013 showed that the level of support for the proposed use of force in Syria – 36 percent – was lower than that for any of the five wars proposed since the end of the Cold War.

Third, the very obvious bankruptcy of the two parties in this election have made tens of millions in this country – especially young people, blacks and independents – open to a movement that connects the dots that need to be connected.

With those favorable strategic conditions in mind, I suggest that it is time for a newly invigorated national movement to come together around a concrete strategy for accomplishing the goal of ending the permanent war state by taking away its means of intervening in foreign conflicts.

What would that mean? The following are the four key elements that we would need to include ins such a strategy:

(1) A clear, concrete vision of what eliminating the permanent war state would mean in practice to provide a meaningful target for people to support

(2) A new and compelling way of educating and mobilizing people to action against the permanent war state.

(3) A strategy for reaching specific segments society on the issue, and

(4)A plan for bringing political pressure to bear with the aim of ending the permanent war state within ten years.

Now I want to focus primarily on shaping a campaign message on the importance of ending the permanent war state.

I suggest that the way to mobilize large numbers of people on the issue of ending permanent war is to take our cue from the Sanders campaign, which appealed to the widespread sense that the political and economic systems have been rigged in favor of the super-rich. We must make a parallel appeal in regard to the permanent war state.

Such an appeal would characterize the entire system that makes and implements U.S. war policies as a racket. To put it another way, the permanent war state – the state institutions and individuals who push for policies and programs to carry out perpetual war — must be delegitimized in the same way that the financial elite dominating the economy has been delegitimized for a large segment of the U.S. population. The campaign should exploit the politically potent parallel between Wall Street and the national security state in terms of both siphoning off trillions of dollars from the American people. For Wall Street the ill-gotten gains took the form of excessive profits from a rigged economy; for the national security state and its contractor allies, they took the form of seizing control over money appropriated from U.S. taxpayers to enhance their personal and institutional power.

And in both the financial-economic policy sector and the war sector, the elites have taken advantage of a rigged policymaking process.

So we should update General Smedley Butler’s memorable slogan from the 1930s, “War is a Racket” to reflect the fact that the benefits that now accrue to the national security establishment make those of war profiteers in the 1930s seem like child’s play. I suggest the slogan such as “permanent war is a racket” or the “the war state is a racket”.

This approach to educating and mobilizing people to oppose the war state not only appears to be most effective way to break down the ideological hegemony of the national security state; it also reflects the truth about virtually every historical case of U.S. interventionism. I have seen the truth of it confirmed over and over again from my own historical research and reporting on national security issues.

It is an invariable rule that these bureaucracies – both military and civilian — always push for policies and programs that coincide with the interests of the bureaucratic entity and its leaders – even though they always harm the interests of the American people.

It explains the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the escalation of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and the U.S. sponsorship of the war in Syria.

It explains the huge expansion of the CIA into drone wars and the expansion of Special Operations Forces into 120 countries.

And it explains why the American people were saddled for so many decades with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons could only destroy this this country and civilization as a whole—and why the war state is now pushing to keep them as a central part of American policy for decades to come.

A final point: I think it is terribly important to have the endpoint of a national campaign spelled out clearly and in enough detail to give it credibility. And that endpoint should be in a form that activists can point to as something to support—specifically in the form of a piece of proposed legislation. Having something that people can support is a key to gaining momentum. This vision of the endpoint could be called the “End Permanent War Act of 2018”.

Cracks in the Kingdom: Saudi Arabia Rocked by Financial Strains

Patrick Cockburn

Hundreds of foreign hospital workers in Saudi Arabia, unpaid for seven months, were on strike this week and were blocking a highway in Eastern Province in defiance of the ban on strikes and demonstrations in the Kingdom. The employees’ anger was deepened by the belief that the very same employer who has been holding back their salaries regularly offers massive fees to international singers who perform at his parties.

Things are not well in Saudi Arabia and this week there were two pieces of bad news. Hitherto, there have been protests like this by foreign employees suffering from the knock-on effects of cuts in state expenditure following the drop in the oil price. In work camps far out in the desert workers complain that, not only have they stopped receiving money owed to them, but they are no longer even receiving supplied of food and electricity.

But today the cuts are for the first time hitting public sector workers who are Saudi citizens, 70 per cent of whom work for the government. So far the austerity is limited with lower bonuses and overtime payments and a 20 per cent reduction in the salaries of ministers, though those close to political power are unlikely to be in actual need.

There are political dangers in this move. In the oil states of the Middle East there is a trade-off between the spectacular wealth of a corrupt and autocratic elite and an extensive patronage system through which much of the rest of the native population plugs into oil revenues. Some $120 billion, or half of government spending, went on salaries, wages and allowances in 2015.

With a Saudi budget deficit of $100 billion in 2015, this haemorrhage of cash may not be sustainable but will also be difficult to rein in. Great construction companies like Oger and Binladen are having serious difficulties getting paid by the government with Oger alone reportedly owed $8 billion. South Asian construction workers, who once saw Saudi Arabia as an El Dorado, are going home after waiting for months for pay cheques that never come.

The woes of foreign workers, and even of the native public sector employees, are not necessarily going to destabilise an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia that mercilessly crushes dissent. The fall or destabilisation of the House of Saud has been forecast for decades with no real sign of the prediction coming true. What makes the present economic stresses more significant is that they come at a moment when Saudi political influence is visibly under strain in the region and the world.

Among those exempted from this week’s benefit cuts are Saudi forces in Yemen which may remind Saudis that they are still mired in a vastly expensive conflict there which their government voluntarily entered last year and shows no sign of winning. In Syria, the five-year-long effort by Saudi Arabia, together with Turkey and Qatar, to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad, has likewise failed. In the decade-long Saudi rivalry with Iran, today it is the Iranians who look like getting the upper hand.

But a more menacing development than this may be facing the rulers of the Kingdom in the US. For so long the ultimate guarantor of the status quo in Saudi Arabia, the US is increasingly ambivalent or hostile towards its old ally. On Wednesday, the US Senate will vote on whether or not to override a presidential veto preventing the families of victims of 9/11 suing the Saudi government. The measure is unlikely to become law, but it is a sign of the Kingdom’s ebbing influence where it really matters at a time of deepening troubles at home.

India launches campaign to “punish” Pakistan

Wasantha Rupasinghe

India has taken a series of high-profile steps in recent days aimed at “punishing” Pakistan for the September 18 attack on the Uri military base in Indian-administered Kashmir. The attack, which was carried out by Islamist opponents of Indian rule over Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, killed eighteen Indian soldiers.

The publicly announced steps that India has taken are of a diplomatic and economic character. But there is no doubt that behind the scenes feverish preparations continue for a lethal Indian “counterstrike,” whether in the form of military or covert action.

Within hours of the Uri attack and before any credible investigation, Indian government and military leaders publicly declared Islamabad responsible. Soon the media was full of commentary baying for military action against Islamabad and enthused reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was huddling with India’s senior-most military and intelligence officials to plot a robust response. The measures under consideration reportedly included air or cruise missile strikes on Islamist Kashmiri separatist bases in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, cross-border raids, and/or the assassination of Pakistani intelligence officials.

The Indian government and military have subsequently signaled that they still intend to bloody Pakistan. However, given the logistical difficulties in carrying out an attack and in rebuffing the inevitable Pakistani military response, they have said that they do not intend to act precipitously. Any action will be at a time and in a form, including potentially “deniable” covert operations, of India’s choosing.

In the meantime, India is mounting a diplomatic and political offensive against Pakistan, and Modi and his government continue to incite the population against Pakistan. In this they have the full support of the opposition Congress Party, which has called for an emergency session of parliament to discuss reprisals against Pakistan.

Yesterday, the Indian government announced that Modi will boycott the SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) summit in Islamabad in November and indicated that it has convinced other member states—Indian news reports named Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan—to do the same.

On Monday, India said it would increase its water withdrawals from three rivers that flow through India to Pakistan to the maximum permitted under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) and cease its participation in meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission, set up under the IWT, until “terror comes to an end.” India and Pakistan already are at loggerheads over the IWT’s application and implementation. By maximizing its water rights and under conditions where Pakistan has repeatedly been hit by drought and electricity shortages, New Delhi hopes to deliver a major blow to the Pakistani economy.

Modi has convened a meeting for later this week to discuss stripping Pakistan of Most Favored Nation Trade status. Given the paltry level of bilateral trade between South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states, this will have only limited adverse impact on Pakistan, but India is intent on moving on as many fronts as it can.

Modi and his Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, have given back-to-back inflammatory speeches targeting Pakistan and labeling it a “terror state” or “state sponsor of terrorism”—designations Washington has repeatedly invoked to justify illegal wars and missile strikes.

Speaking last Saturday before the national council of his party, the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, Modi for the first time explicitly labeled Pakistan as the author of the Uri attack. “Pakistan’s rulers,” said Modi, “should know that the sacrifice of our 18 soldiers will not go to waste.”

“Every time there is a terror attack,” continued Modi, “it appears that either the terrorist has come from Pakistan or like [former Al Qaeda leader] Osama Bin Laden has sought asylum there.”

Modi then went on to contrast India and Pakistan, saying the two countries “got independence at almost the same time, (but) have traversed difference paths” such that India today “export(s) software” while “Pakistan export(s) terror.”

In fact, India and Pakistan—the twin capitalist states born of the reactionary 1947 communal Partition of South Asia, into an explicitly Muslim Pakistan and a mainly Hindu India—have followed the same path. Under the rule of the bourgeoisie, both have failed to provide even the most basic necessities of life for large swathes of their populations, have incited communal reaction to split the working class, and have squandered countless lives and resources in pursuit of their geopolitical rivalry.

Modi himself personifies the reactionary and malignant character of the India ruling elite. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, he helped instigate and presided over an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002 that killed more than a thousand people and rendered tens of thousands homeless.

India’s Prime Minister went on to ridicule the speech Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had given to the UN General Assembly the previous week, saying that it “had been written at the behest of his masters, the terrorists, to serenade Kashmir.”

To be sure, Sharif’s posturing as the defender of the Kashmiri people was an utter fraud. The Pakistani bourgeoisie has denied the Kashmiris under its rule in Azad or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir their basic rights and it has manipulated and systematically sought to communalize the opposition of the people in Indian-held Kashmir, while using it to legitimize its reactionary conflict with India.

That said, Modi clearly had no rebuttal to Sharif’s charges of massive Indian state violence and repression in Kashmir. Instead he denounced—and as is in Sharif’s case not without justification—Pakistan for committing similar crimes against its own people.

In mid-August, well before the Uri events, the Modi government announced that India would hit back against Pakistan by denouncing Pakistani human rights violation in Balochistan and by giving more “political space” to anti-Pakistani Balochi ethno-separatists in India. In his BJP National Council speech, Modi again brandished the Balochistan card. And so as to underscore the implicit threat India will support Balochistan’s secession, he noted, as part of a mock dialogue with Islamabad, “Once Bangladesh was part of your country. You couldn’t handle it.”

On Monday, Swaraj used her speech at the UN General Assembly to castigate Pakistan as a terrorist state and call for its diplomatic isolation. Although she did not directly name Pakistan, her meaning was unmistakable. “There are nations,” she said, that still speak that language of terrorism, that nurture, peddle it and export it.” Invoking the US’s phony “war on terror,” she said that such countries “should have no place in the comity of nations.”

The Indian elite’s hue and cry against Pakistan over Islamabad’s ties to Islamist terror is utterly hypocritical and reactionary and not only because New Delhi has its own sordid record of covert operations and is using the reputed Islamist terror menace to legitimize its own belligerent policy.

Pakistan intelligence developed close ties to Islamist groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when it served as the pivot of the CIA campaign to overthrow the Soviet-backed government in Kabul, and subsequently incorporated some of them into its machinations against India. But the US, with which the Modi government has a burgeoning military-strategic partnership, has over the past quarter-century waged and fomented one illegal war after another. And in so doing, it has made far greater use than the Pakistani elite of Islamist terror groups to advance its predatory strategic interests. From Kosovo in the late 1990s, to Libya in 2011, and Syria for the past five years, Washington has repeatedly enlisted Islamist terrorist groups as its proxy fighters, in the process blowing up whole societies.

Washington has called on India and Pakistan to pull back from further escalation. A senior US State Department official told the Press Trust of India, “Our longstanding position is that we believe India and Pakistan stand to benefit from normalization of relations and practical cooperation.” He added that Washington will “encourage India and Pakistan to continue to engage in direct dialogue aimed at reducing tensions.”

Such statements are entirely hypocritical and self-serving. As in the South China Sea, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, US imperialism is playing the most incendiary role in South Asia. Its drive to make India a frontline state in its military-strategic offensive against China, has overturned the regional balance of power, stoking an arms and nuclear-arms race, increasing the anxiety and strategic crisis of Pakistan’s venal bourgeois elite, and encouraging India in its ambitions to impose itself as the regional hegemon.

Polish Parliament approves ban on abortion

Clara Weiss

Last Friday, the Polish parliament, the Sejm, approved a draft law in a first reading that provides for a near-total ban on abortion and criminalises both women and doctors involved in abortions.

The bill was introduced by an ultra-right, Catholic lobby group and bans all abortion with the exception of those facing the imminent danger of death. Even underage girls who have been raped are denied a right to abortion. Women who abort face a charge of “prenatal murder” and a prison sentence of between three months and five years. The same applies to all and any “helpers”. This also means that even women who suffer a miscarriage run the risk of being charged on suspicion of abortion.

The bill stems from the citizens’ initiative “Stop Abortion” (Stop Aborcji), which collected 500,000 signatures for their petition. The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) has openly supported the draft from the onset. In its election manifesto for the parliamentary election in 2015, PiS had already included a total ban on abortion.

In the first reading on Friday, 267 deputies voted for the bill, 154 voted against and 11 abstained. The draft will now be forwarded to the Human Rights Committee and the Justice Committee of the Sejm. The same meeting also endorsed another draft law tightening up rules on artificial insemination significantly. Accordingly, the freezing of embryos is to be banned and only a maximum of one fertilised egg can be transplanted per operation, thereby greatly reducing the chance of pregnancy.

The existing law is already extremely restrictive. Currently, abortions are only allowed if the woman was raped, incest was involved or the fetus has severe deformities. As a result, the total number of legal abortions per year in Poland is listed at 2,000. Experts, however, estimate that in fact between 80,000 and 150,000 women undergo illegal abortion in Poland or other European Union (EU) countries annually. According to one survey, one third of all women in Poland have had at least one abortion.

The latest ban on abortion is deeply reactionary and represents an attack on the democratic and social rights of the working class. In a country where one in four lives below the poverty line, including 1.4 million children and youth under age 24, a ban on family planning not only undermines self-determination for women, but is directed at the rights of the working class as a whole.

The PiS is seeking with the bill to consolidate its base amongst right-wing and church-based organisations and mobilise them to attack the rights of working people, as tensions grow within the Polish bourgeoisie over foreign and domestic policy. The PiS government plays a key role in NATO’s preparations for war against Russia, and in its first year in office has moved rapidly to build a police state aimed primarily at the working class.

The mobilisation of religious backwardness to enforce austerity measures and social attacks is not new. Following the collapse of the Stalinist regime in Poland in 1989-1990, the president at the time, Lech Walesa, repeatedly restricted abortion rights and worked closely with the Catholic Church to suppress massive opposition to his so-called shock therapy, destroying millions of jobs and the existing social system.

There is mass opposition to the new abortion laws. According to a survey by Newsweek Polska, which has links to opposition parties, 74 percent of the population opposes a tightening up of the abortion law.

But this sentiment finds no expression within the political establishment. The largest opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), which had ruled until 2015, defended the existing reactionary abortion law as a “compromise solution”. At the same time, the party declared that the bill is a “matter of conscience” and lifted party discipline for the vote. Four PO MPs voted on Friday for the abortion ban. The new liberal party Nowoczesna, founded by an influential banker and businessman, shares the line of the PO on this issue.

Protests against the new law, mainly by the pseudo-left Razem (Together) party and the organisation Ratujmy kobiety (“Let us rescue women”), do not reflect opposition to the law within the working class but rather the interests of wealthy layers of the middle class. Representatives of the PO were often allowed to speak at the latter’s demonstrations.

Several thousand people participated in protests in the largest cities of the country over a period of several months, and a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #czarnyprotest (“black protest”) was organised with many pop stars, actors and opposition politicians signaling their dissent.

The party Razem, which was founded in early 2015 along the lines of SYRIZA and the Spanish Podemos, has made every effort to suppress the central political and social issues. It divorced the new legislation from the militarist and anti-social agenda of the PiS government and limited its protest solely to the issue of women’s rights, above all from the standpoint of privileged layers of the urban middle class.

In fact, Razem’s stance, like that of other parties, does not differ fundamentally from the PiS line. The party supports NATO’s aggressive policy against Russia in Ukraine, which is being massively promoted by the Polish bourgeoisie. Like its sister parties in Europe, Razem also backs austerity and social cuts.

Razem is hostile to the social and democratic rights of the working class. The party merely represents a wing of the Polish elite, which seeks closer links with the EU. It is using the protest against the tightening up of abortion law to mobilise the upper middle class for this pro-EU policy.