Financial parasitism and the American oligarchy

Patrick Martin

The report of plans by the Trump administration to push through yet another $100 billion rip-off for the super-rich underscores the urgent reality facing the working class: American society can no longer afford the endless demands of the ruling elite for the accumulation of ever-greater personal wealth.

This is, of course, a global problem. As an Oxfam study found last year, eight billionaires control more wealth than the poorer half of humanity, some 3.6 billion people. Six of those eight are Americans, and nowhere is the conflict between the needs of working people and the insatiable appetite of the financial aristocracy so great as in the United States.

One mega-billionaire alone, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, the world’s richest man, has seen his fortune rise nearly $50 billion in 2018—enough to pay a bonus of $100,000 to each of the company’s more than half a million workers.

The proposal for another massive tax handout is the latest expression of a bipartisan agenda of wealth redistribution, which has proceeded over the course of the past several decades under both Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, the greatest transfer occurred under the Obama administration in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse, with trillions allocated to inflate the financial markets—the principal mechanism for engineering the bailout of the rich.

A recent report by the Roosevelt Institute and the National Employment Law Project reveals the staggering level of financial parasitism that characterizes the American economy. The report examined stock buybacks overall, and in detail for three major industries: restaurants, retail sales and food manufacturing.

Under the financial deregulation pushed by both Democratic and Republican administrations over the past 25 years, stock buybacks have soared from less than 5 percent of earnings in the early 1980s to 54 percent of earnings in 2012, and nearly 60 percent today.

Such figures put paid to the pro-capitalist mythology suggesting that high corporate profits will “trickle down” to the masses because companies will invest those profits in new machinery and hiring new workers. Actually, they spent well over half of their profits enriching big shareholders and top management, who hold the lion’s share of stock.

Remarkably, the restaurant industry spent far more on stock buybacks than it made in profits, 136.5 percent. That means that companies in this sector went into debt, borrowing money to give payouts to investors. The top five restaurant chains for buybacks included McDonald’s, YUM Brands (Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut), Starbucks, Restaurant Brands International (Burger King, Tim Horton’s) and Domino’s Pizza. If the same money had been divided among the workers, it would have raised wages by 25 percent.

The retail industry spent 79.2 percent of net profit on stock buybacks, and companies like Walmart, CVS, Target, Lowe’s and Home Depot could have given workers across-the-board raises of 63 percent instead. For food manufacturing (Pepsico, KraftHeinz, Tyson Foods, and Archer Daniels Midland, among others), the comparable figures are 58 percent of net profit going to stock buybacks, but the profits were larger and could have financed raises of 79 percent to workers.

Stock buybacks particularly enrich CEOs, who generally take the bulk of their income in stock, and thus benefit when the buyback drives up the price. CEOs reaping the most spectacular returns, named in a report this week by Politico,included Safra Katz of Oracle ($250 million), Thomas Kurian, also of Oracle ($85 million) and Ajay Banga of Mastercard ($44.4 million).

Another fact exposes the enormous sums being looted by the corporate and financial aristocracy. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that 350 Goldman Sachs executives and board members who received stock options in 2008, at the height of the global financial crash, will have accumulated $3 billion dollars by the time these options expire this year.

The flood of stock buybacks has been triggered by the mammoth $1.5 trillion tax cut pushed through by Trump and the Republican Congress last December with the complicity of the Democrats. Corporate America is funneling $2.5 trillion into the pockets of shareholders through buybacks, dividends, mergers and acquisitions, and other financial manipulations.

There was evidently some resentment in sections of the super-rich that the tax cut applied mainly to corporate and personal income taxes, and left the capital gains tax rate unchanged. In response, the Trump administration has indicated that it is preparing to reverse previous precedent and is considering an executive action to change the rules for taxing capital gains—the profits made from the buying and selling of stocks, bonds and other financial assets—so that the wealthy can deduct the effects of price inflation.

This will cut the capital gains tax by one-third, or $102 billion over ten years. Two-thirds of this sum, or $66 billion, would accrue to the top 0.1 percent of Americans.

This is an administration that demonizes millions of working people who come to the United States seeking safety and a better life, calling them “illegal aliens” because they are undocumented. But when it comes to the interests of the billionaires, there’s no concern over what is legal, only over how best to fatten their portfolios.

What sustains the Trump administration, in the face of mounting popular hostility to its retrograde social policies, flagrant attacks on democratic rights and unbridled militarism, is the character of the nominal opposition. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, no less dedicated than Trump to defending the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

There is not a single social problem that can be resolved so long as the corporate and financial elite rules over American and world economy. An end to the domination of these social parasites means an end to the economic system, capitalism, that exists to maintain and expand their wealth and power.

The Dilemma of a Threshold

Vijay Shankar


The nuclear planner is acutely involved in analysis of when and under what political conditions opposing leadership (military or otherwise) may resort to the employment of nuclear weapons. For nations with a policy of no first use (NFU), the answer is 'in response to the first-use (FU) of a nuclear weapon under conditions as stipulated in the doctrine.' However, between nuclear-armed states, the one with a first use (FU) policy is faced with a more complex set of issues which will invariably rack up the question: 'are political ends served with first-use of nuclear weapons knowing that an escalatory response may well be massive and place value targets in its cross hairs?' 

Does first-strike come paired with the ability to offset a nuclear response? Indeed there is the theoretical possibility that the first strike may altogether neutralise the opposition’s capability of a nuclear response; but this, as the evolution of nuclear thought and development of nuclear arsenals have shown, is a fantasy. Even the smallest retaliation in a nuclear exchange targeting a city will imply horrific destruction that the first striker must contend with. To put matters in perspective, consider the following: the destructive potential of a nuclear weapon, say a 20 kiloton nuclear weapon airburst, targeting a city such as Karachi (in 2017, metropolitan area population was estimated at 23 million with a population density of 24,000 per sq km) will result in at least 8,00,000 primary casualties and another 12,00,000 secondary (statistics approximate based on casualty curves, Abraham Henry, Nuclear Weapons and War, 1984).One only has to recall the geographic extent and casualties of the 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster to appreciate that the hazards of a nuclear encounter are not abstract notions. In the radiation fallout spread from Scandinavia to the Black sea, over 1,16,000 people were affected while Belarus has since shown a 2400 per cent annual increase in incidents of thyroid cancer.

The capability to respond unfailingly and credibly to a nuclear first strike lies at the heart of a deterrent strategy driven by an NFU policy. Faced with the certainty of appalling destruction in response to a nuclear adventure, why a state armed with nuclear weapons should contemplate FU remains bizarre since it is at odds with the very idea of survival. Whatever be the conditions of conflict; the approach of such a threshold when one or the other protagonist may reach for the nuclear trigger must not only be transparent but be declared if deterrence is to work, so that return to normalcy becomes viable.

The strategic irony of dealing with Pakistan is that not only is it armed with nuclear weapons, but also forewarns FU shorn of a declared doctrine. The weapon, as recent statements from their establishment suggest, is 'India-specific' and the development of their nuclear arsenal is to deter India’s conventional forces from offensive operations through the use of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW). Should that elicit a massive response, it would be countered by an assured 'limited' second strike capability. The latter, in their view, serves to 'stabilise' the former (a conversation with Khalid Kidwai, 2015); never-you-mind what or who caused the primary provocation. The doctrine remains under a cloak of ambiguity emboldened by the belief in a yet to be developed sea-based second strike launched from conventional submarines.

The first deduction that may be made from such a doctrine is that Pakistan has adopted a nuclear war-fighting doctrine notwithstanding a dangerous absence of technology necessary to provide intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and command and control on land, at sea and in air. The second deduction is that between their first and second strikes, Pakistan is convinced of surviving massive retaliation with its second strike intact. Is this a reasonable assumption or is it more bravado than sense? The third understanding is, when such a nuclear doctrine remains cloaked in ambiguity, the separation between the nuclear and principles that govern conventional warfare are blurred. This attains a catastrophic bent, significantly when conventional principles such as surprise and deception are integrated into a first or a second strike plan, for the unsaid implication is that Pakistan, in some woolly manner, holds sway over the escalatory dynamic.

In all this, what alarms is the lowering of the nuclear threshold while exposing the weapon to unintended use in its movement into the tactical battle area and the truancy of centralised command and control. Also, the deterrent value of the weapon from the standpoint of both time and space is narrowed if not foreclosed. Two more issues need to be recognised relating to the vexed geography of the India-Pakistan situation: the Line of Control (LoC) demarcates the extent of geographic control over disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir, and to advocate creating a nuclear wasteland in territorial hankerings does not quite make strategic sense. It is equally clear that among states that share common borders, a nuclear exchange will spread devastation irrespective of man-made boundaries.

In the early stages of Pakistan weaponising its nuclear capability, it had made feeble sounds of where its nuclear threshold lay. As could be deciphered, FU of nuclear weapons was predicated on four thresholds: large territorial setbacks, comprehensive military attrition, economic collapse, and political precariousness. The deterrent logic these thresholds described was really quite unmistakeable for they provided to Pakistan a context for maintaining conventional power. However, this rationality flew in the face of the acquisition of TNWs. The perception widely held among commentators in India is that the four-threshold doctrine has since been trashed.“Full-spectrum deterrence” is what Pakistan today makes its arsenal out to be. Central to this doctrine is the integration of TNWs with conventional forces and a callow belief that the nuclear escalatory ladder is in control of the first striker. This abstruse doctrinal tangle suggests that Pakistan not only fails to take account of India’s nuclear response but is also convinced of their ability to initiate a nuclear war and survive unscathed from the encounter. 

To establish where Pakistan’s nuclear threshold lies conceptually is a baffling task. However, Pakistan escalating to the nuclear dimension in response to an Indian conventional riposte to a major terror assault traced to GHQ Rawalpindi cannot be consistent with their “full spectrum” doctrine since the riposte does not come as a result of the latter's failed conventional action, which is the 'first tier' of the spectrum. Rather, in this frame of reference, the nuclear FU threshold must be assessed in the context of political realities; state policy that finds unity with jihadists and military capability. An ambiguous nuclear doctrine in these circumstances cannot alone determine the nuclear threshold; what it can do is calibrate the uncertainty that it imposes and in the process limit both extent and intensity of the riposte. 

Nuclear thresholds are neither fixed by geography nor by time but determined more by severity and purpose of military action which by some national gauge or a combination of triggers will lead to the decision that a threshold has been breached. As may be surmised from Pakistan’s peace-time nuclear posture, due to a lack of high-technology-persistent-ISR, absence of cyber and outerspace capabilities, and the fragility of the second strike; their nuclear threshold may not lie at the low end of the scale. The reason being the first tier of the spectrum may not have quite ruptured in the early stage of a crisis while the second strike remains unfledged. And yet it is equally clear that threat of nuclear use has been brought out of the backdrop to a position from where nuclear deterrence becomes a looming immediacy.

International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) Internship Programme for Graduate and University Students 2018 – Abu Dhabi, UAE

Application Deadline: Ongoing

Eligible Countries: All

To Be Taken At (Country): UAE, Bonn or New York

Type: Internship

Eligibility: Interns are selected on a competitive basis, based on the needs of the Agency.

• Candidates should be enrolled in a post-graduate programme or in their final year of undergraduate studies, in fields related to the work of the Agency (including economics, environmental sciences, law, international relations, natural sciences, engineering, political science, human resources, public administration, business administration, IT/computer sciences, communications, etc.) at the time of application and during the entire period of internship.
• Recent graduates can also be included in the internship programme provided the start date of the internship is less than one year from completion of studies.
• Applicants must be able to work in English. Another language would be an asset.

Selection Criteria: Applicants should have an interest in IRENA’s work, ability to adapt to new environments and work in a team with people from different cultural backgrounds. Interns work under the supervision of an IRENA staff member.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• Interns are paid a monthly stipend to assist them to cover living and accommodation expenses. A round-trip air or rail ticket will be provided to interns who reside beyond commuting distance from the duty station where the internship is to take place.
• All other expenses connected with the internship will be borne by the intern or by his or her sponsoring government or academic institution. When the intern is sponsored by his or her government or academic institution, stipend and travel are not covered by the Agency.
• Applicants must ensure that they have medical insurance for the duration of the internship and that they obtain any immunizations required in the country where the internship is to take place.

Duration of Programme: 3-6 Months

How to Apply: 

• Applicants should apply on-line at least three months before the intended start of the Internship Programme, including a letter of interest indicating the date of availability.
• Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
• Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for further arrangements.

Apply

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: IRENA

UNU-WIDER Visiting PhD Fellowship for International Researchers (Funded to Helsinki, Finland) 2018

Application Deadlines:

• 31st March 2018
• 30th September 2018

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Helsinki, Finland

About the Award: Visiting PhD fellows typically spend three consecutive months at UNU-WIDER before returning to their home institution. During their time in Helsinki, fellows prepare one or more research papers and present a seminar on their research findings. They may also have the opportunity to publish their research in the WIDER Working Paper Series.

Type: Fellowship, PhD

Selection Criteria: 

1. Applicants must be enrolled in a PhD programme and have shown ability to conduct research on developing economies.
2. Candidates working in other social sciences may apply but should keep in mind that UNU-WIDER is an economics-focused institute.
3. Candidates should be fluent in oral and written English and possess good quantitative and/or qualitative analytical skills.
4. Applications from suitably qualified early-career, female, and developing country researchers are particularly encouraged.
5. The programme is especially addressed at researchers at later stages of their PhD.

Number of Awards: The Visiting PhD Fellowship Programme is highly competitive and only a limited number of fellows can be accepted. In recent years, one percent of all applications have been successful.

Value of Award: UNU-WIDER provides a travel grant to cover the costs of travel to and from the location of your PhD granting institution, medical insurance (for medical and hospital services resulting from sickness and accident during your stay at UNU-WIDER), and a monthly stipend of EUR 1,600 to cover living expenses in Helsinki during the period of their fellowship. The programme does not cover expenses related to dependents.

Duration of Program: 3 months

How to Apply:  

• If you are interested in participating in this programme you should complete and submit the application form.
• As part of your application, you will be asked to upload your curriculum vitae. Your PhD supervisor will need to provide UNU-WIDER with a letter of reference, which should be emailed (by your supervisor) to the following address: phdreference(at)wider.unu.edu. The reference letter will also be used to certify that you are enrolled in a PhD programme at your university.
• Please note we do not receive applications by email or post.
• UNU-WIDER only receives online applications for the Visiting PhD Fellowship Programme twice each year. Deadlines for submission of applications are 31 March and 30 September 23:59 UTC+3 each year.
• When applying in September, you would be visiting UNU-WIDER in the period of February-June of the following year.
• When applying in March, you would be visiting UNU-WIDER in the period of August-November of the same year.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: UNU-WIDER

Important Notes: Please note that the link to the online application form will only become active one month prior to the submission deadline (e.g., application procedures start on 1 March and 1 September of each year). 

Slovak Government National Scholarship Programme for International Students, Teachers, Researchers and Artists 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 31st October 2018 (16:00 CET)

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Slovakia

About the Award: The National Scholarship Programme of the Slovak Republic supports mobility of international students, PhD students, university teachers, researchers and artists for scholarship stays at higher education institutions and research organisations in Slovakia.

Type: Short Courses/Training

Eligibility: Eligible applicants for a scholarship in the framework of the NSP:
A) students who:

• are university students at universities outside Slovakia;
• are students of the second level of higher education (master’s students), or are students who at the time of application deadline have already completed at least 2.5 years of their university studies in the same study programme;
• will be on a study stay in Slovakia during their higher education outside Slovakia and who will be accepted by a public, private or state university in Slovakia for an academic mobility¹ to study in Slovakia.

All 3 conditions must be met. This category does not apply to doctoral (PhD) studies (or their equivalent).
B) PhD students whose higher education or scientific training takes place outside Slovakia and who are accepted by a public, private or state university or a research institution in Slovakia eligible to carry out a doctoral study programme² (e.g. the Slovak Academy of Sciences) for an academic mobility¹ to study/conduct research in Slovakia.

C) international university teachers, researchers and artists who are invited to a teaching/research/artistic stay in Slovakia by an institution with a valid certificate of eligibility to carry out research and development, which is not a business company and it has its headquarters in Slovakia.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The scholarship is intended to cover international scholarship holders’ living costs, i.e. the costs related to staying in Slovakia (food, accommodation, etc.), during their study, research/artistic or teaching stay at universities and in research organisations in Slovakia. The scholarship holder can ask for assistance concerning accommodation and formalities related to entering and staying in the territory of the Slovak Republic either his/her host institution, or he/she can handle all the necessities him-/herself.
In addition, students and PhD students (eligible applicants under the category A) and B) can be awarded a travel allowance, if they apply for it along with their scholarship application.

Duration of Program: 

• Duration of a scholarship stay (students): 1 – 2 semesters (i.e. 4 – 5 or 9 – 10 months) or 1 – 3 trimesters, in case the academic year is divided into trimesters (i.e. 3 – 4 or 6 – 7 or 9 – 10 months).
• Duration of a scholarship stay (PhD students): 1 – 10 months.
• Duration of a scholarship stay (university teachers, researchers or artists): 1 – 10 months.

How to Apply: Scholarship applications are submitted online at www.scholarships.sk. Online application system is opened at least 6 weeks prior to the application deadline. Applications can be filled in only in case that the online application system has already been opened.
Applicants must fill in their online applications and upload all the required attachments in required format to their online application. It is necessary to go through the Application Procedure in the Program Webpage (Link below) before applying.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic.

Important Notes: Applicants are recommended not to submit their applications at the last moment. Number of operations executed within the last minutes prior to the application deadline may have an influence on the reaction time of the application system. Please, keep that in mind, in order not to miss the application deadline

The Great Brexit Disorder

Kenneth Surin

Seeking, and being able to afford (!), a brief psychological decompression from the nightmarish Land of Caged Toddlers, and the almost daily police executions of unarmed blacks, I’m back in the UK, where things are marginally less worse, depending of course on the stratum of society to which one happens to belong.

In Blighty, not quite as yet a banana republic like the US, young children are not (so far) kidnapped on a massive scale by the state, and its non-whites (so far) only generally endure systemic and repetitive police harassment and beatings, albeit, relative to the US, with the very occasional police killing thrown in.

The burning issue in the UK, where immigration is concerned, consists in the subsequent denial of the right of residence to those who entered the country entirely legally.

The recent scandal concerning the so-called “Windrush generation” is a central instance of this official duplicity.

The British Nationality Act was passed in 1948 to allow British Commonwealth citizens legal entry into the UK, as a way of dealing with the country’s acute postwar labour shortage.  Only proof of residency in a Commonwealth country was needed for entry.

The steamship Windrush brought the first of several thousands of immigrants from the British Caribbean to the UK.

In a government “paper reduction” exercise decades later, the entry papers of these immigrants were shredded (other euphemisms were used, but this is basically what happened).

When the Tories introduced their policy of a “hostile environment” for immigrants after they returned to power in 2010, proof of legal residence in the UK was suddenly required for all medical treatment, applications for government jobs, all kinds of licenses, and so forth.

(Incidentally, the current prime minister, Theresa May, was the architect of this vicious “hostile environment” policy when she was home secretary/interior minister prior to becoming PM.  This policy was a cynical ploy to prevent hard-right Tory voters from absconding to the xenophobic and anti-immigration UKIP.)

The Windrush generation, entering the UK legally, had assumed for decades that they were legal UK residents (and were treated as such by officialdom until this policy change), and therefore saw no need to apply for UK documents such as passports, etc.

However, as a result of being classified, overnight and wrongly, as “illegal immigrants”, they were in sudden need of entry papers certifying their legal arrival in the UK decades ago.

When the Windrush generation, elderly by now, applied to the UK immigration authorities for these by now shredded entry papers, the outcome was of course devastating.

Under the Tory “hostile environment” policy, several of the Windrush generation who had spent almost all their lives in the UK were deported back to the Caribbean, summarily, with no realistic prospect of appealing their deportations, sans (no longer existing) official documents, in the hope of a return to the UK.

Others, now officially deemed “foreigners” who therefore did not qualify for NHS healthcare, but who required serious medical procedures, were now presented with catastrophically expensive medical bills.  Yet others were sacked from their jobs or deprived of welfare benefits.

Many incurred severe debt as a result, which they could not pay back, or even if some could, a consequence of being hugely indebted was a plunging of their credit rating to calamitous levels.

There has been at least one Windrush fatality connected with the “hostile environment policy.  According to The Independent:

A Windrush man who died suddenly after being classified an illegal immigrant had refrained from accessing healthcare for nearly two years before his death due to immigration concerns, a pre-inquest review has heard.

Dexter Bristol, who came to the UK from Grenada aged eight, collapsed and died from acute heart failure in the street outside his home in Camden on 31 March. He had been sacked from his cleaning job and then denied benefits because officials did not believe he was in the country legally.

It has now emerged that, according to medical records submitted to the coroner, the 57-year-old had not accessed health services since August 2016. His uncertain immigration status prevented him from going to the GP….

The Guardian revealed that the Tory government had been warned several times since 2014 of the disaster being created for the Windrush generation by its “hostile environment” policy, but chose blithely to ignore these warnings.

As an old Brit friend of mine is wont to say in his laconic Yorkshire fashion:  “Basically, they were fucked”.

Blighty is also a right old mess in other respects.

Decades of Thatcherism and neo-Thatcherism (Blair’s Labour) have exacted a devastating toll on the UK’s social fabric.

Austerity, enacted by the Tories when they came to power in 2010 in the name of debt-reduction, is an absolute con:  UK debt (public sector net debt, excluding private banks) has risen by 50% since the Tories took office in 2010.

At the same time, the rich have prospered mightily. According to the 2018 Sunday Times Rich List, in the 10 years since the global financial crash, the British super-rich, many belonging to the parasitic financial sector, have tripled their wealth.

The same Rich List shows that workers on average still do not earn as much as they did in 2007-2008, the start of the Great Recession. As my old Yorkshire friend will say yet again:  “Basically, they are being fucked”.

Therein lies a stark tale of the Two Britains.

The UK press is overwhelmingly rightwing.  The BBC is not much better.  Reporting on Gaza, for instance, the Beeb provides reports on “Palestinian-Israeli fighting”, without disclosing how many unarmed Palestinians, including medics (wearing highly visible identification) and children, have been shot by the snipers of “the most moral army in the world”.

With the mediascape so dominated by the right, the tale of the Two Britains is vastly under-reported.  More headlines were devoted to the outfits worn by Meaghan Markle and Princess Kate to the Wimbledon tennis.

And as for any detailed reporting about the tragedy unfolding in Yemen, putting Humpty Dumpty back together is a more likely prospect, and this despite the fact that the UK is a major arms supplier for the barbaric Saudis.

The Great Brexit Disorder continues.  Theresa May got the majority of her cabinet to sign onto an agreement which could, optimistically, be presented to the EU as a basis for negotiation. It took the EU a mere 8 minutes to say the document was unacceptable.

The mangy Ukanian beast is thus slouching towards a “no deal” Brexit.  Hardly any planning has been done for this by the utterly inept Tories who, as Brits say, couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.

The economic consequences of an unplanned Brexit are likely to be dire for most Brits.

The country is going through a protracted heatwave (by Northern European standards). Temperatures above 90°F are virtually unknown here, and air-conditioning is rudimentary as a consequence.

Reservoirs are at historically low levels, and there are hose-pipe bans in many parts of the country.

Bitcoin, Innovation of Money that Can End the War on Human Nature

Nozomi Hayase

A decade since the global financial meltdown, social and economic decay continues with regional conflicts creating tension around the world. The panic of 08 unraveled the demise of Western liberal democracy, a model of governance managed through control of the markets. The global crisis of legitimacy brought by the breakdown of the system exposed the forces that defined the contemporary world.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that ended elite control of communist states, the corporations that grew out of the United States arose as a new power. In a form of corporate-led globalization with neoliberal trade agreements creating Western hegemony of markets, colonialism that began in the Age of Discovery now carries on. Callous and aggressive parts of humanity clothed in civility, seek for control through the arms industry and extractive capitalism.

Now, mankind, with capability of nuclear power in its hands seems to pose a threat to its own existence. Is there a way to break the logic of conquest and free humanity from its destructive forces within? For centuries, philosophers and theologians sought for answers in the development of morality. In modern times, scientists and biologists took on this challenge to understand the roots of violence in human nature. Now, in the age of the Internet, imagination from computer science responded to tackle this problem. Bitcoin emerged in the middle of institutional failures and began showing mankind a way to redeem man’s selfishness.

Money as a token of reciprocal altruism

How did Bitcoin, this front-runner of cryptocurrencies find a means to account for man’s tendencies toward extreme selfishness? The invention of Bitcoin arrived through the accumulative efforts of many minds. Before Satoshi Nakamoto shared the vision of peer-to-peer digital cash in the white paper, there were pioneers who stepped into this uncharted territory. Nick Szabo, a legal scholar and cryptographer with his creation of bit gold inspired this breakthrough of computer science.

In the paper Shelling Out, the Origins of Money, published in 2002, Szabo traveled into the ancient past to trace precursors of money used by our ancestors. By gaining the insight of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who saw money as a “formal token of delayed reciprocal altruism”, Szabo recognized the role of money in providing humans’ unique evolutionary advantage. Describing it as a “technology of cooperation”, he noted how early forms of money such as shells of clams solved the problem of the risk of cheating in the exchange of favor, where reciprocity won’t be made simultaneously.

Now, in this digital age, with the birth of Bitcoin, this tool for cooperation is replicated online. Satoshi, through engaging computer machines to work on mathematical puzzles of computation, found a way to check man’s selfishness that takes advantage of others’ good will. Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm enforces sets of rules across a network, by aligning incentives of all players and encouraging each to overcome selfish tendencies that prevent cooperation with a careful balance of risk and reward.

Puzzle of altruism

The genius of Bitcoin’s protocol was developed on this understanding of the origin of money that is deeply tied to evolutionary forces within mankind. At the core of this technology lies knowledge of human nature informed by evolutionary biology. Dawkins, who authored the influential book, The Selfish Gene renewed the theory of evolution by putting genes rather than individuals at the center. With the term ‘the selfish gene’, he explained how “a gene that didn’t look after its own interests would not survive”. With this gene’s-eye view of life, Dawkins appeared to have solved part of the riddle of human nature. Yet, he stumbled upon another when he recognized acts of kindness in nature. Altruism has been one of the greatest puzzles for many biologists.

Dawkins asked, “How can selfish genes support kindness?” Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection offered no incentive for organisms to help others. Dawkins went on, “If genes are striving selfishly to make more copies of themselves, how can a gene achieve this selfish objective by making their bearers act altruistically?” He contemplated how in the Darwinian struggle for existence, kindness toward others seemed to counter this programming.

Partial explanations were provided in the idea of kin selection. Inclusive fitness theory argues the reason for such behavior is due to a sharing of large percentages of genes among close relatives. Another is the idea of reciprocal altruism used to explain costly cooperation between non-relatives, with a tit for tat strategy of ‘you scratch my back and I scratch yours’. Here, altruism is widely considered by biologists to be part of a survival game for genes and nature has shown that the genes that return favor are more likely to survive. Yet, Dawkins pondered that when it comes to humans, there seems to be something more that goes beyond what these theories can explain, for helping occurs even among those who are not close relatives and is given to complete strangers who don’t return favors.

Paradox of human nature

In recent years, examples of altruistic acts emerged on the Internet with the waves of whistleblowers. From WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, we have seen individuals that acted on behalf of the public good at expense of their own well-being. These individuals demonstrated extraordinary courage, even risking their lives to protect not only the welfare of their nations, but all of humanity.

This presents an internal contradiction within humans; man is selfish and can be nasty, yet at the same time has a capacity for empathy and can act kindly to others. Dawkins found a way to embrace this paradox of human nature. He remarked how “selfish genes give rise to altruistic individuals” and asserted that the puzzle of altruism can be solved by using the concept of the selfish gene. He looked at altruism as misfiring of selfish genes and explained how “we have a lust to be nice, even to total strangers, because niceness has been hardwired into us from the time we used to live in small groups of close kin and close acquaintances with whom it would pay to reciprocate favors”.

Civilization seems to have lost this paradox of human nature. Western construction of morality split an evolutionary force in nature into opposite tendencies. In efforts to attain virtues that are considered positive, humanity suppressed others that have been deemed negative and unworthy. Philosopher Jacob Needleman described how religious and moral doctrines of European cultures created a dualistic morality that “supports the radical separation of the good (however it is understood) and the evil (that which resists the good)”. He noted such morality becomes “ ‘moralism’ when it imposes a sense of good and evil that diminishes the interconnectedness of life”.

Duality of human nature with selfishness on one hand and altruistic attributes like empathy on the other, created an internal conflict within man. This made people pit one side of human nature against the other. This one-sidedness of a human view in favor of certain characteristics over the other led to the failure of self-honesty, making it difficult for us to truly account for our deeds. Selfish parts of ourselves that are denied and condemned become dark. Efforts to eradicate this force made it more hostile and cunning. The extreme selfishness created through society’s refusal to accept human nature in its fullness has become destructive. It began to pose a threat to civilization itself.

The value of networked individuals

Systems of governance based on political ideologies, incapable of holding the paradox of human nature, suppressed the dynamics of life. In the last half of the 20th century, the unresolved conflicts inside man have grown, dividing the world into two competing power blocks behind the Iron Curtain. In the grand struggle of power during the cold war, Western capitalism promoted the value of the individual over the needs of the collective, while communism forced people to place the interests of a community over individuals.

The centralized model of society, both in a form of capitalism and communism, has subverted the force of evolution, by using money as an instrument of control to regulate aspects of human nature. The state’s oppression of self-interests of the majority led to the concentration of power in a few hands, stagnating the development of a capacity for altruism. As ordinary people were held hostage by this political battle of governments, being kept in a loop of a death spiral, Satoshi found the perfect equation that could restore the paradox of human nature to end this war that is waged inside each person.

While the hierarchy of institutions divides human nature, breaking apart the value of individuality and the collective, decentralization unites them, creating a higher value of the networked individual. In Bitcoin’s open horizontal platform, what one does to oneself can be directly translated into what one does to others and vice versa. Everyone’s contribution enriches the whole network, while harmful behaviors bring loss for all. In this inclusive circle, contradiction between the logic of service to oneself and service to a group can now be reconciled. What an individual does out of one’s self-interests can become a communal act of giving because it benefits all in the network.

In this invention of free software, Satoshi liberated human nature that was bound up by intellectual property of the nation-state built on archaic knowledge of man. Centralized systems of politics are inherently undemocratic. In such system, the reform and progress of society often rely on the conscience of individuals who can demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to act altruistically to correct the imbalance of human nature. Whistleblowers are a canary in a coal mine, signaling the weakening of democracy. The risks and sacrifices that the system requires from these individuals become unsustainable. Assange has been kept in the arbitrary detention for 6 years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, without access to medical care and sunlight. Manning was sentenced to prison for 35 years, while Snowden remains in exile, being called for execution by U.S. political leaders.

Evolve to solve

Now, Bitcoin brings a creative way to solve problems by opening the path of evolution. In this new paradigm, one no longer has to sacrifice one’s needs in order to act altruistically and one does not have to give up aspirations for altruism in order to preserve self-interests. Upon economic incentives of selfishness, a spiral staircase of Bitcoin’s DNA can emerge. The incentive structure that is built upon a realistic assessment of humanity allows individuals to connect with their own self-interests and through a transparent network engage themselves in holding each other accountable. By distributing self interests widely across the network, it makes the system much more democratic than the current centralized model of governance. Through each taking risks voluntarily, the system increases the rewards for networked value.

In the act of releasing a protocol pseudonymously online, the unknown creator of Bitcoin launched an open source development to build a new habitat for networked individuals. Responding to the good will of strangers, developers around the world came together to engage in a labor of love to work on Bitcoin. Those ambitious and adventurous ones among us all began investing precious resources to play the market. Greed of miners through the survival of the fittest mining markets has helped the network build a global level of security.

The darkness of the old world that has yet to be enlightened became tyrannical. Now, the imagination of computer science calls us all to align ourselves with incentives coded inside our own DNA and restore the balance of human nature. Each individual’s participation in the development of this technology helps Bitcoin maintain its mathematical precision. By laying the solid foundation upon the virtue of selfishness, blocks of cooperation can be built to further improve the workings of reciprocal altruism.

France sets aside €300 billion for military in 2019-2025 budget plans

Kumaran Ira

While slashing wage levels and preparing deep cuts in basic social programs, French President Emmanuel Macron is forking over billions of euros to the super-rich and the military. On July 13, he promulgated the Military Planning Law (LPM) for 2019-2025, which will increase French military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025.

The military budget will increase €1.7 billion per year until 2022 and €3 billion per year starting in 2023. Total military expenditure over the period will be €300 billion. For 2018, it is €34.2 billion (1.82 percent of GDP), compared to €32.7 billion (1.77 percent of GDP) in 2017.

The increase in military spending underscores the fact that France is preparing for large-scale conflict amid growing tensions among the major world powers. Macron is also preparing to impose the draft for all young men and women, supposedly to bring the army closer to the people.

The military spending will go for:

* Increasing regularly planned funding of overseas wars, which will go from €650 million to €1.1 billion starting in 2020. It was €450 million in 2017.

* The acquisition of heavy weaponry for the army, including 100 modernised Leclerc tanks, 733 VBL light armoured vehicles, and 34 NH-90 helicopters.

* Buying 28 new Rafale fighter jets, 11 A330 MRTT tanker aircraft, and 11 A400M heavy transport planes.

* Building up France’s nuclear arsenal, with spending going from €3.9 billion in 2017 to €6 billion per year in 2025. This is a 65 percent increase compared to the previous LPM budget.

* Investing €4.6 billion in intelligence and €1.6 billion in military innovation, with the creation of 1,500 and 1,000 new jobs, respectively.

The rearming of French imperialism goes hand in hand with drastic cuts in social spending and draconian police state measures targeting growing social opposition among workers. Increased military spending will be financed by vast cuts in basic medical care, housing, education and other social services.

As he increases military spending, Macron is promising to cut public spending as a proportion of GDP from 56.5 percent in 2017 to 52 percent. This represents a roughly €100 billion cut.

At the same time, he is slashing the Tax on the Wealthy (ISF), which will allow holders of large fortunes to increase them by billions of euro each year. The 13 richest people in France have increased their wealth by €23.67 billion since the beginning of 2018 alone.

To justify increasing the military budget, the French army points to the neo-colonial wars being waged across France’s former colonial empire. In its 10 talking points on the budget, it claims that “our armies face a very high operational tempo, especially in the demanding theatres of the Sahel and the Levant.” It continues: “In this context, we must satisfy the immediate needs of our armies in order to ensure the long term sustainability of our engagements.”

Having already gone to war in Libya in 2011 and Mali in 2013, French imperialism is stepping up its military intervention in Africa and the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Amid ever sharper international tensions, Paris is preparing new wars in its former colonial sphere to defend its imperialist interests, most notably the vast uranium mines in the Sahel that supply French nuclear energy plants.

There is a broad discussion in official circles concerning France’s expanding wars in its former empire. David Lees, a lecturer on French studies at the University of Warwick, told RT that Macron “will now be putting more emphasis on ‘la Francophonie,’ or the French-speaking world,” aiming “to dominate the French-speaking world.” He added, “There is potential, of course, that Macron will look to Syria and look to the issues in Syria as a way to potentially ensure that the French army deploys more in Syria in the future.”

Since 2011, France has waged war in Syria alongside the United States, backing Islamist and Kurdish militias in an attempt to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In 2017 and 2018, Washington, London and Paris have carried out multiple unprovoked strikes in Syria based on lying claims that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons.

France’s reactionary rearmament campaign comes amid a vast escalation of military spending in Europe and throughout the world. The United States, whose government is openly threatening Russia and China, has carried out a spectacular increase in yearly military spending to reach €614 billion.

At the July 11-12 NATO summit in Brussels, Washington demanded that its allies pledge to boost military spending to 2 percent of GDP by the mid-2020s. Amid growing NATO threats against Russia that could provoke a global conflict among the nuclear powers, conflicts are also erupting within NATO itself, particularly between Washington and Berlin.

In this explosive and dangerous context, certain strategists of French imperialism are calling for a policy that is more independent of the United States, echoing the policy debate in Berlin. The increase in military spending is a key issue in this debate.

Speaking to France Info, Yves Boyer, an associate fellow of the Strategic Research Foundation (FRS) think tank, stressed that the European Union must “review its perception of the United States.” He added that “Europe, together with France, must re-think its security so that Europe can ensure it alone and in its interests.”

European rearmament is a warning to the international working class of the bankruptcy of the capitalist order. Caught in a financial and economic downward spiral for which they have no solution and impelled by the escalating crisis of their catastrophic wars in the Middle East and Africa, the European capitalist classes are furiously rearming, as in the lead-up to World War I and World War II. To fight against austerity, workers will be required to carry out a political struggle against militarism and war.

TSA tracks unsuspecting passengers under “Quiet Skies” program

Kevin Martinez

Members of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently disclosed a secret program to the Boston Globe detailing how federal air marshals keep track of Americans at airports who are not suspected of a crime, not under investigation, and not on any terrorist watch list. The program, ominously called “Quiet Skies,” was established to spy on and gather details on people traveling on a plane based on “suspicious behavior.”

The passengers being spied on “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to the TSA bulletin released to the Globe. The bulletin states how the agency is given wide latitude to determine which passengers to follow and to keeps tabs on and prevent ostensible threats “posed by unknown or partially known terrorists.”

The article stated how some TSA officials grew to have misgivings about the efficacy of the program and its legality, but the agency declined to say whether the program actually prevented any incidents, or even if the program really existed. Nonetheless, TSA spokesman James Gregory reportedly said the release of that information “would make passengers less safe.”

Under the Quiet Skies program, thousands of Americans traveling on airplanes have been spied on by small teams of undercover air marshals. The marshals are given a checklist to document whether the subject “was abnormally aware of surroundings” or if he or she exhibited “behavioral indicators” such as “excessive fidgeting,” “Adam’s apple jump,” “strong body odor,” “cold penetrating stare,” or simply behaviors qualified as “other.” If the “subject’s appearance was different from information provided” and had lost weight, or gained weight, or were balding, or had a beard, or mustache, or even clean-shaven, this would also be noted by air marshals.

If a subject slept during the flight, even if only briefly, this would be noted. Air Marshals would also keep tabs on seemingly innocent behavior such as if the person were in possession of a phone, or used the phone to talk or text. If the person used the bathroom, traveled or met with others, had checked baggage, or carry-on baggage, or “engaged in conversation with others,” all this would all be noted by an undercover, armed federal agent.

These observations would be documented “minute-by-minute” in two separate reports and then sent to the TSA. According to agency documents, all American citizens are automatically screened for being included in the Quiet Skies program, with their travel patterns and associations checked with a terrorist watch list and other databases.

However, even if a person was “possibly affiliated” with someone on a watch list, this may prompt additional surveillance. When someone is selected for spying, a team of air marshals is then put on that person’s next flight. According to agency documents, the team will then be given a file containing a photo and basic information about their subject.

Some 2,000 to 3,000 federal air marshals are deployed at the major airports and routes deemed to be potentially higher risk, or on routes with someone on a terrorist watch list. While this has been always the case since September 11, 2001, the Quiet Skies program, in which the TSA is actively spying on citizens as part of “special mission coverage,” only began last March.

According to TSA documents, there are about 40 to 50 air marshals on domestic flights every day, with on average, 35 people being actively followed and spied on.

The criteria upon which passengers are screened and then followed are broad. According to an internal bulletin from May, travelers may be added to the watch list if their “international travel patters [sic] or behaviors match the travel routing and tradecraft of known or suspected terrorists” or “are possibly affiliated with Watch Listed suspects.”

Suspects can remain on the Quiet Skies watch list “for up to 90 days, or three encounters, whichever comes first, after entering the United States.” The program can also target people who have spent time in one or more specific countries or whose information includes e-mail addresses or phone numbers associated with people on a terrorism watch list.

Passengers can be followed on domestic flights from the moment they pass security, board a flight, and leave their destination airports, with agents being allowed to note the license plate number of the vehicle picking up the person.

The TSA would not disclose how long the information agents collect is stored and said it was only used for internal purposes and not shared with other agencies unless “significant derogatory behavior” is observed.

According to some TSA officials who spoke to the Globe on condition of anonymity, they monitored those who posed no threat whatsoever including a businessman, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, and another police officer.

While the TSA officially denied any program was taking place until only last week, the Globe ’ s exposé has led to lawmakers and civil rights organizations speaking out against the covert domestic spying program. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the TSA to abolish the practice, and the ACLU said it plans to file a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about the program. In addition, top TSA officials have agreed to brief Congress this week.

The TSA’s air marshals program has come under renewed scrutiny following a 2017 Government Accountability Office Report revealed the agency has no information on the effectiveness of armed marshals in preventing terrorist attacks, the declared reason for their undercover presence on flights, even after spending more than $800 million on the program in 2015 alone.

UK Parliament “fake news” report demands sweeping internet censorship

Robert Stevens 

After nearly 18 months of sittings and questioning witnesses, parliament’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (DCMS) has finally released an interim report on “fake news.”

“Evidence” has been selected and manipulated to justify the committee’s demand to ramp-up the UK ruling elite’s anti-Russia campaign.

On the pretext of combating fake news from Russia, the report calls for immediate steps to crack down on the democratic rights of individuals and political organisations, censor social media and close down alternative media sources that expose the plans of the imperialist powers.

A related purpose of the report is to use allegations of Russian political interference to halt or reverse the Brexit vote.

The select committee investigation was launched in January 2017, tasked with investigating “fake news” and centring on accusations of “foreign interference” in the June 2016 referendum on UK membership of the European Union and the June 2017 general election. It was formed in tandem with the Democratic Party’s campaign against the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election which has also centred on allegations of Russian interference.

The DCMS summary states, “There are many potential threats to our democracy and our values,” including ‘fake news,’ created for profit or other gain, disseminated through state-sponsored programmes, or spread through the deliberate distortion of facts, by groups with a particular agenda, including the desire to affect political elections.”

“Such has been the impact of this agenda, the focus of our inquiry moved from understanding the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ distributed largely through social media, to issues concerning the very future of democracy. Arguably, more invasive than obviously false information is the relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans and their behaviour.”

The DCMS identifies Russia as the puppet master able to influence the thoughts and very actions of millions of people all over the world:

“In particular, we heard evidence of Russian state-sponsored attempts to influence elections in the US and the UK through social media, of the efforts of private companies to do the same, and of law-breaking by certain Leave campaign groups in the UK’s EU Referendum in their use of social media.”

The DCMS calls on the term “fake news” to be discarded by the government as there is “no clear idea of what it means, or agreed definition.” Instead, the government should put forward “an agreed definition of the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’” that “can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement.”

Why the DMCS, consisting of five Conservatives, five Labourites and a Scottish National Party representative would feel it necessary to discard the term “fake news” is clear. These are representatives of a right-wing political and corporate set-up that is universally despised. This same parliament voted to take Britain to war in Iraq based on lies that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” The most infamous “fake news” document of the 21st century, the “dodgy dossier,” was used in 2003 to justify the US/UK led invasion that resulted in over a million deaths.

Russia or “Russian” is mentioned 134 times in the report, an average of 1.5 mentions per page. It states that, “The evidence led us to the role of Russia specifically, in supporting organisations that create and disseminate disinformation, false and hyper-partisan content, with the purpose of undermining public confidence and of destabilising democratic states. This activity we are describing as ‘disinformation’ and it is an active threat.”

When it comes to quantifying the “active threat,” the DCMS offers nothing of substance. It castigates Facebook who “told us that the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) had bought only three adverts for $0.97 in the days before the Brexit vote.” It adds, “According to evidence that Facebook submitted to Congress, and later released publicly, Russian anti-immigrant adverts were placed in October 2015 targeting the UK, as well as Germany and France. These amounted to 5,514.85 roubles (around £66).”

Asked by the DMCS to provide details on all political advertising paid for by Russian agencies targeting UK Facebook users from October 2015 to date, Facebook replied in June this year, “Looking further back over the activity of the IRA accounts from as early as January 2015 (including the period of over a year before the start of the regulated referendum period), the total spend on impressions delivered to the UK is approximately $463.”

In order words, the “meddling” in British politics since 2015 by Russia consists of paying $463 in Facebook adverts!

This didn’t suit the objectives of the DCMC, who describe Facebook’s response as “obfuscation.”

After stating it has received “disturbing evidence,” of hacking, disinformation and voter suppression in elections since 2010, it notes that some of this remains unpublished.

The report seeks to link the Leave campaign with Russian interference, stating in bolded text that businessman and UK Independence Party funder “Arron Banks is believed to have donated £8.4 million to the Leave campaign, the largest political donation in British politics, but it is unclear from where he obtained that amount of money.”

Banks is estimated to be worth anything up to £250 million. Without revealing any of it, the report states, “we have evidence of... Banks’ discussions with Russian Embassy contacts, including the Russian Ambassador, over potential gold and diamond deals, and the passing of confidential information by… Banks.”

The DCMS campaign was given the imprimatur of the mouthpiece of the Remain campaign and leading voice demanding an anti-Russian agenda, the Guardian. It hailed the “plucky little committee,” editorialising that its report has “the potential to reshape the political landscape,” as it “deals with issues demanding essential action. For this is subject-matter on which neutrality is not an option.”

Citing “Russian dirty tricks and destabilisation, Facebook’s consistent refusals to acknowledge its practical, moral or legal responsibilities, and the reckless audacity and contempt with which groups like SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica, Global Science Research and Aggregate IQ—as well as the Vote Leave and Leave.EU campaigns—defied the regulatory authorities and the whole idea of the rule of law in politics,” it complains, “It is not impossible that this superior ruthlessness, audacity and defiance enabled the leave side to win the 2016 referendum...”

This must be combated by a huge assault on democratic rights, with the DCMS stating, “In this rapidly changing digital world, our existing legal framework is no longer fit for purpose.”

In a measure aimed at censoring web sites that oppose official lies, it states that government should “initiate a working group of experts to create a credible annotation of standards, so that people can see, at a glance, the level of verification of a site.”

A “new category of tech company” should be developed, “which is not necessarily either a ‘platform’ or ‘publisher.’” These companies should have a “clear legal liability” to “act against harmful and illegal content.”

This would be the basis for a dragnet to delete masses of social media content.

The liability should “include both content that has been referred to them for takedown by their users, and other content that should have been easy for the tech companies to identify for themselves. In these cases, failure to act on behalf of the tech companies could leave them open to legal proceedings launched either by a public regulator, and/or by individuals or organisations who have suffered as a result of this content being freely disseminated on a social media platform.”

It recommends, “ Paid-for political advertising data on social media platforms, particularly in relation to political adverts,” should identify their “source, explaining who uploaded it, who sponsored it, and its country of origin.”

A ban on micro-targeted political advertising to similar audiences and “a minimum limit for the number of voters sent individual political messages should be agreed, at a national level. ”