France: Delevoye report prepares the slashing of pensions by Macron

Anthony Torres 

After 18 months of consultations, the high commissioner for pension reform, Jean Paul Delevoye, will today provide French President Emmanuel Macron with his recommendations for an attack on pensions to be implemented in the autumn. The announcement will be of great social and political significance. Despite widespread social anger and the isolation of the ruling class revealed in the mass “yellow vest” protests, the Macron government is making no concessions. It is accelerating the campaign to destroy the social rights established after the Second World War and the fall of fascism.

This morning, Delevoye, together with the minister of health and solidarity, Agnès Buzyn, will receive the trade unions and employers who have been involved in the consultations for more than a year, before submitting his report to Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The pension reform bill will be introduced in the fall. However, it will not be debated in Parliament until 2020, after the municipal elections, given its obvious unpopularity, and will come into force in 2025.

The new “universal” points-based pension system will replace the 42 current pension schemes. Pensions will be calculated based on the number of quarters that an employee has worked. They will no longer be calculated using the best 25 years for private employees and the last six months of work in the case of civil servants. This will equate to major reductions in pension payments, particularly since the “points” accrued by workers have no fixed value, and can be lowered at any time by the government.

While the retirement age will formally remain 62, in practice it will be determined by a so-called equilibrium age of 64. Those who retire before 64 will have their payment cut, as for workers who currently leave before the retirement age. In other words, the effective retirement age for a full pension is being raised by two years.

While the financial aristocracy is building up the repressive apparatus of the state to mobilise against the working class, these professions will not be affected by the pension cuts. The police, which physically repress workers and young people, as well as customs officers and prison guards, will retain their early retirement age of 57 or even 52 years.

In contrast, urgent care workers in the public hospital system, who have struck against the lack of resources and the onerous conditions of work, will retire under the same terms as their private colleagues. Even with a clause accounting for the physically taxing nature of their work, they will be able to retire on a full pension at 60 at the earliest.

A further reduction has been planned in the subsidy provided to workers who make so-called insufficient contributions to their pension, in the name of balancing the pension system by 2025. However, the government has opted not to implement this in the current budget, as had been foreshadowed. This is in order to ensure the implementation of the overall pension reform, and reduce the threat of mass opposition in the working class escaping outside the control of the trade unions—which have already been weakened by the “yellow vest” protests. The measure will be postponed until either after the municipal elections of 2020 or the social security financing bill of 2021.

When asked about the presentation of the Delevoye report, the unions hypocritically sought to cover their long collaboration with the government in negotiating the attack. Frédéric Sève of the CFDT said on Thursday, “[W]e hope there will be a credible, constructive approach that takes into account the reality of work and the difficulty of certain processions, to avoid a brutal standardisation.”

The award for hypocrisy went to Philippe Martinez, the head of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). “The main victims of this reform will be the precarious, the temporary workers, who will not have a full career,” he said. He added the claim that the retirement age being maintained at 62 was “really taking us for fools.” Having said all this, however, Martinez added casually that “something must be done” to finance pensions.

As with the other reforms of Macron and his predecessors, the unions have participated in the so-called social dialogue to work out the destruction of the Labour Code, the privatisation of the national railway network, and the slashing of unemployment benefits. The criticisms that the unions are now theatrically proclaiming have already been worked out behind the scenes with the employers and the government for 18 months. The unions know what is being carried out by the government and support it.

It is a lie that these cuts are necessary because there is no money. Billionaires in France have tripled their assets since the 2008 crash. Bernard Arnault, the head of the luxury fashion group LVMH, recently surpassed the $100 billion threshold, and surpassed Bill Gates as the world’s second richest man. The European Central Bank has showered billions in public funds upon the financial institutions and banks over the past decade. But corporations and governments are seeking to boost profitability and competitiveness while slashing social spending to free up resources for massive military budget increases and preparations for war.

The ruling class directly finances the majority of the trade unions’ revenues, which is why these corporatist apparatuses and their political allies refused to mobilise any struggle in support of the “yellow vest” protests or in opposition to Macron’s anti-social policies. Instead, the unions, with Martinez at the forefront, slandered the “yellow vests” and declared they were in the pay of the bosses and the far right.

Social opposition is growing across Europe to militarism and austerity, expressed in this year’s national teachers’ strike in Poland and strikes in Portugal, Belgium and Germany against the freezing of inflation-adjusted wage increases. The ruling class, however, is offering no social concessions. The banks are imposing an authoritarian policy, riding roughshod over the views of the vast majority of the population.

Confronted with the growing opposition of workers and youth, Macron is basing himself on and expanding the police-state measures enacted in the wake of the former Socialist Party government’s state of emergency. The attacks now being carried out against the working class can only be carried out only through the building of an authoritarian regime. Thus, Macron hails Pétain, the leader of the Vichy collaborationist regime, and arrests hundreds of “yellow vests” who protested his government on Bastille Day, leading them to empty warehouses surrounded by barbed wire.

The unions, which are hostile to any movement against Macron, have presented the legitimate demands for social equality of the “yellow vests” as the actions of the far right. This is a lie. Macron’s pension cuts show that the unions are the accomplices of the employers and the government in imposing austerity and covering the preparations for an authoritarian regime.

The way forward is the preparation of an international struggle of the working class, independent of the trade union apparatuses, in a movement to overthrow capitalism and transfer power to the workers.

The European Union expands its war against refugees

Marianne Arens

There is growing worldwide outrage at the numbers of refugees dying in the Mediterranean and the inhumane conditions in Libyan refugee camps, where people are tortured and die horrifically. After the courageous captain of the Sea Watch, Carola Rackete, landed shipwrecked asylum seekers in Lampedusa, defying an Italian government ban, more than half a million people signed a petition supporting her and quickly raised €1.5 million for her legal defence. Sixty German cities and towns agreed to accept the refugees.

The EU has responded with new plans to expand its war on refugees. It is considering military operations in the civil war in Libya and in the Sahel to take over prisons and establish new concentration camps, which are referred to as “transit centres” and “disembarkation platforms.” Military patrols are to block the coast of the Maghreb. Alongside the EU Foreign and Home Affairs Ministers meetings taking place this week, more and more similar demands are being raised.

A week ago, the Bild ran with the headline, “Does the military have to take care of order in Libya?” It quoted retired General Lothar Domröse demanding that soldiers from EU countries be deployed to Libya to “train security protection and coastal protection.” In the same article, German Development Minister Gerd Müller (Christian Social Union, CSU) demanded that the United Nations gain access to Libya and administer the camps itself.

In the Neue Osnabrück Zeitung Müller demanded an immediate international “rescue mission” for the refugees in Libya. Weeping crocodile tears, he complained that people only had the choice of “dying in the camps through violence or hunger, dying of thirst in the desert or drowning in the Mediterranean (...) The EU has switched off its spotlights.” What was needed now was “a joint humanitarian initiative by Europe and the United Nations to rescue refugees on Libyan soil. The new EU Commission must act immediately.”

Leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) Christian Lindner told Die Welt newspaper, “The solution must be that we create decent housing and legal escape routes to Europe inside North Africa, with the United Nations refugee agency.” Shipwrecked people had to be rescued, but they would have to be “returned to the starting point of their journey,” i.e. to Libya. “We have to face the truth,” said Lindner, “among the refugees are also economic migrants who are not being persecuted who have no legal right to stay”.

The head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf), Hans-Eckhard Sommer, spoke up on broadcaster WDR saying he was in favour of “a coalition of European states creating a protection zone in Libya” in order “to take care of the people” there and bring them back to their countries of origin. He reasoned that “we must prevent people from facing mortal danger.”

Mathias Middelberg, the internal affairs political spokesman of the Christian Democrat parliamentary group, was determined to “protect” African migrants with brute force, i.e. to keep them out of Europe with rifles and barbed wire. He told news agency DPA, “In the medium term, we need to implement the decisions of the EU Council of June 2018,” and that meant “even greater cooperation with countries of origin and transit to reduce migration” as well as “disembarkation platforms on the Mediterranean coast.”

Middelberg was referring to the EU summit of June 2018, when EU governments decided to completely seal off fortress Europe and force migrants into de facto concentration camps in Africa.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn demanded that the EU-backed and supported Libyan “unity government” should now “finally allow camps to be built under the umbrella of UNHCR and IOM [International Organization of Migration]”. According to Asselborn, there was “urgent need for about six reception centres for every 1,000 migrants.”

Finally, David McAllister (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), who chairs the European Affairs committee of the EU parliament, expressed the same idea. He was also the election manager of the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen in her candidacy for the office of EU Commission President. In the Bild newspaper McAllister explicitly advocated “additional operations in cooperation with NATO” and “joint patrols of EU member states and neighbouring countries in the Mediterranean (e.g. Tunisia).”

The demands and plans being expressed indicate a clear pattern: the EU wants to use the refugee crisis as an opportunity to invade North Africa by military force and take control in Libya and other countries. It wants to construct huge concentration camps there, in which migrants can be returned who have already reached Europe.

The EU military advance into Africa, however, pursues even wider goals: access to oil, natural gas, rare earths and other raw materials, as well as the occupation of strategic positions against rivals China and the USA. More and more, the EU is turning into a monstrous military union. The fate of migrants is the last thing that worries the EU politicians.

In their attempts to get out of Libya, around 360 migrants have been on a hunger strike for eight days. In early July, they survived the attack on the Tadzhura detention centre near Tripoli. Over fifty detained refugees were killed and around 150 injured when a rocket hit the camp. The hunger strikers, who fear further attacks, are also refusing to be transferred to other prisons because they do not want to give up their hope of reaching Europe.

In sharp contrast to the EU’s plans, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is calling for the immediate evacuation of all imprisoned migrants and refugees from Libya. According to findings of the UNHCR and the IOM, about 50,000 registered refugees and an estimated 800,000 other migrants are said to be caught up in a country being engulfed by civil war. So far, the UNHCR has only been able to get some 600 out of Libya, including taking 295 to Italy and 289 to Niger.

The migrants who are on hunger strike in Tadzhura have once again demonstrated to the world the murderous conditions that face people trying to escape on their dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. According to IOM data, 4,068 people have reached mainland Italy or Malta this year, while 3,750 have been picked up by the Libyan Coast Guard and taken back to the torture camps.

By July 15, 682 people had died attempting the crossing. On average, this is three to four people a day drowning, dying of thirst, or perishing from lack of help.

Why the India-China Border Issue Remains Intractable

Anand Benegal

Why is the Sino-Indian border dispute considered intractable in nature? Will it become more/less resoluble in the near future?

This commentary examines the conditions for its resolution, derived from past research on border disputes, bargaining, and negotiations in international relations. It considers three conditions for resolution: 1) If neither country sees an interest in continuing this conflict 2) If the contours of the resolution seem like a win-win scenario for nationalist-realists on both sides, and 3) if both sides have the ability to make reneging on an agreement a costly affair.

First, China has likely calculated that it is more logical to wait out the current border status quo to arrive to a more beneficial deal in the future. This is due to the interest in a swift resolution seeming to be more from India's side given its relatively weaker position based on military strength and economics. China's growth projection for 2020 is 6-6.5 per cent. India's economy grew quicker in 2018-19 (by 7 per cent), and is expected to steadily grow at around 7.5 per cent over the current and next two financial years. However, this belies the sizeable difference between their GDPs: China's GDP for 2018-19 was US$ 13.6 trillion, while India's GDP for the same year was US$ 2.72 trillion (approximately 5 times less than China's). Therefore, China's gains from a 6 per cent growth are substantially greater than India's gains from a 7 or 7.5 per cent growth. China is therefore increasing its economic differential relative to India.

Domestically, there have also been questions about the resilience of the Indian economy including concerns that India's GDP measurements are unsound, resulting in an inflated figure and lending a measure of uncertainty to projected growth estimates. In terms of military spending, data put out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows China's military spending to be US$ 250 billion in 2018-19, while India's was US$ 66.5 billion. This paints a clear picture of the military-economic power differential between India and China. Since China is growing more powerful over time in military-economic terms, waiting out the status quo to arrive at a future resolution is a rational option.

Second, there is serious doubt about whether a "win-win" narrative can ever emerge for nationalists on both sides given the present scenario. Territorial integrity is a central driver to India's national identity ever since Indian Independence in 1947. Indian society is extremely diverse in terms of regional cultures, religions, ethnicities, and linguistics. In this context, the belief in the sanctity of India's territoriality aids the conception of an Indian nationality and what it represents. Historically, however, India has come to territorial resolutions which resulted in a net loss of territory. One instance is the 2015 India-Bangladesh land swap agreement, and another is the 1976 agreement which granted the previously disputed Katchatheevu Island sovereign recognition by India as a Sri Lankan island. (Officially, India does not recognise this as "ceding" territory).

Conversely, China's history of treaties (examples include Tajikistan, Russia, Myanmar and Pakistan) points to a trend in which Beijing only seems to accept territorial dispute resolutions that result in net territorial gain for China. The projection of historical wrongs using Ming and Qing era maps makes territorial concessions difficult for China without 'loss of face'. In fact, even a resolution involving acknowledgement of the current territorial status quo could be painted as a narrative of Chinese concession, triggering external observers (states like Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the US) to demand withdrawals and concessions elsewhere in the South China Sea (SCS). This is a circumstance Beijing does not want to entertain as the SCS is a core maritime interest.

Beijing also likely believes that India is the more flexible party in bilateral border negotiations based on precedent. This perception therefore may lead them to expect a future agreement that results in net territorial gain. However, this belief would be a miscalculation on China's part. The existence of territories (Aksai Chin, Demchok) claimed by India and controlled by China results in a scenario in which India would be unwilling to come to a resolution that contributes to territorial concessions to China.

Third, even if a land border agreement was reached, how could India guarantee its enforceability? China will be secure that India will not renege on a land boundary agreement due to its superior military and economic standing which enables swift and effective reprisal. India does not share this same security, and is more wary of China reneging on an agreement. India has also noted China's territorial encroachments into Nepal, Bhutan, and India (prominent cases include the case of almost a thousand troops entering Ladakh's Chumur sector in 2014, and a stand-off in Sikkim in 2017) and is therefore unlikely to trust that any agreement made will stand firm. This lack of trust and India's unequal ability to enforce any possible resolution solidifies the intractability of the dispute.

The discernible imbalance in the India-China power differential, past history and current nationalism, core interests, and lack of mutual trust operate in a matrix and reinforce the intractability of the border issue. Projecting from these current conditions, it does not seem likely that there will be a land border resolution between the two states in the near future. Unless there is a foundational change in bilateral relations involving a substantial increase in India's military-economic capacities and a reversal in Beijing's negotiating approach, the status quo is projected to continue.  

Merck Make-IT Africa Start-up Programme 2019 for African Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 17th July 2019

About the Award: If you have answered yes to any of the questions above. Then we are looking for you! The Joint Start-up Programme, a collaboration between Merck Accelerator with Tech Entrepreneurship Initiative “Make-IT in Africa” is your gateway to quickly explore and validate the potential for co-creating and working in in the health sector especially in partnership with Merck.

Apply to get a chance to work on a collaboration project with existing Merck’s innovation projects.
Fields:

• Digital Solutions in the Healthcare Sector
• Bio-Sensing and Interfaces
• Liquid Biopsy Technologies

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: We are looking for start-ups that fulfil the following criteria:

• Registered in an African country and operative for at least a year
• A business model with a focus on the SDG’s and a solution in the fields of Healthcare, Life Sciences, Performance Materials and other search fields such as Biosensing and Interfaces, and Liquid Biopsy
  Technologies
• Start-ups with at least 2 cofounders
• The team supports gender equality and diversity
• Applicants must be fluent in English

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: This is your gateway to quickly explore and validate the potential for co-creating and working in partnership with Merck and profit from the broad network of Make-IT in Africa. In addition, we have a few perks for the best start-ups:

• Business Case Development:
  • Fully paid bootcamp in Nairobi for top 20 start-ups (5 per each region) to ideate and develop business cases for collaboration with Merck
  • Continuous business support, technical support and online mentoring and coaching
  • Scale-Up Diagnostics and Design for Scale Training
• Ecosystem Learning Journey:
  • Spotlight and exhibition at the South Africa Innovation Summit in Cape Town for 4 finalists
  • Spotlight and Demo Day at Merck in South Africa for 4 finalists
  • Spotlight and exhibition at MEDICA conference in Dusseldorf for 4 finalists
• Corporate Collaboration: A fully paid trip to Merck Innovation Center at the HQs to pitch for a collaboration project with Merck for 4 finalists
• Connect and Community: Three meetups in each focus region will be conducted to connect with a rich community of founders and innovators in your region going through the same challenges, as you exchange ideas and build lifetime connections.
• Access to Make-IT Fellowship:
  • Investor meetups
  • Business opportunities
  • Potential exposure measures

Duration of Award: August 5 – November 27, 2019

How to Apply: Our program will be targeting start-ups across Africa. We will have one application platform where participants will be required to specify which region they are applying from and where their business is registered: North Africa, Eastern Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Acumen East & West Africa Fellows Programme (Fully Funded Leadership Programme for Emerging Leaders) 2019

Application Deadline: 11th August, 2019

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Countries in East and West Africa

To be taken at (country): Fellow’s Home country

About the Award: The program equips extraordinary individuals from across East and West Africa with the knowledge, support system and practical wisdom to unlock their full potential and drive positive change in society. Fellows are bright minds and big thinkers who dare to do what’s right, not what’s easy, to create positive change in their country. Fellows can come from diverse cultural, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds and work in any sector, and they must be committed to ending poverty in their community through their work.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: 

• Innovators who either started an organization or enterprise, or who are driving change within an existing organization or company.
• Men and women of all ages and education levels who are able to participate in a program conducted in English.
• East Africans who demonstrate a commitment and concrete connection to the region.
• Leaders with strong personal integrity, unrelenting perseverance and moral imagination.
• Committed individuals ready to undergo an intensive yearlong personal transformation and leadership journey.

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Fellowship: Over the course of a year, Fellows remain in their jobs while taking part in five week-long seminars, where they receive the tools, training and space to innovate new ideas, accelerate their impact, build a strong network of social leaders from across their region and around the world.

Duration of Fellowship: 1 year

How to Apply: The online application consists of:

• Background information
• Resume/CV
• Short & long answer questions

It is important to go through the Application instructions on the Fellowship Webpage before applying.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Acumen East Africa Fellows Programme

Vodacom Discover Graduate Programme 2019 for Young African Leaders

Application Deadline: 31st August 2019

Eligible Countries: South African Citizen by Birth/Naturalisation prior to 1994, however citizens of DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania are encouraged to apply.

About the Award: Vodacom Group is a leading African communications company providing a wide range of communication services, including mobile voice, messaging, data, financial and converged services to over 103 million customers. From its roots in South Africa, Vodacom Group has grown its mobile network business to include operations in Tanzania, the DRC, Mozambique, Lesotho and Kenya. Vodacom’s mobile networks cover a population of over 260 million people. Through Vodacom Business Africa (VBA), Vodacom Group offers business managed services to enterprises in 32 countries. Vodacom Group is majority owned by Vodafone (64.5% holding), one of the world’s largest communications companies by revenue.

Type: Job

Eligibility:

• Must have less than 2 years working experience post studies.
• Must be under the age of 25 years old.
• South African Citizen by Birth/Naturalisation prior to 1994, however citizens of DRC, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique and Tanzania are encouraged to apply for consideration in those markets.
• Must have obtained a minimum of 65% aggregate for completed or most recent academic results.
• Must have a minimum of a B-degree (B-Com, BSc & B-Tech) qualification (NQF 7).
• A 3 year National Diploma (NQF 6) will be considered in the following areas only:
  • Electrical / Electronic Engineering
  • Computer Software Engineering and
  • Information Systems/Information Technology

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: Gaining high business exposure from day one, you’ll experience rotations in different areas of our organisation. We’re committed to developing and inspiring fresh talent so you can expect plenty of support and guidance as you develop your skills in your chosen field. It’s a challenging and rewarding adventure, and as you work alongside some of the industry’s leading experts you’ll develop the solutions that will shape our customers’ futures and yours.

Duration of Award: Fulltime

How to Apply:

Step 1

• Before you can apply for a position, please ensure that you meet all of the above criteria.

Step 2

• Complete the questionnaire below by choosing any one category from the list and answering all questions correctly.

Step 3

• Once you have completed the questionnaire successfully, you will only then be prompted to apply accordingly.

Step 4

• Once you’ve registered and applied, we’ll email you confirmation of receipt. Our Resourcing Team will then carefully assess your application and provide you with feedback every step of the way!

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Borlaug-Adesina Fellowship 2019 for Young African Agropreneurs

Application Deadline: 31st July 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries

To be Taken at (Country): Iowa, USA

About the Award: The World Hunger Fighters Foundation, in partnership with the World Food Prize Foundation, USA, is establishing this year-long Fellowship Program, presenting an unparalleled opportunity to outstanding African youths between the ages of 21 and 30 years old to attend the WHFF Africa Youth Institute at the World Food Prize Foundation in Iowa, United States of America. It is an innovative educational program that challenges promising youths across the continent to join forces with other youths globally to solve the most critical problems we face on the planet, providing real-world experiences to prepare them, as Borlaug-Adesina Fellows, for success and high-impact careers to that will end hunger across the world.

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility: Outstanding African youths between the ages of 21 and 30 years old.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The Fellows will be provided with opportunities to gain exposure and experience at any of the International Agricultural Research Centers around the world, or with a select number of global food and agribusiness companies.

Duration of Award: 1 year

How to Apply: APPLY TODAY

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Children’s Trafficking and Exploitation is a Persistent, Dreary Phenomenon

Cesar Chelala

Child trafficking and exploitation are again in the news after the Wall Street trader Jeffrey Epstein was charged on July 8 with sex trafficking crimes involving dozens of minors. Among the latest accusation is one by Jennifer Araoz, 32, who said that Epstein raped her when she was 15, and she had been working at his home giving him massages. After the incident, Araoz became profoundly depressed, had anxiety and panic attacks, and had to drop out of school shortly afterward. Her case is just one of the many cases being investigated against the New York financial adviser.

Children’s trafficking and exploitation is a widespread phenomenon that is causing enormous suffering throughout the world. It can take several forms such as forced labor, sexual exploitation and child begging, among other practices. It is estimated that 4 million women and girls worldwide are bought and sold each year either into marriage, prostitution or slavery. Over one million children enter the sex trade every year. Although most are girls, boys are also victims.

The extent of the problem

A report presented to the European Parliament showed that in Egypt criminal gangs kidnap African migrants and subject them to the worst kind of abuses, and reclaim steep ransoms from their families. It is estimated that between 25,000 to 30,000 people were trafficked in the Sinai Peninsula between 2009 and 2013.

In the United States, as many as 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe are brought to the country and forced to work as servants or prostitutes. The US government has prosecuted cases involving hundreds of victims. In other countries where this problem is frequent, the prosecution rate is lower.

Child sex tourism is an aspect of this worldwide phenomenon, and it is concentrated in Asia and Central and South America. According to UNICEF, 10,000 girls annually enter Thailand from neighboring countries and end up as sex workers. Thailand’s Health System Research Institute reports that children make up 40% of those working in prostitution in Thailand. And between 5,000 and 7,000 Nepali girls are transported across the border to India each year and end up in commercial sex work in Mumbai or New Delhi.

Commercial sexual exploitation

Although the greatest number of children forced to work as prostitutes is in Asia, Eastern European children from countries such as Russia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic, are increasingly unwilling victims.

As a social and pathological phenomenon, prostitution involving children does not show signs of abating. In many cases, not only individual traffickers but also organized groups kidnap children and sell them into prostitution, with border officials and police frequently serving as accomplices.

Because of their often undocumented status, language deficiencies and lack of legal protection, kidnapped children are particularly vulnerable in the hands of smugglers or corrupt and heartless government officials. “Trafficking is a very real threat to millions of children around the world, especially to those who have been driven from their homes and communities without adequate protection,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

Commercial sexual exploitation of children is a growing problem worldwide. The reasons include increased trade across borders, poverty, unemployment, low status of girls, lack of education (including sex education) of children and their parents, inadequate legislation, poor law enforcement and the eroticization of children by the media, a phenomenon increasingly seen in industrialized countries.

Consequences of sexual exploitation of children

Social and cultural reasons force children into entering the sex trade in different regions of the world. In many cases, children from industrialized countries enter the sex trade because they are fleeing abusive homes. In countries of Eastern and Southern Africa, children who became orphans as a result of AIDS frequently lack the protection of caregivers and become, therefore, more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.

In South Asia, traditional practices that perpetuate the low status of women and girls in society fuel this problem. Children exploited sexually are prone to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. In addition, because of the conditions in which they live, children can become malnourished, and develop feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and depression.

Besides the moral and ethical implications, the impact that sexual exploitation has on children’s health and future development demand urgent attention. Throughout the world, many individuals and nongovernmental organizations are working intensely for the protection of children’s rights. Many times, their work puts them in conflict with governments and powerful interest groups.

Policies to protect children

There is general agreement that a victim-centered human rights approach is the best possible strategy to address this problem. Its focus should be punishing the exploiter and protecting and rehabilitating the child.

UNICEF has been particularly active in calling attention to children’s exploitation and in addressing its root causes. This organization provides economic support to families so that their children will not be at risk of sexual exploitation; it improves access to education, particularly for girls, and is a strong advocate for children’s rights.

The work of nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies should be complemented by governments’ actions. Those actions should include preventing sexual exploitation through social mobilization and awareness building, providing social services to exploited children and their families, and creating the legal framework and resources for psychosocial counseling and for the appropriate prosecution of perpetrators. The elimination of children’s exploitation is a daunting task, but one that is achievable if effective policies and programs are put in place.

Sexual Predators in the Power Elite

John W. Whitehead

“As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom.”

—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Power corrupts.

Anyone who believes differently hasn’t been paying attention.

Politics, religion, sports, government, entertainment, business, armed forces: it doesn’t matter what arena you’re talking about, they are all riddled with the kind of seedy, sleazy, decadent, dodgy, depraved, immoral, corrupt behavior that somehow gets a free pass when it involves the wealthy and powerful elite in America.

In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption—especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity and predatory behavior—has become the great equalizer.

Take Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile recently arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls.

It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

This is part of America’s seedy underbelly.

As I documented in the in-depth piece I wrote earlier this year, child sex trafficking—the buying and selling of women, young girls and boys for sex, some as young as 9 years old—has become big business in America. It is the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.

Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.

According to a 2016 investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”

Who buys a child for sex?

Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

Ordinary men, yes.

But then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules or, rather, who are allowed to sidestep the rules that are used like a bludgeon on the rest of us.

These men skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.

Over a decade ago, when Epstein was first charged with raping and molesting young girls, he was gifted a secret plea deal with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s current Labor Secretary, that allowed him to evade federal charges and be given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist: allowed to “work” at home six days a week before returning to jail to sleep. That secret plea deal has since been ruled illegal by a federal judge.

Yet here’s the thing: Epstein did not act alone.

I refer not only to Epstein’s accomplices, who recruited and groomed the young girls he is accused of raping and molesting, many of them homeless or vulnerable, but his circle of influential friends and colleagues that at one time included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Both Clinton and Trump, renowned womanizers who have also been accused of sexual impropriety by a significant number of women, were at one time passengers on the Lolita Express.

As the Associated Press points out, “The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager’s interactions with underage girls, and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.”

In fact, a recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing a 2,000-page document linked to the Epstein case to be unsealed references allegations of sexual abuse involving “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”

This is not a minor incident involving minor players.

This is the heart of darkness.

Sex slaves. Sex trafficking. Secret societies. Powerful elites. Government corruption. Judicial cover-ups.

Once again, fact and fiction mirror each other.

Twenty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut provided viewing audiences with a sordid glimpse into a secret sex society that indulged the basest urges of its affluent members while preying on vulnerable young women. It is not so different from the real world, where powerful men, insulated from accountability, indulge their base urges.

These secret societies flourish, implied Kubrick, because the rest of us are content to navigate life with our eyes wide shut, in denial about the ugly, obvious truths in our midst.

In so doing, we become accomplices to abusive behavior in our midst.

This is how corruption by the power elite flourishes.

For every Epstein who is—finally—called to account for his illegal sexual exploits after years of being given a free pass by those in power, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) more in the halls of power and wealth whose predation of those most vulnerable among us continues unabated.

While Epstein’s alleged crimes are heinous enough on their own, he is part of a larger narrative of how a culture of entitlement becomes a cesspool and a breeding ground for despots and predators.

Remember the “DC Madam” who was charged with operating a phone-order sex business? Her clients included thousands of White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers, none of whom were ever exposed or held accountable.

Power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.

It’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.

It’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.

For every Jeffrey Epstein (or Bill Clinton or Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.

The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it.

The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex.

The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers and its total control of the populace.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.

As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”

After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical.They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”

Power corrupts.

And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.

As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for too long now, Americans have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.

We need to restore the rule of law for all people, no exceptions.

Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

This culture of compliance must stop.

The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.

The state of denial must cease.

Let’s not allow this Epstein sex scandal to become just another blip in the news cycle that goes away all too soon, only to be forgotten when another titillating news headline takes its place.

Sex trafficking, like so many of the evils in our midst, is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.

If we want to put an end to these wrongs, we must keep our eyes wide open.