10/12/2021 US COVID death toll hits 700,000: A massacre by the capitalist system. By: Saul KanowitzRead NowThe United States marked a grim milestone Oct. 1 as the 700,000th death from COVID-19 was officially registered. Since January of 2020 the United States has also counted over 43 million cases, the most of any country on the planet for both deaths and infections. This period has tragically revealed the contradictions between the enormous resources society has to combat the disease and the inability of the capitalist ruling class to take the necessary steps to address the public health crisis. The pandemic shows the fundamental law of capitalism is that nothing must get in the way of exploitation of the human and natural resources of the planet. It can be summed up in three words, “Profits over people.” The Trump administration led an all-out attack on all social programs at the state and federal level that addressed everything from reducing inequality, poverty and hunger, homelessness to protecting the environment and the rights of labor. His administration gave credence to those who promote conspiracy theories and dismiss science and any historical facts that didn’t fit their world view. The Trump administration and the capitalist class dismissed the significance of the virus and did little to prepare. Once the virus arrived on the continent, the country was ill-prepared. Public health departments across the country implemented standard practices proven historically effective to contain airborne viruses: quarantine, masking, handwashing and social distancing were implemented. Congress rushed to pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which funded $2.2 trillion to address the pandemic with measures such as stimulus checks, and emergency funds for medical and hospital costs. Other programs extended unemployment benefits, and created supplemental unemployment benefits and Emergency Rental Assistance. The CDC issued a ban on evictions because putting people out into the streets during a communicable disease public health crisis would accelerate the spread of the deadly virus. The eviction ban was implemented when no vaccine existed. Hospitals were overwhelmed with the sick and dying and forced to implement Emergency Standards of Care, which lowered the level of care so that hospital workers could care for the thousands of unexpected patients. The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the millions of heroic essential workers, who are largely low-wage workers and disproportionately people of color and women. It was clear who really makes society run. It isn’t Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, who insultingly thanked those same essential workers for paying for their hobbies and sacrificing their lives, who are essential — it’s the working class. A rush to develop a vaccine was underway with the federal government bankrolling $18 billion in research and development for private corporations like Moderna and Pfizer. While all this was being done the business of capitalism kept on. Forbes magazine reported that in 2020 the United States counted 98 new billionaires. While those 98 were celebrating their wealth, over 20 million people lost their jobs during the same year. In addition, eleven million people who have been unable to pay their rent since the start of the pandemic have no way to do so and could face eviction if rent debt is not canceled. Capitalists demand “back to normal”, no matter the death toll Throughout the pandemic federal, state and local governments and agencies have sent mixed messages about what to do and not do. Governments tell workers and businesses to shut down, then to open up. They say that dine-in is okay then it’s not, masks are mandatory and then they’re optional. This reflects two things. One: there is a debate inside the ruling class on how best to address the pandemic. How much of a safety net is needed? How much do we need to spend? How much death is “acceptable”? Two: guidelines evolve as knowledge of the virus and our understanding of the virus changes. An unprecedented amount of money was allocated to alleviate the financial crisis facing millions of people and businesses, but the plan was always being calibrated to get the economy back at full pre-pandemic capacity. The plan’s goal was never truly to do whatever is needed to save people. What if the government had guaranteed an income to anyone who lost their jobs or small businesses from the shutdown, or that no one would lose their home and their rents or mortgages would be covered by the government? The pressure people felt to go to work and challenge the mandates would be viewed very differently by the population. Absent a “people’s first” program to deal with the pandemic, the economic uncertainty people experience contributes to making people hostile to mandates, wearing a mask, social distance and other public health measures. For a section of the population already won over by the right wing, the acts of the government are just one more infraction on their individual constitutional rights. The broader problem for the ruling class is if the population gets used to the idea of a safety net for COVID-19, what’s to prevent the population from demanding that kind of safety net for other emergencies: the hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness, or the 48 million who live in poverty, or the people with over $1.73 trillion in student debt? That is why there is a campaign by politicians and the corporate media to get people to return to work and the “normal” conditions of capitalist exploitation before the pandemic. Media articles on heroic essential workers are being replaced by frantic demands by business leaders to cut all the CARES and related benefits and end the eviction moratorium. They want to force people back to work because there is a labor shortage. These demands were answered by dozens of governors who refused the federal unemployment benefits and opted out of the program before the September 30th end date. Another part of the “return to normal” campaign is the message that the COVID-19 virus is here to stay and we should just get used to it. We should treat it like the Flu, adapt and go about our regular lives. For instance, this view was expressed in an article in The Atlantic by former Trump administration Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb. This is the cruel future the U.S. capitalist class has in mind for workers. It will take a broad-based movement of millions of people to force Congress and Biden to turn the emergency measures found in the CARES Act and other pandemic relief measures into a benefit like social security, and refuse to give in on public health efforts to decisively end the pandemic. AuthorThis article was produced by Liberation News. Archives October 2021
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10/12/2021 Left disappointed: Die Linke disaster barely averted in German elections. By: Victor GrossmanRead NowA lonely balloon floats through the hall of the election party of Die Linke in the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus in Berlin on Sunday after everyone left. With its vote share declining precipitously, The Left party averted total disaster by having three of its candidates winning seats outright. | Jan Woitas / dpa via AP BERLIN—Germany’s long election campaign, full of ups and downs, marked the end of 16 more or less placid years with Angela Merkel, 67, and her “Christian double party” (CDU and CSU) known as the “Union” (though the Christian Democratic Union’s Bavarian component, the Christian Social Union, stays somewhat separate). Until now it had joined up with the Social Democrats (SPD) as increasingly uncomfortable junior partners. But now, without Angela, her unlucky Union followers ended up with the worst vote in their history (24.1 %) and an embarrassing second place. They were edged out by their SPD ex-partners, headed by Olaf Scholz, 63, with 25.7%. A pillar of the right wing of his party, he is burdened by shady corruption scandals from his earlier days as mayor of Hamburg and his recent years as Minister of Finance. But his confident, nonchalant personality and his party’s position as lesser evil won out after an amazing upward swoop from its hand-wringing debility and despondency less than a year ago. But to head a new government a majority of the Bundestag seats is necessary. In the past, this always required a twosome. But the big chamber, jammed with 735 deputies, is now split up among six (or seven parties if one counts the Bavarian “Christians” separately), making it almost impossible for even two parties to reach a majority; so Scholz now needs two partners for a threesome. A threesome, but with whom?
The two always disliked each other. The FDP openly and unashamedly favors untaxed, unregulated big business, and they downplay ecology. Perhaps due to a well-spoken leader who skilfully sold voters on pure “trickle-down” economics with “digitalization,” the FDP shinned upward to an unexpectedly high 11.5%. The Greens have long scorned such reactionaries. But now, increasingly conservative, they have become friendlier with sectors of big business, especially auto giants like Daimler and Porsche. After an amazing but very brief stay at the top of the ladder in the polls, they slipped back to a far more modest 14.8%, which was still the best in their history. So now, with the Free Democrats smelling a chance at some of those warm, comfortable, perk-laden cabinet seats they have done without for so many years, the two seem to be smoothing over differences and will most likely opt for Olaf. We should soon know their decision. What about the other two Bundestag parties? The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has now chosen two co-chairs; one from the ranks of more rabid pro-fascists, the other from its cultivated all-for-democracy (“Who? Us, Nazis?) wing, only slightly embarrassed when the other wing betrays all too soon its genuine beliefs and plans. Although the rabid wing won alarming first places in two East German states (Saxony 24.6% and Thuringia 24%), on the national level they only just held on to a two-digit result (10.3%)—far too high but far less than they expected and down 2.3% from 2017. As yet, no other party dares to have anything to do with them. Left disappointed The most important election result is hardly discussed in the media—and when it is, then with satisfaction or joy. It is, in fact, a truly sad result; Die Linke (The Left) came out worst of all the Bundestag parties, losing about two million votes, getting barely over half the 9.2 % it received in 2017 (when it became the leading opposition party) and coming close to losing its entire status in the Bundestag, which requires a vote total of at least 5% in the national vote. The Left, with only 4.9%, was just saved from total defeat by a special rule in Germany’s complex but democratic election rules. When Germans vote, they make two crosses on their ballots; first, for a candidate in their own district, and second, for the party they prefer. The winner of the first vote gets a seat directly. The percentage a party obtains in the second vote determines how many seats it will receive, even if it doesn’t win out in a single district. Who gets these seats is decided by a list chosen by each party before the election; the more crosses obtained in that second column, the more of the nominees on the list will get a seat. If 5% is not reached nationally then none on the list get in, but only those—if any—who won out on their own in their own district. It’s a complicated system, but it does guarantee smaller parties a voice—if they can reach 5%. Sadly, the Left missed that red line level—but was miraculously saved by a special rule. If three or more delegates of a party win out in their own districts—with those first crosses—then their parties and their proportionate lists are saved, just as if they had reached 5%. And, thanks be to God or some secular deity, the Left managed to barely squeeze through. Two candidates won seats in (East) Berlin and another in eastern Germany’s second city, Leipzig. Its 4.9% will thus get it 39 seats, far less than the previous 69, but enough to form a caucus with all of its rights, rooms, staff jobs, and privileges. This near total disaster, saved by a thin thread, is of great importance. Germany, the most powerful country in Europe, is intent on economic and military expansion on a scale second only to the United States (and/or China). In a quest for supremacy, it still plays second fiddle to the Pentagon and Wall Street but is aiming at bass viol strength. All the German parties support these endeavors, and all have ties—some very close, some more complex—with powers-that-be like Bayer-Monsanto, BASF, Daimler, Aldi, Krupp, Rheinmetall, and Deutsche Bank. All but The Left, that is, with no such ties and alone in opposing a dangerous course which, despite good business with both, moves ever more belligerently towards confrontation with Russia, China, or both. A few voices in the SPD have called for the removal of American nuclear bombs from German soil or opposed armed drones, but they were not the voices of Olaf Scholz or Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. As for the Green leaders, they are loudest in demanding that Germany “stand up” to Russia. In the Bundestag, The Left has been alone. Why the Die Linke disaster? Why has The Left lost so severely, reducing its solo voice to an even smaller whisper? One reason, doubtless, was a red-baiting campaign by the Union’s Armin Laschet. In the last weeks of the campaign, desperate to regain party strength, he warned dramatically of a threatening SPD-Green-Left takeover which would plunge poor Germany into a Bolshevik hell like that still peddled daily as typical of the German Democratic Republic, the old East Germany. But that was neither new nor successful. The pressures of the coronavirus also played a part, limiting efforts of smaller parties to reach voters. Far more injurious, though, were the endless quarrels among its leaders, gladly played up in the mass media, and often centering around the personality of Sahra Wagenknecht, the party’s finest orator and best known media figure but who, step by step, has broken with her former leading positions in the party. Whether this was based on personal animosities and jealousies, personal ambition, or genuine strategy differences, it boiled up during the campaign and did plenty of damage to the party’s image. But for many on the left, the main cause of defeat was the hope of some party leaders to join with the SPD and the Greens in a coalition government. For years this was only a tiny possibility, but when the Greens and the SPD gained so swiftly in the polls, it began to look as if they might look to The Left for the necessary delegate majority to harness up a troika team and rule the German roost. With this goal in sight, The Left electioneering turned more and more against the Christian Union and the big-biz Free Democrats, while sparing the Greens and the SPD so as not to hurt their feelings, alluding only to mild differences which could surely be ironed out. This, however, required a willingness to compromise on basic questions, while both SPD and Greens stuck to their guns—almost literally. Could The Left, if in the government, further oppose NATO and call for a wider and peaceful combination of European states—including Russia? Would it continue to reject deploying Bundeswehr troops to foreign conflicts or on foreign missions? If it did, it was insisted, they could be not be included in any governing coalition. Despite the agreed-upon Left party program, this is where some of its candidates and leaders weakened: “We should not remain too hard-headed,” “We must distinguish between good missions and bad ones,” “We must weigh each mission individually,” etc. Those on the left in The Left said: “No means No! These are excuses, means of letting the camel ‘put just one toe in the tent’ to start with!” The Bundeswehr is a vital part of German expansion plans, a successor to German military aggression in Africa around 1900, in World War I, and, above all, in World War II. There can be no compromises on this issue; The Left should instead remain in opposition, save its political soul and forgo the pleasures and honors of a minor cabinet seat or two and a bit more respectability in western Germany, where—for transparent reasons—it is largely ostracized or ignored. This policy of going easy on the SPD, the Greens, and its own principles backfired disastrously. Voters who disliked or feared the post-Merkel Union did not so often vote for the far-right AfD (except in embittered Saxony and Thuringia) as for the SPD and the Greens, leaving The Left in the lurch—as a weak and hardly effective part of the Establishment. Its main candidate, Janine Wissler, did her best to counteract this trend but felt compelled to walk a narrow, rocky path in debates and interviews. And 600,000 former Left voters switched to the SPD. On many economic issues, and especially on war and peace, the delegates of The Left fought valiantly in the Bundestag. But the party was far too rarely visible in struggles in the streets, in the shops, fighting evictions, or in other sectors of everyday life and struggle where people felt most affected. Its candidates were almost always intellectuals or, if from the working class, then from its white or pink collar sectors. Few even hard-hit voters connected The Left with their personal problems. Bright spots There were exceptions. In Bremen, the active Left was strong enough to get into the city-state government—and keep fighting. The Left delegate in Leipzig who saved the party from near oblivion, the teacher Sören Pellman, went frequently to marketplaces or wherever people gathered, spoke with them, and tried to help them whenever he could, a conduct he recommended for others. He received an amazing 22.8% of the vote, far more than any other—or his own party.
Happily, The Left supported the group; within a few months, it helped in getting 350,000 signatures to put it as an “initiative” on the ballot. The Greens also supported it, but only in a lukewarm limited way. The SPD opposed it; it has too many ties to the real estate biggies who, greatly frightened of this new movement, threw everything they could muster against it—but lost. In a glorious victory—a lone bright spot in the election—the initiative received a fantastic 59% of the votes. It must now be debated and ruled upon in the newly elected city-state legislature. Despite its betrayal, the SPD won the city-state election; its popular candidate will soon be the capital city’s first female mayor, who also opposes confiscation. Perhaps, if The Left had pushed this issue more visibly, and on a national level, it might have had better results. But the issue is still very hot and can become contagious—a good contagion for a change! The big questions are now: Can The Left become a street- and shop-level fighter in coming struggles? Can it maintain its positions against armaments and military interference around the globe? Can it hold onto and spread its convictions that the billionaires and their monopolies are the biggest menaces to German democracy, to the environment, and to peace? Can it mobilize a vigorous, rousing movement, involving people of Turkish, Kurdish, and other national backgrounds, but especially all the underprivileged and most heavily exploited? Those are no easy tasks, but they indicate the direction The Left must take if it wishes to play a renewed, growing, and vitally necessary role in adding strong stones while developing the world’s rapidly changing architecture. AuthorVictor Grossman is a journalist from the U.S. now living in Berlin. He fled in the 1950s in danger of reprisals for his left-wing activities at Harvard and in Buffalo, New York. He landed in the former German Democratic Republic (Socialist East Germany), studied journalism, founded a Paul Robeson Archive and became a freelance journalist and author. His books available in English: Crossing the River. A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany. His latest book, A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee, is about his life in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 – 1990, tremendous improvements for the people under socialism, reasons for the fall of socialism, and importance of today's struggles. This article was produced by People's World. Archives October 2021 10/11/2021 Washington-backed groups plotting overthrow of Cuban government. By: Steve SweeneyRead NowDemonstrators opposed to the government of Cuba rally outside the White House, July 17, 2021. New information suggests Washington-backed groups are planning new rounds of protests on the island. | Jose Luis Magana / AP Washington-backed anti-government forces are plotting a new series of protests in Cuba over the next two months, according to information posted on a private Facebook group. MintPress News discovered that the organizations behind July’s riots in the capital Havana are organizing a general strike for Oct. 11, the day after Cuban Independence Day. This will be followed by a series of nationwide demonstrations on Nov. 20, according to the investigative news website’s report. An announcement shared by Facebook page La Villa del Humour, among other groups, urges organizations and individuals to prepare for next week’s strike. “We summon all worthy Cubans, lovers of freedom, their neighbors, their friends, and their families to a national strike on Monday, October 11,” the message says. No single organization or individual has been named as the organizer of the forthcoming action, and there are suspicions of U.S. involvement as part of its longstanding operations towards regime change in Cuba. Washington has pumped billions of dollars into subversive anti-government media operations for decades, and July’s protests were backed by a social media campaign with origins in the United States. Next month’s demonstration is badged as “a peaceful march in favor of human rights and against violence” which will converge at the National Capitol building in Havana. La Villa del Humour spokesman Alex Perez Rodriguez has struck a different tone, however, calling on Cubans to “hit the streets” until the government falls. The group started as an innocuous Facebook page for residents of the town of San Antonio de los Baños and is named after a local comedy festival. But it soon became a forum for the exchange of anti-communist memes and the promotion of anti-government actions, with many of the frequent posters residing in the U.S. state of Florida. One prolific commenter even lists his employer as the Miami Herald, a notoriously anti-Cuba newspaper which has helped to agitate for regime change in Havana. U.S. efforts to oust the Cuban government have intensified in recent months, with $20 million allocated from the House appropriations budget to promote “democracy programs” and “free enterprise and private business organizations” in the country. A similar amount has been gifted by the U.S. government’s Agency for Global Media, which is used to spread anti-government propaganda in Cuba via media and online organizations. During July’s protests, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez called for airstrikes and other military intervention against Cuba in order to oust its government. AuthorSteve Sweeney writes for the Morning Star, the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. He is also a People's Assembly National Committee member, patron of the Peace in Kurdistan campaign, and a proud trade unionist. This article was produced by People's World. Archives October 2021 10/11/2021 Pandora Papers reveal U.S. is another ruling class tax haven. By: Mark GruenbergRead NowThe massive document leak known as the 'Pandora Papers' reveals that several U.S. states are repositories for large amounts of hidden wealth. | LM Otero / AP WASHINGTON—A trove of almost 12 million internal documents, e-mails, and memos from tax havens where the rich set up secret trusts to hide from taxes—while using their corporate clout to stick tax tabs to the rest of us—highlight stateside tax havens, notably South Dakota, available to the wealthy and well-connected. And the multipart “Pandora Papers” series by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) adds that the rich and well-connected include Middle Eastern rulers who align their nations with U.S. policy and interference in the Levant. One is Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who despite his nation’s poverty, used $106 million in the last decade hidden in 36 trusts to buy 14 luxury homes, including a $33 million gated estate in Malibu, Calif. Others include the emirs of Qatar and Dubai. Those Persian Gulf sultanates sit atop a trove of oil but are also now home base and R&R site for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. And the papers list several members of the Saudi royal family, though not, so far, the kingdom’s notorious U.S. ally and ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The hidden trusts aren’t the exclusive province of Middle Eastern potentates. They include the two rulers of Hong Kong, several close allies of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, and a prominent Israeli right-wing politician. Others include Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta (son of the nation’s liberator from the British), former British “New Labour” leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Czech Premier and billionaire Andrej Babis, who’s seeking re-election this week. One law for the rich, another for the rest of us But the bad news in all of this is that in almost all cases, the secret, hidden trusts and troves of cash, and the manipulations the rich use to keep them that way—and evade taxes, too—are perfectly legal. They’re also evidence of how the rich and the corporate class have gamed the system to enrich themselves while impoverishing the rest of us. “This is where our missing hospitals are,” Susana Ruiz, tax policy lead at Oxfam International, said in a statement. “This is where the pay-packets sit of all the extra teachers and firefighters and public servants we need. Whenever a politician or business leader claims there is ‘no money’ to pay for climate damage and innovation, for more and better jobs, for a fair post-Covid recovery, for more overseas aid, they know where to look.” “The biggest blockers to transparency are the U.S. and the United Kingdom, the leader of the world’s biggest tax haven network,” blogged Alex Cobham, director of the Tax Justice Network. “We need full transparency so we can hold tax abusers accountable, especially when our politicians are among them. U.S. President (Joe) Biden must match his own rhetoric on shutting down global illicit finance, and start with the biggest offender—his own country. “But it is important that we don’t lose sight of one crucial fact: Few of the individuals had any role in turning the global tax system into an ATM for the super-rich. That honor goes to the professional enablers—banks, law firms, and accountants—and countries that facilitate them.” The ICIJ found a summary Pandora Papers document reporting banks worldwide—including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorganStanley—helped customers set up at least 3,926 offshore companies. Morgan Stanley set up 312 accounts in the offshore tax haven British Virgin Islands alone. ICIJ also reported the largest U.S. law firm, Baker McKenzie, helped create the modern offshore system, by lobbying governments here and abroad to shape weak financial regulations and laws. Some of its clients seeking to shelter income gained it from fraud and corruption, ICIJ reported. Morgan Stanley said it didn’t anything wrong, but admitted it didn’t ask its clients the source of their big money. The individual offenders, so far, are mostly outside the U.S., even if some did shovel their money into trusts headquartered in Sioux Falls, S.D. It’s home to 23 trusts, out of 206 total such tax havens here.
Rich, Republican, right-wing Which reinforces the fact that the U.S. lacks clean hands in chasing such tax-evading trusts. Behind South Dakota, with 81 such secret private trusts, sheltering $367 billion, are Florida (37 trusts), Delaware (35), Texas (24), and Nevada (14). “My concern is that…we become like Switzerland or Panama,” former State Sen. Craig Kennedy, D-Huron, who questioned the growing industry, ICIJ reported. But as a member of the minority party from 2017-21 in the GOP-run legislature, he didn’t get far. “I don’t know who the beneficiaries are, what kind of assets are being managed. People use banking and trust laws for inappropriate purposes. I can’t say that’s happening in South Dakota. But I don’t know.” Even though Trump isn’t yet listed in the Pandora Papers, he doesn’t get away scot-free. That’s because ICIJ pointed out that it’s still combing through the papers and expects to identify other prominent users of tax avoidance schemes. Probing tax avoidance is the aim of New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James’s ongoing investigation of Trump’s finances.
All this came after ICIJ said Zelensky “owned a stake” in film production and distribution companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, another foreign offshore tax haven. A month before his 2019 election, Zelensky transferred his shares to his business partner. Another connection to Trump is the main source of this latest ICIJ trove, the Panamanian law firm of Alemán, Cordero, Galindo, & Lee, or Alcogal. Its leaked files accounted for around half the documents ICIJ and its media partners, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Project, pored through. ICIJ identified Alcogal as “a go-to offshore provider for top politicians and elites in Latin America and beyond.” It numbered both The Trump Organization—the former Oval Office occupant’s company—and the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as past clients. That shows how long such overseas tax avoidance and wealth-hiding has been going on. Indeed, one trust listed among the clients of another conduit for the rich’s cash, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, dated back to 1949. Other current right-wing leaders within democracies appear in ICIJ’s lists, too. Former “New Labour” leader and British Prime Minister Blair, known for neoliberal economic policies while giving the back of his hand to Labour’s trade union base, is one. “In 2017, Blair and his wife, Cherie, became the owners of an $8.8 million Victorian building by acquiring the British Virgin Islands [BVI] company that held the property. The London building now hosts Cherie Blair’s law firm,” ICIJ reported. BVI is a longtime international tax haven. Another implicated leader is Nir Barkat, a potential successor to former far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu as Likud Party chief. Barkat’s already running for the job. A tech company owner worth $139 million and past Mayor of Jerusalem, Birkat is an ally of the settler movement that sponsors and pushes Israeli land confiscation and housing projects in Muslim East Jerusalem—projects illegal under international law. “Through a set of three companies, Barkat held shares in a British Virgin Islands shell company that owns the Russian, British, and Israeli subsidiaries of the online trading platform eToro,” in a blind trust, ICIJ’s Israeli investigative media partner, Shomrim, reported. Barkat says eToro’s directors decided on the blind trust, and the location. Back in the U.S., there’s a reason South Dakota is such a tax and trust haven. The state, now run by Trumpite GOP Gov. Kristi Noem and a GOP-heavy legislature, not only lets the rich hide their cash in secret trusts, but imposes no caps on interest rates banks and credit card firms may charge depositors—something anyone who’s gotten a dunning phone call from a big U.S. financial institution learns. Payday lenders, the worst financial sector for consumers, face a South Dakotan 36% monthly interest rate cap, but a newspaper investigation last year showed firms were able to evade it, charging up to 160%. “Trusts set up in South Dakota and many other U.S. states remain cloaked in secrecy, despite enactment this year of the federal Corporate Transparency Act, which makes it harder for owners of certain types of companies to hide their identities,” ICIJ said. “The law is not expected to apply to trusts popular with non-U.S. citizens. Another glaring exemption, financial crime experts say, is that many lawyers who set up trusts and shell companies have no obligations to examine the sources of their client’s wealth. “Clearly the U.S. is a big, big loophole in the world,” said Yehuda Shaffer, former head of the Israeli financial intelligence unit. “The U.S. is criticizing all the rest of the world, but in their own backyard, this is a very, very serious issue.” AuthorMark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of Press Associates Inc. (PAI), a union news service in Washington, D.C. that he has headed since 1999. Previously, he worked as Washington correspondent for the Ottaway News Service, as Port Jervis bureau chief for the Middletown, NY Times Herald Record, and as a researcher and writer for Congressional Quarterly. Mark obtained his BA in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked as the University of Chicago correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. This article was produced by People's World. Archives October 2021 Australia has joined the U.S. and UK games to contain China, leaving India unclear in the Quad and isolated in Asia. Tied to the waning imperial power of the U.S., India is gradually losing strategic autonomy. The recent Quad leaders meeting in the White House on September 24 appears to have shifted focus away from its original framing as a security dialogue between four countries, the United States, India, Japan and Australia. Instead, the United States seems to be moving much closer to Australia as a strategic partner and providing it with nuclear submarines. Supplying Australia with U.S. nuclear submarines that use bomb-grade uranium can violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols. Considering that the United States wants Iran not to enrich uranium beyond 3.67 percent, this is blowing a big hole in its so-called rule-based international order—unless we all agree that the rule-based international order is essentially the United States and its allies making up all the rules. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had initiated the idea of the Quad in 2007 as a security dialogue. In the statement issued after the first formal meeting of the Quad countries dated March 12, 2021, “security” was used in the sense of strategic security. Before the recent meeting of the Quad, both the United States and the Indian sides denied that it was a military alliance, even though the Quad countries conduct joint naval exercises—the Malabar exercises—and have signed various military agreements. The September 24 Quad joint statement focuses more on other “security” issues: health security, supply chain and cybersecurity. Has India decided that it still needs to retain strategic autonomy even if it has serious differences with China on its northern borders and therefore stepped away from the Quad as an Asian NATO? Or has the United States itself downgraded the Quad now that Australia has joined its geostrategic game of containing China? Before the Quad meeting in Washington, the United States and the UK signed an agreement with Australia to supply eight nuclear submarines—the AUKUS agreement. Earlier, the United States had transferred nuclear submarine technology to the UK, and it may have some subcontracting role here. Nuclear submarines, unlike diesel-powered submarines, are not meant for defensive purposes. They are for force projection far away from home. Their ability to travel large distances and remain submerged for long periods makes them effective strike weapons against other countries. The AUKUS agreement means that Australia is canceling its earlier French contract to supply 12 diesel-powered submarines. The French are livid that they, one of NATO’s lynchpins, have been treated this way with no consultation by the United States or Australia on the cancellation. The U.S. administration has followed it up with “discreet disclosures” to the media and U.S. think tanks that the agreement to supply nuclear submarines also includes Australia providing naval and air bases to the United States. In other words, Australia is joining the United States and the UK in a military alliance in the “Indo-Pacific.” Earlier, President Macron had been fully on board with the U.S. policy of containing China and participated in Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea. France had even offered its Pacific Island colonies—and yes, France still has colonies—and its navy for the U.S. project of containing China in the Indo-Pacific. France has two sets of island chains in the Pacific Ocean that the United Nations terms as non-self-governing territories—read colonies—giving France a vast exclusive economic zone, larger even than that of the United States. The United States considers these islands less strategically valuable than Australia, which explains its willingness to face France’s anger. In the U.S. worldview, NATO and the Quad are both being downgraded for a new military strategy of a naval thrust against China. Australia has very little manufacturing capacity. If the eight nuclear submarines are to be manufactured partially in Australia, the infrastructure required for manufacturing nuclear submarines and producing/handling of highly enriched uranium that the U.S. submarines use will probably require a minimum time of 20 years. That is the reason behind the talk of U.S. naval and air bases in Australia, with the United States providing the nuclear submarines and fighter-bomber aircraft either on lease, or simply locating them in Australia. I have previously argued that the term Indo-Pacific may make sense to the United States, the UK or even Australia, which are essentially maritime nations. The optics of three maritime powers, two of which are settler-colonial, while the other, the erstwhile largest colonial power, talking about a rule-based international order do not appeal to most of the world. Oceans are important to maritime powers, who have used naval dominance to create colonies. This was the basis of the dominance of British, French and later U.S. imperial powers. That is why they all have large aircraft carriers: they are naval powers who believe that the gunboat diplomacy through which they built their empires still works. The United States has 700-800 military bases spread worldwide; Russia has about 10; and China has only one base in Djibouti, Africa. Behind the rhetoric about the Indo-Pacific and open seas is the U.S. play in Southeast Asia. Here, the talk of the Indo-Pacific has little resonance for most people. Its main interest is in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was spearheaded by the ASEAN countries. Even with the United States and India walking out of the RCEP negotiations, the 15-member trading bloc is the largest trading bloc in the world, with nearly 30 percent of the world’s GDP and population. Two of the Quad partners—Japan and Australia—are in the RCEP. The U.S. strategic vision is to project its maritime power against China and contest for control over even Chinese waters and economic zones. This is the 2018 U.S. Pacific strategy doctrine that it has itself put forward, which it de-classified recently. The doctrine states that the U.S. naval strategy is to deny China sustained air and sea dominance even inside the first island chain and dominate all domains outside the first island chain. For those interested in how the U.S. views the Quad and India’s role in it, this document is a good education. The United States wants to use the disputes that Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have with China over the boundaries of their respective exclusive economic zones. While some of them may look to the United States for support against China, none of these Southeast Asian countries supports the U.S. interpretation of the Freedom of Navigation, under which it carries out its Freedom of Navigation Operations, or FONOPS. As India found to its cost in Lakshadweep, the U.S. definition of the freedom of navigation does not square with India’s either. For all its talk about rule-based world order, the United States has not signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) either. So when India and other partners of the United States sign on to Freedom of Navigation statements of the United States, they are signing on to the U.S. understanding of the freedom of navigation, which is at variance with theirs. The 1973 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty created two classes of countries, ones who would be allowed to a set of technologies that could lead to bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, and others who would be denied these technologies. There was, however, a submarine loophole in the NPT and its complementary IAEA Safeguards for the peaceful use of atomic energy. Under the NPT, non-nuclear-weapon-state parties must place all nuclear materials under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, except nuclear materials for nonexplosive military purposes. No country until now has utilized this submarine loophole to withdraw weapon-grade uranium from safeguards. If this exception is utilized by Australia, how will the United States continue to argue against Iran’s right to enrich uranium, say for nuclear submarines, which is within its right to develop under the NPT? India was never a signatory to the NPT, and therefore is a different case than that of Australia. If Australia, a signatory, is allowed to use the submarine loophole, what prevents other countries from doing so as well? Australia did not have to travel this route if it wanted nuclear submarines. The French submarines that they were buying were originally nuclear submarines but using low-enriched uranium. It is retrofitting diesel engines that has created delays in their supplies to Australia. It appears that under the current Australian leadership of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia wants to flex its muscles in the neighborhood, therefore tying up with Big Brother, the United States. For the United States, if Southeast Asia is the terrain of struggle against China, Australia is a very useful springboard. It also substantiates what has been apparent for some time now—that the Indo-Pacific is only cover for a geostrategic competition between the United States and China over Southeast Asia. And unfortunately for the United States, East Asia and Southeast Asia have reciprocal economic interests that bring them closer to each other. And Australia, with its brutal settler-colonial past of genocide and neocolonial interventions in Southeast Asia, is not seen as a natural partner by countries there. India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have lost the plot completely. Does it want strategic autonomy, as was its policy post-independence? Or does it want to tie itself to a waning imperial power, the United States? The first gave it respect well beyond its economic or military clout. The current path seems more and more a path toward losing its stature as an independent player. AuthorPrabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement. This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter. Archives October 2021 10/8/2021 How Facebook’s Quest for Profits Is Paved on Hate and Lies. By: Sonali KolhatkarRead NowNew revelations by a whistleblower prove that the world’s largest social media platform understands clearly its negative impact on society, but that profits are a greater lure than preserving democracy. Facebook’s former employee Frances Haugen, in an interview on “60 Minutes,” explained to host Scott Pelley that the social media giant has conducted internal experiments that demonstrate just how quickly and efficiently its users are driven down rabbit holes of white supremacist beliefs. The 37-year-old data scientist who resigned from Facebook earlier this year and became a whistleblower explained how the company knows its algorithms lead users down extremist paths. Facebook, according to Haugen, created new test accounts that followed former President Donald Trump, his wife Melania Trump, Fox News and a local news outlet. After simply clicking on the first suggested links that Facebook’s algorithm offered up, those accounts were then automatically shown white supremacist content. “Within a week you see QAnon; in two weeks you see things about ‘white genocide,’” said Haugen. Haugen’s testimony and the documents she shared confirm what critics have known for a long time. “We’ve already known that hate speech, bigotry, lies about COVID, about the pandemic, about the election, about a number of other issues, are prolific across Facebook’s platforms,” said Jessica González, co-CEO of Free Press, in an interview. However, “what we didn’t know is the extent of what Facebook knew,” she added. Three and a half years ago, in the midst of the Trump presidency, I wrote about giving up on an older white man related to me via marriage and who, generally speaking, has been a loving and kind parent and grandparent to his nonwhite relatives. This man’s hate-filled and lie-filled Facebook reposts alienated me so deeply that I cut off ties with him. In light of Haugen’s testimony, the trajectory of hate that he followed makes far more sense to me now than it did in 2018. Active on Facebook, he constantly reposted memes and fake news posts that he likely didn’t seek out but that he was exposed to. I imagine such content resonated with some nascent sense of outrage he harbored over fears that immigrants and people of color were taking advantage of a system that was rigged against whites by Black and Brown politicians like Barack Obama and Ilhan Omar. My relative fit the profile of the thousands of right-wing white Americans who mobbed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, egged on by a sense of outrage that Facebook helped whip up. In fact, Haugen related that Facebook turned off its tools to stem election misinformation soon after the November 2020 election—a move that she says the company’s employees cited internally as a significant contributor to the January 6 riot in the nation’s capital. The House Select Committee investigating the riot has now invited Haugen to meet with members about Facebook’s role. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg understands exactly what Haugen blames his company for, saying in a lengthy post, “At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being.” Of course, he maintains, “That’s just not true,” and goes on to call her analysis “illogical,” and that it is a “false picture of the company that is being painted.” Except that Haugen isn’t just sharing her opinions of the company’s motives and practices. She has a massive trove of internal documents from Facebook to back up her claims—documents that were analyzed and published in an in-depth investigation in the Wall Street Journal, hardly a marginal media outlet. The Wall Street Journal says that its “central finding” is that “Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands.” The crux of Facebook’s defense against such accusations is that it does its best to combat misinformation while balancing the need to protect free speech and that if it were to crack down anymore, it would violate the First Amendment rights of users. In his testimony before House Representatives this March, Zuckerberg said, “It’s not possible to catch every piece of harmful content without infringing on people’s freedoms in a way that I don’t think that we’d be comfortable with as a society.” In other words, the social media platform maintains that it is doing as much as it possibly can to combat hate speech, misinformation, and fake news on its platform. One might imagine that this means a majority of material is being flagged and removed. But Haugen maintains that while Facebook says it removes 94 percent of hate speech, its “internal documents say we get 3 percent to 5 percent of hate speech.” Ultimately, “Facebook makes more money when you consume more content,” she explained. And hate and rage are great motivators for keeping people engaged on the platform. Based on what Haugen has revealed, González concluded that “Facebook had a very clear picture about the major societal harms that its platform was causing.” And, worse, the company “largely decided to do nothing to mitigate those problems, and then it proceeded to lie and mislead the U.S. public, including members of Congress.” González is hopeful that Haugen’s decision to become a whistleblower will have a positive impact on an issue that has stymied Congress. During Haugen’s testimony to a Senate panel on October 5, she faced largely reasonable and thoughtful questioning from lawmakers with little of the partisan political grandstanding that has marked many hearings on social media-based misinformation. “We saw senators from both sides of the aisle asking serious questions,” she said. “It was much less of a circus than we usually see in the United States Senate.” What González hopes is that Congress passes a data privacy law that treats the protection of data gathered from users as a civil right. This is critical because Facebook makes its money from selling user data to advertisers, and González wants to see that “our personal data and the personal data of our children isn’t used to push damaging content… that doesn’t provoke hate and violence and spread massive amounts of lies.” The calculus of Facebook’s intent is very simple. In spite of Zuckerberg’s denials, González says, “the system is built on a hate-and-lie for profit model, and Facebook has made a decision that it would rather make money than keep people safe.” It isn’t as though Facebook is selling hate because it has an agenda to destroy democracy. It’s just that destroying democracy is not a deal-breaker when huge profits are at stake. AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives October 2021 10/8/2021 Australia’s Intelligence Organizations Helped Overthrow the Allende Government in 1973. By: Rodrigo AcuñaRead NowRecently declassified documents confirm what researchers have long claimed: that Australian intelligence worked with the CIA to instigate a coup in Chile during the Cold War. President Salvador Allende in Rancagua, Chile in 1971. (Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional Chile, Wikimedia Commons) On June 2, the Australian government conceded for the first time that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) supported CIA covert operations in Chile in the early 1970s. These operations created the climate for a coup against the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity government. The National Security Archive (NSA) recently published some of the ASIS’ station reports in Santiago, and the story has drawn attention in the Australian media. The subject of ASIS and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) activities in Chile have been the subject of inquiry by journalists, politicians, and researchers for decades. But the Australian government has long worked to cover its paper trail in Chile. Even though the declassification of these documents for the first time is a significant development, few details are revealed by the heavily redacted documents beyond the admission that Australia had an ASIS station in Santiago and collaborated to some degree with the CIA. Clinton Fernandes, a professor of politics at the University of New South Wales began the process to declassify the ASIS’ station reports in Chile in 2017 with barrister Ian Latham and solicitor Hugh Macken. According to Fernandes, when he started searching for the archives on ASIS records in Chile, the Australian “government's response was that we can't even confirm or deny the existence of records.” On May 26, Fernandes and his legal team filed a 16-page set of arguments for the declassification of ASIS records on Chile and in early June, Fernandes was finally given files on ASIS activities in Chile. Decades of Secrecy Fernandes was not the first to look into ASIS’ activities in Chile in the early 1970s. Journalist Ian Frykberg published an article in October 1974 in the Sydney Morning Herald citing two former intelligence agents who claimed it was likely that the Australian mission in Chile was working with the CIA by “acting as the conduct for money passing from the CIA to newspapers and individuals leaking propaganda information to newspapers and other influential people.” On December 2, 1974, Clyde Cameron, the Labor and Immigration Minister wrote to the Attorney General Senator Lionel Murphy about ASIO agents in Chile. “I am particularly disturbed to learn that ASIO agents have been posing as migration officers in South America,” Cameron wrote, “and I am now convinced—though firm denials are to be expected—that the reports of ASIO collaboration with the CIA in bringing about the overthrow of the Allende Government is very close to the mark.” In 1977, a Royal Commission into Australia’s Intelligence and Security (popularly known as the Hope Royal Commission) was tabled before the Australian Parliament. At the commission, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam stated: “It has been written—and I cannot deny it—that when my Government took office, Australian intelligence personnel were working as proxies of the CIA in destabilising the government of Chile.” In 1983, Seymour Hersh published a biography on ex-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger entitled The Price of Power. In that book, the New York Times investigative journalist claimed that since the CIA was aware that its agents were under close surveillance by the new Allende administration, Washington turned to its allies— in this case, Australia. By 1971, Hersh argues that the CIA station in Santiago “was collecting the kind of information that would be essential for a military dictatorship in the days following a coup–lists of civilians to be arrested, those to be provided with protection, and government installations to be occupied immediately.” A year later, Australia “agreed to monitor and control three agents on behalf of the CIA and relay their information to Washington.” "Australia’s involvement in the events following the coup continued for decades." Australia’s involvement in the events following the coup continued for decades. In 1989, journalists Brian Toohey and William Pinwill published a book on ASIS entitled Oyster: The Story of The Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Another Labor administration in Canberra took the authors to court to prevent them from publishing any material on ASIS that had not been vetted by the government. Toohey and Pinwill’s final manuscript was negotiated with officials from ASIS and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It reported that, while the November 1970 CIA proposal for ASIS to become involved in Chile was accepted by the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, ASIS itself “noted there was no vital Australian political or economic interests in Chile at that time.” In recent years, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) journalist Florencia Melgar broke the international story that notorious Pinochet secret police agent and alleged torturer Adriana Rivas (at the time on the run from Chilean authorities) was living in Sydney. For the story, Melgar said she submitted a formal request to the Australian government to investigate ASIS activities in Chile, but her request was turned down, and she was “warned” that she “risked legal prosecution” if some of the material she obtained through Chile’s Foreign Affairs official records went to print. Thus what Fernandes and his legal team achieved is no small feat. Australia, as an article in the New York Times accurately noted recently, may be the world’s most secretive democracy. The Contents of the ASIS Station Reports Although this was the first time reports officially recognized that the Australian government had an ASIS station in Santiago, Chile from 1971 to July 1973, the information published at the NSA is mainly technical. According to the NSA itself, the “documents turned over to Fernandes contain few revelations of actual covert operations, intelligence gathering or liaison relations with the CIA in Chile; those sections of the records are completely censored.” "Most of the communications relate to the difficulties that Australians faced carrying out their tasks in Chile." Most of the communications relate to the difficulties that Australians faced carrying out their tasks in Chile. Reports include comments on everyday events like communication delays, station vehicle deliveries, agent lodgings, and observations like “[a] fluent knowledge of Spanish in SANTIAGO is a necessity.” According to Fernandes, another document notes the difficulty ASIS had in getting a safe while “there are several mentions about how beautiful Chilean women are.” Despite these seemingly insignificant reports, an April 1973 memorandum states that if Australia’s role in Chile at the request of the CIA became public, Prime Minister Whitlam “would find himself in an extremely difficult political situation as, quite clearly, it would be impossible for him to present the MO9 [ASIS] presence in Santiago as being in the direct Australian national interest.” The importance of the April 1973 memorandum cannot be understated. Domestically, Whitlam came to power with the support of a large movement against the war in Vietnam. Once in office, his was the most progressive administration Canberra had seen in decades, promoting a wide range of social policies. If Australia’s activities in Chile had been discovered during Whitlam’s term in office, a section of his own Labor base could have become hostile. By July 1973, the ASIS station was allegedly disbanded, although NSA documents indicate that “one ASIS agent reportedly stayed in Santiago until after the September 11, 1973, military coup.” During the time that this final Australian ASIS agent was allegedly in Chile, leftists were being violently tortured and executed by the Chilean military. Peter Kornbluh, Director of Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects at the NSA would not speculate on that agent’s activities. “That information” said Kornbluh “is contained in still-classified documents that the Australian government should release for the verdict of history.” Australia and the Pinochet Connection Today In November, former Pinochet secret police agent Rivas will return to the Federal Court in Sydney to continue fighting her extradition. She is wanted by the judicial system in Chile for the alleged kidnapping and disappearance of seven members of the Chilean Communist Party. Rivas, a former member of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (Directorate of National Intelligence, DINA) and personal secretary to Manuel Contreras, the head of Chilean intelligence (1973-1977), has already lost two appeals. The eventual conclusion of her case could set a precedent. According to Chilean-Australian journalist Juan Miranda, there is “real proof that other members of Pinochet’s secret service” could be “living in Australia.” Miranda claims these possible members of the regime are being investigated, and at some point their presence will be raised with authorities in Australia. Diego Andrés Peñaloza Pinto is a 28-year-old law graduate from the University of West Sydney whose family emigrated to Australia from Chile in order to escape political persecution. Several of his family members were disappeared or killed by the Chilean secret police. “It is concerning and disappointing to know that the Australian taxpayer was duped into funding Australia's involvement in the toppling of a democratically elected government,” said Peñaloza after ASIS’ activities in Chile were confirmed. Peñaloza’s mother, Sandra del Carmen Pinto, added that it saddens her “that the country that gave me so much helped people that took so much from me.” Together with 70 Chilean-Australians, Pinto has added her name to an open letter sent to Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) demanding that the Australian government apologise for its participation in the overthrow of the Allende government. The open letter also requests that “the government of Australia declassify all necessary files regarding ASIS activities in Chile in the 1970s.” "Fernandes has few hopes that he will ever see the full declassification of Canberra’s reports on Chile or countries like East Timor and Cambodia." Although his work led to the Australian government admitting ASIS role in the overthrow of Allende, Fernandes has few hopes that he will ever see the full declassification of Canberra’s reports on Chile or countries like East Timor and Cambodia. If those reports were published, Fernandes is sure that they would show Australia’s intelligence agencies' “total immersion in the CIA’s activities.” The Australian government signed the new strategic defence alliance AUKUS with the U.K. and United States last month to build a series of nuclear-powered submarines and deepen cyber and artificial intelligence cooperation. In light of a recent series of Australian journalists and whistle blowers being threatened with legal actions or even arrested for their attempts to expose abuses by the Australian government, Fernandes’ comments should come as no surprise. Australia’s secretive nature, and who its key international allies are, has largely remained unchanged since September 11, 1973 when president Allende was violently removed from office in Chile. AuthorRodrigo Acuña is an independent journalist on Latin American politics and host of Alborada’s Indestructible Podcast. He holds a PhD from Macquarie University. You can follow him on Twitter at @rodrigoac7. This article was produced by Nacla. Archives October 2021 In a lecture delivered at the Sverdlov University on July 11, 1919, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov remarked, “The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another.” In other words, the bourgeois state is a political product and institutional precipitate of the social dominance of capitalists. What does this dominance consists of? It comprises the successful management of the irreconcilable class antagonisms of a given social formation. Now, insofar that the state is a site historically occupied by the ruling class, it is an instrument deployed exclusively by it to maintain power, one which is constantly re-configured so as to be effective against the efforts of the subalterns to impose controls on its operations. The fact that the state is a transformed form of social power – alienated from class society and so beyond its control – derives from the class domination of the bourgeoisie, which encompasses the whole set of economic, political and ideological forms of domination. Since the state arose in conjunction with the division of human societies into classes, it draws its sustenance from the hegemonic requirements of the dominant class, serving as the regulatory node where its economic rule is translated into political power; it is where it becomes centralized and condensed, reinforced with the power and authority of various state apparatuses. As the state is the primary agency through which the ruling class gives appropriate socio-political forms to its economic clout, the basis for state apparatuses is defined by the constitutive violence of the wage labour-capital relation; i.e., the bourgeoisie’s claim to the juridical right to appropriate the surplus-value produced by the proletariat. The class character of the state, therefore, is linked to its status as a machine which recognizes only the force and violence of the bourgeoisie, which transforms the basic fact of economic exploitation into elaborate and dense networks of consent and coercion. G. M. Goshgarian’s introduction to Louis Althusser’s “Philosophy of the Encounter Later Writings, 1978-87” notes: Because the state results from the transformation of an excess of class force, the differential between the class struggle of the dominant class and all the others (friend or foe), it is by definition the preserve of the victors in the struggle. And it is such whatever the ‘political form’ through which the dominant exercise state domination: the dominion of the landed nobility persists under absolutism, that of the capitalist class is not necessarily diminished – the contrary generally holds – with the advent of parliamentary democracy. In short, the conflictual differential between the force of the dominant classes and that of the dominated classes – the dynamics of class struggle – gives structure to the state. However, as the state is based on this differential, class struggle is inscribed in a new framework within which only one force – the force of the bourgeoisie – is recognized, which is then transformed into hegemonic power. That is why Lenin said: Every state in which private ownership of the land and means of production exists, in which capital dominates, however democratic it may be, is a capitalist state, a machine used by the capitalists to keep the working class and the poor peasants in subjection. While the capitalist state is an instrument of the ruling class – functioning as an articulated whole and existing by virtue of specific hegemonic objectives – it is not structurally static. If we try to understand the state historically – as an instance of the combination of the singular elements that give rise to it, as ensemble of social relations in which real people move and act, as an ensemble of objective conditions – it becomes clear that the state is always-already embedded in a hegemonic matrix. Even though state apparatuses are in the service of the dominant class, the complex, uneven and contradictory logic of class struggle results in the continuous accrual of internal contradictions between different branches, the accentuation of the ideological role of a given apparatus, or the consolidation of violence. However, the regular rhythms of class struggle never impact the fundamental structures of the state. While the proletariat can expand its influence in civil society and even gain parliamentary power, an elementary fact remains: since the derivative base of the state is class society and the violence upon which it rests, and its purpose is to transform the surplus of violence into legitimate force, what an electoral victory damages – through the creation of an alternative architecture of consent – is the transmission system of the state-machine. To comprehensively destroy the bourgeois state – and gain full-fledged hegemony – the proletariat has to not only open ruptures but confront the very materiality of the repressive apparatuses of the state. This process involves the construction of hegemonic apparatuses – the series of institutions, practices, and initiatives by means of which subalterns create popular organizations opposed to the logic of the bourgeois state. AuthorYanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several countries of Latin America. This article was produced by Dissident Voice. Archives October 2021 Paul Ricoeur died at the age of 92 in 2006 and on May 24 of that year the New York Times reported the death of one of France’s most famous philosophers in an obituary by Margalit Fox”). Many of Ricoeur’s ideas are interesting even when they clash with the Marxist philosophical outlook. We can always learn from those who don’t share our philosophical commitments. Fox quotes Dr. C. E. Reagan who said about Ricoeur, “In the history of philosophy, he would take positions that appeared to be diametrically opposed, and he’d work to see if there was a middle ground.” In that spirit I propose to see what middle ground Marxists might be able to share with Ricoeur ( I don't think we will find too many-- but at least two come to mind: peace is better than war and democracy is a positive good) whose philosophy, forbiddingly, is a species of “phenomenological hermeneutics.” This is not as bad as it sounds. Phenomenology is the “science” of how we experience the world and hermeneutics is a fancy word for “interpretation.” It comes from the Greek for ”interpret” (originally used for interpreting the Bible) and ultimately from the name of the Greek God “Hermes” (Roman Mercury) who was the messenger of Zeus (Jupiter). Christopher Norris (The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. by Ted Honderich) wrote that Ricoeur found in his “middle ground” way of thinking a “kindred dialectic” with Marxism. Norris points out the double aspect of interpretation (it has a “positive” and “negative” moment). His interpretation of Freud is one example: the negative-- psychoanalysis looks for the past repressed information in the unconscious mind in order to find the positive-- a cure to repression and a new possibility for the future. He also sees this in Marxism: the negative-- class struggle, oppression, revolution leads to the positive-- a new society of human equality [hopefully]. G. B. Madson (The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. by Richard H. Popkin) tells us that Ricoeur comes out of the tradition of the German Fascist philosopher Martin Heidegger (this sounds bad and it is bad but not as bad as it sounds). This tradition breaks with the mainstream of modern philosophy from Descartes through Russell and their contemporary followers (almost all philosophers but not professors of literature and cultural criticism). The first part of the break is not so bad. Modern philosophers have a tendency to start with the isolated consciousness of a particular person, the ego, and then try to see how this ego can get to an external world independent of its own thinking mind. We can agree with Heidegger that human beings find themselves, “always already”, as Madson says “in a world.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The gesture of hermeneutics is a humble one of acknowledging the historical conditions to which all human understanding is subsumed in the reign of finitude.” No problem. We awake to find ourselves always already in a specific historical context-- e.g., I’m a French worker or a German bourgeois, etc. Let’s agree not to start with the ego without its environment. But we are going to go downhill from here. We all agree with the historical consciousness as a starting point. We do not need Heidegger or his followers to tell us this. It is a basic core belief of Marxism already. Let us assume that I am a sugarcane cutter in 1950’s Cuba. My consciousness is determined by what Ricoeur calls its “historicality.” Madson says, “As Ricoeur characterizes it, effective historical consciousness is ‘the massive and global fact whereby consciousness, even before its awakening as such, belongs to and depends on that which affects it.” In other words, Mr. Sugarcane Cutter belongs to and depends upon the world dominated by Mr. Plantation Owner and overseen by Mr. President Batista (and globally Uncle Sam). Ricoeur continues, “The action of tradition [effective history] and historical investigation are fused by a bond which no critical consciousness could dissolve without rendering the research itself nonsensical.” This leads to the conclusion, Madson says, that the Enlightenment is wrong in thinking effective history must be overcome in order to really understand the “truth.” When Ricoeur proclaims that truth is historical you begin to think he must be on to something. But wait! We are informed that this way of thinking rejects the “correspondence theory of truth”. This is the theory accepted by Marxism. A proposition is true if it corresponds to a state of the external world. “My car is red” is true if and only if my car is red. But we find out, says Madson, that “a core tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that genuine understanding is not representational but essentially transformative.” Mr.Sugarcane Cutter has been reading the Communist Manifesto (or listening to Fidel broadcasting from the the Sierra Maestra mountains) and has decided that there is no correspondence between a just society and the world of Mr. Plantation Owner. He is told, “I’m sorry, but we don’t use the correspondence theory anymore.” What does it mean to say the truth is transformative. Well, you read the Manifesto and it transforms you, you “appropriate” it and interpret it in your historical context-- Cuba 1950”s-- very different from Germany in 1848. Mr. Sugarcane Cutter objects. He thinks the Manifesto is appropriate for any class society, that Marx and Engels had it in mind to lay down general truths corresponding to the entire historical epoch of capitalism. Well then, we have missed “one of the most distinctive tenets of philosophical hermeneutics: The meaning of a text is not reducible to the meaning intended by its author.” Its meaning is now what you make of it. Ricoeur is quoted: “The text’s career escapes the finite horizon lived by its author. What the text says now matters more than what the author meant to say, and every exegesis unfolds its procedures within the circumference of a meaning that has broken its moorings to the psychology of its author.” Mr. Plantation Owner thinks the Manifesto is really pro-capitalist since it calls his class the most revolutionary in history and has spread all over the world, so whatever Marx and Engels thought they were doing doesn’t matter, their work escapes their finite horizon and celebrates the achievements of capitalism. This may be going too far. Original intent is important. We must first understand the text before we can interpret it. How to make sense of the phrase “what the text says now’’? This means to Ricoeur something like “what it says to me”. But this sounds like relativism. Anyone can read Marx, etc., anyway s/he chooses. It is not relativism, says Madson. Philosophers in this school reject dogmatism and “maintain that it is never possible to demonstrate conclusively the validity of one’s interpretations, they also maintain, against all forms of relativism, that it is nevertheless always possible to argue for one’s interpretations in cogent nonarbitrary, reasoned ways [the Enlightenment lives on!]. In other words... if our interpretations can reasonably lay claim to being true, they must adhere to certain argumentative criteria, such as coherence and comprehensiveness.” Mr. Sugarcane Cutter decides that the Manifesto is both coherent and comprehensive and runs off to the mountains to join Fidel. Was he right to do so? Our philosophers, following Ricoeur, think that the purpose of interpretation, of understanding, of finding the “truth” is ultimately to better understand ourselves [the return of the ego]. They reject “objectivism” and want to suborn it to “communicative rationality. “People, Madson says, “reason together in such a way as to enable them to arrive at common agreements or understandings (however provisional) that enable them to live together peacefully, whether as members of a particular scientific discipline or as members of society.” A revolution would seem to be a breakdown of "communicative rationality”. The US blockade of Cuba would be another. But Mr. Sugarcane Cutter and Mr. Plantation Owner can’t reason together. They don’t have a “human” relation-- only an exploitative economic one. What this philosophy represents is bourgeois liberalism. It represents “none other than the core values of liberal democracy.” Remember “truth” is not “objective.” It really is for these thinkers, “subjective.” Madson quotes Ricoeur: “The truth is... the lighted place in which it is possible to continue to live and think.” That really doesn’t say anything! Madson continues, “Ricoeur has asserted that “democracy is the [only] political space in which [the conflict of interpretations] can be pursued with a respect for differences”-- that is to say, with a respect for the pursuit of truth on the part of each and every individual human being. When all is said and done, the basic tenet of philosophical hermeneutics is that there is only one truth, which is the democratic process itself.” Here is another quote from Ricoeur, from Le Monde [2004] (via BBC News): “If I had to lay out my vision of the world... I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned (and) what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do. I call it the action that suits.” This is an interesting quote, but what does it mean? This is true for everybody, including cats and dogs. It sounds like fatalism-- my actions are the result of my past history. A strange quote from someone associated with the existentialist (via Heidegger) movement. Why not try thinking outside the box? Anyway, who cares what Ricouer meant? I can interpret this to suit myself as long as I am coherent and comprehensive. Mr. Sugarcane Cutter was right to run off to the mountains. In this class riven world where profits come before people this was the action that suits. The thinking of Paul Ricoeur cannot lead to the liberation of humanity from the bestial reality of monopoly capitalism and imperialism. We will have to evaluate him again when we live in a classless society. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives October 2021 10/7/2021 Better Family Planning Can Improve Public Health, Inequality and the Environment. By: Carter DillardRead NowSmaller, more sustainable families would create massive long-term savings and catalyze sustainable development. Existential crises, from accelerating climate change to a pandemic that is mutating to overcome the defenses of our immune system, have prompted talk of the need for fundamental change. This talk rarely, if ever, touches on the one form of change that is the most fundamental: Altering the way we have kids or create future generations. It is a choice that would change who we as a society are—and who we are becoming. This option is almost never discussed, despite the disproportionate long-term positive impact better family planning policies can have on the environmental, inequality, and public health crises we face, because it means making decisions that are not individualistic in nature, but are, instead, shaped by the need to ensure a better and a more sustainable future for everyone. Whatever happens in the world, for many, that sense of familial autonomy and privacy—the right to have as many kids as they want, when they want, irrespective of the needs of both their own families and the environment, the opportunities the children will or won’t have—gives them a feeling of power and freedom. Most people are at best unaware of and at worst uncaring about how their decisions impact the freedom of others—future generations’ freedom to a fair start in life, and freedom from the ravages of the climate and other ecological crises. Much like the refusal to wear a mask during the peak of the pandemic, the assertion of autonomy relating to the questions of having kids is absurd and cruel in the current circumstances. It’s a power-grab masquerading as an assertion, rather than the praxis, of freedom. Unlike those who refuse to wear masks to protect others from the spread of COVID-19, however, people asserting the self-contradiction of procreative autonomy are buoyed up by the population growth culture pushed by governments and big business because baby-making grows the pyramid--which Nobel laureate Steven Chu decried—atop which these parties sit. In my experience—having spent over a decade wrestling with leadership in civil society and social justice to stop treating the right to have kids as an unlimited right, instead of something more nuanced like free speech—I have found that the dilemma boils down simply to being a collective action problem. Most people would plan for and have children more sustainably and equitably if they could be assured others would too. But there is a lack of trust that whoever goes first will see others follow suit. Such problems are nothing new. That is why we have a social contract and government, which can help us act collectively, and perhaps lead us to a more child-centered thinking of working together to give every child a fair start in life. What would that look like? In the United States, Black families typically have one-tenth the wealth of white families. The impacts of this wealth disparity are especially hard on kids, and can ripple forward into future generations. President Biden’s child care and tax credit proposal is a step in the right direction, but it could be better. All benefits to wealthy families who don’t need the funding could be cut. Those savings could then be used as cash incentives to power up family planning and early childhood investment systems in the United States to target child abuse by amending the federal child abuse law, incentivizing having kids only when parents are really ready, and promoting smaller and more sustainable families, as well as fostering and adoption. These changes can have 20 times the impact on climate emissions, as compared to short-term fixes, and when they are made as part of recognizing our sacred constitutional right to nature, they will create massive long-term savings and catalyze sustainable development. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) has already proposed a vehicle called “baby bonds,” which would “create a new American birthright—giving every child a fair chance at economic opportunity and mobility,” and if these changes are made progressively, they can accomplish significant sustainable changes. This change can help combat climate change and widen the opportunities for children, all while achieving goals that go beyond U.S. partisan values. It specifically prioritizes children and social equity over big business (as leftists seek to do) and improves the possibility of personal autonomy without the interference of so-called big government (thus satisfying the interests of the right wing). This is not a loss of control—when we take into account future generations, it’s a net gain, where future generations have control over their lives that a fair start would provide, control over systems of governance, and control over the environment that can help us deal with the climate change crisis in an effective manner. AuthorCarter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. He served as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and served with a national security law agency before developing a comprehensive account of reforming family planning for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives October 2021 10/7/2021 Why the World’s Eyes Are on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan Border. By: Vijay PrashadRead NowAfghanistan and Tajikistan share a 1,400-kilometer border. Recently, a war of words has erupted between Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon and the Taliban government in Kabul. Rahmon censures the Taliban for the destabilization of Central Asia by the export of militant groups, while the Taliban leadership has accused Tajikistan’s government of interference. Earlier this summer, Rahmon mobilized 20,000 troops to the border, and held military exercises and discussions with Russia and other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the Afghan government—Zabihullah Mujahid--tweeted pictures of Afghan troops deployed to Takhar province on the border of the two countries. The escalation of harsh language continues. Prospects of war between these two countries should not be discounted, but—given the role Russia plays in Tajikistan—it is unlikely. Panjshir Exiles On September 3, 2021, Afghanistan’s former Vice President Amrullah Saleh tweeted, “The RESISTANCE is continuing and will continue. I am here with my soil, for my soil & defending its dignity.” A few days later, the Taliban took the Panjshir Valley, where Saleh had taken refuge for the past fortnight, and Saleh slipped across the border into Tajikistan. The resistance inside Afghanistan died down. From 2001, Saleh had worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and then had become the head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (2004-2010). He had previously worked closely with Ahmad Shah Massoud of the right-wing Jamiat-e Islami and of the Northern Alliance. Saleh fled by helicopter to Tajikistan with Massoud’s son Ahmad. They were later joined in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe by Abdul Latif Pedram, leader of the National Congress Party of Afghanistan. These men followed the lead of the Northern Alliance, which had taken refuge in Tajikistan’s Kulob region after the Taliban victory in 1996. The personal ties between Ahmad Shah Massoud and Tajikistan’s President Rahmon go back to the early 1990s. In March 2021, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Tajikistan Mohammad Zahir Aghbar remembered that in the early 1990s Massoud told a group of Tajik fighters in Kabul, “I do not want the war in Afghanistan to be transferred to Tajikistan under the banner of Islam. It is enough that our country has been fraudulently destroyed. Go and make peace in your country.” That Massoud had backed the anti-government United Tajik Opposition, led by the Islamic Renaissance Party, is conveniently forgotten. After the Taliban took Kabul on August 15, 2021, and just before Saleh and Massoud escaped to Dushanbe, on September 2 Rahmon conferred upon the late Ahmad Shah Massoud the highest civilian award of Tajikistan, the Order of Ismoili Somoni. This, the protection afforded to the Saleh-led resistance movement, and Tajikistan’s refusal to recognize the Taliban government in Kabul sent a clear signal to the Taliban from Rahmon’s government. Rahmon says that the main reason is that he is dismayed by the Taliban’s anti-Tajik stance. But this is not entirely the case. One in four Afghans are Tajiks, while half of Kabul claims Tajik ancestry. The economy minister--Qari Din Mohammad Hanif—is not only Tajik, but comes from the Badakhshan province that borders Tajikistan. The real reason is Rahmon’s concerns about regional destabilization. Tajik Taliban On September 11, 2021, Saidmukarram Abdulqodirzoda, the head of Tajikistan’s Islamic Council of Ulema, condemned the Taliban as being anti-Islamic in its treatment of women and in its promotion of terrorism. Abdulqodirzoda, the lead imam in Tajikistan, has led a decade-long process to purge “extremists” from the ranks of the mosque leaders. Many foreign-trained imams have been replaced (Abdulqodirzoda had been trained in Islamabad, Pakistan), and foreign funding of mosques has been closely monitored. Abdulqodirzoda frequently talks about the bloody civil war that tore Tajikistan apart between 1992 and 1997. Between 1990, when the USSR began to collapse, and 1992, when the civil war began, a thousand mosques—more than one a day—opened across the country. Saudi Arabia’s money and influence rushed into the country, as did the influence of the right-wing Afghan leaders Massoud and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Rahmon—as chair of the Supreme Assembly of Tajikistan (1992-1994) and then as president (from 1994)—led the fight against the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), which was eventually crushed by 1997. The ghost of the civil war reappeared in 2010, when Mullah Amriddin Tabarov, a commander in the IRP, founded Jamaat Ansarullah. In 1997, Tabarov fled to join the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), one of the fiercest of the extremist groups in that era. The IMU and Tabarov developed close ties with Al Qaeda, fleeing Afghanistan and Uzbekistan after the U.S. invasion of 2001 for Iraq, later Syria. Tabarov was caught by the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani in July 2015 and killed. As the Taliban began to make gains in Afghanistan late last year, a thousand Ansarullah fighters arrived from their sojourn with the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. When Darwaz fell to the Taliban in November 2020, it was these Ansarullah fighters who took the lead. Tajikistan’s Rahmon has made it clear that he fears a spillover of Ansarullah into his country, dragging it back into the war of the 1990s. The fear of that war has allowed Rahmon to remain in power, using every means to squash any democratic opening in Tajikistan. Regional Balm In mid-September, Dushanbe hosted the 21st meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of the Heads of State. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan had several talks with Rahmon about the situation in Afghanistan. As the war of words escalated, Khan called Rahmon on October 3 to ask that the tension be reduced. Russia and China have also called for restraint. It is unlikely that guns will be fired across the border; neither Dushanbe nor Kabul would like to see that outcome. But both sides are using the tension for their own ends—for Rahmon, to ensure that the Taliban will keep Ansarullah in check, and for the Taliban, for Rahmon to recognize their government. AuthorVijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including "The Darker Nations" and "The Poorer Nations." His latest book is "Washington Bullets," with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma. This article was produced by Globetrotter. Archives October 2021 10/4/2021 U.S. aims for China-Vietnam split, but ‘divide and conquer’ strategy is failing. By: Amiad HorowitzRead NowA Vietnamese girl holds Vietnamese and Chinese flags prior to the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping for a visit to Hanoi in November 2017. | Hoang Dinh Nam / Pool Photo via AP One of the oldest military and political strategies known to humanity is “divide and conquer,” which can be traced back to ancient Macedonia. In modern times, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, successfully used it to play China and the USSR off against each other to the advantage of the United States. Lately, the U.S. government has been trying to utilize it again, attempting to sow division between Vietnam and China. The hope in Washington is that Vietnam might be drawn into an anti-China coalition. These attempts have failed and will continue to do so. The U.S. ruling class sees the rise of China as a threat to the unipolar, capitalist world order that prevailed after the Cold War and is desperate to draft countries into the anti-China camp. Recently, the U.S. corralled Australia into canceling a major weapons contract with France and into joining the U.S. and U.K. in the “AUKUS” nuclear submarine deal aimed at China. The U.S. government also sought to pressure Vietnam to allow construction of a U.S. naval base on Vietnamese territory, a move Washington seemed confident would be successful. The reason the U.S. government was so optimistic it could pressure Vietnam to join its coalition was its reliance, once again, on the divide and conquer strategy. Vietnam and China have a long-standing territorial disagreement over the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea (known in Vietnam as the East Sea). U.S. military planners believed this dispute could be used to drive a wedge between the two countries. However, the U.S. government fails to understand or refuses to respect, several important aspects of Vietnam’s foreign policy.
The Vietnamese government is firm in its pursuit of friendly relations with all countries, despite any disagreements they may have. In fact, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which Vietnam is a leading member, recently affirmed that only peaceful means will be pursued to settle the various territorial disputes in the South China Sea. If the above reasons weren’t enough to show that the United States was barking up the wrong tree, there is one other important reason. Despite any disagreements that may exist between the two socialist countries, the material reality is that the relationship between them is quite strong. This has become especially apparent in the last year, as there have been numerous high-level meetings between Chinese and Vietnamese government officials and between representatives from the two respective Communist Parties that govern the countries. In April 2021, after the Vietnamese elections, President Xi Jinping of China spoke with President Nguyen Xuan Phuc of Vietnam. In that conversation, Xi spoke about how the two governments must aid each other as they work to build socialism in their countries. Later in the same month, China’s defense minister, Sr. Lt. Gen. Wei Fenghe, visited Hanoi, where he met with his Vietnamese counterpart, Sr. Lt. Gen. Phan Van Giang. At this meeting, Giang stated that maintaining a strategic partnership and defense cooperation was important for both countries. At the end of the meeting, the two ministers oversaw the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two militaries. This is not the behavior of two forces that want conflict with each other, no matter how much the United States government might wish it was so. Then, at the end August, hours before U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Vietnam for an official visit, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh met with the Chinese ambassador in Hanoi, Xiong Bo. At this meeting aspects of Vietnamese and Chinese relations were discussed, including inter-party ties, foreign relations, and security links. Most notably, the two officials discussed the need to be “on guard” against any foreign forces trying to divide and create conflict between their two countries.
Just last week, on Sept. 24, Xi Jinping, who is also the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), spoke with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). In this conversation, the two spoke about working together to continue the ever growing trade and economic ties between China and Vietnam, fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, and ensuring peace in the South China Sea. Xi added that it was in both countries’ interest to work together to safeguard their socialist systems. The ties between China and Vietnam have their complications, as do all relationships between sovereign countries. However, the picture that the anti-China powers would like to paint of two countries on the brink of war is simply fantasy at best or a lie at worst. Those in Washington banging the drums for a new Cold War probably won’t stop trying to incite conflict between Vietnam and China and draw Vietnam into their anti-China club. They fail to understand, however, that such a conflict goes against the policies of the Vietnamese government, the principles of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and the best interests of the Vietnamese people. AuthorAmiad Horowitz studied history with a specific focus on Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh. He lives in Hanoi, Vietnam. This article was produced by People's World. Archives October 2021 10/4/2021 The Child Tax Credit Is a Proven Boost to American Families—Why Are Conservative Democrats Trying to Stop It? By: Sonali KolhatkarRead NowEven though the expanded CTC is a win-win for families and the economy, conservative Democrats are finding ways to oppose it. American families have struggled for decades to make ends meet with wages simply not rising as fast as the cost of living and a government social safety net that has been so deeply decimated that the U.S. now spends less on children than nearly any other wealthy nation. This year there was a small glimmer of hope that such a trend might be halted and even reversed. Democrats, using their razor-thin control of the Senate and marginal control of the House, passed an expanded child tax credit (CTC) in March 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan that not only increased the tax refund received by families with young children but also began sending them a monthly advance instead of making them wait until they filed their annual tax return. By any measure, the amounts are embarrassingly modest and only offer an increase of $1,000 to $1,600 over the entire year. Families whose incomes are low enough to qualify and have children aged 6 through 17 are now receiving $3,000 a year instead of $2,000, while those with children younger than 6 are getting checks that add up to $3,600 a year. Putting cash, however small an amount, into the hands of ordinary Americans is a win-win proposition for all but the most conservative pundits. As the 2020 CARES Act unemployment benefits--amounting to a $15 an hour wage—demonstrated, the economy as a whole is buoyed when people have more money in their pockets to spend on basic necessities. And, just as importantly, the benefits helped the most vulnerable, particularly Black and Latino workers, to stave off financial ruin. Now, the monthly CTC payments are already showing similar promise. The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University documented “a notable drop in child poverty” after just the first month of payments. Additionally, the benefits are particularly helpful for Black and Latino children, who the center estimates have twice the poverty rate of white children. Still, because the CTC relies on tax returns filed in the previous year, white children benefited more than children of color as their families were “more likely to have filed taxes.” The U.S. Census Bureau also found that after just one month of payments, food insecurity among vulnerable families dropped significantly, and families receiving checks also had less difficulty paying for weekly expenses. So convincing are the expanded CTC’s proven benefits that nearly 450 economists wrote an open letter to Congress urging them to extend the program. The CTC payments benefit roughly 39 million American families who are currently receiving monthly checks of up to $300 per child per month. Meanwhile, the cost of child care in the U.S. is exorbitant, averaging at about $1,300 per month for infants and nearly $900 per month for preschool-aged children. For families with multiple children and parents in low-wage jobs, child care is simply out of reach, and the modest CTC payments don’t even come close to covering the costs. At the same time, child care workers are so underpaid that in the wake of the pandemic, more than 120,000 have simply quit their jobs nationwide. Even the U.S. government is so concerned that the Treasury Department issued a report admitting that “the existing child care system in the United States, which relies on private financing to provide care for most children… fails to adequately serve many families.” This is not a new problem. In a 2014 speech at the White House Summit on Working Families, former President Barack Obama acknowledged that, “in 31 states, decent childcare costs more than in-state college tuition,” and that “there are other countries that know how to do childcare well.” Child care is such an important factor for families with young children that the latest Harris Poll survey found that 76 percent of working parents felt that child care decisions were a major factor in their employment decisions. The cost of raising a child is estimated to be nearly a quarter of a million dollars—a sum that is wildly out of reach for low-income families. Combined with persistent wealth and income inequality, it is no wonder that, as per a recent CDC report, 2020 was “the sixth consecutive year that the number of births [in the U.S.] has declined.” One 2009 study concluded that cheaper child care is the key to reversing falling birth rates. There are two simple ways to make child care cheaper: heavily subsidize the child care industry (the U.S. government, after all, subsidizes fossil fuel and agricultural industries), or put more money into the hands of parents with children. Currently, the expanded CTC benefits are valid only for a year, and some Democrats want to make them permanent. But President Joe Biden wants them extended for only four years via a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill called the Build Back Better Act. And some conservative Democrats want to roll back the expanded benefit right away. Accountable.US identifies nine House Democrats and two Senate Democrats opposing the extension of an expanded CTC. Of these 11 naysayers, eight are millionaires. In spite of its clear benefits, the CTC is in very real political danger of being rolled back. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), who is one of its biggest proponents, said, “There’s nothing bigger than this… if you just want to look at the impact of a child’s life, this is the biggest thing that we’re doing.” Indeed, it’s hard to argue against helping vulnerable American children, but some Democrats like Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) are managing to do so as they stand in the way of the current iteration of the CTC. Manchin in particular has adopted a posture far closer to the Republican way of thinking: that benefits aimed at wealthy interests are good for the nation, while benefits to vulnerable individuals are effectively “entitlements.” Using Republican-favored buzzwords, Manchin recently said that while he supports the CTC in theory, “anything that can be added should be means tested,” and that it is important that the U.S. not turn into an “entitlement society.” One critic explained that “‘Means testing’ is just a nicer way to say, ‘We want people to jump through more hoops, so fewer people can get help.’” The West Virginia senator exudes such hubris in opposing his own party that in a New York Times interview earlier this year, he essentially dared Democrats to try to oust him, saying, “What are they going to do, [are] they going to go into West Virginia and campaign against me? Please, that would help me more than anything.” With friends like Manchin, Republicans can sit out the discussion and have no clear policy position on the matter. With many progressive Democrats going on the defensive to protect the expansion of the CTC, some are going on the offensive in trying to get money into the hands of low-income and middle-income Americans by other means. Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar in July introduced a guaranteed income bill that would ensure individuals making up to $75,000 a year receive $1,200 monthly checks. The SUPPORT Act, backed by progressive stalwarts such as Cori Bush (D-MO) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), includes running a pilot program initially to prove that monthly payments would have a positive impact on families. Such approaches embody the opposite of the trickle-down economic model long championed by many establishment economists in the face of progressive opposition. Now, the trickle-down model is so discredited that even Biden has explicitly rejected it. Rather than infusing the top tiers of society with money, tax breaks and subsidies, based on a fantasy that those riches will eventually reach the bottom tiers, policymakers are getting on board with direct benefits to vulnerable Americans. Whether or not the CTC survives Washington’s political wrangling remains to be seen, even as tens of millions of Americans rely on it. AuthorSonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Archives October 2021 In the Manifesto of the Communist Party the authors raised a list of 10 immediate objectives, the very first of which read’s: ‘1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.’ So the communists aimed to get rid of landed property, but what did they propose to replace it with? They wanted land nationalisation. The state would own all land and insofar as land was cultivated by entities that were not state farms, these would pay rent to the state for its use. Marx was quite adamant that it was not in the interest of the working class to allow land to pass into the ownership of rural associations. In his article The Nationalisation of Land [The International Herald No. 11, June 15, 1872;] he wrote: To nationalise the land, in order to let it out in small plots to individuals or working men's societies, would, under a middle-class government, only engender a reckless competition among themselves and thus result in a progressive increase of "Rent" which, in its turn, would afford new facilities to the appropriators of feeding upon the producers. "Small private property in land is doomed by the verdict of science, large land property by that of justice. There remains then but one alternative. The soil must become the property of rural associations or the property of the whole nation. The future will decide that question." I say on the contrary; the social movement will lead to this decision that the land can but be owned by the nation itself. To give up the soil to the hands of associated rural labourers, would be to surrender society to one exclusive class of producers Marx in this article argued against a system of small peasant proprietorship, arguing that the experience of France indicated that it led to the gradual subdivision of land into smaller and smaller family plots and that these small farms could not sustain the large scale mechanised agriculture needed to adequately feed a large working class. Why did Marx demand the allocation of rent to public purposes as part of the Nationalisation of land. Lenin explains this : Nationalisation of the land under capitalist relations is neither more nor less than the transfer of rent to the state. What is rent in capitalist society? It is not income from the land in general. It is that part of surplus value which re— mains after average profit on capital is deducted. Hence, rent presupposes wage-labour in agriculture, the transformation of the cultivator into a capitalist farmer, into an entrepreneur. Nationalisation (in its pure form) assumes that the state receives rent from the agricultural entrepreneur who pays wages to wage-workers and receives average profit on his capital—average for all enterprises, agricultural and non-agricultural, in the given country or group of countries. The aim therefore is to ensure that the portion of surplus, that must under relations of commodity production take the form of rent, is centrally appropriated and used for the development of the nation as a whole. The effectiveness of this policy is clearly born out by the comparative histories of China and India after independence. In China land was nationalised. The private appropriation of rent by a parasitic landlord class came to an end. In India that class survived, and continued to appropriate a large part of the surplus product. Without the drain imposed by landlords, China was able to develop rapidly, raise life expectancy and become the largest economy in the world. China/India GDP per capita current US$ , (World Bank) In addition to agricultural rent, capitalist society generates rent for minerals and urban land. The owners of land under which oil lies are able to extort a huge rent revenue. This revenue arises from the difference between the labour time necessary to produce oil on the most marginal reserves - those that for example require extensive fracking or those offshore in deep water - and the labour time necessary to produce oil on easily exploited reserves like those in Saudi Arabia. Similarly for urban land the rental that can be obtained relates to the differential labour costs of getting to work. A house 20 miles from the main employment center will command less rent than the same sized house 10 miles away. Workers must give up time and money to travel to work. Any saving they can make by living closer to work tends to end up in the hands of landlords who can charge more for a house close in to a great metropolis. It is evident, if the two houses are the same size and quality, that the premium in the second case is due to the land on which the house rests. Owner occupiers do not escape this. The price of property in a capitalist market is set by the price landlords are willing to bid to buy houses and flats as rental investment. A landlord will be willing to buy a house if the expected rent revenue is less than the interest he would pay on a bank loan used to purchase it. As cities expand, areas which were once marginal suburbs become embedded within the metropolis. Houses in them which originally commanded low rents are now let for high rents. This reacts back on property prices as illustrated from the following figure from my book How The World Works So landowners not only gain from increased rent, but make additional profits from the appreciation of property prices. Such speculative unearned income becomes a major driving force for the upper classes. I understand that slogans about ‘land back’ have started to be advanced in the USA, with the reference ‘back’ referring to the descendants of the indigenous or aboriginal peoples of the United States. Consider some possible interpretations of this.
These are the typical scenarios that would play out in the USA. In all of which the effect is to transform the indigenous group into collective exploiters of one or more sections of the rest of the population. That is because the mass of the direct producers in the USA are not from the indigenous population. Under these circumstances where they to acquire ownership of all land they would inevitably become and exploiting minority. The situation is quite different in some Southern American countries where a class of landowners of European descent has historically exploited a peasantry of indigenous descent. In that case the indigenous comprise the majority of the direct producers and the transfer of private land to regional governments elected mainly by the indigenous farmers would correspond to the programme of land Nationalisation advocated by Marx. AuthorPaul Cockshott is an economist and computer scientist. His best known books on economics are Towards a New Socialism, and How The World Works. In computing he has worked on cellular automata machines, database machines, video encoding and 3D TV. In economics he works on Marxist value theory and the theory of socialist economy. Archives October 2021 City of London Corporation coat of arms “Land back”, like anarchism a decade ago during Occupy Wall Street, is the latest refuge of what is always an infinitesimally tiny group of (very vocal) violence preaching dead enders who always (conveniently for capital) carbuncle their cancer onto American “leftism”. Like the Occupy anarchists, the term “working class” is gone from this leftism, in favor of festooning a new dead end slogan with woke idpol trappings calling for violence. (FYI - it always comes down to violence. Always.) For the uninitiated (i.e. nearly everyone), the “land back movement” (which just so happens to find favor with typically oligarchic NGO funders), demands all working class Americans be deemed “settlers” on “stolen land”, who must be removed from it, then the land be given “back” to indigenous tribes. Today’s “settlers”, all 300 million of us, must then be sent, well, somewhere else, or become tenants of our new kumbaya utopian indigenous landlords, whose untaxed “non-profit” casino corporations already exist on whatever indigenous land they do hold. So laughably facile, the FBI is most certainly already resident somewhere in the land back “movement”, as it was for months among Occupy Cleveland’s anarchists from October, 2011 until the FBI sprang their FBI conceived FBI funded “bridge bomb plot” April 30, 2012, waiting with the infinite patience only Joe Biden’s carefully crafted police state can possess. Layer upon layer of dialectical debunking can be had, so have at it. I will merely introduce here the corporate entity that created settler colonialism in America. That corporation still exists today, functioning exactly as it did when it created settler colonial imperialism, a diseased petri dish of capital still springing cancerous capitalist lesions, entirely unchanged from its birth, the date of which no one knows. If any “land back” folks live in London, they could quite literally walk to the spot settler colonialism was born, and have a go at it, instead of targeting working class Americans who’ve been exploited by the same corporation, and its endless progeny, their entire lives. Sadly, not even Jeremy Corbyn bothered with the black hole of capital known as the City of London Corporation. Neither will the land back “movement”. “Missed time”The literal spot where British settler colonial imperialism was born, and where the legal framework of the British empire remains today, is the deadest dead zone of capital in the world, a tiny square mile hugging the north shore of the Thames in London. Almost the moment one crosses an invisible border from the bustling boroughs around it, silence descends like a phantom, the only thing missing is tumbleweeds. Neither Marx nor Engels ever bothered much about this ghost town of capital, if at all. The terms “The City”, “The Corporation”, or “the Square Mile”[i], as most widely understood today refer to the British financial industry, just as “Wall Street” refers to the American financial industry. However, in addition to being the heart of British finance, today, as it has been for a millennium, this spot is in fact the “Corporation of the City of London”, a 1.2 square mile nominally municipal division permanently tucked into the heart of the London metropolis. Unlike any corporation or municipality on earth, there is no single document or paper trail creating the Corporation, let alone establishing its sovereignty. Its origins are totally unknown, according to the City’s own chief executive in 2002 who treated these murky origins quaintly thus. "The corporation emerged from a 'missed time' and there is no direct evidence of it coming into existence," he said. "There is no charter that constituted the corporation as a corporate body." City people joke that it dates its "modern period" from 1067, the year when William the Conqueror "came friendly" to the City and let it keep its ancient rights as he subdued the rest of the country.[ii] The City’s eastern boundary borders the Tower of London, where William the Conqueror built his Tower outside of the City’s walls; the first known objectively observable exercise of the Corporation’s international legal sovereignty, i.e. recognition, both by the Corporation and by the Conqueror who chose not to conquer the City itself. The location of the Tower outside of the Corporation predates the concept of Westphalian sovereignty by 600 years. By 1215 King John’s Magna Carta treated the City with the same sovereign recognition William did in 1066, granting the Corporation the right to elect its own Lord Mayor, beginning eight centuries of one hundred more royal charters[iii] that would embed the Corporation’s sovereignty into the Square Mile. Emerging during the reign of Elizabeth I was the office of the Remembrancer, whose title is explicitly crafted to remind the Crown who is boss; the official representative of the Corporation to Parliament. Current commentators call the Remembrancer a mere “lobbyist”, but the position more resembles an ambassador in all but name. Seated across from the Speaker in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the City itself says “The Remembrancer is charged with maintaining and enhancing the City's status and ensuring that its established rights are safeguarded."[iv] Capitalism’s First Refugees As capitalism began to emerge under the watchful eye of the Remembrancer in the 17th century, feudal lords clearing peasants off land for profit created one of the first of capitalism’s grotesque side effects; vast numbers of unemployed English refugees, who took to the roads, the outskirts of towns and villages, becoming quite an unpleasantness. What to do? In 1637, the Corporation explicitly refused the Crown’s request to deal with London’s now teeming suburbs by incorporating the suburbs around the City into the City’s charter.[v] Known as “The Great Refusal”, instead, the City of London Corporation forcibly sent thousands of capitalism’s first refugees to England’s new colonies, themselves chartered by the City as subsidiary corporations, such as Northern Ireland. Instead of seeking to integrate the new arrivals, the Corporation put large resources into transferring its unwanted excess population to the Ulster Plantation and the Corporation of Londonderry, which were established for that purpose. The bowler hats and umbrellas of the Orange Orders derive from their sponsorship by the Corporation of London.[vi] This is precisely the same legal machinery that created the trans-Atlantic slave trade of British colonial imperialism, born in the exact same legal manner as the Orange Orders and bowler hats of the Great Refusal, at the very same time, the articles of incorporation even drafted by the very same people. During this period, every single corporate entity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was chartered by the City of London Corporation; the Virginia Company, the Maryland Company, even beyond America to the East India Company, and so on. In the 2021 second edition of her book, Birth of a White Nation, Jacqueline Battalora traces the invention the “white” race, from whole cloth, solely to defend capital by dividing the working class of the new colonies into privileged and non-privileged racial groups under law. The very first appearance in law, in history, of the term “white,” is in the 1681 Maryland anti-miscegenation law responding to Bacon’s Rebellion, a “law” legislated by Maryland’s royally appointed barons, whose only legitimacy, if any at all, is traced to their legal creation by the City of London Corporation. Bacon’s Rebellion itself was populated by the City of London’s previous decades of industrial shipping of human beings for profit, ranging from indentured to lifetime slaves, the first of whom were by far mostly English men. These first refugees of clearing land for capital mixed in America with Africans brought both as slaves and freedman by other subsidiary corporations and indigenous tribes to become the first cross cultural working class revolt against capitalism in history. From 1607 to 1682, the City’s shipped humans were not just, nor in the first instance, Africans; they included tens of thousands of political trouble makers, prisoners of war, Catholics, Jews, Germans, Swiss, Quakers, Irish, petty thieves, even “vagrant” English children, whose going price the City of London Corporation negotiated with its subsidiary the Virginia Company to be £5 - a gigantic sum if given to the homeless child, a trifle to the City of London shipping that child to slavery[vii]. Capitalism’s global black hole Not just parliament, but no London governmental authority has, nor has ever had, any jurisdiction whatsoever over the spot where settler colonial imperialism was created, the Square Mile. The most recent claim to create a unified London government, New Labour’s 2002 “reforms” of London elections under Tony Blair, merely cemented the City’s sovereignty ever further. Elections for the Greater London Authority’s assembly and mayor are entirely separate from the City of London. The GLA and London mayor created in 2002 are subject to a voting process recognizable to all of us. In the City itself, corporations domiciled there control the show in precisely the same way slavery functioned in the City’s subsidiary corporations’ colonies three centuries ago. First, it established a legislative innovation unprecedented in English history. Clause Four of this new Act bases the size of a company’s vote, the number of votes it will be allocated in elections to the Corporation of London, on a human unit – the workforce – which has no civic status other than as a unit of calculation. The only comparable franchise which based the size of a voting entitlement on a human unit that had no civic personality and was entirely mute, was the voting rights accorded to the owners of chattel in the Antebellum American South at the time of the American Revolution.[viii] Called “the slavery franchise”[ix], which no sovereign state would allow in a municipality under its jurisdiction, the math of the 2002 New Labour London government “reforms” leave the few actual human beings living within the City’s boundaries, about 6,000, many of whom are in public housing, outvoted by tens of thousands of Corporation of the City of London registered companies’ “employees” who “vote” by proxy through their companies’ representative at the City’s elections, merely packing the ballot box to bursting with ever more financial industry power. Before 2002, the 17,000 business votes (only business partnerships and sole traders could take part) already swamped the 6,000-odd residents. Blair's reforms proposed to expand the business vote to about 32,000 and to give a say, based on the size of their workforce in the Square Mile, to international banks and other big players. Voting would reflect the wishes not of the City's 300,000 workers, but of corporate managements. So Goldman Sachs and the People's Bank of China would get to vote in what is arguably Britain's most important local election.[x] Worthy of an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, these voting proxies packing the ballot box must also be members of one of the ancient associations within the Corporation. An incomplete list includes “the Worshipful Company of Broderers, dating from the 13th century, to the unfortunately named Worshipful Company of Launderers, to the more modern Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers,”[xi] …medieval guilds such as the worshipful company of costermongers, cutpurses and safecrackers. To become a sheriff, you must be elected from among the aldermen by the Livery. How do you join a livery company? Don't even ask.[xii] There is even a medieval succession announced years in advance for the Lord Mayor. Three months before the “election” of the 2014 Lord Mayor, then Lord Mayor Alan Yarrow, in “About Mayoral Appraisal process,” instructed … The Court's position on the Mayoralty for 2014/15 is, I think, already clear but I will recap. At the election of the Lord Mayor this year, if Alderman Alan Yarrow is one of the two Aldermen whose name is returned by the Livery to the Court, then he will be elected. Since Lord Mayor Alan Yarrow, the mayoral successions thus arranged included a member of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, the Worshipful Company of Bankers, to today’s Lord Mayor, stockbroker William Russell, a member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. The City’s capitalist cancer today By the 18th century, the City took on its current ideological political stand advocating Adam Smith, laissez faire, free market capitalism.[xiv] Today, the office of Lord Mayor is the self proclaimed “ambassador” for free market neoliberalism, “supporting and promoting the City as the world leader in international finance and business services, the Lord Mayor travels extensively… fostering goodwill and boosting British trade, particularly the markets and services of the City.”[xv] As the British Empire began to disintegrate in the 20th century, the Corporation still sat atop the entire financial legal infrastructure of the empire, globally. Slavery may have gone, the colonies too, but most of those colonies remained legal entities whose sovereignty is still traced today to the City of London Corporation. We know their names - the Caymans, Bermuda, Jersey, the Channel Islands, etc. A 2018 film, The Spider’s Web, Britain’s Second Empire, details how these legal remnants evolved from settler colonial imerialism’s creator to creator of the offshore tax haven financial system, resident in the nominally “British Commonwealth” former colonies, but legally within the Corporation. The sun never did set on the City’s empire. Susan Strange, in her prescient indictment of what in 1999 she called the “Westfailure system”, describes the first age of globalization, led by these legal tendrils of the City of London in the British Empire, thus; “the value of the pound sterling in terms of gold remained unchanged for a century, thus creating the first stable international money.”[xvi] Perfected as the telegraph, the steamship, and electricity first embedded the City’s offshore into world finance, The Corporation’s meticulously laid rent extracting miles of path dependence for the movement of this first stable international money remained quite intact once Britain emerged from World War II to assess the ruin. “Early telegraph links were progressively upgraded as new technologies emerged, first with telephone trunk lines and then fiber optic cables. As a result, financial firms looking to establish branches and subsidiaries outside the sovereign oversight of an onshore jurisdiction found that these locations already satisfied their communications requirements…the decisions made in the 19th century resulted a hundred years later in the emergence of offshore finance in these specific locations in the Caribbean rather than elsewhere.”[xvii] Ronan Palan wrote in 2010, “Formalities aside, we should treat the City of London, Jersey, Cayman Islands, BVI, Bermuda and the rest of the territories as one integrated global financial center that serves as the world’s largest tax haven and a conduit for money laundering.”[xviii] Predictably, this financial hall of mirrors set off a spectacular evolutionary reproduction of countless financial product life forms accelerating to this day. The “spider’s web” of offshore tax havens, centered in the City, today plays a central role in the now regular international monetary crises whose intensity increases with each iteration, including the most recent of 2008. “Tax havens are the underlying constant theme of the financial crisis of 2008-9.”[xix] Today, even China is getting in on the act, as efforts to internationalize the renminbi realized in the Corporation in October, 2014, with the UK the first non-Chinese state to issue bonds in RMB, the profits immediately destined for the offshore. It is the world’s first non-Chinese issuance of sovereign RMB debt and will be used to finance Britain’s reserves… In particular, the proceeds are expected to be reinvested in the renminbi offshore market.[xx] The scale of the recurring crises is now incomprehensible. The City of London Corporation’s offshore financial archipelago in 2021 likely dwarfs even the size of the entire world economy. Estimates of the money residing in the City’s offshore have ranged from Palan’s conservative 2010 estimate of $16 trillion, to the Tax Justice Network’s 2012 estimate of $32 trillion, both of which now seem laughably low balled after the post 2008 and Covid-19 era of loose monetary policy. Evolving within the seamless unseen financial remnants of the British Empire, this systemic risk to the international monetary system manifests repeatedly, with increasing intensity. The City had a fight to survive. Once. The only real threat ever to concern this comically absurd medieval black hole of world finance was nonviolent. From 1875-1890 a bare knuckle, public relations campaign defeated repeated Parliamentary attempts to bring the City of London Corporation within London government. Centered on reviving the long dormant Lord Mayor’s Show parade, the City launched an all out media campaign, featuring meetings packed with City-paid rabble-rousers, ostentatious “charity”, secret slush funds, fraudulent signature campaigns, powered by a passive-aggressive dripping ironic message of “envy” that sounds eerily familiar to 21st century ears.[xxii] The City seems to have believed that the various, diverse reformers were united by two ambitions: greed, and a quest for “self-aggrandizement.” The City was not above launching personal attacks… “deluded dupes,” the City wrote, were merely interested in getting their hands on the City’s enormous wealth.” The pinnacle of the City’s Victorian fight for survival was the annual Lord Mayor’s Show; a parade, creating through ever more spectacular displays of royalty and ritual a shared sense of empire among the population, royal privilege as a shared glory from rich to poor, “a calculated attempt to use the past to justify the present in order not to face the future.”[xxiii] The robes, the scepters, the fuzzy hats of today’s tourist shows were in fact invented out of whole cloth, the parade’s costumes chosen strategically from each of the seven previous centuries of the City’s history, plus the then current empire’s camels from Egypt, and elephants from India… As for the extravagant Lord Mayor’s Show of 1884, the most original and significant innovation was the introduction of what The Times called the “historical element.” Two knights carried a banner bearing the inscription “The Charter, A.D. 1067”…a car drawn by four horses displayed a facsimile of the original charter in a gold box, guarded by “citizens”, their swords drawn. There followed a banner reminding all those present that the City had sent forty ships to defeat the Spanish Armada. The most prominent banner read: “London would not be London without the Lord Mayor’s Show.”[xxiv] Drawing hundreds of thousands, growing every November for a decade, the final triumph, after successively more spectacular Lord Mayor’s Parades finally defeated reform, was the 1889 show victory lap, drawing an estimated 2.5 million Londoners of every class to see the spectacle[xxv]; reform of the City was done in, for good. Sensing the real fight unfolding before them for years, the “stunt” or “PR trick” did not go unnoticed in The Standard. “It was impossible to witness the procession and the undiminished enthusiasm with which it was everywhere greeted…without feeling something more of a suspicion that the end of all this was a long way off yet, and that an amount of public feeling was enlisted on the side of the old civic constitution which would not be very readily overcome.”[xxvi] Today, both the Lord Mayor’s Show website[xxvii] and the Corporation’s website mention nothing of the life and death battle between 1875-1890 resulting in the extravaganza the Lord Mayor’s Show is today. And to this day, it is a royal event if the British sovereign visits the sovereign City. Queen Elizabeth II is invited into the City by the Lord Mayor after an elaborate ritual during which Her Majesty passes through a red rope at the Temple Bar entrance to the Square Mile. For tourists, the Queen passing through a red rope at Temple Bar is just another fancy royal spectacle. As the new tide of radical socialism across Europe in the early 20th century began to notice the City again, the newly formed Labour Party wrote the abolition of the Corporation of the City of London into its manifesto in its early history, calling the City “the home of the devilry of modern finance”. In 1917, Peter Mandelson's grandfather Herbert Morrison, a rising star in Labour ranks, put the party's antipathy plainly. "Is it not time London faced up to the pretentious buffoonery of the City of London Corporation and wipe it off the municipal map?" he asked. "The City is now a square mile of entrenched reaction, the home of the devilry of modern finance." Clement Attlee took up the baton in 1937. "Over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster," he said. "Those who control money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which has been decided by the people."[xxviii] Alas, Labour, and even the most radical British left, would flip in no time. Not one Labour candidate for London government at any level has ever once echoed the party’s early attempts to abolish the City. The first London mayor elected under Blair’s New Labour London municipal elections law in 2000, Ken Livingstone, himself a Labour defector otherwise so far left his nickname was “Red Ken”, never uttered a word about the City of London in his 2000 campaign, nor did Red Ken as mayor ever once attempt to exert any jurisdiction whatsoever over the Corporation, let alone the offshore. By 2008, Red Ken was replaced as London Mayor by current UK Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a Tory so deliciously caricaturing the City’s essence his visage will likely reappear as a “historical element” representing the 21st century in a Lord Mayor’s Show parade a century from now. The GLA constituency which includes the City, City and East, is today represented by current Labour councilor Ummesh Desai, himself never speaking of the Corporation, despite being Labour’s London Assembly chair for Audit, police and crime. Not even the two Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party general election manifestos mentioned a single whisper of the City’s sovereignty, the Corporation, the Remembrancer, or the worshipful whatnots. Corbyn, twice, merely promised to abolish the non-domicile, and thus tax exempt status of certain British citizens[xxix]. Even the Occupy Wall Street movement’s London manifestation at St. Paul’s Cathedral within the City’s limits in 2011 meekly asked to see the City’s books[xxx], specifically the bluntly termed “City Cash”, representing the City’s own budget which has never seen the light of day, not in 1,000 years. Laughably, in December, 2012, the Corporation responded to this “pressure” by announcing the City Cash had accumulated over its 1,000 year history sitting atop the financial center of the world an absurdly tiny amount of £1.3 billion, 70% of it being property holdings in London, thus not even cash.[xxxi] For comparison, this amount would not crack the top ten American university endowments; if the Corporation is to be believed, it’s City Cash is dwarfed by Harvard’s endowment alone, estimated in 2015 at $32 billion.[xxxii] Do your homework, land backers The land back “movement” knows none of this rather brief introduction to the entity which created the harm they claim to address, an entity still lording (literally) over us today, functioning exactly as it did when it first shipped its wretched refuse across the seas. The American working class are not “settlers” to be targeted with rhetoric of violence from people calling themselves leftists. We are the heirs to the exploitation of centuries, first created by a medieval black hole these land backers could simply walk into, right now, and destroy with nonviolence. Let’s hope they figure that out. [i] This paper will use all three terms interchangeably, depending on the context, as is the custom. [ii] Shaxson, Nicholas, “The Tax Haven in the heart of Britain,” New Statesman, February 24, 2011 (http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city) [iii] Smith, Timothy, “In Defense of Privilege: The City of London and the Challenge of Municipal Reform, 1875-1890”, Journal of Social History, George Mason University, Fall 1993, p. 60. [iv] Quinn, Ben, “Corporation of London; an ancient institution that favours big business”, The Guardian, October 31, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-institution-big-business [v] Doolittle, Ian, “The Great Refusal: Why does the City of London Corporation Only Govern the Square Mile?”, The London Journal, Vol. 39 No. 1, March, 2014, p.24. [vi] Glasman, Maurice, “The City of London’s strange history”, Financial Times, September 29, 2014. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3WAGprjJO) [vii] Battalora, Jacqueline, Birth of a White Nation, Rutledge (2021) p. 17-18. [viii] Brown, Matthew, “A Tale of Two Cities” Independent Labour Publications, September 13, 2012, http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/09/13/a-tale-of-two-cities/ [ix] Shaxson, New Statesman, 2011. [x] Ibid. [xi] Shaxson, Nicholas, “The Much-too Special Relationship”, The American Interest, March 19, 2014 http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/03/19/the-much-too-special-relationship/ [xii] Monbiot, George, “The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest”, The Guardian, October 31, 2011 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval [xiii] City of London, “About Mayoral Appraisal Process”, http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/the-lord-mayor/Pages/letter-to-the-livery-about-mayoral-appraisal-process.aspx [xiv] Glasman argues one early manifestation of this ideology was the City’s financial support for the American Revolution against the Crown, even sending men to fight with George Washington’s army. Glasman, 2014. [xv] City of London website, http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-the-city/the-lord-mayor/Pages/default.aspx [xvi] Strange, Susan, “The Westfailure system”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, 1999, pp. 345-354, p. 348. [xvii] Vleck, William, “Behind an Offshore Mask: sovereignty games in the global political economy,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 8 (2009), pp. 1465-1481, p.1468. [xviii] Palan, p. 135. [xix] Palan, p.1. [xx] HM Treasury, “Britain issues western world’s first sovereign RMB bond, largest ever RMB bond by non-Chinese issuer” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-issues-western-worlds-first-sovereign-rmb-bond-largest-ever-rmb-bond-by-non-chinese-issuer [xxii] Smith, p.68. [xxiii] Ibid, p.60. [xxiv] Ibid, p.68. [xxv] Ibid, p.71. [xxvi] Ibid, p.69 [xxvii] Lord Mayor’s Show Website, http://lordmayorsshow.london/history. The only mention of this period is on the page where a visitor can purchase a book of the history of the show, in which “Section 3 – Noteworthy Shows and Lord Mayors” mentions “The 1876 Show, with 13 elephants”. [xxviii] Shaxson, New Statesman, 2011. [xxix] Mason, Rowena, “Labour Manifesto 2015 – the key points”, The Guardian, April 13, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/13/labour-election-manifesto-key-points?CMP=mic-88 [xxx] Statement of Occupy London General Assembly, November 8, 2011, http://occupylondon.org.uk/occupy-london-gets-moving-on-policy-first-statement-of-the-city-of-london-policy-group/ [xxxi] Mathiason, Nick, “City of London Corporation reveals its secret £1.3bn bank account”, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, December 20, 2012 http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/12/20/city-of-london-corporation-reveals-its-secret-1-3bn-bank-account/ [xxxii] Snider, Susannah, “10 Universities With the Largest Financial Endowments”, US News & World Report, January 13, 2015, http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2015/01/13/10-universities-with-the-largest-financial-endowments Bibliography Brown, Matthew, “A Tale of Two Cities” Independent Labour Publications, September 13, 2012, http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/09/13/a-tale-of-two-cities/ Burley, Anne-Marie, Regulating the World; Multilateralism, International Law, and the Projection of the New Deal Regulatory State, ed. Ruggie, J., Multilateralism Matters, Columbia University Press (1993) City of London website, http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk Cohan, John A., “Sovereignty in a Postsovereign World”, Florida Journal of International Law, Vol. 18, 2006 Crowley, Kevin & Choudhury, Ambereen, “Made-in-London Scandals Risk City Reputation as Money Center”, Bloomberg Business, July 5, 2012. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-05/made-in-london-scandals-risk-city-s-reputation-as-finance-center Doolittle, Ian, “The Great Refusal: Why does the City of London Corporation Only Govern the Square Mile?” The London Journal, Vol. 39 No. 1, March, 2014 Ferguson, Niall, The Ascent of Money, Penguin Books (2009) Glasman, Maurice, “The City of London’s strange history”, September 29, 2014. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3WAGprjJO) HM Treasury, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-issues-western-worlds-first-sovereign-rmb-bond-largest-ever-rmb-bond-by-non-chinese-issuer Henry, James S., “The Price of Offshore Revisited”, Tax Justice Network, July 2012 Krasner, Stephen D., Sovereignty; Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton University Press, (1999) Lord Mayor’s Show Website, http://lordmayorsshow.london/history Mason, Rowena, “Labour Manifesto 2015 – the key points”, The Guardian, April 13, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/13/labour-election-manifesto-key-points?CMP=mic-88 Mathiason, Nick, “City of London Corporation reveals its secret £1.3bn bank account”, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, December 20, 2012 http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/12/20/city-of-london-corporation-reveals-its-secret-1-3bn-bank-account/ Monbiot, George, “The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest”, The Guardian, October 31, 2011 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval Occupy London General Assembly Statement, November 8, 2011, http://occupylondon.org.uk/occupy-london-gets-moving-on-policy-first-statement-of-the-city-of-london-policy-group/ Palan, Ronen, Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works, Cornell University Press, 2010. 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AuthorTim Russo is author of Ghosts of Plum Run, an ongoing historical fiction series about the charge of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg. Tim's career as an attorney and international relations professional took him to two years living in the former soviet republics, work in Eastern Europe, the West Bank & Gaza, and with the British Labour Party. Tim has had a role in nearly every election cycle in Ohio since 1988, including Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020. Tim ran for local office in Cleveland twice, earned his 1993 JD from Case Western Reserve University, and a 2017 masters in international relations from Cleveland State University where he earned his undergraduate degree in political science in 1989. Currently interested in the intersection between Gramscian cultural hegemony and Gandhian nonviolence, Tim is a lifelong Clevelander. Archives October 2021 |
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