Here is why Fox News is terrified of covering the Buffalo shooter's racist manifesto

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
May 16, 2022



The mass shooter who killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday posted a racist manifesto online before targeting a majority-Black neighborhood. His writings took heavily from conservative conspiracy theories that white people were in danger of being replaced by people of color. This so-called Great Replacement conspiracy theory has been promoted by major far-right media figures including Tucker Carlson of Fox News. “What it does is create a dynamic where believers view immigrants and nonwhite people as an existential threat not only to themselves physically but to their position in society,” says Nikki McCann Ramírez, associate research director at Media Matters for America, who has researched how Carlson uses his show to launder white nationalist ideology. We also speak with prominent antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi, who says mainstream conservatives are increasingly parroting extremist talking points.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We’re looking at the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, Saturday, when an 18-year-old white supremacist wearing full body armor, carrying an assault rifle, opened fire on a supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo. We just went to Buffalo. Now we’re joined by Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon professor in the humanities at Boston University, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, contributing writer at The Atlantic, where his new piece, published — well, it looks like it was published yesterday, but it was actually published last month, before the attack in Buffalo, headlined “The Danger More Republicans Should Be Talking About: White-supremacist ideology is harmful to all, especially the naive and defenseless minds of youth.” He is also the author of many books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, also author of How to Be an Antiracist and the children’s book Antiracist Baby. He’s got two forthcoming books out in June, How to Raise an Antiracist and the picture book Goodnight Racism.
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I hope those books won’t be banned the way a number of your books have been around the country, Professor Kendi. But as you watched this horror unfold this weekend, I think it’s very critical to talk about taking the word “fringe” out of fringe theory, the “Great Replacement” theory, because how mainstream what is motivating, quite explicitly, this young self-identified white supremacist fascist, who only wished he had killed more people.

IBRAM X. KENDI: Exactly. I mean, the leading — some of the leading politicians and media figures and intellectuals, particularly over the last two years, if not the last 10 years, have been asserting this idea that antiracism, that critical race theory, that Latinx immigrants, that so-called Black criminals, that Muslim terrorists, that people of color are harming or seeking to replace or even engage in a genocide against white people. That’s the “Great Replacement” theory, that is a dominant talking point particularly among members of the Republican Party. And so, this is certainly not a fringe theory. It was a fringe theory, on many levels, a decade ago, but it’s certainly not now.


AMY GOODMAN: So, respond to what took place this weekend, how it’s covered, the issue of it being a domestic terror attack, not a lone gunman, you know, who is suffering from mental illness. Last year his school was so concerned about what he was saying, they called in the New York state police, who had him taken for a mental evaluation, yet he could still lawfully buy, in his hometown, the weapon used in this attack.

IBRAM X. KENDI: For years now, law enforcement officials and FBI have been talking about and have been acknowledging, whether you’re talking about the head of the Justice Department or the head of the FBI or even local officials — have been referring to white supremacist domestic terror as the leading terrorist threat of our time. And it’s indisputable. And we also know that the people who are most likely to carry out these acts of domestic terror are younger white males.

And so, the fact that people — that this nation still does not recognize that we have a serious problem on our hands and these younger white males are engaging in all sorts of acts of terror against Jewish Americans, against Black Americans, against Asian Americans, against women, against people from the LGBTQ+ community, and that — you know, I mean, that, to me, is part of the sort of horror. That, to me, is part of the toll that I think is weighing on people, because even after all of these mass murders and shootings over the last few days, people still don’t feel as if this nation is seeking to protect them, is seeking to keep them safe.


AMY GOODMAN: As we continue our coverage of the massacre in Buffalo and what led to it, I want to look at the role of Fox News in pushing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and opposition to gun control, particularly through Fox’s most popular host, Tucker Carlson. A New York Times investigation last month found he invoked the conspiracy that Democrats are trying to force demographic change through immigration in more than 400 episodes of his show on Fox News.

I want to also bring in another guest to join Professor Kendi. Nikki McCann has spent years compiling evidence for the watchdog group Media Matters of how Tucker Carlson has used his show to launder white nationalist ideology. Nikki McCann Ramírez is going to join us in a second, but first just a few examples she found of Tucker Carlson repeatedly defending the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. This is Carlson lashing out last April at President Biden’s immigration policy.
TUCKER CARLSON: An unrelenting stream of immigration. But why? Well, Joe Biden just said it: to change the racial mix of the country. That’s the reason, to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World. And then Biden went further. He said that nonwhite DNA is the, quote, “source of our strength.” Imagine saying that. This is the language of eugenics. It’s horrifying. But there’s a reason Biden said it. In political terms, this policy is called the “Great Replacement,” the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries.


AMY GOODMAN: That’s Tucker Carlson on Fox News last April. This is another clip noted by Media Matters from last year as Carlson’s fearmongering about white replacement, genocide and a race war.
TUCKER CARLSON: The left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term “replacement,” if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s — that’s what’s happening actually. Let’s just say it it. That’s true.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, in addition to Professor Kendi, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Nikki McCann Ramírez, associate research director at Media Matters for America.


Nikki, thanks so much for being with us. As we talk about what motivated this 18-year-old white supremacist, talk about the “Great Replacement” theory, where it came from and what Tucker Carlson is doing with it and how it’s being weaponized by everyone from the New York Congressmember Elise Stefanik to the senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, Congressman Perry and more.

NIKKI McCANN RAMÍREZ: Yes. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me on.


The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory has existed for decades. It is a subset of a larger conspiracy known as the white replacement or white genocide conspiracy theory. And it really came into a renewed era prominence in the last decade, with a period of acceleration in the last three to four years. In 2012, a French writer published a book called Le Grand Remplacement, and what it essentially argues is that there is a cabal, comprised typically of elites, Jewish people — because this is fundamentally an antisemitic conspiracy theory — and media figures, who are using immigration, birth rates and multiculturalism to eliminate or replace the white race. The theory baselessly makes these accusations of what are essentially natural or cyclical changes in demographics. And what it does is create a dynamic where believers view immigrants and nonwhite people as an existential threat, not only to themselves physically but to their position in society. And importantly, this theory wants believers to act against their supposed replacement.

So, when people like Tucker Carlson present a ready-for-cable version of the theory, it makes more extreme versions of it more accessible to audiences who would have never encountered it or would have never really thought about it. And if people believe in portions of the theory, like the idea that immigrants are being, quote-unquote, “imported” to replace them demographically, it becomes easier to tack on more extreme versions of the theory and fold them into their beliefs.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how Fox News has been covering this massacre?


NIKKI McCANN RAMÍREZ: Absolutely. So, a notable thing that we’ve seen, pretty much since the coverage broke, is that Fox has been very hesitant to make any reference to the “Great Replacement” theory or talk about specifics about what was in that shooter’s manifesto. And to be clear, the shooter’s manifesto did not directly reference Tucker, but Fox News is aware that they have been pushing this theory, selling it toward their audience, and they do not want to make that connection themselves, to explicitly connect that theory to their audience once again.

I believe what we’re seeing Fox News do right now is kind of fold back and fall back onto the traditional reactions that they have, that this will be used in an attempt to promote greater — or, sorry, to promote more gun restrictions, or, as we saw yesterday, one of their hosts on a Sunday show said that this shooting will be exploited to unfairly censor conservatives. I think Fox News is very aware of the hand that they’ve had in bringing this conspiracy to mainstream audiences. An Associated Press poll recently found that one in three Americans now believe that immigration is being used as a form of electoral manipulation, electoral replacement. And they are very aware that they have a hand in this narrative, so they are being very cautious about how they cover this, and are really trying to deflect the narrative onto other issues that don’t necessarily implicate them.

AMY GOODMAN: Do we know where the 18-year-old shooter, alleged shooter, Payton Gendron, learned about these theories — I mean, it’s a vast screed that he’s got, what, something like 180 pages — where he lived online, etc.?


NIKKI McCANN RAMÍREZ: Yes. So, the shooter did publish a more than 100-page manifesto. And I want to make a caveat here: As we already know, the manifesto was largely plagiarized from writings of other shooters, writings that he found online, so we should always take these, like, self-published screeds with a bit of a grain of salt.

What the shooter claims is that he was radicalized on 4chan and other online forums, that he didn’t really have a lot of direct contact with cable news. But what extremism researchers know is that Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric is very present on these forums. A lot of people on these forums view Tucker Carlson as an ally in presenting their messaging to a layman’s audience. So it’s not unlikely that this shooter encountered Tucker Carlson, his rhetoric, his statements about immigration, people of color. It wouldn’t be unlikely that he encountered them online.

And it’s important to point out here once again that presenting a sort of stripped-down version of this theory, which is what Tucker Carlson does — he doesn’t explicitly make references to racial superiority or explicitly make references to antisemitism when he talks about “Great Replacement,” but what he does do is give viewers context clues that allow them to make those connections themselves. He regularly attacks Jewish billionaire George Soros as an enemy of Western civilization who’s attempting to destroy America. He uses very racialized language when discussing the theory. And what that does is make it easier for his audience to find these more extremist spaces, to make those connections, and directs them toward a place where when a shooting like this happens and you have a third of the population that already believes that a large portion or a central tenet of this theory is true, it’s a lot harder for people to disavow it or to say, “That theory is incorrect. I shouldn’t subscribe to it.” They can say, “Oh, well, this was a,” quote-unquote, “‘lone wolf’ attack,” or “This man was crazy and acting on his own.” But the underlying beliefs can still be considered true. And that is a very dangerous thing for the most watched cable news host to be doing.


AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you can’t help think about what happened here, what happened at the church in South Carolina, what happened in El Paso in 2019. The shooter deliberately went to a place with a large Latino population clientele, customers, the local Walmart. He also issued a screed railing against a Hispanic invasion and posted that online. This was in 2019.

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Antiracist Scholar Ibram X. Kendi: Republicans Must Address How White Supremacists Target Youth - YouTube

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Mysterious US Army PSYOPS recruiting video has critics scratching their heads -- and wondering about its real intent

Sarah K. Burris
May 16, 2022


A hacker at work (Shutterstock)

A recruitment video made by the U.S. Army Fort Bragg’s 4th Psychological Operations Group-Airborne (Psy-Ops) talked about an effort involving witchery. Psych-Ops is the group that focuses on ways in which the military can use mental and emotional manipulation to try and fight the enemy at the same time that traditional ground forces are.

The video, titled "Ghosts in the Machine," is described by the Charlotte News-Observer as a kind of conspiracy theory, movie trailer with the tagline “All the world’s a stage. Join us.”

The video, posted on May 2, begins with clips of cartoons and then empty city streets and public trains and then gets darker with a shadow man and flashing articles with headlines like “The Occult History of the U.S. Military’s PSYOPS and its Highly Symbolic Recruitment Video.”

“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the video asks. “You’ll find us in the shadows at the tip of the spear. ... Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”

The Psy-Ops website says that they use informational warfare, which is like fake news and the like. It is not to be confused with the psychic operations being tested until the 1990s in which the military attempted to use ESP, remote viewing, walk through walls and achieve a level of invisibility. There is still an ongoing effort to achieve invisibility, focusing primarily on aircraft but also for soldiers as well. The Chinese military claimed that they figured it out last month. Lying about the ability to be invisible, however, could be an example of informational warfare often deployed by the military Psy-Ops.

“We use all available means of dissemination – from sensitive and high-tech, to low-tech, to no-tech, and methods from overt, to clandestine, to deception."

As one article observed about the Psy-Ops video, “Here’s the odd thing — clandestine Army units like this DON’T make recruiting material, because that material brings unwanted attention,” the Pipeline said. “Have you ever seen an official Delta Force recruiting video? Exactly.”

The video, however, could also be an act of informational warfare.

Read the full report at the Charlotte News-Observer.

You can watch the video below or at this link.

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINEyoutu.be

 Love, Will, and Wisdom: The Temple of Witchcraft Documentary

Edited and directed by River Ouellet, Love, Will, and Wisdom is an insightful look into The Temple of Witchcraft, a religious organization based in Salem, New Hampshire through the eyes of experts: High priests, ministers, and founders in the temple. As lots of the people involved with this project are capable authors and speakers, River gives them the floor and lets them move through their personal and unique experiences with witchcraft and the temple. Alexander Bardo does the score, which was both crafted scene by scene for the documentary and incorporates Rites used in temple rituals and initiations. Co-founded by Christopher Penczak, Steve Kenson, and Adam Sartwell, the Temple of Witchcraft started in 1998 as a system of magickal training and personal development, and eventually developed into a formal tradition of Witchcraft. Now, as an outgrowth of the work of students, initiates, and graduates of the programs, the Temple of Witchcraft has evolved into an organization based on traditions of modern magick, Witchcraft, and neopaganism. This documentary follows the founders and several members of the temple as they talk about their past, experiences, and the community within the temple.

Japan: Why are There So Few Women in Top Managerial Roles?

Despite decades of promises that women would have the chance to "shine" in Japan's corporate and political worlds, the country lags behind other industrialized nations in gender equality.

Julian Ryall (Tokyo)
13 May 2022



Japan ranks 120 out of 156 nations in the world for overall gender gap

Japan's financial services watchdog is introducing a new regulation designed to encourage companies to employ more women in senior management positions, although women are divided on whether the change will have an impact on the nation's male-dominated business world.

The Financial Services Agency will require firms listed on the stock exchange to reveal the ratio of women in senior positions within their organizations in their annual securities report.

The new regulation will affect around 4,000 companies and is expected to become mandatory in reports from April next year, the start of the financial year.

The plan also requires companies to disclose average pay by gender and the ratio of male employees who take child care leave, with the intention of providing investors with a better picture of how companies are performing on gender equality metrics.
SHRINKING WORKING POPULATION

Aware of deepening structural imbalances in the population and the need to get more women into the workplace, successive Japanese governments since the turn of the century have passed legislation designed to assist women to stay in employment after having a family and to climb the corporate ladder.

In 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went as far as to say that his administration was going to make Japanese women "shine" in the workplace, in the political world and broader society.

That ambition, however, has failed to materialize.

According to the most recent statistics released by the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, Japan ranked 120 out of 156 nations in the world for overall gender gap, and an only narrowly better 117 in economic participation and opportunity. Japan ranked significantly lower than other G-7 nations.

The country also fell short of its own targets. In 2003, the government announced that it wanted to see 30% of all management positions filled by women by the year 2020. Official statistics released in 2021, however, revealed that just 13.2% of managers were female, well below the average of 30-40% seen in European and North American companies.

"The agency's regulations are a very positive thing, we believe, especially when Keidanren [The Japan Business Federation] is making similar requests of its member companies," said Tsumie Yamaguchi, an executive of the Tokyo-based pressure group Women in a New World Network.

Yamaguchi said she had been encouraged when previous prime ministers announced targets for women in both the workplace and Japan's political world, but was subsequently disappointed at the lack of progress.

And for that, she blamed the men of Japan's traditionally male-dominated society.

"The number of men in politics and business in Japan is much larger than women and those men have a strong desire to keep their positions," she told DW.
A TRADITIONAL PLACE IN SOCIETY

"Historically, Japanese men were told by their parents and society that their responsibilities lay outside the family, but women were taught that they had to stay home and care for the household," she said.

"Even today, that kind of attitude exists in many people's minds."

Chisato Kitanaka, an associate professor of sociology at Hiroshima University, agreed that the Financial Services Agency's new regulation was a "positive development," albeit long overdue.

"Japan lags behind other developed countries badly and even today it is rare to find a woman who is a department or division head at a corporation," she said.

"Old attitudes and stereotypes still linger in too many workplaces," said Kitanaka, who specializes in workplace issues. "Lots of companies do not hire as many women as men, even when they have the same qualifications, and then they are slow to promote them."

A major part of the problem is that while legislation was enacted as far back as 1986 to guarantee employment equality between the genders, the law is toothless because it contains no sanctions on any companies that fail to abide by the rules, she pointed out.

The only punishment for firms that ignore the law is publication of their name, a measure designed to shame companies into compliance. To date, Kitanaka said, two companies have been named for breaking the 1986 law.
OPTIMISM OR PESSIMISM?

And she is not optimistic that meaningful change is on the horizon for Japanese women.

"It is difficult to change laws, but it is even harder to change attitudes," she said. "It is easy for men in the business and political worlds here to do nothing instead of doing the right thing."

Women in a New World Network's Yamaguchi, however, is more positive about the future.

"I am positive because more and more young women today have all the skills and abilities that they need to do well in business environments, plus they are bringing other attributes to the workplace," she said, adding that "many are more efficient, for example, than men and I think that senior managers are beginning to recognize that."

"More companies will slowly realize that having women in leadership positions is a benefit to their organization and I see young women graduating from universities today as being more positive about their futures."

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru

Ukraine War is Accelerating New Space Race

The suspension of collaborative projects between Russian and Western space agencies will enhance their traditional rivalries. But the new space race is also being driven by other countries—as well as private companies.

John P. Ruehl
14 May 2022



Shortly after Russia was sanctioned for invading Ukraine in late February, Russia’s state-run space agency, Roscosmos, announced that it was officially suspending the U.S. from an upcoming Venus exploration mission. Weeks later, on March 17, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the suspension of a joint mission to Mars with Roscosmos, and further said that it would not be taking part in upcoming Roscosmos missions to the moon.

These decisions have naturally generated concern across the space industry and political landscape. For decades, Russian and Western countries have collaborated in space despite flare-ups in tensions on Earth. In 1975, the U.S. Apollo capsule linked up with the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft briefly as a symbol of cooperation amid the Cold War. In 1995, the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir.

And in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) was launched, featuring a Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and a United States Orbital Segment (USOS), the latter being operated by NASA, the ESA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Sustained cooperation on the ISS has been a notable exception to the growing tensions between Russia and the Western states over the last decade. But in April, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, declared that Russia would end cooperation on the ISS, as well as other joint projects, if sanctions against Russia were not lifted. While such threats have been issued before, notably after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the heightened confrontation between Russia and the West since the start of the Ukrainian invasion has reinforced this possibility.

NASA, meanwhile, chose to downplay Rogozin’s claims and stated that it will continue to operate the ISS until at least 2030. But Roscosmos has previously stated that it intends to develop its own space station by 2025, and has also revealed plans for a potential manned mission to the moon. Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system, which achieved global coverage in 2011, has also become a viable rival to the United States’ GPS system. These developments show the Kremlin’s growing commitment to pursuing its own interests in space without partnering with Western states.

In comparison, Roscosmos has increased its collaboration with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), particularly after the first wave of Western sanctions in 2014. In 2021, China and Russia announced plans to build a lunar research station, a direct rival to NASA’s Gateway project, which will be coordinated with the space agencies from Europe, Japan, and Canada.

China has already created its own space station, the Tiangong Space Station, which was launched in 2021. While far smaller than the ISS, China’s space agency has six more launches planned this year to complete the installation. China also sent a rover to the far side of the moon in 2019, as well as to Mars in 2021, and has announced plans for its own manned moon mission this decade.

While the space programs of some countries in the Global South, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Iran, are certainly less impressive, their development demonstrates the growing accessibility to space, which has long been dominated by Russia, China, and Western states. More than 70 countries now have space agencies, while 14 are capable of orbital launch.

For these countries, success in space in recent years has often come from collaborating with existing space powers. In 2005, Iran’s first satellite was built and launched in Russia, while in 2008, China, Iran, and Thailand launched a joint research satellite on a Chinese rocket. Technology sharing, domestic innovation, and decreasing costs have also allowed more countries to compete in space. India made history in 2013 after it sent its own orbiter to Mars, notably on a smaller budget than the space movie “Gravity,” which came out the same year.

The growing number of countries active in Earth’s orbit and beyond have also revitalised fears of the possibility of the militarization of space. So far, only Russia, China, the U.S., and India have successfully demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. Other countries, however, including Iran and Israel, are believed to either be developing or already have similar capabilities.

Of course, Western countries remain far ahead technologically than any other state or group of states. NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, for example, aims to place humans on the moon again by 2025, while three NASA rovers are currently active on Mars. NASA’s unmanned X-37B programme—which began in 1999, was transferred to the U.S. military in 2004, and is now being run by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office—has so far conducted four missions, while collaborative projects with the ESA have further underlined Western dominance in space.

But a growing phenomenon in space is the role of private companies. They have been involved in many of NASA’s and the ESA’s high-profile projects, including Boeing’s involvement in the X-37B project. Largely based in the U.S. and the UK, these companies have helped reduce costs and have increased opportunities for government space agencies, and they will be essential for exploiting the vast resources on the moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies.

Though hundreds of space-related companies exist, a handful have stood out as pioneers of the modern space age. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned by entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson respectively, both made history in 2021 after conducting their own manned space flights. Blue Origin, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and other corporations have also signed contracts to create private space stations in the future.

The most notable private company operating in space, however, is SpaceX, which is owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk. In recent years, the company has helped reduce the United States’ dependency on Russian Soyuz rockets to bring astronauts and deliveries to the ISS following the termination of the NASA program as a consequence of the Ukraine war.

SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites into space, with plans to launch more than 12,000 by 2026. Most will form part of the Starlink project that aims to provide internet access to populations around the world.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted at Elon Musk in February to use the Starlink project to bring internet to Ukraine after some services were disrupted by the Russian invasion. Within days, Starlink was active across the country, and in early May, Ukrainian officials stated that 150,000 Ukrainians were using the service daily.

The use of Starlink satellites was no doubt seen in Moscow as a direct challenge to the Kremlin. While Russia is currently unlikely to attack the network, it has raised questions as to how future confrontations between private companies and countries in space might play out. The growing use of private military companies on Earth by both states and the private sector could inspire similar moves to protect government and private assets in space.

The growing profile of private space-related companies threatens to upend the rules of regulations regarding space, most of which were written decades ago. This includes the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which through Article VI established that countries have the legal authority to regulate space and not international bodies, with private companies not yet having started space exploration when the treaty was finalized. The Artemis Accords, a modern U.S.-sponsored agreement to regulate space created in 2020, has so far only been signed by 16 countries.

Nonetheless, the increasingly competitive space industry has already demonstrated that even smaller countries can play a large role in it. Overseeing the development of technologies and tempering the weaponization of space, by both countries and companies, should become a priority globally to help ensure that growing competition in space does not lead to avoidable and destructive consequences on Earth.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Why ‘Bolivia is the Centre of the World’ for People’s Movements

We are poor and far from powerful centres of economic and political decision-making. But, we live in the centre of the most important battles—fought from our smallest trenches, communities, neighbourhoods, cities, jungles and forests.

Rogelio Mayta
14 May 2022

Image Courtesy: AFP via Getty Images

Humanity finds itself at a crucial moment. It’s not only war and climate change that threaten life on our planet. Ideologies and some people do too.

We know that money and the production of wealth and well-being have created an ever greater and more profound gap between people, neighbourhoods, cities and countries—a gap that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

So, I’d like us (my fellow Bolivians and Indigenous peoples) to stop thinking of ourselves as the poor periphery of a process of globalisation that has been unequal, colonial and racist.

In Bolivia, since the beginning of this century, we have battled some of the most important and decisive questions for the future of the human race: water, our sacred coca leaf, the goods we have which we can share thanks to the generosity of the Pachamama and, of course, the right to make decisions collectively about our lives.

Each battle, each sacrifice made, from places like El Alto and Cochabamba, has repeatedly confronted us with the owners of power and money.

At the core of each one of our struggles is our overriding need to stay alive, to finally construct a world fit for all of us to live with dignity.

Not tomorrow, today. Bolivia is the centre of the world, as is North Dakota or Chiapas, or the poor neighbourhoods of Caracas.

Yes, we are poor and far from the powerful centres of economic and political decision-making. But at the same time, we live in the centre of the most important battles—battles fought from our smallest trenches, communities, neighbourhoods, cities, jungles and forests.

What I’m describing to you isn’t merely a simple change in discourse. We want to think about ourselves differently, because if we do that at the core of the true struggle for survival, we can look at the world and at our sisters and our brothers with new eyes. If we are condemned to be at the margins, we will not get far.

It is by constructing in this way, from the hundreds and thousands of centres in which life is defined, that we fight for what is most essential: water, food, shelter, education and dignity—perhaps from this we can construct a new horizon. Weaving together our needs, our achievements, and even our errors, it’s possible to dismantle centuries of colonialism, the brutal pillaging of our territories, and the forced subjugation of our people.

In Bolivia, we have had to draw on our millennia-old Aymara and Quechua traditions and knowledge, for example, peoples who define much of what this country is. But it’s not only Indigenous peoples who have fought against imperialism, nor is it the obligation of one people to be the vanguard or the moral reserve for the human race.

We are what we are. We know, among ourselves, what our grandparents passed down to us. For that reason, from our lived experience, I invite you to begin this journey, firstly by re-establishing what is important so that we can begin to view ourselves like the people in the streets of Cochabamba were viewed after the Water Wars, knowing that it is possible and that there is another life waiting beyond the barricades, beyond the strikes and the roadblocks, and that is our common heritage.

This also happened to us in October 2003, when El Alto (near the capital city of La Paz) was converted, for a few moments, into the centre of the world. With sticks and with stones, with their will, the Aymara rejected the selling off of our riches—a death prescribed by a corrupt and foolish president.

There, in this burning epicentre, everything that matters was at stake. The centres of power and global decision-making were our periphery. Without a doubt, I do not think we are the periphery. This mini-census is not intended to be paralysing. Quite the opposite.

As a Bolivian, as an Aymara, as someone who has lived within one of the most decisive battles to change everything, I know that we can’t ignore the daily catastrophe we saw in Sri Lanka, in the boats filled with refugees in the Mediterranean, in that wall that separates North America from the rest of the Americas, in the Aboriginal territories of Australia, or in the famine experienced by the girls and boys in La Guajira in Colombia.

To be able to view the immensity of our horizon, to be able to daydream when we look upon the Andean Altiplano and its peaks, perhaps we should give ourselves a different perspective, a new centre.

In Bolivia, like in so many other places, what’s at stake is not a set of goods or a piece of land, not even a government. We have fought to defend life itself, to nourish it, and to watch it grow with dignity. We do not know of anything more important to do in these difficult times.

We are the centre of the world.

Adapted from Rogelio Mayta’s speech to the Progressive International’s Summit at the End of the World on May 12, 2022.

Rogelio Mayta is the foreign minister for the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

Source: This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Double Standards and Inhumanity of Capitalism

Amidst a pandemic, when humanity and sagacity demand that we should be concerned with all human life, a metropolis-centred social system considers some lives to be of value, not others.

Prabhat Patnaik
15 May 2022



For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives, according to the World Health Organisation or WHO, without being anywhere near an end. This is an unprecedented crisis for humanity as a whole, which requires a massive effort on the part of every government, especially governments in Third World countries where the people are particularly vulnerable not just to the disease but also to the destitution it brings in its train.

They have to expand hospital facilities, keep adequate numbers of hospital beds ready, create testing facilities, make vaccines available and set up vaccination facilities, and so on. In addition, governments have to provide relief to the people through transfers, and succour to small producers who are likely to go under.

All this requires an increase in expenditure on the part of governments. But precisely because of the pandemic, production suffers and with it the government’s revenue at existing tax rates. Unless they raise wealth tax rates, they have to enlarge their fiscal deficits, therefore, as a proportion of GDP or gross domestic product. They have, in short, to adopt policies that run directly contrary to the dictates of neo-liberalism, that violate all constraints imposed by so-called “fiscal responsibility” and that abandon all concern with fiscal “austerity”. But let us see what has actually happened.

Precisely because of the slowing down or stagnation of the world economy, exports of Third World countries suffer. To be sure, so do their imports because of the slowing down of their own GDP growth rates; but even assuming that exports and imports are affected to the same extent so that the trade deficit or surplus moves down in tandem with GDP, the fact remains that inherited external debt commitments have to be met whose magnitude relative to GDP must increase. These debts need to be rolled over and their servicing has to be suitably deferred.

In other words, even if trade flows relative to GDP remain the same for all countries after the pandemic as before, while the GDP itself stagnates, the external debt stocks rise relative to GDP because of this stagnation. The debt burden, therefore, becomes greater and requires special accommodation to be offered to Third World countries.

The most obvious way that this can be done is to have a debt moratorium for a certain number of years; and within contemporary world capitalism, the institution that has to be entrusted with implementing such a debt moratorium is the IMF, which should also be encouraging countries to abandon “austerity” and spend on people’s health and welfare during the crisis.

In fact, the current managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, has often told some member countries to abandon “austerity” in this time of crisis, from which one may get the impression that IMF has at last seen the magnitude of the threat to mankind as a whole posed by the pandemic. For instance, she urged Europe recently not to “endanger its economic recovery with the suffocating force of austerity”.

But the reality, it turns out, has been quite different. Oxfam has recently analysed 15 loan agreements signed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with Third World countries in the second year of the pandemic, and 13 of these explicitly insist on “austerity”.

Such “austerity” measures include taxes on food and fuel and spending cuts by governments that would inevitably affect basic services like education and healthcare. In the case of six additional countries with which negotiations have been going on, IMF is insisting on similar measures being adopted by them.

This insistence on “austerity” cannot be dismissed as an exception. Earlier on October 12, 2020, Oxfam had reported that since March 2020 when the pandemic was declared, the IMF had negotiated 91 loans with 81 countries; and of these in as many as 76, namely in 84% of loan agreements, there was an insistence on “austerity” which would not only make life harder for the poor people caught in the grip of the pandemic but also result in a squeeze on healthcare expenditure.

The IMF’s insistence on “austerity”, therefore, continues as strongly as ever, even at a time when the people of the world can least bear its burden. Not surprisingly, Oxfam has underscored the contrast between Kristalina Georgieva’s advice to Europe not to be constrained by “austerity”, and the actual programme the institution she heads insists on for the Third World, which is to observe “austerity”.

On this basis, Oxfam has accused IMF of using “double standards”, one for the advanced countries and a different one for the Third World countries. The use of double standards is abhorrent at all times; but its use at the time of a pandemic which is affecting mankind as a whole is particularly abhorrent.

What the Oxfam analysis misses, however, is the fact that the double standards evident in IMF’s behaviour, are immanent in the nature of capitalism itself. Indeed, a class society necessarily entails double standards: a labourer cannot march into a bank and apply for credit, but, of course, a rich person can apply for and obtain credit.

Put differently, the amount of capital one can get from “outside” sources depends on the amount of “own” capital one has, which is why ownership over capital is an essential condition for being a capitalist. If this were not the case then anybody could become a capitalist, so that there would be perfect social mobility rather than a hiatus amounting to class division.

In fact, intellectual defenders of capitalism, like Joseph Schumpeter who attributed the origin of profit not to the ownership of the means of production but to the fact that those who became capitalists had a special talent, which he called innovativeness, actually asserted that anybody with such innovativeness, namely, anybody with an idea that can be used to create a new production process or a new product, can obtain a loan from banks and set up a business. But such attempts to obliterate class divisions in society are palpably false; no agricultural labourer, no matter how innovative an idea he or she may have, can set up a business (though of course the idea can be stolen by a rich man to start a business).

Exactly in the same manner, in a world of imperialism where countries are divided into two distinct categories -- metropolitan and peripheral countries -- metropolitan banks would be much more loath to give loans to peripheral countries than to metropolitan countries; there will necessarily be “double standards” in the matter of giving loans.

The IMF, as the custodian of international finance capital that is dominated by metropolitan financial institutions, has to maintain these “double standards” in sanctioning loans and in imposing conditions for getting back the loans. The Oxfam-type criticism of the “double standards” on the part of IMF, therefore, is based on the misconception that the IMF is a well-meaning humane institution that is supposed to look after the interests of mankind, rather than being a capitalist institution that is supposed to look after the interests of international finance capital.

The IMF’s behaviour is thus reflective of the very nature of capitalism, of its essential inhumanity. I do not mean “inhumanity” merely in the sense that it places profits before people, but also in the sense which follows from it, namely, that it does not see all human life as of equal value, that it necessarily applies “double standards” in every sphere of life. For instance, when the demand is raised that polluting industries should be shifted from the metropolis to the periphery, the obvious assumption behind this demand is that human life in the periphery is not worth as much as human life in the metropolis.

The invidiousness of a social system that is based on this fundamental discrimination, or “double standards” if you like, becomes evident especially in periods like now, in the midst of a pandemic. When both humanity and sagacity demand that we should be concerned with all human life, no matter where it is located, a social system that discriminates between them, that considers some lives to be of value, not others, stands out for its inhumanity and irrationality.

It’s Not Enough to Resist—We Have to Build, Too: Corbyn

The global system is not in a crisis that can be resolved. The system is crisis and must be overcome, replaced and transformed.

BUILDING THE NEW WORLD IN THE SHELL 0F THE OLD

Jeremy Corbyn
15 May 2022



In April, the UN’s climate scientists warned it’s “now or never” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. You can almost hear them screaming at their keyboards, desperate for governments to actually do something, when they outline the need for “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts in CO2 emissions. But their words are not just a warning about the future; they describe the present reality for billions of people.

South Asia is now into its third month of extreme heat, with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius day after day. And it’s not just South Asia that is sweltering. In March, both the Arctic and the Antarctic were 30 degrees Celsius and 40 degrees Celsius above their usual average temperatures, respectively. Ice is melting, and sea levels are rising. Thirty million people were displaced by climate shocks in 2020. And these shocks store up more strife to come by wrecking harvests.

The supply chains that connect the world’s farms, mines, factories, shipping lanes, ports, warehouses, delivery networks and consumers are already massively disrupted, even before the full effects of climate breakdown are felt. In the heavily integrated global capitalist economy, disruption spells disaster. Already, more than 800 million people—1 in 10 people of the entire world’s population—go to bed hungry.

The price of wheat has doubled already this year. And it could rise further as the effects of Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s resulting partial economic isolation are felt across the globe.

Wars lead to hunger, mental distress, misery and death for years after the fighting stops. There must be an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory and a negotiated settlement between the two countries.

If there isn’t, then not only will the Ukrainian people continue to face the horror of shells, tanks and air raid sirens; not only will Ukrainian refugees suffer uncertain futures and dislocation from their families and communities; not only will young Russian conscripts be sent off to be brutalised in the army and die in a foreign land for a war they don’t understand; not only will Russian people suffer under sanctions; not only will the people of Egypt, Somalia, Laos, Sudan and many others who rely on wheat from the belligerent nations continue facing rising hunger.

But everyone on earth faces the threat of nuclear Armageddon if the war in Ukraine continues. The threat of direct confrontation between Russian and NATO forces is a clear and present danger to all of us. That’s why it is so important that we support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is now part of international law thanks to inspiring campaigning by countries in the Global South.

It will not be easy. Weapons companies do extremely well out of war. They fund politicians and think tanks. They have their many media mouthpieces. Those who strive for peace and justice are vilified because behind conflict stand the interests of the war machine. They threaten the ill-gotten wealth and power of the few.

We see it with painful clarity in the pandemic as Big Pharma refuses to share vaccine technology that was mainly developed with public funds. Who benefits? The pharma executives and shareholders. Who loses? Everyone else. More mothers and fathers die. More livelihoods are wrecked. And the threat of viral mutation hangs over everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

The state is used to prop up the wealth of the richest. Central banks pumped in $9 trillion in 2020 in response to the pandemic. The result? Billionaire wealth went up by 50% in one year, when at the same time the world economy shrank. The billionaires and corporations claim to hate government action. In reality, they love it. The only thing they hate is governments acting in your interests. And so, they fight to keep governments in their pocket and try to overthrow those that aren’t.

When we step back and survey all of these dynamics, a truth dawns on us. We used to think that there were a series of distinct crises: the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, the housing shortage crisis, the debt crisis, the inequality crisis, the crisis of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We tried to isolate each one and solve it.

Now we can see that we don’t face multiple separate crises. The system itself is the crisis. The global system is not in a crisis that can be resolved. The system is crisis and must be overcome, replaced and transformed.

The end of the world is already here—it is just unevenly distributed. The image of apocalypse—bombs and raids, oil spills and wildfires, disease and contagion—is a reality for people across the planet.

The periphery is the future, not the past. We were told that developed countries give the developing world an image of their future. But the periphery sits at the vanguard of history—where the crises of capitalism hit hardest, the consequences of climate collapse arrive the quickest, and the call to resist them rings the loudest.

That resistance is powerful and inspiring. The world recently witnessed the largest strike in history when Indian farmers and their worker allies resisted the neoliberal Bills that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wanted to force through their Parliament. The farmers stood up for themselves, their livelihoods and the needs of the poor. And they won.

Or take Amazon, the world’s sixth-largest company, which has made record profits during the pandemic. Its greed and exploitation are being fiercely resisted by workers, communities and activists on every continent in the world. They have come together to make Amazon pay.

In Latin America, the people are rallying to support progressive political leaders to say no more to the domination by imperialism, the destruction of their communities and the abuse of their environments.

But it’s not enough to just resist. We have to build a new world brimming with life, bound by love and powered by popular sovereignty.

How do we do that? We strengthen workers and rural workers in their struggles against exploitation, support people and communities in their fights for dignity and join progressive forces to mobilize state power. And we bring them all together into powerful people’s alliances with the capacity to remake the world. If we do that, we will breed hope over despair.

So I want you to commit today: Double your efforts in the struggles you are involved in. Join that campaign you’ve been thinking about joining. Show that real solidarity.

I want you to be able to look back in a generation’s time and say, yes, I built the trade unions, the community organisations, the social movements, the campaigns, the parties, the international platforms that turned the tide.

I want you to be able to say, yes, we produced and distributed the food, homes and health care so no one endures poverty; preserved and shared the wisdom of the people of this planet; spread love between people and communities; built the energy system to decarbonize our planet; dismantled the war machine and supported refugees; reined in the power of the billionaires; and secured a new international economic order.

Will it be easy? Of course not. We will face enormous resistance. Of course we will.

But, as the great and wonderful Chilean poet Pablo Neruda once wrote, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop spring from coming.”

And spring, my friends, is coming.

Adapted from Jeremy Corbyn’s inaugural speech to the Progressive International’s Summit at the End of the World on May 12, 2022.

Jeremy Corbyn is a member of the UK Parliament, former leader of the UK Labour Party and the founder of the Peace and Justice Project.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Sri Lankan Situation is Fraught with Danger

The danger here is that the emergent political dimensions will undermine the prospects of economic recovery.

M.K. Bhadrakumar
16 May 2022

Ranil Wickremesinghe arrives at a Buddhist temple after his latest appointment as prime minister, Colombo, May 13, 2022.

India finds itself between the rock and a hard place in its approach to the Sri Lankan crisis. There is no question that the government attributes primacy to Sri Lanka remaining a practising democracy. But the developing situation in that country is going to be a cliffhanger right up to the final whistle.

Things can take different turns. The best hope is that although the political class is thoroughly discredited and the legislative is dysfunctional, the democratic spirit lingers on. Arguably, the protests themselves are a manifestation of it — an inchoate uprising clamouring for political accountability by the elected government. The democratic foundations of the state are not irreparably damaged.

Political transition has become the core demand of the protestors and embedded within that the non-negotiable pre-condition that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa should quit office. The demand has been partially conceded, although with caveats, but the pre-condition on the president’s ouster hangs in the air. No one knows how to bell the cat.

Rajapaksa acted smartly by appointing as interim prime minister a senior politician with sound experience, Ranil Wickremesinghe, but the fact remains that the latter is in popular perception someone who is close to the president’s family, and whom the president can rely upon to protect the family’s security and interests if the crunch time comes. Simply put, it is old wine in a new bottle.

On the plus side, however, this is the sixth time that Wickremesinghe is holding the post of prime minister and he enjoys acceptability in Delhi and the western capitals as a sober thinker and doer who can be trusted to steer clear of rash decisions, which is useful at the present juncture to source urgently needed help from abroad to navigate the crisis in the Sri Lankan economy.

On the other hand, Wickremesinghe is a discredited politician himself who never once completed a term in office as prime minister, and he represents a one-man party (himself) in the parliament and is a spent force politically. As the Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith put it, “People want a person with integrity, not someone who has been defeated in politics.”

There is lurking suspicion In Colombo that Rajapaksa picked Wickremesinghe primarily to deflect the protestors’ demand for his own exit. The BBC reported that the news of Wickremesinghe’s appointment has been “largely met with dismay and disbelief” in Sri Lanka.

This becomes important in the days and weeks ahead because the onerous responsibility to steer the political transition to calmer waters leading to fresh elections and the formation of a new government, etc. falls on Wickremesinghe’s shoulders. The big question is: Will he persuade Rajapaksa to step down?

The high probability is that Rajapaksa may instead try to use Wickremesinghe as a firewall to weather the protests, in effect, to defy the protestors’ demand that he quit. Suffice to say, the future of the Wickremesinghe government is murky at best.

The danger here is that the emergent political dimensions will undermine the prospects of economic recovery. It is going to be next to impossible for Wickremesinghe to negotiate the bridging finance and the agreement with the IMF while simultaneously on a parallel track clip the powers of the executive presidency and set a date for Rajapaksa to resign and for the office of the executive presidency to be abolished. The economic agenda itself is so daunting.

In addition to negotiating with the IMF on the details of long-term structural reforms, the government will need to arrange urgent “bridge financing” from international agencies to inject short-term liquidity, convince creditors to allow a pause in debt payments, and prepare a range of legislation to increase taxes and cut non-urgent public spending.

Without doubt, the IMF has already spelt out the reforms needed to win its financial support, which include a long series of austerity measures, from budget cuts to income tax and VAT increases, an end to inflationary money printing by the Central Bank, phasing out import restrictions, stopping government interventions aimed at stabilising the rupee, and “growth-enhancing structural reforms”, including unpopular measures such as the sale or partial privatisation of state-owned companies, removal of costly social subsidies, and so on.

As for Rajapaksa, he seems determined to cling to power, especially in the face of the public calls to hold him and his family accountable for alleged corruption and other crimes. He has expressed no intention to resign his post and instead has floated the idea vaguely of curtailing his executive powers. The situation is extremely volatile. Even deeper economic collapse or more serious social unrest becomes a possibility if the political standoff continues unresolved quickly.

At any rate, the process to remove or sideline President Rajapaksa is likely to take weeks, if not months, and could fail entirely. This is where Rajapaksa may seize the moment to turn the turmoil to his own purpose by resorting to violent repression (consistent with his past record) or bring in the military for a larger role in governance.

The top military commanders – most notably the army chief, Major General Shavendra Silva and the defence secretary, retired General Kamal Gunaratne — are known to be close to the president. The military personnel live a life of perks and privileges in Sri Lanka and as stakeholders, they would have no qualms about turning their guns on protestors to preserve the regime.

Of course, the role of the international community is relevant but it is not to be exaggerated. The military leadership is unlikely to be deterred from intervening in politics or from brutal suppression of protests in support of the regime. Interestingly, the incumbent army chief is already under US sanctions for alleged war crimes (committed under Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch as the defence secretary during the civil war.)

Paradoxically, any lifeline from the IMF, while easing economic hardships for the average Sri Lankans and lessen the intensity of the clamour for political change, could also provide breathing space to Rajapaksa, allowing him and his family to restore themselves. The family has a history of rising like the Phoenix from the ashes.

Sri Lanka is only one of some 35 developing countries today that are struggling with post-pandemic economic recovery. The big powers have little time left for Sri Lanka amidst the birth pangs of a multipolar world order. Therefore, the chances are that Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a ruthless practitioner of power, will strive to attrition the protesters somehow to survive the challenge to his leadership.

INDIA

Rich Look on as Homes of the Poor Vanish in Delhi

Governments and society must change their outlook toward those who keep the wheels of the economy turning. It is what our Constitution says we must do too.

Swarajbir
14 May 2022

A man walks past demolished structure after a demolition drive in Delhi


In American novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s novel ‘The Sirens of Titan’, a central character named Winston Niles Rumfoord acquires the power to appear anywhere on earth and then disappear to another planet. One of his sojourns takes him to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Vonnegut fantasises that Rumfoord and his dog have entered a phenomenon he calls Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum, which turns them into a kind of ‘wave’ that appears and disappears at will. Rumfoord materialises—becomes visible—when the scattered molecules of his body come together. And when he wants to disappear from anywhere, the molecules break up, and he dematerialises to materialise in a new location.

The wealthy and middle-class people who live in big metros and cities also want people with fewer resources, who work in their homes, shops, factories, businesses, etc., to appear at their place of work on time, work properly, and then disappear. They expect workers to be diligent and efficient in accomplishing their tasks quickly and appropriately. These sections also believe they pay these workers a lot of money, which they do not even deserve. In a way, they think they are being kind to an underserving lot. It does not matter to them where or how these workers live, whether they have access to health and education or social security. The rich and middle class remain silent and indifferent to all such concerns.

The question is, where should these workers live? Like in Vonnegut’s imaginary world, they cannot materialise and dematerialise at will. They are not characters in a novel but human beings in flesh and blood who live in a cruel real world. With the kind of wages they earn, very few of them can afford houses with concrete roofs. So, where do the rest of them live? Of course, in unhealthy, unsafe, and socially undesirable environs called “slums”.

Their spaces are cramped, yet they live there—entire families of five, six, or seven members in just a tiny hovel. Many pay rent to live in these huts. Even this is termed as “illegal occupation” and “encroachment”. There are times when their settlements are legalised, and at other times, they are bulldozed. It depends entirely on the will of the rulers, the administrators, and the balance of political power. Is it not pertinent to ask, when do the workers figure in our collective understanding or our social and economic discourses?

Look at the residential colonies of the wealthy and the middle class. There is no space for the poor and the underprivileged in them. No part of these colonies is reserved for housing for the workers, as the land prices here are high. When the price of land is steep, men with fewer resources get dwarfed. Setting aside areas for workers’ dwellings makes no “economic sense” in the development discourse. The claims of the underprivileged inevitably dwarf and disappear before such economic logic. Some large, affluent houses create servants’ rooms, typically tiny single rooms where the help and their entire family are expected to stay, feeling obliged. The servants’ room is considered a big favour to a worker. A worker who lives in such a room with their family must be grateful to the employer and, in return, they make themselves available to the master full-time. Not all workers are fortunate enough to get a room in exchange for their services. This is metropolitan slavery—what else are we going to call it?

The same middle-class thinking informs the architecture and town planning professions. Just like no place is carved out where workers can live in dignity while planning colonies, city planning as a whole also creates no space for them. Occasionally, the government will announce housing for the poor and pigeonhole flats are built for working people. The upper and middle classes quickly lash out at these as a “wasteful” expenditure. As control over the process of urbanisation increasingly passes into private hands, new privately-developed colonies have even less space for workers. In fact, they are entirely missing from these developments.

In the perception of the middle class, workers’ settlements are havens for the filthy, the criminals and those who spread disease. There is no room for such settlements in our beautiful clean cities, opines the middle class. They should be demolished to make way for better buildings, or parks and business facilitation centres.

But what is the economy of the demolitions we are seeing? When any settlement (slum) is demolished, the upper and middle-class people living in its neighbourhood heave a sigh of relief. They rejoice that the “filth” is being removed, even if they need those who live there to work in homes, shops, or factories. Whether the government is giving workers an alternative place to live—is it not the government’s responsibility to provide shelter to the underprivileged?—the upper- and middle-class attitude towards these issues is negative.

The middle class thinks it pays taxes, especially income tax, so it funds the government’s expenses and runs the economy, while all other people are a “burden” on the exchequer. In reality, the millions of underprivileged people contribute to the state exchequer through indirect taxes, which pay for the advancement of the rich and cover the salaries and loans taken by the middle class.

When slums and settlements of the poor are demolished, officials declare they have freed government land worth thousands of crores of rupees from illegal occupation. Such announcements are hailed as a sign of the success of the authorities. They are credited with having benefited the government and civil society by thousands of crores. Only on the margins of some newspapers does it appear that the demolition has left thousands homeless and hurt as many livelihoods. Where will the homeless go to live? Nobody thinks about it.

Even if a rehabilitation plan exists for the poor, it is half-baked and remains stuck in administrative red tape for decades. Often, resettlement sites are miles away from the upper- and middle-class habitations, and even then, they are seen as acts of state benevolence.

In a few years, the city expands, and the upper and middle class approach these settlements. All over again, they start talking about the workers’ settlements as filthy, crowded, ‘sanctuaries of crime’, just like Delhi’s affluent class are talking about Jahangirpuri and other settlements these days.

When it comes down purely to economics, most experts say the government saves thousands of crores through demolitions and removing encroachments. But many experts have brought to our attention the losses incurred when thousands of people are left homeless, with their livelihoods destroyed. Losses from such destructions are far bigger than financial gains derived from amassing some more land.

Governments, political leaders, town planners, financial experts, administrators, and economists should be guided by a humane perspective on urban issues. It is their humanitarian, legal and constitutional duty to think about the poor working people before they order the bulldozing of humble settlements. Only this will make us civilised in the true sense, not the mindset that seeks to uproot workers from their homes. Workers are the water that nourishes the soul of humanity. They are the salt of the earth, the real inheritors and masters of the earth. Governments and society must give them their due share. Only by recognising their share can society move towards a just order and build a nation on the principles of justice, equality, and fraternity. Governments and society must change their outlook towards the working people. This is what our Constitution also says we must do.

Dr Swarajbir is the editor of Punjabi Tribune and a noted playwright. The views are personal. This article is a translation by Navsharan Singh from the original in Punjabi, published with permission from the author.