It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 05, 2022
German police hunt for clues after blast at left-wing party offices
Glass lie on the ground after an explosion at The Left Party (Die Linke) office.
David Young/dpa
German police believe a home-made bomb could have caused an explosion at the offices of the hard-left Die Linke political party in western Germany, according to dpa sources.
Police in the city of Oberhausen found evidence of a home-made explosive device that was built using "flash explosives" like those contained in fireworks, the sources said.
An explosion at around 3:20 am (0120 GMT) destroyed the windows of the Die Linke party office. It also partially destroyed the interiors of the shops including a hairdressers and a travel agent.
Yusuf Karacelik, parliamentary group leader of the party in Oberhausen, said in a written statement on Tuesday that he assumed it was a "targeted attack from the right."
Speaking to dpa, Karacelik called it a "right-wing terrorist attack."
National party leader Janine Wissler also said she believed there could be a right-wing political motive behind the blast.
There are currently no indications of who carried out the suspected bombing. A police spokesperson said that they were investigating all possible leads and that a political motivation could not be ruled out.
Glass lie on the ground after an explosion at The Left Party (Die Linke) office. David Young/dpa
Police officers investigate the scene after an explosion at The Left Party (Die Linke) office. David Young/dpa
Full ban of ‘weapons of war’ is a ‘good place to restart’ gun debate: Washington Post
After seven were killed and 38 more injured in a mass shooting in Highland Park during an Independence Day parade, The Washington Post editorial board on Tuesday argued for a full ban on assault weapons.
"Police said Tuesday that they think Crimo legally purchased his weapon, described as “similar to an AR-15,” and randomly fired at the crowd with no apparent motive," The Washington Post reported. "A second rifle was found in his car, police said."
The newspaper was dumbfounded that the country allows the massacres to continue.
"Once again, an angry young man with a high-powered rifle wreaks bloody havoc on an American community. Once again, heartbroken families must plan funerals for loved ones. Once again, something so simple — like going to church or attending school and now watching a parade — is added to the pleasures of life that can no longer be taken for granted. And once again, we must ask why we allow this madness to continue. How many more families and communities have to be needlessly ripped apart before something is finally done about the weapons that make it obscenely easy to kill the most people in the shortest period of time?" the editorial board wrote.
Victims in the shooting ranged in age from 8 to 88.
"The ease of acquiring these weapons of war — and make no mistake, war is what the designers of these weapons envisioned — is by now, after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Las Vegas and countless other mass shootings, a sadly familiar story. That the back-to-back shootings in May at a grocery store in Buffalo and at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., were allegedly committed by 18-year-olds who had no problem strolling into gun stores and leaving with weapons that would be used to kill 31 people should have been a call to action for Congress," the editorial board wrote. "Instead, the regulation of assault weapons was not even allowed on the table as a package of moderate gun and school safety measures was negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators and signed into law."
The editorial concluded that "Banning assault weapons is a good place to restart the conversation."
However, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said at an event in Kentucky that the bipartisan bill had addressed the problem.
“I think yesterday’s shooting is another example of what the problem is,” McConnell said. “The problem is mental health and these young men who seem to be inspired to commit these atrocities. So I think the bill that we passed targeted the problem.”
Congress is scheduled to return from vacation next week.
An endless arms race: How to fight the NRA's absurd solution to mass shootings
Salon July 05, 2022 A man fires a machine gun on the main firing line during the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
As we celebrated Independence Day, there was no independence from the scourge of gun violence and the toll it is taking on the American psyche. The shooter who attacked a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing six people and wounding at least 38 others, used a "high-powered rifle," according to authorities. Survivors report a rain of bullets at the height of the attack.
This attack is bound to renew calls for more "red flag" laws that would help identify and disarm emotionally or mentally unstable persons who are making threats of gun violence or praising mass murderers. But would the Highland Park shooter's online record of participating in "death fetish" culture sites and making art featuring mass killing have been enough for a judge to order seizure of his guns? The Guardian reports that just one Reddit website featuring gruesome death videos has more than 400,000 subscribers, most of whom will never shoot anyone. Red flag laws may help, but they seem likely either to cast too wide a net or to miss key individuals, given that mental health is not a strong predictor of becoming a mass shooter.
The outcry was even enough to motivate some Republican senators — enough for the 60 votes needed to surmount a filibuster and pass a new gun control law. But don't get your hopes up. The Senate bill, now signed into law, does not include renewing the assault weapons ban that, for a decade, lowered deaths in mass shootings, and would have prevented many more in the years since the Senate declined to renew it in 2004. Nor does it expand background checks to all gun show sales. It does increase checks on buyers under age 21, but will not prevent them from buying high-capacity magazines.
You will recall that the Uvalde shooter bought two semiautomatic rifles and more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition, and the Highland Park shooter clearly also had large magazines. Deaths almost triple when shooters use high-capacity magazines. The House passed a better bill that would ban high-capacity magazines and currently untraceable "ghost guns," as well as requiring secure storage at home. The law we need should also require smart gun technology — a fingerprint or eye-scan lock — that makes handguns fireable only by their owners.
Instead, the "Safer Communities Act" now in effect throws money at the problem by funding more programs to help emotionally disturbed youth and to encourage every state to implement its own "red flag" procedures. That's a far cry from a unified national standard to stop highly unstable people from buying powerful weapons (New York's new law could be used as such a standard). As things stand, even a person flagged for severe mental disturbances in one state may be able to visit another state, a gun show or a website to buy an assault rifle with a magazine that holds 80 or more armor-piercing bullets.
This new law may create a false sense of hope, but will do little to reduce the 316 "routine" shootings that take place on average every day in this country, including around 74 in suicide attempts and another 91 in accidental shootings. This problem is driven by the fact that there are so many guns in American households that someone in a psychic meltdown can easily get hold of one. Gun sales tripled during the pandemic, and there is more than one private firearm per person in America, far more than in any other nation. In 2021 alone, 19.9 million guns were sold in the U.S., amounting to more than $1,1 billion in gross profits. Even if we assume half of that went to guns for hunting sports (which is unlikely), it is still a shocking figure.
Like every crisis, this one produces new markets. In particular, beyond funeral homes and gun manufacturers, opportunities in security are booming. The number of law enforcement officers in this country has increased over 27% in just nine years since its low during the last big recession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 14% increase in the number of private security guard jobs during this decade. We can expect towns and cities to spend more on police protection for parades and public events. For example, one report shows that, in nominal dollars, Seattle's expenses on police for large events almost doubled from 2010 to 2016.
That is essentially the NRA's alternative to gun control: continuing to add armed security personnel without end. But this alleged solution to gun violence is a mirage that recedes as you try to approach it. The NRA wants more armed personnel not only at schools and churches, but also at bars, arts and music festivals, supermarkets, movie theaters, schools, parades,and workplaces where the mass shootings that uniquely plague America keep happening. A security detail will be needed for every federal judge, but also for their family members — potentially more than 3,000 new federal security officers. Eventually the same will hold for all 535 members of Congress and Cabinet members, plus an increasing number of state officials as well.
How expensive that will be is rarely even discussed, but in fact the economic costs entailed by this approach are staggering. Imagine how angry Americans would be if their state doubled sales taxes on every product and service. The NRA's "armed guards everywhere" approach might entail at least that much.
After every school, movie theater, county fair, mall and nightclub has its own elite military unit at your expense, shooters will move on to farmers markets, dog runs, ski resorts and ice rinks. No amount of armed officers will ever be enough.
A "resource officer" with a handgun was never a familiar figure in school for most of us who are now adults. As one study noted, "in 1975, only 1% of schools reported having police officers on site, but by 2018, approximately 58% of schools had at least one sworn law enforcement official present during the school week" at an annual cost of many billions of dollars — even though, as the Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 2021, there is little evidence that they deter school shootings. This is hardly a sign of progress.
The NRA's approach would require at least two or three officers with expensive training at every school building, because the presence of a single officer does not stop school shootings – as we saw in Parkland, Florida, and again in Uvalde, Texas. An average school district might need at least 24 SWAT-style security experts, whose salary, benefits and equipment would cost at least $2.5 million a year, at a conservative estimate). Such a midsize district could have hired perhaps 15 to 20 excellent teachers for that sum. And even then, two police officers in a school under attack might feel too outgunned to storm the shooter's apparent location.
The target options will also expand. Every office, every government official's home street and every floor of every hospital will need at least two guards with assault rifles and armor. After every school, cinema, county fair, mall and nightclub, every large holiday party or summer concert has its own elite militia unit at your expense — all priced into everything you buy — the shooters will move on to farmer's markets, ski resorts, dog parks, rush hour traffic jams, ice rinks, you name it. No number of armed officers in the world will be enough, but their presence everywhere will create the numbing, tourism-killing sense of living in a war zone.
The law passed by the Senate will not stop our slide down this slippery slope. We will eventually see armed guards and vigilantes — including armed teachers, armed bus drivers, armed supermarket managers and so on — at cross purposes in mass shooting events, mistaking each other for the active shooter. How many innocent civilians will get caught in the crossfire during shootouts in ordinary public spaces as we "harden our targets" according to the NRA's insane dictates? And how many more children will accidentally get shot at home because of all these newly armed ordinary civilians? An estimated 4.3 million kids already live in homes with one or more loaded and unlocked guns.
In areas where violent crime is perceived to be high, we are also likely to see more ordinary civilians carrying guns, ostensibly for self-protection, now that the Supreme Court has made it much easier to get concealed carry permits by striking down a New York law. Everytown USA reports that direct and indirect costs of gun violence now top $280 billion a year. A study in Mother Jones gave a figure of $229 billion in 2015 dollars. Yet such calculations don't usually even begin to add up the likely costs of all these additional security guards.
For comparison, $280 billion is more than all state spending on Medicaid and all federal spending on Veterans Affairs. It's more than 10 times the total amount of spending on Pell Grants, the main federal aid program for college expenses. After another decade, the money we spend on hordes of armed guards, health care for the injured, life insurance for the murdered, counseling for children traumatized by shootings, prisons for gun crime convicts, and other effects of the gun glut could equal half our entire national defense budget (which itself equals the combined defense budgets of the next seven nations). No other advanced democratic society would even consider sacrificing so much just to subsidize one destructive industry.
When we start keeping our kids away from Fourth of July parades, we are allowing politicians like Ted Cruz, subsidiaries of the NRA, to destroy the fabric of our society.
There is another insidious and less obvious social cost of the gun glut: more isolation. Already parents have moved more than a million students out of public schools during the COVID pandemic, and one-third of American adults say that fear of shootings keeps them and their kids from going to certain events and venues. As shootings increase, more parents will decide to homeschool their kids or keep them from participating in sports, shopping with friends or visiting beaches and rock concerts. When we start keeping our kids away from Fourth of July parades, we are allowing politicians like Ted Cruz, who are fully-owned subsidiaries of the NRA, to destroy the social fabric of our society.
In sum, the NRA plan is an arms-race spiral with no logical end. Because officers with handguns are not enough, we will need armor-piercing weapons to stop mass shooters. The armor will get stronger and so will the guns and bullets, with the weapons industry cashing in at every iteration cycle. It's a bit like a web programmer who attacks your computer with viruses and then sells you antivirus software: Their goal is to direct attention away from the root of the problem.
That root, once again, is the vast number of guns in this society, including assault rifles, and their ready availability in most states. This is the main difference between the U.S. and other developed democratic nations, where most mentally ill people, suicidal people or those on a rampage of hate cannot easily get hold of a powerful firearm when their crisis arrives.
To really fix the problem, we have to reduce the fears of neighbors cultivated by mass media, which drive gun sales. The sense that others around you are arming up also triggers second-order fears. Americans feel the need to own a gun because the enormous number in circulation make it far more likely that a criminal here will use a gun while committing a crime. There is no technological substitute for deep social trust, as sociologists researching "social capital" have found. The proliferation of guns erodes that trust like the strongest acid, and produces a defeatist sense that mass shootings are "inevitable."
There is no technological substitute for social trust, which the proliferation of guns corrodes like acid, producing a defeatist sense that mass shootings are "inevitable."
That point also helps explain what's wrong with the NRA's main arguments against new gun laws. Against red flag laws, supporters of our disastrous status quo say they depend on family members, school officials or mental health professionals to report dangerous individuals; but as we saw in the Buffalo shooting, such people often face counter-pressures not to report. Against limits on magazines and armor-piercing semiautomatic guns (or "assault rifles"), they say that there is already an "immense stock" of them on hand, so a ban will do little. Against gun-show checks, they cite mass shooters who passed background checks.
Sadly, these arguments are largely correct: even the House bills would only reduce, not stop, the carnage from rising numbers of mass shootings. But that doesn't mean that "resistance is futile" and we should give up. These objections only show that, in addition to such stronger laws, we must reject the spiraling addiction to powerful weapons and armed guards in our society, which fuels potential shooters' sense that this is a quick route to fame. The only sane course is to reject the whole arms race that is so self-defeating for all of us.
We could start by adding steep federal taxes on sales of all guns other than standard hunting rifles, which would recapture at least some of the costs in medical insurance, lost productivity and life insurance that are being imposed on us. For semiautomatics, the tax could be 1,000%, as one Virginia lawmaker recently proposed. Then we could end the immunity from civil liability lawsuits that gun manufacturers enjoy.
Of course, none of this is possible while the filibuster curse endures. More fundamentally, we need a cultural shift, or even a crusade: We have to start heaping scorn on "gun culture," and making everyone understand its appalling and ever-increasing social costs. We need to reverse the idea that masculine image and status come from AK-47s and instead project the message that this kind of posturing is immature and weak: You don't need a gun to be a real man, or have a confident and powerful identity. That requires a society-wide effort to counter the NRA's lies, starting with discussions in our homes and extending to mass advertising campaigns. It eventually worked with the tobacco peddlers, and we can set ourselves free from our addiction to guns too.
FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Historic American Rescue Plan Pension Relief for Millions of Union Workers and Retirees
Tomorrow, President Biden will join union workers and retirees at the Max S. Hayes High School in Cleveland, Ohio to announce the final rule implementing the American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance program. The American Rescue Plan provided critical assistance to working families and jump started our economic recovery, re-opening 99% of schools, helping to create more than 8 million jobs, and generating the fastest economic growth in 40 years. The Special Financial Assistance Program will protect millions of workers in multiemployer pension plans who faced significant cuts to their benefits.
Multiemployer plans are created through agreements between employers and a union, with plans typically involving multiple employers in a single industry or related industries. A typical worker whose multiemployer plan became insolvent would see their expected pension benefits slashed substantially. Before the American Rescue Plan, workers and retirees participating in more than 200 multiemployer pension plans faced the prospect of not receiving the full benefits they earned and need to support them and their families in retirement.
These plans are insured by a federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). PBGC provides partial protection of the benefits of approximately 10.9 million workers and retirees in approximately 1,400 private-sector multiemployer, union-connected plans. Prior to the America Rescue Plan, the PBGC’s multiemployer pension insurance program was projected to become insolvent in 2026.
The American Rescue Plan Protects Retirees’ Pension Benefits
Named for heroic Ohio union leader and pension advocate Butch Lewis, the American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance program will provide financial relief to struggling multiemployer pension plans and ensure that millions of families facing benefit cuts will receive their full benefits they earned.
Under the program, financially struggling multiemployer pension plans can apply to the PBGC for assistance. PBGC issued an Interim Final Rule implementing the program in July 2021. Unions, employers, and other key stakeholders provided important comments that PBGC and the three Cabinet agencies that constitute its Board of Directors (the Labor, Treasury, and Commerce Departments) considered in developing the Final Rule. Important policy changes from the Interim Final Rule to the Final Rule include:Addressing the amount of Special Financial Assistance needed to better achieve the goal of allowing plans to remain solvent until 2051. The interim final rule applied a single rate of return included in the statute that is higher than could be expected for Special Financial Assistance funds given that they were required to be invested exclusively in safe, but low-return, investment-grade fixed income products. The final rule uses two different rates of return for SFA and non-SFA assets so that the interest rate for SFA assets is more realistic given the investment limitations on these funds. This policy fix will help ensure that all multiemployer plans that receive assistance will receive sufficient funds to remain solvent until 2051.
Responsible permissible return-seeking investments: The final rule allows 33% of Special Financial Assistance to be invested in return-seeking assets that are projected to allow plans to receive a higher rate of return on their investments than under the interim final rule, but subject to strict protections. This portion of plans’ SFA funds generally must be invested in publicly traded assets on liquid markets to ensure responsible stewardship of federal funds. These return-seeking investments include equities, equity funds, and bonds. The other 67% of SFA funds must be invested in investment-grade fixed-income products.
Ensure MPRA plans could confidently restore both past and future benefits and enter 2051 with rising assets. PBGC designed the final rule to ensure that no MPRA plan – the 18 multiemployer plans that remained solvent by cutting benefits pursuant to the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) – was forced to choose between restoring their benefit payments to previous levels and remaining indefinitely solvent, as required by the Act. The final rule ensures that all 18 MPRA plans avoid this dilemma, with enough assistance so that these plans can both restore benefits and be projected to remain indefinitely solvent going into 2051.
Taken together, these changes ensure that all plans that receive Special Financial Assistance are projected to be solvent and pay full benefits through at least 2051.
The American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance Program Will Have Historic Impacts: Positions multiemployer plans that receive assistance to remain solvent through at least 2051 – with no cuts to earned benefits: Before American Rescue Plan: over 200 multiemployer plans were on pace to become insolvent in the near term.
After: Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, every multiemployer pension plan that faced near-term insolvency and benefit cuts that receives Special Financial Assistance is projected to remain solvent through 2051, and for much longer.
Protect benefits for millions of workers who faced cuts: Before the American Rescue Plan: a wave of multiemployer pension plan insolvencies was projected to leave two to three million union workers, retirees, and their families without the full benefits they had earned.
After: Two to three million workers and retirees in plans that receive assistance are expected to have their full pension benefits for the next three decades.
Harsh Pension Cuts Reversed for over 80,000 Workers and Retirees in 18 Multiemployer Plans: Before: MPRA allowed plans to, for the first time, cut workers’ and retirees’ benefits in order to remain indefinitely solvent. Eighteen multiemployer “MPRA plans” were approved to utilize this program.
After: More than 80,000 workers and retirees in MPRA plans who, through no fault of their own, had their pension benefits cut, are eligible to have those benefits fully reinstated – with their plans solvent through 2051. The Special Financial Assistance program ensures all MPRA plans that were forced to cut benefits are able to restore those cuts in full, maintain full benefits into the foreseeable future, and be projected to remain indefinitely solvent.
Most significant effort to protect the solvency of the multiemployer pension system in almost 50 years: Before: Before the American Rescue Plan, because of the anticipated financial pressures from the need to guarantee minimum (partial) benefits for insolvent plans, PBGC’s Multiemployer Pension Insurance Program was projected to become insolvent in 2026.
After: The American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance program extended the solvency of the PBGC multiemployer insurance program from 2026 to 2055. This relief is the most substantial policy to strengthen the solvency of our nation’s multiemployer pensions since the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974.
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USA West Coast dockworkers still talking after contract expires
The Associated Press Robert Jablon Publishing date:Jul 05, 2022
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A contract between shipping companies and 22,000 West Coast dockworkers expired over the weekend. But both sides continued to talk and said they want to avoid a strike that could savage an economy already stressed by soaring inflation and supply chain woes.
The contract that expired last Friday covered workers at ports from California to Washington state that handle nearly 40% of U.S. imports.
“While there will be no contract extension, cargo will keep moving, and normal operations will continue at the ports until an agreement can be reached,” said a joint statement from the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
The ILWU is the union representing Pacific dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Association is a trade group for cargo carriers and terminal operators. Its members include such global shipping giants as Maersk and Evergreen Marine.
The talks are so crucial that President Joe Biden even stepped in last month and met with both sides in Los Angeles. They are taking place against the backdrop of surging imports that left backlogs of ships anchored offshore, and declining exports.
Both sides said last month that they weren’t planning any work disruptions, but U.S. industries are clearly worried.
In a letter to Biden issued hours before the latest contract expired, about 150 trade groups ranging from truckers to agricultural, chemical and toy industries urged the administration to work with both parties to extend the current contract, negotiate in good faith and agree to avoid actions that further disrupt the ports.
The letter stressed that the groups are entering their peak season for imports as retailers stockpile goods for the fall holidays and back-to-school items.
“We continue to expect cargo flows to remain at all-time highs, putting further stress on the supply chain and increasing inflation,” the letter said. “Many expect these challenges to continue through the rest of the year.”
A major issue in the talks is automation of port facilities. The union argues that it will cost the jobs of crane operators and other workers, who can earn $100,000 or more per year. The Pacific Maritime Association argues that automation will actually will increase employment by enabling ports to move more cargo.
Ports already have been struggling to handle container traffic, much of it from Asia, where ports are heavily automated.
After the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in 2020, cargo traffic to ports slumped drastically. But then it recovered and has been booming since. Soaring demand has led to traffic jams at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which in 2021 alone moved some 20 million cargo containers. The ports, collectively known as the San Pedro Bay port complex, alone handle more than 30% of waterborne containerized imports and exports in the U.S.
In January, some 100 ships were waiting to get into the port complex, but that total is now down to 60 or even as low as 20 at times, Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero said Tuesday.
Cargo is loaded and unloaded 16 hours a day, on average, Cordero said. However, the ports need to have a “24-7 mindset” to deal with Asian traffic, where ports operate around the clock, he said.
Contracts are renegotiated every six years, and Cordero said most have concluded without disruptions.
However, a lockout in 2002 and an eight-day strike in 2015 cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars and forced the administrations of then-presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to intervene.
Cordero said he hadn’t seen any work slowdowns at the port and was optimistic that the current negotiations would end with a fairly quick resolution.
“The world’s looking at us to make sure that were moving the cargo,” he said. “I think the administration has made it clear that they expect a reasonable … outcome.”
Unionized dockworkers also are seeking a raise and argue that shipping lines can afford it. With global demand, overseas freight shipping firms are seeing record profits.
Last month, Biden signed the Ocean Shipping Reform Act — meant to make shipping goods across oceans cheaper — and blasted the concentration of corporate shipping in the hands of nine foreign-owned companies.
“These carriers made $190 billion in profit in 2021, seven times higher than the year before,” Biden said. “The cost got passed on, as you might guess, directly to consumers, sticking it to American families and businesses because they could.”
Port workers moving cargo [Photo by ILWU/Facebook]
The contract for 22,000 West Coast dockworkers expires at midnight Friday evening without a new deal. The lack of a deal by the time of expiration is widely expected. Statements by both the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association, the group representing port employers, indicated that it was their intention to continue talks past the deadline.
The ILWU is keeping workers on the job without a new contract indefinitely. There has been complete radio silence from the union on the progress and character of the talks, and even on when a contract could be expected.
Meanwhile, both parties have been meeting on virtually a daily basis with the Biden administration, which declared to one industry outlet that work stoppages “would not be tolerated this year.” The ruling class knows that a strike on the West Coast docks would not only have an immediate impact; it would also have a galvanizing effect on workers across the US and around the world.
One of the few official statements from the union came in the form of a joint statement with the PMA, in which it pledged that it had no intention of preparing for a strike. This statement and the decision to keep workers on the job, in violation of the principle of “no contract, no work,” have produced considerable anger and frustration among dockworkers.
“I would prefer to strike even against the union’s advice than let shippers get away with their lies and automation demands,” one southern California worker told the World Socialist Web Site.
Earlier this week, the WSWS issued a statement urging dockworkers to demand the ILWU call an immediate strike authorization vote and set a strike deadline of July 11 for the PMA to give a contract that meets all of their demands. To fight for this, the WSWS called for the formation of a Dockworkers Rank-and-File Committee to end the secrecy surrounding contract talks, establish rank-and-file control and appeal for support from dockworkers and other workers around the US and the world.
In a statement earlier this week, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh declared that all was well with the discussions behind closed doors. Both sides “continually tell me that we’re in a good place. It’s moving forward,” Walsh said. “There’s been no issues that I’m aware of that have come up that have made either side concerned.”
In fact, press reports indicate that the PMA is demanding sweeping concessions, particularly in automating some of the highest-paid jobs and lengthening the working day. If, under these conditions, the talks are “moving forward with no issues,” this can only mean that the ILWU bureaucracy is conspiring with the port operators and the Biden administration to enforce a major sellout on the workers.
Indeed, the ILWU released a study this week recommending that the state of California issue a tax levy on automated port facilities in Los Angeles and Long Beach, “with revenues directed to communities that suffer economic harm from the loss of dockworker jobs,” the Journal of Commerce reports. In other words, the ILWU is seeking to set the political conditions for it to accept job losses due to automation, rather than mobilizing workers against job cuts.
The ILWU already functions as a cheap labor contractor for the PMA through its role in providing a continual supply of tens of thousands of casual workers. This exploited layer are little more than day laborers with no benefits. They are not even union members. The ILWU, however, strings along casual workers with false promises that they can be hired in as full timers within two to five years. “Thanks to the ILWU, we actually increased our dockworker workforce by 16 percent last year” to help work through backlogs, Dann Wan, executive director of the Port of Oakland, told CNBC.
“The cost of living is tearing us apart”
One casual worker in Southern California told the WSWS: “Work has been very sporadic. It has been super-slow this week. I haven’t been able to go out even once. This makes this job basically just a little extra money at best. The ILWU has created this myth that working as casuals will lead you to a good job, so a lot of us do leave our jobs to pursue what is portrayed as a good longshore job. But the reality is that we end up working as casuals for many years, making very little money, and without any benefits. I know it’s the union that contributed to creating the tier system. It’s very unjust. We have no protection whatsoever as casuals.
“I have another job or else I would not be making a living as a dockworker alone. The thing is that I am second generation longshoreman, and what I make is nothing compared to my family members. They had it way better decades ago. Today, the cost of living is tearing us apart. Workers at McDonald’s do better than us. They even have some benefits, insurance, retirement. We have none of this.
“Concretely, if we had more hours assigned to us, say four to five full days a week, it would still be very low, somewhere around $900 a week. Here in Los Angeles, that is nothing. Then we would need at least 4,000 hours to go through the stages: ID, B-man, A-man. After all is said and done, you are looking at 12 to 15 years of casual labor before you really can have a serious job. And then automation threatens that as well. According to my calculations, I would need 14 years of this to see benefits.
“Down at the hall we go in at 6:30 a.m and in the afternoon around 4 p.m., you can catch so many of us waiting to even get a job and only a few are available. If you come down, you will see with your own eyes, and you can talk to any of us. They will tell you the same story.
“Regarding the new contract, we are being kept totally in the dark. I have a lot of family on the docks and no one is talking about it. I’d say that at least 90 percent of us don’t have a clue, all we know that bringing automation and not giving us jobs is killing us.”
Anxiety within ruling circles over dockworkers struggle
Behind the anodyne and reassuring official statements, there is deep anxiety within the corporate elite that the PMA and ILWU may not be able to keep rank-and-file anger under control. The New York Times published an article Thursday morning, “As Dockworkers Near Contract’s End, Many Others Have a Stake,” in which it used cherry-picked interviews with a single trucker and businessman to portray a strike as having a “crushing” impact on a population already dealing with rising prices and shortages.
The Times also stressed the unprecedented character of the Biden administration’s intervention in the talks, which began months before negotiations even officially began. “Mr. Biden’s early intervention could help stave off severe backlogs,” the Times said. Geraldine Knatz, former executive director for the Port of Los Angeles, told the paper, “In the past, the federal government would swoop in at the end when negotiations were at a stalemate. The relationship that developed between the ports and the Biden administration as a result of the supply chain crisis is something that did not exist before.”
While the Times sheds crocodile tears for the supposed economic harm done by a strike, the same media mouthpiece of corporate America argues that it may be necessary to trigger a recession in order to rein in “inflation,” by which it means any push for higher wages by workers. It also coined the phrase “the cure can’t be worse than the disease” in early 2020 when prominent New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued against lockdowns and other measures needed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic as too costly to the “economy.”
The rejection of such measures has led to 1 million deaths in the US, including at least 70 dockworkers. Allowing the virus to spread unhindered is the main cause of the supply chain crisis itself, in addition to the US-provoked war against Russia in Ukraine. The corporate oligarchy for whom the Times speaks, however, is raking in more profits than ever before. This is the only standard by which they measure the health of the “economy.”
“These are our lives. We are not going to give that up.”
A full-time Oakland dockworker said, “To ship one container before the pandemic in 2019 cost $1,200. As of today, one container costs $15,000. They are making 15 times as much as what they were making before. Our health care is free, so we’re going in with that as non-negotiable. We’re asking for cleaner equipment, better equipment that we work on and cleaner, better, safer working conditions. That’s what’s on the table.
“They are gonna say we got great wages, we make $150,000 a year, blah blah blah. But nothing compares to them going from billions to trillions a year. The companies are gonna make it look like we are greedy, but with today’s prices, our salary is just breaking even or check to check.”
“We want the support of the working class,” he concluded. “Every time there’s a fight, we are there for everyone. We just want to be treated like we treat people.”
Enormous support exists in the working class for the dockworkers, including among dockworkers on the East Coast, who are in a separate union, the International Longshoremen’s Association. “What are they saying? Are they going to strike? We would support them,” one Hampton Roads dockworker said.
“Why haven’t they called a strike vote yet? They want to cut us out, but if all of us can pull together, we can win,” she continued. “They want to pay us minimum wages. I checked on the companies, they spent 3 percent on labor last year! Three percent! And they say we are making too much. That is bulls***.”
After reviewing the exorbitant six-figure salaries of top ILA officials, she called them “outrageous, ridiculous,” adding, “This is knowledge that needs to be known about. We all need this information.”
The Hampton Roads dockworker said that she and others won’t stand for the concessions that are coming down the line, especially automation without compensation. “No, this is our job. These are our lives. We are not going to give that up.”
1,300 YEARS OLD
Ancient Spanish village loses school, fears for its future as population dwindles
Rural school closes down in one of the least populated regions of the European Union
Tue, July 5, 2022 By Susana Vera and Emma Pinedo
PITARQUE, Spain (Reuters) - The tiny village of Pitarque at the foot of a mountain in Aragon in eastern Spain has survived for more than 1,300 years, but if depopulation continues at the current rate, it will be deserted by 2046, its residents warn.
The closure of the local school at the end of term last month, as two of its only four pupils moved away with their parents, may mark the point of no return in the village of 69 residents, which was founded by Muslim conquerors in the 8th century and in its heyday a century back had over 1,000 residents.
Many are retired, and just about half spend the cold winter months in Pitarque, which is situated above a small valley in a rugged mountain range and where the local road ends, 340 km (211 miles) east of Madrid.
Depopulation is a major challenge in Spain, whose 47-million-strong population is 80% urban and occupies just 13% of its territory, compared to France's 68% populated territory, and 60% in Germany.
Villages at risk of depopulation make up 42%, compared to the European Union's average of 10%. The province of Teruel, which includes Pitarque, is one of the EU's least populated.
Alberto Toro, 42-year-old local teacher, fell in love with the picturesque village, its nearby river, dramatic canyons and climbing routes when he first arrived 14 years ago.
With fewer than 10 pupils at a time, he tailored his teaching to each child and used fun, innovative methods such as a rap song explaining how the blood circulatory system works.
"Schools are the engine of change and development. When you close them down, you become stagnant," said Toro, who is still deciding where to go next but plans to keep visiting Pitarque, which he calls his "micro-paradise".
He prefers not to think what he's leaving behind, but a colleague compared him to Robinson Crusoe about to leave his island.
Twelve-year-old Eloy, who will now go to school in another village a few miles away, said he would miss Toro the most, describing him as akin to a second father who taught him about the human body using Lego blocks.
On the last school day, several former pupils joined Toro and the schoolchildren in an art workshop followed by a group hug.
Spain's government has pledged 4.3 billion euros of EU funds to increase public services coverage to fight depopulation, but locals fear it could be too late for Pitarque.
"The school closure means the end of the village itself. We will possibly become - I hope I am wrong - a weekend village that is dead Monday to Friday," said Eloy's mother Pakita Iranzo, 52.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, Editing by Andrei Khalip and Raissa Kasolowsky)
Reduced COVID-19 testing across the U.S. is blurring view of the pandemic
By Adeel Hassan and Sarah Cahalan New York Times •Jul 05, 2022
At a glance, the pandemic picture in the United States may seem remarkably stable. The average number of new confirmed coronavirus cases per day has hardly budged for weeks, hovering between 95,000 and 115,000 a day each day in June.
A closer look shows that as public testing sites run by state and local governments have winnowed, more states have also stopped giving daily data updates, creating a foggier look at the state of virus across the country. That comes as federal estimates say the rapidly spreading omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 have together become dominant among new U.S. cases.
The reduction in public testing means that lab-based PCR testing capacity in July will be only half of what it was in March, according to a recent estimate by Health Catalysts Group, a research and consulting firm. Even a few testing companies announced layoffs and closures last week.
The vast majority of the positive results from popular home test kits are not included in official data, and not everyone who gets infected knows or gets tested. Many Americans appear to be moving even further away from focusing on daily case counting — which, to be sure, have always been an undercount of total infections — as a measure of the nation’s pandemic health. But other Americans with risk factors have said they feel ignored and abandoned as their governments and neighbors have sought a return to normal.
And some scientists estimate that the current wave of cases is the second largest of the pandemic.
“One of my favorite lines from somebody at the CDC was ‘You don’t need to count the raindrops to know how hard it’s raining,’” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in late June at a conference in Aspen, Colorado. “So we can tell by the half a million to a million PCRs we’re doing every day how we’re doing in areas around the country.”
The CDC’s monitoring of community risk levels shows that in its latest update, 33% of the American population lived in a high-risk county, in most regions outside the Northeast. In May, the map had been flipped, with the Northeast comprising most of the high-risk counties. The CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public under such a designation.
In most of the Northeast, cases have decreased continuously throughout June, according to a New York Times database. In the South, many states have seen cases double or triple over the same time. As of Sunday, more than 113,000 new coronavirus cases are being reported each day in the United States, according to the Times.
“That’s not really a reflection of the total amount of virus circulating in the communities,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He said that his “back of the envelope” estimate was about 1 million cases per day.
As states report less frequently, changes in the trajectory of the virus are slower to reveal themselves. Nearly every state reported the number of new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths for five days a week or more in 2020 and 2021, but 23 states now release new data only once a week, according to Times tracking.
California, which once updated its cumulative case and death figures every weekday, now does so only twice weekly. In Florida, case and death data are released just once every two weeks. Just last week, many more public testing sites closed in Alaska, Colorado and Rhode Island. Iowa is shutting many sites by the end of next week.
Recent virus figures have hiccuped around holidays such as Memorial Day and Juneteenth, during which many states often pause reporting and then restart tracking afterward, a trend that is sure to continue this week, after the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
“Following the daily test count is less instructive than it was,” Adalja said, citing the close link between cases and hospitalizations in the past.
Today’s numbers should not be treated like checking a sports team’s daily standings or scores, he added.
“I think testing is taking a different role,” he said. “Even when testing was at a different point, it has always been an underestimate.”
To get a localized look at how the virus is faring, Adjala said that he has come to rely on hospitalizations as a percentage of its capacity. He also checks the CDC’s community levels tracker, which includes new hospital admissions and how many beds are used. He urges a shifting focus to severe disease, rather than tracking the “booms and busts of cases.”
Hospitalizations have increased modestly throughout June, though they remain low. Just over 33,000 people are in U.S. hospitals with the coronavirus on an average day, and fewer than 4,000 are in intensive care. Reports of new deaths remain below 400 a day, down from the country’s daily death toll peak of more than 3,300 deaths in January 2021.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Has Britain drafted a law to protect Israel’s weapons makers?
Palestine Action has forced Elbit Systems to leave two of the 10 sites from which it operates in Britain. VX Pictures
Palestine Action has proven that the merchants of death are not invincible.
Just this week, it was confirmed that Israel’s top weapons exporter Elbit Systems is closing down its offices in London. The decision follows numerous protests against Elbit and Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), the letting agent for those offices.
It is the second time that Palestine Action, the group organizing the protests, has compelled Elbit to quit a site in Britain – a country identified by the firm as a priority for sales and investment.
Earlier this year, Elbit confirmed it had sold Ferranti, its subsidiary based in Oldham, near Manchester. Palestine Action’s protests – which often involve smashing up weapons facilities – have angered Israel and its supporters.
One of Israel’s most influential backers in Britain is Priti Patel, the home secretary.
She has effectively declared war on Palestinian solidarity activists by claiming that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is racist – without presenting any evidence.
Patel has proposed new legislation which targets the kind of protests Palestine Action has undertaken.
The National Security Bill – as the legislation is called – gives the police powers to designate as “prohibited places” areas where an “aircraft, or a part of an aircraft, used for military purposes” or “equipment relating to such an aircraft” is located. Little opposition
Following the sale of its plant in Oldham and the closure of its London offices, Elbit now operates out of eight sites in Britain.
Elbit-owned plants – which make engines for drones among other components – could conceivably be given a protected status once the legislation comes into effect.
Introduced to Britain’s Parliament in May, the bill has so far encountered little opposition.
Most elected representatives appear to either welcome how it would penalize direct action against the arms trade or have no concern about its likely implications.
The bill’s stated objective is to replace “existing counter-espionage laws with a comprehensive framework for countering hostile state activity.”
The approach being taken is so “comprehensive” that it is questionable whether the bill is really focused on spying in the conventional sense of that term. Many of its provisions could be used against ordinary people seeking to disrupt the weapons business.
The bill enables life imprisonment for anyone who obtains or discloses “protected information” and behaves in a way deemed “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”
Elbit describes itself as an “established supplier to the UK Armed Forces” and was recently awarded a contract to deliver surveillance drones to the British Army. Sabotage
A section on “sabotage” in the bill is highly relevant to Palestine Action.
“Sabotage” is defined as “conduct that results in damage to any asset,” particularly if the purpose of that activity “is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”
Palestine Action is openly committed to damaging and destroying Elbit’s assets in Britain.
While many people have been arrested for breaking into Elbit’s plants in Britain, nearly all have been acquitted when cases have gone to court.
The only successful prosecution was against one activist, who was convicted of defacing a JLL site in the English city of Brighton.
The sentence given in that instance was a fine of less than $30 and conditional discharge for three months.
Under a conditional discharge, somebody convicted of an “offense” is released with the “offense” registered on their criminal record. No further action is taken if no other “offense” is committed within a stated period.
Elbit has displayed a reluctance to press charges against protesters – no doubt because the company fears that evidence about the use of its weapons in attacks on Palestinians will be produced in court.
The new bill could shield Elbit and other weapons makers from scrutiny.
For example, courts would be able to “exclude the public from proceedings” if doing so is deemed “necessary in the interests of national security.”
A Palestine Action campaigner argued that the British government is “running scared of the effectiveness of direct action deployed against Elbit.”
“If this bill is custom built to increase consequences for taking action against Elbit, as it seems to be, it clearly exposes the alliance between Britain and Israel’s apartheid regime,” the campaigner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added.
“No matter what efforts they take to stop our campaign, we will not be moved. While the government wastes time legislating against us, Palestine Action will get on with the job of shutting down the remaining Israeli arms factories in Britain.”
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Twitter: @KitKlarenberg.
Analysts worry that UNRWA’s perpetual cash crunch signals the beginning of the end for the agency. Ashraf AmraAPA images
In his April 2022 message to Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said the agency is “cash-strapped” and that it has become “almost customary” for the person in his position to “beg for help if we want the services to continue.”
Throughout the message, he emphasized the “chronic underfunding” of UNRWA only to note that the agency is exploring how to “maximize partnerships within the broader UN system.”
This cryptic statement – what does it mean, exactly, if UNRWA were to maximize partnerships within the broader UN system? – has raised concerns among Palestinians that UNRWA will be disbanded – its services dispersed among other UN agencies or nongovernmental organizations.
UNRWA was established in December 1949 to provide relief to Palestine refugees created by the Nakba, or the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to create the state of Israel.
Today, some 5 million refugees are “eligible,” according to UNRWA, to receive its social services, education and health care. However, the agency has been forced to steadily reduce those services due to lack of funds.
Yet Lazzarini said in his April message that “such partnerships” – as in, those “within the broader UN system” – “have the potential to protect essential services and your rights from chronic underfunding.”
In Syria, 82 percent of Palestine refugees live on less than $1.90 a day. In Lebanon, 86 percent of Palestine refugees live below the poverty line. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza have been under siege and persistent attacks by Israel for almost two decades. UNRWA reports that 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza need food assistance.
UNRWA’s mandate, which is renewed every three years by the UN General Assembly, includes a commitment to assist and protect Palestine refugees until a “just resolution” to the Palestine refugee “question” is reached.
As UNRWA prepares for a new General Assembly vote at the end of 2022 to renew its mandate, the agency faces a financial deficit of roughly $100 million. This is not a new dilemma for UNRWA.
Donor pledges to UNRWA totaled approximately $412 million in 2022, a drastic decrease from years prior, such as in 2018, when pledges to UNRWA totaled $1.3 billion – and that was despite the Donald Trump administration’s elimination of approximately $300 million of its anticipated contributions to UNRWA that year.
While Arab states have typically provided a quarter of UNRWA’s budget, those contributions have also declined, with Arab donations falling to less than 3 percent of UNRWA’s budget in 2022.
This decline in Arab funding appears to be a consequence of several Arab states – the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan – signing the so-called Abraham Accords in 2020 and thus “establishing diplomatic relations” with Israel.
In 2018, the United Arab Emirates contributed nearly $54 million, helping to allay UNRWA’s budget deficit after Washington cut off funding. The following year, its contributions decreased to $51.8 million. However, the UAE only donated $1 million in 2020, the year the accords with Israel were signed. Last year, it did not offer any financial support.
It also reflects how, for decades, Israel and its supporters in the United States have targeted UNRWA.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously called for UNRWA to be dismantled because it “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem.”
At the beginning of the 2021-22 academic school year, the European Parliament blocked 20 million euros in aid to UNRWA, demanding changes be made to textbooks used in UNRWA schools for assistance to resume.
Although the Joe Biden administration resumed US contributions to UNRWA, it has set conditions on the funding.
UNRWA claims that the partnerships referenced by Lazzarini are neither new nor will they replace the agency.
In a 5 June email interview, Hoda Samra, UNRWA’s senior media and communications adviser in the Lebanon field office, said that “partnerships” were a reference to “partnerships between UNRWA and other UN agencies/funds/programmes.”
The partnerships “have been a part of operations since UNRWA was first established,” she said, adding that “UNRWA will engage with key stakeholders (UN agencies, hosts, donors) during the coming months to discuss the partnerships option, and [it] expects to reach a collective agreement on the way forward within 2022.”
Samra said: “The idea of expanding partnerships is still at an early stage, with initial consultations taking place between the UNRWA commissioner-general and his senior counterparts within the UN system.”
Yet outside observers are concerned that UNRWA’s weak financial state and lack of political support will only worsen in time.
Palestinian author and historian Salman Abu Sitta told the author by email at the beginning of June that the United States and Israel are “trying to eliminate UNRWA altogether by transferring its activities to other agencies.”
“This means that Palestinians will not have a right of return and they can only seek food and shelter elsewhere, away from their homeland,” he added.
UNRWA’s Samra dismissed the notion that the agencies’ services will be “taken over” or “outsourced.”
“Any service-delivery to Palestine refugees that falls under the UNRWA mandate is also under its responsibility,” she said.
Samra emphasized that support from UN partners will be “on behalf of UNRWA and not in replacement of it.”
Dalal Yassine is a non-resident fellow at the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @Dalal_yassine. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center.
Link between soil pollution and heart disease identified in new study
Soil pollution is defined as contamination of soil at higher than normal concentrations by waste materials of human origin that have adverse effects on human and ecosystem health.
Palestinian man packs cherry tomatoes at a farm in Tubas, in the West Bank (photo credit: RANEEN SAWAFTA/ REUTERS)
Pesticides and heavy metals in soil may have detrimental effects on the cardiovascular system, according to a study published in Cardiovascular Research, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology.
Pollution of air, water, and soil is a great and growing threat to global health. The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health documented that pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today.
Diseases caused by pollution were responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths in 2015—16% of all deaths worldwide, according to the peer-reviewed study.
“Soil contamination is a less visible danger to human health than dirty air,” said author Professor Thomas Münzel of the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany.
“But evidence is mounting that pollutants in soil may damage cardiovascular health through a number of mechanisms including inflammation and disrupting the body’s natural clock,” he added.
Soil pollution is defined as contamination of soil at higher than normal concentrations by waste materials of human origin that have adverse effects on human and ecosystem health. Soil pollutants include heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals such as pesticides, biological pathogens, and plastic waste.
Soil is important for human health in a number of ways. Approximately 78% of the average per capita calorie consumption worldwide comes from crops grown directly in soil, and another nearly 20% comes from terrestrial food sources that rely indirectly on soil. Soil is also a major source of nutrients, and it acts as natural filters to remove contaminants from water. Study results
The paper examines the relationships between soil pollution and human health, with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease.
The authors state that contaminated soil may lead to cardiovascular disease by increasing oxidative stress in the blood vessels, causing inflammation, and by disturbing the body clock (circadian rhythm).
“Although soil pollution with heavy metals and its association with cardiovascular diseases is especially a problem in low and middle-income countries since their populations are disproportionately exposed to these environmental pollutants, it becomes a problem for any country in the world due to the increasing globalization of food supply chains and uptake of these heavy metals with fruits, vegetables and meat,” the study stated.
“More studies are needed on the combined effect of multiple soil pollutants on cardiovascular disease since we are rarely exposed to one toxic agent alone," Professor Münzel said.
"Research is urgently required on how nano- and microplastic might initiate and exacerbate cardiovascular disease. Until we know more, it seems sensible to wear a face mask to limit exposure to windblown dust, filter water to remove contaminants, and buy food grown in healthy soil,” he urged.
"Research is urgently required on how nano- and microplastic might initiate and exacerbate cardiovascular disease. Until we know more, it seems sensible to wear a face mask to limit exposure to windblown dust, filter water to remove contaminants, and buy food grown in healthy soil.”Professor Thomas Münzel
PRECIENT PREDICTIONS
Russia
Chapter 4
“The Orange Revolution in Ukraine from December 2004-January 2005, was the moment when the post-Cold War world genuinely ended for Russia. The Russians saw the events in Ukraine as an attempt by the United States to draw Ukraine into NATO and thereby set the stage for Russian disintegration.” … “After what Russia regarded as an American attempt to further damage it, Moscow reverted to a strategy of reasserting its sphere of influence in the areas of the former Soviet Union. The great retreat of Russian power ended in Ukraine. Russian influence is now increasing in three directions: toward Central Asia, toward the Caucasus, and, inevitably, toward the West, the Baltics and Eastern Europe. For the next generation until roughly 2020, Russia’s primary concern will be reconstructing the Russian state and reasserting Russian power in the region.
The former Soviet satellites – particularly Poland, Hungary and Romania – understand that the return of Russian forces to their frontiers would represent a threat to their security. And since these countries are now part of NATO, their interests necessarily affect the interests of Europe and the United States. The open question is where the line will be drawn in the west. This has been a historical question, and it was a key challenge in Europe over the past hundred years.
Russia will not become a global power in the next decade, but it has no choice but to become a major regional power. And that means it will clash with Europe. The Russian-European frontier remains a fault line.”
Chapter 8
“…The Russians must dominate Belarus and Ukraine for their basic national security. The Baltics are secondary but still important. Eastern Europe is not critical, so long as the Russians are anchored in the Carpathian Mountains in the south and have strong forces on the northern European plain. But of course, all of this can get complicated.
Ukraine and Belarus are everything to the Russians. If they were to fall into an enemy’s hands –for example, join NATO- Russia would be in mortal danger. Moscow is only a bit over two hundred miles from the Russian border with Belarus, Ukraine less that two hundred miles from Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. Russia defended against Napoleon and Hitler with depth. Without Belarus and Ukraine, there is no depth, no land to trade for an enemy’s blood. It is, of course, absurd to imagine NATO posing a threat to Russia. But the Russians think in terms of twenty-year cycles, and they know how quickly the absurd becomes possible.”
“In this book, I am trying to transmit a sense of the future. I will, of course, get many details wrong. But the goal is to identify the major tendencies—geopolitical, technological, demographic, cultural, military—in their broadest sense, and to define the major events that might take place. I will be satisfied if I explain something about how the world works today, and how that, in turn, defines how it will work in the future." (from Author’s Note)
Overture: An introduction to the American Age “At a certain level, when it comes to the future, the only thing one can be sure of is that common sense will be wrong. There is no magic twenty-year cycle; there is not simplistic force governing this pattern. It is simply that the things that appear to be so permanent and dominant at any given moment in history can change with stunning rapidity. Eras come and go. In international relations, the way the world looks right now is not at all how it will look in twenty years….or even less. The fall of the Soviet Union was hard to imagine, and that is exactly the point. Conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long-term, shifts taking place in full view of the world.”
