Dear Friend,
Surely the communal forces are spreading canards and falsehood against the protests like Shaheen Bagh. As such these protests are a solid foundation of our democracy. The spontaneity of the movement is a strength which needs to be channelized to uphold Indian Constitution and democratic ethos of our beloved country.
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Binu Mathew
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Shaheen Bagh Movement: Deepening Democracy-Uniting India
by Ram Puniyani
Surely the
communal forces are spreading canards and falsehood against the protests. As such these protests which is a solid foundation of our democracy. The spontaneity of the movement is a strength which needs to be channelized to uphold Indian Constitution and democratic ethos of our beloved country.
Time for a mid-term poll -in response to reverberations from Shaheen Bagh and other parts of India
by Sumanta Banerjee
The protestors in Shaheen Bagh in the national capital are being targeted by police-protected revolver-wielding Hindutva fanatics, and those in other cities across the country are being prevented by the police from demonstrating in the streets.
BJP’s Vicious Campaign In Delhi Elections
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
The filth
is growing day by day and the desperation on the faces when the entire cabinet and a rabble rousing chief minister from neighboring state is campaigning in Delhi. The focus is on Pakistan and ‘terrorism’ and not the basic amenities of the people.
Open Letter To Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi
Press Release
Dear Mr. Prime Minister: We speak to you as women of this country, and the women of Delhi – Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Adivasi and Dalit – who are horrified at the atmosphere of violence against women that members of your party have created merely to try and win an election.
Understand the Chronology
by Dr Md Intekhab Alam Khan
The sub-project of Muslim vilification is accomplished a few years back. Now, the exclusion has started with zest by the combined implementation of CAA & NRC; the extermination will
follow in a few years hence. This can be dismissed as fear-mongering by the government representatives, right-wing organisations and their apologists nevertheless the extent of damage is difficult to fathom now. But the damage for the Muslims and for rest of the country, however, stands to be beyond one’s scope of imagination. At this watershed moment in history, the singular hope resides in the ongoing wave of peoples’ resistance.
Coronavirus-China Fights Determinately, While Others Smear!
by Andre Vltchek
Testimonies from inside China
Scientists sign open letter to Australian Government urging action on climate crisis
by Countercurrents Collective
More than 270 scientists have signed an open letter to Australia’s leaders calling on them to abandon
partisan politics and take action on climate change. They are calling for urgent action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions
More than 270 scientists have signed an open letter to Australia’s leaders calling on them to abandon partisan politics and take action on climate change.
They are calling for urgent action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions
The scientists warn the impacts of climate change are coming faster, stronger and more regularly
The letter comes as the Australian Parliament sits for the first time this year and amid Australia’s ongoing bushfire crisis.
The scientists warned an increase in bushfires was just one part of a deadly equation that suggested the impacts of climate change were coming faster, stronger and more regularly.
Heatwaves on land and in the oceans were longer, hotter and more frequent, they said.
The scientists, who have expertise in climate, fire and meteorology, are calling for urgent action to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and for Canberra to engage constructively in international agreements.
Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram said the letter was the product of scientists’ despair as they witnessed the deadly fire season unfold.
“Scientists have been warning policymakers for decades that climate change would worsen Australia’s fire risk and yet these warnings have been ignored,” Professor Abram said.
“The thick, choking smoke haze of this summer is nothing compared to the policy smokescreen that continues in Australia,” University of NSW climate scientist Katrin Meissner said in a statement on Monday.
“We need a clear, non-partisan path to reduce Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions in line with what the scientific evidence demands, and the commitment from our leaders to push for meaningful global action to combat climate change.”
Oxfam
Oxfam said the Government must demonstrate it had fully grasped the lessons of this “horrific” bushfire season.
“In spite of the scientific evidence and the extreme weather we’re living through — bushfires, hailstorms and drought — the Government still hasn’t joined the dots and taken action to tackle the root causes of the crisis,” Oxfam chief executive Lyn Morgain said in a statement.
She said Australia must dramatically strengthen emissions reduction targets and move beyond fossil fuels.
“The Government’s narrow-minded focus on adaptation and resilience simply does not go far enough,” she said.
She said Australia could wield great authority and leverage globally if it changed its policies.
“If we led by example and immediately strengthened our own emissions reduction commitments, and if we linked our own crisis with those escalating around the world, we could be a great catalyst for stronger international action,” she said.
Climate emergency message resonates at world’s largest literature festival in Jaipur, India
Against the backdrop of India’s famed “pink city” of Jaipur, the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan, the world’s largest literature festival hosted Renata Dessallien, the UN’s top representative in India on Monday, who told the audience attending a special session on the climate emergency, that the UN organization is working to slow the pace of climate crisis.
It is estimated that over 600 million Indians are likely to be impacted adversely by climate crisis.
Acclaimed as the “greatest literary show on Earth”, the five-day Jaipur Literature festival attracts more than 400,000 book lovers; around 2,000 speakers addressing more than 200 sessions; and authors from 20 different countries.
Questioned over whether the UN is doing enough to resolve the climate crisis, the UN’s Resident Coordinator in India, Renata Dessallien, quipped that the Organization could not act as a “global police” force.
“We are also not a global Government, so there are limits, to which the UN is mandated and on what it is able to do.”
“In fact”, she added, “we are pushing the limits on many fronts. The best way to describe the United Nations is that we are the ‘world persuader’ – persuading people to do what is fundamentally right.”
She lauded the UN’s pioneering role in the science relating to the impact of climate change, in the late 1980s, “when a panel was established on climate change by the UN” known as the IPCC, which provides governments at all levels with trusted scientific information they can use to develop climate policies.
“So the science is out there and as an inter-governmental body we bring the nation states together to address the problem that’s staring us in the face, validated by the science.”
Ladakh
The session heard some startling stories of people living in India’s Ladakh region who are gravely affected by climate crisis.
Solar Energy Innovator, Educationist and Managing Director of Himalayan Institute of Alternatives in Ladakh, Sonam Wangchuk said: “Up in the mountains, across the Himalayas, particularly in Ladakh, our glaciers are melting and while we always had water shortages, now we are seeing droughts in the spring season.
“I know at least two villages where people had to abandon the whole village due to water (shortages). These droughts are now accompanied by flash floods in autumn.”
In 2006, while volunteering in one such village that was washed away, leading to many deaths, he had asked villagers when the last flash flooding had occurred, but “they didn’t remember. The same village had another flash flood in 2010, then in 2015 and then another one in 2017. So it’s now becoming as frequent as that.”
He appealed to the people living in the plains and the cities to be responsible and “live simply” so that the people of the mountains in turn, can ‘simply live’.
Tamil Nadu
Managing Editor of online journal PARI, Namita Waikar, who is chronicling the stories of how vulnerable populations across India are being most affected by climate crisis for the upcoming UNDP Human Development Report, chimed in with other first-hand accounts of how life is being adversely affected in the coastal cities.
“In the rural areas, there are communities in Tamil Nadu where seaweed farmers are forced to change livelihoods due to fast disappearing seaweeds.
Delhi
“Similarly, in places like Delhi, inland fishing communities are catching dead fish. What they told me was heart breaking.” Fishermen told Namita Waikar that if they lay the net at night, all they catch are the “freshest of the dead fish” in the morning. Keeping sewage and industrial waste out of rivers and coastal areas in an urgent priority, she said” “Another fisherwoman said that some of the fish they caught earlier are now only seen on the Discovery channel. That clearly explains the gravity of the situation.”
Appreciate the Universe
Writer, educator and filmmaker, Shubhangi Swarup, who is exploring ecology in her fiction, explained how she is integrating climate change themes into her work.
“Our stories have become human-centric, self-obsessed and obnoxious. We don’t have appreciation of nature and universe in our stories.
“So, I tried to write a novel where a geological fault line is the thread of the narrative. It begins with the Andaman (islands), goes to Myanmar, then Nepal and ends in Ladakh. While telling the story, I realized how ridiculous the political borders are when we are talking about solving local problems”, she said.
Profit or progress?
Civil Society Activist, Apoorva Oza, reiterated the need to take profit considerations out of the climate change debate: “There’s this excessive focus on measuring everything in economic terms. When I write a proposal they ask me whether I’ll double the farmers’ income. All I can tell you is that they will protect nature, they’ll sustain the environment, they’ll not over-exploit groundwater. But I can’t guarantee that I can double their incomes. I can only guarantee their progress.”
The session took a sombre turn when the famous Bollywood Actress and UN Advocate for Sustainable Development, Dia Mirza reached out to the audience and asked, “Do you have time? We just have a decade. Listen to women, listen to mothers, listen to children. And if you don’t understand science, just watch nature.”
The message was clear: everyone is responsible for creating a more environmentally sustainable world – And the arts and cultural sector is no exception.
As Moderator, Sameer Saran aptly concluded: “Since this festival is attended by the literati, stories come out of such places. If climate change becomes a part of these stories, we’ll be inspired to take better steps in mitigating climate change. Stories we tell about ourselves define our actions. And if our stories are green, then probably our future will also be green and prosperous.”
Female flogging squad engaged in Indonesia’s Aceh
by Countercurrents Collective
A female flogging squad in Indonesia’s Aceh province has been engaged recently. They watch for morality crimes in Aceh, the only region in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation that imposes Islamic law – known as Sharia. Those found guilty of breaches are often publicly whipped with a rattan cane.
‘Deal of the Century’ : Never Trust Foreigners
by Jafar M Ramini
What I find extremely hard to fathom and explain is how the Jews, who suffered so much in Europe, when they mention the Holocaust and say “never again” they do the same to us again, again and again. It’s a strange old
world.
In 1929, as a result of extreme British mandatory forces’ oppression and a huge increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine, the beleaguered Palestinians showed their first act of defiance. They announced a general strike and raised black flags. The British Government’s answer to that legitimate protest was to hang the three leaders of the resistance; Hijazi, Zeir and Jamjoum.
Their graves are still in Acre with the message to Arab leaders:
“Never trust foreigners.”
How wise that advice was. And how unheeded.
As a result of even further increases in Jewish immigration and the trafficking of arms to the Jewish militia in Palestine, another general strike in 1936 was called and it lasted six months, the longest in history. What ensued was calamitous. King Abdul Aziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia and Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan, both British collaborators, urged the Palestinian leadership to come back, sit at the negotiating table and give the British the benefit of the doubt. What those two did was nothing short of treacherous. They twisted the arms of the Palestinian leadership and convinced them to end the strike and trust British good-will towards us Palestinians. What a mistake. 72 years later we are still waiting.
The strike was called off on those empty promises. Our leaders, looking for justice were to be rewarded by imprisonment and exile. The next year, 1937, the culmination of that treachery and double-dealing by the British was revealed. It was called “The Peel Commission” and was a plan which divided Palestine into two states, one for Jews and one for the Palestinians.
The legitimate owners of the land, the Palestinians were offered the lowest percentage and the Jews, who were at that time in the minority were to be given the majority of the fertile land. Sound familiar? Not dissimilar to Mr Trump’s uniquely appalling ‘Deal Of The Century’?
Of course, the Palestinian leaders rejected it, as they are doing now, and were disbanded, imprisoned, and exiled for daring to question the wisdom of foreign intervention with its unjust and unfair plan. Will history repeat itself again as Mr Trump’s ludicrous deal is properly examined by the international community and the media?
The same scenario occurred in 1947 when Britain abandoned us to our fate and dumped the Palestine question in the lap of the United Nations. The result? Another partition plan, worse than the Peel Commission whereby the Jewish settlers, still in the minority, were given 56% of Palestine and we, the legal owners of the land 43%. The remaining 1% which was Jerusalem was considered corpus separatum, and put under international jurisdiction.
History is littered with examples of western so-called honest broker policies on Palestine. Our cemeteries are jammed with the bodies of our men, women and children who dared to raise their voices, wave our flags, protest at the imprisonment and torture of our people.
It seems that when it comes to us Palestinians words don’t matter. Our words that is. Our voices. Our demand to be treated as human beings and to be given our basic rights as accorded to any human being on this earth by the United Nations and the Universal Human Rights conventions. Why not?
Because, the Israelis and their Zionist supporters, both Christian and Jewish, consider us sub-human and inconsequential, irrelevant, just not worth considering. How else could you explain the latest move by foreigners to crush us under the Israeli boot and deprive us of our land, our freedoms, our dignity and our very humanity.
Last Tuesday January 28th 2020 two alleged criminals, both indicted in their respective neighbourhoods, President Trump in Washington and Prime Minister Netanyahu stood together in the White House, arrogantly driving a bull-dozer through international law, international conventions, human dignity and peace. Yet they called the utter garbage that spewed from their mouths ‘a peace plan’. Mr Trump described it as a win/win.
Mr Netanyahu called the 28th January 2020 a date that would go down in the annuls of history. He spoke to his friend, Donald Trump, saying that “On this day you became the first world leader to recognise Israel sovereignty in the areas of Sumaria and Judea which are vital to our security and central to our heritage. On this date you too have charted a brilliant future for Israelis, Palestinians and the region by presenting a realistic path to a durable peace.” He even had the nerve to say, “Since its inception Israel has yearned for peace with the Palestinians and with its neighbours.”
How can “yearning for peace result in brutal, violent sieges, destroying entire villages, homes and killing thousands of people over and over again? As UN special coordinator for the Middle East, Nikolay Mladenov said as he watched the killing fields around the Gaza security fence during the Great March of Return, “How does the killing of a child in Gaza today help peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. Children must be protected from violence, not exposed to it, not killed!”
How is it a win situation for the Palestinians when this so-called ‘deal of the century’ gifts Israel:
All of historic Jerusalem as their undivided capital.
Legalises the illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
Legalises the annexation of the Jordan Valley, the most fertile piece of land in Palestine and considered to be the ‘the basket’ of Palestine.
Puts the security of the so-called ‘new’ Palestinian state in the hands of Israel forever.
Gives the Palestinians a miniscule, uncontiguous state to be connected to Gaza by a tunnel.
This new Palestinian state to be de-militarised.
This new Palestinian state not to be allowed to join any international organisations or forums without the specific prior approval of Israel.
This new Palestinian state to be unable to forge treaties with other nations without the consent of Israel.
Most important of all, no right of return.
No compensation, no reparation, no acknowledgement of any responsibility on the part of Israel for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the violence against Palestinians by Israel to the ratio, according to UN figures of 80:1.
Legalises the illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
Legalises the annexation of the Jordan Valley, the most fertile piece of land in Palestine and considered to be the ‘the basket’ of Palestine.
Puts the security of the so-called ‘new’ Palestinian state in the hands of Israel forever.
Gives the Palestinians a miniscule, uncontiguous state to be connected to Gaza by a tunnel.
This new Palestinian state to be de-militarised.
This new Palestinian state not to be allowed to join any international organisations or forums without the specific prior approval of Israel.
This new Palestinian state to be unable to forge treaties with other nations without the consent of Israel.
Most important of all, no right of return.
No compensation, no reparation, no acknowledgement of any responsibility on the part of Israel for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the violence against Palestinians by Israel to the ratio, according to UN figures of 80:1.
Not only that, Jewish people who left their own countries in the Arab world to go to Israel and elsewhere, whether by choice or if they were compelled to leave are to be compensated for properties they left behind in their countries they came from.
All of the above generosity by the United States of America and Israel is conditional on this new Palestinian state behaving itself for a period of four years.
It doesn’t stop there. The new Palestinian state, for the loss of Jerusalem, of one third of the West Bank will be given, in return, three Arab towns in Israel, together with their entire Arab/Israeli population. 250,000 Arab/Israelis to be disowned by Israel and deprived of their Israeli citizenship.
Of course, there is a bribe to make the Palestinians accept this. $50 billion. Not American money. Not Israeli money. But Arab money. Three Arab ambassadors were there at that White House debacle, from Oman, from Bahrain and from UAE. What are our Arab ‘brothers’ thinking of here? What is the major prize they believe will be handed to them from their foreign benefactors? That remains to be seen.
As for the Palestinian Authority, Mr Abbas, during his speech at the Arab League yesterday, threatened, not for the first time I may add, that he will stop the security co-ordination with both Israel and the USA and will hand the responsibility of the occupation onto the Israeli occupiers to deal with. This, of course, also remains to be seen.
What I find extremely hard to fathom and explain is how the Jews, who suffered so much in Europe, when they mention the Holocaust and say “never again” they do the same to us again, again and again.
It’s a strange old world.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst, based in London, presently in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
Trump Attempting To Consolidate The Balfour Declaration
by Askiah Adam
There are two schools of thought as to whither the fate of the newly revealed proposed settlement to the protracted Palestine problem. One espoused by Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Inspector, that it is an offer that Palestinians cannot refuse and the other that it must be rejected, not least because of its total disregard of justice for the Palestinians and their dignity.
There are two schools of thought as to whither the fate of the newly revealed proposed settlement to the protracted Palestine problem. One espoused by Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Inspector, that it is an offer that Palestinians cannot refuse and the other that it must be rejected, not least because of its total disregard of justice for the Palestinians and their dignity.
With its obvious bias for Israel, President Trump’s so-called Deal of the Century or more accurately titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”, the Vision for short, released recently, is built on the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s vision of “less than a state” for Palestinians as prescribed by the Oslo Accords and approved by the Knesset and “not rejected by the Palestinian leadership of the time”. “In 1993, the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation reached the first of several interim agreements, known collectively as the Oslo Accords.”
The argument is straightforward. If Palestinian leaders were agreeable to “less than a state” then why should the same not apply today? More importantly, while there is mention of further negotiations, Tel Aviv whether its Netanyahu or General Gantz, is already on board. The Vision, through some doublespeak also attempts to accommodate the non-division of Jerusalem, very much reflecting the Israeli bias. While the city will not be divided, the area which most symbolises the city’s essence of religious spirituality, where the tourist attractions are — tourism being an industry mentioned in the Vision — is handed over to Israel as her capital city, retaining the name Jerusalem. Meanwhile, “East Jerusalem, located in all areas east and north to the security barrier…could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the state of Palestine”.
“While a physical division of the city must be avoided, a security barrier currently exists that does not follow the municipal boundary which already separates Arab neighborhoods (i.e., Kafr Aqab, and the eastern part of Shuafat) in Jerusalem from the rest of the neighborhoods in the city.
The physical barrier should remain in place and should serve as a border between the capitals of the two parties.”
Will this satisfy the Arab nations who protested when Trump declared that the American Embassy to Israel was to move to Jerusalem, most notably Turkey and King Salman of Saudi Arabia? That Palestinians are already protesting against the Vision is a clear signal that the people are far from enthusiastic despite the attempt to bribe them with US$50 billion over ten years to develop the Palestinian economy and rebuild its infrastructure destroyed by Israeli bombing. 1 million jobs are promised. Iran is clearly against it. According to Al-Monitor, Russia’s negative attitude to Trump’s deal is no secret.
To date, support or otherwise for the Vision, so-called, fall along the traditional divide of the binary division vis-a-vis those who are pro-Palestine and others who are pro-Israel.
Naturally, Palestine will be reinstated on the world map but with less than full sovereignty. Its very profile as envisioned in this distorted Vision is a state that surrenders its security to its occupiers, totally demilitarised, its education curriculum must in no way undermine the integrity of the enemy and accept the loss of lands to the illegal Jewish settlements on occupied lands. In short, the Palestinians must allow for the consolidation of the Balfour Declaration and more. Any breach would only mean giving the Jewish state the right of retribution which will further erode the basic human rights of Palestinians, as an occupied people. It is no exaggeration to suggest that in agreeing to the Vision the Palestinians are legalising their own enslavement to the tyranny of the Jewish state.
Will they? Should they?
The answer is, of course, no. Why should the Palestinians submit to tyranny when international law and order is on their side? For instance, by agreeing to Trump’s idea of a solution the Palestinians are denying their right to protection from the International Criminal Court (ICC) their recourse to justice against the tyrant under the present circumstances. Should they for US$50 billion over 10 years and the million jobs promised renounce all rights that would secure them their dignity and the return of lands stolen from them? Or is there restitution in economic development?
If, as Ritter suggests, this is the chance of a lifetime for the reinstatement of Palestine and its economic development, how can the Palestinians refuse this deal when a refusal means the perpetuation of poverty and their ultimate genocide? After all, the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) acceptance of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 — the land-for-peace principle — already granted Israel a window to security and recognised borders. Given this concession, some would argue that the PLO should never have signed the Oslo Accords. The UN Security Council’s resolution 242 was the cornerstone upon which Israel was recognised by Egypt and Jordan. A few days ago the PA announced its intention to cancel the Oslo Accords and will not adhere to the agreements. Having made their position known, a request was made to the Arab League to convene a ministerial level extraordinary meeting to discuss Trump’s Deal of the Century.
Seven decades have passed since the Nakba ( catastrophe for the Palestinians and other Arabs) and there is a growing silence in the corridors of power. A deafening silence that ignores the Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated on the Palestinians. In fact, even worse is Trump’s attempt to make legal the illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Who will defeat the European perpetrators of the Jewish genocide through regular pogroms and ultimately, the Holocaust, deniers notwithstanding? The Palestinians have endured 70 years of Israeli tyranny so Europe may find atonement for their sins. Who amongst the mighty will champion the Palestinian cause?
Contemporary global civil society is now strengthening a peaceful campaign to defeat expansionist Israel and restore Palestine. The Boycott Divestment Sanctions (DBS) Movement against Israel is currently the only light in the tunnel. That friends of the Tel Aviv government are taking legal measures to undermine the Campaign suggests clearly that the BDS Movement is gaining traction. But it has yet to achieve a critical mass that can bring Tel Aviv to heel and the apartheid Jewish state ended and occupied Palestinian lands freed. Yes, South Africa benefited from a series of boycott initiatives. But is there time for Palestine? Even the UN once predicted that this year, 2020, Gaza will be uninhabitable given the deliberate destruction of its infrastructure by Israel including the delivery of treated water.
Furthermore, without the right of return, can Palestinians make that decision which will bring to an end their diaspora status? Some postulate that Trump’s proposal is designed to fail. Already the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, has rejected it and the PA has complained of the lukewarm, if at all, support of the Arab nations for the Palestinian position. Hamas is asking for a meeting with the PA. Given that the Vision demands its dissolution one cannot see Hamas agreeing to its annihilation.
The prospects do not bode well. What will be the way forward for Palestine? Should not the consolidation of the multipolar world be speeded up in the hope that the United Nations might yet play its assigned role and not be the handmaiden to US hegemony as it so obviously is, now?
Askiah Adam, Executive Director, International Movement for a JUST World (JUST)
These Chains Will be Broken
by Jim Miles
On first opening Ramzy Baroud’s new book, These Chains Will be Unbroken, there is a series of references from five distinguished activists praising, in different ways, the short anecdotes from those who have been or are imprisoned within the Israeli system. They speak eloquently of the power and
passion generated by the work, of the criminality of the Israeli system, the disgust with the savage and brutal tactics used within the prison system, and the steadfastness and humility of those imprisoned. What more could be added other than to read the individual stories themselves.
The Shame of Child Poverty in the Age of Trump
by Rajan Menon
Billionaires Are Soaring, Poor Kids Are Losing More
Billionaires Are Soaring, Poor Kids Are Losing More
The plight of impoverished children anywhere should evoke sympathy, exemplifying as it does the suffering of the innocent and defenseless. Poverty among children in a wealthy country like the United States, however, should summon shame and outrage as well. Unlike poor countries (sometimes run by leaders more interested in lining their pockets than anything else), what excuse does the United States have for its striking levels of child poverty? After all, it has the world’s 10th highest per capita income at $62,795 and an unrivalled gross domestic product (GDP) of $21.3 trillion. Despite that, in 2020, an estimated 11.9 million American kids — 16.2% of the total — live below the official poverty line, which is a paltry $25,701 for a family of four with two kids. Put another way, according to the Children’s Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70% of them have at least one working parent — so poverty can’t be chalked up to parental indolence.
Yes, the proportion of kids living below the poverty line has zigzagged down from 22% when the country was being ravaged by the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and was even higher in prior decades, but no one should crack open the champagne bottles just yet. The relevant standard ought to be how the United States compares to other wealthy countries. The answer: badly. It has the 11th highest child poverty rate of the 42 industrialized countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Winnow that list down to European Union states and Canada, omitting low and middle-income countries, and our child poverty rate ranks above only Spain’s. Use the poverty threshold of the OECD — 50% of a country’s median income ($63,178 for the United States) — and the American child poverty rate leaps to 20%.
The United States certainly doesn’t lack the means to drive child poverty down or perhaps even eliminate it. Many countries on that shorter OECD list have lower per-capita incomes and substantially smaller GDPs yet (as a UNICEF report makes clear) have done far better by their kids. Our high child-poverty rate stems from politics, not economics — government policies that, since the 1980s, have reduced public investment as a proportion of GDP in infrastructure, public education, and poverty reduction. These were, of course, the same years when a belief that “big government” was an obstacle to advancement took ever-deeper hold, especially in the Republican Party. Today, Washington allocates only 9% of its federal budget to children, poor or not. That compares to a third for Americans over 65, up from 22% in 1971. If you want a single fact that sums up where we are now, inflation-adjusted per-capita spending on kids living in the poorest families has barely budged compared to 30 years ago whereas the corresponding figure for the elderly has doubled.
The conservative response to all this remains predictable: you can’t solve complex social problems like child poverty by throwing money at them. Besides, government antipoverty programs only foster dependence and create bloated bureaucracies without solving the problem. It matters little that the actual successes of American social programs prove this claim to be flat-out false. Before getting to that, however, let’s take a snapshot of child poverty in America.
Sizing Up the Problem
Defining poverty may sound straightforward, but it’s not. The government’s annual Official Poverty Measure (OPM), developed in the 1960s, establishes poverty lines by taking into account family size, multiplying the 1963 cost for a minimum food budget by three while factoring in changes in the Consumer Price Index, and comparing the result to family income. In 2018, a family with a single adult and one child was considered poor with an income below $17,308 ($20,2012 for two adults and one child, $25,465 for two adults and two children, and so on). According to the OPM, 11.8% of all Americans were poor that year.
By contrast, the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published yearly since 2011, builds on the OPM but provides a more nuanced calculus. It counts the post-tax income of families, but also cash flows from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), both of which help low-income households. It adds in government-provided assistance through, say, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), Medicaid, subsidies for housing and utilities, and unemployment and disability insurance. However, it deducts costs like child care, child-support payments, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. According to the SPM, the 2018 national poverty rate was 12.8%.
Of course, neither of these poverty calculations can tell us how children are actually faring. Put simply, they’re faring worse. In 2018, 16.2% of Americans under 18 lived in families with incomes below the SPM line. And that’s not the worst of it. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study commissioned by Congress found that 9% of poor children belong to families in “deep poverty” (incomes that are less than 50% of the SPM). But 36% of all American children live in poor or “near poor” families, those with incomes within 150% of the poverty line.
Child poverty also varies by race — a lot. The rate for black children is 17.8%; for Hispanic kids, 21.7%; for their white counterparts, 7.9%. Worse, more than half of all black and Hispanic kids live in “near poor” families compared to less than a quarter of white children. Combine age and race and you’ll see another difference, especially for children under five, a population with an overall 2017 poverty rate of 19.2%. Break those under-fives down by race, however, and here’s what you find: white kids at 15.9%, Hispanic kids at an eye-opening 25.8%, and their black peers at a staggering 32.9%.
Location matters, too. The child poverty rate shifts by state and the differences are stark. North Dakota and Utah are at 9%, for instance, while New Mexico and Mississippi are at 27% and 28%. Nineteen states have rates of 20% or more. Check out a color-coded map of geographic variations in child poverty and you’ll see that rates in the South, Southwest, and parts of the Midwest are above the national average, while rural areas tend to have higher proportions of poor families than cities. According to the Department of Agriculture, in rural America, 22% of all children and 26% of those under five were poor in 2017.
Why Child Poverty Matters
Imagine, for a moment, this scenario: a 200-meter footrace in which the starting blocks of some competitors are placed 75 meters behind the others. Barring an Olympic-caliber runner, those who started way in front will naturally win. Now, think of that as an analogy for the predicament that American kids born in poverty face through no fault of their own. They may be smart and diligent, their parents may do their best to care for them, but they begin life with a huge handicap.
As a start, the nutrition of poor children will generally be inferior to that of other kids. No surprise there, but here’s what’s not common knowledge: a childhood nutritional deficit matters for years afterwards, possibly for life. Scientific research shows that, by age three, the quality of childrens’ diets is already shaping the development of critical parts of young brains like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in ways that matter. That’s worth keeping in mind because four million American kids under age six were poor in 2018, as were close to half of those in families headed by single women.
Indeed, the process starts even earlier. Poor mothers may themselves have nutritional deficiencies that increase their risk of having babies with low birthweights. That, in turn, can have long-term effects on children’s health, what level of education they reach, and their future incomes since the quality of nutrition affects brain size, concentration, and cognitive capacity. It also increases the chances of having learning disabilities and experiencing mental health problems.
Poor children are likely to be less healthy in other ways as well, for reasons that range from having a greater susceptibility to asthma to higher concentrations of lead in their blood. Moreover, poor families find it harder to get good health care. And add one more thing: in our zip-code-influenced public-school system, such children are likely to attend schools with far fewer resources than those in more affluent neighborhoods.
Our national opioid problem also affects the well-being of children in a striking fashion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2008 and 2012, a third of women in their childbearing years filled opioid-based medication prescriptions in pharmacies and an estimated 14%-22% of them were pregnant. The result: an alarming increase in the number of babies exposed to opioids in utero and experiencing withdrawal symptoms at birth, which is also known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS, in medical lingo. Its effects, a Penn State study found, include future increased sensitivity to pain and susceptibility to fevers and seizures. Between 2000 and 2014, the incidence of NAS increased by a multiple of four. In 2014, 34,000 babies were born with NAS, which, as a CDC report put it, “is equivalent to one baby suffering from opioid withdrawal born approximately every 15 minutes.” (Given the ongoing opioid crisis, it’s unlikely that things have improved in recent years.)
And the complications attributable to NAS don’t stop with birth. Though the research remains at an early stage — the opioid crisis only began in the early 1990s — it suggests that the ill effects of NAS extend well beyond infancy and include impaired cognitive and motor skills, respiratory ailments, learning disabilities, difficulty maintaining intellectual focus, and behavioral traits that make productive interaction with others harder.
At this point, you won’t be surprised to learn that NAS and child poverty are connected. Prescription opioid use rates are much higher for women on Medicaid, who are more likely to be poor than those with private insurance. Moreover, the abuse of, and overdose deaths from, opioids (whether obtained through prescriptions or illegally) have been far more widespread among the poor.
Combine all of this and here’s the picture: from the months before birth on, poverty diminishes opportunity, capacity, and agency and its consequences reach into adulthood. While that rigged footrace of mine was imaginary, child poverty certainly does ensure a future-rigged society. The good news (though not in Donald Trump’s America): the race to a half-decent life (or better) doesn’t have to be rigged.
It Needn’t Be this Way (But Will Be as Long as Trump Is President)
Can children born into poverty defy the odds, realize their potential, and lead fulfilling lives? Conservatives will point to stories of people who cleared all the obstacles created by child poverty as proof that the real solution is hard work. But let’s be clear: poor children shouldn’t have to find themselves on a tilted playing field from the first moments of their lives. Individual success stories aside, Americans raised in poor families do markedly less well compared to those from middle class or affluent homes — and it doesn’t matter whether you choose college attendance, employment rates, or future household income as your measure. And the longer they live in poverty the worse the odds that they’ll escape it in adulthood; for one thing, they’re far less likely to finish high school or attend college than their more fortunate peers.
Conversely, as Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shown, kids’ life prospects improve when parents with low incomes are given the financial wherewithal to move to neighborhoods with higher social-mobility rates (thanks to better schools and services, including health care). As in that imaginary footrace, the starting point matters. But here the news is grim. The Social Progress Index places the United States 75th out of 149 countries in “access to quality education” and 70th in “access to quality health care” and poor kids are, of course, at a particular disadvantage.
Yet childhood circumstances can be (and have been) changed — and the sorts of government programs that conservatives love to savage have helped enormously in that process. Child poverty plunged from 28% in 1967 to 15.6% in 2016 in significant part due to programs like Medicaid and the Food Stamp Act started in the 1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Such programs helped poor families pay for housing, food, child care, and medical expenses, as did later tax legislation like the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. Our own history and that of other wealthy countries show that child poverty is anything but an unalterable reality. The record also shows that changing it requires mobilizing funds of the sort now being wasted on ventures like America’s multitrillion-dollar forever wars.
Certainly, an increase in jobs and earnings can reduce child poverty. Wall Street Journal odes to Donald Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation policies highlight the present 3.5% unemployment rate (the lowest in 60 years), a surge in new jobs, and wage growth at all levels, notably for workers with low incomes who lack college degrees. This storyline, however, omits important realities. Programs that reduce child poverty help even in years when poor or near-poor parents gain and, of course, are critical in bad times, since sooner or later booming job markets also bust. Furthermore, the magic that Trump fans tout occurred at a moment when many state and city governments were mandating increases in the minimum wage. Employers who hired, especially in heavily populated states like California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan, had to pay more.
As for cutting child poverty, it hasn’t exactly been a presidential priority in the Trump years — not like the drive to pass a $1.5 trillion corporate and individual income tax cut whose gains flowed mainly to the richest Americans, while inflating the budget deficit to $1 trillion in 2019, according to the Treasury Department. Then there’s that “impenetrable, powerful, beautiful wall.” Its estimated price ranges from $21 billion to $70 billion, excluding maintenance. And don’t forget the proposed extra $33 billion in military spending for this fiscal year alone, part of President Trump’s plan to boost such spending by $683 billion over the next decade.
As for poor kids and their parents, the president and congressional Republicans are beginning to slash an array of programs ranging from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program to Medicaid — $1.2 trillion worth over the next 10 years — that have long helped struggling families and children in particular get by. The Trump administration has, for good measure, rewritten the eligibility rules for such programs in order to lower the number of people who qualify.
The supposed goal: to cut costs by reducing dependence on government. (Never mind the subsidies and tax loopholes Trump’s crew has created for corporations and the super wealthy, which add up to many billions of dollars in spending and lost revenue.) These supposedly work-ethic-driven austerity policies batter working families with young kids that, for example, desperately need childcare, which can take a big bite out of paychecks: 10% or more for all households with kids, but half in the case of poor families. Add to that the cost of unsubsidized housing. Median monthly rent increased by nearly a third between 2001 and 2015. Put another way, rents consume more than half the income of the bottom 20% of Americans, according to the Federal Reserve. The advent of Trump has also made the struggle of low-income families with healthcare bills even harder. The number of kids without health insurance jumped by 425,000 between 2017 and 2018 when, according to the Census Bureau, 4.3 million children lacked coverage.
Even before Donald Trump’s election, only one-sixth of eligible families with kids received assistance for childcare and a paltry one-fifth got housing subsidies. Yet his administration arrived prepared to put programs that helped some of them pay for housing and childcare on the chopping block. No point in such families looking to him for a hand in the future. He won’t be building any Trump Towers for them.
Whatever “Make America Great Again” may mean, it certainly doesn’t involve helping America’s poor kids. As long as Donald Trump oversees their race into life, they’ll find themselves ever farther from the starting line.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His latest book is The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Originally published in TomDispatch.com
Copyright 2020 Rajan Menon
Unlikely Confluences: Sarah Bernhardt, Nikola Tesla and Swami Vivekananda
by Monish R Chatterjee
In one of those obscure, seemingly unlikely, yet epoch-making encounters in the grand pageant of human interactions, the paths of three trailblazers of contemporary history- the divinely graceful French actress and singer, Sarah Bernhardt, the Yugoslav inventor-genius par excellence Nikola
Tesla, and the Indian cyclonic monk and firebrand Vedantist, Swami Vivekananda, came together in ostensibly mysterious ways towards the end of the nineteenth century. An icon of the theater, a deeply far-sighted scientist, and a trailblazing monk: what could this trio possibly have in common- or, as some might argue, was their historic meeting somehow pre-ordained, was it an evolutionary inevitability?
Budget Versus Three Themes of India
by Dr Rahul Kumar
As an ordinary person belonging to the middle class was looking forward to a budget which can really kick start the economy but Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman disappointed not only me but a billion ordinary citizens.
Death of a Housewife: Some Thoughts on Stay-at-Home Motherhood
by Saurav Kumar Rai
The differential ways in which our society reacts
to the death of a patriarch and a housewife manifest categorically the extent to which patriarchy and the associated hierarchy cut across various facets of our day-to-day life. Incidentally, the orthodox social wisdom views the death of even the elderly male head of a family as a greater loss than that of a housewife.
Hyderabad: Understanding India’s Biggest Massacre
by Mohammed Mirza
In 1948, right after Operation Polo or “police action” as many refer to it the massacre began. A BBC report termed it as “India’s Hidden Massacre”. The “conservative” estimate of the death toll that this report puts up is 27 to 40 thousand. The worst affected districts according to the report are Nanded, Bidar, Osmanaabad and Gulbarga.. Historian William Dalrymple in his book the Age of Kali estimates that as many as “200,000 Hyderabadi Muslims were slaughtered.” If this is true, it amounts to
almost one in every five adult Muslim males considering the population of the Hyderabad state before Operation Polo.
While speaking on the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) with a neighbor of mines who hails from Zaheerabad, Telangana as in almost every discussion on CAA we ended up discussing the documents issue.
He started telling this story of how his family escaped from Zaheerabad when ordinary farmers took up arms and unleashed violence on Muslims. I was taken aback by this comment of his. I have read about this massacre but never came across anyone who had escaped the violence first hand. He said that his family had to escape with whatever they could get hold of, many of their family’s documents were lost in the process. These documents could have proved handy in proving his citizenship at a time when the Indian government is set to take on a mammoth task of creating a register of all Indian citizens based on documents that they produce.
I came home and discussed it with my father, who astonishingly had his own family story of escaping the massacre themselves. His maternal grandfather hailed from Warangal and moved to Hyderabad in the months following Operation Polo.
Operation Polo is deemed as one of the Indian military’s biggest successes. After all, they overcame the forces of what was the richest princely state of India, Hyderabad. The ruler of Hyderabad called the Nizam had armed forces that largely comprised of undertrained razakars. After all, the Nizam’s empire was built on culture and wealth generation through agriculture and trade rather than military might.
In 1948, right after Operation Polo or “police action” as many refer to it the massacre began. A BBC report termed it as “India’s Hidden Massacre”.
This massacre of genocidal numbers wasn’t done by the army alone, the blame lay on the rural folk who unleashed violence. Some defenders of it claim that it was a natural venting reaction to the oppressive feudal rule.
It was anything but that as in the days to follow it wasn’t just the feudal lords who came face to face with the brutalities, it was the common folk who in fact faced the brunt of it as mostly Hindu led paramilitary groups took up arms.
The horror stories reached the ecehlons of the then Congress-led government and Nehru commissioned a fact-finding committee. This committee comprised of people from different faiths and the leader of it was a Hindu congressman, Pandit Sunderlal. The Sunderlal committee visited the affected towns and villages and collected first-hand reports from the ground.
The report carrying his name was not published then or in the decades to follow. This massacre was covered up by successive governments as well. So well in fact that today even many who live in Hyderabad don’t know that a massacre of such proportions took place.
Indians were treated with bits and pieces of this report over the years. The full copy, however, stayed away from public eyes.
However, after years of being kept under wraps a copy of the report was obtained by historian Sunil Purushotham from the University of Cambridge. It made some startling revelations and was subsequently published in a BBC report.
The “conservative” estimate of the death toll that this report puts up is 27 to 40 thousand. The worst affected districts according to the report are Nanded, Bidar, Osmanaabad and Gulbarga.
The report goes on to mention that the army too was either complacent or actively took part in the looting and burning of Muslim owned properties. It didn’t stop there they were even reported to have shot Muslim men in cold blood.
On the contrary the report also mentioned that the Indian army protected the persecuted Muslims in many instances.
The death toll that the report mentions, however, has been contested. Historian William Dalrymple in his book the Age of Kali estimates that as many as “200,000 Hyderabadi Muslims were slaughtered.” If this is true, it amounts to almost one in every five adult Muslim males considering the population of the Hyderabad state before Operation Polo.
Today, as I walk through the streets of Hyderabad there are no signs of the massacre. It is almost as if it never happened. From the educated to the not so educated this part of Hyderabad’s history is not known to most. It has become one of India’s best-guarded secrets.
In fact, you can even get through a bachelor’s degree in Indian history without having to learn about this massacre.
For the common man in Hyderabad that still has remnants of the Nizams era dotted all over, the story of the massacre only lies in tales of the elderly few who lived through that time. Not those elders who lived in the city of Hyderabad but those who lived in the border districts of what once was the Princely state of Hyderabad.As of today hardly any of the perpetrators of this massacre either in the Indian army or the Hindu led paramilitary were indicted.
Mohammed Mirza is a Middle East-based journalist.
A Warrior mother!!
by Sonali Chanda
I carry some wounds and hurt with my self indeed!
Not a mere woman I’m,you must know me,
Rather a warrior mother,who fought a unique battle…without any weapons in her hands,
Nor I am like Goddess Durga,who decorated herself with so many arms!
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