Who Makes US Foreign Policy? - Lawrence Wilkerson on Reality Asserts Itself

Couple points to highlight from this interview of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell):

1. As I always blog that there's no such thing as "democracy" in this world. Many countries, & billions of people either say that "they are living in a democratic country" or "they are fighting for democracy", but everyone of them think "democracy" is merely voting in "free & fair elections". That's not democracy. Democracy is not merely about voting in elections, but it's much more. Democracy is when the voice of the majority of a nation are heard on major internal & external issues; issues which are affecting a country.

But, as this interview proves once again, that the wealthy people of United States, for instance, are controlling the government, & hence, all the major decisions American government makes; regardless of it's domestic or foreign matters. As Larry Wilkerson says, that "the oligarchs ... buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy." He also gives example of this is similar to what happens in Putin's Russia. I completely agree with it. Many Americans will of course disagree with it, but it's the bitter truth. There's no "democracy" in US, since it doesn't matter what the general public needs or wants, it's the rich elites who get what they want.

2. Another point I frequently make in my blogs is that arms sales around the world, ironically, by the permanent members of UN "Security" Council, create more chaos & deaths around the world than brutal dictatorships.

Such international arms manufacturing companies as Lockheed & Raytheon vigorously lobby politicians in US, UK, Canada, France etc. to allow them to sell international arms & weaponry to such countries as Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, Nigeria, UAE, Bahrain etc. Then, these countries have to find any excuse whatsoever to use that stockpile, & hence, wars start. Poor people die in large numbers in neighbouring countries like Palestine, Yemen, Syria etc.

But who benefits from all these arms & weapons transactions? Definitely not Saudi Arabia, UAE, or Nigeria. These countries are importing these arms & hence, they are indebted to their Western counterparts. But companies like Lockheed & Boeing, & of course, those politicians who pushed their countries' foreign policies towards more belligerence & wars, benefit tremendously. As Larry Wilkerson says in regards to the re-emergence of another potential Cold War era between US & Russia that "this group alarms me probably more than any other in the world, and particularly my own country--that is interested in a constant state of war, or as near a constant state as possible, because they sit behind all the belligerents and make money."

So does the majority of American or Russian public want their countries at each other's throats? Or how about the new Asian pivot of America? Does the majority of Americans want US & its Asian allies (Philippines, Japan etc.) banding together against China? I don't think so. But do they have any say in this matter? Of course not. So is this "democracy" when the general public suffers because their tax dollars, which they are paying just so they can get better public infrastructure, education, healthcare etc., are actually being used towards military hardware & a perpetual war against the world?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZW8T4NA3Is

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Larry, you were right at the center of the State Department. Back when you were there, and then sort of extrapolating to today, who runs U.S. foreign policy? 'Cause there's this sort of feeling there's this grand design and, grand machinations and chessboard-playing and all of that. Where are the centers of power for making U.S. foreign policy? 'Cause it seems to me it's not just the president.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: I think you're right. And part of what I teach--and I teach post-World War II policy more than anything else, but we have to go back into the past to understand that policy. Part of what I teach is how since World War II and the acquisition of this enormous power by what in essence is the new Rome in the world, the United States, part of the shift that takes place in manipulating and managing that new power is a centralization of foreign policy away from the old cabinet places where it used to take place, most prominently through the Foreign Service and through the secretary of state, to the White House and to the creation of the 1947 National Security Act, the National Security Council. So if you ask me pro forma where does it exist today, it exists more in the National Security Council and its staff than it does anywhere else, certainly anywhere else in the cabinet. So what I'm saying is it's centralized in the White House.

But what does that mean in terms of, I think, your real question, who's behind the White House, and who's therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less? I think the answer today is the oligarchs, which would be the same answer, incidentally, ironically, if you will, for Putin in Russia, the people who own the wealth, the people who therefore have the power and who more or less ... buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy. ...

JAY: There seems to also be centers or circles of power. For example, Lindsey Graham and John McCain seem to represent an alignment of forces. It seems that the fossil fuel industry, military-industrial complex--and certainly not that they are exclusively backing McCain and Graham. They have their hooks into both parties and to--they're kind of a hidden hand throughout much of American politics. But it seems to be a somewhat distinct center. And then Wall Street seems to have even--although it's not monolithic, it's a distinct center of power. What's the actual dynamic? Like, how do they influence National Security Council decisions? How do these processes take place? Where do the discussions take place?

WILKERSON: I think it's probably less fundamental and less precise, and therefore less in the interest, often, of the United States than you might think or that the American people might think. Because of what you've just suggested, that there are many poles in American foreign-policy, from the Congress to even the Supreme Court, to the White House, to the State Department, the Foreign Service, and so forth, it's a very complex mix, and it's rarely ever articulated in a way or manifests itself in a way that good leadership can control it, handle it, and manage it toward a real strategic objective. That's part of our problem in the world today.

But I would submit to you that certain oligarchs, anyway, big food, big pharmacy, big energy, oil, real estate, things like that, they like it this way because then they can flow into the void in the particular region or function or both that they want to control, that they want to manipulate, and do so effectively, whether it's subsidies from the federal government for oil companies or whether it's massive efforts by the government, clandestinely or otherwise, to influence someone like Monsanto being able to operate in Latin America and do the things that it does. So it's incredibly complex, difficult to analyze from a strictly governmental standpoint.

But when you start probing and you start analyzing, you begin to discover that there are centers in this mess, if you will, that are getting what they want. And what they want is basically wealth and power. And they then turn that wealth and power back into political contributions, which now almost have no limits, no constraints on them, and they influence people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham and Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank when he was in there and so influential with the banking committee, and they get what they want in terms of legislation that oftentimes I'm convinced the legislatures do not even realize they're doing. They don't understand that they're fulfilling this objective of a particular oligarch or conglomeration of oligarchs. And yet they're doing it, and they're doing it because they are well paid for doing it, in the sense that their PACs are flush and full and they get reelected.

Is John McCain motivated entirely by this? Is Bob Menendez motivated entirely by this? Of course not. They're not intellectual giants, and they don't spend lots of time analyzing this situation in the complex ways that we do. So they think they're actually fulfilling their principles and bending over a little bit to accept the money and the cash necessary to do that. So that's how the system works. That's not even half the explanation, but that's how the system works. And, incidentally, it has worked that way for a very long time, I would say probably since about Andrew Jackson coming into the White House after we'd really established ourselves.

JAY: I think it's a really interesting point, because those of us that sit back doing this geopolitical analysis--and we look at what are the objective interests of the powers and what are the objective interests of the different parts of these powers, and then we kind of think there's people making policy the same way, but they kind of ... what's the crisis that I'm going to deal with today? How am I going to make money out of this tomorrow? It seems to me that with the odd exception of ... the Brzezinskis and these type of people that seem to think in a broader way--most of it seems to be what is in it for me today, the hell with tomorrow, & not so conscious of the forces. I mean, one of the things that always hits me is when you look at the predictions of who would win World War II. Most of what I've seen is by 1940, '41, it was pretty clear Hitler's going to lose. Now, if you're in the German monopoly capitalist class doing analysis, you'll say, well, this is not leading to anything good for us; why aren't we bailing? But the forces of refusing to accept the reality of it were far too strong.

WILKERSON: Well, that's a good point. I would say--and I don't subscribe to conspiracy theory normally, but I would say there were forces behind that shadow, if you will, who were doing quite well, Swiss, German, American, and others who were more or less feeding off the conflict and got very wealthy feeding off the conflict, just as they did off World War I, even more dominantly with respect to the United States in particular, German reparations and so forth. We made a ton of money off of World War I, and we really didn't contribute a whole lot, if you'll remember. We were only really there substantially for a very short period of time, roughly April 1917 to Armistice Day. So there is a group that's interested in this kind of thing--and this group alarms me probably more than any other in the world, and particularly my own country--that is interested in a constant state of war, or as near a constant state as possible, because they sit behind all the belligerents and make money.

JAY: And there seems to be sectors of the economy that profit from volatility, brinksmanship, geopolitically, which leads to massive arms sales. And I've mentioned before on air that I was at this dinner of this organization that does military advice and policymaking to Middle Eastern countries, mostly about arms purchases, and of course who backs the organization's advice is Lockheed Martin and Boeing and, all the military manufacturers. So the brinkmanship sells weapons. And then, of course, Wall Street also does great in volatility, 'cause--especially if you're one step ahead, which the insiders are. But then there's other parts of the economy. ... if you're trying to sell stuff to the American public, massive volatility is not particularly good for you.

WILKERSON: No, it's not. The real economy in this country, though, has shrunken so dramatically since World War II--I show the stats to my students, and I usually use the CIA stats. I can't remember them precisely right now, but I can give you general idea. In 1945, we were about 25% or so services and about 60% or so what was called heavy, medium, or light industry, manufacturing mostly. It's completely the opposite today. It's about 11% to 12% manufacturing, and the latest stat--and this is a precise number from the CIA--76% services. So you don't have the same real economy, if you will, and you don't have the same GDP reflective of that real economy. And that's a very different economy to wage war under than the one we had when we entered World War II, for example. Very different. And you could say in some respects this shadow behind the power that makes money off war, period, no matter who's the belligerent, makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. With computers you can do it at lightning speed and you can do it in a nanosecond, and you can make billions in that nanosecond, and you don't care about what you're doing to the real economy, because you're raking in the dough.

JAY: Has the American elite, including that section which profits on near war and profits on actual war--but in general has there come to a conclusion now that ... if you want a really good Cold War, a really good arms race, then Russia's the right one to do it with?

WILKERSON: That's an interesting speculation. ... I think what's happening is people are beginning--people, these people I'm talking about, who really understand the dynamics in the world--and some of those are in the White House, no question about it. Some of them are people bearing the burden of public policy. No question about it. ... what's happening ... with Ukraine and with Russia, of course, is what you just said: hey, ... we yearn for the solidity and the stability of the Cold War, and my God, Putin's giving it back to us. Let's accept the offer.
...

JAY: ... Is this coming from the Obama administration? Or is it coming from--and this is where I get to who makes U.S. foreign-policy--how many lines of this kind of policy exist that kind of circumvent the White House and the National Security Council?

WILKERSON: I don't think they necessarily circumvent it. I think they are at times in tension within it, but I don't think they necessarily circumvent it, like, for example, Dick Cheney did in the Bush administration. I think what you have is you have people like Samantha Power and Susan Rice who are right-to-protect-people. This is very traditional. This is messianic Christianity manifesting itself in a secular way. This is we have to bear the brown person's burden, we have to go fix these problems in the world. So this is not something new. It's just got a more sophisticated manifestation in 2014.

And it makes a difference. It made a difference in Somalia when Madeleine Albright and Boutros Boutros-Ghali were pushing for state building in Somalia, when any anyone with a brain could have seen impossible task, you're going to fail, and you're going to have to leave ignominiously, which is exactly what Bill Clinton had to do. It manifested itself in the Balkans and in Kosovo. Two days of bombing and Milosević will cave. 78 days later and the threat of ground forces and Milosević finally caves.

So there's that strain, a messianic strain that's always been there.

Then there is a strain of real power, realpolitik. And that's people who are actually trying to achieve American interests, whatever they may be, and the way they think they should be achieved. I would put President Obama in that category.

And then you've got people who are closet neoconservatives, who really do feel that America has to assert itself periodically at a minimum in order to teach the rest of the world that it can't climb the hill on which America is the king.

JAY: But Ukraine is setting up we have to teach Putin a lesson, except you helped create the conditions where you have to teach Putin a lesson ... and more or less play into Putin's hands.

WILKERSON: Well, this is a chess game, to a certain extent, played on multiple levels simultaneously. And when you have a person like Putin with the capabilities that Putin has--I would suggest to you that the KGB and the GRU or NKVD, whenever you want to talk about, were probably the best intelligence people in the world for a long time. When you've got those kind of capabilities, you can do things, and particularly when you're operating on interior lines.

I'll take you into a military jargon here. Interior lines means I've got a border with you and I can move my tank 15 feet and kill you. But I am the person going to contest that tank, and I'm 10,000 miles away, and I've got to fly my tanks into your country before I can even take you on. The advantage of operating on those interior lines is really, really huge. It'd be like us doing something in Mexico and Russia trying to object or us doing something in Cuba and Russia trying to object. It's really difficult. You can do it, but it's really difficult.

So there are a lot of things operating with respect to Crimea, Ukraine, Odessa, and so forth, Georgia, right now that play into what some of these people, like ... John McCain, Lindsey Graham, would love to see happen, and that is the development of a new Cold War, a new Cold War with old antagonists.
...

WILKERSON: ... When Jim Baker and George H. W. Bush really accomplished what I think was one of the real diplomatic feats of the end of the 20th century, the reunification of Germany, whether we agree with that or not, they did it, and they did it without a shot being fired. It was wonderful to watch H. W. Bush do that, and Jim Baker. But one of the reasons they could do it was because they assured Gorbachev, and later Yeltsin, that NATO would be quiescent, it wouldn't move, it wouldn't threaten Russia. In fact, I was there when we told the Russians that we were going to make them a member -- observer first and then a member and so forth.

Well, that fell apart on the fact that they perceived right quickly that we weren't really serious. And then we start, under pressure from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and others, to sell weapons to Poland and weapons to Georgia and weapons to Romania and everybody else we could bring into the fold. Under those pressures and others, we started to expand NATO and stuck both our fingers in the Russian eye, so to speak, immediately. It's clear to me why Putin responded in Georgia and why he's now responding to Crimea in Ukraine. This is what great powers do when they get concerned about their so-called near abroad.
...

Baltimore Residents & Workers voice outrage over plans to privatize public housing

I liked this piece from The Real News Network about the rising homelessness, & decreasing numbers of affordable public housing, in US. Here, they are discussing homelessness in one of the American cities, Baltimore, Maryland.

As Mr. Singer explains in the piece that American government has been privatizing public housing since 1974 & now, under the Obama administration, "60,000 public housing units around the country are being sold to private developers, most of them for-profit developers, & we the taxpayers are subsidizing their profits." All this is happening when "homelessness is at the highest peak it's been since the Great Depression of the '30s." Is this democracy when the public taxes are subsidizing the rich, & those same poor public are becoming homeless?

Some 40,000 people are homeless in Baltimore. That's just 1 American city & it's not even considered a large American city by any measure. Homelessness has increased multiple folds in large American cities; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta etc. & this is all happened within the last decade.

Poverty among Baltimore kids are almost 35%; that's almost 1 poor child in 3 children. Poverty is constantly increasing in US. The young generation is moving down south to have some sense of accumulation of wealth through cheaper real estate & taxes. But, the taxes are going up, & wages are going down, overall, & those taxes are not helping the poor public, but the rich keeps getting richer through tax cuts, subsidized public assets being turned private assets, & hence, the inequality keeps increasing.

Where's the democracy in the largest self-anointed "democratic" country in the world where poor can't even get a decent place to call it a home, & keeps becoming poor everyday, while the rich elites become rich at the expense of the poor public?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTL3T0qT6MA

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: In part one of this story, we looked at Baltimore's plans to sell about 40% of its public housing stock to private developers & why some residents, workers, & advocates oppose these plans. But due to declining federal contributions to public housing, many cities face a shortfall in funding. The Department of Housing & Urban Development, HUD, puts the shortfall at $27 billion USD.

Baltimore says it can raise $300 million USD of the $800 million USD it needs by selling some of its properties to private developers.

To understand how America's public housing crisis got so bad in the first place, we spoke to Jeff Singer. He's an instructor at the University of Maryland & a longtime Baltimore public housing advocate.

NOOR: So there's a public housing crisis around the country. How did it get to that point? And start under Bill Clinton to give people a little background in how things got so bad.

JEFF SINGER, CITY ADVOCATES IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE HOMELESS: Well, we can go back even a little farther to 1974, when Richard Nixon created the first privatization of public housing, what we call the Section 8 certificates. And the more money that went to Section 8 certificates, the less money that went to public housing. Section 8 was a way to give private landlords money to house people who were poor. So from 74 until now, we've seen a decline in the amount of federal funds directed toward public housing & an increase in--a small increase in the amount that's directed toward profits.

The program we're talking about here tonight is the efflorescence of that. It's actually privatizing the housing that we built for ourselves & making sure that people can make profits from it. And they don't mix well together. Affordable housing & profits are antithetical.

NOOR: And so what happened starting under the Clinton administration?

SINGER: What happened out of the Clinton administration was a couple of programs & policy changes that are very important. One policy change was that it is now illegal to build additional public housing with federal funds. Can you imagine that? In 1949, Congress declared that it is the goal of the US to make sure that every resident here has safe, decent, affordable housing. But under Bill Clinton, that language was stricken from the law & the number of public housing units was capped by law. So that was one very important issue. Another was that he continued the defunding of public housing. There was a law that required that whenever a public housing unit was demolished, a new unit had to be created. He eliminated that as well. So this has accelerated the demise of public housing.

NOOR: RAD program is happening under the Obama administration, a Democratic administration.

SINGER: Yes. Well, as Huey Long said, they may be Democratic waiters or they may be Republican waiters, but they're serving food from the same Wall Street kitchen. This RAD program was created actually in 2003 by the Bush administration, but they couldn't get it implemented. So now the Obama administration is implementing it with a vengeance, & 60,000 public housing units around the country are being sold to private developers, most of them for-profit developers, & we the taxpayers are subsidizing their profits. At the same time, homelessness is at the highest peak it's been since the Great Depression of the '30s, & the secretary of the federal Department of Housing & Urban Development himself says we're in the worst rental housing crisis in our history.

NOOR: How bad is it here in Baltimore?

SINGER: Well, we don't know how many people experience homelessness every night in Baltimore, but we counted over 4,000 people two years ago per night. Over the course of a year, that's probably 40,000 people. So we know it's pretty bad. There are encampments all around the city, the shelters are full every night, & people have nowhere to go.

NOOR: And there's a lot of people in risk of losing their housing as well.

SINGER: Well, they are. And one of the aspects of this new RAD program is that it's going to use federal tax credits to create profits for these developers in public housing. But that means that those federal tax credits will no longer be available to build new affordable housing. ...

NOOR: Baltimore is a pilot city for the RAD program. Why will it be important for people to be engaged here? What kind of impact will what happens here have on the rest of the country, especially when it comes to tenants & the union workers that are being affected by this being mobilized & getting their voices out?

SINGER: I think we have an opportunity here to do something very important, & that is to combine the forces & the interests of the tenants with the forces & interests of the workers. It is outrageous that the federal government has approved a plan that's going to fire 200 workers, workers who had decent wages, job protections, & benefits. The middle class that--the president is talking about growing the middle class; well, now we're destroying part of the middle class. So by combining the interests of the tenants & the workers & the advocates & the neighborhood folks, we can create a really important force, & that force is devoted toward affordable & fair development policies.

NOOR: And so part of the drive for this you can kind of say comes from the perception that public housing is failing. And so why is it important to talk about the mismanagement & the underfunding of public housing to contextualize that?

SINGER: ... The federal budget for the Department of Housing & Urban Development was the equivalent of $90 billion in 1980, & it is now $42 billion. It's less than half of what it was. So they have purposefully for 40 years underfunded public housing, both the capital costs ... & the operating costs. Now the City of Baltimore gets only about 75% of what they need to run public housing, & they get a hundredth of what they need to maintain it.

NOOR: What else is important for people to know about the future of public housing in America, in Baltimore today?

SINGER: Well, public housing is the sector of housing that keeps housing permanently affordable for the very large number of folks whose income is low. And we have a poverty rate in the US of about 15%. In the City of Baltimore, it's over 20%. Among children in Baltimore it's 35%. None of those folks can afford housing through the market. Public housing is the best way to keep them safe and secure.

In other civilized countries, public housing is a very large part of their housing sector. In most European countries, it's 20% of all the housing. In the city of Vienna it's 60% of all the housing is public housing, meaning it's owned by all the people & it's available to people who need it. In the US, it's 1% of our housing, & that's diminishing.

Ivy League Study: The General Public Has Virtually No Influence on Policy

This news bite isn't so surprising or at least should not be surprising, if you don't live under a rock & actually think a little bit how the world actually works in real life.

As I have blogged several times in the past & as this news bite confirms it that democracy doesn't exist anywhere in the world, except, maybe, in very small countries with quite a bit of homogenous population in terms of race, ethnicity, & religious beliefs.

So, as this study concludes that public policy is heavily, or rather, completely, influenced by wealthy elites & the special interest / lobbying groups. The common man, or a woman, doesn't have any power in influencing public policies, even the ones directly & adversely affecting him / her.

Now, I know that correlation doesn't imply causation but you do have to wonder how come most, if not all, policies coming out of the government end up favouring the wealthy much more than the poor public. Be it the taxation debate or jobs discussion, or the minimum wage or homelessness, or any number of social & public problems, the rich & wealthy always win out, while the poor left holding the empty bag.

Democracy in the world, especially in the West, only exists superficially. The mass public thinks that since they are voting, their voice matters. Nope it doesn't. Take Canada, for instance. Majority of public is against Syrian refugees making Canada their new home or Canada supplying $15 billions of armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. But did the government listen to the public to actually not welcome Syrian refugees, especially when government is cutting funding to help reduce urban homelessness or rising unemployment through financial injections in the economy. Please keep in mind here that we are not discussing the morality of these issues. That's a whole different discussion in itself.

We can also take US public opinion when George Bush's approval ratings before winning his second term was the lowest of any American president before him but he still won a second term. Or how a majority of German public is against Merkel's insistence on keep welcoming more & more refugees & migrants? Once again, not discussing morality of such issues as refugee crisis. Or Japan where a majority of public was against Abe's decision to turn the country towards more militarism than pacifism. Or is it really democratic of all those dozens of nations involved in TTP (TransPacific Trade Partnership) without any input, whatsoever, from the general public, who will be taking the brunt of all the adverse effects of this trade partnership, while the rich elites make a fine buck out of this trade partnership?

Remember, democracy is not about voting in general elections, but actually about having an actual influence in how the country is run.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5So9ZFO5DeY

ANTON WORONCZUK, TRNN PRODUCER: A new study titled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, & Average Citizens (PDF) says what we've all long felt to be true: the rich & powerful have much greater influence than the rest of us. Political scientist Martin Gilens of Princeton University & Benjamin Page of Northwestern looked at about 1,800 survey questions of public opinion between 1981 & 2002, & they concluded "economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

So, Benjamin, tell us how you came to this conclusion. Tell us about the data that you looked at. And give us some concrete statistics to show that democracy gap between the public & the economic elites.

BENJAMIN PAGE, FULCHER PROF. OF DECISION MAKING, NORTHWESTERN UNIV.: Well, Marty Gilens & his people worked for about 10 years to do this. It's a very difficult study. ... . It involved gathering a lot of information about public opinion, about what affluent people think, & about what interest groups stand for. And we then looked at how public policy came out on these 1,800 cases. And it turns out, if you wanted to predict it, the average citizen simply appeared to have no influence whatsoever, no measurable influence, but organized groups had quite a bit, & affluent citizens even more.

WORONCZUK: So you looked at about two decades' worth of surveys of public opinion. Do you see a change in influence of economic elites over that time? Or is it relatively constant? And also, do you see a change in the kinds of elites that have influence over policy?

PAGE: Well, there appears to be some change over time. As economic inequality has increased & there's more money among the most wealthy people, they seem to use more of it for politics & have more influence. And, of course, the study data ended some time ago. This was before the Supreme Court decisions that increased the power of money still far further.

WORONCZUK: And so what kind of issues do we see the wealthy having a greater influence over? What kind of policy choices do they seek that differs from that of the desires of the public?

PAGE: Well, there are certain kinds of issues on which wealthy Americans tend to disagree quite a bit with the average. One of the biggest is Social Security, where the average American really likes the program, wants to increase it, & wealthy Americans tend to want to cut it to reduce budget deficits. Then there are a lot of policies that have to do with jobs & incomes where you get the same kind of situation--the wealthy people, of course, don't particularly get anything from those, & I think they may underappreciate their importance to average people. There are also disagreements about economic regulation. The average American's much more keen on regulating big corporations, for example. And there are difference about tax policy. The average American would like to close loopholes & have high-income people pay a substantially larger share, whereas upper income people are less enthusiastic about that.

WORONCZUK: Do you see any policy desires of the public or the economic elite that tend to converge?

PAGE: Yes. There are many of them, and particularly in this study. ... in many cases, the average person agrees & they get what they want, but apparently it's only because the affluent want it.

What we suspect but don't really have evidence for is that much wealthier people may be exerting most of that political influence. And they tend to have much more different policy preferences from the average person.

WORONCZUK: Okay. So judging this democracy gap that exists between the public & the economic elite, let's say that Obama called you tomorrow & put you on economic reform task force. What recommendations would you make to him?

PAGE: ... what I would suggest is that we really work hard to reduce the role of money in politics. The Supreme Court's made it a little harder, but there's still things you can do--full disclosure of all kinds of political donations, for example; limiting lobbying; & probably public financing of campaigns. Most people don't want to give a bunch of tax money to politicians, but the alternative is to have them rely on private money, & public funding would probably help quite a bit reduce that reliance.

Ending the cycle of gang violence in El Salvador

This article points to a primary reason why violence is so rampant in developing countries & increasing at a fast rate in developed countries, too. The primary reason for youths & young people to join gangs, or simply be involved in street violence, is the spreading hopelessness for their future, which in turn, is happening because of increasing poverty & a lack of respectable work opportunities.

There's a saying that an empty mind is a devil's abode. As long as a person, especially a young one, keep himself / herself busy, they will be happy. Problem is with what are they keeping themselves busy. Is it something constructive or destructive?

Many of these youths are uneducated. It's not because they don't want any education, but because, the education system has become so expensive everywhere around the world that, even in the developed countries of North America & Europe (except a few countries), a youth & his / her family has to think twice before going to a post-secondary institution. Due to economic reasons, if he / she chooses something else over education, then cycle of violence starts. Heck, even if he / she is educated, he / she may still chooses to be involved in violence. And it's for a simple reason that he / she & his family needs food, clothing, & a roof over their heads.

Jobs, even for educated youths, are becoming scarce all over the world. Everywhere it's all about connections & networking. That doesn't help a large swath of young population who may not have the right connections because their parents & friends only know of people who are in the similar circumstances as they are.

Economic situations, the wrong result of capitalism (hoarding of wealth by a few rich individuals), the increasing social & wealth gap between rich & poor are all leading towards more misery & poverty for the billions around the world. Austerity measures in the name of economy is only creating more misery for the poor, while wealth is actually increasing for the rich. Wealthy families are simply sitting on their giant piles of cash instead of investing in the economy to create more jobs, which in turn, is only going to create more work opportunities for the youths.

Many youths, who are already involved in violence, also want to get out of that violent life, but they see no future in earning a honest buck. Because, there's more hopelessness in their future going down that route. In one of earlier posts, ex-convicts in US told how the justice & prison systems is made to trap a convict in a life of continuing violence. No one wants to take a chance on a youth who might have done something wrong in their life. If nobody offers them a second chance, they will of course re-offend & goes back into the for-profit prison system.

Furthermore, if the youths are busy with the right kind of "work", instead of killing & looting their fellow compatriots, they will not only be putting food on their families' table, clothing their kids, & putting roof over their families, they will also be feeling satisfied & fulfilled to be earning compensation from a non-violent line of work. Governments, & of course, the wealthy people, will also be reaping rewards with fewer criminals out on the streets & more tax-paying individuals. It is a win-win result for everyone in a society.

But the problem is how many rich individuals are willing to take that first step of investing in the young populations of their countries?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-33750162

It is Sunday morning in San Salvador & San Rafael hospital's accident & emergency department is full.

People are lying in the corridors on spare hospital beds waiting their turn.

Those who can sit up are in wheelchairs ... .
...
June saw 677 murders in El Salvador, more than any other month since the country's civil war ended in 1992.

Juan - not his real name - is lucky not to be another number in those grisly statistics. 37 years old, he runs a recycling business & a carwash. 4 men arrived at his work & opened fire: 40 bullets.

"Thank God just one bullet hit my arm," he tells me from his hospital bed.

Juan says in the 20 years he has had his own business he has never given in to gangs trying to extort money from him. ...

The police never came to see him to find out what happened. And did he go to them to report it?

"What's the point? I don't believe in the system," he says. He is now making plans to leave the country with his wife & 2 children.
...

Faith

On the outskirts of the capital, San Salvador, is a factory that is trying to pick up the pieces ... . It is not long after dawn & all the workers at League Central America are gathered outside. Everyone listens intently to a motivational speech followed by prayers.

Once that is over, work begins. Most of the more than 400 employees are sat behind sewing machines, sewing on labels or cutting material that is used to make sweatshirts & shorts.

All the clothes here are branded with American university logos such as Harvard & Brown & sent to the US.

Just over one in 10 are former gang members, from both the rival gangs - the Mara Salvatrucha & the 18th Street gang. You can tell their affiliation by the tattoos that some of them still have. Up until a few years ago, it used to be standard if you were a gang member.

But tattoos apart, they have started new lives here. One of them - I'll call him Jorge to protect his identity - came to work here through a church group. That is a prerequisite to work here.

After years of robbing, extorting, attacking & even killing several people, he decided to give it all up.

"It didn't make any sense, I was bored of it," he tells me. "I was fed up with suffering. I was in the street all the time.

"My daughter was born and I didn't want her to go through the same thing I had gone through."

The only thing left of his gang days is the tattoo. He pulls down his lower lip to show it to me - carved out with a knife, it is inked with the words MS - to mark him out as a Mara. He says though that gang violence is getting worse.

"They go around killing police, soldiers," he says. "It's partly because of the lack of work, the poverty.

"There are lots of former gang members who want to change their lives but they don't have a way out, nobody gives them an opportunity. So they go back to what they used to do."

Jorge was lucky. He is now one of the chief pattern cutters at League Central America & is thankful for another chance at life.

'No choice'

"People join gangs because they have to. They join because they have no other choice," says Carly Gerstman, the development manager at League Central America.

"We've found that they have the motivation and they have the drive and they have the appreciation that, you know, we are bringing them back in and we are giving them this opportunity, and they take it and they run with it."

Company boss Rodrigo Bolanos says businesses need to play a part in solving the cycle of violence.

"The war between the government and gang members is already here, it's already started," he says.

"In the process of suffocating the economy and the country the private companies need to take a position to look for a dignified way out."

Pentagon’s new military strategy calls for preserving US dominion of the world

So, basically, US wants to keep increasing its military power & prowess, & keep projecting it on to the world. If you are one of those "rogue" nations, who think there might be another way of living life than what the Hollywood is teaching the world, then you will be branded a "terrorist nation," & will be forced, through deathly sanctions, into submission. You better kneel before your 21st Century American gods OR we will make you kneel & prostrate before us.

When people of other countries don't go along with what the US wants, the international media comes along & helps US in achieving its objectives of making others believe its false opinions & lies about other "rogue" nations. American military action is then taken, unilaterally or with allies, resulting in millions of unnecessary innocent deaths. Then, those people of that nation want to retaliate & want justice for what has been done to them; only for not going along with what America wanted them to do in the first place.

That retaliation & call for justice result in guerilla war tactics & so-called "terrorism". Innocent, albeit completely clueless & ignorant, people die in those attacks, too, except not only they are mourned on the international stage, since they were killed in a Western developed country, & an ally of US, but their deaths are exploited for more punishment through wars.

The end result for all this "my-manhood-is-bigger-than-thou" competition is innocents die on multiple fronts, while the powerful elites in military, weapons manufacturing industry, military-industrial complex, governments, lobbyists, financial services etc. enjoy ever-more wealth & power.

Besides, all of the innocent people suffering due to deaths & injuries on both sides, countries who are actively waging wars (US & its allies) also suffer the economic & social breakdown in their own societies. Reason being is that governments start cutting social spending & divert that money towards military & its related industries. Since, the governments become more financially conservative, more people starts falling into social problems like homelessness, poverty, unemployment, health, illiteracy, discrimination etc. Case in point is that since US got engaged in ever more wars around the world (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Somalia etc.), homelessness & poverty has increased multiple folds in all major cities of US; from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles.

End result for all this preservation of American dominion of the world is more misery, death, destruction, chaos & problems for everyone living on this tiny dot in the vast universe; regardless of one's active or inactive or voluntarily or involuntarily. The world will suffer & no one will be the winner; not even the powerful rich elites.

The world is entering into a very volatile period & the saddest part of all this is that people are not learning from their pasts & still continuing to forge ahead to wield their powers on others. Remember that famous quote that nations (& people) who forget their pasts are doomed to repeat it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.rt.com/usa/271099-pentagon-new-military-strategy/

The US military needs to remain engaged around the world against both rival states & non-state actors, while nurturing regional allies & promoting American values, declares the Pentagon’s new National Military Strategy 2015.

That the US is “the world’s strongest nation, enjoying unique advantages in technology, energy, alliances and partnerships, and demographics,” is the underlying assumption in the document. “However, these advantages are being challenged.”

The main challengers are the state actors of Russia, Iran & North Korea, & non-state groups – particularly the “violent extremist organizations” (VEO) such as Islamic State & the Taliban. The strategy attempts to create a unified approach to dealing with both, seeking to “deter, deny, and defeat” the states & “disrupt and degrade” the non-state groups.

The document blames Russia for violating “numerous agreements” with its “military actions.” This list of agreements includes a number of pacts that US has been also violating such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Iran & North Korea, on the other hand, are accused of seeking nuclear weapons. The document explains that the US would like to see China, which is not listed as a rival, as part of the international order, rather than a regional power challenging Washington’s dominance.

“None of these nations are believed to be seeking direct military conflict with the United States or our allies,” the document summarizes. “Nonetheless, they each pose serious security concerns which the international community is working to collectively address by way of common policies, shared messages, and coordinated action.”

The Pentagon aims to address the conflicts against “VEOs” by addressing the “root causes” of conflicts in failed states, with the military helping providing security while governments & international agencies provide economic opportunities & humanitarian assistance.
...

Technological frontier

"We now face multiple, simultaneous security challenges from traditional state actors and transregional networks of sub-state groups — all taking advantage of rapid technological change," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey wrote in the introduction. "We are more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly."

Driven by globalization, technology is enabling other states & groups around the world to challenge the advantages long enjoyed by the US, such as early warning & precision strike capability, the document notes. This requires the US to embrace “greater agility, innovation, and integration” to meet these challenges, & “reinforces the need for the US military to remain globally engaged to shape the security environment and to preserve our network of alliances.”

Brian Becker, director of the ‘Answer’ anti-war coalition, says that complaints about losing technological advantages are largely targeted at the domestic public. “American are being told that there is no money for hospitals, schools and many other vitally needed social programs, but suddenly we will have a clarion call that the United States must catchup, it must not let its adversaries Russia or China become superior to America, this is precisely what triggered the arms race in the 1950s,” he said to RT.

Global presence

US military presence around the world is explained as key to the security of allies & partners, a factor of stability in promoting “economic growth and regional integration” and giving Washington the capability to react swiftly in case of a crisis.

“We are prepared to project power across all domains to stop aggression and win our Nation’s wars by decisively defeating adversaries,” the document states. “While we prefer to act in concert with others, we will act unilaterally if the situation demands.”

The strategy says that the US “will press forward with the rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, placing our most advanced capabilities and greater capacity in that vital theater.” It also remains committed to NATO allies & Israel’s security.

“If you look at what the US is doing, not to what it says in the document, the pivot towards Asia is a pivot of containment,” Becker says. “The new military strategy, which is to take all of the non-Chinese republics and nations in the region and forge them into a US-led military alliance, cannot be perceived in China as anything else but a threat to its national interest.”

In addition to safeguarding the survival of the US & prevention of a “catastrophic attack,” the national security interests articulated in the strategy include the “security of the global economic system,” the “security, confidence, and reliability of our allies,” & the “preservation and extension of universal values.”
...

"Distribution of Wealth" by Dario Castillejos

"Distribution of Wealth" - Dario Castillejos, Mexico

Ontario allowing employers to fire workers without cause

Another one of those stories shining a bright light on millions of Ontarians precariously employed & how they are exploited by employers in Ontario. This story is not telling about people working in some far off developing country in Africa or Asia but right here in Canada.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/05/17/ontario-allowing-employers-to-fire-workers-without-cause.html

Show up to work one day & get fired for no reason?

Sorry about your luck.

In Ontario, not a single worker is protected from wrongful dismissal under the Employment Standards Act.

Hit with the flu & can’t make it into the office?

Consider sucking it up, because chances are you won’t get paid. You’ll be lucky to keep your job, in fact.

Have to put in extra hours one week to get the job done?

Whatever you do, don’t expect overtime pay. Or even to get paid at all.

Ontario’s outdated employment laws, currently under review, were designed to create basic protections for the majority of the province’s non-unionized workers.

Instead, millions are falling through the gaps created by a dizzying array of loopholes, from the dangerous to the downright bizarre.

Construction workers have no right to take breaks on the job.

Care workers aren’t entitled to time off between shifts.

Vets aren’t entitled to vacation pay.

Janitors have no right to minimum wage.

Cab drivers aren’t entitled to overtime pay.

And dozens of occupations, some that you’ve never even heard of, are exempt from basic rights entirely.

“Keepers of fur-bearing mammals” have no right to minimum wage.

Sod layers have no limits on their daily hours of work.

Shrub growers don’t get a lunch break.

The system is so complicated that the Ministry of Labour has developed a special online tool to help decipher who’s entitled to what.

But as the province reviews its antiquated Employment Standards Act, critics argue that its confusing web of exemptions makes it harder for the so-called precariously employed to defend their rights — & easier for bosses to ignore them.

“When you distil it down to what these exemptions are seeking to achieve, really they are to give employers more control over work & more control over wages,” says Mary Gellatly of Parkdale Community Legal Services.

“It sends the message to employers that they can get away without complying.”

The Act was first introduced in Ontario in 1968 to set basic work standards, especially for non-unionized employees who don’t have a collective agreement to provide extra protections.

But there are at least 45 occupations in Ontario that are exempt from a variety of its fundamental entitlements, many of them low-wage jobs in industries where precarious work is rife.

The Ministry of Labour says many of the exemptions are “long standing” & related to “the nature of the work performed.”

But York University professor Leah Vosko, who is leading research into employment standards protections for the precariously employed, says exemptions have come at least in part from industry pressure, leaving the Act a “complex patchwork that is difficult for workers & even officials to comprehend.”

Even when there are clear violations, speaking out can come at a cost.

Reprisal is illegal under the Act, meaning bosses can’t penalize employees for exercising their workplace rights. But the Act gives workers no protection against wrongful dismissal. Employers do not have to give cause for firing someone.

Unionized employees are generally protected by their collective agreements, & workers can sue employers if they think they have been unfairly terminated.

But most precarious, low-income employees are not unionized, & most do not have the money to take legal action against an employer, says Parkdale’s Gellatly.

“It’s the big reason why many people can’t do anything if they’re in a workplace with substandard conditions, because they can get fired without cause.”

Linda Wang, who worked at a Toronto cosmetics manufacturer for 4 years, was fired less than 2 weeks after she asked her employer for the extra pay she was owed for working a public holiday. She says no reason was given for her termination.

Wang, a mother of two, claims her employer repeatedly bullied her & her colleagues, & that she believes she was dismissed for asking for the wages.

She has filed a reprisal complaint with the Ministry of Labour, but Wang cannot afford to take her employer to court.

“I feel the system is against workers,” she says. “It’s in favour of employers.”

“Whatever job you have you put so much of yourself into it,” adds Gellatly. “The fact that employers can just fire you without a reason is incredibly devastating for folks.”

The Act also contains significant gaps when it comes to sick leave & overtime.

The legislation provides most workers with 10 unpaid days of job-protected emergency leave, which means they can’t be fired for taking a day off due to illness or family crisis.

Critics call this measure subpar by most standards, since it still causes many workers to lose a day’s income for being ill. An estimated 145 countries give employees some form of paid sick leave.

“Unfortunately, we stand out for our inadequacy,” says Brock University professor Kendra Coulter.

But the 10-day protected leave doesn’t apply to almost one in three of the province’s most vulnerable workers. An exemption that excludes employees in workplaces of less than 50 people from that right means 1.6 million workers in Ontario are not even entitled to a single, unpaid, job-protected sick day.

Fast-growing, low-wage sectors such as retail, food services & health care are most likely to be exempt according to a recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre.

While many small businesses voluntarily give their employees paid sick days, the loophole leaves many workers — especially the precariously employed — exposed.

Toronto resident Gordon Butler asked his employer, a small construction company in Markham, for one day off work after he sliced his thumb open on the job. He says his boss told him not to come back.

“I didn’t believe him,” says Butler, 44, who has an 8-month-old child. “I tried to plead with him, & he said ‘No, too bad.’ ”

“The way it’s stacked up right now is there are very few options for people who are in low-wage & precarious work to actually take sick leave when they’re sick,” says Steve Barnes, director of policy at Toronto’s Wellesley Institute, a health-policy think tank.

“They not only have to worry about lost income, but the potential for losing their jobs,” adds Brock’s Coulter. “It’s unkind & unnecessary.”

The stress caused by the province’s meagre sick leave provisions are compounded by exemptions surrounding overtime pay, to which around 1.5 million don’t have full access.

As a rule, employees should get paid time & a half after 44 hours a week on the job, according to the Employment Standards Act.

But in 2014, more than one million people in the province worked overtime, & 59% of them did not get any pay whatsoever for it, Statistics Canada data shows.

This, experts say, is partly because enforcement is poor. But in Ontario, a variety of occupations don’t even have the right to overtime pay, including farmworkers, flower growers, IT workers, fishers & accountants. Managers are also not entitled to overtime.

Vladimir Sanchez Rivera, a 45-year-old seasonal farmworker in the Niagara region, says he has worked 96-hour weeks doing back-breaking labour picking cucumbers & other produce.

“We don’t have access to protections when we are working in agriculture,” he says. “And our employers tell us that.”

Low-wage workers are even more likely to be excluded from full overtime pay coverage, according to the Workers’ Action Centre’s research. Less than one third of low-income employees are fully covered by the Act’s overtime provisions, compared to around 70% of higher earners, because they are more likely to work in jobs that aren’t eligible.

Workplaces can also sign so-called “averaging provisions” with their employees, which allow bosses to average a worker’s overtime over a period of up to 4 weeks.

That means an employee could work 60 hours one week & 50 the next, but not receive any overtime as long as they don’t work more than a total of 176 hours a month.

Critics say the measure means more work for less pay, & paves the way to erratic, unpredictable schedules.

“That’s a huge impact on workers & their families in terms of lost income & having to work extra hours,” says Parkdale’s Gellatly.

“It’s certainly not good for workers, for their families, & it’s not good for creating decent jobs in terms of rebooting our economy,” she adds.

For many of the precariously employed, falling through the gaps ruins lives.
...


Proposed solutions

A recent report by the Workers’ Action Centre makes a number of recommendations to rebuild the basic floor of rights for workers. The proposed reforms include:

• Amending the ESA to include protection from wrongful dismissal

• Eliminating all occupational exemptions to ESA rights

• Repealing overtime exemptions & special rules

• Repealing overtime averaging provisions

• Repealing the emergency leave exemption for workplaces with less than 50 people

• Requiring employers to provide up to 7 days of paid sick leave

"Shining City" by Steve Greenberg

"Shining City" - Steve Greenberg, CA, US

"Shrinking Middle Class income" by Bob Englehart

"Shrinking Middle Class income" - Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, US

3,000 children enslaved in Britain after being trafficked from Vietnam

After I keep hearing news of how adults & youths, of both genders, were keep getting enslaved in war torn countries, where there is no law & order, I came upon this article & thought to put some perspective to this news of slavery ... in a developed Western country. Now, this article is highlighting the problem of slavery in UK, but US & Australia have a similar problem.

These 3,000 children are enslaved in UK. They are being sexually & physically abused & put in domestic labour as a slave. The authorities, as usual, keep saying that they are trying to end it but losing the war against slavery. The reality of 21st century is that the slavery has actually increased in this century.

Slavery is wrong, regardless of whoever or wherever it happens. But, considering, there are almost 10,000 to 13,000 slaves in Britain, then how can the Western developed countries expect people in war torn countries to prosecute people in slave trade (criminal gangs & organizations) & protect people from being enslaved. It's very easy to blame others for their practices & ideologies before judging oneself where he/she is standing.

Furthermore, we need to keep in mind that these criminal gangs are only suppliers of slaves. Supply cannot exist without demand. That means then that people in the West, regardless of their race, education, national origins, ethnicity, religion, are open to knowingly taking in a slave, as long as it benefits them, somehow. Slavery exists because the general public demands it. Now, it might be a small section of the general public who is demanding it, but they definitely are the customers. The public supports slavery by either directly buying the slaves (usually rich elites) or indirectly asking for quality products at the lowest prices possible, which is possible only by businesses paying no or extremely low wages (recall my blog on Thailand's fishing, & Australian & Spanish agricultural industries employing slaves).

Since, we also know that criminal gangs would not be involved into this business without making a good return on their investments, they charge high prices for these slaves. So, their customers must be well-heeled to be paying such high prices for these slaves, which, in turn, means that they themselves are earning handsomely. So, the "respected" rich elites of our society don't hesitate from slavery. Hey, I thought, that happened in 1800s in the Western countries. So, after all, it seems like that the society hasn't developed, at all.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/may/23/vietnam-children-trafficking-nail-bar-cannabis

Hien was 10 when he arrived in Britain. He did not know where he was or where he had been. He knew only that he was here to work. Since he emerged from the back of a lorry after crossing from Calais 7 years ago, his experience has been one of exploitation & misery. He has been a domestic slave, been trafficked into cannabis factories, been abused & beaten & was eventually prosecuted & sent to prison. It has been a life of terror, isolation & pain.

... . He is one of an estimated 3,000 Vietnamese children in forced labour in the UK, used for financial gain by criminal gangs running cannabis factories, nail bars, garment factories, brothels & private homes. Charged up to £25,000 for their passage to the UK, these children collectively owe their traffickers almost £75m.

While there is growing awareness of the use of trafficked Vietnamese people in the booming domestic cannabis trade, child trafficking experts are now warning that the British authorities are unable to keep up with the speed at which UK-based Vietnamese gangs are recruiting & exploiting children for use in other criminal enterprises such as gun-smuggling, crystal meth production & prostitution rings.

“By our calculations there are around 3,000 Vietnamese children in the UK who are being used for profit by criminal gangs,” says Philip Ishola, former head of the UK’s Counter Human Trafficking Bureau.

“The police & the authorities are now aware that trafficked children are being forced to work in cannabis farms but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Often the same child will be exploited not just in a cannabis farm but also in myriad different ways. This is happening right under our noses & not enough is being done to stop it.”

Police admit that they are struggling with the speed at which Vietnamese criminal gangs are diversifying & expanding their activities across the England & into Scotland & Northern Ireland. “Right now we are just fighting in the trenches, fighting in the nail bars,” said detective inspector Steven Cartwright, who heads Police Scotland’s human trafficking unit. “It is vital that we that we understand new methods being deployed by the gangs because we need to stop demand at one end or limit their ability to make money at the other.”

Hien’s journey to the UK started when he was taken from his village at the age of 5 by someone who claimed to be his uncle. As an orphan, he had no option but to do as he was told. He spent 5 years travelling overland, completely unaware which countries he was going through, from Vietnam before being smuggled across the Channel & taken to a house in London. Here he spent the next 3 years trapped in domestic servitude, cooking & cleaning for groups of Vietnamese people who would come in & out of the property where he was held.

The men in the house beat him & forced him to drink alcohol until he was sick. Other things happened to him that he still cannot talk about. He was never allowed out of the house & was told that if he tried to escape, the police would arrest him & take him to prison.

During his time in that house, Hien says, many other Vietnamese children were brought in. They told him that they were here to work & to pay off debts for their families back home. They would stay for a few days & then be taken away, & Hien never saw them again. He became homeless after his “uncle” abandoned him. He slept in parks & ate out of bins. He was eventually picked up by a Vietnamese couple, who offered him a place to stay but then forced him to work in cannabis farms in flats in first Manchester & then Scotland.

In his testimony to police, he says he still does not understand exactly what the plants were, although he understands now that they are worth a lot of money. He looked after the plants, using pesticides that made him ill, & only left the flat when he helped transport the leaves to be dried elsewhere. He was locked in, threatened, beaten & completely isolated from the outside world.

“I was never paid any money for working there,” he says. “I did not stay there for money but because I was afraid & I hoped the whole thing would end soon.”

When the police came, they found Hien alone with the plants. He told his story to the police, but was still sent to young offenders’ institution in Scotland, where he spent 10 months on remand, charged with cannabis cultivation. He was released only after the intervention of a crown prosecutor led to him being identified as a victim of trafficking.

Vietnamese children such as Hien are easy pickings for the increasingly sophisticated trafficking gangs operating between the UK & Vietnam. Children make up nearly a quarter of the estimated 13,000 people trafficked into the UK every year, & Vietnamese children are the largest group of children trafficked to the UK. The United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime estimates that 30 Vietnamese children arrive illegally in the UK every month, on well-established smuggling routes.

“Children are an increasingly valuable assets to criminal gangs because they are easy to get hold of, easily intimidated & exploited, & easy to keep isolated & unaware of what is really happening around them, which makes it far less likely for them to be able to disclose anything of use to the police,” says Ishola.

When it comes to Vietnamese children, he says, the culture of seeing a child as the “golden egg”, who will be sent to work abroad & provide for their families still prevails. This attitude is exploited by gangs, who deceive families into believing that there is legitimate work in Britain for their children.

“During their journey to the UK, the traffickers keep charging the children more & more money, & by the time they arrive, the pressure to pay back this enormous debt is a key factor in their vulnerability to ending up trapped in forced labour,” he says. “Upon arrival the children are faced with a highly organised system of criminal activity, with methods of control ranging from extreme physical brutality to debt bondage. Before they even arrive, that trap is set for them.”

Members of the Vietnamese diaspora in London told the Observer that they had seen an explosion in child trafficking by criminal gangs operating on the peripheries of their communities in recent years. “Some of these children & victims have told me that it cost them £25,000 to get to the UK,” said one Vietnamese community leader in London, who did not want to be named. “They come with a debt & they are not allowed to leave until the debt is paid. That is slavery & exploitation.”

Like Hien, many of the children end up working on cannabis farms. The link between child trafficking & the UK’s domestic cannabis industry has been increasing, with Vietnamese children the main group at risk. According to a 2014 report by the NGO AntiSlavery International, almost all potential victims of trafficking linked to cannabis are Vietnamese, & more than 80% are children.

Many of these children are subsequently prosecuted by the UK justice system, despite many being identified as potential victims of trafficking. This has led to Vietnamese children becoming the second-largest ethnic group held in youth detention centres across the UK.

Vietnamese gangs have historically dominated the UK’s £1bn cannabis trade & have been instrumental in the proportion of domestically grown cannabis in Britain rising from 15% in 2005 to about 90% now. While the trade remains enormously profitable – the number of Vietnamese cannabis factories in the UK has grown by 150% in the past 2 years – their grip has been weakened thanks to increased law enforcement & under competition from British growers. Now they are finding new & more efficient ways of doing business.

“In terms of law enforcement, I think we’re about 2 years behind the curve,” says Daniel Silverstone, a criminologist at London Metropolitan University who has written extensively on Vietnamese gangs in the UK.

“Traffickers have changed their modus operandi in recent years in direct response to the attention & interventions of law enforcement. A few years ago it was almost exclusively cannabis farms, but their business interests have now become much more diverse. So we’re seeing an expansion into Scotland & Northern Ireland, the use of nail bars for forced labour & money laundering, & moves into drugs like crystal meth.” This means that children, who are an integral part of the gangs’ business operations, are also now being moved into other areas of exploitation. “As their grip on the domestic cannabis trade slips a little, they are looking to maximise their profits from these children in whatever way they can,” he adds.

The Metropolitan police say that there is now much more awareness of the complexity of tackling the UK’s child trafficking problem but that the closed nature of the Vietnamese community has made things difficult. “What has persistently been a challenge for us is making inroads into this community,” says Phil Brewer, who heads its new human trafficking & kidnap unit. “We usually only find out about a child when we make a raid & find someone in a cannabis factory or nail bar, but often this person has been through multiple forms of exploitation before we reach them.”

Parosha Chandran, a leading human rights barrister & UN expert on trafficking, has represented Vietnamese children charged with cannabis cultivation who have gone through many different trafficking situations before being moved into cannabis farms.

“Trafficked Vietnamese children have rarely faced just one type of forced labour,” she says. “I’ve come across cases where young people have been subjected to a spectrum of exploitative practices. In one of my cases, for example, the child was forced to look after people’s homes & care for their children, when he was just a child himself, then he was taken to work cleaning a nail bar, then moved to another place where he was forced to sew labels on to clothing – & all of this happened before he even arrived in the cannabis factory.”

In March the UK passed its first Modern Slavery Bill, designed to increase the prosecution of traffickers & give better protection to victims of modern slavery in the UK. However, Chandran says that Vietnamese children continue to be prosecuted for cannabis cultivation while their traffickers remain free.

“The Modern Slavery Act’s central focus on prosecution is misguided & its provisions fail to fully protect the rights of trafficked children,” she says. “We as a democratic country need to find durable solutions to ensure these children remain protected from harm for the rest of their lives.”

...

Methods used to lure children from Vietnam to the UK are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, including use of social media. “Vietnamese children are brought to the UK, taken in by Vietnamese adults & put to domestic work,” says Swat Pandi, from the NSPCC’s child trafficking advice centre. “The child feels indebted to the adults for food & shelter & is told they need to return the favour by looking after cannabis plants. These children suffer high levels of neglect, emotional abuse &, in the absence of any protective factors, are highly vulnerable to physical & sexual abuse.”

Despite the government’s pledge to end modern slavery & the UK’s first modern slavery bill, passed in March, Chitty says she has seen no change in the numbers of Vietnamese children coming through her charity’s services. “It’s very much business as usual,” she says. “We still have a problem with immediate safeguarding & appropriate placements for trafficked children. And young people are still being criminalised by the courts.”

Even when a child has been taken out of trafficking & come under the care of a local authority, he or she is likely to return to the control of the traffickers. In 2013, a report by independent thinktank the Centre for Social Justice concluded that 60% of trafficked children in local authority care go missing, nearly a third of them within a week of arrival. Most are never found again. There are increasing reports of children being retrafficked from foster homes or when they have been given asylum status.

“I don’t think we understand the entire enterprise,” says detective inspector Cartwright. “Despite our best intentions I think we’re not offering them anything that would persuade them to stay. Many will get retrafficked because we didn’t offer them a better alternative to what the traffickers are providing.”

Hien is trying to rebuild his life after being given asylum in Scotland, but is struggling to find peace after years of trauma. “I still worry that the traffickers may find me & come to my house. But I know this time that I will ask for help,” he says. “I think they have justice here but I wish they hadn’t kept me in prison for so long. By telling my story, I want people to understand what I have experienced here.”