Two cyclones devastate areas of northern and eastern Australia

Will Morrow

Hundreds of people have been left homeless and tens of thousands remain without power across both central Queensland and the Northern Territory in the wake of the impact of cyclones Marcia and Lam, which struck the two regions on February 22.

In the Northern Territory, the impact of the category four Cyclone Lam, which struck the northern area of Arnhem Land last Friday, has been disastrous. It has exacerbated the endemic poverty facing thousands of people, mainly Aboriginal, in the region.

Some of the worst-hit communities have been Ramingining, population 800, Milingimbi, just off the coast of Arnhem Land, population 1,500, and Galiwinku, the main town on Elcho Island, population 2,000. The total damage there has been estimated at $80 million.

The cyclone has highlighted the absence of basic infrastructure, including storm protection facilities, despite the region’s tropical climate. Milingimbi’s cyclone shelter has a 300-person capacity—one fifth of the town population. Julie Turner, a resident, told the SBS that people were turned away from the shelter during the storm and directed back to their homes, unaware of what other buildings were cyclone-proof. “For me that’s just not good enough,” she said.

In Galiwinku, 250 people remain homeless, with more than 100 homes declared uninhabitable. They will be forced to stay in tent camps being set up on a local football oval. At a community meeting yesterday, they were told it could be up to two months before they can return to their homes, many of which were constructed using asbestos, a known carcinogen.

Yvonne Gananbarr, a Galiwinku resident, has been sleeping on the floor of a school hall since the cyclone. She is unable to return to her house, which has been completely covered in asbestos. Even prior to the storm, Gananbarr had requested to the Northern Territory housing commission to address basic maintenance problems in the house, including broken taps and showers, and walls which leak during the rain, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Grace Tongatua, another Galiwinku resident, complained about the delay in government financial support, compared to public relations announcements. “Most family and friends assume it’s been made from all the press releases that have been put out there,” she said, according to the ABC. “If we didn’t have family members that were able to provide us with extra money and things like that, it would be a fairly large stress on us to not have any money.”

In Queensland, more than 550 homes have been declared uninhabitable after the category five cyclone Marcia, the larger of the two storms, hit. As of Thursday, at least 33,000 people were reported to be without access to the power grids across the state, down from over 65,000 last week. The storm brought down over 1,800 power lines. Some of the worst-hit larger cities include Rockhampton, with a population of over 80,000 people, and Yeppoon, population 25,000.

Many smaller towns have been left devastated. One such town, Marmor, with a population of 200 people, is expected to be without power for another week, and running water, which relies on electricity to be pumped from bores, has been cut off.

Thousands of people have been left to fend for themselves, with little or no government support, and have instead been forced to turn to charities, or friends and family, just to survive. Colin Maxwell of the Salvation Army reported that the organisation has been feeding 900 people a day across the state since the cyclone. While the crisis continues, the major national media outlets have largely moved on to other issues.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott conducted a ritual, stage-managed tour to Yeppoon on Thursday, in a show of government support. In reality, the response by both the federal Liberal government and the state Labor government of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has been contemptuous.

A paltry $1,000 sum, funded by the federal government, has been made available only to people whose home has either been destroyed or badly damaged, or who have suffered serious injury, with an additional $400 per child. The criteria have been substantially tightened since cyclone Oswald, which hit Queensland and New South Wales in 2013, when the fund was available to anyone adversely affected.

As of yesterday, only 1,433 claims had been accepted, totaling just $1,866,000, according to the Morning Bulletin. A second program run by the state government, called Immediate Hardship Assistance, has provided $360,000 in total to approximately 2,000 people, an average of just $180 per claimant. In addition, the state government has given $250,000 to each of four major charity organisations, essentially making clear that private charities, rather than government services, are responsible for providing assistance.

Many farmers and small rural businesses have suffered catastrophic damages. The total economic toll on the agricultural industry across the state has been estimated at $50 million. Rather than covering these costs, the federal government is providing low-interest loans, meaning the burden of the damages will ultimately be borne by the farmers and small businesses themselves.

The mass power outages have only highlighted the refusal of both government and private electricity providers to bury power lines underground, which is more costly than using above-ground poles. Queensland’s electricity distributor Ergon indicated last Monday that it may take out private insurance against storm damage to the power network, meaning the cost will be passed on to the population via higher electricity prices.

In the small towns of Biloela and Jambin, residents have blamed the private operators of the Callide Dam for the flooding of their towns. Rather than carrying out controlled releases of water in the days leading up to the cyclone, the dam operator SunWater allowed water to build up, until the flood gates automatically opened in the middle of the cyclone.

A number of commentators have pointed to the impact of global climate warming in contributing to the disaster. Last Friday was likely the first time that twin cyclones of category three or higher have struck Australia.

In particular, climatologists have predicted that global warming is expanding the earth’s tropical zone further from the equator, exposing new regions to powerful cyclones. A study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US claimed that the areas of the strongest cyclone intensity were now stretching from the equator at a rate of 56 kilometres per decade. Commentators have noted that the occurrence of a category five storm reaching as far south as Yeppoon, in central Queensland, is historically extremely rare, and potentially unprecedented.

Cairns climatologist professor Steve Turton, from James Cook University, said storms such as Marcia “are going to become more common in the future along the eastern seaboard of Australia,” according to a February 20 Sydney Morning Herald article. “The research is suggesting that, in a warmer world, we’ll get more intense cyclones because there’ll be more energy in the oceans and also the atmosphere.”

Sri Lankan opposition parties seek to bring back Rajapakse

W.A Sunil

A number of opposition parties and organisations—supporters and allies of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s ruling coalition—have launched the “National Front to Defend the Motherland (NFDM),” a communalist movement with the aim of bringing Rajapakse back to office, as prime minister.

In the January 8 presidential election, Rajapakse was defeated by former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena, who was supported by the pro-US United National Party (UNP) and other parties. The whole regime-change operation was sponsored by the US to shift Colombo’s foreign policy away from China, with whom Rajapakse had developed close ties.

Sirisena has formed a government with UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister and a UNP-dominated cabinet. Parliamentary elections are currently due to be held in June.

The NFDM started its pro-Rajapakse campaign with a rally in Nugegoda, a Colombo suburb, on February 18 under the banner, “The victory of freedom at risk, rally to take the challenges of the nation.” The reference to victory is to the military defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009 under Rajapakse, in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed.

The rally was mainly organised by the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) led by Dinesh Gunawardena, the National Freedom Front (NFF) led by Wimal Weerawansa and the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU), a breakaway faction of the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). All are Sinhala chauvinist parties and partners in Rajapakse’s former ruling coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Also participating in the rally were the Deshapremi Bikshu Peramuna (Patriotic Front of Buddhist Monks) and the Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Brigade)—Sinhala Buddhist extremist groups that carried out violent attacks on Muslims and Christians under the Rajapakse government’s patronage.

According to the police and media reports, around 20,000 people were transported from several parts of the country to attend the meeting. The organisers hope to hold further rallies around the country.

Hated for his police-state methods and relentless attacks on living conditions, Rajapakse was silent for a few weeks after his January 8 defeat. However, he has signaled his readiness to stage a comeback. He sent a message to the rally, read former petty bourgeois radical-turned communalist Dayan Jayatillake, saying he could not “ignore the hands of affection.”

In his greetings, Rajapakse alleged that his defeat was the “result of an enemy conspiracy against the country” and again boasted about the victory over the LTTE. As in the past, Rajapakse did not name the “conspirators” because he is still trying to balance between Beijing and Washington, as he sought to do when in power.

The speakers at the rally delivered similar communal diatribes. They concentrated on appealing to Rajapakse to become a prime ministerial candidate and urging Sirisena, to appoint him as the SLFP candidate for the June elections. Even though Sirisena defected from the Rajapakse government and stood against Rajapakse in the election, not only is he still a member of the SLFP but heads it in his capacity as president.

“Today our national security has been threatened,” Gunawardena claimed. Weerawansa accused Sirisena’s government of “betraying national security,” adding: “We will not stop our struggle to bring Mahinda [back] to politics.” PHU leader Udaya Gammanpila characterised Sirisena’s election win as a victory for the LTTE and declared: “We need Mahinda to save the motherland.”

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) of Vasudeva Nanayakkara, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Stalinist Communist Party are backing this reactionary patriotic movement, underscoring the fact that these ex-left parties are nothing but appendages of a wing of the bourgeoisie directed against the working class.

According to media reports, sections of big business that profited from Rajapakse’s rule helped finance the Nugegoda rally. Rajapakse and his brother and former defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, have also cultivated close relations with the military hierarchy and senior state bureaucrats. Sirisena recently shuffled the top military posts, appointing new officers supposedly loyal to his government.

The NFDM coalition is trying to exploit the emerging disillusionment among working people, who, while hostile to the previous government, are distrustful of the new one.

Various middle class pseudo-left groups, such as the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP), and the trade unions claimed that a Sirisena government would boost their living standards. In his election program, for example, Sirisena promised to increase public sector wages by 10,000 rupees ($US75) a month, but is already backtracking on the election pledge.

The moves to install Rajapakse as prime minister indicate growing political and social tensions and the instability of Sirisena’s government. The government only has minority support in parliament, even though Sirisena heads the SLFP-led UPFA, which still holds a parliamentary majority. A leading section of the SLFP wants to use Sirisena to reassert its authority, but he is hostile to bringing back Rajapakse.

The SLFP officially decided not to participate in the Nugegoda rally, but there is an incipient split in the party. Some parliamentarians and provincial council members joined it, defying the party decision. In a counter-move, Sirisena held a two-day workshop for party MPs and organisers last weekend, which proposed a “national unity government” with the UNP.

Sirisena and UNP leader Wickremesinghe have announced a rally against the forces “stoking communalism”—a reference to the NFDM campaign. In reality, neither Sirisena nor Wickremesinghe are anti-communalist. Wickremesinghe’s UNP started the civil war in 1983 and Sirisena, as a senior minister in Rajapakse’s government, directly participated in it. Sirisena, like Rajapakse, hails the 2009 military victory and declares that he should be credited for his role.

Compounding these political tensions, the country’s economic crisis is intensifying under the impact of the worsening international situation. Sirisena’s government has initiated negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout loan of $US4 billion. Finance Minister Karunanayake has also asked the IMF to defer loan repayments in order to avoid a default.

For several weeks, the Central Bank has been spending dollars in the money markets to stave off a sharp devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee. Foreign investors are selling government and treasury bonds, withdrawing funds to invest elsewhere. The IMF will intervene with a more brutal austerity program that will impose new attacks on the conditions of workers and the poor, paralleling those in Greece.

Sirisena’s call for a “national unity government” amounts to a sinister plan against the working class and poor to impose such an assault. Similarly, the real target of those sections of the ruling class rallying behind Rajapakse is the working class.

At the same time, the sharp shift in foreign policy in favour of the US highlights the mounting frictions generated by Washington’s aggressive steps throughout the Indo-Pacific region to confront China, creating enormous dangers for the working people in Sri Lanka, across the region and globally.

Anti-Muslim actions rise sharply in France after Charlie Hebdo shooting

Anthony Torres

Since the January 7 Charlie Hebdo shootings, the number of acts against Muslims has risen sharply, spurred on by the hysteria of the media and politicians. The official response to the shootings is encouraging the most reactionary forces in society and the state to target and persecute France’s Muslim minority.

According to the National Observatory Against Islamophobia, 116 anti-Muslim actions have been reported in France since the beginning of 2015, more than in all of 2014. Muslim religious sites were targeted 28 times and received 88 threats. These statistics are likely underestimations, as many Muslims do not report intimidation or attacks for fear of reprisals.

Many attacks occurred in the days after the Kouachi brothers’ terrorist attack. Mosques or prayer rooms in Bayonne, Le Mans, and Port-la-Nouvelle were attacked or sprayed with graffiti. (See: French Muslims targeted by revenge attacks after Charlie Hebdo shootings)

The official stimulation of a climate of fear and suspicion towards Muslims has even led police to investigate schoolchildren denounced by school officials or third persons.

Nice-matin reported that a school in Nice called police after an eight-year-old schoolboy said, “I am not Charlie. I am on the side of the terrorists.”

The boy was held for a two-hour interrogation by police on suspicion of the crime of “apologetics for terrorist actions,” even though the regional head of public security declared: “The child manifestly did not know what he was saying. We do not know where he got this idea.”

According to the lawyer for the boy’s family, “The child is under investigation for apologetics for terrorist actions. It is written in black and white on the police documents I had to sign. The police are lying.” He added that the boy’s father, who went to the school to try to calm his son, faces charges of “breaking into a public establishment.”

He added that the parents had explained to their son that “terrorism is bad,” and condemned his remarks.

According to the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), the child has diabetes and complained of “being deprived of his insulin treatments by teaching staff.”

The CCIF and the lawyer both state that while the boy was playing in a sandbox, the school’s headmaster shouted at him: “Quit digging in that sand, you won’t find a machine gun to kill us under there.”

A child aged 9 was investigated for shouting, “God is great, long live the Koran.”

Prosecutors explained, “Afterwards, another child told his mother, an employee at the cafeteria, about the event, and she told the person overseeing the cafeteria, a report was drawn up. ... Finally, the military police [ gendarmerie ] were notified.”

The child facing charges “told investigators that he did not understand, there had been some misunderstanding between the two children.” Prosecutors added that “on the basis of the facts, accusations are entirely unfounded.”

Exploiting the rise of anti-Muslim prejudices to promote their reactionary agenda, leading politicians are embracing and stimulating anti-Muslim sentiment.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the vice-president of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), declared: “I’m going to give you a very concrete example. The mayor of Mulhouse, a friend, tells me that in his city there are dozens of children who arrive late every day because of prayers, their parents take them to prayers. And when their parents are summoned, because they are summoned, they explain that there are religious authorities which are superior to those of the Republic.”

She said that she supported taking away children and placing them in foster homes. “I want to be very precise,” Kosciusko-Morizet said. “Today, half of all reports to the judicial authorities protecting youth come from the schools. And very often they are on suspicion of violence, of incest or mistreatment.”

The role of the ruling Socialist Party (PS) and its pseudo-left satellites is not substantially different. They supported, under the false guise of defending “secularism,” bans on Islamic headscarves in the schools and on the burqa. The PS invited the neo-fascist National Front (FN), which is notoriously anti-Muslim, to the Elysée after the Charlie Hebdo shootings. They exploited anti-Muslim cartoons and sentiment to promote their military interventions in Africa and the Middle East. Such policies create the conditions for the persecution and stigmatizing of the Muslim population.

PS statements addressing the rise of anti-Muslim actions drip with cynicism. President François Hollande declared, “We must abstain from all amalgams and confusions. Frenchmen of the Muslim faith have the same rights and responsibilities as all citizens. They must be protected. Secularism is a part of this, it respects all religions.”

The same day, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “In these moments, everyone has his importance, and I want to assure all of my fellow citizens, and especially those of the Muslim faith, that they have the right to the same protection, including of their places of worship.”

In fact, the PS is exploiting both the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the anti-Muslim hysteria to bolster the security forces, accelerate the building of a police-state infrastructure, and promote a climate of fear and intimidation against all those who oppose its policies of austerity and war.

Canada invokes “jihadi threat” to pursue agenda of war and reaction

Keith Jones

Canada’s Conservative government is steamrolling its new “anti-terrorism” bill through parliament—legislation that tramples on core democratic rights and dramatically augments the power of the state and its national-security apparatus.

The Conservatives, who last fall sent Canada to war yet again, this time in Iraq, are also plotting to involve Canada still more deeply in US imperialism’s global offensive.

In both instances, the government is justifying its actions with the claim that Canada is under attack from Islamist terrorism.

This has been a constant refrain of Prime Minster Stephen Harper and his minsters since the killing of two members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) last October in separate incidents in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec and Ottawa.

Harper and his Conservatives seized on these killings—the work of deeply troubled individuals who had no connection with each other, let alone any terrorist group in Canada or the Middle East—to advance a pre-planned right-wing agenda.

The claim that Bill C-51 is an anti-terrorist measure is a brazen lie. Running to well over 600 pages, it amends numerous laws to give vast new powers to Canada’s spy agencies and the police.

Canada’s premier spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, is to be empowered to break virtually any law when disrupting what it deems threats to Canada’s national security, including ostensible threats to Canada’s economic stability and infrastructure, territorial integrity, and diplomatic relations.

The only provisos are that when employing illegal measures against opponents of the government, CSIS must not kill people, cause bodily harm, or impugn their “sexual integrity.” They also will require a judge acting in secret and on the basis of secret jurisprudence to grant them a “disruption warrant.”

No one should be taken in by the government’s pretense that “lawful dissent” will be protected from CSIS dirty tricks and provocations. Canada’s national security apparatus is notorious for spying on socialist, labor, anti-war, environmental, and aboriginal groups and justifying it on the grounds that one of their members “may” engage in unlawful activity sometime in the future.

Moreover, governments across Canada have increasingly criminalized the struggles of the working class and political dissent, passing one anti-strike law after another and employing police violence against the anti-G20 protesters and striking Quebec students.

Those who organize or participate in worker job actions in defiance of strikebreaking laws, student sit-ins, or other acts of civil disobedience, or whom CSIS claims “may” do so in the future, would all be potential CSIS “disruption” targets

Bill C-51 builds upon the Chretien Liberal government’s 2001 “Anti-Terrorism Act.” It created a new category of “terrorist” crimes subject to “exceptional” rules and penalties and based on a catch-all definition of terrorism in which any “unlawful” action aimed at compelling a government to do something—such as for example a political general strike or even a blockade of a highway–could be designated a terrorist act.

Bill C-51 expands the power of preventive arrest introduced under the 2001 law and reduces the evidentiary threshold at which it can be employed. Police will now be able to detain a person whom they suspect “may” commit a terrorist act for up to a week without charge. In the name of protecting Canadians, the state will also be able to much more readily place restrictions on the movements and actions of people who have never been charged let alone convicted of any crime.

Under Bill C-51 the government is also creating a new crime of advocating or promoting terrorism “in general” for which the punishment will be up to five years in prison. Even the big-business mouthpiece the Globe and Mail noted that this measure could potentially result in the prosecution of someone who expressed sympathy with the Palestinian group Hamas (which the government has designated as “terrorist); and, precisely because it is so sweeping and deliberately vague, will, by way of intimidation, greatly restrict free speech and public debate even in the absence of widespread prosecutions.

Bill C-51’s undemocratic character is underscored by the methods the government is using to speed it into law. The Conservatives have responded to opposition queries and criticism with half-truths, lies and smears. Harper has himself led the charge, calling the NDP’s concerns over the bill “ridiculous,” “extremist” and grounded in “conspiracy theories.”

Although the House of Commons only began its deliberations on Bill C-51 on February 19, the Conservatives—joined by the Liberals, who have pledged to support its passage—effectively adopted it in principle this past Monday when they voted to send it to the Public Security committee for review.

Initially the government proposed this committee hear just four days of “expert” testimony on the bill, the first of which would be given over to presentations by Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and Justice Minister Peter MacKay. In the face of an NDP filibuster, the Conservatives later conceded that nine sessions can be devoted to hearing “expert” reaction to Bill C-51. But the government is insistent that the entire committee process be terminated by the end of March so that Bill C-51 can be passed into law in early April. The NDP has bowed to this demand, saying it shares the government’s view that adoption of the bill is a matter of urgency.

The government is also preparing to extend and expand Canada’s combat mission in the Middle East, which is currently slated to come to an end at the end of March. In his first public address since becoming defence minister, Jason Kenney declared the government “committed to playing a meaningful role in the fight against ISIS” because “it’s a matter of national interest” and “Canadian security.” A few days later Kenney told CBC the Canadian military mission could be expanded to Syria and Libya, adding that nothing has been ruled out.

As with the government’s claims that Bill C-51 is directed against jihadi terrorism, its attempts to present Canada’s growing involvement in war in the Middle East as a response to the threat of jihadi terrorism is completely disingenuous. The latest US-led war in the Middle East, like those that have preceded it, is aimed at strengthening US imperialism’s strategic dominance of the world’s most important oil exporting region. The Canadian elite, for its part, has responded to the deepening crisis of world capitalism and the emergence of new rivals to US global dominance by strengthening its decades-long military-strategic partnership with Washington and signing up for one US-led war after another.

While Harper rails against the “international jihadist movement,” the reality is that until recently the US and its allies were using Islamist forces, including those comprising ISIS, as their proxies in “regime change” wars in the Middle East, first in Libya, then Syria. Last fall, when the Harper government announced that CAF aircraft would be bombing ISIS in Iraq, even sections of Canada’s corporate media noted that they might well end up bombing Islamist fighters with whom the CAF coordinated bombing raids in Libya in 2011 during NATO’s campaign to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

With the government set to present its budget and steamroller Bill C-51 through parliament in April and announce an expansion of Canada’s role in the Mideast war sometime in March, the Conservatives are putting everything in place for a possible spring “jihadi” election. The Conservatives would seek to frame such an election around their false narrative of a Canada under attack, presenting themselves as the only ones prepared to confront jihadi terrorism at home and abroad and to resolutely defend “Canadian values.”

Through this bellicose, nationalist appeal, laced with anti-Muslim chauvinism, the Harper government hopes to divert attention from the deepening economic crisis—the collapse in oil and other commodity prices, a plunging dollar, and growing unemployment and underemployment—and divert the social frustration produced by mounting economic insecurity and social inequality behind war and reaction.

They also hope to rally the support of the ruling class by demonstrating their ruthless determination to implement big business’ agenda at home and abroad and their readiness to run roughshod over democratic norms and rights to suppress opposition, especially from the working class.

This is a high-risk gamble. There is mass disaffection from the entire political establishment, broad hostility to war and bigotry, and mounting working class resistance to years of concession contracts and the systematic dismantling of public services.

In mounting their right-wing campaign of lies and reaction, the Conservatives are dependent on the spinelessness and complicity of the opposition parties and the trade unions. Their differences with the government over its program of war, austerity and attacks on democratic rights are entirely tactical: over how best to ensure the competitiveness of Canadian capitalism and its global strategic interests.

The Liberals, the Canadian elite’s traditional alternate party of government, blazed the trail for the Harper government. The 12-year Chretien-Martin Liberal government (1993-2006) implemented a fiscal counterrevolution that included the greatest social spending cuts in Canadian history and massive tax cuts for big business and the rich. They led Canada to war against Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, launched the rearmament of the Canadian Armed Forces, and presided over a massive expansion of the national-security apparatus, including authorizing the Communications Security Establishment to systematically spy on Canadians’ electronic communications.

Although it withheld approval for the CAF combat mission in Iraq, the NDP has otherwise repeatedly supported Canada’s participation in US-led wars and Harper’s aggressive foreign policy. Just this week, the social democrats signaled they would be ready to support the CAF training troops of Ukraine’s right-wing government, which came to power through a fascist spearheaded, US-German fomented coup, if NATO approves such a step.

Similarly, while it claims to oppose Bill C-51, the NDP has agreed to help secure its speedy passage. Moreover, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has said that in the event the NDP forms the government it will amend, not repeal, this omnibus assault on democratic rights. (See: Canada’s NDP belatedly opposes Conservatives’ draconian “anti-terror” bill)

As for the NDP’s union allies, they have systematically suppressed working class resistance to the austerity agenda of big business and ordered compliance with the anti-union laws. While they claim to oppose austerity, they encouraged the NDP to prop up an Ontario Liberal government as it imposed massive social spending cuts and illegalized teacher strikes.

Now, in the name of defeating Harper, the unions are seeking to channel the opposition to the Conservatives behind a campaign to elect a Liberal or Liberal-NDP government. Were such a government to come to power it would simply give a new, “progressive” face to the Canadian elite’s program of aggression abroad and sweeping attacks on workers’ democratic and social rights.

Workers and youth can only assert their interests through the building of new organizations of struggle, independent of the pro-capitalist unions and NDP—above all a workers’ party, animated by a socialist-internationalist program to put an end to capitalism.

Missouri Republican candidate, apparent target of anti-Semitic comments, commits suicide

Nick Barrickman

Missouri’s state auditor Tom Schweich died Thursday from a single gunshot to the head in what police are ruling an “apparent suicide.” According to a spokesperson for Schweich, he had been preparing to go public with allegations of anti-Semitism against state Republican Party Chairman, John Hancock.

Schweich, a practicing Episcopalian with a Jewish grandfather, had announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor of Missouri in the 2016 elections. Hancock, who is alleged to have made disparaging remarks about Schweich’s faith and ethnicity in private discussions, had worked as a consultant for rival Republican gubernatorial candidate, Missouri House Speaker Catherine Hanaway.

“The campaign had been difficult, as all campaigns are,” said Schweich’s spokesman Spence Jackson. “There were a lot of things that were on his mind.” Attempts to identify Schweich as Jewish were seen as potentially damaging to his chances of appealing to the Christian fundamentalists who play an enormous role in Republican primary elections.

Hancock denied the claims, stating that, “I don’t have a specific recollection of having said that,” while adding that it was “plausible that I would have told somebody that Tom was Jewish, because I thought he was, but I wouldn’t have said it in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.”

According to Tony Messenger, the editorial page editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Schweich had contacted him personally the morning of his death, requesting reporters be sent to his residence for a videotaped interview on the matter. Messenger said in a public letter that Schweich had been experiencing “significant angst” in the days prior to the suicide, and that “he had heard from campaign donors that while political consultant John Hancock was doing work for gubernatorial candidate Catherine Hanaway, he would mention in passing that Mr. Schweich was Jewish.” Messenger stated that Schweich had said he had a number of donors who would go on record to support the allegations.

A series of phone calls on the day of his death suggest that Schweich was undergoing some sort of crisis or breakdown. He called first the AP, then thePost-Dispatch, setting up appointments for interviews on the charge of anti-Semitism, but shot himself a few minutes later.

Whatever the circumstances that precipitated the fatal events, Schweich had held a series of responsible, high-stress positions in the federal government, beginning with a 1999 appointment as chief of staff for former US Senator John Danforth, who headed the federal probe into the FBI’s actions at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

He worked as chief of staff to the US ambassador to the United Nations for three years, serving three successive ambassadors—Danforth, then Anne Patteron, then John Bolton. He was also principal deputy secretary of state in the administration of President George W. Bush, responsible for international law enforcement, with a particular focus on illegal drug trafficking in Afghanistan under the US occupation.

That such an individual could be driven to suicide—if indeed that is what happened—speaks volumes about the toxic political environment in the American political establishment, and particularly in the fever swamps of the Republican Party’s right-wing.

Clinton Foundation raked in cash from right-wing regimes, corporations

Tom Hall

Several press reports last week highlight details of the major donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, including right-wing Persian Gulf monarchies, big defense contractors, and an array of corporations and governments seeking influence with the US political establishment—and potentially in the next White House.

Founded in 2001 after the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, the Foundation has raised and distributed huge amounts of money, reaching nearly $2 billion. After a brief drop in fundraising coinciding with Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, when most foreign donations were discouraged because of conflict-of-interest concerns, donations jumped $100 million in 2013, reaching $262 million.

The list of the Foundation’s largest donors, available on the Foundation’swebsite, is a virtual who’s who of the super-rich and major corporations. The largest donors, having given over $25 million since 2001, include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, well known for its leading role in the dismantling of public education, Chicago multimillionaire and top Democratic Party donor Fred Eychaner, and, strangely, the Dutch national lottery.

Major corporations appear in spades in the list of 168 individuals and organizations that have given more than $1 million. Defense contractors such as Boeing and Booz Allen Hamilton, both gave between $1 and $5 million, joined by Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and the American Federation of Teachers.

The reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies have poured tens of millions into the Clinton Foundation, including Saudi Arabia ($10 to $25 million), Kuwait, ($5 to $10 million), Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates ($1 to $5 million). In addition, several groups and individuals close to the Saudi government have also made tens of millions in contributions.

The Clinton Foundation made an agreement with the Obama administration not to accept new donations from foreign sources during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, a policy which has now expired. However, tens of millions of overseas dollars continued to flow into the Foundation through an exemption which allowed existing donors to continue making contributions at a similar level.

Claims by Clinton Foundation donors that they were genuinely interested in charity are belied by the circumstances of many of the donations. For example, the Wall Street Journal cited an incident in 2009 in which Hillary Clinton convinced Russia to purchase 50 Boeing 737s; seven months later, Boeing made its first-ever donation to the Clinton Foundation, $900,000 to help “rebuild” Haiti’s school system. Perhaps admitting more than she intended, a Boeing spokeswoman said in a written statement, “Secretary Clinton did nothing for Boeing that former US presidents and cabinet secretaries haven’t done for decades.”

In another case, the Foundation received a $500,000 donation from the government of Algeria for its pro-market “relief” effort in Haiti. TheWashington Post notes that the donation, which violated the Foundation’s earlier agreement with the Obama administration, came in the midst of a particularly heavy lobbying push from Algeria in Washington in the aftermath of a report by Clinton’s State Department condemning Algeria’s human rights record. The donation was more than the Algerian government spent on lobbying for the entire year.

Two years later, Secretary of State Clinton lobbied successfully on behalf of GE in its bids to construct power plants in Algeria, described by the company as “some of its largest power agreements in company history.” A month later, GE donated from $500,000 to $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The focus in the media, especially from Journal and other ultra-right outlets, has been on the fact that foreign countries, companies and individuals comprise a third of the foundation’s major donors, implying that they are purchasing political influence through the Clintons. While there is a degree of truth to this, this is also a two-way street, as the Clinton Foundation is fully integrated into the political apparatus as an instrument of American imperialist foreign policy.

Instructive in this regard is their role in the “rebuilding” of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, in which some 300,000 died. The Clinton Foundation played a major role, with Bill Clinton himself co-chairing the panel that distributed all international aid to Haiti. The entire aid effort was used to ram through pro-market restructuring, while American and then UN “peacekeepers” patrolled the country to prevent any opposition from the population. The Obama administration made no objection to the Algerian donation to the Clinton Foundation for the simple reason that it was entirely in line with American foreign policy in Haiti.

The Clinton Foundation’s version of “charity” also involves imperialist intrigue. This included secret maneuvers last year against Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, which ultimately led to his electoral defeat last month. The country’s former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, who joined the Clinton Foundation in 2005, played the major role in backroom deals that led to Maithripala Sirisena’s sudden departure from the government and announcement that he would be the “common opposition candidate.” Earlier this month Kumaratunga admitted that unnamed “foreign governments” had urged her to maneuver against Rajapakse.

During her time as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton took the lead in denouncing the Sri Lankan government’s “human rights record” in order to pressure it to move away from its ties with China as part of the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia.” She presented resolutions in 2011 and 2012 in her capacity as secretary of state demanding that the UN take action against Sri Lanka for human rights violations during the civil war against Tamil separatist guerrillas.

Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

Asia

India: West Bengal tea plantation unions betray workers’ demands

Twenty-four unions representing 350,000 tea plantation workers in India’s northern state of West Bengal signed a sell-out wage deal on February 20 with plantation owners and the state government. Workers at 300 tea estates at Darjeeling and Dooars Hills have been holding limited strikes and demonstrations since last August for a minimum daily wage of 322 rupees ($US5.20). The strikes have been organised by the United Tea Workers Forum and the United Trade Union Congress.

While the state minimum daily wage for unskilled agricultural workers is 206 rupees, tea estate workers are only paid 95 rupees. Under last week’s the tri-partite agreement, tea garden workers’ daily wage will be increased to 132.5 rupees by April 2016, back-dated from April last year. Other entitlements have been increased by minimal amounts.

While it falls far short of workers’ demands and the official unskilled agricultural minimum wage, the tea plantation unions claim the minimal increase is a victory. The 132.5 rupees will now become the official minimum wage for all tea plantation workers in West Bengal.

Public sector bank unions impose inferior pay rise

The United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), representing nearly one million public sector bank employees at 50,000 branches nationally, has called off a four-day strike scheduled for February 25 following a five-year wage deal with the Indian Bankers Association. Workers will receive a 15 percent pay increase, back-dated to November 2012, and Saturday work is restricted to two days per month. This is far short of workers’ original demand for a 40 percent pay rise and a five-day week. The bank workers were also demanding improved pensions, better healthcare benefits and oppose government plans to merge several nationalised banks and allow foreign institutions to compete with the State Bank of India.

While bank employees have not received an increase for almost six years, the UFBU has progressively reduced its wage claim during 18 rounds of negotiations.

Pakistan: Utility workers protest privatisation in Islamabad

Thousands of workers from the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and its distribution companies protested outside the Press Club in Islamabad on February 18 against the privatisation of the state-run utility and its associated companies.

WAPDA workers were mobilised nationally to join the protest and were joined by workers from the railways, banks and other state-run enterprises threatened by the government’s privatisation plans.

While the All Pakistan WAPDA Hydro Electric Workers Union and the WAPDA Hydro Electric Central Union have conducted a three-year campaign against privatisation of the sector, the unions have restricted this to demonstrations and harmless protest strikes.

In line with International Monetary Fund demands, the government insists that it will continue privatising state-run utilities. IMF loan payments are determined according to regular reviews of Pakistan’s restructuring and sale of state assets.

Punjab government doctors demonstrate

Services Hospital and Punjab Institute of Cardiology doctors in Lahore held a sit-down demonstration in the city on Monday to condemn recent targeted killings of doctors and the non-payment of salaries to postgraduate trainee doctors in public sector hospitals in Punjab province. The protest was organised by the Young Doctors Association (YDA)-Punjab chapter.

The doctors’ action followed a demonstration in the city on February 10 by YDA members from several teaching hospitals over delays in the implementation of a long-promised service structure. The doctors also demanded pay rises for medical officers, postgraduate doctors and house officers.

On Wednesday, doctors, nurses and paramedical staff of the Shaikh Zayed Hospital in Lahore protested on the hospital premises calling for the service structure, risk allowance for paramedics of grade 1 to 4 and other demands. The Allied Health Organisation at the hospital also wants restoration of salary increments and establishment of a Board of Governors as per government regulations.

Philippines public school teachers hold national strike

Public school teachers across the Philippines held a sit-in strike on Wednesday in a long-running dispute for a pay rise. Teachers attended their schools but did not teach and only assigned activities for pupils. Their action followed a one-day strike in November over the issue.

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) wants teachers paid 25,000 pesos ($US557) per month, up from the current 18,549 pesos, and 15,000 pesos per month for non-teaching personnel, up from the 9,000 pesos. Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino is delaying signing House Bill 245, which provides for salary increases for teaching and not-teaching personnel, falsely claiming that the government does not have enough funds.

The ACT has also called for the immediate implementation of Republic Act 4670, or the Magna Carta of Public School Teachers, which mandates that public school teachers’ salaries “shall compare favourably with those paid in other occupations requiring equivalent or similar qualifications, trainings and abilities.”

Australia and the Pacific

New South Wales power workers to strike

The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) members at the state-owned electricity network company Ausgrid will strike for four hours in Newcastle, the wider Hunter area, the Central Coast and Sydney on March 3 in a dispute for a new work agreement. The union, however, has limited the strike action, directing members to respond to all blackouts and supply interruptions during the walkout.

While workers overwhelmingly voted for strike action, the ETU last week offered to reduce the pay demand from an 8 percent increase over two years to annual 2.5 percent increases over two years in line with the New South Wales Liberal government’s wages policy. In return, the union called on the company to retain all existing conditions are retained, including a guarantee of no forced redundancies. Ausgrid rejected the offer.

Papua New Guinea teachers on strike

Teachers at six primary schools in Papua New Guinea’s Northern province have been on strike since the start of the school year in January to demand unpaid salaries and holiday-leave fares.

According to the PNG Teachers Association, at least 15 teachers have not received their 2014 holiday-leave fares and about 300 elementary teachers in rural areas of the province were teaching without salaries.

The provincial governor was handed a petition by teachers on Wednesday. He governor responded by claiming that the teachers’ protest was illegal and that the teachers were receiving adequate support.

A revealing exposure of the destruction of health care in the UK

Joan Smith

In his 57-minute documentary, filmmaker Peter Bach reveals the extent to which the National Health Service (NHS) has been privatised since the introduction of the internal market by Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989-1990.

Bach was first approached by a group of doctors in 2013 and asked to make the documentary. Over the course of several months, he interviewed the doctors about their jobs and the ways in which privatisation policies have affected them and their patients. He brings in the comments of several others, including a lawyer, journalists and activists, to widen his exposure of the constant attacks on the NHS.

His shots are mainly close-ups of the people speaking, capturing their facial expressions in detail. Shots of London, where the documentary was filmed, include scenes of Bach outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, site of the 2011-2012 Occupy protest, and by the Thames, where Dr. Peter Brambleby is interviewed. Other interviews take place in GP (general practitioner) surgeries and other health care settings.

Split into 10 sections, the film’s aim is to make the public aware of the “tsunami of structural changes” and the huge level of privatisation that has gone on behind closed doors, as well as the steps taken to keep the public in the dark. All the professionals interviewed passionately contribute to exposing the steady dismantling of health services. The aim is to replace the NHS with an “American model” that enriches the private health companies.

The documentary compares the NHS with the US for-profit health care system. The US spends $8,233 per person per year on health care while the UK presently spends $3,433. Yet, it is well established that the NHS is the most cost-effective and best health service in the developed world. By breaking up the NHS, which has been a model for publicly funded health care for more than 60 years, the private sector is attempting to set a precedent for other countries and to open up new profitable markets.

In the segment on Accident and Emergency (A&E) closures, health policy analyst Lucy Reynolds comments on how patients are now dying in ambulances in places where A&E centres are few and far between, meaning longer journeys. While Reynolds is talking, the camera focuses on an ambulance trying to squeeze its way through traffic.

Segment two deals with Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) that were introduced in 1992 by the Thatcher government and expanded after the Labour Party came to power in 1997. PFI Hospitals are built with loans that have to be repaid at almost 20 percent interest. As a result, many hospitals have to close departments and sell off certain sectors in order to keep running. Even if the hospital closes, the loan has to be repaid. Bach tells us that from the “£11 billion borrowed to build PFI hospitals, over £79 billion has to be repaid.”

Professor Allyson Pollock makes the point that “for the amount they have to pay back for building one hospital they could have had three hospitals open and running, that includes staffing.”

For example, “Coventry University hospital cost £400 million to build and has a repayment plan of £3 billion.”

While hospitals are saddling with massive deficits, the main beneficiaries of PFIs are the “banks, bankers and private investors.” The documentary points out: “From 1997 to 2009, during [prime ministers Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown’s New Labour government, 101 out of 135 hospitals were built using PFI loans.”

The film exposes the bogus promises to defend the NHS by the Tories before they came to office and their hiring of corporate lawyers to write the Health and Social Care Act. This act, that laid the legal basis for a rapid escalation of privatisation in the NHS, is vividly exposed in segments three and four.

Dr. Lucy Reynolds provides other revealing observations: “British Railway was run down for some years systematically before the privatisation. In fact, that is the standard privatisation strategy to make it easier.” Showing the viewer Conservative MP Oliver Letwin’s 1988 book Privatising the World, Reynolds points out that he sets out tactics “for governments who are trying to privatise public services against the wishes of their population.” One key step “is to restrict the budget, so that the public service gets worse and worse and worse. Then privatisation can be represented as a step up.… It is a deliberate policy.”

Segment five discusses the media as an extended arm of the government that has played a key role in preparing the narrative to justify creeping privatisation. Propaganda and negative coverage of NHS services, originating from the government and the Department of Health, are regurgitated by the media to “make the NHS look bad.”

In segment six, the doctors are interviewed about the setting up of Foundation Trusts, which were promoted in order to make every hospital an independent business entity by the Labour government. Hospitals were forced to compete with one another for funding, opening a back door to private enterprises. Foundation Trusts are allowed to earn up to 49 percent of their income by providing treatment to private patients, creating a two-tier system.

The segment on intimidation is particularly revealing. Dr. Brambleby tells us that when he started raising issues about patient safety he was told his duties were to the corporate team, not the wider public. He was threatened by a press officer of the Strategic Health Authority, who told him that he should “reflect on the fate of the late Dr. David Kelly.”

Every doctor appearing in the film has experienced intimidation.

Despite the documentary’s powerful coverage, it can offer no real answer for those seeking to oppose the destruction of the NHS, other than urging the public to pressure the media and politicians to reverse their decisions. Dr. Clive Peedell, one of the doctors interviewed, is the co-founder along with Dr. Richard Thomas Taylor of the National Health Action Party, which campaigns solely on NHS issues. Dr. Bob Gill is a member of the same organisation and is running as a candidate for the party in May’s general election.

In an interview with RT’s Max Keiser, Bach reveals the limitations of his perspective when he claims that the NHS was set up due to a compassionate ruling elite. This is false. Following World War II, the British ruling class faced a militant and socialist sentiment amongst broad layers of workers, who opposed any return to the “hungry ‘30s”, and revolts in its colonies abroad. Fearing social revolution, the bourgeoisie were forced to make concessions. Universal free health care, state-funded education, national insurance and social housing were established. It is not a “compassionate” ruling elite to which the UK population owes the NHS, but to the working class that struggled for the right to a decent standard of living.

There is widespread opposition to the attack on the NHS. Millions of people have joined protests against the closure of hospitals, children’s heart units, and maternity units, and the closure or downgrading of A&E units. It is the trade unions that have played the lead role in dissipating these actions, as they have done with so many others. The trade unions have not only avoided any generalised mobilisation of working people against the dismantling of NHS, but wherever struggles erupt they have kept them fragmented. Despite the party’s record of attacking public health care when last in office, the unions maintain that only the election of another Labour government can reverse the attacks on the NHS.

The Socialist Equality Party established the NHS Fightback campaign in 2012 to defend the NHS on the basis of a socialist perspective of class struggle against capitalism.

Judge in Detroit bankruptcy calls for dismantling public employee pensions nationwide

Thomas Gaist

In remarks this week at a luncheon sponsored by the publishing conglomerate Crain Communications, federal bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said that pension cuts imposed as part of the Detroit bankruptcy, should be used as a starting point to completely eliminate defined benefit pension plans nationwide.

Rhodes, who in late 2014 ruled to approved the city’s plan to slash pensions and other retirement benefits, predicted that state governments nationwide would soon force workers onto defined-contribution plans, citing estimates that US municipal pension funds face collective shortfalls of some $4 trillion.

“I think that solution across the country, including in Detroit, has to be at some point defined contribution plans,” Rhodes said.

Only days earlier, Rhodes told the Detroit Free Press in an interview, “The political reality of pension obligations is there isn’t a real strong political constituency for them.”

He added that he believes Detroit’s Chapter 9 filing should have been used to eliminate defined-benefit plans for retired Detroit city workers and that he viewed the failure to do so as a “missed opportunity.”

“I regret that the City of Detroit did not take the opportunity that this case offered,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes’ comments come as yet another confirmation of the analysis made by the World Socialist Web Site at the time of the Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing in July 2013. “Detroit will serve as a precedent for other cities across the country that have been financially crippled by the economic crisis,” the WSWS declared, two days after Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr submitted bankruptcy papers on behalf of the city.

“The use of the bankruptcy court to rip up pensions and health benefits will open the floodgates for similar attacks on millions of teachers, transit workers, sanitation workers and other municipal employees. Just as Greece became the model for attacks on workers throughout Europe and beyond, the Detroit bankruptcy—which goes beyond even the brutal measures carried out in Greece—will set the pattern for the next stage in the attack on the working class in the US and internationally,” the WSWS wrote.

Rhodes’ order authorized the effective reduction of health benefits owed to retired city workers—who subsist on an average annual income of some $20,000 per year—by nearly 90 percent. For the countless retirees who pay hundreds and thousands of dollars per month in health care related costs, the ruling amounts to a death sentence.

The ruling came in defiance of decades’ worth of precedents upholding constitutional mandates—themselves the product of ferocious struggles by the American working class during the 20th century—stating in clear language that public sector pensions cannot be tampered with under any circumstances.

The Detroit bankruptcy case was orchestrated from the outset as part of a conscious, far-reaching agenda to overturn these protections. During the lead-up to the December 3 ruling, Rhodes himself attended conferences focusing on the implications of Chapter 9 statutes for pensions, and his co-conspirators from the Jones Day law firm wrote strategy papers, including one entitled “Pensions and Chapter 9: Can municipalities use bankruptcy to solve their pension woes,” detailing the ways in which bankruptcy proceedings could be used to subvert the rule of law and steal constitutionally-protected pension benefits.

Orr, himself a former partner with Jones Day, has since been appointed as “special counsel” in yet another slash-and-burn “emergency management” municipal restructuring, this time targeting Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The conclusion of the Detroit bankruptcy has been followed by a continuously escalating series of attacks on pensions by US state and city governments. In a budget plan announced last week, Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner approved plans to cut more than $2 billion from state employee pensions. Earlier in February, Judge Christopher Klein approved cuts to pensions of city workers in Stockton, California, declaring with shocking arrogance that the city’s pension fund “turns out to have a glass jaw.”

All of these attacks are rationalized by the US ruling elite and its ideological servants on the grounds that “there is no money.” Even a cursory examination of the vast sums squandered every year by the US government on handouts to Wall Street and the Pentagon’s war machine is sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity of these claims. In reality, the mass seizure of pension funds now being prepared is part of the drive by the financial oligarchy to return workers to the levels of poverty and social misery that prevailed in the 19th century.

Governor compares Wisconsin protesters to terrorists

Patrick Martin

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, speaking Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an ultra-right political conference held in suburban Washington DC, compared the working class and student protesters who thronged the streets of Madison in 2011 to ISIS terrorists. “If I could take on 100,000 protestors, I could do the same across the world,” he said, boasting that his defeat of the unions in Wisconsin qualified him to wage war in the Middle East.

Following his remarks, Walker was criticized by at least one other potential candidate, former Texas governor Rick Perry, who said on MSNBC, “You are talking about, in the case of ISIS, people who are beheading individuals and committing heinous crimes, who are the face of evil. To try to make the relationship between them and the unions is inappropriate.”

In a brief interchange with reporters, Walker backtracked, saying, “There’s no comparison between the two, let me be perfectly clear. I’m just pointing out the closest thing I have to handling a difficult situation was the 100,000 protesters I had to deal with.”

He continued, attacking the media questioners, saying, “You all will misconstrue things the way you see fit. That’s the closest thing I have in terms of handling a difficult situation, not that there’s any parallel between the two.” Walker’s campaign later issued a statement declaring, “He was in no way comparing any American citizen to ISIS.”

No one at CPAC was fooled by the subsequent disclaimers. On the contrary, Walker’s remarks, including his comparison of protesters to ISIS, were greeted with noisy cheering, and his speech was the most well-attended of the day’s events. Walker is a top-tier candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, leading in party polls in Iowa, the first state primary contest, and well financed by billionaire supporters like the Koch brothers.

The clear favorite among the half dozen potential presidential candidates who addressed CPAC, Walker repeatedly cited his success in pushing through a battery of anti-worker laws in Wisconsin as his political calling card.

When a heckler shouted something about his attacks on workers, Walker received a standing ovation from the crowd as he claimed to represent “the hard-working taxpayers of this country.” He provoked another ovation by announcing he would sign a right-to-work law next week, making Wisconsin the 25th state to outlaw the union shop.

Walker’s “gaffe,” if it was one, was the blurting out of a usually unspoken truth: in the eyes of the American ruling elite, the working class at home is an enemy just as dangerous—and in reality, far more dangerous—than Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

The Wisconsin governor is not the first prominent figure in the US ruling elite to make such a comparison. Only a month ago, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton—appointed by liberal Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio—announced plans for a Special Response Unit of 350 highly trained paramilitary police.

This new unit was “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris,” Bratton said, equating peaceful marches against the official whitewash of police murders in New York City to the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine that killed 10 people and the massacre of nearly 200 people in Mumbai. (See: New police unit in New York: The ruling elite prepares for class struggle).

Like Walker, Bratton sought to defuse outrage, saying he had misspoken and that there would be two separate elite police units, one to kill terrorists, the other to beat and arrest demonstrators.

In making an amalgam of peaceful protest and terrorism, to justify murderous mass repression, American politicians are following in the footsteps of military juntas and right-wing dictators around the world.

Only two days before Walker’s speech, the Egyptian military dictator, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi issued a decree that broadens the official definition of terrorism to include any group that uses “any means” to disturb public order, endanger state interests, or “disrupt the constitution or law, or harm national unity.”