Court ruling allows Canadian spies to conduct mass surveillance of cellphones

Laurent Lafrance

Federal court judge Chief Justice Paul S. Crampton has ruled that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s premier domestic spy agency, can make use of cellphone surveillance technology to carry out warrantless spying.

Crampton’s decision, released late last month, relates to CSIS’ use of cell-site simulators (CSS) in the course of a recent “Islamist terrorism” investigation. The reactionary ruling argued that “state objectives of public importance [i.e., national security] are predominant, the intrusive nature of the search was minimal, and the method of the search was both highly accurate and narrowly targeted.”

Crampton concluded that the use of CSS by CSIS does not represent an “unreasonable search,” and is thus not in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In other words, the ruling gives a green light to the spy agencies to use tools of mass surveillance.

CSS—also known as IMSI catchers or “Stingrays”—are briefcase-size devices that imitate cellphone towers and trick nearby cellphones into establishing a connection with them. They can record phones’ geolocation, phone numbers, personal information and even the content of texts and phone calls.

While officials claim the devices are only used to track a targeted suspect in the course of a police investigation, the reality is that CSS can cover a half-kilometre radius in urban areas and a two-kilometre radius in open spaces, meaning that intelligence agents can intercept communications of hundreds or thousands of civilians at a time. This kind of technology has been regularly used to conduct mass surveillance during protests in various countries.

The latest ruling grants even greater powers to Canada’s intelligence apparatus, which under successive Conservative and Liberal governments has been dramatically expanded in the name of the “war on terror.” The scaffolding of a police state has been erected in the more than 15 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with core democratic rights, such as the presumption of innocence, right to remain silent and freedom of assembly, having been gravely undermined.

Privacy advocates in Canada and around the world have long criticized the use of IMSI catchers due to the anti-democratic implications for ordinary citizens. Tamir Israel, a staff lawyer at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) characterized the IMSI catchers as “inherently intrusive” and said of the court ruling, “[T]he impact on non-direct targets can actually be, I think, much more serious than is presented here.”

Crampton’s pro forma insistence that any information collected incidentally must be “quickly destroyed and not subject to any analysis whatsoever” and that CSIS cannot legally capture the content of communications nor geolocate someone without a warrant will not reassure anyone over the age of ten.

CSIS routinely flouts the law and has repeatedly been found guilty of lying to the courts. In 2016, it was revealed that CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had been secretly using CSS technologies for over ten years, sometimes without any warrant.

Last November, Federal Court Judge Simon Noel sharply criticized CSIS for concealing the existence of a mass data collection program—the Operational Data Analysis Centre. Established in July 2006, the ODAC has gathered metadata on a vast and unspecified number of Canadians, including email addresses, telephone numbers and IP addresses of anyone who has been in contact with a person surveilled by CSIS.

In 2013, Justice Richard Mosley ruled that CSIS systematically lied for years in a series of applications it made to the courts to secure authorization for wiretapping operations. The domestic spy agency failed to disclose that it was collaborating with CSE (Communications Security Establishment), Canada’s foreign signals intelligence service, which is part of the NSA-led “Five Eyes” alliance and is formally prohibited from collecting information on Canadians.

Since these revelations became public, lifting a small corner of the veil of secrecy surrounding the intelligence agencies’ activities, the Liberal government has been engaged in damage control.

The suggestion that government officials were unaware that police forces utilized CSS does not hold water. Information came to light in 2016 revealing that during a six-month period in 2015, the RCMP used IMSI catchers without warrants under the direct advice of the Department of Justice and an intergovernmental working group on wiretapping technology.

The granting of legal authority to CSIS to use tools of mass surveillance is in keeping with the Liberals’ National Security Act, 2017 (Bill C-59). The legislation empowers CSIS to actively “disrupt” vaguely defined “threats” to national security, including by using illegal means if necessary. Bill C-59 is the promised reform of the draconian Bill C-51 that the previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper rammed through parliament in 2015 in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

Bill C-59 retains all the anti-democratic provisions contained in the Harper government’s law, while giving the new legislation a veneer of legitimacy by providing a list of “permitted” illegal acts for CSIS to use. These include restricting people’s movements, disrupting communications and financial transactions, and damaging property, as long as the damage does not endanger life or cause bodily harm. It also authorizes CSE to launch offensive cyberattacks against what it deems “hostile actors,” including foreign states.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who at the end of November sent Bill C-59 for study to the House Public Safety and National Security Committee, recently boasted that the bill will make it easier to combat “homegrown extremism” by improving existing provisions.

The Liberal government trumpeted the creation of a new committee of seven MPs and two senators with the power to review intelligence and security operations in any department or agency, as well as the nomination of a new Intelligence Commissioner tasked with authorizing the warrants granted to the intelligence agencies.

In truth, these mechanisms merely serve to provide the intelligence agencies with a legal-constitutional fig leaf as they continue their mass surveillance of the population. Committee members are barred from making their findings public, and the government has wide powers to withhold information from the committee if a responsible minister deems that a review of an operation would harm “national security.”

The Library of Parliament recently released a discussion paper underscoring that CSIS and CSE are out to data-mine electronic records in “bulk” about ordinary people as they look for so-called terrorist threats. The report states that parts of Bill C-59 “would accommodate the bulk acquisition of any publicly available information that has been published or broadcast for public consumption, including, for example, facial imagery captured in social-media posts.”

The report went on to suggest that Bill C-59 could be a windfall for service providers and information brokers—companies that will gather bundles of data such as credit histories, web browsing history, online purchases, social-media connections, marital status, etc., and sell them to government agencies.

The Liberals’ assault on the population’s basic democratic rights and defence of Canada’s national security apparatus goes hand in hand with their aggressive, imperialist foreign policy. Bill C-59 was introduced just two weeks after the Trudeau government unveiled a 70 percent hike in defence spending over the next decade as part of its new defence policy. A key element of this is the deepening of Canada’s strategic partnership with the Trump administration, with which Ottawa wants to be able to cooperate in the waging of wars around the world to uphold both countries’ imperialist interests.

Such militarist policies, which will be paid for by an intensification of the assault on the social position of the working class, cannot be implemented democratically. In the final analysis, these repressive measures will be used against any form of social opposition to the government’s right-wing policies—from environmentalists, to native organizations, leftist and antiwar groups, and above all the working class.

German police publicly name and shame G20 protesters

Peter Schwarz

Five months after protests in the German city of Hamburg against the G20 summit, the police and state prosecutors have published pictures of hundreds of demonstrators online. In a co-ordinated campaign with the right-wing Bild newspaper, they are calling on members of the public to denounce those pictured. The initiative is not only disproportionate, but unlawful. Nothing comparable has taken place since the founding of the German Federal Republic.

“Pictures of criminals are generally only published if they have been accused of committing capital offences, such as murder, grievous bodily harm or armed robbery,” commented the weekly news magazine Die Zeit. The last time state prosecutors publicly sought alleged left-wing motivated criminals was during the period of the Red Army Faction, whose members murdered representatives of the state and big business.

Heribert Prantl, a jurist and head of the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s internal affairs desk, wrote, “This is unlawful, and it remains unlawful even if the investigation is successful in one or another case. Will future investigations really consist of the police in cooperation with the Bild newspaper hunting people down? This is not solving crime, but a scandal.”

If the Hamburg case becomes the norm, any participant in a left-wing protest must reckon with being placed in the stocks by the police and denounced in front of their neighbours, work colleagues and employers as a potential criminal.

This does not only do away with individual rights, such as the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence, but also basic democratic rights such as the rights to protest and express one’s opinion freely. Only dictatorships or semi-dictatorial regimes like Turkey have raised the threat of treating people like hardened criminals merely for participating in a protest.

In this particular case, the police are seeking information on 104 people accused of participating in violent clashes and looting. But the hundred photos and video segments they have published feature “very, very many people,” as Prantl put it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Are they all really criminals? No one knows, the police merely suspect it; they conclude it from the spatial context, from the proximity to a criminal incident.” The evidence, according to Die Zeit, “is often scant.”

From the outset, the G20 summit served to launch a public campaign against “left-wing extremism,” and construct a police state. Isolated incidents of violence, for which police and intelligence agency agents were often responsible, were deliberately exaggerated and exploited so as to criminalise all opposition to the ruling elite or capitalism.

This began with the decision to hold a gathering of the most powerful heads of government in the world, against which strong protests have occurred over recent years, in the middle of a major city and in the immediate proximity of the Schanzen quarter, a stronghold of anarchist groups.

A huge police operation was assembled for the summit, which cracked down brutally against peaceful demonstrators, intentionally dispensed with proven methods of de-escalation and watched for hours as several businesses were looted. They claimed that the police could not intervene due to an alleged ambush.

Almost everything spread by the police and media at the time was subsequently exposed as lies. Although a special “Black Bloc” commission has been searching for evidence for five months with the help of 163 officials, only a handful of charges have been brought to date. Those affected have been mainly foreign demonstrators, who due to an alleged “flight risk” were held in investigative custody following the summit.

An 18-year-old Italian worker, Fabio V., was held in custody for four months even though, according to the criminal justice authorities, there was no evidence he had committed an individual act of violence. He did not even throw a stone. He was accused of being “jointly responsible for creating the civil war-like conditions” on the basis that at the time he was arrested he was part of the black bloc.

His trial, which is to conclude early next year, is seen as a test case. “If the now 19-year-old is convicted of a severe breach of the peace, many demonstrators are sure to be receiving post from the state prosecutor in the coming months. By contrast, if he is acquitted, other charges are likely to collapse,” wrote Die Zeit.

The judiciary in Hamburg has stood out for its draconian ruthlessness in the few trials that have taken place thus far. In the first trial held at the end of August, the court sentenced a 21-year-old from the Netherlands without any criminal history to two years and seven months in custody because he allegedly threw two glass bottles at a police officer and resisted arrest. The evidence for this: the statements of the two police officers.

By contrast, the judiciary is taking no action against the police in spite of well-documented incidences of brutality. Although more than a hundred police officers are suspected of inflicting bodily harm in the course of their duties, denial of freedom or duress, the authorities have not filed a single charge.

Police officers being investigated are permitted to read the witness statements of their colleagues. This gives them the opportunity to ensure their narrative fits with that of their fellow officers. Matthias Wisbar from the Republican Lawyers’ Association described this as a “special service” only available to police witnesses.

On the other hand, the intimidation and pursuit of left-wing individuals and organisations continue to spread. At the end of August, the interior minister banned the left-wing website linksunten.indymedia. On September 4, the police carried out raids in many parts of the country involving large numbers of officers. With the public search for hundreds of people, the exploitation of the G20 summit for the establishment of a police state has assumed new dimensions.

This can only be understood in the context of intensifying global and social tensions. The ruling class is preparing a major programme of militarism in its foreign policy and a violent clampdown on any social and political opposition domestically.

This is also the reason for the difficulties in forming a new government. The call for an end to “Merkelism” (Spiegel) is growing ever louder. Merkel, notwithstanding her right-wing policies in the European Union and Germany, is increasingly seen as a figure of balance and compromise. But in the view of the sections of the economic and political elite who call the shots, the time for this approach is past. They want a government that asserts itself on the global stage as a great power and imposes itself ruthlessly at home.

The Social Democrats are playing a leading role in this. It is significant that the police state offensive has been launched in Hamburg, which together with Bremen is the only federal state where the SPD still governs in a two-party alliance with the Greens. Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz is among the favourites to replace the hard-pressed SPD leader Martin Schulz. Like Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, he is one of the advocates for militarism and a strong state.

DACA deal put off to 2018 leaving 800,000 under deportation threat

Norisa Diaz

Congress has put off until the new year any decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, or DACA, the executive order to defer the deportation of individuals who came to America as minors. The postponement leaves nearly 800,000 DACA youth in danger in the run-up to a March 5 deadline for the passage of legislation regularizing their status set by President Donald Trump when he terminated the program in September.

If the legislation is not passed, all of them will be subject to deportation. As it is, some 11,000 youth have already lost permission to work as a result of DACA’s repeal, and an estimated 120 more are facing the same fate every day.

In November, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised DACA recipients that a deal would come before the new year and vowed that the Democratic caucus would withhold support on stopgap spending legislation to prevent a government shutdown if a DACA deal was not reached before Congress adjourned for the holidays.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Tuesday that he had reached an agreement with Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to forego any action: “No, we’ll not be doing DACA … this week ... That’s a matter to be discussed next year. The president has given us until March to address that issue. We have plenty of time to do it.”

Seven DACA supporters were jailed last Friday after staging a sit-in at Schumer’s office and then carried out a hunger strike.

Democrats, especially those up for reelection in states won by Trump, are quickly distancing themselves from threats of a government shutdown to force action on DACA.

“We’ve got to get it done, but I’m not drawing a line in the sand that it has to be this week versus two weeks from now,” said Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who faces reelection next year. Echoing those sentiments were Senators Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.). These senators all voted “yes” when the temporary funding bill passed the Senate last night by a 66-32 margin. Seventeen Democrats voted “yes,” including Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who attempted to use his poor Spanish language skills during the 2016 campaign to convince Latino voters to support the Democratic ticket.

While many DACA enrollees are frustrated that a decision has been kicked down the line to 2018, the reality is that any DACA “deal” that emerges will be a piece of reactionary legislation to further escalate the crackdown on undocumented immigrants, militarize the border, limit immigration and sentence millions of immigrants and refugees to increasingly dangerous journeys.

Following a meeting to discuss immigration policy this past Tuesday, White House chief of staff John Kelly and other officials went into detail about the size and scope of fencing off the southern border and what measures the White House requires in exchange for a DACA deal.

This so called “deal” will allow the Democrats to help pass a bill for the increased militarization of the border and the crackdown on immigrants, while dressing it up as “progressive” by trading on the lives of 800,000 youth.

What is being portrayed in the media as some kind of virtuous fight by Democrats to “save DACA” must be called out for all of its hypocrisy. From day one, DACA has been nothing but a bargaining chip for the political establishment.

Indeed, some are already hoping to cash in, using the passage of a DACA deal to propel their own careers. Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) announced that she is canceling her Christmas plans to stay in Washington to work on legislation. “I believe that my leadership is gonna close the deal and I have to believe that,” she said. Lujan Grisham has announced her bid for Governor of New Mexico in the 2018 election.

DACA was first unveiled as a cynical maneuver in 2012, just three months before the presidential election. The popular realization that the Obama administration had continued and expanded upon the Bush policies of war abroad and austerity at home, while dramatically increasing the number of deportations, reflected itself in the polls leading up to November. The worried administration produced the executive order out of thin air in August of 2012 in an attempt to court Latino voters at the eleventh hour. DACA offered only deferred deportation for a small fraction of the 11 million undocumented.

For the first two years of the Obama administration, the Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, yet there were zero efforts to put forth legislation to offer routes to citizenship or amnesty for the 11 million undocumented.

This should come as no surprise, as the administration was too focused on deporting a record number of immigrants (nearly 3 million), establishing mandatory bed quotas for detention facilities (34,000) and massively expanding ICE throughout the country to disappear people from their workplaces and homes.

While the conditions of the DACA deal are still being worked out, there can be no doubt that the Democrats will negotiate a deal that will introduce some of the most reactionary anti-immigrant legislation since Japanese internment.

Trump and the Republican right are lining up behind Senator Tom Cotton’s (Republican-Arkansas) “RAISE Act,” which would end green cards for the parents of adult U.S. citizens, eliminate all family sponsorship beyond spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and Legal Permanent Residents, reduce the age limit for minor children from 21 to 18 and reduce green card caps from 226,000 to 88,000.

Another GOP proposal, the SECURE Act, would offer only “provisional status” in the form of three-year work permits to 690,000 DACA youth, while tying it to increased funding for the construction of a border wall and the hiring of more border guards, limiting the ability of immigrants to reunite with their families, a tightening of the e-Verify system to exclude undocumented immigrants from jobs and the penalization of so-called “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration-enforcement agencies.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned opinion which stated that the Trump administration is not required to turn over documents which “informed” or were related to its decision to end DACA, as was ordered by a San Francisco federal court to respond to five lawsuits which have been filed against the Trump administration by immigration lawyers and activists.

Wednesday’s opinion, further exposing the right-wing character of the Supreme Court and the overall anti-immigrant consensus in Washington, comes just weeks after justices voted 5-4 to issue a temporary order protecting the administration from having to turn over documents before a December 22 deadline.

The postponement of any action on DACA until next year exposes the criminal indifference of both political parties to the fate of immigrant youth who are threatened with deportation to countries that they, in many cases, left as infants. Underlying this indifference is a bipartisan consensus on essential policies of US imperialism that drive mass immigration from Latin America and war-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

DACA youth and their supporters must draw the critical lessons from this experience and break completely from the Democratic Party, whose every action serves to expose it as a party of warmongers and Wall Street cronies. The Democrats deserve only contempt, and any policy based on appeals to them serves to merely instill illusions and to divert any genuine struggle against the assault on immigrants. Where was the Democrats’ “concern” for immigrants during the millions of abductions and deportations that took place under Obama?

Catalan nationalists win narrow majority in crisis elections

Alex Lantier & Alejandro López 

Late last night, Catalan nationalist parties were set to win a narrow majority of 70 seats in the 135-seat Catalan parliament, in special elections the Spanish government called amid the crisis unleashed by the October 1 Catalan independence referendum.

Together for Catalonia (JxCat) had won 34 seats, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) 32, and the Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) 4 seats. In the anti-separatist camp, the Citizens party won 36 seats, the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) 17, and the Popular Party (PP) 3. Catalonia en Comú (CeC)—the Catalan branch of the Podemos party, which claimed to be neutral between Spanish and Catalan nationalism—won 8 seats. Voter turnout was high, at 82 percent.

This result puts paid to hopes in the Spanish ruling elite that elections would allow them to rapidly resolve the standoff between the Spanish and Catalan regional governments. Instead, the conflict between Madrid and Barcelona is set to continue and escalate, amid deep political uncertainty.

The PP government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the election as part of its repressive strategy in Catalonia, which is backed by the European Union (EU). On October 1, backed by Citizens and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), it organized a brutal crackdown on peaceful voters in the independence referendum organized by the Catalan separatist parties. It then invoked Article 155 of the Spanish constitution to suspend the Catalan government and called yesterday’s elections in the hope of obtaining a pro-PP majority.

In the event, however, Rajoy’s strategy backfired. Despite the PP’s threats and its jailing of many Catalan nationalist politicians, the Catalan nationalists retained their majority. The PP, traditionally weak in Catalonia, suffered a humiliating collapse of its vote.

Already last night, recriminations were appearing in the pro-PP press. In an article in the right-wing newspaper ABC titled “Elections for this?” columnist Curri Valenzuela declared, “Mariano Rajoy made a mistake in calling elections as quickly as possible.”

The precise outcome in the Catalan parliament remains unclear. Eight of the 70 Catalan nationalist deputies to be elected cannot physically go to the parliament. Five have fled abroad to avoid Spanish arrest warrants (deposed Catalan regional premier Carles Puigdemont, Clara Ponsatí, Toni Comín, Lluís Puig and Meritxell Serret); three (deposed regional vice-premier Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Sanchez, and Joaquin Forn) have been jailed. This would leave the Catalan nationalists six votes short of the necessary 68-vote majority.

These individuals could give up their seats to lower-ranking JxCat or ERC members to obtain the necessary parliament majority. However, Puigdemont might also seek to return to Catalonia and demand his reinstatement, citing the victory of the Catalan nationalist forces, among which his party was the top vote getter.

The PP’s initial response was to signal that it is preparing stepped-up repression. Yesterday, Rajoy repeated his threats to again invoke Article 155 and suspend the Catalan government if it did not obey Madrid, declaring, “Obey the law, or else you already know what will happen.”

The Guardia Civil announced new accusations before the Supreme Court against more Catalan nationalists, including Marta Rovira (the leader of the ERC while Junqueras is in jail) and CUP spokeswoman Anna Gabriel. They also laid the grounds for new accusations against more Catalan nationalists, by denouncing a peaceful protest called on the Diada national day as an act of treason.

The Guardia Civil alleged that the protests promoted “a dangerous germ of a sense of rejection or even hatred of the Spanish state and the institutions supporting it. … In these citizens’ protests, there were calls for implementing a permanent strategy of deliberately planned disobedience.”

During the election campaign, PP officials dispensed with the pretense that these are independent investigations by the judicial branch of government. In fact, the PP is using it to settle accounts with its opponents, as PP Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaría told a rally in Girona: “Who has left ERC and the PDECat leaderless after decapitating both parties? Mariano Rajoy and the PP. Who put an end to the law being flouted? Mariano Rajoy and the PP. ... So, who deserves the votes to continue liquidating separatism? Mariano Rajoy and the PP.”

Voters delivered a rebuke not only to the PP, however, but also to the coalition of Catalan nationalist parties. The results of the Catalan elections, while humiliating for the PP, did not signify majority support for the Catalan nationalists’ reactionary program of building an independent capitalist Catalan Republic oriented to the EU and hostile to Spain—a program which traditionally faces broad opposition among urban workers in Catalonia.

The Catalan nationalists failed to win a majority of the popular vote, or to substantially increase their vote. The Citizens party received the most votes (25.36 percent), followed by JxCat at 21.68 percent and the ERC at 21.4 percent. Together with the CUP’s 4.45 percent, this signifies that the Catalan separatist parties collectively obtained only 47.53 percent of the vote.

They obtained a majority in the regional parliament, however, as an unintended consequence of the gerrymandering of electoral districts by the Spanish fascist regime during the Transition to parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s. This gerrymandering favored rural districts over urban ones that, at that time, voted for social-democratic or Communist Party candidates. Since then, however, this has turned into an advantage for the Catalan nationalists, whose electoral support is now concentrated in rural areas.

Separatist forces only won 44 and 49.5 percent of the votes in Catalonia’s two main urban districts, Barcelona and Tarragona. However, they won 63.7 percent in Girona and 64.2 percent in Lleída.

In another indication of weariness among voters for forces that try to dress up the Catalan separatist program in “revolutionary” colors, the vote for the CUP fell drastically, from 8.2 percent in 2015 to 4.45 percent this year. The number of CUP deputies fell from 10 to 4.

The traditionally anti-separatist “red belt” around Barcelona—the working-class suburbs that historically voted for the social democrats or the Communist Party in the period immediately after the Transition—voted not for the PSC or Podemos, but for the Citizens party. Citizens, a right-wing party with close ties to the PP, nevertheless ran a campaign criticizing the PP and proclaiming that it wanted a more rational and less aggressive strategy to resolve the crisis. Citizens was able to increase its score from 25 to 37 seats.

The election was also a significant setback for the petty-bourgeois party Podemos and its Catalan branch, CeC, which fell from 11 to 8 seats. This represents a response by the voters for the failure of Podemos, despite the millions of votes it received in recent national elections, to organize any opposition whatsoever to the PP’s dictatorial policies, as well as opposition to Podemos’s support for austerity.

The Podemos-backed mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, recently passed millions in budget cuts to comply with austerity demands by Spain’s Ministry of Finance. Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias defended the cuts, saying it is “logical” that the cities have to “comply with the law,” because “there is a spending rule.” He added, “The City Council of Madrid is an example of good management and will continue to be so.”

UN General Assembly repudiates Trump over Jerusalem announcement

Jordan Shilton

The Trump administration suffered a humiliating defeat in the UN General Assembly Thursday as 128 countries condemned the president’s December 6 announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The 128-9 vote, with 35 abstentions, reflects the extreme isolation of the United States and increases the prospect of a violent clash in the Middle East.

The vote was preceded by an aggressive campaign of bullying and intimidation by Trump and other officials. On Wednesday, Trump threatened any country that voted against the US with the cut-off of development aid. “They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us,” Trump said. “Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care.”

US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley continued the attacks in her speech at the General Assembly yesterday. “The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very right of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” declared Haley. “And we will remember when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.” She proceeded to arrogantly inform the assembly that regardless of the outcome of the vote, Washington would stick by its policy.

Only Togo, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, Guatemala and Honduras sided with the US and Israel in support of recognizing Jerusalem. Thirty-five countries abstained and 21 were absent from the vote, an indication that Trump and Haley’s threats had some impact.

Although the US has often found itself in a small minority with its support for Israel on a series of UN resolutions, the readiness of many states to so explicitly defy the US is an expression of growing inter-imperialist antagonisms and the protracted decline of US capitalism.

Traditional US allies like Britain, France, and Germany, who have tended to abstain on resolutions related to Israel, voted to condemn Trump’s announcement. Even Canada, arguably the closest US ally and a country which has voted repeatedly in defense of Israel at the UN, abstained.

The fact that Trump’s blustering threats made such little impression and the decisive repudiation of Washington’s position only increase the danger that the US could lash out aggressively in the Middle East and trigger a catastrophic regional conflict.

The Trump administration’s thuggish and bullying actions are bound up with the resort to the waging of great power conflicts as elaborated earlier this week in Trump’s National Security Strategy. Having been engaged in virtually uninterrupted war for over a quarter century, claiming the lives of millions in the process, the American ruling class is now openly contemplating military conflicts on a scale not seen since the two world wars of the 20th century.

Were Trump to carry out his threat to cut financial aid to those states opposed to his line on Jerusalem, it would only further escalate great power tensions over the Middle East. Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan all defied Washington by supporting the resolution. The European powers, led by Germany, interpreted the Jerusalem decision as an opportunity to expand their influence in the region at the expense of the US and would rapidly fill the void left behind by a drawdown of US support. Russia and China, the chief obstacles in Washington’s aggressive drive to consolidate unchallenged dominance over the energy-rich region, would also seize the opportunity.

The General Assembly vote, which is non-binding, came three days after Haley cast the only vote against the resolution in the Security Council, vetoing its passage.

Trump’s Jerusalem decision ended the decades-long fraud of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict promoted by Washington and the other major imperialist powers. It laid bare the bankruptcy of the bourgeois nationalist perspective which claims that the Palestinians can secure their democratic and social aspirations by achieving a bargain with the imperialist powers.

This was on full display Thursday, as Palestinian Authority officials applauded the passage of a resolution which essentially asserted the status quo under which Israel has ruthlessly oppressed the Palestinian people for decades. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whose regime has loyally served as a security guard for US imperialism and is widely hated among the Palestinians, celebrated the vote as a “victory for Palestine.”

“We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” added Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas’ spokesman.

In reality, Washington has made clear it is not prepared to tolerate the emergence of such a state. The European imperialist powers are no more concerned for the fate of the Palestinians, but are hoping to exploit Washington’s inability to broker a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the crisis of its military intervention in Syria, to advance their own predatory ambitions in the Middle East.

The bourgeois Arab regimes, which used the General Assembly to attack Trump’s policy, are thoroughly complicit in the terrible conditions faced by the Palestinians. All of these regimes were informed of Trump’s policy announcement in advance. Saudi Arabia, which is keen to win Israeli support for its policy of militarily confronting Iran, reportedly ordered Abbas to Riyadh in November to dictate terms of a settlement to him that involved accepting Israeli control of Jerusalem and reducing Palestinian territory to a few small non-contiguous enclaves.

The Jerusalem decision strengthened the hand of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, which has injured over 1,900, arrested over 200 and killed 10 Palestinians in the two weeks since Trump’s speech as Israeli security forces have responded to mass protests with live ammunition. The US decision has also emboldened Tel Aviv to continue flouting international law in the Occupied Territories, including by persisting with its illegal settlement program.

Predictably, Netanyahu went on the offensive following the vote. Blasting the outcome as “preposterous,” he proclaimed that Jerusalem “always was, always will be” Israel's capital.

Trump’s Jerusalem policy is bound up with efforts to construct an anti-Iranian alliance in the Middle East with the aim of preparing for war with Tehran. Since he visited Saudi Arabia in May to deliver a speech to the assembled Arab leaders in which he called for the formation of a Sunni alliance to combat Iran, Trump and his senior officials have escalated tensions with Tehran and its allies at every opportunity.

Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem came less than two months after he refused to certify Iranian compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord negotiated under the Obama administration. He has demanded that Congress adopt tougher sanctions, including on the country’s ballistic missile program.

The lead-up to Thursday’s UN vote only underscored the deepening tensions across the Middle East. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Trump’s threats to curtail financial aid, calling on the international community to teach the US “a good lesson.” “Mr Trump, you cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with your dollars. Our decision is clear,” he continued. “I call on the whole world: Don't you dare sell your democratic struggle and your will for petty dollars.”

While there is no small amount of political posturing in such remarks, with Turkey seeking to exploit the Palestine issue to bolster its position in the region, Erdogan’s comments reflect Ankara’s growing rift with Washington. Erdogan has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin seven times this year and his government has indicated its intention to purchase a Russian anti-aircraft defense system. In addition, the Turkish government appears set to reach an agreement with Russia and Iran over the presence of Kurdish representatives at peace talks on Syria from which Washington has been largely excluded.

Drug deaths drive down US life expectancy for second year

Eric London

Two reports published yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reveal that the life expectancy of the American working class is declining due to an increase in drug overdoses and suicides.

The data reflects, in empirical terms, the social devastation wrought on the lives of millions of people by decades of bipartisan policies aimed at enriching the wealthy. The decline in life expectancy, a fundamental measure of social progress, is a historical milestone in the decline of American capitalism. This is the second year in a row that life expectancy has fallen in the US, marking the first time in nearly half a century that life expectancy has declined in consecutive years.

Life expectancy dropped from 78.7 years in 2015 to 78.6 years in 2016, driven by a 0.2-year decline from 76.3 to 76.1 years among men. Life expectancy for women remained at 81.1 years, as the gap between women and men reached an all-time high.

However, life expectancy for those who make it to old age continues to improve, and the mortality rates for heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses are declining as technological and medical advances improve the capacity to extend human life. The decline in life expectancy is caused by a dramatic increase in the mortality rate among those under age 44 who are overdosing, particularly on opioids, or taking their own lives.

The CDC report shows a 21 percent year-to-year increase in drug overdoses, which took the lives of 63,600 people in 2016. It is as if each year, a city the size of Palo Alto, California; Bismarck, North Dakota; or Fort Myers, Florida was killed off entirely. Since 2006, roughly 430,000 people have died of drug overdose, more than the number of US soldiers killed during World War II. An army of people who should be alive today is not.

A total of 42,249 people died from opioid overdoses in 2016, a 28 percent increase from the year before. While Barack Obama was traveling the country on behalf of Hillary Clinton, proclaiming, “America is already great,” 115 people were dying each day from opioids alone.

Corporations have been flooding poor areas with pills and are shielded from prosecution by the government. Between 2007 and 2012, for example, drug distributor Miami-Luken shipped 11 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone into Mingo County, West Virginia, which has a population of 25,000.

Former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Joe Rannazzisi told 60 Minutes in October that it is “a fact” that companies inundate poor areas with the knowledge that many will die as a result. While lawsuits against the drug companies have forced paltry penalties of several million dollars, this is part of the cost of doing business. The Obama administration slashed the number of DEA cases against drug distributors by 69.5 percent between 2011 and 2014.

The decline in life expectancy and the increase in drug overdoses are the product of a massive growth in social inequality. Daniel Kim, a professor at Northeastern University, told Reuters yesterday that “what we know from numerous health studies is that a wider gap between the rich and the poor means that more people will die unnecessarily.”

Over the past 40 years, the Democratic and Republican parties have been engaged in a conscious strategy to pare back the gains won by the working class through the social struggles of the early 20th century. A bipartisan cabal has slashed wages, eliminated pensions, cut social programs, reduced taxes on the rich, and done away with employer-provided healthcare.

In the process, the government has transferred trillions from the working class into the bank accounts of the financial elite. Today, the top 10 percent owns 77 percent of the wealth. The richest 3 billionaires own as much as the poorest 160 million—half the country’s population.

The social counterrevolution was intensified under the Democratic administration of Barack Obama, which oversaw the bailout of the banks following the 2008 financial crisis, conducted the bailouts of the auto industry that slashed the wages of autoworkers to historic lows, and enforced the Detroit bankruptcy. The enactment of Obamacare has coincided with a drastic increase in the number of drug overdose deaths. While the rate per 100,000 of overdoses was increasing by 3 percent from 2006 to 2014, it began increasing by 18 percent per year in 2014, the year Obamacare came into force.

The death rate will continue to rise as the Trump administration deepens tax cuts for the wealthy. Citing Kim’s research, Reuters wrote, “the income inequality produced by the [tax bill] will mean 29,689 more deaths each year, perhaps more.” Billions in cuts to Medicare, mandated by laws that require budget cuts to match drops in revenue, will lead to the deaths of thousands more.

The victims of the opioid crisis come from all regions and social backgrounds, but the overwhelming majority of those killed are poor and working class. According to last year’s CDC data, 90 percent were white, and most were men, with overdoses for whites roughly triple the rate for African-Americans and double the rate for Latinos. The Native American overdose rate equals the rate for whites.

This reality exposes the reactionary lies advanced by Black Lives Matter and its claims of “white supremacy,” and by the #MeToo movement, which asserts that society is organized on the principle of patriarchy and male domination.

New York Times contributor and racial politics proponent Michael Eric Dyson recently attempted to turn the opioid crisis into an example of white privilege when he said in March 2017, “White brothers and sisters have been medicalized in terms of their trauma and addiction. Black and brown people have been criminalized for their trauma and addiction.”

Seething with contempt for the working class, Dyson ignores the fact that if adequate medical services were available, tens of thousands would not die each year from drug overdose. Instead of helping the victims, state governments have responded by calling in the National Guard to police the streets (West Virginia) and by calling for the quadrupling of jail terms for opioid users (New Jersey). Meanwhile, both parties voted to increase military spending by $80 billion over last year’s levels.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for expropriating the billions of dollars the drug companies have made from the ongoing crisis. This money, and the personal wealth of the corporate and financial aristocracy, must be put into an emergency fund to pay for the immediate construction of a network of hospitals and health clinics, staffed with well-trained doctors, to provide permanent, free medical care to all those effected.

Rehabilitation centers must be expanded and new ones built so that the millions with addiction and dependency problems can seek help free of charge. A 90 percent tax must be imposed on all income above five million dollars to provide funds for massive jobs and public works programs in those areas hardest hit by the crisis to alleviate inequality and poverty.

These demands can be met only through the building of a mass movement of the working class, independent of the Democratic and Republican parties, aimed at linking workers of all races and nationalities in a common fight against the capitalist system.

The Bitcoin Bubble

ROY MORRISON

The price of a rare tulip bulb on the futures market in Amsterdam in January 1637 was equal to ten times the annual wage for a skilled crafts worker. A single bulb was reportedly exchanged for 1,000 pounds of cheese at the height of tulip mania. The market collapsed precipitously starting in February 1637, bottoming out in May 1637

According to economist Brian Dowd, “By the height of the tulip and bulb craze in 1637, everyone.. rich and poor, aristocrats and plebes, even children had joined the party. Much of the trading was being done in bar rooms where alcohol was obviously involved…bulbs could change hands upwards of 10 times in one day. Prices skyrocketed… in 1637, increasing 1,100% in a month.”

Bit coin, the original crypto-currency, was valued at $.08 in July 2010; $8100 on November 20, 2017, and $17,900 on Dec.15 2017. The sky is apparently the limit.

The danger of course,is not just that at some point, the bigger fools, the last purchasers of bit coin and the long term holders (“hodlers” in crypto-speak) will loose some or all of their money. That would be regrettable. But like straight forward pump and dump market manipulations of a stock some will win while others loose.

But, as in 2007 and 2008, the creative greed behind global financialization is creating not just a bubble in bit-coin and many other crypto-currencies as investors , as in Holland in 1637, pile into markets as buyers. There is a real and, I believe, rapidly emerging threat that bit coin and its ilk could follow dynamics similar to mortgage back securities as the basis for highly leveraged and complex financial instruments, like credit default swaps that were traded in unlimited volumes with no limits based on the actual number of mortgages.

Cyrpto-currency has now entered the leveraged futures market. Speculators now can leverage futures purchases 15 to one. This means a 7% drop in the price of bit-coin (a familiar phenomena) will wipe our your capital, returning us quickly to the momentous margin calls of 2007-8. And there is no limit to the number of futures contracts. Derivative instruments of more complexity and undefined risks are almost certain to swiftly appear as they did in 2007 when,for example, insurance giant AIG took enormous bets to earn premium on credit default swaps on mortgage backed securities. After all were, these were AAA rated… The sudden collapse of mortgage backed securities led to a liquidity crisis. The securities could not be sold for almost any price and the giant financial institutions on wrong side of the bets were suddenly bankrupt.

As Frances Coppola in Forbes points out, “As more and more financial institutions with connections to the real economy pile into the cryptocurrency mania, the chances of a similar disastrous collapse rise ever higher, and along with it, the likelihood of Fed or even a government bailout.”

The intent of those driving the explosion of crypto-currency prices is not a desire use crypto-currency as a low cost ,reliable medium of exchange verified by a transparent block-chain, but as a magic carpet to wealth. If you’d bought $100 worth of bit coins in 2010, they would be worth $1.79 million as of Dec. 15. 2017. It is paradoxical that crypto-currency, allegedly meant to free us from fiat currency, finds its liquidity and value in the all mighty dollar.

There is much to recommend block-chain for its potential use as a reliable and low-cost means of trade whether is is tied to crypto-currency or not. For example, bock chain is being used in Brooklyn, NY to test sale of solar energy from local producers to local buyers, with the exchange medium in dollars not crypto-currency.

The Media Lab at MIT is working on designing crypto-currency projects that could facilitate, for example, trades and transaction by the global poor purchasing and selling locally produced community renewable energy. Crypto-currency and block chain could be an important tool for people not just beyond power lines, but who live unbanked and with little access to cash or liquidity of any kind. Crypto-currency could become a reliable exchange medium and basis for a community controlled economy.

Bit-coin is also seeing the transaction costs for bit-coin transaction soar rising to $20 charged by block-chain “miners” whose computers verify transaction and at the same time create more blocks and produce more bit coins as part of the solution of the algorithm that verifies transactions. Far from being a means for vey quick cheap, anonymous financial transactions, bit coin is becoming slow and expensive to use. A newer generation of crypto-currencies like IOTA offers an improved block-chain with zero transaction costs and faster transaction all the better to attract investors.

Crypto-currencies could represent a tool for self-management and community economies, a way to use the internet to help challenge the growing netocracy of the Googles, Facebooks, Twitters, Amazons, Ali Babas and their ilk. But by making crypto-currency into an investment who use is part of a get rich quick scheme as opposed to a free instrument of exchange and trade it has become just another arrow in the quiver of making the rich richer and worsening the already grotesque distribution of income. Crypto-currency speculation will make some people rich, as does day trading and house flipping, where many more will loose then win.

I suppose the original sin of crypto-currency was to allow its purchase in dollars, and not, for example, in services provided by one to another based on labor time and materials. But the crypto-currency model is based on a limited quantity that makes it resistant to inflation, but enshrines scarcity and therefore value and the siren calls of greed and desire as it does for scarce commodities like cocaine or diamonds or gold.

The bit-coin and crypto-currency bubble will not end well.

India’s Sick Health Care

Moin Qazi 

India’s economy is soaring but its healthcare system remains an Achilles’ heel. For millions of people, the high cost of treating illness continues to undermine economic progress. This is largely on account of the abysmal and chaotic healthcare system owing to the declining budgetary healthcare support by the government. India now ranks close to the bottom of the pile in international rankings on most health indices.

With an investment of 1.3% of GDP in health services— which has remained at the same level for a decade—India ranked 187th out of 194 countries according to the World Health Organization (WHO), while accounting for a full 20% of the global healthcare burden. Comparable rates are 1.5% in Sri Lanka, 2.7% in China, and 3% in Thailand. In order to remedy this, the National Health Policy 2017 has proposed an increase in public spending on health care from the current dismal rate of 1% to a meagre 2.5% of GDP by 2020. This would still leave India well below the world average of 5.99% of GDP.

Compared to its spending on health, India spends around 2.4% of its GDP on defence. Global evidence shows that, unless a country spends at least 5-6% of its GDP on health with most of that coming from public funds, basic healthcare needs are unlikely to be met.

Illnesses are a severe risk and can shave off most of the hard-earned savings in low income communities. They are the No. One route to bankruptcy. The Ministry of Health found that a quarter of all people hospitalised were driven to penury by their hospital costs ~ not including the cost of missed work.

Universal healthcare in India remains a distant reality because healthcare still continues to rank very low on the government’s priority card. Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room. While facilities in Indian metros are competing with the world’s best medical centres, the scenario beyond the urban conglomerates is quite distressing. The demand and supply in healthcare services still show a significant disparity in urban and rural areas as also regional imbalances. Here’s a snapshot:

• 30% of Indians do not have access to primary healthcare facilities.
• About 39 million Indians fall below the poverty line each year because of healthcare expenses.
• Around 30% of people in rural India do not visit hospitals due to fear of the expenses.
• 47% of healthcare needs in rural India and 31% of the need in urban areas are financed by loans or the one-off sale of assets
• About 70% of Indians spend all their income on healthcare and drugs.
• Out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in India—which makes up 69% of the total expenditure on health—is among the highest in the world, and is much more than the rates in Thailand (25%), China (44%), and Sri Lanka (55%).

Nearly 30,000 doctors, 20,000 dentists and 45,000 nurses graduate from medical colleges across India every year. However, the doctor-to-patient ratio in India is only six for every 10,000 people. This is far below the rate in Australia (1 for every 249), the UK (5 for every 1,665) and the US (9 for every 548). The global ratio stands at 15 doctors for every 10,000 people.

The distribution of doctors is also uneven across the country, with a low ratio in states like Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand—just two doctors for every 1, 00,000 people. And there are only six hospital beds and two surgeons per lakh of population. There is one government doctor for every 10,189 people, one government hospital bed for every 2,046 people and one state-run hospital for every 90,343 people. In comparison to these dismal numbers, the US has 24.5 doctors for every 10,000 people and one hospital bed for every 345 citizens.

India has a laggardly record in updating its healthcare coverage. In per capita terms, adjusted for purchasing power, India’s public expenditure on health is $43 a year, compared to $85 in Sri Lanka, $240 in China, and $265 in Thailand. European nations spend 10 times and the US 20 times. According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), the Indian government’s contribution to health insurance stands at roughly 32%, as opposed to 83.5% in the UK. India’s high rate of out-of-pocket expenses for health in stems from the fact that 76% of Indians do not have any health insurance.

The recently released National Health Accounts (NHA) for 2014-15 show that the average amount spent by the government for each citizen per year was just Rs 1,108. This is against nearly Rs 6,300 spent on each central government employee. According to the NHA, India’s total health expenditure in 2014-15 worked out to Rs 3,826 per person. Of this, people had to spend Rs 2,394 (63%) out of their own pockets. In 2014-15, the Union government’s expenditure on the National Health Mission was Rs 20,199 crore. Spread this cash injection over a population of roughly 1.25 billion and it comes out to a paltry Rs 162 per head.

The apathy of the government is reflected in a rather poor prognosis for the health system. Primary health centres (PHC) in villages are supposed to screen and feed medical cases to specialised hospitals in districts and further on to state-level specialised hospitals. PHCs do not exist in many villages (about 1 for every 20 villages), and where present are so acutely undermanned that the “access” system is broken at the first mile. As many as 18 per cent of PHCs were entirely without doctors, This impacts not only the filtering of patients but also deeply impairs prevention and early detection which is a must if costs in the whole system are to be contained. The only redeeming feature is the committed cadre of Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) at PHCs and their sub-centres and accredited social health activists (ASHAs).

Our healthcare facilities have grown significantly in terms of numbers and expertise of our professionals, but this has largely been in the private sector. The government’s failure to deliver quality care has led to a rapid expansion of private hospitals, which today account for 93 per cent of all hospitals (up from 8 per cent in 1947), 64 per cent of all beds, and 80 to 85 per cent of all doctors. But mass access continues to remain a challenge. For the private sector, affordability in Tier 3 cities and rural areas is a critical limiting factor for further expansion.

The health infrastructure is heavily skewed in favour of urban areas. Nearly 75 per cent of dispensaries, 60 per cent of hospitals and 80 per cent of doctors are located in urban centres. Doctors cater to a third of the urban population, or no more than 442 million people.

There are around 734 district hospitals across the country which provide secondary healthcare facilities to people. In addition, there are around 300 other hospitals, such as women’s hospitals at the district level. They are powerful nodes in India’s healthcare network and can be revitalized to boost the health infrastructure.

India needs to reform the public health care sector’s governance and management systems. The approach to service delivery has to be a functional referral linkage and establishing a ‘continuum of care’ across the spectrum from village to sub-health centre to primary health care, sub-district hospital and the district hospitals. The challenge remains to reform the health system and its workforce in particular, so that practitioners, administrators and others have the skills, knowledge and professional attributes to meet the emerging health-care needs of our community.

Several laudatory policies are already in place. The direction of travel, so to speak, is right but we have to accelerate the pace of the journey. For reforms to be successful we need hard-coded timelines and accountability of those tasked with the administration. It is now for the policy doctors to collaborate with the professional doctors to use their ingenuity to come up with radical solutions that can cope with the mounting challenges of healthcare.

Haitian audit report on PetroCaribe corruption deepens crisis of Moïse goverment

John Marion

In October, an audit commissioned by five members of the Haitian senate—led by Senator Evallière Beauplan—was released to the public. It detailed years of corruption and no-bid contracts through which private corporations profited from the PetroCaribe program. Those implicated include Laurent Lamothe, prime minister under former President Michel Martelly, whose handpicked successor Jovenel Moïse is now President.

PetroCaribe consists of a set of agreements between the Venezuelan government and individual Latin American and Caribbean governments, providing oil under a long-term payment plan. In Haiti’s case, the government has up to 90 days from the date of each delivery to pay Venezuela a small amount of the bill, but can pay the remainder over 25 years with only 1 percent interest. The plan is structured so that the Haitian government can take in revenues quickly by selling the oil domestically, and then have use of the money for public works projects because of the long repayment repayment schedule. The priorities are supposed to include agriculture, education, public works, sanitation and the environment.

Haiti signed its agreement with Venezuela in May 2006, two years before a series of hurricanes (Gustav, Hanna, and Ike) wracked the country in 2008. The audit—conducted by 50 professional auditors in nine teams, assisted by two engineers and a lawyer specializing in financial crimes—looked at the results of dozens of public works projects undertaken after those storms and the 2010 earthquake. The audit period was from September 2006 to September 2016, ending before Hurricane Matthew.

During that 10-year period, the Haitian parliament voted two laws declaring states of emergency, successive presidents issued three state of emergency decrees covering the whole country and 13 resolutions were passed to either begin or continue specific programs.

The first emergency law, passed on September 9 2008, suspended all legal requirements about public bidding processes, allowing the government to issue no-bid contracts “which it judges necessary.” It also eliminated the requirement that all contracts be submitted for prior review by the Superior Court for Accounting and Administrative Disputes (CSC/CA). A law passed in April 2010, after the earthquake, purported to reform these measures by allowing for after-the-fact CSC/CA review and “expeditious” public bidding processes.

Because the Haitian government controls both the sale of the imported oil and the issuance of funds for public works projects, avenues for corruption exist in both directions. The audit shows, for example, how accounts receivable for the PetroCaribe program went from 29 billion Haitian gourdes in 2015 to 43.7 billion in 2016.

Nearly one-fourth of the money (12.2 billion gourdes) owed to the Haitian government by private fuel companies in 2016 was in the hands of Sogener (Société Générale d’Energie), part of a corporate group which deals in real estate, construction, auto parts and electricity. The group’s CEO, Jean Marie Vorbe, is one of the founders of the Haitian Stock Exchange.

The audit encountered confusion because the Haitian government valued some accounts in dollars and some in gourdes, and because it used wildly inaccurate exchange rates (ranging from 70.35 and 107.35 gourdes to the dollar on 9/30/16, compared to the official rate of 65.5368). Nonetheless, the auditors valued Sogener’s outstanding debt—essentially, free money for the company to use elsewhere—at US174 million. The PetroCaribe agreement stipulates that companies are supposed to pay such debt within 30 days.

The second-in-command of the Vorbe Group, Réginald, accompanied Moïse on a trip to Europe last week, during which the president boasted to the French business federation MEDEF that Haiti is “27,750 square kilometers of opportunities to invest and make money.” He promised French investors a period of 15 tax-free years of revenues, along with the possibility of not having to pay payroll taxes.

During the audit period, Haitian government debt doubled because money due to the Venezuelan government is treated as debt, despite the program’s intended purpose of using the funds for public works. As of 9/30/16, Haiti owed Venezuela US$80,633,024.

In another case, the Dominican corporation Ingeniería ESTRELLA was given a contract of nearly US$20 million by the Martelly/Lamothe government to build an airport on Ile-à-Vache, which it was trying to develop as a resort for rich tourists. Le Nouvelliste visited the island recently and found that, although the company had pocketed more than $5.2 million in revenue, work on the project ended more than two years ago and left behind an unpaved landing strip half the size contracted for. No planes have been able to land on it.

In 2014, Lamothe gloated about such projects: “as far as the future tourists are concerned, it is worth it to know that the money that you are spending while having fun is helping someone to get out of poverty … This should be very rewarding, and that is what I call a tourism of solidarity.”

In an even more blatant crime, the government spent US$3.6 million worth of funds earmarked for earthquake relief on 100 Haitian National Police (PNH) vehicles in 2010.

The audit also found that the public electricity utility EDH (L’Electricité d’Haïti) awarded a contract worth a total of US $72.9 million to a company called ESD Engineering and Services SRL without approval from the CSC/CA, the Commission Nationale des Marchés Publics (CNMP), or the Administrative Council of the Office of Monetization of Programs of Aid and Development (BMPAD).

ESD was part of Hillary Clinton’s Caricol industrial park boondoggle in northern Haiti; its web site displays a 2012 letter from then-US Ambassador to Haiti Pamela White, thanking the company for “the fascinating visit to the Caracol Industrial Park electricity-generating site during Secretary Clinton’s recent visit.”

The release of the audit has provoked bitter infighting among Haiti’s ruling elite.

In Europe last week for the Paris climate summit and subsequent meetings with the European Investment Bank, Moïse made a public statement complaining of “political persecution” and claiming that the Haitian judiciary had recently forced him to renew the appointments of 50 corrupt judges. Haiti’s Superior Judiciary Council (Cspj) responded with a statement accusing Moïse of “putting in peril the independence of the judiciary power,” of “discrediting … the principal of the separation of powers” and of making a statement that was “incompetent and irresponsible.”

For his part, Senate President Latortue is posing as an opponent of corruption but has a sordid history. A former death squad leader implicated in drug smuggling, he was described in a US State Department cable released by Wikileaks as “the most brazenly corrupt of leading Haitian politicians.” According to Haiti Liberte, Latortue launched his first run for elected office in order to gain immunity from criminal prosecution.

Senator Beauplan is part of a group of ten senators whose terms would normally end in January, but whose absence would reduce the size of the Senate by one-third. Nineteen senators are required for a quorum, and only 20 would be available if Moïse unseats the ten in revenge for the report. No new Senate elections are scheduled until the fall of 2019.

At a time when street protests and the judiciary are calling for Moïse’s ouster, the US government is taking up the issue as well. Section III of the audit admits that it was conducted because of public anger at and press reports of corruption. At a cocktail party attended by Latortue this month, US Chargée d’Affaires Robin Diallo told Le Nouvelliste that “concrete actions are needed to have a Haiti without corruption. One has to have a program, a vision.” This scolding of Moïse is in line with the US government’s “vision” of keeping the Haitian bourgeoisie in power.