Hundreds demonstrate in London against proposed Housing Bill

Thomas Scripps

Hundreds of London residents took part in a national rally against the Conservative government’s Housing Bill in March.

Set to be passed this month in parliament, the Bill would put an end to secure tenancy agreements for new social renters, impose higher rents for some higher earning council tenants and add a requirement for landlords to check a tenant’s immigration status.

The Housing Bill also forces the sell-off of valuable council homes in order to fund the extension of the government’s “Right To Buy” policy to housing associations.

Anna described to the WSWS the situation faced by many:

“I’m paying £150 a week and if the bill goes through, it will go up to £675. This means our family will have to give up working. We will be living out of food banks.”

Daniel lives in a council flat in Camden. He and his wife have a combined income of just over £40,000: “We don’t have enough money to buy or to pay for the increase in rent. The current market rate where we live in Kings Cross is between £3,200 and £3,000 a month. If you tally it up it is almost what we earn together.

“I have heard cases in Southwark and Tottenham and in Haringey where Labour councils are selling social housing and the people don't have anywhere to turn. None of the big parties are on their side.

“There are a lot of ordinary people in social housing who try to work and get on with their lives. This is what is called social cleansing, which is totally unfair. Building houses for the poor was something that was done in the past and we need to get off this neo-liberal agenda.”

Price of London housing continues to soar

Figures from the Land Registry show an annual house price rise of 13.5 percent in London--double the national average. According to the Office for National Statistics, in January of this year average prices rose nearly £500 a day in the capital, taking the average cost of a house to a record £551,000.

Rents have also increased, with the average tenant in London paying 3.8 percent more than this time last year. Wages have not even kept half-pace, growing only 1.6 percent in England and Wales over the same period.

London prices, with all of their associated social ills, are beginning to spill over into nearby commuter cities and counties as people priced out of their homes in the capital drive up demand. Slough, Luton and Reading saw annual price rises of 19 percent, 17 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively. In Thurrock, Essex, a 17.2 percent rise was recorded.

Persistent overcrowding in London boroughs

A small number of high profile raids by police and local authority housing officers in March found 70 people living in four homes in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

In one property, on Green Lane, eight people were found living in a single room. The raids are ostensibly directed towards enforcing landlords to pay a new license fee, but are in fact targeted against immigrants.

Local councillor and Labour Party member, Laila Butt, commented, “We will not tolerate or accept this attitude from rogue landlords.”

She said much the same in July of last year, when 21 people were found living in five bedrooms across two homes--one of which had six children and seven adults sharing the space.

In response to the discovery of 50 migrant workers living in just four houses in October 2015, her co-councillor, Labour’s Darren Rodwell, said, “We've got to have a really serious talk about how London can accommodate the new people coming in but also the existing people that are already here.”

The truth is that the Labour council is complicit in the housing crisis, having imposed savage budget cuts estimated at £185 million between 2010 and 2020. It has roughly 13,000 people on its housing waiting list.

Housing charity sells 63 homes to private developer

In a meeting in parliament in March, Keith Nunn, chairman of Glasspool Trust housing charity, brushed off the eviction of former tenants, whose houses had been sold by the charity to a private developer.

Glasspool Trust provides accommodation at below market rents. In January, it sold 63 of its houses at Butterfields Estate, Walthamstow to a private developer Butterfields E17 Ltd. Tenants have since been evicted to allow the developer to sell their homes on at a profit. Nunn said that the charity had made money and that such things happen.

Butterfields E17 is looking to take advantage of the ongoing redevelopment of Walthamstow to suit the needs and tastes of richer layers of society. Prices in the borough have risen 32 percent in the last year as part of a general process of gentrification. The Butterfields estate is close to the desirable locale of Walthamstow Village.

Discrimination against benefit claimants

Digs, a group supporting private renters in Hackney, has launched a campaign against landlords deliberately rejecting potential tenants on the basis that they claim housing benefit.

The problem extends beyond landlords to the mortgage providers with whom they have a contract. Most buy-to-let contracts state that housing benefit claimants are not to be accepted as tenants.

Those contracts allowing for tenants claiming housing benefits tend to charge much higher rates. Likewise, insurance against damaged property and non-payment of rent is hard to obtain for landlords who wish to house benefit claimants. For private landlords, the easier and more profitable course is to reject these potential tenants.

Renters outnumber homeowners in London

Data from the government’s English Housing Survey shows private renters in London now outnumber homeowners.

The number of tenants in privately rented housing has more than doubled since 2003/4, from 405,000 households to 898,000. This compares to 883,000 households living in mortgaged homes--down 17 percent on last year.

Confirming recent research, a PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) report indicated that younger people--aged 20 to 39--are especially likely to be forced into rented accommodation. According to the Inter-generational Foundation, the number of those under 34 renting has doubled in the past ten years.

PwC indicates that this trend is likely to continue, with the expectation that 60 percent of households will be private renters by 2025 and 40 percent mortgage owners, reversing the situation in 2000.

Historic shopping centre to become luxury apartments

The Whiteley’s shopping centre--the first department store in London located in Bayswater--is set to be redeveloped into 103 luxury homes, none of which are scheduled to be listed as affordable.

The build will also include shops, a gym, a boutique hotel and an underground cinema. Over 1,000 local residents have signed a petition against the development, protesting the neglect of affordable housing and the destruction of an historic landmark.

Property developers reduce “affordable” housing quotas

Property developers are doing all they can to avoid meeting required allocations of affordable housing in London new builds. Just 8,374 affordable homes were built in the capital in the year 2014/15, roughly 5,000 short of the 13,200 target set by the Mayor of London’s Office.

London is being refashioned as a private city of the rich. This is the content of the support of Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, for the demolition of London’s council estates.

In Brixton, May Developments is building a 37-unit tower block of which only seven units are to be listed as “affordable”. Lambeth Council nominally requires a figure of 40 percent. Even seven units was considered too high, with May Developments speculating in a report to the Planning Committee, “We wonder with how much enthusiasm the affordable units will be marketed?”

Given Lambeth council had 22,000 people on its waiting list for affordable housing last year, May Developments is hoping to keep the properties unsold for long enough to justify raising the price to an “intermediate rent.”

Protest at lack of affordable housing at redevelopment of West Ham United ground

The redevelopment of West Ham United’s Boleyn Ground stadium by Galliard Homes is scheduled to include only a small fraction of “affordable” housing.

On March 10, protesters demonstrated outside the Old Town Hall in Newham against a development of more than 800 new homes incorporating just 25 percent of affordable housing. The Boleyn Ground is located in Newham, and the Galliard proposal was accepted by Newham council at the meeting being lobbied--despite the Labour-run council normally stipulating that new developments include between 35 and 50 percent of affordable housing.

Just 211 homes in the development are classed as affordable, including 84 available for shared ownership. In its original proposals, Galliard offered just 61 shared ownership homes and no social housing.

Galliard Homes bought the land from West Ham United for an undisclosed fee and will take ownership of it later this year when the club moves to the former Olympic Stadium in Stratford. The Olympic Stadium was taxpayer funded and has so far cost more than £700 million to construct and transform into an all-purpose stadium. West Ham United paid just £15 million as a one-off upfront cost and agreed an annual rent of around £2.5 million to be the anchor tenants on a 99-year lease.

As of August 2015, there were a total of 15,721 applicants on Newham's waiting list for social housing. Nearly 3,000 of these have been waiting a decade or longer and 3,370 for between five and 10 years after applying for housing. Social rents in the borough are the highest in the country on average, at £128.89 a week, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Cost of elderly care increasing throughout the UK

Dennis Moore

A new report by the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) charity highlights the plight of many of the 433,000 elderly people in the UK living in care homes. In total, some four million older people—nearly half the over-65 population—require some form of care.

CAB carried out a mystery shopping exercise of 404 care homes across England, between November 4 and November 18 last year, utilising data and insights obtained from the CAB and another agency. The purpose of the study was to try to ascertain whether care home providers were taking advantage of their clients.

Elderly care is a growing industry in the UK, with many people living longer and requiring more complex provision. The number of people aged 85 or above is set to double in the next 20 years. At present one in six people over the age of 85 lives in a care home. Recent research predicts that there will be a 15 percent increase in demand for residential care between 2015 and 2020.

The UK elderly care market is estimated to be worth £15.9 billion, with £12.1 billion taken by for-profit providers. There are 17,000 care homes in England and approximately 80 percent are for profit, with most of the rest run by voluntary, charitable organisations, and only a small number still run by the local authority. The majority of older people in care homes have to pay something toward their costs, with nearly 41 percent paying for their costs in full.

Many care home residents are vulnerable due to mental health problems and often suffer with dementia. It is difficult for someone to be able to know what their rights are in such a state.

The CAB supported nearly 27,000 advice queries regarding social care last year, a rise of 7 percent on the previous year. The number of queries concerning residential care increased by 12 percent over the same period.

The report pointed to the short notice period in which many elderly people are informed of fee increases. Nearly one in 10 care homes give only a week’s notice – possibly affecting 22,000 older people. Two thirds of care homes give four weeks’ notice or less. Just 18 percent give up to a year’s notice. The short notice period does not allow time for a resident to query the increase and challenge its legitimacy. This leaves the resident with very little choice but to accept the increase.

Fees rose on average by £900 last year, an increase of 2.7 percent, while in the East of England residential care home fees rose on average by £2,184, an increase of 6.8 percent. Failure to arrange for fee increases can mean the resident being forced to move. This process is often distressing and can exacerbate existing health problems.

Almost all (96 percent) care homes do not pass on savings to residents when they were away from the home for as long as four weeks. While care homes have constant running costs, variable costs such as, food, electricity and laundry costs are avoided when a resident is absent.

The elderly face other massive expenses. It can be difficult for costs of chiropody and carer support to be ascertained before moving into a home. In the case of having to attend hospital on a weekly basis, requiring two hours of care provider time, this could end up costing the resident up to £5,200 a year.

The CAB reported that it has had to assist residents who have received unexpected phone bills of £1,000 and unspecified entertainment charges.

The payment of care fees has been a contentious issue for many elderly people and their families who feel the system is unfair. In 2014, the Daily Mail reported that between 30,000-40,000 people had to sell their homes to be able to pay for their residential care costs. This worked out at 100 elderly people a week having their homes seized because local councils refused to pay.

In the decade from 2004 to 2014, state funding for care of the elderly plunged by a third from £8.1 billion to £5.4 billion. This cut of over £3 billion has meant the loss of thousands of jobs and front-line services being cut back to a minimum.

Due to strict eligibility criteria, only 850,000 of the elderly who require care services qualify for state help. Many elderly people are forced to hand over their entire life savings and assets to pay for their care.

One in 10 who enter the care system end up paying over £100,000 in fees. This state-sanctioned robbery is set to continue. Last year the government delayed the introduction of its still expensive cap of £72,000 on the amount residents can be charged for care homes. This was scheduled to be in place by 2020.

There is much evidence that cuts to services for those over 65 are leading to mounting pressure on the National Health Service, with over 400,000 extra elderly individuals subject to emergency admissions to hospital.

For hundreds of thousands of pensioners living outside of care homes, the situation is no better. A survey, using the Freedom of Information law, found that last year three quarters of councils in the UK had commissioned care visits of just 15 minutes. The visits by nursing staff were so brief and rushed that nursing staff did not have the time to speak to the people they were visiting, and care givers would not even have the time to take someone to the toilet, or help them to wash. For many elderly people, such visits could be the only human contact they have in a week.

The Local Government Association, representing 370 local authorities across England and Wales, warns that due to funding cuts home care for the elderly in some of the poorest areas of the country will have to be scrapped or only provided for those in the most desperate need.

Local authorities are now allowed to raise revenue via increases in Council Tax of 2 percent, as long as the money is spent on social care. This will benefit more affluent areas of the country disproportionately, as property prices are higher, leaving poorer areas with less money. It places the cost of care on the local population, while rationing services for the most needy.

The elderly are seen as consumers of services in a market, like any other consumer who purchases a product. It speaks volumes about the failure of capitalism that elderly people, who have worked all their lives and contributed through their taxes to the building up of the National Health Service, are robbed of everything they have to pay for care.

Canada: Attawapiskat First Nation declares state of emergency over attempted youth suicides

Laurent Lafrance

The chief and eight councilors of the Attawapiskat First Nation—a Cree community on James Bay in northern Ontario—declared a state of emergency last weekend after 11 teenagers attempted or threatened suicide during the previous 24 hours.

This tragedy, which has drawn attention and concern around the world, is testament to the atrocious, inhumane conditions that confront indigenous communities across Canada.

The day after the state of emergency was declared, another group of 13 young people, including a 9-year-old girl, were sent to the hospital after being overheard discussing a suicide pact. Attawapiskat, which has a population of around 2,000, saw 28 suicide attempts in March alone, and more than a hundred since last September.

The suicide crisis in Attawapiskat is the latest in a series of tragedies that have engulfed aboriginal reservations in recent months. In early March leaders of the Pimicikamak Cree First Nation, located at Cross Lake in northern Manitoba, declared a state of emergency after six people took their own lives in less than three months. In January, a troubled adolescent shot dead four people and wounded seven students on the Dene nation reserve at La Loche, Saskatchewan.

Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Bruce Shisheesh said the state of emergency had been declared because “community front-line resources are exhausted and no additional outside resources are available.” With the emergency declaration, local, provincial and federal authorities, including Health Canada, have been legally compelled to provide support.

The only full-time, provincially funded mental-health position in Attawapiskat has been vacant since last summer, in part because of a housing shortage. Overburdened by the rash of suicide attempts, three of the reserve’s four health care workers were recently sent to Thunder Bay for counselling and rest.

The ruling elite and the media have responded to the Attawapiskat crisis with crocodile tears. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted, “The news from Attawapiskat is heartbreaking. We’ll continue to work to improve living conditions for all Indigenous peoples.”

The House of Commons held a six-hour emergency debate Tuesday with the stated aim of finding “solutions” to the social crisis gripping aboriginal communities. In reality the debate was directed at whitewashing Canadian capitalism’s dispossession and criminal mistreatment of the aboriginal population and at sowing illusions that the Liberal government will significantly improve the living conditions of Canada’s native people, both on and off reserve.

Even sections of the corporate media were forced to concede the emergency debate will do nothing to end the chronic poverty and social deprivation that afflict native communities across Canada.

The MPs, reported Global News, “shared personal stories and made moving speeches, but in the end, didn’t agree on much other than the need to do something. Specifically what, they didn’t say. How and when? Also unclear."

The federal government has now deployed some 18 health care workers to Attawapiskat to provide temporary crisis relief, while the Ontario Liberal government has pledged a derisory $2 million for a youth fund. This princely sum is to be divided among the seven First Nations, including Attawapiskat, that make up the Mushkegowuk Council.

For two decades, Liberal and Conservative federal governments callously implemented a two-percent annual cap on First Nations’ budgets. Due to inflation and population growth of upwards of 40 percent, this cap translated into a huge decline in government support for what were, with only rare exceptions, already the county’s poorest communities.

Whereas the Harper Conservative government ignored and bullied native people, fueling widespread protests, the Liberals under Trudeau have pledged to bring about “reconciliation.” In reality, this change is largely cosmetic, and has as a key element the cultivation of a privileged petty bourgeois native elite that can be used to contain and suppress social anger among the impoverished native population.

Like the Conservatives before them, the Liberals are anxious to secure native support for oil pipeline projects and to integrate the native reserves much more fully into contemporary Canadian capitalism so as to more profitably exploit their natural resources and pools of cheap labour.

In their first budget, the Liberals pledged an additional $8.4 billion over five years for improved public services, housing and basic infrastructure for native people. However, $3 billion of this money won’t kick in until after the next election, meaning it is both tied to the Liberals’ re-election and their pledge to bring the federal budget back into balance in the medium term. Even if the Liberals do fulfill all their pledges, per capita education spending on Native children will still fall well under the Canadian norm.

During Tuesday’s debate, Charlie Angus, who is both the NDP’s critic for Indigenous and Northern Affairs and the MP for the constituency in which Attawapiskat is located, said: “There’s nothing new here. This is the culmination of years of problems and underfunding and calls for help and it’s now tearing the life out of some of our young people.”

What Angus didn’t discuss is how the various NDP provincial governments have themselves contributed to the appalling conditions facing native people. For instance, a massive hydro-electric project initiated in the 1970s under the NDP in Manitoba brought about flooding that destroyed transportation routes and wildlife habitats in the Cross Lake area, the impacts of which are still felt today.

The truth is, the oppression of the aboriginal people is the product of the capitalist profit system, which all the parliamentary parties are committed to uphold. Indeed, the Canadian capitalist nation-state was consolidated through the systematic dispossession of the native people. Relations between the federal government and the First Nations are still largely framed according to the racist 1876 Indian Act, which codified them as an inferior group and wards of the state.

Contemporary conditions on native reserves, which were frequently truncated so as to pave the way for lucrative resource extraction projects, are akin to those in the Third World. Many lack basic infrastructure, including clean drinking water, adequate housing, modern schools and recreational facilities. Levels of disease, suicide, poverty, and substance abuse far exceed the Canadian norm.

The current state of emergency in Attawapiskat is in fact the fifth in that one community since 2006 alone. In 2011, so severe was the housing crisis whole families were sleeping in wooden shacks or makeshift shelters without clean water and electricity. One year later, Attawapiskat struggled with a serious problem of contaminated drinking water. Two years later, half of Attawapiskat’s population had to be evacuated because of flooding.

What the political establishment really thinks about the crisis in Attawapiskat was summed up by former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was visiting Parliament Hill Tuesday to meet with the government’s representative in the Senate, long-time government mandarin and promoter of Canadian investment in China, Peter Harder. When asked by reporters about what should be done with crisis-ridden native communities, Chretien said “sometimes” First Nation communities should be moved because “isolation” makes it difficult “to have economic activities in some of these areas.”

In 1969, when he was the Indian Affairs minister under former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (the father of the current PM), Chretien introduced the infamous 1969 White Paper on Indian Policy which proposed eliminating the distinct legal status of “Indian” so as to fully integrate indigenous people into Canadian capitalism.

The Canadian bourgeoisie’s callous mistreatment of the First Nations and other indigenous peoples and its renewed drive to integrate aboriginal communities into the capitalist “free market” are part of its broader assault on the entire working class through the destruction of jobs, wages and public services. They can be successfully combatted only through the independent political mobilization of the working class—native and non-native—and the establishment of a workers’ government that will radically reorganize socio-economic life so as to make the fulfillment of social needs, not capitalist profit the animating principle.

Microsoft sues US Justice Department over secret data requests

Josh Varlin

Microsoft Corp. filed suit in federal court Thursday against the Department of Justice and its head, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, over government data requests under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986. Microsoft is specifically challenging the government’s prohibition barring it from notifying customers about official requests for access to their private communications.

The company’s complaint makes clear that it regularly receives requests from the government for its customers’ private data stored on Microsoft’s remote servers. It states, “Between September 2014 and March 2016, Microsoft received 5,624 federal demands for customer information or data. Of those, nearly half—2,576—were accompanied by secrecy orders, forbidding Microsoft from telling the affected customers that the government was looking at their information.”

Corporations and individuals increasingly store their data on remote servers operated by Microsoft and other technology companies, a practice known as cloud storage. US intelligence and police agencies look on the growth of the Internet “cloud” as an opportunity to further expand their already massive surveillance of people both at home and abroad.

Microsoft notes that documents stored physically—for example, in a desk drawer—or digitally on “local computers and on-premises servers” can be accessed only with a warrant and with notice.

The government is using cloud computing to bypass notification. Microsoft’s brief before the federal court in Seattle contends that this practice violates the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” and its requirement that the government obtain a court warrant based on a showing of “probable cause.” The company argues that “the transition to the cloud does not alter the fundamental constitutional requirement that the government must—with few exceptions—give notice when it searches and seizes the private information or communications of individuals or businesses.”

The ECPA, signed into law by then-President Ronald Reagan, allows courts to issue what are essentially secret warrants to search data stored by electronic communication service providers. Under the ECPA, courts can issue these warrants with orders that the provider (in this case, Microsoft) not notify the targets of surveillance that they are being targeted, potentially indefinitely.

Microsoft’s suit follows on the heels of the legal battle between Apple Inc. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in which the FBI attempted to force Apple to unlock the iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the deceased perpetrators of the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack. The FBI ended its legal case on March 28 after it claimed to have successfully hacked the phone.

Neither Microsoft nor Apple have any genuine interest in protecting democratic rights. They are concerned that customers will shun their services if they are compromised by the FBI or National Security Agency. Both companies have cooperated with the NSA in its PRISM program, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Microsoft, in particular, has been a close partner of the American surveillance state. It unlocked Outlook.com’s encryption for the NSA prior to its launch and helped the NSA triple the amount of intercepted Skype video calls within nine months of Skype’s purchase by Microsoft.

In a related development, reddit, the popular aggregator site, removed a so-called “warrant canary” from its transparency report in March. The “canary” was a paragraph that stated it had never received a classified request for data. Its removal means that the web site, the world’s 33rd most popular, has likely received a request for user information that it is not allowed to discuss publicly.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said, “I’ve been advised not to say anything one way or the other. Even with the canaries, we’re treading a fine line.”

Meanwhile, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati, ruled on April 13 that the government does not need a warrant when requesting cell-site location information. This ruling, which affects Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, allows the government to obtain approximate location data for cellphone users during the course of an investigation.

Investigators generally use this information to establish suspects’ locations after the fact, not in real time. However, this use of warrantless cellphone data-gathering requests parallels the use of Sting Ray devices, for which the FBI now supposedly obtains a warrant, and similar, cheaper devices for which police departments and the federal government do not obtain warrants.

The 6th Circuit Court ruling allows the government to seek only a court order, which requires the “reasonable grounds” standard, rather than a warrant, which requires a stricter “probable cause” showing. The ruling echoes decisions in the federal appeals courts for the 5th and 11th circuits, which together cover Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. However, it contradicts laws and court rulings in New Jersey, Maine and Montana. These conflicting rulings can be resolved only through a Supreme Court decision.

New testimony exposes Mexican government’s complicity in Ayotzinapa massacre

Neil Hardt

The Mexican National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH) announced Thursday that federal police played an active role in the disappearance of 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in the southwestern state of Guerrero in September 2014.

The new revelations, stemming from previously unpublished testimony by federal police officers themselves, prove that the federal government has been lying for a year-and-a-half about their involvement in the attacks on the normalistas, as the student teachers are known.

On September 26, 2014, police monitored a group of students traveling by bus to protest against cuts to education by the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The students were stopped and attacked by a group that included local and federal police, and 43 of them have not been found since. Ever since the immediate aftermath of the attack, the government has lied to the public and the families of the student teachers, resorting to violence and intimidation against those protesting the disappearances.

Luis Raul Gonzalez Perez, CNDH President, told the press Thursday, "Today we now know information that exposes the participation of elements of [local police] from Huitzuco and elements of the Federal Police" in the attacks.

Since the attack itself, the Mexican ruling class has been attempting to sweep the disappearance under the rug by stating that the students were attacked by members of a gang working in alliance with corrupt local police. The direct involvement of federal police in the attack exposes this story as false. All signs point to the fact that the highest levels of the Mexican state were involved in the attack and its cover-up.

As more facts emerge showing federal complicity, the federal government is trying to close investigations into the massacre. Earlier in April, the government announced it would seek to shut down by April 30 an investigation carried out by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI). The GIEI’s probe has undercut the official version of the massacre, most recently by producing evidence placing in question the government’s claim that the bodies of two teachers were placed in a garbage dump by gangsters. Parents of the disappeared teachers made a statement yesterday, following a meeting with government prosecutors, announcing that they would fight to keep the GIEI investigation open until their children were found.

Parents of the disappeared teachers also learned yesterday that their phones had been tapped by the government for a year and five months. Mario Cesar Gonzalez, the father of one of the disappeared normalistas, told the press: "Why did they not use this technique against those responsible" for the September 2014 attacks? "If they thought that criminalization was going to separate us, they are wrong and the result is to the contrary, we are more united than ever. The only thing the government wants is for its version of the story to prevail."

The revelations could not come at a worse time for President Peña Nieto. A poll released this week by the Mexican daily Reforma shows his administration is the most hated since polling began in 1995.

According to the poll, 66 percent of Mexicans oppose Peña Nieto’s presidency, an increase from the 58 percent who opposed him in a December 2015 poll. In the latest poll, 56 percent said the economic situation in the country has worsened in the last year, with only ten percent responding that it had improved. Sixty-eight percent oppose Peña Nieto's handling of poverty and employment.

The government is preparing to meet the growing social opposition with police state forms of rule. In two months, the "Atenco Law" will take effect, granting the government of the State of Mexico the ability to cancel democratic rights in case of social protests or strikes. A similar bill, amending the Mexican Constitution to grant the president emergency powers, was passed out of committee in the Chamber of Deputies earlier this month.

In preparation for the outbreak of social struggles, the ruling class has increased its ties to the US military, militarized its own southern borders and laid the foundations for police state rule.

Meanwhile, the Mexican economy remains mired in crisis as the fall in commodity prices—in particular the price of Mexican crude oil—has been used to justify a renewed assault on the living standards of the Mexican working class. This week, the Mexican government pledged $4 billion USD in aid for the struggling state-owned oil company, Pemex. The bail-out funds were provided on the express condition that Pemex carry out further cuts to oil workers’ pensions, which were already slashed with the help of the trade unions late in 2015. Renewed calls for austerity at Pemex come after the government cut federal spending by $10.1 billion USD last year, a figure totaling 0.7 percent of GDP.

While Mexican Finance Minister Luis Videgaray said these cuts would be made to programs "without a high economic and social impact," the Pemex bailout strongly suggests that low commodity prices are forcing the Mexican bourgeoisie to intensify its attacks against the working class with rapidity and with less attention to mitigating social tensions. Edward Glossup, emerging markets economist at the firm Capital Economics, said that the Pemex aid “could mean the government needs to announce more fiscal austerity measures to bring the deficit under control.”

These cuts will lead to a further deterioration of living standards for the already deeply impoverished Mexican working class and peasantry. A report released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) in March revealed that poverty in Mexico increased from 51.6 percent in 2012 to 53.2 percent in 2014.

Conflicts over European financial policy point to coming attacks on workers

Alex Lantier

This week, European financial circles were torn by ever more bitter divisions over financial policies pursued by the European Central Bank (ECB) in the aftermath of the 2008 Wall Street crash and the ensuing global economic crisis.

Near-zero interest rates and the printing of trillions of euros to purchase bonds and sustain financial markets have failed to revive European capitalism. These massive resources were used not to create jobs, but to bailout the super-rich conditioned on ruthless social austerity dictated by the European Union (EU). With new storm clouds gathering on the horizon of the world economy, including signs of a possible crash in China, there are rising divisions in the European bourgeoisie over how to mount a new onslaught against the working class.

Top German officials are making clear that Berlin will no longer accept the uncontrolled easy-credit policies of the ECB and of central banks internationally, including the US Federal Reserve. In an April 8 speech to the Market Economy Foundation, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble attacked ECB President Mario Draghi, claiming ECB policies were responsible for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s sucess in last month’s state elections.

“I said to Mario Draghi … be very proud: you can attribute 50 per cent of the results of a party that seems to be new and successful in Germany to the design of this policy,” Schäuble said.

On Tuesday, Schäuble indicated even more bluntly that ECB policy was harmful to Berlin and was undermining support in sections of the German ruling elite for the EU. “It is indisputable that the policy of low interest rates is causing extraordinary problems for the banks and the whole financial sector in Germany. That also applies for retirement provisions,” he said.

“That is why I always point out that this does not necessarily strengthen citizens’ readiness to trust in European integration,” he added.

Schäuble’s positions were echoed Monday by Markus Söder, the state finance minister of Bavaria. Calling ECB policy an “assault” on Germans who saved money for retirement, he told Der Spiegel: “We need a debate in Germany on the ECB’s false policy. The [German] federal government must demand a change of course in monetary policy.”

Officials of the AfD, which initially stressed opposition to the euro at its foundation in 2013 but increasingly turned to stirring up anti-immigrant sentiment, are again attacking the euro. “We don’t want to leave the EU but the euro, which is an economic absurdity,” its vice-president Alexander Gauland told Die Zeit on Thursday.

These comments provoked a storm of angry reactions from financial newspapers and officials in countries that have relied on easy-money or “quantitative easing” policies. The Financial Times of London titled its lead editorial Thursday “Germany should keep its hands off the ECB,” attacking Schäuble’s statements as “wrong in principle and unwise in practice.”

The French Socialist Party (PS) government also attacked Schäuble on free-market grounds, with Finance Minister Michel Sapin arguing that Schäuble was undermining the principle of central bank independence from elected governments.

“During the construction of the single European currency, the French learned that one must absolutely, wholeheartedly, totally respect the independence of the ECB. I hope our German friends will recall this quality that they pushed for from the beginning. The French have acquired a good habit, the Germans must not lose theirs,” Sapin said.

US financial news channel CNBC issued a hysterical denunciation of German officials for attacking the easy-money policies pursued not only by the ECB but also by the Fed in the United States.

It wrote, “True to form, these ECB critics had no second thoughts about what they were doing to their fellow Europeans waiting, homeless, cold and hungry on long soup kitchen lines and in makeshift charity shelters. … But the selfish cynics criticizing the ECB are undeterred. They continue to brainwash people that the ECB’s supportive credit policies are ineffective, and that they should be stopped immediately to let interest rates increase on saving deposits and insurance premiums.”

These mutual denunciations are hypocritical and false. Schäuble’s concern for small savers in Germany, like the concerns of CNBC or the PS government, which is imposing ruthless austerity against workers in France, are cynical postures hiding a ruthless struggle for the division of profits between rival imperialist powers.

More fundamentally, an economic crisis is gathering across the entire world capitalist economy, and the sharp divisions between the European imperialist powers are coming to the surface as each one seeks to position itself for new attacks on the working class.

The escalating industrial slowdown in China, signs of gathering recession in Europe, and the holding of talks by Russia and Saudi Arabia ostensibly to stem the collapse in world oil prices all point to deep tensions undermining the world economy. With unemployment in the double digits across Southern Europe after drastic EU austerity programs in Greece, Spain and Italy, the European economy is teetering on the verge of a major new crisis.

A recent IMF report pointed to a deep problems emerging in the European banking industry, with as many as one third of European lenders by total assets facing “significant challenges to attaining sustainable profitability without reform.” The report singled out Deutsche Bank and Crédit Suisse as particularly troubled within the euro zone financial system, while pointing to Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as weak in Britain.

The German population, increasingly forced to rely on private savings by the reactionary Hartz IV social reforms passed in the last decade, faces a potentially catastrophic situation upon their retirement. Fully half of retired workers are expected to live in poverty on the pittance still provided by the state, and those who have amassed small savings for their retirement will receive increasingly few returns.

While Berlin sheds crocodile tears for German retirees to justify turning the screws against debt-laden countries across Europe, the role of the defenders of “quantitative easing” is no less reactionary. The PS government in France is pushing for a change to labor laws designed to allow the trade unions and employers to ignore protections for the workers in the Labor Code, and seeking to crush youth protests in order to ram it through.

Compared to when the global economic crisis erupted eight years ago, European capitalism is both socioeconomically and politically even less capable of addressing the insoluble contradictions it faces. Not only are socio-economic conditions facing broad masses of workers increasingly intolerable, but political tensions are at a far higher level.

Germany has announced the abandonment of its post-World War II policy of military restraint in 2014 and has begun pouring hundreds of billions of euros into its military. The tensions between the major European powers over financial policy will increasingly take military form.

The increasing influence of neo-fascistic tendencies highlighted by Schäuble, such as the AfD in Germany and the National Front (FN) in France, is in particular a warning that the ruling class as a whole in each European country are turning to ever more aggressive policies. They will escalate attacks on the working class and increasingly come into conflict among themselves.

Stimulus measures ease slowdown in Chinese growth

Nick Beams

The Chinese government reported Friday that the nation’s economy grew by 6.7 percent in the first quarter of this year, the lowest quarterly result since the beginning of 2009. The figure was in line with the government’s target of growth between 6.5 percent and 7 percent, but it was achieved only as a result of stimulus measures that boosted housing and infrastructure spending.

While the growth data eased immediate concerns of a rapid slowdown in the Chinese economy, there are warnings that the government’s measures mean an increase in debt and an easing in the pace of so-called “financial reform” demanded by the West.

The increase in debt was reflected in figures showing that the total stock of financing in the economy, including the issuance of bonds by local government, increased by 15.8 percent in the year to March from the year ago, the fastest rate in two years.

The impact of stimulus measures was reflected in monthly production data, issued at the same time as the quarterly GDP numbers. They showed fixed asset investment growth of 10.7 percent in the year to March, ahead of expectations and the highest level since August last year. Industrial production rose by 6.8 percent, its fastest pace for nine months.

One of the key drivers of the increase in investment was a pick-up in the property market, especially in the large cities, where sales rose by 33 percent in the first three months, the biggest increase in two years.

Cornell economics professor Eswar Prasad, former China head at the IMF, said the new macroeconomy data “painted a picture of an economy that has lost some growth momentum but lives to fight another day.” The data appeared to repudiate the “excessively pessimistic” view about China in financial markets earlier in the year, “although there is still plenty of ammunition for pessimists to maintain their negative outlook.”

Other commentary on the growth figures focused on the impact of government measures. The managing director and vice-chairman for Asia Pacific at JPMorgan Chase, Jing Ulrich, told CNBC that the economy was recovering from the lows experienced last December and January. “That shows that the government measures, which they introduced in recent months, are beginning to have an effect,” he said.

The “weak spot” was the decline in the total value of exports and imports, which are down by 5.9 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago, reflecting weaker global growth, which is impacting Chinese trade.

The Asia economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, Tom Rafferty, said the growth figures represented only a “temporary respite” for the economy. The data “ought not to distract from the fact that the structural issues facing China’s economy remain unresolved,” he said. “It has taken considerable monetary and fiscal loosening to stabilize growth at this level and this effort has distracted from the reform agenda that is fundamental to long-term economic stability.”

Central to the “reform agenda” is the closure of unprofitable enterprises, with the loss of millions in jobs in basic industries, and the reduction of debt.

The International Monetary Fund’s Global Financial Stability Report, issued earlier this week, warned that declining growth and profitability had led to a rise in the share of debt held by Chinese firms that do not earn enough to cover their interest payments. This category is now 14 percent of the total debt of Chinese companies—more than triple the level in 2010.

Chief China economist at JPMorgan in Hong Kong, Zhu Haibin, told theFinancial Times that corporate debt was “alarmingly high.”

“If credit growth continues to be very strong, while at the same time we don’t see a concrete plan to deal with ‘zombie companies’ such as bankruptcies and writing off bad loans, then the situation may get worse,” he said.

There is also considerable scepticism about the accuracy of the figures, with some analysts claiming the real Chinese growth rate is closer to 4 percent. An index based on data on electricity usage, rail cargo volumes and bank lending showed a drop of 13 percent in the first quarter.

The president of China Beige Book International, which monitors Chinese growth data, Leland Miller, said the basic trends were lower investment and rising layoffs. The latest data indicated that the Chinese government had decided to slow down reform and restructuring. “It means that they’re taking more debt and they’re putting off their problems for longer,” he said.

While the speed of the slowdown has moderated, its continuation, as reflected in the decline in trade figures, will further impact the global economy as a whole and the Asian economies in particular.

Japan is being adversely affected. While the Chinese and global slowdown has cut Japan’s export markets, it has also had the effect of bringing down the value of the US dollar, with the Fed, citing international conditions, backing away somewhat from its program of interest rate hikes. As a result, the dollar has ceased its rise in international markets, leading to an increase in the value of the yen and making Japanese products less competitive.

This movement has dashed the hopes of the Bank of Japan and the Abe government that the central bank’s negative interest rate regime, introduced at the end of January, would see the value of the currency fall. Instead, it has moved sharply in the opposite direction.

The Financial Times reports that Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso told US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, during discussions at the IMF meeting in Washington, that he was “gravely concerned” by the surge in the value of the yen.

According to the report, Japanese officials were met by “firm warnings” not to devalue the currency, following commitments made at the G20 meeting earlier this year that governments would not target exchange rates, lest this set off a “currency war.”

That agreement is coming under increasing strain. Aso said his message to Lew was that “extreme and disorderly movements in foreign exchange markets have a negative effect on the economy, and I’m gravely concerned by recent one-sided moves.”

White Paper 2016: Blueprint for a new German police and military state

Johannes Stern

The “White Paper 2016 on the Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces]” presented by the Ministry of Defence marks a new stage in the return of German imperialism and should be taken very seriously by workers and young people.

Quoted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday, the draft dispenses with the central limitations imposed on German imperialism following its defeat in two world wars and amounts to a blueprint for the establishment of a new German police and military state.

The draft contains three central points. These include the deployment of the armed forces domestically, and extension of foreign military missions, independently of post-war allies, together with a strengthening of the Federal Security Council.

On the domestic use of the army it states: “The character and dynamic of present and future security policy threats make a further development necessary in order that the Bundeswehr can make an effective contribution to countering threats on the internal and external borders on a clear basis.”

In plain English: The prohibition of deploying the Bundeswehr at home, as well as the separation of the police and army, which is constitutionally enshrined due to the experiences under the Kaiser, during the Weimar Republic and under the Nazi dictatorship, are to be thrown overboard. Although these principles have been continually eroded ever since the 1968 Emergency Laws, a deployment of the army inside Germany has so far been prohibited.

In addition to dismantling the hurdles for the use of the Bundeswehr domestically, the draft White Paper further hollows out the previously existing legal limitations on foreign military missions. “In recent times, the number of deployments and missions has increased that call for immediate and consistent action,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quotes from the White Paper. It will, however, become increasingly more difficult “to maintain the framework of an integrated system of mutual collective security.”

The background to this according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, are formed by “the rulings of the Supreme Court, according to which Bundeswehr foreign missions are only possible if the Federal Republic [of Germany] is part of such a system of mutual collective security.”

According to the White Paper, however, more and more deployments are happening “through ad-hoc cooperation” between states. “Given the further growth of Germany’s security policy responsibilities,” one has to “rise to these challenges.”

Since the infamous “Out of Area” ruling by the Supreme Court in 1994 it is “legal” for the Bundeswehr to be deployed de facto world-wide within the framework of armed missions, however, only as part of collective security systems such as the UN or NATO. While Germany has gone to war in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, and most recently in Syria and Mali in alliance with the US and other European powers, it is now preparing to pursue its imperialist interests independently of the other major powers.

The strengthening of the role of the Federal Security Council (BSR) outlined in the White Paper must be seen in this context. The BSR, which has so far been mainly involved in approving sensitive defence exports, is in future to be “continually involved in strategic questions,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quotes from the White Paper. The BSR will be “strengthened ... as a body providing strategic impulses and control” and backed “with a working structure” as well as “extended by a subordinate coordination body.”

The planned enhancement of the BSR means transforming the “primacy of politics over the military”, also anchored in the constitution in light of the terrible history of German militarism, into its opposite. As in the Kaiser’s Empire and under the Nazis, a small circle of pro-war politicians and generals are once again to be the advocates and architects of German foreign and military policy.

The BSR is not subject to any parliamentary scrutiny and presently has nine permanent members: the Chancellor (Merkel), the Chancellery Chief of Staff (Altmeier), the Foreign Minister (Steinmeier), Defence Minister (von der Leyen), Justice Minister (Maas), Economics Minister (Gabriel) and Economic Cooperation and Development Minister (Mueller). As a rule, the Bundeswehr General Inspector, Volker Wieker, also participates in BSR meetings.

The White Paper 2016 is a further step on the road to the revival of German militarism, announced by President Gauck and the government at the start of 2014. It has been discussed and elaborated for a year. As with the strategy paper “New Power—New Responsibility. Elements of German foreign and security policy for a Changing World”, the original template for the new German foreign and great power politics, leading German journalists, academics, military, business representatives and representatives of all parliamentary parties were involved in its drafting.

The members of the four working groups—“Security and Defence Policy”, “Partnerships and Alliances”, “Bundeswehr” and “National Action Framework” that the White Paper establishes include, among others:

Sylke Tempel, chief editor of Internationale Politik; Thomas Bagger, chief of the planning staff at the Foreign Ministry; Major General Hans-Werner Wiermann, commander of the Bundeswehr’s Territorial Command in Berlin; Winfried Nachwei, former security spokesman for the Green Party; Henning Otte, defence policy spokesman for the Christian Democratic Party/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group, Constanze Stelzenmueller, a former security policy editor at Die Zeit and Fellow of the American Brookings Institute; the historian Klaus Naumann from the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, and Matthias Herdegen, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for Public Law, as well as director of the Institute for Law at the University of Bonn.

Representatives of the Left Party, who already contributed to the paper “New Power—New Responsibility”, were involved in the process of drawing up the White Paper. Extensive video interviews with the defence spokeswomen of the Left Party, Christine Buchholz, and the Left Party representative on the Parliamentary Defence Affairs Committee, Alexander Neu, can be seen on the White Paper’s web site set up by the defence ministry. Buchholz had already participated in the meeting announcing the White Paper last February, and presented a lecture on the new German foreign policy at the German Society for Foreign Policy (DGAP) just two weeks later.

The draft White Paper 2016 now issued by the defence ministry, due to be presented to the cabinet in June, has been praised by many Christian Democratic politicians.

For example, the chairman of the Interior Ministers Conference (IMK), Klaus Bouillon (CDU), supported the use of the Bundeswehr at home. “The Bundeswehr must be a reliable partner for internal security,” he said on Tuesday in Saarbrücken. “After the awful terror in Belgium and France”, he welcomed the considerations at federal level to change the constitution accordingly. In order to protect people, “all available forces” should be combined, he said.

The representatives of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party, commented on the paper in a manner that also signaled their approval of its basic thrust.

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Bundeswehr, Hans-Peter Bartels (SPD), declared that he considered a debate on the possible uses of the Bundeswehr would be useful. However, in a newspaper article, he expressed scepticism over whether this required a constitutional amendment, saying, “There already exists laws concerning Internal Emergencies, national defence and official help in cases of natural disasters or serious accidents, which permit the use of the armed forces at home.”

The SPD parliamentary defence spokesman, Rainer Arnold, told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that it made more sense to provide the police with additional resources, rather than make the already stretched Bundeswehr take on more tasks. The parliamentary group leaders of the Greens and the Left Party expressed something very similar. Anton Hofreiter (Greens) called for the police to be better equipped and Dietmar Bartsch (Left Party) said: “In order to ward off terrorists, we need a well-trained police.”

US corporate tax cheats hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in offshore accounts

Patrick Martin

A report issued Thursday by the British charity Oxfam found that the 50 largest US corporations are hiding $1.4 trillion in profits in overseas accounts to avoid US income taxes, much of it in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

The biggest tax dodger is technology giant Apple, with $181 billion held offshore. General Electric had the second-largest stash, at $119 billion, enough to repay four times over the $28 billion GE received in federal guarantees during the 2008 Wall Street crash. Microsoft had $108 billion in overseas accounts, with companies like Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, IBM, Cisco Systems, Google, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson rounding out the top ten.

Overseas tax havens have been the focus of recent revelations about tax scams by wealthy individuals, based on the leak of the “Panama Papers,” documents from a single Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, involving 214,000 offshore shell companies. The firm’s clients included 29 billionaires and 140 top politicians worldwide, among them a dozen heads of government.

But the sums involved in corporate tax scams dwarf those hidden away by individuals. According to the Oxfam report, the offshore manipulations by the 50 largest US corporations cost the US taxpayer $111 billion each year, while robbing another $100 billion annually from countries overseas, many of them desperately poor.

The $111 billion a year in US taxes evaded would be sufficient to eliminate 90 percent of child poverty in America, effectively wiping out that social scourge. It is more than the annual cost of the food stamp program, or unemployment benefits, or the total budget of the Department of Education.

Oxfam timed the release of its report for the April 15 income tax deadline in the United States (actually Monday, April 18 this year), when tens of millions of working people must file their income tax returns or face federal penalties. Working people could face additional tax penalties of up to 2 percent of household income, to a maximum of $975, under the Obamacare “individual mandate,” if they have not purchased private health insurance.

There is a stark contrast between the IRS hounding of working people for relatively small amounts of money—but difficult or impossible to pay for those on low incomes—and the green light given to corporate tax cheats who evade taxation on trillions in income.

Federal Tax Paid vs Federal Loans, Bailouts, Loan Guarantees Received by 50 largest US companies 2008-2014

“As Americans rush to finalize tax returns, multinational corporations that benefit from trillions in taxpayer-funded support are dodging billions in taxes,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. “The vast sums large companies stash in tax havens should be fighting poverty and rebuilding America’s infrastructure, not hidden offshore in Panama, Bahamas, or the Cayman Islands.”

The Oxfam report, titled “Broken at the Top,” expresses concern that “tax dodging by multinational corporations…contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth.”

It continues: “This inequality is fueled by an economic and political system that benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of the rest, causing the gains of economic growth over the last several decades to go disproportionately to the already wealthy. Among the most damning examples of this rigged system is the way large, profitable companies use offshore tax havens, and other aggressive and secretive methods, to dramatically lower their corporate tax rates in the United States and developing countries alike.”

Oxfam collected figures available from the 10-K reports and other financial documents issued by the 50 largest US companies, covering the period since the Wall Street crash, 2008 through 2014, and presented them in an interactive table. The figures included total profits, federal taxes paid, total US taxes paid (including state and local), lobbying expenses, tax breaks, money held in offshore accounts, and benefits received from the federal government, including loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.

Among the most important findings:

* The top 50 companies made nearly $4 trillion in profits globally, but paid only $412 billion in federal income tax, for an effective tax rate of barely 10 percent, compared to the statutory rate of 35 percent.

* The 50 companies spent $2.6 billion to influence the federal government, while reaping nearly $11.2 trillion in federal support, for an effective return of 400,000 percent on their lobbying expenses.

* The overseas cash stashed by the 50 companies, nearly $1.4 trillion, is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Russia, Mexico, Spain or South Korea.

* US multinationals reported 43 percent of their foreign earnings from five tax havens, countries that accounted for only 4 percent of their foreign workforce and 7 percent of foreign investment. All told, US companies shifted between $500 billion and $700 billion in profits from countries where economic activity actually took place to countries where tax rates were low.

* In the year 2012 alone, US firms reported $80 billion in profits in Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in the four largest economies (after the US itself): China, Japan, Germany and France. This figure was nearly 20 times the total GDP of the tiny island country.

The Oxfam report also pointed to an estimated $100 billion in taxes evaded in foreign countries, many of them rich in natural resources extracted by such global giants as Exxon, Chevron and Dow Chemical. According to the report, “Taxes paid, or unpaid, by multinational companies in poor countries can be the difference between life and death, poverty or opportunity. $100 billion is four times what the 47 least developed countries in the world spend on education for their 932 million citizens. $100 billion is equivalent to what it would cost to provide basic life-saving health services or safe water and sanitation to more than 2.2 billion people.”

The report cited former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assessment that “Africa loses more money each year to tax dodging than it receives in international development assistance.”

Oxfam offered no solution to the growth of inequality and the systematic looting by big corporations that its report documents, except to urge governments around the world to close tax loopholes. The group also pleads with the corporate bosses themselves not to be quite so greedy. Neither capitalist governments nor the CEOs will pay the slightest attention. But the working class should take note of these figures, which provide ample evidence of the bankrupt and reactionary nature of capitalism, and the urgent necessity of building a mass movement, on a global scale, to put an end to the profit system.