Another expanded recall of airbags prone to deadly explosions

Shannon Jones

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said this week that it is expanding the recall of defective airbag inflators manufactured by Japanese auto parts maker Takata to 35-40 million. The latest announcement doubles the size of the Takata airbag recall, which is already the largest in history.

The announcement this week is the latest in a piecemeal series of recalls of the defective airbags that can explode, sending deadly metal fragments spraying into a car’s passenger compartment. At issue is an airbag inflator that is powered by an ammonium nitrate propellant. If exposed to water or humid conditions it can become unstable, exploding with sufficient force to spray shrapnel from the inflator canister.

The latest recall followed the report of three separate investigations carried out by Honda, Takata and a consortium of 10 automakers. According to these reports, NHTSA concluded that long-term exposure to environmental moisture and wide temperature fluctuations can, over time, degrade the airbag propellant, making it prone to sudden, unanticipated explosions.

The most recent documented death occurred on March 31 when Huma Hanif, a Texas high school senior, was killed after her Honda Civic rear-ended another car at an intersection. An autopsy showed that metal fragments sprayed by the air bag inflator had cut her jugular vein and carotid artery. Police said that Hanif should otherwise have survived the accident, which crumpled the car’s hood. At least 11 deaths worldwide are linked to the defect and over 100 injuries.

The expanded recall, which is limited to airbag inflators without a drying agent to prevent moisture accumulation, brings the number of vehicles affected to at least 63 million. That amounts to about one out of every four vehicles on the road in the US. But there are millions more ammonium nitrate inflators installed in vehicles that are still in operation and most likely need to be recalled.

Once again NHTSA is showing extreme indulgence in the face of criminal corporate neglect. The problem with the Takata airbag inflator has been known for years. The recalls have been proceeding at a snail’s pace since 2008, when Honda first brought the problem to the attention of NHTSA. The agency opened an investigation at the time, but took no further action.

But the problem dates back much further. One Takata engineer, Mark Lillie, raised concerns about the use of ammonium nitrate propellant in the late 1990s. Honda first raised the issue with Takata as early as 2004. It settled several injury claims related to exploding airbags, but did not issue a safety recall until 2008, and then limited it to a few thousand vehicles. Other vehicle manufacturers, including US carmakers, who used Takata airbag inflators were meanwhile either unaware of the problem or chose to ignore it.

Takata only finally admitted in May of last year that its products were defective. For an extended period Takata denied that its use of ammonium nitrate was to blame for the deaths and injuries, instead citing manufacturer errors or quality control problems. It eventually added a drying agent to the ammonium nitrate in an attempt to make it more stable. However, Lillie, in remarks to the New York Times, said that while the drying agent could reduce the problem, “It can’t eliminate the problem.”

Last year NHTSA gave Takata until the end of 2018 to prove that its inflators without the drying compound were safe. It imposed a token $70 million fine and threatened another $130 million penalty if the company did not comply with terms of a consent order. NHTSA has now barred Takata from using ammonium nitrate on future product orders. No criminal charges are pending, despite the fact that, according to NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind, Takata “misled, obscured and withheld information,” from consumers, regulators and automakers.

In fact, according to US Senate documents cited by the New York Times,Takata presented falsified test data to Honda. Another document cited a Takata manager who wrote an internal memo warning that the company had used inaccurate information to determine the scope of one of the recalls.

NHTSA has periodically issued expanded recalls of Takata airbags since 2008, generally in reaction to reports of another gruesome death. Federal regulators have performed strange contortions to limit the impact of recalls. In 2014, for example, they issued a recall for Takata airbag inflators restricted to certain US states with particularly high humidity. Owners of vehicles in non-recall states were not notified and not eligible for repairs.

Despite the large number of recall orders, relatively few inflators have been replaced due to a shortage of parts, leaving millions of cars with the deadly defect on the road. The Detroit News reported that as of April 22, only 8.2 million of nearly 29 million airbag inflators initially recalled had been replaced.

Meanwhile, there are still some 18 million side-air-bag inflators lacking a drying agent that are not under a recall order. There are also another 32 million airbag inflators with the drying agent not subject to recall.

The continued delays and obfuscations by NHTSA in relation to Takata are part of a long pattern of collaboration by federal safety regulators with the automotive industry. The agency spends about as much money on developing safety rating for vehicles, a corporate marketing tool, as it spends on investigating safety defects. In 2015 there were only 28 full-time workers employed in the defects office.

The Takata airbag scandal follows the more than decade-long cover-up by General Motors of a deadly ignition defect. At least 124 people died and hundreds more were injured, many maimed for life. No GM officials were criminally charged as a result of the cover-up and the company was hit with relatively minor monetary sanctions.

As in the case of the Takata airbag cover-up, NHTSA did nothing, even when confronted with evidence of a tie between the defective GM ignition switches and deadly crashes. Attorneys for accident victims eventually exposed the connection, not GM’s phony internal investigation or government regulators.

Slowest US job growth in seven months

Barry Grey

The US economy continued to stagnate in April, creating a mere 160,000 jobs, far fewer than the 200,000 predicted by economists and the lowest number in seven months, according to the monthly employment report released Friday by the Labor Department.

Employment gains have averaged 192,000 a month so far this year, well below 2015’s average of 229,000 jobs a month.

The official unemployment rate edged up to 5.0 percent from 4.9 percent and employment fell by the most since 2013. The labor force actually declined, with 362,000 people dropping out of the labor market. The labor participation rate—the share of working-age people in the labor force—dropped to 62.8 percent from the previous month’s 63 percent. The employment-to-population ratio also declined, falling to 59.7 percent.

These dismal figures are consistent with recent data showing a sharp deceleration in US economic growth, which has slowed for three consecutive quarters. Last week, the government reported that the nation’s gross domestic product rose by only 0.5 percent in the first three months of 2016, the weakest quarterly pace in two years. Of particular significance was a dramatic decline in business investment, portending more months of minimal job growth.

Earlier this week, the government reported a sharp decline in US imports, a direct reflection of the deepening slump in the global economy. In April, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its projection for global economic growth for the fourth straight time in a year and warned of a “synchronized slowdown.”

On Thursday, the outplacement consultancy firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported a sharp increase in layoff announcements by US-based companies in April. Challenger said employers had given notification of workforce reductions totaling 65,141 jobs, a 35 percent increase over March and nearly 6 percent higher than the number recorded in April of 2015.

The company noted that US employers announced more than 250,000 job cuts through the first four months of 2016, 24 percent higher than the same period a year ago and the highest January-April total since the depths of the economic crisis in 2009.

“We continue to see large-scale layoffs in the energy sector, where low oil prices are driving down profits. However, we are also seeing heavy downsizing activity in other areas, such as computers and retail,” said the firm’s CEO, John A. Challenger. The report pointed out that the energy section announced a further 19,759 job cuts in April, bringing the year-to-date total to 72,660. It also noted that computer firms announced nearly 17,000 job cuts last month, including 12,000 by chipmaker Intel.

The official 5.0 percent unemployment figure masks a continuing jobs crisis and deterioration in the wages and working conditions of broad sections of the population. The vast majority of jobs wiped out in the so-called Great Recession that followed the financial crash of 2008 have been replaced during the Obama “recovery” that began in mid-2009 with low-wage, part-time, temporary and contingent jobs. This regression in working-class living standards is reflected in soaring mortality rates, rising suicide and drug addiction rates and declining life expectancy for substantial social layers.

The acute social crisis has found expression in recent weeks in a wave of store closings and layoffs by large retail chains, including Walmart, Sears/Kmart and Macy’s, whose revenues and profits have been impacted by the economic distress of their customer base.

In April, there were still 7.9 million people officially counted as unemployed. That number, however, excludes millions of people who have dropped out of the labor market because they are unable to secure a job that pays a living wage, and an additional 6 million people who are working part-time only because they cannot get a full-time job.

The US financial markets rose in response to the poor jobs report, based on the calculation that the weak figures made it less likely the Federal Reserve Board would raise interest rates when it meets next month.

In typical fashion, President Obama and others in his administration attempted to present the April jobs report as a positive vindication of their economic policies. Obama held a brief White House press conference in which he hailed the report, saying, “The [economy] has been growing, unemployment has been falling and wages have been rising.”

His labor secretary, Thomas E. Perez, was even more enthusiastic. “Today’s report,” he declared, “is further evidence of a steady recovery that continues to put more people back to work… Despite a lot of naysaying from some people, the plain truth is that the economy has bounced back impressively from the Great Recession, creating opportunity and improving the lives of millions of people.”

The net gain in private-sector jobs in April was 171,000, but government jobs declined by 11,000, mostly as a result of cuts in the US Postal Service and in education. The job figures for the two previous months were downwardly revised by a combined total of 19,000.

Retailers cut payrolls by the most in two years, and construction firms added only 1,000 positions. Employment in mining and logging, a category that includes the coal, oil and gas industry, fell by 8,000 in April. The sector lost 136,000 jobs from a year earlier.

Manufacturers added 4,000 jobs during April, but factories shed 47,000 jobs in the first three months of the year.

Press reports generally hailed a rise in average hourly earnings for the month of 0.3 percent from the prior month, bringing the annualized rate of growth since April 2015 to 2.5 percent. However, economists consider growth of at least 3.5 percent to be indicative of a healthy labor market.

Growing anxiety in Europe over Donald Trump

Ulrich Rippert

As it becomes increasingly likely that Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate in the autumn, concern is growing in European capitals over the consequences. The fact that Trump’s ascendancy is of major international significance is recognised on all sides.

Last Wednesday, when it became clear that the multibillionaire had convincingly won the Indiana primary election and his two remaining competitors had announced their withdrawal, editorial offices were taken aback. The word “shock” made the rounds.

The foreign affairs editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, titled his piece “American primaries: Shock—it’s Trump!” Der Spiegel headlined its commentary “The shock is complete.” Broadcaster NTV spoke of the “Trump shock” and “helpless Republicans.” Die Zeit ’s article was titled “Donald Trump: America’s worst nightmare.”

Frankenberger posed the question of why shock dominated the editorial offices when they were well connected and kept informed by correspondents in Washington. His answer was that they had falsely evaluated the animosity of the Republican establishment toward Trump. His “outsider” status had been not a handicap, but an advantage. He had become a spokesman for a section of those who oppose the political establishment.

Already on the Monday prior to the Super Tuesday contests on March 1, Frankenberger had written: “Trump is harvesting the anger of voters where others have been its victims. He is profiting from the anger of many white voters towards ‘Washington,’ the perception that the country is on a fundamentally wrong course as a result of social and cultural shifts.” Trump can portray himself as “the new leader and healer in relation to the concerns and needs of ordinary people,” and “say the most incredible things with hardly any consequences” because the anger towards the elites is so great.

“American society is much more enraged than it has been for a long time, the class contradictions are much sharper than before,” wrote Frankenberger, noting that the previous years of crisis had fundamentally changed American society. “And now Trump comes along and gathers together the victims, the angry, the enraged, those without inhibitions, who celebrate Trump’s uninhibitedness and audacity. And to whom it is irrelevant what the world thinks or if it is speechless about what is going on in the United States.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung concluded its assessment with the words, “We are writing in 2016, the year when the disillusioned strike back.”

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung attempted to assuage concerns, writing that Trump’s elevation meant the rise of “Hillary Clinton as the bearer of hope.” For the Democratic Party, the primary result in Indiana was good, the mouthpiece of the Swiss banks declared. Clinton could now focus on Trump as her competitor, and Trump’s unpredictability increased Clinton’s chances of victory.

This was contradicted a day later by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which wrote, “Speculation that Clinton will have an easy time of it against Trump in November—because her rival is unelectable, because he has insulted too many groups of voters, because he offers simple solutions to a complex world”—was plausible, but it underestimated the “unprecedented anti-establishment furore” that had emerged in the primaries.

The newspaper does not view Trump’s extreme right-wing politics as the main danger for Europe, but rather the social movement that underlies his rise.

In an article titled “America is in turmoil,” Frankenberger wrote that there was in the population a “desire to settle accounts with the political establishment.” And such a sentiment, “which has political and economic, social and cultural roots,” is not restricted to the US, but is making itself felt in other Western countries.

The article continued: “In France, a new president will be elected in the coming year. How will the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, Marine Le Pen, perform?” In Austria, a far-right candidate had suddenly emerged in the lead, and in Germany the AfD was registering growing support. The impact this would have on the federal elections next year was just as incalculable as Trump’s candidacy had been a year ago.

The evaluations of Trump’s political declarations have been restrained to date. Responding to his foreign policy speech last month, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he could “still not identify a course.” Steinmeier added, “It seems to me as though it is not quite spelled out yet.”

Trump announced his intention, under the slogan “America first,” to focus foreign policy solely on US interests. Steinmeier remarked, “I only hope that the election campaign in the US does not evade accepting reality.” The future US president would have to accept that the global security framework had changed. “To that extent, ‘America first’ actually offers no answer,” he said.

Trump’s declarations, according to Steinmeier, were “not entirely free from contradictions” because he stated his intention to make America strong again while at the same time indicating a retreat. “These two things don’t seem to me to fit together.”

Josef Joffe, writing on the same issue in Die Zeit, said Trump’s foreign policy speech permitted all possible interpretations. In some statements he had “outflanked Hillary Clinton from the left.” It was no accident that the former secretary of state was seen as the “lone hawk” among the remaining candidates. She had always appealed for a “firm stance,” Joffe wrote, “whether against Assad in Syria or Chinese expansionism.” He continued, “Instead of retreat, she preaches aggressive defence and loyalty to alliances.”

By contrast, Trump said he wanted “to bring peace to the world.” He would be happy “to make friends out of old enemies.” He had issued conciliatory words towards Russia, while speaking out against free trade deals.

“Bernie Sanders says more or less the same,” Joffe wrote, and asked, “Is Trump a red in capitalist clothing? Certainly in one sense: the Western left has switched sides—away from the internationalism of the 20th century to protectionism and inwardness.”

But the “other face of Donaldism” was the unrestrained nationalism, the exaltation of one’s own nation—and these reflexes were clearly right-wing. “America first! was his central message in his foreign policy speech.” He thereby placed himself in the tradition of the American right wing, which, with the support of the anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh, fought under precisely this slogan against US participation in World War II against Hitler.

While discussion of the causes and consequences of the rise of the far right on both sides of the Atlantic has been the dominant response, voices are beginning to be raised in support of a Trump victory.

The Münchner Merkur wrote a comment titled “A US President Trump could offer us an opportunity.” It opined, “Many in Europe are looking towards America with concern and have nightmare visions of Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States. But this would be an opportunity.”

Europe had long faced the challenge of finding alternatives to greater or lesser dependence on its partner, America. But thus far, all had fallen by the wayside: “No common defence policy in the EU, no common finance policy. Europe is in a shambles just now, one only has to consider the refugee policy.”

Perhaps the words of French historian Emmanuel Todd, who described a German-French alliance as a world power, were somewhat exaggerated. But “in essence, Europe has a lot of potential for the future.” Britain would then have to decide “whether it prefers to stand with Europe rather than a world power in retreat.”

The EU was a “historically unique project” that had to newly invent itself. “If America isolates itself under President Donald Trump, this could be the opportunity.”

Baghdad on military lockdown over fear of protests

Bill Van Auken

Security forces erected heavy concrete blast walls and strung barbed wire across two strategic bridges in the capital of Baghdad Friday as heavily armed troops deployed across the city. The security lockdown was meant to prevent a repeat of the events last Saturday, when thousands of demonstrators stormed the Green Zone, the walled-off seat of the Iraqi government.

On April 30, demonstrators denouncing the Iraqi government’s corruption, failure to provide basic services and inability to prevent terrorist bombings pulled down the massive blast walls surrounding the Green Zone, a high-security enclave created by the US occupation authorities after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They occupied the parliament, breaking up furniture and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives.

Friday saw no repeat of those dramatic scenes, in large measure because the populist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who called on his supporters to join the siege of the Green Zone last weekend, this time urged them to only protest outside the city’s mosques at the end of Friday afternoon prayers.

Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia waged an insurgency against US occupation troops a decade ago, was called to Iran after the events of last weekend. He had supported the protest ostensibly to further the bid by the US-backed Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to overhaul the current government with the aim of curbing corruption and introducing more competent governance.

It appeared, however, that Sadr was in less than full control of the protest, which followed a series of largely spontaneous actions demanding that the government provide basic services and denouncing its corruption. Last weekend’s attacks on the parliament and assaults on several legislators expressed the bitter hostility of the masses of Iraq’s impoverished population toward a regime dominated by reactionary exile politicians brought back to the country by the US war of aggression.

The storming of the Green Zone shook the Baghdad regime and has provoked serious consternation in both Washington and Tehran, which are both allied with the Abadi regime in the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Among the security forces occupying Baghdad’s bridges and major roads on Friday were reportedly three regiments of the elite US-trained counterterrorism police, which had been withdrawn from the battle against ISIS to protect the Iraqi regime from the people of Baghdad. These troops, equipped with armored Humvees armed with machine guns, also took up positions inside the Green Zone itself.

On Thursday night, Prime Minister Abadi delivered a televised speech vowing to prevent any repeat of the storming of the Green Zone. A day earlier, he sacked the officer in charge of security in the fortified enclave, Gen. Karim Abboud al-Tamini, who in an earlier protest had been filmed kissing the hand of Sadr in a sign of loyalty to the Shia cleric.

“We fear that some may take advantage of the peaceful protests to pull the country into chaos, looting and destruction,” Abadi said in his televised remarks. “This is what happened in the attack on the parliament and the MPs.”

At the center of the current crisis is the dispute over the attempt by Abadi to replace incumbent ministers drawn from the various Iraqi political parties with a cabinet of “technocrats.” The proposal is bitterly opposed by the politicians and parties that have benefited from the divide-and-rule system imposed by the US occupation, which accorded political positions and influence based on a religious- and ethnic-based quota system.

Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties all have used their control of different ministries as a means of looting public funds derived from the country’s oil exports, while infrastructure and basic services continued to deteriorate and masses of people were plunged into deepening poverty.

The parliament has blocked Abadi’s appointments, and there are growing calls for his ouster, including from within his own ruling Dawa Party. In one recent parliamentary session, 100 out of the legislature’s 328 members called for the prime minister to resign.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, in large part due to the collapse in oil revenues, which are the source of 95 percent of its budget.

Jan Kubiš, the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative to Iraq painted a grim picture of the political situation there in a report Friday to the UN Security Council. He said that the country was engulfed in a “profound political crisis” that will only be worsened by the ongoing escalation of the US-led war against ISIS.

Under conditions in which the government is beset by “paralysis and deadlock,” the envoy said, Iraq’s humanitarian crisis is “one of the world’s worst.”

“Nearly a third of the population—over ten million people—now require some form of humanitarian assistance,” Kubiš said. He warned that the US-led assault now being prepared against the ISIS-held city of Mosul would lead to “mass displacement in the months ahead.”

“In a worst case scenario, more than 2 million more Iraqis may be newly displaced by the end of the year,” the envoy warned.

Adding that “political crisis and chaos” would only strengthen ISIS, the special representative told the Security Council that the “demonstrations are set to continue.”

In apparent anticipation of deepening unrest, the Pentagon rushed an additional 25 US Marines to Baghdad to beef up the security force guarding the US Embassy. Located in the heart of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified embassy is the largest such facility in the world, built at a cost of over $750 million and occupying a space roughly equivalent to that of Vatican City.

The political crisis in Baghdad is unfolding even as the US steadily escalates its military intervention in Iraq. The increasingly direct involvement of US troops in the fighting was underscored by the announcement Tuesday of the death of a Navy SEAL in combat with ISIS fighters in the north of the country. And it was announced Friday that US Apache attack helicopters will be sent into combat imminently.

What the simmering protests make clear is that ISIS is merely one of the symptoms of the catastrophe created by the US war of aggression begun in 2003, which claimed the lives of over a million Iraqis and left an entire society in ruins.

New Zealand Labour Party leader visits Iraq

Tom Peters

At the invitation of New Zealand’s National Party government, opposition Labour Party leader Andrew Little joined Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee on a trip to Iraq last week.

Little and Brownlee visited approximately 100 New Zealand troops who have been training Iraqi forces at Camp Taji for the past year. They also met Iraq’s Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi and held talks with US and Australian military commanders.

Little’s visit underscored, once again, Labour’s support for the US-led war in Iraq and imperialist interventions across the Middle East. Under the pretext of a “war on terror” against Islamic State (ISIS), the US is seeking to cement its control over Iraq, while Syria has been turned into a hell on earth by civil war instigated by US-backed Islamist “rebels” to bring about regime change. The rise of ISIS has been fuelled by US interventions, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the 2011 NATO war in Libya and the proxy war in Syria. In Syria, the CIA and Washington’s allies—Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar—have funded and armed ISIS and similar militias linked to Al Qaeda.

The Labour Party voted against sending New Zealand soldiers to Iraq last year, in deference to widespread anti-war sentiment. This opposition was revealed to be a fraud when Little, during a visit to Washington last December, declared he would be willing to send elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces to fight ISIS if the United Nations mandated the intervention. At the same time, Labour openly supported the bombing of Iraq and Syria by the US and its allies, merely expressing concern that this would not be enough without “troops on the ground.”

Following his visit to Camp Taji, Little said in a press statement on April 28 that “Labour opposed the deployment because the Iraqi Army’s track record was poor, even after years of training by American and other armies.” He did not, however, call for the New Zealand troops’ withdrawal.

Instead, Little strongly implied that the deployment should be extended. “[T]he needs Iraq has won’t be met in the two-year period the government set for the mission, and the government must now be open with the public about the demands being made of it and its plans,” he said.

In an interview with TV3’s “The Nation,” Little gushed that he “saw some great stuff happening in Camp Taji, great work that our folks are doing out there.” He described the two-year deployment as inadequate, saying “the American generals, the Iraqi minister of defence and his generals ... [and] the Australians who are there, they’re all saying this [mission] is long-term ... It’s not as easy as saying we’ve done some training, we’re out of here, because there will be a vacuum left.”

Little also declared that “the world has to push back on ISIS, certainly in Iraq. The next big challenge then will be Syria. Then you’ve got Libya, and you’ve got, you know, other parts of the Middle East.”

In short, Labour is positioning itself to the right of the government. It is pushing for a lengthier deployment in Iraq and New Zealand support for other US imperialist interventions.

Labour's supporters in the media, including the trade union funded Daily Blog, have mostly remained silent on Little's trip to Iraq and his pro-war statements. Pro-Labour columnist Chris Trotter complained that Little had "compromised" Labour's "principled foreign policy stance.” He called on Labour to demand the "withdrawal of all Westernforces—including our own—from the entire region.” Trotter has no principled opposition to the war, however. In July last year he called for a major Western military escalation to bring about the "utter destruction" of ISIS and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The Green Party, which voted against sending troops last year, made no comment on Little’s embrace of the deployment. The Maori nationalist Mana Party and its pseudo-left supporters—the International Socialist Organisation, Fightback and Socialist Aotearoa—also said nothing about Labour’s pro-war positions. These parties supported Labour’s 2014 election campaign. The pseudo-left groups lined up behind US imperialism in Syria by fraudulently presenting the US-backed “rebels” as the leaders of a revolution.

The government is apparently preparing to announce an extension to its military deployment in Iraq, following a request by Washington last year for a greater commitment. New Zealand Herald political columnist Claire Trevett suggested on April 30 that Little was invited to Iraq in order to ensure “bipartisan” support for such a decision. She noted that the government similarly sought Labour’s backing for legislation to expand state surveillance powers earlier this year, and arranged a meeting between Little and US national security chief James Clapper.

Labour, in fact, has played the leading role in strengthening the military and intelligence alliance with the US. The 1999-2008 Labour government, which was supported by the Greens, sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Successive governments have overseen a major expansion in the spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, which is part of the US-led Five Eyes alliance and spies on China on behalf of the US National Security Agency.

The entire political establishment supports New Zealand’s collaboration with Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, an aggressive strategy aimed at securing US domination over the Asia-Pacific region through the military encirclement of China. Along with the right-wing populist New Zealand First Party, Labour recently demanded a major increase in spending on the military, particularly the navy. The government already plans to spend $11 billion over the next decade on new military hardware, including frigates and air force planes, in order to prepare the country for future wars.

Leader of Brazil impeachment drive sacked over corruption

Bill Van Auken

The Brazilian Supreme Court justice in charge of the “Lava Jato” (Car Wash) investigation into the massive Petrobras kickback and bribery scandal ordered the removal Thursday of Eduardo Cunha from his position as the speaker of the lower house of the Brazilian parliament. Cunha, one of the country’s most powerful politicians, is the chief architect of the impeachment drive against Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) president Dilma Rousseff.

The order by Judge Teori Zavascki came in response to a request from Brazil’s prosecutor-general, Rodrigo Janot, who last December issued an 11-point indictment calling Cunha a “delinquent” who used his political position to “prevent investigations against him from progressing...as well as in order to continue his criminal behavior.”

It further charged that the speaker’s actions were incompatible with a “democratic state governed by the rule of law.”

In March, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to place Cunha on trial on charges of corruption and money laundering in connection with the Petrobras scandal. He is accused of personally receiving US$5 million in bribes stemming from contracts with the giant state-run oil conglomerate and of funneling tens of millions of dollars more in kickbacks to his political allies.

Investigations into Cunha’s activities led to the discovery of secret Swiss bank accounts containing millions of dollars. The evidence presented by Janot included accounts of international junkets by the lawmaker and his family which involved levels of spending far beyond the reach of a deputy’s salary. This included Christmas holidays in Miami in 2013 in which the family spent US$42,258. This was followed over the course of the year with similar trips to New York, Paris, Switzerland, Barcelona and Russia that involved similar levels of spending.

Cunha is an evangelical Christian radio commentator and among the most right-wing figures in what is the most reactionary congress seen in Brazil since the end of the military dictatorship. He has been accused of using a mega-church to launder Petrobras kickbacks.

The latest move to suspend Cunha from both his speaker’s position and as a deputy came as the Senate moved closer to the impeachment of Rousseff. Senator Antonio Anastasia, a member of the right-wing PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who was nominated to evaluate the impeachment charges, presented his findings Thursday to a 21-member Senate impeachment committee, declaring that there was “sufficient evidence” to try Rousseff.

The Brazilian president is not charged with personal corruption or in connection with the Petrobras scandal, but rather for violating budget laws by allegedly transferring state bank funds to continue financing government programs and conceal a deficit in the run-up to the 2014 presidential election.

It is virtually certain that the impeachment committee will vote to bring the matter to the full Senate, which is expected to vote next Wednesday on whether to try Rousseff. There likewise appears to be little doubt that the Senate will muster the simple majority vote needed to begin impeachment, a process that would lead to Rousseff’s suspension for 180 days until her final fate is decided.

In the meantime, Vice President Michel Temer, a close political ally of Cunha and fellow member of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party), would assume the presidency. Temer, who has also been accused of involvement in the Petrobras scandal, though as yet not charged, has already unveiled plans to carry a wholesale replacement of ministers and other government officials upon assuming the presidency.

His plans are aimed at meeting the demands of both Brazilian and foreign capitalists for sweeping changes in government policy and class relations under conditions of the deepest economic crisis to face the country since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

While Rousseff and the ruling PT have denounced the impeachment drive as a “coup,” they have worked behind the scenes to win support form the country’s most right-wing parties, while claiming that only they would have the “legitimacy”—as well as the collaboration of the CUT union bureaucracy and the so-called “social movements—to force through the drastic attacks being prepared against the working class

In his decision, Judge Zavascki stressed that he intervened in large measure to stop Cunha from becoming first in line of succession—and acting president if Temer traveled abroad or were suddenly removed from office—because such a position was incompatible with being “a defendant in a criminal case under way in the Supreme Court.”

In reality, the sacking of Cunha raises all the more directly the specter of a full-blown constitutional crisis of the Brazilian state as a result of the corruption that pervades the entire government and every major party. While not yet charged, both Temer and Cunha’s successor as speaker of the lower house, Waldir Maranhao, are also under investigation in connection with the Petrobras scandal.

Among the formal charges against Cunha was that he attempted to bribe and intimidate fellow deputies in order to stymie a move within the parliamentary Ethics Committee to remove him from office.

A principal element of this intimidation was Cunha’s threat to bring impeachment charges against Rousseff unless she and the PT leadership convinced members of the ethics panel in the House of Deputies to vote against his removal. When the PT failed to deliver the votes, he immediately moved to impeach the president.

Seizing on this connection, Rousseff’s attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, announced Thursday that he would make a formal request to the Supreme Court to annul the entire impeachment process. “Cunha threatened the president of the republic that he would begin the process of impeachment if the PT did not come up with the votes to save him in the Ethics Committee,” he said. “What the Supreme Court decided today is exactly a demonstration of his modus operandi.”

It appears unlikely that the court will intervene to halt impeachment.

Meanwhile, Janot, the prosecutor general, is pursuing Petrobras corruption cases against both Rousseff and her precedessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In charges submitted to the Supreme Court in support of a criminal investigation against Lula, Janot charged that the pervasive corruption involving politicians, Petrobras executives and private contractors “could never have functioned for so long and in such a broad and aggressive manner in the sphere of the federal government without the participation of former president Lula.”

Janot is basing his request largely on the testimony of Senator Delcidio do Amaral, the former leader of the ruling PT in the Senate, who was arrested last November for trying to bribe former Petrobras executive Nestor Cervero into staying quiet about his own and his political allies’ involvement in the scandal. Amaral has since told prosecutors that both Lula and Rousseff knew about the kickbacks and bribery.

While Rousseff has not been charged directly with offenses related to the Petrobras scandal, she chaired the energy conglomerate’s board of directors between 2003 and 2010, when much of the bribery and kickbacks took place.

US-backed Chinese separatists, dissidents meet in Dharamsala, India

Kumaran Ira

As Washington presses forward with its anti-China “pivot to Asia,” US-sponsored Chinese exile and dissident groups held an Inter-ethnic/Interfaith Leadership Conference from April 28 to May 1 in McLeod Ganj, a suburb of Dharamsala, India. The stated purpose of the meeting was to discuss how to bring about a transition to “democracy” in China.

The conference was orchestrated by US imperialism along with its regional ally, India, as part of Washington’s growing diplomatic and military-strategic offensive against Beijing. While intensifying preparations for war against China, the US is encouraging explosive ethnic and regional divisions within China, a country with 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities. The goal is to divide China along ethnic lines and ultimately reduce it to semi-colonial status.

The conference, “Strengthening Our Alliance to Advance the Peoples’ Dream: Freedom, Justice, Equality and Peace,” was jointly hosted by a leading Indian-based NGO, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), and the US-based Initiatives For China (IFC), led by Tiananmen Square activist and exiled Chinese dissident Yang Jianli.

It brought together representatives of various separatist groups from Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, “pro-democracy ” Chinese dissidents, and leaders of China’s religious minorities, including Christians, Muslims and Falun Gong.

US government representatives attended the conference, including representatives of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Foreign delegates met the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader, whose exile government is in Dharamsala, on April 28.

The only media permitted at the conference was Radio Free Asia, which is funded by a US federal agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors. According to India’s the Wire, “reports, videos and articles emanating from event were only broadcast on its Cantonese service, with the station’s English web site not making any reference to the conference or the visa controversy” (that had preceded it.) The Wire cited the president of the US-based Uyghur American Association, Ilshat Hassan, who attended the conference. He made clear that a major topic of the conference was the division of China along ethnic lines.

Hassan said, “The youth from China were arguing that big China should be kept intact, stating that democracy will be coming soon. We didn’t say that we want to be independent, but that we must have self-determination. It will be decided by the people of East Turkestan and the people of Tibet on what they want after they are allowed to decide themselves. I guess they are still young.”

As they seek to foment ethnic nationalism and separatism in China, US imperialism and its allies are seeking to exploit real bitter social conflicts and national divisions that emerge from the reactionary policies of the Chinese regime. It has relied ever more on fomenting Han Chinese nationalism since restoring capitalism in China over the course of the 1980s. It has also resorted to discrimination and outright repression of ethnic minorities like the Uighurs in Xinjiang, which like other inland regions of Chine faces high unemployment and low wages.

There have been escalating ethnic riots in Xinjiang between Han and Uighur people, and Beijing has begun banning beards and Muslim veils, provoking discontent among Uighurs and particularly among the large number of unemployed university graduates. Numerous reports indicate that thousands of Uighurs have travelled to the Middle East to join Islamist militias fighting as NATO proxies in the war for regime change in Syria.

The response of Washington and its allies to this state of affairs is utterly reactionary. They are seeking to exploit the discrimination and oppression faced by the Uighurs to stimulate ethnic-nationalism and divide the working class along ethnic lines, promoting various right-wing bourgeois nationalist groups that they directly control. After orchestrating wars for regime change in Libya and Syria relying on Islamists as proxies, US imperialism and its allies are debating whether to employ similar methods against China.

Many of the organisations at the conference, such as the TCHRD, IFC, and the Uyghur American Association, are assets of US imperialism, directly funded by the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED finances as many as 22 organisations in Tibet, including the TCHRD, which receives some $60,000 per year from Washington. Its stated mission is to monitor, document and highlight political repression and human rights violations in Tibet.

The NED is also involved in funding groups that claim to represent the mainly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority to the north-western Chinese region of Xinjiang. The US-based Uyghur American Association and the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) groups are funded by the NED to the tune of $295,000 and $260,000, respectively. The WUC is headed by US-based multimillionaire businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer.

Initiatives for China (IFC) receives as much as $86,500 per year from the NED. It was founded by Tiananmen Square activist and exiled Chinese dissident Yang Jianli, who completed his Doctorate in Political Economy at Harvard University.

Jianli was arrested by the Beijing regime and sentenced to five years imprisonment on espionage charges. With the support of a UN Resolution and a unanimous vote of both houses of the US Congress, Jianli was released in 2007. He advocates a transition to “democracy” in China and US leadership of the struggle for “peaceful democratic reform.”

Under the guise of defending the universal right to freedom of religion, the United States Commission of International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) coordinates closely with Chinese dissidents groups. USCIRF is a bipartisan commission of the US federal government, tasked with making policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress. USCIRF senior representative Katrina Lantos Swett, who founded the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice in 2008, attended the Dharamsala conference.

Direct US financing and supporting of Chinese dissidents against Beijing is a reckless strategy that is escalating diplomatic tensions and threatens to provoke a war between nuclear-armed powers.

Beijing has made clear that it could react violently to overt encouragement by the major powers of separatism in China. At the 2005 National People’s Congress (NPC), the regime passed an “anti-secession law” pledging to go to war in response to a Taiwanese declaration of independence, which it fears could be the signal for the broader promotion of separatism in China.

Before the conference took place, a diplomatic row erupted between China and India over New Delhi’s decision to grant a visa to exiled Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa of the WUC. Although Indian authorities canceled the visa it had granted to Isa after protests from Beijing, provoking harsh criticisms in the Indian media, India offered tourist visas to other Chinese dissidents, including Ilshat Hassan, to attend the conference in Dharamsala.

As the US “pivot to Asia” inflames tensions between the major Asian powers, the attitude of the Indian bourgeoisie towards China is increasingly hostile, as well.

On May 1, the Times of India wrote, “One only need to observe the carefully calibrated yet unmistakably hostile Chinese strategic pursuits vis-a-vis India—be it the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor passing through territories historically claimed by India), the OBOR (One Belt One Road Initiative), or the String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean—to understand that if India fails to stand up to the Chinese now, while it still can, it may forever surrender the possibility of resisting Chinese arm-twisting in the future.”

US intelligence agencies expand electronic surveillance worldwide

Thomas Gaist

The US National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency approximately doubled their surveillance of telephone and electronic communications in 2015, according to documents released in a US government “transparency report” this week.

US intelligence analysts carried out some 25,000 analytical searches of archived communications data derived from the NSA’s sweeping data collection programs last year, including nearly 5,000 searches of data collected from communications by US citizens.

The figure represents a more than twofold increase over 2013, which saw the agencies conduct 9,500 searches of the surveillance database.

Neither the NSA nor CIA is, in theory, authorized to conduct domestic spying operations. Nonetheless, the CIA searched some 2,000 US communications, while the NSA searched nearly 200.

No statistics are provided covering surveillance database searches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The documents do reveal, however, that the FBI issued nearly 50,000 national security letters (NSLs), special memos used by the security apparatus to demand access to contents of private communications from providers in 2015, according to the transparency report.

The NSLs are binding and compel the recipient to maintain total secrecy about the government’s demands for information.

The surge in US government surveillance activity has been accompanied by a legal and political offensive, spearheaded by the Obama administration and the military-intelligence bureaucracy, aimed at further eroding the democratic protections enshrined in Bill of Rights.

As a FISA court judge noted in a secret opinion declassified this week, the military-intelligence apparatus is pushing for statutory changes that “would allow the NSA and CIA to deviate from any restrictions based upon unspecified ‘mandates.’”

The secret FISA order declassified Tuesday, dated November 6, 2015 states: “The FBI, NSA, and CIA all have access to ‘raw,’ or unminimized, information under Section 702

“The NSA and CIA Minimization Procedures included as part of the July 15, 2015 Submission each contain new language stating that ‘nothing in these procedures shall prohibit the retention, processing, or dissemination of information.’”

NSA and CIA are authorized to surveil and analyze any data considered “reasonably necessary” to carry out the agencies’ “legislative mandate,” the document states.

The latest exposures of the US government’s mass spying operations come just days after the US Supreme Court approved changes to an obscure statute, known as Rule 41 of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, which covers the application of the Fourth Amendment to electronic spying by federal agents.

The changes to Rule 41 grant US government operatives essentially limitless authority to hack into, surveil and implant malware into computers and networks anywhere in the world.

According to a letter by Google law enforcement head Richard Salgado, the changes enable “various forms of hacking,” known in the technical jargon as “remote search techniques,” which are essentially hi-tech trojan horse programs that allow agents to manipulate, search, and extract data from infected machines.

Malware-based surveillance is “more invasive than other searches because they often have unknown, widespread and destructive consequences,” Salgado said.

While the rule previously held that state operatives must acquire a specific warrant authorizing a search of clearly defined contents on a given machine, new language allows investigators to deploy surveillance and hacking technology against as many machines and search as many contents as they deem necessary for a given investigation, all on the basis of a single warrant by a single district judge.

The changes state: “A magistrate judge, with authority in any district where activities related to a crime may have occurred, has authority to issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media, and to seize or copy electronically stored information located within or outside that district.”

“The amendment would eliminate the burden of attempting to secure multiple warrants in numerous districts and allow a single judge to oversee the investigation,” the new language states.

"We could definitely see the government go forum-shopping for judges. The bigger question here is should the government be engaged in hacking at all, and, if so, what should the rules of the road be? That's something Congress should decide,” said Robyn Greene of New America’s Open Technology Institute.

The Rule 41 changes were proposed in May 2015 by the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure and given final approval by a panel of officials and experts, including the high court, last week.

US Senator Ron Wyden, who recently warned that the new statute is “not just a garden-variety federal rule change,” and that “we’re talking about mass hacks,” has called for Congress to review the hacking rules.

Wyden is one of a group of leading congressmen who have become vocal advocates on behalf of “surveillance reform,” in an effort to appease popular opposition to spying that erupted after the Snowden revelations broke in June 2013, while directing it into safe channels..

In similarly demagogic remarks, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York recently warned an audience that the NSA is spying on them out of city billboards.

“New spying billboards are being installed across the country, including right here in New York City, and they are being used to collect your mobile-phone data,” Schumer told an audience in Times Square. “They have huge amounts of information on you. Who knows what they could use it for? It’s something straight out of a scary movie,” Schumer said.

Despite his posture of opposition to the spying, however, Schumer made clear that he fully accepts the spying operations.

“We have to move a little bit on the liberty side,” he said. “The wholesale elimination of the [NSA surveillance] program, I think, leaves us too naked in terms of security, and you’ve got to have security as well as liberty.”

The claim that mass spying is necessary to protect Americans’ liberty against “Islamic extremism,” propagated by the state and media establishment and parroted dutifully by liberal and libertarian advocates of surveillance reform alike, is a lie.

The universal acceptance of this lie by the leading promoters of surveillance reform makes clear that the “reform” agenda is little more than a dog-and-pony show, orchestrated by the Obama administration and members of both parties, aimed at restoring a facade of legitimacy to spy programs that have been utterly discredited in the eyes of millions since 2013.

More than a century of historical experience shows that spying on communications by the capitalist state is aimed, above all, at identifying, profiling, and monitoring groups and individuals considered by the state to be threats to the bourgeois order.

The most powerful agencies of the US government are working overtime to assemble dossiers on the views and relations of a population that is becoming increasingly radicalized politically in response to the capitalist crisis.

Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu resigns amid mounting government crisis

Halil Celik

Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu suddenly announced on Wednesday his decision to step down as chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and therefore as prime minister. At a press conference, following the meeting of the Central Executive Board of his party, Davutoglu said that the AKP would organise an extraordinary congress to elect his successor.

The resignation is a reflection of deep conflicts within the state, in the midst of Turkish involvement in the Syria civil war and growing tension with Russia, as well as a renewed, bloody civil war with its own Kurdish minority.

Davutoglu resigned after fistfights repeatedly erupted inside the parliament over Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s moves to crush the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). Last week, and again on Monday, AKP and HDP deputies fought each other in the General Assembly, as the AKP threatens to lift HDP deputies’ parliamentary immunity to allow their trial on terrorism charges.

A barely veiled conflict between between Davutoglu and Erdogan had been growing in the days before Davutoglu’s resignation. On April 29, the AKP’s central executive committee, stacked with Erdogan loyalists, voted to deprive Davutoglu of his right as AKP chairman to appoint regional party officials. Before an emergency meeting with Davutoglu on Wednesday, Erdogan bluntly and publicly told him, “You should not forget how you got your post.”

After the April 29 meeting, there was media speculation over Davutoglu’s political future. Rumours were spread that Erdogan would replace Davutoglu with someone like Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, his close ally, or Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, his son-in-law.

Erdogan blandly dismissed Davutoglu’s resignation, stating that “it is the prime minister’s own decision.” However, Davutoglu made clear it was his response to deep divisions in the AKP.

“I have never negotiated for any post or position over the values and principles I have,” he said, stating that he was angered by the decision to strip him of his powers as party chairman. He added, “As a result of my own examination and consultations with my friends with political experience, including our president, I have come to the conclusion that instead of changing colleagues, it’s much better to change the party chair for the unity of the AKP. … [T]he fate of the AKP is the fate of Turkey.”

Calling for loyalty to Erdogan, Davutoglu cryptically added, “No one should dare to initiate new plots.”

With Davutoglu’s resignation, explosive conflicts inside the Turkish government and bourgeoisie are coming to the surface.

A former foreign minister, Davutoglu is well aware that Turkey has suffered a heavy blow as Erdogan’s policies have simultaneously undermined Ankara’s relations with the United States, the European Union (EU) and Russia. The AKP has also overseen unprecedented social inequality, poverty and unemployment. Nearly half of the Turkish population lives below the poverty line, while a tiny elite appropriates a vast and growing amount of wealth.

Though he was always careful not to criticise Erdogan publicly, Davutoglu has distanced himself from the president on many controversial issues. These include Erdogan’s attempt to concentrate power in his hands by building a “presidential system” and repressive measures against the press, such as pre-trial detention of journalists.

The rift between Erdogan and Davutoglu in the Islamist AKP marks a new stage of the AKP regime’s disintegration, faced with the political aftershocks of the revolutionary upsurge in Egypt in 2011 and the ongoing war launched by NATO that year in Syria. After some initial hesitation, the AKP joined the NATO war drive. The 2013 coup that toppled an Islamist-led regime in Egypt, led by President Mohamed Mursi, came amid the June 2013 protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park—both of which threatened the AKP government.

Since then, Erdogan has carried out an ever more bellicose policy, both internationally and inside Turkey. He stoked a civil war against Turkey’s Kurdish minority and nearly provoked war with Russia when, with US backing, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter plane over Syria last November. It is increasingly obvious that with his calls for a “presidential” system, Erdogan is trying to deal with insoluble political contradictions by imposing an authoritarian regime.

The AKP is pushing to remove the immunity of 129 deputies, nearly a quarter of the total number, through a constitutional amendment, as the destruction and loss of life in ethnic Kurdish cities continue to rise.

On Tuesday, May 3, the Turkish parliament’s constitutional commission embraced an AKP proposal to add a temporary clause to the Turkish constitution lifting the deputies’ immunity. The proposal was approved with the support of the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), while the HDP voted against it.

During the session of the commission, AKP deputies physically assaulted HDP MPs, who denounced the commission’s decision as a “coup.” After the physical attack against them, the HDP officials decided to withdraw from the commission.

Speaking at his party’s weekly group meeting that same day, HDP Co-President Selahattin Demirtaş stated that they would discuss other alternatives if HDP parliamentarians were arrested and prosecuted. He said that “citizens…could form multiple parliaments if they wanted.” He called for support to the HDP and invited the CHP to join them in opposing the AKP.

After supporting the AKP’s so-called peace process with the Kurds, the HDP has faced repeated denunciations by Erdogan and Davutoglu for supporting a “terrorist organisation,” that is, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Ankara’s attitude to the “Kurdish question” shifted radically over the course of the Syrian war, as a Russian intervention devastated AKP-backed Islamist forces, and the US and European imperialists embraced Kurdish forces led by the PKK’s Syrian offshoot as a new proxy in Iraq and Syria.

Davutoglu has supported the AKP’s brutal and aggressive policies both in Syria and inside Turkey. He recently denounced calls for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast of Turkey, saying that deputies cannot be forgiven “for hiding behind the shield of [parliamentary] immunity” if they support terrorism. He also reportedly played a crucial role in negotiating the filthy deal with the EU in which Turkey agreed to prevent refugees from fleeing Syria to Europe.

It is Erdogan, however, who emerged as the main instigator of attacks on press freedom and of the witch-hunt against the HDP. While he was earlier the initiator of the so-called peace process with the PKK, the Turkish president, in a close alliance with the army and the MHP, frequently accuses HDP deputies of being extensions of the PKK and has demanded that judiciary bodies prosecute them.

Davutoglu’s departure and the ongoing attacks on Kurdish nationalists plunge not only Turkey into political uncertainty, but also its imperialist patrons, who rely on Turkey as a useful ally for their war plans in the Middle East and for imprisoning millions of refugees trying to flee the region.

“Davutoglu has been the cooperative, Western-oriented face of the government, particularly important in pushing through the refugees deal with the EU,” foreign policy consultant Ian Bremmer told UK Business Insider. “It’s going to be a dangerous time to be in the opposition.”

Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that if Erdogan continued to consolidate his power, “it will render the country so brittle politically that when Erdogan leaves office one day, there will be nearly no institutions left standing to keep the country together.”

UK elections intensify crisis in Labour Party

Chris Marsden

The most notable feature of Thursday’s round of elections in the UK is the obvious disappointment of many of Labour’s leading representatives that the party did not perform worse than it did. This was an extraordinary contest, with large swathes of the parliamentary Labour Party not merely predicting a disaster, but actively working for one.

In the run-up to the elections for London mayor, the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and local councils, Labour’s right wing colluded with the Conservatives and Zionist groups to portray their own party as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, engineering numerous expulsions and suspensions, including that of former London mayor Ken Livingstone.

The message delivered at every opportunity was that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was responsible for discrediting the party, because anti-Semitism was the inevitable product of hostility to Israel’s battle for “self-determination” and its war against the Palestinians, which was tantamount to “cuddling up” to “Muslim extremists.” This, the right-wing Blairites declared, was just one more expression of how Corbyn’s supposed “left-wing” agenda was consigning Labour to electoral oblivion, in part because “good” Labourites were being saddled with the unwanted image of a “tax and spend” party.

In the event, Labour’s performance was poor, but not disastrous on the scale they had hoped would pave the way for an immediate party leadership challenge. As opposed to predictions of losses of 100, 150, even 200 seats, Labour basically held its share of the vote in local elections and even increased it by 1 percent. It held a number of key swing councils, including Crawley, Harlow, Southampton, Nuneaton and Redditch, but lost Dudley.

In the Welsh Assembly elections, Labour secured 29 seats, just short of a majority, having lost votes and one of its heartland valley seats, Rhondda, to Leanne Wood, leader of Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales). The UK Independence Party (UKIP) won its first seats in the assembly, a total of seven.

Corbyn’s opponents were forced to focus on Labour’s worst performance, in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party (SNP) maintained their electoral grip on the Scottish parliament in Holyrood. Although the SNP lost its outright majority in the 129-seat parliament and received a smaller vote, with 63 seats it remains by far the largest party. Labour won only 24 seats, a loss of 13, coming third behind the Conservatives, with 31.

Labour’s share of the vote in the constituencies fell a further 9.2 percent from its 2011 position. Recently elected Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, lost her Holyrood constituency seat, only returning as a member of the Scottish parliament on the regional lists. Labour is in danger of losing control of its remaining local authorities. Since the 1950s until recently, Labour was the dominant party in Scotland.

Tactical voting against the nationalists enabled the Conservatives to become the largest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament. Under Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who distanced herself completely from the Conservative government at Westminster, the party increased its share of the constituency vote by 8.1 percent and doubled its seat tally, largely by portraying itself as a defender of union with the UK.

Political responsibility for this rests with the pseudo-left groups, which have systematically promoted Scottish independence as a supposedly progressive response to Conservative rule and the rightward shift of the Labour Party. The result of this injection of nationalist poison has been to push large numbers of workers into the clutches of the SNP, which has been given the undeserved gloss of a party of the “left,” and create the conditions for a Tory revival north of the English border.

Dugdale has consistently identified herself as an opponent of Corbyn and lined up with the right-wing attack on Livingstone. She is now indicating sympathy for home rule for Scotland.

Following the vote, Ian Murray, Labour’s shadow Scotland secretary, told the BBC, “I don’t think that the public see the UK Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn at the moment as being a credible party of future government in 2020. That’s something, after this week’s results, we should reflect on, the leadership of the party should reflect on…”

In the end, the single most important event of the day was Labour’s win in the London mayoral election. Sadiq Khan, a human rights lawyer, has become the first Muslim mayor of a major Western city.

Khan received 1,310,143 votes after second preferences were taken into account, besting the Conservative Party’s Zac Goldsmith, who received 994,614 votes, by a margin of 13.6 percent. Labour also took the majority of seats in the London Assembly, giving the party control of the capital after eight years of Tory rule.

Khan, who stands on the party’s right wing, convincingly defeated his Tory opponent Goldsmith, who ran a filthy racist campaign with the active support of the Conservative national leadership. The Tories sent leaflets accusing Khan of being a supporter of Muslim extremists to Hindu, Sikh and Tamil voters and warned that Labour would tax the gold jewellery of Indian families. Home Secretary Theresa May said Khan was unfit to run London at a time when there was “a significant threat of terrorism,” while former London mayor Boris Johnson accused him of “pandering to the extremists,” referring to both Muslims and the Labour Party.

Goldsmith, whose declared wealth is £281 million, hoped to benefit from accusations that Labour is anti-Semitic.

The results of the elections are nevertheless an indictment of Corbyn, though not in the terms laid out by his right-wing opponents.

In its first national electoral test since Corbyn became leader, Labour has once again demonstrated that it is an unreformable right-wing party of big business, while he has proved to be a man without principles or a political future. To the extent that he is relied on to lead a fight-back, this only inhibits the emergence in the working class of a politically independent socialist opposition to the Tory government.

Labour was in a position to inflict major defeats on the Tories in the midst of the greatest assault on workers’ living standards in the post-World War II period by a widely hated government. It did not do so because Corbyn has backtracked on every one of the promises he made in his campaign for the party leadership, whether on opposing austerity or standing against militarism and war. This reached a new low with his agreement to suspend large numbers of his own supporters in the ongoing anti-Semitism witch-hunt.

Following their attempt to sabotage the elections, the only thought of the party’s right wing will be how best to pursue the campaign to remove Corbyn. In contrast, Corbyn’s main ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, was quick to offer an olive branch, pleading to the right wing, “Look, get behind us and stop carping, there’s room for everyone in this Labour party. Everyone can make a constructive contribution.”