Young worker dies on Australian “work for the dole” scheme

Declan O'Malley

On April 19, Josh Park-Fing, an 18-year-old unemployed youth from the rural town of Meringandan, near Toowoomba, Queensland, died in an accident while being forced to work for the dole.

His death underscores the unsafe conditions imposed on jobless workers via the Australian government’s forced work scheme, which compels them to undertake unpaid labour in order to receive poverty-line welfare payments. This amounts to compulsory servitude in sub-standard and potentially dangerous conditions.

The tragedy also highlights the lack of workers’ compensation and insurance coverage for Work for the Dole participants.

The teenager was collecting rubbish at the local Toowoomba Showgrounds. It is believed that he was on a trailer being pulled by a tractor when it jolted. The jolt threw the young man from the trailer, and he suffered head injuries. Park-Fing died on the way to the hospital after attempts to revive him failed.

Park-Fing’s twin brother Jayden, siblings Matt, Locklyn and Jemma, and mother Jenny Fing were too distraught to speak to the media immediately. A friend and work colleague of Jenny Fing, Christabel Dodds, told reporters: “They don’t want this to ever happen to another family again, but at the moment all they’re focused on is grieving Josh’s loss.”

The local community has raised money to support the family because of the inadequate Work for the Dole insurance coverage. Whereas families of workers killed in the course of paid employment are eligible for up to $750,000, the families of unemployed workers forced into the Work for the Dole program are paid a maximum of $250,000.

Participants in the program are also denied workers’ compensation if injured. According to the government, they are not workers but volunteers and therefore not covered by WorkCover, the official agency that regulates occupational health and safety and work-related injury compensation.

There is nothing “voluntary” about Work for the Dole. As of July last year, everyone under the age of 50 who has been on unemployment benefits for more than six months is required to work for the dole for six months every year. People aged under-30 must perform 25 hours’ labour per week and those aged between 30 and 49 must do 15 hours. Unemployed workers aged over 50 can “volunteer” to take part.

Work for the Dole, first imposed in 1998 by the Howard Liberal-National Coalition government, was maintained by the Rudd and Gillard Labor Party governments from 2007 to 2013. Initially, it was limited to the long-term unemployed, but it was extended to nearly all unemployed workers last year, when the current Coalition government declared it would place 100,000 people on the scheme during 2015–16.

The Australian Unemployed Workers Union (AUWU), which claims to represent Work for the Dole participants, has reported numerous cases of workers with chronic injuries being forced into strenuous physical labour on the program. If they do not comply, they are threatened with loss of Centrelink (welfare) benefits.

An unemployed worker, Nick Smart, told the media he was expected to dig holes and push heavy wheelbarrows despite chronic back problems. “I fell down a retaining wall and twisted my back pushing a wheelbarrow,” he said. “I’ve been told I have no access to WorkCover because technically I was not working—I was a Centrelink volunteer.”

In other cases, Work for the Dole workers had been denied toilet breaks. One worker reported being exposed to 40-degree plus heat and poisonous snakes at a Work for Dole site.

These conditions highlight the punitive character of the scheme. Far from being intended to help jobless workers gain experience and improve their job prospects—as successive governments have claimed—Work for the Dole is designed to harass and demoralise workers, while using them as a cheap labour force.

A study by the Australian National University Social Research Centre demonstrated that the scheme does little or nothing to improve participants’ job prospects. According to the research: “It is estimated that in the short term [work for the dole] resulted in an additional 2 percentage point increase in the probability of job seekers having a job placement (from a low baseline of 14 percent).”

Above all, with almost 750,000 workers officially unemployed, the program is intended to coerce them into seeking low-paid work on inferior conditions to avoid being compelled to work for nothing. By the official statistics, more than one million workers are also under-employed—that is, looking for more work. As of February, however, there were only 166,500 job vacancies. That meant that for every job vacancy there were more than 10 people seeking employment.

Initially, the scheme was limited to working for not-for-profit organisations, including local councils. This led to calls by business groups for private employers to be given access to the program as well. Last year, the scheme was extended to allow aged care providers to exploit participants, as a first step.

Last May, after this expansion was proposed in the 2015 federal budget, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott told employers they would soon be able to “try-before-you-buy,” referring to unemployed workers.

This year’s budget, handed down by the Coalition government on May 3, took that expansion to a new level. In his budget speech, Treasurer Scott Morrison unveiled what he called “real work for the dole.” Over the next four years, 120,000 unemployed workers aged under-25 will be pushed into a nominally “voluntary” cheap labour scheme that enables businesses to employ them as government-subsidised “interns.”

Under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s new scheme, PaTH—which stands for Prepare Trial Hire—the unemployed will be expected to work up to 25 hours a week for private employers. For this, to supplement their pitiful unemployment benefits, they will receive $100 a week, effectively making their hourly rate just $4 an hour. To further sweeten the deal for business, employers will receive a $1,000 bonus and a wage subsidy of between $6,500 and $10,000 per year.

The Labor opposition has welcomed the new scheme, falsely claiming that it represents an improvement on Work for the Dole. But previous studies have shown that such programs lead to only 19 percent of the participants being offered paid employment. In other words, more than 80 percent of the participants will simply be exploited as low-wage “interns.”

The tragic death of Josh Park-Fing highlights the shocking conditions to which unemployed workers will continue to be subjected—conditions that will be increasingly imposed on all workers as the economic situation worsens globally and in Australia.

Australian government boasts of helping US kill its own citizens in Middle East

Mike Head

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his senior ministers this week welcomed the reported assassinations, via US airstrikes, of two young Australians in Iraq and Syria and declared that Australia was directly involved in targeting them.

Interviewed on Sky News on Thursday, Turnbull went further, warning that other Australians allegedly supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the Middle East “will be targeted” in the same manner.

Turnbull hailed the news as a “very positive development in the war on terror,” while Attorney-General George Brandis said “we should be gladdened by this news.”

These remarks—and Turnbull’s chilling threat of further assassinations—have not received the slightest criticism in Australia’s political and media establishment, even though they amount to sanctioning extra-judicial killings as a matter of government policy, without the pretence of any legal process.

This development demonstrates the readiness of Australia’s ruling elite to abrogate even the most fundamental legal and democratic rights as part of the fraudulent “war on terrorism.” Officially, the death penalty has been banned by Australian law for more than four decades, but these young people were summarily executed, without trial.

One victim, 24-year-old Neil Prakash, was said to have been killed by an American airstrike in Mosul, northern Iraq, on April 29. The joint media release of Brandis and Defence Minister Maris Payne said Prakash was targeted because he was a “terrorist recruiter” and “attack facilitator.”

Prakash was not accused of being an ISIS fighter, nor was he killed on a battlefield. Instead, he allegedly appeared in “propaganda videos” and “encouraged acts of terrorism.” These activities may have been crimes under the terrorism laws introduced since 2001, but Prakash was not charged or convicted of any offences. Instead, in the words of Brandis, he was “taken out.”

The other victim, Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad, a student believed to be in her 20s, was apparently even further removed from any military combat. According to the official media release, she was killed “near Al Bab, Syria, on 22 April 2016, along with her Sudanese husband,” Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani.

Both were said to be “active recruiters of foreign fighters” and “had been inspiring attacks against Western interests.” The only other fact cited to justify Mohammad’s murder was that she was the sister of Farhad Mohammad, a 15-year-old boy who was shot dead by police in Sydney last October after fatally shooting a police employee.

Despite offering no evidence of any involvement in fighting, Turnbull justified the killing of these two young people, both of whom grew up in Australia, declaring they were “enemies of Australia” who were “waging war against Australia.”

Turnbull indicated that other Australian citizens were on a death list. Asked if Prakash was specifically targeted, Turnbull replied: “Yes, and has been for some time.” While refusing to elaborate for “operational” reasons, he declared: “We are unrelenting in the war against terrorism … Australians will be targeted.”

This “war” has nothing to do with protecting people against terrorism. For more than 15 years, the “war on terror” has been waged by the US and its allies, with Australia in the frontline, to seek to establish American hegemony over the resource-rich and strategically-vital Middle East. Entire countries have been devastated—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria—fuelling the rise of ISIS. In fact, the US and its partners have funded and armed ISIS and similar militias linked to Al Qaeda in order to oust governments, and then exploited the atrocities of their proxies to escalate their predatory interventions.

Interviewed on Sky News, Brandis echoed the assertions of the Obama administration that the US president has the power to routinely select citizens for assassination. At least three American citizens have been killed so far, in flagrant breach of the US law and constitution: Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Brandis confirmed that Australia cooperated with the US in “the identification and location of Prakesh.” He insisted that it took “quite a while” to isolate a target in order to avoid “killing innocent people” and “family members of targets.” Australia took this responsibility, under international humanitarian law, “very, very seriously,” as did the US.

In reality, the targeting is based on unproven allegations, as well as family links. Moreover, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed throughout the Middle East by US drone attacks and Allied airstrikes.

The attorney-general pointed to the integration of Australia’s military and intelligence agencies into the global operations of the US, referring to the cooperation throughout the Five Eyes countries, which also include Britain, Canada and New Zealand. The joint US-Australian spy base at Pine Gap in central Australia plays a crucial role in pinpointing targets and coordinating US military operations across the region.

The Liberal-National government’s blatant celebration of the assassinations of Prakash and Mohammad marks an escalation of a bipartisan policy of placing Australian citizens on US hit lists. In April 2015, the Australian reported that an Australian citizen, Mostafa Farag, had been selected for drone execution in Syria, initially by the previous Labor government. A year earlier, another citizen, Christopher Harvard, and a dual Australian-New Zealand citizen, Muslim bin John, were killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

Significantly, Turnbull’s government proclaimed the two killings on the eve of calling a “double dissolution” election of both houses of parliament in an attempt to remove a political blockage to the imposition of deeply unpopular social spending cuts and other austerity measures. Once again, the fraudulent “war on terror” is being ramped up to try to distract the population and whip up support for militarism abroad and unprecedented attacks on basic democratic rights domestically.

In the media, Prakash has been demonised for alleged procurement of young Muslims to attempt a series of terrorist attacks in Australia. These unsubstantiated claims have been splashed throughout the media, prejudicing the trials of a number of teenagers whose cases have yet to get to court.

The allegations are also being utilised to bring forward another package of “anti-terrorism” laws, which will feature detaining and interrogating suspects, as young as 14, for up to 14 days without charge. These measures, agreed to by a meeting of federal and state leaders last month, will also include keeping prisoners convicted of terrorism offences incarcerated indefinitely after they have completed their sentences.

In his Sky interview, Brandis said “jihadists” had to be kept in prison beyond their sentences because they were “driven by ideology to violence.” This logic could be used against a wide range of supposed “extremists,” including political opponents, allegedly motivated by ideology.

These draconian laws, like the unlawful executions, have the full support of the Labor Party. The Greens, while previously professing opposition to aspects of the terrorism laws, have remained silent on the latest assassinations, as they were on the earlier ones.

This alignment behind the criminal activities of Washington goes far beyond killing Australians in Syria and Iraq and victimising vulnerable Muslim youth at home. It is a warning to workers and young people of the brutal methods that will be used by the political and security establishment to suppress opposition to the underlying agenda of war and austerity.

India opens talks with US on waging war on Chinese submarines

Deepal Jayasekera

The United States and India are stepping up their naval collaboration in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, targeting China, according to statements by military officials from both countries. This marks an important further step in US efforts to transform India into a “frontline” state in its drive to strategically encircle and prepare for war against China—what Washington euphemistically refers to as its “Pivot to Asia.”

US and Indian officials are holding talks about countering Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean, including collaborating in submarine-tracking and augmenting their anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities.

An anonymous senior US official, familiar with bilateral military ties with India, told Reuters: “These types of basic engagements will be the building blocks for an enduring Navy-to-Navy relationship that we hope will grow over time into a shared ASW capability.”

An Indian naval spokesman declined to comment on the issue, as New Delhi wants to cloak its growing military ties with US in secrecy because of fear of popular opposition.

An “Indian naval source” told Reuters that anti-submarine warfare will be the focus of the next round of joint Indo-US naval games, the Malabar exercises. The venue for those exercises, which will be staged in June, will be the northern Philippine Sea. This is near to both the South China Sea, where the US has launched provocations against China under the pretext of “freedom of navigation,” and the East China Sea, where Japan has moved to aggressively assert its claim to the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, which were annexed by Japan after the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War.

India recently invited Japan, the US’s most important strategic ally in Asia, to become a permanent third member of the annual Malabar exercises. The June event in the Philippine Sea will be joined by Japan, which has repeatedly deployed its navy to confront Chinese vessels in the vicinity of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Building on the Indo-US “global strategic partnership” forged by its Congress Party-led predecessor, India’s two year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has dramatically expanded its military-strategic cooperation with Washington. This has included parroting the US line on the South China Sea, which portrays China as an aggressor and a threat to “freedom of the seas,” when it is the US that seeks unbridled access for its warships off the Chinese mainland. New Delhi has also significantly increased bi-lateral and trilateral military-strategic cooperation with the US, and Washington’s other key Indo-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia.

A key strategic aim of the US, including in its pursuit of ever-more comprehensive military alliances with Japan, Australia and India, is to prepare to impose a naval blockade on China in the event of a war crisis. By seizing control of Indian and Pacific Ocean “chokepoints,” Pentagon strategists calculate they can deny China access to the Indian Ocean shipping lanes that carry the oil and other raw materials that sustain its economy.

Confronted with the possibility of being denied access to the Indian Ocean, China has moved to increase its naval presence there, including by deploying submarines. This has in turn panicked India, which views a growing role in “policing” the Indian Ocean as vital to realizing its great-power ambitions.

India, which is the midst of a massive expansion of its navy, has moved aggressively to counter China’s growing economic interests in various India Ocean states. This has included, assisting the US in engineering the 2015 ouster of Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was deemed too close to China, and bullying the tiny Maldives to pledge that it will pursue “an India first foreign policy.”

The Indo-US naval talks come in the wake of a call from Admiral Harry Harris Jr., the head of the US Pacific Command, for joint US-Indian naval patrols across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and last month’s announcement that New Delhi and Washington have agreed “in principle” to a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA). The LEMOA will give the US military access to Indian military ports and bases for resupply, repair and rest and will invariably entail the stationing of US military personnel in India.

The US is also seeking to harness India to its predatory strategic agenda through partnerships to co-develop and co-produce advanced weapons systems, including aircraft carrier technology.

Washington is seeking to exploit Indian concerns about China's growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean to press New Delhi into collaboration in anti-submarine warfare. Reuters cites Indian naval officials as saying, “Chinese submarines have been sighted on an average four times every three months. Some are seen near India's Andaman and Nicobar islands that lie near the Malacca Straits, the entry to the South China Sea through which more than 80 percent of China's fuel supplies pass.”

Expressing the US military establishment's satisfaction with Washington’s success in enticing and cajoling India into closer military collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region, former US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jon Greenert told Foreign Policy: “Is this driven by China? I think so. I think clearly it is... The Indian Navy’s interest in moving further east in the Indian Ocean and coming into the Pacific to exercise is an indication of that.”

With US encouragement, the BJP has transformed India’s “Look East” policy, an economic and strategic outreach to East and Southeast Asia, into “Act East”—that is, a more aggressive intervention into that region in pursuit of India’s geo-political ambitions. Numerous US officials, from President Obama to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter have repeatedly boasted about the “convergence” between India’s “Act East” policy and the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” and pledged US help in India realizing “Act East.”

Nilanthi Samaranayake, a South Asia analyst at the US military's Center for Naval Analyses, noted that New Delhi is cautious not to be seen as an open ally of US against China: “India is always going to be hedging a little bit, because they don’t want to be seen as antagonizing China too much.” But she was quick to point to the possibilities an expanded Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean provide Washington to project Beijing as an “aggressor” and prod New Delhi into an even closer alliance. “If we actually see China be aggressive in the Indian Ocean,” said Samaranayake, “that could really help crystallize Indian policy toward China, and move the relationship with the US forward.”

Voicing the views of powerful sections of India’s elite who want a more aggressive stance against China, G. Parthasarathy, a former High Commissioner to Pakistan, published a comment this week decrying China’s close relations with Pakistan, India’s historic rival, and arguing for this to “be countered by a robust relationship with China’s maritime neighbours such as Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines. Military exercises with the US, Japan, Australia and Indonesia in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean should be expanded.”

For his part, the former head of Indian Navy’s Eastern Command, retired Vice Admiral Anup Singh, has welcomed the growing naval partnership between the US and India. “Of course there has been a change in India’s strategic vision,” he told Foreign Policy. He added that the BJP government and the Indian military-security establishment are “all in favor of a solid handshake with the United States, because that is the only way to maintain the balance of power.”

Australia is also keen to collaborate with the India and the US in enhancing submarine warfare capabilities and policing the Indian Ocean. David Brewster, an Australian National University expert on the strategic rivalry in the Indian Ocean, has suggested that Australia, which has just ordered 12 new submarines, may eventually join that US-led AWS collaboration. He told Reuters, “We are likely to ultimately see a division of responsibilities in the Indian Ocean between those three countries, and with the potential to also share facilities.”

China has responded cautiously to the US-Indian talks on collaborating on anti-submarine warfare. Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said: “We hope that the relevant cooperation is normal, and that it can be meaningful to the peace and stability of the region.”

Whatever China’s hopes, US imperialism’s aggressive moves for developing military ties with India, including anti-submarine warfare, will further escalate geo-political tensions across the Indo-Pacific region and the danger of an all-out war among nuclear powers.

Islamophobic provocations on California campuses

David Brown

Towards the end of March the University of California (UC) board of regents unanimously adopted a resolution on intolerance that claimed a growing connection between anti-Zionism, opposition to the policies of Israel, and anti-Semitism. The move was hailed by pro-Israeli groups and anti-Muslim organizations. In mid-April, the far right David Horowitz Freedom Center launched a campaign of intimidation on five campuses, publicizing the names of students and teachers that they called “genocidal” and allied with “terrorists.”

Worldwide, the allegation of “anti-Semitism” is being used to silence critics of militarism and imperialism in the Middle East. The events in California are occurring in the middle of a purge of the British Labour Party of officials who have publicly criticized Israel. Although the UC regents presented their resolution as a tactful compromise that defends free speech and academic freedom, it consciously laid the framework for punishing opposition to Israel.

The resolution as adopted stated “Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semitic forms of Anti-Zionism, and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” This was a revision to a draft from January that called Anti-Zionism discriminatory without qualification. The adopted formulation was left intentionally vague to allow almost any opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine to be called anti-Semitic. In the comment period a letter signed by 130 UC faculty members described it as anti-Semitic when “legitimate criticism of Israel devolves into denying Israel’s right to exist.”

The Israel advocacy group StandWithUs hailed the regent’s resolution. Their CEO Roz Rothstein praised the regent’s decision claiming that “denying Israel’s right to exist and opposing the rights of the Jewish people to self-determination in their homeland is racism, pure and simple.” The main target of the allegations of anti-Semitism is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement led by the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The SJP acts as a pressure group on the Israeli government, asking universities and businesses to avoid investing in Israel or selling Israeli products until Israel recognizes the right of Palestinian refugees to return, the end of the occupation of Palestine, and the equal rights of Arabs within Israel.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and co-founder of the Amcha Initiative, said that “BDS is in virtually all of its aspects anti-Semitic.” The Amcha Initiative follows the US State Department definition of anti-Semitism, which includes “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” and “denying Israel the right to exist.”

Rossman-Benjamin told the New York Times that “classic anti-Semitism merged with a new anti-Zionism,” on campuses and praised the regents for being the first to specifically recognize “that there are forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic.”

Within a few weeks of the UC Regents laying out the welcome mat for allegations of anti-Semitism, the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) staged a right-wing provocation against the SJP and the Muslim Student Association. The DHFC put up posters at five different campuses denouncing the BDS as “a Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign,” and listed the names of students and professors that they said “have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred.” The posters were a clear call for reprisals against specific critics of Israel.

The campuses targeted were UC Berkeley, San Diego State University (SDSU), UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles. The DHFC had used this tactic in isolation before, but hit all five campuses in mid-April. At SDSU a hundred students protested on April 27 after the university president, Elliot Hirshman issued a statement claiming that the posters were acceptable criticism of the SJP.

Hirshman wrote in part: “First, we recognize and fully support the rights of all parties to voice their positions on political issues, whether supportive or critical. We also understand that when parties adopt a specific political position they become responsible for their actions and these actions may produce criticism.”

In short, Hirshman felt that if the students did not want to be called terrorists, they should not voice political opinions. In a country whose government claims the right to indefinitely detain or kill without trial anyone who supports terrorism, that allegation can have particularly severe consequences.

On May 6, David Horowitz gave a speech at SDSU at the invitation of the College Republicans. He has been a regular speaker at California’s public universities over the years, usually at the request of campus Republican clubs. In his speeches are a combination of complaining that universities are dominated by leftists and denouncing student groups like the SJP as supporting terrorism and “Jew Hatred.”

Horowitz’s extreme positions are well within the norms of US politics. The presumptive Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, has called for a “total shutdown of Muslims” entering the United States. Within the Republican Party debates candidates sought to outdo themselves in their support for any outrage Israel might perpetrate against the Palestinians in the name of “Fighting terrorism.”

These positions are also found between both contenders for the Democratic nomination. In a speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on March 21, Hillary Clinton said: “Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement known as BDS. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate, and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.”

The same day Bernie Sanders agreed that “Israel has got to be defended, has a right to exist,” and that “there is some level of anti-Semitism” in BDS.

The World Socialist Web Site has irreconcilable class differences with BDS, which appeals to the Israeli government for a capitalist two-state solution, but to call opposition to Israel “anti-Semitic” is a fundamentally dishonest provocation. These slanderous accusations are being used in country after country to silence any criticism of imperialist policy in the Middle East.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the British Labour Party, he has suspended 18 party members following allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. The media frenzy and witch hunt following criticisms of Israel by some high-ranking members of the Labour Party are directed at the hundreds of thousands who voted for Corbyn imagining that as a self-described socialist he would oppose war and austerity. Instead, the pseudo-left Corbyn, like SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain, has willingly accepted every right-wing measure asked of him.

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.