The Government and Your i-Phone: the Latest Threat to Privacy

Julian Vigo

Since last year, the US government and Apple have been in a deadlock over the government’s demand that Apple unlock an iPhone. And now the landscape surrounding these cases has vastly shifted in recent months.

In a 2015 case, the SEC filed a civil suit against Bonan Huang and Nan Huang, former fraud analysts based in Virginia, for insider trading. However, the SEC’s case could not go forward without the passcode for the mobile telephones which were encrypted with Apple software.  U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney wrote that as the passwords for the smartphones are not recorded with the corporation, “the act of producing their personal passcodes is testimonial in nature and Defendants properly invoke their fifth Amendment privilege.” And when the Department of Justice attempted again to force Apple to unlock its iPhones, Apple issued its “Supplemental Response to Court’s October 9, 2015 Order and Opinion” which clarified Apple’s refusal to unlock the device in question.

Then there is the case of the San Bernardino shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook, who together with his wife, killed fourteen people in December 2015. The FBI requested that Apple unlock the shooter’s iPhone and Apple refused stating that complying with this request would entail the creation of “a backdoor to the iPhone.” More recently in February, 2015, a California judge ordered Apple to assist the FBI in breaking into the phone of the San Bernardino shooter. Apple again refused citing its reasons in this response:

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals… Rather than asking for legislative action through Congress, the FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority. The government would have us remove security features and add new capabilities to the operating system, allowing a passcode to be input electronically. This would make it easier to unlock an iPhone by “brute force,” trying thousands or millions of combinations with the speed of a modern computer.”

This case is just one of many in recent months where the courts have attempted to force either the user or Apple to unlock an iPhone. Apple has been increasing its level of encryption in its mobile software amid privacy concerns in the almost three years following the leaks by former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. Today there are more and more cases going before the courts setting precedent regarding the use of smart phones and private information just a little over a year after DMCA regulations established that it was illegal to unlock smartphones. In what is now becoming a routine act of transparency post-Snowdon, Apple has revealed in a recent report that it has received over 1,000 government requests for user data.

Yet there have been two recent game changers. First, the case of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, where the FBI was able to retrieve data from the iPhone without the help of Apple. In March, less than twenty-four hours before its court date, Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing that they no longer needed Apple’s assistance.   FBI director James Comey confessed just last week that the FBI paid approximately $1.3m for software to hack Farook’s iPhone, a fee which he claims was “worth it.” Also last week was the case in New York where an individual had given investigators the passcode to an iPhone linked to a local drug investigation, resulting in the Department of Justice telling a federal judge that it was dropping its case against Apple.

Relatedly, The Wall Street Journal just announced today that the FBI has no plans to report the software vulnerability that should be reported to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process panel, stating that, “Such a move, tantamount to deciding not to share the vulnerability with Apple, is likely to anger privacy advocates who contend the FBI’s approach to encryption weakens data security for large groups of customers in order to preserve technical options for federal investigators.” What started as a standoff over privacy issues is now turning into a delicate balancing act between providing privacy measures for all users of information technology while not allowing government agencies to exploit their power over sensitive information. Even the future of software updates is endangered by the menacing pull on technology that the state is exploiting, according to the ACLU’s Principle Technologist with the Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, Christopher Soghoian.

What trust we put in software companies in the US or the UK is paramount to protect, but as we use our mobile devices for everything from banking to nourishing long distance relationships, along with the expansion of the Internet of Things, more and more software and devices in our home will be susceptible to the same sorts of government requests to hack. Until March 2016, Apple was able to rely upon the fact that the current iOS does not allow even Apple to access data, but this may soon change as the UK unveiled a draft “Investigatory Powers Bill” on 4 November, 2015 which would place tight controls on service providers to aid in intercepting data requiring web and phone companies to keep “internet connection records” for a maximum of twelve months without police warrant.

Additionally, the person commissioned with carrying out what is called in the UK the “Snoopers’ Charter,” David Anderson QC, has recently confirmed that he will be leaving his position as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. Anderson has recently written about the Investigatory Powers Bill which has recently finished (19 May 2016) going through the committee stage in the House of Commons after having passed its second reading in March of this year, “gets the most important things right….no one’s communications can be intercepted without the approval of a judge, the Bill goes a long way to meet the cynics who see its vital powers as ripe for governmental abuse.” Anderson outlines some of the more problematic areas of this proposed bill, namely that:   the powers in vigour do not cover the mass body of communication on the Internet, mobile platforms, and bulk equipment interference; the requirement of ISPs (Internet service providers) to retain Internet connection records is both controversial and expensive; and that the report (245 pages) is replete with technical details that require disambiguation.

The Bill will next be considered at the Report Stage and Third Reading whose stages are scheduled to be debated on Monday 6 June and Tuesday 7 June 2016. Moreover, on 15 March 2016 MPs agreed a carry-over motion which allows for proceedings on the Bill to be resumed in the 2016-2017 session of Parliament.

Public Burdens Of Religion And The Lightness Of Atheism

Sanjay Kumar

Death evokes strongest of human emotions. However, exploring and finding reasons behind a death is also part of our humanity. Legal codes in all countries demand criminal investigations of deaths due to the so called 'unnatural' causes. Medical sciences have advanced largely due to explorations of the other, 'natural' causes of death. Deaths due to completely avoidable reasons fall in a category of their own. How a society deals with such deaths is a good indicator of how it treats its living.

One hundred and eight people died in an explosion during a fire cracker festival in a temple in Kollam, Kerala on 10th April. According to reports, the district administration had not given permission for the event, citing hazards of firing crackers close to a densely populated area, and the fact that the fire cracking festivities were actually in the form of a competition. Yet, pressure from the powerful temple trust meant that the programme was held amid full police presence. The accident happened in one of the better governed states of India, which also boasts of a vigilant citizenry. Hence, it was not surprising that large number of private medical practitioners lined up at the government run Thirunavanthapuram Medical College Hospital to provide crucial medical aid to hundreds of the injured in Kollam accident. The number of dead would have been much higher in any other part of the country. Police in Kerala is likely to file charges against temple trust office bearers and persons handling fire crackers. However, serious charges are unlikely to stand in a court of law. Unlike the people who died in the recent Kolkata flyover collapse, the crowd that came to watch the fire cracker programme in the middle of the night was there not during a normal day's activities, but was a willful and an illegal gathering. The dead, in a way, were complicit in their own death. Nor can watching a fire cracker display be argued to be an essential part of any citizen's fundamental right to religious freedom. In all likelihood the deaths of Kollam will end up declared 'an act of God', beyond any human culpability.

The fire cracker festival of Kollam was an extrusion of religion into the public life of the community. It clearly was a threat to those living in houses near the temple. Popular religion in India is the holiest of the cows, beyond civic regulations and laws. Two months ago the flood plane of river Yamuna in the national capital was ravaged by the 'World Cultural Festival' organised by a 'spiritual' sect. It boasted of a seven acre, forty foot high stage, declared to be the largest ever in the world. The city was pasted with hoardings of the guru heading the sect with photographs of his much younger days. It seemed that getting into the Guinness Book of Records was one of the important motivations of the organisors. Declarations of 35 lakh devotees (in parallel with thirty five years of the founding of the sect) coming for the event, the largest stage, largest number of artists at one place, etc. were widely disseminated in the media. Despite clear regulations that the Yamuna flood plane being an ecologically sensitive area can not be used for any such activity, guru's followers managed to get all administrative clearances in record time. Even the Army of the republic got roped in to build a pontoon bridge over the river. When the matter came up in the National Green Tribunal, all government departments in the dock passed the buck around. The affair would have been hilarious, but for utter bureaucratic irresponsibility. Even though all regulations were flouted, the tribunal allowed the event to go ahead with a fine of Rs 5 crore, while an expert committee constituted by the board earlier had estimated the cost of undoing the damage to the Yamuna plane to be Rs 100 crores. The culutral jamboree was graced by the Prime Minister of the nation, who admonished environmentalists for trying to give a bad name to such a noble work.

The fire cracker festival at Kollam, and the destruction of Yamuna flood plane in Delhi, are mere instances of an over the top public religiosity that actually enjoys its own gargantuan pretensions. Spectacle and self promotion are its key themes. Over sized statues of deities, often with little aesthetic value and without municipal clearances jut in at busy crossings, and stand over public parks. Ashrams thrive upon illegally occupied public land. Every guru, swami, baba, maa, maataa, or bapu indulges in self promotion which would be considered obscene if done by ordinary people. The self attested spirituality breeds loud arrogance. And all this happens in the name of religious grace and spirituality.

It can be argued that it is not correct to single out public religiosity for violating norms and regulations when so much of the other social life of Indians is mired in such violations. If the NDA government of Mr Vajpayee allowed the large Akshardham temple in the capital to be built on the endangered flood plain of Yamuna, the Congress government ten years later did the same with regard to the Common Wealth Games Village. For an Akshardham temple getting out of regulation permission, there is the swanky Sainik Farms neighbourhood in South Delhi built completely illegally, where some of the richest in the city live. Further, when so many of Indians voluntarily come to pray at and gather for religious functions, the religion in India is surely providing an important public service, even if some sects or places of worship violate regulations and norms.

Such empirical arguments miss an important point of distinction. Religion occupies a special place in society. Religion is social worlds' 'spiritualistic point d'onneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its universal ground for consolation and justification .... (its) spiritual aroma' (emphases in the original). These are not the words of an enthusiastic believer, but atheist young Marx in 1844. While the violations of norms and regulations by secular activities can be challenged within secular institutional structures and are seen as corruption, religious activities are able to garner extra legal privileges because of the claim that religion lies at the base of private and public morality. If secular activities are seen as mundane, even banal, then an aura of goodness surrounds religion.

Religion in a Secular World

Yet the point is that today's social world also has significant domains in which religion is irrelevant. These are domains of secularity which create their own, sui generis moral valuations, codes of conduct, and purposes. Religion can not escape secular criticism because social world today is largely secular. All ideas of modern democratic polity like, equality, freedom, fundamental rights, rule of law, etc do not derive their validity from any religious belief. Authors of the American Declaration of Independence may have claimed ‘that all men are created equal’, and ‘that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.’ Nobody today bothers whether their claim about a Creator God was correct or misplaced. For the evolution of democracy it was the belief of flesh and blood humans about themselves that they are equal, and that they have certain in-alienable rights, which turned out to be of paramount significance. All modern political constitutions establish their source as the will and wisdom of the people, without any recourse to a divine source or agency. The constituent assembly of India did consider a proposal to start the Preamble with 'In the name of God'. However, even in a thoroughly religious India, the proposal was defeated. In other areas of social life too humanist and naturalist perspectives have become dominant. A divine inspiration is no longer sought behind works of art and culture. Economy is understood as emerging from the needs and greed of humans only. Public office holders can take oath on whatsoever they consider as the basis of their morality, any god if they so wish, or just their own conscience, if they do not believe in any supernatural power. However, only they as individuals are responsible for their actions. They can not pass on the responsibility of their actions onto their god(s). Similarly, no supernatural cause is justifiable under any modern criminal justice system.

The metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological basis of secular life is atheism, i.e. none of the foundational beliefs of modern secularism give any quarter to any transcendental being. The 'death of God' has not ushered in the age of immorality, as Neitzsche and Dostoevesky feared. Nor has the 'enchantment' of religion proved to be enough of an adhesive to prevent humans from making more and more domains of their lives secular. However, it is also a fact that humans appear shame faced in owning up to the atheistic underpinnings of their secular life. The reluctance to accept atheism is not due to ignorance, or even due to the dead weight of tradition, as some of the liberal New Atheists would like to believe.

'Religion is the heart of a heartless world, … The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions'. This again is the young atheist Marx, arguing not against religion, but against conditions which produce and require religious illusions. The primary condition which creates the need for religion in modern societies is alienation. Where as public institutions like the market, state, health and education services, public culture and politics, have been secularised, the rule of private property under capitalism, and the form of state power as a class rule (of 1% over 99%, as Occupy Movement activists christened it) means that instead of participating in these public institutions as their collective creators and sustainers, people as individuals find themselves at the mercy of these very institutions wielding social power beyond their comprehension. The recent neo-liberal turn of the political economy has degraded the public nature of these institutions further by forcing them into a market mould, which is leading to greater alienation, and a greater need for religion. The liberal secularism tries to overcome this contradiction between a secular public life, and an alienated private life in capitalist societies through the fiction of religion as a private matter, enjoying protection as a fundamental rights. The lie of this ideological move is nailed every time an American president ends his speech addressed to his compatriots with 'God Bless You'. It is foolish to imagine that religious beliefs which enjoy powerful hold on the emotions, imaginations, and the moral sense of so many humans can be safely fire walled within their private lives, and that unscrupulous politicians, peddlers of 'spiritualism', advertisers, or the ordinary believers themselves, would not like to use them for public gain.

The second reason for apathy towards atheism is its conventional understanding, which focusses on its negation of theism, rather than as a positive constitutive force for the creation of a meaningful and fulfilling world view. During the period when the belief in god(s), deities, demons and ghosts, was an overwhelming feature of human life, any thoughtful and rational engagement with this world required a clear and categorical position on these beliefs. Hence, in the ancient Indian philosophy, six out of eight systems gave arguments against theism. However, the elaboration of an alternate world view remained an unmet challenge because humans knew so little about nature, including their own selves. Even radical challenges to existing religiosity, for instance by the medieval Indian saint Kabir, took a religious form. Nevertheless, despite an overwhelming presence of religion there were a few remarkable humans like Gautam Buddha, who did expound and elaborate a way of life without any transcendental scaffolding. For the first time in human history, Buddha's 'teachings' presented a consistent set of guidelines for the internal life of humans that did not rely upon rituals or prayers aiming to propitiate non-human imagined entities, due to fear of their punishment, or guilt.

Atheism in a Secular World

Now, when so much of the human world; the world of knowledge, technology, public policy, morality, economy, art and politics is fashioned on the basis of rules and principles figured out by humans themselves, the main point of atheism is not any set of explicit arguments against theism. Its principal job now is to deepen and expand the domain of human secular practices by elaborating their underlying principles and consequences. An important part of this job in a country like India is confronting contradictions between secular practices and the immense baggage of non-secular beliefs, like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief doing a special pooja with a replica of India's spaceship to Mars at the Tirupati temple during its launch. The untenability of beliefs in transcendental entities having power over human affairs will be a consequence of atheistic critiques of such contradictions, rather than their starting point.

According to an ISRO scientist, presenting a replica of spaceship to Mars to the Tirupati deity helped scientists deal with the pre-launch stress. Scientists at ISRO are evidently capable of making sufficiently complex machines, a significant human achievement (not a divine gift) indeed. Every launch failure is examined in detail to pin point its causes, which also is an exercise in human ingenuity. Most of them are very likely to believe that any failure of the machine has definite material causes. Even when an accident is proved to be due to a particular coincidence of a number of different causes (as for instance the combination of a faulty part and bad weather) they are likely to agree that the probability of precisely such a coincidence can be reduced by following proper procedures, rather than praying to a divine. Nevertheless, ISRO scientists who are so capable otherwise, somehow find themselves incapable to confront the possibility of a failure without seeking divine help. Engagement with the divine comes in not as an explanation of a material failure, but as an exercise to deal with their anxiety about a possible failure. One can list a number of anxieties and vacuities of everyday life regarding which religion provides not only alternative framing, but also value laden justifications. Drug abuse and alcoholism are also related to anxieties, but seeking divine help is treated in a different category. One may not agree with young Marx in characterising the illusions of the divine as an opium, but that characterisation does open up a window to a very fruitful analysis. In Marx's time, opium was also used as a pain reliever, and the textual context of his famous quote makes it clear that he meant opium as an analgesic. Humans can surely live without the use of opium. Even when humans can not sustain pain, non-addictive pain relievers can be used. Can they live without turning to the divine in engaging with the uncertainties of their own lives? Is it the case, as Voltaire claimed that, 'if God did not exist it will be necessary to invent him'? Is there then any hope for atheism?

In one of his popular shers Assadullah Khan Ghalib, unarguably one of the greatest of Indian poets, says 'Humko maloom hai jannat kee hakeekat lekin, dil ko khush rakhne ko Ghalib yeh khyaal achha hai' (I know the reality of Heaven. But how pleasing is its idea to the heart!). It is a mark of Ghalib's irreverence that he plucks out the idea of heaven from the duality of heaven-hell. Else, the solace, hope and 'pleasures' of religion come entwined with fear, hatred and guilt. Going ahead, what is the meaning of Ghalib knowing the reality of heaven? Ghalib was not an atheist, but he shared their realist epistemology and recognised the distinction between what is known to be real, and the ideas and images created by human mind, even if they happen to have real consequences. The secular atheistic critique of religion is this. While the benefits and costs of religious beliefs are illusory, and some of them may have real consequences for individual believers, such beliefs have little public benefits, and their costs in public, the ravaged flood plain of Yamuna, or the dead of Kollam, are often real. The ISRO chief should better use the time and resources at his disposal for better management of prevention of accidents, rather than praying for an illusory help.

It is only for the better that many public practices have been freed from illusions of religion. Imagine the state of ISRO if scientists there actually believed in divine intervention during the launch of a spacecraft and acted accordingly. Or, imagine living under a criminal justice system that relied on clues from the divine, is operated by a clique whose members claim a special understanding of these clues, and who routinely ordered 'trial by fire', and compare it to a system designed to rely on evidence, whose proceedings are public, reasons transparent, and functionaries selected through an open system. Or, imagine living in a society that is satisfied with treating deaths due to avoidable causes as 'acts of the divine', rather than taking concrete measures to prevent these causes.

The last of the above is also an indicator of how a society values its living. At stake is the basic conception of human beings. When humans elevate images created by them onto a transcendent pedestal, and make themselves subservient to their own creation, they limit themselves to a prison of their own making. The divine is the ultimate symbol of human narcissism. Any imprisonment, even ones cushioned by the 'Love of God', Parmanand (ultimate bliss), 'Self Knowledge', etc., is bondage. Atheism breaks all such spells. It begins from the state humans find themselves in the world. Without any Creator, Guide, or divine scaffolding, it ushers them into this world with the dictum to rely solely on their own abilities. The basic assumption is that with their senses, their cognitive abilities to reason, abstract and self reflect, and their emotional resources to laugh, cry, wonder, and empathise, humans can not only make sense of the world around them, but they also have the potential to make ever new connections with this world. By freeing humans from attachment to any illusory Ultimate, Final or Absolute being, atheism makes them aware of their finitude. However, the recognition this necessity is also the ground for real freedom. In return, the atheistic conception gives humans the freedom to build their own relationships with the world. By making humans take care of their own weight in the world, it also helps them fly on their own. That is the lightness of an atheistic being.

Obama in Vietnam: Only Permanent Interests

Amruta Karambelkar

The US and Vietnam are the strangest bedfellows in the Asia Pacific. US President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam received wide attention, particularly because of the lifting of the embargo on the sale of lethal weapons to Vietnam. The ban was eventually expected to ease but it seems to have happened much sooner. This appears to be one of the significant measures undertaken within the so-called US ‘rebalance’. Both the presidents have stated - Obama more clearly - that the elevated bilateral ties are not aimed against Beijing. At the same time, however, both have also expressed concern regarding developments in the South China Sea and freedom of navigation. The US ‘rebalancing’ is tangible through this visit, along with other recent US visits and initiatives in the region.

The US and Vietnam have been gradually striving to normalise their relationship. The process started after the end of the Cold War and the landmark visit to Vietnam in 2000 by then President Bill Clinton with the aim of reconciliation. Just like Clinton’s, Obama’s Vietnam trip has happened towards the end of his presidency. Sixteen years since Clinton’s historic visit, a lot has changed between the former enemies. Most of the present Vietnamese population was born after the war, and the negative psychological cloud of the war has passed. The enthusiastic welcome that Obama received from the civilian community is an indicator of the changing times.

The US-Vietnam joint statement specifies their commitment to respecting their “respective political systems.” This could be a reference to how many in Vietnam see the US’ insistence on human rights and political freedom as an attempt to destabilise the communist regime. Those specific words in the joint statement should therefore help assure the Vietnamese regime and sceptics of US-Vietnam rapprochement. It also indicates a mutual understanding between the two - that the Vietnamese cannot be pushed against the wall over the issue of human rights. Both are different political systems are bound to have differing perspectives regarding governance. Indeed, President Obama admitted that both sides have differences, which may indicate that it would not be as contentious an issue in bilateral relations as before.

Since the end of the Cold War, Vietnam has recalibrated its foreign policy to establish relations with the Western world. Since its domestic restructuring programme of the ‘90s called Doi Moi, and after joining the WTO in 2007, Vietnam’s economy attracted investments from across the spectrum. The US today is the seventh largest investor in Vietnam, and in the words of Obama, “…the single largest market for Vietnam’s exports.” Vietnam is also a part of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which could potentially challenge Chinese economic preponderance in Southeast Asia. In recent years, Vietnam has been consciously trying to diversify its FDI sources so as to reduce reliance on any one country.

Obama’s visit dropped other goodies in the Vietnamese kitty. A Fulbright University will be set up with the aim of making it a world-class university in Vietnam. That scores brownie points with the youth, and serves as a soft power instrument to iron out remaining historical tensions. The US and Vietnam also expanded the civil nuclear partnership that would aid the energy starved, rapidly industrialising, Vietnam. A joint commission on civil nuclear cooperation will be set up to implement the 123 Agreement.

The highlight of the visit is the lifting of sale of lethal arms to Vietnam. It is a bold move. The ban on non-lethal weapons was lifted in 2013. Now that the embargo is completely done away with Vietnam can purchase hardware as per its requirements and from wider sources. Vietnam has been modernising its military over the past few years, and particularly building its navy towards sea denial capabilities. In the process, it has largely relied on traditional security partners such as Russia and India, but has gradually turned to Western suppliers also. The US has been strengthening Vietnam’s coast guard. A quid pro quo, one can imagine, is the possibility of greater US access to the strategic Cam Ranh Bay in the future. Importantly, the US is already taking advantage of the commercial facilities at the Bay.

The lifting of the arms embargo is significant for another reason. There have been doubts over US’ commitment to Southeast Asia within the region. In his joint press conference with President Quang, Obama reiterated US’ priority to the Asia-Pacific, and how its comprehensive relations with Vietnam are in sync with its broader strategy.

In 2015, the Pentagon launched the Maritime Security Initiative (MSI) for Southeast Asia. The MSI, a part of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Asia Pacific strategy, aims at improving maritime domain awareness, enhancing capabilities, and creating “strong, independent partners in the region.” Accordingly, the plans for Vietnam include assistance in vessel modernisation, maritime patrol aircraft, support for C3 systems in search and rescue operations, and training, although the funds for Vietnam are only US$2 million whereas Philippines gets US$41 million. The ‘rebalancing’ to Asia, the MSI and the lifting of the embargo - it all adds up. The course is set, although it is a long way yet for bilateral security cooperation. Nonetheless, the increasing ease between US and Vietnam, which transcends history and ideology, reflects the realpolitik of Asia Pacific security. Because there are only permanent interests.

New Zealand budget: Cuts to basic services, billions for the military

Tom Peters

On Thursday, Finance Minister Bill English announced New Zealand’s eighth consecutive austerity budget.

Newspaper editorials described the budget as “boring” and “steady as she goes.” In fact it continues the cuts to basic services imposed since the 2008 global financial crash, which are designed to make the working class pay for the economic crisis.

There is a thin $NZ719 million ($US484 million) surplus forecast for the financial year ending June, achieved by starving health, welfare and education of funds. The only significant funding increases are aimed at strengthening the police state and spying apparatus, and preparing the military for future wars.

Treasury released growth forecasts of 2.8 percent on average over the next five years. Such forecasts are wildly optimistic. Economic growth slowed from 4.1 percent in 2014 to 2.3 percent in 2015 as New Zealand was severely impacted by the economic slowdown, particularly in China and Australia, the country’s two main trading partners.

Global prices for New Zealand’s main export, dairy products, have plummeted 56 percent since their peak in February 2014. Dairy farmers have $30 billion in debt between them, which is more than $5,000 per cow. The Reserve Bank has warned that the proportion of non-performing loans could rise to over 40 percent.

The ruling elite has responded to the deteriorating economy by fuelling unstable speculative bubbles, particularly in the housing market, and gutting public spending.

English trumpeted token measures “to support vulnerable New Zealanders,” notably $200 million over four years to fund 750 more “social housing” places for low-income families. This is grossly inadequate given there are 4,500 on the public housing waiting list and at least 34,000 people suffering from severe housing deprivation.

The government and the opposition parties have not proposed any measures to alleviate the housing affordability crisis, which is fuelled by rampant property speculation. It has become virtually impossible for the majority of workers to afford a house in the biggest city, Auckland.

There is no increase to welfare or the minimum wage. In recent years there have been major cuts to welfare, including pushing tens of thousands of single parents off benefits.

The budget will exacerbate the crisis in the public health sector, caused by decades of underfunding by National and Labour-led governments, combined with population growth. According to the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, in the current budget there is “an overall operational funding shortfall of $304 million, including a funding shortfall for district health boards of approximately $131 million.”

A series of recent reports show that tens of thousands of people are being denied vital surgical operations. Hospital emergency departments and mental health services are under severe pressure and failing to cope with demand.

Operational funding for schools has been frozen, resulting in a de facto cut that will increase the burden on staff and families and deepen the divide between schools in rich and poor neighbourhoods. Recent statistics show that between 2014 and 2015, overall schools funding dropped by $150 per student. A pittance of extra funding—$12.3 million—has been announced for the education needs of children deemed “at risk” due to poverty. There are an estimated 300,000 children living in poverty.

The budget provides money for seven new for-profit charter schools, in addition to the eight existing ones. Charter schools, generally located in oppressed areas, are not required to teach the curriculum and have been used overseas to attack teachers’ pay and conditions.

According to the Early Childhood Council, “accumulated cuts, over the past five years, [have] now reached $90,000 a year” for an average kindergarten or preschool with 50 children.

Apart from a small amount of funding for scientific research programs, money for universities and polytechnics remains frozen. To compensate, institutions will continue to raise fees, increasing student debt, which currently stands at $15 billion. Previous budgets have capped the amount students are able to borrow for study and restricted eligibility for living allowances to smaller numbers of students. The government has already arrested at least one person at the border for an outstanding student debt.

According to student associations, the total amount allocated for allowances has fallen from $620 million in 2011, to a forecast of just $496 million in 2016. The weekly allowance has failed to keep pace with inflation, rising by a mere $5 in the past five years to $175 a week, barely enough to cover the average cost of renting a room.

To address the inevitable increase in social misery and crime as a byproduct of the austerity measures, there is an extra $300 million for the police force over the next four years. The Corrections Department has been allocated $355 million, with the prison population forecast to reach 9800 by the end of the year (up from 8,641 at the end of 2014).

The military and intelligence agencies were described by the New Zealand Herald as “big winners” from the budget. The Defence Force will receive $300.9 million over four years in new operating funding. This is in addition to $11 billion that has been foreshadowed to buy military hardware over the next decade.

The upcoming Defence White Paper will provide further details on how this will be used to further integrate the operations of New Zealand forces and their main allies, Australia and the US. Like the Australian White Paper released earlier this year, it will strengthen New Zealand’s commitment to Washington’s aggressive military encirclement and preparations for war against China.

The spy agencies will get an extra $178.7 million over four years, including an immediate 25 percent increase for the domestic Security Intelligence Service (SIS) next year. The government declared that this was needed to improve “cyber security” and counter “risks posed by extremist groups such as ISIL.”

The supposed threat of terrorism is a pretext to strengthen the agencies’ abilities to suppress opposition within New Zealand to austerity and the drive towards war. A recent review recommended the effective merger of the SIS and the external spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), allowing both to carry out virtually unrestricted surveillance on New Zealand citizens and residents.

The funding will also assist the GCSB’s activities as a member of the US-led Five Eyes alliance. Edward Snowden revealed last year that the agency spies on China and other countries in Asia and shares the information with the US National Security Agency.

None of the opposition parties have any fundamental differences with the government’s agenda of austerity and militarism. The Labour Party and the right-wing New Zealand First Party have called for greater spending on the armed forces, particularly the navy. Labour also denounced the new funding for the police as inadequate.

While criticising the government’s failure to solve the housing crisis, Labour and the Greens have proposed only a token increase of 450 state houses, which would do nothing to house the tens of thousands of people in need. They have followed the lead of the anti-Asian NZ First in whipping up xenophobia by scapegoating immigrants for the housing shortage and calling for a ban on foreign buyers.

UK rich just keep getting richer

Simon Whelan

The annual Sunday Times Rich List has noted that 120 billionaires listed in the UK monopolise £325.1 billion in wealth and assets, a 5.79 percent increase on last year. The fortunes accrued by the 120 account for 60 percent of the wealth of the 1,000 richest people in Britain and Northern Ireland.

The newspaper’s estimate of the wealth of the top 1,000 doesn’t begin to provide the full picture. It is only an estimate of the value of the known assets of the UK’s super-rich, and does not include bank accounts to which the newspaper has no access. Listed assets, such as those documented in the Rich List, are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, real wealth is hidden from sight in private banks and myriad offshore arrangements.

This is the first Rich List made available since the revelations exposed by the Panama Papers. These leaks, detailing over 200,000 offshore companies listed by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, provided a glimpse into the shady world of tax avoidance by the world’s elite. They detailed the criminal practices involved in the global financial oligarchy’s financial affairs, with substantial evidence of the funnelling of huge amounts of money offshore.

The Panama Papers revealed that London was the centre of an international web of financial corruption. More than half of the 300,000 firms listed as Mossack Fonseca clients were registered in British-administered tax havens or in the UK itself. Britain is second only to Hong Kong in a list of international jurisdictions where the most banks, law firms and middlemen associated with the law firm formally operate.

The Sunday Times list is only one estimate of the wealth of the financial elite. It puts the number of billionaires in the UK at 120, with 77 of them residing within London. However, the successful Labour London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan spoke ad nauseam during his campaign of his pride at there being 140 billionaires living in the capital. This is the estimate of Beauchamp Estates “Ultra Prime market” survey and was also highlighted by the Daily Mail recently, as it crowed about London having more billionaires than any other city in the world—replete with banks of photos showing their palatial homes.

Much of the income on the Rich List is derived parasitically from the financial markets, without any connection to material production.

Over recent decades, extensive attacks upon public services in Britain have reduced services to a minimum while the population have been told that there is no money. Yet simultaneously fantastic amounts of money, sums easily capable of paying for entire annual social service budgets, are secretly squirreled away with zero contribution made to the public purse.

The French novelist Honore de Balzac was never more correct as when he suggested, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”

This year the Sunday Times pointed to the “crisis in the steel industry, plunging oil prices and a retail slump” that has “turned some of Britain’s biggest winners into losers.”

But while there was a fall in the wealth of some of the super-rich who derive their income from industrial production and the sale of commodities, overall the 1,000 wealthiest people in Britain are worth a combined £576 billion. This is an increase of £28.5 billion on last year, amounting to an increase of £901 every second.

Among the “causalities,” as the newspaper views them, is Lakshmi Mittal, whose wealth originates in the global steel industry. Despite losing an estimated £2 billion in the last year, he stands at number seven on the rich list with £7.12 billion. The Mittal family are hardly on their uppers and occupy three separate properties, in London’s Kensington Palace Gardens, costing a collective £300 million.

Top of the 0.001 percent of society this year are the Reuben brothers, David and Simon, with £13.1 billion—up an incredible £3.4 billion from last year. The Indian born brothers made their initial wealth, like others in the upper echelons of the Rich List, as a result of capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union. They muscled their way into the Russian aluminium industry and made their first billion.

Others charting high who made their seed money in the criminal carve-up of the state assets of the former Soviet Union include Lev Blavatnik, £11.59 billion, with substantial holdings in coal, aluminium and petrochemicals.

Alisher Usmanov, £7.85 billion, like Blavatnik Ukrainian by birth, made his money in steel and iron ore mines. He is the largest shareholder in the London Premier League soccer team, Arsenal. He resides in London’s One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive apartment block. He paid a staggering £140 million for a penthouse there, but likes to escape to Sutton Place, the Surrey manor house that previously belonged to the oil tycoon John Paul Getty. Blavatnik lives at one of the mansions on Kensington Palace Gardens that he purchased for £41 million in 2004.

After raking in a fortune alongside the Stalinists and gangsters who liquidated the Soviet Union, the Reuben brothers returned to London in 2000, smelling an opportunity to bolster their wealth further by playing the super-rich version of Monopoly. In the capital, they proceeded to buy up a substantial portfolio of expensive buildings in London’s West End. Their wealth has skyrocketed, increasing by almost £3.5 billion in the last year alone, because of burgeoning property values at the top end of the London property market. The brothers own London Oxford Airport and London Heliport, and are major investors in Belmond Hotels and Metro Bank. Other properties include Millbank Tower, Connaught House in Berkeley Square and the former In & Out Naval and Military Club building in Piccadilly.

The Reubens plan to transform the former Gentlemen’s Club into a 48-room luxury home. The Sunday Times reported they expect to place it on the exclusive market for an amount in excess of £500 million. The development of gratuitously large homes costing hundreds of millions of pounds in London is a prominent feature of the contemporary London housing market.

Apparently aghast at the relatively small size of London’s mansions in comparison to cheaper cities around the world, the international rich are buying up already opulent and grand homes and extending them into palatial urban castles equipped with 21st century security “ramparts.” This process includes buying up whole terraces of grand properties and merging them into ‘trophy mansions.’

Two years ago, the Beauchamp Estates estimated that their average price in Mayfair was £321 million and £17.6 million in St. John’s Wood.

In the last few years more than half a million working class Londoners have been forced out of the capital due to a huge increase in the cost of rent.

The gulf between the world’s billionaires and the rest of the world’s population is unbridgeable. According to business solutions company Expert Market, it would take a British worker employed on an average wage of £15.01 an hour and working 40 hours a week more than 348,000 years to match the fortune of the London-based brothers, Srichand and Gopichan Hinduja, who have amassed £10 billion in net wealth.

Wave of budget cuts throughout Latin America

Neil Hardt

The governments of Latin America are preparing a wave of budget cuts that will impact hundreds of millions of workers across the region. The cuts, orchestrated at the behest of international finance capital and supported by US imperialism, represent an intensification of anti-working class policies already implemented by the so-called “pink tide” governments.

The intensification of the attacks on the working class are being carried out in tandem with the US pivot to Latin America, aimed at countering Chinese influence in the region and facilitating the exploitation of the region by Wall Street and US corporations. The harshest cuts are being imposed in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador.

In April, Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior announced $US9.4 billion in cuts to many of the country’s “priority programs.” The government has previously been reluctant to attack these programs due to fear of provoking social opposition.

In education, five out of 15 priority programs will be cut, including 5 percent from educational quality programs and 1.7 percent from scientific research and technological development programs. Health budgets will also be slashed. Obesity and diabetes prevention programs face a 21 percent cut, HIV and STD prevention will be cut by 13.3 percent, and disease control programs will be slashed by 20 percent, this as the Zika virus makes its way through the country.

On May 22, sub-Secretary of the Interior Fernando Galindo Favela said that the decline in world commodity prices would force the government to reevaluate these cuts, in order to deepen them. “We will reevaluate the role of all of these programs and will change the rules of operation of those that are not working so they can serve the intended population. This does not mean we are eliminating them,” he said.

In Argentina, the newly elected government of Mauricio Macri announced a series of moves that are dramatically raising the cost of living for the working class. In February, the government announced a series of taxes on basic utilities. Since then, the price of electricity has increased between 250 and 700 percent. Train and bus prices have also doubled, while gas and water prices have tripled.

As a result, Macri’s favorability ratings are beginning to plummet. According to the Argentinian firm Public Opinion Group (GOP), Macri’s popularity has dropped 12.6 percent since taking office in December 2015. Today, 57.2 percent of Argentinians say the situation is worse than a year before, up from 41.4 percent in March. 53.2 percent say Macri’s administration governs on behalf of society’s richest, up from 49.5 percent in March.

“This is the price he pays for the enormous quantity of methods he has taken which have affected the daily life of the population, like increases to taxes, inflation, and the freeze on parity salaries,” said Raul Timerman, director of the GOP.

The government of Brazilian Interim President Michel Temer is also preparing to launch a wave of cuts against the Brazilian working class. On Wednesday, the legislature accepted Temer’s plan to cap budget spending, with Wall Street nodding in approval. “The plans are lofty in ambition, but so far lacking in detail. The problem, as ever, remains implementation,” Neil Shearing, chief emerging markets economist with Capital economics, told Bloomberg.

Rafael Cortes, a political analyst from the firm Integrated Consulting Tendencies, told the Chicago Tribune: “There’s a feeling that the government does have a coalition and passed this first test in the legislative process. The hope is that it can hold on to that to approve the economic measures.”

The legislation limits government spending for health, education, science and environmental protection programs while opening avenues for the selling off of state assets. Scientists in Brazil have expressed a fear of what the impact of the cuts will mean.

Similar waves of cuts have been imposed by the governments of Colombia, Chile, and Ecuador.

In February, Colombian President Miguel Santos announced that 3 percent of the country’s budget would be cut in the coming fiscal year, with each ministry forced to cut spending by 5 percent.

“You have to make adjustments when you have to, even though they are painful,” he said. “It’s the responsible thing to do.”

Chile’s government also announced cuts in February totaling $540 million for the 2016 budget. “When the economy gets difficult, like now, to make investments like these becomes more difficult. At times, it is necessary to make adjustments,” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet tweeted in February.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has imposed a new ruthless austerity regime, raising the value-added tax to 14 percent in 2016, up from 12 percent in 2015. Last year, Correa imposed $US2.2 billion in cuts to social spending. In his state of the union address delivered Tuesday, he stated that in 2015 and 2016, “6 percent of GDP [was cut] from the state budget, basically in investment, in such a way as to affect the poorest and economic activity to the least extent possible. By far, it’s the biggest adjustment in all of Latin America.”

This is not an exhaustive list. In numerous other countries in Latin America, cuts are impacting an already devastated working class.

From 2002 to 2015, Latin America’s billionaires grew 21 percent wealthier each year, a rate six times higher than that of the whole region’s GDP. Across the region, the average tax rate for the wealthiest 10 percent of the population amounts to roughly 5 percent of their income. In 2014, Oxfam reported that the richest 10 percent of Latin Americans control 71 percent of the wealth. The World Economic Forum noted that “if this trend continues, according to Oxfam’s calculations, in just six years’ time the richest 1 percent in the region will have accumulated more wealth than the remaining 99 percent.”

These figures are not the product of accident or poor planning. Rather, they are the product of decades of attacks against the working class, led by the bourgeoisie of each country at the encouragement of Wall Street and US imperialism. Whether openly right-wing or self-proclaimed “left” or “socialist,” the bourgeois governments of Latin America are to blame for deepening social inequality and poverty.

German chancellor boosts anti-refugee deal in visit to Turkey

Peter Schwarz

“The inhumane treatment of refugees,” we wrote on the World Socialist WebSite in early March, “is a signal of what workers and youth throughout Europe can expect in the future.” This was confirmed by the visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Turkey last Monday.

Merkel sought to save the refugee deal that the European Union agreed with Ankara under pressure from Germany. In exchange, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, with whom she met for a one-hour meeting in Istanbul, is now demanding that the EU accept the creation of an authoritarian presidential regime which he is energetically pursuing.

According to the official record of the talks, Erdogan threatened that the Turkish parliament would not ratify the agreement if the EU continued to insist on the weakening of Ankara’s controversial anti-terrorism law as a condition for visa freedom for Turkish citizens travelling to the EU.

Erdogan is using the anti-terrorism law to eliminate oppositional politicians and journalists critical of the Turkish army’s actions against the Kurds and his politics in Syria. Even a mere expression of opinion can result in arrest and a years-long prison sentence.

Just last week, at the insistence of the ruling AKP, the Turkish parliament agreed to lift the immunity of a quarter of its deputies, overwhelmingly members of the pro-Kurdish HDP. They can now be brought before the courts and lose their mandate if convicted. In this way, Erdogan could establish the two-thirds majority he requires to anchor the presidential dictatorship, which is already functioning in practice, in the constitution.

Prior to the talks, Merkel went a long way toward meeting Erdogan’s demands. Although she expressed her concern about “some developments in Turkey” in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, she insisted that the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was a terrorist organization. There were “of course mutual dependencies” and the “necessity to balance interests,” said the chancellor. It was her role to “identify differences and arrive at compromises.” Thus far, Turkey had been reliable with its promises.

The refugee deal with Turkey is the heart of Merkel’s so-called European solution of the refugee crisis. Fearing that the closure of Europe’s internal borders—as Hungary, Austria and other countries unilaterally decided to implement—would mean multi-billion-euro losses for German big business and the break-up of the EU, Merkel pressed for the sealing off of Europe’s external borders.

Within the EU, the right to asylum was thus practically abolished. Refugees are being treated like criminals, arrested at the borders, confined to detention camps and deported. However, the EU is relying to a large extent on Turkey taking back refugees and deporting some of them to their countries of origin.

Merkel is not only under pressure from other European governments over her refugee policy, but also from within Germany. In this, the opposition comes overwhelmingly from the right.

Horst Seehofer, the chairman of the Christian Social Union, the Christian Democratic Union’s sister party in Bavaria, attacked Merkel on Sunday on the public broadcaster ARD, stating, “One should never allow oneself to become dependent upon such systems or be blackmailed.” In the face of the lifting of immunity for Turkish parliamentary deputies “the whole world must raise its voice,” blustered Seehofer. But there had not been much criticism, “because the deal obviously can’t be put at risk.”

Seehofer, who is among the hardliners against refugees and maintains close ties to autocrats like Hungarian President Victor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin, is pursuing two main goals with his critique of Merkel.

Domestically, he aims to halt the rise of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) by adopting its nationalist and Islamophobic line, which is also directed against Turkish immigrants. He is continuously repeating the maxim of the former CSU leader Franz Josef Strauß that no legitimate democratic party can be allowed to the right of the Union parties. Merkel has publicly contradicted him.

Secondly, Seehofer, along with other sections of the foreign policy elite, fears that too close of a reliance on Turkey could limit German options in the Middle East, where it is acting with increased aggressiveness.

A century ago, German imperialism pursued its aims in the Orient in alliance with the Ottoman Empire, but was left empty-handed after it was divided up by France and Britain following the defeat in the First World War. Now, with a renewed division of the Middle East taking place, Germany wants to retain the option of playing the Iranian, Egyptian or Kurdish card.

It is therefore no coincidence that the German parliament is due to pass a resolution on June 2 condemning the persecution of Armenians a hundred years ago (in which German military officers were heavily involved) as “genocide.” This move will increase tensions with Ankara.

In Berlin, Erdogan’s authoritarian strivings are accepted or tolerated with verbal protests, but they are seen as a sign of weakness. The German ruling elite does not wish to tie its foreign policy too closely to a regime which could soon be rocked by social conflict.

Throughout its history, the Turkish bourgeoisie has repeatedly responded to domestic and external crises with dictatorial measures. During the last sixty years alone, the military has launched three coups and enforced one change in power. This same course is taken by Erdogan in the face of mounting social tensions and foreign policy crises.

The rise of his AKP was closely bound up with an influx of international capital and high economic growth rates which made possible some social concessions and a growth of the middle class. But now the economy is stagnating, unemployment and inflation stand at 10 percent, and the Turkish lira is in free fall. At the same time, Turkey is deeply implicated in the Syrian war and, after expanding its economic ties with much of the Arab world and former states of the Soviet Union, finds itself in disputes with virtually all of its neighbors, as well as Russia.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung lobbies for militarism and war

Johannes Stern

“Militarism means the dominance of military ideals and aims in politics and social life, such as, for example, through the one-sided emphasis of the right of the stronger, and the expression of the view that wars are necessary or unavoidable.” This is the definition of militarism provided by the sixth edition of the political lexicon published by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education.

Seventy-one years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship and the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Second World War, influential sections of the German elite think it is time to resurrect the principles that pushed Europe into the abyss twice in the last century. A recent article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, headlined, “When will we finally get back on our feet?” provides eloquent testimony of this.

The daily, a mouthpiece for the Frankfurt banks, has provided a platform for Wolf Poulet, a former “tank force officer and general in the high command of the armed forces,” whose views are entirely in the tradition of his historical predecessors in the Kaiser’s army. He advocates an aggressive German foreign and war policy.

At the very beginning of his guest column, Poulet complains from the point of view of a well-integrated militarist, a Free Democratic Party (FDP) member and foreign policy adviser, “We Germans are obviously no longer in a position to deviate from the supposed path of the all-understanding do-gooders.” And it is “this perpetual role of do-gooders, so to speak the ‘Adolf Hitler apology 2.0,’” that has “put our country on a course that is hard for neighbouring countries and allies to tolerate.”

Then he asks provocatively, “When will the Federal Republic of Germany be able to get on its feet with a self-confident, political attitude?” Of course, the “moralizing about atrocities committed in the name of Germany is right just as it was before … However, when can we trade the ‘culture of guilt’ that has lasted for 70 years for an appropriately self-confident and rationally directed state philosophy?”

In their exposure of the role of the Humboldt University professors Herfried Münkler and Jörg Baberowski, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party have shown how the German elite is systematically working to minimize the crimes of German imperialism in the 20th century in order to prepare the way for the return of an aggressive Germany foreign policy. Poulet’s article makes it clear how far this process has already progressed and reveals the dangers it brings with it.

Poulet explicitly advocates a huge, highly armed army capable of waging war all over the world. He mourns the period of the Cold War, when the German army represented “a significant proportion of the conventional defences of Central Europe” and had “almost a million soldiers.” The army was “respected” by the Soviet army for its military capability and had more than 4,500 tanks at its disposal for the purposes of “defence” against the Warsaw Pact. Today, only “between 225 and 300” remain, he complained.

In the last 25 years, the German army has degenerated to a “torso full of holes” in which only “a few small, brave units in all sections of the military forces have maintained their functionality.” According to Poulet, political policy is responsible for this. He writes: “The principle is: make it sound good, ignore it and then cobble it together. Since the beginning of the ‘90s, the political elite have had the framework in place for dissolving the armed forces. The responsible committees in the German parliament have used the defence budget as a form of financial reserves almost every year. All the parties in government have assisted in this whenever one has taken a look into the budgets.”

Poulet not only accuses the “political elite” of financially exhausting the army, but also of not really wanting to fight a war. “In addition to the material withering of the armed forces, the fearful flinching of the members of the government at any suspicion of a deployment of fighting forces is embarrassing,” he writes. “As soon as the heat is on in a relevant region … the German foreign minister and defence minister react reflexively to reject action.”

A section headed “Primacy of Politics” makes it clear what Poulet views as the real issue. In his view, the politicians currently in power are neither ready nor in a position, after the horrible experiences of two world wars, to make Germany into a leading war power, to accept the “primacy of the military” and to impose this on the population as under the Kaiser and the Nazis.

His anger is directed above all against former FDP Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is now dead, and current Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the war in Libya in 2011, they acted as though the issue was “the implementation of a no-fly zone against the Libyan ground troops” and were “so imbued with a preference for peace that Germany abstained from the vote like the Russians and Chinese,” he complained.

“The military does not have a very good reputation” inside Germany either, complains Poulet. In 2006, “the sanctimonious Bild newspaper” increased its circulation by publishing pictures of “young [German] soldiers in Afghanistan posing with bones and skulls.” The German media then immediately showed “their disgust and indignation,” using phrases like “desecration of the dead” and “dead body parts.” The chancellor immediately demanded “a heavy punishment for the guilty.”

However, once the situation is considered more carefully, it becomes clear “that the Afghani population was not especially interested in the issue” and “that the old fossil bones came from a gravel pit.” The fact that a “head of government of a middle power” judged soldiers in “such an unexamined way” is “only possible in Germany.” It is always “about the defence against shame and fighting the bad guys and not wanting to be one of them.”

It is clearly not enough for Poulet that the grand coalition is aggressively implementing a change in German foreign policy with the support of the opposition parties and the media, increasing military spending, and carrying out one foreign deployment after another. The consequences of his argumentation are clear: one must be ready once again to be “one of the bad guys,” and, just as in the past, to commit war crimes and defend them against every criticism.

Poulet ends his article with a provocative “prognosis.” He no longer trusts the “generation that grew up for the most part under peace” that is between 50 and 75 years old today, and “has ruled and influenced Germany for 25 years” to carry out the change he longs for. “Sustainable change” is “only to be expected with the rise of the young generation. It is tougher than us and no longer so sensitive about Nazis.”

If Poulet and the German elite for whom he speaks are of the opinion that they will get a third chance to hurl the world into the abyss, they are mistaken. Even 70 years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the younger generation knows what horrible crimes the SS and the Wehrmacht perpetrated in the Second World War, and the great majority rejects militarism and war. However, his article serves as a warning. The German elite with the military at the head is once again ready, as the saying goes, to trample bodies under feet to defend the interests of German imperialism.

Strike wave against austerity spreads in France, Belgium

Kumaran Ira

As strikes and occupations continue in France against the reactionary labor law imposed earlier this month by the Socialist Party (PS) government, despite attacks on strikers by riot police, protests and walkouts against austerity are breaking out in neighboring Belgium. On Tuesday, some 60,000 workers marched in Brussels against the austerity measures of the conservative government of Prime Minister Charles Michel.

The Brussels demonstration targeted planned cuts to the welfare system, budget cuts in public service and education, and a labor reform allowing bosses to introduce a 45-hour work week and impose overtime without extra pay.

Prior to Tuesday's protest, the Michel government reinforced draconian security measures imposed after the March 22 terrorist attack in Brussels. It is now clear that the Belgian government, which ignored forewarnings from foreign intelligence agencies concerning the identity and plans of the March 22 attackers, is using the security measures to repress domestic opposition from the working class. Riot police used water cannon and tear gas against Tuesday’s protest, injuring several people. Ten people were reportedly arrested.

The growing movement against austerity in Belgium coincides with an escalating wave of strikes in France. The regressive PS labor law allows companies to negotiate with trade unions to lengthen the work week up to a maximum of 46 hours and to cut wages. It also eases the conditions for laying off workers. The law, overwhelmingly opposed by workers and youth, is widely seen as an illegitimate attack on workers' social rights won through decades of struggle.

In France, strikes are occurring at oil refineries and ports and in civil aviation, rail, energy, transport and construction. Nationwide protests will take place today, after thousands of people participated in protest on May 19.

A week-long oil strike is paralyzing the French economy and causing widespread fuel shortages. Thirty percent of France’s 12,000 gas stations are reportedly out of fuel or close to it.

The PS government has responded by hypocritically denouncing protesting workers. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “democracy is being taken hostage by a minority.”

This is a brazen and provocative lie. It is the PS government that is behaving like a dictatorship, pushing through the socially regressive law without a parliamentary vote in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, employing the emergency powers provisions of the anti-democratic Article 49.3 of the French Constitution to do so.

A large majority of the population holds President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls responsible for the social tensions and the industrial disruptions caused by the strikes. An Elabe survey published yesterday found that nearly 70 percent of the population support having the PS, and not the strikers, back down by withdrawing the labour law.

The strikes are undermining the PS government, triggering a deep crisis and calls for withdrawing the law, even from within the PS itself. Bruno Le Roux, head of the PS faction in the National Assembly, called on the government to rework the labor law. He particularly singled out Article 2, which allows the trade unions to sign and implement contracts violating the Labor Code and the requirement for industry-wide agreements.

Valls opposed this proposal in the parliament, claiming that there would be “neither a withdrawal of the law nor questioning of Article 2, as it is the heart of the philosophy of the bill.”

Instead, the PS government is determined to use police repression to crush strikes and blockades by oil workers.

After sending riot police on Tuesday to attack workers blockading the oil refinery at Fos-sur-Mer near Marseille, police intervened yesterday to reestablish access to a key fuel depot at Douchy-les-Mines near Valenciennes in northern France. The depot had been blocked by members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and Solidaires unions since May 19.

The attack on Tuesday began around 5 a.m., as 20 police trucks converged on the refinery and riot police used water cannon to dislodge 80 workers who were blocking access.

Despite the police repression, strikes are spreading throughout France’s oil facilities. The country's eight refineries are all affected by strike action. The Total refinery at Feyzin near Lyon and Total's Normandy plant have stopped production. The Grandpuits facility near Paris will soon come to a complete halt and Donges, close to Nantes, will shut down several units, while La Mède of Fos-sur-Mer and Lavéra in the Marseille region are working at a reduced rate. Dozens of oil depots, out of a total of 78 in France, are also blocked.

With fuel shortages worsening, the government has begun releasing portions of its strategic fuel reserves. Francis Duseux, president of the French oil industry group UFIP (Union Française des Industries Petrolières), told RMC radio: “Over the last two days, since we had problems with the refining operations and blockades of fuel depots, we began, together with the public authorities, to use the reserve stocks.”

Terrified by the protests, ruling circles are calling for the government to trample on the constitutionally protected right to strike and force employees back to work. The right-wing opposition Republicans (LR) asked the PS to requisition oil workers and legally compel them to return to work. MP Eric Ciotti said, “We must requisition them, as [conservative President] Nicolas Sarkozy did in 2010. It is in the national interest. We cannot leave the country blockaded by a small minority.”

In the meantime, strikes are erupting in other French industries against the labor law. The CGT-Energy federation has called for strike action at the French state electricity company EDF and is planning site blockades to cut electricity production. This would lead to power cuts across the country. Yesterday, workers at France’s 19 nuclear plants, including Nogent-sur-Seine southeast of Paris and Gravelines in the north, voted to go out on strike on Thursday.

Unions at the French National Railway (SNCF) called strikes for yesterday and today, and the CGT issued a notice of strike action, renewable daily, starting from May 31. Indefinite strike action has been called at Paris transport system (RATP) against the PS labour law and poor working conditions and wages, starting from June 2.

Airport workers, including air traffic controllers, administrative staff, engineers and technicians are on strike today, causing the cancellation of flights at several airports. A nationwide strike is planned between June 2 and June 5 involving air traffic controllers and civil aviation workers to protest against the labor law and the drop in staff numbers.

Port and dock workers are also entering into struggle, with dockers at Marseille and Le Havre, which handles 40 percent of French imports, voting to strike until Friday to protest police repression on Tuesday at the Fos-sur-Mer oil facility.

Since Monday, Marseille dockers have refused to unload goods, including crude and refined petroleum products, headed to refineries. Some 29 ships carrying crude oil were still stranded yesterday as the CGT called a work stoppage until Friday at the public Marseille port facilities as well as at Fluxel, the private operator that manages two oil terminals.