Bayer’s Trojan Horse

Colin Todhunter

The decision whether to allow the commercialisation of the first genetically modified (GM) food crop (mustard) in India is close. Serious conflicts of interest, sleight of hand and regulatory delinquency – not to mention outright fraud – could mean the decision coming down in favour of commercialisation.

The bottom line is government collusion with transnational agribusiness, which is trying to hide in the background, despite much talk of Professor Pental and his team at Delhi University being independent developers of the GM mustard (DMH 11) in question The real story behind GM mustard in India seems to be that it presents the opportunity to make various herbicide tolerant (HT) mustard hybrids using India’s best germ plasm, which would be an irresistible money spinner for the developers and chemical manufacturers (Bayer-Monsanto).

Campaigner Aruna Rodrigues is petitioning India’s Supreme Court (view the petition), seeking a moratorium on the release of any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment pending a comprehensive, transparent and rigorous biosafety protocol in the public domain conducted by agencies of independent expert bodies, the results of which are made public.

If at first you fail… try collusion and fraud?

In order to understand the GM mustard issue in India, it is important to appreciate the history behind it, as outlined in the writ petition:

“In 2002, Proagro Seed Company (now Bayer), applied for commercial approval for exactly the same construct that Prof Pental and his team are now promoting as HT Mustard DMH 11. The reason today matches Bayer’s claim then of 20% better yield increase (than conventional mustard). Bayer was turned down because the ICAR [Indian Council of Agricultural Research] said that their field trials did not give evidence of superior yield.”

The petition says that, some 14 years later, invalid field trials and unremittingly fraudulent data now supposedly provide evidence of a superior yield of 25%. It continues:

“HT DMH 11 is the same Bayer HT GMO construct – an herbicide tolerant GMO of three alien genes. It employs, like the Bayer construct, pollen sterilisation technology BARNASE, with the fertility restorer gene BARSTAR (B & B system) (modified from the original genes sourced from a soil bacterium) and the herbicidal bar gene in each GMO parental line. The employment of the B & B system is to facilitate the making of hybrids as mustard is largely a self-pollinating crop (but outcrosses at rates of up to 20%). THERE IS NO TRAIT FOR YIELD. HT DMH 11 is straightforwardly an herbicide tolerant (HT) crop, though this aspect has been consistently marginalised by the developers over the last several years.”

In basic terms, as mustard tends to be self-pollinating, in order to produce a hybrid, two parent lines had to be genetically modified. Barnase and barstar technology were used in the parent lines. And the outcome is three GMOs: the two parents and the offspring, DMH 11, which will be ideal for working with glufosinate (Bayer’s ‘Liberty’ and ‘Basta’).

“… the plan is that the OFFICIAL ROUTE FOR THE FIRST-TIME RELEASE OF AN HT CROP AND A FOOD CROP, WILL BE THROUGH HT DMH 11 AND/OR its TWO HT PARENTAL LINES by STEALTH. Since the claimed YIELD superiority of HT DMH 11 through the B & B system over Non-GMO varieties and hybrids is quite simply NOT TRUE…”

In other words, GM mustard is both a Trojan horse and based on a hoax.

Whatever happened to science and proper procedure?

Various high-level reports (listed here) have advised against introducing GM food crops to India. In a press release, Aruna Rodrigues notes the abysmal state of GMO regulatory oversight in the country and the need for the precautionary principle to be applied without delay.

GM mustard (DMH 11) is a HT GMO with three alien genes. DMH 11 and its two GM parental lines, which have suddenly emerged in the line-up for commercial approval as part of the DMH 11 ‘package’, are HT crops designed to be used with glufosinate (notably Bayer’s market brands), a neurotoxin that will be banned in the EU from 2017.

Rodrigues asserts that the two parent lines and the hybrid DMH-11 require full independent testing, which has not occurred. And it has not occurred because of a conflict of interest and regulatory delinquency. The Department of Biotechnology is an active partner with Prof Pental (and his team at Delhi University, who have been developing GM mustard). The institutions of GMO governance in India see no problem in regulating DMH11, which they are also invested in and promote.

Allowing for not one but three GMOs is a serious case of regulatory ‘sleight-of-hand’, permissible due to diluted rules to ensure easy compliance. According to Rodrigues, it effectively means that the system allowing for GMOs in India has been deregulated. From a biosafety perspective, both maternal lines of DMH 11 must trigger the need for new rigorous safety testing.

Rodrigues explains that the testing/regulatory system that has been used allows for three GMOs to be defined as a single ‘event’ under cover of a single safety dossier:

“They have slipped under the regulatory radar on a technicality, through a lacuna in the rules of an ‘event-based system’, which allows these three GMOs to come up for commercial approval without safety testing… India is suddenly faced with the deregulation of GMOs. This is disastrous and alarming, without ethics and a scientific rationale.”

She goes on to highlight in some detail how the tests for GM mustard have been based on fraud. GM mustard is said to out-yield India’s best cultivars by 25-30%. The choice of the correct ‘comparators’ is an absolute requirement for the testing of any GMO to establish whether it is required in the first place. But Rodrigues argues that the choice of deliberately poor ‘comparators’ is at the heart of the fraud of HT DMH 11.

In the absence of adequate and proper testing and sufficient data, no statistically valid conclusions of mean seed yield (MSY) of DMH 11 could be drawn anyhow. Yet they were drawn by both the regulators and developers who furthermore self-conducted and supervised the trials. Without valid data to justify it, DMH 11 was allowed in pre-commercial large scale field trials in 2014-15.

For an adequate basis for a comparative assessment of MSY, Rodrigues argues it was absolutely necessary for the comparison to include the cross (hybrid) between the non-modified parental lines (nearest isogenic line), at the very start of the risk assessment process and throughout the subsequent stages of field testing, in addition to other recommended ‘comparators’. None of this was done.

Deliberately poor non-GMO mustard varieties were chosen to promote prospects for DMH 11 as a superior yielding GMO hybrid, which then passed through ‘the system’ and was allowed by the regulators, a classic non-sequitur by both the regulators and Dr Pental.

The fraud continued, according to Rodrigues, by actively fudging yield data of DMH 11 by 15.2% to show higher MSY. Again, she offers a good deal of evidence to show how it was done and why it was done: to justify the request for commercial approval.

A combination of fudged data and regulatory delinquency mean that DMH 11 and its two GMO parental lines are effectively forcing open the backdoor entry into India of herbicide tolerant GMOs based on non-GM traits.

Rodrigues concludes:

“It matters not a jot if HT DMH 11 is not approved. What does matter is that its two HT (GMO) parental lines are: HT Varuna-barnase and HT EH 2-barstar will be used “for introgressing the bar-barnase and bar- barstar genes into new set of parental line to develop next generation of hybrids with higher yields –” (Developer and Regulator). This extraordinary admission confirms that the route to any number of ‘versions’ of HT mustard DMH 11 IS INVESTED IN THESE TWO GMOs as parents. India will have hundreds of low-yielding HT mustard hybrids (as was contrived for failed Bt cotton, with a present count above 1500 Bt hybrids), using India’s best mustard cultivars at great harm to our farmers and contaminating our seeds and mustard germ plasm irreversibly.”

India will be forced to accept a highly toxic and unsustainable technology suited to monocropping. Herbicide tolerant GM crops would be particularly unsuitable for its agriculture given the large number of small farms growing a diverse range of crops alongside mustard that contribute towards agricultural biodiversity and, in turn, diverse, healthy diets.

This unremitting fraud and unremitting regulatory delinquency is being protected by a subterranean process of regulation that has also broken India’s constitutional safeguards by keeping the biosafety data hidden from the nation.

“India faces a three in one regulatory jugglery in a brazen display of collusion to fraud the Nation, by our regulatory institutions of governance… There is an on-going and accelerating down-sizing of precautionary regulation and rigorous and sceptical oversight of GMOs, even unremitting and clear fraud.”

Rodrigues says:

“These matters require criminal prosecution. The Petitioners’ Prayer to the Hon’ble Supreme Court is for HT crops to be barred and specifically HT (GMO) Mustard to be barred, and for an enquiry to be instituted into the regulatory process followed for DMH 11, amongst other Prayers.”

It raises the question why are top officials seemingly hell-bent on driving GMOs into India. That, of course, is an issue in itself, one that is again related to collusion and deception.

House of Saud Won’t Save Britain From Post-Brexit Decline

Patrick Cockburn

Why does the British Government devote so much time and effort to cultivating the rulers of Bahrain, a tiny state notorious for imprisoning and torturing its critics? It is doing so when a Bahraini court is about to sentence the country’s leading human rights advocate, Nabeel Rajab, who has been held in isolation in a filthy cell full of ants and cockroaches, to as much as 15 years in prison for sending tweets criticising torture in Bahrain and the Saudi bombardment of Yemen.

Yet it has just been announced that Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are to make an official visit to Bahrain in November with the purpose of improving relations with Britain. It is not as though Bahrain has been short of senior British visitors of late, with the International Trade Minister Liam Fox going there earlier in September to meet the Crown Prince, Prime Minister and commerce minister. And, if this was not enough, in the last few days the Foreign Office Minister of State for Europe, Sir Alan Duncan, found it necessary to pay a visit to Bahrain where he met King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and the interior minister, Sheikh Rashid al-Khalifa, whose ministry is accused of being responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses on the island since the Arab Spring protests there were crushed in 2011 with the assistance of Saudi troops.

Quite why Sir Alan, who might be thought to have enough on his plate in dealing with his area of responsibility in Europe in the era of Brexit, should find it necessary to visit Bahrain remains something of mystery. Sayed Ahmed Alwadei, director of advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, asks: “Why is Alan Duncan in Bahrain? He has no reasonable business being there as Minister of State for Europe” But Sir Alan does have a long record of befriending the Gulf monarchies, informing a journalist in July that Saudi Arabia “is not a dictatorship”.

The flurry of high level visits to Bahrain comes as Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, awaits sentencing on next week on three charges stemming from his use of social media. These relates to Rajab tweeting and retweeting about torture in Bahrain’s Jau prison and the humanitarian crisis caused by Saudi-led bombing in Yemen. After he published an essay entitled “Letter From a Bahrain Jail” in the The New York Times a month ago, he was charged with publishing “false news and statements and malicious rumours that undermines the prestige of the kingdom”.

This “prestige” has taken a battering since 2011 when pro-democracy protesters, largely belonging to the Shia majority on the island, were savagely repressed by the security forces. Ever since, the Sunni monarchy has done everything to secure and reinforce its power, not hesitating to inflame Sunni-Shia tensions by stripping the country’s most popular Shia cleric, Sheikh Isa Qassim, of his citizenship on the grounds that he was serving the interests of a foreign power.

Repression has escalated since May with the suspension of the main Shia opposition party, al-Wifaq, and an extension to the prison sentence of its leader, Sheikh Ali Salman. The al-Khalifa dynasty presumably calculates that US and British objections to this clampdown are purely for the record and can safely be disregarded. The former Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond claimed unblushingly earlier this year that Bahrain was “travelling in the right direction” when it came to human rights and political reform. Evidently, this masquerade of concern for the rights of the majority in Bahrain is now being discarded, as indicated by the plethora of visits.

There are reasons which have nothing to do with human rights motivating the British Government, such as the recent agreement to expand a British naval base on the island with the expansion being paid for by Bahrain. In its evidence to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Government said that UK naval facilities on the island give “the Royal Navy the ability to operate not only in the Gulf but well beyond in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and North West Indian Ocean”. Another expert witness claimed that for Britain “the kingdom is a substitute for an aircraft carrier permanently stationed in the Gulf”.

These dreams of restored naval might are probably unrealistic, though British politicians may be particularly susceptible to them at the moment, imagining that Britain can rebalance itself politically and economically post-Brexit by closer relations with old semi-dependent allies such as the Gulf monarchies. These rulers ultimately depend on US and British support to stay in power, however many arms they buy. Bahrain matters more than it looks because it is under strong Saudi influence and what pleases its al-Khalifa rulers pleases the House of Saud.

But in kowtowing so abjectly to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf kingdoms, Britain may be betting on a flagging horse at the wrong moment. Britain, France and – with increasing misgivings – the US have gone along since 2011 with the Gulf state policy of regime change in Libya and Syria. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in combination with Turkey, have provided crucial support for the armed opposition to Bashar al-Assad. Foreign envoys seeking to end the Syrian war since 2011 were struck by British and French adherence to the Saudi position, even though it meant a continuance of the war which has destabilised the region and to a mass exodus of refugees heading for Western Europe.

Whatever the Saudis and Gulf monarchies thought they were doing in Syria, it has not worked. They have been sawing off the branch on which they are sitting by spreading chaos and directly or indirectly supporting the rise of al-Qaeda-type organisations like Isis and al-Nusra. Likewise in their rivalry with Iran and the Shia powers, the Sunni monarchies are on the back foot, having escalated a ferocious war in Yemen which they are failing to win.

In the past week Saudi Arabia has suffered two setbacks that are as serious as any of these others: on Wednesday the US Congress voted overwhelmingly to override a presidential veto enabling the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. In terms of US public opinion, the Saudi rulers are at last paying a price for their role in spreading Sunni extremism and for the bombing of Yemen. The Saudi brand is becoming toxic in the US as politicians respond to a pervasive belief among voters that there is Saudi complicity in the spread of terrorism and war.

The second Saudi setback is different, but also leaves it weaker. At the Opec conference in Algiers, Saudi Arabia dropped its long-term policy of pumping as much oil as it could, and agreed to production cuts in order to raise the price of crude. A likely motivation was simple shortage of money. The prospects for the new agreement are cloudy but it appears that Iran has got most of what it wanted in returning to its pre-sanctions production level. It is too early to see Saudi Arabia and its Gulf counterparts as on an inevitable road to decline, but their strength is ebbing.

Plan Colombia Vindicated: Colombia Rejects Peace

Roger D. Harris

Rio Hacha, Colombia. 

The mood in this improvised Colombian town on the Caribbean coast is somber tonight.  The national peace plebiscite was just defeated by a mere 0.43% or 60,000 votes.

The  government of Colombia and the FARC insurgents signed peace accords six days ago to much public jubilation. Today the peace accords were put to a public vote. Polls predicted a landslide approval of 60%.

The public airwaves had been saturated with advertisements for “si” to approve the accords. Practically every wall to I passed here on the coast and earlier this week in the capital of Bogota was plastered with “si” posters.

The “no” side appeared absent except for a fringe represented by former president Uribe and his right-wing cohorts. The Catholic Church, the current Santos government, and the entirety of progressive civil society – unions, Indigenous, Afro-descendants, campesinos – were campaigning for “si.” The outcome seemed preordained.

Yet when the polls opened today, the usual long lines were absent. Turnout was low, allowing an upset victory for “no.”

The right-wing had been threatening activists – many had already been assassinated – to disrupt the peace process. Hence our delegation of  North Americans to accompany targeted Colombian  activists to provide them some protection by raising their international visibility. The Alliance for Global Justice along with the United Steelworkers and the National Lawyers Guild came to Colombia at the invitation of FENSUAGRO, an agrarian workers federation,  Marcha Patriotica, a large progressive coalition, and Lazos de Dignidad, a human rights organization.

The accords would have ended the 52-year civil war – the longest in modern history. The FARC’s position during the intense four years of negotiations in Havana with the Colombian government was there could be no peace without justice. That it makes no sense to end the armed conflict if the conditions that generated that conflict were not addressed. The accords accordingly had provisions for agrarian reform, political participation for the insurgents, transitions from an illicit drug economy, and reparations for victims of the conflict.

Campesino leaders in the rough and rundown frontier town of Maicau on the Venezuelan border, where drug running and sales of contraband are mainstays of the local economy, spoke about the agrarian struggle. The “oligarchs,” they explained, want to “ethically clean” the countryside of small farmers to make way for transnational agribusiness. Yesterday they spoke of the great hope they had for a “si” vote to defeat the oligarchy.

Today Colombia voted against peace and against that hope.

The Obama administration, while giving lip service in support of the peace process, has massively increased lethal aid and transfer of the latest military technology to the Colombian government under the rubric of Plan Colombia. Presumptive president-elect Hillary Clinton has been on the campaign trail stomping for Plan Colombia as the world model for the military subjugation of those who oppose the extension of the US neoliberal empire.

The October 2nd  “no” vote on peace in Colombia will have repercussions around the world.

Amnesty International documents torture by Thai junta

Tom Peters

Amnesty International published a report on September 28 documenting 74 cases of torture and other forms of abuse by the Thai military and police. The report, entitled “‘Make Him Speak by Tomorrow:’ Torture and other ill-treatment in Thailand,” is based on interviews with victims in 2014 and 2015 as well as information gathered from lawyers, relatives, court documents and medical records.

The ruling National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) came to power in a military coup in May 2014, which removed the elected Pheu Thai Party government of Yingluck Shinawatra. Since then the junta has maintained conditions of martial law: public gatherings and protests are banned, the media has been censored and elections have repeatedly been postponed.

Many cases of torture documented by Amnesty International occurred during a week-long period of detention by the military. The victims include “suspected insurgents, government critics, and migrant workers, suspected drug users, ethnic minorities and others from various walks of life.”

The military granted itself sweeping powers to detain anyone at undisclosed locations and without charge for up to a week, and a further 30 days with court approval. Those arrested since the coup include politicians in the ousted government, student protesters, journalists and academics. About 1,800 people have faced military courts for alleged breaches of the military’s interim constitution. More than 500 people have been arrested and 68 charged with lèse majesté, that is, insulting the monarchy.

The Amnesty report paints a chilling picture of the brutal methods that will be used more broadly as opposition develops to the junta’s austerity measures and attacks on democratic rights.

A press conference organised in a Bangkok hotel to launch the report was interrupted by police and officers from the Labour Ministry, who threatened to arrest Amnesty International spokespersons on the pretext that they did not have a work permit. In an attempt to intimidate anyone who exposes the regime’s crimes, army spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvaree told the Nationnewspaper: “If there is anything in the report that damages the reputation of anyone or any agency, they may be sued for defamation.”

In July, three Amnesty International officials based in Thailand were charged for criminal defamation for releasing a report documenting 54 cases of alleged torture carried out by the army and police in southern Thailand. They face up to five years in jail if found guilty.

For the most recent report, the organisation spoke to several people who were tortured while detained “in relation to political activities or alleged involvement in acts of politically-motivated violence” prior to the coup. The most common form of torture was beatings. There were also cases involving “strangling, choking, waterboarding, electroshocks and burns, prolonged and painful handcuffing, humiliation (including through acts of a sexual nature), prolonged blindfolding, threats including death threats, and exposure to cold.”

In one case a young man arrested in mid-2014 told Amnesty International: “They put a plastic bag on my head until I fainted, and then poured a bucket of cold water on me … They applied electro-shock to my penis and chest. I was restrained, my legs tied, and my face covered with tape and a plastic bag.” During the ordeal he pleaded with the soldiers: “Please shoot me and send my corpse to my family.”

Another victim described the horrific experience of being waterboarded: “They’d sit me on a chair, wet a towel and hold it to my face until I couldn’t breathe, or they would put a towel on my face and tie it behind my head, then pour water on the towel until it went into my nose and I would choke. Then the soldier would remove it, and then do it again.”

While the report states that cases of torture have increased following the coup, it also documents some cases that occurred before the coup, under the Pheu Thai government. Victims included men suspected of involvement in southern Thailand’s Muslim separatist insurgency. Martial law has been in place since 2006 in parts of the south affected by the long-running and bloody conflict, enabling arbitrary detentions by the military for up to 37 days.

The report also details cases involving alleged drug users and migrant workers. It points to the longstanding practice of police officers using torture to extract bribes from these particularly vulnerable people.

Hardly anyone is ever held accountable for such human rights abuses. Amnesty’s report notes that Thailand’s Penal Code “does not specifically criminalise acts of torture.” Nor is there any law against statements obtained through torture being presented as evidence in court.

Victims rarely come forward out of fear of reprisals and allegations of torture are almost never investigated. A senior member of the Thai judiciary admitted to Amnesty International: “We wouldn’t initiate an investigation into torture even if we’re convinced there was torture … we do have the power to investigate but we’re quite passive.”

The widespread abuse and torture by the army and police are an attempt to suppress any opposition to the regime, as it moves to impose the full burden of the economic crisis on the population.

The army, led by General Prayuth Chan-Ocha, ousted the Pheu Thai government in order to carry out the assault on the working class and rural poor demanded by the ruling elite.

The monarchy, the armed forces and the state bureaucracy are deeply hostile to Yingluck and her brother, telecommunications billionaire and former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed in an earlier coup in 2006. Parties linked to the Shinawatras have won every election since 2001 and gained support among the rural poor by offering limited reforms including subsidies for rice farmers, which have now been eliminated.

The Economist recently noted that as a result spending in rural Thailand has collapsed and the rural economy “has contracted for seven quarters in a row.” Under the ousted government’s subsidy scheme “a tonne of rice brought in as much as 20,000 baht ($625)” for a farming family. The amount has now dropped to 8,000 baht following the collapse in global rice prices and the removal of the subsidy.

The Obama administration has so far made no official statement on Amnesty International’s report on torture in Thailand. Washington considers the country an important military ally in Asia, where the US is encircling and preparing for war against China. While making token criticisms of the coup-leaders, the US has continued to conduct regular military training with Thai forces, including the annual Cobra Gold war games in February, an anti-submarine warfare naval drill in May, and the Hanuman Guardian exercise in July, focused on search and rescue operations and aviation interoperability.

According to the Nation, on September 23 US ambassador Glyn Davies praised the junta’s August referendum, which endorsed an anti-democratic constitution designed to entrench military rule, even if elections are held as promised in 2017. Davies told reporters: “The US considered the referendum to have been carried out in a fairly free and fair manner and could plausibly bring reconciliation to the country.” In fact, the referendum was marked by widespread military and police intimidation of opponents, including the arrest of hundreds of people who campaigned against the draft constitution.

Thousands of teachers strike in Brazil as government prepares attack on education

Gabriel Lemos

On September 22, thousands of teachers throughout Brazil took to the streets in defense of wages and working conditions and against education budget cuts being prepared by President Michel Temer of the PMDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). It was the largest demonstration of workers since last month’s impeachment of Workers Party (PT) president Dilma Rousseff.

The demonstrations were called by the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), which is affiliated to the CUT, Brazil’s largest trade union federation. Also joining the call for strike action by the CNTE were unions representing teachers and workers at federal universities, which led to a one-day strike on some campuses.

A demonstration in Sao Paulo

As part of a broader program of attacks on the Brazilian working class, President Temer expects to win approval in the National Congress, by the end of this year, of two proposed constitutional amendments that would have drastic effects on education. The first, initially proposed by ousted PT president Rousseff, freezes the wages of existing public employees and prevents the hiring of new ones for the next two years.

The other one, authored by president Temer, limits social spending to the level of the previous year’s inflation for the next 20 years. Economists estimate that it would slash education spending by 60 billion reais (almost US$19 billion) over the next 10 years, which would make the goals of Brazil’s National Education Plan unviable.

Unanimously approved by the National Congress in 2014, the National Education Plan has 20 goals for the next 10 years, among them the universalization of basic education and an increase in spending on education to 10 percent of GDP. Today, there are 3 million Brazilian children and youth between the ages of 4 and 17 years old out of school in Brazil.

In addition to cuts in the education budget, teachers protested against Temer’s proposals for pension “reform,” which would increase the retirement age to 65, and a labor reform, with includes the possibility of employment contracts being tied to hours worked and productivity, and also would increase the working day to 12 hours. Temer’s labor reform also proposes that direct negotiations between employees and employers take precedence over collective agreements.

These “reform” proposals are being advanced in the context of the worst economic crisis in Brazil since the Great Depression, with economic contraction for a second consecutive year, rising inflation and the unemployment rate above 11 percent.

On September 21, Folha de Sao Paulo reported that in August, 52 percent of wage agreements were below the inflation rate. One day before, on September 20, post office workers ended a week-long strike after accepting a wage increase of 9 percent. Bank workers, who have been on strike for three weeks, have already rejected two proposals of the National Banks Federation, the last one consisting of a wage increase of 7 percent.

Cuts in real wages and precarious working conditions especially affect teachers, the sector with the highest education levels in Brazil, and the lowest wages. The report “Education at a Glance 2016,” published by the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on September 16, showed that Brazilian teachers receive 39 percent of the average income of teachers from 41 countries, ahead only of Colombian and Indonesian teachers. It also showed that Brazilian teachers work the longest of all the surveyed countries, with two weeks per year more than the average.

The largest demonstration of the September 22 actions was held in Sao Paulo, where 20,000 teachers gathered on Paulista Avenue. There, APEOESP, the 180,000-member teachers’ union affiliated to CUT, also held its assembly.

Teachers in Sao Paulo have been facing two central issues in recent years. First, there is the performance-based policies that the right-wing party PSDB has implemented since 1994, replacing regular wage increases by bonuses based on standard testing. Since July 2014, the date of the last wage increase, Sao Paulo teachers have accumulated a loss in real wages of nearly 17 percent. This is the second consecutive year in which Governor Geraldo Alckmin has reduced the education budget.

Second, teachers in Sao Paulo face a long record of betrayals by APEOESP, including the sabotaging of assemblies and isolating the struggles of teachers of secondary students, who occupied almost 200 schools last year against a restructuring plan. APEOESP has collaborated closely with the state government in implementing attacks on teachers and public education.

The great majority of speeches at the September 22 assembly addressed two main issues: the recent criminal case brought by federal prosecutors against former PT president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, charging him as the “maximum commander” of the Petrobras bribery scheme, and the need for a general strike to defeat the reforms proposed by Temer.

The PT and the pseudo-left bureaucracy in APEOESP denounced the charges against Lula, calling him “a symbol of the working class” who “has fought against the Brazilian bourgeoisie.” João Felício, former APEOESP and CUT president, and current president of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), delivered a speech saying, “Lula was an obstacle to the ruling class, which never liked him.”

Such speeches only show how far from the working class, the PT and its controlled unions, APEOESP and CUT, have gone.

During its 13 years at the head of the Brazilian State, the PT was the main party of Brazilian capitalism. Just as in the USA, where the AFL-CIO, the US affiliate of the ITUC, has opposed the development of any mass political movement of the working class independent of the Democratic Party, PT-controlled unions in Brazil are seeking to channel the growing dissatisfaction of the Brazilian working class over Temer’s proposed reforms toward support for the PT in the next elections.

The speeches regarding the need for a general strike could not be more rhetorical. During the impeachment procedure against former president Rousseff, the PT and CUT did nothing to mobilize the working class. Instead, while the CUT suppressed workers’ struggles, Lula worked behind the scenes with the same corrupt politicians he now accuses of being golpistas(putschists) to prevent the impeachment.

Despite the increasingly clear plans of President Temer to unleash his attacks on the working class, the CUT was unable and unwilling to unite the workers’ struggles. In the last month, three major sectors of the working class in Brazil took to the streets in protest: the post office workers, the bank workers and teachers, all of them affiliated to the CUT. At the same time, the CUT was unable to organize any broader mobilization towards a general strike.

As the interests of the unions collide directly with those of the workers, the distrust of workers towards the unions is rising. This has already begun happening with teachers, whose participation in the September 22 demonstration decreased since the previous one, on August 26.

APEOESP’s assembly decided to join a one-day strike of public employees on October 5 against Temer’s reforms. It will also join the CUT’s national one-day strike scheduled for October 21. However, insofar as the struggle of teachers and workers against Temer’s reforms moves forward, it will soon be suppressed by the same unions that are calling the general strike. Only an independent mass movement of the working class will be able to stop the attacks backed by Temer and all sections of the Brazilian ruling establishment.

Hungary’s anti-refugee referendum fails after low turnout

Markus Salzmann

Hungary’s referendum on the distribution of refugees within the European Union (EU) has been declared invalid. According to the Hungarian electoral authority, only 39.9 percent of the 8.3 million eligible voters took part on Sunday, well short of the 50 percent required to give the vote legal authority. With almost all votes counted, 98.3 percent voted in favour of the position put forward by the right-wing Fidesz government and against the EU’s refugee quotas.

The vote was preceded by an extremely nationalist and xenophobic campaign by the Fidesz government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The question was, “Do you want the European Union, without the consent of parliament, to be able to impose the compulsory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary?”

Even if the referendum had been successful, it would have had no immediate legal consequences. It followed an EU one-off decision last year, according to which 160,000 refugees would be distributed throughout the member states. The Orban government filed a complaint, together with the Slovakian government, against this with the European Court of Justice but officially declared it would await the legal ruling and accept it.

In Brussels, the distribution of refugees had already been abandoned as hopeless in any case, after Slovakia and Hungary were joined in their opposition by the other Visegrad states, Poland and the Czech Republic. Then at its recent summit in Bratislava, the EU in effect adopted the anti-refugee policy of the right-wing Eastern European governments.

The “Bratislava declaration” urged the strengthening of fortress Europe, denied refugees from war zones the right to asylum and, like Orban, demands the mass deportation of refugees. The section titled “Migration and external borders” calls for the “complete exclusion of last year’s uncontrolled flow of migrants and [a] further reduction of the number of irregular migrants,” as well as the “securing of complete control over external borders.”

The Hungarian referendum is the high point to date of a political campaign waged by Orban and the EU for some time. Hungary has taken the lead in the EU in deterring refugees, who are fleeing war and the destruction of societies. To this end, a border fence was erected on the border with Serbia and asylum laws restricted significantly. Human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have drawn attention to systematic violations of the human rights of refugees in Hungary and in the border region with Serbia.

Reports in the media shed light on the reactionary climate created in the run-up to the referendum. Austrian daily Die Presse cited a Jordanian who has lived in Hungary for 30 years: “It is propaganda, a hate campaign.” He did not want to give his name out of concern for reprisals. “We are fearful,” he said, “fearful of potential acts of violence on the streets. Fearful of posting something political on Facebook.” Some of his acquaintances, even those married to Hungarians, did not dare “to even raise the issue within the family… All of those who work here in the city centre” would not “dare” to discuss the referendum.

In its attempt to mobilise at least half of the electorate, Orban’s Fidesz relied on its entire party apparatus. Municipal employees and ministerial officials were obliged to call a list of eligible voters and persuade them to take part and “act for the fatherland.” Poorer municipalities were threatened with the cutting of social welfare assistance if the referendum was lost and Hungary compelled to accept the refugees.

In citizens’ offices set up by the government, weeks-long openly racist and Islamophobic campaigns were organised. A nationwide placard campaign spread claims that refugees would bring disease, rape women and increase the terrorist threat. “Islamic hordes” were responsible for the “decline” of Europe’s peoples, was the message propagated everywhere. Prime Minister Orban initiated the campaign’s tone. He commented in a recent interview that the refugees who came to Europe were a “poison” which he “will not drink.” Hungarian writer Rudolf Ungvary subsequently accused Orban of “racist demagogy.”

A central role in Orban’s despicable campaign was played by the fascist Jobbik Party, which also called for a “no” vote. It mobilised its ultra-right gangs to support the government’s anti-refugee campaign. Since the last national election, which saw Jobbik emerge as the third strongest party, Fidesz has closely collaborated with the openly fascist party.

This sharp political shift to the right was strongly motivated by domestic political considerations. The Fidesz government confronts growing opposition from the population and is doing everything to direct it into extreme right-wing, nationalist channels. In the health and education sectors, tens of thousands demonstrated in late 2014. The Fidesz Party lost a number of important local elections and its two-thirds majority in parliament. Economic and social conditions are worsening dramatically. Hungary is among the poorest countries in the EU and has the highest rate of child poverty, according to UNICEF.

The EU is deeply hated among the population. Joining the EU in 2004 brought no improvements for workers and young people. Wages remain at the same level as before Hungary joined and in some regions are even lower.

Some restrained criticism came from Brussels. President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz (Social Democrats, SPD) criticised the referendum as a “dangerous game,” according to Die Welt. He also threatened to cut financial aid to Hungary. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn recently even raised the possibility of expelling Hungary from the EU. He also called for sanctions against Hungary.

These comments reflect growing tensions within the EU, but have nothing to do with a more progressive or humane refugee policy in Brussels. In reality, Orban’s policies are only the most right-wing example of the EU’s policy as a whole, which is directed against refugees with increasing brutality.

Referring to Sunday’s referendum, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz (Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP) cautioned against a condemnation of Orban’s policy. The EU should, notwithstanding existing agreements, no longer insist on the distribution of refugees across all member states, Kurz told Welt am Sonntag. Prior to this, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern (Social Democrats, SPÖ) expressed a similar view. He is also an avid supporter of a strict sealing off of “fortress Europe’s” external borders.

This perfectly sums up the EU’s refugee policy. At the Vienna refugee conference at the end of September, the complete sealing off of the so-called Balkan route was agreed so as to reduce the number of refugees reaching Europe to as close to zero as possible. Repatriation agreements along the lines of the dirty deal between the EU and Turkey are to be concluded with other states in North Africa, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. For his part, Orban demanded at the Vienna meeting the establishment of a massive camp on the Libyan coast and the deportation of all refugees arriving in Europe there.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also made clear at the Vienna summit what her “welcoming culture” is all about. At the Vienna conference, she complained that in spite of the closure of borders along the Balkan route earlier this year, 50,000 refugees had still used this route to reach Germany. This had to be stopped through a major deployment of security forces. “Our goal must be to stop illegal migration as much as possible,” according to Merkel. Prior to this she said that “repatriation, repatriation and again repatriation” were the most important tasks of the coming months.

UK Prime Minister announces timetable for UK exit from European Union

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed Sunday that she will trigger Article 50 of the European Union’s (EU) Lisbon Treaty by the end of March 2017. Once this is done, the UK enters a formal two-year period in which to negotiate a Brexit (British exit).

May made her announcement on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.” It means that Britain would be out of the EU by March 2019—a year ahead of a scheduled 2020 General Election.

The decision follows months in which the government refused to set a date to enact Article 50, following the narrow June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU. The Tories were split down the middle, with up to half the parliamentary party in favour of a Leave vote despite then Prime Minister David Cameron urging a Remain vote.

May told the Sunday Times that there would also be “a Great Repeal Bill that will remove the European Communities Act from the statute book.” The Act, passed by parliament in 1972, took the UK into the EU.

The Great Repeal Bill will be legislated after Article 50 has been triggered and will be introduced in the next year’s Queen’s Speech, which sets out the government’s legislative programme for the coming year. The bill will convert all existing laws derived from the EU into domestic legislation. Enacted as law in 2017 or 2018, it will end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK. The court’s decisions are binding on all EU member states. The Queen’s Speech is expected to be held in April or May.

The announcements coincided with the opening of the four-day Tory Party conference in Birmingham, at which May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis gave further details on the government’s plans.

May opened the conference with a short speech, in which she ruled out any parliamentary debate on when to trigger Article 50. “It is not up to the House of Commons to invoke Article 50, and it is not up to the House of Lords,” she said. “It is up to the government to trigger Article 50 and the government alone.”

Since the referendum, pro-EU forces within the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties, backed by influential business figures, have called variously for a second EU membership referendum to be held, a vote in parliament on any agreement reached between the government and EU, or even calling a general election over the issue.

In her bellicose speech, May declared, “Even now, some politicians—democratically elected politicians—say that the referendum isn’t valid, that we need to have a second vote. Others say they don’t like the result, and they’ll challenge any attempt to leave the European Union through the courts. 
“The referendum result was clear. … It was the biggest vote for change this country has ever known. Brexit means Brexit—and we’re going to make a success of it.”

The Leave vote was widely opposed by big business, which now wants to ensure that the UK retains access to the European Single Market as part of any Brexit deal. But May poured cold water on such prospects, making immigration controls central to her appeal to the Tories’ overwhelmingly Brexit supporting membership.

“I know some people ask about the ‘trade-off’ between controlling immigration and trading with Europe,” she said. “But that is the wrong way of looking at things. We have voted to leave the European Union and become a fully independent, sovereign country. We will do what independent, sovereign countries do. We will decide for ourselves how we control immigration. And we will be free to pass our own laws.”

In an attack on the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh, May declared her opposition to calls for a referendum on Scottish independence, and demands that Scotland remaining part of the EU after Brexit. In the June referendum, Scotland voted by a majority to remain in the EU. May stated, “Because we voted in the referendum as one United Kingdom, we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, and we will leave the European Union as one United Kingdom. There is no opt-out from Brexit. And I will never allow divisive nationalists to undermine the precious union between the four nations of our United Kingdom.”

The decisions outlined by May were heavily influenced by Davis, who last month attended a seminar at Oxford University that presented a scenario for a “hard Brexit.” The Guardian reported that “pro-Brexit MPs, legal and trade experts who broadly support a hard Brexit from the EU, and senior civil servants” were present. The newspaper, which supports the UK remaining in the EU, reported, “The group proposed the ‘great repeal bill’ set out on Sunday by Theresa May … as well as an early triggering of Article 50, the clause that starts the two-year timetable for the Brexit negotiations.”

The Guardian noted, “The discussions at the seminar have been condensed into a pamphlet published jointly by the Centre for Social Justice and Legatum Institute, two think tanks likely to be at the heart of setting out the Conservative case for a hard Brexit.”

The consolidation of the Tories as the party of Brexit will exacerbate the political crisis wracking the British ruling elite. Immediately following the referendum, the Parliamentary Labour Party, with the backing of forces within the UK and US intelligence complex, initiated an unprecedented coup attempt against party leader Jeremy Corbyn, insisting that Britain had to remain within the EU as a pivotal geostrategic necessity.

Sections of the ruling elite regard the Labour Party as the most effective vehicle for its efforts to reverse a Brexit, as the possible locus for a pro-EU political regroupment, provided that the party is placed under a reliable leadership.

The schism within the Tories over Europe resurfaced Sunday in response to May’s announcements.

Speaking to ITV, former Tory minister Anna Soubry, now a spokeswoman for the cross-party pro-EU Open Britain campaign, said, “The idea that we hold the cards, and that the EU is going to come to us and give us pretty much what we want? We aren’t going to get anything like what we’ve got now, we’re going to get something worse, obviously we are, we don’t hold the cards, the EU does.”

Another pro-EU Tory, Kenneth Clarke, said EU withdrawal could take up to eight years. After a Brexit agreement was reached, “Then it will take you another five or six years with lots of boffins locked away thrashing out agreements.”

May would have to be prepared to end up being “one of the most hated people in the country” if she made compromises that angered ardent euro-sceptics, he warned. “Any agreement that is produced will eventually be denounced by the head-banging faction of the Brexiteers as a betrayal—anything short of a tribute in gold being presented to the Queen once a year by the EU. Then they would say she should have three.”

Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry issued a press release stating, “A commitment on the timing of Article 50 is meaningless unless Theresa May can answer all the prior and more fundamental questions about what deal Britain is going to propose for our future relationship with the EU, what the plan is to secure that deal, and what we will do if it fails.”

Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who are committed to a second referendum said, “We can’t start the process without any idea of where we’re going.”

India and Pakistan teeter on the brink of war

Keith Jones

Four days after India conducted “surgical” military strikes inside Pakistan-held Kashmir, South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed states continue to teeter on the brink of war.

There have been hours-long artillery and gun-fire exchanges across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir each night since India sent troops and helicopters into Pakistan and inflicted “double-digit” casualties.

Late Sunday evening, India claimed that an army camp in Barmulla in the Kashmir Valley had come under terrorist attack and that at least one Indian solider had been killed and one injured.

India has repeatedly held Pakistan responsible for terrorist acts on its soil, most recently for the September 18 attack that anti-Indian Islamist militants mounted on the Uri military base in Jammu and Kashmir.

In anticipation of a possible Pakistani army counter-strike, or so as to facilitate their own war preparations, Indian authorities have ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people living near the border with Pakistan in the Indian states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. According to Indian press reports, soldiers at garrisons near the border have also been instructed to send their families home.

On Saturday, as Indian Army Chief General Dalbir Singh visited its Northern Command headquarters in Jammu and Kashmir to review the military’s “operational preparedness,” the army ordered its troops to be “prepared for any eventuality.”

Wednesday night’s punitive raids were the first military action that India has publicly admitted to carrying out inside Pakistan in more than four decades.

In their wake, India’s political elite and media are boasting that New Delhi has thrown off the supposed shackles of “strategic restraint,” successfully neutered Pakistani “nuclear blackmail,” and demonstrated India’s prowess as an emerging great power.

Comparing India’s military to the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman who bounded across an ocean in a single stride after being reminded of his powers, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said, “The surgical strikes gave our forces an idea of what they were capable of doing.” Pakistan, he claimed, had been left “bewildered,” “not quite knowing how to react.”

India has claimed it has no immediate plans for further military action. But, referring to the Uri attack, Parrikar said, “If Pakistan continues with such conspiracies, we will give them a befitting reply again.”

India’s bellicose stance is being encouraged by Washington, which has forged an ever-closer military-security alliance with New Delhi as part of its drive to strategically encircle and prepare for war against China.

The strikes that India carried out on the evening of September 28-29 were illegal, highly provocative, and justified on a patently trumped-up claim that they were aimed at “terrorist launch pads” from which squads of Islamist gunmen were about to be sent into India.

Yet Washington has signaled its support for the Indian attacks. Obama administration spokesmen have studiously avoided criticizing the strikes and have invariably linked their calls for New Delhi and Islamabad to dampen down tensions to demands Pakistan take urgent action to prevent its territory being used as a “safe haven” by terrorists.

No mention is ever made of India’s concerted push under the 28-month old Hindu supremacist BJP government to “change the rules of the game” with Pakistan. This has included: instructing the military to take a more aggressive posture at the border, which led in 2015 to months of cross-border shelling; vehemently opposing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, on the grounds it will pass through parts of the former British Empire princely state of Kashmir that New Delhi claims are hers; and backing the Balochi ethno-nationalist insurgency, effectively threatening Pakistan with dismemberment.

Speaking Friday, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter emphasized that the Indian-US military relationship is the “closest it has been ever.”

Pakistan continues to publicly deny that Indian Special Forces penetrated beyond the LoC, claiming instead that two of its soldiers were killed and nine injured by Indian cross-border shelling. This stance is belied by the hurried series of high-level military and government meetings and the shrill statements being made by Pakistani military and political leaders.

Pakistan Chief of Armed Services General Sharif has vowed, “Any misadventure by our adversary will meet the most befitting response from Pakistan.”

Bellicose statements have also been made by Defence Minister Khawaja Asif. In recent weeks as tensions with India have mounted, Asif repeatedly warned that Pakistan will use its recently deployed “battlefield” or tactical nuclear weapons should India launch a large-scale attack. Just hours before last Wednesday’s Indian strikes, he declared in a television interview, “We will destroy India if it dares to impose war on us … We have not made [an] atomic device to display in a showcase. If such a situation arises we will use it [a nuclear weapon] and eliminate India.”

Pakistan has appealed to the United Nations to intervene. Pakistani envoy Malleha Lodhi met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon late last week to appeal for action. While maintaining that India’s claim of strikes inside Pakistan was “false,” Lodhi said that India by its own admission has “committed aggression.”

Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement Saturday offering UN mediation, calling on both countries to take “immediate steps to de-escalate the situation,” and urging them to address their differences, including over Kashmir, through dialogue.

It is highly unlikely the UN’s mediation offer will be taken up, both because New Delhi believes it has succeeded in isolating Pakistan diplomatically and because it wants to keep the door bolted to any third-party involvement in Kashmir.

On Friday, Pakistan was forced to cancel the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which was due to be held in November in Islamabad, after Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Sri Lanka joined India in announcing they were going to boycott it.

Bangladesh and Afghanistan have also supported India’s military raid on Pakistan, with Kabul, which has been involved in its own border skirmishes with Pakistan in recent months, terming it an act of self-defence.

The Indian strikes have also been applauded by the Balochi separatists inside Pakistan. Some have even provocatively called for the Indian attacks to be continued, action that could easily plunge South Asia headlong into the abyss of the first-ever war between nuclear-armed states.

The growing Indo-US alliance has led China and Pakistan to tighten their longstanding close ties. But Beijing has been very cautious in the face of the escalating crisis, repeatedly urging both India and Pakistan to draw back from confrontation.

In an editorial, the Pakistan Express Tribune expressed alarm about Islamabad’s isolation. “Of immediate concern,” it wrote, “is that there has been a ringing silence in terms of the rest of the world, which has failed to condemn what India is admitting it has done which if true is a violation of sovereignty at least.”

In both countries, a foul chauvinist atmosphere is being whipped up which will be used not only to pursue the reactionary geo-political interests of the rival bourgeois cliques, but to suppress dissent and attack the working class.

In India, the Stalinist parliamentary parties have joined with the rest of the political establishment in supporting the Indian military attack on Pakistan. T. Sitaram Yechury, the general-secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, participated with the other main party leaders in an “all-party meeting” convened by the government last Thursday to show that India was united against Pakistan.

Speaking to reporters Saturday, Yechury again extended the Stalinists’ support to the military strikes, declaring, “It is our and the central government’s responsibility to ensure that our people are protected.” He added, “We urge upon the Government of India, from its position of strength, to continue with the diplomatic and political moves to defuse tension and eliminate the scorch of cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan.”

For its part, the Communist Party of India (CPI) issued a statement applauding the military strikes and saying the government had had no choice but to bring South Asia to the brink of all-out war. “The [September 18] Uri incident,” said the CPI, had “made inevitable … action on cross border terrorism by the Indian Army. We appreciate the well-planned action of the Indian Army.”

Death toll mounts in US police killings

Patrick Martin

At least 19 people lost their lives in encounters with police in the United States last week. The victims, all men, ranged in age from 18 to 53. Seventeen were shot to death, one tased, and one both tased and beaten and strangled. In only two of the cases were the victims shot while engaged in violent attacks on others. All the others were shot while fleeing or allegedly resisting police, or while experiencing mental health or emotional crises.

In several instances the police killings sparked protests. In El Cajon, California, a suburb of San Diego, there were protests over the death September 27 of Alfred Olango, an immigrant from Uganda who was tased and shot to death while unarmed. Olango was having an emotional breakdown after learning of the death of a friend.

In Pasadena, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, more than 100 people gathered to protest the killing of Reginald Thomas, father of eight children, after police were called to address a domestic dispute early Friday. The 36-year-old black man, who was reportedly bipolar, was said to be waving a knife and a fire extinguisher when police arrived.

Despite the claims by Democratic Party politicians and middle-class groups like Black Lives Matter that police violence is exclusively a matter of race, with white cops killing African-Americans, the 19 victims last week included at least eight white men, a Hispanic man and an Asian man.

The race of the police killers was usually not reported, but the killings took place in many cities with racially diverse police forces, including Newark, New Jersey; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles and San Diego, California.

The geographic distribution of the killings included inner cities, suburbs and rural areas, and all regions of the country, from the Northeast to the Pacific Coast. By states, the killings fell as follows: Arizona, Arkansas, California (3), Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan (2), Minnesota, New Jersey (2), Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas (2), and West Virginia.

The death toll on a single day, Friday, September 30, gives a glimpse of the savage character of social relations in the US and the unrestrained brutality of the police, who serve as the first line of defense for capitalist property and the authority of the capitalist state. There were no less than seven victims.

These included, in addition to Reginald Thomas in Pasadena:

* Clayton Eugene Baker, a 24-year-old white man, shot to death by a Trinity County sheriff’s deputy in Groveton, Texas, a small town north of Houston, after the policeman arrived in response to a reported domestic dispute.

* Douglas Marrickus Rainey, a 32-year-old black man, shot to death by a SWAT team in rural Gowensville, South Carolina, hours after a reported armed robbery at a Dollar General which led to a general lockdown of the region.

* Richard Parent, a 37-year-old white man, shot by Michigan state police in Van Buren Township, in the western suburbs of Detroit, after a lengthy chase. Parent refused to pull over on a traffic stop, allegedly claiming to be a “sovereign citizen.”

* Najier Salaam and George Richards-Meyers, both 18 years old, shot to death by six Newark, New Jersey police, who claimed to be confronting a three-man gang responsible for a series of carjackings. None of the officers was injured despite claims of a wild shootout.

* Jacquarius M. Robinson, a 20-year-old black man, killed by a police SWAT team in Columbus, Ohio, 10 hours after police responded to the scene of a shooting death on the city’s east side. Robinson attempted to flee and police shot him dead. It was not known whether there was any evidence connecting him to the earlier killing.

Public attention has focused on the killings in southern California because these provoked angry protests, albeit on a limited scale and without further clashes with the police. Tensions rose again over the weekend after an 18-year-old black youth, Carnell Snell Jr., was shot to death by police about 1 p.m. Saturday in south Los Angeles, after police stopped a car on suspicion that it was stolen.

Two people fled from the car and police shot and killed one of them, later identified as Snell. Police claimed to have found a handgun at the scene, but there was no indication that the youth had the gun in his possession or had fired it. Police frequently place “throw-down” guns at the site of such shootings to provide retroactive justification.

There were protests from family members and other local residents, including one young woman who told the Los Angeles Times, “A police officer should not be the judge, the jury and the executioner.” Snell’s mother, Monique Morgan, said she had been told her son was shot five times in the back. Witnesses told the local CBS television station KCAL that Snell had his hands up and was telling police not to shoot him when they opened fire.

According to the grim tally kept by the web site killedbypolice.net, the week’s death toll, including the police shooting Sunday morning of an as yet unidentified man in Markham, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, brought the year’s total to 868 people. A separate tally, maintained by the Washington Post, found that whites comprised 46 percent of the victims of police killings this year, blacks 24 percent, and Hispanics 16 percent, with other races and undetermined accounting for the remaining 14 percent.

Blacks are killed by police at a much higher rate than their proportion in the population, an indication that racism plays a significant role, but the number of white victims demonstrates that class, not race, is the more fundamental issue. Nearly all the victims of police killings are from the working class, and usually its poorest sections. Police killings do not take place in Beverly Hills, Grosse Pointe or the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but in lower income areas, whether urban, suburban or rural.

That does not stop Democratic Party politicians from seeking to cover up the class character of police violence with rhetoric about “systemic racism.” Hillary Clinton did so during her debate with Republican Donald Trump last Monday and again during a visit Sunday morning to an African Methodist Episcopal church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where 36-year-old Keith Scott was gunned down by police September 20.

Scott; the policeman who killed him, Brentley Vinson; and the Charlotte police chief in charge of whitewashing his death, Kerr Putney; are all African-American. That fact alone demonstrates that the struggle against police violence requires uniting workers of all races in the building of a political movement directed against the capitalist class and the police and politicians who serve it.