New Zealand moves to restore relations with Fijian regime

John Braddock

Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama made a three-day state visit to New Zealand last month, the first since his 2006 military coup. Bainimarama was invited by Prime Minister John Key, reciprocating Key’s trip to Fiji in June, also the first in ten years by a New Zealand prime minister.

The invitation would have been prepared in close consultation with Washington and Canberra. The local US allies, Australia and New Zealand, regard Fiji, the largest South Pacific island state, as critical to their own hegemony over the region and are increasingly concerned about China’s growing diplomatic and economic presence.

The visit coincided with deepening turmoil in the Asia-Pacific, highlighted by the crisis surrounding the Obama administration’s anti-China “pivot.” US strategy is facing serious setbacks following threats by Philippines President Duterte to “separate” from Washington. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the pivot’s central economic initiative, which was signed in Auckland last February, is also in doubt in the face of opposition from US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Bainimarama told reporters he wanted a stronger engagement with New Zealand. “I am very pleased the prime minister has worked with me to take our relationship to another level; a relationship in which we let bygones be bygones,” he said. The two leaders declared they were “looking forward, rather than reflecting on the past.”

Relations had soured with the imposition of sanctions by Australia and New Zealand following the 2006 coup. The regional powers were driven by concerns that the regime could destabilise the region and open the way for Beijing. The sanctions backfired, however. Bainimarama countered with a “Look North” policy, receiving economic, diplomatic and military aid from China, Russia and elsewhere. He also encouraged other Pacific island states to take a more “independent” path.

Bainimarama’s installation as prime minister followed the victory of his Fiji First Party in the 2014 elections, held under conditions of press censorship, military provocations and severe restrictions on opposition political parties. The authoritarian regime, which rests on the military, rules largely through fear and intimidation. Although sanctions were lifted after the elections, relations deteriorated as geostrategic tensions in the Pacific generated by Washington’s aggressive “pivot to Asia” intensified.

Key’s June trip to Suva, Fiji’s capital, was almost derailed when Bainimarama publicly aired his grievances over the attitude of the local powers toward his government. Last month, he hit out at “interference” in Fiji’s domestic affairs after comments by Key over the arrest of six leading Fijian opposition figures at a political forum. Key had declared he was keeping a “watch” on the situation and warned the Fiji government against doing anything “silly.”

Bainimarama began last month’s trip to New Zealand by issuing effusive thanks for the aid given by New Zealand and Australia in the wake of Cyclone Winston, which struck Fiji in March, causing 44 deaths and widespread destruction.

Canberra and Wellington, in fact, exploited the cyclone devastation to send warships, aircraft and hundreds of military personnel to Fiji. While this was characterised as a “humanitarian and disaster aid” mission, the intervention followed a gift of weapons to the Fijian military by Russia and dovetailed with the intensifying militarisation of the Pacific.

Bainimarama also announced during last month’s trip that he would rescind an eight-year ban on three New Zealand journalists seen as critical of his government. He said lifting the ban was part of the “diplomatic process.”

Topics discussed included development and aid, the PACER Plus regional free trade agreement, defence links and regional sport. Key had previously indicated he wants to keep Fiji in the PACER Plus talks. According to Bainimarama, PACER is too one-sided in its present form and would burden Pacific island nations. Fiji would not sign, he said, “until there are better terms” on infant industries, a “most favoured nation” clause and labour mobility. Key said he would seek to “accommodate the demands.”

Key told the media that human rights in Fiji were still an area where “discussion and engagement” was needed. “I have always said the restoration of democracy in Fiji was a good and important step, but it does evolve over time,” he declared.

Democratic rights in Fiji have never been a concern of the local powers. In June, Key dismissed the 2006 military coup as “ancient history.” Last month Key declared, echoing Bainimarama, that he was keen to “look forward now and not necessarily look back, that’ll be good for both Fiji and New Zealand.”

Fiji is regarded in Australia and NZ as spearheading a thrust by Beijing into the South West Pacific. According to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, China has overtaken Australia as the biggest source of aid to Fiji, and will soon surpass Canberra’s aid to Samoa and Tonga. Trade between China and the Pacific doubled last year to $US7.5 billion. Strategic analyst Paul Buchanan falsely claimed on Radio NZ last month that unless China is pushed back, the South Pacific is “going to become like a Chinese lake,” supposedly “like the South China Sea.”

New Zealand continues to pursue a precarious balancing act over relations with China, its second most important trading partner. Late last month, Deputy Prime Minister Bill English cancelled a planned meeting with two Hong Kong “democracy” activists, Martin Lee and Anson Chan, following advice from New Zealand foreign affairs officials that the meeting could be “diplomatically sensitive.”

Behind the diplomatic manoeuvring lies the ever-growing threat of war. The US “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific is forcing all the states in the region, no matter how small, to take sides. Key recently gave clearance for the destroyer USS Sampson to visit Auckland during this month’s celebrations for the Royal New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary. The visit marks the end of a 30-year-old military stalemate between the countries that was triggered when the Lange Labour government banned nuclear warships.

Successive Labour and National administrations since 2001 have worked to restore defence ties. Key declared last week that the relationship with the US “is truly in the best shape it’s been since the anti-nuclear legislation was passed.”

Australia: Hazelwood power station closure threatens thousands of jobs

Oscar Grenfell 

ENGIE, a major French energy multinational, announced on Thursday it will close the Hazelwood coal-fired power station, in southeastern Victoria, in March 2017.

The closure will directly destroy up to a thousand jobs, with the flow-on impact threatening thousands more. It will further devastate the economically-depressed Latrobe Valley, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in Australia.

Reports have indicated that the move could see power prices across Victoria rise by up to 25 percent. State government figures indicate a 4–8 percent hike, but even that would exacerbate the financial difficulties facing millions of working class households.

The announcement is the culmination of decades of job cuts across the Latrobe Valley and the energy sector, including at Hazelwood, overseen by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments and enforced by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).

Announcing the shutdown, Alex Keisser, ENGIE’s chief executive in Australia, made clear that the plant was no longer sufficiently profitable for the company’s wealthy shareholders.

“ENGIE in Australia would need to invest many hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure viable and, most importantly, continued safe operation,” Keisser said. “Given current and forecast market conditions, that level of investment cannot be justified.”

The plant employs around 750 workers—450 permanent workers and 300 contractors—and a number of casuals. ENGIE also announced it will sell its other Latrobe Valley plant, Loy Yang B, which has about 150 full-time staff and 40 contractors, and its Kwinana cogeneration plant in Western Australia. There is no certainty either will find a buyer.

The Hazelwood shutdown is part of a global restructure of ENGIE’s operations, spurred by mounting competition in the energy sector, the fall in commodity prices and stepped-up demands from the financial markets for ever-greater returns.

In February, the company’s incoming chief executive, Isabelle Kocher, foreshadowed plans to slash costs annually by €10 billion to €20 billion, through the sale or closure of production and exploration sites, and a turn to renewable energies. At the end of 2015, the ENGIE had total assets of over €160 billion.

The company has sought to suppress and intimidate the widespread opposition to the closure. In the days before the announcement, workers were warned not to make any comments to the media.

The CFMEU, which has collaborated with Hazelwood’s owners through successive rounds of job cuts, signalled it will seek to enforce an “orderly closure” of the plant.

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, CFMEU state secretary Geoff Van Dyke touted the company’s worthless claims that 200 workers may remain employed in the demolition of the plant over the next five years.

Trevor Williams, the CFMEU’s mining and energy president for Victoria, called for more time, essentially so that the trade union could better assist the closure, on the pretext of supposedly providing workers with other opportunities. He stated: “If it needs to be closed we believe it should be done in a phased-out way which would give us an opportunity to make arrangements for the workers.”

At the same time, Williams admitted that the union was fully aware of long-standing plans for the closure. “Some of us have seen this coming for quite some time,” he said, noting “talk off and on for the last 20 years” about a shutdown.

While the union, and state and federal politicians, have cynically feigned concern, the policies they have implemented are responsible for the dire social crisis in the Latrobe Valley.

In the early 1990s, the Labor state government of Joan Kirner initiated the privatisation of Victoria’s electricity industry, which was completed by the Liberal government of Jeff Kennett. Over the ensuing years, under successive Labor and Liberal governments, up to 15,000 jobs have been destroyed in the Latrobe Valley, which was historically the state’s main centre of electricity production. More than 6,000 of those job cuts were in the electricity sector. Across the state, the number of electricity workers fell from 21,500 in 1990 to just 8,000 in 2005.

Privatisation programs implemented by Labor and Liberal governments in other states have resulted in similar attacks on the jobs, wages and conditions of workers.

The assault on jobs in the Latrobe Valley has escalated in recent years. In 2014, the Energy-Brix coal-powered station closed, with at least 70 workers sacked. The same year, Hazelwood unveiled a series of voluntary redundancies aimed at downsizing the workforce.

Unemployment in the town of Morwell, near the Hazelwood plant, stands at an estimated 19.7 percent. A 2015 report listed the town among the seven most disadvantaged areas in Victoria by a range of social indicators. Youth unemployment is endemic. Hazelwood was one of the few local facilities employing skilled workers and tradesmen, making a mockery of the claims that its workforce will be “retrained” and assisted to find employment elsewhere.

As for moving house to find work, the protracted decline in home values in the Latrobe Valley makes that almost impossible. According to a real estate web site, the median house price in Morwell is $153,000, compared to $773,669 in Melbourne, the state capital, which is about 150 kilometres away.

Underscoring the central role of the major capitalist parties in these attacks, federal Energy and Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, a key member of the Turnbull Liberal-National government, and the state Labor government’s state Treasurer Tim Pallas, travelled to France late last month for backroom meetings with ENGIE heads. The timing of the visit indicates that the purpose was to prepare to police the plant’s shutdown.

Other politicians claimed that the closure of the plant, a significant emitter of carbon dioxide, is a victory in the struggle against climate change. Last September, Greens federal MP Adam Bandt responded to rumours of the impending closure by declaring: “This good news is the start of Victoria’s energy transition, where dirty coal is replaced with clean renewable energy.”

In reality, as ENGIE’s corporate heads have made plain, the decision is based purely on profit-making motives. Bandt and the Greens, indifferent to the plight of workers in the Latrobe Valley, speak for an affluent layer of the middle class, with ties to various renewable energy corporations. They defend the capitalist profit system, whose anarchic operations are responsible for the climate change crisis.

The state and federal governments have announced “rescue” packages for the Latrobe Valley, reportedly totalling $266 million. The state Labor government’s initiative is clearly about exploiting, not alleviating, the region’s social crisis. It wants to transform the region into an “economic growth zone” by providing businesses with tax breaks and financial incentives to take advantage of cheap labour in the area.

The Hazelwood closure is part of an escalating offensive against the working class across the country, and internationally, stemming from the breakdown of the global capitalist system. It comes hard on the heels of the closure of Ford’s auto assembly plants in Australia, destroying thousands of jobs.

The only way to oppose the shutdown is through a break with the thoroughly corporatised trade unions, the Labor Party and the entire capitalist political establishment, in the fight for a workers’ government and socialist policies, including placing the major energy companies under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.

Australian government hit by legal challenges to two senators

Mike Head

Australia’s government, already fragile and wracked by in-fighting since its near-defeat at the July 2 election, was thrown into further disarray this week by moves to constitutionally disqualify two senators on whose votes the government was relying to push through its legislation.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced yesterday to postpone key bills because of the uncertainty surrounding the numbers in the Senate, which may not be resolved for many months as the two cases are heard by the High Court, the country’s supreme court.

These bills include a draconian measure—the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) bill—to suppress industrial action by construction workers. The previous blockage of the bill by the Senate was the chief trigger cited by the government to call the July 2 double dissolution election of all members of both houses of parliament.

Such is the popular hostility to the government, and the opposition Labor Party, that the election saw the Liberal-National Coalition barely cling to office with a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the upper house, the government now only holds 30 of the 76 seats because a record number of “crossbench” senators were elected, mostly right-wing populists seeking to exploit the widespread disaffection from the rest of the political establishment.

Two of those senators, it appears, may have been legally disqualified from standing for election. Moreover, the government has long known this, but sought to cover-up the issues in the hope of securing the votes of the pair for the ABCC bill and other major legislation, including sweeping cuts to welfare entitlements.

The first case involves Bob Day, a millionaire house builder and former Liberal Party candidate who originally won a South Australian Senate spot in 2013 on the ticket of Family First, a misleadingly named right-wing Christian party. He is accused of breaching section 44(v) of the Constitution, which declares that a person with “any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” shall “be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator.”

Documents have revealed that the government was aware, from February 2014 onward, that Day’s use of a building in which he held a financial interest as his electoral office, which would be leased by the government, was legally dubious. In fact, a special minister of state overrode a Finance Department recommendation to agree to the deal. After various legal manoeuvres, a formal lease was ultimately signed last December.

This arrangement began to unravel after Day was re-elected on July 2, as his building empire crumbled. His Home Australia Group of companies eventually went into liquidation, owing $19 million, leaving about 200 angry customers with unfinished homes and throwing hundreds of building workers and contractors out of work.

On August 4, Day approached the current special minister of state, Senator Scott Ryan, about rent on the electoral office. According to the government’s account, Ryan then discovered there may be a constitutional breach. But it was not until two months later, on October 7, that Ryan terminated the lease and the government secretly sought legal advice from barrister David Jackson. That advice, delivered on October 27, reportedly said Day’s election was possibly invalid, forcing the government to refer the issue to the High Court.

In the meantime, Day announced, on October 17, he would resign from the Senate, supposedly to assist the victims of his corporate collapse. On October 26, Day reversed his position, insisting that the fate of the ABCC bill and other legislation was “too important” to allow a Senate vacancy. On November 1, however, Day quit the Senate, effective immediately, while still insisting he had not violated the Constitution.

The second High Court challenge, which was revealed within 24 hours of Day’s case, seems also to be entangled with a financial collapse. It concerns Rod Culleton, who secured a Western Australian Senate seat as a candidate for Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation party.

At the time of the July 2 election, as was reported in the media, Culleton had been convicted of larceny, an offence punishable by more than 12 month’s jail. That appeared to place him in breach of section 44(ii) of the Constitution, which disqualifies anyone from standing for election who “has been convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or of a State by imprisonment for one year or longer.”

After the election, Culleton succeeded in having the conviction annulled. That bid to retrospectively dodge the Constitution, however, was challenged in the High Court in September by two former business associates of Culleton, who claim he owes them money. The High Court sent word to the government on September 28, alerting it to the constitutional challenge.

Again, the government, fully aware of the issue, continued to cover it up for as long as possible. According to Attorney-General George Brandis, he finally sought legal advice from Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson on October 13, and that advice, delivered on October 28 was that Culleton had not been “duly elected as a senator.”

The High Court action is not Culleton’s only legal trouble. One of his companies, Elite Grains, had a creditors’ meeting this week, another company is being liquidated and a Perth businessman has filed a bankruptcy petition against Culleton for a $205,536 debt, which could also disqualify the senator. In addition, Culleton faces a stealing charge over the alleged theft of a hire car from bank-appointed receivers in 2015.

Evidently, Brandis ultimately felt compelled to obtain advice from Gleeson, after previously seeking to block the solicitor-general from giving legal opinions that could potentially expose the illegality of government actions. In May, during the lead-up to the July 2 election, Brandis issued a “Legal Services Direction” prohibiting Gleeson from providing legal advice to anyone else, including the governor-general, the formal head of state, without Brandis’s written, signed consent. That conflict, at the highest levels of the state apparatus, eventually forced Gleeson to resign last month.

The outcomes of the two High Court challenges remain uncertain, adding to the political instability. Both cases will hinge on the vagaries of the court’s interpretation of the Constitution, as well as the Commonwealth Electoral Act. In the words of one constitutional law academic, the rulings will depend on whether the judges apply the section 44 provisions “strictly.”

According to some analysts, if the challenges succeed, the court could order vote recounts for the two Senate seats, possibly resulting in the Labor Party picking up one or both.

This turmoil has intensified the government’s precariousness, following the public rifts that erupted last month, triggered by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whom Turnbull deposed in September 2015.

Increasingly, doubt is being expressed in the corporate media about the capacity of the government, and the parliamentary system itself, to deliver the agenda of slashing social spending, and cutting wages and workers’ conditions, demanded by the financial elite.

Yesterday’s editorial in the Australian Financial Review concluded as follows: “An environment that was already unconducive for good government or getting important legislation passed is about to get even worse. As Australia drifts towards losing its AAA sovereign credit rating, which in turn would flow onto a downgrade for our banks, Parliament appears incapable of doing anything about it.”

These anti-democratic rumblings are another warning sign that acute political, economic and geo-strategic conflicts lie ahead.

Former president arrested in El Salvador amid government default crisis

Andrea Lobo

The former president of El Salvador, Elías Antonio Saca (2004-2009), was arrested on Sunday, along with six other functionaries of his administration, on corruption charges. The Attorney General’s Office declared the next day that it has proof of the laundering of $6 million by Saca and his former private secretary, Élmer Charlaix, and their appropriation of $116 million from the state’s coffers. Accountants and other top financial officials are also implicated.

“Initially, there is a general amount of $246 million that was channeled into a large number of personal accounts (14) in favor of the defendants… some of which can still be justified,” stated Attorney General Douglas Meléndez.

The arrests are part of a series of high-level investigations and arrests of top politicians and businesspeople of the Central American Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). This anti-corruption drive, supported by the US, is tied to the $750 million Alliance for Prosperity Plan, which is primarily aimed at deterring migrants from traveling to the US and countering the increasing influence of China and Russia in the region.

“Operation Uncovering corruption”, the name given to Saca’s case, is the first one led by the Group against Impunity (GCI), formed by Attorney General Meléndez with strong political, logistical, and financial support from Washington.

This new organization now joins the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the Support Mission against Impunity and Corruption in Honduras (MACCIH) as instruments used by US and European imperialism to discipline its client regimes and to provide political cover for further social cuts and repression.

The immediate context of the arrests is the deep economic crisis plaguing the FMLN government, which has reached an “emergency” of “technical default” on its payments. Through letters and meetings with the minister of economy, Carlos Cáceres, the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and other credit agencies have pressured the FMLN and the right-wing opposition ARENA party, which controls Congress, to reach an agreement that solves the state’s liquidity crisis.

Standard & Poor’s issued a report this month warning that it might have to downgrade the country’s credit rating unless fiscal issues are resolved and complaining of “heightened political polarization.”

FMLN president Sánchez Cerén and his cabinet have held several unsuccessful negotiations with ARENA to reach an agreement with the IMF. Cerén announced recently that, “in the interest of the Salvadoran people,” the government is pursuing a new austerity law and a fiscal responsibility law that embody deep social cuts, a “pension reform” to pay for the deficit and the issuance of new debt bonds. However, ARENA, for its part, has been sending mixed signals, presumably to deepen the FMLN administration’s crisis and unpopularity.

The US ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, recently stated: “You must have an honest conversation; a fiscal agreement is key not only to get the funds, but also to send a signal to the international community.” While the supply of funds has been historically used by US and European imperialism, i.e., “the international community”, to impose its preferred policies, the “anti-impunity” campaigns serve as a means of safeguarding both the investments and political control of finance capital.

The FMLN, the former guerrilla front that in 1992 turned itself into a nominally left political party, has become the most dedicated defender of the interests of US imperialism in El Salvador. It has carried out austerity measures, while steadily expanding its repressive apparatus. Most recently, on October 17, the FMLN government sent police “shock groups” to harass striking hospital workers across the country. Meanwhile, the official rates for total, relative and extreme poverty and unemployment have all increased steadily since 2013, according to household census data.

Saca, who became president heading ARENA, the far-right party associated with the late death-squad organizer Roberto D’Aubuisson, had already been under investigation. His arrest takes place less than two months after his successor, Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) of the FMLN, sought asylum in Nicaragua to escape corruption charges linked to $728,000 of unjustified income. Moreover, the investigations against both Funes and Saca were initiated only two weeks after the death of ex-president Francisco Flores (1999-2004), who was on trial for stealing $10 million from relief donations for the 2001 earthquake victims.

When entering office, Mauricio Funes’s government had presented 152 corruption cases against functionaries of past ARENA governments and business people, however only two cases led to prosecutions, including that of ex-President Flores.

In a videoconference on September 14 to announce the creation of the GCI to the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., Meléndez cynically avoided responding to a question about the 152 cases against ARENA, stating: “It’s very difficult to avoid pronouncements from the political class. What they cannot do is to want to direct these investigations.”

On several occasions, Meléndez has also said that there is “no international involvement” in his GCI; however, he has travelled to and communicated frequently with Washington to coordinate his investigations.

In Guatemala, former right-wing president Otto Pérez Molina and ex-vice-president Roxana Baldetti both resigned and were prosecuted in 2015 after the CICIG presented undeniable evidence of their participation in a corruption network that embezzled about $1 million each month. This and dozens of other prosecutions have generated widespread support for the commission in Guatemala, which US imperialism is seeking to replicate in Honduras and El Salvador.

Conversely, the bourgeois politicians being targeted have expressed their strong opposition. Pérez Molina and his Patriotic Party have accused the CICIG and Guatemala’s attorney general, Thelma Aldana, of being puppets of the US embassy. Also, the discredited parties related to the “Left turn” in Latin America have rejected the commissions as “interference by the United States,” a charge they made in the official resolution of the XXII Sao Paulo Forum held in June.

In a particularly violent case of personal resistance, Pérez Molina’s former finance minister, Pavel Centeno, committed suicide last Friday after shooting two police officers who had come to arrest him over a case of money laundering under investigation by the CICIG.

The broader dependence of these elites on US imperialism for private and public investment, including for their repressive apparatuses in the Alliance for Prosperity, have however forced the national ruling cliques to ultimately accept these forms of imperialist political control.

Somewhat greater resistance, however, has been mounted against the investigation of crimes committed during the Central American civil wars. On July 13, the Salvadoran Supreme Court cancelled a blanket amnesty implemented by a former ARENA government for those involved in crimes related to the civil war. There were 75,000 deaths and 8,000 disappearances between 1980 and 1992 in El Salvador, 85 percent of them attributed to the US-backed security forces. FMLN party leaders described the ruling as a “soft coup attempt” and a “destabilization” of the country, echoing the reaction of the military and the extreme right.

So far, there is only one open civil war case in El Salvador, the massacre of 520 civilians by the Salvadoran army in 1981in the village of El Mozote. Reflecting the FMLN government’s hostility to upsetting the impunity enjoyed by the mass murderers of the Salvadoran security forces, Attorney General Meléndez expressed contempt for the El Mozote investigation, indicating that it’s an “expired” case and a “dead process of merit.”

Antonio Saca had proven to be a dedicated servant to the US Government, which repeatedly expressed its appreciation for his political subservience, which included sending troops to the Iraq War. He was praised for approving and implementing the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA-DR), “especially in the face of the challenge from China,” according to US State Department documents.

In a leaked diplomatic cable written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006, then US ambassador Hugh Douglas Barclay described Saca as having, “a visceral dislike for communism (FMLN, Castro, Chavez), which he blames for having destroyed the country's infrastructure and overall economy during the war years. Saca is proud to say that he smokes only Padron cigars, made by Miami Cubans, and would never smoke a Cohiba.”

In December 2009, however, Saca was expelled from ARENA for having misspent $219 million in government funds to improve his personal image, instead of spending it on health and safety programs. He was also accused of intimidating party members and provoking divisions.

Putin criticizes the US and pleads for a change in course

Andrea Peters

With tensions between Washington and Moscow at their sharpest point since the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a lengthy critique of the United States in a speech delivered last week to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi. The Russian leader painted a picture of a global order destabilized by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony and its targeting of Russia. All the while, he persisted in referring to his “partners” in the West.

Putin’s remarks, which included delusional appeals to the United Nations and praise for the principle of national sovereignty, revealed both the dire situation facing Russia’s ruling elite and its inability to offer any form of progressive opposition to Washington’s war drive.

The Russian president began his comments to the assembly of policy experts, government officials, journalists and academics by declaring that since his previous appearance at the forum, “nothing has changed.”

While making no direct reference to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, much less the role played by the social forces he represents in restoring capitalist market relations, Putin found himself compelled to make reference to the consequences of that event. “Some countries saw themselves as victors in the Cold War,” he complained. They attempted “to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organizations, norms and rules,” and “chose the road of globalization and security for their own beloved selves.”

This entailed “airstrikes in the center of Europe, against Belgrade,” Putin continued. He characterized the 1999 US-led Kosovo war as a criminal operation that paved the way for violations of international law that were to come in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

The Russian president went on to charge Washington with creating and arming terrorist groups that have plunged the world into “chaos.” The US is engaging in a “dangerous game” of continuing to supply and train these forces, he added.

He pointed to the hypocrisy of American policy makers, saying, “If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules.”

Despite his “personal agreements” with President Barack Obama, Putin lamented, “There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice.”

He expressed frustration over the continual references to the “Russian military threat,” insisting, “This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defense budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower’s interests, expand NATO, and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders.”

He continued: “The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd.” He noted that Russia has only 146 million people compared to NATO’s 600-million population.

Putin described allegations of Russian meddling in the US elections as “hysteria” and “another mythical and imaginary problem.” He asked rhetorically: “Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people’s choice? America is not some kind of ‘banana republic,’ after all, but is a great power.”

He argued that the anti-Russian line is an effort to divert the attention of the American people away from the country’s domestic problems, including the massive accumulation of public debt, “cases of arbitrary action by the police,” and an “eviscerated” political system.

Putin derided the current US elections as consisting of “nothing but scandals and digging up dirt,” adding later, “And honestly, a look at various candidates’ platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould—the difference is slight, if there is any.”

“People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite’s vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses,” he said. “The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities.”

Because the political establishment is unable to come to grips with this new reality, he observed, it insists that “society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities’ labour for the public good … Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda.”

“Friends and colleagues,” he declared, “I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others.”

In the limited press coverage that Putin’s speech has received in the US, his remarks have been seized upon to further the McCarthyite-style denunciations of the Trump campaign. An October 31 editorial in the Washington Post was headlined “Trump, Putin share frightening worldview.”

The commentary treated the Russian president’s observations as absurdities. The Post wrote, “For every crime committed by his Kremlin, Putin was ready with a comparison to a supposedly identical outrage by the American ‘ruling class,’ as he likes to call it.”

Putin’s speech is an expression of the objective crisis in which the ruling capitalist oligarchy in Russia finds itself. Facing ceaseless military and economic pressure from the US, the European Union and NATO, the Kremlin chief is compelled to make certain accurate observations about the state of affairs. However, he does so from the standpoint of an enfeebled and corrupt ruling class desperately trying to find a way out of a disaster of its own making.

The oligarchs and security services on whose behalf Putin rules were the architects of the restoration of capitalism in the late 1980s and 1990s. The Stalinist bureaucracy, increasingly frustrated by the limitations on its power and privileges and frightened by the growth of opposition in the Russian working class, transformed itself into a new ruling class by stealing the wealth built up during the Soviet period and liquidating whatever remained of the conquests of the Russian Revolution.

This counterrevolution was hailed by the bureaucracy as not only a new form of “social justice,” but the starting point, in the words of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, of a new era of “co-development, co-creation, and cooperation.” In 1990, speaking before the last Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev declared that “inclusion of our national economy in the world economy is necessary… for the construction, in conjunction with other peoples, of the material foundations for an irreversibly peaceful period of history and for the solution of mankind’s global problems.”

This has all proven to be delusional. In reality, Washington views Russia as an intolerable obstacle in the way of its exploitation of and control over Eurasia. The ruling elite in Moscow is now confronting the consequences of its own stupidity and blindness.

Despite Putin’s efforts to portray Washington’s policies after the Cold War as some sort of unforeseeable and unexpected betrayal of the principles of world peace and equality among nations, the actions of the United States were entirely predictable. As Leon Trotsky, the co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution and leader of the socialist opposition to Stalin, noted in 1929, “A capitalist Russia could not now occupy even the third-rate position to which czarist Russia was predestined by the course of the world war. Russian capitalism today would be a dependent, semi-colonial capitalism without any prospects. Russia Number 2 would occupy a position somewhere between Russia Number 1 and India.

In the face of this impossible situation, the Kremlin attempts to shore up its rule by appealing to nationalism and populism. Denouncing “ideological ideas that… are destructive to cultural and national identity” in his Valdai Club speech, the Russian president went on to advocate for Russia’s “identity, freedom and independence.” He called national sovereignty “the central notion of the entire system of international relations.”

The “sovereignty” demanded by Putin is the sovereign right of Russian capitalism to exploit its own population. Like right-wing political figures in the US, France, Britain and elsewhere, he attempts to harness popular anger over disastrous economic conditions and channel it in a nationalist direction.

Putin presides over a society with extremely high levels of social inequality and rising discontent. Some 36 percent of Russian households cannot meet essential living expenses, and the statistical agency VTsIOM has recorded a massive drop in popular support for the government, falling to just 26 percent, the lowest level in five years.

The Kremlin vacillates between seeking an accommodation with the US, issuing impotent appeals to the United Nations, and carrying out military adventures.

Having referred throughout his speech to his “partners” in the West, Putin declared: “It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue.”

Within less than 24 hours of these remarks, Russia was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Council in a historically unprecedented move. The action was part of the US-led effort to criminalize Russia and the Putin regime for its intervention in Syria in support of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The efforts of Washington to bring down the regime in Damascus and install a puppet government have been frustrated by Moscow’s military intervention, which began in September of 2015.

The Russian-backed Syrian government offensive in Aleppo threatens to dislodge from the city’s eastern sector the anti-Assad Al Qaeda-linked Islamist forces that have been armed and supported by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. In the face of an impending major defeat for the US-backed “rebels,” Washington is spearheading a propaganda campaign to brand Russia as a “rouge state” and accuse it of war crimes.

While the UN obligingly voted Russia off of its fraudulently named Human Rights Council, it reelected the despotic Saudi regime, which earlier this month added to its human slaughter in Yemen by killing upwards of 140 civilians in the bombing of a funeral in that nation’s capital.

The criminal character of the Putin regime and its policies was highlighted in last week’s speech in Sochi by the Russian president’s pleas for the US to join in a more effective “anti-terror” campaign and his citing of Israel as a model for the conduct of such an enterprise.

The Kremlin regards Russia’s nuclear arsenal as its ultimate tool of defense. The prospect of a “hot” war is now regularly discussed in the Russian media. Continuing a policy that was begun in 2012, at the start of October the Putin regime held civil defense drills involving 40 million people, including 200,000 rescue personnel. Nothing could be more expressive of the dead end of Russian capitalism than the fact that its last line of defense is its ability to incinerate masses of people in a nuclear holocaust.

German think tank demands greater foreign policy independence from the US

Johannes Stern

Just days before the US presidential election, the German government-aligned think tank German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) published a paper entitled “Even without Trump much will change.” It calls for a more aggressive German and European foreign policy, which, “regardless of the election result,” is prepared to impose its economic and geopolitical interests with greater independence from, and if necessary against Washington.

The candidacy of Republican Donald Trump makes “clear that […] a US policy is possible that would demand from Germany more independent action than in the past,” according to the author of the paper and the leader of the America research group, Johannes Thimm. The possibility of Trump entering the White House compels “German politicians to ask themselves difficult questions.”

Trump’s rise to prominence has provoked considerable trepidation within broad sections of the ruling elite in Germany and internationally. “With Trump as president […] there would be a high degree of uncertainty about US foreign policy,” the paper stated. Germany could “certainly not rely on Trump’s unpredictability or extreme positions being ‘discarded,’ either through advisory staff, the cabinet, the military or Congress.”

But even with an election victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton, “corresponding strategic considerations [would be] necessary,” and Germany would “do well not to take the easy way out of wait and see.” Instead, Berlin should, “regardless of the election result, consider how the Transatlantic relationship and the future world order are to be organised.”

In line with the article written for Foreign Affairs in June by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrats), the SWP paper calls into question the claim of the US to global leadership. In the section “A strategic America policy,” it states, “the balance sheet of American engagement in the world [is …] mixed at best.” Among other things, “the US policy” – such as the “invasion of Iraq in 2003” or the “ongoing Saudi Arabian intervention in Yemen” – is “simply counter-productive for a stable order.”

“If similar types of situations arise in the future,” the paper states provocatively, “it would be important for Germany (possibly with Europe) to take a clear position and adopt its own estimation at an early stage.” Even though options are limited, “Germany and Europe [should] not leave the area of planning the political order to the US alone.”

Concretely, this means, among other things, “to question the view, based on the self-portrayal of the US as exceptional, that American interests are per se global interests.” It is also necessary “to consider how to respond if US behaviour is, from Germany’s standpoint, counter-productive.” In this, “good transatlantic relations” should not be “an end in themselves and [placed] before other considerations,” otherwise, one would be robbing oneself of the “possibility of acting strategically.”

It continues, “Without the willingness to argue with the US government ... many options for exerting influence [are] excluded from the outset.”

Nobody should underestimate the historical, political and military implications of such statements. Two years ago, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) warned: “At present, Washington is pursuing these objectives with the collaboration of the other major imperialist powers. However, there is no permanent coincidence of interests among them. German imperialism, which fought two wars with the US in the 20th century, is reviving its imperial ambitions.”

At the beginning of this year, the ICFI wrote in its statement Socialism and the Fight Against War: “Seventy years after the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich, the German ruling class is once again demanding that its state assert itself as the unquestioned overlord of Europe and as a world power. In the face of deeply felt anti-war sentiments within the German population, Berlin is deploying military force to assert its interests in the Middle East and Africa. It is pouring money into rearmament, while apologetics for the crimes of the Nazi regime are being advanced across the political establishment, media and academia, with the aim of justifying the revival of German imperialist ambitions.”

The SWP played a central role in this revival from the outset. In 2013, it organised a project involving 50 leading politicians from all parliamentary parties, journalists, academics and military and business representatives to elaborate a strategy for the return of German militarism. At the end of the discussions, the paper “New Power–New Responsibilities. Elements of a German foreign and security policy for a world in turmoil” was produced, which formed the basis of Steinmeier”s and President Gauck’s imperialistic speeches at the Munich Security Conference in 2014 and the army’s 2016 white paper.

The German ruling elite is now using the deepening international crisis in the wake of the Brexit vote and the political chaos in the US to press ahead with its great power ambitions. In a current essay entitled “Europe is the solution,” Steinmeier writes, “We must grant ourselves the concrete instruments necessary for a joint foreign [EU] policy.” This includes “practical capabilities: for joint situation analysis, financial instruments for stabilisation and crisis prevention, and ultimately joint military capacities, such as joint command structures or maritime task forces.”

These, according to Steinmeier, are “the concrete steps we now face.” Then, “the creation of a European army [should] be discussed ... when we have proven that Europe can do it better than any national state alone.” This would be the significance of a red-red-green (Social Democrats (SPD), Left Party and Greens) federal government! It would have the task in foreign policy of pressing ahead with the return of German militarism behind phrases about “responsibility,” “humanity” and “human rights,” while at the same time developing an independent German foreign policy increasingly at odds with that of the United States.

High Court verdict on EU Brexit plunges UK deeper into crisis

Julie Hyland 

Yesterday’s High Court ruling that Parliament alone has the right to trigger Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU) has created a major constitutional and political crisis.

The verdict, which the government is to appeal, rejected the right of Prime Minister Theresa May to begin Brexit (British exit) without a parliamentary vote by use of the Royal Prerogative. These are archaic powers, once held by British monarchs and now reserved to the government on the advice of the prime minister and the cabinet.

The hearing before Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales centred on Article 50 of the European Union Treaty, which states that a member state may quit the bloc “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”

May intended to trigger Brexit next March, bypassing a vote in parliament. This would begin two years of negotiations as to its terms. With EU ministers stating that the UK should be punished for its decision as a warning to other member states, and May (who campaigned as a Remainer) playing up to the vociferous pro-Brexit lobby in her own party, a substantial section of the bourgeoisie is concerned that this could result in a “hard-Brexit” in which the UK loses access to the Single Market.

With the majority of MPs in favour of remaining in the EU, government lawyers argued at the High Court that it was “constitutionally impermissible” for Parliament to be given a vote on the Brexit process as it was tantamount to overturning the “people’s will”—as registered in the narrow 52 to 48 percent June 23 referendum vote to leave the EU.

The arguments were presented last month at a judicial review at London’s Royal Courts of Justice. Against the government was a group of claimants representing interests in the City of London—led by Gina Miller, a London-based investment manager for the firm SCM Private.

The claimants’ lawyers cited the Bill of Rights of 1689, which states that laws should not be discarded or suspended without consent from Parliament. The use of prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 would have the “intended consequence” of depriving citizens of rights they have as EU citizens, and which were enshrined in UK law. Such constitutional rights could not be removed by the executive, they argued, without “breaking the back of the constitution and crippling it.”

The High Court upheld this argument, stating that government moves to begin exit negotiations without parliamentary approval would overturn 400 years of legal tradition. While asserting that “nothing we say has any bearing on the question of the merits or demerits” of Brexit, the 32-page judgement states that the “sole question” involved was “whether, as a matter of the constitutional law of the UK, the Crown—acting through the executive government of the day—is entitled to use its prerogative” to trigger Article 50.

The “subordination of the Crown (i.e., the executive government) to law is the foundation of the rule of law in the UK,” it states, noting that this has its roots in the English Civil war (1642–1651) and “has been recognised ever since.”

As to the argument that the “opinion of the electorate” stands above constitutional law, the judges rejected this on the grounds that “as a matter of law: ‘The judges know nothing about any will of the people except in so far as that will is expressed by an Act of Parliament’.”

A government spokesman said that ministers would appeal to the Supreme Court against the decision. The hearing will take place on December 7-8. However, any possible delay or further protracted legal wrangling threatens to derail the government’s plans and opens the possibility of an early general election.

The opening of a constitutional crisis underscores the recklessness of the decision by former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to agree a referendum on Brexit. The move was shaped wholly by the attempt to settle a right-wing factional dispute within the Conservative Party and its fringes in the UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Having called a referendum, all sides in the campaign sought to utilise anti-immigrant and nationalist prejudice to divert from the growing social crisis and the danger of war. For the Remain camp, led by Cameron, the aim was to wield a potential Brexit to extract greater concessions from the EU, especially securing beneficial treatment for the City of London. This meant that the Leave campaign—dominated by the most xenophobic and Thatcherite wing of the bourgeoisie—was able to monopolise legitimate opposition to the EU.

Neither side gave any consideration as to the more fundamental consequences of their actions, including the complex constitutional issues raised. Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who was secretary-general of the European convention that drafted what became the Lisbon treaty, said he had never imagined Article 50 being made use of. “I thought the circumstances in which it would be used, if ever, would be when there was a coup in a member state and the EU suspended that country’s membership,” he said. “I thought that at that point the dictator in question might be so cross that hed say ‘right, I’m off’ and it would be good to have a procedure under which he could leave.”

The shock 52 percent vote in favour has therefore opened up an existential crisis for the British bourgeoisie. Not only does it threaten to gravely diminish the role of the UK as the premier political and military ally of the US in Europe, but it reopens the possibility of the breakup of the United Kingdom itself.

The Scottish government has already threatened to hold a second referendum on independence in the event of a “hard-Brexit”, while Wales First Minister Carwyn Jones of the Labour Party welcomed the High Court ruling arguing that the devolved administrations should also get a vote on May’s Brexit negotiating position.

Indicating the explosive character of Brexit for political relations in Ireland, last week, Northern Ireland’s High Court rejected a legal bid to secure a parliamentary vote on May’s Brexit plans. The case had been taken on the grounds that May’s executive action threatened to jeopardise the power-sharing arrangements between the Unionist and Republican parties established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Sitting in the Belfast High Court, Mr Justice Maguire had said that it “is the court’s view the prerogative power is still operative and can be used for the purpose of the executive giving notification for the purpose of Article 50.”

If the Supreme Court appeal is unsuccessful, the issue is supposed to turn on whether the government can hold a one-off substantive vote on Brexit or whether parliamentary approval applies to the negotiations and terms of any agreement eventually arrived at. It is generally assumed that most MPs, pro-Remain or otherwise, would not veto the referendum result. If, however, it is found that parliament have oversight on the terms, this opens the way for numerous amendments and an even more protracted and politically incendiary process—including the involvement of the House of Lords and a second vote.

Having campaigned for a Leave vote based on “reasserting” the “sovereignty” of the British parliament, the most strident pro-Brexit forces are the loudest in protesting the High Court ruling.

Posing as the defender of the “popular will” against a “judicial elite”, Nigel Farage, the interim leader of UKIP, said, “I worry that a betrayal may be near at hand ... I now fear that every attempt will be made to block or delay the triggering of Article 50. If this is so, they have no idea of the level of public anger they will provoke.”

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that his party “respects the decision of the British people to leave the European Union.” However, he was the subject of a putsch attempt by the most pro-EU faction of his party and does not command the support of most of his MPs. There is no guarantee that the majority would not vote against triggering Article 50 in a parliamentary vote.

The right wing of the Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, has made clear they are in favour of forming a so-called “progressive alliance” to block or limit a “hard-Brexit”. This position is shared by the Liberal Democrats, whose leader Tim Farron welcomed the High Court ruling, stating, “Ultimately, the British people voted for a departure but not for a destination...”

US air strikes kill scores of civilians in Afghanistan

Bill Van Auken

US airstrikes claimed the lives of scores of civilians in northern Afghanistan Thursday, following a firefight between US-backed Afghan troops and Taliban fighters in which at least two US special forces “advisers” were killed.

The bombing, which continued through much of the night, targeted the village of Bouz Kandahari, on the outskirts of the northern city of Kunduz, where US and Afghan special operations troops had mounted an assassination raid late Wednesday aimed at eliminating two senior leaders of the Taliban. They came under heavy fire, leading to the deaths of the two American soldiers and the wounding of four others. Three Afghan special forces troops were also killed. The Pentagon euphemistically described the operation as a “train, advise and assist mission.”

A spokesman for the governor of Kunduz put the number of civilians killed in the air raids at 30. Residents and others, however, said the real number of dead was significantly higher.

Amruddin, the local representative on the provincial council, said at least 100 civilians had been killed or wounded in the bombing raids. A local resident said that 50 had been killed and between 40 and 50 wounded. Another survivor said at least 70 people had been taken to a local hospital.

As many as 50 homes were demolished by the US bombs, and more victims were feared buried in the rubble.

Outraged relatives of the dead and residents of the village staged a protest march on the governor’s palace, chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to [Afghan President Ashraf] Ghani.” The protesters used pickup trucks to carry the bodies of the dead, most of them women and children. One man held aloft the headless body of an infant. Police stopped them before they could reach their destination.

“What did these children do wrong? I want justice for the killers,” one resident told Al Jazeera.

Taza Gul, another local resident, told the Pajhwok Afghan News: “I was working on my farm when the bombardment started. On coming home, I saw seven members of my family, including women and children, killed in the raids.”

The civilian death toll in Thursday’s bombings represented the worst atrocity carried out by the US military since the deliberate targeting of a Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz by a US AC-130 gunship killed at least 42 patients and medical staff and wounded another 37 in October 2015.

That attack followed the Taliban’s seizure of the strategic northern city. Despite extensive combat operations in the ensuing year, Kunduz remains insecure and surrounded by territory controlled by the Taliban. Last month, Taliban fighters came close to overrunning it once again.

More than 15 years after the US invaded Afghanistan and nearly two years after President Barack Obama claimed an end to American combat operations, nearly 10,000 US troops remain deployed there along with a considerably larger number of military contractors. US warplanes have conducted more than 700 airstrikes so far this year, twice as many as in 2015.

By all discernible measures, the crisis of the US occupation and the regime that it has installed in Kabul is deeper than ever.

More than 1,600 civilians were killed in just the first six months of 2016, the highest death toll for a half-year period since the UN began keeping figures in 2009.

Afghan security forces, meanwhile, have also suffered record losses. Between January and August of this year, 5,523 Afghan National Army and Afghan National Defense and Security Forces troops have been killed (more than twice as many deaths than the US military has suffered in Afghanistan in 15 years), with nearly twice as many wounded.

Between casualties and desertions, the Afghan security forces are growing weaker rather than stronger, despite the more than $60 billion the US has poured into arming and training them.

Last September, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee that the state of the war was “roughly a stalemate.”

A report released last month by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) also reported 101 “insider attacks” in which Afghan soldiers turned on their own units, killing 257 and wounding 125 in the first eight months of the year. Three Americans, two soldiers and a civilian, were killed in such an incident last month at a training base near Kabul.

The SIGAR report found that the Taliban today controls more of the country than at any time since the US invasion of 2001. It also stated that the rates of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, violence, emigration and internal displacement are all on the rise.

The United Nations found that more than a million people had been displaced last year and another million Afghans are “on the move” within the country’s borders this year because of the violence, creating the conditions for a massive humanitarian crisis. The country is the second biggest source of refugees, trailing only Syria, and as many as 100,000 could be sent back after being denied asylum in Europe.

Despite the depth of this crisis and the fact that more US troops are fighting in the country than anywhere else in the world, the word Afghanistan has barely been mentioned in the 2016 presidential race by either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump. Not a word about the ongoing war appears on the campaign web sites of either candidate.

Whoever takes office in January 2017, however, the prospects for the continuation and escalation of the war are strong. President Barack Obama, having made the war his own with a “surge” that tripled the number of US troops deployed there to 100,000 in 2010, has put the brakes on what had been billed in 2014 as a gradual drawdown of American forces to the level of “normal embassy presence.”

It is now clear that the corrupt and internally divided Afghan regime will not survive without US military power to prop it up. Moreover, the Pentagon has made clear that it intends to keep permanent bases and thousands of troops in the country, which offer a strategic launching pad for operations in South Asia and the former Soviet republics of energy-rich Central Asia, as well as against both Russia and China.

To these ends, the kind of mass slaughter of civilians seen outside Kunduz on Thursday will continue.

War of smears and scandals intensifies in US election campaign

Patrick Martin

With only four days remaining before Election Day in the United States, the two main capitalist candidates have stepped up their campaigns of scandal-mongering to divert public attention from any serious examination of the critical issues of war, economic inequality and attacks on democratic rights.

Republican Donald Trump has focused his campaign almost entirely on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State, and on the operations of the Clinton Foundation, calling her corrupt and demanding she be prosecuted and jailed. Congressional Republicans have chimed in with threats of impeachment if Clinton wins the November 8 vote.

The response of the Clinton campaign and the Democrats has been to intensify their own smear tactics, promoting allegations of sexual misconduct, and even rape, against Trump, and claiming, without any evidence, that Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed the Manhattan billionaire by unleashing Russian intelligence agencies to hack into the communications of the Democratic campaign.

The presidential contest has appeared to narrow significantly since the intervention of the FBI against Clinton last Friday, when FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing additional “investigative steps” in relation to the investigation into Clinton’s private email server.

Clinton retains a small lead in national opinion polls, and in the “battleground” states whose votes in the Electoral College are the most closely contested. She also appears to have benefited from higher Democratic turnout in the early voting that is permitted in 38 of the 50 states. The result of the election remains highly uncertain, as well as the outcome of voting for 33 Senate seats and 435 seats in the House of Representatives, both now controlled by the Republican Party.

Opposition to Clinton’s candidacy within the FBI—a supposedly non-political investigative agency headed by an appointee of President Obama—was underscored by reports in right-wing media outlets Wednesday that agents were pushing an investigation “into possible pay-for-play interaction between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the [Clinton] Foundation.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier, citing unnamed sources close to the FBI investigation, claimed that the investigation into the Clinton Foundation was “a very high priority” and that “agents are actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” He claimed that “an indictment” was believed likely, although he did not indicate who was to be indicted or for what alleged crime.

The Wall Street Journal—like Fox News, owned by ultra-right billionaire Rupert Murdoch—also reported Wednesday that FBI agents were engaged in a major investigation of the Clinton Foundation, during which they had obtained “secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation,” without giving any details.

The Journal report also revealed that the FBI investigation began in response to the 2015 publication of an anti-Clinton book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, written by right-wing activist Peter Schweizer. In other words, FBI agents set out to collect evidence that would vindicate a political screed written to torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The various anti-Clinton investigations led to clashes between the FBI agents and career prosecutors in the public integrity section of the Justice Department, who regarded the evidence as flimsy and the probes politically motivated. These conflicts intensified after FBI Director James Comey announced in July that the investigation into the Clinton email server had not uncovered evidence that warranted any criminal prosecution.

Comey’s letter to Congress last week, apparently reviving the email investigation, was prompted by the continuing unrest within his agency. According to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, as many as 100 FBI agents had threatened to resign unless Comey took the extraordinary step of dropping a political bombshell only 11 days before Election Day. Other press reports described the ranks of the FBI as “Trumpland,” indicating that there is widespread support in the agency for the Republican candidate and his embrace of authoritarian methods against political opponents.

The Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party have responded in kind to the scandalmongering by Trump and the Republicans. Television advertising for Clinton in the final days of the campaign has focused almost entirely on the allegations that Trump has engaged in abusive conduct towards women, which Clinton uses as the basis of her appeal to those layers of the upper-middle-class obsessed with identity politics—the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles attorney and media commentator Lisa Bloom, the daughter of multi-millionaire defense attorney Gloria Allred, announced a news conference at which her client, a woman now 35 years old, was to detail claims that Donald Trump raped her 22 years earlier, when she was only 13. The press conference was then abruptly cancelled with the claim that “death threats” from Trump supporters made it too dangerous.

The effect was to associate the Republican candidate first with sexual assault and then with threats of violence, without actually presenting any evidence. Bloom is also the attorney for one of the women suing Trump for alleged sexual harassment.

Meanwhile congressional Democrats and the Clinton campaign continue to peddle allegations that the Russian government is the source of the trove of emails, now being made public by WikiLeaks, hacked from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The WikiLeaks emails have proven highly damaging, detailing efforts by Bill Clinton and his top aides to cash in on the operations of the Clinton Foundation by inducing corporate contributors to the charity to pay Clinton lucrative fees for giving speeches or becoming a “consultant” to their businesses.

On Thursday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange flatly denied the claims that the Russian government had supplied the emails to his organization. “The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything,” Assange said in an interview with Dartmouth Films in Britain, where he has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange pointed out that the Clinton campaign has repeatedly lied about the emails, claiming the US intelligence agencies had determined that Russian intelligence agencies were responsible for the hacking. In fact, he said, no such determination had been made. US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has claimed that the email server of the Democratic National Committee had been hacked by the Russian government—without providing any evidence—but the DNI has been silent on the hacking of Podesta’s emails.

The mutual mudslinging and scandal-mongering between the Democrats and Republicans is not merely an “aspect” of the 2016 presidential campaign. The two parties rely on such degraded methods to fight out bitter internal conflicts within the ruling class while concealing from the American people the right-wing, anti-working-class policies that the next US government, whether headed by Clinton or Trump, will carry out.

Whether it is President Clinton or President Trump, the next administration will be compelled by the deepening global economic crisis of capitalism and intensifying geo-political conflicts to adopt even more aggressive and right-wing policies than those of the Obama administration.

The next administration will employ US military force even more widely than Bush and Obama, not only in the Middle East but against more formidable nuclear-armed opponents like Russia and China. And it will respond to renewed financial crisis with sweeping attacks on jobs, working class living standards and public social services.