Brexit Stumbling: The High Court, British Parliament And Article 50

Binoy Kampmark

Parliamentary supremacy in British law and politics is akin to the fetish of the union in the United States. Challenge it at your peril; question it to your misfortune.  The point was tested, with rumbling consequences, by the May government in its latest Brexit stumble dealing with Britain’s painful and at times confused response to exiting the European Union.

The way Theresa May’s government has respected that referendum result so far is open to question. Behind closed doors, it has promised various versions of what it might do, when in truth, it may well not know what it is doing at all.  Terms such as “hard Brexit” and “soft Brexit” change hands with meal like regularity; positions are foggily unclear.  The only matter sovereign at this point is solid confusion.

This confusion was even more confounded by the antics of the High Court, which suggested in it judgment of November 3 that Prime Minister May’s approach to the nature of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty had demonstrated significant error.

Parliament, in other words, had to be involved in triggering the operative functions of Article 50, which involves a two-year process for departure.  The executive would have to duly comply with those wishes.

According to Lord Chief Justice John Thomas, “The most fundamental rule of the UK’s constitution is that parliament is sovereign and can make and unmake any law it chooses.”  Hardly heretical, given that the Brexiteer group had always insisted that UK sovereignty had been imperilled by the bureaucrats in Brussels.

The government statement was stubborn but in its own way an expression of frustration at what had been the most traditional of readings of Parliamentary supremacy.  “The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament.  And the Government determined to respect the result of the referendum.”

Not that the government won’t – it will just have to do so through the very legislature it has decided to hoodwink. In bringing the Brexit process before Parliament, the May play book will be brought to light.

The reaction from the Leavers was furious. The Daily Mail, in sinister fashion, suggested that the judges were, as its headline went, “Enemies of the people.” Photos of these touted criminals were also published, suggesting a near vigilante call to arms.

As ever, the paper’s editors decided to wade into the issue about what was meant by those good people of Britain when they decided leaving the EU was a good idea. The “people” had effectively lost out to a court which had sided “against [their] interests”.  Had the battle against the wicked court system within the European Union been for nothing?

An image here that emerges is that of nativism burning wildly before the cliquish designs of the elite.  Such a judgment, it was hyperbolically argued, stoked the flames of dissatisfaction “not just in Britain and Europe, but also among Donald Trump’s supporters in America – that western public life is becoming a conspiracy of tightly knit, self-serving Establishment elites against the public.”

The Daily Express event went so far as to urge the British public to rush to the barricades to “fight, fight, fight”. Those humble court darlings were misfits who had purposely engineered a roadblock to prevent Brexit by including Parliament in the whole rotten business.  An eccentric reading of the ruling if ever there was one.

The European authorities are not going to go easy on what is regarded as audacious mischief making by the British populists to damage the European project. But that populist voice took the form of a vote which must, in the annals of that country’s electoral history, be respected.

Suspicion, however, abounds as to how this timetable of exit is to be performed, and such Murdoch papers as the Sun suspect foul play amongst the conservatives.  Everyone is in need of someone to crucify.

Yet the populists, ever the bullies in the playground, were the first ones to jump ship after the vote in the name of sovereignty. Nigel Farage, having done the damage, fled to the United States to enthusiastically embrace Donald Trump’s campaign to claim that Britain had reclaimed itself.  Only the often oafish Boris Johnson was brought, most probably by compulsion, into the ministry.

Perhaps the most useful aspect to this entire affair, apart from the predictable anger on the part of the government at the intrusive rulings of courts it would rather not listen to (even their own), is the understanding of the populists.  Behind the Brexit campaign – less than the vote itself – was a despotic snigger, a sense that unaccountable power might not be such a bad thing.

As Alex Massie noted with understandable derision, “People who shouted for months about the urgent need to restore parliamentary sovereignty now reacted in horror to the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty.”[1] The populists had effectively ambushed themselves.

UNESCO Censures Israel’s Administration Of Jerusalem

Richard Falk

In response to UNESCO resolutions adopted in October that were highly critical of Israel’s protection of sacred and cultural Islamic heritage sites in Jerusalem, there is again a fiery confrontation between Israel and this UN organ whose actions have so often touched the raw nerves of Western political sensibilities. The main UNESCO resolution ‘deeply deplores’ Israel’s failure to stop a series of excavations and related activities in East Jerusalem, which are declared to be harming Islamic sites in Jerusalem, and above all complains about Israel’s interference with worship and serenity at the Al Aqsa mosque. The resolutions also complain about Israel’s general failure to cooperate with UNESCO’s cultural and religious conservation work in Jerusalem, especially in the ‘Old City,’ even to the point of refusing visas to UN officials seeking to carry out their duties.

Of course, not far in the background is Israel’s hostility toward UNESCO that has been pronounced ever since 2011 when Palestine was admitted to UNESCO as a member state over the vigorous objections of Israel, the United States, as well as several European countries. Unlike the Security Council, where the US could single-handedly block full UN membership, there is no veto in either the General Assembly or in UN specialized agencies. Israel has refused all cooperation with UNESCO ever since Palestine gained membership, which presupposes that Palestine qualifies for membership because it has the credential of a state. Obligingly, the U.S. reinforced Israel’s hostility by withholding its annual contributions ever since, which amounts to a hefty 22% of the UNESCO budget.

This New Controversy

This latest initiative raised substantive issues high on the UNESCO agenda. This contrasts with the earlier status fight about admission to the agency, which was limited in scope to a procedural matter, that is, whether or not Palestine qualifies as a state entitled to membership. Here, Israel insists that UNESCO is aligning itself with a sinister Arab effort to minimize, or even erase, Jewish historic and religious connections with Jerusalem, and specifically with the area around Al Aqsa Mosque and the nearby Noble Sanctuary. The resolution fails to mention explicitly Jewish connections with the Temple Mount and Western Wall, using only Arab names for these places of overlapping religious significance, although in its general language it was acknowledged in the UNESCO text that all three monotheistic religions possessed historical connections with the Old City in Jerusalem that should be respected. It is accurate for Israel to assert that the Temple Mount and Western Wall are the very most sacred of all Jewish holy places, a reality that should have been acknowledged. It was somewhat invidious, and not really relevant, for the Israeli denunciation of the UNESCO action, to point out that Al Aqsa ranked only third in the Islamic canon, behind Mecca and Medina, and thus seemingly had a lesser claim on UNESCO’s protection if competing claims were at issue. Actually, this line of attack is a red herring as there was no UNESCO attempt to denigrate Jewish claims; the resolutions were devoted to pointing out Israel’s failures of responsibility with Islamic sites.

Nevertheless, in a typically diversionary spirits, Israel’s top politicians insisted that to approach UNESCO’s role in Jerusalem in such an allegedly partisan manner effect was deeply offensive to Jewish concerns. Netanyahu, never at a loss for invective, put his objection this way: “Saying that Israel doesn’t have a connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying the Chinese don’t have a connection to the Great Wall.” He went on, “Through this absurd decision, UNESCO has lost the little bit of legitimacy that it has.” Let’s be clear. The UNESCO resolutions in no way denied Jewish connections with the holy sites of Jersualem, it just failed to acknowledge them by name. There was no ‘absurd decision’ as the resolutions were above all a fully legitimate, even overdue, call to Israel to start performing its proper role of protecting Islamic sites as Occupying Power in accord with law, and in the interest of cultural preservation. There were strong grounds to believe that Israel was administering Jerusalem in ways that were threatening in various ways to the integrity and enjoyment of Islamic sites. From this perspective it was in no way relevant to mention, much less criticize, Israel’s protection of Jewish sites as they were being fully protected by Israel, likely over-protected and allowed to encroach in unacceptable ways on Islamic sites.

Jordan, among the several Arab sponsors, praised UNESCO’s “historic decision” as supportive of the very genuine struggle to preserve the status quo in Jerusalem in the face of Israeli efforts to create as much of a Jewish city as possible, diminishing by stages the Palestinian and Islamic character of the place. In recent years there was particular reasons for concern about Israel’s effort to administer the holy sites in Jerusalem, especially Al Aqsa. Such an evenhanded role conflicted with Israel’s preoccupation with promoting the primacy of Jewish traditions and memories, and deliberately at the expense of Muslim and even Christian concerns.

There has been a series of violent encounters at Al Aqsa during several recent religious holidays. This much beloved mosque was increasingly endangered as a serene place of worship by Israeli policies and practices in recent years. Israel has in the past been severely criticized for the failure to fulfill its legal responsibilities with respect to holy sites in Jerusalem as ‘Occupying Power.’ With respect to Al Aqsa Israel was specifically charged with denying access to Muslim worshippers and not taking adequate steps to curb the campaign of settler extremists to assert aggressively Jewish claims in the mosque area leading to violent encounters.

Appraising the UNESCO Initiative

Overall, it would seem that there are two kinds of understandable reactions to this latest UNESCO initiative. It was entirely appropriate and even necessary for UNESCO members and the organization to complain about Israel’s failures to uphold its several responsibilities with respect to holy and heritage sites throughout Jerusalem. It is one more illustration of Israel’s pattern of defiance when it comes to discharging its obligations as set forth in the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties. In these circumstances, it was appropriate for UNESCO to act, and given developments in Jerusalem in recent years, even with a sense of urgency.

At the same time, it was inappropriate and seems irresponsible for the resolution to avoid an explicit acknowledgement of the Jewish connections to Temple Mount and Western Wall. The UNESCO drafters should have anticipated that by referencing only the Arabic names the resolutions would be sufficiently provocative to give Israel a rather plausible pretext for voicing a hostile reaction, and thereby evading the substantive criticism that was the core of the initiative. These wider politics also led a politically acute Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO, to join Israel, the United States, and some European states in condemning the resolutions, calling them an irresponsible incitement of violence, swallowing Israel’s bait to place all blame on the provocation and give no attention at all to the genuine substantive issues that lie at the heart of UNESCO’s mission.

This unwillingness to mention both the Jewish and Arab names for the holy sites in Jerusalem had the dysfunctional effect of shifting attention away from the legitimate concerns of Palestinians and others in the Islamic world about the overall failure of Israel to uphold its responsibilities in Jerusalem, which included a variety of efforts to Judaize the city by stages. These unacceptable occupation policies verge on ethnic cleansing with a focus on undermining the Palestinian presence in relation to religious and cultural claims, residence rights, building permits, and family reunification. Thus, Israeli failures to carry out the legal responsibilities associated with being an Occupying Power with respect to non-Jewish holy and cultural heritage sites should be understood as an inflammatory implementation of Israel’s unlawful annexation of Jerusalem.

It is possible that this question of acknowledgement might not have avoided Israel’s condemnation of UNESCO’s initiative. It seems likely that Israel was enraged by this successful move by Palestine to sidestep Israel’s attempt to oppose any Palestinian effort to gain legitimacy and attention for its statehood claims. In this regard Israel’s most basic objection to the resolution likely involved the adoption of its title “Occupied Palestine,’ giving Palestine the status it is aspiring to establish on its own without any prior agreement by Israel. This by itself infuriates the Netanyahu leadership in Israel, which is evidently seeking to exclude any possibility of Palestinian statehood, and seeks to avoid the legal complications of occupying a foreign state as it proceeds with its own territorial expansion. Finally, it should be appreciated that Palestine has only resorted to this symbolic chessboard of UN legitimation after twenty years of frustration and setbacks resulting from Oslo diplomacy.

Australian government steps up assault on social welfare

Richard Phillips 

The Australian government is intensifying its attacks on the poor and most socially-vulnerable with plans to slash parental leave payments and calls for an expansion of the punitive “Healthy Welfare Card.”

The campaign is in line the government’s “welfare reform” measures announced in September and in response to demands from the financial elite for major inroads into social spending in order to cut corporate taxes and force welfare recipients into low-paid work.

Altogether the government is seeking to slash $6 billion from welfare spending over the next four years, in addition to the $6 billion in cutbacks already imposed with the support of the opposition Labor Party since July. The further measures include abolishing Family Tax Benefit end-of-year supplements, ending carbon tax compensation payments for future welfare recipients, freezing welfare eligibility thresholds and extending the time before the unemployed receive dole payments.

Last month the Liberal-National Coalition government also introduced legislation to restrict access to Australia’s state-funded paid parental leave. It currently provides 18 weeks’ pay at the minimum wage of $672 a week and allows recipients to combine this with parental payments from their employers.

The government now claims this is “double dipping.” Under the legislation, those receiving eight weeks pay from their employer will have their government-funded entitlement cut from 18 to 10 weeks, equivalent to a loss of about $12,000.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter said the “reforms,” which will directly impact at least 80,000 new parents, are designed to make paid parental leave “fairer.”

In bid to whip up hostility to welfare recipients, Porter last week claimed that thousands of parents receiving welfare payments were “financially better off not getting a job.”

He cited the example of a single parent, who, he said, could receive over $52,000 from Family Tax benefits and other government payments. This, Porter alleged, was more than the $49,831 take-home pay of a median full-time worker. He declared the government had a “moral” responsibility to end “welfare dependency.”

Porter’s claim, which was prominently featured in the Murdoch press and on talk-back radio, was utterly bogus. His hypothetical example referred to a single parent with four dependent children—a tiny minority of the population.

According to the Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research, only 9 percent of the 6.7 million family households were single-parent homes with dependent children and only 2.5 percent of these, or about 15,000 households, had four children.

Porter omitted to mention that single parents who worked full-time for the mean annual wage can receive $30,916 in family tax benefits, as well as their wages. Their mean annual income would be over $80,000, not $49,000. Current average family tax benefit payments amount to only about $7,000 per child per year. This is supposed to cover all child-related costs, including food, clothing, education and numerous other expenses.

Porter’s calculations also did not take into account the government’s planned cuts to Family Tax Benefits. Single parent families with four children will lose about $4,000 per year, irrespective of whether the parent is working or not.

As for government and media claims that thousands are “double-dipping,” according to the most recent data, only 48 percent of employers provided paid parental leave in 2015. Of those, 80.9 per cent offered full pay to employees and only 8.6 per cent topped up the government scheme to full pay. The average period of paid leave was just 10.2 weeks.

Porter’s assertions are part of the constant drumbeat of government and corporate media claims that welfare spending is “out of control” and that anyone receiving the below-poverty level government payments is “bludging” on society. The anti-welfare demagogy is to divert attention from decades of tax cuts for corporations, lower rates for the rich and rising military spending.

The legislation confronts opposition in the Senate where the Coalition lacks a majority. Facing widespread public hostility to austerity measures, Labor and the Greens have postured as opponents to the changes to paid-parental leave. This is a patent fraud given that both parties have consistently supported attacks on welfare spending.

In October 2012, the Greens-backed minority Labor government cut 100,000 single parents off Parenting Payments and forced them onto the Newstart unemployment benefit, a cut of about $120 from their fortnightly income.

In June last year, the Greens made an agreement with the Coalition to impose far-reaching assets tests on the aged pension to slash $2.4 billion from pension spending over four years.

If Labor and the Greens do not strike a deal on parental leave, the government will require the support of eight out of 10 “cross-bench” senators—that is, the small parties and “independents” that hold the balance of power. Moreover, two senators on whom the government was counting for votes are facing High Court challenges.

The anti-immigrant One Nation party, which holds four Senate seats, has already endorsed the cuts, with Senator Pauline Hanson telling the Australian Financial Review she would support the government “if it wanted to go harder.” However, the government has yet to get the backing of the three Nick Xenophon Team senators, without which the legislation faces defeat.

Early this week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull flagged further expansion of the government’s cashless “Healthy Welfare Card,” another punitive measure to undermine the rights of welfare recipients.

Under this scheme, 80 percent of welfare payments to individuals are placed in a Visa-debit account that cannot be used to buy alcohol or gambling products, or to withdraw cash. Most single welfare recipients would only have access to about $50 cash per week.

The card is being “trialled” on about 10,000 people in the remote communities of Ceduna in South Australia and Wyndham and Kununurra in Western Australia’s east Kimberley region. The government claims that the cashless welfare card, which was endorsed last year by Labor, will reduce spending on alcohol, gambling and family violence.

The Healthy Welfare Card, which was devised by Fortescue Metals Group owner Andrew Forrest, in fact, is a variation on the Basics Card. This was initiated by the previous Labor government, which continued the Howard Liberal-National government’s “intervention” into Northern Territory indigenous communities in 2007. The Basics Card, which has now been imposed on over 25,000 welfare recipients across Australia, places between 50 and 70 percent of an individual’s welfare payments into cashless cards.

Last month, Forrest, a multi-billionaire, told Australia’s National Press Club that the Healthy Welfare Card should be expanded across Australia, declaring that a “cash-based welfare system underpins laziness and rewards bad choices.”

The Healthy Welfare and Basic cards have nothing to do resolving unemployment, poverty, substance abuse but are mechanisms for destroying the right to social welfare and another means of blaming the victims for the social ills created by government policies and the profit system.

Chinese president’s visit to Bangladesh highlights growing rivalry in South Asia

Sarath Kumara

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Bangladesh last month is a sharp expression of the sharpening geo-political rivalry between China and India, which is backed by the US. India, the US and Japan are increasingly intervening in Bangladesh to put pressure on the government of Prime Minister Sheik Hasina in order to undermine Chinese influence.

Xi’s visit to Bangladesh on October 14 was the first by a Chinese head of state since President Li Xiannian toured the country in 1986. The trip was clearly aimed at countering India’s efforts to strengthen relations with Dhaka. Xi met with Hasina, Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid and opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP) leader Khalida Zia.

On arrival in Dhaka, Xi emphasised the importance of Bangladesh to China as a partner in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. He said Beijing was ready to deepen “political mutual trust and elevate our relations and practical cooperation to a higher level.” A joint statement declared that 2017 would be the “year of friendship and exchanges.”

During Xi’s visit, the two governments signed 27 agreements involving $US24.45 billion in assistance and investment for Bangladesh. Moreover, 13 Chinese corporations signed joint venture agreements worth $13 billion with Bangladeshi companies.

Jiang Jingkui, director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at Beijing University, told the China Daily that “the South Asia region, which was not China’s traditional focus, has become more important in recent years especially after China put forward the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.” The initiative involves massive Chinese spending on infrastructure to more closely link Africa and the Eurasian landmass.

Beijing is well aware that Washington is seeking to harness India as a frontline state in its war preparations against China. The Obama administration has encouraged New Delhi to build its regional influence, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan, at China’s expense.

In June last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Dhaka and signed 22 agreements, including on maritime security and to establish special economic zones (SEZ) in Bangladesh. Significantly, India also proposed a means to end the four-decade border dispute between the two countries. However, Modi’s promises of a $2 billion credit line and the release of another $800 million, which had been agreed previously, have been dwarfed by Xi’s offers last month.

China is also Bangladesh’s leading military equipment provider and the two countries have robust training and military exchange programs.

Chinese investments are increasing. Just one day before Xi’s visit, China’s Jiangsu Etern Company signed a four-and-a-half year deal worth $1.1 billion to strengthen the power grid in Bangladesh. Etern also won a bid for a power plant project for $304 million in August.

Rivalry with India is growing. In July, India’s state-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) signed a contract to construct a 1.32 MW power station worth of $1.6 billion with Bangladesh, undercutting China’s Harbin Electric International Company.

Beijing had agreed to build a deep-sea port at Sonadia Island of Bangladesh, south of Chittagong. However, Dhaka cancelled the project early this year claiming it was not commercially viable. The real reason was the opposition of the US and India, along with Dhaka’s decision to allow Japan to build an alternative port just few kilometres away.

China is trying to counter Indian allegations of the dangers posed by Beijing’s influence in South Asia. Its state-owned Global Times wrote on October 12: “Some Indian people may mistakenly flatter themselves when they think China’s Belt and Road initiative is aimed at balancing India’s influence.”

Nevertheless, New Delhi has been strengthening its ties with Dhaka. In the wake of Xi’s visit, Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina was asked by the Hinduon October 18: “Isn’t it a valid concern for India that Bangladesh could become China’s ‘string of pearls’ in the region.” Hasina rejected claims that “Bangladesh is inclining more towards China,” saying, “India is best poised to benefit from the Bangladeshi market.”

Asked why trade with India lagged behind trade with China, Hasina said: “It depends on the private sector, where they want to buy goods from… We also plan for the establishment of Indian SEZs at Mongla and Bheramara that would increase the FDI [foreign direct investment] flow into Bangladesh and narrow the trade gap.”

On October 29, an article in the Diplomat warned about “the burgeoning relationship between China and Bangladesh” and called on New Delhi to “address all unfinished business with Bangladesh” to counter China. In particular, the article proposed concluding an agreement to share water from the Ganges River to provide larger supplies to Bangladesh.

The article also suggested: “India must also expeditiously bring the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal ( BBIN) transport agreement fully into effect, recognising the fact that China is going all-out to bring the Bangladesh, China, India, Myanmar (BCIM) project online.”

For her part, Prime Minister Hasina has supported New Delhi on key issues. Significantly, she joined India in boycotting the summit of SAARC, the South Asian regional grouping, which is currently chaired by Pakistan. New Delhi blamed Islamabad for the terrorist attack on a military post at Uri in Kashmir on September 18.

India has recklessly ramped up tensions with Pakistan by carrying out military attacks inside Pakistani territory on September 28, saying these were “surgical strikes” against terrorist camps. The Hasina government supported India’s actions and accused Pakistan of “exporting terrorism” to other countries.

Washington is also seeking to boost its influence in Bangladesh. In August, US Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to Dhaka. Washington has used the rising number of terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists over the past three years to strengthen its ties with the Bangladeshi military and intelligence apparatus.

The Hasina government, which confronts a worsening economic and social crisis, is desperately manoeuvring: seeking economic assistance from China while maintaining close ties with India and trying to avoid alienating the US. As tensions between China and the US continue to escalate, this balancing act will become increasingly impossible.

Indian elite rails against China for its ties to Pakistan

Keith Jones

Relations between India and China are rapidly spiraling downwards, with potentially cataclysmic consequences for Asia and the world.

The root cause of the increasing acrimony between New Delhi and Beijing is the US drive to transform India into a frontline state in its diplomatic, economic, and, above all, military-strategic offensive against China.

India's two-and-a-half year-old Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has dramatically enhanced New Delhi's decade-old “global strategic partnership” with Washington. It has granted the Pentagon routine access to India's military bases, parroted Washington's provocative anti-China line on the South China Sea dispute, and begun trilateral military-strategic cooperation with the principal US allies in the Asia-Pacific, Japan and Australia.

Since Wednesday, Indian and Chinese troops have been in a “face-off” along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), that is the de facto, disputed Sino-Indian border, between India's Ladakh region and Tibet. The confrontation began when some 50 Chinese troops intervened to prevent the construction of an irrigation canal on the Indian side of the LAC. They claimed India was violating an agreement that neither side would build infrastructure near the LAC without the approval of the other. India has responded by saying the agreement only holds for military infrastructure.

This is far from the first such border incident. But it takes on heightened significance under conditions where the Indian government and press have been railing against China for opposing Indian efforts to strategically isolate Pakistan in the midst of a mounting war crisis between South Asia's rival nuclear-armed states.

In the seven weeks since India labelled Islamabad responsible for an attack by Islamist militants on the army base at Uri in Indian-held Kashmir, Beijing has repeatedly called on both sides to back away from further escalation. But China has also made clear that it will not abandon its decades-old alliance with Pakistan—an alliance that it has significantly expanded over the past two years in response to the Modi government's integration of India into Washington's anti-China “Pivot to Asia.”

China pushed back when Modi sought to transform last month's BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit meeting in Goa into a platform to denounce Pakistan. During the weekend of the summit, Modi repeatedly described Pakistan as the “mothership” of international terrorism. But to the consternation of the Indian government and media, the communique issued at the end of the Goa conclave made no mention of Pakistan or the Uri attack, even though it went on at length about the need to defeat terrorism.

Soon after Chinese President Xi returned from Goa to Beijing, China announced a deal to sell Pakistan eight submarines.

Beijing's stance is impeding New Delhi's concerted campaign to change the “rules of the game” with Islamabad. Calculating that India's burgeoning alliance with the US has pushed Pakistan onto its back foot, the Modi government is seeking to compel Islamabad to cease any and all support for the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir.

In August it announced that New Delhi will trumpet Pakistani human rights abuses in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan and give “greater political space” to Balochi separatists living in India. This shift in policy constitutes a thinly veiled threat to use the Balochi separatist insurgency as a weapon against Pakistan and even press for its dismemberment.

Eleven days after the Uri attack, India publicly announced, for the first time in more than four decades, that it had carried out military action inside Pakistan and declared that henceforth any “Pakistan authored” terrorist strikes will be met by similar cross-border strikes.

Since then, India and Pakistan have continued to inch ever-closer to war. The past 10 days have seen repeated cross-border artillery and machine gun barrages, resulting in the deaths of more than two dozen people, most of them civilians, and the injuring of scores of others.

Especially since the Goa BRICS summit, the Indian elite's anti-Pakistan campaign has been accompanied by broadsides against China. Most have been of a rhetorical character, such as the repeated denunciations of China in the Indian press for backing the world's principal “rogue states,” Pakistan and North Korea.

But the Modi government has also hit back against Beijing with a series of provocative actions.

These include inviting the US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma, to be the guest of honor at the annual festival in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, Indian-held territory that is claimed by China. According to the Indian web site Wire, this is “the first time that a foreign diplomat, let alone the US ambassador,” had been named “guest of honour” at the Tawang Festival.

New Delhi has also announced that it will allow the Dalai Lama, the public face of the campaign for Tibet's secession from China, to visit Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing calls southern Tibet, next March.

India is continuing its vocal campaign against the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a series of rail, road and pipeline links that are to connect western China with Gwadar, Pakistan’s newly-built Arabian Sea Port. Indian claims to oppose the CPEC because it will pass through parts of Pakistan that Indian claims are rightfully hers. But its real objections are that the $50 billion project will give a much needed boost to the Pakistani economy and provide China with ready access to the Indian Ocean, which New Delhi covets as its area of strategic dominance.

Late last month India announced that Modi will travel to Japan on November 11-12, with the aim of further cementing military-strategic ties with Washington’s most important Asian-Pacific ally and China’s most powerful strategic rival in Asia.

With tacit and in some cases explicit support from BJP politicians, Hindu supremacist organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and other extreme chauvinist elements are mounting a reactionary campaign for Indians to boycott Chinese goods.

Sarbananda Sonowal, the BJP chief minister of the northeastern Indian state of Assam, has urged the people of his state to support the anti-China boycott. Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar received wild applause when he told an audience in Mumbai of Indian foreign policy experts and other members of the elite that while the government could not call for a boycott of Chinese without running afoul of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, “Not to buy Chinese products can be taken at [the] individual level.”

Washington for, its part, is seeking to exploit the mounting tensions between India and Pakistan and between India and China to further harness India to its predatory strategic agenda.

While urging “caution” and counseling restraint, the Obama administration has publicly endorsed India's illegal and highly provocative Sept. 28-29 cross-border Special Forces’ “surgical strikes” inside Pakistan.

Verma’s visit to Twang was also a highly calculated move, constituting as it did implicit backing for India’s territorial claims. Washington was no doubt pleased when China reacted angrily, with a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declaring that Verma’s visit “will damage the hard-earned peace and tranquility of the China-India border region.”

Beijing has generally responded in low-key fashion to Indian provocations, for fear that a harsh reaction will only push New Delhi deeper into the US's embrace, furthering China’s own strategic encirclement. However in recent months the tone, at least in the Chinese media, has begun to change. The state-run Global Times has, for example, published a number of articles that bristled with hostility to India.

The enmeshing of the India-Pakistan and Sino-Indian strategic rivalries with the growing US-China divide, as a result of US imperialism’s drive to contain and subjugate China and restore its global hegemony, has added new, explosive charges to all three, threatening absent the intervention of the international working class, to plunge humanity into a Third World War.

Speculation mounts over snap general election as UK Brexit crisis intensifies

Robert Stevens 

The political and constitutional crisis enveloping Britain’s ruling class is intensifying, following Thursday’s High Court ruling that only Parliament has the right to trigger Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU).

Prime Minister Theresa May’s government hopes to invoke Royal Prerogative powers in an attempt to begin Brexit (British exit from the EU) without a parliamentary vote. The government is to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the case in December.

The crisis has prompted speculation that May, who campaigned for remaining in the EU but leads a party overwhelmingly committed to Brexit, may be forced to call a snap general election over the issue. The Times editorialised Friday, “The arguments for an early general election must look compelling in Downing Street this morning, despite the prime minister’s assurances to the contrary.”

On Friday, Nigel Farage, the interim leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP), said, “The neatest, cleanest way to finish this off is for May to call a general election on the basis that Brexit means Brexit, to get a majority and to get on with it.”

The government’s crisis worsened Friday, with the resignation of Conservative MP Stephen Phillip, prompting a by-election in his seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham. Phillips, who voted for Brexit, admitted that he never believed the Leave vote would win. Since the consequences of it have become apparent—especially as regards access to the Single Market—and with May committed to Brexit, Phillips has been open in his opposition and worked in alliance with pro-Remain forces.

Up to three-quarters of MPs in Parliament are in favour of remaining in the EU, with many determined to reverse the June 23 vote either via a second referendum, or a general election. Phillips applied unsuccessfully to Parliaments’ Speaker John Bercow for a debate in the Commons on the issue of Parliament being able to vote on Article 50 (the EU legislation which begins formal EU exit). This followed an unsuccessful request on the same issue by former Labour leader Ed Miliband.

UKIP leadership candidate Suzanne Evans announced Friday she would contest the Sleaford and North Hykeham election.

May has a slim parliamentary majority of just 15. The Sleaford and North Hykeham contest follows another by-election in Richmond Park on December 1, prompted by the resignation of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith over the building of a third runway at Heathrow. The seat could be lost to the Liberal Democrats, who are being backed by the Greens as part of the pro-EU “progressive alliance.”

The High Court ruling has spurred on deepening collaboration between pro-Remain forces. On Friday, the Guardian reported that “a cross-party group of Tory and Labour MPs” met immediately following the ruling to discuss how it “could be used to force May to reveal more about her broad negotiating aims.”

The widely-despised former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair is leading this political realignment. Writing in the October 28 New European newspaper, set up by pro-Remain forces following the referendum vote, Blair stated, “We are the insurgents now... We have to build the capability to mobilise and to organise.” The Remain camp had “to make the argument, and not to be whipped into line to support a decision we genuinely believe is a catastrophe for the country we love.”

Speaking to the BBC Radio Four’s Today, Blair said that nothing was off the table in terms of possible moves to reverse Brexit. “If it becomes clear that this is either a deal that doesn’t make it worth our while leaving, or a deal that is so serious in its implications that people may decide they don’t want to go, there’s got to be some way, either through Parliament, through an election, possibly through a referendum, in which people express their view,” he said. “There is no reason why we should close off any options.”

Blair’s intervention came just days before the launch of the “centre-left” Tribune group of 70 Labour MPs, with a speech by Guardian journalist Will Hutton—part of which was republished in the Guardian Wednesday under the heading, “The Brexit war can still be won, but we must start fighting back.” Hutton wrote, “Britain must reaffirm EU membership, which is the bridge to international openness and fundamental to our prosperity … These are the propositions around which the centre and left—and the best of the conservative tradition—can unite.”

Central to the aims of the pro-Remain forces is the moulding of Labour as the main pro-EU vehicle of the ruling elite. Immediately after the Brexit referendum, Labour’s Blairite wing launched a coup aimed at removing party leader Jeremy Corbyn on the basis that he was not sufficiently pro-EU and was a declared opponent of nuclear weapons and war. On Friday, the Guardian editorialised: “Parliament is back where it should be, at the heart of the debate. Now Labour must be in the thick of the contest, bold and principled in support of the national interest.”

The depth of the divisions within ruling circles is reflected in the language employed by their representatives and in the media. Right-wing pro-Brexit newspapers responded to the High Court ruling by denouncing the “treachery” and “betrayal” of the three judges who authored it. Utilising populist rhetoric to hail a battle for “freedom” and democracy”, articles and commentaries warned of “civil war”, “riots” and “rebellions” if the courts and Remain camp force the reversal of Brexit.

The Daily Mail front page consisted of a photo of the three “out of touch” judges “who defied 17.4 million Brexit voters” above a banner headline reading, “Enemies of the People.” The Mail made a derogatory reference, before it was pulled, to one of the judges being “openly gay.”

The Daily Express evoked World War Two, editorialising, “Today, this country faces a crisis as grave as anything since the dark days when Churchill vowed we would fight them on the beaches … Rise up people of Britain and fight, fight, fight.”

The Independent cited the comments of UKIP councillor Stephen Raven from the town of Boston where the highest vote for Brexit was recorded. Raven said, “If Brexit doesn’t go ahead, you are going to get civil uproar. It’s not a word I use lightly, but there is going to be a revolution.”

The invocations of the “sovereignty of Parliament” by May’s opponents is just as much cynical hyperbole as is the claim that her government and UKIP are genuinely concerned that the “will of the people” be honoured. If the judges’ decision is reversed by the Supreme Court, the same essential arguments will continue utilising different rhetorical flourishes. Two right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie are engaged in a bitter conflict over the best way to secure the interests of British imperialism against both its major rivals and the working class. Both are pro-big business, pro-austerity and pro-war.

The Socialist Equality Party has been vindicated in its decision to oppose support for either reactionary camp in the referendum campaign and in urging an active boycott. The programme advanced by the SEP, in opposition to British nationalism in both its “Little Englander” and pro-EU guises, was for the political mobilisation of the British and European working class for a socialist workers’ government and a United Socialist States of Europe. It is only on this basis that the lies being used to line workers up behind rival capitalist factions can be exposed and the working class take an independent stand in its own interests.

Canada’s Liberal government outlines privatization plans

Roger Jordan

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau presented the Liberal government’s Fall Fiscal Update on Tuesday, almost one year to the day the Liberals returned to power after a decade of Conservative rule. The update was a fitting way to mark the Trudeau government’s first anniversary, since it outlined plans to accelerate the privatization of public infrastructure and allotted additional funds for aggressive military interventions abroad.

The Canadian ruling elite’s traditional party of government, the Liberals returned to power last fall with the support of the trade unions and the social democratic NDP, who shamelessly promoted them as a “progressive” alternative to the Conservatives. Predictably, the new government has carried out little more than cosmetic changes, while using phony progressive rhetoric and the appointment of visible minorities to high-profile positions to provide a smokescreen for expanding Canada’s role in Washington’s military-strategic offensives and for pressing forward with the dismantling of public services.

Morneau acknowledged the deepening global crisis of capitalism and the souring of Canada’s economic prospects in his speech to the House of Commons. Total deficits were increased over the next six years by around $31 billion, with the goal of balancing the books by 2021-22 abandoned. Even after eliminating the $6 billion annual contingency fund adopted in last March’s budget, the Liberals are projecting a rise in additional government debt of $115 billion by the 2022 fiscal year.

These figures reflect the impact of the collapse of oil and commodity prices and the anemic state of Canada’s manufacturing sector despite a sharp drop in the value of the Canadian dollar. The Bank of Canada has repeatedly revised down its growth forecast over recent months, to 1.1 percent for this year and 2 percent for 2017. A number of concerns, above all the potential bursting of the housing market bubble, have led some observers to predict that still worse is to come. At its October meeting, the Bank of Canada reportedly considered the option of cutting interest rates to a historic low of 0.25 percent.

The government is responding by laying the groundwork for the widespread privatization of public assets, so as to boost corporate profits and open up new business opportunities. On the recommendation of the government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which is being led by the managing director of the global consultancy firm McKinsey, Dominic Barton, the Liberals have announced that they will establish an Infrastructure Bank to involve Canadian and foreign investors in public infrastructure projects.

The bank is to be “seeded” by $35 billion in public money. $15 billion of this is to be drawn from infrastructure investments already announced and a further $20 billion will be raised via equities and government debt.

The bank’s goal will be to attract hundreds of billions in Canadian and foreign capital to invest in everything from the country’s airports and bridges to roads, water systems, electricity suppliers and sea ports. The result will be billions in profits for the corporate elite while working people are left to bear the burden of increased user fees and tolls.

Morneau also announced the government is deregulating foreign investment, with the threshold for government reviews of foreign takeovers to be increased to $1 billion in 2017.

Moves to privatize Canada’s eight largest airports are already well advanced. Credit Suisse, one of the world’s largest banks, has been hired by the government to present a report on how the sell-off should proceed by the end of the year.

On Thursday, Transport Minister Mark Garneau announced that the government is raising the foreign investment limit in domestic airlines from 25 to 49 percent, a step which is aimed at facilitating the creation of “ultra low-cost” (ULC) carriers. In the US and other parts of the world, the establishment of ULCs has been bound up with a massive restructuring of the airline industry on the basis of a devastating assault on the wages, working conditions, and jobs of airline workers.

Morneau and the Liberals are also touting Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) as the mechanism for cities and towns to undertake infrastructure investment projects. The involvement of private capital in the infrastructure bank will likely see municipalities forced to pay between 7 and 9 percent on funds borrowed so as to secure “suitable” returns for investors.

Significantly, the Trudeau government is receiving advice from Sir Michael Barber, a British academic who played a key role in the development of so-called “deliverology” by Tony Blair’s Labour government. Under Blair, Labour continued and intensified the right-wing, pro-business thrust of its Conservative predecessor, including by launching privatization drives in education, health care and other public services. Since then, according to CBC, Barber has presented his ideas to some 40 state and national governments around the world.

The Liberals’ Advisory Council on Economic Growth released a brief report containing its first set of policy recommendations in the run-up to this week’s fiscal update. It called on the government to concentrate on privatization, both in the form of PPPs and the outright sell-off of government assets. The Liberals, the report argued, should “create a flywheel of re-investment … by catalyzing the participation of institutional capital in existing assets.”

The latest economic announcements thoroughly expose the Liberals’ phony posturing as defenders of the “middle class.” In Tuesday’s update Morneau still sought to frame his proposals as a way of boosting the middle class by creating good jobs. But the reality is that the government’s overriding focus is on finding a means of boosting returns for the business elite under conditions of economic stagnation.

The Liberals’ program has been hailed by no less of an organization of the global financial elite than the IMF. Managing Director Christine Lagarde praised the Trudeau government in September saying she hopes Canada’s economic policies “can actually go viral.” “If you use [fiscal space] to invest in infrastructure, that will, in the medium to long term, improve productivity of the country and in the short term will actually boost growth because it will put people to work,” she told CBC.

Talk of improving Canada’s productivity, one of the central concerns of the Liberals’ advisory council, is a euphemism for stepping up the exploitation of workers by reducing labour costs.

This is underscored by the involvement of McKinsey, which has advised governments around the globe on how best to increase corporate profitability and reduce the living standards of the working class. Maclean ’ s magazine revealed in a recent article that McKinsey is providing support services for the Barton-led Liberal advisory council for free, because, as columnist John Geddes put it, this provides “a way of making sure the firm is in the room when big ideas are being hatched.”

Black Rock, the world’s largest asset management firm, is also deeply involved in the Liberals’ plans. On November 14, it will host a meeting in Toronto with top government ministers and large institutional investors to discuss the rollout of the infrastructure bank.

One of the government’s main concerns is how to sell this right-wing agenda to an overwhelmingly skeptical public. As former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge, who played a key role in the Chretien-Martin Liberal government’s unprecedented public spending cuts in the 1990s, wrote in an open letter to Morneau on behalf of the right-wing C.D. Howe Institute, “You need to have the political courage to explain to Canadians why it is in their interest that they should pay for the use of public use infrastructure.”

As well as boosting the bottom line of global corporate giants and the banks and consultancy firms, the Trudeau Liberals intend to use the financial rewards reaped from privatization to boost military spending, so that Canadian imperialism can more aggressively assert its interests on the world stage.

Morneau’s fiscal update included $348 million to fund the presence of 450 Canadian troops in Latvia through 2020. This deployment is part of NATO’s aggressive policy of encircling Russia with 4,000 soldiers, led by contingents from the US, Britain, Germany and Canada. The financial support for the next four years makes clear that in spite of the rhetoric about rotating forces, the deployment to the Baltic state is for all intents and purposes a permanent deployment. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan visited the Latvian capital Riga at the end of last month to discuss mission specifics with his NATO colleagues.

In addition, a further $465 million was committed to support the US puppet regime in Afghanistan, where Canadian imperialism participated for over a decade in a war of occupation. The funding will provide military and police training and other aid to the Afghan government until 2021.

In the days prior to the fiscal update, Sajjan and one of his advisers both indicated that Canada may soon reconsider re-engaging with combat operations in Syria, where the US and its Mideast allies have fomented a “regime-change” war against the Russian- and Iranian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Liberals have already expanded Canada’s role in the latest US war in the Middle East, including by tripling the number of Special Forces’ troops deployed in northern Iraq. The deployment of fighter jets or troops to Syria would draw Canada even deeper into a conflict that threatens to escalate into a direct clash between the world’s major powers.

Election eve US jobs report reflects continuing stagnation

Barry Grey

The US employment report for October released by the Labor Department on Friday, four days before Election Day, provided a snapshot of an economy that continues to be mired in stagnation. The net nonfarm payroll increase was a tepid 161,000, with the bulk of the new jobs, as in previous months, made up of low-wage service and part-time positions.

Economists had predicted a payroll increase of 173,000. Even with a combined upward revision of 44,000 jobs for the months of August and September, the overall rate of job-creation has slowed markedly, averaging 181,000 a month through October as compared to 229,000 for all of 2015.

The number of long-term unemployed remained at 2 million, comprising 25.2 percent of those officially counted in the government tally. These are extraordinarily high numbers for the seventh year of a so-called “recovery.”

The decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.9 percent in October from 5.0 percent in September was not the result of workers joining the labor force and finding jobs, but the departure of 425,000 more working-age Americans, bringing the number of such workers who are outside the labor force to a near-record high of 94.6 million.

The labor force participation rate actually declined, reaching 62.8 percent in October versus 62.9 percent the prior month.

Manufacturing employment declined for the third straight month, with a net loss of 9,000 jobs. Mining continued to lose jobs, extending a monthly decline that has spanned two years.

A particularly telling indicator of the deterioration in the social and economic position of the American working class since the Wall Street crash of 2008 is the wholesale destruction of decent-paying full-time jobs and their replacement by part-time, contingent and temporary positions. The corporate elite, operating through the Obama administration, has carried out a far-reaching restructuring of social and economic relations to reduce the living standards and increase the exploitation of workers.

In October, according to the Labor Department, some 5.89 million employees were in part-time jobs but wanted full-time work. That figure is well above the level prior to the onset of the Great Recession, which officially began in late 2007. Of those who wanted a full-time job, 2.12 million said part-time employment was all they could find, the highest number in seven months.

This social crisis is obscured, deliberately, by the focus of the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton election campaign on the raw jobs numbers. Much is made of the quantity of jobs created under Obama, in itself an inadequate number, while virtually nothing is said of their quality.

Jacob Leibenluft, a senior policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, hailed Friday’s employment report, calling the job numbers “another reminder of the progress we’ve made since the financial crisis: the longest streak of overall job growth of record, an unemployment rate below 5 percent and wages growing at their fastest pace since the recession.”

Labor Secretary Tom Perez similarly touted the report, releasing a statement declaring that “our economy demonstrates its continued strength month after month.” Like the Clinton campaign, he also seized on the report’s figures on wage increases, which have been presented in the media as a reversal of years of stagnating or declining wages.

The Labor Department reported that average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 2.8 percent in October compared with a year earlier, the highest annual wage growth since June 2009. Average hourly earnings rose 10 cents from September, or 0.4 percent, to $25.92 in October. Economists had expected a 0.3 percent increase.

“Americans have been waiting for a meaningful raise for too long, and today’s report confirms what we’ve seen over the last year—that they are getting one,” Perez declared.

Leaving aside the fact that wages are still rising more slowly than in previous periods designated as economic recoveries, and that more than half of the increases are eaten up by inflation, the real income of millions of working class families continues to decline.

A major factor is the runaway rise in out-of-pocket health costs, a process that has been accelerated and institutionalized by Obamacare. A Kaiser Foundation report issued in September noted that since 1999, health care premiums for employer-sponsored insurance plans have increased more than three times faster than wages.

The report said that workers today are paying an average of $18,000 for health insurance that covers fewer services, as companies shift costs to their workers by means of higher deductibles and co-payments and increases in the employees’ share of premium payments.

Suicides up sharply among US middle school children

Tom Eley

In a chilling new index of social despair, a report published on Thursday indicates that American children from 10 through 14 are now more likely to die from suicide than from car accidents.

In 2014, the last year for which data is available, 425 children between the ages of 10 and 14 killed themselves, as opposed to 384 children who died in car accidents, according to a chart released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on it Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The chart, based on a CDC report published in April, shows an increase in suicides in the 10-14 age group from 1.25 deaths per 100,000 in 1999 to 2.25 in 2014, while the death rate for the same cohort over the same period from motor vehicle accidents declined. The two lines on the chart intersect in 2013.

The April CDC survey found that more boys killed themselves than girls—275 versus 150. But the rate of increase over the period of study was much higher among girls—a threefold increase versus an increase of about one-third for boys. For all children ages 10-14, suicide is now the second-leading cause of death, according to the CDC, after the combined category “unintentional injury,” which includes car wrecks and other forms of accidental death. “Homicide” is fifth on the list, with 156 American children murdered in 2014.

Tellingly, the entire increase in the suicide rate took place after 2007, the year it hit its lowest point in the period of study, at .9 deaths per 100,000 children. Then, from the onset of the Great Recession until 2014, the suicide rate more than doubled, to 2.1 deaths per 100,000 kids.

The CDC did not offer explanations for the increase, but it is noteworthy that there has been a parallel increase in child poverty during the same years. According to Robert D. Putnam, professor of public policy at Harvard and author of Our Kids, a study of the impact of social inequality on American children, the data on the increasing suicide rate is “part of the larger emerging pattern of evidence of the links between poverty, hopelessness and health.”

To cite one example, Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty has found that the percentage of children ages 12-17 living in poor and low income families increased by over 14 percent between 2008 and 2014, with nearly 10 million of America’s 24 million adolescents living in low-income households by the end of that period. “Research is clear that poverty is the single greatest threat to children’s well-being,” the NCCP web site states.

The increased suicide rate among 10-14 year-olds from 2007 also corresponds to a similar increase within the entire population, which has gone up by more than 2 percent per year since 2006, according to the same CDC report published in April. The overall suicide rate in the US in 2014 stood at a 30-year high—with sharp increases in every age group except for the elderly. In 2014, 42,773 Americans killed themselves, up from 29,199 in 1999.

The new CDC report on increased suicide among children follows publication of a 2015 study by Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case that found mortality rates rapidly increasing among low-income, middle-aged white Americans—an increase attributable in large measure to more suicide, alcohol and drug-related deaths. The death rate for whites with no more than a high school education, ages 45 to 54, increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

CDC epidemiologist Dr. Alex Crosby has studied the historical relationship between economic crisis and the suicide rate as far back as the Great Depression, when the number of suicides reached its all-time high. “There was a consistent pattern,” he told the New York Times in April. “When the economy got worse, suicides went up, and when it got better, they went down.”

No doubt other factors are at play in the growth of the child suicide rate. Life for American children is increasingly stressful, even beyond the immediate economic pressures that their families face. Educational “reform” under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations has resulted in schools increasing standardized testing and emphasizing math and science “STEM” curriculum while rolling back recess, recreation, art, music and gym classes, which served as vehicles of self-expression and release for previous generations of American children.

There is also a dearth of funding for juvenile mental health services and suicide prevention. The US government finds endless money to conduct wars all over the world—with all of the unquantifiable impact that the resulting mood of violence and fear must have on children. It spent some $600 billion on the military in 2015. On the other hand, federal funding for suicide prevention at the National Institutes of Health stood at only $25 million in 2016—about the equivalent of four US Abrams tanks.

Capsized boats in Mediterranean leave 240 refugees dead

Martin Kreickenbaum

Two refugee boats capsized this week in the Mediterranean near the Libyan coast, leading to the deaths in a 48-hour period of about 240 people. This brings the total number of refugees who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe to 4,220, more than ever before in a six-month period. The European Union bears full, criminal responsibility for this massive loss of life.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, 31 refugees were rescued in the most recent incident. Statements made by the survivors indicate there were approximately 270 people on board the two dinghies. So far only 12 bodies have been recovered.

The two dinghies departed not far from the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Tuesday night. A few hours later, they capsized in the channel of Sicily, about 25 nautical miles from the Libyan coast. The rescue operation coordinated by the Italian coast guard, which included five ships, came too late to save most of the passengers.

Two severely injured people who survived the capsizing were transported by helicopter to Palermo, Sicily. The other survivors, most of whom came from Guinea in West Africa, were taken to the island of Lampedusa. A heartrending scene unfolded there, as reported by Pietro Bartolo, a doctor, in Repubblica, the Italian newspaper. At one point a desperate survivor showed Bartolo the photo of his child who was nowhere to be found after the disaster.

The mayor of Lampedusa, Giusi Nicolini, called the deaths “genocide.” “Humanitarian corridors must be set up immediately or else we will never stop counting the dead,” he said.

This most recent refugee catastrophe follows on the heels of a series of incidents in the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy over the past few weeks. On October 27, a Danish merchant ship rescued 339 refugees from the sea. They had been tossed into the water when their dinghy capsized due to bad weather. Fifty-one refugees are missing from this episode, and only one corpse was recovered from the water.

On the night before that disaster, the Libyan coast guard reported that a dinghy with 126 refugees on board capsized 23 nautical miles from Tripoli, not far from the location of the most recent tragedy. A coast guard ship rescued 29 survivors, but an additional 97 refugees remained missing.

At almost the same time, a ship belonging to the aid organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) discovered a dinghy with 29 dead bodies on board. They had all succumbed to petrol vapours. Only three days later, the Libyan Red Cross reported that 16 corpses had washed up on the coast of Zuwarah in northwestern Libya.

With two months to go, the deaths of 4,220 people trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2016 are already a horrifying record. In the course of the previous two years, a total of 3,279 refugees drowned in the Mediterranean, according to statements by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The Mediterranean route has produced the highest number of refugee fatalities by far. The IOM estimates that more than 5,530 refugees have died worldwide so far this year. Some 299 refugees have died on the US-Mexico border, 149 have died in Central America, 435 in the Sahara and North Africa, 94 in the horn of Africa, 96 in the Middle East and 61 in Southeast Asia.

It is striking that the number of fatalities in the Mediterranean has risen so dramatically even though a smaller number of refugees has taken this route this year. Last year, over a million travelled to Europe, compared to only 340,000 this year.

The deaths are taking place in the central Mediterranean even though the European Union and NATO have enormously increased the number of ships in the sea. In fact, however, these ships are not responsible for rescuing refugees, but for keeping them out of Europe.

In October 2014, the European Union made a conscious decision to accept an increase in the number of deaths in order to deter refugees. With the blocking off of the Balkan route earlier this year, the refugee deal with Turkey and the so-called “war on traffickers,” the EU has drastically and deliberately increased the risks for refugees.

A study titled “Destination Europe,” from the MEDMIG (Mediterranean Migration) project, released November 2, noted that “Since the beginning of 2016 the rates of death have increased from 1 in 54 to 1 in 46 people among those crossing via the Central Mediterranean route and from 1 death in every 1,063 arrivals to 1 death in every 409 arrivals via the Eastern Mediterranean route.”

Another of the group’s research papers alleges that “European governments have contributed to the European ‘migration crisis’ by blaming people smugglers, rather than conflict, for increased migration to Europe. The failure to open up safe and legal routes to protection and the focus on border security has actually driven demand for the smugglers.”

In previous years traffickers used discarded merchant and fishing boats with satellite telephone and GPS equipment. Today, in order to avoid detection by stepped up surveillance, they rely almost exclusively on dinghies that are not suited to maritime conditions. In addition, according to the report, traffickers were now “looking for alternative routes” or sending “boats onto the water at night when they were less likely to be detected and also to be rescued.”

Meanwhile, the European Union is strengthening its military presence on its outer borders. At the beginning of October, the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which replaced Frontex, was deployed. The new agency not only has more extensive refugee deterrence and deportation powers than Frontex. It is also has significantly more personnel and supplies at its disposal, including over 1,500 permanently deployable border soldiers, its own ships, airplanes and helicopters, and a yearly budget of €330 million ($US 367 million).

The response of EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, to the deaths of 4,220 refugees dripped with cynicism. Speaking to the news media at the opening of the Bulgarian-Turkish checkpoint Kapitan Andreevo, he called the agency a “symbol of a Europe that is efficient in addressing the migration and security challenges we are facing in cooperation with our neighbours. A symbol that we are determined to preserve our freedom of movement, without internal borders.”

Avramopoulos thanked the employees of Frontex: “Throughout all these months of the ongoing refugee crisis, these people have been working tirelessly and it is thanks to them that today we are in a much better situation than one year ago.” He ended his speech with a barely concealed threat to the refugees: “It is now our duty and responsibility for those who arrive at our borders to keep delivering in the same vein on all aspects of our comprehensive migration policy.”

The European Union is cooperating ever more closely with North African countries to stop the flow of refugees before they even reach the coast of the Mediterranean.

In Tunisia, the German federal police is training border guards. The Zeit reported that the Tunisian forces were being supplied with trucks, pick-ups, speedboats, trailers with lamp posts for watching the border at night, thousands of combat helmets and flak jackets, hundreds of protective barriers and telescopes, dozens of thermal imaging cameras and night-vision devices, and, in the near future, Dingo armoured vehicles.

In order to keep out refugees, the EU also supports dictatorships in Sudan and Ethiopia, where a state of emergency was recently declared. For European weapons companies, refugee deterrence has become a billion-euro business in which above all Airbus, Leonardo-Finmeccanica and Thales have muscled in to provide thermal imaging cameras, drones and helicopters.