Infrastructure failures exacerbate Australian heatwave conditions

Frank Gaglioti 

Large parts of Australia, from South Australia to New South Wales (NSW), northern Victoria and Queensland, are experiencing unprecedented heatwave conditions that are being worsened by inadequate infrastructure and emergency services.

While heatwaves are not unknown in Australia, the more than 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) temperatures recorded in many cities and regional centres over the past two weeks have broken previous records.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, experienced its hottest-ever January, with new records broken in the first weeks of February. Western Sydney suburbs reached 46.9 C on Saturday and the statewide average maximum temperature hit 44.02 C, the highest ever recorded.

Cities in rural NSW, such as Moree and Walgett, have experienced close to 50 consecutive days of temperatures over 35 degrees. Temperatures have climbed to over 40 C in many cities and towns in South Australia and Queensland during the past fortnight.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Stephen Wood said: “To have such a large area [of Australia] with temperatures above 40C, and for so long, is definitely unusual ... large areas are going to suffer through the pain of it, unfortunately.”

These temperatures, and the combination of wind and humidity, have produced dangerous fire conditions in NSW, which were officially rated as “catastrophic” by the state’s Rural Fire Service (RFS). On Saturday, RFS commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said the fire danger was “off the old scale. It is without precedent in NSW.”

Yesterday 87 fires were raging across NSW, with 25 not contained and five given emergency warning status. The RFS, made up mainly of volunteers, has been overwhelmed by the extent and sweep of the fires.

RFS deputy commissioner Rob Rogers told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “We can’t guarantee to save every house, we can’t even guarantee to have a fire truck at every fire. People just need to focus on their own safety today.”

Rogers warned that conditions in some parts of the state could be worse than Victoria’s Black Saturday fires, Australia’s worst fire disaster, in which 173 people died in 2009.

Temperatures have fallen in NSW today, assisting fire fighters to bring a number of fires under control. Thousands of hectares in the state’s central west and the north, however, have been incinerated. The small community of Uarby in the state’s central west was destroyed, but miraculously no deaths were reported anywhere. More high temperatures are expected in NSW on Wednesday, again raising the danger of a major fire catastrophe.

Young children, the sick, the elderly and those unable to afford air conditioners were highly vulnerable to the heatwave, yet no heat-related deaths have been reported. That is because no real figures have been released by government or medical authorities.

So far, the media has only reported that 200 people were treated for heat-related symptoms in South Australia last week and Queensland ambulance services on Friday treated 16 teenagers. Three high school students were hospitalised in Brisbane, the state’s capital.

In the 2009 heatwave that struck the southern states of Australia, thousands of people, mostly elderly, were treated by ambulance services. Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr John Carnie, estimated that over 370 people died as a result of the heat. In 2014, more than 160 were killed by that year’s heatwave.

The dangerously hot conditions and the inability of tens of thousands of people to cope with them have highlighted the lack of reliable energy supplies and other vital infrastructure.

Last week, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) blacked out supplies to various heat-affected areas. Such practices are euphemistically called “load shedding.”

On February 8, the AEMO ordered the shutdown of electricity to 90,000 homes in South Australia for 45 minutes while people were enduring temperatures of 42 C. According to AEMO, there was not enough supply to meet demand.

The federal government later claimed the problem was caused by South Australia’s near 30 percent reliance on renewable energy supplies—wind and solar power.

These claims were bogus. It was later revealed that a gas power generator at South Australia’s Pelican Point had extra power generating capacity but was not turned on.

Late last week, the NSW government warned residents and small businesses that unless they reduced their energy use, particularly during peak demand periods between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m., power supplies would be cut.

NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin warned residents against using power. “Rather than going straight home,” he suggested, people might “want to consider going to a movie, going out to a shopping centre, keeping the load low.” In effect, the population is being made responsible for inadequate supplies of electricity.

In reality, in the largely privatised energy market, power-generating companies decide whether or not to sell their electricity, depending on the prices they can extract by exploiting demand peaks. Australia’s electricity market is one of the most deregulated in the world. As a result, the adequacy of the electricity supply—an essential ingredient of modern life especially in times of extreme weather—is determined by profit, not social need.

The record temperatures are further evidence of global warming and its implications, which include extreme, irregular and dangerous weather patterns.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology’s 2016 annual Climate Statement, last year was the fourth hottest year on record for Australia. Australian Climate Council scientist Professor Will Steffen warned that extreme weather events would worsen as the climate warmed.

Extreme heat must be “taken really seriously,” Steffen commented. “It is a risk for human health, particularly for the most vulnerable—the elderly, very young people, and exposed outdoor workers ... It is obviously a risk for the agricultural industry, it is a risk for natural ecosystems.”

As parts of southeastern Australia experienced a heatwave, people in Western Australia were hit by a major flood emergency. Heavy rains forced people to abandon their homes and properties in parts of the wheat belt and southwest regions of the state. And yesterday, mountains in southern Tasmania had snowfalls.

Duterte militarises the “war on drugs” in the Philippines

Dante Pastrana 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte earlier this month ordered the suspension of police involvement in his brutal “war on drugs” that has left thousands dead throughout the country. All units of the Anti-Illegal Drug Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP) were ordered dissolved and the PNP’s Operation Tokhang (Knock and Plead), a campaign of house visits and intimidation of those accused of illegal drug activity, was put on hold.

The pullback of the police by no means indicates the end of Duterte’s “war.” It portends an even greater escalation. Vowing to continue the offensive until the end of his term, Duterte called on the military to take the front line. This will widen and deepen the violence being inflicted on the working class and the poor.

Duterte is not only militarising his war on the poor, conducted on the pretext of the anti-drug crusade. He has also moved to resurrect the hated Philippine Constabulary, the military apparatus of domestic repression, created by the United States during its colonial rule in the country and used by former President Ferdinand Marcos to implement martial law.

Duterte is proposing to make this section of the military responsible for continuing the program of state-sanctioned vigilante killings. This is a marked development in Duterte’s own rapid drive toward dictatorial power and direct military rule.

The sidelining of the Philippine police followed the exposure last month of police involvement in the abduction and murder of Jee Ick Joo, a South Korean businessman. Jee was seized last October from his home in Angeles city, two hours from Manila, the country’s capital, by a PNP Anti-Illegal Drug Group unit under the guise of an anti-illegal drug operation.

On the same day, Jee was brought to Camp Crame, the PNP national headquarters, where he was strangled. The unit demanded and received $US100,000 in ransom for the by-then deceased Jee, and then, even more brazenly, demanded an additional ransom of nearly $100,000 more.

Three other South Koreans have since come forward claiming that they have also been accused of illegal drug activity by police, detained, beaten up and forced to cough up large sums of money for their release.

The toll of the war on drugs has been horrendous. Since Duterte’s assumption of office, 7,080 people have been killed—of that number, 2,555 by the police and 4,525 by death squads. Underscoring the intimate connection between the police and the death squads, following Duterte’s orders, extrajudicial killings dropped sharply, from over 30 deaths a day to one a day.

On January 31, Amnesty International released a report on its latest investigation into the killings. Entitled, “If you are poor you are killed”: Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ ‘War on Drugs,’” the report states:

“Police officers routinely bust down doors in the middle of the night and then kill in cold blood unarmed people suspected of using or selling drugs. In several cases documented by Amnesty International, witnesses described alleged drug offenders yelling they would surrender, at times while on their knees or in another compliant position.

“They were still gunned down. To cover their tracks, police officers appear often to plant ‘evidence’ and falsify incident reports.”

According to the report, the killings have engendered an “economy of death,” where the police and the death squads are provided financial incentives for each death. It states:

“A police officer with more than a decade of experience on the force, and who currently conducts operations as part of an anti-illegal drugs unit in Metro Manila, told Amnesty International that there are significant under-the-table payments for ‘encounters’ in which alleged drug offenders are killed.”

This source said the police are “paid by the encounter …The amount ranges from 8,000 pesos ($US161) to 15,000 pesos ($302) … That amount is per head. So if the operation is against four people, that’s 32,000 pesos ($644) … We’re paid in cash, secretly, by headquarters …There’s no incentive for arresting. We’re not paid anything.”

In addition, Amnesty International recounts strong evidence of state authorities paying off assassins to carry out drug-related killings. “Two individuals paid to kill alleged drug offenders told Amnesty International that their boss is an active duty police officer; they reported receiving around 10,000 pesos ($201) per killing.”

The Amnesty report points to the class character of the war on drugs. Those killed “are overwhelmingly from the urban poor. Many were unemployed and lived in informal settlements or squatter communities.

“The killings mean further misery for already impoverished families, at times compounded by police officers stealing from them during crime scene investigations. A woman whose husband was killed said the police took goods she sold on commission, money she set aside for the electric bill, and even new shoes she bought for her child.”

The targeting of the poor is no accident. Intensifying inequality is fuelling deep social tensions and unrest, with brutal repression the only answer of the Filipino ruling class.

The more than a decade of economic growth recorded for the Philippines has been built on the backs of the working class and the poor. In 2014, out of a population of 100 million, 50 people held over $74.2 billion in assets, equivalent to 25.7 percent of the 2014 gross domestic product. Their wealth increased $8.45 billion from the previous year, cornering 51 percent of economic growth for 2014.

This obscene level of wealth is a product of the export of cheap labour around the world and the brutal exploitation of even cheaper labour locally. Over 2.4 million workers are abroad as overseas contract workers, joining more than 8 million Filipino economic migrants. These overseas Filipinos, enduring long hours, low wages and few chances to visit family, sent back $29.1 billion last year.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the minimum daily wage in Manila is barely $10 and in the provinces, as low as $5 a day.

While huge wealth is being accumulating at one end of the social scale, more than 26 million people are living below the poverty threshold of a monthly income of $184. Of these, more than 12 million people are living in extreme poverty on less than $128 a month and could not even meet their basic food needs.

Amid growing social inequality and massive poverty, the Philippine ruling class is preparing to use the state apparatus and associated vigilantes to intimidate and suppress any opposition by the working class and the poor. That is the significance of Duterte’s anti-drug war and his assumption of increasingly draconian powers.

UK government proposes raising fees for two-year degree courses

Alice Summers

Britain’s Conservative government is considering further raising fees for students studying two-year “accelerated” degree programmes. Currently, fees charged for these qualifications are capped at £9,000 per annum, a cost that is already prohibitive for many prospective students. However, according to the Conservative supporting Daily Telegraph, the government could seek to amend the Higher Education and Research Bill—currently being debated in Parliament—to allow more flexible fee caps on such courses.

Fees caps are currently set per year of education at universities in England, meaning that while a two-year condensed degree provides the student with the same qualification as its three-year equivalent, universities cannot charge more than £18,000 for them. Under the new proposal, this limitation would be lifted, enabling universities to raise their fees to a yet unspecified “flexible” cap—possibly even up to the £27,000 currently charged for three-year programmes, despite these courses being significantly shorter.

These proposals come after a letter from the Competitions and Marketing Authority (CMA) to the government last July recommended that universities offering fast-track courses be allowed to charge an “appropriate” fee, in order to increase choice for students and “[help] to improve the quality of HE [higher education] provision.”

The CMA, a supposedly “independent,” non-ministerial government department, states that its role is, to “make markets work well for consumers, businesses and the economy,” with one of its “strategic goals” that of “extending competition frontiers—by using the markets regime to improve the way competition works, in particular within the regulated sectors.”

The claim that raising fees is intended to improve educational standards and options for students is a barefaced lie. As the rest of the CMA letter explains, their real concern over the £18,000 fee cap is that it “reduces providers’ incentive and ability to find more flexible and efficient ways of delivering courses.”

The reality is that far from increasing choice for students, these proposals will provide many private institutions with “an incentive to compete on the price of such courses below the higher cap,” increasing the subordination of the Higher Education system to a growing educational “market.” Rather than competing to keep prices down, the CMA’s recommendations will most likely cause universities to raise prices to meet the “cap,” as was the case when fee regulations for standard courses were lifted in 2011, prompting the vast majority of universities to immediately up their fees to meet the “limit” of £9,000 per annum.

These proposals come at the same time as a host of other attacks on education are being proposed in the Higher Education and Research Bill. Under this bill, HE institutions will be ranked according to “quality,” with those at the top of the table being allowed to raise tuition to £9,250, which many universities have now done for the academic year beginning September 2017. The Bill also makes it easier for “alternative providers”—read private institutions—to gain university status.

There are currently more than 700 “alternative providers” in the UK, including many for-profit institutions. These measures, also touted by the government as offering students “more choice,” would further hasten the process of privatising and marketising education that began in force in 2010. In that year, BPP University College became the first UK private HE provider since 1976 to achieve university status. More than 120 of these providers now run courses that are eligible for government student finance loans, funnelling £382 million into private hands between 2014 and 2015.

BPP University College, with its eight city campuses across the UK, is one of the few universities in the country to already offer two-year accelerated courses. In fact, while there are currently only around 20 institutions nationwide who offer such courses, more than half of them are privately run.

Concerns were already raised over the perceived benefits of condensing a three-year course into two as early as 2006, when the first “compressed” degrees were introduced under Tony Blair’s Labour government. It was feared that accelerated degrees would reduce the quality of education for students, as they would not have sufficient time to assimilate their lessons, as well as putting additional pressure on academic staff who would have to teach throughout the summer break.

In an interview with the Independent, Professor Peter Main, director of education and science at the Institute of Physics, stated: “There are several problems with two-year degree programmes. ... [In] subjects such as physics, students encounter exciting but challenging concepts, such as quantum mechanics. A thorough appreciation of these topics requires time. Secondly, degrees are best taught by people who are active in research—most academics set aside the summer for research. If they lose it to teaching, they will necessarily diminish their research capability.”

As well as possible educational disadvantages, two-year programmes were criticised for increasing the financial pressure on students from low-income backgrounds—many of whom have to work part-time jobs throughout term time or the summer holidays in order to meet the skyrocketing costs of HE. This becomes much more difficult for students enrolled in these more intensive courses.

The “flexible cap” on fees would provide another financial disincentive for prospective students, and would only decrease access to HE for poorer students—further exacerbating social inequality.

The increasingly unequal access to education is apparent from the latest figures released by UCAS, the national body responsible for university admissions. The gap between rich and poor students going to university has now reached a record high, with a difference of 16.7 percent points. Recipients of free school meals—an indicator of poverty-level income—are now less than half as likely to enter university as their more affluent peers.

Those students who are lucky enough to enter HE go on to enter the job market with an average of £44,000 of student debt, with some estimates reaching £100,000 once interest rates are taken into account. Regents University, an independent institution in London, was recently named the most expensive university in London, with estimated yearly costs of tuition standing at a staggering £38,854. Other prestigious London universities, as well as the University of Oxford, also rank within the top 10 for tuition costs.

While issuing mealy-mouthed protestations about the proposal to raise fees for two-year courses, neither the National Union of Students (NUS) nor the University and College Union (UCU) made any suggestion that they opposed fees in principle. They merely urge the government, respectively, to “restructure funding” and to “look again at the support for part-time study and not the opening up of an uncapped fee market.”

UK: Privatisation and cuts agenda exacerbates NHS staffing crisis

Ajanta Silva

The starving of funds from the National Health Service (NHS) by successive governments has created an enormous crisis of hospital bed provision, with falling staff levels and a lack of resources severely jeopardising patient care and safety in the UK hospitals.

The new year dawned with harrowing accounts of patients dying in hospital corridors—after awaiting treatment for hours—stretched waiting lists, cancellations of elective and non-elective operations, missed accident and emergency (A&E) targets, and staff struggling to cope in hospitals. The Red Cross described the situation prevailing in hospitals as a “humanitarian crisis.”

By analysing the official data for the period 2014/15-2016/17, the Health Service Journal (HSJ) exposed the scope of the nursing staffing crisis in the NHS.

In England, 96 percent or 214 out of 224 acute hospitals operated without an adequate level of nursing staff during day shifts last October, while 85 percent of them did not have the right staff levels on night shifts. These are the worst figures since the hospital trusts started to publish staffing levels in 2014, in the aftermath of the investigation into the failures at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital in 2013.

Among the trusts with the lowest percentage of nursing shifts filled were Dewsbury and District Hospital (75 percent), Pontefract General Infirmary (77 percent), Princess Alexandra Hospital, Harlow (77 percent), University Hospital of North Tees (77 percent) and Royal Albert Edward infirmary, Wigan (79 percent).

The consequences of these shortages are disastrous. They include patients having to wait for medication, not having their personal care needs met and not having observations checks on time. Nurses raised concerns with the HSJ that having inadequate staff levels meant hospitals were providing substandard care, causing a severe risk to patient safety.

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said, “This is yet more evidence that there are too few nurses caring for patients, putting people at serious risk. Safe staffing levels aren’t an optional extra. Having the right number of nurses is essential to ensure that patients can recover properly.

“There are already at least 24,000 nursing vacancies in the UK and it’s getting worse every single day.”

An important issue arising from the figures analysed by HSJ is the increased and routine use of less qualified Health Care Assistants (HCAs) to cover nursing staff shifts. Professor Peter Griffiths of Southampton University, who is a member of the NHS Improvement’s safe staffing committee for acute wards, points out that relying on HCAs to substitute for nurses in the long term risks compromising patient safety and gives a false reassurance.

The NHS staffing crisis, brought about by the policies of successive governments, goes far beyond a lack of nursing staff.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) says there is a 3,500 shortfall in full-time midwives in England. Thousands of women in labour face “Red Flag” incidents, including delays of up to an hour or more in washing or suturing, medication being missed, delays in getting pain relief. Staff are not able to provide continuous one-to-one care and support to a woman during established labour as result of staff shortages.

The RCN, RCM and other professional bodies representing Allied Health Professionals point out that the Tory government’s plan to scrap bursaries from this year will aggravate the already dire shortage of frontline workers. The government falsely claims that replacing bursaries with student loans will attract more students for these professions—creating an extra 10,000 nurses training places during this parliament.

The latest figures from UCAS, the university admission service, disprove these claims. There is already a sharp 23 percent drop in nursing applicants this year compared to 2016. There were 43,800 applicants in England in January 2016 compared to 33,810 in January 2017.

The real aim of getting rid of bursaries is to slash the funding available to Health Education England (HEE).

A senior clinician in Bournemouth Hospital said that cutting the funds of HEE would also result in scrapping secondments, which helped less qualified staff to gain qualifications.

Junior doctors repeatedly stressed the implications of understaffing in hospitals during their industrial action last year. The strike, eventually sold out by the British Medical Association, was in opposition to government plans to impose inferior contracts, further endangering patient safety and care.

Staff shortages and the lack of beds in Intensive Care have created an enormous crisis in lifesaving surgeries. Leading doctors who staff Intensive Care Units (ICUs) told the Guardian, “ICUs are becoming so full that patient safety is increasingly at risk because life-saving operations—including heart, abdominal and neurosurgery—are having to be delayed.

Dr. Carl Waldmann, the dean of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FICM), said, “Intensive care is at its limits in terms of capacity and struggles to maintain adequate staffing levels.” According to the new survey, based on data collected by FICM, one in three of the 220 ICUs across the UK have a vacancy for at least one consultant.

The ITV broadcaster recently reported on the crisis facing ambulance services in Kent and Sussex. They are operating with a serious shortage of paramedics, putting patients’ lives at risk. There is a shortage of 140 paramedics (almost one in six of positions unfilled). Similar conditions are widespread in ambulance services across the country.

General Practices also face severe pressures due to underfunding and understaffing. Patients are struggling to obtain appointments to see a family doctor when necessary. The government claims that GP numbers will increase by 5,000 by 2021. However, the British Medical Association (BMA) disputes this. GP Committee Deputy Chairman Dr. Richard Vautrey said, “There has been woefully inadequate progress towards recruiting more GPs to cope with rising patient demand.”

He continued, “The government is simply not on course to recruit the extra 5,000 GPs it promised at the last election.”

Staff levels of all categories in the NHS are set to worsen as a result of the uncertainty created around Brexit. Currently, 5 percent of the 1.3 million NHS workforce consists of workers from European Union countries.

At the Conservative Party conference last October, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt cynically said, “My job is to prepare the NHS for the future, and that means doing something today that we have never done properly before, and that’s training enough doctors.”

This was yet another bogus attempt by the government—stuffed with MPs who hate the very notion of free and universal public health care—to appear as champions of the NHS, committed to increasing the number of nurses, doctors, midwives and other clinical and non-clinical staff.

However, Hunt ordered the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to stop determining safe staff levels in hospital wards and units in 2015, with the intention of cutting funding on staffing.

NICE started drawing up guidelines on NHS-wide safe staffing levels in the aftermath of Sir Robert Francis’s inquiry into the failures in Mid Staffordshire Hospital in 2013. One of the key findings of the probe into the substandard care provided by the hospital, which resulted in excessive deaths, was chronic understaffing.

Since 2006, Mid Staffordshire hospital, like many other hospitals trusts, was on a mission to save millions of pounds by further cutting down already insufficient staff numbers in order to gain Foundation Trust status. This was carried out under the direction of the then-Labour government.

The 2010 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government sought to blame hospital workers, while ignoring the key findings and recommendations outlined by Francis, which centred on more resources and money being made available.

Since 2010, Tory-led governments have intensified the attack on the NHS, building on that carried out by Labour. Hospitals trusts are saddled with more than £2.5 billion in deficits as a result of systematic funding cuts. Many more hospital trusts are being forced to follow the fate of Mid Staffordshire Hospital.

Turkey schedules April 16 referendum on constitutional changes

Halil Celik 

After a constitutional amendment package vastly strengthening the president’s powers was approved in the Turkish parliament and sent to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on February 2, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced on Friday the holding of a referendum on the amendment on April 16.

“Our president has approved the constitutional amendment so the date of the public vote has become clear. God willing, the referendum will be held on April 16,” he told reporters.

The 18-article amendment package, proposed by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and backed by the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), was passed by Turkish parliament in January 21, with 339 votes in favor. The opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) opposed the amendment.

The amendment, if approved in the referendum, would hand almost all executive power over to the president. Abolishing the post of prime minister, it would also allow the president to issue decrees having the force of law, appoint vice presidents and cabinet members, dissolve parliament and call elections, and declare a state of emergency—during which the president could rule by decree without any restriction from other branches of government.

The proposed amendment would also give the president vast powers over the judiciary—altering the configuration of the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), reducing its number of members from 22 to 13. Four members of the board will be appointed by the president, while the justice minister will be the chairperson and the undersecretary a permanent member. The seven remaining members would be elected by the parliament, where the president’s party would likely have a majority.

It would also reduce the age of candidates to 18, and raise the number of lawmakers to 600, while stipulating simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections for a five-year term, starting in November 2019.

The referendum on the constitutional changes will take place under the state of emergency first declared days after the failed July 2016 coup attempt. Since then, the Erdogan government has further escalated its crackdown on the opposition.

In the last wave of purges, on February 7, 4,464 public employees, including 330 academics, were fired over suspected links to the so-called Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO) of preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom the government accuses of organizing the failed coup attempt, or to other illegal groups.

Since July 15, more than 100,000 civil servants have been dismissed and some 50,000 people arrested in the state institutions. More than 1,500 associations, 15 universities, at least 177 media outlets and several trade unions have been shut down for alleged ties to FETO.

Facing sharp conflicts with its imperialist allies in NATO over the war in Syria and escalating social anger and strike activity in the working class, the AKP aspires to build an authoritarian regime. Its drive to dictatorship is not rooted in the personal decisions of the Turkish president and his inner circles, but the escalating class conflict and international rivalries of world capitalism.

Both within the ruling elite and especially in the population in Turkey, there exists substantial opposition to the referendum, whose success is increasingly uncertain, amid rising political and social tensions.

Suspicions are already being raised that Erdoğan and the AKP would try to exploit potential terrorist attacks in the run-up to the April 16 referendum as effectively as they did after the elections of June 7, 2015. In that election, for the first time since its foundation in 2001, the AKP had lost its absolute majority in the Turkish parliament. In a snap election only five months later, however, it came to power alone—exploiting fear over escalating terror attacks and the bankruptcy of the bourgeois opposition.

On January 25, in an interview with the state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said that it would be possible to “create an atmosphere of fear in Turkey by using terrorist organizations to block the ‘yes’ vote in the referendum… We are taking all kinds of measures against [them], and after an overwhelming ‘yes’ vote in the referendum, the voice of terror will be cut off.”

CHP chairperson Kemal Kilicdaroglu said this was “a very unfortunate confession,” as it “effectively means ‘we are feeding terror, we overlook terrorist organizations and people are getting slaughtered. But if you choose us and help bring about a presidential regime, a one-man regime, terrorism will stop.’”

The government and the MHP are responding by using rumors about a “terrorist threat” to threaten the opposition, by claiming that it is united through the HDP with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The AKP and MHP increasingly denounce the HDP as the “legal extension” of the outlawed Kurdish separatist group—a claim designed to tar anyone voting against the presidential system as aiding or abetting terrorism.

Since the last general elections of November 2015, thousands of Kurdish politicians and activists, from both the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and its sister party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), have been arrested.

The Turkish government effectively decapitated the HDP, lifting its deputies’ parliamentary immunity last May with the support of the CHP and MHP—while Turkish army and special police units razed scores of Kurdish-populated towns to the ground and forced tens of thousands of Kurds to flee. Since then, thousands of HDP functionaries, including 12 deputies and the party’s two co-chairs, have been arrested on charges of maintaining direct links with the PKK.

Erdogan has personally involved himself in the campaign for a “yes” vote in the referendum, slamming credit rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s over their recent downgrading of Turkey’s credit rating. Speaking to the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, on February 7, he said, “Have you seen the justifications that [the credit rating agencies] used for the downgrade? ‘The constitution vote in Turkey.’ It is none of your business whether or not the constitution vote is held. Who are you?”

The demagogic and aggressive character of the “yes” campaign launched by Erdogan’s AKP and its fascistic accomplice, the MHP, reflects the fear that anger over growing social inequality, poverty and oppression within the working masses would produce a “no” vote in the referendum.

Indeed, according to the latest polls, by Gezici Research Company earlier this month, some 58-59 percent of voters, including 35 percent of AKP supporters, will vote “no” to the amendment. Meanwhile, the MHP’s cooperation of its leadership with the AKP has already divided MHP voters into two camps, with some 68 percent supporting “no.”

The Future of US-Taiwan Relations Under China's Shadow

Namrata Hasija

As soon as Donald Trump was elected as the president of the US, speculations from scholars came in quickly, especially on how global geopolitics would be reshaped. His phone conversation with Taiwan's President, Tsai Ing-wen, soon after his election, did create some ripples in East Asia. This phone call brought about two important divergences in the US' policy towards Taiwan; first, after a forty year hiatus, there had been a direct interaction between the heads of the two countries and Trump addressed Tsai as the President of Taiwan. Trump’s second statement has been that anything and everything - including the 'One China Policy' - is negotiable. This made strategists sit up and predictions of realignment in US-Taiwan and US-China relations were made. 

Taiwan and mainland China have been guarded in their reactions to this phone call, still uncertain about Trump’s foreign policy. China’s official reaction to date has been mixed. In the initial statement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed Taiwanese leaders for the phone call, calling it a “petty gambit.” On 3 December 2016, the China Daily took a condescending swipe with an editorial, titled “No Need to Over-Interpret Tsai-Trump Phone Call,” opining that “For Trump, it exposed nothing but his and his transition team's inexperience in dealing with foreign affairs.” Meanwhile, Global Times took a hard stance and called Trump an inexperienced, complacent and brash billionaire. The article further stated that China is prepared to engage in a long-term struggle on the Taiwan question with the US, and added that the one-China policy is the political foundation of bilateral ties and that it is "non-negotiable.”

Taiwanese officials and media also demonstrated mixed reactions. Some were euphoric and said US-Taiwan relations will be consolidated and witness more high-level exchanges during Trump’s presidency. Some analysts were skeptical and felt that the US would use Taiwan as a bargaining chip for economic gains.

Trump’s coming to power in the US has created additional problems in the already volatile China-Taiwan relations. After Tsai’s election in Taiwan, her silence on the 1992 consensus infuriated China, which then broke off communications with Taiwan. China blamed the US for interfering in cross-strait relations and warned Washington that "China is preparing for a final solution by non-peaceful means." Global Times also took a strong position on the former US President Barack Obama’s signing of the ‘Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act’, which for the first time authorised higher level exchanges between US civilian officials above the level of US Assistant Secretary of Defense and active duty US military officers and their Taiwanese counterparts. Global Times called for military pressure on Taiwan after all these actions by the US. Not only the media but the Chinese government too has increased its military activities and aggressive rhetoric against Taiwan. In January 2017, China’s lone aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, accompanied by other ships went into the Taiwan Strait during a drill in the South China Sea. China has already alienated Taiwan in the international arena but after Tsai’s election and Trump’s phone call, it has begun building additional pressure on countries that recognise Taiwan as the Republic of China. In December 2016, São Tomé and Príncipe switched their diplomatic allegiance to Beijing, to which China's foreign ministry responded, stating that “China expresses appreciation of this, and welcomes São Tomé back onto the correct path of the ‘one China’ principle." 

Even after this tense situation, the US invited a Taiwanese delegation to attend Donald Trump's oath taking ceremony despite Chinese pressure. Former Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun led the delegation and said that the Trump administration posed more of an opportunity than a challenge for Taiwan, adding that the nation should take the opportunity to improve relations with the US. The delegation visited think tanks including the Washington-based American Institute In Taiwan, and met with members of the US Senate and House of Representatives to convey Taiwan’s ideas and sincerity regarding the development of bilateral relations.

However, on 10 February 2017, Trump stumped everyone again by taking a U-turn on the ‘One China Policy’. People’s Daily (RenminRibao) elaborated on this and said that Trump called China's President Xi Jinping and reaffirmed the US' policy of accepting the ‘One China Policy’ and that Xi thanked Trump for accepting the core principle that was the basis of Washington-Beijing relations. During the conversation, both promised to work towards the enhancement of communication and cooperation to further strengthen the relationship. Chinese official media, especially Global Times, did not shy away from taking a jibe at Trump and stated that “Trump has stopped openly challenging China's core interests, and instead showed respect to Beijing. The change creates an impression that Trump is learning about his role in the realm of Sino-US ties. He's now sending a new message that he does not want to be a disruptor of the Sino-US relations.” 

This change in Trump’s rhetoric on China indicates that the US will never sacrifice its relations with China for Taiwan and US diplomats too understand that a secure and confident Taiwan is better able to constructively engage Beijing. Thus, Trump’s team must have convinced him not to challenge Beijing on this issue that might lead to direct friction between US, China and Taiwan. Uncertainties still loom in the US-China relationship but they will be about specific interests and not on the ‘One China policy’. The US-Taiwan relationship under Trump remains uncertain in terms of upgradation but certain in terms of continuation.

Human rights group documents Honduran ruling class’ ties to murders of activists

Andrea Lobo 

The Honduran government and business elite has responded with furor and threats to the findings of the London-based human rights group, Global Witness (GW). Its recent report “Honduras: The Deadliest Place to Defend the Planet,” published on January 31, provides evidence linking international finance, top figures of the ruling class and the military apparatus to corruption cases and the murders of environmental and indigenous activists.

The explosive growth of inequality, poverty, social opposition and militarization in Honduras since the 2009 military coup backed by the Obama administration, along with dwindling investments and global profitability, set the context for the report’s findings and the uproar it provoked.

Global Witness documents 123 murders of land and environmental activists opposing dams, mining, and other extractive projects in Honduras since 2010, the highest number in the world, while countless others have been attacked or faced trumped-up legal charges.

The government has done virtually nothing to protect activists, instead leading a “race to the bottom on rights and standards” to attract investments. The study notes that out of the 49 rights defenders that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) requested protection for, 13 have been murdered.

In March 2016, the indigenous rights activist, Berta Cáceres, was murdered as she gained international recognition for her role in the struggle against the Agua Zarca dam. “A very dangerous network of wealthy people in this country were consistently after her. Berta received at least 33 death threats,” stated her brother in May. Four of the seven men arrested so far for her murder were military or special forces veterans; one of them was the former head of security for the company building the dam, DESA.

The GW investigation sheds new light on the mix of military, political, corporate and international forces behind the killing of Cáceres and dozens of other activists. The executive board of DESA is a stark representation of this collusion of reactionary forces. According to GW, the company’s president worked for military intelligence and has a record of corrupt sales to the military, while the secretary is an ex-minister of Justice. Three of the board members are close relatives of the well-connected Atala Family—one is the president of a local bank, while the other is the president of the US-Honduras Chamber of Commerce and ex-director of the Central American Development Bank, which has invested in the dam.

They are also relatives of the billionaire owner of Ficohsa bank and ex-minister Camilo Atala, who according to Bloomberg , in April 2015 hosted Guatemalan and Honduran presidents and US State Department officials in a resort to initiate discussions over an annual $1 billion package to halt child migration into the US.

Several other networks like these are exposed, involving numerous top officials and sponsors of the ruling National Party (PN). Most notably, the head of the PN and vice-president of the Honduran Congress, Gladis Aurora López, allegedly staged prior community consultations and ordered incursions against protesters over the Los Encinos dam, owned by her husband.

Global Witness writes that 82 of the 123 murders it documented are of small farmers and activists protesting land theft for the Bajo Aguán palm oil plantation in northern Honduras, owned by late billionaire Miguel Facussé until his death in 2015. The report mentions that a US-funded task force investigating the plantation found at least 148 killings of campesinos.

The publication of the report on Honduras was immediately met with furious responses and attempts to discredit its documented findings. The secretary of Natural Resources, José Galdámez, called for the GW campaigners who presented the report in Honduras to be detained. The government’s chief coordinator signaled that the 123 murders are “not substantiated anywhere” in the document and that the NGO is discrediting itself by acting “ideologically or politically.” The head of the ruling National Party (PN), who was mentioned repeatedly in the report, threatened to file a lawsuit with the Public Ministry.

The GW representatives met with Attorney General Óscar Chinchilla, a figure close to the US embassy, but cancelled meetings with opposition politicians due to safety concerns. “Yes, we felt threatened,” said Global Witness in an official statement criticizing the “smear campaign.” They called upon the government to “demonstrate its absolute commitment” to implement the measures they suggest in the report.

Several regional rights organizations also denounced the government’s attacks against the British NGO, while calling for the same policies outlined in the GW report. Last week, organizations meeting at the ProDerechos Forum in Costa Rica expressed their concern over the government’s reaction and called on the Honduran attorney general’s office and MACCIH to investigate the cases presented in the GW report.

Another umbrella group stated that the government should uphold the requirement of defending activists in order to receive $125 million from Washington as part of the Alliance for Prosperity.

GW writes, “What is driving the attacks? Corruption, a lack of consultation and a failure to protect activists,” and calls on president Juan Orlando Hernández to “urgently address these root causes.” In terms of corruption, it calls on the US-financed judicial body MACCIH to “investigate at least one high profile case of corruption in the natural resource sector.” (emphasis added) As this purely symbolic proposal suggests, MACCIH is an “anti-impunity” tool being used by the US Embassy to gain greater control of its client state by pressuring the Honduran ruling class with corruption investigations, while also seeking to deal with the crisis of legitimacy and opposition in Honduras that has deepened since the 2009 coup.

In terms of “consultation and protection of activists,” GW couches its recommendations in terms of the profit interests of Honduran and foreign capital: “Defenders’ local expertise is essential in helping investors to identify, prevent, and mitigate human rights abuses and therefore also minimize related adverse business impacts…”

The bulk of the funding for Global Witness comes from the same financial oligarchies and international cooperation money that fund the dams and mines in Honduras and fills the corrupt pockets of its ruling class. GW lists the UK and other European governments, along with the CIA-linked Ford Foundation and US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, as some of their main contributors.

The NGO warns that the country’s reputation will be “too lawless and risky for respectable companies.” This is ludicrous. The international development banks, where the US financial aristocracy holds sway, like the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, have recently invested hundreds of millions in energy and extractive projects in Honduras, concerns over their “respectability” notwithstanding.

A 2016 UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean report found that Honduras has the third highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) profitability of the region, while most of new FDI into Honduras is going into banking and renewable energy projects like dams and solar power. For the financial aristocracy, naked reaction and the “race to the bottom” in regulations and democratic rights have been the norm of the global movement of capital, but increasingly so since the 2008 financial crisis. The record highs on Wall Street on the basis of Trump’s anti-regulatory, reactionary, and militaristic program clearly reflect this process.

The ominous attitude of the Trump administration toward the region is reflected by its attacks against immigrants. Moreover, in October 2015, retired general John Kelly—then the head of the Southern Command and currently the secretary of Homeland Security—commented on the Northern Triangle (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador): “So over time, the court systems have collapsed. The Attorney Generals are ineffective. The police are all bribed. The only functioning institutions that exist today are the militaries.”

The reality is that the killings in Honduras are generated both by the thuggish drive for profit by the local oligarchy and increasing pressure from US and European capital on the Honduran ruling class to create ever-more profitable conditions for investment.

In the end, under the guise of human rights, the demands made by GW and local rights organizations to the criminal Honduran coup regime are aimed at advancing the efforts of the imperialist powers to suppress social opposition and gain greater control over the Honduran political establishment.

Workers need to draw their own conclusions from the GW findings. Activists, indigenous communities, peasants, workers and youth cannot rely on the government for protection from persecution and death of its own repressive forces. Workers and peasants need to fight for a revolutionary socialist program under the workers’ leadership of the International Committee and its efforts to unite workers across the region, the US, Europe and the world to confront the imperialist powers and their semi-colonial client regimes.

Australian government reintroduces sweeping welfare cuts

Mike Head

The increasingly unstable Turnbull government this week suddenly unveiled an “omnibus bill,” seeking to push through parliament welfare cuts that have been stalled in the Senate since 2014 because of deep popular hostility to them.

Facing defections and rifts in his government, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is desperately seeking to demonstrate to the corporate elite that he can impose the cuts and other austerity measures that his ousted predecessor Tony Abbott failed to deliver.

The bill contains 16 separate provisions to slash welfare payments by a total of $7.5 billion over four years, with the most severe cuts targeted at young people, working-class families and aged pensioners. Over the past three years, the media has dubbed these measures “zombie” cuts—“stinking carcasses” of the 2014 budget that the Liberal-National government, then headed by Abbott, was unable to fully implement.

By resuscitating the “zombies,” Turnbull’s government is intensifying an assault on welfare entitlements. The poorest and most vulnerable members of society are being victimised. One of the central aims is to coerce thousands of jobless workers, students and parents with young children into low-paid and insecure jobs.

This is under conditions where there is massive destruction of full-time jobs taking place throughout basic industries, especially manufacturing and mining, and wide areas of the country are already in recession.

An entire generation of young people will be the hardest hit. School leavers and jobless youth will be forced to wait five weeks, and made to complete a compulsory “activity” program, before receiving income support. Unemployed or ill people aged 22 to 24 will be shifted from sub-poverty Newstart dole and sickness allowances to even lower Youth Allowances.

Together, these measures will cost a single person living away from home at least $1,320 upfront and around $47 a week thereafter. The result will be deep impoverishment. The maximum Youth Allowance rate for a young person living independently of their parents is $219 a week—far less than rents in most cities.

Students, young and old, will also lose their once-a-year $208 education entry payments, and all welfare recipients will be stripped of annual education supplements.

The cheap labour thrust of this package is exemplified by a “social security income test incentive” aimed at “increasing the number of job seekers who undertake specified seasonal horticultural work, such as fruit picking.” The pay and conditions of seasonal fruit pickers are so poor that employers have for years relied heavily on young overseas backpackers, who must undergo such work to satisfy visa conditions.

All new welfare recipients will be forced to wait a week before being eligible for any payments, and will lose an energy supplement, cutting their benefits by up to $7 a week. This includes people on the lowest incomes, such as the unemployed, aged pensioners, students and sole parents.

Aged pensioners who leave the country to live overseas will have their retirement pensions cut off after six weeks, down from 26 weeks, unless they have worked for 35 years in Australia. The government delayed one “zombie” measure, to increase the pension age from 67 to 70, but insists it still intends to proceed with that plan.

The biggest cuts of all—worth $4.7 billion over four years—are the abolition of end-of-the-year supplements for family tax benefits, including those for sole parent or low-income households. These payments, made to about 1.5 million families, can be worth up to $726 a year per child.

Social Security Minister Christian Porter claimed that the government was making the family tax benefit system fairer by increasing some weekly payments by $10. According to the Australian Council of Social Services, however, this does not make up for the supplement cuts. A sole parent with two children aged 13 and 15, for example, will still lose between $14 and $20 per week.

The government’s bill ties these cuts to what Porter called “once in a generation reforms” to parental leave and childcare subsidies, designed to assist parents to “work for the first time, or work more.”

In reality, working-class mothers will be under increased pressure to return to work early after giving birth. Previously, they received 18 weeks’ parental leave paid at the minimum wage, on top of any leave provided by their employer. Now, leave granted by an employer will be deducted from their entitlements, with government top-up payments capped at 20 weeks.

Childcare subsidies will rise, but new means testing will make an estimated one-third of families worse off. The childcare benefits also only apply if families can afford to have children enrolled in day care or after school care, with fees of up to $200 a day.

This package is part of an offensive against welfare recipients. Despite a public outcry over its crackdown on supposed “welfare fraud,” the Turnbull government is stepping-up its “debt recovery” program. It is seeking to compel or terrify recipients, under threat of imprisonment, into paying back $4 billion in alleged over-payments. These measures will be extended from unemployed workers to sole parents and aged and disability pensioners by July.

While targeting the poor, the government is pushing ahead with cuts in the company tax rate from 30 to 25 percent to boost corporate profits. This will widen the sharp social divide in Australia, where the richest 10 percent of the population own more than half of household wealth, while the poorest 40 percent are in debt or own virtually nothing.

The full extent of the welfare cuts was quickly buried by the mass media this week, submerged beneath coverage of Prime Minister Turnbull demagogically denouncing Labor Party opposition leader Bill Shorten as a “parasite” for feigning outrage at the cuts. Turnbull’s theatrics, which seek to shore up his leadership in the Liberal Party and divert attention away from the severity of the cuts, will only intensify the widespread popular hostility to his government and the entire political establishment.

Shorten’s pretence of opposition to the dismantling of welfare entitlements is equally cynical. For decades, Labor governments have proved equally committed to enforcing the dictates of the corporate elite.

The last Labor government, in which Shorten was a key minister, stripped sole parents of benefits once their children turned 8. Like Turnbull and his ministers today, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared that her government was “creating the right incentives for getting people back into work.”

Last September, Labor helped the Turnbull government pass another “omnibus” bill, cutting $6.3 billion from social spending over four years. It also supported the government’s abolition of a six-year statute of limitations on welfare “debts” and is counting on the $4 billion in budget “savings” from debt recovery for its own proposed measures to eliminate the federal budget deficit of nearly $40 billion a year.

Driving these measures is a deepening economic crisis, with the implosion of the mining boom compounded by a sharp decline in business investment. These pressures have been amplified by the election of Donald Trump as US president. His “America First” program of aggressive trade measures and huge cuts to company taxes and social spending is fuelling the demands of the capitalist class in every country for their governments to match him.

EU and IMF demand more austerity measures from Greece

Robert Stevens 

Officials from the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed Friday to a take a unified hard line against Greece, as the country’s debt crisis worsens.

The Syriza government must make a further €7 billion payment to its creditors by July or risk default on its entire debt, which remains at a staggering €330 billion.

Greece continues to drown in debt because virtually every cent of the €300 billion in loans received over the last seven years as “bailouts” have been siphoned off to service its debt to banks and financial institutions that continue to draw interest.

For the last two years, the IMF has been involved in a fraught standoff with the EU, insisting that it would not back any further bailout programmes for Greece if they did not include some debt relief structures. The IMF is on record that Greece’s debt is unsustainable and opposes demands from the EU that Athens must meet a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent. Instead, it calls for Greece to be bled dry more slowly—based on a 1.5 percent primary budget surplus with debt relief factored in so as not to kill the “milch cow”. Addressing an Atlantic Council event Wednesday, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said, “Reforms are absolutely needed. Somebody can ask me the questions three times over, I will still say the same thing.”

The IMF position was reinforced by concerns that if Greece were forced out of the euro zone, it would mean a relaxing of the relentless imposition of massive budget cuts and threaten overall debt repayment by Athens. According to an IMF report leaked last week, Greece’s debt is set to reach 170 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 and 164 percent by 2022, and “become explosive thereafter”, escalating to 275 percent of GDP by 2060.

Friday’s announcement confirms that whatever tactical differences exist on the means to impose austerity on Greece, there are no conflicts over carrying it out. Reuters quoted a senior eurozone official: “There is agreement to present a united front to the Greeks.” Noting that the proposal had yet to be put to Greece, the official said, “What comes out of it, we will see.”

Regarding the substance of the “deal”, Reuters reported, “Officials said the lenders would ask Greece to take 1.8 billion euros worth of new measures until 2018 and another 1.8 billion after 2018, focused on broadening the tax base and on pension cutbacks.” The new cuts represent 2 percent of GDP, which has already fallen by 25 percent since 2010. In human terms, a further €3.6 billion in austerity represents taking another €327 from every man, woman and child in the country.

The agreement came following talks in Brussels Friday between Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, Pierre Moscovici, EU commissioner for economic affairs, Klaus Regling, head of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)—the EU fund overseeing Greece’s loans in exchange for the austerity programme—and Benoît Coeuré from the European Central Bank.

Later Friday, Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece’s finance minister, arrived for talks with the EU leaders. According to the Athens News Agency, Tsakalotos will discuss the crisis in coming days with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, ESM President Regling and Poul Thomsen, Director of the IMF’s European Department.

The party led by Alexis Tsipras is widely despised for repudiating its pledge to oppose austerity and agreeing to impose the most vicious attacks yet in return for a further €86 billion in loans. The latest poll shows Syriza has the support of just 15 percent of the electorate. Tsakalotos boasted last week that a third of the austerity measures Greece had to impose as part of the current programme have been “totally completed”, another third are “totally agreed”, while the rest are subject to “political negotiation.”

Under conditions in which US President Donald Trump has declared his desire for the break-up of the EU, Greece is once again in the eye of the storm. This week Ted Malloch, Trump’s favoured candidate for US ambassador to Europe, declared that Greece could soon be forced to exit the eurozone and the euro itself was under threat. Malloch told Greek broadcaster Skai TV, “Whether the eurozone survives, I think it’s very much a question that is on the agenda.”

He added, “We have had the exit of the UK, there are elections in other European countries, so I think it’s something that will be determined over the course of the next year, year-and-a-half.”

Trump himself has repeatedly insisted that Greece should withdraw from the euro. On announcing his candidacy for president last year, Trump described Greece’s position as “unsalvageable”. Back in October 2012 he tweeted, “Greece should get out of the euro & go back to their own currency—they are just wasting time.”

Of the divisions between the IMF and EU that seem at this point to have been patched up, Malloch said, “If the [IMF] will not participate in a new bailout that does not include substantial debt relief, and that’s what they are saying, then that, more or less, ensures a collision course with eurozone creditors.”

Germany led the resistance to the IMF proposals for debt relief, and challenged, along with other EU nations including France, Belgium and Sweden, the IMF’s Greek projections at a board meeting Monday.

The Financial Times editorialised, in a swipe primarily aimed at Germany, “The rest of the IMF’s membership should be prepared to overrule the recalcitrant Europeans. The complaints of a self-interested cabal cannot be allowed to get in the way of Greece’s best interests. Eurozone governments have behaved poorly on this issue. They deserve to be defeated.”

Germany responded not by backing down, but with brutal language and further threats against Greece. On Wednesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned that no relief would be offered on Greece’s mammoth debt—of which a substantial chunk is owed to German banks. “We can’t undertake a debt haircut for a member of the European single currency, it’s ruled out by the Lisbon Treaty,” he said, adding, “For that, Greece would have to exit the currency area.”

He continued, “The pressure on Greece to undertake reforms must be maintained ... otherwise they can’t remain in the currency area.”

The joint EU/IMF proposals will be presented to the Syriza government, which is overseeing a social counterrevolution.

More than a third of the population (35.7 percent) are officially in poverty, unemployment stands at 23 percent and 46 percent among youth. Last year alone Syriza slashed another €350 million from the health budget under conditions in which 2.5 million Greeks have no health care coverage. Public spending on higher education was gutted by 75 percent five years ago, with 15 to 25 percent cuts in each subsequent year. An example of the impact of this is at the University of Crete, which had a budget of €17.5 million in 2011, but now operates with just €3.1 million.

Tsipras responded to Berlin’s warning by again solidarising his government with the EU. On Tuesday, he visited Kiev and held a joint press conference with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. Calling for continued sanctions against Russia, Tsipras said, “Greece is a member-state of the European Union and, despite the fact that it has a particular economic interest in an immediate resolution of the crisis and the lifting of sanctions that have had an extremely painful effect on the Greek economy, nevertheless we will not fragment European unity.”