Forgotten Americans

Vijay Prashad

Clarity about the the value of government comes through its budget allocations. If there is more money provided for poverty alleviation, for instance, it indicates that the government is compassionate. If there are severe cuts to farm aid, it suggests that the government cares little for the trials of farmers. The government of Donald Trump—in close association with the Republican leadership in the United States Congress—has now provided its template for the budget. A reading of the document—merely 62 pages long—shows that the Trump administration seems to care little for those who suffer and much more for the military and the moneyed. Trump’s rhetoric about helping the “forgotten Americans” seems largely forgotten. Wall Street, the defence industry and the military contractors will benefit greatly from this budget. Those without jobs and who live in poverty will see little relief.

Trump ran for office making the pledge that he would turn his attention to those who had been abandoned by policymaking in Washington, D.C. The language he spoke was drawn from the doctrine of economic sovereignty—that the government should tend to the economic problems of its people before it worries about global problems. Nation-building at home, Trump said to rapturous applause, was more important than nation-building in Afghanistan or Iraq. There is little in this budget that reflects his nation-building-at-home promise. Has Trump abandoned the “forgotten Americans”? In introductory economics classes, students are taught the problems of resource allocation through the metaphor of “guns vs butter”. Governments have scarce resources and they must allocate these resources with care for the priorities of the people. It is necessary to spend some money on the military and the police, but if too much goes in that direction, it will undermine other requirements of society, such as education, health care and programmes for the elderly. A government’s decisions over how much to spend on “guns” impacts on how much remains to be spent on “butter”.

The Trump budget calls for an increase in U.S. military spending by $54 billion. This would lift the total U.S. military spending to $641 billion, edging up to 3.5 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). The U.S. far outspends the rest of the world’s states in terms of military spending. China, the next on the list, spends a mere $215 billion, under 2 per cent of its GDP. Added up, the total military spending of the next nine countries after the U.S.—China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom, India, France, Japan, Germany and South Korea—approaches the U.S. total. In other words, U.S. military spending was already far above that of other countries, while it is now in another stratosphere entirely. It is important to point out that Russia’s government, in this period, has cut its military budget by 25 per cent, down to roughly $60 billion. This means that Trump’s addition to the U.S. military budget amounts to 80 per cent of the total Russian military budget.

Trump will divert money to the military at the same time as he offers major tax concessions to the wealthy, deregulates business enterprises and cuts sharply on social programmes. The economic team in the administration is entirely staffed by former executives of the major financial behemoth Goldman Sachs—people such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and head of Trump’s National Economic Council Gary Cohn. These men are driving economic policy, much of it to benefit their own circle of billionaires and financiers. Money to help the American poor with heating costs and with affordable housing will be sliced, just as funding for education, the arts and the humanities will be cut. Regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency will lose their ability to do their jobs. This is what Trump’s adviser called the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. Rural Americans, many of whom drove miles to vote for Trump, will find themselves unable to avail themselves of rural airports and to listen to public radio on rural stations. Money for these initiatives will dry up. More money is spent on the military’s advertising budget than on the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Large numbers of government employees will lose their jobs. “Shrink the federal workforce,” says the draft budget. “You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” said Mick Mulvaney, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Senator Bernie Sanders, confronted with this draconian budget, called Trump a “fraud”. “I think he is going to sell out the middle class and the working class of this country,” said Sanders, who had run his primary campaign on the issue of rising social inequality in the U.S.

Cultural sovereignty

Despite an avalanche of negative publicity, Trump’s approval ratings, as reported by the Gallup poll, remain at 42 per cent. This has remained steady despite the chaos in the White House, the report that showed that 24 million Americans would lose their health care with Trump’s new plan, the ridiculous tweets about Barack Obama wiretapping Trump last year, and the catastrophic diplomatic fumbles with Germany and the U.K. None of this has impacted Trump’s followers, who are loyal to the core. What Trump’s team understands is that his supporters need economic support but that they also believe that their fortunes have been undermined by specific groups of people and policies. These include “Mexican illegal workers”, “Indian H-1B workers”, “the Chinese government’s fiscal policy”, and “radical Islamic extremism”. Trump justifies his budget choices not on the basis of rational calculations but on the prejudices of his followers. The main impulse that anchors his budget is “America First”.

In Trump’s preface to the budget document, he writes: “A budget that puts America first must make the safety of our people its number one priority—because without safety, there can be no prosperity.” In other words, the population of “forgotten Americans” must forgo their personal ambitions for that of the nation. It turns out, of course, that the “forgotten Americans” are the largest contributors to personnel in the U.S. armed forces. They have one or more family members in the military and have a personal connection to the idea of a strong military. Whether this helps their family in direct economic terms or not is beside the point. The idea that national strength translates to personal strength is a powerful emotion that cannot be set aside.

Trump’s preface points not only to the increase in defence spending but also to the building of the wall on the Mexican-U.S. border, to the increase of funds for Homeland Security, and to the increase of funds for the police. If economic sovereignty cannot easily be produced, then cultural sovereignty can be afforded to the population. Attacks on those who “do not belong”—illegal immigrants, terrorists, job stealers—become central to the message of the Trump administration. The id to Trump’s ego is Iowa Representative Steve King, who went on television news programmes to tout an unreconstructed racist message. “You cannot rebuild your civilisation with somebody else’s babies,” he said, referring to immigration. “You’ve got to keep your birth rate up and you need to teach your children your values.” No other civilisation, King said, had contributed anything worth studying. “Western civilisation” alone is to be championed. It is sufficient. Such messages of cultural superiority tickle the fancy of a population that will once more be forgotten when it comes to economic policy.

There is an element of raw truth in Trump’s draft budget. He writes that it is “a message to the world—a message of American strength, security and resolve”. A strong military, such a view suggests, would allow the U.S. to threaten its trade partners to resolve trade disputes, such as those over intellectual property rights or currency manipulation, to its benefit. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s threats to North Korea—“all options are on the table”—send a strong message to China. Trump’s comments about a 30-foot-high border wall send a message to Mexico City and Ottawa regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Trump’s comments that NATO members “must pay what they owe” and his refusal to shake German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hand during a photo opportunity, after she asked him specifically if he would like to shake hands, signify the kind of America First message that Trump wishes to send. In an earlier language, this attitude would have been characterised as “imperialism”. Nowadays, that term is rarely used. Which is largely why there is such confusion over how to understand the Trump agenda.

Tapping Into The Creativity Of The Poor

Moin Qazi

I always believe that people can do wonders, if their energy is channelized and focused on a given task. Tomorrows are made by people. A lesson I learnt early in life is that great leaders don’t teach. They touch and transform. They don’t instruct; they inspire by their conduct and disposition. They help people discover within themselves the strength to find the pathway to the stars.

This lesson kept me in good stead in my rural development journey over four decades .During my early engagement with the poor I trying to relate to them through personal association. My fertile, overheated conscience was stung by my academic reading of the sufferings of people in Latin American countries. Driven by guilt, buried under the weight of my attractive job and haunted by the sight of excruciating poverty every day, I volunteered to spend the weekends off from my office with villagers, trying to make up for the fact that I had so much while they had so little.

The friends whom I consulted before embarking on my rural mission admired my aspiration but moderated my enthusiasm with caveats. “They know a lot more than we do. You can at best learn from them.” “Don’t try to supplant their culture; that will be the greatest disservice.” I initially wrote off these responses as an attempt to unnerve me. Later I realized that these advices were not pure banter.

I put away my books and immersed myself in the rhythms of villages learning from the poor and understanding their problems, trying to see their culture and society through their own eyes. I had to invert everything I’d learned in economics classes. My status as a qualified sociologist was worth zilch. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. That status did make me a little ashamed at my inadequacies, yet it freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. I was able to turn my ideas into workable goals. The humble beginnings taught me life as only a villager can know. It brought me to terms with the inadequacy of my learning. I realized I had to become part of the villagers’ heartbeat to be in a position to help them.

My exposure to villages came from our home stays. This was known as a ‘night halt’. This was not just a paper fad. The bank’s regional offices monitored these night halts and we were expected to give a monthly report on them. Rural branches were opened in such remote hinterlands that the bank manager was the only literate denizen in some of these desolate islands. We lived the lives of the locals so that we would feel the pain the villagers felt. I remember once a poor woman telling me “Uncle, I will fetch rice from the village headman’s house as what I cook is very dirty. It’s so full of stones you’ll crack your teeth if you eat it.” When I checked the cavernous kitchen, I found her daughter trying to light the damp wood. She fingered the kindling gingerly for fear of the community of scorpions living, loving, and reproducing in the pile.

Once I decided I would remain a permanent creature of the planet of the poor, I started religiously making myself part of the villagers’ beats—interacting with people, speaking their earthy language, rallying the masses for meetings. Without a common language, we communicated through gestures and occasional local words which I had picked up from colleagues. Languages interest me very much—as the basis of communication, and in their own aesthetic right—but I have never been very good at learning them. My lingua franca was Hindustani which is itself a mongrel of two hybrid languages, Hindi and Urdu. In remote villages, I spoke pidgin Marathi. I made very serious efforts to respect linguistic sentiments and tried to avoid mangling any of the culturally rooted modes of communication.

It was only through long and close contact with the poor themselves and through our work with them that we were able to gain a deeper understanding and more balanced view of the local society. In this way, our experience was not that of typical non-governmental organizations (NGO), many of which work from within the confines of the project enclave or are based in urban centres from where excursions are made out into the villages by jeep. Sadly, many NGOs are far removed from the realities of poverty and often fail to reach those most in need. For me, the most surprising discovery was the simple human-to-human connection that let me overcome both linguistic and cultural barriers.

We have to get rid of the pernicious notion that the roots of poverty lie with the poor themselves and that cultural differences are responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West. I found the villagers had many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were keenly interested in profits, and entrepreneurship was in plentiful supply in rural India, having been part of the traditional culture for a millennium.

Now more than ever, it is important to reaffirm that significant advances are attainable for the rural poor, who are a potential source of great wealth and creativity, but who must first and foremost seek their own survival under present institutional, cultural and policy conditions. Their poverty deprives not only themselves but also the rest of us of the greater value they could produce under more conducive circumstances. I feel that the people, who have pioneered the various programmes that have now become models, recognized this potential and sought to evoke it.

We should not forget that poor villagers are not just statistics but people like you and me, and apart from the poverty that they share in common, there is as much variety of humankind among them as anywhere else in the world: the hardworking, the lazy, the shy, the outspoken, the honest, the devious, the intelligent and the dull, the improvident and the enterprising. The people with whom we worked were all of these, though, in my experience, the positive characteristics almost always stood out.

The best approach to local development is to tap into the knowledge already available and think of ways it can be leveraged to achieve a more appropriate, locally useful and sustainable development. Approaches to rural development that respect the inherent capabilities and native    of rural people and that systematically build on experience have a reasonable chance of making significant advances in improving those people’s lives. A critical success factor is creating organizational capabilities at local levels that can mobilize and manage resources effectively for the benefit of the many rather than just the few.

As Verghese Kurien, the father of India’s Milk Revolution repeatedly emphasized: “India’s place in the sun would come from the partnership between wisdom of its rural people and skill of its professionals”

Ice And Busts: The Lost War On Drugs In Australia

Binoy Kampmark

It was hard to tell whether Australia’s Federal Police authorities, along with their Victorian colleagues, were gloating at their latest effort.  Thrilled at the unearthing of a stash of methamphetamine, a form of it colloquially known as ice, trumpeted as the “biggest seizure” in Australian history, there was a sense of achievement. They had gotten one up on the drugs gangs, inflicting a blow to the narcotics trade.  Celebrate!

Such celebrations, however, are misplaced. For one, they seemed to follow similar celebrations in February, when $1 billion worth of liquid methamphetamine, concealed in gel push-up bra inserts, were uncovered.

Do these seizures suggest that the police and various enforcement authorities are gaining the upper hand, or perhaps foot dragging before ever enterprising and novel ways of adding to the narcotics market?

A stash of 903 kg of methamphetamines is certainly a remarkable quantity, secreted in boxes of wooden floorboards in an inconspicuous part of east Melbourne.  “We located 70 boxes of floorboards,” chirped AFP assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan.  In each of them “was concealed between the floorboards two kilograms of methamphetamine.”

But this suggests that there might well be much more, a drugs economy that is thriving in a hot house of high demand.  Even Justice Minister Michael Keenan has conceded this point, noting that Australia has become one of the most lucrative markets for drug trade in the western world.

Tones of scolding severity duly follow when the phenomenon of drugs consumption is examined, notably among the researchers most interested in those habits of gradual yet mesmerising decay. “There is no doubt Australia has a culture, especially among our young people, which does not see the taking of illicit substances or binge drinking as particularly detrimental to the health,” claimed Professor Harvey Whiteford of the University of Queensland in 2013.

The police also annotate such findings with their suspicions about the inner drug devil in many an Australian.  As Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Smith of the New South Wales Drug Squad’s Chemical Operation Unit claims with a Presbyterian fury, “1.3 million people in Australia have tried ice.  Some of your friends and members of your family would have to have tried ice.” The horror, the horror.

Last month, researchers released findings after examining, somewhat unglamorously, wastewater across 51 sites only to find that methylamphetamine was the most consumed illicit drug in the country.  It topped the premier league table of items, beating a range of other contenders such as heroin and cocaine.

For such reasons, this is a battle, if not a poorly described war, that is unwinnable against basic human wishes and market demand.  Experimentation and temptation is all, and the world of testing is becoming more diverse than ever.  Law and medical authorities are desperate to stifle the interest, and are failing.  The central problem is the nagging obsession with drugs as a matter of law and order.

Those participating in the market know this better than anybody else.  Even Gaughan concedes with detectable admiration that the methods of novelty in this case on the part of the drug traders were considerable. (One has to beef up the opposition to show your own efforts are worthwhile.)  “You can appreciate the concealment method used in this particular activity is quite complex, quite unique. It wasn’t something we had seen previously.”  The sentiment is often noted.

The battle against drugs was lost in the United States at enormous cost, becoming a continental affair of devastating consequences to security and welfare.  Other countries, lagging in efforts to legalise certain drugs and attempts to control the narcotics market, find themselves at the losing end. Warring against desire and instinct eventually unravels. The cartels, and those connected with the prison industrial complex, profit.

It is precisely for such reasons that Portugal decriminalised the use of all drugs, whatever their rank of severity, in 2001.  The result?  Portugal has 3 drug overdose deaths for every million citizens.  The EU average, by way of contrast, is 17.3 per million.

In Australia, a few politicians have decided to shift the emphasis.  The Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale, himself a former drugs and alcohol doctor, convinced his party in 2016 to abandon absolute opposition to the legalisation of illicit drugs.  “It’s time we recognise this as a health problem not a law and order one.  We have to have an open, honest conversation about this and stop pretending we’re winning this war.”

Whether it is the heavy hand of the law, or some clumsy variant of it, the campaign against drugs is simply going the way of those who cash in on it, a vast sprawl of vested interests.  In the end, the very existence of the police and the enforcement complex thrives on such spectacles, on the illusion of safety and security. As this happens, sickness prevails as the money runs out the door.

In the meantime, lawyers and members of the public will be treated to the picture of overly enthusiastic ministers and police commissioners keen to get the message across that arrests are taking place and drugs seized with dedicated efficiency.  During such a process, the rule of law is bound to take a battering, not least of all the presumption of innocence.  Grainy images of various suspected figures are already doing the rounds through the papers.

The ministers traffic in votes and illusions, and finding drugs provides a false incentive for both.  What is needed, as The Age editorial surmised in November last year, is a policy “in favour of a harm minimisation strategy based on decriminalisation, regulation and education.” Paramilitary approaches should be ditched, and resources channelled into health.  Portugal, not the United States, should be seen as the model here.

Australian teachers’ agreement: The reality behind union “victory” claims

Susan Allan

An in-principle four-year industrial agreement covering public school teachers in the state of Victoria marks another sell-out deal organised by the Australian Education Union (AEU).

Worked out last month with the state Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews, after twelve months of back-door negotiations, the deal saw the union call off planned industrial action by teachers before it even began. Unlike previous industrial agreements, this one has been finalised without any strike action or mass meeting of teachers. The union aims to prevent any discussion among teachers and ram through the agreement by lying about its contents and claiming it represents a “win” for teachers.

In reality, on every key issue confronting school staff, the AEU and government have worked together to entrench and deepen the assault on the public education system.

Excessive teacher workload will continue, leading to increased teacherstress impacting on overall student learning

Meredith Peace, president of the Victorian branch of the AEU, claims that the agreement addresses “crushing workload” by giving teachers four “Professional Practice Days” a year, supposedly allowing them to catch up with out-of-classroom work while a relief teacher covers their classes.

In the lead-up to the sell-out deal, the union reported that negotiations had hit a sticking point over workload, and were preparing to strike over the issue. Before the ballot for industrial action had even begun, the union announced a “win” on the basis of the new Professional Practice Days. The new measure does not, however, even begin to address intense workload pressures.

Teachers are already working on average 15 hours of unpaid overtime each week. The union’s claims that 7.5 hours time-release each term will resolve the situation is a cynical joke.

The agreement makes no change to face-to-face teaching time, class sizes, nor will it see any extra teachers employed in schools. As the agreement states, the one day release per term from scheduled duties must be negotiated with the principal and be in line with “department and school priorities.” In other words, it remains unclear whether teachers will be able to use their day each term to carry out work that would be of benefit to them and their students.

Insecure employment and contract teaching will continue

In an AEU statement to members, Peace claimed that changes to contract processes will see “thousands of teachers and ES [Education Support] automatically translate to ongoing employment.” Minister of Education James Merlino stated that at least “2,500 teachers and 5,000 Education Support staff would be given certainty moving them from contract to permanent roles.”

In fact, secure employment for contract teachers is not guaranteed in the agreement, and the government has since admitted that the numbers of new permanent roles are merely Department of Education “estimates.” The AEU deal retains explicit statements contained in previous agreements endorsing contracts as “continu[ing] to be necessary.”

The new proposed agreement states that schools “will offer ongoing employment” to eligible teachers, whereas the previous agreement stated that schools “should” offer it. This change in wording, however, will not alter the widespread use of contracts in public schools. Previous sweeping loop-holes that principals have used to avoid transferring contract teachers onto ongoing positions, such as “the employer having good reason” not to, or “predicted declining enrolments” for a school, remain. One in five of all teachers are now on contracts, with 65 percent of graduate teachers on short term contracts in their first five years.

Insecure employment for underpaid Education Support staff will alsocontinue

In a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) information sheet, the AEU states that Education Support (ES) staff that are linked to the Student Support Program (SSP) will be converted into ongoing positions. Student support funding is attached to students with disabilities, and other students requiring additional needs. Presently more than 45 percent of ES staff are on contract.

Again, the devil is in the detail for this supposed “win.” The proposed agreement details that if a student on the SSP leaves the school, or his or her funding is cut, then the ES staff member attached to that student will be dismissed, though now with 12 weeks’ notice rather than 10. Fewer and fewer ES staff are linked to the Student Support Program, with the government continually raising the threshold to either maintain or gain funding for students with additional needs. ES staff will continue to be grossly underpaid and face onerous working conditions, such as being compelled to work five hours straight without any break.

Real wage cuts continue , with Victorian teachers the lowest paid nationally

In a FAQ information sheet, the union states that teachers and ES staff have secured a 3.25 percent annual salary increase with an “increase of 13.7 percent over the course of the agreement.”

This falls far short of the initial 21 percent catch-up increase included in the initial log of claims. The last time Victorian teachers had a wage increase was in October 2015, and under the new agreement the next will be in April 2017. The deal provides no back pay, therefore equating to a wage freeze for more than one year. Victorian teachers will remain at or near the bottom of the wage scale compared with other states. This coincides with Victoria remaining the lowest state for government funding for schools per student, funded at $2,253 less than the national average.

Teacher “performance” monitoring processes will deepen

As with all previous industrial agreements, the union has agreed to government dictates that seek to tie teachers’ “performance” to education department criteria, school priorities and student data, creating the framework for so-called “performance pay” and targeted layoffs.

The proposed agreement deepens this process. As part of a list of union-government “commitments,” the AEU has signed off on electronically-managed and online “performance and development reviews.” Performance reviews were previously discussed and signed off on at the school level, but now the government will have the ability to monitor them centrally.

Another commitment includes a sweeping pledge by the AEU to the “implementation of the [government’s] education reform agenda and contribution to achieving targets.”

A new teaching category has also been created, “Learning Specialists.” In addition to “modelling exemplary teaching practice,” they will use data for "whole school improvement,” and develop “protocols of teacher observation, practice and feedback.” This initiative was first proposed by the AEU, which is effectively seeking to have classroom observations embedded in the industrial agreement. This follows the previous agreement where the union added a new clause allowing teachers’ accused of “unsatisfactory performance” to be sacked within 13 weeks.

AEU rewarded for its sell-out

As a result of its latest betrayal, the union has further entrenched its privileged position within the public education system. Union representatives will now be present during all induction processes for new school employees, union representatives on local consultative committees will be given 16 hours of time-release per year, union state councillors will be given two days paid leave per term, and any employee nominated by the union to attend a union training course will be given five paid days per year.

Whereas the union stands to gain from the proposed agreement, teaching and other school staff, students, and the public education system as a whole, will be worse off if is rammed through.

Teachers should vote “no” to the rotten deal, as the starting point for a coordinated political campaign in defense of the public education system as a whole and for the rights and conditions of teachers and school staff within that system.

Such a fight cannot be undertaken through the AEU. Across the country, the teachers’ unions have helped impose the following “education reforms”: NAPLAN standardised testing, My School, school “autonomy,” a new Year One phonics test, so-called performance reviews, and now the reintroduction of school inspectors in New South Wales some 40 years after their abolition.

Australian flood crisis continues as questions mount over government preparations

Oscar Grenfell 

The flood crisis that has hit large parts of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales over the past week is continuing to affect thousands of people, with floodwaters peaking in the Queensland regional centre of Rockhampton today.

Outlying areas of the city, which has a population of around 80,000, have already been submerged by the slow-moving floodwaters, with the Fitzroy River rising to a level of nearly nine metres, the benchmark of a major flood disaster. Record rainfalls in the aftermath of Cyclone Debbie, which made landfall in south-east Queensland on Tuesday last week, have concentrated in the Fitzroy River catchment.

Over 200 homes in Rockhampton were thought to have been damaged by floodwaters as of Wednesday. The airport, along with schools and many businesses in the city have been closed since early this week.

Authorities have warned that another 300 homes and businesses are likely to be inundated today. Over 3,000 more properties are expected to be directly affected by the flood. Warnings have been issued that the disaster will have a “devastating” impact on the local economy.

The floodwaters are not expected to subside for between 24 and 48 hours, meaning that many residents will be isolated, with the prospect of widespread power outages.

Questions have already emerged over the lack of government action to prevent inundation of the city, which is one of the most flood prone in the country. The current flood is the fourth to have hit Rockhampton in the past seven years, but authorities at the local, state and federal levels have resisted calls for the construction of a protective levee.

In 2011, the city suffered substantial damage in floods that swept over large parts of Queensland. The economic cost was estimated at $35 million. Rockhampton was again struck by floods in 2013, and in 2015 it was hit by a cyclone and flow-on flooding.

Calls for the construction of a levee were first made in 1992, following severe floods the previous year. In 2015, proposals were discussed for a $50 million levee, which would have protected an estimated 1,500 properties, through the construction of a 7.2 kilometre embankment. The plan was scuttled over costs.

Responding to criticisms over the past days, Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow declared that the local council did not have sufficient funds to build a levee. Instead, it has prepared for the current inundation by erecting makeshift structures in parts of the city. The barriers are down the middle of flood-affected streets, meaning that residents on the wrong side will likely suffer inundation.

The council has suffered a number of budgetary crises. Between 2011 and 2013 it reportedly spent more than $6 million repairing flood-damaged roads and infrastructure.

Questioned about the absence of a levee on a Channel Nine television broadcast this morning, Queensland Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk blandly stated that her government was “open to the idea.” Any measures, however, she said, would need to be backed by the federal government, which has also resisted allocating funds to flood mitigation.

Residents have also voiced anger over the impact of power outages. Reg Dummett, told the Australian yesterday that his electricity had been off for the previous two days, the first time he has suffered a flood-related outage in 40 years.

“It’s ridiculous. I’m a pensioner and I’m having to run a generator paying, I don’t know how much, for fuel,” Dummett said. As in other areas of the state, those affected by the floods can apply for a government grant of just $180.

The dire social consequences of last week’s flooding in New South Wales (NSW) are also becoming clear. Damages across the state are estimated at $200 million. The regional centre of Lismore, in northern NSW, was among the worst hit.

Lismore has a flood levee, but the structure, built in 2005, was only designed to withstand one in ten year floods, and was breached last Friday by floodwaters that were the highest since 1974. The entire central business district was submerged and hundreds of homes were damaged.

On Monday, Liberal-National Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was confronted by Steven Kreig, a small business owner, during a stage-managed visit to Lismore.

Krieg denounced the state and federal government for offering loans, rather than grants, to small businesses devastated by the floods, and contrasted the response to the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by successive governments to the major car companies, which are ending production in Australia at the end of the year.

Krieg, who said he was already “up to his eyeballs” in debt, commented: “If you come back in six months, you’ll just about see 50 to 80 percent of those businesses still not open... I’m facing the fact that if I don’t open my doors I’m going to have to sell my house to pay the rent.” Many businesses and homes were uninsured, with some insurance companies charging premiums of $30,000 a year in flood-prone areas.

The city is littered with piles of debris and mud on front lawns, including severely damaged household items, and material that was scattered by the floods. The local council has declared that it is unable to move the volume of rubbish that has accumulated, and has said that some of it may remain in the city for up to a month.

Greg Bell from the North Coast Public Health Unit warned of the potential health impact of the debris, telling the ABC yesterday: “Whatever was on the land ends up in the water—chemicals, oil, dead animals, septic tanks have overflown, sewerage plants have been on bypass so they can’t pump and it goes into the floodwater. As the water goes down, that material goes into the mud.”

The flood crisis in Queensland and NSW has claimed at least seven lives, while three men are still missing in Queensland. On Monday, tragedy struck when a car carrying Stephanie King and her three children slid into the Tweed River in northern NSW. King and two of her children perished.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, police authorities stated that the road had been closed, before backtracking on the claim amid anger from local residents.

One of King’s friends, Sally Fraser wrote on Facebook: “I hope people keep demanding the truth, that the road was not closed. Even buses were using that road. I knew immediately when I heard, it couldn’t have been closed, because I know for a fact you would never EVER put your kids in harm’s way.” The deaths will be the subject of a coronial investigation.

As in previous disasters, the current floods have underscored the manifestly inadequate character of federal and state government preparations for natural disasters which are a predictable and routine occurrence. Flood-mitigation measures are stymied by governments committed to budget cuts on behalf of big business, while residents in affected areas are often left to fend for themselves.

National strike in Argentina as opposition to austerity grows

Rafael Azul 

At a March 7 rally of Argentina’s main trade union confederation, the CGT, workers booed and denounced the trade union leadership, demanding a national general strike of all workers against the right-wing government of Mauricio Macri. The CGT stonewalled the demand. Several months earlier, the CGT had met with Macri and guaranteed they would keep the lid on social discontent and “preserve social peace” long enough for his government to implement pro-corporate reforms.

But March and April have seen a wave of street protests, strikes and rallies by the Argentine working class, in Buenos Aires and across Argentina.

A series of strikes, road closures and protests by teachers, autoworkers and other sections of the working class against sackings and attacks on wages and benefits are continuing this week. Across Buenos Aires, teachers are now voting on the next steps to take in their struggles. These include a strike for an indefinite time, weekly walkouts and other forms of struggle.

The protests have been massive. On March 22, over 300,000 teachers marched and rallied in Buenos Aires.

On March 24, tens of thousands in many cities across Argentina ( and 100,000 in Buenos Aires) participated in the March of Memory, Truth and Justice, which marked the 41st anniversary of the 1976 military coup d’etat. Except for a 100-word statement from 1984 on his Facebook page, Macri made no official declaration. The Macri government has downplayed the significance of that coup, insisting that the number of victims fell far short of the accepted figure of 30,000. No official event was organized.

On April 3, tens of thousands of striking teachers in the southern state of Santa Cruz surrounded the state government office and refused to let Peronist governor Alicia Kirchner (sister of ex-president Nestor Kirchner) leave until 4:00 am.

This social tension made it impossible for the CGT to continue stonewalling the broadly supported demand for a general strike. Fearing the prospect of social explosion, the CGT announced a one-day strike, scheduled for today, April 6.

There is broad hostility to the Macri government’s reform plan. Macri’s measures since he assumed the presidency in December 2015, with the support of the national legislature (including both the Kirchnerista and the Massa wings of the Peronist movement), have been combined with attacks on basic rights, jobs, housing, health care, pensions, and freedom of speech and assembly.

The Macri administration wants to limit wage and salary increases to less than 20 percent, in several installments, amounting to a substantial cut in real wages. Official unemployment tops 10 percent of the labor force. Tens of thousands of workers have been sacked and suspended in the auto, printing, oil, electronics, consumer goods, steel and food industries. One third of the population lives below the poverty line, and last year’s inflation rate reached 30 percent, driving down living standards.

Macri has especially targeted teachers, who have responded by striking, demanding wage increases that correspond to the rate of inflation. Teachers have rejected offers of 19 percent wage hikes, in return for accepting concessions in working conditions. At the same time the government is illegally refusing to pay teachers for days on strike.

Full of fear that workers’ anger is rapidly getting out of control, as it has in the past (the 1969 Cordobazo, for instance, or the protests of December 2001 that brought down the government of Fernando De La Rua), the CGT is using the one-day strike as another offer of class collaboration to Macri and the Argentine ruling class. Breaking with tradition, the CGT announced that there would be no mobilizations, marches or rallies in Buenos Aires on April 6. A CGT leader told workers to “stay home with their Mate tea.”

CGT leader Héctor Daer declared that the purpose of this general strike was to “generate debate in society, not only among workers, but among middle layers and intellectuals,” over the social and economic reforms.

Juan Carlos Schmid, the CGT’s general secretary acknowledged the “there is a generalized discontent among many layers in the population” over the impoverishment created by Macri’s economic measures. Other bureaucrats have spoken to the press about their concerns that the trade unions may lose control of social discontent.

The CGT, with a membership of more than two and a half million, is the largest union federation in Argentina. The Argentine trade unions have a long history of class collaboration, corporatism and anti-socialism, going back to the 1930s and the Uribe dictatorship. The CGT under the regime that followed the 1943 coup established close links with the populist nationalist anticommunist military, and played a big role in the installation of Juan Perón as president (1945-55, 1973-74). Peron integrated the trade unions into his government and the populist Justicialis ta Party.

Throughout succeeding civilian administrations, interrupted by five military governments and a brutal military fascist dictatorship, the CGT leaders have continued with their criminal betrayal of the Argentine working class.

For their part, the pseudo-left Morenoist Socialist Workers Party (PTS) and the Workers Party (PO) limited their criticism of the 24-hour national strike to the absence of marches, calling instead for an “active strike.” Beyond that they present no perspective or program to orient and unite the working class internationally.

Aggressive claims by Spain helped provoke Gibraltar flare-up with Britain

Alejandro López

The Spanish bourgeoisie has used the Brexit negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) to provocatively reassert its claims to the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar.

The 6.7 square kilometre territory was seized by Britain in 1704 for its strategic military importance at the entrance to the Mediterranean. It has since become a major tax haven for the British and international ruling elite. Although the territory’s 30,000 inhabitants rejected Spanish sovereignty in a referendum in 2002, they voted by 96 percent in last June’s Brexit referendum to remain in the EU.

Last year sections of the Spanish ruling class calculated that Brexit offered Spain a “golden opportunity,” not only to reclaim Gibraltar but also to possibly become Washington’s new strategic ally in Europe.

Former Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo declared that it would give Spain “an opportunity to have an even more important role than the one we already have with the United States, and don’t forget about one other thing: we’ll be talking about Gibraltar the very next day.”

The renewed moves by Spain have the backing of the EU. Brussels has dropped its traditional neutral position on conflicting Spanish/UK claims on Gibraltar and adopted an aggressive anti-British position—as it has done on every issue of controversy since the result of the Brexit referendum.

Last week, in response to UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s hardline demands on the terms of the UK-EU divorce, the EU sent its 27 remaining member a nine-page document containing its draft negotiating position. It warned, “A non-member of the union… cannot have the same rights and enjoy the same benefits as a member.”

It made clear in a clause in the document that “no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom.”

On Monday, the European Commission’s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said, “The guidelines presented on Friday have the complete backing of President [Jean-Claude] Juncker and [chief negotiator] Michel Barnier. We will give no more explanations.”

Juncker’s endorsement of the Gibraltar clause comes just a few weeks after his intervention over the status of Northern Ireland in EU-UK negotiations. Juncker and Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny jointly declared that “at some future time,” there was a vote for a united Ireland, as laid down in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, “Northern Ireland would have ease of access to join as a member of the European Union again.” The EU also indicated it opposes the re-establishing of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

In Britain, the Gibraltar clause led former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard to invoke Margaret Thatcher’s 1982 war against Argentina over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands to declare the UK was prepared to go to war with Spain over Gibraltar. Former minister Norman Tebbit warned that Gibraltar is a “vital Western strategic interest” and suggested “inviting leaders of the Catalan independence movement to London, or even to raising their desire for independence at the United Nations.” It took two days before UK Prime Minister May tried to make a joke of Howard’s bellicose talk.

In contrast, Spain’s ABC newspaper declared, “The Spanish government achieves its first triumph after the opening up of Brexit negotiations.”

El País stated that the clause is “handing the Spanish government the negotiating key it needed in its claims over the territory.”

For El Español, “in what has become a major diplomatic victory, Spain has a powerful ally on its side in its dispute with the United Kingdom over The Rock: the European Union of the 27.”

Soon after, the leaders of three of Spain’s main parties, the ruling Popular Party (PP), the main opposition Socialist Party (PSOE) and Citizens met with high-ranking foreign ministry officials to agree on a joint strategy for Gibraltar.

Amid this tense situation, on Tuesday Spain dispatched a warship into the disputed territorial waters around Gibraltar. The Spanish Ministry of Defence described this as routine operations against illicit drugs and migrants, while the British Foreign Office declared it to be an unlawful maritime incursion.

Unhindered control of the Straits of Gibraltar has always been one of Spanish imperialism’s foreign policy priorities. Its repossession became official government policy during the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco (1939-1978) and following the Transition to democracy, the policy has remained in place under successive governments.

One of the main books dealing with Spanish foreign policy explains, “The Straits of Gibraltar continues to be the main sea route in the world, both because of the number of ships passing through it (80,000 a year, about 220 a day), and because of its tonnage and the presence of ships with nuclear weapons. It acts as a key to the Mediterranean, which is not only important from a military point of view, but also because of the large oil tankers from North Africa and/or the Persian Gulf coming through Suez, which are part of the normal supply of energy to the European countries. Ensuring the free movement and preventing any form of blockade that would affect countries like Spain, which receives 82% of its supplies by sea, is therefore a priority objective.” [Ricardo Méndez and Silva Marcu, “La posicion geoestratégica de España” p.137-138 in La política exterior de España de 1800 hasta hoy (2010).]

Criticisms have been levelled at Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis’ other piece of political brinkmanship targeting the UK—his suggesting that Spain would not block Scotland’s application for membership of the EU if it separated from the UK.

His remarks open the Pandora box regarding Catalonia and the Basque Country, which both have strong separatist movements that, like the Scottish National Party, are demanding independence as a first step to seeking EU membership. In Catalonia, a referendum on independence, declared illegal by the Spanish government, has been called in November by the regional Catalan government. The Catalan position can only be strengthened by Dastis’ tacit support for the SNP’s own demand for a second independence referendum.

El Mundo said that when questioned about Scotland, “a Spanish minister is expected, at this point in time, to put nationalism in its place, which is that of garbage...” Dastis’ comments, it declared, had caused “Tebbit to threaten to take the Catalan cause to the UN.”

ABC posted an editorial, “Dastis’ grave mistake,” warning that “any reference to Scotland’s independence and eventual entry into the European Union from the mouth of a Member of the Government of Spain can be used against our national interests.”

The Gibraltar crisis is also an expression of the growing antagonisms brought about by President Donald Trump’s open declarations of support for Brexit and for the break-up of the EU, which he has described as a German-dominated economic competitor to the US.

While the UK is interested in defending the “special relationship” with the US after the UK leaves Europe and calculates it will have Trump’s support on Gibraltar and the EU negotiations, Spain is attempting to become the new strategic partner of the US in post-Brexit Europe.

Last week, Spanish Defence Minister María Dolores de Cospedal visited US Secretary of Defence James Mattis in Washington for talks described as successful. This week, Spain complied with Trump’s demand that NATO countries commit at least 2 percent of spending on defence, increasing its military spending by fully 32 percent—from €5.7 billion in 2016 to €7.5 billion in 2017. Two years ago, Spain signed an agreement with the US making permanent its airbase at Moron and naval base at Rota, just 1.5 hours away from Gibraltar. Both bases have played a major role in all US-led wars since the First Gulf War in 1990.

French presidential candidates feign opposition in 11-party debate

Alex Lantier

On Tuesday night, all 11 French presidential candidates participated for over three hours in the first of two 11-party debates scheduled before the first round of the elections, on April 23. The unusual debate, which produced noisy and often fractious exchanges and a great deal of political posturing, reflected the deep and growing concerns of the French ruling class.

The financial aristocracy, facing a historic collapse in support for the candidates of its two traditional parties of rule, Benoît Hamon of the ruling Socialist Party (PS) and François Fillon of The Republicans (LR), is considering the deep crisis of the European Union (EU) and growing social anger. French and international banks are analyzing the possibility of a French exit from the EU and the euro, if Marine Le Pen of the neo-fascist National Front (FN) wins. And protests are erupting against police killings and sexual assaults that the PS, despite the state of emergency, no longer dares to ban.

Ruling circles, feeling increasingly at sea and concerned by polls showing that two-thirds of the French population believes the class struggle is a daily reality, want the political establishment to make a symbolic gesture, to appear to take popular sentiment into account.

Yesterday, in his editorial on the debate for Libération titled ‘Revolt,’ Laurent Joffrin complained of “hard times for financial capitalism.” France, he said, is “a worried country, on edge, explosive, that is getting tired of reasonable solutions.” He went on to welcome the fact that the less prominent candidates expressed “something profound: a revolt against injustice, the rejection of a ruling class that has let money be king.”

Expressions of opposition in the debate were hypocritical and empty, however, insofar as they came primarily from long-time, trusted allies of the PS such as Philippe Poutou of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) or Nathalie Arthaud of Workers Struggle (LO). All the so-called “little candidates” cut their deals with the major parties to obtain the 500 signatures of elected officials required by anti-democratic electoral laws in order to present a presidential candidate.

Their positions offer nothing to the working class, and the debate moved within extremely narrow limits. No candidate in the debate, “little” or otherwise, raised the danger of a major war posed by NATO’s threats against Russia and Syria, and heightened by the recent propositions of candidates Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélenchon to bring back the draft. No one proposed, either, to end the ongoing state of emergency imposed by the PS.

Nevertheless, Joffrin’s comments indicate why limited and hypocritical discussions of war and social inequality emerged in this tightly controlled debate.

Macron, the candidate supported by President François Hollande and his PS government, attacked Le Pen, declaring: “What you are proposing, with the exit from the euro, it’s cutting purchasing power, destroying jobs, and economic war! You are proposing nationalism, and nationalism, that means war!” Le Pen responded that Macron’s statements were just “tired old nonsense.”

Poutou, a union bureaucrat at the Ford factory in Blanquefort whose party emerged from the post-1968 student movement as a classic example of a petty-bourgeois organization, played the role of the “working class” candidate that has netted him media coverage. Wearing a T-shirt, he refused to be photographed with the other candidates and indicated his solidarity with LO’s Arthaud: “They try to limit us to the role of a little candidate who represents nothing and should not be here, but we are the only ones to have real jobs...”

Similarly, Arthaud postured as a fighter for working people, calling for “consciousness, confrontation, combat and social struggle because nothing will ever be given to us. It’s a vote of conscience and militancy.” She later added, pessimistically, that things are getting “harder, but we will get nothing without that.”

The hypocrisy involved in these statements is staggering. Firstly, all of these candidates, the NPA and LO no less than Macron and Le Pen, are on record as supporting imperialist wars in Libya, Syria, and Eastern Europe. As Macron takes Le Pen to task for promoting nationalism and thus heightening the danger of war, he and Mélenchon are demanding a return of the draft, to prepare the French army for war. Macron justified his call for the draft by declaring that we are living in an “epoch in international relations in which war is again a possible outcome of politics.”

As for LO and the NPA, these are organizations that have endorsed every trade union sell-out of workers struggles in France, and whose co-thinkers in Greece, in the Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government, are imposing deep EU austerity on the working class.

Asked about the significance of Europe and the euro, Arthaud light-mindedly and nationalistically dismissed the issue of Europe as a “diversion,” even as conflicts within Europe surge amid Brexit. “If you’re badly paid, be it in francs [the former French national currency] or in euros, you’re still badly paid,” she declared.

What came to predominate in the debate was nationalism and differences over foreign policy, as concern on the fate of the euro pushes Le Pen at least temporarily on the back foot, and candidates such as Mélenchon or Le Pen tack away from their previous anti-EU policies.

After Le Pen has backed away from pledges to take France out of the euro, instead proposing to hold a referendum on whether to leave the EU and the euro if she is elected, Fillon attacked her: “As we all know that an immense majority of French people does not want to abandon the European currency. This means in reality that Mrs. Le Pen has no economic policy, as her economic policy will collapse the minute that the French people take a position on the exit from the European currency.”

At the same time, there were growing xenophobic attacks from all sides of the debate. When right-wing nationalist candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan denounced workers posted in France from abroad for supposedly stealing French workers’ jobs, he obtained support from Mélenchon, who issued a nationalist rant against foreign workers. Having already accused them of “stealing French workers’ jobs”' last year, Mélenchon accused them this year of “destroying our social legal system,” and added: “If I’m elected, there will be no more posted work.”

The outcome of this debate underscores the bankruptcy of the entire political establishment in France. Aware and afraid of a coming social explosion of the working class, they themselves are firmly committed to the drive to war and escalating attacks on democratic rights.

Syria’s alleged gas attack: An imperialist provocation

Bill Van Auken

The Trump administration publicly responded to unsubstantiated allegations that forces loyal to the government of President Bashar al-Assad bore responsibility for a chemical attack in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province with the threat of a new escalation of the American intervention in the war-ravaged Middle Eastern country.

Speaking alongside one of Washington’s favorite Arab puppet rulers, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, during a joint news conference at the White House, Trump declared that the “heinous actions by the Assad regime cannot be tolerated” and had “crossed a lot of lines for me.” While condemning his predecessor, Barack Obama, for failing to carry through on a threat to intervene militarily in Syria over alleged chemical weapons attacks in 2013, Trump declared “I now have the responsibility,” adding that his “attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, meanwhile, issued an even more direct threat of unilateral US military action in the run-up to an anticipated Russian veto of a provocative Western-backed resolution that could serve as a fig leaf for aggression against Syria. “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” she said.

Fourteen years after the US invaded Iraq, turning that country and much of the Middle East into a charnel house, Washington is at it again, employing a strikingly similar pretext for imperialist aggression.

Once again, the US and world public is being bombarded with unsubstantiated claims about “weapons of mass destruction” allegedly employed by an oppressed former colonial country, mixed with crocodile tears and feigned moral outrage from a government responsible for more civilian deaths and war crimes than any regime since the fall of the Nazi Third Reich.

The pretext for this orchestrated campaign has all the earmarks of an imperialist provocation planned and executed by the Central Intelligence Agency and allied Western secret services with the aim of shifting US policy in relation to Syria.

First, there is the question of motive. Who benefits from such a crime? Clearly, it is not the Assad regime, which, with the aid of Russia and Iran, has largely vanquished the Islamist “rebels” that were armed, financed and trained by the CIA and Washington’s regional allies in the bloody six-year-long war for regime change. The government now rules over 80 percent of the country, including all of its major cities, with the Islamists’ hold reduced to largely rural areas of Idlib province. Under conditions in which the Trump administration had been signaling a shift in focus from toppling Assad to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), why would Damascus carry out such a provocative attack?

The CIA-backed “rebels” themselves, however—along with their patrons in the US military and intelligence apparatus—have every interest in staging such a provocation as a means of thwarting the government’s consolidation of its rule throughout Syria. Moreover, numerous investigations, including by the UN’s own chemical disarmament agency, have made it clear that these forces, dominated by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, the Al Nusra Front, have carried out similar attacks using both chlorine and sarin gas, which they have received from their regional backers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and which they themselves have proven capable of manufacturing.

Then there is the issue of timing. The alleged gas attack was launched Tuesday morning, coinciding with the opening in Brussels of a European Union-sponsored “Conference on Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region,” which was to review proposals for “political transition” in Syria as well as Europe’s intervention in the potentially lucrative reconstruction of the ravaged country. The alleged chemical attack set the stage for renewed demands for regime change and criticism of the Trump administration for suggesting that the ouster of Assad was no longer a priority.

There is a definite pattern here. The last time that Washington and its allies accused the Assad regime of a major chemical weapons attack and nearly launched a full-scale war on that pretext was in August 2013. That alleged attack, which subsequent revelations exposed as a “rebel” provocation carried out with the help of Turkish intelligence, was launched on the very day that UN weapons inspectors arrived in Damascus.

The most telling aspect of the entire affair, however, is the extraordinary coordination of the entire corporate media in the launching of a full-throated campaign for military action before the basic facts of the incident were even known, much less a serious investigation conducted. It seemed that even before the alleged incident in Syria was reported, all of the major newspaper editors and columnists as well as the television news commentators had received the same talking points.

None of them, of course, bothered to inform their readers and viewers that the sole sources of the information they retailed as good coin consisted of Al Qaeda-connected “activists” in Syria along with US intelligence and military officials pushing for war.

Leading the pack, as usual, was the New York Times, which carried the headline “Chemical Attack on Syrians Ignites World’s Outrage.” What evidence there is of such “outrage,” outside of the world of intelligence agencies, state officials and their media hacks was not clear. Nor, for that matter, was there any explanation for the selective character of this “outrage.”

It is noteworthy that this moral outpouring came just a day after Trump gave the red carpet treatment to Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the butcher of Cairo, who slaughtered 1,000 unarmed demonstrators in a single day. Nor, for that matter, did the Times evince any such “outrage” over the 200 Iraqi civilians killed in a single US bombing raid in Mosul last month, or the hundreds if not thousands more buried alive by US bombs and missiles dropped on schools, mosques and homes in Syria itself, not to mention in Yemen.

There are certain bylines that appear on such articles that brand them as the product of direct collaboration with US intelligence. In this case, it was that of Anne Barnard, who has provided such services over the entire course of the US-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria. Her work was supplemented by that of Thomas Friedman, who has backed every US imperialist intervention over the course of over a quarter century. He offers a modest proposal for the “partition of Syria” and the creation of “protected” zones enforced by the US military. “It won’t be pretty or easy,” he allows, noting reassuringly that the US maintained 400,000 troops in Europe during the Cold War.

What is also strikingly uniform in the media propaganda campaign over the events in Syria is the across-the-board indictment of Iran and Russia as equally culpable in the alleged chemical attack. The Times editorial charged that the attack speaks to Assad’s “depravity and that of his enablers, especially Russia and Iran.”

A Washington Post editorial insisted: “Now it is Mr. Trump’s turn to decide whether to stand up to Mr. Assad and his Iranian and Russian sponsors.”

The aim is clear. The murky events in Syria are to be exploited in order to shift the bitter internal debate on foreign policy within the US ruling establishment. The intention is to bring the Trump administration into line with the predominant tendency within the US military and intelligence apparatus which is pushing for an uninterrupted buildup to military confrontation with both Iran and Russia.

That these efforts are having their desired effect found concrete expression Wednesday not only in Trump’s remarks on Syria, but also in the removal of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s fascistic chief strategist, from the principals committee of the National Security Council. The ouster of the ideological architect of Trump’s “America first” right-wing nationalist demagogy was reportedly dictated by Gen. H.R. McMaster, the president’s new national security adviser, an active duty officer who speaks for the Pentagon. Faced with intractable social and political crises at home, Trump, like his predecessors, appears to be turning toward war abroad.

The working class in both the US and internationally must take these developments, along with the CIA provocation in Syria and its accompanying media propaganda campaign, as a deadly serious warning. It faces the threat of being dragged not only into a renewed bloodbath in the Middle East, but a far more dangerous conflagration involving the world’s two major nuclear powers.