Corruption and Poverty in Bulgaria

Louis Proyect

One of the more important developments cinematically over the past decade has been the emergence of social criticism films in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Generally, the films focus on the continuation of elite privileges under new neoliberal regimes. One of the more remarkable Russian films is Yury Bykov’s “The Fool” that I reviewed for CounterPunch in 2015 and that thankfully can now be seen on Youtube. The fool is a plumber named Dima studying construction engineering who after seeing cracks in the building where he works and lives concludes that they can widen to the point of bringing down the building over the heads of everybody within it. When he brings the emergency to the attention of local officials who don’t want to spend a penny on evacuating the tenants, they launch a vendetta to crush him and cover up their shady deals that led to the defects in the first place.

Bykov has described his film as a treatment of the central dilemma facing his country: conscience versus survival. Now playing at the Film Forum in New York is a Bulgarian film titled “Glory” that is closely related to Bykov’s film thematically. Like Nima, Tzanko Petrov (Stefan Denolyubov) is a humble worker—a railway lineman who we first see setting his watch meticulously to a radio announcement before going off to work. This is important because linemen must be aware of the exact time to the second to avert oncoming trains.

After synchronizing his watch, Petkov meets up with his co-workers on the railroad tracks they are assigned to maintain. Walking a few dozen or so yards ahead of them, he stumbles across a most remarkable find: millions of dollars in Bulgarian currency strewn across the tracks—its origin unknown. Unlike the rest of his crew or most Bulgarians for that matter, Petkov thought the natural thing to do was contact the police.

His altruistic act turned him into an instant celebrity, something that the state railway corporation—the Bulgarian Amtrak in effect—decided to turn to its advantage. The head of its PR department is a woman named Julia Staykova (Margita Gosheva) who is the quintessential post-Communist hustler. Her main interest is to make an amalgam of this most unusual worker’s idealistic behavior with that of the crooked top executives she serves.

When she goes out with a cameraman to interview Petkov, she is disconcerted to learn that he is a very bad stutterer. Her plans to turn him into a photogenic icon are thwarted by this as well as his overgrown beard that she urges him to trim. She is also not very happy with his shabby clothing. Why couldn’t this hero be more attentive to superficial details? When Staykova returns to her office, she and her underlings laugh at a tape of the interview. They agree with her boss that his stuttering practically outweighs his strengths as a human being but they are stuck with him anyhow.

Next on the PR agenda is to stage a ceremony where Petkov will receive some meaningless awards. Before the cameras roll, he sits next to the director of the railway company who will bestow the awards. Petkov cannot resist letting him in on what the average worker thinks, at least an honest one. He asks why the workers are owed back pay and when will they receive it. He also offers information about theft of railway resources by employees such as selling purloined locomotive diesel fuel on the black market. The director squirms uncomfortably waiting for the ceremony to begin. Where did Petkov get the nerve to bring up such nettlesome questions? Didn’t he understand that when it comes to conscience versus survival, it is survival that must be victorious?

At part of the ceremony, Petkov is to receive a new watch to replace his Slava (Glory), a keepsake from his father whose dedication is engraved on the back of the dial and one he has relied on for his work as a lineman. The Slava watch-making factory was established in the Soviet Union in 1924 and perhaps might be a symbol of the proletarian solidarity that men and women like Petkov foolishly still believe in.

Petkov grudgingly puts his watch in Staykova’s care while the director presents him with a cheap, brand-new watch that does not even keep accurate time. Meanwhile, Staykova misplaces the watch and keeps putting Petkov off as he grows increasingly worried over the possible loss of an heirloom that also has such practical value. The clash eventually spills over into the corruption issues that Petkov raised with the director to the point of turning him into a victim of forces deeply rooted in the Bulgarian bureaucratic capitalist machine dedicated to survival rather than conscience.

“Glory” is a tremendous film and likely to make it my best of 2017 feature films. It is also one that puts a spotlight on the discontent that is ripping apart the fabric of eastern Europe society. In 2013, protestors blockaded the Bulgarian parliament in protest of the corruption that “Glory” dramatized. The NY Times reported:

Metodi Litsev, 34, who has participated in the protests, compared them to clashes in Turkey and the Occupy movement, saying, “If there weren’t protests in Taksim or Wall Street, we might not have found the moral example to seek our emancipation.”

As it happens, this protest movement ebbed just as it has in the USA. Elections were held a couple of weeks ago that resulted in a victory for the incumbent GERB party (“Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria”) that is roughly equivalent to the party in power in Kiev and that stepped down in 2013 because of the street protests. Its leader is one Boyko Borisov, a former Communist whose claim to fame is mastery of the martial arts and playing soccer. Historically, many wrestlers, martial arts experts and secret agents with such skills had been pampered under Communism. Once the system collapsed, they became unemployed just like samurai warriors during the Meiji Restoration. Many like Borisov became politicians while others went to work for organized crime. As GERB’s leader, Borisov emphasized the need to end corruption in Bulgaria. Journalists have dismissed this as purely for show since he has been linked both to the Bulgarian mafia and white-collar criminals like the railway chief in “Glory”.

How bad is corruption and poverty in Bulgaria? Bad enough to drive ten men to self-immolation in 2013 as the protest movement was at its height, just like the Tunisian fruit vendor Tarek Bouazizi in January 2011. Vice Magazine reported on the self-immolation epidemic in 2013 :

Some say the inspiration for it all was a 36-year-old photographer named Plamen Goranov, who burned himself on February 20 in front of City Hall in Varna, a resort city on the country’s Black Sea coast. According to investigative journalists, Varna’s commerce is controlled by a business group called TIM, which the former US ambassador to Bulgaria, James Pardew, accused of racketeering, prostitution, and extortion in a 2005 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. TIM, he said, was the “up-and-coming star of Bulgaria’s organized crime.” Plamen set himself on fire to protest TIM’s alleged relationship with Varna’s mayor, Kiril “Kiro” Yordanov. Before he set his body aflame, he propped up a sign demanding the “resignation of Kiro and all the city council by 5 PM.”

Can Bulgaria’s Socialist Party bring such misery to an end? This party emerged out the country’s ruling Communist Party that renamed and remodeled itself after the system collapsed in 1989. Whether it has much to do with Scandinavian type social democracy is open to question. Most Bulgarians would probably liken it to Greece’s Syriza.

Then there is Bulgaria’s Donald Trump, a businessman named Veselin Mareshki. Like GERB, he represents himself as an enemy of corruption. He calls his new party Will, maybe having Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” in the back of his mind. The NY Times described him as “a blunt-talking anvil of a populist who preaches patriotism, strict immigration controls, friendlier relations with Moscow and, above all, the need to ‘sweep away the garbage’ of a corrupt political establishment.”

If I were a Bulgarian, I’d shy away from GERB, the former Stalinist party and their Donald Trump. What’s the alternative? I’d say young people who exemplify the values of the fictional hero of “Glory” as well as the directors of that film.

If Assad Must Go, So Must All The Warmongers

Irwin Jerome

The real truth revealed by the chemical weapon tragedy in Syria’s Idlib Province is that as the world continues to tear itself asunder and make a mockery of the United Nation’s concept of international law and the sovereign rights of nations – supposedly intended to protect them from such unprovoked, preemptive attacks by rogue countries like the United States and its unilateral 59 Tomahawk cruise missile attack – is that so much acrimony and mistrust now exists to the point that the world teeters all the more dangerously on the edge of a potential World War III?

In the critical first days of the chemical weapon tragedy and the United States loose cannon/lone wolf response, the world’s corporate media in the West especially did virtually nothing to get at the real truth about what really caused this tragedy. Instead it mostly offered up little more than propaganda, bogus allegations and glowing accolades about President Trump’s showing his “presidential timber” as a warrior-leader, who now has proven himself capable of taking swift, decisive action against what the corporate media described as a chemical attack committed by Assad and his Government against innocent Syrian civilians and especially innocent, helpless children and babies. Historically, it was yet another classic false flag Vietnam ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ Resolution, Iraq ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ moment in time when Deep State Fifth Columnists – who always are gathered in the shadows of whatever geopolitical event, once again sought, as they always do – mobilize – through sabotage, disinformation, espionage or outright aggression with whatever external military forces – any excuse to foment another new war and commit yet another unprovoked attack against whatever country upon which it has imperial designs.

But if Assad and his family now must go for his/their alleged guilt in the recent chemical weapon attack in Idlib Province, then so must go the whole lot of world leaders and their families of rogues and criminals who are complicit in the horrendous reality of so much that has been the history of the world, especially during the last century up to the present day. If the Assad’s now must go for the part they play in all this than so should: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Merkel, the Saudi Royal Family and a host of lesser lap dog war monger leader-followers in countries throughout the world.

In short, the world desperately needs a completely new make-over from top to bottom and regime changes throughout its length and breadth. Otherwise, the same Fifth Column of the Deep State and its multitude of: neo-conservative/alt-right plotters, corporate media propagandists, arms merchants and manufacturers of the materials of war, Wall Street financiers and speculators will only continue to endlessly fan the flames war, death and destruction in the Middle East and everywhere else as they have for countless decades, regardless of the murders of however many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, the utter devastation of whole countries and subsequent tsunami waves of refugees and immigrants who continue to sweep throughout every country in the world, creating endless political chaos and ideological backlash. To all those who relish creating such a dark, obscenely-evil world, rather than one based upon light, peace and tranquility, the world is considered nothing more than an abstract algorithm to be endlessly manipulated for their own advantage.

So to say, “Assad Must Go!”, is to say nothing significant will ever change for the better any more than it did when Saddam Hussein, Moammer Gadhafi, Osama Bin Laden and a host of other mad men who were removed and eliminated also finally “Had To Go!”. One could argue that it instead only makes world events so much more worse because such mad men represent nothing more than the tip of an iceberg of what is constantly going on everywhere in the world.

The corporate media’s subterfuge, spin and hype has run riot over this latest chemical weapon tragedy in Syria. To try to make sense of it all is a crazy maker of Orwellian doublespeak of epic proportions. Some contend the whole problem began when President Trump received a fraudulent briefing on the Syrian event that some say originated from one Shajul Islam, a British-accused terrorist who was previously put on trial in the UK for terrorism offences and kidnapping, yet mysteriously was allowed to travel to Syria to join al-Qaeda’s fight to overthrow Assad where he is affiliated with a British Intelligence project, known as the White Helmets, who are funded by the British Foreign Office and USAID, and are the ones who provided the graphic images of the victims of the Idlib attack that were shown “as evidence” to the UN Security Council and Donald Trump.

British journalist Peter Hitchens telling description of the terrorist-controlled site of the Idlib Province attack immediately calls into question the source of such questionable ‘evidence’ when he commented, “No independent Western journalist could go there. He or she would be kidnapped or killed within hours. Any report which came from that region is filtered through people who you never see. These are groups like Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, alias the al-Nustra Front, alias al-Qaeda, the Syrian ‘opposition’ which Britain and the U.S. have been supporting for years…the same movement which destroyed the Manhatten Twin Towers.”

Yet U.S. military authorities, the CIA intelligence network and British MI5 already knew full-well before Trump’s ordered attack that the chemical weapons in question came not from the Assad government’s air force but from the warehouse/ammunition depot of an al-Qaeda based terrorist group that operated in the region. And the White Helmets only operate in terrorist-controlled areas, as they are in fact members of al-Qaeda. So, it begs the question who in the Deep State is behind the scenes mouthing who or what to say and do in all this? Is it Trump and his administration dictating to the generals and military what to say and do or is it the other way around? if President Trump was either lied to or kept ignorant of these facts by individuals in his administration or those within his national security/intelligence chain of command they should now all be exposed, fired from whatever their current position, criminally-charged with war crimes against humanity and, perhaps, even executed for treason?

Other geopolitical analysts even go so far as to say that the sources President Trump used to claim Syrian culpability for the chemical weapon attack began with the British, exclusively, and its corporate media who are the same Fifth Columnists who, for a multitude of nefarious reasons, have been coordinating an international attack on Trump’s Presidency in an effort to destroy any positive potential for healthy, non-violent relationships with Russia and China so as to rebuild the U.S. and world economy. However, Trump is making the same mistake in Syria as President Bush did in Iraq when he only listened to those British and American Intelligence advisors who were/are clearly bent again on a war for which there is no compelling reason, the unintended consequences of which are certain to be catastrophic.

The Rupert Murdoch war propaganda machine likewise has gone into high gear over Syria, just as its atrocious Sun newspaper in the UK and Sydney, Australia’s Daily Telegraph attacked anyone who questioned the corporate media’s Big Lie. During the Iraq War Murdoch’s media labeled all those who opposed it as scum and traitors, while labeling all those who now question the Assad/Syrian chemical attack spin as sick trolls. The British & Australian governments, in turn, initially cheered Trump after his cruise missile attack and applauded him for resorting to war when they had previously criticized Trump when he attempted to make peace overtures to Russia and China. Yet others go so far as to suggest that Trump was intentionally ‘played’ and set up as the ‘fall guy’ by both al-Qaeda and the British Royal Family itself for the near world holocaust that might have occurred and still could because of Trump’s cruise missile attack. It’s very curious that this all occurred on the eve of President Trump’s historic meeting with China’s Xi JinPing that many had hoped would lead to a new and peaceful paradigm for economic and scientific progress in the world beyond all the mindless, senseless wars.

By contrast, the level of political acrimony in the world continues to escalate beyond anything that has come before. Progressives and peace activists are constantly ridiculed and made caricatures of by the corporate and social media. Trump, like the dupe that he is, beyond his war-mongering in Syria, continues to play into the hands of alt-right Fifth Columnists when he declares, like the bully that he is, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will, too!”

So many political analysts and pundits now wonder, “How has the world come to all this?” For starts, it has come to all this because ever since the Fifth Columnists in the Democratic Party, like Hillary Clinton, Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland and other hardliner neo-conservatives in the Obama Administration, committed their violent intervention in the civil war of Libya, and then further enflamed the geopolitical scene by their covert interventions with a Nazi movement that led to a violent coup in the Ukraine. Almost all the pro-interventionist editorial pages in the United States corporate media since Trump’s attack against Syria have similarly supported his interventionist actions, suggesting that the actions he took showed that he finally had “become president”, as if such despicable actions are what makes a real man of a president. Editorials in such major U.S. papers as the: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Washington Post, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times and Denver Post heralded Trump’s preemptive attack against Syria. Even normally progressive editorials like the San Jose Mercury News and LA Times have been ambiguous about their moral and geopolitical position on Trump’s attack, while the New York Times even couched Trump’s attack in terms of making one “feel some sense of emotional satisfaction…and feeling good as a result of the attack”. The Pittsburg Post Gazette again even went so far as to refer to Syria and North Korea together as Russia and China’s moderate little proxies. While various pundits in the U.S. corporate media actually waxed poetically about the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles that Trump hurled at Syria’s sovereign territory.

One in particular, MSNBC’s breaking news anchor Brian Williams bumped MSNBC Rachel Maddow to report Trump’s attack on Syria. Invoking a line from the song “First We Take Manhatten”, by the late Canadian poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, Williams described the Tomahawk cruise missiles as they lifted off of the decks of the U.S. warships, as “beautiful pictures in the night”. His description of the cruise missiles seemed almost orgasmic if not religious. It was a reminder of something Leonard Cohen himself once said about that song when he revealed its meaning in an interview. Cohen commented, “I think it means exactly what it says. It is a terrorist song…There’s something about terrorism that I’ve always admired; the fact that there are no alibis or no compromises. That position is always attractive”.

Brian Williams and Leonard Cohen’s remarks call to mind a particular scene from the 1970 sci-fi movie “Planet of the Apes” that involved an Alpha-Omega Bomb; a large atomic bomb that was designated as a “Doomsday Bomb” to be used only as a last result that the few remaining human survivors referred to as The Divine Bomb. It had been placed at the altar of what used to be St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the irradiated ruins of New York City. This ‘Divine Bomb’ was venerated by a subspecies of psychic mutant-humans who religiously safeguarded the missile and its operational launch system. The mutants believed they owed their very existence to this missile and worshipped it as a deity. They wore specifically designated latex masks to hide their grotesque features and only during their liturgical services to worship the bomb would they take off their masks to, “reveal their innermost selves unto their God”.

The implied suggestion is that what is being revealed here about the innermost nature of the United States as a whole – all its politicians, citizenry and violent history – by and large has demonstrated a constant fixated upon war since its very origins and probably won’t ever change until, in the end, it finally extinguishes itself and, in the process, unfortunately, possibly the entire world at the same time. As is commonly stated in many news reports and history books it simply is a very violent and violence-prone society that would rather happily spend the bulk of its national GDP and life blood of its people upon war materials, the conducting of war, and the funding of other societies in the world – like Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and others – who practice the same ideology, rather than on other more peaceful, non-violent, countries and solutions that would otherwise lead to an entirely different, more tranquil world and human being way of life.

How The Insurgencies In Middle East Are Not Terrorism?

Nauman Sadiq

The definition of the term “terrorism” has been deliberately left undefined by the Western powers to use it as a catch-all pretext to justify their interventionist policy in the energy-rich Islamic countries. Depending on context, “terrorism” can mean two markedly distinct phenomena: that are, religious extremism or militancy.

If terrorism is understood as religious extremism, then that is a cultural mindset and one cannot possibly hope to transform cultures through the means of war and military interventions; if anything, war will further radicalize the society.

However, by terrorism, if the Western powers mean militancy, then tamping down on militancy and violence through the means of war does makes sense because a policy of disarmament and de-weaponization can be subsequently pursued in the occupied territories.

That being understood that the Western powers aim to eradicate militancy through wars, but then a question arises that who were the Libyan and Syrian so-called “rebels” who were, and still are, being supported by the Western powers in their purported wars of “liberation” of those hapless countries? Are they not armed to the teeth militants?

Notwithstanding, it can be argued that war and militancy are only means to an end and it’s the objectives and goals that determine whether such wars are just or unjust. No-one can dispute this assertion that the notions of “just wars” and “good militants” do exist in the vocabulary; empirically speaking, however, after witnessing the instability, violence and utter chaos and anarchy in the war-ravaged countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen, the onus lies on any “liberal interventionist” to prove beyond doubt that the wars and militants that he justifies and upholds are indeed just and good.

In political science, the devil always lies in the definitions of the terms that we employ. For instance: how do you define a terrorist or a militant? In order to understand this we need to identify the core of a “militant,” that what essential feature distinguishes him from the rest?

A militant is basically an armed and violent individual who carries out subversive activities against the state. That being understood, now we need to examine the concept of “violence.” Is it violence per se that is wrong, or does some kind of justifiable violence exists?

In the contemporary politics, I take the view, on empirical grounds, that all kinds of violence is essentially wrong; because the ends (goals) for which such violence is often employed are seldom right and elusive at best. Although democracy and liberal ideals are cherished goals but such goals can only be accomplished through peaceful means; expecting from armed and violent militants to bring about democratic reform is naïve and preposterous.

The Western mainstream media and its neoliberal constituents, however, take a different view. According to them, there are two distinct kinds of violence: justifiable and unjustifiable. When a militant resorts to violence for the secular and nationalist goals, such as “bringing democracy” to Libya and Syria, the misinformed neoliberals enthusiastically exhort such form of violence.

However, if such militants later turn out to be Islamic jihadists, like the Misrata militia and Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, or the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham in Syria, the credulous neoliberals, who have been misguided by the mainstream narrative, promptly make a volte-face and label them as “terrorists.”

More to the point, there is a big difference between an anarchist and a nihilist: an anarchist believes in something and wants to change the status quo in the favor of that belief, while a nihilist believes is nothing and considers life to be meaningless.

Similarly, there is also a not-so-subtle difference between a terrorist and an insurgent: an Islamic insurgent believes in something and wants to enforce that agenda in the insurgency-hit regions, while a terrorist is just a bloodthirsty lunatic who is hell-bent on causing death and destruction. The distinguishing feature between the two is that an insurgent has well defined objectives and territorial ambitions, while a terrorist is basically motivated by the spirit of revenge and the goal of causing widespread fear.

The phenomena of terrorism is that which threatened the Western countries between 2001 to 2005 when some of the most audacious terrorist acts were carried out by al-Qaeda against the Western targets like the 9/11 tragedy, the Madrid bombing in 2004 and the London bombing in 2005; or the terrorist acts committed by the Islamic State in Europe in the last couple of years; those acts were primarily the result of intelligence failure on the part of the Western intelligence agencies.

However, the phenomena which is currently threatening the Islamic countries is not terrorism, as such, but Islamic insurgencies. Excluding al Qaeda Central which is a known transnational terrorist organization, all the regional militant groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, al Shabab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, and even some of the ideological affiliates of al Qaeda and Islamic State, like Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan, Sinai and Libya which have no organizational and operational association with al Qaeda Central or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, respectively, are not terror groups, as such, but Islamic insurgents who are fighting for the goal of enforcing Sharia in their respective areas of operations; like their progenitor, the Salafist State of Saudi Arabia.

Notwithstanding, after invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and when the American “nation-building” projects failed in those hapless countries, the US policymakers immediately realized that they were facing large-scale and popularly-rooted insurgencies against foreign occupation; consequently, the occupying military altered its CT (counter-terrorism) approach in the favor of a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy.

A COIN strategy is essentially different from a CT approach and it also involves dialogue, negotiations and political settlements, alongside the coercive tactics of law enforcement and military and paramilitary operations on a limited scale.

The goals for which Islamic insurgents have been fighting in the insurgency-wracked regions are irrelevant for the debate at hand; it can be argued, however, that if some of the closest Western allies in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, have already enforced Sharia as part of their conservative legal systems and when beheadings, amputations of limbs and flogging of criminals are a routine in Saudi Arabia, then what is the basis for the US declaration of war against Islamic insurgents in the Middle East who are erroneously but deliberately labeled as “terrorists” by the Western mainstream media to manufacture consent for the Western military presence and interventions in the energy-rich region under the pretext of the so-called “war on terror”?

Regardless, the root factors that are primarily responsible for spawning militancy and insurgency anywhere in the world is not religion but socio-economics, ethnic differences, marginalization of disenfranchised ethno-linguistic and ethno-religious groups and the ensuing conflicts; socio-cultural backwardness of the affected regions, and the weak central control of the impoverished developing states over their remote rural and tribal areas.

Additionally, if we take a cursory look at some of the worst insurgency-plagued regions in the Middle East, deliberate funding, training and arming of certain militant groups by regional and global powers for their strategic interests has played the key role.

Back in the ‘80s, during the Soviet-Afghan war, the Afghan so-called “mujahideen” did not spring up spontaneously out of nowhere; the Western powers, with the help of Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, trained and armed those “freedom fighters” against their archrival, the Soviet Union. Those very same Afghan “mujahideen” later mutated into the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Similarly, during the Libyan and Syrian uprisings, the Western powers, with the help of their regional client states, once again trained and armed Islamic jihadists and tribal militiamen against the hostile regimes of Qaddafi and Bashar al Assad. And isn’t it ironic that those very same “moderate rebels” later transformed into Ansar al Sharia, al Nusra Front and the Islamic State?

While formulating their security policies, military strategists generally draw a distinction between intentions and capability of adversary, and they always prepare for the latter. Similarly, the ideology of militants, whether it’s ethno-religious or ethno-nationalist, only has a tangential importance; it’s their capability: that is, their funding, training and arming, that decides the strength and success of a militant organization.

Pompeo, Power And WikiLeaks

Binoy Kampmark

“Vested interests deflect from the facts that WikiLeaks publishes by demonizing its brave staff and me.”

Julian Assange, The Washington Post, Apr 11, 2017.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s current director, Mike Pompeo, has a view of history much like that of any bureaucrat as understood by the great sociologist Max Weber. The essential, fundamental purpose of bureaucracy is a rationale to manufacture and keep secrets. Transparency and accountability are its enemies. Those who challenge that particular order are, by definition, defilers and dangerous contrarians.

On Thursday, April 13, Pompeo was entertained by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an opportunity of sorts to sound off on a range of points. Pompeo’s theme is unmistakeable, opening up with a discussion about Philip Agee’s “advocacy” as a founding member of CounterSpy, which called in 1973 for the outing of CIA undercover operatives.

Richard Welch, a CIA station chief working in Athens and identified in a September 1974 issue of CounterSpy, was duly deemed a victim of Agee’s stance.  “When he got out of his car to open the gate in front of his house, Richard Welch was assassinated by a Greek terrorist cell.”

Agee is then the mint and mould for the current WikiLeaks agenda, deemed by Pompeo to be compromised in “the harm they inflict on the US institutions and personnel”.  What bothers Pompeo is their zeal, their determination, even romance, those self-touted “heroes above the law, saviours of our free and open society.”

Pompeo’s methods are blunt, and shower generous disdain on the notion that free speech protections should extend to such an organisation as WikiLeaks.  “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

This is the language of fear about the fifth columnist, that WikiLeaks is mimicking the CIA, even surpassing it.  (Such flattery!)  The organisation “encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence.”  Gravely, claims the CIA director, “It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information.”  Never mind what that information actually revealed.

For the director’s myopic appraisal of the world, only the select should be in a position to steal.  “We steal secrets from our foreign adversaries, hostile entities and terrorist organizations. And we’re damn proud of it.”

These words are hardly going to fluster Assange, though they have provided the main front man of WikiLeaks food for thought about what individuals like Pompeo really think about democratic virtue, given the continuous insistence by US officials that they keep the sacred flame of liberty alive the world over.  The very defender of the US Republic is willing to ignore a fundamental feature of that Republic’s existence: the need for public debate about the limits of power.

Assange is aware of this, noting how the “American idea”, or the United States as “idea” throbs within his mind and body. It is precisely that idea that needs conservation, even purification.  What Pompeo is really bothered about is how similar the intelligence goal is for an organisation charged with the task of dealing in secrets, be it their theft and exposure, or their protection.

What matters in such information environments, and notably the one so currently crowded by a noisy battle between digital rabblerousers and orthodox followers of the closed society, is where they fit in holding the powerful accountable.  All positions ultimately turn on matters of power and how information is best wielded.

Assange uses his piece in the Washington Post not merely to rubuff the CIA’s position, but to reference the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

The motives, then, are “identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post – to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the US Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media.”

Assange also reminds readers of an old, proposed taxonomy on the issue of how the fourth estate might function in terms of accuracy and content with President Thomas Jefferson’s own proposal.  An editor might wish to “divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, ‘Truths.’  2nd, ‘Probabilities.’  3rd, ‘Possibilities.’  4th, ‘Lies.’  The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information.”

The modus operandi is significant here: the exposure of truths deemed inconvenient, complicating, disrupting.  Reduced to that dimension, Pompeo’s supposedly patriotic bile seems one of simple objection, an age old struggle between those who wish to know, and those who prefer to keep ignorance central to the argument.  The ever tantalisingly relevant point remains: Who is so entitled?

New Zealand government and opposition back US war in Syria

Tom Peters

New Zealand’s National Party government joined the chorus of US allies hailing President Donald Trump’s missile strike on Syria and beating the drum for increased US military intervention in the war-torn country.

Prime Minister Bill English told the media on April 7 the US decision to launch 59 cruise missiles against the Shayrat airfield was a “proportionate” response to Bashar al-Assad’s regime’s “chemical weapons” attack in Idlib. He said “we would consider” sending troops to Syria if a US request was made. The US actions increase the danger of a catastrophic war against not only Assad but his government’s allies, Iran and Russia.

Last week the Trump administration, joined by the Democrats and the corporate media, seized on video footage of children allegedly killed in the Idlib attack as the pretext for military action. The claims are unsubstantiated and dubious. The Assad regime, which is on the verge of defeating the US-backed “rebel” groups, has no motive for using chemical weapons.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully described the actions of the Assad regime as “outrageous” and “horrific,” adding: “It is critical that the international community emphatically demand an end to this violence, and that the Syrian government be held to account.”

The professions of horror and outrage, echoed throughout the media, are entirely hypocritical. Needless to say, there have been no similar statements about the victims of thousands of US and allied bombs in Iraq and Syria, or the slaughter of civilians by US and Iraqi troops in Mosul, which New Zealand’s government fully supports.

Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee revealed he was informed “an hour or two” in advance of the impending US missile attack. New Zealand is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance led by the US. The ruling elite has depended on its alliance with US imperialism, since the Second World War, to advance its own neo-colonial interests in the Pacific and throughout the world.

There are currently around 140 New Zealand soldiers stationed in Iraq, ostensibly in a non-combat capacity, training Iraqi forces. According to some reports—denied by the government—New Zealand Special Air Service (SAS) commandos have been involved in combat operations in Iraq.

New Zealand has also played an active role in the Afghanistan war, under both Labour and National Party-led governments. Prime Minister English has brushed aside recent revelations that an NZSAS raid on two defenceless Afghan villages in 2010 resulted in 21 civilian casualties, including the death of a three-year-old girl.

Opposition Labour Party leader Andrew Little echoed the government’s support for aggression against Syria, saying: “We cannot let the use of chemical weapons in violation of international law happen without consequence.” His only reservation was that any action “should comply with UN resolutions and we do not want a repeat of what happened in Iraq.”

In fact, the 1999–2008 Labour government supported the Bush administration’s war in Iraq by sending 60 New Zealand army engineers to assist the occupying forces.

Labour’s ally the Greens criticised the US airstrike for being “hasty” and “unilateral.” Its foreign affairs spokesman Kennedy Graham stated: “No wrong has ever been righted, no child has ever been protected and no conflict has ever been solved by launching missiles.” The same statement, however, made clear that the Greens would support a “multilateral” intervention approved by the United Nations. Graham attacked Russia and China for vetoing UN Security Council resolutions designed to pave the way for intervention in Syria.

There is widespread anti-war sentiment in the working class. A Facebook poll by TVNZ, asking whether New Zealand should join US action in Syria, found after the first four hours “3,429 had answered ‘no’ with just 336 saying ‘yes’.”

One comment on the poll referred to “the litany of lies” used by the US to start previous wars. The commenter, Frank, listed the Gulf of Tonkin attack used as a pretext for war in Vietnam, false reports of babies “thrown from incubators” in Kuwait in the lead-up to the first Gulf War in 1991, and fabricated claims of “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

On the other hand, the middle class pseudo-left organisations, orbiting the trade union bureaucracy, academia and the opposition parties, are increasingly open in their support for imperialist war.

Syrian Solidarity New Zealand, a pro-intervention group heavily promoted by the media, supported Trump’s missile strike. Its spokesman Ali Akil told Radio NZ the attack was “one step in the right direction six years late. On its own, it’s not really going to do anything. If it is followed up then it might have an effect.”

Syrian Solidarity NZ is also promoted by the pseudo-left groups Fightback, Socialist Aotearoa and the International Socialist Organisation.

None of these groups has published a statement denouncing Trump’s missile strike and the New Zealand government’s support for it. All of them have instead lined up behind the US war for regime change and threats of war against Russia.

Prominent Fightback member Daphne Lawless wrote on Facebook on April 7 that Trump “going after Assad would be like Joe Stalin going after Hitler—a good thing, on balance, done by a disgusting monster.”

She followed this absurd analogy by declaring that opponents of US intervention were “in the red-brown camp alongside the fascists and Vlad Putin. It remains to see what any Trumpist intervention in Syria would look like—it may be sensible and relatively successful like Libya or a clusterf..k like Iraq. But I doubt the father of the twin toddlers who were chlorine-gassed in Idlib by their own government is opposed to rolling the dice.”

One could hardly give a more explicit endorsement of US imperialism and denunciation of its opponents. For years the pseudo-lefts have falsely promoted the anti-Assad “rebels,” which are dominated by Al Qaeda-linked forces and funded by the US and its allies, as leaders of a “revolution.”

A genuine anti-war movement must be built based on internationalism and socialism, to stop the drive toward a Third World War. This can be done only in opposition to the entire capitalist political establishment, including the pseudo-left cheerleaders for imperialism.

US drops largest non-nuclear weapon on Afghanistan: A crime against humanity

Bill Van Auken & David North

The US military’s dropping of the largest non-nuclear weapon in its arsenal on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border Thursday is a crime against humanity. Even as the US government and the mass media were engaged in a lying propaganda campaign denouncing Syria and Russia for the use of poison gas, the American military was positioning the monstrous weapon—the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)—for use in Afghanistan.

While the Pentagon has released few details about the impact of the bombing, one can be certain that the total number of deaths resulting from the dropping of the MOAB is a massive multiple of the number killed in the alleged Syrian gas attack, assuming—and this is by no means certain—that the gas attack even took place.

Seventy-two years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American imperialism has proven once again that it is the most ruthless and criminal force on the planet.

The use of the MOAB has implications that extend beyond Afghanistan. It demonstrates—and this is, in fact, the principal aim of the attack—that there are no restraints on what the US military is prepared to do in pursuit of the interests of American imperialism.

In the context of mounting military tensions from the Korean peninsula to Syria to eastern Europe, the detonation of the massive bomb over Afghanistan represents a warning to Russia, Iran, North Korea and any country that dares to challenge Washington’s interests that there is no limit to the level of violence that US imperialism will unleash against them.

The weapon, officially known as the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, designated by the Pentagon as MOAB, or “mother of all bombs,” detonates nearly 20,000 pounds of explosives in mid-air, igniting the atmosphere and creating a massive concussion that obliterates everything within a radius of 1,000 yards. Its shock waves are capable of killing people within a radius of up to 1.7 miles. The impact of the explosion is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon for those caught in the target zone.

Designed for use in the “shock and awe” campaign unleashed with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, it was never utilized in combat over the course of 14 years. Even as the Pentagon carried out a war and occupation that claimed some one million Iraqi lives, the weapon was seen as too destructive to serve US strategic purposes.

Planning for the use of this horrific weapon in Afghanistan began under the Obama administration.

According to the Pentagon command, this genuine “weapon of mass destruction” was dropped for the first time on a remote district of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province in order to obliterate alleged caves and tunnels used by elements of the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

There is no immediate tactical, much less strategic, justification for the dropping of such a massive weapon on a small, poorly armed band of Islamist guerrillas—a Pakistan-based group that merely adopted the ISIS logo. Instead, the attack has all the earmarks of a calculated demonstration of American military might, the most terrifying one that could be staged short of a nuclear attack.

The bombing comes just one week after Washington carried out a naked act of military aggression against Syria, firing 59 cruise missiles into a government airbase and killing at least 15 Syrians, the majority of them civilians.

That attack was justified in the name of retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack blamed on the Syrian government. Damascus denied using any such weapon and, the endless lies of the Western media notwithstanding, all objective evidence points to a provocation staged by the CIA and the Al Qaeda-linked fighters that it supports in Syria.

Even as the US government and media churned out war propaganda over the fabricated “chemical weapons” attack in Syria, Washington was preparing to drop its largest non-nuclear weapon on Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has claimed that it “took every precaution to avoid civilian casualties with this strike.” Such promises, made repeatedly as the US military has killed millions across the Middle East, are utterly worthless. According to initial reports, there are several villages near the target area and, in all likelihood, civilian deaths and injuries will be massive.

At this point, no one knows what the real toll from this attack is, and, if left to the US media, no one will ever be told. The same editorialists for CIA house organs like the New York Times, and television news talking heads who have parroted the government’s denunciations of the Assad regime over the chemical weapons provocation in Syria, are completely indifferent to the loss of life caused by the massive US bomb dropped on Afghanistan.

Similarly, the media largely ignores the ongoing carnage inflicted by US bombs and missiles upon the people of Iraq and Syria. On Wednesday, a US airstrike in western Mosul killed 13 civilians while injuring another 17, most of them seriously. On the same day, a UN agency described the devastation wrought by the US siege of the Iraqi city, where hundreds, if not thousands, of men, women and children have died: “Homes are being destroyed. Schools and health centers are damaged and crucial public infrastructure including electricity and water stations are in ruins,” according to the report, with the destruction turning over 300,000 people into homeless refugees.

Meanwhile, in northern Syria, US warplanes carried out a “friendly fire” airstrike that killed 18 Kurdish fighters, while the Syrian government reported that a US bomb hit an Al Qaeda weapons depot, spreading chemical agents that may have killed hundreds of civilians. None of these incidents are given any significant coverage; much less do they provoke the moral outrage of those crying crocodile tears over the victims of the alleged chemical attack for which the Syrian government has been framed.

Who are these people to lecture anyone on “human rights,” much less to posture as opponents of “terrorism?” Once again, US imperialism has demonstrated to the world that it is bound by absolutely no constraints of international law, much less morality. Its violent and predatory actions on the world stage are a direct expression of the criminal and parasitic character of the American capitalist ruling class, personified in the loathsome figure of Donald Trump.

This latest atrocity comes fifteen and a half years after the US invaded Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban government, installing its own puppet regime and carrying out a bloody war and occupation ever since. Conservative estimates put the Afghan death toll since 2001 at some 200,000, with hundreds of thousands more wounded and millions turned into refugees. From the outset, the purpose of this intervention was to subjugate the Afghan people to semi-colonial American domination and to further US imperialism’s drive to assert its hegemony over the energy-rich region of Central Asia.

The timing of the bombing was significant. It came on the very eve of talks called for April 14 in Moscow on a peace settlement in Afghanistan. Russia has called the meeting together with China and Pakistan, with the participation of nine other countries, including India and Iran. The Taliban has indicated that it may join the talks. While invited, Washington failed to confirm whether it will attend, and US military commanders have made repeated baseless allegations of Russian support for the Taliban.

Whether an armed confrontation takes place between US and Russian warplanes in the skies over Syria, in a military strike against North Korea or in a provocation on Russia’s western borders, the next step from the weapon dropped on Afghanistan is the launching of nuclear missiles.

Workers and young people in the US and internationally must respond to these ominous events with utmost seriousness and a determination to stop US and global capitalism from engulfing the planet in a third, nuclear world war.

Protests must be organized across the United States and around the world against the latest US atrocities in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq as part of the struggle to build a mass antiwar movement based upon the working class and the program of socialist internationalism. At the very center of this struggle lies the need to build the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International—the only consistent political opponents of world imperialism—as the revolutionary leadership of the working class.

Spectrum of anti-hydrogen observed

Joe Mount 

The ALPHA-2 (Anti-Hydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) experiment has made the first observations comparing the light emitted from hydrogen atoms made of antimatter to the light emitted from hydrogen atoms made of ordinary matter. The results indicate that the underlying characteristics of matter and antimatter differ by at most 200 parts per trillion, a significant milestone for research into antimatter and particle physics in general.

ALPHA is one of many international scientific collaborations operating out of the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) laboratories near Geneva, Switzerland. It generates and traps atoms of anti-hydrogen, the antimatter counterpart of the simplest atom, hydrogen, to allow for precision comparisons between the two in order to more fully understand the underlying physics governing antimatter.

The ALPHA-2 apparatus at CERN. Credit: Maximilien Brice/CERN

The exact nature of antimatter is one of the outstanding questions in modern physics. Antimatter was first hypothesized by Paul Dirac in 1928 and worked through more carefully by Dirac and Robert Oppenheimer in 1931. They predicted that certain physical processes would produce particles identical to the well-known electron or proton, except that they would have an opposite electric charge. While the idea was met with some scepticism in the physics community, the existence of the “anti-electron” (more commonly known as a positron) was experimentally verified in 1931 by Paul Anderson. Since then, antimatter equivalents have since been observed for all known fundamental particles.

What has puzzled scientists for nearly a century, however, is the imbalance between the amounts of normal matter and antimatter in the universe. The Standard Model, the most advanced understanding of fundamental physics to date, predicts that there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the moments after the Big Bang, and thus in the rest of the cosmos. This contradicts the entirety of human experience on Earth and every astronomical observation, which all show that everything seems to be made solely from one half of this primordial material, ordinary matter.

Moreover, when a particle of matter meets its antiparticle, they both annihilate, demonstrating Einstein’s equivalence between mass and energy as both particles transform into radiation. Given that, the Standard Model also predicts that no astronomical structures should have developed, with everything constantly changing from particles to light and vice versa, ad infinitum.

The current explanation is that while the physics underlying the Big Bang produced an equal proportion of matter and antimatter, a hypothesized and as-yet-unexplained phenomenon caused a slight imbalance in this process, so that after wholesale annihilation one particle per billion of ordinary matter survived. These remnant particles are what we now call matter, with antimatter existing only as an exotic particle observed in cosmic rays, nuclear fusion and other high-energy phenomenon.

ALPHA provides a new tool to examine the root cause of the matter-antimatter asymmetry by examining the wavelength of light emitted from a trapped anti-hydrogen atom as the atom’s electron transitions between energy levels. This wavelength (analogous to colour) has been used to learn about the internal structure of normal hydrogen for decades and has now been used by the researchers of the ALPHA collaboration to begin similar studies of anti-hydrogen.

As ALPHA spokesperson Jeffrey Hangst explained, “Using a laser to observe a transition in anti-hydrogen and comparing it to hydrogen to see if they obey the same laws of physics has always been a key goal of antimatter research.”

The ALPHA-2 magnetic trap that confines antihydrogen atoms. Credit: Niels Madsen

To produce anti-hydrogen, ALPHA takes 90,000 antiprotons produced by CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator and mixes those with 1.6 million positrons, yielding approximately 25,000 anti-hydrogen atoms per mixing. From this, an average of 14 anti-atoms are captured for study. While the number of anti-atoms captured per mixing may seem small, it is an order of magnitude greater than what has been achieved in previous studies. This enables such high precision in the measurements.

The main technical challenge facing ALPHA is keeping the anti-hydrogen from interacting with any hydrogen and being converted to energy, as described above. To avoid this, the atoms are stored in a vacuum and suspended in a strong magnetic field generated by powerful electromagnets, using techniques that have been refined since CERN first produced anti-hydrogen in 1995.

The anti-hydrogen atoms are then manipulated using precisely tuned laser beams inserted through the windows of the vacuum chamber. By observing how the anti-hydrogen reacts to the laser and the magnetic field, physicists are able to work out the internal properties of anti-hydrogen, which so far have not shown any fundamental difference from those of hydrogen.

While this does not shed any new light on the difference between matter and antimatter, it does provide a promising new way forward. Even now, the ALPHA collaboration is developing a number of upgrades and new techniques to increase the precision of their measurements in an attempt to find and measure any matter and antimatter asymmetries. The work occurs alongside other collaborations at CERN, including ASACUSA and BASE, all of which are working to penetrate this peculiar mystery.

Video: The ALPHA experiment observes light spectrum of antimatter for the first time

Australian prime minister visits India to boost strategic ties

Mike Head

Enhanced military and strategic collaboration, clearly directed against China, was the central agenda discussed when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made a four-day state visit to India this week.

While Turnbull and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid lip service to forging closer economic ties, Turnbull ended his trip by conceding that there was little prospect of finalising a long-delayed trade pact between the two countries. Instead, the focus was on establishing a formal strategic partnership and joint military exercises.

The outcomes were in line with the ongoing push by Washington, initiated under the Obama administration’s “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific to confront China, for US allies throughout the region to strengthen their military relations with each other, as well as with the Pentagon.

The visit proceeded in the shadows of the global uncertainty produced by the even more aggressive “America First” policy of the Trump administration. The illegal US missile attack on Syria and Trump’s threats to strike against North Korea have heightened the dangers of war across the Asia-Pacific region, with the US targeting both Russia and China.

The trip also followed India’s elevation to “frontline” status in US war plans against China by becoming a major service and repair hub for the US Seventh Fleet, under an agreement announced in February. The Seventh Fleet would play a crucial role in any US war against China, which would include blocking China’s key trade routes from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The basing agreement marks an intensification of India’s integration into US military and strategic arrangements, a drive pursued by successive US administrations since the beginning of the century. In return for lining up against China, the Indian ruling class is seeking to assert its geo-strategic sway over the sub-continent and the Indian Ocean.

Turnbull hailed India as an “enormously important” emerging “superpower” whose strategic interests dovetail with those of Australia, which he asserted was “already a significant Indo-Pacific naval power in its own right.” He declared that the two countries need “to engage our friends and partners” to “shape the entire region’s common strategic outlook.” Turnbull said “trilateral engagement” between Australia, India and Japan was a “good example” of this, as were “our respective bilateral engagements with the United States.”

In a remarkable speech at the National Defence College, the Indian military’s most prestigious officer training institution, Turnbull boasted: “We have one of the largest and most sophisticated naval forces in the region, with nearly 50 commissioned vessels and more than 14,000 personnel. And we have just embarked on Australia’s largest peacetime investment in national security.” His government is spending $195 billion on new weapons systems and other military hardware over the next five years.

Turnbull went further, defining the relationship between the two countries by invoking “more than a century” of “Indian and Australian soldiers, sailors and airmen” fighting alongside each other. This harks back to World Wars I and II, in which millions of Indian soldiers were sent to defend the interests of the British Empire, and at least 150,000 died.

In response, Modi raised India’s security ties with Australia to a level previously established only with Japan, another key US ally against China. The two prime ministers announced they would later this year convene their first “2+2 strategic dialogue”—a meeting of their defence and foreign ministers.

India and Australia will also hold their first bilateral army exercises in 2018, as well as the second edition of joint maritime exercises they launched in 2015. Special forces from the two countries will also hold their second exercise later this year, following the first conducted last October.

In a press statement Modi and Turnbull “underscored the importance of respecting the maritime legal order based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).” This was a reference to last year’s tribunal ruling that rejected China’s territorial claims over parts of the South China Sea, providing a potential pretext for US action to block China’s access to its islets in the strategic sea.

Australia’s previous Labor government backed closer strategic ties to India as part of the US “pivot,” while also seeking to open up India’s markets to exploitation by Australian-based companies. A particular signal was a decision to permit the export of uranium to India, which has a nuclear weapons stockpile but is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Turnbull and Modi expressed confidence that uranium sales would shortly commence, effectively enhancing India’s nuclear war capacity.

On the economic front, the pair held up the prospect of more Indian students enrolling in Australian universities and colleges. After coal, education is Australia’s most lucrative export to India, currently worth $2.3 billion a year, with more than 60,000 Indian students studying in Australia last year, although this is far less than the $5.7 billion made from Chinese students.

Despite the intensifying military ties, economic tensions were evident. When Turnbull’s predecessor Tony Abbott visited India in September 2014 and Modi toured Australia in November that year, the two governments claimed that a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement could be struck by the end of 2015.

Turnbull, however, said an agreement “may not be possible.” He blamed India’s heavy protection of its domestic economy, particularly its agricultural sector, while Modi publicly pushed for greater access to Australia for Indian workers. Turnbull lamented that Australia’s two-way trade with India was only about $20 billion, compared to “$150 billion-plus” with China.

There were indications of the disarray produced by the Trump administration’s junking of the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the Australian capitalist class had hoped would break down barriers to its penetration of Asia-Pacific markets. In an evident concession to India’s own economic aspirations, Turnbull said the “big agenda” in the region was now the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes India.

In an effort to court Indian investors, Turnbull held a private meeting with Gautam Adani, a mining magnate whose company will soon decide whether to construct the world’s largest open-cut coalmine in central Queensland. Despite vehement support by Turnbull’s Liberal-National Coalition and Queensland’s state Labor government, the $21 billion project has been delayed by Aboriginal land claims and legal challenges triggered by its damaging impact on the environment, including the offshore Great Barrier Reef.

Turnbull claimed India had an “enormous need for more electrification” which the Adani mine would help meet. After decades of importing coal, however, India’s domestic output has surged, making it a net exporter. And although about 300 million Indians still lack access to electricity, India’s draft national electricity plan, released last December, said there would be no need to build more coal-fired power stations until at least 2027.

Turnbull reportedly gave Adani assurances that native title law changes would clear the way for the project, and left open the possibility of meeting Adani’s demand for a concessional $900 million government loan to finance a planned rail line to connect the mine with a port on the coast.

Billions of pounds more in welfare cuts are enforced in Britain

Dennis Moore

The start of the UK’s new financial year saw the introduction by the Conservative government of some of the most severe and punitive welfare benefit cuts seen for decades.

In its 2015 summer budget, previous Chancellor George Osborne declared the government’s intention to make savings of £12 billion from the welfare budget, with £7 billion of this for the period 2015-2016 and 2019-2020.

The cuts will hit every aspect of millions of people’s lives, including young people trying to claim housing benefit, families with children, the disabled and those dealing with bereavement, having to face the costs of paying for a funeral and the loss of income of a family member.

It is estimated that the new benefit changes will push 200,000 more children into poverty. The Child Poverty Action Group and Institute for Public Policy Research said that some families would be almost £3,000 a year worse off under these new rules.

The new rules affecting Child Tax Credits (CTC), a benefit paid to families with children, hits all those families who have more than two children, affecting children born after April 6. Under previous rules, all children in a household qualified for this benefit, as part of benefit entitlement.

A further cut to CTC will affect all families who claim after April 6, the family element of the benefit (£10.50 a week). This element was included as part of the calculation for CTC benefit, and will no longer be paid.

The latest figures show that in 2014-2015, 872,000 families with more than two children were claiming tax credits, families likely to lose out under the new changes.

These figures include 65 percent of families who were working, with 68 percent having no more than three children. It is estimated by researchers that once this policy is fully implemented, a further 100,000 adults and 200,000 children could face poverty.

The changes come at a time when there are record levels of poverty among working families. More than two-thirds of children living in poverty in the UK live in a family where at least one parent is working, according to official figures.

Since the financial crash of 2008, there are now more than four million children living in poverty, with figures showing that since 1996-1997, it has gone up from 43 percent, to the current 67 percent. The rise is largely down to the huge increase in the numbers of the working poor. As a result, the most common form of child poverty is a product of “in-work” poverty.

Access to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), a benefit paid to all those claiming benefit as a sick person, is being restricted, with the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) component being abolished. Prior to the changes, ESA was paid at two rates of payment, the Support Group, and the WRAG.

This will mean a cut in benefits of £29.05 a week for new claimants in the WRAG.

Until now, there had always been an underlying acceptance that those who were sick required more money than the standard Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) rate to live on, as sickness often incurred extra costs. Claimants receiving JSA, paid to all claimants who are claiming as unemployed, receive a pittance of £73.10p a week to live on.

Those who were sick and placed in the WRAG were paid at a higher rate than standard JSA.

These changes are a precursor to the ongoing denial of access to welfare benefits to millions of people. As of May 2016, just under 2.4 million people claimed ESA in the UK, including 429,000 in the Work Related Activity Group.

Significant changes have come into force affecting 18- to 21-year-olds claiming housing costs. The new rules will mean that those claiming Universal Credit—a new benefit that supposedly covers living and housing costs in one benefit—will no longer be entitled to the housing costs component.

There are several categories of people excluded, however. The Centrepoint charity—which works with young people—estimates the change will put at least 9,000 young people at risk of homelessness.

The bereavement benefit, introduced to relieve the financial pressure following the death of a loved one, is to be drastically curtailed. This benefit is the successor to the Widow’s Pension, first introduced in 1925 and predating the introduction of the post Second World War welfare state.

Bereavement benefit is paid to families with children where one parent died. The family is eligible to a one-off, £2,000 lump sum payment, and then a taxable benefit of £112 a week until the youngest child leaves full-time education.

Depending on the age of the children in the bereaved family, this could mean payments being paid for up to 20 years.

The new rules mean that though the lump sum payment rises to £3,500, the overall payments fall to £350 a month, a loss of over £30 a week in benefit. Although the new payments are tax-free, the period in which the new benefit will be paid is dramatically reduced to 18 months, leading to a cut of tens of thousands of pounds.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper under the pseudonym of Alan, a 51-year-old man from Barnet in London, spoke out against the benefit cuts.

Alan lives with his wife and two children, and was diagnosed with terminal cancer in December 2016.

“Based on the ages of our children and on my probable death—I would imagine this year—I had calculated that we would be entitled to about £58,000.” He added, “The new calculation shocked me. My life is now deemed to be worth £6,300.” After years of paying into the system, he described the changes as “daylight robbery.”

The latest cuts are on top of a four-year freeze on benefits and tax credits, in place since April 2016. This lowers the benefit value of all welfare claimants, as rising inflation pushes up the cost of essential items such as food and fuel.

The trajectory of increased cuts to the welfare budget will lead to millions being driven into poverty and destitution, as the very existence of the welfare state as a safety net is dismantled and got rid of.

This is not just the outcome of the policies of the Tory-led governments in office since 2010. The cuts now being enforced are effectively joint Conservative/Labour policy.

The Labour Party introduced the Welfare Reform Bill in 2008, instigating regressive changes to sickness benefit with the introduction of ESA and the much-criticised work capability assessments. These have resulted in some of the most sick and disabled being found fit for work.

In 2015, following Labour’s defeat in the General Election, Labour aided the Tories as they introduced the raft of cuts to welfare benefits now being imposed.

In July of that year, 184 Labour MPs refused to vote against the second reading of the Conservatives’ Welfare Reform and Work Bill. This included measures reducing the household welfare cap from £26,000 to £23,000, cuts to child tax credits, cuts to Employment and Support Allowance, cuts to housing benefit for young people and abolishing legally-binding child poverty targets.

Just 48 Labour MPs (20 percent of the total) voted against the Bill.