Britain Must Break Free From The Agrochemical Cartel

Colin Todhunter

Agrochemical manufacturers are knowingly poisoning people and the environment in the name of profit and greed. Communities, countries, ecosystems and species have become disposable inconveniences. Corporate totalitarian tries to hide beneath an increasingly fragile facade of democracy. The agrochemicals industry lobbies hard to have its products put on the market and ensures that they remain there. It uses PR firms and front groups to discredit individuals and studies which show the massive health and environmental devastation caused and gets its co-opted figures to sit on bodies to guarantee policies favourable to its interest are secured.

From bought-and-paid-for science and public relations that masquerades as journalism to policy implementation and the lack of regulation, the argohemicals industry wallows in a highly profitable cesspool. Money wields power and political influence.

In capitalism, a private corporation is compelled to secure control of assets (in agriculture – seeds, land, water, soil, chemical inputs, etc) and exploit them for a cash profit, while removing obstacles that might hinder this goal. Concerns about what is in the public interest or what is best for the environment lies beyond the scope of hard-headed business interests and is the remit of governments and civil organisations. The best case scenario for private capital is to have toothless, supine agencies or governments.

Rosemary Mason writes to the chair of the ECP

The UK Expert Committee on Pesticides (ECP) “provides independent, impartial advice to the government on matters relating to pesticides.”

William Cushley is a professor of molecular immunology and chair of the ECP. Environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has just written an open letter to the professor requesting that he acknowledges genuine independent evidence about the toxic impacts of pesticides – not the studies or data being pushed and prioritised by powerful transnational corporations – and breaks the silence over the devastation being caused.

Mason felt it necessary to write to Cushley because the financial and political clout of a group of powerful agrochemical corporations ensures that their interests are privileged ahead of public health and the environment to the detriment of both. There is in effect a deeply embedded collusion between powerful corporations and public bodies. The agrochemical industry has corrupted public institutions, government policies and decision making.

Mason draws Cushley’s attention to some of the outcomes. For instance, she notes independent research that recognises the extreme toxicity of low levels of systemic neonicotinoid insecticides, which have become widespread in the environment. They cause a virtually irreversible blockage of postsynaptic nicotinergic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the central nervous system of insects (to which the human foetus is also exposed). The damage is cumulative: with more exposure, more receptors become blocked.

In the Netherlands, the levels of imidacloprid in Dutch surface have been increasing since 2004 and such increases are correlated with a decline in invertebrates and in insect-feeding birds.

Mason then goes on to point out that in 2006 she set up a small nature reserve in Wales in response to the decline in birds and invertebrates such as bumblebees, butterflies, dragonflies and moths. However, even the reserve’s biodiversity soon began to witness a loss of biodiversity.

About that time, she received the article by US Scientists Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff ‘Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases’ and immediately suspected that Monsanto’s Roundup was destroying the reserve. That’s because for many years Monsanto’s contractors had been spraying Roundup on Japanese knotweed in the Swansea area where she lives, until it had become Roundup-resistant.

It was clear that the reserve was thus under threat from numerous agrochemicals, which have wide-ranging consequences, not least where human health is concerned.

In the UK, some farmers have been spraying glyphosate pre-harvest since 1980, and the US Center for Disease Control has found strong correlations between it and various diseases which have been increasing over the last 30 years. These include obesity, autism, type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver and kidney failure, hypercholesterolemia, stroke and various cancers such as kidney, liver, pancreas, thyroid, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myeloma and leukaemia. In her previous documents, Mason has noted spiralling rates of illness in Wales and the UK in general and has indicated how they are linked to agrochemical use, especially glyphosate (as well as other toxins courtesy of Monsanto having used a quarry as a toxic dump).

Mason informs Cushley that detrimental health outcomes are caused by even small exposure to common chemicals like the ones found in pesticides as well as in plastics and air pollution. There are documented links between prenatal exposure to environmental chemicals, and adverse health outcomes span the life course and include impacts on fertility and pregnancy, neurodevelopment and cancer. The global health and economic burden related to toxic environmental chemicals is in excess of millions of deaths and billions of dollars every year.

The health problems are even greater for babies exposed in the womb, who face increased risks of cancer, reduced cognitive function and even miscarriage or stillbirth.

There has been a sharp increase over the past four decades in chemical manufacturing, which continues to grow by more than three per cent every year.

A system set up to serve corporate needs

As with all her numerous open letters and correspondence with various officials, Mason supplies Cushley with a lengthy fully-referenced document (Open Letter to the Chairman of the Expert Committee on Pesticides) that supports all the claims made and which sheds further light on the issues raised (readers should consult that document to access texts and links which are also relevant to the article you are now reading).

On this occasion, she outlines conflicts of interest within the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, the damning verdict of the judges of the International Monsanto Tribunal and a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council about the Right to Food. The disastrous effects of Roundup and neonicotinoids are also discussed along with the agrochemical industry’s hold on the UK government.

Mason’s evidence indicates the not-so-hidden hand of the agrochemical sector, including Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto, has conspired to cover up the damaging effects of its products. The power of the industry – underpinned by its ability to fund and thus slant research, to lobby government officials effectively, to infiltrate and co-opt institutions and to push people through the revolving door into key positions – has corrupted science and decision making and destroyed any notion of objective and independent regulation and policy formulation.

Industry-backed research has been favoured ahead of independent studies, directives are ignored, court rulings are overturned in favour of the industry and public bodies act more as product promoting agencies than acting in the interests of the public.

Cushley is informed that the UK government is being directed by the pesticides industry. Mason tells Cushley that he, as Chairman of the ECP, has the responsibility for giving chemicals authorisation and should realise he is being fed industry information.

For instance, Mason argues that the industry had known – but has consistently denied – that neonicotinoid pesticides are harmful to bees. Tests and protocols that had allowed registration of the systemic pesticides were not adapted to assess potential hazard and risk from this type of pesticide. Despite knowing all this, protection agencies have allowed the pesticides industry to keep neonicotinoids on the market.

In discussing the International Monsanto Tribunal, Mason notes that Monsanto has violated human rights to food, health, a healthy environment and the freedom indispensable for independent scientific research. This corporation holds huge sway over governments and promotes a highly-profitable (but damaging and unnecessary) chemical-intensive model of farming.

To strengthen her case, Mason also presents Cushley with details concerning a report to UN Human Rights Council about the Right to Food. Global agricultural corporations (like Monsanto) are severely criticised by Hilal Elver the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and co-author of the report, which is highly critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralysed global pesticide restrictions.”

The reports adds:

“It is time to create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production.”

Elver says:

“Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, we are able to feed 9 billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”

Whilst spouting platitudes about feeding the world, the increasingly globalised system of agriculture being rolled out by the transnational agritech/agribusiness cartel was never designed to do that. Part of that design it to undermine alternative, credible approaches that could feed the world sustainably without being dependent on the agrochemical cartel and its dubious products.

But that’s the problem: these independent alternatives are a threat to the prevailing business models of companies such as Monsanto and Bayer, which resort to the practices Elver outlines.

Mason proceeds by discussing in some detail the well-documented disastrous effects on the environment of Roundup and neonicotinoids, in terms of the destruction of biodiversity, ecosystems, environmental degradation and human and animal health, etc. Evidence is provided that shows pesticide residues on British food are increasing annually, and statistics show a massive increase in glyphosate between 2012 and 2014

Mason quotes Robert van den Bosch, writing in 1978 in ‘The Pesticide Conspiracy’:

“If one considers how dangerous these chemicals are, one would suppose that it would be Government policy to minimize their use by every possible means. However the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP) notes, ‘there is… no such policy in the UK, nor does the possible need for it appear to have been considered, notwithstanding the great increases in the use of these chemicals.”

However, the agrochemical industry, on the contrary, seems to be under the impression it is government policy to encourage the maximum use of pesticides.

Mason notes Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s into endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that were changing humans and the environment was ignored. In the 1996 book ‘Our Stolen Future: How Man-made Chemicals are Threatening our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival’, Colborn, Dumanoski and Peters revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs.

Mason concludes by stating:

“Britain will soon become a biological desert just as Craig Childs described in Apocalyptic Planet with reference to the fields of GM Roundup-Ready corn on a Farm in Iowa… “

“Few can avoid the pollution of water, soil and air by genotoxic and teratogenic herbicides, insecticides and other industrial chemicals. Governments and regulators only measure a small fraction of them. Human health depends on biodiversity. Food depends on natural pollinators.

“The devastating effects of these silent killers on us and our environment do not distinguish between farmers or city dwellers, the wealthy or the poor, between media moguls, editors or their reporters, Monsanto or Syngenta executives, prime ministers or presidents. Humans and the environment are being silently poisoned by thousands of untested and unmonitored chemicals.

“What will your grandchildren experience in the way of wildlife? Nothing. It will all have been poisoned by chemical biocides just to make money for the agrochemical corporations and the British government. They should be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.”

Mason encourages Cushley to break the silence and inform people what is happening.

Politics, Not Religion, Is The Source Of Sunni-Shia Conflict

Nauman Sadiq

Lately, it has become a habit of Orientalist apologists of Western imperialism to offer reductive historical and theological explanations of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region in order to cover up the blowback of ill-conceived Western military interventions and proxy wars that have reignited the flames of the internecine conflict in the Islamic World.

Some self-anointed “Arabists” posit that the division goes all the way back to the founding of Islam, 1400 years ago, and contend that the conflict emerged during the reign of the fourth caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib, in the seventh century A.D. I wonder what would be the American-led war on terror’s explanation of such “erudite” historians of Islam – that the cause of “the clash of civilizations” can be found in the Crusades when Richard the Lionheart and Saladin were skirmishing in the Levant and exchanging courtesies at the same time?

In modern times, the Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region is essentially a political conflict between the Gulf Arab autocrats and Iran for regional dominance which is being presented to lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity. Saudi Arabia which has been vying for power as the leader of Sunni bloc against the Shi’a-dominated Iran in the regional geopolitics was staunchly against the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003.

The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a Sunni Arab bulwark against Iran’s meddling in the Arab World. But after Saddam was ousted from power in 2003 and subsequently when elections were held in Iraq which were swept by Shi’a-dominated parties, Iraq has now been led by a Shi’a-majority government that has become a steadfast regional ally of Iran. Consequently, Iran’s sphere of influence now extends all the way from territorially-contiguous Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

Moreover, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration took advantage of ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq and used the Kurds and Shi’as against the Sunni-led Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. And during the occupation years, from 2003 to 2011, the once dominant Sunni minority was politically marginalized which further exacerbated the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The Saudi royal family was resentful of Iranian encroachment on the traditional Arab heartland. Therefore, when protests broke out against the Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in Syria in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Gulf Arab States along with their regional Sunni allies, Turkey and Jordan, and the Western patrons gradually militarized the protests to dismantle the Iranian axis.

According to reports, Syria’s pro-Assad militias are comprised of local militiamen as well as Shi’a foreign fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and even the Hazara Shi’as from as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan. And similarly, Sunni jihadists from all over the region have also been flocking to the Syrian battlefield for the last six years. A full-scale Sunni-Shi’a war has been going on in Syria, Iraq and Yemen which will obviously have its repercussions all over the Islamic World where Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace for centuries.

More to the point, the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front and the majority of Syrian militant groups are also basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab States were also directed against Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Regarding the Syrian opposition, a small fraction of it has been comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists and armed tribesmen who have been generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by their regional and international patrons.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of numerous Syrian militant outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. All the Sunni Arab militant groups that are operating in Syria are just as fanatical and brutal as the Islamic State. The only feature that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded.

The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other Syrian militant outfits have only local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria, while the Islamic State has established a global network of transnational terrorists that includes hundreds of Western citizens who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on their present policy, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the formation of Islamic State, for instance, the US policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government.

Similarly, the “war on terror” era political commentators also “generously” accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing al-Qaeda, Taliban and myriads of other Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The mainstream media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget, however, that the formation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the Bush Administration as it has been the legacy of the Obama Administration that funded, armed, trained and internationally legitimized the Sunni militants against the Syrian regime since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa region.

In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and numerous other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

Apart from Syria and Iraq, two other flashpoints of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region are Bahrain and Yemen. When peaceful protests began against the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain by the Shi’a majority population in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, Saudi Arabia sent thousands of its own troops across the border to quell the demonstrations.

Similarly, when the Iran-backed Houthis, which is an offshoot of Shi’a Islam, overran Sana’a in September 2014, Saudi Arabia and UAE mounted another ill-conceived Sunni offensive against the Houthi militia. The nature of the conflict in Yemen is sectarian to an extent that recently, the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda’s leader, Qasim al-Raymi, has claimed that al-Qaeda has been fighting hand in hand with the Saudi-led alliance against the Iran-backed rebels for the last couple of years.

The revelation does not comes as a surprise, however, because after all al-Qaeda’s official franchise in Syria, al-Nusra Front, has also been fighting hand in glove with the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime for the last six years of the Syrian civil war.

Now when the fire of inter-sectarian strife is burning on four different fronts in the Middle East and the Sunni and Shi’a communities are witnessing a merciless slaughter of their brethren in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain, then what kind of an Orientalist shill would have the time and luxury to look for the cause of the conflict in theology and history? If the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have been so thirsty for each other’s blood since the founding of Islam, then how come they managed to survive as distinct sectarian groups for 1400 years?

Fact of the matter is that in modern times, the phenomena of Islamic radicalism, jihadism and the consequent Sunni-Shi’a conflict are only as old as the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the late seventies and eighties when the Western powers with the help of Saudi money and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies trained and armed Afghan jihadists to battle the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

And the conflict has been further exacerbated in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 when the Western powers and their regional client states once again took advantage of the opportunity and nurtured militants against the Arab nationalist Qaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria.

New study details correlation between tornado deaths and social inequality

Eric London

A new study published by the Regional Science and Urban Economics journal reveals the degree to which social inequality and poverty determine the likelihood of being killed by a tornado.

The study, titled “Double danger in the double wide: Dimensions of poverty, housing quality and tornado impacts,” is written by Michigan State University academics Jungmin Lim, Scott Loveridge, Robert Shupp and Mark Skidmore.

It was published in April, as tornado season begins in the United States. Last weekend, tornadoes and floods left at least 15 dead, including many children, across impoverished parts of East Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

The number of people crushed to death or swept up and killed by tornadoes is staggering. Between 1980 and 2014, 2,718 people were killed and 39,635 injured by tornadoes in the world’s wealthiest country. In a three-day period in April 2011, 351 tornadoes killed 316 people.

The study’s authors explain, “While it is clear that some places are simply more prone to tornadoes due to climatic reasons, this does not fully explain the difference in fatalities across the region.”

The report notes that “poor people tend to cluster in high tornado risk areas” across the Midwest and South. For the most part, the wealthiest Americans live in major coastal cities where tornadoes do not occur. Those who remain in “tornado alley” do so in part because the risk of tornado is factored into the lower cost of living. A 2016 study revealed that half of Americans cannot afford the cost of a $400 emergency expense like travel, hotel and meal expenses during a storm evacuation.

But this “does not fully explain the differences in fatalities across the regions,” the study says, because “the areas with relatively high tornado fatalities do not necessarily match up with the areas with the highest tornado intensities.” The study’s conclusion is that areas with higher poverty and inequality are more vulnerable to deaths during tornadoes due to a large number of people living in mobile homes and a lack of infrastructure and government programs.

Poor and working class residents of tornado-prone areas are less likely to evacuate in the face of tornado warnings, “mostly due to constraints placed by a lack of transportation and affordable refuge options,” the study’s authors write, citing an earlier study. In addition, even if families had money saved to evacuate, many workers simply cannot afford to take time off work, even to escape a tornado.

Even after controlling for the likelihood that residents of areas with a history of tornadoes are more likely to be prepared, the report notes that for each one percent increase in the poverty rate, the number of tornado fatalities increases by two percent.

Further, the report notes: “people living in mobile homes are more vulnerable to natural events such as tornadoes because mobile homes typically have no foundation or basement and can be more easily destroyed” and “the rate of death from tornadoes in mobile homes is about 20 times higher than in site-built homes.”

Controlling for other factors, a one percentage point increase in the proportion of mobile home owners to total housing units leads to a five percent increase in tornado fatalities. Roughly one-half of all tornado deaths from 1996 to 2000 were in mobile homes. Particularly concerning is the fact that “more households are choosing this type of housing arrangement over time and thus vulnerability may be increasing.”

Lower levels of local government spending on public safety and welfare had a “significant” impact on tornado fatalities, increasing the likelihood of death. Counties with less educated residents and more female-headed households were also more likely to experience fatalities when tornadoes strike. Only in Minnesota and a small number of individual counties in other states are mobile home park owners required to provide storm shelters for residents.

Perhaps most notable is the correlation between social inequality and tornado-induced deaths. The study found that a 1 percent increase in the share of income controlled by a county’s wealthiest 10 percent increased the average deaths from tornadoes by 14.8 people over a five-year period.

“Holding other factors constant including per capita income and the poverty rate, a higher top ten percentile income level means a larger lower-middle income group, which indicates wider income disparity in the community. Our estimates suggest that greater income inequality tends to exacerbate the impacts of disasters.”

This key fact underscores the disastrous impact of social inequality on elements of social life that may not initially appear to be directly impacted by social relations. Those areas most affected by tornadoes are the rural and semi-rural towns spread out across the American South and Midwest where infrastructure is collapsing, social services are limited and poverty is widespread.

Though storms do not select their victims, capitalism does. The few wealthy people who live in these regions own mansions with large basements and storm shelters. There is little question whom the police and National Guard will rescue first in the event of a natural disaster, while public shelters are largely unavailable. Over 60 percent of Oklahoma’s public schools have no storm shelter, for example.

But the majority of people in these parts of “tornado alley” either work low-wage jobs at grocery stores, fast food restaurants and other service sectors, or they join the military or National Guard. Ten to 30 percent of people live in mobile homes because they cannot afford to buy homes. Healthcare costs and opioid abuse are on the rise, while life expectancy for middle-aged white men is declining. Local, state and federal government propose new budget cuts that axe emergency relief programs.

One professional estimate shows that the cost of installing a 700-person storm shelter at a public school would be $1 million. Constructing the 25,000 large shelters capable of housing the entire 17 million population of “tornado alley” would cost $25 billion. This equals just 1.25 percent of the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, valued at about $2 trillion.

At least 23 dead, dozens trapped in Iranian coal mine disaster

Oscar Grenfell 

An explosion yesterday at an Iranian coal mine in Golestan Province, in the country’s north, has killed at least 23 workers and injured many others. While initial reports are scanty, it appears that dozens remain trapped in the mine, prompting fears that the death toll will rise dramatically in coming days.

The disaster reportedly occurred during a shift change at around 12:45pm, at the Zemestan-Yurt mine, close to the town of Azadshahr. As many as 500 workers are employed at the site, located in a region heavily dependent on coal mining, which is needed for the country’s industrial production, including steel manufacturing.

Accounts by Iran’s Fars news agency and other media reports indicate the blast may have been triggered by the jump-starting of a locomotive that ignited a gas leak. The explosion rapidly tore through the mine.

Most of the 23 workers whose bodies have been recovered died while attempting to rescue their trapped colleagues from the mine. They were hit by a series of tunnel collapses.

Images published online showed badly burned, semiconscious miners covered in coal dust being carried from the site by health workers and colleagues. Some were treated for the effects of gas inhalation. As many as 69 workers are thought to have been injured, with limited information on the severity of their conditions.

It is unclear how many workers are still in the mine. State authorities released contradictory estimates throughout Wednesday afternoon. Initial reports indicated as many as 80 workers, aside from those who perished, were unaccounted for. That figure was later scaled down to 50, and then 26.

However, no reason was provided for the changed toll, and there were no reports of additional rescues later in the day. Those who remain in the mine are reportedly up to 1.3 kilometres underground. They are imperilled by noxious and volatile gases and the prospect of further tunnel collapses at the unstable site.

Local officials and mine authorities claim to have cleared a section of the mine, and are reportedly digging a tunnel to gain access to the trapped miners. Rescue workers, along with ambulances, helicopters and members of the Red Crescent organisation, have been dispatched to the scene.

There are already reports of anger over the official response to the tragedy, with some describing it as slow and inadequate. Many questions remain over the conditions that led to the disaster.

The government fears the accident could become a focal point for wider anger over dangerous industrial conditions and a deepening social crisis afflicting the working class. President Hassan Rouhani yesterday sent the labour minister, Ali Rabiei, to the site to personally oversee the official response.

The accident occurred two weeks before presidential elections, slated for May 19. All the major candidates have adopted a posture of concern over industrial accidents and deaths.

On January 19, the 17-storey Plasco Building in the capital Tehran was engulfed in flames before collapsing. The disaster killed more than 20 fire fighters and injured up to 194 people.

The historic building was owned by a foundation with close ties to state authorities. Its offices had been transformed into sweatshops for clothing manufacture.

According to Tehran municipal authorities, the building’s owners had ignored up to 30 warnings over safety breaches. Jalal Malekias, a fire brigade official, told the press: “Even in the stairwells, a lot of clothing is stored and this is against safety standards. The managers didn’t pay attention to the warnings.”

The accident prompted a social media campaign calling for the resignation of Tehran mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and widespread denunciations of the authorities for not enforcing safety standards.

Mine accidents are no less politically sensitive, due to the importance of resource extraction for the Iranian economy, and widespread knowledge of the dire conditions confronting coal miners. Like their counterparts internationally, they are forced to work in dangerous environments, with exposure to coal dust and gases and the constant risk of accidents.

Iranian mines produced 1.68 million tonnes of coal in 2016, a substantial increase over the previous year. Much of that went to domestic consumption, including for steel manufacture and other industry.

While mining has expanded in recent years, little has been done by authorities to boost safety standards. Mining accidents in 2009 killed around 20 workers, while in 2013, 11 workers died in two separate incidents.

A 2012 survey of the safety of Iranian mines, published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, found an increase in mining accidents over the previous year.

According to figures cited in the report, the number of active mines in Iran increased from 4,974 to 5,246 between 2011 and 2012. Over the same period, the annual injury rate rose from 106 per 10,000 workers in 2011, to 164 of 10,000 miners in 2012. Coal mines were among the most prone to fatal and injury-causing accidents.

In 2011, just 12 percent of mines had health and safety departments. In 2012, the percentage decreased to 10 percent of sites. According to the report, only 7 percent of accidents took place at sites with a health and safety department.

The plight of Iranian coal miners is paralleled by that of workers internationally. Dozens of coal workers have died in accidents in recent months. Among the disasters are:

● In December 2016, 23 workers were killed at the state-run Lalmatia mine in Jarkhand, in east India. Workers said that they warned managers of the imminent danger that the mine would collapse, but were ordered back to work.

● In March 2017, 17 Chinese miners were killed when the lift in which they were travelling fell at a state-owned mine in Heilongjiang province in the country’s northeast. Two welders were scapegoated for safety violations that caused the accident. A disaster in the same province in December 2016 claimed 32 lives.

● In March 2017, a blast at a coal mine in eastern Ukraine killed eight and injured others. The accident was ascribed to outdated equipment and lax safety measures.

● This year, three coal miners have died in accidents in the US, two of them in the impoverished state of West Virginia.

In other words, the subordination of workers’ safety to the dictates of major coal producers is leading to an expanding tally of dead and injured miners.

Prime Minister May accuses EU of meddling in UK election

Chris Marsden 

Ratcheting up tensions with the European Union (EU), Conservative UK Prime Minister Theresa May made an unannounced statement Wednesday outside 10 Downing Street.

After visiting the queen to formally declare the closure of parliament, she asserted that representatives of the EU were deliberately seeking to influence the outcome of the upcoming general election.

In her brief address to the media, May said that talks over the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU have been “tough”:

“The European commission’s negotiating stance has hardened. Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials. All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June.”

May portrayed her own position as the epitome of sweet reason, declaring that “in leaving the European Union, Britain means no harm to our friends and allies on the continent” and that she wanted to maintain “a deep and special partnership with the European Union.” But “there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed: Who do not want Britain to prosper.”

May’s intervention plays to a domestic political audience and were shaped by electoral imperatives. Her allegations were followed by a repeat of her mantra that a vote for the Conservatives would deliver the “strong and stable” government needed to make Brexit “a success” that is “central to our national interest.”

To choose Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party would mean “a hung parliament and a coalition of chaos” that would “let the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us. ...”

May’s speech was denounced for placing party considerations over the national interest she claims to defend. Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, joined Corbyn, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party in attacking May for making “such preposterous, paranoid and xenophobic claims” at “the first sign of difficulty in her talks with Brussels. ... Instead of alienating our European partners...she should be working to build effective relationships and make meaningful progress.”

But for May to accuse the EU of interfering in the UK general election in language hitherto reserved for Russian President Vladimir Putin testifies to a real escalation of hostilities with Europe. Indeed, over the past days, much of Britain’s media has been dominated by accusations that differ from May’s only in that the Tory press has not shied away from naming Germany as the moving force in efforts to undermine the government for its “hard Brexit” stand.

May viewed the support of US President Donald Trump for Brexit, his hostility to Germany and promise of a trade deal with the UK as her ace in the hole in negotiations over Brexit that would help secure access to European markets. But she massively misjudged Berlin’s preparedness to reject the UK’s demands as a threat to Germany’s domination of the EU.

On April 22, sources close to the White House reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel leaked to the Times how, in March, she had in fact convinced Trump that a trade deal with the EU was far more important for the US than one with the UK post-Brexit.

In the German parliament last Thursday, Merkel then announced that no concessions would be made in negotiations with the UK and that her warning was necessary because “some in the UK still have illusions.”

Saturday saw the 27 EU member states agree in a matter of minutes to a hardline framework for negotiations drawn up in Berlin. These included a declaration that substantive negotiations on post-Brexit trade and economic relations would not even begin until the financial details of the withdrawal were clarified. This is opposed to May’s insistence that separation payments would be agreed on at the end of the planned two-year interim talks.

It then emerged that Merkel’s statement last Thursday followed a telephone call between her and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, regarding talks with May and her leadership team over dinner at Downing Street last week.

Merkel's people leaked the contents of the discussion to the Frankfurter Allgemeine, which published an account on Sunday. It reported Juncker’s view that May was “in a different Galaxy”, that Brexit Secretary David Davis should be removed and that Juncker was “10 times more sceptical” that a settlement could be arrived at after the Downing Street dinner.

On the morning of May’s Downing Street declaration, the Financial Times added to her woes by estimating that the divorce settlement with the EU would likely amount to €100 billion “using the EU’s negotiating guidelines, the more detailed draft mandate for the bloc’s negotiator, Michel Barnier.”

May’s claim that forces in the EU are trying to engineer the election of Corbyn is far-fetched. But the same is not true of her charge that the past week of leaks has been “deliberately timed” so as to fire a shot across the government’s bow.

Berlin’s decision to make public its willingness to punish the UK has a broader political aim. Coming just days before Sunday’s vote in the second round of the French presidential election, it serves as an implied threat to anyone reluctant to vote for Emmanuel Macron, an economic liberal advocate of austerity and closer ties with Germany.

Hostility to Macron is such that the once unthinkable prospect of a victory for Marine Le Pen of the far-right and anti-EU National Front is considered a serious possibility. Le Pen prepared for her televised debate against Macron last night by telling the French media that she is the best candidate to face the “new world” dominated by US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and to “talk to the Britain of May.”

The Conservatives are entering an election that, according to the polls, should be a walkover thanks to a 15-20 points lead over Labour. But May must win decisively to extend her wafer-thin majority and maintain control over a deeply divided party: one in which the pro-Brexit forces dominate and champion a “hard Brexit” involving quitting the Single European Market which is opposed by big business and the City of London.

May’s brinksmanship is a measure not only of her own underlying political weakness, but that of British imperialism, which is still heavily dependent on EU trade and cannot rely on the US to step up and fill the void that would be left by the failure to secure an agreement.

Gary Gibbon of Channel Four News warned of growing fears that May “is pushing herself into a hardline position on the EU negotiations that could make a deal impossible. ... [T]here has been one school of thought that says Mrs. May is fighting for a big mandate in this election so she can make the concessions in the negotiations which she couldn’t make if held to ransom by a small number of Brexit hardliners exploiting her small majority. Adherents of that view may be scratching their heads after that Prime Ministerial address wondering if they’ve quite called it right.”

Whatever happens, the national tensions revealed in the bitter exchanges between London and Berlin will continue to escalate, not only placing a question mark over the fate of post-Brexit Britain but over the long-term survival of the EU itself.

Neo-Nazi network in German army exposed

Peter Schwarz

The arrest of a German army officer suspected of plotting the assassination of leftist politicians and high-ranking state officials has exposed the operations of neo-Nazi forces at the highest levels of the German military (Bundeswehr).

The information that has emerged thus far indicates that the suspected officer-terrorist was part of a broader network of fascists within the Bundeswehr, and that his activities were known to his superiors and covered up by them.

Most astonishing is the official reaction to these alarming revelations. They have prompted an outpouring of anger in the German media and from the establishment parties directed not at the existence of this network and evidence of its toleration by high-level state forces, but at mild criticisms of the military by Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen.

Given the historic crimes of German imperialism in the 20th century and the current revival of militarism in Germany, it is remarkable how little attention has been paid to these developments in the American and international press.

Lieutenant Franco A., 28, was arrested last week after coming to the attention of Austrian police when he sought to retrieve a weapon hidden at the airport in Vienna. It quickly emerged that the officer had been leading a double life. In addition to his activities in the Bundeswehr, Franco A, who does not speak a word of Arabic, had registered as a Syrian refugee and been recognized as such.

He apparently intended to carry out a terror attack under a false flag. A police search of his home uncovered a list of possible targets, which included, together with leftist politicians and activists, Justice Minister Heiko Maas and former German President Joachim Gauck.

Franco A. did not operate alone. The police have recovered shells and handguns from a 24-year-old accomplice, who was also arrested. The Defence Ministry has informed the parliamentary defence committee that the arrested officer may be part of an ultra-right network within the Bundeswehr.

The reaction of the military leadership suggests that this network is far more extensive and reaches much higher than has thus far been revealed. Defence Minister von der Leyen cancelled a planned trip to the US and invited 100 high-ranking military officers to Berlin on Thursday “to discuss the implications and consequences of the accumulated cases in the Bundeswehr.”

It is now clear that, for some time, Franco A.’s superiors were aware of his fascistic views and shielded him. As far back as 2014, his graduate thesis at the French military university Saint-Cyr was rejected on the grounds that it was not a scholarly work, but rather “a radical nationalist, racist appeal,” calling for “existing conditions to be adapted to the alleged natural law of racial purity.” The responsible French general advised Franco A.’s German superiors to sack him, but the latter concluded that he was not a racist. They hushed up the case and promoted his military career.

The neo-Nazi views of the first lieutenant were an open secret in the French town of Illkirch, where he served in a Franco-German unit. Investigators from the Bundeswehr have found “indications of right-wing and racist ideas” in his room. In addition to a swastika carved on an assault rifle, they discovered pictures glorifying Hitler’s army, the Wehrmacht.

Racist and authoritarian views and the glorification of violence are not only widespread in the Bundeswehr, they are actively encouraged by its leaders. The military intelligence service is currently investigating 275 extreme right-wing suspects. These investigations are exercises in damage control. Charges were dropped against one soldier who placed a photo of a machine gun on the Internet with the caption: “The fastest German asylum procedure: rejects up to 1,400 requests per minute.”

The tradition of Hitler’s Wehrmacht continues to be officially cultivated in the Bundeswehr. Many barracks bear the names of military officers who were implicated in the Nazis’ genocidal racial and war policies.

The universities of the Bundeswehr in Munich and Hamburg have repeatedly generated headlines by promoting right-wing extremism. In Munich, there was a controversy in 2011 surrounding the student magazine Campus when three of its editors expressed their support for the Conservative Revolutionary movement, one of the leading ideological forbears of the Nazis.

In Hamburg, the book Armee im Aufbruch (Army on the Move) was published in 2014 with contributions from sixteen officers who studied at the Bundeswehr University there and had combat experience in Afghanistan. The book is full of language typical of Nazi literature glorifying war.

The officers consider themselves to be an elite, opposed to a “hedonistic and individualistic” society focused on “self-gratification, consumption, pacifism and egoism,” a society that has no appreciation for the “striving for honour through great sacrifice,” for a “patriotic attitude to the people (Volk) and Fatherland” and for “courage, loyalty and honour.”

There was no protest against the book within the German political establishment. The right-wing, dictatorial standpoint it expressed is shared across the political spectrum.

When Defence Minister von der Leyen, a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, responded to the exposure of the Franco A. case by warning that “the German army has an attitude problem and it apparently has weak leadership at different levels,” she provoked a storm of protest. She may well lose her post, not because terror attacks on the former president and current ministers and members of parliament were planned from within the ranks of the Bundeswehr, but because she spoke out too sharply against it!

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Left Party are protesting the loudest against von der Leyen. SPD Chairman Martin Schulz accused the defence minister of lacking a sense of responsibility. SPD defence expert Rainer Arnold called on her to apologise to her troops. Former Deputy Juso (SPD Young Socialists) Chairman Lars Klingbeil accused von der Leyen of “stabbing hundreds of thousands soldiers in the back.”

The Green Party defence expert Tobias Lindner declared, “It is not the Bundeswehr’s fault if it is increasingly attractive to right-wing extremists.” His colleague from the Left Party, Alexander Neu, proclaimed his opposition to placing all soldiers under general suspicion due to the case of Franco A.

These developments reveal the enormity of the swing to the right by the entire German ruling class and the advanced state of its campaign to again make Germany the hegemon of Europe and a world military as well as economic power. The deepening crisis of world capitalism and rising economic and geo-political tensions are tearing Europe apart and fracturing the Atlantic alliance, increasingly pitting Germany against the United States.

Under these conditions, German imperialism must seek to sanitize its criminal past and rewrite its history to rehabilitate fascism, as it transforms the Bundeswehr into a lethal force of professional killers, capable of waging war all over the world.

Claims that the German ruling class learned its lesson from the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazis, and that the military had purged itself, are exposed as myths.

In a commentary on Tuesday, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung co-editor Berthold Kohler derided the “fantasy image” of the Bundeswehr “as a kind of missionary military that spreads the gospel of the German constitution so that the German spirit shall heal the world.” He wrote: “Whoever sends soldiers into crises and wars must prepare themselves and the soldiers for the harshness and cruelty that awaits them.” Because the Bundeswehr has to teach its recruits “to fight and kill… it must be able to go to the limits of what is permissible in terms of hardship in training its fighting units.”

The spread of militarism into all spheres of society is an international phenomenon. In the US, Donald Trump, the most right-wing president in American history, has appointed generals to all the main security-related ministries, as American imperialism spearheads the drive to World War III. In France, heavily armed soldiers routinely patrol the streets since the imposition of a state of emergency a year-and-a-half ago.

The general silence to date of the international media on the growth of fascistic forces within the German military is itself an expression of the turn by the ruling classes of the world toward war and dictatorship.

New Zealand: Gender pay deal used to promote unions, government

John Braddock

In a settlement acclaimed as “historic” by New Zealand’s media and political establishment, the National Party government has announced it will fund a $NZ2 billion package to address gender pay equity in the aged and disability care sector.

More than 55,000 predominantly female workers will, over 5 years, receive a minimum pay rise of between 15 and 50 percent depending on qualifications and experience. A worker on the current legal minimum of $15.75 per hour will move to $19 in July and eventually reach $23 in 2021.

The decision follows a declaration by the Supreme Court in a legal challenge begun in 2012 by the then Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU)—now part of the E Tu union—under the 1972 Equal Pay Act.

The test case was taken by SFWU member Kristine Bartlett, an aged-care worker, who was being paid only $14.46 an hour after 20 years’ work at the same rest home. She argued that her employer, TerraNova, was underpaying its staff because most were female. The courts ruled that the Equal Pay Act applied and that care workers must be paid the same as workers in male-dominated industries who perform similar tasks, such as corrections workers.

The government pays the wages through subsidies to the private health care companies. The ruling National Party strenuously opposed the pay equity case over a period of five years, including three court cases and two appeals. In 1991 and 2008 National governments had dismantled pay equity laws put in place by previous Labour governments. Successive Labour governments, however, did not implement any pay equity measures.

Now, five months out from a general election, the settlement is being universally acclaimed as a landmark for low paid workers. The Dominion Post said it represented “a huge change in New Zealand’s approach to wage setting” that is “wholly welcome.” The Otago Daily Times declared it meant “redistributing the wealth in a more equitable manner.”

The case and its reception is a desperate attempt to shore up support among profoundly alienated sections of workers for increasingly discredited capitalist institutions. As the assault on jobs and living standards intensifies, workers are being told that they can achieve wage “justice” through the framework of the unions, courts, and parliamentary parties.

Prime Minister Bill English said he expected other sectors to lodge similar claims, which would be dealt with by a new process for resolving pay equity cases, rather than direct negotiations. Legislation will be presented to parliament later this year. English warned, “The hurdles will be pretty high. This is a fairly unique set of circumstances—it’s not readily or easily applicable outside of government for instance.” According to the Council of Trade Unions, which has been collaborating with a government-employer pay equity working party since 2015, the Bartlett case would not have succeeded under the new law.

The government’s deal is yet to be ratified by workers, but the trade unions have declared it a major victory. E Tu assistant national secretary John Ryall announced it will mean a “once in a lifetime pay rise, which will end poverty wages for this mainly female workforce and set them on the path to a better life.”

This is a lie. Low wages at one end of society are required to support obscene wealth, mainly obtained through financial speculation, at the other. Households with an income of less than $30,000, i.e., 60 percent of the median disposable income, are considered in poverty. This now includes one third, or more than 300,000, of children, increasingly from families designated as the “working poor.” The numbers living below the poverty line increased by 45,000 in a year and are now double those in 1984.

While a pay increase of 15–40 percent is not insignificant, the settlement will not lift chronically underpaid workers out of conditions of poverty and grinding exploitation. The same trade unions claim that a “living wage” of $20.20 an hour is the minimum required to provide families with the basic necessities of life. The 20,000 care workers currently on the minimum wage will not even reach this inadequate threshold in the first year of the agreement.

Moreover, the majority of carers work part-time, and will still earn well below the poverty line. It is unclear what the pay rise will be worth by the time it is fully implemented in five years, given the soaring cost of living. The median rent for a 3–4 bedroom house has risen by 30 percent over the past five years, adding $6,000 to yearly household bills.

The pay equity campaign, which is promoted by a raft of unions, employers, academics and women’s organisations, has nothing to do with addressing the vast and deepening issues around social inequality which are rooted in the class relations of capitalism. While gender inequality persists, the main division in society is class, not gender.

Employers certainly use every device available to them to divide workers according to gender, ethnicity, nationality and even age to suppress wages and increase profits. Under the framework of pay equity however, there is nothing to prevent businesses from paying poverty wages, as long as men and women get the same for the same tasks. This cannot be fought on the basis of identity politics, which is promoted by affluent, privileged layers of the middle class, to oppose a genuine struggle for social equality.

The ruling elite has seized on the settlement to boost the unions. For decades the unions have suppressed strikes and collaborated in destroying tens of thousands of jobs, as well as entire industries such as car manufacturing. Union membership has plummeted to 17.7 percent of the country’s workforce, compared with about 40 percent in 1970.

The government and big business are concerned that the decimation of the unions will undermine their ability to police the working class. English praised the unions’ “constructive approach” in negotiations following the court ruling. Health Minister Jonathan Coleman also hailed the agreement and he has in turn been applauded by union leaders.

In a revealing interview with Radio NZ, former conservative Prime Minister Jim Bolger last week feigned concern about growing inequality and declared it was time “to give some power back” to the unions. In fact, the Bolger government’s attacks during the 1990s, including cuts to welfare and the anti-worker Employment Contracts Act, were made possible by the betrayals of the unions.

The aged care deal will give a major boost to the private operators, which insisted for years that they could not “afford” to improve pay rates without increased public funding. Ryman Healthcare managing director Simon Challies welcomed the settlement, saying the increase will be passed on to 45 percent of the company’s workforce.

Ryman boasted last year that its profit had grown 16 percent to a record $158 million, with the company entering “a new era of growth.” Since listing on the NZ Stock exchange in 1999, Ryman has paid out more than $500 million to shareholders.

Inevitably, the money funnelled by the government to these companies will be funded by cuts in spending on basic services. Costs for aged care residents could also increase. The health sector as a whole has been starved of funds, particularly since the onset of the 2008 economic crisis, leading to lengthy waiting lists for treatment and chronic staff shortages.

The vast majority of low-paid workers will gain nothing from gender equity legislation. In recent weeks the Meat Workers Union and the Taylor Preston company have pushed through an agreement that entrenches the poverty wages and insecure conditions at the plant, which has some of the country’s lowest paid workers. It includes an extra 70 cents an hour, mirroring the government’s recent pitiful 50 cent increase to the minimum wage. Most Taylor Preston workers, men and women, will still receive little more than the minimum wage. This situation is repeated in industry after industry.

Leadership contest begins in Spain’s Socialist Party

Alejandro López 

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) has announced the primary election for the party’s general secretary will be held on May 21. Candidates will have to be endorsed by at least 5 percent of the party’s 180,000 members before May 4.

The PSOE has been without a leader since October, when an internal coup orchestrated by a cabal of bankers, the intelligence services and the media ousted general secretary Pedro Sánchez. Organized by former PSOE Prime Minister Felipe González and El País editor-in-chief Juan Luis Cebrián, the objective was to install a Popular Party (PP) government after Spain had been without a proper administration for almost 10 months—something opposed by the Sánchez faction of the PSOE.

The coup exposed the reactionary workings of the political system that emerged from Spain’s transition to parliamentary rule in 1978, after the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted, “The putsch has laid bare the class forces served by the PSOE and the Spanish political system. It has shown how capitalist politicians, the media and the state machine ruthlessly do the bidding of the banks, corporations, and the leading imperialist powers. If elections do not produce the desired result—in this case, a right-wing government planning austerity, attacks on democratic rights and preparations for war—they simply impose it. To do so, they are quite willing to toss aside small fry like Sánchez.”

The coup, however, has not resolved the crisis of bourgeois rule. The PP minority government, supported by little more than a third of the parliament, is weak and unpopular. Moreover, it is embroiled in one corruption scandal after another, implementing savage austerity measures, drastically increasing the military budget and is divided over whether to orient towards Berlin and the European Union or the US under the aggressively nationalist and protectionist Trump administration. To pass laws, the PP government depends on the direct support of the PSOE in parliament.

The question now being fought out between the main contenders in the PSOE leadership contest—ousted PSOE former leader Sánchez and current state premier of Andalusia, Susana Díaz—is whether the PSOE should continue propping up the PP minority government, or whether the PSOE should dress itself up as a “left” alternative by allying with the pseudo-left Podemos in preparation for the PP’s possible collapse.

Although both candidates have called for unity, the differences are such that they threaten to break up the party. HSBC economist Fabio Balboni has stated, “Depending on who wins, we could see a shift of the party to the left (Pedro Sánchez) or the centre (Susana Díaz), with a risk of a possible party split and, particularly in the first case, a tougher opposition to the PP-minority government.”

Díaz is the clear favourite of the ruling class, with the backing of virtually all the media, the support of the PSOE interim committee (supposedly a neutral organ in the power struggle), previous PSOE prime ministers, including her mentor González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and dozens of former ministers and regional premiers.

During the coup against Sánchez, she played the leading role in attacking him, defending an abstention to allow the PP to come to power for “the good of Spain.”

Díaz has accused Sánchez of being Podemos’ lackey in the PSOE, claiming that if he wins, the PSOE will be handed over to Podemos: “It’s one thing to forge pacts and another to give yourself over to someone else or even imitate them,” Diaz said in a rally. She has vowed, “to struggle against … populism [i.e., Podemos] and regional separatism.”

The Sánchez faction calculates that the continued survival of the PSOE depends on the incorporation of the pseudo-left Podemos into a PSOE-led “left alliance” government—as he had attempted to do before the coup against him—in order to control the working class. He has also called for “unity of action” with the trade unions and other “left” forces.

Sánchez represents factions of the ruling class who are concerned that the PSOE, one of the pillars of the post-Franco era, will be destroyed—as has its social democratic equivalents in Greece, PASOK, and France, the Socialist Party (PS)—if it continues its support for the PP. The PSOE has already suffered disastrous results in national elections, dropping from 44 percent of the popular vote in 2008 to its current 22 percent.

Sánchez made this clear in a recent interview when he said, “I am especially concerned about the lack of trust that exists between our members and part of the leadership. And I think our project can humbly repair those wounds. It can rebuild the lost unity between the militants and the leaders, and also the credibility lost to our voters.”

Díaz opposes an alliance with Podemos, despite its pronounced shift to the right; for fear that such an alliance might still serve to arouse left-wing anti-capitalist sentiments in broader layers of the population that neither the PSOE nor Podemos would be able to control. She has even attempted to use the disastrous results of the PSOE’s French counterparts in the April 23 presidential elections as an example of failure resulting from adopting “radical policies”!

Díaz declared, “We should learn from that [the French Socialist Party’s results], when radical positions are taken, people punish us, move away from us.”

Díaz omitted any mention of the fact that the Socialist Party’s (PS) meltdown in France, with its presidential candidate Benoît Hamon winning barely more than six percent of the vote, is due to the hatred engendered by the current PS government’s austerity measures, warmongering and attacks on democratic rights. The PSOE’s own pro-austerity track record includes the programme implemented by her regional government in Andalusia, one of the poorest regions in Spain, with the second highest unemployment level at 28 percent.

Sánchez is in no position to attack his foes’ austerity measures or those implemented previously by the PSOE governments—voting for them as a parliamentarian in 2009-2011.

Sánchez and Díaz are also fighting over the question of how to deal with the nationalist forces that control the region of Catalonia, one of the wealthiest in Spain, who are pledged to hold a referendum on independence this year, illegal under the Spanish constitution.

Díaz is a hardliner. She has publicly stated, “There will be no referendum” because “it goes against the law”—the same position held by the PP government. Sánchez, on the contrary, defends giving symbolic concessions, such as Catalonia being recognized as a “nation” in the country’s constitution. Sánchez has also defended the federalist proposal of the PSOE’s sister Catalan Socialist Party.

Regardless of the differences, both candidates agree that the minority PP government should remain in power as long as possible. Last month, Sánchez said in an interview, “We can say no to Rajoy without the need to put forward a no confidence vote”, and that “we cannot call for new elections once again”.

Last week, he described the no confidence proposal, put forward by Podemos in parliament because of the latest corruption scandals of the PP, as making “no sense” and called on Rajoy to resign to save his government.

Podemos has called for support for Sánchez. Its leader Pablo Iglesias has said that he would aim to negotiate with the PSOE to form a government, declaring, “If you are in politics, it is to rule.”

Podemos’ no confidence vote, impossible to win without the support of the PSOE, which has dismissed the Podemos initiative as “irresponsible fireworks”, also aims at exposing the PSOE’s pro-PP line, while bolstering the positions of Sánchez within the PSOE to pave its own path to government on behalf of Spanish capital.