Catastrophe Looms In Gaza

Charlotte Silver

Israel will reduce its electricity supply to the occupied Gaza Strip by 40 percent, turning an already dire situation into a catastrophe.

Israel says the further cutback, approved by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday night, is based on a request by the Palestinian Authority.

Before the cut, Gaza’s population of two million has received only four hours of electricity a day, with hospitals, desalination and sewage treatment plants severely imperiled or made inoperative.

Already, medical services, including critical surgeries, have been sharply reduced due to the ongoing power crisis.

Hospital backup generators are on the brink of failure, Gisha, an Israeli human rights group that monitors the blockade of Gaza, warned on Monday.

Gisha wrote an urgent letter to Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday, warning that a further reduction in electricity “is a red line that must not be crossed.”

Palestinians in Gaza are now being told to prepare for the worst. The cut will reportedly reduce the daily average of electricity by another 45 minutes.

Hamas called the decision “catastrophic” and “dangerous,” warning it would “hasten the deterioration and explosion of the situation in the Strip.”

“The parties who carry the responsibility for the consequences of this decision are the besieging Israeli enemy and the head of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas for his immoral and irresponsible role with the occupation,” the group, which governs the interior of the territory, added.

Israel’s obligation

An Israeli official told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz that the cabinet accepted the Israeli army’s “recommendation against leniency toward Hamas and to act in accordance with” Abbas’ request.

The term “leniency toward Hamas” indicates that Israeli officials make no distinction between Gaza’s entire civilian population on the one hand, and a political grouping Israel opposes, on the other. It indicates that Israel is imposing collective punishment on the civilian population to achieve political goals.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, told army radio the cut was a “decision” by Abbas. “Israelis paying Gaza’s electricity bill is an impossible situation,” Erdan added.

Israel’s military, security and intelligence officials are backing the move, even with the understanding of its catastrophic humanitarian consequences and that it could result in military escalation.

But hiding behind Abbas does not exonerate Israel, the occupying power in Gaza, of its responsibilities. The Fourth Geneva Convention, governing military occupation, requires the occupier to use all means at its disposal to ensure adequate medical services, public health and other basic necessities of life.

“Israel is not just a service provider, responding neutrally to a client’s request,” Gisha stated. “Given its extensive control over life in the Strip, Israel is responsible for enabling normal life for its residents.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the move to further cut electricity threatens the lives of the population in Gaza. It urged Israel “in its capacity as an occupying power according to the international humanitarian law, to fulfill [its] obligations towards the Gaza Strip population and guarantee civilians’ access to the necessary basic services.”

Cruel power play

At the end of May, the Palestinian Authority asked Israel to reduce the amount of electricity it supplies to Gaza, saying it would start paying only 60 percent of Gaza’s monthly electricity bill from Israel.

Palestinian Authority spokesperson Tareq Rashmawi defended the move, saying Hamas had failed to reimburse the PA for electricity. Rashmawi also demanded that Hamas agree to hold parliamentary and presidential elections – again indicating a political motive in inflicting suffering on the population.

Last month, Gaza’s power authority said that it had complied with all of the PA’s conditions to end the electricity crisis, including conducting more rigorous collections of electricity bills within the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Last month, the Palestinian Authority stopped transferring funds to support Gaza’s health system, denying at least 240 infants and hundreds of people cancer and other critical treatments, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

The PA also stopped providing medicine and baby formula to hospitals in Gaza, a move health officials in Gaza denounced as politically motivated.

The Palestinian Authority’s mounting pressure is seen as an attempt to wrest control over Gaza from Hamas.

This week, Harvard scholar Sara Roy wrote in the London Review of Books that “if Abbas wanted to win the support of Gaza’s people all he would have to do is pay the civil servants their salaries.”

Roy, who has written about Gaza for years, describes harrowing and accelerating levels of social distress and breakdown in the territory as a consequence of the decade-long blockade imposed by Israel with the support of Egypt and the PA.

In addition to cutting electricity and medicine supplies, Abbas has also stopped paying civil servants in Gaza who worked for the PA before Hamas took control in 2007, after it won parliamentary elections the year before.

Even though these employees stopped working, Abbas had been paying their salaries. In April, the PA cut their payments by 30 to 70 percent.

In recent weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization and the UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA have all warned of the disastrous consequences of reducing Gaza’s already desperately inadequate electricity supply.

But as Gaza is left to suffer in the dark, there has been virtually no international attention to the worsening crisis.

Hamas authorities in Gaza have relied on aid from Qatar, which has financed emergency fuel supplies for Gaza’s sole power plant, to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. That supply ran out in April.

Qatar is now facing pressure from Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to cut all assistance to Hamas.

Rallies Across USA Show Convergence Of Supremacist And Islamophobes

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Far-right activists held anti-Muslim demonstrations in least 28 cities across the United States on Sunday (June 11). The demonstrators, spurred by one of the largest grass-roots anti-Muslim group, and in many cases were met by larger crowds of counter protesters.

Counter protesters amassed in several cities to oppose the nationwide marches, with clashes and skirmishes taking place at a handful of the march sites. Clashes reportedly broke out between anti-fascists – known colloquially as Antifa – and march participants in a handful of cities, including Seattle, Washington. The protests and counter protests in more than a dozen cities come at a time of increased tensions and frequent physical confrontations between Antifa and far-right activists.

During a rally and counter protest in New York City, local media reports estimate that around 200 Antifa protests outnumbered several dozen participants of the National March Against Sharia.

At least one planned rally was canceled in Portland, Oregon, where two men were fatally stabbed last month while defending two Muslim women from a man who taunted them with racial slurs.

Members of the alt-right – a loosely knit movement that includes white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other far-right groups – had announced their intention to participate in many of the marches.

The demonstrations were also held Seattle, New York, Chicago, Saint Paul (Minnesota) and Santa Clara (California).

According to Reuters news agency, on the steps of the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg, barricades and a heavy police presence, including officers mounted on horses, separated about 60 anti-sharia demonstrators from an equal number of counter-protesters. Many of the latter were dressed in black masks and hoods and chanting “No Trump, no KKK, no Fascist USA.”

The atmosphere was tense but the protest went off with no violence and only one arrest, police said.

More than a dozen men belonging to the anti-government Oath Keepers were on hand, invited by ACT to provide security. Most of them carried handguns.

In Seattle, about 75 anti-sharia protesters were outnumbered by counter-protesters at a rally that was moved from Portland, Oregon. Tensions are running high in Portland after a man yelling religious and racial slurs at two teenage girls on a commuter train fatally stabbed two men who tried to stop him.

Oath Keepers said on its website that it was “answering the call to defend free speech against those who would use terrorist violence or the threat of violence to shut it down.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center says Oath Keepers is “one of the largest radical anti-government groups in the United States,” organized around a “set of baseless conspiracy theories.”

The so-called anti-Shariah rallies were organized by Act for America, deemed an anti-Muslim hate group deemed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The demonstrations prompted security fears at mosques across the country and come at a time when hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise.

A coalition of 129 national and local organizations amplified concerns on June 9 in a letter urging mayors to denounce the marches, which also coincide with Ramadan, the holy month in which Muslims fast during the daylight hours.

“We are deeply concerned about the type of message that these protests send to the American public and to the good people in your city – that it is acceptable to vilify people simply because of their faith,” the groups wrote on Friday in their letter to 29 mayors.

“We, the undersigned national and local civil rights, faith-based, and community organizations, ask that you use your voice as an elected representative of your city to reject bigotry.”

The FBI has documented a surge in anti-Muslim hate crimes in recent years, reporting a 67% spike between 2014 and 2015 of incidents motivated by bias against Muslims, Arabs, South Asian and other immigrant communities.

The belief that Sharia law is infiltrating the United States is a tactic the far-right has used to instill a fear against Muslims among those who aren’t familiar with Islam and to push forward Islamophobic policies.

For example, in July, former 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said that any Muslim who believes in Sharia should be deported. Other anti-Muslim figures like conservative radio show host Mark Levin have claimed Sharia law has already creeped into the country, claiming that “free speech under attack. Non-Islamic religions under attack, in many respects. You can see the gays under attack.”

Neo-Nazis have been actively recruiting people online to help organize and attend Saturday’s demonstrations. For example, neo-Nazi group White Lives Matter is using the Daily Stormer (a popular neo-Nazi website) to recruit white nationalists to organize and join the anti-Sharia rally in Austin, Texas, according to SPLC. In Batesville, Arkansas, longtime neo-Nazi Billy Roper volunteered to organize the anti-Sharia rally. Roper, founder of the white nationalist group National Alliance, wrote an email to his members immediately after 9/11 praising al-Qaida for hitting the Twin Towers in New York City.

The nationwide anti-Muslim demonstrations were called by Act for America founded by Brigitte Gabriel, American of Lebanese origin, in 2007.

In recent years Gabriel made a barrage of anti-Muslim comments. During a speech at the Joint Forces Staff College in 2007, she said “a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah … who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen of the United States.”

She has referred to Arabs as “barbarians” and claimed they have “no soul”.

Her group has worked in state legislatures pushing anti-Muslim laws. In February 2017, she said that she provided a “national security briefing” to President Trump.

Between 2008 and 2013 ACT for America was one of 33 anti-Muslim groups that had access to more than $204 million in revenue and helped push for legislation targeting Muslims.

India and Pakistan admitted to Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Wasantha Rupasinghe

Amid growing hostilities between India and its arch-rival Pakistan, the two countries were granted full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) during its two-day annual summit in Kazakhstan last week.

The regional formation, which is dominated by Russia and China, was established to counter US geo-political strategy in Central Asia and the Caspian region. It includes a number of Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

India and Pakistan were not granted membership in 2005 because of differences between Russia and China, the two leading powers in the organisation. Russia pushed for full membership of its decades-long ally, India, while China favoured Pakistan for similar reasons. In recent years, Russia and China have come together in response to Washington’s aggressive and confrontational stance and agreed to open the way for India and Pakistan to become full members.

The US has intensified its efforts to integrate India into its military-strategic agenda against China and, under the Modi government, has effectively turned India into a frontline state in Washington’s war preparations against Beijing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has increasingly parroted the US line on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Last August, India agreed to open its bases to the US military.

Pakistan and China have responded to the closer line-up between the US and India by further consolidating their decades-long political, economic and military partnership.

India hopes that its SCO membership will allow it to advance its geo-political ambitions in the broader Asian region and, in particular, secure access to energy-rich Central Asia. “Joining the SCO is a low-cost initiative to increase India’s influence in Central Asia,” Constantino Xavier, a fellow at Carnegie India, recently commented.

By backing Indian membership, Beijing is seeking to expand its own interests in South Asia and weaken US-Indian ties. As Xavier noted: “India joining the SCO could open a precedent for China to claim membership in SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation], BIMSTEC [Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation], and other regional organisations in South Asia.”

Notwithstanding their full SCO membership, there is no sign of any de-escalation of war tensions between India and Pakistan. Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif failed to hold any formal bilateral or sideline talks during the summit. Their only meeting was a brief encounter at the leaders’ lounge in the evening before the summit concert and banquet. They reportedly only “exchanged greetings” while Modi inquired about the health of Sharif and his family.

Before the SCO summit, the Hindustan Times reported on June 1 that there would be no bilateral meetings. The newspaper quoted an unnamed Indian official, who said: “The Pakistan army is playing a more emphatic role in its India policy. Everything possible is being done to spoil the ties on various fronts. As of now, there are no request from Pakistan side for any meeting.”

Modi’s speech to the SCO summit focused on the “fight against terrorism” and declared, “unless we take coordinated and strong efforts, it is not possible to find a solution.” While not naming any particular country, his obvious target was Pakistan, which New Delhi constantly accuses of waging a proxy war by supporting anti-Indian Kashmir separatist groups.

While the Indian prime minister said his country fully supported “connectivity” among SCO member countries, he insisted that “sovereignty and regional integrity must be respected while inclusivity and sustainability are essential.” These remarks were significant, given that just weeks earlier India boycotted China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) summit, citing a “sovereignty” issue. The $46 billion China and Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of OBOR, passes through Pakistani-held Kashmir which India still claims.

Modi’s reference to “respect for sovereignty” shows that despite its SCO membership, India continues to oppose CPEC and the OBOR project. New Dehli, in line with Washington’s agenda, is concerned that these projects will significantly enhance China’s geo-political clout in South Asia and Eurasia more generally, and boost Pakistan’s battered economy.

War tensions between the two South Asian countries have dramatically escalated during the past year. Last September, the Indian government ordered its military to launch a “surgical strike” inside Pakistan’s territory. Modi boasted that India’s military actions meant the end of “strategic restraint” vis-à-vis Pakistan. Since then, relations have worsened with exchanges of fire across the Line of Control (LoC) that divides Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir. Both sides have issued war threats, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.

On June 11, the Daily Excelsior reported that the Indian military launched a major offensive against Pakistan after its army targeted defence locations and civilian areas in three sectors of the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri along the LoC. The newspaper reported that at least nine Pakistani army posts and bunkers were destroyed in retaliatory fire. Pakistan intensified its attacks a day after its army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, visited Muzaffarabad and some forward posts on the LoC.

On June 12, Geo News, quoting from Inter Services Public Relations, the Pakistan army’s media wing, reported that two young people were killed and another three injured in artillery attacks by Indian troops along the LoC. Two days earlier, a 70-year-old man was killed in Chirikot by Indian artillery. Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh and lodged an official protest over the “unprovoked” firing by the Indian troops.

Early this month, the Indian army announced the killing of five Pakistani soldiers and the injuring of another six in a “retaliatory firing.” A Pakistan army spokesman reported that two Pakistani civilians were killed and eight injured by Indian military forces.

Australian media widens campaign against Chinese “influence”

James Cogan

“Are you now, or have you ever been, an agent of influence for the Chinese Communist Party?”

It has not reached the point where people are being hauled before a Royal Commission in Australia and asked such a McCarthyite question, but processes are developing in that direction. A media campaign against alleged Chinese “power and influence” in the country is assuming ever-more anti-democratic and sinister dimensions.

The campaign is based on the purported “concerns” of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), which, along with other intelligence and military agencies, works in constant collaboration with its American counterparts. ASIO’s conduit is an “investigation” being carried out by the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), along with the newspapers published by Fairfax Media—the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and Australian Financial Review. It was well and truly joined over the weekend by the Australian, one of the flagship publications of Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire.

A pall of suspicion has been cast over current and retired politicians, business figures, universities and academics, journalists, Australian citizens of Chinese descent, and more than 170,000 Chinese students who are studying at Australian universities and vocational colleges. The implication of the media coverage is that, in one way or another, whether consciously or not, they are being used to assert the interests of the Chinese regime in Australian politics and society.

The preoccupation with Chinese “agents of influence” can be understood only by assessing it within the context of Australia’s role in the rising geo-political tensions in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia is one of the key allies of the United States in its escalating efforts to confront China and shatter Beijing’s ability to challenge the global dominance of American imperialism.

While China is Australia’s largest export market, the dominant factions of the ruling class have chosen to maintain their alignment with the US ruling elite, its strategic ally for over 70 years and largest investment partner.

The foreign policy of Australian imperialism is in line with Washington on a range of issues that could lead to open conflict with Beijing. These include threatening military action to compel North Korea to give up its missile and nuclear weapons programs; opposing Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea; and seeking to compel China to open protected areas of its economy to foreign ownership and competition. Australia hosts crucial American military bases and assets, and its military and intelligence agencies are integrated and “inter-operable” with their US counterparts.

The obvious aim of the anti-China campaign is to intimidate, silence or purge from the political, academic and media establishment those who question the alignment with the US.

The ABC is conducting the campaign through the current affairs’ “Four Corners” program and on its website. The Fairfax press is waging it via an ongoing series in its publications, under the banner “China’s Operation Australia.”

At the centre of the “investigation” is an attack on the governing Liberal Party and the opposition Labor Party for accepting donations from “Chinese-linked corporations and individuals.”

The ABC website named the “Chinese-linked” donors on June 8 and asserted that unspecified analysts—presumably ASIO—“say Chinese political donations are one way that Beijing seeks to gain influence over Australia.”

Included in the ABC’s scurrilous list, however, is billionaire Chau Chak Wing, an Australian citizen for 20 years. This week he made a public statement denying any relationship with the Chinese government or membership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Others on the list are Taiwanese, including at least one who has close links to the pro-independence movement. Another is a Hong Kong-born Catholic businessman.

No comparable list has been published showing the vast sums of cash that flow to the main capitalist parties from American and other foreign corporations, or from Australian-based banks and companies.

Most Liberal and Labor leaders have been involved, in one way or another, in soliciting donations from “Chinese-linked” corporate sources over the past decade or more. Desperate to prove their allegiance to the US-Australia alliance, both parties have responded by scrambling to condemn China for “interference” in Australian politics. Inquiries are being initiated to draw up legislative changes to ban donations from overseas corporations.

On June 10, the Australian extended the witch-hunt to the country’s universities. It published sensationalist claims that research projects being conducted in partnership with Chinese universities and institutes are “contributing to enhancing the sophistication of China’s military and intelligence technology.”

The University of Adelaide was indicted for collaborating in research to develop “superior rubber-based materials.” Such rubber, readers were told, could be used in the production of Chinese jet fighters.

The University of NSW was working with Chinese companies on a “new type of world-class wireless infrastructure.” The article declared such technology would have “obvious military and espionage uses.”

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) was indicted for joint projects with Chinese collaborators in fields such as “big data technologies, metamaterials, advanced electronics and quantum computing and communications.” All these areas, the article insisted, “have military or security applications.”

One could have added that virtually any aspect of technology has similar potential.

The author of the inane article, academic and former Green candidate Clive Hamilton, asserted: “UTS appears to have become an unofficial outpost of China’s scientific research, some with direct application to advancing the PLA’s (Peoples Liberation Army) fighting capacity.”

This follows a comment published on June 4 by the Conversation website, written by academic James Leibold, demanding the eviction of the Australia China Relations Institute from UTS. Leibold accused the institute of “courting” Australian journalists on Beijing’s behalf, by financing them to undertake “study tours” of China.

Among the journalists he named—and over whom he, at the least, cast suspicion—were Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of the Australian; Ross Gittins, economics editor for the Sydney Morning Herald; Malcolm Farr, national political editor of News Limited’s online news.com.au; and Jim Middleton, a commentator on Sky News.

On June 11, the ABC accused the Chinese government of attempting to establish influence over the Australian media—including the ABC itself. Among the cases it ludicrously cited was a program co-produced by Murdoch media’s Sky News cable channel and China Central Television. It consisted of a panel of “experts” debating foreign policy controversies such as Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

As the World Socialist Web Site noted last September, the anti-China campaign is being waged in the “language of political purges, police raids, mass arrests and internment camps for ‘traitors’ and ‘enemy aliens’ in the event of a war with China”.

The over-riding aim of the campaign is to combat the widespread anti-war sentiment in the working class. Years of wars and intrigues, waged on the fraudulent pretext of combatting terrorism, has given rise to growing opposition to the US-Australia military alliance. American imperialism, not China, is viewed as the greatest threat to peace and progress by most Australian workers and youth.

The greatest fear of the ruling class is that anti-war sentiment will intersect with the mounting anger toward the existing economic and political order that has emerged around the world. No less than in the US and Europe, millions of workers in Australia are increasingly hostile to the capitalist profit system, and the political parties that defend it, due to the endless assault being waged against their living standards.

Under such conditions, the stoking of anti-Chinese paranoia is being used to try to disorientate and divert sections of the population into patriotism and chauvinism. It will be used to justify squandering resources on the military on the grounds the country is “under threat” from the Chinese regime. Opponents of militarism and war—especially the socialist movement—will be denounced as “traitors” and apologists for the Chinese Communist Party.

The fact that the CCP is the political representative and guardian of the Chinese capitalist class, and is totally hostile to socialism and the working class, will not stand in the way of this Australian nationalist propaganda.

China, Japan take tentative steps to revive relations

Kurt Brown

Senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi visited Japan from May 29 to 31, meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and others, marking a tentative step toward reviving Sino-Japanese relations, which have been strained for years. As one of only five state councillors of the People’s Republic of China, Yang is China’s top foreign affairs official, ranking ahead of the foreign minister.

Yang’s visit was preceded by the equally significant decision by an initially reluctant Japanese government to send a high-level delegation, headed by the secretary general of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Toshihiro Nikai, to China’s Belt and Road Forum (BRF), held on May 14–15. The BRF is part of China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project, designed to further enhance its global economic standing by linking China with the rest of Asia and Europe via massive infrastructure spending on roads, railways, ports and communications.

Nikai reportedly took a personal letter from Abe, addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping, seeking to work closely with China on forcing North Korea to denuclearise and offering to cooperate with Beijing on the OBOR plans.

Relations between China and Japan have been cold to openly hostile ever since Abe came to power in December 2012. Abe further ramped up tensions around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands by insisting that the rocky outcrops in the East China Sea were Japanese territory and there would be no negotiations with China on their status. His government has also taken steps to remilitarise Japan, and leaders have visited the notorious Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead, provoking protests by China and South Korea.

Yang’s visit included a five-hour meeting with Japan’s national security advisor Shotaro Yachi as part of the fourth round of the annual China-Japan political dialogue. In line with other US allies, Yachi told Yang that “Japan and China need to work together to strongly urge North Korea to avoid further provocative actions and obey things like United Nations resolutions.” A North Korean missile landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone in the Sea of Japan that morning.

Yang also spoke with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and held a 50-minute discussion with Abe. Both Abe and Kishida called on China to put more pressure on North Korea. Amid US military threats, Yang restated China’s insistence on “a political resolution through peaceful means” to the standoff with North Korea.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yang sought confirmation that “sensitive issues that bear impact on the political foundation of China-Japan relations, including Taiwan and the historical issues” would be properly handled. The reference is to efforts by the Abe government to whitewash the crimes of Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s, and to the One China policy that recognises Beijing as the sole legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

Significantly, however, both sides downplayed contentious issues. Just days earlier, Japan had authored a G7 summit communiqué that included references to China’s unilateral actions and alleged militarisation in the East and South China Seas. Public statements during Yang’s visit contained no such provocative rhetoric.

Instead, the focus was on bilateral economic cooperation, with China welcoming Japanese involvement in the OBOR project. Yang met representatives from the Japan Business Federation and the Japan-China Friendship Group on May 30.

In a television interview after the Belt and Road Forum, Abe suggested that Japan could participate in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, set up by China and in which Beijing holds the largest voting share. The US had pressured its allies not to take part in the bank. On June 5, Abe declared his intention to cooperate with China in the OBOR scheme.

These moves by Japan take place in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a blow to Abe’s plans for Japan’s economic revival. Abe had to overcome opposition inside his ruling LDP to ratify the TTP, which is now in limbo. Facing a lower house election by the end of next year, Abe is casting around for other means to boost the stagnant Japanese economy.

The Abe government has sought to broaden its economic arrangements. While seeking participation in China’s OBOR, Tokyo has no intention of accommodating to Chinese dominance of the Asia Pacific. It has also formed a partnership with India in the multi-billion dollar development of a proposed Asia-Africa Growth Corridor that involves infrastructure projects, especially along Africa’s east coast.

In addition, Japan, along with the other remaining TPP members, met in Vietnam on May 21 to discuss reviving the TPP without the US. In a significant speech in Sydney, US Senator John McCain was critical of Trump and suggested that TPP members proceed with the bloc, saying Washington could re-join at some future point—hinting at Trump’s removal.

While tentative, Japan’s moves to improve relations with China are part of a broader pattern fuelled by the global uncertainty generated by Trump’s “America First” nationalism. In the wake of the recent G7 and NATO summits, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly declared that Germany and Europe needed to pursue their own independent role.

Unlike Merkel, the Japanese government has not been openly critical of the Trump administration. But the steps by Japan and China toward a thaw in relations are another sign of the shifts in geopolitical relations and rivalries accelerated by Trump’s election. Abe is due to take another step toward improved ties with China when he meets Chinese President Xi at the G20 summit in early July.

UK food bank usage at record high

Alice Summers 

Food bank usage in the UK has reached an all-time high, with a record 1.2 million emergency food parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust, the largest food bank charity. The 2016-2017 period marks the ninth successive year in which demand has risen. According to the Trussell Trust, 436,938 of its food parcels went to children.

This report comes after nearly a decade of welfare cuts in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Since 2008, the number of emergency three-day food parcels handed out by the Trussell Trust has multiplied a staggering 45 times—up from 25,899 in 2008 to 1,182,954 between April 2016 and March 2017.

Research by the Trust has found that issues with welfare benefit payments are one of the main reasons for referral to a food bank. Nearly 43 percent of food bank users in the 2016-2017 period reported that they were in a crisis situation due to changes or delays to their benefit payments. After benefits issues, the most common reason cited was low income (26.45 percent), with debt (7.78 percent) and homelessness (5.43 percent) also listed as important factors.

Both indebtedness and homelessness have seen a significant rise in recent years. According to the Bank of England’s Governor Mark Carney, household indebtedness is “high by historical standards,” with the average household now owing around £13,000, excluding mortgages. Total unsecured debt is at an all-time high of £349 billion. Levels of homelessness in England have doubled since 2010, with at least 3,600 people sleeping on the streets each night, according to a Shelter charity report from December 2016.

The Trussell Trust raises particular concerns over the impact that the rollout of Universal Credit is having on vulnerable people. The 2012 launch of Universal Credit—the Conservative government’s amalgamated benefits payment “reform”—has seen the introduction of some of the most severe and punitive benefit cuts for decades.

The introduction of Universal Credit involves lowering the amount of money claimants can earn before low-wage subsidies, in the form of Universal Credit benefits, are reduced. This reduced allowance and strict eligibility conditions imposed by the government amount to the loss of up to £200 a month for many working families. A six-week waiting period is also enforced before claimants can collect their first payment, effectively depriving recipients of a large portion of their income for weeks on end.

According to the Trussell Trust, this six-week delay can have grave consequences, leading to referrals to food banks, mental health issues, debt, rent arrears and even eviction. “These effects can last even after people receive their Universal Credit payments, as bills and debts pile up,” the report stated.

Sixty-five percent of Trussell Trust food banks reported that this six-week wait for the first Universal Credit payment has led to an increase in the number of people being forced to rely on food assistance to feed themselves. Over a quarter (27 percent of food banks) say that this increase has been significant. There have been instances of food bank users being forced to wait for much longer periods for their benefits payments, with some users experiencing delays of up to 13 weeks.

One in four food banks said that Universal Credit has led to an increase in mental health problems.

Two in five food banks also stated that the rollout of Universal Credit is linked to an increase in debt, while one in five consistently noted that their clients feared eviction from their homes or were in rent arrears due to the new method of payment.

While Universal Credit will not be fully in place until 2022, the Trussell Trust established a clear link between those areas where Universal Credit has already been fully introduced and an increased use of food banks. Food banks in areas of full Universal Credit rollout have seen a 16.85 percent average increase in demand, more than double the national average rise in demand of 6.64 percent.

The Trust’s report comes in the wake of other studies revealing growing levels of poverty and food insecurity in the UK. Nearly 3 million children in Britain are threatened with malnutrition outside term time, when they are not provided with school meals. A Department of Health report released in December also found a 44 percent rise in UK hospital admissions related to malnutrition over the past five years.

This vast increase in reliance on food banks is massively overstretching the Trussell Trust’s resources, with some food banks running out of food and having to appeal to the local population and other food banks for more donations.

These figures are an indictment of the vicious austerity policies carried out by successive Labour and Conservative governments alike. The Trussell Trust research reveals only a portion of food bank usage.

According to a separate report by the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN), a network of smaller food aid providers, the real level of reliance on food banks is far greater than the Trussell Trust’s figures suggest.

IFAN reports that there are at least 651 smaller “grassroots” food banks operating outside of the Trussell Trust network. This brings the estimated total number of food banks in the UK up to more than 2,000.

Sabine Goodwin, an IFAN researcher involved in the writing of the report, labelled the increased use of food banks as “a national crisis that cannot be underestimated.” She continued, “People arrive regularly into food banks across the country not having eaten for days while the government hasn’t even begun to monitor food poverty.”

The Conservative government has made their indifference to the plight of the most vulnerable people clear. In a recent interview with the BBC, senior Conservative MP Dominic Raab sought to downplay the catastrophic effects of Tory welfare cuts by asserting that food bank users are not “languishing in poverty” but are merely suffering from an occasional “cash-flow problem.” In response, Raab was jeered by audience members.

This campaign to whitewash the impact of decades of cuts to social spending and to demonise welfare claimants has been enthusiastically taken up by the bourgeois media. A recent article in the nominally liberal Guardian by columnist Deborah Orr endeavoured to shift the blame for the enormous increase in food bank usage from the government to individuals, by promoting the Victorian idea that there are “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.

Orr’s article was written as a response to the comments of a right-wing audience member on the BBC’s Question Time programme, who claimed that people use food banks because they spend all their money on cigarettes, alcohol and television. While this remark, as with Raab’s, provoked widespread public condemnation, Orr responded with a vicious diatribe against the poor in which she slandered those who defended food bank users and questioned: “Seriously? It’s left-wing to insist that the recipients of charity are always deserving?”

Orr denounced welfare claimants that she selectively chose to focus on as scroungers, without attempting to examine the real reasons behind escalating food bank usage: “Victims are not always good. Messed-up people are not always good ... Privileged or socially excluded, some people are gits. The left just looks naive and childish when it asserts otherwise,” she concluded.

Despite these attempts to absolve the government of any responsibility, what is apparent from the latest food bank usage surveys and many other reports on falling living standards is that large swathes of the UK population are being deliberately pushed further and further into poverty.

Marching toward a wider war in the Middle East

Bill Van Auken

Behind the bitter political warfare in Washington and the endless media flogging of hysterical claims of Russian interference in the election with the supposed collusion of Donald Trump, very real wars in the Middle East are threatening to coalesce into a regional and even global conflagration with ominous implications for the peoples of not only the region, but the entire planet.

These two fields of battle are by no means unconnected. The US ruling establishment is bitterly divided over US foreign policy and, most decisively, its war strategy. Behind the anti-Russia hysteria, the opposition to Trump on the part of the Democratic Party and significant layers of the Republicans is bound up with a determination to prevent him from in any way weakening the escalation of US aggression against Moscow, in particular over Washington’s drive for regime change in Syria.

The Trump administration and the cabal of recently retired and active duty military officers who effectively steer its foreign and military policy have spelled out with increasing clarity a policy directed at planning war with Iran in preparation for confrontation with China. This was the unconcealed agenda of Trump’s trip last month to Israel and Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s two major regional enemies.

The administration’s stated aim of forging an anti-Iranian, NATO-like alliance with the Sunni oil sheikdoms of the Gulf Cooperation Council has translated into a de facto state of war imposed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt against Qatar, which has been subjected to an all-out economic blockade. The Saudi monarchy, the principal ideological and financial sponsor of Islamist extremism, has—with Trump’s blessings—absurdly cast its attack on Qatar as a crusade against terrorism. The real issue is Qatar’s ties to Tehran and its reluctance to join the anti-Iranian war drive.

Turkey, meanwhile, has sided with the Qatari regime, sending food and taking steps toward establishing a military base on the small gas-rich Qatar Peninsula. Ankara had fallen out previously with Saudi Arabia and its allies over its opposition to the military coup that toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. These tensions have been exacerbated by charges that the UAE funneled billions of dollars into Turkey to support the abortive July 2016 coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Amid this spiraling regional conflict, there is a seeming element of incoherence in the Trump administration’s policy. Qatar hosts the strategically vital al-Udeid air base along with some 10,000 US troops. The base is used to carry out airstrikes from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, all in the name of a campaign against terrorism and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in particular.

With Iraqi forces, backed by a murderous US bombing campaign, close to conquering Mosul, a once great city turned to rubble, and Washington’s Kurdish proxies advancing under similar devastating air cover into the Syrian city of Raqqa, ISIS is being driven out of its last two major strongholds.

These apparent victories, however, spell not the end of the latest US war in the Middle East, but rather its increasingly dangerous transformation and escalation.

In a report that could accurately be characterized as “straight from the horse’s mouth,” the New York Times published an article over the weekend titled “Beyond Raqqa, an Even Bigger Battle to Defeat ISIS and Control Syria Looms.” The author is Anne Barnard, who since the beginning of the US-orchestrated war for regime change six years ago has served as a faithful conduit for the CIA and Pentagon and a cheerleader for the US-backed, Al-Qaeda-linked “rebels” employed in the attempt to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Barnard’s article indicates that the Pentagon and the CIA view the crusade against ISIS as a sideshow, a useful pretext for pursuing US imperialist interests in Syria and throughout the region. The battle against the Islamist militia, itself the product of the succession of US wars from Iraq to Libya and Syria, is being eclipsed, she writes, by a conflict in southeastern Syria “with far more geopolitical import and risk.”

Barnard refers to this unfolding military confrontation as the “21st-century version of the Great Game,” a telling historical reference to the protracted rivalry between British imperialism and the Russian empire for dominance over Central Asia. Precisely such predatory aims are involved in Syria, where Washington seeks to overthrow the Assad regime and replace it with a puppet government, as a means of isolating and preparing for war against Iran, which it sees as a rival for hegemony in the energy-rich and strategically vital regions of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.

The focus of this new stage in a Syrian war that has killed hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees is a desert outpost run by US and British special forces commandos in al-Tanf, Syria’s southeastern border crossing with Iraq that controls the main highway between Damascus and Baghdad.

The Pentagon is using the base to train so-called rebels, ostensibly to fight ISIS, but in reality to turn against the Syrian regime. It has unilaterally declared a 34-mile radius surrounding the base a “deconfliction zone,” using this as the pretext for launching three separate airstrikes—the latest on June 8—against militias aligned with the Damascus government. It also recently shot down what it claimed was an armed drone operated by pro-regime forces.

Meanwhile, in the US-backed siege of ISIS-controlled Raqqa to the north, Washington’s Kurdish-dominated proxy ground forces have deliberately left ISIS an escape route to the south so that its fighters can join in the attack on the government-held half of Deir ez-Zor, a city of 200,000 in eastern Syria.

In a blow to the unfolding US war strategy, pro-regime forces have fought their way east to the Iraqi border between the US base at al-Tanf and the ISIS-held border town of al-Bukamal on the Euphrates river. The Pentagon had claimed that its aim is to prepare the “rebels” it is training to take the town from ISIS. This would serve to consolidate US domination of the border area, opening the way for a drive up the Euphrates and ultimately the partition of Syria in preparation for an all-out war for regime change.

The Syrian advance has disrupted US attempts to cut off supply routes linking Syria to Iraq and, further east, to Iran. Iraqi Shiite militias, backed by Iran, have reportedly moved toward the Syrian border.

As the New York Times article makes clear, this is a matter of strategic importance to US imperialist aims. “...[W]hat is really at stake are even larger issues. Will the Syrian government re-establish control of the country all the way to its eastern borders? Will the desert straddling the Syrian-Iraqi border remain a no man’s land ripe for militant control? If not, who will dominate there—forces aligned with Iran, Russia or the United States?”

One would never suspect that what is being described is a sovereign country. The US operation in Syria and Iraq is emerging clearly as the axis of a new imperialist carve-up of the Middle East after a quarter century of US wars that have laid waste to much of the region and left the rickety nation-state system imposed by the former colonial powers in shambles. Just as with earlier such colonial carve-ups, the resulting antagonisms pave the way toward world war.

“With all these forces on a collision course, several recent escalations have raised fears of a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran, or even Russia,” the Times notes.

The logic of the US intervention in Syria points toward a marked escalation of US military force to reverse the tactical defeats the Pentagon has suffered on the Iraqi-Syrian border. That such an offensive may provoke a direct military confrontation with “Iran, or even Russia” will not be unwelcome to dominant layers within the US ruling establishment that see war as the essential instrument for reversing the protracted decline of US capitalism’s global hegemony.

For masses of working people in the Middle East, the United States and across the planet, however, these developments pose a mortal threat. This threat can be answered only through the building of a mass antiwar movement uniting the international working class on the basis of a fight to put an end to imperialism and reorganize society on socialist foundations.

Bangladesh apparel workers still confront appalling conditions

Sarath Kumara

Four years after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, Bangladesh in April 2013, none of the fundamental issues that led to the disaster has been resolved. More than 1,135 workers were killed and almost 2,600 injured, many seriously, when the eight-storey building, which housed a number of apparel factories, caved-in, trapping hundreds under tonnes of concrete and rubble.

Rana Plaza survivors face a desperate situation. A recent survey by ActionAid revealed that 42 percent of the survivors remain jobless and 30 percent are “too traumatised to work.” About 48 percent are physically weak and 33 percent are psychologically weak.

Shilpi Begum, who lost an arm in the tragedy, said she and her chronically ill husband had to stop the education of their three daughters because of financial problems. Factories, she said, were reluctant to hire physically disabled workers. Begum, who wants to return to work and send her kids to school, asked: “How can I ensure that?” Most of the compensation the family received for the disaster was eaten up by medical costs.

While the government has feigned concern about the Rana Plaza disaster, its real attitude is indicated by its response to a peaceful protest by about 500 people at the site on the anniversary of the collapse. The government deployed police, armed with a water cannon, to prevent the rally occurring. According to protest organisers, the police prevented those in attendance laying floral wreaths.

Anwara Hossain, the mother of a deceased Rana Plaza worker, said she was forcefully pushed away by the police. She shouted at police: “If you had a son, you would know my misery. On this day when my son was taken away from me, you keep me away from the one place I can come to remember him … This day might be just another day of duty for you, but for me this is a day when I cannot bring food to my mouth.”

Savar’s Senior Assistant Superintendent of Police Mahbubur Rahman justified the police operation, declaring that his officers only asked people to “not create any chaos.” He claimed that the presence of the water cannon was part of a “regular deployment.”

The government’s callous indifference to the plight of the Rana Plaza victims is reflected in the long-delayed legal actions against those responsible for the disaster.

Charges were not filed against the building owner, Sonel Rana, and 40 others, including local government officials, for three years. Three of these cases are still pending in court, due to so-called legal errors and a series of reinvestigations.

While Rana, a regional leader of the ruling Awami League, is still in custody, 16 others are on bail and 24 defendants have fled.

There are close connections between the political establishment and the apparel industry. The main concern of the Bangladeshi ruling elite and international retailers is to ensure that the sector continues to expand.

The country’s garment industry produces low-cost items and massive profits for a range of international brands, including Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and Gap. The industry employs about 4.5 million workers, 80 percent of whom are young girls from rural areas. In fact, one in every eight Bangladeshi directly or indirectly depend on the textile industry.

Bangladesh’s garment workers are the lowest paid in the world, receiving just 5,300 takas ($68) per month. While hazardous roads and chronic power shortages are a serious problem for the garment industry, international retailers and investors are attracted by the country’s poverty-level wages.

Despite many promises from employers, wages have not improved in the past four years. A recent report from dw.com cited the example of a married couple. Ashik and his wife Rahinur, who worked in a factory producing clothes for international retailers such as H&M and Zara, were sacked for joining demonstrations demanding increased wages last December. They worked 14 hours a day but earned only $193 a month between them. Ashik told dw.com their wages were just enough to cover food and rent but not health care. Having lost their jobs, they could now only afford rice and some dried fish.

The Awami League government and garment industry employers are determined to keep the country’s cheap labour competitive internationally. In 2014-15, clothing provided almost 82 percent of Bangladesh $31 billion export earnings.

Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Siddiqur Rahman said the government raised wages in 2013 and another pay increase was not possible for at least five years, if ever.

Promises by the international retail sector to improve safety conditions in Bangladesh’s apparel sector are a fraud. Many retailers are unwilling to sign even the limited Apparel and Footwear Supply Chain Transparency Pledge, which was drafted and endorsed last year by a nine-member coalition that included Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Labor Rights Forum and the International Trade Union Confederation.

The “pledge,” which has no enforcement mechanisms, requires its signatories to disclose details twice a year about the manufacture of their products, including addresses, types of products made and number of workers at each site. According to HRW, only 17 of out 72 companies contacted have agreed to implement these toothless demands by the end of this year.

Walmart refused to sign the “pledge,” claiming it had its own initiatives to improve transparency in its supply chain.

Health and safety in Bangladeshi workplaces have not improved, and this is not only in the apparel factories. A comment in Dhaka’s Daily Star newspaper reported on May 1 that “294 workers were killed while 101 workers were grievously injured” in the first three months of 2017.

The newspaper noted that 1,240 people were killed and 544 injured in workplace accidents in 2016 and 951 died in 2015. It also revealed that the Bangladesh Occupational Safety Health and Environment Foundation discovered that 33 workers from the 101-strong workforce at one shipbuilding company had acute asbestos poisoning.

Syriza government in Greece passes more austerity

John Vassilopoulos

Greece’s parliament passed further austerity measures last Friday prior to the Eurogroup meeting of finance ministers on June 15.

These come on top of a series of savage measures that were enacted last month, including additional cuts to pensions of between 9 and 18 percent, the reduction of the tax-free allowance from €8,636 to €5,681 as well as cuts in heating allowance, unemployment insurance and other benefits. The bill included measures designed to facilitate mass sackings as well as further sell-offs of public assets.

Friday’s measures were added to a draft bill on fishing regulations in an attempt to fast-track them through parliament. They included an amendment to last month’s legislation, which will see freezes on pension increases extended by one year until the end of 2022. This amounts to a cut of €250 million on pensions on top of the €500 million cut voted in last month. Another amendment specified that collective bargaining will not be automatically resumed after the European Union’s (EU) current €86 billion austerity for loans programme ends in 2018.

All these measures—140 in total—are demanded by Greece’s creditors as a precondition for the release of a €7 billion tranche it needs in order to pay off liabilities due in July. Greece’s overall debt burden remains at around €300 billion or 180 percent of GDP.

Additional measures demanded by the EU, such as the lifting of administrative restrictions on the privatisation of Hellenikon, the site of the former Athens international airport, will be enacted through a series of government decrees.

Passing the measures Syriza Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos justified their fast-tracking, declaring the government needed to counter the danger that “some of our opponents are deliberately trying to turn the Eurogroup meeting… into a discussion about the prerequisite measures rather than a discussion about the debt.”

This is a reference to the ongoing stalemate between the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) regarding the second assessment of the current austerity programme, which should have been finalised last November. This has brought the prospect of a Greek debt default to the fore again, especially after talks over debt relief, which the German government opposes, broke down at the last Eurogroup meeting.

The IMF has not joined the current loans programme, maintaining that Greece’s debt is not sustainable in the long run and that a “haircut” is necessary in return for even more draconian cuts. In fact, the bulk of the measures enacted last month and on Friday are based on demands by the IMF that it says are a precondition for it joining the programme.

According to the minutes from the Eurogroup meeting that were leaked to Greek news site Euro2day, the head of the IMF in Europe, Poul Thomsen, insisted: “[We] would need something considerably more specific [on debt relief] or you will not be able to get us to agree to this.”

German Federal Minister Wolfgang Schauble’s reply was: “I don’t have a mandate [to agree debt relief measures]. If this is the way, then good luck. We will not find a solution.”

While Schauble considers the formal participation of the IMF politically necessary for austerity to continue, he considers debt relief as especially detrimental to the German elite, which is Greece’s chief creditor within the EU.

By the start of last week, the IMF had softened its stance with IMF Director Christine Lagarde telling German financial journal Handelsblatt: “If the creditors are not yet at that stage where they can agree on and respect our assumptions, if it takes them more time to get there, we can acknowledge that and give them a bit more time.” At the same time, she maintained that “disbursement will only take place once debt relief is clearly articulated by the creditors.”

According to reports, Lagarde will be attending this week’s Eurogroup meeting, which has been taken as a sign that an agreement will be reached.

The rush to reach a compromise underscores the nervousness in ruling circles that the prospect of a Greek default could trigger mass protests and strikes by the working class in Greece, as expressed by the wide participation in last month’s 24-hour general strike. Called by the trade union bureaucracy to coincide with the passage of last month’s measures, it brought the country to a standstill.

While there are differences between the IMF and the EU on the handling of the Greek debt crisis, expressing the increasing divergence between Washington and Berlin’s geopolitical interests, on the question of stepping up the offensive against the working class there is full agreement.

The compromise was initially proposed by Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who appealed to the IMF “to take a big step and take the programme to the [IMF] board… even if it cannot disburse before the debt question is resolved.”

In response, the IMF’s Thomsen declared, “this is an interesting proposal which we can consider.”

In response Tsakalotos balked that such a compromise “is the worst of all worlds for [Greece],” adding that “we have negotiated a tough programme with the IMF on the proviso that it comes with a plan saying that the debt is not sustainable so we can turn a page. The IMF’s participation must be based on its stating that the debt is sustainable”. All the same Tsakalotos assured that his government remains as reliable as ever in implementing the EU and IMF diktats stating that “you have my personal commitment that the work to complete the prior actions will continue.”

This is just the latest evidence of Syriza’s role as a tool of the financial elite. It was swept into power in January 2015 winning mass support on an anti-austerity ticket. Just a few months later, the pseudo-left party fully capitulated to Greece’s creditors by signing a new bailout package, thus betraying the overwhelming rejection of Greek workers and youth of austerity in the July 2015 referendum.

Like its social democratic and conservative government predecessors, Syriza relies on undemocratic means to fast-track the austerity measures demanded by the EU/IMF within parliament and on riot police units to put down opposition by workers and youth outside.

Syriza is now widely despised, polling around 16.5 percent according to a recent survey. Some 40 percent of Greeks believe that the measures voted in last month are the most brutal since the first bailout package was signed in 2010.

Greece’s private sector and public sector trade union federations, GSEE and ADEDY, issued statements condemning the latest measures. Referring to the way the measures were passed, ADEDY stated, “last minute amendments have been used in the past by all pro-austerity governments in order to avoid a social backlash. This did not however contribute to their longevity, nor to the lessening of a backlash and of popular anger.”

Such bluster seeks to conceal the trade union bureaucracy’s own complicity in facilitating the passage of the measures. Countless 24-hour general strikes have been called since 2010, the sole purpose of which has been to allow workers to let off steam while the measures are enacted unopposed.

GSEE also verbally condemned the latest measures and vowed to “militantly continue the struggle through our unions”. Nonetheless, it had no qualms about inviting Finance Minister Tsakalotos and Bank of Greece Governor and former Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras to speak at an upcoming event organised by its Labour Institute. Both are directly responsible for implementing measures that have pauperised and impoverished the Greek working class.

Massive abstention in Puerto Rican statehood referendum

Rafael Azul 

On Sunday, June 11, a non-binding referendum took place in Puerto Rico, polling Puerto Ricans on the political status of Washington’s Caribbean colony. Voters were asked to choose between three alternatives for the island: US statehood, independence (and an “improved” association with the US), or the current system—a US territory with a measure of political control over its internal affairs since 1952 (an associated free state) but no representation in the US Congress.

The polling was either ignored or repudiated by more than 2.1 million out of the 2.6 million eligible voters (nearly 80 percent).

The overwhelming majority of those who did vote, 97.17 percent, or 466,000, chose statehood, the option favored by Governor Ricardo Rosselló and his pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Some 7,600 voted for free association/independence; about 6,700 opted for the current territorial status.

The total number of pro-statehood votes fell by 300,000 compared to a similar referendum that took place in 2012. PNP leaders attribute this drop to the mass exodus taking place from this financially crippled territory. A decade-long economic collapse is forcing the emigration of thousands of Puerto Ricans every month to Miami, Chicago and other cities on the US mainland.

In a speech on Sunday evening, announcing the results, Rosselló applauded the pro-statehood victory, ignored the mass abstention, and declared his intention of convincing the US Congress to initiate the transition to US statehood for Puerto Rico.

Governor Rosselló had organized the referendum and campaigned for statehood as a so-called alternative to colonial status, mostly as a distraction from Puerto Rico’s economic debacle, with the island territory’s debt reaching $120 billion, its poverty rate 46 percent and its schools, health care and pension systems in a state of collapse.

For his part, Hector Ferrer, president of the second largest party, the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which is more closely aligned with the Democrats in the US, declared that Rosselló had been the “big loser” in the referendum, because of the record abstentionism, the largest since 1967.

The PPD, together with the pro-independence PIP, had called on voters to boycott the election, as had the striking University of Puerto Rico student body.

At the same time, neither the PPD nor the PIP organized any rallies or protests against the referendum, undoubtedly preferring that potential voters “go to the beach,” a phrase chosen by Ferrer.

Undoubtedly none these forces, or for that matter, the Puerto Rican trade unions, well aware of the explosive conditions that are affecting Puerto Rican workers and youth, would risk mobilizations that could rapidly get out of control.

There was one act of protest in San Juan. As the results started to come in about 500 independentistas rallied at the Electoral Commission in San Juan, rejecting statehood. The demonstrators waved Puerto Rican flags and burned those from the US, while chanting “fire, fire; the Yanquis want fire!” The demonstration included members of the pseudo-left such as Se Acabaron Las Promesas (No more promises), The Revolutionary Puerto Rican Workers Party— Macheteros, the Feminist Collective, as well as groups that reject US financial supervision over Puerto Rico’s budget. For all its bluster, the rally presented no alternative to resolve the crisis gripping Puerto Rican society.

The historically low voter turnout did not just result from the boycott calls by the PPD and PIP; it follows a low voter turnout of 55 percent in November 2016, when Rosselló was elected, down from turnouts of 70 or even 80 percent in the previous elections.

This growing mass abstention reflects popular disgust with all of the capitalist political alternatives on offer and the prevailing view among Puerto Rican workers, students and the lower middle class that the real power is in the hands of the Financial Oversight Board that is managing Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy and in those of the US Congress.

Another issue affecting the low turnout is that many Puerto Ricans are critical of the $8 million cost of the election, at a time when schools, hospitals and pensions are under attack.

Whether the formal status of the island is changed to that of a US state or “sovereign” nation, or it continues as a colonial “free associated state,” the brutal capitalist exploitation of Puerto Rican workers will continue as will Wall Street’s demands for draconian austerity policies to meet payments to billionaire bondholders.

In the past, the US Congress has shown little interest in changing Puerto Rico’s status, while President Donald Trump has made clear his administration’s opposition to a bailout. Given the likelihood that as a state Puerto Rico would send five more Democrats to the House and two to the Senate, there is no support within the Republican congressional leadership for acting on the dubious results of Sunday’s referendum.

The Trump White House issued a statement Monday washing its hands of the matter: “This referendum is nonbinding and only Congress can change Puerto Rico’s status.”