Amazon’s monopoly swells with $13.7 billion offer to buy Whole Foods

Evan Blake

Amazon, the world's largest online retail corporation, announced early Friday that it began negotiations to acquire the grocery store company Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. The corporation now has a foothold in the $800 billion US grocery market as it expands its octopus-like tentacles of economic domination into new segments of the world economy.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s personal fortune rose by an estimated $1.88 billion yesterday as Amazon's stock soared by $23.54 a share. In a single day, Bezos earned as much as 72,890 Amazon warehouse workers—well over half the total American workforce—make in an entire year.

The sale expresses the tremendous power exercised by a handful of powerful financial houses on the world economy. Ninety three percent of Whole Foods shares are owned by so called “institutional investors,” with a quarter owned by just three companies—Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. These companies are also the first, second, and sixth largest institutional shareholders of Amazon stock, over 60 percent of which is owned by financial corporations. Four of the top five largest financial institutions in the world earned a combined winnings of $2.26 billion from the deal in the first day alone.

It is the financial aristocracy, not the workers at Amazon and Whole Foods, who are the sole beneficiaries of the potential merger between these two companies. While the corporate owners celebrate the deal, Bloomberg News quietly announced: “Amazon also wants fewer employees in each [Whole Foods] store, with those who remain providing product expertise, rather than performing mundane tasks.” In other words, thousands of jobs will be slashed. Current and former Amazon employees can tell those who remain that their working conditions will rapidly deteriorate.

Amazon offered to buy the company for $42 a share. Over the course of the day, Whole Foods stock rose 28 percent to a high of $43.45. Yesterday’s rise in Amazon’s stock price added $11 billion to the corporate coffers, almost equaling the cost of the Whole Foods acquisition. Whole Foods, founded in 1978, is best known for selling more expensive organic and “natural” products, largely to upper middle class customers, giving it the nickname “whole paycheck” for the expense of shopping there.

The negotiations behind the deal give a sense of how the world economy is really run.

Over the past year, Whole Foods has increasingly struggled to compete with larger grocers, and in April activist hedge fund company Jana Partners announced that they had become the second-largest shareholder in the company, sending stock prices flying. The hedge fund immediately placed pressure upon Whole Foods to cut costs and increase stock prices, prompting the company to replace five members on its board of directors and hire a new chief financial officer last month.

Shortly thereafter, financial backer Neuberger Berman, which owns roughly 2.7 percent of the company and manages $267 billion in assets worldwide, sent a letter to the Whole Foods board, urging them to consider “possible strategic mergers, partnerships, joint ventures, alliances.”

For Amazon, a primary motive behind the acquisition is the vast expansion of the company's physical, brick-and-mortar presence, as they will take ownership of Whole Foods' more than 460 stores spread across the United States, Canada and Great Britain.

Amazon has been piloting a series of cost-saving initiatives at individual grocery stores, including an “Amazon Go” convenience store in Seattle that functions without cashiers, instead using an array of sensors and cameras to monitor shoppers and automatically charge them for items they take from the store.

Prior to Friday's deal, Amazon had been a minor player in grocery retail. In 2007, the company launched its food delivery service “Amazon Fresh” in Seattle, expanding to over a dozen cities globally since then. In March, the company announced “Amazon Fresh Pickup,” which lets users shop online, reserve a time to pick up the groceries and have them loaded into their car at the store.

The acquisition is still subject to approval by Whole Foods shareholders and federal regulatory agencies, with the negotiations expected to finish in the second half of 2017. Multiple analysts predict that other retail giants, including Walmart, Target, Costco, and more, may attempt to outbid Amazon in the meantime, or at least drive up the price Amazon has to pay to seal the deal.

Walmart is the most likely opponent to step into the fray, fearing that an Amazon-Whole Foods deal could mark an encroachment on their control over brick-and-mortar retail. The two companies have been engaged in a ferocious campaign over control of the global retail industry. To challenge Amazon, Walmart has been engaged in an acquisition spree of e-commerce companies over the past year, culminating with a purchase also announced Friday of the online apparel company Bonobos for $310 million.

Amazon’s offer to purchase Whole Foods will have profound implications for workers at Amazon, Whole Foods, and on the entire working class. In their efforts to undercut one another and expand their control into all industries, the corporations’ central strategy will be to reduce labor expenses—that is, wages and benefits for their workforces. These downward pressures will drive other companies to reduce wages and benefits to satisfy shareholders in a ruthless competition for profit.

The Amazon-Whole Foods deal is an expression of the growing concentration of wealth and economic power in an increasingly small handful of financial aristocrats like Jeff Bezos and the executives at leading Wall Street firms like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. According to a 2017 academic study, these three firms are the largest combined shareholder of 40 percent of all publicly listed companies in the US, accounting for a market capitalization of $17 trillion, roughly equal to the total GDP of the United States.

As monopolies like Amazon gain strength across all industries, an increasingly interconnected network of investors and directors demand higher profits and more intense exploitation of the working class. It is not just the cruelty or greed of individual bosses which lies beneath the increasingly demeaning and difficult conditions Amazon workers face in fulfillment centers worldwide—this cruelty and greed has a material basis—it stems from the monopolization and financialization of the capitalist economy.

The task of the working class is to take control of these international behemoths, place them under democratic control, confiscate their assets, and reorganize them to meet the needs of the human race.

Germany issues stinging rebuke of US sanctions against Russia

Johannes Stern

Germany’s Foreign Ministry published a sharply-worded press release Thursday from Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats, SPD) and Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern (Social Democrats, SPÖ) denouncing the United States’ foreign and economic policies.

Republicans and Democrats agreed almost unanimously, by 97 votes to 2, to impose new sanctions on Russia in the Senate on Wednesday. The Senate justified the measure as a punishment for Moscow’s alleged meddling in the US presidential election, the annexation of Crimea and its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The bipartisan bill was “the package of sanctions the Kremlin deserves for its actions,” said Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.

Gabriel and Kern brusquely rejected the US Senate’s measure. The bill was really about “the sale of American liquefied gas and the sidelining of Russian gas supplies in the European market,” according to the two social democratic politicians. That emerges from the text “particularly explicitly.” The goal was “to secure jobs in the American oil and gas industries.”

The US and Europe had since 2014 “side by side and in close joint consultation answered Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which is illegal under international law, and its actions in eastern Ukraine. … But the threat to impose extraterritorial sanctions which violate international law on European companies participating in the expansion of European energy supplies” could not be tolerated. Europe’s energy provision was “a European affair, and not one for the United States of America!”

Gabriel and Kern went on to warn, “Instruments of political sanctions should not be connected with economic interests.” Threatening European companies “in US markets with punishments” if they participate in or finance projects like the Nord Stream II oil pipeline with Russia would introduce “an entirely new and extremely negative quality to European-American relations.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel explicitly backed her Foreign Minister on Friday. There was “very strong agreement in terms of content with Gabriel’s statement,” stated government spokesman Stefan Seibert. “It is, to put it mildly, an unconventional action by the US Senate.” It was troubling that European businesses were being targeted by sanctions to punish Russian behaviour. “That cannot be allowed,” added Seibert.

The bipartisan action by the US Senate and the sharp response from the German government make clear that the conflicts between the US and Germany are not simply intensifying as a result of President Donald Trump, but have deep objective roots. Twenty five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the conflicts between the major imperialist powers, which resulted in two world wars during the 20th century, are erupting into the open once again.

Following the G7 summit three weeks ago, Merkel, in a speech delivered in a Munich beer tent, called into question the alliance with the United States, which formed the basis of Germany’s foreign policy in the post-war era. “The times in which we could completely depend upon others are long past,” she stated and advanced on this basis the demand, “We Euroepans really have to take our fate into our own hands” and “fight for our own future.”

The German government has since worked systematically to expand its global political and economic relations. After Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Berlin at the beginning of the month, and Merkel visited Argentina and Mexico last week, the government organised a major conference on Africa in Berlin earlier this week.

As Berlin moves to fulfil Gabriel’s pledge to “use the spaces vacated by America,” the tensions with Washington are rising. Already last week, Gabriel criticised the US-backed action taken by Saudi Arabia against Qatar, which is aimed above all at Iran. In a statement, Gabriel defended the emirate and warned against a “Trumpification” of relations in the region. The “latest gigantic arms deals between US President Trump and the Gulf monarchies” intensified “the danger of a new arms race.” This was “a completely wrong policy, and certainly not Germany’s policy.”

Gabriel’s statements against the United States have nothing to do with pacifism. He is not concerned with “peace,” but the enforcement of German imperialist interests, which are increasingly at odds with those of the United States. While the United States under Trump is ever more openly heading in the direction of war with Iran, the German government is striving for a further opening up of the country’s economy to secure new markets for German corporations in the Middle East and new investment opportunities for German capital.

The same applies to Russia. Although the German government supported the right-wing coup against Viktor Yanukovitch alongside the US in Ukraine in 2014, and stationed troops on the Russian border, it opposed open conflict with Russia over Ukraine. In his new book “Remeasurements,” Gabriel boasts that “with the Minsk Accord, France and Germany, on behalf of Europe, while not resolving an escalating conflict, curbed it significantly for the first time,” and had done so “without the United States.”

Washington, at that time, had been “close to…supplying weapons to Ukraine,” the Foreign Minister stated. “With the cynical idea that although Russia could not be defeated militarily, it would be pressurised into peace talks more rapidly if it paid a high ‘price in blood’. The war in Ukraine would have become a war over Ukraine.” But Europe was “grown up enough…to foresee this and to let Germany and France negotiate.”

Following Brexit, the election of Trump and the victory of pro-European President Emmanuel Macron, Berlin seemingly feels it is “grown up enough” to increasingly distance itself from the US and to press ahead with the construction of a European army under German leadership.

“Europe’s security is Europe’s own responsibility,” noted Gabriel in his book. “We must become capable of acting strategically in foreign and security policy, because we don’t do so enough. That includes us defining our European interests and articulating them independently of the US. This obstinacy requires to some extent an emancipation from the direction adopted in Washington.”

He goes on, “Whoever has their own goals also should develop their capabilities to achieve them. The EU needs to see itself as a greater security policy power. Our defence budgets must be adjusted accordingly. The armaments of the European armies need to be modernised, made operationally deployable and reoriented to military tasks.”

Gabriel’s declared goal is the building of a veritable European combat power capable of enforcing its global imperialist interests independently of NATO and the US, and, if necessary, against them. The issue is not “just to buy new weapons. It is about integrating the arms industry more in Europe and pooling forces. It is about creating a joint European security identity, which opens the way to a European army through ever more closely integrated structures.”

This policy, which is supported by all of Germany’s parties, from the CDU/CSU to the SPD, Greens and Left Party, has an irresistible logic. As in the first half of the 20th century, the deepening rivalries between the imperialist powers over raw materials, markets and geostrategic influence are leading once again to a war between the great powers, unless the working class intervenes on the basis of its own socialist strategy.

US preparing to send up to 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan

Jordan Shilton

Secretary of Defence James “Mad Dog” Mattis is set to announce the deployment of up to 5,000 additional troops to wage war in Afghanistan in the coming weeks, following a decision Tuesday by President Trump granting Mattis authority to set troop levels.

The move will mark a dramatic escalation of the longest war in US history, which has already claimed the lives of thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians, and is increasingly developing into a wider regional conflict.

The additional forces are desperately needed to prop up Washington’s crisis-ridden puppet regime in Kabul, which is facing an ever-expanding insurgency led by the Taliban. According to conservative estimates, the Islamist group controls around 40 percent of Afghan territory and is initiating new offensive operations.

Mattis acknowledged in congressional testimony this week that the outlook for US imperialism in Afghanistan is bleak. “We are not winning in Afghanistan right now,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, before vowing to change that “as soon as possible.” In what was clearly a criticism of the Obama administration’s drawdown of troops in Afghanistan to the current level of some 9,800, Mattis went on, “It’s going to require a change in our approach from the last several years.”

As well as sending more US forces, Washington is expected to urge its NATO allies to step up their troop commitments. There are currently approximately 5,000 NATO forces deployed in the country.

The corrupt, widely-hated government of President Ashraf Ghani is barely able to exert its authority outside the capital, and even there suicide bombings and other militant attacks occur regularly. A massive suicide bomb exploded two weeks ago, claiming the lives of at least 90 people in the embassy district of Kabul.

On Thursday, a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the capital claimed a further two lives.

The Afghan armed forces, which has been trained and equipped at a cost of billions of dollars, is struggling to cope with the insurgency. Last weekend, three American soldiers died when a Taliban sympathizer, who had infiltrated the army, opened fire on them during a training exercise.

Casualty rates among Afghan troops are high, as shown by figures documenting over 800 deaths in the first two months of 2017. In April, the Taliban launched its bloodiest attack since the beginning of the war, killing some 200 Afghan military personnel at an army base in the north of the country.

While the additional US troops to be deployed will be officially designated as “advisers” to the Afghan forces, it is clear that they will increasingly engage in combat operations. A New York Times report on Tuesday noted that proponents of the deployment hoped that the personnel increase would enable US forces to “advise” their Afghan counterparts closer to the frontline of battle. They are also urging an expansion of the use of US air power to strike more targets.

In Iraq and Syria, similar special forces “advisers” have directed fighting and conducted artillery barrages, including with illegal weapons such as white phosphorus, on civilian centers such as Raqqa and Mosul, leading to the deaths of thousands of innocent residents. Trump’s decision earlier this year to grant more latitude to commanders on the ground to carry out operations is now being repeated in Afghanistan and will have similar results.

The expansion of the air war can only add to the carnage. Just two months ago, the US dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb on a remote mountainous region in the east of the country in what was clearly meant as a warning to its geopolitical rivals and a sign of its determination to use all methods to retain its control over Afghanistan. The bomb was dropped on the eve of Russian-sponsored peace talks with the Taliban.

According to US Air Force statistics, the pace of air strikes has already intensified. More strikes have been conducted over the past four months than at any time since the summer of 2014.

Launched in the wake of 9/11 under the bogus pretext of the “war on terror,” Washington intervened in Afghanistan above all to cement its geostrategic hegemony in the strategically crucial Central Asian region. Control over Afghanistan places the US in close proximity to the energy-rich former Soviet republics to the north, and within striking distance of its main rivals for regional dominance: China, Russia and Iran.

These broader considerations were underscored in an interview given to PBS by retired General David Petraeus, who served as commander of US forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He referred to news of the latest troop deployment as “heartening,” before insisting that the US had to remember why they had intervened. “This is a generational struggle. This is not something that is going to be won in a few years,” he declared, before making a comparison with the US presence in Europe following World War II or in Korea following the Korean War.

The New York Times, in a typical war-mongering editorial, urged Trump to assume responsibility for the 16-year-old conflict, declaring, “Mr. Trump, Afghanistan is your war now.”

The immanent escalation of the Afghan war will only lead to a deepening of the crisis confronting US imperialism. Even pro-war stalwarts like Republican Senator John McCain were compelled to point out during Mattis’s Senate testimony earlier this week that the Trump administration has yet to present a strategic plan for Afghanistan.

Mattis vowed to present the strategy by mid-July, but promised to take interim measures, which could include the troop deployment, to halt what he referred to as a Taliban “surge.”

The Times noted that the development of an Afghan strategy is being complicated because discussions in Washington have been widened to include the US stance towards neighbouring Pakistan, which has long provided a safe haven for Taliban fighters and other Islamist militants like the Hakani Network.

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are high. In May, at least a dozen people died when clashes broke out between the two countries over their disputed border. Without citing evidence, Afghan officials accused Pakistan of being involved in the Kabul suicide bombing that killed 90 earlier in June. Kabul and Islamabad have traded accusations of backing terrorist groups, with Afghanistan accusing Pakistan of assisting the Taliban-aligned Hakani Network. In turn, Islamabad has charged that the Pakistan Taliban enjoys aid from its neighbor.

At the same time, Washington’s relations with Pakistan, which were close throughout the Cold War, have deteriorated as the US has moved over recent years to woo India as a strategic partner as it seeks to encircle and isolate China in the Asia-Pacific. This has included partnership agreements between the US and Indian militaries and efforts to encourage New Delhi to assert its regional authority. Pakistan has reacted with deepening concern and increasingly looked to China for economic and trading relations. Tensions have surged between India and Pakistan over recent months, raising the danger of war between south Asia’s nuclear rivals.

The Trump administration’s strategic review, according to the Times, has thus also had to consider how Washington can manage tensions between Islamabad and New Delhi, with the result that “the Afghan review has turned into a larger review of American policy towards Southwest Asia.”

This only underscores the reckless character of US imperialism. As it escalates the conflict in Afghanistan, plans are already well advanced to ensure it can retain its unchallenged hegemony throughout Central and South Asia, a strategy which raises the prospect of a wider military conflagration, potentially with nuclear-armed adversaries.

Corporate mass murder in London

Robert Stevens

Shock and horror has boiled over into raw anger and fury. Thousands protested in London Friday to demand justice and the punishment of those responsible for mass murder in the worst housing fire in modern British history.

Hundreds chanting “We want justice” for the victims of the Grenfell Tower inferno surrounded Kensington Town Hall, London to demand answers from council officials who had barricaded themselves in the building.

Prime Minister Theresa May while visiting Kensington was forced to remain in a church and was then chased away—surrounded by a heavy security detail—with protesters booing and shouting “shame on you” and “coward.”

This sentiment finds its echo throughout Britain and worldwide.

Millions are horrified by the loss of at least 100 and as many as 150 lives of working class residents in Wednesday’s fire.

Most shocking of all, this took place in Kensington and Chelsea, Britain’s richest borough in one of the richest cities in the world. But like so many other areas of the capital, extreme wealth exists side-by-side with extreme deprivation.

Kensington and Chelsea is one of the most socially divided areas of London, with those living on the Lancaster West Estate, where Grenfell Tower is located, in clear view of the homes of multi-millionaires and billionaires. The most expensive street in the country, Victoria Road in Kensington, has an average house price of £8 million.

This imparts a politically explosive dynamic to unfolding events—which is why, incredibly, the police and council officials have stonewalled the appeals of resident’s families and friends and have still refused to admit the real death toll.

Grenfell is not only an appalling tragedy. It is a crime. Those whose lives were taken were murdered just as surely as if a torch had been applied to the building.

Ruthless cost-cutting with no concern for public safety laid the basis for the Grenfell deaths and ensured the devastating, rapid spread of the fire from its initial source in just a single apartment.

The fire spread so rapidly due to the cladding on the building bursting into flames. It was added last year in a “refurbishment.” On Friday, what many already suspected was confirmed when it was revealed that the insulating material used was combustible. It was chosen because it was £2 per square metre cheaper than a “fire resistant” alternative. The saving made amounted to just £5,000.

This and other equally life-threatening decisions were taken or authorised by the Conservative-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, who ran Grenfell Tower on its behalf. The tower block had no central fire alarm system, no sprinklers in place and just one exit stairwell. The authorities ignored repeated warnings from a tenants group and residents over many years who insisted that Grenfell was unsafe and a “death trap.”

Such flagrant criminality has deeper causes. The essential fact is that the Grenfell deaths are the product of class society and the “normal” workings of the capitalist system.

London is a world centre of speculation and financial parasitism. And the property market is a vital element of this global web of corruption. Land and housing in the capital have become one of the most lucrative commodities in the world. It is not only that London is home to 80 billionaires, but the fact that fully 60 percent of its skyscrapers and vast numbers of luxury houses and flats are owned by overseas companies or wealthy residents who rarely or never set foot in them.

Catering to this market demands the social cleansing of council estates of their poor residents, especially when they are located in a desirable area. This has become so routine that residents of the Lancaster West Estate are correct to insist that the failure to invest in Grenfell Tower was a deliberate effort to drive them out.

Similar equally anti-social decisions are made every single day by the money-mad oligarchy and their political flunkeys who determine every aspect of people’s lives to ruinous effect. Homes and schools are rendered unsafe. Hospitals closed, beds lost, vital social services withdrawn because someone, somewhere decides they are an unacceptable drain on profit—which must be maintained at whatever cost.

Forty years after Margaret Thatcher declared, “There is no such thing as society,” in order to justify the gutting of social services, privatisation and deregulation, the social conditions facing the working class have been reduced to levels once associated with the so called “third world.” This testifies to the immense class divide and social inequality that now exist in all capitalist countries.

On Thursday in the face of mounting public anger, May ordered a public inquiry into the Grenfell fire. This is aimed at ensuring a cover-up and the protection of those responsible—above all within her own government.

Those responsible for these deaths must be arrested and face criminal proceedings with the truth to come out in trials. Among these should be the former London mayor Boris Johnson, who is responsible for the slashing of London’s fire service and mass deregulation, and Kensington and Chelsea council leader Nick Paget-Brown.

But while leading Tory figures such as Johnson were responsible for the last wave of ultra-gentrification in the service of the super-rich, all the bourgeois parties, including Labour, which runs many of London’s councils, are equally culpable. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan must answer for his role in allowing this situation to continue unchallenged since he took office promising to remedy London’s housing crisis.

It should be stressed that the death toll from Grenfell is expected to exceed the combined total resulting from every terrorist attack in the UK since the beginning of the so-called war on terror in 2001.

Whenever a terrorist attack has taken place in Britain over the last decade, the full force of the state has been brought to bear. Police have carried out raids on every person who is linked, even in the most innocuous way, to the individual terrorist. They have been immediately arrested and hauled off to be detained and grilled for days on end. In response to the Grenfell fire, not a single person in any responsible position has yet been arrested, let alone charged.

Instead we are promised a toothless inquiry!

Whatever the outcome of ongoing police investigations and public inquiry, neither will uncover the essential cause of the corporate mass murder at Grenfell because it is rooted in the failed capitalist system, which is reaping untold misery, and death and destruction against the vast majority of the planet’s population.

The appalling loss of life in London demonstrates the urgent necessity for the mobilisation of the working class behind a socialist programme and putting an end to the subordination of every aspect of social policy to the interests of the financial swindlers and parasites.

Sri Lankan government calls for police “action” against anti-Muslim violence

K. Ratnayake 

On Tuesday, the Sri Lankan cabinet issued a statement denouncing anti-Muslim assaults and calling on police to take the “strictest action” against the perpetrators.

For the past two months Muslim-owned shops, houses and places of worship have been targeted across Sri Lanka, including in Colombo, Galle, Badulla, Ratnapura, Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura and Trincomalee.

The Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force or BBS) has been accused of perpetrating the violence, but was not named in the statement. The BBS, which emerged about six years ago with the blessing of former President Mahinda Rajapakse, has also been courted by the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The hypocritical cabinet statement was issued only after widespread criticism of the government’s tolerance of the BBS. Muslim ministers and MPs, as well as foreign diplomats, have spoken out about the communal violence.

The statement condemned “in the strongest terms, these acts of violence and hatred” and “reaffirmed its commitment to reconciliation, peace building, peaceful co-existence, and the rule of law.” It directed “law enforcement authorities to immediately take all necessary steps, in accordance with the law of the land, against instigators and perpetrators of violence and hate speech targeting any religious and ethnic groups in the country.”

Wickremesinghe later said the government would enact new laws “if necessary to curb violence.”

The cabinet statement is an attempt to avert a deepening crisis within the unstable government. It will also see the introduction of even more repressive laws to be used against workers, youth and the poor.

Contrary to the cabinet statement, the BBS has free reign across Sri Lanka. The police have done nothing to prevent most of the attacks but simply watched as the communalists carried out their assaults. This stands in stark contrast to the ruthless and violent response when workers, farmers and students protest against government policies.

BBS leader and monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara is currently wanted on “contempt of court” charges for his behaviour during a hearing against arrested army intelligence personnel over the disappearance of a journalist. Rather than face the court, Gnanasara disappeared. There are rumours he is being sheltered by senior government ministers.

Last week, five people were arrested over the communal attacks. Police allege that one had been a member of the BBS since 2014 and was involved in four arson attacks on Muslim businesses. One was a Tamil national who allegedly attacked a mosque. Another was a Muslim who made a Facebook post against Buddhism.

The BBS claims it has no links with the recent attacks and that those arrested are not members. BBS chief executive officer Dilantha Withanage provocatively declared: “We have the ability to unleash terrorism, extremism and violence, but are not behind the [anti-Muslim] attacks.”

While former President Rajapakse, who faced deepening opposition among workers and the poor, backed the emergence of the BBS, the group’s targeting of Muslims and Christians contributed to the discontent with his administration.

In June 2014, the BBS and several other extreme-right Sinhala groups held a well-planned meeting in Aluthgama, about 50 kilometres from Colombo. Led by Gnanasara, its purpose was to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment. Straight after the meeting, Sinhala Buddhist mobs attacked shops and houses and assaulted people. Three Muslims were killed.

In the lead up to the January 2015 presidential election, Sirisena was promoted as a common candidate against Rajapakse by a disparate political coalition, which included Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), the chauvinist Jathika Hela Urumaya, pseudo-left groups and various academics. This formation claimed that a Sirisena government would establish “reconciliation,” “good governance” and improved living conditions. Within months of taking office, the pro-US Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government began imposing social austerity measures.

As opposition to these retrogressive measures has increased among working people, Rajapakse and a group of supporting MPs are attempting to make a political comeback. The BBS and similar organisations, including Sihala Ravaya (Echo of Sinhalese) and Ravana Balakaya, which supported Rajapakse, have reacted by whipping up anti-Muslim tensions.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have tried to appease the fascistic BBS and other Sinhala chauvinists, hoping to undercut the communalists’ relations with Rajapakse, while using their divisive campaigns to distract growing opposition among working people.

In January last year, for example, Sirisena met with BBS secretary Gnanasara and other members of the organisation. Gnanasara said they briefed the president about “threats to Sri Lankan Buddhists from global Islamic extremists.” He said Sirisena would heed his complaints about “Muslim ministers” and “Tamil separatists” who opposed the settlement of Sinhalese in Tamil majority areas. Gnanasara said Sirisena promised to inform the “army chief to take speedy action in this regard.”

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe are no opponents of chauvinism. They backed the war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and boast that, with the help of the US, European powers and India, they stopped an international war crimes probe and saved the military “war heroes” who won the communal war.

The government is mired in deep political and economic crisis. Battered by the global downturn, declining exports, debt repayment problems and falling economic growth, it is implementing International Monetary Fund austerity measures. These social attacks have fuelled struggles by workers, rural poor and students.

The administration, which increasingly relies on the military, is preparing for dictatorial forms of rule. After meeting with several MPs last week about the BBS attacks, Sirisena declared that if the police could not control the situation he would mobilise the military to curb the violence. The government is also preparing to pass new anti-democratic “counter-terrorism” laws.

In their efforts to bring down the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration, Rajapakse and his faction are continuing to whip up anti-Tamil chauvinism. They accused the government of betraying the military victory and the country to the separatist LTTE. Like the government, Rajapakse’s real concern is the developing unrest among workers and poor.

These developments are a warning to workers, youth and the poor. Pseudo-left forces, such as the Nava Sama Samaja Party, United Socialist Party and Front Line Socialist Party, and the trade unions, which directly or indirectly helped install Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, are politically responsible for the situation now facing working people.

The working class can combat the dangers that lie ahead only by breaking from every faction of the bourgeoisie, establishing its political independence and leading the rural poor and youth in the struggle for a socialist and internationalist program.

Energy policy impasse highlights Australian political disarray

Mike Head

Two tension-filled events in Canberra this week underscored the fragility of the Australian government. It is caught in a perfect storm of global and domestic crises.

Deepening social discontent toward the entire political establishment is being compounded by the international uncertainty produced by the ferocious infighting in Washington over Donald Trump’s presidency.

First, on Tuesday, there was what the media termed a “mini revolt” by Liberal-National Coalition members of parliament against the Turnbull government’s support for the introduction of a Clean Energy Target, supposedly to reduce carbon emissions in coming decades.

After two stormy party room meetings, which lasted for hours, it became clear that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership would again be in doubt if his government pushed ahead with such a scheme, which would threaten the interests of the coal mining industry. The second meeting generated foul-mouthed shouting matches featuring Turnbull’s ousted predecessor Tony Abbott, a trenchant opponent of any emissions-reduction proposal.

Abbott’s aggressive interjections in the meeting were meant to send a message that he could exploit the conflict to topple Turnbull. In 2009, Abbott won sufficient support to oust Turnbull as Liberal Party leader after he supported the then Labor government’s plan for a carbon trading scheme.

Over the past year, Turnbull sought to break the decade-long impasse over energy policy by commissioning a report by the country’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel. The outcome was a recommendation that the government legislate a target that might eventually phase out coal-fired electricity generation. For years, the financial elite has been demanding bipartisan support for some kind of carbon trading scheme to provide certainty for giant energy investors by boosting profit prospects for power generation, including so-called clean or green projects.

Much to the frustration and alarm of the corporate ruling class, the rifts in the Coalition indicate a continuation of the seemingly intractable paralysis. Yesterday’s Australian Financial Review editorial denounced “a decade of zero-sum stop-start climate change policies.” It declared: “Business is rightly desperate for the political class to settle on a stable policy framework on which to support billions of dollars of investment commitments needed to fix the energy crisis the politicians have created.”

These demands for further corporate enrichment via a market-based energy system were quickly exposed, however, by announcements by the main retail electricity and gas companies of crippling rises of up to 20 percent in prices for households and small businesses from July 1.

Average households will pay up to $400 a year extra for electricity and $50 for gas, exacerbating a worsening social crisis. Household debt levels are already the highest in the world because of falling real wages and soaring property prices. By some estimates, small businesses will pay up to $2,000 a year more for electricity and gas.

According to the Finkel report, retail power prices have risen by nearly 140 percent since 2004—years in which electricity networks have been privatised by Liberal-National and Labor governments alike. This has created a lucrative national market in which operators perversely reap super-profits from price hikes produced by power shortages.

The sky-rocketing prices demonstrate the incapacity of the private profit-driven order to provide affordable power, let alone tackle the grave dangers of global warming and climate change.

The other chaotic event was yesterday’s near-defeat of the government in the House of Representatives on a Labor Party and Greens-backed Senate bill to establish a commission of inquiry into the banking sector. A defeat on the bill would not have brought the government down—it was not a formal vote of no-confidence—but it would have illustrated the government’s tenuous existence, as it holds just a one-seat majority.

The bill has been pushed by Labor, the Greens and right-wing populists in the Senate as a means of containing intense public hostility to the predatory and rapacious operations of the banks. Turnbull, a former merchant banker, has sought to block the bill and instead proposed cosmetic steps to supposedly monitor bank practices.

After several hours of nervous manoeuvring, a right-wing government backbencher, George Christensen, baulked on his threat to cross the floor to support the opposition bill. This resulted in a tied vote, allowing the House Speaker to exercise a casting vote to adjourn the debate. But if Christensen had followed through on his threat, the government would have been defeated because Foreign Minister Julie Bishop missed the vote.

These events are symbolic of the wider disarray engulfing the government. Commenting on the energy policy debacle, the Australian’s political correspondent David Crowe wrote: “The federal Coalition has put its dysfunction on display again. Always up for a brawl on climate change, Liberals and Nationals MPs have thrown themselves into an internal row that tells Australians to look elsewhere for leadership.”

Having barely survived last July’s election and holding only 29 out of 76 Senate seats, the Coalition faces parliamentary blockages on many fronts, including on widely-hated austerity measures—slashing education, health care and welfare—in last month’s federal budget.

Fearing popular discontent, Labor, the Greens and other senators have felt compelled to oppose these cuts. But they have no opposition to the extra billions of dollars allocated in the budget to the military and the police-intelligence apparatus. These funding splurges not only mean deeper cuts to essential social spending; they are preparations for war and domestic repression.

While the besieged Turnbull this week mocked Trump, in line with those elements in Washington moving against him, he has stepped-up his efforts to demonstrate his commitment to the US military alliance, including by condemning China. This increasingly places Australia on the frontline of US war plans against China, which Washington regards as a rival for hegemony over the Asia Pacific.

Despite the worsening political crisis, the working class remains sidelined in the face of the danger of war and the ongoing corporate offensive on jobs, working conditions and social programs. All the posturing by Labor, the Greens and the Senate populists are attempts to confine the disaffection of youth and working people within the discredited parliamentary framework.

The same purpose is served by the trade unions and pseudo-left organisations, which promote illusions that Labor and/or the Greens can be pressured into transforming themselves into progressive or even anti-capitalist parties.

While seeking to exploit the government’s turmoil, the Labor Party is positioning itself to return to office to continue the pro-business offensive that it mounted under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, with the help of the Greens, from 2007 to 2013. In parliament this week, Labor leader Bill Shorten presented himself as the champion of the “national interest”—that is the interests of the Australian capitalist class. He appealed to Turnbull to “now commit to work with Labor in the national interest to end the policy paralysis which led to instability in the energy market.”

At the same time, Labor has attacked the government from the right, condemning it for failing to curb the budget deficit and mounting public debt. Shorten and his shadow ministers used parliamentary question time yesterday to lambast the government for allowing gross debt to reach $500 billion.

Germany decides on massive tightening of security laws

Sven Heymanns

At its spring meeting in Dresden the conference of German state interior ministers (IMK) decided on a massive tightening up of security laws. The implementation of such measures, which are primarily aimed at increasing co-operation between the various security authorities while significantly expanding their powers, represent de facto moves towards the establishment of a police state. All of the proposals are justified with reference to the struggle against international terrorism, but in fact the ruling class is preparing for fierce class struggles.

At the centre of the three-day conference were plans to harmonise and coordinate the various security services of Germany’s 16 states with the federal intelligence agencies. This was announced in advance by federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU).

The separation of the activities of the police and the secret services anchored in the German constitution was agreed after WWII to avoid repetition of the crimes of the Nazi era and the terror of the Gestapo. This separation has now been completely undermined by the establishment of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Centre (GTAZ) in Berlin, where representatives of more than 40 German security authorities work under the same roof.

Now, additional new laws are planned for the digital sector aimed at networking databases, enabling the security authorities to spy on all persons and groups alleged to be suspect. The latest security laws makes it possible to set up entire so-called “shadow databases” beyond any democratic control.

In the run-up to the IMK, de Maiziere even raised the prospect of complete centralisation of the security authorities. In an interview with the Tagesspiegel, he said: “And it is certainly the case that we will continue to discuss whether, in view of the challenges, further changes are needed to our federal security architecture.”

The networking of databases establishes uniform guidelines for all state authorities. The interior minister of the state of Lower Saxony, Boris Pistorius (SPD), went further and also proposed joint disaster relief exercises. Joint exercises by the German army (Bundeswehr) and the police already take place at the level of individual states, something which also clearly violates the German constitution.

In addition to networking capacities the powers of the security agencies are being massively expanded. A look at the future powers adopted at the IMK makes clear that there is to be strict monitoring of the population. This concerns both digital communication and the monitoring of the public sphere.

For some time, leading interior ministers have complained that the security authorities are not able to access message services such as WhatsApp or Telegram because they are equipped with an end-to-end encryption, unlike an ordinary SMS. This encryption is now to be circumvented by permitting police and the country’s foreign intelligence agency BND to carry out so-called source telecommunication monitoring (TKÜ) of suspect persons. This enables the security agencies to tap and observe the communications of a suspect prior to the message being encrypted.

Another planned measure is the so-called online search. It is intended to enable the use of Trojans to read hard disks without the need for physical access. In contrast to a house search, which has regularly been used to confiscate a suspect’s hard disks, the victim of an online search does not know this measure is being carried out and therefore has no possibility of legal redress.

According to de Maizière, both the TKÜ measures and the online search are to be integrated into the country’s criminal code before parliament breaks for summer.

Measures for facial recognition by video surveillance in public areas were also adopted. The existing large-scale video monitoring of railway stations and other public places is evidently not enough for the authorities.

De Maizière formulated the plans for the targeted prosecution of suspects in Tagesspiegel: “We currently have video surveillance at railway stations. However, we have not been able to capture the image, for example, of a fleeing terrorist into the software, so that an alarm sounds when he appears at a station.” This had to function under difficult conditions, “for example, when it is dark or someone is wearing a hood.”

The contempt with which de Maizière regards the fundamental rights of every citizen is clear from his legal justification for the measure: “The restriction of basic rights is low-level, since uninvolved persons are not covered.”

In future, refugees and their children will be regarded en masse as suspect. Already, every asylum seeker over the age of 14 has to give his fingerprints at the time of his application for asylum. Now this degrading procedure is to be extended to children from six years upwards, announced IMK chairman Markus Ulbig (CDU).

Before the start of the IMK, Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann (CSU), called for an extension of the surveillance of under 14-year-olds. De Maizière then referred to an incident in Hanover, where a 14-year-old girl had stabbed a policeman after being radicalised by Salafists at the age of 11.

Spying on the population does not stop with communications and the video surveillance. In future, the authorities will be able to determine the age, skin colour, eye colour and the origin of suspects by DNA analysis.

The ministers of the interior could not agree on a unified position regarding stop and search operations. So far, this massive, systematic control by the police is already possible in 13 out of 16 states, the only exceptions being Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen.

Objections raised against uniform introduction of the measure are not based on democratic considerations. As a spokesman for Berlin’s interior minister Andreas Geisel (SPD) explained, stop and search was not the right way to track down suspects: “The results do not justify the effort involved.”

In fact, all parties agree about the need to expand the powers of the security authorities. Tactical differences, when they come up, centre around how best to construct a police state.

Claims made in the media in the past few days that the Left Party rejects the new police powers appear to be groundless on closer examination. The Left Party participates in a number of state administrations, whose interior ministers have agreed on the new measures.

Thuringia, where the state premier is a member of the Left Party, is one of the states where blanket stop and search is allowed and in Berlin, where the party is part of the ruling coalition, its representatives have been active in expanding the security apparatus.

At the start of this year the Berlin coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party adopted a “Security and Prevention package,” which provides an additional €45 million for internal security for the year 2017.

Klaus Lederer, Berlin culture minister and a right-wing spokesman for the Left Party group in the Berlin parliament, stated that such proposals were discussed on a “pragmatic” basis. The question of video surveillance in public spaces did not depend on the actual number of cameras, but rather, where they could provide the most security.

The erection of a police state is justified on the basis of fighting terrorism and Islamist threats. The attack on the Christmas market in Berlin and similar terror attacks in Paris, Brussels and Manchester are invariably cited. But this is obviously an excuse. All these attacks were not the result of any lack of surveillance. On the contrary, the assailants were well known to the security authorities, with some so well known that the involvement of state forces is highly likely.

Last week the WSWS wrote: “In the aftermath of terrorist actions, governments respond with stepped-up measures of repression and surveillance. Troops are deployed in the streets, democratic rights are suspended, and, as in France, a state of emergency is made the overriding law of the land. All of these measures are useless in terms of preventing future attacks, but serve very well to control the domestic population and suppress social unrest.”

This has been confirmed by the conference of interior ministers. Against a background of massive social inequality and growing political opposition the ruling elite is developing police state measures in order to deal with an impending social explosion.

German government hosts major conference on Africa

Johannes Stern

The German government is working systematically to expand its global political and economic relations ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg in July. Following the visits earlier this month by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to South and Central America last week, the focus has now shifted to Africa.

The German government organised a high-level conference in Berlin on June 12 and 13 attended by dozens of African heads of government within the framework of the “G20 Africa Partnership – Investing in a Joint Future.” Organisers included the federal Finance Ministry, Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Bundesbank.

In her opening address, Merkel raised the question of whether industrial states had “adopted the correct approach with the classical development aid model.” From the German government’s point of view, it was necessary in the future to focus more on “each state’s own economic development,” i.e. private investment. As a result, “the idea emerged—particularly from our Finance Minister and Development Minister—to say: We need an initiative where we are not speaking about Africa, but with Africa.”

The official propaganda about a new form of cooperation, from which both sides will allegedly profit equally, cannot conceal the fact that Germany is pursuing definite imperialist interests on the heavily populated and resource-rich continent.

Aid projects are to be replaced by capital exports, the exploitation of raw materials and cheap labour, the securing of new sales markets and other forms of profit maximisation—methods which characterised the scramble for Africa between the 1880s and the beginning of the First World War. To this end, the domestic ruling elites are being bribed, blackmailed, supported militarily and if necessary made to see sense by violent measures. For this reason, the German government is propagating the need to increase “development aid” in conjunction with its military budget.

Tuesday’s edition of Die Welt enthused, “Merkel wants to make Africa the new China.” On the sidelines of the conference, German companies Bosch, Kärcher, Siemens and Volkswagen announced new investments in Africa. Die Welt reported that the discount textile retailer Kik is opening new locations in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Egypt, and the German government is initiating “reform partnerships” with Ghana, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast.

In the lead article of the same edition, entitled “Continent with potential,” the newspaper could not resist having a dig at the United States. While “in this country” the “0.7 percent of GDP on development aid proposed by the UN” was spent, “the US, which under President Donald Trump is vehemently demanding the fulfillment of military spending [achieves] … just 0.2 percent.”

The German government’s declared goal is to develop new initiatives at the expense of the United States. “We must now use the spaces being vacated by America,” declared Social Democrat Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel shortly after Trump came to office.

Nonetheless, the Africa conference is not merely a reaction to growing transatlantic tensions, but has been politically prepared over a long period of time. “The time for strategy papers is over, now the concrete projects must come,” stated Stefan Liebing, head of the German Business Association for Africa.

An examination of the strategy papers authored in Berlin over recent years makes clear what “concrete projects” he means. The Association for Africa’s position paper entitled “Energy and Raw Materials” states, for example, “Germany requires a long-term and reliable supply of raw materials. Africa, as a resource-rich continent, offers this. Along with the securing of supplies with long-term contracts, for example within the framework of resource partnerships, German business must engage much more strongly in the processes of exploration, extraction and processing of raw materials.”

It continues, “To bring this vision to life, close cooperation—between business and politicians in Germany on the one hand and with African partner countries on the other—is required. In the highly-competitive international energy and resource market, German business requires political backing to create favourable conditions for German corporations to operate.”

As German business implements this “vision,” the Chancellor has increased her focus on Africa. Prior to her Africa trip last autumn, Merkel declared in typical German colonial style in an interview with Die Zeit, “Now we certainly cannot improve the whole world from one day to the next. But if we want to pursue German interests, we have to also realistically say that Africa’s welfare is in Germany’s interest.”

Merkel’s speech on Monday in Berlin made clear what other “interests” apart from economic ambitions she is talking about. She demanded the curbing of illegal immigration, because “if there is too much hopelessness in Africa, young people will say: We have to look for a new life somewhere else in the world.” According to the German government’s plans, ruthless African rulers like Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who once again enjoyed the red carpet treatment in Berlin, will receive billions in European Union funds to strengthen their security forces and detain refugees in Africa before they reach Europe.

Nothing is more terrifying to the imperialists than an uprising of the rapidly growing and young African population, as occurred in Egypt and Tunisia six years ago. Merkel cautioned, “Substantially more than half of the population is younger than 25. I always say this in Germany: Our average age in Germany is 43. The average age in Niger, Mali and in other countries is little more than 15. […] If we don’t give the youth a perspective, if we don’t invest in education and qualifications, if we don’t strengthen the role of girls and young women in particular, the development agenda won’t be successful.”

Merkel’s “development agenda” includes the brutal suppression of the population in the name of “security” and the “fight against terrorism.” Development aid policymakers had “for many years […] failed to pay enough attention to questions of security,” the Chancellor complained. “For many years, we felt good if we avoided thinking about military armaments.”

But this would now change: “We have to be honest and say: only where security is guaranteed can development actually take place. I think it is very courageous that some countries are ready to assume responsibility in the struggle against terrorism in Mali and throughout the neighbourhood. In this context, France is seeking a mandate in the UN Security Council. I would only add: We will support you from the German side in this.”

The German government is clearly planning to extend its military engagement in Africa. German imperialism has resorted increasingly to military means over recent years to pursue its economic and geopolitical interests under the cover of combatting terrorism or dealing with “causes of flight.”

Parliament decided in early 2013 to support France’s military intervention in Mali by stationing German soldiers in the country. The deployment has since been expanded on several occasions. It is now the German army’s largest foreign deployment. Further German operations are currently under way in Senegal, the Central African Republic, the Horn of Africa, Western Sahara, Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia, all of which have either been extended or expanded.

The grim traditions upon which the army’s interventions rest are becoming ever more obvious in Africa. Der Spiegel reported recently that on a wooden wall in the watchtower of Camp Castor in Mali, the slogan “God with us” had been written in runes. This was last used as a battlecry by the Wehrmacht, and appeared on the soldier’s belt buckles directly above the swastika, according to the magazine. The use of the slogan remains popular in right-wing circles.

Growing fissures in Maduro government as Venezuelan protests continue

Bill Van Auken

With violent right-wing-led protests in Venezuela now entering their third month and amid the spread of social unrest and acts of looting in the country’s working class areas, growing fissures are emerging within the chavista government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Among the more significant defections from among former government loyalists is that of Major General Alexis Lopez Ramirez, a top military adviser to Maduro, who resigned last week as secretary of the country’s National Defense Council. Lopez had previously served as the commander of the Venezuelan army and the head of presidential guard of Maduro’s late predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

The retired general said he had quit his post “due to my disagreement with the way of proceeding to summon a national constituent assembly.” Maduro has called for an election next month of a special assembly to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution.

The move is largely seen as a maneuver aimed at deflecting the rising popular anger and laying the foundations for some kind of accommodation with elements of the right-wing opposition.

Under the existing constitution, however, the power to convene such an assembly rests with the Venezuelan electorate, by means of a popular referendum, not with the president. Moreover, Maduro has stacked the deck by reserving a portion of delegates to be selected not by means of universal suffrage, but rather picked by various social “sectors,” including neighborhood councils, unions and other organizations controlled by the ruling PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela).

The resignation of General Lopez poses a serious political threat to the government to the extent that it reflects broader disaffection within the military. From its very origins, the chavista movement, behind its populist and even “socialist” pretensions, has rested heavily on the military. Chávez was himself an army colonel who first gained national exposure by means of an abortive military coup in 1992, six years before he was first elected president.

While Maduro, who assumed the presidency after Chávez’s death in 2013, has no such military background, senior active and retired officers continue to dominate his government’s most important ministries and make up half of the country’s governors. The senior officer corps has also been among the principal beneficiaries of the wholesale corruption that has characterized “Bolivarian socialism,” controlling key areas where illicit profits are to be made, including ports, food distribution and the control of foreign exchange.

In the face of the mass protests called by the right-wing opposition coalition, the MUD, the government has rested ever more heavily on the armed forces. Under Plan Zamora, instituted last April, it has assumed the power to declare martial law throughout the country, and protesters, including those accused of looting, have been brought before military courts.

Until now, the indications of military opposition had been restricted to lower-ranking officers. In April, the government announced the arrest of four junior officers—three first lieutenants and a captain—for “conspiracy and planning terrorist actions.” And the previous month, three army lieutenants who declared their opposition to Maduro sought asylum in Colombia. The right-wing opposition has claimed that scores of officers have been placed under arrest, but this has not been confirmed.

Henrique Capriles and other MUD leaders, while centering their protests on the demand for Maduro’s ouster and the convening of immediate elections, have repeatedly pitched their appeal to the military command, invoking its duty to protect the constitution and essentially calling for a coup.

Also continuing to express opposition to the government’s policies is Venezuela’s attorney general, Luisa Ortega Diaz, who publicly called Wednesday for Venezuelans to reject the call for the constituent assembly after the Supreme Court rejected her demand that eight of its justices be impeached for “conspiring against the republican form of government.” Among the charges she presented was the court’s decision in late March to usurp the power and functions of the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Her opposition to the action at the time led the court to back down.

Ortega, a long-time chavista, has also initiated the prosecution of lower-ranking military personnel for acts of repression, which has led to disquiet within the ranks and leadership of the Venezuelan armed forces.

Maduro and his closest allies have responded angrily to Ortega’s latest intervention. Vice President Tarek El Aissami attacked her on his Twitter account, demanding that she “stop this fascist opposition, which now has you as its chief, from keeping on murdering people.”

The death toll since the beginning of the latest round of mass protests two months ago has risen to at least 80. Among the latest deaths were those of a protester struck down by a truck at a street barricade Wednesday night in Miranda state and a police supervisor shot dead by masked protesters at a road blockade in Merida state.

Washington is attempting to exploit the violence—and no doubt its intelligence agencies are fueling it—to pursue regime change and the installation of a new government that would be even more compliant with the demands of Wall Street and the US-based oil corporations.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former head of ExxonMobil, whose predecessor company Standard Oil controlled Venezuelan oil for decades before its nationalization in 1976, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday that the State Department is currently working with the US Treasury Department to compile “a very robust list of individuals” in the Venezuelan government to be targeted with sanctions.

Reuters news agency reported that the Trump administration is also considering punishing sanctions against Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA. A ban on Venezuelan oil imports to the US would plunge the already shattered Venezuelan economy into an unprecedented crisis. Oil exports are the source of 95 percent of the country’s foreign earnings, and the US is Venezuela’s largest market, accounting for 40 percent of total sales.

If such measures are taken, it will spell an intensification of the hunger, mass unemployment and impoverishment already facing Venezuelan workers. The Maduro government has responded to the country’s economic crisis by shifting the burden onto the working class, slashing imports of vitally needed food and medical supplies to meet debt payments to Wall Street bondholders and defend the wealth of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.

All sides, from the Maduro government to the right-wing opposition to the US government, confront the threat of the unraveling political situation in Venezuela giving rise to revolutionary social upheavals from below. The concern is that the increasingly frequent bouts of protest and looting in working class and poor neighborhoods can coalesce into a mass upheaval along the lines of the so-called Caracazo, the 1989 revolt that shook Caracas in response to a draconian IMF-dictated austerity package imposed in the face of falling oil prices.

The emergence of dissidents in the Maduro government is part of a bid to fashion a new national unity government with the aim of heading off such a revolt from below.

Elements of the Venezuelan pseudo-left such as the group Marea Socialista, which previously subordinated itself to the Chávez and Maduro government, joining the ruling PSUV, are aligning themselves with these efforts, voicing criticisms of Maduro while seeking to divert any independent movement of the working class back behind the political machinations of the bourgeoisie.