A Tale of Two Elections: Democracy & Counter-Democracy in Venezuela

Alison Bodine

On July 30, 2017 the people of Venezuela went to the polls to elect a National Constituent Assembly (ANC). The vote was Constitutional, verifiable, secret, direct and universal, and over 8 million people participated. Despite this reality, the government United States and their allies, along with mainstream capitalist media have all decried the elections as “illegitimate,” “unpopular” and a “sham.”

On July 17, there was another “vote” in Venezuela. In sharp contrast to their reaction to the Constituent Assembly, imperialist governments and their capitalist media had nothing but praise for this illegal “plebiscite.” Basically, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition organized a non-binding referendum without the authority of either Venezuela’s National Electoral Council or the Constitution of Venezuela. The opposition claims that over 7 million people participated in this referendum, however, the results are not verifiable as the ballots were destroyed.

It has been 19 years since election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 and the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolutionary process. Since then, poor, working and oppressed people in Venezuela have made tremendous gains in their standards of living; in healthcare, education, housing, access to food and clean water, among other basic indicators of quality of life.

Today, Venezuela has a revolutionary government led by the democratically elected President, Nicolas Maduro, but the economy of Venezuela is still run by Venezuela’s rich class. This rich class is represented in government by the opposition coalition MUD (the Democratic Round Table).

Over the past four months the people of Venezuela have been facing an increasingly violent campaign by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition and their violent mercenaries, whose ultimate goal is to overthrow the legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro and reverse the gains of the Bolivarian revolution. Over 100 people have been killed and over 1000 injured in the terrorist attacks that have included murders, assassinations, road barricades, fires and attacks on government buildings, among other crimes.

The National Constituent Assembly is the revolutionary government of Venezuela’s response to this escalated violence. The right-wing so-called plebiscite was the opposition’s response to the ANC. Thus there is, with these two votes, a “Tale of Two Elections,” an important illustration of the revolution and counter-revolution in Venezuela.

What is the National Constituent Assembly?

“Today, on May 1, I announce that I am going to use my constitutional powers as the head of state to convoke the Original Constituent Power, which, according to Article 347, allows for the working class and the people convoke the National Constituent Assembly…I convoke a citizens’ Constituent Assembly, not a Constituent Assembly of parties or elites…a citizen’s, workers’, communal, campesinos’ Constituent Assembly. A feminist, youth, students’ Constituent Assembly. An Indigenous Constituent Assembly.” (teleSUR)

As President Maduro explained, the ANC would be elected by the people of Venezuela through a popular, direct and secret vote. The ANC would then be charged with proposing changes to improve and broaden Venezuela’s Constitution in order to strengthen the Bolivarian revolutionary process and “make peace triumph over violence.” After the ANC had completed its work, any proposed changes to the Constitution of Venezuela would then be approved by the people of Venezuela in a referendum.

In the three months following the May announcement, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), together with the various social institutions of the Bolivarian revolution, mobilized the mass majority of people in Venezuela towards the ANC election. By election day, July 30, there were 6,120 candidates running for the 545 seats in the Constituent Assembly.

Not a single candidate in the election was from the right-wing opposition. This, however, was not because they were not allowed from running. The right-wing opposition parties decided to boycott the National Constituent Assembly. While at the same time, they increased their campaign of violence and fear meant to discourage the people of Venezuela from participating in the vote.

It is also important to note that, as with previous elections, the Constituent Assembly elections were overseen by the National Election Council (CNE). The CNE is actually one of the five branches of government in Venezuela.

July 30, 2017 – Election Day 

The Constituent Assembly elections were a great success for the revolutionary government of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolutionary process. According to the CNE, on Sunday, July 30, 8,089,320 Venezuelans went to the polls for the Constituent Assembly vote. This represents 41.5% of the registered voters in Venezuela (people living abroad were not able to vote). In comparison, in 2013 President Maduro won the election with 7,587,579 votes and Chavez won his 2012 re-election with 8,191,132 votes.

537 representatives, out of the 545 total members, were elected on that day. The majority of these seats were voted on using the method that most people in North America are familiar with, by region. Much like elections in the US or Canada, 364 representatives were chosen on the basis of where people lived, with one representative for every 83,000 people, and at least one representative for every municipality. A further 173 of the representatives were chosen based on sector. This means that they were nominated and voted upon by specific sectors of society such as workers, farmers, people with disabilities, students, pensioners, the business sector and communes and communal councils. This way, groups within Venezuelan society, with specific needs, could be sure to have their interests represented in the Constituent Assembly.

The final eight representatives were chosen from within Venezuela’s Indigenous peoples on Tuesday August 1. In keeping with the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, for Indigenous people the “their ancestral methods of choice and participation” were recognized as part of the election process.

The ANC will be inaugurated on Friday, August 4.

Venezuela’s Violent Right-Wing Opposition Attacks Democracy 

The great success of the Constituent Assembly elections came despite an intensified campaign by the violent right-wing opposition to sabotage the vote. In the months leading up to July 30, leading members of the opposition publically stated that they would not let the Constituent Assembly happen. Following their marching orders, violent mercenaries and counter-revolutionary thugs then got to work, bringing violence and terror to the streets of Venezuela. This included the assassination of a Constituent Assembly candidate, Felix Pineda Marcano, the night before the election.

The violence in the streets of Venezuela continued on election day. The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, reported that 200 voting stations were surrounded by violent opposition members. Because of this, alternate voting stations had to be set-up. Attacks were also carried out against government security forces deployed to protect the voting stations; the Interior Ministry has reported that 21 state security personnel were wounded with gunshots, in addition to the murder of National Guard Second Sergeant Ronald Ramirez in Tachira State. At least nine other people were killed that day. There was also a bombing attack directed against a police motorcycle envoy. The bombs went off as the police drove through a pro-opposition neighborhood in Caracas, injuring eight officers.

The right-wing campaign to stop the Constituent Assembly elections also extended beyond the borders of Venezuela. In the days leading up to the elections, both the government of the United States and the government of Canada demanded that Venezuela cancel the elections. The US even threatened to impose further sanctions, a direct violation of the people of Venezuela’s sovereignty and self-determination.

Within the Organization of American States (OAS), United States government, Canada, Mexico and their allies attempted to get the regional body to issue a formal condemnation of the Constituent Assembly. However, their efforts failed, just like so many other attempts by the imperialists to use the OAS to promote intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela.

What About Allegations of Fraud by Venezuela’s Opposition and Their Foreign Allies? 

This was the 21st time that elections were held as part of the Bolivarian revolutionary process that began with the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Out of these 21 elections, two were considered a loss for the Bolivarian revolution, the most recent being the 2015 parliamentary elections in which Venezuela’s opposition won a majority of the seats.

The two times that elections in Venezuela were in favour of the opposition, imperialist governments and their capitalist media machine were silent about the results. For the other 18 elections that brought about advancement in the Bolivarian revolutionary process, these same governments and the mainstream media were quick with their allegations of fraud, irregularities and rigging. This was no different for the Constituent Assembly elections on July 30. In fact, immediately following the elections, the US government took their threats one step further, and President Trump imposed sanctions directly on President Maduro.

The imperialist and right-wing allegations against the July 30 elections are, however not based in fact. Instead of relying on data from the electronic voting machines used in the elections (which by the way use finger-prints to identify voters), mainstream media sources like the New York Times are instead quoting so-called “independent” election observers (like the investment bank Tornio Capital) and the observations of unnamed reporters in the country.

An audit of the Constituent Assembly election is also set to be carried out to further verify the results, but imperialist governments are not waiting in on this before continuing their attacks against President Maduro and the Bolivarian revolution. This is another sign that the allegations of fraud and rigging are baseless. They speak of “democracy” in Venezuela, but what they really mean is “democracy” for Venezuela’s violent opposition and capitalist class. The reaction of the US representative to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, says it all “Maduro’s sham election is another step toward dictatorship. We won’t accept an illegitimate govt. The Venezuelan people and democracy will prevail.”

Right-wing Plebiscite in Venezuela – Exactly What the US Government and Their Allies Were Looking For 

On Sunday, July 17, Venezuela’s opposition organized another vote, what they referred to as a “plebiscite.” This “plebiscite” was essentially a non-binding referendum called by the right-wing opposition, with no recognition by Venezuela’s democratically elected government or the National Electoral Council, and no Constitutional recognition. Despite this, the opposition went ahead with the voting with the full support of the government of the United States and their allies, and received wide-spread recognition as the “voice of the people of Venezuela” in mainstream capitalist media.

So, What Was This Opposition “Plebiscite” All about? 

As reported by Al Jazeera, the three questions on the ballet (which were supposed to be answered with a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’) were:

1. Do you reject and ignore the realization of a Constituent Assembly proposed by Nicolas Maduro without the prior approval of the Venezuelan people?
2. Do you demand that the National Armed Forces and all public officials obey and defend the Constitution of 1999 and support the decisions of the National Assembly?
3. Do you approve the renewal of public powers in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, and the holding of free and transparent elections, as well as the formation of a government of national unity to restore constitutional order?

Instead of being organized by the government and Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), it was organized by a coalition of Venezuela’s right-wing opposition. In contrast to the Constituent Assembly vote which took three months to prepare, this vote was organized is just two weeks, after being announced on July 3.

Anyone over the age of 18 could vote in the plebiscite, including people living outside of Venezuela.

What Were the Results? 

The opposition reported that 7 million people voted in the referendum. There are however, a number of significant irregularities that have been reported about this number.

For example, the opposition has reported that 693,000 votes were cast abroad, while only about 101,000 voters live outside of Venezuela. There are also basic problems exposed by mathematical analysis that make 7 million votes impossible.

As reported by Ryan Mallett-Outtrim of venezuelaanalysis.com “According to the pro-opposition newspaper El Nacional, on Sunday the opposition organized roughly 2000 voting centers nationwide, with a total of 14,800 individual booths. That means that on election day, each booth must have received an average of 485 votes. Yet the voting centers were only open for nine hours, from 7am to 4pm. That means each booth had to receive 54 ballots per hour: that’s around one every minute.”

Unlike the Constituent Assembly election, the opposition has also made an audit of the results impossible as the ballots have already been burned from some states.

Some of the irregularities in the number of votes might be explained by repeat voting. A teleSUR investigative report conducted during the unconstitutional referendum revealed that one person was able to vote three times.

This is What Democracy Looks Like”? 

On the eve of the Constituent Assembly election in Venezuela, US Vice-President Mike Pence made a phone call to Leopaldo Lopez, a leader in Venezuela’s violent, counter-revolutionary opposition. Mr. Lopez had recently been let out of prison, and was under house arrest, for his role in inciting street riots in 2013 that killed 43 people.

In his phone call to this convicted criminal, Vice President Pence gave Leopaldo Lopez words of support and encouragement, reminding him that the US government had demanded that the government of Venezuela cancel the Constituent Assembly elections and hold a US-supported, opposition led version of “free and fair elections” in Venezuela.

However, Mr. Pence, you forgot that those “free and fair” elections were just about to happen. Left with a choice between an election that was constitutionally recognized and verifiable, and a referendum that was neither of these things, the US government and their allies have chosen the latter.

Once again, imperialist lies, manipulations and intervention in Venezuela are exposed. The US government and their allies do not care about “democracy” or “legitimate” elections in Venezuela, as much as they do not care about the hundreds of people that have been killed in Venezuela by the violent opposition that they support. Together with Venezuela’s violent right-wing opposition, their only interest is in overthrowing the government of Venezuela and reversing the gains of the Bolivarian revolutionary process.

Increasing US and imperialist intervention and sanctions are preparation for further, and more aggressive attacks. As the people of Venezuela continue to build the Bolivarian revolutionary process, and defend their rights to sovereignty and self-determination, international solidarity is needed now more than ever before.

Barcelona’s Grief: Today And Always, The Only Solution Is Nonviolence

Sasha Volkoff 

Barcelona, 18th August, 2017. Yesterday it was Barcelona’s turn to suffer the indiscriminate madness of a terrorist attack. The killing of people is deplorable, and it saddens me a great deal. I could say “innocent” people but I don’t want to discriminate on this point: any killing, for whatever reason, is terrible to me. And I don’t like the subsequent reactions of the powerful who strongly condemn this kind of attack and then continue their discriminatory policies and their perverse trade. Nor do I like the attitude of the mainstream media who fill their front pages with eloquent words while remaining silent about the violence that is exercised against populations all around the world every day.

This attack is the latest in a chain of recent attacks all over Europe, although it would be fairer to remember that there are many more attacks in the non-Western world, it’s just that they don’t get the same media coverage.

Barcelona is a peaceful, beautiful city that is full of light and colour, and full of visitors all year round. It goes without saying that no city deserves to be attacked, nor their population frightened, but Barcelona aspires to be an integrating and fair city which is open to the world and in solidarity with those most repudiated by the system. We already know that the chaos is slowly growing, starting from the most important places which are doing the biggest business and where millions of weapons are being manufactured that are then distributed around the world. But when barbarity strikes in your own city, it hurts much more. To see the places that we frequent, shaken with terror, produces a shock in us that it takes time to recover from.

We are physically fragile, as is shown by situations like this, but we can also be very strong internally. That strength is what must help us stand up and redouble our efforts for a Universal Human Nation, a world in which there is no confrontation or competition, only cooperation and enriching interchange. That Force comes from another place, it connects us with other spaces and other times.

We condemn violence in all its forms, from the most brutal as seen yesterday in Barcelona, to the most subtle and elegant; the violence that is exercised in the offices of the big banks and multinationals; the violence that takes decisions that impoverish millions of people and then goes to play golf; the violence that makes weapons, sells them to the highest bidder and then later on condemns their use. We want to surpass that absurd violence that leads us to fight among ourselves, while a small minority gets rich at our expense.

We want to surpass hatred, ignorance and cruel selfishness. We want equal rights and opportunities for everyone, from wherever they come from and wherever they’re going. We want a world in which human life is the central value, the objective of freedom of our actions.

Sri Lankan government establishes phony Office on Missing Persons

Vijith Samarasinghe

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena last month signed a gazette to establish an Office on Missing Persons (OMP) so as to pretend to be delivering justice for the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the country’s three-decade communal war and civil emergencies.

In reality, this is a desperate attempt by the government to paint itself in “democratic” colouring, while protecting and further arming the same police and military forces responsible for these crimes.

More than 20,000 people, mainly Tamils, went missing during the 26-year communal war that ended in May 2009. Tens of thousands of Sinhala youth also disappeared during the suppression of rural unrest in the 1988–1990 period. These people were abducted by the security forces or associated paramilitary death squads and killed.

After signing the gazette on July 20, Sirisena tweeted: “This marks another step forward in Sri Lanka’s path to sustained peace.” UN Secretary General António Guterres commended the government, saying the decision was “an important step for all Sri Lankans who are still looking for the truth about their loved ones.” Various media outlets and “civil society” quickly endorsed the government’s claim of a victory for democracy.

Referring to the OMP, the official leader of the parliamentary opposition, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sambandan, said he “wished the issue of the missing persons would be credibly dealt with to ensure relief for the families.”

All of this is false. Establishing the OMP was a key recommendation of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution in 2015 on “Promoting Reconciliation, Accountability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka.” The government supported the resolution, but took more than two years to finalise the OMP legislation.

The Office on Missing Persons (Establishment, Administration, and Discharge of Functions) Bill was introduced in parliament in May 2016 and passed in August 2016 following much internal contention. After another 10 months, the bill was finally adopted in June with an amendment proposed by the Sinhala communalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), followed by Sirisena’s endorsement on July 20.

It will take weeks or months to appoint the top OMP officials. They are to be selected by the Constitutional Council and approved by the president, giving the government full control over the OMP’s investigations.

None of the UNHRC’s resolutions on war crimes in Sri Lanka had anything to do with concern for the human rights of the victims. The resolutions were initially sponsored by the US for the purpose of pressuring the former President Mahinda Rajapakse and halting his political and economic tilt toward China.

When Sirisena was installed in office in the January 2015 presidential election, as a result of a US-orchestrated regime-change operation, the content of the UNHCR resolutions was changed to help the current government cover up human rights abuses and war crimes.

As some human rights organisations have pointed out, the legislation provides “civil, criminal and administrative immunity” to individuals who cooperate with OMP to trace missing persons. In essence, this will shield those individuals from being held accountable.

The legislation also prevents any evidence provided to the OMP to trace missing persons from being used by an OMP member or official in any subsequent trial.

The government is committed to covering up the crimes behind the disappearances, for which many military and police officials are directly responsible. As soon as the bill was passed by the parliament last year, Sirisena sought to appease the military and communal forces. He said: “We only want to give redress to those who have been affected, not to punish anyone.”

The OMP’s powers include “to search for missing persons and identify appropriate mechanisms for the same” and “make recommendations to the relevant authorities towards addressing the incidence of missing persons” to protect their rights. The OMP can also “identify avenues of redress” for missing persons and relatives.

Underscoring the toothless nature of this body, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament during a debate on the bill on June 21: “The responsibility of this office is to search for missing persons and issue a certificate. There is no other power [for this office].”

The JVP fully endorsed this phony bill, saying the rights of missing persons must be protected. The amendment moved by the JVP concerned a clause that gave powers to the OMP to enter into an agreement with any person or organisation, domestic or foreign, to obtain information or technical assistance. In line with its ultra-nationalist outlook, the JVP claimed this would allow the OMP to strike agreements with foreign bodies, saying that would be harmful to the country.

Nothing has changed for the victims of the communal war in the North and East of Sri Lanka. These areas are still under military occupation, hundreds of political prisoners are still incarcerated without trial and the security forces are continuing arrests, torture and random shootings.

UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Ben Emmerson, who completed a five-day visit to Sri Lanka in July, said torture remains “endemic and routine” in the country’s security system. Even those arrested as recently as late last year had been subjected to torture, he said, “despite a new government promising to end such practices.”

Emmerson met stern opposition from sections of the government. This included a heated argument with the Justice Minister Wijedasa Rajapakse, who is backing various Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist groups.

Former President Rajapakse and the parliamentary group loyal to him—the Joint Opposition—are attacking the OMP on chauvinist grounds. In an open letter to chief Buddhist prelates, Rajapakse criticised both the OMP Act and a postponed Bill on “enforced disappearances” as mechanisms “to punish the members of the armed forces and the political authorities that gave leadership to the war.” This is despite Sirisena’s and Wickremesinghe’s assurances to the military that the legislation has nothing to do with punishing the perpetrators.

The bitter infighting in the Sri Lankan ruling class over democratic window-dressing, such as the OMP, points to the deep crisis within the political establishment. At the same time, amid rising class struggles against the government’s austerity program, all factions are seeking to whip up communalism to divide the working class and are bolstering the police state apparatus.

Greenland is burning

Daniel de Vries 

Wildfires have raged for weeks in Greenland, the massive Arctic island known principally for its vast quantities of ice. The fires are unprecedented in size and duration, marking an ominous new stage in the warming of Greenland and the entire Arctic.

Scientists first observed signs of the current burning in late July, in an area of western Greenland about 150 kilometers from the second largest town, Sisimiut. That blaze and smaller ones nearer the coast have engulfed over 18 square kilometers to date. The latest satellite data indicate the fires continuing to burn as of August 16.

The burned-out area is on the border between the frigid, arid grasslands close to the border of the ice sheet, and typically wetter, coastal landscapes with mosses, shrubs and small trees. The fires appear to be fueled at least in part by peat, the partially decomposed plant material which takes thousands of years to form.

While the size of the current blaze is not remarkable on a global scale, scientists have never before seen anything like it on Greenland. Since 2000, satellite monitors have enabled researchers to detect remote wildfires on the island. As Stef Lhermitte of Delft University in the Netherlands wrote on Twitter, “wildfires have occurred in the past over Greenland but 2017 is exceptional in the number of active fire sections by MODIS,” referring to the thermal detection instrument used to assess the fires.

The immediate cause for the fires is unknown. Lightning, a campfire, or a stray cigarette can all provide the necessary spark. Pinpointing precisely how the blazes began can be very difficult, particularly in such remote areas. The unusually dry summer weather, however, contributed to the conditions for the fire to spread rapidly. Sisimiut had trace amounts of rain in June and half the normal amount in July.

Yet more than the normal variability of weather is at play. “The Earth is complex. Our climate system is complex. Rarely can we say it’s one thing that caused this,” Jessica McCarty, a geography professor at Miami University, told NPR. “But in this example, we do know that it was not expected for the permafrost to be at this condition so soon,” she said. The fires indicate that the layer of frozen ground known as permafrost has melted to an extent not expected until 2050.

Temperatures are rising twice as fast in the Arctic compared to the global average. Alongside the warming—and even outstripping it—is the rate of melting by glaciers and ice sheets. “In Greenland, everything got warmer at the same time: the air, the ocean surface, the depths of the ocean,” Ian Joughin, a University of Washington glaciologist, told NASA earlier this month. “We don’t really understand which part of that warming is having the biggest effect on the glaciers. What scientists do know is that warming Arctic temperatures—and a darkening surface of the Greenland ice sheet—are causing so much summer melting that it is now the dominant factor in Greenland’s contribution to sea level rise.”

Joughin added that Greenland’s summer melt season is 70 days longer than it was 40 years ago. Over half the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet now regularly melts in summer. In extreme cases like 2012 virtually all of the ice sheet can experience surface melt. In all, Greenland contains the equivalent of more than seven meters of sea level rise trapped in its ice sheets.

Wildfires together with warming temperatures are thought to be responsible for much of this accelerated melting. Fires across the northern hemisphere deposit black soot on the white surface of Greenland’s ice sheet, darkening the ice and absorbing more of the sun’s heat. While the soot is typically transported from vast distances—in fact, smoke from a Canadian forest fire is currently tracking over Greenland—large deposits can be expected from the intense local smoke originating just 80 kilometers from the edge of the ice sheet.

Perhaps the most ominous aspect is the prospect for the synergistic impacts of climate change and wildfire activity in the high latitudes to increase further in the future. While on a global scale wildfires are trending downwards, largely driven by expanding agriculture in the African savannas, areas of the high north like Alaska have seen a sharp increase in large forest fires over the past few decades.

As warming temperatures continue to alter Arctic ecosystems, increased fire activity could release vast stores of carbon buried in soil, darkening and destabilizing ice sheets, adding global warming gases to the atmosphere, and amplifying the changes already under way.

Millions travel to view 2017 total solar eclipse

Don Barrett 

Today marks the first time in 38 years that the continental United States will experience perhaps the most spectacular astronomical event, a total solar eclipse. The Moon will pass directly between Earth and the Sun, casting a shadow that will, for a 70-mile wide corridor across 14 states, briefly turn day into night.

On a global scale, total solar eclipses are hardly rare: one takes place approximately every 18 months, with a regularity so well-studied and explained by science that tables of future eclipses, their locations and exact times and duration, are available covering the next one thousand years. But the totality, complete blotting out of sun for several minutes, is highly localized, extending in a band about 70 miles wide and 3,000 miles long.

Today’s eclipse will race at 1600 miles per hour diagonally across the United States, beginning at 10:15 a.m. at Depoe Bay, Oregon, and departing an hour and a half later from McClellanville, South Carolina. For those wholly within the Moon’s shadow, the sky will suddenly dim as bands of shadow play upon the ground, a last bead of light will flare out where the Sun stood, birds will roost, and up to two and a half minutes of darkness will begin. The Sun will remain only in the form of its faint pearly outer atmosphere, the corona, surrounding the inky void of the Moon’s silhouette.

A partial solar eclipse, where the Moon only blocks out part of the Sun, will be visible across virtually the entire North American continent, though special solar viewing glasses will be needed to safely observe this.

Nearly a century has passed since a similar eclipse path cut across the heart of the United States on June 8, 1918, while World War I still raged and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia faced its first challenges from civil war and imperialist intervention. The following year, another solar eclipse would be used to provide the first experimental evidence for Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Accordingly, the event has generated a great deal of public interest in the United States. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people from around the world are traveling to towns, campgrounds and highway roadsides that fall within the eclipse’s path of totality, where the Moon fully blots out the Sun. Millions of solar viewing glasses and thousands of hotel rooms are sold out. The eclipse will be live streamed by government, news and social media outlets throughout the day.

At the same time, cities and municipalities in the eclipse’s path are rightly worried about the mass influx of people to areas along the eclipse path. While only 12 million people live directly under the path of totality, 200 million people live within a day’s drive. Hundreds of thousands have flocked to Idaho and Oregon alone, where it is the height of wildfire season and no coordinated plans exist should mass evacuations prove necessary. Nor do plans exist nationwide to deal with the expected traffic or potential shortages of gasoline, food and water.

Eclipses are among the oldest recorded astronomical phenomena, having been studied by civilizations across the globe for more than four millennia. Their interruptions to the ordinary rhythms of the sky remain just as vivid now as when the earliest lunar eclipse (when the Moon is shadowed by the Earth, rather than the Earth by the Moon) was recorded in Sumeria in 2094 BCE, or the first solar eclipse recorded in what is now modern Syria in 1375 BCE.

Until the 20th century, total solar eclipses provided the only views of the faint atmosphere of the Sun by covering the brilliant solar “photosphere.” The pink glowing clouds of hydrogen gas called prominences would be described by Fermicus Maternus during a solar eclipse of 334CE, and the faint solar corona would enter the literature with the solar eclipse of 968CE. These and subsequent observations provided a glimpse into the inner workings of the Sun.

Approximate recurring patterns in the motion of the Earth and Moon relative to the Sun enabled the Babylonians to make rough estimates of when lunar eclipses might be seen in the 6th century BCE. Fragmentary evidence even suggests the Neolithic culture of Stonehenge may have noted some of the principal periods in which eclipses repeat. In Greece, Hipparchus observed the 189 BCE eclipse of the Sun and estimated for the first time the distance between Earth and the Moon, the first “astronomical” calculation, giving the first hint of vast scales of distance to come.

The intense study of the cycles of sky motion, both of eclipses and the planets, reached a high point with the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century CE, drawing on centuries of Greek records. With Ptolemy’s work, “rough” predictions of solar eclipses became possible for the first time. The solar eclipse of 1560 became the first to be predicted with some specificity, creating a sensation in Europe and inspiring the 13-year-old Tycho Brahe to dedicate his life to astronomy.

Isaac Newton, who published his theory of gravity in 1687, further refined eclipse predictions by basing the motion of the Moon and Sun (and all the planets) on concrete physical principles which explained the recurrences of nature at a deeper level. His predictions were improved upon after the British government offered a £20,000 prize (about $5 million in modern value) in 1714 for methods by which the position of a ship at sea (vital for both the navy and seaborne trade) could be determined: one such method required accurate positions of the Moon. Between 1748 and 1751, a series of papers by Alexis Clairaut, and more practical work inspired by him published by Leonhard Euler, solved this problem theoretically. High-precision tables of the Moon’s celestial movements emerged; ships at sea could get their position and solar eclipses could be predicted precisely.

In the 20th century, scientists combined historical records of eclipses over three millennia with high-precision computer calculations on the motions of the Earth-Moon system. Because of the narrowness of the path of a total eclipse, even tiny variations in the rotation of the Earth or the revolution of the Moon about it would change the locations where an eclipse was reported. Historical records, made only with the naked eye, have pinned the average rotation rate of the Earth over these millennia to a few parts per billion.

US takes major step toward trade war with China

Nick Beams

The Trump administration has formally begun an investigation into alleged Chinese intellectual property theft following the president’s issuing of an executive order calling on US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to examine whether to launch the probe under section 301 of a 1974 trade law.

The investigation, which will begin with written submissions up to September 28 followed by a hearing in October, is the most significant move so far by the administration to take action against China. It could lead to the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions, moves that will almost certainly bring about retaliation and a possible trade war.

The announcement on Friday came the same day as the news that Stephen Bannon, the fascistic “America First” economic nationalist, was quitting his position as Trump’s chief strategist.

Before his departure, Bannon gave an interview with the American Prospectmagazine in which he outlined the motivation for the investigation—the fear in all sections of the American ruling class that the economic growth of China is undermining American global economic dominance.

“We’re at economic war with China,” he told the magazine. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path.”

After pushing aside the issue of Korea, saying there was no military solution, Bannon returned to what he said was the central question. “To me, the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.”

His agenda included action under section 301 as well as measures against steel imports under 1962 legislation enabling the president to impose restrictions on “national security” grounds. A report on this has been prepared but not yet released.

“We’re going to run the tables on these guys,” Bannon said. “We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”

Two days after the publication of the interview, Lighthizer made the formal announcement of the investigation into alleged intellectual property theft.

“On Monday, President Trump instructed me to look into Chinese laws, policies and practices which may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation or technology development,” he said in a statement. “After consulting with stakeholders and other government agencies, I have determined that these critical issues merit a thorough investigation.”

Chinese government authorities have made clear there will be retaliation. Responding to Trump’s order to launch the probe, a statement from a representative of the Ministry of Commerce said: “China definitely won’t sit back and watch. China will absolutely take appropriate actions to defend its legitimate rights.”

In the wake of Bannon’s interview, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the China-US economic relationship was “mutually beneficial” and warned that there would be “no winner from a trade war.”

“We hope that people will not use 19th and 20th century perspectives and measures to address 21st century problems,” it added.

But the speed with which Trump’s executive order has been acted on indicates that the agenda set out by Bannon enjoys wide support within the political and corporate establishment. This support was underscored in remarks by Council on Foreign Relations China expert Jennifer Harris, a high-level staffer at the State Department during the Obama administration, who worked closely with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.

“It’s a weird day when I agree with Steve Bannon, but he’s right on this,” she said. “Going back to George W. Bush, America’s policy towards China has been to ask. That has not panned out well.”

The Trump administration’s economic war on China is not a break with previous US policy, but its development by other means. The aim of the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, repudiated by Trump in the very first days of his administration, was to create an economic bloc excluding China that would force Beijing to comply with US demands.

Including major provisions governing intellectual property rights, it was motivated by concerns that the present global trading system under the regulations of the World Trade Organisation was weakening the economic position of the US against both China and other rivals.

The Trump administration’s position has been to shift away from multilateral trade deals and focus on bilateral agreements in which it extracts concessions from trade rivals. While changing the form of economic warfare begun under Obama, the Trump administration adheres to its essential premise—that the present world trade order is undermining the economic position of the United States.

Writing in the Financial Times last week, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross claimed that intellectual property theft and expropriation was costing US businesses up to $600 billion a year, and that more than 3 percent of America’s gross domestic product was being lost each year, with China the main culprit.

The dependence of the US on intellectual property rights is underscored by a report prepared last year by the Commerce Department which estimated that intellectual property accounted for nearly 40 percent of the US economy in 2014.

The central component of the alleged theft by China is its investment rules requiring foreign companies that form joint ventures in China to share intellectual property—a normal business practice.

In his article, Ross also complained that Chinese companies pursue an investment strategy in which they identify US start-up companies that have made scientific breakthroughs and then invest in those companies on better-than-market terms. But this is exactly the strategy pursued by major US corporations. The complaint is that US firms are being beaten at their own game.

Economic history reveals that the rise of the US to economic pre-eminence was not a result of “American genius,” but was the outcome of the appropriation, development and application of scientific discoveries made internationally. One only has to recall that the development of rocket science depended on the research carried out in Nazi Germany, while mobile phone technology is dependent on the breakthroughs in theoretical physics, much of it in Europe in the first decades of the last century.

Likewise, the profits accumulated by the pharmaceutical industry through the enforcement of intellectual property rights are dependent on the discovery in the 1950s of the structure of DNA.

The amassing of profits through the enforcement of intellectual property rights is essentially a form of parasitism, in which breakthroughs in science, which rest on social and collective intellectual labour, are turned into private property. It is a measure of the worsening economic position of the US vis à vis its rivals that it is moving toward the launching of a global trade war in order to seek to maintain its dominance in this form of parasitic accumulation.

Demonstrators block neo-Nazi march in Berlin-Spandau

Katerina Selin

Around 1,500 demonstrators blocked a march on Saturday of some 700 neo-Nazis from the northern Berlin district of Spandau to a former allied prison for war criminals, where they intended to commemorate Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. Condemned to lifelong imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials, Hess committed suicide in the prison thirty years ago, on August 17, 1987.

Andreas Geisel (Social Democrats, SPD), Berlin’s state senator for the interior, approved the neo-Nazi commemorative march. Geisel rejected repeated demands for the fascist protest to be banned, attempting to justify his position by referring to “freedom of speech.”

The neo-Nazis were ordered to follow certain procedures. However, despite a court order to avoid any glorification of Hess in writing, speech or pictures, they carried a large banner with the Hess citation, “I regret nothing.” The police, who were at the scene with 1,000 officers to seal off the march and protect the right-wing extremists from counter-protesters, did not intervene.

Instead, police bullied counter-demonstrators and prevented them from reaching the rally in front of the former prison. “We will not tolerate outright blockades and we will prevent them,” the police warned over Twitter. Officers intervened against counter-protesters who blocked the route of the neo-Nazis.

After a number of sit-down protests and resistance against the right-wing agitation, however, police officers were forced to disperse the neo-Nazi march.

A broad coalition of organisations, including political parties, trade unions, church groups, and organisations like the Association of Persons Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, called for the counter-protest. Concerned about the rise of far-right forces internationally and the rise of nationalism, many people not affiliated with any of these organisations, especially youth, joined the demonstration.

Their protest is an expression of mounting international opposition to nationalism and right-wing extremism. Many are shocked at the latest developments in the United States, where President Trump has solidarized with Nazi and fascist groups.

Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) members and supporters distributed hundreds of election statements and the leaflet, “German politicians and media promoted the ideology on display in Charlottesville,” and were met with strong interest.

While the vast majority of counter-protesters came to resist the neo-Nazis, the establishment parties used the demonstration for their election propaganda and attempted to portray themselves as opponents of the far right.

At the counter rally, only around 200 people were present, the majority of whom were flag-waving SPD supporters. This was in part due to the bullying of the police, who prevented counter-protesters from reaching the rally’s location. It is also true, however, that many people had come to the demonstration to stop the neo-Nazis, not to hear the speeches of representatives of parties whose policies have encouraged and strengthened the far-right for years.

The first speaker was the chairman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) in Berlin-Brandenburg, Doro Zinke, whose comments were restricted to a few phrases and critical remarks about the actions of the police. Other speakers included Petra Pau, vice president of the German federal parliament and the Left Party’s lead candidate for the federal election; Renate Künast from the Greens; and Hubertus Heil, the SPD’s general secretary.

All three clad themselves in the mantle of left-wing democrats and anti-fascists. Pau pledged the unity of all “democrats.” “It is nice,” she said, “that we are gathered here today along with colleagues from the federal parliament, Berlin state senate, municipal assemblies, the trade unions, churches, and democratic organisations.” During election campaigns, one could “argue about everything under the sun, about interventions by the German army, about the cause of old age poverty or the criminals in the diesel emissions affair. But when the issues at stake are citizens’ rights and democracy, we have to defend them together.”

She did not utter a single word about the political shift to the right in Germany, where all parties are now unanimously agitating against refugees. She did not mention the murders by the National Socialist Underground (NSU), even though as a representative on the NSU investigative commission she is well informed about the close connections between the intelligence agencies and the series of murders by the right-wing extremist terrorist group.

Künast warned of a shift to the right in Germany, led by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Pegida. She stated on the violence in Charlottesville, “We don’t want American relations, but to preserve our democracy, which begins with dignity.”

Hubertus Heil (SPD) agreed with his fellow speakers. In the struggle against the Nazis, he said, it was necessary, in spite of political disagreements, to stand together. In the same breath, Heil defended the police from criticism and claimed that they also opposed the Nazis.

This is as cynical as it is dishonest. In reality, the police frequently tolerate and protect right-wing extremist gatherings, including the recent festival “Rock against foreign invasion” in Thuringia. And in the federal election campaign, hardly a day goes by without politicians from the SPD, Greens and Left Party agitating like the AfD against refugees, promoting nationalism, and appealing to the far-right to enforce their policies of militarism, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus, and social cuts.

The SPD in particular is responding to mounting popular opposition by adopting the AfD’s xenophobic rhetoric. Just days prior to the demonstration, SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz called for a ruthless crackdown by the police against alleged criminal immigrants. The Green Party’s Boris Palmer, along with Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine from the Left Party, have been railing against migrants and refugees for some time. Wherever the Left Party, Greens and SPD serve jointly in government, they organise brutal deportations and strengthen the police.

All of the red-red-green slogans against the right cannot conceal the fact that they are themselves guilty of acting as “racist cheerleaders” and “advocates of nationalist conceptions and falsifiers of history,” as the official leaflet calling for the demonstration describes it. This is also clearly demonstrated by the defence of right-wing extremist professor Jörg Baberowski (who claimed that “Hitler was not vicious”) by the SPD president of Humboldt University.

Bullying Venezuela: Trump’s Unvarnished Threat

Binoy Kampmark

Whether he holds good on it is beside the point.  President Donald J. Trump’s great value to US foreign policy is its lack of artifice and sophistication, a bullying force of nature that alters with the next burst of adolescent acne and the breaking of the voice.  Even less than the traditional stereotype of the American behaving badly, he is ugliness without a veil, the brute promise without gloss.  Truly ghastly, yet in a way, oddly refreshing.

His threats against President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela were impudent enough to garner resistance from Latin American leaders averse to Washington’s heavily intrusive hand.  The result of Trump’s stance has been one of unifying, not dividing, the bloc.

Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos warned Vice President Mike Pence that, “The possibility of military intervention shouldn’t even be considered.”  Santos went even further, making the almost daring, if delusionary point that “America is a continent of peace. It is the land of peace.”

The vantage point from analysts in the US is that Maduro has got to go (the default position of Washington tends be interference – the only issue amongst the scalpel holders is how the program might be implemented).  This has been the position since he assumed power, enshrining a long held position that Venezuela is perfectly entitled to have any government as long as it sings the lullaby of American empire.

The reality since the 1990s is that the functionaries in Washington have been concerned about the unruly, independent trajectory of Venezuelan politics.  The Bolivarian revolution spearheaded by Hugo Chávez between 1999 and 2013, a socialist experiment fuelled by rising oil receipts, sent a lingering titter amongst those in the US political establishment.

The Bush administration was sufficiently stirred by Chávez’s achievements as to seek his ouster in 2002.  While denying a direct hand, there was no shying away from the obvious point that “democracy promotion” was the administration’s velvet gloved fist that would be repeatedly used, a pretext to advance business agendas and suitable alternatives to Chavismo.

As Christopher I. Clement, a long time student of US influences (read interference) in Latin American elections explained in 2005, the effort against Chávez was purely self-defeating.  “This targeting of a democratically elected government,” claimed Clement in Latin American Perspectives, “raises serious questions about the objectives and content of US policies toward Latin America.”

Subsequently, WikiLeaks revealed some gold on US intentions in Venezuela with a 2006 State Department cable from then US Ambassador William Brownfield.  For the eager Brownfield keen to make use of his position, US strategy towards altering the Venezuelan political landscape would entail five approaches: “strengthen democratic institutions” which had been “systematically dismantled” over the 8 years of Chávez’s rule; “penetrate” the base and “divide Chavismo”; “isolate Chavez” and, predictably enough, protect “vital US business” interests.

The document is awash with calculations and not-so-hidden agendas, the dirty asides suggesting that democracy is only good if it is managed from the outside.  The funding of 54 social projects through the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) gave the ambassador a cynical chance “to visit poor areas of Venezuela and demonstrate US concern for the Venezuelan people.”  This tactic would supposedly divide the Bolivarian efforts, and sow “confusion”.

What the critics have against Trump is his near subnormal forthrightness.  He is not interested in the subterfuge of US aid that chips away at a foreign government, the softly softy approach to discrediting an opponent.  Rather than undermining the state using the more conventional techniques in the CIA armoury, the dissimulative practices of US Aid, or mere economic punishments through levelled sanctions, he has suggested calling in the marines.

“Threatening military action,” suggests Mark L. Schneider of the America’s program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “undermines the strongest Latin American consensus in support of democracy that I have seen since the end of the Pinochet regime.” But a view such as Schneider’s is merely more of the same recipe, the same formula with different utensils.

US intervention in Venezuela, whatever form it takes, resembles the abusive family member who regularly violates the sanctity and solemnity of others in the inner sanctum.  Things were already looking less than peachy in 1841, with the commencement of the Venezuelan Boundary Dispute gave a foretaste of the US stance in the Americas.

While the Venezuelans were perfectly clear where their post-Spanish independence boundaries lay, the British were less than observant, preferring to see Britannia’s own acquisition of British Guiana from the Netherlands as borderless to the west.  This contrived amorphousness brought the imperial interests of a global empire into play, a point that piqued Washington’s interest. To that end, the Monroe Doctrine was born, fashioned to prevent, if not repel, European efforts to influence the Americas.

Ironically enough, the resolution of the dispute was taken as the necessary validation of the Monroe Doctrine, which was duly used to sanctify periodic, often murderous acts of intervention by the United States in the affairs of Central and South America.  Keeping the meddlesome Europeans out of the Western Hemisphere was simply a prelude to entrenching the US within it: imperialism was bad, but only if practiced by foreigners. Trump has merely joined a large and not so distinguished club.

Amid India-China war crisis, Washington boosts strategic ties with New Delhi

Deepal Jayasekera & Keith Jones

The Trump administration and Pentagon have taken multiple steps in recent days to strengthen Washington’s military-strategic alliance with India.

These moves are manifestly aimed at encouraging India to hold fast to its hardline stance in the current dispute with China over control of the Doklam Plateau—a ridge in the Himalayan foothills that both China and Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that New Delhi treats like a protectorate, claim as their sovereign territory.

For the past two months Indian and Chinese troops have been arrayed against each other “eyeball-to-eyeball” on the Doklam Plateau, while New Delhi and Beijing have exchanged bellicose threats and taunts, and ordered their militaries to ready for war.

India has moved thousands of troops to forward positions along its northeastern border with China, placing them on a high-alert “No War, No Peace” status, and undertaken emergency purchases of munitions, spare parts and other war materiel.

China has reportedly deployed fighter jets to Tibet and surface-to-air missile batteries near its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and sent additional blood stocks to Tibet, in anticipation of casualties.

Washington’s intervention in the conflict, even if at present only indirect, greatly heightens the danger that a border clash between India and China, themselves both nuclear powers, could rapidly escalate and draw in the US and other regional and imperialist powers with catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and all humanity.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that, during an Indian Independence Day telephone conversation between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the US and India agreed to enhance their military-security cooperation “across the Indo-Pacific region.”

As a first step, the two countries will “elevate their strategic consultations” by establishing a “2-by-2 ministerial dialogue,” involving their foreign and defense ministers. This set-up is akin to that which the US has with its principal treaty allies in the region, Japan, Australia and the Philippines.

The next day, Washington announced it has designated Hizbul Mujahideen, an Islamist militia opposed to India’s rule over disputed Kashmir as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Not surprisingly, this move was warmly welcomed by India—which claims Pakistan government-backed terrorism is the principal, if not sole, reason for the mass alienation and opposition to New Delhi in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley—and condemned no less sharply by Islamabad.

Yesterday, a “2-by-2” meeting between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and their Japanese counterparts, respectively Taro Kono and Itsunori Onodera, decided that the US and Japan will work together “to advance trilateral and multilateral security and defence cooperation with other partners in the region, notably the Republic of Korea, Australia (and) India.”

This was presented as a response to North Korea’s refusal to cede to US demands that it unilaterally cease nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile tests. However, the North Korean crisis, which the Trump administration has systematically enflamed since coming to office eight months ago, is above all driven by American imperialism’s drive to strategically isolate, encircle, and bully China, Pyongyang’s northern neighbor and principal ally.

As part of its ever-deeper integration into Washington’s military-strategic offensive against China, India has taken to parroting the US line on North Korea, depicting this small, impoverished country as a unique threat to world peace, when it is Washington that over the past quarter-century has illegally invaded one country after another.

Ominously, Modi has aligned India with Trump’s reckless threats to rain unprecedented “fire and fury” on North Korea. According to the readout of their August 15 conversation, “Prime Minister Modi thanked President Trump for his strong leadership uniting the world against the North Korean menace.”

For the past decade-and-a-half, a central strategic goal of Washington, whether under a Democratic or Republican administration, has been to build up India as a counterweight to China and harness it to US strategic aims. Not only does India share a nearly 3,500 kilometre-long border with China and possess one of the world’s largest armies. It also geographically dominates the Indian Ocean, whose sea-lanes bear most of the oil and many of the other resources that fuel China’s economy.

During the three-year rule of Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India has been transformed into a veritable frontline state in the US offensive against China. India now allows US warplanes and battleships to make routine use of its military bases and ports, shares intelligence with the Pentagon on Chinese ship and submarine movements in the Indian Ocean, and has dramatically expanded bi-lateral and tri-lateral military-strategic ties with Japan and Australia.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India last weekend, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, reiterated the importance the Pentagon accords to India, declaring the US “is ready to help India modernise its military.” The admiral lauded the recent joint US-Indian-Japanese naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal, adding that if Australia were added to the annual Malabar exercise—making it a quadrilateral exercise of the US and the states that are the pivot of the Pentagon’s strategy to militarily confront and defeat China—it would be even better.

Washington’s moves to bolster ties with India come in the wake of calls from various strategists of US imperialism for the Trump administration to make clear that it stands with India in the current border crisis with China, even if for diplomatic reasons it continues to publicly maintain that the US has no position on who is the rightful owner of the Doklam Plateau.

Particularly significant in this regard was an article penned by the longtime CIA operative and Obama administration official Bruce Reidel titled, “JFK stopped a China-India War. Can Trump? The nuclear stakes are much higher now.” The article argues that it was President John Kennedy’s dispatching of “the US Air Force to resupply the Indians” and an aircraft “carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal” that caused China to unilaterally end the 1962 Sino-Indian border war and withdraw from its “conquests” in northeast India.

While Reidel urges the Trump administration to be ready to mount a diplomatic offensive to prevent the outbreak of a conflict that could have “potentially enormous consequences for the world,” his implicit argument is that Washington must come to India’s military support so as to help it stare down Beijing and, if need be, bloody it on the battlefield.

For his part, Richard M. Rossow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major US think-tank, is urging the Trump administration to recognize that in “sending its troops into foreign territory to stand up to China,” New Delhi is realizing the hopes that American imperialist strategists have long placed in it.

War, Rossow concedes, may not be desirable, but “Washington must recognize—we just received a loud, clear signal that India is ready to take important steps to contribute to the” US-led “global order, and it should strengthen our resolve to further deepen our emerging security partnership.”

Japan, American imperialism’s most important Asian ally, has gone even further than the US in backing India’s stance on the Doklam Plateau dispute. Yesterday, Japan’s ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, defended the intervention of Indian troops on territory to which it has no legal claim, saying India has a “treaty understanding with Bhutan.” He also suggested, without naming Beijing, that its attempt to expand a road on the disputed plateau was tantamount to “unilaterally” trying to “change the status quo by force.”

In the hope of supplanting China as the principal cheap-labour supply-chain hub for Western capital and advancing its own great power ambitions, the venal Indian bourgeoisie is serving as a satrap for American and Japanese imperialism in their drive to re-subjugate China.

The Chinese regime, which represents the oligarchs that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the People’s Republic, has no progressive answer to the relentless offensive being mounted against it.

Organically incapable of making any appeal to the anti-war sentiment of the people of Asia and the world, it oscillates between seeking an accommodation with Washington and whipping up bellicose nationalism and engaging in its own militarist actions.

A recent article in the South China Morning Post cited People’s Liberation Army sources as saying war was increasingly likely, but that the Chinese military believes the conflict can be limited to the eastern sector of the Indo-Chinese border and last no more than a week or two.

But as the developments of recent days have underscored, a border war could rapidly involve other powers, starting with US. Even if such a catastrophe were averted and a clash between India and China limited to a border war, it would have calamitous consequences for working people around the world.

Whatever its outcome, such a war would only strengthen imperialism.

A Chinese “victory” would only cause the Indian bourgeoisie to cement its place in a US-led NATO-type alliance against China. Moreover, Germany, Japan and the other imperialist wars would use the events in the Himalayas as a pretext to accelerate their plans for rearmament and war.

In the event China suffered a defeat, US imperialism would seize on the opportunity to intensify its reckless military-strategic offensive against China. Meanwhile, the Modi government, flush from reversing the “humiliation” of 1962, would step up its efforts to bully India’s neighbors into recognizing it as the hegemon of South Asia and whip up a climate of bellicose nationalist euphoria to intensify the assault on the working class and drive Indian politics still further right.

There is, however, an antipode to the war drive of the bourgeoisie. Recent decades have seen the growth of a massive working class in India and China. It is this mighty social force, which has no interest in the capitalist struggle for profits, resources and strategic advantage, which must be mobilized along with workers in the US, Japan, and around the world in an anti-war movement aimed at liquidating the source of war—capitalism and the outmoded nation-state system in which it is historically rooted.

Worsening child poverty in the UK

Barry Mason 

A new report issued by Buttle UK, “The Real Face of Child Poverty in the UK in 2017,” paints a picture of the desperate financial plight of many families.

Buttle UK is a charity that disburses grants to needy children. Its chief executive, Gerri McAndrew, said, “While this is not a state of emergency, it is beginning to look like one. Urgent action needs to be taken.”

Buttle UK is the largest charity directly dispensing grants to families with children and young people in need. Over the last 10 years it has had 125,000 requests. The database of these requests means the charity has been able to make a detailed analysis of life in the UK for millions of poor children, who have suffered as years of brutal austerity measures have been unleashed on them by successive Labour and Conservative governments and local authorities of all political stripes.

The foreword to the report notes: “The plight of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children in the UK is deteriorating—more are living in poverty than at any time in the last 10 years. Government figures show that the number rose by 200,000 in 2014/15, the first increase in levels of child poverty since 2011-12. It meant there are now 3.9 children across the UK living below the breadline.”

This means, taking the Office of National Statistics figure for 2016, that of 11 million children under 18 in the UK, a third are living below the breadline.

One item the charity is asked to provide for children is a bed, and since 2006 it has given out 13,000 beds. The need is rising, and in 2015/2016 alone it gave out 3,000 beds. This represents around a third of the 10,000 families helped last year. The report states, “These are children who do not have a suitable bed to sleep in because they are sharing with parents or siblings; they are sleeping on the floor or their beds are damaged to the point where they are simply not fit to use.”

Based on figures compiled by the charity, it estimates that around 400,000 children in the UK are without a suitable bed. The report comments that this “is a staggering figure, and surely not one that is acceptable in the UK in 2017.”

Over the last decade the charity has already distributed the following to poor families:

· 18,885 washing machines

· 16,564 cookers

· 13,311 children’s beds

· 9,954 fridge freezers

· 5,023 grants towards children

· 1,394 pieces of household furniture

The areas of the country where most of the requests for assistance have come from are the large cities, including families in Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Glasgow.

Among its key findings, the report noted the changing profile of the families it helps. While noting that the number of people in work is at an all-time high, “there has been a big shift in those classed as experiencing ‘in-work poverty,’ a rise of 1.1 million people since 2010/11. As a result two thirds of those children classified as poor are so despite the fact that at least one of their parents is in work. More people are living in private rented housing where costs are high and tenancies lack stability,” and this has led to “a staggering 60 percent rise in the number of evictions by private landlords, between 2010/11 and 2015/16.”

Another key finding is how economic changes are hitting the poorest families hardest and subjecting them to a “poverty premium.” The report explains: “Benefits have been frozen but prices are rising, adding increasing pressure to weekly budgets. Child benefits will have risen by just 2 percent between 2010 and 2020 compared with projected price rises of 35 percent.”

Families on low incomes are not able to access cheap credit or lower cost energy tariffs. Many of the families live in what it calls “ATM deserts” and are only able to access cash from machines charging a fee. The End Child Poverty Coalition calculated the “poverty premium” for a typical low-income family to be up to £1,700 a year.

The report notes that parents are forced into having to make detrimental choices because of financial constraints: “These combined pressures make the reality of everyday life incredibly challenging. Children…are isolated and lack forms of engagement and stimulation beyond the home. Their diets are poor. When money is so tight, the ability to meet basic material needs is an ongoing battle: a cooker or washing machine breaking down—or moving into a new unfurnished property—can create a crisis.”

The report highlights the increasing dependence on the privately rented sector (PRS) for housing by low-income families. This dependence is linked to increasing insecurity, instability and higher costs associated with having to make more frequent moves: “The number of people living in poverty in the PRS has doubled in a decade, from 2.2 million people in 2004/5 to 4.5 million today. … Almost three quarters (73%) of people…living in the PRS pay more than a third of their income in rent…compared to 28% of owner-occupiers and 50% of social renters with similar income levels.”

The cost of housing is exacerbated by the erosion of the value of Housing Benefit, which is no longer linked to a typical local rent figure. While rents in the PRS rose by nearly 12 percent between 2010 and 2015, the erosion of the value of Housing Benefit entitlement meant families faced a shortfall of £82 a month by 2015. This will rise to £154 a month by 2020.

The Buttle UK findings echo those of an End Child Poverty report, “Feeling the Pinch,” issued in January. It noted: “Forecasts suggest that child poverty rates will rise significantly in coming years. Low income families really are ‘feeling the pinch’—trapped between support being eroded by the cost of living rising much faster than benefit rates, and facing some of the highest prices on basic essentials as a result of a ‘poverty premium’ on key goods and services.”

Many struggling families are relying on credit just to get by. A July report by the charity StepChange noted the high cost of credit and explained, “There are too many families on tight budgets who have to turn to credit, including high cost credit, as a ‘safety net’ to meet the costs of everyday essentials. These households are particularly likely to be struggling to manage but vulnerable to falling into problem debt.

“Our new research finds that an estimated 8.8 million people in Great Britain have turned to credit to pay for their everyday household expenses in the last year. Of these, 1.1 million of them are using a form of high cost credit including payday/instalment loans, doorstep loans and rent-to-own stores.

“The regular use of high cost credit to meet essential costs can severely damage the already tight budgets of families who are struggling to manage. Moreover, having to repay loans with high interest rates and charges can significantly increase the risk of these households falling behind and spiralling into problem debt.”