Israel bombs Syrian government positions as anti-Assad opposition forces lose ground

Jean Shaoul

Last week, Israeli fighter jets attacked major military facilities near the town of Maysaf in western Syria from Lebanese airspace with the full backing of Israel’s paymasters in Washington.

The first attack killed two people and caused extensive damage, while a second killed or wounded a further seven people.

According to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—a British-based monitoring group with ties to forces opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad—Israeli missiles hit facilities belonging to the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) and a military base storing ground-to-ground missiles.

The SSRC is a Syrian government agency that the US and Israel claim is producing chemical weapons.

These strikes are part of a broader push by Israel to create “facts on the ground,” under conditions where Assad’s regime in Syria—with Russia and Iran’s backing—has been gaining the upper hand. They indicate the multiple rivalries in the region that threaten a wider conflagration in the resource-rich Middle East.

While Israel, as usual, did not confirm or deny the attacks, military intelligence chief Major General Herzl Halevi said that Israel was “dealing with threats near and far.” He added, “The threats to Israel are from armed militant groups, most of them aided and funded by Iran. They are grave threats, but not existential ones.”

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was more explicit. He said that Israel was determined to resist Iran’s influence in the region, stating, “Everything will be done to prevent the existence of a Shiite corridor from Tehran to Damascus.”

Just a few days earlier, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu accused Iran of trying to produce advanced, precision-guided missiles in Lebanon and Syria. He said, “Iran is busy turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment and it wants to use Syria and Lebanon as war fronts against its declared goal to eradicate Israel. This is something Israel cannot accept.”

These strikes come exactly 10 years after Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in eastern Syria and follow numerous interventions by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in Syria’s six-year-long civil war.

Israel has been a largely silent partner in the US-orchestrated campaign to topple the Assad regime. But just last month in an interview with Ha’aretz, Major General Amir Eshel, the outgoing chief the Israel Air Force, admitted to launching nearly 100 attacks on Syrian territory, allegedly against convoys supplying Hezbollah, over the past five years. Israel has also carried out targeted assassinations of senior Hezbollah figures.

Hezbollah, the Shia party and militant group from Lebanon that is supported by Iran, has played a key role supporting President Assad. It has sent its forces to fight the ever-shifting alliance of Islamist groups opposing him that includes Islamic State, Al Nusra, Jaish al-Fatah and Ahrar al-Sham, variously funded at different times by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey.

Israel, for its part, has allowed competing Islamist groups opposed to Assad to set up bases in the Golan Heights, providing them with training, intelligence and medical facilities. It has maintained regular contact with these groups, according to a 2015 report published by the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has itself faced repeated lethal attacks from al-Nusra and other groups.

Following an agreement between Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2015, Russia and Israel coordinated the operations of their aircraft over Syria—in order to avoid accidentally trading fire. This proved what had long been suspected: that Israel has been intervening covertly in the Syrian conflict. Netanyahu himself has acknowledged that Israel’s air force has operated undisturbed in Syrian air space in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and its 1974 agreement with Syria following the October 1973 war.

While the Syrian government for its part warned of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region,” it has not responded militarily as it has done on a few occasions in the past.

Instead, the Syrian Foreign Minister filed a formal complaint with the United Nations Security Council and the Secretary General, saying “The Israeli aggression has become a norm.” The complaint added that Israel was seeking to provide aid and support for terrorist groups such as the al-Nusra Front and ISIS just as the Syrian army was advancing against them, and that inaction on the part of the Security Council would be “unacceptable.” Just last week, the Syrian army and Shi’ite militias drove out IS fighters from Deir el-Zour, in the eastern oil-producing region of the country.

The Israeli air strikes took place as the IDF was conducting the largest military exercise in 19 years on its border with Lebanon that involved tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian evacuation drills. Commentators have described the 10-day-long exercises as a dress rehearsal for a future war with Hezbollah that would counter multiple terrorist infiltrations from southern Lebanon.

Israel’s relations with Russia have soured recently following Moscow’s threat to veto any UN Security Council resolution designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization. A meeting between Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi ended without any commitment by Putin to arrange the withdrawal of both Iran and Hezbollah from Syria and Netanyahu warning that Israel would act to protect its interests.

While Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has emphasized Russia’s commitment to Israel’s security interests and said the establishment of “de-escalation zones” in Syria would not harm Israel, Israel views the presence of Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria as a threat.

In any event, Russia is powerless to force Hezbollah’s forces out of Lebanon because of Iran’s support for the group as the basis for maintaining Tehran’s influence in Lebanon and as a crucial pro-Assad fighting force. Although Russia has sought to limit Iran’s role in Syria, to avoid antagonizing Washington, its aims—to shore up the Assad regime, preserve its only warm water port in Tartus, ensure its military and commercial contracts and loans with Syria and regional influence—are dependent on Iran.

Last month, Netanyahu told UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, during his visit to the Middle East, that Iran was building facilities in both Syria and Lebanon to make precision-guided missiles.

Accordingly, Tel Aviv seized on a UN report released the previous day to legitimize its aerial attacks. The report claims, without citing any evidence, that Syria’s attack on Khan Sheikhoun in March—that provided the pretext for Washington’s cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base—was just one of at least 20 chemical weapons attacks carried out by the Syrian government from March 2013 to March 2017.

Russia is party to an agreement with Washington and Damascus in which Syria agreed to destroy or send to Russia its chemical weapons. This was agreed in exchange for former President Barack Obama withdrawing his threat to invade Syria in September 2013. Russia indicated at the time that it would not oppose an attack on Syria’s chemical weapons stores if there was UN backing and proof of the use of such weapons.

Israel is seeking to use this to extend the justification under which it can attack Syria with impunity: that it has become Iran’s base of operations against Israel.

As the first Israeli strikes against Syria since the July cease-fire agreed between Russia and the US in southern Syria, along the border with Israel and Jordan, they signify that Tel Aviv is determined to impose its own interests in any political settlement of Syria’s civil war.

Israel opposed the agreement because it leaves pro-Assad forces, including potentially Hezbollah and Iran, in control of the border region, and also creates the template for future agreements in other parts of Syria, destroys the power of the so-called rebel groups that it has backed and leaves Assad in power.

Almost all the imperialist and regional powers have now withdrawn their demand that Assad must go as a pre-condition for negotiations on a peace settlement.

Hundreds of thousands march against Macron’s austerity measures in France

Alex Lantier & Anthony Torres 

Around 400,000 people protested yesterday against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to rip up France’s Labor Code, which would open the way for mass layoffs, pay and benefit cuts, and speedups. Macron’s labor “reforms” are the centerpiece of a massive campaign of austerity, including plans to slash state pension funds and unemployment benefits.

There were large protests in Paris (60,000 according to the unions), Marseille (60,000), Toulouse (16,000), Nantes (15,000), Bordeaux (12,000), Lyon (10,000), Rennes (10,000) Nice (5,000), and Le Havre, the home city of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe (3,400). It was the first protest organized by the trade union bureaucracy since Macron’s election in May. Police used water cannons in Paris to attack protesters in the 13th district, while youth and police also clashed in Lyon and Nantes.

The ruling classes throughout the world, including in the United States and Germany, see Macron’s “labor reforms” as the spearhead of a new round of international attacks on the working class. The New York Times hailed Macron’s measures as upending “the notion of the worker in permanent need of protection against rapacious capitalists,” bemoaning the fact that “Every effort at fundamental reform for at least a quarter of a century has foundered on giant and sometimes violent” popular demonstrations.

Macron’s approval ratings are plunging, and the great majority of workers and youth oppose his plans to impose a social counter-revolution by extra-parliamentary decree. Macron won the presidency after defeating the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen in the second-round runoff of an election that saw mass abstention and an electoral debacle for France’s traditional political parties.

The demonstrations took place against the background of France’s state of emergency which provide the presidency with “extraordinary powers,” including subjection of people to house arrest without trial. These powers, which have been in effect since November 2015, have been used to persecute opponents of the labor law reforms under both Macron and his predecessor, Socialist Party President Francois Hollande.

WSWS correspondents attended protests in Paris, Marseille, and in the north of France. Protesters stressed their hostility not only to the destruction of the Labor Code, but also the drive to war and dictatorship. Many expressed their distrust of the trade unions and existing parties. After the elections, which provided a choice between a neo-fascist and a free-market ideologue, youth said they were disgusted with the political system.

In Paris, Nathanaël said: “This is the only way we have left to struggle: to show our discontent. The representative institutions of the Fifth Republic have failed, they have been failing for years. I am a high school student. I don’t vote, and even if I voted, I don’t see what it would get me. I don't see why I should. This is not how social protection works, this is not how the rule of law works. … We are forced now to go into the streets and protest in order to make ourselves heard.”

Asked about the Parti de l'égalité socialiste’s call for an active boycott of the presidential elections to prepare the independent perspective mobilization of the working class against the president, he said: “I am pretty much in agreement with that. I am absolutely against the noxious, deadly ideas of the [neo-fascist] National Front [FN), but to vote is to support someone. Voting is supporting the system, the institutions.”

Nathanaël pointed to the French general strike of May 1968: “It is the only thing to do, to mobilize the working class. We are not in a trade union but a political struggle. … We’re close to a struggle like May ’68.”

He also denounced Macron’s plan to write France’s repressive state of emergency into common law: “That is the ultimate violation of the rule of law,” he said. “I see it very clearly in my high school, every day they search our bags, demand our papers. Teaching people to submit from high school or junior high on, that’s neither liberty nor the rule of law.”

He raised the Korean crisis to stress the concern of the youth faced with the danger of war: “For me, the threat comes not so much from North Korea as from the relationship between North Korea and the United States. Trump is impulsive, egocentric and obsessive, in fact this person does not even deserve the terms we use to describe him.”

Nathanaël also opposed law-and-order denunciations of protesters in the media: “I’m not a wrecker, I am not going to throw paving stones in storefront windows. … There is an entire type of rhetoric and language of the far right that is taking over the media coverage.”

The WSWS also spoke to Sarah, another student, who criticized growing social inequality and the turn to repression in France under Macron: “I find it intolerable to pass laws this way. I was not necessarily for Macron, especially on labor issues. In him, we’re dealing with a person who knows nothing. What he wants to do with contracts, where you can have a five-year temp contract, that is extraordinary.”

She added, “I am studying to work in Human Resources. I was a bit naïve. I thought that the work would be simple, there you have to help the workers. And now, time is going by, and I’m young but I am realizing that in the working world, relations are really vicious. And Macron is just piling on the viciousness.”

On the state of emergency, she said: “I think its main purpose is to scare the people. It scares people, obviously when you are young, when you come to Bastille Square [where the demonstration started] … We are basically under a type of dictatorship. It’s not the type of dictatorships that we know from the history books, but I think very bad things are happening, the way the president uses his power.”

Between the students and workers entering into struggle on the one hand, and the union bureaucracies and the pseudo left parties on the other, there is a class gulf. The unions and pseudo-left political forces like Jean-Luc Mélenchon of Unsubmissive France (LFI) are trying to present themselves as militant alternatives to the collapse of the Socialist Party (PS), discredited by the wars and austerity policies of Hollande. In fact, however, they are deeply integrated into the political establishment and hostile to a revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, which the Parti de l'égalité socialiste, the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, aims to lead.

NATO launches war games in advance of Russian exercise

Bill Van Auken

The US and its NATO allies have launched a series of war games in advance of a major military exercise by Russia and Belarus scheduled to begin later this week.

The dueling war games are unfolding under conditions in which relations between Washington and Moscow are more tense than at any time since the height of the Cold War. They follow the imposition of unilateral US sanctions against Russia, a round of tit-for-tat expulsions of Russian and American diplomats initiated by Washington and an unrelenting propaganda campaign alleging Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

On Monday, military forces from the US and a number of other NATO countries joined the Ukrainian army for military exercises dubbed “Rapid Trident,” involving 2,500 troops. The war games, which are taking place in the western Ukrainian city of Yavoriv, are to continue until September 23.

Washington has steadily increased its support to the right-wing nationalist regime brought to power by a US-backed and fascist-spearheaded coup in February 2014. Last month, US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis traveled to Kiev, where he signaled his support for providing the country with lethal weapons.

The US and NATO have invoked Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, which came in response to a referendum expressing overwhelming support for the militarily strategic territory’s return to Russia, and the revolt by pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region as manifestations of Russian aggression, justifying the US-led military buildup in the region.

This has included NATO’s deployment last May of four “multinational battlegroups,” consisting of over 1,000 combat troops each, in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, led by the UK, Canada, Germany and the US respectively. This has been accompanied by the organization of a 40,000-troop rapid reaction force and a steady military buildup in the Black Sea region.

The US recently sent seven more advanced fighter planes to Lithuania to beef up its military presence during the Russian military exercise, along with an additional 600 American airborne troops. For the first time since 2014, the Pentagon has taken command of NATO’s air operations in the Baltics.

Meanwhile, NATO initiated another military exercise, “Steadfast Pyramid” in Latvia on Sunday, involving 40 senior commanders from NATO member states along with Finland and Sweden. NATO issued an opaque description of the exercise, which continues until September 15, declaring that it was focused on “further developing the abilities of commanders and senior staff to plan and conduct operations through the application of operational art in decision making.” A second stage of the war games, known as “Steadfast Pinnacle,” is to last from September 17 through September 22.

In addition to these US-NATO actions, American and French troops are participating, along with units from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Lithuania and Estonia, in the largest Swedish military exercises to be held in 20 years. The maneuver, which began on Monday and runs through September 20, represents another show of force directed against Moscow. In an unmistakable sign of the sharp tensions roiling the region, Sweden has substantially increased its military budget, re-instituted conscription and is debating joining NATO, an action that would break the country’s century-long tradition of neutrality.

The US-NATO military buildup in both Ukraine and the Baltic republics—as well as the war games in Sweden—are clearly aimed, in the first instance, at countering the “Zapad 2017” joint exercises being staged by Russia and Belarus, which is set to begin on Thursday and continue through September 20.

Moscow has said that only 12,700 troops will participate in the military exercise, but Western officials, echoing allegations by the right-wing nationalist regimes in Ukraine and the Baltics, have issued hysterical and unfounded statements predicting that some 100,000 will be involved, casting the maneuvers as a potential preparation for invasion.

Typical was the reaction of Britain’s Defense Minister Michael Fallon, who told the BBC: “This is the biggest exercise I think for four years, over 100,000 Russian and Belorussian troops now on NATO’s border. This is designed to provoke us, it’s designed to test our defenses, and that’s why we have to be strong.”

Such claims turn reality on its head. For the past quarter century, since the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union, the US and NATO have steadily advanced on Russia’s borders, seeking to militarily encircle the country, while orchestrating regime change operations aimed at installing pro-Western governments in various former Soviet republics. Its ultimate aim is the dismemberment of the Russian Federation and its transformation into a semi-colony.

While there is nothing progressive about Moscow’s flexing of its military muscles, the fact is that Russia’s major troop mobilizations are taking place on its own territory, while under the banner of NATO, the Pentagon has deployed warplanes and paratroopers on Russia’s borders.

The dueling war games in Eastern Europe constitute a serious warning. After 16 years of uninterrupted—and unsuccessful—wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, US imperialism is increasingly shifting its focus toward preparation for military confrontation with its major geo-strategic rivals, in particular Russia and China, threatening humanity with a nuclear third world war.

The potential fuses to ignite such a powder keg stretch from Syria to North Korea, the South China Sea and Ukraine and the Baltics.

The simultaneous war games themselves hold the potential of inadvertently triggering a military confrontation.

“With two major exercises at the same time, there is always a risk for incidents,” a former Swedish army officer and Russian military expert, Joergen Elfving, told Sweden’s SR International radio. “The Baltic Sea area will be filled with military activity more than usual for a very long time.”

Australia: Turnbull government expands “cashless welfare card”

Richard Phillips 

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced late last month that his Liberal-National coalition government will expand its “cashless welfare card” trial to more than 3,400 working-age social welfare recipients in Western Australia’s Goldfields region in early 2018.

This punitive system, which big business wants applied across the country to all welfare recipients, quarantines 80 percent of an individual’s welfare into a debit card that can only be used at designated retail outlets. The remaining 20 percent is deposited into the recipient’s savings account.

The current Newstart allowance for a single job seeker without children is just $535.60 a fortnight. Those on the cashless welfare trial would receive only $107.12 in cash and $428.48 on the card every two weeks.

Cashless welfare cards have been “trialled” for more than 12 months at Kununurra and Wyndham in Western Australia’s East Kimberley and at Ceduna in South Australia. The Goldfields Region includes the towns of Laverton, Leonora, Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie. All these areas have high unemployment and no real future for young people.

Announcing the trial, Turnbull, one of the wealthiest men in the Australian parliament, cynically claimed that cashless welfare was “an exercise in compassion.”

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge declared that the government was determined to stop “welfare-fuelled” alcohol and drug abuse and gambling and insisted that the measures had produced positive social improvements. Tudge previously worked for America’s Boston Consulting Group which advises government agencies on cost-cutting.

Cashless welfare has nothing to do with overcoming the endemic unemployment and associated social ills afflicting poor communities. It does not increase the current poverty-level welfare payments that are the root cause of the financial difficulties facing recipients and scapegoats the most vulnerable layers of society as alcoholics, drug addicts and criminals.

Cashless welfare was initiated in 2007 by the Howard government, with Labor Party support, as part of its so-called Northern Territory (NT) Intervention. The measure which quarantined 70 percent of welfare income via a “Basics Card,” only applied to Northern Territory Aborigines.

The Rudd Labor government, which came to power in late 2007, rebadged the card and spread it to urban working-class areas suffering high unemployment and poverty.

In every case, the Australian government has feigned concern about the horrendous social conditions for which they are responsible, while blaming the victims for the social crisis.

Like the hysterical media campaign that accompanied the NT Intervention, Turnbull’s cashless welfare announcement last week was preceded by a malicious social media video campaign funded by billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest and his Minderoo Foundation.

The video alleged that hundreds of indigenous children are being sexually assaulted and featured purported CCTV footage showing a drunken Aboriginal man physically abusing a child. Forrest, who insists that cashless welfare cards are the only way to prevent child abuse, has denounced anyone opposing welfare restrictions as “paedophile supporters.”

The Turnbull government claims that a recent report by ORIMA Research proves the life and social conditions of those forced onto the cashless cards in Ceduna and the East Kimberly have dramatically improved. Tudge told the media that the cashless welfare system had produced a substantial decline in alcohol and drug abuse and gambling and had widespread support from participants.

The ORIMA Research of those involved in the welfare trials is highly questionable and provides no statistical proof that cashless welfare cards assist poor communities. Those asked to participate in the ORIMA Research survey, mostly Aborigines, were promised $30 or $50 gift cards on completion of the survey, which obviously coloured their answers.

The questions were highly intrusive and included detailed information from individuals about what they spent on alcohol, drugs or gambling and their children’s education. Yet, all those surveyed said they did not have drinking or drug problems and did not gamble.

The results simply do not prove the government’s claim that cashless welfare improved living conditions. While 45 percent said they were better able to save only 23 percent said the system had made their life better. Over 40 percent said their lives had worsened and 48 percent said they found it harder to look after their children. Significantly 20 percent of those asked refused to participate in the survey.

While the Australian Council of Social Services and other welfare organisations have denounced extension of the government’s cashless welfare measures, the Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten, said the party “remains open to the idea” provided there was “adequate support in the community.”

Shorten was a minister in the previous Labor government, which extended welfare quarantining beyond the Northern Territory.

One of those speaking out against the cashless welfare trials was Lawford Benning, chairman of the indigenous Miriuwung Gajerrong Corporation. Having originally supported the East Kimberly trial in early 2016, Benning told media that the federal government had failed to provide the increased support services that was used to persuade local leaders to back the system.

Cashless welfare, he said, “didn’t do what I thought it was going to do … I’m seeing there is more drinking, there’s a lot of sly-grogging, and I’m seeing a lot of kids late at night when you go to the shopping centre.” Benning’s opposition was briefly reported by one media outlet and then buried by articles and comments slavishly repeating government claims about the “success” of the welfare measures.

Cashless welfare cards are just one of a number of government measures that demonise the poor and eviscerate their right to social welfare.

Last month the Turnbull government announced that 5,000 new recipients of the Newstart Allowance and Youth Allowance—about 1,750 in Bankstown in western Sydney, 2,500 in Logan, Queensland, and 750 in Mandurah, Western Australia—will be drug tested, starting early next year.

If found to be using illicit drugs, welfare recipients will be forced onto cashless cards. If they test positive on a second drug test they will be referred to a doctor for substance abuse treatment, as a condition for retaining payments. Failing that they will be subjected to payment suspensions and ultimately cancellations.

The drug-testing regime, which was part of this year’s federal budget, is yet to be endorsed by the Senate, has been opposed by the Australian Medical Association, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and other peak medical bodies.

The federal government has also deepened its attacks on those forced into its so-called Community Development Program (CDP), a work-for-the-dole program in remote areas of Australia, where there are few, if any fulltime jobs.

The scheme which involves 35,000, mainly indigenous participants, pays the below-poverty rate of about $11 an hour and requires that they work or are involved in “related activities” for 25 hours a week, 46 weeks of the year. If CDP participants fail to comply with the program’s strict requirements, they are fined, causing great personal financial problems. In the final quarter of 2016, the federal government imposed over 35,120 separate financial penalties on CDP participants.

Sri Lankan president desperately tries to rally support

W.A. Sunil 

Recent public remarks by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena underline the growing crisis of the “unity” government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) and the president’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Sirisena became president in 2015 after a US-backed regime-change operation to unseat the former President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government in the presidential elections. The US and India were hostile to Rajapakse close relations with Beijing and wanted Sri Lanka brought into line with Washington’s geo-strategic buildup against China. Sirisena and his political allies won support by exploiting popular anger over Rajapakse’s socially-destructive policies and his autocratic methods of rule.

Just two and half years later, wide layers of workers, students and youth have drawn the conclusion that the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s retrogressive social program is no different to that of Rajapakse and the current administration is even more ruthless in implementing its policies.

Like its predecessor, the current administration is imposing the austerity demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), attacking workers’ jobs and living conditions and cutting its minimal subsidies for small farmers and the poor. Rather than honour Sirisena’s phony reform promises during the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections, the new government is systematically undermining basic democratic rights.

Former President Rajapakse now heads a breakaway parliamentary faction of the SLFP known as the Joint Opposition (JO) and hopes, with the support of former coalition partners, to bring down the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration and return to power.

In an attempt to bolster support for his factionally-riven party, Sirisena decided to hold a mass rally on September 3 to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the founding of the SLFP. On August 30, Sirisena invited media heads and newspaper editors to a special meeting at his home to promote the rally.

Answering a pre-arranged question about the dissenting voices in his own party and Rajapakse’s threats to bring down his government, Sirisena declared: “It’s not me but the SLFP parliamentary group that is in the consensual government. Although some say their party will soon form government on their own, under the current composition of the parliament no single party could form a government … Even if there is another coalition, I will fulfill my responsibilities towards the people as president of the country until the end of my term.”

In other words, Sirisena, contrary to his previous promises to restore parliamentary democracy, was reminding the media indirectly that he will retain the dictatorial executive presidential powers previously used by Rajapakse. It was yet another demonstration that Sri Lanka’s political elite cannot tolerate any form of genuine democratic rule.

Sirisena, through his political proxies, has also indicated that he will seek a second presidential term after 2020. On July 18, SLFP general secretary Duminda Dissanayake told the Daily Mirror that the party’s candidate in the next presidential election will be “none other than President Maithripala Sirisena.”

In the days leading up to the commemoration rally, Sirisena used the state-owned electronic and print media establishment, government ministers and the pseudo-left organisations to promote the event, and the so-called achievements of his unity government. No expense was spared with over 2,000 buses hired and free lunches provided to transport people from distant areas to the rally.

Addressing the event, Sirisena pompously declared: “I ask every learned and intelligent person to ask their conscience where this country would be if I had not been elected at the presidential election in 2015 January. At that time we faced an election, the international community was pointing guns at us and economic sanctions were hanging over the head of our beloved motherland.”

Sri Lanka, however, he continued “regained” the support of the “international community” by establishing “consensual government.” Then, in a direct appeal to the military and Sinhala chauvinist elements, he boasted that he had blocked UN Human Rights Council plans for an international investigation into Sri Lankan war crimes.

Sirisena then compared the current situation with the crisis faced by SLFP founder and former prime minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike from 1956 to 1959. Bandaranaike began his parliamentary career as a member of the first UNP cabinet. He broke from the UNP and founded the SLFP in 1951, as an alternative Sri Lankan capitalist party in order to prevent a left-wing regime coming to power under the leadership of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

The SLFP, after forming a coalition with petty-bourgeois opportunist formations, Sinhala communalist and the Stalinist parties, won the 1956 election. The new government was challenged by a series of powerful national strikes involving all sections of the working class. In 1959, Bandaranaike was killed, the victim of an assassination plot hatched by far-right groups within his own party.

Sirisena invoked this episode in an attempt to win sympathy from politically-naïve followers of the SLFP who have rallied around Rajapakse and to threaten workers and youth involved in the current protests and strikes.

Sirisena claimed students and workers opposing his regime were “abusing” the democratic conditions created by his government. “Some are enjoying democracy inappropriately, using Facebook [and holding] campaigns, demonstrations and agitations. They are unaware that there are limits and they exceed them frequently. The country cannot tolerate such a situation,” he said.

Sirisena’s democratic posturing is a fraud. His government has deliberately strengthened the police and the army and systematically mobilised against striking workers and protests by students and the rural poor. Eight years after the three-decade war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lankan armed forces still occupy the North and East of the island, hundreds of Tamil families are displaced and little war rehabilitation work has been completed.

Rather than Sri Lanka enjoying a flourishing democracy, the government has postponed local council elections for more than a year and plans to pass a constitutional amendment deferring the scheduled Provincial Council (PC) elections until 2019.

Although the combined votes of the UNP and SLFP allow the government to make a range of repressive laws and constitutional changes, the Sri Lankan government is heavily dependent on the police and the army. This was clearly indicated in the show of armed strength as Sirisena addressed the rally.

Sirisena used the rally to denounce Brazilian legal moves for a war crimes investigation against Jagath Jayasuriya, a former army commander and current Sri Lankan ambassador. “I state very clearly,” he declared, “that I will not allow anyone in the world to touch Jagath Jayasuriya or any other military chief, or any of the war heroes in this country.”

Sirisena’s threatening remarks are a serious warning to the working class and further highlight the increasingly desperate crisis of Sri Lankan unity government. Facing intensifying economic problems exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis, the Sri Lankan ruling elite will step up their assault on democratic rights in preparation for military forms of rule.

India, China attempt to reset relations after border crisis

Wasantha Rupasinghe

India and China sought to use last week’s BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) heads of government summit and a one-on-one September 5 meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping to “reset” their relations after almost coming to blows during a 73-day border standoff.

However, developments during and since the BRICS summit—most notably Washington’s bullying and threats to annihilate North Korea—underscore that the dynamics of world geopolitics are pushing Asia’s two largest powers toward open confrontation.

Just six days before the September 3-5 BRICS summit opened in Xiamen, China, New Delhi and Beijing defused their most serious border crisis since the 1962 Sino-Indian war by making staggered troop withdrawals from the Doklam (or Donglang) Plateau. A Himalayan ridge adjacent to the Indian state of Sikkim, Doklam is controlled by China but also claimed by Bhutan.

The crisis began when India, which treats Bhutan as a protectorate, sent troops onto the Doklam Plateau to prevent China from expanding a road. New Delhi claimed the Chinese road-building violated a “standstill agreement” pending mutual determination of where precisely the tri-junction between the three states lies. Beijing countered that India’s intervention constituted an unprecedented provocation since its troops were confronting the Chinese army on territory over which New Delhi does not claim sovereignty, but rather, contends belongs to a third country.

Although New Delhi and Beijing both announced on August 28 they were satisfied the Doklam crisis had now ended, they issued no joint statement. Nor did they even use similar language to describe how the dispute had been resolved, a stratagem that enabled each to claim the other had given way.

At last week’s summit, Modi, Xi, and their aides sought to downplay their differences on a host of questions, adopting, according to Indian Foreign Secretary, S. Jaishankar, a “forward looking approach.” Briefing reporters on Modi’s and Xi’s more than hour-long tête-à-tête, Jaishankar said the two leaders had agreed to “shelve differences” and “make more efforts to enhance mutual trust.” Referring to the Doklam crisis, Jaishankar said that so as to “ensure” situations like that “which happened recently do not recur,” the countries had agreed their “security and defence personnel must maintain strong contacts and cooperation.”

At the previous BRICS summit in Goa, India, Modi had accused Pakistan, a close ally of Beijing, of being the “mothership” of global terrorism. While Modi refrained from strident attacks on Pakistan in Xiamen, Beijing—in a “concession” much trumpeted by the Indian press—agreed to denounce two Pakistan- based Islamist groups, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), as “terrorist” organizations in the summit declaration. Both LeT and JeM are active in the anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir and New Delhi has long accused the former of organiz ing the 2008 Mumbai terrorist atrocity.

India, China and the three other BRICS member states also found common ground in calling on all countries to implement the Paris Climate Change Accord and to guard “against inward-looking policies and tendencies that are weighing on global growth prospects and market confidence.” These calls clearly targeted actions of the Trump administration, although the declaration avoided direct reference to Washington.

Both Indian and Chinese officials have said the expansion of economic ties is key to realizing a “reset” of bi-lateral relations. Indo-Chinese trade has expanded dramatically over the past decade, but is currently heavily weighted in China’s favour—a point India’s media and corporate leaders made repeatedly during the Doklam crisis. In fiscal year 2016-17, China’s $51 billion trade surplus with India was more than four times India’s total exports to China.

Following the discussions in Xiamen, Indian Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu announced last weekend that India and China have established “industry specific working groups, to promote more exports from India” to China.

The deep tensions between India and China found their clearest expression at Xiamen in the summit statement’s short paragraph dealing with the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. Speaking from Xiamen, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the Trump administration’s “ramping up” of “military hysteria” in response to North Korea’s September 3 nuclear test “could lead to a global catastrophe.” Xi and the Chinese leadership , although somewhat more circumspect, have similarly warned of the incendiary character of US threats to launch “preventive war” against North Korea or wage economic warfare through a global cut-off of oil supplies to Pyongyang.

But any reference to the Korean crisis only came in the 44th of the statement’s 71 paragraphs, and was limited to condemnation of the North Korean nuclear test and a perfunctory call for the crisis to “be settled through peaceful means and direct dialogue of all the parties concerned.”

China and Russia are traditional allies of North Korea, and view Washington’s relentless pressure on Pyongyang as ultimately aimed at strengthening the US drive to strategically isolate and encircle them. At the very least, Washington is using the confrontation with North Korea to justify a vast military buildup in north-east Asia, including the deployment, in the name of “ballistic missile defense,” of systems that could threaten and target China and Russia.

India, on the other hand, has repeatedly parroted Washington’s provocative line on the North Korean crisis over the past two years. Moreover, according to a White House account of a recent conversation between Modi and Trump—an account New Delhi has in no way denied or contradicted— India’s prime minster “thanked” the US president “for his strong leadership uniting the world against the North Korean menace.” This after Trump had threatened to rain “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on the impoverished country.

India’s alignment with Washington on the Korean crisis is entirely in keeping with its transformation under Modi into a veritable frontline stance in the US military-strategic offensive against China.

Over the past three years, New Delhi has dramatically escalated military-strategic cooperation with Washington and its principal Asia-Pacific allies, Japan and Australia. It has also agreed to open its military bases and ports to routine use by US warplanes and warships and now shares intelligence with the Pentagon on Chinese ship and submarine movements in the Indian Ocean.

Until recently, Beijing sought to dissuade New Delhi from harnessing itself to Washington principally through offers of investment and cooperation. But the cementing of the Indo-US alliance has caused it to tighten its strategic partnership with India’s arch-enemy, Pakistan, leading to a further souring of relations with India.

The Doklam crisis was both an expression of and a new stage in the deterioration of Indo-Chinese ties. After 10 tense weeks of threats, provocative military deployments and increasing warnings, especially from the Indian side, that there was no guarantee a military exchange could be limited to the border, both sides pulled back.

But the capitalist crisis, the desperate attempt by the US to restore its global hegemony, and the scramble of all the imperialist and great powers for profits, resources and strategic advantage, mitigates against the attempts of New Delhi and Beijing to establish any lasting modus vivendi even were that their intent.

Modi flew directly from the BRICS summit to Burma, where India and China are vying for strategic influence. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting India for two days this week to press for a further strengthening of Indo-Japanese military-strategic ties, including through the Asia Africa Growth Corridor, a bilateral Indo-Japanese initiative aimed at countering Chinese influence in Africa.

Shortly after the conclusion of the BRICS summit, Chinese Foreign Ministry representatives were compelled to rebuke India’s Army Chief, Lieutenant-General Bipin Rawat, for telling a seminar organized by the New Delhi-based Centre for Land Warfare Studies that India could find itself forced to fight a “two-front war” against Pakistan and China. Rawat said he didn’t “see any scope” for “reconciliation” with “our western adversary” (Pakistan) and accused India’s “northern adversary,” China, with “flexing of muscles,” “salami slicing,” “taking over territory in a very gradual manner, (and) testing our limits of threshold.”

Plans for major military build-up after Germany’s federal election

Peter Schwarz 

Several comments have appeared in German and international media outlets on the boring federal election campaign, which is dragging on without provoking enthusiasm or fighting spirit. But by contrast, one finds no explanation, or only very superficial ones, as to why this is so.

In reality, there are two key reasons. The first is that the ruling elite has planned a major military build-up after the election that they do not want to speak about publicly due to its extreme unpopularity. And the second is that all parties are in agreement on this issue and are disputing publicly over second-rank issues and trivialities.

Background analyses not intended for a mass audience make clear that German capitalism faces its biggest crisis, or “challenge” as it is positively formulated, since the establishment of the Federal Republic. The economic, geopolitical and social framework within which German capitalism has operated since the founding of the Federal Republic no longer exists or is rapidly breaking apart.

As in the first decades of the twentieth century, the ruling class has only one answer to this: a massive build-up of the military and state apparatus at home and abroad, and a return to war and dictatorship.

On August 25, Handelsblatt published an analysis entitled “Red alert,” which over the course of several pages described with remarkable openness the global crises confronted by the German economy.

It begins by stating, “Several geopolitical crises threaten the global conjuncture. Standing in the eye of the storm is Germany, which more than any other country depends on trade without borders. The most important task for the next federal government is therefore: Save the global free market!”

It becomes clear in the article that this “saving” will not be confined to diplomacy and goodwill, but will include major military interventions and a resort to the methods of great power politics.

“It is no longer economic imbalances which are the main threats to growth and wellbeing. Instead, it is the many mounting political crises, which, unlike in the past, the US is inciting rather than resolving,” writes Handelsblatt. The United States has become “since the election of Donald Trump as US president a threat rather than a saviour.” The political crises are “poison for the German economy.” If they are not resolved, “Germany’s bliss will soon be over.”

Handelsblatt examines seven crisis situations in detail—North Korea, the South China Sea, Russia, Brexit, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, and Venezuela—and it becomes clearer following each case that the concern is not resolving the conflict and overcoming the crisis, but pushing out rivals. For example, the newspaper refers to the “important role” played by China “in the industrialisation of Africa,” and remarks with regard to Russia, “Political power is also the issue at stake in the Middle East.”

The section on Venezuela makes unmistakably clear that what Handelsblatt is speaking of is a bitter struggle for the imperialist re-division of the world in which Germany must participate.

Venezuela has “become a powder keg—with potentially global political consequences. Because in the Caribbean state…the global powers Russia, China and the US are testing their strength,” the article states. For Russia, “Venezuela [provides] an opportunity to establish a foothold in the US’s backyard.” And China, “Venezuela’s largest creditor by far,” possesses “an important card in the geopolitical balance of forces with its influence on the regime in Caracas.” President Trump is making threats “without much credibility of a ‘military intervention,’” and is “basically looking on passively as a second left-wing regime à la Cuba is established.”

The article concludes with the declaration, “Germany and the German chancellor have to be urgently clear about which part of the leadership vacuum left behind by the United States they are prepared to fill. Just like in Venezuela, others stand ready to take over this role.”

It is easy to understand what this means if one considers how the US has practiced its “leadership role” over recent decades: by conquering and destroying entire countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Handelsblatt is merely stating openly what large sections of Germany’s ruling class are thinking. Similar considerations are to be found in other publications. The German Society for Foreign Affairs (DGAP) published a 40-page dossier in the summer on “Foreign policy challenges for the next federal government,” which like the Handelsblatt article treats the various crisis situations around the world.

It warns of the danger “that the US significantly weakens the institution-based international order and uses its power for short-term gain.” The “growing competition between the US and China” could “meanwhile destabilise the Asia region, while potential conflicts are growing in the Middle East and the Gulf region.”

The DGAP urges the next government to “forcefully implement the comprehensive security policy approach that was introduced under the slogan of ‘new responsibility.’ ” This is a reference to the paper “New power, new responsibility,” which announced Germany’s return to militarism and an aggressive great power policy four years ago.

Britain’s Financial Times has also identified the problems confronted by Germany and describes Chancellor Merkel as appearing “to understand that the days of free-riding are over.” However, she only speaks to the voters in vague terms, it continues, “as a serious discussion of the international role Germany can no longer avoid has been missing in the campaign.”

The reason for this, as was noted at the outset, is the deep popular opposition in wide sections of the population to militarism and imperialist policies. However, the systematic rearmament of the German armed forces is being pushed forward behind the scenes, and it will assume entirely new dimensions after the election—regardless of who wins and which parties form government. This is not only accepted by the Social Democratic Party, but also by the Left Party.

The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) recently published an article entitled “Ambitious framing nation: Germany in NATO,” which enthuses about the “ambitious plans” Berlin is pursuing in security and defence policy. According to the article, the German government is ready to assume “a political-military leadership role within the alliance.” The German army should explicitly “become the backbone of a European defence capability within NATO.”

The article provides extensive detail on the measures being taken to increase the number of brigades ready for deployment to 10. “Regarding potential deployment scenarios” it is also necessary “to lay the basis for multi-national combat-ready divisions around the framing nation, Germany.” This is “new and politically and militarily very ambitious. The role of Germany in these units and structures, on land, at sea and in the air would be significant.”

Under the heading “High financial demand,” the article goes on to state, “The armed forces’ plans require long-term increases in defence spending.” Already in 2020, “the NATO goal of spending 20 percent of defence spending on investments in arms is to be achieved.”

These issues are not being discussed in the election campaign because they are opposed by the vast majority of the population. Instead, all parties are advocating a massive expansion of the police and intelligence agencies, because they expect major resistance and bitter class struggles if the costs for the military build-up and the horrific economic consequences of new wars are offloaded onto the backs of working people.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) is the only party that has placed the struggle against militarism and war at the heart of its election campaign. The SGP fights for a programme that connects the opposition to war with the fight against capitalism, and aims to construct a socialist movement in the international working class.

UK: Tony Blair calls for anti-immigration policies to stop Brexit

Robert Stevens

Former British Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, has called for the introduction of draconian anti-immigration measures, to pave the way for the reversal of last year’s referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU).

Blair is the de facto leader of the faction of the ruling elite that favours remaining in the EU and its Single Market.

In a concerted intervention over the weekend, Blair was joined by his Labour peer acolyte, Baron Andrew Adonis. Their remarks were timed to coincide with the second reading of the Tories European Union (Withdrawal) Bill—the first step in legally removing the UK from the EU in March 2019.

Blair authored a Sunday Times article, “Only a hard Brexit is on offer—and that will do Britain immense damage,” and has issued a paper setting out his anti-immigration policies via the “Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.”

When he was in office in 2004, “the economy was strong, the workers [were] needed,” he wrote. “The times were different; the sentiment was different; and intelligent politics takes account of such change.”

Those who support remaining in the EU, writes Blair, must now make “uncomfortable choices.” He declares, “There is no diversion possible from Brexit without addressing the grievances which gave rise to it. Paradoxically, we have to respect the referendum vote to change it.”

It is a lie that referendum result was primarily the product of anti-immigrant sentiment. A more critical factor was disaffection with the political establishment and anger over social inequality—both of which Blair and his Labour government were instrumental in creating.

But Blair now utilises the same argument as the xenophobic UK Independence Party to justify adopting its policies. His paper, “EU Migration: Examining the evidence and policy choices,” was authored by Harvey Redgrave, a former Labour government advisor under Blair and his successor Gordon Brown.

The paper’s introduction states that politicians have to set out “how to reform the current system of free movement of people in a way that responds to public anxiety, whilst leaving open the option of remaining within the EU, or, should that not be possible, ensuring Britain retains its membership of the Single Market” (emphasis added).

This means that while visa-free travel should be maintained at the UK’s borders, EU nationals must be quizzed and refused entry if they are thought to be looking for work. “All EU nationals would be required to register on arrival,” it states.

Those EU nationals wanting to work “would need to show evidence of a job offer to be given permission to reside (and employers would be required to provide confirmation). EU nationals without permission to reside would be ineligible to rent, open a bank account, or access welfare benefits and would be subject to removal. Employers would also be required to check whether EU job applicants were illegally residing in the UK.”

Blair advocates “new, discriminatory (relative to UK nationals) terms and conditions for EU nationals taking up residence in the UK. That could include going further to restrict access to public resources (e.g., free health care) for EU migrants that are economically inactive; indexing of child benefit payments sent abroad; or enabling UK businesses and universities to give preference to UK citizens over EU nationals, for example, with respect to apprenticeship schemes and/or the charging of tuition fees for study.”

Negotiations with the EU could agree to “retain free movement but include safeguard provisions to restrict flows for a temporary period … either on the labour market or on public services.”

Blair’s demands confirm that there was nothing progressive about the Remain campaign, as the Socialist Equality Party explained at the time. It was shaped entirely by the demands of big business and the security-military apparatus. Concern for freedom of movement applies only to the freedom of capital to exploit workers internationally.

Significantly, Blair’s paper proposes finding “common cause with [French] President Macron who has expressed a desire to tackle the undercutting of wages and conditions, by amending the Posted Workers Directive …”

Macron, a former leader of the French Socialist Party, is tying his attacks on the French Labour Code and the removal of workers’ rights to changes in the Posted Workers Directive (PWD). Under PWD, European companies can send employees to work in another EU member country while continuing to pay benefits and taxes in their own country. Macron is calling for restrictions on PWD, including limiting posted workers contracts to one year.

In his Guardian article, Adonis wrote, “The EU withdrawal bill, which started in the House of Commons last week, is the mechanism by which a referendum [over the final EU/UK deal resulting from the ongoing negotiations over the terms of Brexit] can be secured. When the bill reaches the House of Lords early next year, there will almost certainly be a majority of peers prepared to insert a requirement for a referendum before withdrawal takes effect.”

On this basis, “[T]he crucial political event of 2018 will be the vote in the House of Commons next summer on a proposed referendum on May’s proposed withdrawal treaty.” In order not to be seen to overturning vote to leave, Adonis writes, “It is vital this is not conceived as a rerun of last year’s poll, but rather a referendum on May’s deal.”

German Chancellor Angel Merkel and Macron could look favourably on such a referendum, calculated Adonis, “Partly because—in Macron’s case—he (rightly) doesn’t believe that unrestricted free movement of labour is integral to the single market. Partly because many other EU leaders agree with him.”

Adonis was explicit as regards the pro-imperialist considerations animating his and Blair’s strategy. His proposed policy could win support in the EU, “[P]artly for the big strategic reason—which weighs on strategic thinkers in Berlin—that, if Britain leaves the EU, 80 percent of NATO resources will then be outside the EU, which is hardly a recipe for European security and stability if you are looking across at the Russian and Chinese bears.”

It should be noted that Jeremy Corbyn has made no statement on the anti-immigrant and militarist agenda outlined by these two leading Labourites, who continue to dictate party policy. In fact, Corbyn has agreed that free movement must be curtailed.

The sinister and far-reaching measures proposed by leading Remain figures vindicate the SEP’s call for an active boycott of the referendum.

The ballot had nothing to do with democracy, let alone genuine political debate on the issues facing workers in Britain and Europe. It was a manoeuvre, engineered by then Prime Minister David Cameron, in an attempt to settle a faction fight between two equally right-wing factions of his party.

Warning that “whichever side wins, working people will pay the price,” the SEP stressed what was needed was for the working class to “advance its own internationalist programme to unify the struggles of workers throughout Europe in defence of living standards and democratic rights. The alternative for workers to the Europe of the transnational corporations is the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.”

Hundreds of thousands march in Catalonia as Madrid aims to block independence referendum

Paul Mitchell

Around 1 million people demonstrated in Barcelona yesterday on Catalonia’s national day or Diada, according to local police, ahead of a Catalan independence referendum scheduled for October 1. El País, a Madrid paper opposed to Catalan independence, estimated the number of marchers at a half million. Marchers shouted slogans, waved pro-independence “estelada” flags and carried banners in support of the referendum.

The march came amid a rapidly escalating crisis of the Spanish political establishment caused by the announcement of the independence referendum. The march was called by the separatist Catalan National Assembly (ANC) to ask Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont to defy the Spanish Constitutional Court rulings and proceed with the October 1 referendum. Whilst the Catalan population is overwhelmingly in support of having a vote, polls suggest they are divided about splitting from Spain, with a plurality still opposing separation.

Protesters in Barcelona

By all accounts, the march was smaller than a previous pro-independence demonstration of 1.8 million people in Catalonia in 2014.

The separatists are acting recklessly and provocatively advancing the reactionary referendum. Ahead of the demonstration, on Friday, 71 separatist MPs in the Catalan Parliament, from the governing, pro-austerity Junts Pel Sí (“Together For Yes”) coalition—the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT)—and the pseudo-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) passed a “Legal Transition & Foundational Law Of the [Catalan] Republic” bill outlining the independence process.

If the “yes” vote wins on October 1, the separatists are pledging to declare independence within 48 hours, regardless of the turnout. The ERC and CUP plan to call street protests if the referendum does not go ahead. The Catalan secessionists have passed an anti-democratic measure allowing laws to be approved after a single reading in the regional parliament, so independence legislation can be fast-tracked with little or no debate.

All sides saw yesterday’s demonstration as a test of the strength and appeal of the pro-independence campaign. ANC President Jordi Sànchez said, “If we’re not able to mobilize a maximum number of people on September 11, October 1 will be weakened.”

After the demonstration, Sànchez said that all Catalans should declare themselves in “contempt before all courts which only look for the unity of their homeland” in reference to Spain’s Constitutional Court, which has declared the referendum illegal and ordered 1,000 Catalan government members, mayors and officials to stop preparations for it under threat of criminal prosecution. He labeled as “cowards” mayors who refused to provide polling booths for the referendum.

A section of the rally

The referendum is opposed by the Popular Party (PP) government in Madrid, the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party) and Citizens party, all of whom have called their supporters in Catalan to boycott the vote, a move which may strengthen the odds of its passage. PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has warned that though the Spanish state might appear slow to react, “appearances should not deceive us.” “There will be no self-determination referendum,” he declared.

Citizens party leader Albert Rivera has accused Puigdemont and pro-independence parties of “staking a blow to democracy, a coup like the one that this country experienced in October 1934,” referring to the proclamation of a Catalan Republic by President Lluís Companys after Spanish President Lerroux invited members of the fascist CEDA (Spanish Coalition of the Autonomous Right) into his government.

Increasingly, leading figures on the right and in the social democracy are warning they will use violence to block the referendum.

Retired General Manuel Fernández-Monzón Altolaguirre, who held a number of positions in the Franco regime including head of the Counter-espionage Service, also praised Lerroux for suppressing the Catalan Republic, declaring: “The current situation in Catalonia should be considered an act of high treason that would necessitate the application of a state of war.” He called for the arrest of all the leaders of the Catalan Parliament. “The independence of Catalonia is not going to occur. What I do not know is whether it will be impeded in a bad way or not,” he warned.

Simiarly, Josep Borell, former PSOE minister and former president of the European Parliament, described the passing of the secessionist laws and the referendum by the Catalan parliament as a coup, adding, “We are getting to a situation of physical violence.”

Juan Luís Cebrian, director of the pro-PSOE El País, wrote an opinion piece in the newspaper, saying that those wanting to change the rules outside of the democratic channels “are predisposed to violence.”

Spain’s Director of Public Prosecutions José Manuel Maza has announced criminal charges of “contempt, abuse of authority and misuse of public funds” against all the members of the Catalan government. He has also ordered police to investigate those organising the referendum and seize materials being prepared for the vote. Printing companies have been raided to search for ballot papers, and one printer criminally charged for allegedly helping prepare the vote.

The Rajoy government hopes its threats will split the Catalan bourgeoisie and weaken the referendum. Madrid has thus far stated publicly that it wants to avoid invoking the so-called “nuclear option”—article 155 of the constitution—which would effectively revoke Catalan autonomy and place the region under the military control of the Spanish government, for fear of the degree of social opposition this would engender.

But last week, Spain’s Ministry of Interior started to reinforce state buildings in Catalonia with police from the anti-riot Intervention Units. The Civil Guard has been instructed to prepare to move to Catalonia within an hour and reinforce the Reserve and Security Group (GRS4), based in Barcelona. The GRS was created by former PSOE Prime Minister Jose Zapatero dedicated to “the restoration of public order in large mass demonstrations.” There are conflicting reports as to what the Catalan police—the Mossos d’Esquadra—will do in case of physical conflict.

Sections of the ruling elite in Europe and the US fear that a confrontation between Barcelona and Madrid could spark a crisis that will engulf Spain, dragging down the fourth largest economy of the eurozone and a key European Union and NATO member state. It risks inflaming the explosive military situation in Europe, amid a stand-off between NATO and Russia, and growing class tensions in Spain and across Europe after a decade of deep austerity.

On Thursday, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said Catalonia must obey the Spanish Constitution and said that if Catalonia secedes, it will be out of the European Union. Credit rating agency Moody’s also warned that independence would harm the ratings of Spain and Catalonia. It hoped and predicted that “Catalonia will continue to be part of Spain,” and said it was up to Madrid to satisfy some of Catalonia’s main demands, such as budget reforms, to stem the crisis.

Behind all the talk of Catalan independence are the right-wing policies of the nationalists who rule the region and have imposed intense austerity on its working class. Funding for education, health care and other social expenditure have been slashed, and poverty has risen in one of Spain’s richest regions.

The pro-separatist factions within the Catalan bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeois CUP are promoting nationalism in order to prevent a united struggle of the working class in Catalonia with their brothers and sisters across Spain and Europe. It offers nothing to the working class. A Catalan Republic, were it to be established, would function as a low-tax, cheap-labour platform for the benefit of the banks and transnational corporations.

Catalan independence has also caused a crisis in the Podemos party. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has attempted to side-step the referendum, saying it should be delayed until after Podemos, the separatist parties and the PSOE build a “new progressive government” in Spain and Catalonia that removes the PP from government. At the same time, the Podemos-backed mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, has said that the city council will “do everything possible” to enable Barcelona citizens to vote in the referendum.