Merkel Clobbered, German Far Right Rising

Victor Grossman

A key result of the German elections is not that Angela Merkel and her double party, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian CSU (Christian Social Union), managed to stay in the lead with the most votes, but that they got clobbered, with the biggest loss since their founding.

A second key result is that the Social Democrats (SPD) got clobbered too, also with the worst results since the war. And since these three had been wedded in a coalition government for the past four years, their clobbering showed that many voters were not the happy, satisfied citizens often pictured by You-never-had-it-so-good-Merkel, but are worried, disturbed and angry. So angry that they rejected the leading parties of the Establishment, those representing and defending the status quo.

A third key story, the truly alarming one, is that one eighth of the voters, almost 13 percent, vented their anger in an extremely dangerous direction – for the young Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose leaders are loosely divided between far right racists and extreme right racists. With about 80 loud deputies in the new Bundestag – their first breakthrough nationally – the media must now give them far more space than before to spout their poisonous message (and most media have been more than generous with them up till now).

This danger is worst in Saxony, the strongest East German state, ruled since unification by a conservative CDU. The AfD has pushed into first place with 27 %, narrowly beating the CDU by a tenth of a percentage point, their first such victory in any state (the Left got 16.1, the SPD only 10.5 % in Saxony). The picture was all too similar in much of down-at-the-heels, discriminated East Germany and also in the once Social Democratic stronghold, the Rhineland-Ruhr region of West Germany, where many working class and even more jobless looked for enemies of the status quo – and chose the AfD. Men everywhere more than women.

It is difficult to ignore the history books. In 1928 the Nazis got only 2.6 %, in 1930 this grew to 18.3 %. By 1932 – to a great degree because of the Depression – they had become strongest party with well over 30 %. The world knows what happened in the year that followed. Events can move fast.

The Nazis built on dissatisfaction, anger and anti-Semitism, directing people’s anger against Jews instead of the really guilty Krupps or Deutsche Bank millionaires. All too similarly, the AfD is now directing people’s anger, this time only rarely against Jews but rather against Muslims, “Islamists”, immigrants. They have been fixated upon these “other people” who are allegedly pampered at the expense of “good German” working people, and they blame Angela Merkel and her coalition partners, the Social democrats – even though both have been hastily retreating on this question and moving toward ever more restrictions and deportations. But never quickly enough for the AfD, who use the same tactics as in past years, thus far with all too similar success. Over a million CDU voters and nearly half a million SPD voters switched allegiance on Sunday by voting for the AfD.

There are many parallels elsewhere in Europe, but also on almost every continent. The chosen culprits In the USA are traditionally African-Americans, but then Latinos and now – as in Europe – Muslims, “Islamists”, immigrants. Attempts to counter such tactics with counter-campaigns of alarm and hatred of Russians, North Koreans or Iranians only make the matter worse – and far more dangerous, when countries with giant military might and atomic weapons are concerned. But the similarities are frightening! And in Europe Germany, in all but atomic weapons, is the strongest country.

Were there no other, better alternatives than the AfD for opponents of “staying the course”? The Free Democrats, a polite bunch with ties almost exclusively to big business, were able to achieve a strong come-back from threatened collapse, with a satisfying 10.7 percent, but not because of their meaningless slogans and clever, unprincipled leader, but because they had not been a party to the governing establishment.

Neither were the Greens and DIE LINKE (the Left). Unlike the two main parties, they both improved their votes over those of 2013 – but by only 0.5 % for the Greens and 0.6 % for the Left, better than a loss, but both great disappointments. The Greens, with their increasingly prosperous, intellectual and professional trend, offered no great break with the Establishment.

The Left, despite unceasingly bad media treatment, should have had a big advantage.  It opposed the unpopular national coalition and took fighting stands on many issues: withdrawal of German troops from conflicts, no weapons to conflict areas (or anywhere), higher minimum wages, earlier and humane pensions, genuine taxation of the millionaires and billionaires who rip off Germans and the world.

It fought some good fights and, doing so, pushed other parties toward some improvements, out of fear of Left gains. But it also joined coalition governments in two East German states and Berlin (even heading one of them, in Thuringia). It tried hard if vainly to join in two others. In all such cases it tamed its demands, avoided rocking the boat, at least too much, for that might hinder hopes for respectability and a step up from the “disobedient” corner usually assigned to it. It found too seldom a path away from verbal battles and into the street, loudly and aggressively supporting strikers and people threatened with big layoffs,  or evictions by wealthy gentrifiers, in other words engaging in a genuine challenge to the whole ailing status quo, even breaking rules now and again, not with wild revolutionary slogans or shattered windows and burnt-out dumpsters but with growing popular resistance while offering credible perspectives for the future, near and far. Where this was lacking, especially in eastern Germany, angry or worried people viewed it, too, as part of the Establishment and defender of the status quo. Sometimes, on local, even state levels, this glove fit all too well. Its almost total lack of working-class candidates played a part. Such an action program would seem the only genuine answer to menacing racists and fascists. To its credit, it opposed hatred of immigrants even though this cost it many one-time protest voters; 400,000 switched from the Left to the AfD.

One consolation; in Berlin, where it belongs to the local coalition government, the Left did well, especially in East Berlin, re-electing four candidates directly and coming closer than ever in two other boroughs, while militant Left groups in West Berlin gained more than in older East Berlin strongholds.

On the national level dramatic developments may well be in the offing. Since the SPD refuses to renew its unhappy coalition with Merkel’s double party, she will be forced, to gain a majority of seats in the Bundestag, to join with both the big business FDP and the torn, vacillating Greens. Both dislike each other heartily, while many grass-roots Greens oppose a deal with either Merkel or the equally rightwing FDP. Can those three join together and form a so-called “Jamaica coalition”- based on the colors of that country’s flag, black (CDU-CSU), yellow (FDP) and Green? If not, what then? Since no-one will join with the far-right AfD – not yet, anyway – no solution is visible, or perhaps possible.

The major question, above all, is all too clear; will it be possible to push back the menace of a party replete with echoes of a horrifying past and full of its admirers, who ever more openly want to reincarnate it, and are ready to employ any and every method to achieve their nightmare dreams. And can, as part of the defeat of this menace, such looming dangers to world peace be repelled?

Colonialism Never Gives Anything Away for Nothing

Ron Jacobs

Frantz Fanon made this observation in his classic text on revolutionary struggles for national liberation: “National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.” Like childbirth, it is simultaneously the creation of a new relationship and the creation of a new human. No longer is the oppressor, the colonizer, alone in their supremacy. Indeed, it is now the oppressed, the colonized who has demanded an equality. Of course, to the colonizer unwilling to release their power, this demand is not only impossible to fulfill, it must be put down with all possible means.

It is this understanding of the struggle against colonialism (and its successor imperialism) that forms the essence of Algerian freedom fighter Zohra Drif’s memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter. A bestseller in Algeria and France, this recently translated history stands with texts like George Jackson’s Soledad Brother and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in terms of its honesty and desire for justice. In addition to being the personal history of a revolutionary Algerian patriot, Drif’s memoir is also a study of the tightrope women in movements like Algeria’s Frente Liberacion National (FLN) must sometimes walk, given the nature of patriarchal societies and the armed struggle.

It is this understanding of the struggle against colonialism (and its successor imperialism) that forms the essence of Algerian freedom fighter Zohra Drif’s memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter. A bestseller in Algeria and France, this recently translated history stands with texts like George Jackson’s Soledad Brother and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in terms of its honesty and desire for justice. In addition to being the personal history of a revolutionary Algerian patriot, Drif’s memoir is also a study of the tightrope women in movements like Algeria’s Frente Liberacion National (FLN) must sometimes walk, given the nature of patriarchal societies and the armed struggle.

Although Inside the Battle of Algiers is informed by Fanon and the international struggle against European colonialism of the Twentieth century, it is first and foremost a narrative of the day to day events of a cell of dedicated revolutionaries. Zohra Drif begins her tale by describing her childhood. An intelligent student, Drif’s education was encouraged by her family—especially her father—and was ultimately the means by which she made it to Algiers. Her awareness of the growing struggle for Algerian independence began when she was quite young and by the time she went to the equivalent of high school, Drif was a supporter of the most militant wing of the independence movement. Indeed, when they weren’t studying, she and a good friend spent much of their first couple years in Algiers attending political meetings and hoping to be introduced to members of the underground.

When they finally did make a connection and gained the trust of their cell, the two young women were given their first assignment. This involved delivering weekly stipends to families of those fighters who were in the country training, in prison or dead. These tasks not only provided an essential service to the struggle’s fighters and their families, they also helped Drif and her comrade gain a familiarity of the Casbah, a city within the city of Algiers. It is the Casbah that is the oldest part of the metropolis and was the heart and soul of the era of the revolution Drif and her comrades took part in. It was also the Casbah, that was sealed off by the military and police authorities, much like the Israelis have done in Gaza and US forces did in Vietnam and Iraq. The scenario she describes is one of increasingly brutal police and military repression amidst a growing sense of the inevitability of the independence struggle’s ultimate success. The reader is introduced to a number of Drif’s comrades and confidantes as she describes her growing involvement.

That involvement included setting bombs. In her descriptions of these operations, Drif carefully describes the reconnaissance undertaken, developing of disguises and the actual carrying out of the operations. It is a narrative that brings to the forefront the issues of violence in the pursuit of freedom and justice while keeping the engaged reader on the edge of their seat, wondering if the freedom fighters will pull off their action without being killed or caught. In between these escapades, the reader is provided a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of those who decide to commit their lives to armed struggle. In essence, these details describe a growing camaraderie that compares to that of a family. There is a sense of a genuine love amongst the fighters and those that provide safe houses and cover for them. As the campaign of bombings and other attacks intensifies, however, those familial-like bonds are tested, with some members of the underground forces caving to the oppressor. To their credit, most members of the revolutionary forces did not cave either to bribery, threats or torture. Also to their credit is that those who did succumb to torture were not branded as traitors (like those who bend to bribery), but as victims of the same oppressor who had colonized the Algerian people for decades with dehumanization, violence and torture.

Although relatively light on political discussion, Inside the Battle of Algiers presents the reader with enough history and political discussion to provide the understanding necessary to appreciate the political struggle the FLN was engaged in. For this reader, the crucial political statement in the book is one spoken to Drif by her cell leader after she expresses impatience over a decision to cancel an operation she was involved in and had been preparing to undertake. “However you must remember that you are not—that none of us are—ordinary soldiers in a conventional army…. Never lose sight of what we are: political activists whom the colonial regime’s arrogance has forced us to become fighters in a war of national liberation….we will oblige France to meet us on a different battlefield: the political one, where it can never win.” In other words, the very asymmetry of the war demands that the national liberation struggle be primarily a political one. As it would in Vietnam, this approach turned out to be the correct one in Algeria, too. Also important are her discussions of the role of women in such a struggle; how far does one push for one’s freedom as a woman in the context of fighting to free one’s people? How does one address the psychology of patriarchy without alienating the masses?

Zohra Drif’s Inside the Battle of Algiers is an emotionally riveting historical adventure that is both exhilarating and breathtaking. It is also an intellectually provocative study of a once-common form of political struggle that combined Marxist and nationalist thought in order to free the colonies from their yoke. Intensely personal, it is proof that a popular struggle must be of the people and by the people in order for it to succeed. Like Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece film The Battle of Algiers, Drif’s memoir is a powerful and unforgettable work.

JPMorgan Chase is Right to Fear Cryptocurrency

Thomas L. Knapp

When JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “fraud,” what ensued looked a lot like a “poop and scoop” con: The practice of driving down a thing’s price by saying bad things about it, then buying up a bunch of it before the price bounces back. After Dimon’s comments, JPMorgan briefly became one of the cryptocurrency’s biggest buyers. The company claims it was purchasing Bitcoin on behalf of clients, not as corporate policy, but it looked bad.

Now Dimon is badmouthing cryptocurrency again. And, as before, he clearly either has no idea what he’s talking about or has sinister motives.

“It’s creating something out of nothing that to me is worth nothing,” Dimon told CNBC. “It will end badly.” He also warned that as cryptocurrencies become more popular, government crackdowns will drive them into the black market (that’s happening in China right now).

The key words in Dimon’s “to me [it’s] worth nothing” are “to me.” Value is subjective. What’s a thing worth? Whatever it’s worth to you, or to me, or to Jamie Dimon. Each of us may find that thing more valuable, or less, than do the other two.

Dimon considers cryptocurrency “worth nothing” for one reason only: Because his company — the largest bank in the United States and among the largest in the world — doesn’t control it. And that’s one of several reasons why others find it very valuable indeed.

Cryptocurrencies run on blockchains, “distributed ledgers” without central authorities. Dimon prefers fiat currencies, which are created by governments, managed by central banks, and funneled through institutions like his, legally privileged choke points taking generous rake-offs from wealth created by others but forced to pass through them.

Neither crypto nor fiat currencies are backed by physical commodities like gold or silver, but the resemblance ends there. Crypto is backed by the work of maintaining its ledgers, called by the imaginative name “mining.” Fiat currency is backed only by your trust in the governments (and the Jamie Dimons) of the world.

“Creating money out of thin air without government backing is very different from money with government backing,” he says. He’s right. Money with government backing pays Jamie Dimon. Cryptocurrency threatens his business, his paycheck and his way of life.

His prediction of government crackdowns isn’t just a prediction, it’s a fervent wish. He’s desperate to see cryptocurrency crushed, unless he can find a way to force it through the JPMorgan toll booth.

Dimon should be careful what he wishes for. If cryptocurrency is forced entirely into the “black market,” that market will, sooner or later, bury his. His only chance is to co-opt blockchain and cryptocurrency methods into the fiat system. Here’s hoping he fails.

The Female Face Of Poverty

Moin Qazi

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. The global statistics on poverty are numbing. The real brunt has always fallen on women and sometimes it is very cruel. Women are commonly married young, quickly become mothers, and are then burdened by stringent domestic and financial responsibilities.

Women bear the grater brunt of poverty. In India, where a patriarchal system is deeply entrenched, only 13 per cent of farm land is owned by women. The figure is even lower when it comes to lower caste Dalit women who are single. About 12 per cent of India’s female population is classified as single, including women who are widowed, divorced, separated, and older unmarried women, according to the 2011 census.About 41 percent of households headed by women in India do not own land, and make a living through casual manual labour.

Over the years several strategies have been used to empower women .One of them relies on community groups whose members   can be trained and equipped to use their collective strength and wisdom to tackle their problems.

Women and families the world over work tirelessly to end the poverty and hunger in their lives. But it can take much more than hard work. They need new tools to create their own paths forward. They need opportunities that can overcome economic, cultural and gender barriers. It needs multissectoral cooperation to create breakthrough ideas and breakthrough solutions   that break through and break down economic, social and technical barriers.  We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. The global statistics on poverty are numbing. The real brunt has always fallen on women and sometimes it is very cruel with them. Gender discrimination continues to be an enormous problem within Indian society. Traditional patriarchal norms have relegated women to secondary status within the household and workplace. This drastically affects women’s health, financial status, education, and political involvement. Women are commonly married young, quickly become mothers, and are then burdened by stringent domestic and financial responsibilities.

In India, self help groups and panchayat raj institutions, assisted by the voluntary sector, are training rural women in nutrition and financial literacy, connecting them with health providers and financial services. Their food security has doubled. They are using digital technology to provide impoverished farmers with loans and agricultural training. They no longer go hungry; many have bought livestock and even land. They are   enabling shop owners to provide women with safe ways to save, borrow, make payments, and buy micro-health insurance

Empowerment has led to a number of positive changes in women’s own perceptions of themselves, and their role in household decision making women’s self-image and self-confidence was enhanced when they received training on women’s rights and social and political issues. This is a truly uplifting signal of the role women will play in building our future sustainable economy.

When 35 years old unassuming and submissive Rajni applied   for a loan from the bank there was no one willing to back her up as a guarantor. There was great doubt whether she would be able to repay the loan. But this steely and tenacious woman proved the other members wrong. It was at the women’s   meeting at which she and her mother-in-law     first heard of loans being made available to women intending to pursue income-generating activities. They were at once attracted of the soft loans for women of low income households. She discussed the proposition with her husband and together they decided to avail the loan to buy a motor pump for their fields as to increase and better the yield. The cost benefit was soon worked out. The cost of the pump being high, it was decided that both the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law would acquire a loan each and put it to use for their common benefit. And so each of them took a loan of Rs. 7000/- individually. The loan soon became a bonding element to help them emerge wiser.

The pump was installed and soon the waters gushed out of the thirsting land. Now water supply was ensured at the touch of a button. The fields were full with mash-melons, gourds, wheat, rice and other vegetables. Workload happily increased and so did the returns. The whole family got actively involved in the cultivation exercise=–related to sowing, irrigating, nurturing, reaping and selling of various produce according to the time of its maturity. She and her mother-in-law had never felt this close before. The plentiful harvests had given them a sense of fulfillment. Nor were they overtly worried about the return of the loan. In fact, there was hardly any difficulty in the repayment of the monthly installments.

As Rajni led us to her fields not far from the village to show the motor pump, her face was awash with pride and recollections. “All thanks to the motor-pump”, says Rajni, as she carefully wraps it back with the polythene sheet and covers it with a wooden crate. Lightly lapping the box, she looks all around her, surveying the surrounding land. “Yes, we owe it to the pump for our togetherness and plenty”.

For all interventions, the fundamental logic is plain: if we are going to end extreme poverty, we need to start with girls and women. They are the ones who have the grit to lift families out of the pit. People who have pioneered successful social programmes   recognized this potential and sought to evoke it.

During my engagement with programmes for empowering poor women to climb out of poverty, several of my colleagues would argue whether our efforts   have any relevance when we have a vast desert of poverty. Their question reminded me of the story of a boy who found himself on the seashore surrounded by thousands of dying fish. The boy started to pick up one fish at a time and throw them back into the sea. A man watching him from afar came up to him and asked why he was wasting his time. The boy said that if he could save even one fish, he would have fulfilled his purpose in life.

We now have the techniques and resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will. A lot of good programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But several of these programmes were difficult to scale up. As Bill Clinton noted during his presidency, “Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere.” The frustration is that, “we can’t seem to replicate [those solutions] anywhere else.”

We increasingly have the tools to combat poverty. We know what to do; what we really need is to    summon the political will.

Angela Merkel: The Ikea Politician

Binoy Kampmark

Modular furniture divinities, or corporations, may not be the best points of comparison for a politician, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel has invited it.  She is stable, reliable, self-assembled from history.  But more to the point, she has managed to forge a workshop of political viewpoints, angles, and perspectives, a tent so vast it has neutralised opponents within and without her political base. Her capacity to deal in “flat pack centrism,” otherwise termed the “IKEA principle” has become textbook.

The notion of IKEA politics is not something that has been missed by conservatives and centre-based politicians.  IKEA supplied a point of reference to Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, when she observed a certain organisational principle at work in the conservative movement in the United States. The State Policy Network proved particularly interesting, some 64 groups loosely assembled as free-market think tanks.  Its president, Tracie Sharp, while denying the IKEA model had any role to play in a public sense, secretly spoke about it, its points of assembly and distribution.

For all its stock standard reliability, Merkel’s period in office has also seen hiccups, some of the dangerous sort.  The Syrian refugee crisis, and the open door policy to migrants and refugees which her European counterparts fear, has threatened inroads into her political base.  She has managed to prevent a general exodus from the centre, but dissatisfaction is finding form across a range of smaller parties across the political spectrum.

To that end, any vision of furniture is only as good as its final product.  These wear over time, and not even the advertising agency Jung von Matt could conceal the creaks and breaks for this campaign.  This was the question that presented itself on Sunday.  Mutti did pull through eventually, but it was a scarring encounter.

The first signs on Sunday night, true to a form that has become a recurring pattern across the elections of Europe, were that smaller parties, notably those reaping the populist whirlwind, were set to make strong gains.

The Free Democrats (FDP), which had vanished from the Bundestag in 2013 on 4.8%, found themselves projected to return with a notably present 9%.  (As the figures continue being finalised, that number has moved to almost 11%.)

The AfD (Alternative for Germany), while still garnering support as a far-right wing alternative, did not do as well as certain worried predictions went, though, with just under 13%, things promise to be merry for this coming term.  As the party’s manifesto went with conspiratorial glee, a “secret sovereign… has cultivated itself in the existing political parties.”

Nothing can get away from the reality that the party has made good its promise to found a petulant base in the Bundestag, a nationalist rear guard hopeful of dampening the refugee agenda.  The party’s co-leader, Alexander Gauland, has made clear through his conservative soaked account Anleitung zum Konservativsein (Instruction on Being a Conservative), that he wishes for a return to such notions as “deutsche Leitkultur,” a dominant German culture which arrests any other notions of identity.  Germany first is not a dirty term.

Despite being a refugee of the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War, Gauland saw his experience as singularly German, one to set apart from those swarms Merkel was accepting onto the soil of the fatherland.  He, as he explained, “went from Germany to Germany. It is quite different when someone comes from Eritrea or Sudan.  He has no right to the support of a foreigner.” A fantasy he holds near and dear is a Muslim ban and an open cradling of the nostalgia of Heimat.

It was a night where major parties received more than a touch-up.  Merkel’s CDU/CSU grouping received the lowest share of the vote since 1949, on 33%, while the SPD’s effort was even more impoverished at 20.5%.

The message from the electoral pundits and analysts was generally uniform: Merkel would win.  Thankfully for her, the FDP performance means that a “Jamaica” coalition with the CDU/CSU and the Greens is in the offing.  But she could barely conceal the exhausted fact that it was a victory stripped of its sweetness.  Her own efforts to reverse the rot had seen a more curt electioneering approach, a visible hardening in policies, including support for a burqa ban and attempts to gauge the conservative temperature.

“The CDU could have hoped for a better result, but we mustn’t forget – looking back at an extraordinary challenge – that we nevertheless achieved our strategic objectives: we are the strongest party.”

The next period in the Budestag promises to be truly astringent, the very politics that resists the convenient brand labelling of modular, stable furniture.  For Merkel, its objective is clear. “We want to win back the AfD voters above all through good politics.”  The chancellor’s political centre risks breaching.

Sri Lanka: JVP leader assures business that it defends capitalism

K. Ratnayake 

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and chief opposition whip in the Sri Lankan parliament, has called on big business to recognise his party as a viable alternative to the country’s two establishment parties—the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Dissanayake made his appeal to a September 14 meeting of business leaders organised by the JVP at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall. The event was entitled “The Way Forward for Sri Lanka, We are Sri Lankan” and is part of the JVP’s campaign for the next parliamentary elections, scheduled in 2020.

In the 2015 presidential elections, the JVP backed Maithripala Sirisena to oust former President Mahinda Rajapakse, then supported the UNP-SLFP “unity” coalition government that was subsequently formed. Hypocritically, the JVP is now attempting to distance itself from this same regime, accusing it of corruption and blaming it for the country’s economic crisis.

Dissanayake assured business leaders that they should not harbour “any doubts” about the JVP and its attitude towards the private sector. “We have ‘Our Vision’ but the [JVP’s] policies will be determined by taking together your ideas and ours. The private sector is essential for the economy, as well as the state sector,” he declared.

The JVP was established in the 1960s based on an amalgam of Castroism, Stalinism and Sinhala chauvinism and advocating the “armed struggle.” It long ago abandoned its guerillaism and entered parliament to integrate into the Colombo political establishment. The JVP played a key role in assisting SLFP leaders Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse to become Sri Lankan presidents.

JVP parliamentarians were part of Kumaratunga’s coalition government in 2004 and held four ministerial positions. Dissanayake himself became the minister of agriculture, livestock, land and irrigation. The party backed the 30-year communalist war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and maintains close connections with Western diplomats, particularly the US embassy in Colombo.

Dissanayake told the September 14 gathering that there were five major features of the Sri Lankan economic crisis. The first of these, he said, was Sri Lanka’s debt, which has risen from 120 billion rupees in 1985 to 10,500 billion ($US68.5 billion) in 2016 November. The second feature was the country’s declining export earnings which were at 33 percent of GDP in 2000 but had dropped to 14 percent in 2014.

The third feature, Dissanayake said, was the “collapse of state income”—from 23 percent of the GDP in 1996 to 11.3 percent in 2014—and the fourth and fifth features were the sharp fall in Sri Lankan production and the widening inequality of income distribution, respectively.

Dissanayake drew no connection between these “features” and the ongoing crisis of global capitalism but insisted that the predicament facing Sri Lanka could only be solved by taking into account the country’s location, its natural and human resources, and its history. He suggested that a future JVP government would adopt reactionary protectionist measures—only accepting foreign investment in selected industries and seeking loans for development purposes.

In reality, the crisis in Sri Lanka stems from the worsening breakdown of global capitalism and the government’s economic agenda, including savage austerity measures, is dictated by the IMF, not by Colombo. The JVP has already signalled its support of the IMF’s anti-working class measures as its “Our Vision” program promises tax breaks for international investors and calls for the commercialisation of state-owned enterprises.

Dissanayake told the meeting that Sri Lanka did not have adequate resources to expand its export of goods but that it could increase export earnings by capturing a larger share of the global guest worker market.

What is required, he continued, is the creation of a highly skilled army of labour with increased government expenditure on education, health and sport. This perspective, he insisted, was not aimed at securing “low income earning jobs like house maids” but at exporting more highly paid professionals to compete with other countries.

The JVP leader also warned his big business audience of the dangers of income disparity in Sri Lanka, pointing out that 43 percent of the population were living on just two dollars a day. These comments were aimed at assuring big business that the party would act to suppress any future social and political explosions produced by this social polarisation.

While the JVP has been addressing dozens of public meetings as part of its 2020 election campaign, it has kept silent about its assurances to big business. In fact, the JVP campaign—under the slogan of “Boost the village—Power for the country”—consists of populist denunciations of the corruption, fraud and bribe-taking of the previous Rajapakse government and the massive financial scandals of the current Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration.

“Our country’s politics has become a profiteering business. Instead, we assure you [that a future JVP government] will transform politics into public service,” Dissanayake told one meeting. At another event he demagogically declared. “Let’s get together to form a government. We can assure you that under our government the rulers will receive no extra benefit other than people receive.”

Posturing as a “clean party,” the JVP’s anti-corruption rhetoric is an attempt to keep the growing popular opposition to the government’s attacks on social and democratic rights trapped within parliament channels. Dissanayake recently told Ceylon Today that his party was organising a broad front with “civil organisations including professionals, journalists, farmers and fishermen.”

The JVP leaders are hoping that workers, the poor and youth are suffering from political amnesia. Dissanayake’s party, which is infamous for its countless “fronts” with establishment parties and groups, is directly responsible the wide-ranging attacks on the social and democratic rights of masses by successive governments.

The JVP played a key role in the regime-change campaign in the 2015 election to remove Rajapakse as president and promote Sirisena’s so-called “good governance movement.” This has nothing to do with ending corruption or lifting living standards but was part of Washington’s efforts to bring Colombo into line with US economic and military strategic operations against China.

Five days after Sirisena was elected, Dissanayake issued a statement calling for the establishment of a National Executive Council (NEC) to advise the Sri Lankan cabinet. Enlisting the support of other parties, the JVP insisted that the NEC should be “under the president and the prime minister.”

Dissanayake, together with leaders from the Tamil and Muslim parties as well as various NGOs and the pseudo lefts, joined this new entity, providing critical political support for four months and helping to consolidate the new pro-American regime.

In order to hoodwink workers and youth the JVP still falsely claims some allegiance to “Marxism” and “socialism.” Virtually every page of its newspaper Niyamuwa is adorned with quotes from Marx, Engels or Lenin.

The JVP also ludicrously claims that China, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea and Cuba are “socialist countries” that have developed “alternatives” to capitalism. These countries are capitalist economies. Ruled by the remnants of the old Stalinist bureaucracies, these regimes transformed have their countries into cheap labour sweatshops of international investors.

To claim that these countries are “socialist” is not just to sow political confusion but is also a message to big business and international capital that the JVP will likewise encourage investors by boosting profits and ruthlessly suppressing any opposition by workers to their exploitation.

Social anger grows after Mexico earthquakes

Alex González

Following this month’s devastating earthquakes, anger is rising at the Mexican government’s sluggish distribution of supplies and minimal response to citizen’s needs, together with leading officials’ efforts to exploit the disaster for political gain. In many states, the working class has responded by bypassing the government altogether, organizing citizens’ brigades to independently canvass damaged areas and distribute aid to those in need.

On Saturday morning, a major earthquake struck Mexico for the third time this month. The latest disaster comes barely two weeks after the south of Mexico and Guatemala were hit by an 8.2 magnitude quake, the strongest in a century, as well as a 7.1 magnitude earthquake on September 19 that affected the capital and nine other states.

Saturday’s earthquake had a magnitude of 6.1 with an epicenter in the southwestern state of Oaxaca. Although mostly unnoticed in the capital, the earthquake monitoring system went off in Mexico City, causing many to evacuate their homes. Two women, aged 58 and 80, died of heart attacks after hearing the alarm. In Oaxaca, at least two are dead and seven injured due to the latest quake.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the September 19 earthquake has risen to 318. At least 69 people had been rescued from collapsed buildings, overwhelmingly due to the efforts of thousands of working class volunteers who rallied to rescue trapped victims throughout the city. After the September 19 earthquake, over 11,200 residents of Mexico City have asked the government to evaluate the structural integrity of their homes, while in the State of Mexico over 2,000 homes were reportedly damaged. In the state of Puebla, over 12,500 homes are affected, of which 2,500 were considered beyond repair and will be demolished. About 55,000 homes were damaged in the state of Chiapas following the September 7 earthquake.

As with every other major natural disaster, the working class and peasantry will be forced to bear the cost of the earthquakes, with the government offering only minimal assistance. While the Secretary of Finance has announced that up to $360 million may be available through the World Bank, an initial assessment by the United States Geological Service found that damages from the September 19 quake alone could cost up to 1 percent of Mexico’s GDP (about $10 billion).

Social tensions are rising as the official establishment continues to discredit itself in the eyes of the population. The “left” Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) governor of the state of Morelos, Graco Ramírez Abreu, came under criticism after a video went viral on social media showing police officers detaining several trucks from the National System for Integral Family Development (DIF) with supplies for the victims of the September 19 earthquake. Two drivers were reportedly ordered to unload their supplies at Morelos’ DIF, which is run by Elena Cepeda de León, the governor’s wife.

Protests and clashes with police ensued when it was discovered that the storage unit in Morelos’s DIF already had over 90 tons of supplies. About 500 people gathered at the DIF on Friday night to remove goods from the storage center and distribute the aid themselves. Others reportedly blocked passage to police-escorted trucks going to the DIF. Cepeda de León denied that aid was being withheld for political reasons and threatened legal action against the “looters.” The state’s commissioner of public security warned that he would “impose order” in the city. The governor labeled the story as “fake news,” brushing aside numerous videos documenting the event.

In the Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa, residents took over water pipes and blocked roads to protest a severe water shortage caused by the earthquake affecting 80 percent of the borough, or 1.5 million people. Residents also hijacked several distribution vehicles, which they claimed were only servicing well-connected individuals. Protestors then marched to the borough’s city hall to confront officials who were giving an informational presentation to earthquake victims.

Thousands who suffered damage to their homes have yet to return due to a lack of qualified engineers to evaluate their safety. Many have reported that their homes were seen by non-specialized personnel, and inspections were often limited to assessing external structures, even when there is significant internal damage. Engineering professor Pablo Iván Ángeles Guzmán told El Universal that “in some cases there have already been visits by Civil Defense, but they are only filling out a simple three-page form,” noting that his own evaluation would last a minimum of three hours. An investigation by the newspaper found that only four out of Mexico City’s 16 boroughs answered calls for help last Friday.

In an attempt to channel social anger back into bourgeois politics, the major Mexican political parties have given demagogical promises to donate some of their 2018 presidential campaign funds to the earthquake’s victims, including the Party of National Action (PAN), the Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena), and the Citizens’ Movement (MC). Morena has also proposed cutting the salaries of government functionaries by 50 percent to give a paltry 2,400 pesos (about $135) a month to each affected household.

If elected, these tried-and-tested bourgeois parties—including the supposed “lefts” of Morena—would continue defending the capitalist system and the staggering social inequality it has produced in Mexico.

As has been the case with natural disasters in the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States, it has been the working class which has taken independent action to help victims out of a sense of class solidarity. Nothing less than a frontal assault on the wealth of the ruling class can ensure that society’s resources are distributed not to fill the pockets of the rich, but to prevent another disaster by allotting billions to infrastructure spending and to other social needs of working people.

No clear winner in New Zealand election

John Braddock & Tom Peters

The New Zealand election on Saturday delivered an inconclusive result, with neither the incumbent National Party nor the main opposition Labour Party in a clear position to form a government. The outcome is likely be decided by whichever is able to strike a deal with the right-wing, anti-Asian New Zealand First.

According to provisional results, National remains the largest party with 46 percent of the vote and 58 seats, two seats down on 2014. Labour has 35.8 percent (45 seats), NZ First 7.5 percent (9 seats), and the Greens 5.9 percent (7 seats). ACT with 0.5 percent has one seat by virtue of an electorate deal with National. Labour and the Greens, who campaigned as potential coalition partners, have a combined total of 43 percent.

Based on the current figures, a Labour-Green-NZ First government would command a majority of just 61 to 59. An estimated 384,000 special votes, including those cast overseas, 15 percent of the total, will not be counted until October 7.

On Saturday night, NZ First leader Winston Peters boasted, “We hold all the main cards.” He refused to answer questions about which party he would ally with. Peters has previously formed coalitions with National, from 1996–98, and Labour from 2005–08, the latter rewarding him with the post of foreign minister. NZ First ran a Trump-style campaign based on national protectionism, rabid anti-Asian xenophobia and calls for a massive cut to immigration.

Concerned about political instability, the corporate media has signalled its preference for a National-NZ First coalition. The Sunday Star Times insisted that Peters has “no choice.” “The voting public,” it warned, “cannot, and will not tolerate him abusing his kingmaker position” by supporting Labour when it trails National by 12 points. The paper’s front page highlighted Prime Minister Bill English’s assertion that he has the “moral authority” to lead National into government for a fourth consecutive term.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern and Green Party leader James Shaw, however, have both declared they will try and form a coalition with NZ First.

The result reveals the same over-riding tendencies in recent elections in the US, Australia and France: widespread alienation and disaffection with the entire political establishment. Despite strenuous efforts to promote increased voter participation, the official turnout of 78.8 percent of registered voters was just above the 2014 figure of 77.9 percent. In that election, more than a million people either abstained or did not register.

The main feature of the campaign was the desperate attempt to divert widespread social opposition into safe parliamentary channels. This required a concerted operation to stave off the collapse of the Labour Party, which was polling at an historic low of 23 percent in July. The media, trade unions and pseudo-left groups sought to whip up support for Labour and its new leader Ardern, installed in August, based on bogus claims that the party would address the deepening social crisis facing working people.

Ardern, however, made no significant appeal to the working class. She rejected being called a “socialist,” instead saying she was a “progressive” and a “pragmatist.”

In the face of widespread anti-war sentiment, Ardern supported English’s decision to send more New Zealand troops to Afghanistan. Both leaders refused to rule out joining a catastrophic US-led war against North Korea. Ardern repeatedly reassured big business that a Labour-led government would not increase taxes to address the worsening social disaster, including homelessness, the soaring cost of living and the crisis in the health system

The surge in support for Labour, particularly among youth and students, did not reach the level predicted. The party’s vote rose to 36 percent from 25 percent in 2014, its worst result in 92 years. Much of the increase came from the Greens, whose support dropped from 10.7 to 5.9 percent. NZ First was polling at 13 percent before Ardern’s elevation, but ended on 7.5 percent, a point below its 2014 result.

Labour gained support from layers of the upper middle class, while losing votes in some of its strongholds. The Labour Party candidate for Ohariu, Greg O’Connor, a former police union head, took the wealthy Wellington electorate from National’s coalition partner United Future. Meanwhile in the nearby “safe” working-class seat of Hutt South, Labour’s candidate and party vice president Ginny Andersen lost by over 2,000 votes to National’s Chris Bishop.

The most significant shift among working-class voters towards Labour occurred in the seven Maori electorates which Labour won by decisive margins. Labour had historically dominated the seats until inroads were made over the last 15 years by the Maori nationalist Maori Party and Mana, which postured as representing an “independent Maori voice.” In fact, both outfits represent the interests of a highly privileged layer who control $NZ40 billion in Maori business assets, while the majority of Maori remain highly oppressed and marginalised.

The Maori Party, which has been in coalition with National since 2008 and helped implement its austerity measures, received just 1.1 percent of the vote, and lost its two remaining MPs. Mana’s leader, Hone Harawira, who lost his seat in 2014, failed to regain it. Mana, falsely championed in previous elections by pseudo-left groups as “pro-poor” and “anti-capitalist,” is now a moribund organisation.

Labour failed to increase its support in a number of Auckland’s urban working-class seats. The opposition parties’ campaign to scapegoat Asian migrants for the housing crisis, low wages and unemployment, coupled with demands for cutting immigration by more than 40 percent, was decisively rejected.

For the past five years, Labour, the Greens, Mana and the trade unions have largely adopted NZ First’s anti-immigrant politics in order to divide the working class along racial lines, while lining up with Washington’s preparations for war against China.

More than a quarter of New Zealand’s population is immigrant, heavily concentrated in the Auckland region. An article by Newsroom pointed out that Labour made little headway in Auckland, performing worst in those seats with a high number of migrants.

In New Lynn, Labour’s support declined by 500 votes between 2014 and 2017. In nearby Te Atatu, Labour’s campaign chair Phil Twyford, infamous in 2015 for blaming ballooning house prices on people with “Chinese sounding names,” saw his majority cut by several hundred.

The final days of the election campaign were dominated by a witch-hunt against National Party MP Jian Yang and several other politicians based on wild and unsubstantiated accusations that they are “Chinese Communist Party” agents. The McCarthyite campaign, which appears to have involved individuals close to US and Australian intelligence agencies, is intended to shift New Zealand politics into closer alignment with the US preparations for war against China.

On September 19, NZ First, now being courted by both major parties, demanded a “special commission” to investigate “China’s impact on our democracy.” Peters echoed Trump and Obama’s hypocritical denunciation of Chinese “expansionism,” which has been the pretext for a major US military build-up against China.

The Daily Blog, funded by several trade unions, supports this pro-imperialist campaign. Following the election it declared, “National’s total acquiescence to Chinese business interests... will quickly become the major issue.”

The next government, whatever its composition, will inevitably come into conflict with the working class as it continues to impose austerity while diverting billions of dollars to the military, strengthening ties with the US and promoting nationalism and xenophobia to prepare the country for war.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale quits

Steve James

Kezia Dugdale, the eighth leader in 18 years of the Labour Party in Scotland, resigned last month after two years in the job.

Dugdale, a right-wing careerist devoid of principles or any record of struggle in the working class, was from the first at odds with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the British party. Her career points to the hollowed-out character of Labour and underscores how Corbyn’s refusal to wage a struggle against the right-wing has played the central role in maintaining its dominance of the party.

At times, it seemed Dugdale was more loyal to Scottish First Minister and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon. But no campaign was mobilised against her, and her departure was not even anticipated. Rather, she simply walked away from a post that had become politically tiresome and personally awkward.

Dugdale joined the Labour Party as an unemployed law graduate at a loose end, having had an interest in student welfare on the student union. She considered politically-minded students as “geeks.” She was selected as a member of the Scottish parliament (MSP) in 2011 via the list system and quickly appointed as shadow minister for youth employment. By 2014, still a complete unknown, she was elected deputy leader to arch right-winger and Blairite Jim Murphy.

Murphy led the Labour Party’s campaign for a “No” vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, which was waged on an entirely right-wing, pro-imperialist basis, arm-in-arm with the hated Conservative government, rather than opposing efforts to divide Scottish and English workers. Despite voters rejecting independence by a 55 to 45 percent majority, the Labour Party went on to suffer the most catastrophic electoral collapse in its history, with the party viewed, on the basis of its long record in local as well as national government, as indistinguishable from the Tories. Labour, for decades the dominant party in Scotland, lost all but one of its 41 Westminster seats in the 2015 general election to the SNP.

Murphy immediately resigned to be replaced by Dugdale, who won 72 percent of the vote among Labour members against fellow right-wing nonentity Ken Mackintosh. Dugdale’s main credentials for office appeared to be that she was right-wing and female. Shortly after her election in Scotland, however, Corbyn won the leadership of the British Labour Party which, in a highly distorted way, reflected political shifts to the left among broad sections of workers.

Dugdale opposed Corbyn from the first and voted for the Blairite candidate, Yvette Cooper. She supported successive efforts to unseat Corbyn by the right-wing, and in June 2016 called on him to resign. Two months later, she voted for Owen Smith, who challenged Corbyn for Labour leadership. When Corbyn again won, Dugdale immediately stated Corbyn’s chances of winning an election were “slim to nonexistent.” Twenty-four hours later, realising which way the wind was blowing and confirming her lack of political convictions, she insisted the exact opposite, stating, “Of course Jeremy Corbyn can win a general election.”

Dugdale, nevertheless, continued her efforts to undermine Corbyn. In September 2016, both the Scottish and Welsh Labour parties won autonomy within Labour to set their own policies and to have representation on the party’s powerful National Executive Committee (NEC). The move deprived Corbyn of a majority on the NEC. Dugdale trumpeted her success and promised to be a “loud and passionate voice for Scotland’s interests”—that is, for the right-wing Labour apparatus and its business backers in Scotland.

The NEC dispute also highlighted tensions between Dugdale and Corbyn on the constitutional question. Since being elected, Dugdale had attempted to triangulate Labour into a position where it was less vulnerable to the Scottish nationalist claims that Labour in Scotland was merely a branch of Labour in London. In the party’s election manifesto, 20 years after Labour’s original devolution legislation, Labour offered, with Dugdale’s backing, “the option of a more federalised country—dangling the possibility of a further extension of powers to the regional elite, while avoiding a breakup of the UK.

Dugdale also consistently gave the impression of being closer to the SNP than sections of her own party. As deputy Labour leader, she had already professed herself a “fan” of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Brexit vote, Dugdale went as far as to confess that it was “not inconceivable” that she might back another Scottish independence vote if it helped keep Scotland in the European Union.

By early 2017, it emerged that Dugdale, whose father is an SNP supporter, was actually dating an SNP MSP, Jenny Gilruth, Parliamentary Liaison Officer for SNP deputy leader, John Swinney. Extraordinarily, the two appear to have met on a tour organised by the US State Department—which notoriously holds such recruiting events for prospective CIA assets.

Labour, in the event, did better than expected in this year’s snap June 8 election, winning 30 seats, including six recovered in Scotland. Corbyn embarked over the summer on a tour of 64 key marginal seats which Labour needs to win to form a government without support from one of the minority parties. Eighteen of these are in Scotland and all are currently held by the SNP.

Had Corbyn had the slightest interest in a struggle against the right-wing in his own party, this tour, through Labour’s lost industrial heartlands in Scotland, would have been the time and place to do it. He could have denounced Dugdale’s campaign against him and exposed Labour’s fostering of the political climate in which the SNP could emerge. He could then have denounced the SNP in power for its implementation of Tory policies and revived the accurate term “Tartan Tories”—once coined by Labour to describe the nationalists.

Instead, although matters do indeed appear to have come to a head during Corbyn’s tour, it was over what tactics best served business interests. Dugdale spoke on BBC radio late August of her view that Corbyn was “very open” to her repeated calls for Scotland, in the context of Brexit, to develop distinct employment policies in line with the needs of Scottish-based employers. Corbyn rejected this, but from a rival view of what was best for business: “I think that becomes very complicated because if you are trading, companies exist in Scotland, exist in Wales, exist in England, they are making things, doing things together, it would be very, very difficult if not impossible to see how we could separate those out. It has to be a UK-wide agreement.”

Dugdale resigned days later.

Only two candidates have come forward to replace her. Anas Sarwar, reportedly the favourite, is a right-wing multi-millionaire MSP and a shareholder in his family’s low-wage cash-and-carry empire.

Sarwar’s opponent is Richard Leonard, the preferred candidate of Corbyn supporters in Scotland around the Campaign for Socialism group. Leonard, formerly an organiser for the GMB trade union, has also been supported by Simon Fletcher, who organised Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign based on recruiting a layer of new party members. He is supported by the pseudo left. The Socialist Party Scotland, for example, hailed Leonard’s candidacy, claiming that Labour can be a “party that fights for the interests of the working class”… if only it changes its position to support Scottish independence.

In Paris, Mélenchon calls on trade unions to control opposition to austerity

Anthony Torres & Kumaran Ira

On Saturday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s movement, Unsubmissive France (LFI, La France Insoumise), held its national rally in the Place de la République in Paris amid growing protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s decrees scrapping the country’s Labour Code. Between 30,000 and 150,000 people came to Paris for the protest. Whatever the precise number, the rally was noticeably smaller than the protest organised in Paris by the trade unions in the context of a national day of action on September 21.

WSWS reporters spoke to a number of the protesters in attendance. The rally was extremely heterogeneous, with many teachers, IT workers and youth having mobilised to protest Macron’s decrees, which aim to destroy legal obstacles to unfair dismissal, wage and job cuts, and permanent temp contracts. Others joined the protest because they agreed with the perspective outlined by Mélenchon, who demanded that the union bureaucracy maintain its domination of workers’ protests against Macron.

In his speech Mélenchon, wearing a patriotic tricolour sash, declared: “We are ready to rally behind them [the unions]. … We are aware of the strength of the trade union organisations and of salaried workers.” He sowed the illusion that thanks to his collaboration with the unions, the tiny LFI parliamentary group in the National Assembly could somehow block the adoption of the decrees. “The struggle is not finished, it is only beginning,” he said.

The various union bureaucracies, however, have been working hand in glove with the government since Macron was elected in May. They are negotiating the decrees and preparing future attacks with Macron, while trying to stabilise Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s government by blocking the growing opposition of workers and youth to Macron’s policies of austerity and war. The unions are holding secret meetings with the government, and individual union bureaucrats are joining the staffs of various ministries.

Mélenchon’s appeal to the unions to lead the protest thus signifies an attempt to strangle protests against the decrees and to give tacit support to Macron’s reforms. Mélenchon is also working with the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF), and the former presidential candidate of the Socialist Party (PS), Benoît Hamon. They are preparing an alternate government for French imperialism, should the Philippe government collapse.

The alliance between Mélenchon and Hamon, whose Socialist Party was the first to include decrees like Macron’s in early drafts of its labour laws in 2016, underscores the cynicism of Mélenchon’s pose of opposition to the current president’s austerity policies. He is not at all trying to break with the corrupt, anti-working class forces that have passed for the “left” in France since the 1968 general strike. Rather, following the collapse of the PS in the presidential elections in May of this year, Mélenchon is trying to regroup PS forces and its various allies into a new political tool for the ruling class.

The NPA participated in the rally in Place de la République, as did PCF national secretary Pierre Laurent and Hamon, who said he wanted “the mobilisation to continue.” Philippe Poutou, the NPA’s 2017 presidential candidate, called on Mélenchon: “Launch an appeal to everyone to start something, you’ve got the means to do it more than us.”

Mélenchon responded, “I’m trying to find the right dose. I don’t want to send you all into the wall.” And by letting the unions “dose” the protests, that is, isolate them industry by industry and bottle them up in France alone despite growing social anger across Europe, Mélenchon is working to block the emergence of a revolutionary, international struggle of the working class.

A certain proportion of the protesters were fairly open about supporting Mélenchon’s reactionary and anti-worker perspective. They told WSWS reporters that they were not necessarily favourable to forcing the retraction of all of Macron’s decrees, and insisted they did not want to discuss the link between Mélenchon and his Greek ally, the pro-austerity Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.

Others said they were looking for a way to oppose Macron and the rising dangers of war internationally and dictatorship inside France. They were sceptical about the union protests and were waiting to see what Mélenchon would propose.

Ninon, a teacher, declared: “I think we have to call a stop to all these measures against the workers. I am in solidarity with the other workers, even if I am not the person who will be hit first in the public service. This is a government that is on the side of business, of big business and finance, not of the workers.”

When the WSWS asked Ninon if she believed Mélenchon’s perspective would allow him to change these policies, she replied: “In the short term, he can’t, he is not in power. I don’t believe in it so much, however. I’m waiting to see. Many people will be mobilised today and in October. I am convinced that the government will not back down. But I can’t simply stay home, either.”

Ninon also expressed her opposition to the state of emergency and dramatically expanded police and surveillance powers in France: “It should not last. But it will, we know it. It will always be a way to impose the laws rapidly, to spy on political opposition figures. I am against it. I do not think it is very effective in terms of fighting terrorism. That is not where the problem comes from.”

She also condemned Trump’s threats of nuclear war against North Korea: “It’s quite clear. He [Trump] is crazy, he is dangerous, that’s obvious. If it continues, there will be a very real danger.”

Jocelyn, an IT student, said she was attending her first protest and that she opposed both Macron’s labour decrees and the state of emergency, which, she said, “does not serve a useful purpose. … It does not stop any attacks, I don’t think. For me it’s clear, it’s a dictatorship. In any case, the election was rigged, from the moment all the media started attacking all the candidates except Macron. He was being brought forward. From that moment on, you could see France isn’t a democracy. … It is a dictatorship, too.”

Maximilien, a musicology student, also explained that he was demonstrating not only against the decrees, but also against the state of emergency and war: “I am absolutely against war. I don’t know what to think about it. It is so sad that we have gotten this far. I’m for peace. That is one of the major reasons I am here today.”

Laurent, an IT worker, pointed to the increasingly deep disenchantment of the French people with the established political parties: “We saw it in the legislative elections, there was an extraordinary level of abstention. Elections don’t get people to go vote. … I’m not an LFI member but it’s one of the parties I feel closest to. But if tomorrow its proposals don’t please me, I will leave.”

Turkey threatens war over Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum

Halil Celik 

The Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government’s (KRG) independence referendum slated for today has further escalated dangers of a major war in the Middle East. Threats from Baghdad, Tehran and Ankara, as well as warnings from the United States and European Union (EU), are raising the question of another possible military intervention, this time against Iraqi Kurds.

The Turkish government—which has for more than two years launched military operations against Kurdish nationalist parties, both at home and in Iraq, devastating Kurdish-populated towns in Turkey and forcing tens of thousands of Kurds to flee their homes—is leading the charge.

On Saturday, September 23, in an extraordinary session during which the chairman intervened to silence the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) spokesperson, the Turkish parliament extended the government’s mandate for military action another one year. This mandate permits the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to deploy troops to Iraq and Syria.

Thus the Turkish parliament has opened the door for a Turkish invasion of the KRG. It attacked the referendum as part of “efforts to break the territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria, which would endanger Turkey’s national security.”

During the parliamentary debate, spokespersons of the ruling AKP and its de facto partner, the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), sharply criticized the referendum, calling for its cancellation, and attacking the KRG’s President Barzani.

The spokesperson of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) also declared its support to the motion, however only after criticizing the AKP’s foreign policy in the Middle East, including its active participation in the US-led wars in Iraq and Syria. The HDP was the only party that stood against the motion, arguing for the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination.

The Turkish parliament’s decision came only hours after a meeting of Turkey’s National Security Council (MGK) chaired by Erdogan on late Friday, September 22. The MGK issued a written statement warning that “Turkey reserves its rights based on international conventions.” This is an open threat of not only diplomatic and economic sanctions, but also a military intervention.

Speaking to reporters on the same day, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also said Ankara would “not refrain from using its natural rights. ... This referendum is an issue of Turkey’s national security.”

Presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın then issued a statement warning the KRG that the referendum would “have serious consequences.” On September 23, he wrote on his Twitter account that “Erbil should immediately correct this grave mistake that will trigger new crises in the region.”

Since September 18, the Turkish army has held military exercises in Turkey’s Sirnak province, as a sign of Ankara’s “determination” to avoid the emergence of an independent Kurdish state inside the current boundaries of Iraq. The Turkish army had already deployed troops, tanks and artillery to the Iraqi and Syrian border.

The Iraqi government in Baghdad has also threatened to intervene militarily against the KRG if the referendum results in violence. As the Turkish parliament debated the motion, Iraqi Chief of Staff General Othman al-Ghanimi arrived in Ankara to meet with his Turkish counterpart General Hulusi Akar and discuss the KRG referendum and Iraq’s territorial integrity.

Akar reportedly plans to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Major General Mohamed Baqeri, to discuss events in Iraq and Syria and moves against the Kurdish-nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which since 1984 has waged guerrilla war against the Turkish state. The Iranian Chief of General Staff had already paid a three-day visit to Ankara, in August 15-17, to discuss possible common military operations “against terrorist organizations” in the KRG.

The Iranian Chief of Staff also warned the referendum “would be the basis for the start of a series of tensions and conflicts inside Iraq, the consequences of which will affect neighboring countries. So, for this reason, the authorities of the two countries [Turkey and Iran] are emphasizing that it is not possible and should not be done.”

While the Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi governments regard the referendum as a serious threat to the territorial integrity of Iraq, the KRG's Western allies, including Washington and the EU, are mainly criticizing its timing. They cite the need to concentrate on the ongoing fight against the Islamic State (IS).

The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has openly supported the KRG’s referendum on independence.

The growing threat of sanctions and or military action from Ankara, and repeated warnings from Baghdad and Tehran, as well as the Western powers, however, have apparently not impressed the KRG’s President Masoud Barzani. He said on Saturday that they would not renounce independence, whatever the cost.

First elected in 2005 by the Kurdish regional parliament and in 2009 by popular vote as KRG president, Barzani’s term of office in fact ran out in August 2015, after a two-year extension. Having presided over a de facto government since then, the corrupt Kurdish leader faces ever growing popular opposition—in part, over his regime’s economic and financial dependence on Ankara, which brutally suppresses its own Kurds, and its slavish obedience to the US and European imperialists.

By pushing for the independence referendum, Barzani is playing the card of nationalism to disorient Kurdish workers, poor peasants and the youth, who have repeatedly paid the price of the decades-long maneuvers of the Kurdish nationalists with the imperialist and regional states.

The Iraqi Kurdish referendum and Ankara’s military deployment along the border only fan the flames amidst ongoing war and growing ethnic and sectarian divisions, in Iraq and Syria and across the region.

Ankara has long been preparing to launch another military adventure in Iraq or Syria—with or without collaboration of, or even against, the Barzani leadership. This now also threatens to ignite a military conflict with the troops of Ankara’s NATO allies, now operating on the ground with Kurdish forces. With all its unforeseen consequences, such an invasion would lead to a dangerous military escalation that could easily get out of control.