US-backed Saudi war and blockade puts millions of lives at risk in Yemen

Niles Niemuth 

The heads of the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Food Program (WFP) released a joint statement Thursday demanding the immediate lifting of the Saudi blockade of Yemen, warning that it is putting millions of lives at risk in the poorest country in the Arab world.

On November 6, Saudi Arabia dramatically escalated its nearly three-year war against Yemen by implementing the total blockade of all seaports, airspace and land crossings into the country. The move came in supposed response to the firing of a single missile from Yemen which was shot down near Riyadh’s international airport.

The blockade is war crime being carried out in direct violation of Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions, adopted in the aftermath of World War II, which bars the collective punishment of civilians. According to a confidential brief obtained by the Intercept, UN experts believe that Saudi Arabia is deliberately blocking the delivery of aid without any legal justification.

Amid calls to lift the blockade, Saudi’s ambassador to the UN facetiously announced that ports and airports controlled by coalition backed forces would be reopened, meaning that an overwhelming majority of the country remains under blockade. Hodeida, the port through which 80 percent of humanitarian aid enters the country, is still controlled by the Houthis and therefore remains blocked from receiving shipments of any kind.

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake and WFP Executive Director David Beasley warned that “untold thousands” will die without access to crucial life-saving medicines, vaccines and food supplies. Even before the crushing blockade was put in place, Yemen was suffering from the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

“The clock is ticking and stocks of medical, food and other humanitarian supplies are already running low,” they warned. “The cost of this blockade is being measured in the number of lives that are lost.”

Their statement reviewed the catastrophe which has resulted from the daily war crimes being carried out by Saudi Arabia with the full backing of the US government. These crimes have been passed over in almost complete silence by the Western press.

Nearly the entire population of Yemen, 20 million out of 28 million people, are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance, 11 million of those in need are children, and nearly 15 million are without any access to basic health care.

Approximately 17 million people do not know where their next meal will come from, and 7 million are totally dependent on food aid to avoid starvation. Some 400,000 children are on the verge of death from starvation, suffering from acute malnutrition. Without treatment 150,000 malnourished children will die in the coming months.

The international aid organization Save the Children reported this week that 50,000 Yemeni children have already died from extreme hunger or disease this year, with more than 130 dying every single day.

The Saudi monarchy, leading a coalition of other Sunni Persian Gulf monarchies with the support of the United States, has been waging a brutal war against Yemen for nearly three years in an effort to push back Houthi rebels and allied forces who seized control of the capital city, Sanaa, in early 2015.

Saudi coalition fighter jets have carried out an unrelenting campaign of bombing, destroying hospitals, schools, marketplaces, factories, ports and residential neighborhoods as well as crucial electrical and water infrastructure. This campaign has been facilitated by refueling flights, targeting information and other logistical support provided by the United States military, first under Obama and now Trump.

So far, the Saudi onslaught has directly killed more than 12,000, over half of them civilians. Approximately 3 million have been displaced.

The destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure and the collapse of its health system has led to the worst cholera outbreak in modern history, with nearly 1 million suspected cases since late last year. More than 2,000 people have died from the waterborne disease, which is easily treatable with access to mediation and clean water.

While the number of newly reported cases of cholera has recently been waning, the Red Cross warned Friday that fuel shortages caused by the blockade have put nearly 1 million people in the cities of Hodeida, Saada and Taiz at risk of contracting the disease

An outbreak of diphtheria, a bacterial infection that is easily preventable with proper vaccination, has already claimed 14 lives. While the disease has been almost entirely eradicated worldwide, it now threatens the lives of 1 million children in Yemen as vaccine shipments have been blocked from entering the country.

The Saudi monarchy claims that the Houthis are being funded and armed by Iran, a charge with Tehran has repeatedly denied. Nonetheless, the war is seen by the Saudis and their backers in Washington as a crucial effort to block the emergence of Iran as challenge to Saudi and American dominance over the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Middle East.

Of particular importance to Washington is the fact that Yemen borders the Bab al Mandab strait, a geopolitical choke point through which much of the world’s oil shipments must flow.

On Monday, the US House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution 366-30 acknowledging the already well-known fact that the US is facilitating the war in Yemen without any congressional authorization. The House resolution will do nothing to ease the suffering of millions of Yemeni men, women and children.

Introduced by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, the resolution grimly pledged support for Saudi efforts to “improve their targeting capabilities” and specifically condemned Iran. The resolution also reaffirmed the United States’ right to patrol the Bab el Mandab strait and wage war in Yemen under the threadbare guise of the war on terror against Al Qaeda and ISIS.

While a handful of Democratic representatives and senators, including Khanna and Senator Chris Murphy, have postured as critics of the Trump administration’s support for the Saudi slaughter in Yemen, the Democrats have no fundamental opposition to the war, supporting every war initiated or expanded by former President Obama, including in Yemen.

France intensifies intervention in West Africa with launch of Sahel G5 force

Kumaran Ira 

The Sahel, which has been devastated by the 2011 NATO war in Libya and the resulting French war in Mali starting in 2013, is facing a new military escalation as France steps up its deployments in the strategic, resource-rich region in its former colonial empire.

The new regional force set up by Paris, the Sahel G5—comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad—carried out its first operation, code-named Haw Bi (“Black Cow”) from October 27 to November 11 in the border region between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The G5 force operated in coordination with French troops and the MINUSMA, the 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Mali. It carried out patrols aimed at ethnic Tuareg or Islamist fighters hostile to Paris and the Malian central government in Bamako.

“This operation has the character of a try-out,” said the G5 force’s commander, Malian General Didier Dacko. According to French army sources, the “territorial control” operation was carried out by 350 soldiers from Burkina Faso, 200 from Niger and 200 from Mali.

Since his election in May, French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed to intensify the war launched by his predecessor, François Hollande, in France’s former colonial empire, amid growing geostrategic tensions between Europe, the United States, and China. On July 2, Macron attended a summit of the G5 states in Bamako. The summit formally inaugurated the new force, which officially includes around 5,000 troops in total furnished by the countries of the alliance.

Macron confirmed that France will not leave Africa and or redeploy its 4,000 troops fighting in Operation Barkhane (the war in Mali), despite the launching of the G5 force. He said France would remain engaged in Mali “as long as it takes” to carry out a struggle against terrorism. He gave no indication of when, or even if, Paris might withdraw its forces.

“I came to Bamako today and went to Gao last month to show you that France will remain engaged as long as it takes,” Macron said in a speech before the French community in Bamako. “Thanks to our engagement, we aim in the long term to accompany and support the national and regional forces,” he added.

Paris faces a significant difficulty, in that it confronts a budgetary crisis. The G5 estimates that its operating costs will run to €423 million in the first year. Macron has announced material and logistical aid from France worth €8 million by the end of the year; the European Union (EU) has promised €50 million, and each G5 member country has committed to contributing €10 million. France is therefore forced to ask for financing from its imperialist allies, principally Germany and the United States.

In the final analysis, the imperialist capitals plan to put the costs of this neo-colonial escalation on the backs of the workers—which Macron made clear by calling for multi-billion defense spending increases while eliminating the special tax on large fortunes. Austerity and slashing cuts to social spending aim to boost financing for wars like the G5 operation in Africa. At the same time, Macron is demanding that the G5 countries, which were already among the poorest in the world even before being devastated by the wars during this decade, to provide large quantities of cannon fodder.

The claim that these sacrifices in blood and treasures are necessary in a struggle against terrorism is a shameless political lie.

The crisis in the Sahel flows from the bloody war for regime change that NATO waged against Libya in 2011, relying directly on Islamist militias as its ground troops. After the fall of the Libyan regime, Tuareg forces that had fought inside the Libyan army returned to northern Mali and backed local Tuareg fighters, including the National Movement for Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) against the Malian army. This provoked a major crisis in Bamako, where a coup toppled President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012.

Initially, Paris tried to remove the military junta of Captain Amadou Sanogo, which it forced to hand over power to an interim government. But finally Paris decided to back the Sanogo junta when it launched its own war in Mali in January 2013—which it nonetheless presented as a war to protect democracy from Islamism.

Since 2013, the French war in Mali has aimed neither to fight terrorism nor to create democracy in Mali. Rather, amid increasingly sharp international rivalries, Paris is preparing major new wars in Africa to protect its imperialist interests, including its control of the region’s vast uranium mines that fuel France’s nuclear plants.

These successive wars have devastated the G5 countries. According to the UN, 5 million people have fled their homes and 24 million people need humanitarian assistance in the region. Even Malian officials kept in power by French troops now feel compelled to confess that the war in Libya had horrific consequences for the region. Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop called the Libyan war a “strategic error” whose fall-out was not “well handled.”

As US troops also intervene in Niger and across the Sahel, there are growing differences between the imperialist powers and also with China, whose political influence in Africa is growing in line with its commercial weight. Washington—which is opposed to French demands that African operations function under the aegis of the UN and is reticent to fund French operations—has expressed serious reservations over the G5 force.

Washington has refused to finance the G5 through the UN, particularly under conditions where the Trump administration is trying to slash US payments to the UN, and has announced that it will provide funding directly to the G5 member states. It reportedly plans to provide aid worth €51 million to the five countries and has declared that this money would not go to the UN.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley bluntly criticized the French plans. “They can’t show us a goal, they can’t show us how they’re going to proceed,” Haley told CNN. “If they go back and they show us a strategy, and if it’s something that General [James] Mattis and General [Joseph] Dunford feel like is moving in the right direction, then yes. We will. But right now they’re not showing that, and so it doesn’t make sense for us.”

Amid these Franco-American tensions, the Chinese regime is providing support, on paper at least, to the new force set up by French imperialism. Chinese permanent vice-representative to the UN Wu Haitao declared that it “would be necessary to support this alliance, while taking into account the leading role of the regional powers and the sovereignty of countries in the alliance.” Beijing has also set up its own aid fund targeting the Sahel countries.

Campaign to force out Mugabe escalates in Zimbabwe

Chris Marsden

Zimbabwe’s war veterans’ association is staging a march today through the capital, Harare, demanding the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. Tens of thousands are expected to take part after all ten of the country’s provincial Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) branches passed motions of no confidence in Mugabe.

Mugabe refused to step down yesterday and was briefly released from house arrest to make his first public appearance since the army staged a palace coup early Wednesday.

His appearance in the role of chancellor of the Open University at a graduation ceremony in Harare was designed to lend an appearance of normalcy to an enforced transition of power to the faction of the ruling ZANU-PF led by its former vice president, Emmanuel Mnangagwa. The president’s wife, Grace Mugabe, was not present at the ceremony.

Mugabe, now 93, sacked Mnangagwa last week to pave the way for Grace Mugabe, 52, to assume power. She heads the G40 faction of younger bourgeois layers in the ruling elite. The army, under the leadership of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, General Constantino Chiwenga, moved to back Mnangagwa and call a halt to efforts by Mugabe to sideline or remove from office members of the old guard tied to the military.

The military issued statements via Zimbabwe state media stressing their respect for Mugabe and citing progress in talks “with the Commander-in-Chief President Robert Mugabe on the way forward.” But the talks are being held at gunpoint and a senior member of ZANU-PF warned, “If he becomes stubborn, we will arrange for him to be fired on Sunday… When that is done, it’s impeachment on Tuesday.”

The chairman of the war veterans’ association, Chris Mutsvangwa, a key ally of Mnangagwa, has been at the forefront of demands for Mugabe to go, and go quickly. Mutsvangwa boasted that “the war veterans of Zimbabwe… have the full support of the war veterans of South Africa, the government of South Africa… we are giving a very strong warning to Mugabe and his wife, he is done, finished. He won’t be allowed to continue… He has to make a decision today to leave… If he doesn’t leave, we will settle the scores tomorrow."

He told the media that three cabinet ministers under Mugabe—Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo, Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and Finance Minister Ignatious Chombo—“are in jail” along with others. Moyo was scheduled to attend the graduation ceremony with Mugabe, but did not appear.

Grace Mugabe’s actual whereabouts are disputed.

According to various reports, Chombo was detained at the King George VI military barracks after a fire-fight that left several bodyguards dead, while Moyo is on the run. The minister of foreign affairs, Walter Mzembi, has not returned from a trip to neighbouring Zambia. Masvingo Provincial Affairs Minister, Paul Chimedza, was arrested on Thursday at an army roadblock. Unconfirmed reports say that the Women’s League secretary for administration, Letina Undengem, is also detained.

Central Intelligence Organisation Director Albert Miles Nguluvhe was released on Thursday, with a senior military official stating that he was not a member of the G40 faction and that he had been arrested to “alienate him” from the president.

ZANU-PF National Youth League Secretary Kudzanai Chipanga is in military custody. He made a televised apology to military chief Chiwenga for criticising his earlier threats to intervene to stop purges within the party leadership. “We are still young people. We are still growing up and learning from our mistakes,” he said.

The army maintains a blockade around key buildings, including the presidential palace—site of current negotiations between Mugabe and Chiwenga, brokered by South African Minister of Defence Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and State Security Minister Bongani Bongo. Mnangagwa fled to South Africa after being removed from his post by Mugabe.

Lending its backing to the military alongside the ANC government of Jacob Zuma is China. Beijing said Thursday that its “friendly policy” toward Zimbabwe would not change. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing in Beijing: “We will continue to develop friendly cooperation with Zimbabwe on an equal, mutually beneficial win-win cooperation principle.”

Several news sources, including CNN and Britain’s Guardian, expressed concern that China was behind the coup and would be its main beneficiary. Noting the visit to Beijing last Friday by Chiwenga, Simon Tisdall listed China’s “extensive investments in the mining, agriculture, energy and construction sectors,” claiming that the “pre-independence guerrilla force led to victory by Robert Mugabe… was financed and armed by the Chinese in the 1970s. Close ties have continued to the present day.”

The general concern is that China has established an economic foothold in Zimbabwe as a result of Western sanctions from 2002 onwards. President Xi Jinping’s government seems to have been persuaded that Mugabe should be removed as a result of the combined impact of measures taken last year—the “indiginisation laws”—directed against overseas investors, including in diamond mining, and by Zimbabwe’s worsening economic crisis, with inflation at 50 percent a month and a government deficit of $1.82 billion.

Chiwenga and Mnangagwa have enjoyed friendly relations with China stretching back decades. Mnangagwa was trained in Beijing and Nanjing in the 1960s. Tisdall cites an interview Mnangagwa gave to the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV two years ago in which he stressed, to clear effect, “We must know that investment can only go where it gets a return, so we must make sure we create an environment where investors are happy to put their money.”

It is this geopolitical threat, rather than hypocritical concerns regarding Mnangagwa’s record of brutality against ZANU-PF’s opponents, or a supposed desire for a “democratic transformation,” that accounts for the cautious reaction of the United States, Britain and other Western powers to the coup.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told parliament, “Nobody wants simply to see the transition from one unelected tyrant to a next. No one wants to see that. We want to see proper, free and fair elections.”

Members of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Africa subcommittee stated, “While a change in leadership is long overdue, we are concerned about the military’s actions. We urge the leaders of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces to ensure the protection of all citizens and a transparent return to civilian control.”

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto told Reuters, “It’s a transition to a new era for Zimbabwe, that’s really what we’re hoping for.”

The German government concurred, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Rainer Breul calling on all parties to work together to reach a peaceful solution. Mindful of how sanctions had benefited China, Stefan Liebich of the opposition Left Party advised against imposing any fresh penalties. According to Deutsche Welle, he suggested that Germany “assert its influence as a creditor, making future loans to Zimbabwe conditional on a peaceful change of power.”

What Washington, London, et al. want from any new regime is the incorporation of forces loyal to themselves and not to Beijing.

J. Peter Pham, director of the influential Atlantic Council think tank’s Africa Centre, wrote on the council’s website: “Indications are that [Mnangagwa] may seek to form some sort of ‘unity government,’ possibly with the participation of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) faction loyal to [Morgan] Tsvangirai, with whom he reportedly developed a good relationship in recent years… It will behoove us to wait and see what his first steps are and reserve judgment.”

Tsvangirai was elected secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) in 1998 and founded the MDC in 2000 ostensibly to challenge Mugabe for the presidency. But behind his pose as a workers’ leader stood industrialists, large landowners and the imperialist powers, for whom the MDC still speaks.

The US tax bill: A massive handout to the financial elite

Andre Damon

On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a sweeping bill that will slash taxes on the wealthy and hike taxes on millions of working class households, in a move that will further fuel social inequality in the world’s most unequal developed country.

Since the 1960s, the slashing of top income and corporate tax rates has been a major driving force in the phenomenal growth of social inequality in the United States. Now, under the fascistic billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, this process is being kicked into overdrive.

The centerpiece of the bill is the reduction of corporate tax rates by almost half, from 35 to 20 percent, at an estimated public cost of $1.5 trillion, making US corporate taxes the lowest since 1939. This will dramatically accelerate the fall in effective corporate taxes that has taken place since the 1950s, when the effective tax rate was 50 percent, to today, when it is less than 20 percent.

Next, the financial elite is salivating over the abolition of the estate tax, which the bill mandates by 2025, providing a massive windfall to the top 0.2 percent of households.

According to a report published last month by UBS, more than half of all billionaire wealth in the US is controlled by individuals older than 70, and the US financial elite has been waiting for the abolition of the estate tax to transfer its wealth to the next generation. The abolition of the estate tax would be a major step toward making the United States a hereditary oligarchy, in which wealth is passed down dynastically without any diminution.

According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, under the Senate version of the bill, by 2027 every family earning below $75,000 per year will see a tax hike, and every family making above $100,000 per year will see a tax cut.

The bill includes provisions that are little more than cruel and insulting. Alongside a tax break for the ownership and maintenance of private jets, it mandates the elimination of tax deductions for graduate student stipends and tuition reimbursement. The Harvard Crimson wrote that the result would be a 400 percent tax increase on graduate students, who are often massively underpaid.

Finally, by putting a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget, the tax plan will accelerate demands for slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, together with other forms of social spending, to plug the gap.

While Democratic politicians mouthed criticisms of the Republican-sponsored bill, its most important measure, the corporate tax cut, has been a major element in the Democratic playbook. The Obama administration’s 2016 budget, for example, called for lowering the corporate tax rate to between 28 and 25 percent.

The New York Times, a leading mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, wrote in an editorial this week, “The Right Way to Cut Corporate Taxes,” that “Republicans are right about the corporate tax system being broken.” The newspaper added, “If Republicans worked with Democrats… they could reach a compromise to lower the top corporate tax rate to between 25 percent and 28 percent.”

On Thursday, the Times and leading Democratic politicians were far more concerned with whipping up a series of sex scandals, centered around Republican Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore and Democratic Senator Al Franken.

As expected, all three US stock indexes soared on Thursday following passage of the bill by the House of Representatives. Since the election of Donald Trump, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shot up by 17 percent, and it has more than tripled in value since the 2008 financial crash.

In an interview last month, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear that a major driving force in the run-up in prices has been the expectation that the Trump administration is going to slash taxes on corporations and the super-rich.

“There is no question that the rally in the stock market has baked into it reasonably high expectations of us getting tax cuts and tax reform done,” said Mnuchin. “To the extent that we get the tax deal done, the stock market will go up higher.” He also made clear that Wall Street would not accept any slowdown in the upward redistribution of wealth. “There’s no question in my mind that if we don’t get it done, you’re going to see a reversal of a significant amount of the gains,” he said.

The comments by Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs banker worth nearly half a billion dollars, are just one expression of the stranglehold of the financial elite over political, social and economic life in the United States. The first and last priority of American society is the continuous enrichment of this financial oligarchy.

The United States is the most socially unequal developed country in the world. Just three men— Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—have between them more wealth than the bottom half of the American population. The world’s billionaires have had their wealth shoot up by $1 trillion over the past year, driven by central bank money creation, tax cuts and incentives, and the continuous assault on the social position of the working class.

The domination of the financial elite, in the United States and around the world, over human civilization is the root cause of every serious problem of modern society, from poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction, to war. The ending of these evils requires the radical transformation and reorganization of society in the interest of social needs, not private profit.

Bubonic plague ravages Madagascar

Eddie Haywood

Since August 1, 171 people have died in Madagascar after becoming infected with a virulent strain of bubonic plague. As of November 10, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 2,119 confirmed cases of people infected in Madagascar. While the rate of infection has declined, the WHO is expecting more cases going into early next year.

Professor Jimmy Whitworth, an international public health scientist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, stated, “This outbreak is the worst for 50 years or more."

The current manifestation of the strain has been particularly resistant to antibiotic treatment. The plague has swept into the capital city Antananarivo, surprising medical personnel, as traditionally the strain usually does not develop in heavily populated areas.

The so-called Black Plague, a virulent infection mainly spread by bacteria in mammals and fleas, can be treated with a regimen of antibiotics, if the disease is discovered early. The bubonic strain of the plague, the so-called “Black Death”, threatened human existence and decimated entire civilizations across Medieval Europe and Eurasia, claiming an estimated 75-200 million lives in the 14th century.

There are three forms of the plague; bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. The most common form of the disease is bubonic, the form currently in Madagascar. Septicemic is the most deadly, with a 100 percent fatality rate. The pneumonic form of the disease materializes when the bubonic form is left untreated, and the disease moves to the victim’s lungs, making it the most contagious. People infected by the plague generally experience headaches, dizziness, fever and flu-like symptoms.

The WHO reports that 62 per cent of all reported cases of the current outbreak in Madagascar are pneumonic plague, the form most contagious, as persons who become infected will cough and sneeze, making the disease airborne. According to figures published by WHO, the outbreak in Madagascar has a fatality rate of 8 per cent.

In the period of August 1 to November 10, 1,618 cases and 72 deaths in the country have been clinically classified as pneumonic plague; 324 cases classified as bubonic plague; and one case as septicemic plague. Also during the same period, 16 (out of a total 22) regions in Madagascar have reported plague cases, with the Analamanga region, which includes the capital city, Antananarivo, being the most affected, with 72 per cent of all cases.

The outbreak in Madagascar has a high potential to erupt into a full-scale pandemic, as the country is ill-equipped to deal with such virulent outbreaks, due to a lack of vital health care services and poor infrastructure. The WHO has made a mere $4.9 million available to deal with the catastrophic epidemic.

Professor Michael Bayliss of the Institute of Infection and Global Health at Liverpool University, suggested that the plague’s surprising spread was due to the heavy rains and flooding brought about by El Niño.

Bayliss told the UK Express, “We have suspicions--and it is no more than a suspicion--that it could be related to the El Niño we had a year ago.”

The WHO weighed in, suggesting the popular Malagasy religious practice of “Famadihana,” a ceremony which prescribes the digging up of graves of ancestors to rewrap the corpses and dance around the tomb with them before reburying them, contributed to the spread of the plague.

Madagascar’s health minister, Willy Randriamarotia, told reporters, “If a person dies of pneumonic plague and is then interred in a tomb that is subsequently opened for a Famadihana, the bacteria can still be transmitted and contaminate whoever handles the body.”

While cultural practices and environmental factors, such as those brought about by climate change, may exacerbate the effects of plague and other pandemics, it is the configuration of impoverished conditions of life for the Malagasy masses, and the lack of access to decent health care and facilities, which assumes the largest role in contributing to the severity of the plague raging through Madagascar.

Of the 24 million people who make up the Malagasy population, the majority live in abject poverty. According to the most recent figures published in 2012 by UNICEF, 81 percent of the population lives on $1.25 per day or less. While the country’s GDP is nearly $10 billion annually, less than 3 percent is allocated towards health care. The infant mortality rate is roughly 42 per 1,000 live births, and the neonatal mortality rate is 22. Only 48.1 per cent of the population has access to sanitary water facilities.

Hospitals and clinics, where they exist in the country, suffer an acute lack of equipment and properly trained staff necessary to deliver proper health care. Many rural residents are many miles from a doctor or clinic. Due to a starvation of funding made available for quality, adequate medical care, the ability to treat and contain pandemics is severely impacted.

In the midst of such glaring poverty, a mere ten people in the country sit atop an obscene pile of wealth. The ten own a variety of business concerns, including banking and manufacturing, which generate annual revenue of more than $3 billion. In contrast, less than $300 million is allocated for health care in a nation of 24 million, which equates to a pitiful $12.50 per person annually.

That such pandemics as bubonic plague run rampant in the modern era stands as an indictment of not only a privatized-for-profit medical system, but the entire existing setup in which the capitalist politicians in Antananarivo oversee and facilitate the criminal enrichment of a tiny layer of wealthy parasites at the top of Malagasy society, at the expense of the impoverished Malagasy population.

Report notes dramatic increase in homelessness in Germany

Marianne Arens

“Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.” As beautiful as the Rilke poem about the approaching end of the year may sound—for the homeless, the onset of winter is the worst punishment. The Federal Working Group for Homelessness (BAG W) reported this week that the homeless now number almost 1 million in Germany, approximately 860,000.

The latest figures mean that in “rich” Germany, one in a hundred inhabitants is without a place to live. So much for the ubiquitous media commentary about how well things are going in Germany: “The Germans live well” (FAZ), “Germany is experiencing the strongest economic recovery in a long time” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), and the Frankfurter Rundschau: ”Is the German economy really too good?”

In reality, it is only going well for a narrow layer of the population. The bottom of society confronts a catastrophic social situation that has enormously explosive implications.

The number of homeless is increasing from month to month. Last year it literally exploded. Although there are no definitive statistics, in December 2016, the federal government put the number at 335,000. The BAG W, which calculates its figures from reports produced by support services and social institutions, assumes that homeless population has increased two and a half times since 2014.

Not all homeless people sleep permanently outdoors, beneath a bridge or underpass. Most find refuge in shelters, sleep in public facilities such as a women’s shelter or homeless shelter, or temporarily stay with friends. But the number of those who are living permanently or predominantly on the street has increased massively and is estimated to be more than 50,000 people today.

Most homeless are adult men, but the number of women is growing and the number of children and adolescents on the street is steadily increasing. According to the survey, about 30 percent of those affected are living together with partners and/or children. The percentage of children and adolescents among the homeless is estimated at 8 percent, that of women at 27 percent, and 20 percent young people under the age of 25. The proportion of women among the latter is considerably larger than the total.

Many newspaper reports point out that about half of those affected today are homeless refugees. That may be the case, but, as the authors of the study emphasise, it has little to do with the causes of the misery. Although immigration intensifies the effect, it is by no means the “sole cause of the new housing shortage”, as Thomas Specht, managing director of BAG W, emphasised. The “main causes of housing shortage and homelessness lie in a housing policy in Germany that has failed for decades, in conjunction with an insufficient fight against poverty,” the BAG W press release states.

The widespread lack of affordable housing is the result of systematic deregulation and privatisation over the last 25 years by the politicians responsible at federal, state and local level.

Since 1990, the stock of social housing in Germany has shrunk by almost two thirds, and it continues to shrink. Two parallel processes are responsible for this. The municipal and state housing stock is being systematically sold off and handed over to private interests. And at the same time, the commitment to provide social housing is diminishing, as the authorities cancel any further funding.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, the sale of local authority and cooperative housing stock began on a large scale towards the end of the 1990s. The city of Dresden was one of the first to sell its entire housing stock to pay off its debts. This example was followed by Berlin and many other cities. Four years ago, Bavaria sold 33,000 social housing units, 8,000 of them in Munich.

Those responsible were politicians of all stripes, from the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU to the Free Democratic FDP to the Social Democratic SPD, the Greens and the Left Party. In Berlin, the SPD-Left Party city government sold over 200,000 apartments to financial sharks such as Cerberus Capital Management. While speculation in land was being powerfully fuelled, Social Affairs Senator (state minister) Harald Wolf (Left Party) simultaneously ended subsidies for social housing. Today, Berlin lacks 150,000 apartments for low-income earners.

Recently in Frankfurt am Main, the desperate situation of thousands of students at the beginning of the semester has once again shed light on the housing shortage, which has been rife for a long time. There are officially only 2,900 dorm rooms for over 60,000 students. Students are thus put in competition for affordable housing with those on low incomes, or they sleep in tents, in the car, or far away in the surrounding area.

In Frankfurt, a massive process of displacement from affordable housing has been taking place for years, driven by gentrification and luxury refurbishment on the one hand, and rising rents and homelessness on the other. Again, responsibility lies with the SPD Mayor Peter Feldmann and the former planning department head Olaf Cunitz (Green Party), and his successor Mike Josef (SPD).

Nationwide, speculation in housing construction is on the rise. Freehold apartments and new housing estates are listed on the stock exchange for speculative purposes. So-called premium real estate in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich or even Heidelberg and Potsdam is highly regarded as capital investment. Many empty apartments are intended solely for speculation and are completely unavailable as living space.

The lack of affordable housing is compounded by growing poverty. Here, too, the SPD and Greens have set the course. It is precisely the conditions that were created with the Hartz IV laws and Agenda 2010 policies of welfare and labour “reforms” that make the housing situation even more difficult for those affected.

Job centres can sanction unemployed under-25s by withdrawing their accommodation and heating allowance. This leads to many young jobless not being accepted as tenants for an apartment, because landlords fear the rent will not be paid if a young person is sanctioned by the authorities. As a result, many young people without permanent work are unable to find housing from the outset.

The ALG II benefit regulations can also cause problems for older welfare recipients. Often, the job centre will not cover the full cost of housing. Local governments impose certain upper limits for housing costs, forcing people to give up their long-familiar home. But many will not easily find a new apartment, which would be sufficiently small and cheap. The consequences can be high levels of debt, eviction and homelessness.

The situation of the homeless is also becoming increasingly difficult as municipal social services themselves suffer cutbacks due to austerity measures and are increasingly reaching their limits. For example, in Munich, the head of a women’s refuge told regional broadcaster BR, “Unfortunately, it is increasingly the case that we have to send women away. This is completely new and terrible, and we are suffering a lot from it. That just shouldn’t be happening in Munich!”

The level of social polarisation is especially striking in Munich. Homelessness no longer affects just down-and-out alcoholic men. It is often ordinary people on middle-incomes who are threatened and affected. Living in Munich has become very expensive, and once you land on the street, it is increasingly difficult to get back up.

A report from February 2017 by broadcaster ZDF makes clear that by no means all homeless people are perceived as such. Many are not counted in the numbers of homeless, since they do everything humanly possible to not attract public attention. Many homeless people go to work every day, take a shower at public facilities and have their hair cut regularly. They have put all their belongings into storage and their mail is collected from a post office box or goes to the address of acquaintances.

The ZDF report highlighted the situation of people who are homeless despite having work, including a dentist from Slovenia and a 61-year-old nurse.

The programme accompanied a former retail salesman. His “home” is now under a bridge, even though he still pursues a regular job de-cluttering. His income is insufficient to rent a flat in Munich; it is just enough for a monthly public transport ticket. He takes a shower every day and shaves regularly. “You don’t see it. Nobody has spoken to me yet.” But in the evenings, when he rolls out his bedding under the bridge, he often thinks, “You used to have a flat, a car, a roof over your head. ... During the day, I block that out quite well.”

By the end of 2018, according to the BAG W report, the number of homeless people is expected to have increased by another 350,000 to about 1.2 million people.

Patel resignation exposes UK’s covert support for Israel and Islamist proxies

Jean Shaoul 

The sordid tale of the Department for International Development (DFID) Secretary Priti Patel’s fall from grace and resignation highlights the methods and true content of Britain’s “aid” policy.

Forged by lobbyists and fixers behind the backs of the British public, it contrasts sharply with both the official line on aid and the propaganda of the “war on terror.”

Patel, an ambitious politician tipped as a future prime minister and a vehement advocate of Brexit, is a longstanding supporter of Israel and a former vice-chairperson of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). She was forced to resign on November 8. Eight days earlier, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale reported that she had held 12 meetings with top Israeli officials—including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan—while supposedly on a 12-day “family holiday” to Israel in August.

The list of engagements, at least one of which was arranged by Israel’s ambassador to London, reads like the official state visit of a top diplomat. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that she was on a mission that could not be publicly acknowledged. But Patel had allegedly failed to inform Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson or Britain’s ambassador to Israel of her meetings.

According to Ha’aretz, she also visited the Golan Heights and the Israeli army’s field hospital, which it uses to treat Al Qaeda linked forces fighting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, enabling them to return to the battlefield. As Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan in 1981 is not internationally recognised, she broke the rule that no British politician visits the Golan (or the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

On November 7, the BBC revealed that on her return, Patel had lobbied to divert part of the UK’s international aid budget to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations in the Golan, and a joint project with Israel in Africa. It is widely reported that Israel has been aiding the Al Nusra Front and other Al Qaeda linked fighters, treating wounded fighters in Israeli hospitals, and providing them with training and reconnaissance information for their targets. Israel has worked closely with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, the CIA and their proxies in their bid to topple the Assad regime.

Patel thus sought to use her department’s aid budget for IDF field hospitals to support Islamist fundamentalist forces prepared to use atrocities to achieve their objectives. It was nothing but an attempt to launder money to the Islamists via Israel.

This should come as no surprise. Patel famously argued that Britain’s aid budget should be cut unless it works in the national interest, and opposes aid to the Palestinians. Her department provides most of Britain’s $85 million a year aid to the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, as well as grants to human rights organisations that criticise Israel, including Amnesty International.

It emerged that her visits were arranged by Stuart Polak, who for 25 years was president of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and was rewarded with a baronetcy and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service by former Prime Minister David Cameron. Lord Polak heads the consultancy firm TWC Associates, whose clients include Israeli arms corporations. He attended several meetings in Israel alongside Patel.

Patel’s unauthorised meetings were generally portrayed in the media as the behaviour of an arrogant politician who has scant regard for the norms of ministerial conduct. She had failed to inform either Number 10 or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) before or after her visits, which were not attended by civil servants. Nor were they minuted, so no one knows what she discussed with Netanyahu and other politicians.

However, it is now clear that the Israeli politicians and diplomats she met informed the FCO of their discussions almost immediately after they took place. Patel’s meeting with Netanyahu was described as “successful,” while Lapid and Erdan tweeted photos of their meetings with Patel. This means there is every reason to question whether the government was secretly informed beforehand, and that Patel had in fact acted with May’s authorisation.

In any event, Patel’s supposed disregard for diplomatic protocols was evidently not a problem for the FCO or Number 10, nor presumably was the content of her discussions. Rather the government suppressed information about Patel’s meetings for at least two months, until the BBC brought it to public attention.

According to the Jewish Chronicle, Patel maintains that she discussed her proposals to use some of the aid budget for the IDF field hospitals with May in September, prior to the UN General Assembly. May did not dispute the validity of the plan, but said it would need to be agreed with the FCO, which later rejected it.

Speaking in the House of Commons last week, Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt defended Patel’s “perfectly legitimate” right to raise the matter, adding that it was within the context of providing medical help for Syrian refugees who could not get assistance in their own country. He said the idea had been rejected because ministers did not think it would be “appropriate.” May’s spokesman was then forced to clarify that “The UK does not provide any financial support to the Israeli army.”

It later emerged that Patel had two further undisclosed meetings with Israel’s public security minister Gilad Erdan in parliament on September 7 and foreign ministry official Yuval Rotem in New York on September 18. Again, these were held without government officials being present. Although the Department for International Development had declined the proposed meeting with Erdan, Patel’s constituency office later arranged it. It was the revelation of these meetings that finally forced May to demand Patel’s resignation.

Erdan heads Israel’s taskforce that monitors Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations in Israel, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement and other groups abroad that Tel Aviv accuses of seeking to delegitimise Israel.

This is not the first time that Israel has sought to influence ministers. Last January, Al Jazeera filmed Israeli officer Shai Masot, attached to the embassy in London, proposing to “take down”—by manufacturing a scandal—Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister, and Crispin Blunt, the Conservative chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, because they were “strongly pro-Arab rather than pro-Israel”.

Blunt had ordered an inquiry into British policy in the Middle East that would also examine “how UK policy is influenced by other states and interests.” His successor, Tom Tugendhat, closed down the investigation.

According to the Jewish Chronicle and Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson, Patel had spoke about these two further meetings to May, who asked Patel not to include them in her list, as it would embarrass the FCO.

May fired Patel because her exposure also revealed Britain’s craven support for Israel and Islamist terrorists. The British prime minister’s attitude to Israel’s efforts to directly influence British political life at the highest level of government could not stand in sharper contrast to her pose of outrage over unsubstantiated accusations of Russia’s attempts to subvert Britain’s elections and plant fake stories in the media.

Just five days after quietly shunting Patel from cabinet, May delivered a speech at Mansion House accusing Russia of seeking to “weaponise information” so as to “sow discord in the West and undermine our institutions.”

Puerto Rico proclaims “new government” to intensify austerity

Andrea Lobo

On Tuesday morning, Puerto Rican authorities held a public hearing advancing the “New Government of Puerto Rico Act.” The bill itself and the hearing, which followed the announcement that Hurricane Maria fully destroyed 70,000 households when it devastated the US territory on September 20, both constitute warnings that a brutal offensive against Puerto Rican workers and youth is being prepared.

Referring to the “historically excessive expenditures” of the US territory and the estimation of $100 billion in costs from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the bill states, “we’ve been forced to re-think and re-design the Government of Puerto Rico.” Among other drastic measures, it calls for “authorizing the Governor to reorganize, externalize, consolidate and suppress agencies, programs, and services of the Executive branch.”

There is little doubt that such dictatorial powers are aimed at imposing the austerity diktats of the financial oversight and management board responsible for ensuring the payments to the bondholders of the island’s $74 billion debt. Local officials acknowledge that, in order to receive any of the $94.4 billion they requested from Washington on Monday in relief aid, the authority of the financial board will have to remain unquestioned.

Puerto Rico’s resident commissioner to the US Congress, Jennifer González Colón, also announced Monday that she introduced a bill to reform the Stafford Act, which currently limits disaster relief aid to the restoration of infrastructure to its previous state, which in the case of Puerto Rico was wholly inadequate.

During the public hearing on the “New Government,” held jointly with members of the colonial upper and lower legislative chambers, public officials took turns in seeking to legitimize the exploitation of the ongoing humanitarian crisis on the island and chaos in the relief efforts to aggressively overhaul public institutions.

The intensity of the measures being prepared is underscored by the insistence that this restructuring will be aimed at fulfilling the existing 10-year fiscal plan, which aims to reduce the number of public agencies from 130 to 35 and to cut $2.75 billion in expenditures annually.

The secretary of labor, Carlos Saavedra, portrayed the crisis as a window of opportunity to further the government’s services to the financial and corporate oligarchies. However, as the bill’s reassurances to public workers also show, the main fear is that such an escalation in austerity and privatizations will provoke a mass upheaval and the independent mobilization of Puerto Rican workers.

“This is a historic opportunity to make a new government,” he said, a process that could lead to some “movements of personnel,” cynically adding that this specific legislation will lead to no layoffs.

Almost immediately, however, the director of the island’s fiscal agency AAFAF, Gerardo Portela, vowed that the main aim was “for the government to save money.” The secretary of Justice, Wanda Vázquez, simply declared that the 130 public agencies are “unnecessary.”

In the middle of this farce, and less than a week after a power blackout reduced the share of Puerto Rican households with electricity from 40 to 18 percent, another massive power outage took place. According to the public electric power company PREPA, a “technical failure” on the same transmission line as the previous week, which covers the San Juan metropolitan area, made the island-wide generation collapse from 50 to 22 percent. Several medical centers lost power.

Even though it took the Electric Power Authority a few hours to fix the failed lines, these incidents expose the unreliability of the infrastructure that is being restored and how urgent it is to modernize it.

Even prior to Tuesday’s blackout, 31 of the 78 municipalities still had no power at all, while most of the other municipalities only had partial supply. On Tuesday, the trade union associated with PREPA’s workforce, UTIER, said that the 50 percent figure is “suspicious,” given that the government has refused to make public recent data on average electricity use across the island.

UTIER also denounced the subcontracting of repair work on the Palo Seco facility to a Puerto Rican private firm, rather than sending available PREPA workers. Such maneuvers are signs that the government is already pushing away the public utility from the still halting reconstruction efforts, which have so far depended upon the public workers.

On the same day, the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Roselló, and the head of PREPA, Ricardo Ramos, both testified before the US House Natural Resources Committee, in a hearing which amounted to another step towards the privatization of the power utility.

At that hearing, US legislators sought to portray PREPA as an unfixable and corrupt mess, attacking it for signing a hugely over-priced $300 million contract with a tiny and inexperienced firm, Whitefish Energy. In response, Ramos insisted that the company offered the best terms, but recognized that PREPA has been failing for a long time and is susceptible to corruption. On the other hand, Rosselló declared bluntly that he is considering privatizing PREPA.

Since the Obama administration created the financial control board in 2016, assembling a group of right-wing political operatives charged with dictatorially imposing austerity and funneling money to Wall Street, it has rejected restructuring the debt and has openly called for the privatization of PREPA.

A naked illustration of this was given by one of the members of the board, Andrew Briggs. The Intercept reported Tuesday that, at a public event, Briggs listed the barriers preventing Puerto Rico’s recovery, including: “minimum wage laws, labor rules requiring just-cause termination, paid sick days for employees, paternity leave, and overtime pay.” In this sense, he said he hoped the hurricane would incite some changes, “like the alcoholic who hits rock bottom.”

The economic conditions on the island are the result of more than a century of colonial exploitation of the island’s working class as a cheap-labor platform and the more recent flight of investment capital seeking cheaper labor, particularly in Asia, which has resulted in a more than 10 percent economic contraction over the past decade.

Almost two months after Hurricane Maria, the majority of Puerto Ricans are still living a nightmare, with the US Army Corps of Engineers reporting that 80 percent of the 60,000 households requiring temporary roofing still have none, and that only 7 percent of the debris has been cleared.

Laura, a retired New York City sanitation woman who lives in the southeastern town of Arroyo, told the WSWS, “I just got my electricity back on last week. The Stryker company, which has a factory here with 1,000 workers that makes medical equipment, hired a private company to completely redo the electrical infrastructure to get their factory running again. The poles are made of concrete instead of wood, which is easily knocked down in a hurricane. The people in the towns around it hope they can get their power restored too.

“People are cleaning with contaminated water and there is a serious mosquito problem too. A lot of sewerage goes into the water and the rivers go into the sea. There’s a quarter-mile stain on the beaches. But it is even worse in the poorer areas in the countryside and up in the mountains. There are still areas that haven’t been reached where people need clean water. Some houses without roofs still haven’t gotten tarps to cover them from the elements.

“They are saying it could take nine months to get the electricity fully restored. If it were not for the municipal workers and other people here in Arroyo lifting up downed poles and wires, cleaning up and clearing away debris, we would still be in a disaster. Teachers have cleaned the schools, people with extra generators are bringing them to the elderly. But I’m afraid everything is going to be worse after the hurricane. We need help.”

In a blatant signal of Washington’s utter indifference to the suffering of the Puerto Rican people, the Pentagon is pulling out US military units sent to participate in relief efforts, including dozens of helicopters that had been flying relief missions. “We're out of the emergency phase, but people still need help,” Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan told CNN after announcing that his troops were being withdrawn.

This week a new set of schools resumed classes, reaching a total of 932 open schools, out of a total of 1,132. It’s expected that a large portion of those remaining will not open, and that one of the windows of opportunity that Puerto Rico’s officials will seek to exploit is for the wholesale privatization of the education system. Puerto Rico’s secretary of education, Julia Keleher, already tweeted last month that the transformation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina into an all-charter school district was a “point of reference.”

For its part, the state water utility AAA announced Tuesday that about 10 percent of the households it serves still have no running water. And, in terms of telecommunications, only 60 percent of the island has cellphone coverage.

The global processes behind the parliamentary crisis in Australia

James Cogan

Official politics in Australia is in turmoil. On October 27, the High Court decreed that five elected members of parliament, including the deputy prime minister, were ineligible to sit in parliament because they had dual citizenship in another country.

The court upheld the most literal interpretation of a clause in the country’s 1901 Constitution that proscribes anyone from standing for parliament who “is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power,” or is “entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power.”

The unanimous ruling of the seven judges asserted that members of parliament could not have “foreign loyalties or obligations.” The court endorsed the position that politicians must have “single-minded loyalty” to Australia.

Since the High Court decision, three more parliamentarians have resigned because their parents were born in Britain and they were therefore eligible for citizenship in the “foreign power” that colonised the continent and whose monarch is also the Queen of Australia.

In an agreement struck between the Liberal-National Coalition government and the opposition Labor Party, every member of parliament must now provide a disclosure statement by December 1. All members must swear that they have renounced any entitlement to citizenship elsewhere, stemming not only from where they or their parents were born, but also through their grandparents and even through marriage.

As many as 30 of the 226 members of the two houses of parliament may be forced out as a result. Even before the likely exodus leading up to December 1, the Coalition parties have already lost the threadbare one-seat majority in the lower house they need to govern. The Greens, along with others in the political establishment, have suggested calling for the governor-general—the unelected head of state—to use the dictatorial powers vested in his office to dissolve parliament and order a new election.

The situation has left most Australians, let alone international observers, utterly bewildered. The country is one of the most culturally diverse on the planet. Its population has grown from barely seven million in 1945 to near 25 million today as the direct result of large-scale migration. Under Australian law, three million people have the right to dual citizenship in Britain alone. Millions more can claim dual citizenship in New Zealand, Italy, Greece and dozens of other countries from where people have migrated in the decades since World War II.

The working class suburbs of major cities such as Sydney and Melbourne are a true “melting pot.” Workplaces, and especially the playgrounds of the country’s schools, are testimony to the fact that people of different ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds can live and interact in fraternity and harmony, providing they are not disoriented and divided by racism and nationalism.

Yet, in 2017, that is precisely what the High Court has intervened to do. Members of parliament are the initial target of a sinister witch-hunt. The real target, however, is the ethnically and culturally diverse working class. The court, the supreme judicial arm of the capitalist state, has effectively decreed that half the population is “un-Australian” until they prove they have “undivided loyalty” by renouncing their purported “allegiance” to the country in which they, their parents or their grandparents were born.

The significance of what is unfolding can be understood only when it is assessed in the context of world economic and political processes.

The vast globalisation of production that has taken place over the past 40 years has not led to a lessening of national antagonisms and conflicts. It has resulted in the complete opposite. The point has been reached where US imperialism—headed by the degenerate figure of Donald Trump—is openly threatening China, Germany, Japan and other economic rivals with trade war. As in the 1930s, the rupture of international economic relations is the prelude to military conflict.

The patriotic hysteria in Australia is just one expression of universal, global tendencies. In every country, the capitalist elite is stoking xenophobia against “foreigners” as they prepare, behind the backs of the masses, for war. Nationalism is the ideological means by which the ruling class tries to poison the minds of the working class majority into believing that it shares common interests with a tiny minority of ultra-rich corporate oligarchs.

Paul Kelly, the editor-at-large of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian, stressed the paramount importance of demanding unquestioned allegiance to the nation in a comment last week. He denounced any suggestion that the constitution be changed to allow dual citizens to stand for parliament as “a social engineering project aimed at weakening Australian sovereignty in the cause of internationalism.”

As the global struggle between the great powers develops, Australian foreign policy is based on the conclusion that war between its US ally and China over dominance of the Asia-Pacific region is inevitable. The dominant factions of the ruling class, and both the Coalition and Labor, support the complete and unconditional military alignment of Australia with Washington.

A report published this week by the state-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) demonises China as a threat to US and Australian strategic interests. It blandly observes that war with China would “bring into consideration the use of nuclear weapons.”

The Australian welcomed the ASPI report in its November 16 editorial, lauding its authors for having “no time for the diplomatic sensitivities that seek to suggest our multi-billion-dollar submarine, frigate and missile acquisition programs have a potential enemy other than China in mind.”

The witch-hunt over dual citizens in the parliament emerged amid constant agitation in the establishment media for action to be taken against purported “Chinese influence” in Australian politics and society. This is a part of a calculated attempt to create a war-time political atmosphere, with all “loyal” citizens expected to wrap themselves in the Australian flag and demonstrate their fidelity to the nation.

At the same time, the stoking of patriotism is motivated by the fear of the ruling elite. It is a desperate attempt to cultivate a right-wing constituency that will defend the “nation”—that is, the class interests of the capitalist oligarchs—from the inevitable eruption of struggle by the working class against the danger of war and social inequality. The top 10 percent of the population own at least 55 percent of the country’s wealth, with the top 1 percent controlling the lion’s share. Not far from the ostentatious displays of wealth in Sydney’s harbour suburbs, working class families earn so little they can barely keep a roof over their heads and feed themselves.

The consequences of the parliamentary crisis will be the refashioning of official politics. The longstanding two-party system dominated by the Coalition and Labor is disintegrating under the impact of immense geopolitical stresses and class antagonisms. As is the case across Europe and in the United States, the façade of democracy through which the capitalist class could rule in the past is breaking down. More and more openly, preparations are being made to dispense with it altogether and impose outright dictatorial measures.

The machinations of the ruling elite must be answered by the intervention of an independent political movement of the working class, advancing the socialist and internationalist alternative to capitalism and national divisions. In Australia and internationally, it is only the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Socialist Equality Party that fights for this perspective.