Political crisis in Berlin as coalition talks for German government fail

Peter Schwarz

The failure of talks on a so-called Jamaica coalition between the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), Green Party and Free Democratic Party (FDP), eight weeks after Germany’s federal election, has not only triggered a deep crisis in Berlin. It also marks a turning point in German and European politics.

It remains entirely unclear how things will proceed—whether the SPD will declare itself ready to continue the Grand Coalition with the CDU, whether a minority government will be formed, or whether fresh elections will be called, which will drag out the crisis even longer. However, one thing is clear. The time when differences within the ruling class could be resolved around the negotiating table is over. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s era is coming to an end. The political climate is becoming rawer, social conflicts are hardening, and official politics is moving further to the right.

Germany has long been a stabilizing force within a European Union dominated by economic crises, domestic political conflicts, and the growth of nationalist tendencies. It is now experiencing, as Spiegel Online put it, its own “Brexit moment” and “Trump moment.”

The cause of this crisis is not the squabbling over emissions rates, refugee levels and tax rates, which have dominated the Jamaica talks over the past four weeks, but rather the growing gulf between the parties’ right-wing program and the needs of broad sections of the population.

Over the past four years, the Grand Coalition has launched a massive military buildup, imposed horrendous austerity programs on weaker EU states, and increased levels of poverty and precarious working conditions. This was the government’s response to the global financial crisis and the growth in tensions between the major powers following the election of Donald Trump.

These policies are deeply unpopular. The CDU, CSU and SPD lost a large number of votes in the election, which resulted in their worst result in 70 years. Nonetheless, all parties are committed to continue these policies. This is determining their behavior in the current crisis.

It is no accident that the FDP broke off coalition talks, and, as many believe, planned to do so long in advance. The party, which never enjoyed mass influence and relied on rich donors in big business, has always played a trailblazing role during major transformations in German history.

After the Second World War, the FDP stood on the far right of the political spectrum, attracted many former national liberals and Nazis to its ranks, and formed a coalition with the CDU’s Konrad Adenauer. In 1969, the party switched sides and assisted Social Democrat Willy Brandt to become chancellor. In 1982, the FDP changed course again, bringing down the SPD-led government of Helmut Schmidt and governed for the next 16 years with Helmut Kohl (CDU).

The FDP is now returning to its roots and orienting towards the neo-fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), which gained in the elections by profiting off the collapse in the vote for the major parties. Thirty-eight-year-old Christian Lindner, who has led the FDP for four years, is taking the party far to the right. The daily Tagesspiegel wrote that in the event of fresh election, he would “seek out the right-wing fringe so as to become a new kind of people’s party through the national liberals.” The Süddeutsche Zeitung accused Lindner of abusing the exploratory coalition talks to “Haiderise” himself in the image of the former Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) leader, Jörg Haider.

Lindner also calculates that he will win strong support for his right-wing program within the CDU/CSU. In the CSU, Markus Söder and Alexander Dobrindt are preparing to oust leader Horst Seehofer. Both represent a hardline conservative agenda. Angela Merkel is also under pressure from the right-wing section of her party, and it remains unclear whether she will survive the crisis politically.

Leading AfD politician André Poggenburg has already offered to tolerate a CDU-FDP minority government in parliament, provided someone other than Merkel holds the position of chancellor and that the new government expands domestic repression and prevents refugees from reuniting with their families in Germany.

The SPD’s politics is also shifting rapidly to the right. The party played a substantial role in reviving German militarism and, especially since the Hamburg G20 summit, has advocated the strengthening of the police and intelligence services. It did this in the name of a campaign against “left-wing extremism.” The SPD considers its traditional goal to be the establishment of a bulwark against opposition from the left.

This is why the parties do not wish to continue the Grand Coalition. Although Chancellor Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) applied significant pressure to the SPD, the SPD executive agreed unanimously Monday to stay in opposition rather than enter the government. The SPD fears that a socialist perspective will find an audience if it continues to work closely with the CDU/CSU, leaving the AfD as the largest opposition in parliament.

The Left Party supports this course. It is responding to the breakdown of coalition talks by demanding new elections and offering to form a government with the SPD and the Greens who were desperate to form a coalition with the CDU/CSU and the FDP.

No matter how the crisis develops over the next few days and weeks, workers and youth must prepare for massive attacks and an intensification of the class struggle. The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), stated during the election campaign that the elections are a political turning point, and that all parties are working to push through “an unprecedented increase in militarism, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus, and social cuts.”

The SGP is the only party “that opposes the ‘left’ and right-wing defenders of capitalism and fights for the building of an international socialist movement.” The fight to build the SGP and a socialist movement, in the US and internationally, is the urgent political task.

Sri Lankan government bans Lanka e-News web site

Vijith Samarasinghe

The Sri Lankan government stepped up its assault on democratic rights early this month by banning access to the London-based Lanka e-News (LeN). Although the government made no official announcement, the Colombo Telegraph reported on November 9 that the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) had issued a directive to all Sri Lankan Internet service providers to block the site.

TRC member Hemantha Warnakulasuriya “strongly defended” the ban, telling the English-language Island newspaper that the government had “the responsibility … to counter propaganda campaigns undertaken by a section of the media.”

Questioned by journalists during the weekly cabinet press briefing on November 16, government spokesman Dayasiri Jayasekera was unable to explain who was responsible for the censorship of the web site. He justified it, however, accusing LeN of attacking President Maithripala Sirisena.

LeN is a right-wing, pro-big business publication with close connections to the current coalition government’s majority partner, the United National Party (UNP). It was a vociferous supporter of US-sponsored regime change operation that ousted President Mahinda Rajapakse and brought Maithripala Sirisena to power through the January 2015 presidential election. The US, which opposed Rajapakse’s orientation towards China, helped facilitate a behind-the-scenes operation, encouraging Sirisena to challenge Rajapakse in the election.

The ban on LeN reflects deepening factional tensions within the “national unity” government: namely between Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP. The current government was formed as a coalition of UNP and SLFP following the 2015 election. After the presidential election, Sirisena replaced Rajapakse as SLFP leader with the latter now heading the so-called Joint Opposition (JO), a minority faction of the party’s parliamentary group.

During 2015 elections, Sirisena was promoted by sections of the ruling elite, upper middle class layers and pseudo-left groups, such as the Nawa Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) and the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), as the “democratic” alternative to Rajapakse. The LeN ban exposes these claims.

The LeN censorship came a few days after Sirisena declared that some UNP members of the government were using “Facebook, website campaigns and multipage articles in weekend newspapers” to undermine him. “Some in the government itself [are paying] certain media outfits based outside Sri Lanka to attack me,” he told a public meeting.

Sirisena claimed that the criticism was in response to his moves against corruption, a reference to the ongoing investigation into fraud allegations against Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) in 2015. Several officials appointed by the Prime Minister Wickremesinghe were involved. The chief suspect is Wickremesinghe’s confidante and former CBSL Governor Arjun Mahendran. Senior UNP minister Ravi Karunanayake has also been implicated and forced to resign his portfolio.

LeN had been recently publishing allegations against senior SLFP government members, including Sirisena. According to the Island, a few days before the web site was banned, LeN published an article questioning the early retirement of former Sri Lankan Navy Commander Travis Sinnaih. It made references to disagreements over a deal he made with the defence ministry, which is headed by Sirisena, to buy a Russian warship. Another recent LeN article raised questions about vehicle purchases made by the president’s office.

Prior to the web site’s ban, Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne told a cabinet media briefing that journalists who publish “false and obscene news about the government should be arrested.” He added: “If a few of them are punished, ethical media conduct can be established in the country.”

Several national and international organisations have denounced the censorship of LeN and demanded it be lifted immediately. This includes the International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists-Asia, the Free Media Movement, the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association and the Young Journalists Association.

Although the blocking of LeN has emerged over factional differences within the unstable Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, it is a direct attack on freedom of the press and a warning to all sections of the media that the Sri Lankan ruling elite will not tolerate any criticism and is preparing dictatorial measures.

Colombo is reeling under a $US65 billion debt burden and has begun imposing International Monetary Fund (IMF) orders to make savage attacks on the living and social conditions of the masses. This is provoking bitter struggles by workers, students and farmers across the country.

In the past 12 months alone, workers in the ports, railways, postal service, electricity, water supply and petroleum sectors have taken strike action over wages, jobs and working conditions. Students have waged a struggle for almost a year against the privatisation of education.

Although the unions have repeatedly derailed these struggles, the government has mobilised the police and the military to brutally assault and arrest workers and students, as well as journalists for covering these events. The banning of LeN is an extension of this repression into cyber space.

Factional rivalry within the government has been seized upon by Rajapakse’s JO faction, which is whipping up Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism to divert popular anger against the government in a reactionary direction. A number of SLFP parliamentarians who supported Sirisena have crossed over to the Joint Opposition and are supporting Rajapakse.

While in power, Rajapakse ruthlessly censored the media during the communal war against separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Web sites such as TamilNet were completely banned in Sri Lanka for allegedly having ties to LTTE and murderous attacks were carried out against dissident journalists. LeN was also blocked in 2011 and its Colombo offices subjected to an arson attack, compelling its editor, Sandaruwan Senadheera, to flee the country.

When Sirisena’s so-called “good-governance” regime came to power in 2015, it lifted media bans on various publications, including on LeN, and claimed it had opened a new chapter in Sri Lankan political history. The latest ban on LeN and threats to arrest journalists for criticising the government, exposes the “good governance” posturing as a political fraud.

Colombo’s attack on press freedom is part and parcel of escalating censorship by capitalist governments around the world. Journalists and media outlets are being targeted for propagating so-called “fake news,” for “personal defamation” or over McCarthyite allegations they are working for Russia.

Google’s censorship of left-wing, progressive and anti-war web sites and in particular the World Socialist Web Site since April, shows that the multinational corporates are playing a key role in blocking press freedom and access to honest and accurate information. Workers and youth of Sri Lanka must oppose the government blocking of LeN. It is an attack on democratic rights, an attempt to suppress political opposition and another step towards dictatorial forms of rule.

Australian wage growth continues downward trend

Nick Beams

Australian wages showed another low increase in the quarter to the end of September, continuing a trend that has been in place for at least the past four years.

Wages rose by just 0.5 percent for the quarter in seasonally adjusted terms or 2 percent over the year. This fell short of market expectations of a 0.7 percent rise and an annual increase of 2.2 percent based on the decision by Fair Work Australia in July to increase the minimum wage by 3.3 percent.

Wage increases have been in the range of 0.4 to 0.6 percent for each of the last 13 quarters and there is no sign of any change. According to Callam Pickering, the Asia-Pacific economist for the job site Indeed, low wage growth remains the dominant trend for the Australian economy. There was a “high degree of slack in the labour market” that would “keep wage growth relatively low for the foreseeable future,” he wrote in a note.

This was the opinion of a number of corporate economists. JP Morgan economist Tom Kennedy told the ABC the most striking feature of wage data in recent years was the extent of the weakness, with wage growth at or only just above historic lows in most industries.

According to Su-Lin Ong, head of Australian economics at RBC Capital Markets: “There is little to suggest wages growth will pick up much in 2018 and into 2019.”

Adam Boyton of Deutsche Bank said the result was weak when viewed from any angle. “In the end there has either been a step down in ‘underlying’ wage growth; or the pass through of the most recent minimum wage increases was even less that we had expected,” he said.

In other words, workers who receive above the minimum wage did not have their pay increased in line with the rise in the new base level. The days when a rise in base rates would see increases across the board are long gone.

In the private sector, the annual wage growth to the end of the September was just 1.9 percent with no industry paying above 3 percent. The mining industry, which in previous years had enjoyed a boom, saw a wage rise of just 1.2 percent, below the level of inflation.

Another indication that the low wages are set to continue came in a revision of its inflation predictions by the Reserve Bank of Australia. It has forecast that inflation will not reach the lower end of its target band of 2 to 3 percent until early 2019, a year later than it had expected previously. The RBA has said that the measure of average weekly earnings growth contained in the figure for gross domestic product had turned negative for the first time since the mid-1960.

Low wage growth is having a major impact on retail sales, which suffered a rare contraction in the September quarter. The Westpac consumer survey issued this week showed a drop of 1.7 percent in its sentiment index with only 11 percent of respondents planning to spend more on Christmas gifts, the lowest level since 2009.

The long-term impact was highlighted in an article by Guardian journalist Greg Jericho in which he noted that private sector wages had grown by just 0.02 percent in the past year.

“This continues an utterly dreadful four-year period of next to no real wages growth,” he wrote.

From 2002 until the impact of the global financial crisis real wages grew on average by 0.9 percent each year. From March 2010 to March 2013 they rose by 1.2 percent each year—largely as a result of the mining boom. Since then, however they have grown on average by just 0.03 percent and are now only 0.1 percent above where they were in March 2013.

“And the real worry is where all this is heading,” Jericho continued. “One of the biggest problems with ongoing low wages growth is that it can create a structural shift that lower wages growth becomes expected in conditions that previously would have seen higher wages.”

In Australia, as in other major economies around the world, the past period has seen a breakdown in the so-called “Phillips curve” in which the fall in the unemployment rate would bring about a rise in wages and an increase in inflation. Despite the fall in the official level of unemployment to 5.4 percent, the lowest level since February 2013, there has been no upward movement in either wages or prices.

The breakdown of the relationship on a global scale points to the far-reaching structural changes in the labour market associated with the growth of part-time working, casualization and the increasing use of contacts to replace permanent employment conditions.

The official Australian jobless rate bears little relationship to the real state of the labour market because anyone who has worked at least one hour a week is counted as being employed.

According to Roy Morgan Research, in September 1.2 million people were unemployed (9.1 percent of the workforce), an increase of 101,000 on a year ago. In addition almost 1.3 million were underemployed and looking for more work. Almost 2.5 million people were either unemployed or underemployed, marking 24 straight months where more than two million Australians have either been looking for work or looking for more work.

In other words, the official data cover up what Marx called an “industrial reserve army,” which is used to drive down wages and conditions. A recent research paper issued by the Reserve Bank of Australia, entitled “Insights into Low Wage Growth in Australia,” pointed to its existence, albeit in the much milder terms used in such bourgeois publications to try obscure the reality of class relations.

Noting that wage increases have become less frequent since 2012, it pointed out that “there has been more slack in the labour market since 2008 and employees may be more willing to accept lower wage growth given concerns about future employment.”

According to the RBA paper, while between 2004 and 2014 the underemployment rate tended to move fairly closely with the unemployment rate, “over recent years it has remained elevated while the unemployment rate has declined.”

It found that the decline in the size of wage increases had contributed to more than two-thirds of the overall fall in wages growth since 2012 with the reduction in the frequency of wage adjustments contributing the remainder.

One of the most significant features of recent developments has been the decline in what it called “large” wages rises, that is, those over 4 percent. “The share of jobs that experienced a wage change of over 4 percent has fallen from over one-third in the late 2000s to less than 10 percent of jobs in 2016.”

It also pointed to the long-term effects of the divisions in, and consequent weakening of, the workforce resulting from enterprise bargaining agreements and the increased use of individual contracts introduced under the Keating Labor government with the collaboration or the trade unions.

While wage growth across all pay-setting methods had declined, “wage growth in industries that have a higher prevalence of individual agreements has declined most significantly in recent years following the strong growth in previous years.”

Pointing to the possible reasons, it noted that this “may indicate that wages set by individual contract can respond most quickly to changes in economic conditions.”

Once again the language employed covers over the reality, which is marked by the increasing moves by employers to force through cuts in wages and conditions and to tear up previous agreements.

A third of UK children in poverty, with rate set to rise

Margot Miller 

Over the next four years, 37 percent of UK children will be living in relative poverty, according to the latest Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report.

“Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2017,” funded jointly by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council, predicts a 4 percent national increase in children in families living in poverty. It means a rise of 400,000 children in poverty in families with incomes of 60 percent or less of the median.

This will bring the total number of children living in poverty to a scandalous 5.2 million by 2022. This would be the highest percentage since records began in 1961, when relative child poverty stood at 13 percent.

The report defines relative poverty as families consisting of a couple with two children surviving on a weekly income after housing costs of £347 or below—a single person is measured poor on an income of £144.

The increase in the number of poor households is not because pensioners—usually the poorest—are living longer due to historical benefits of the welfare state. Pensioners have gone from the largest demographic group in poverty to the smallest, the report notes. Its findings underscore the fact that successive governments, Labour and Conservative, have turned the UK into a low-wage, cheap labour platform.

The largest group living in relative poverty now is the “working poor.” While children living in households where no one works are five times more likely to be living in poverty, the low-wage economy means that the greatest proportion of poor children now live in families with one wage earner.

In 2015-2016 more than two thirds of children in absolute poverty lived in working households.

A feature of the UK labour market has been the creation of 5 million low-paid and highly insecure jobs in the gig economy, as well as zero hours contracts. Wages remain depressed; the median wage remains 11 percent lower than 20 years ago. And this is not expected to get any better.

According to Andrew Hood, senior research economist at the IFS and an author of the report: “Growth in average household incomes over the next few years is likely to be sluggish at best.

“If workers’ earnings grow as the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] expected ... median income is projected to rise by just 4 percent over the next four years. … [T]he OBR have already indicated they now think that forecast was too optimistic.”

The report projects “very little income growth over the next two years” due to rising inflation, the fall in the value of real wages since the depreciation of sterling following the Brexit vote, cuts to working age benefits and the impact of benefit reforms.

It concludes that “eliminating persistent worklessness [not a likely outcome!] would reduce persistent poverty by less than half.”

When Theresa May first became Conservative Prime Minister in 2016, she promised “about managing families”:

“I know you’re working around the clock, I know you’re doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. ... The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.”

Instead, the war on the poor has continued apace. The government is currently rolling out Universal Credit (UC), a benefit that merges all previous benefits into one, including working tax credit for low earners, child tax credit and housing benefit. In October, 610,000 claimants had transferred to UC, of which more than a third were in work.

The IFS estimates that 2.1 million in-work households will lose an average of £1,600 a year under this new benefit, while more than a million out of work households will lose an average of £2,300.

Government welfare reforms disproportionately penalise families with children. The report explains: “Average incomes and poverty rates miss the fact that different households can experience dramatically varying changes in income.”

Projections suggest that by 2020, a family with three children will lose £58.93 a week, while a family with five children faces a possible weekly loss of £90.98. This is because the benefit is limited to no more than two children.

UC claimants face a particularly bleak Christmas this year. Fully 67,000 employed claimants will receive no benefit for December, because “the season of goodwill” it is a long month with five pay days, which means their income from work will be too high to qualify, leaving many having to reapply.

Those claiming universal credit for the first time this week will get nothing until after the festive season, because of the six-week wait before the benefit kicks in. This will affect 60,000 households with more than 40,000 children, according to the Peabody Trust.

Claimants are already reporting great hardship under the new system, with growing indebtedness, having to resort to the use of food banks, and accruing massive rent arrears, leading to evictions and landlords refusing tenancies to UC claimants.

The Labour opposition under nominal left leader Jeremy Corbyn is not opposing UC in principle, merely calling for it to be paused for six months to iron out the difficulties. It was the Labour government of Tony Blair, with the backing of the trade unions, that helped pave the way for transforming the UK into a low-wage economy with the introduction of tax credits in the Tax Credits Act 2002. Supposedly designed to lift the poorest families out of poverty, tax credits acted as a wage subsidy paid for by other workers, enabling employers to continue paying low wages.

While the IFS report says that “income inequality is likely to increase over the next four years,” it has little to say about the income of the top 1 percent of the population, the stated reason being “it is hard to track how household incomes of the very richest have been changing.”

Though the report doesn’t say so, this is because the income and wealth of the top 1 percent is largely hidden in offshore tax havens, or squirrelled away in shell companies which pay no tax. Tax evasion by the very richest, as well as the companies they invest in, has reached monumental proportions, as revealed in the recent leak of the Paradise papers, and before that the Panama papers.

The IFS report offers no solution to child poverty other than to blame the poor for being workshy. It describes efforts to raise earnings in single wage families as “challenging,” bemoaning the fact that only 12 percent of the second adult in single wage households are looking for work. It warns that “increasing benefits [in one wage families] weakens the financial incentives for the second adult to find work.”

It is no secret to all who suffer under it that the benefit system is already designed to be punitive by driving people into low paying work. This blanket assertion that everyone who does not work can work—including mothers with young children, the sick, parents who have no means of paying for childcare, or who simply cannot find work—is a recipe for more of the same.

German government coalition talks stall

Peter Schwarz

After four weeks of talks, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Greens failed to reach agreement on a so-called Jamaica coalition by Thursday evening. German Chancellor and CDU leader Angela Merkel had set the November 16 date as the deadline for the conclusion of exploratory talks. Two months after the federal election, Germany remains without a new government, and it is entirely unclear when one will be established.

The negotiating teams separated early Friday morning after 15 hours of talks, having reached no agreement on any essential points in dispute. Several meetings of party committees organised to discuss the result were cancelled. The talks began again at midday on Friday, without a deadline for their conclusion being set.

The views on if and when an agreement will be reached diverge wildly. Deputy FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki said, “We are so far apart on the issues in dispute—immigration, combatting climate change, finance policy, internal security—that I currently can’t imagine how we can come together in such a short time.”

“We are convinced that we can come together if we want to come together,” said CSU leader Horst Seehofer. He added, “We will do everything humanly possible to determine whether a stable government can be formed.” Green Party parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckhardt proclaimed over Twitter, “We are ready to talk and hope there will be a result.” At the same time, she did not exclude the possibility that this would not be achievable.

If the talks fail, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will assume a decisive role. He has the task of presenting a candidate for the post of chancellor to parliament. If this candidate does not receive an absolute majority in the first round, and another candidate fails to secure a majority within two weeks, deputies can elect a candidate in the third round with a relative majority. The president then has the option of accepting them within seven days as chancellor, or dissolving parliament. There has never been a minority government in the history of the German Federal Republic.

Steinmeier could use his position to force his party, the Social Democrats (SPD), to continue the grand coalition with the CDU and CSU. Such a coalition would have a clear majority in parliament, with 399 of 706 seats. However, the SPD has insisted thus far on going into opposition, not least because the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) would be the largest opposition party in parliament. But this opinion could change. Almost all parties are afraid of new elections.

The rapidity with which the SPD could change course is shown by the latest developments in Lower Saxony. After having bitterly fought each other during the election campaign, the SPD and CDU reached a deal just four weeks later on the formation of a grand coalition.

The reason for the crisis of the Jamaica coalition talks (named after the colours in that country’s flag, the black, yellow and green of the CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens) is not the political differences between the participating parties, which have long collaborated in all conceivable combinations at the state level. It has much more to do with their political instability. Under the pressure of growing geopolitical tensions and sharp social conflicts, the political system which enabled three or four parties to guarantee stable “left-wing” and “right-wing” majorities is breaking apart.

As all of the established parties move further to the right, they are fracturing. This not only finds expression in the entry of the AfD into parliament, which now has seven parties for the first time, but also in sharpening conflicts within the parties. Within the CSU, which achieved its worst election result in its history, a bitter dispute is raging over leader Horst Seehofer, who risks losing his position as Bavaria’s minister president. Bitter faction fights are also ongoing within the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left Party.

Under these conditions, the issues in dispute among the Jamaica coalition negotiators, whose parties share considerable common ground, are becoming questions of prestige. This is shown very clearly on refugee policy, which was debated for 12 of the 15 hours of negotiations on Thursday.

The CSU, which fears competition from the AfD in next year’s Bavarian state elections, is insisting on an upper limit on immigration, while the Greens, eager to avoid losing liberal voters, oppose this. In practice, this amounts to the CSU seeking to write an overall limit for immigration into the coalition agreement, whereas the Greens prefer the formulation “management of immigration.”

Both options amount to the same thing, as has been shown in practice. In states where the Greens are in government, refugees are bullied and deported just as ruthlessly as in other states. The Greens’ ranks include Baden-Württemberg’s Minister President Winfried Kretschmann and Tübingen Mayor Boris Palmer, two hardliners on the issue of refugee policy.

The same applies to other issues being haggled over by the Jamaica coalition negotiators. A 61-page document containing the results of the exploratory talks thus far, which was leaked to the press on Thursday and contains disputed points in brackets, reveals widespread agreement on core points.

For example, the Jamaica parties agree that what is required is “a new balance between the best possible security for our country and civil freedoms and rights.” Translated into plain language, this means that civil rights will be sacrificed in the name of strengthening the security and surveillance apparatus. To this end, they plan to hire 7,500 new federal police offices and 5,000 at the state level, coordinate police and security services more closely, strengthen the federal domestic intelligence agency, extend video surveillance, and control the EU’s external borders more effectively.

The massive military build-up and foreign interventions launched by the previous government will also be continued and expanded. The paper pledges on the issue of defence to make “available to soldiers the best possible equipment, training and support.”

“We want to make the German army more UN-capable and suitable for Europe,” the document continues, “and for this purpose toughen it up in the following areas: digitalisation, deployment and transport capabilities, unmanned reconnaissance, tactical mobile communication.”

The paper explicitly endorses an “Africa strategy” and the continuation of the military intervention in Mali. In Iraq and Syria, it strives for the development of the intervention against ISIS into a permanent military presence, with a mandate that “makes a contribution to the new focus on capacity-building within the NATO framework, strengthening reliable and politically controlled security structures throughout Iraq.”

On finance policy, where differences over detail exist, the coalition parties agree to table “budgets without new debt for the coming four years”—meaning the continuation of the austerity policies associated with long-serving Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU).

Nonetheless, ruling circles are concerned that due to internal differences, a Jamaica coalition will not prove stable enough to enforce its anti-worker and militarist programme in the face of mounting social and political opposition. An increasing number of press articles are being published accusing the Jamaica parties of not going far enough on the issues of the strengthening of the military and state apparatus at home and abroad.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article last week headlined, “Jamaica is putting German security at risk.” The author, Wolf Poulet, was a German army officer from 1963 to 1994, last as a colonel in the general staff, and now runs a consulting firm.

He accused the Jamaica alliance of failing to deal with the “future capabilities of our country, under conditions of increasingly dangerous developments of the complex global situation.” The key issues at stake are “Will the new government plan, introduce and finance effective measures to reestablish the German defence capabilities required in Central Europe in time? Will Germany permanently be willing and capable of consistently realising ‘the right to material self-assertion’ (i.e., the right to wage war), as every state is entitled to?”

According to Poulet, “The most important of all questions is not being asked: how much time and what means must be utilised so that the combat power and capability of the army, air force and navy to deploy is adequate?” It is “obvious” that there is not enough daring “to explain this demand to the traditionally ‘peace-oriented’ Greens and frame it politically.” As the devil evades the holy water, so the emotive words “combat power” and “increase in deployment readiness” are being avoided.

It remains unclear how long the process of forming a new government will drag on and what its final composition will be. However, one thing is certain: it will be the most right-wing government since the founding of the Federal Republic, combining massive attacks on democratic and social rights with militarism and war.

Leader of Barcelona terror attack was Spanish intelligence informant

Alex Lantier 

Spanish media have confirmed that Abdelbaki es-Satty, the mastermind of the August 17 Islamic State (IS) terror attacks in Barcelona, was a police informant.

A convicted drug dealer directly linked to the Al Qaeda operatives who carried out the March 11, 2004 Madrid train bombings, Satty was reportedly providing information and receiving payment from Spanish intelligence until shortly before the attack. He was reportedly the political or religious leader of the youth who carried out the Barcelona attacks, in which 16 people died and 152 were injured. Satty himself died shortly before the attacks, when large home-made bombs they were preparing at a house in Alcanar accidentally exploded.

This remarkable revelation underscores the utterly deceitful character of the European bourgeoisie’s insistence that deep attacks on democratic rights are needed to wage a “war on terror.” In Barcelona, as in the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 attacks in Paris in 2015, the Berlin Christmas attack, and the May 22 Manchester terror attack, the terrorists were known to law enforcement. They served as tools for the intelligence services and instruments of European imperialist wars in Syria and Iraq, and operated under official protection.

The exposure of Satty as a Spanish intelligence asset is particularly significant given the explosive situation in Catalonia, where Madrid suspended the regional elected government and imposed direct police rule after the October 1 Catalan independence referendum. These revelations raise questions of whether forces in Madrid or Barcelona allowed the attack to proceed in order to win political advantage in the bitter battle that escalated in the run-up to the referendum.

On November 16, the right-wing populist site OkDiario first reported that Satty, who served as an imam in the town of Ripoll, was an informant for Spain’s National Intelligence Center (CNI). “At the same time as he provided information to the secret services and received special funding for this work, the imam was setting up the terror cell that perpetrated the second-bloodiest attack in the history of terrorism in Catalonia,” OkDiario wrote, citing documents held by investigating magistrates in the Spanish judiciary.

OkDiario said Spanish officials were desperate to cover up this report. “The obsession for weeks has been that the status of the imam as an agent should not get out and become known to public opinion,” it wrote.

OkDiario also alleged that the Mossos d’Esquadra, the Catalan regional police headquartered in Barcelona, were in close contact with Satty. It reported that “an agent of the Mossos spoke for four minutes from his office in Barcelona with the perpetrator of the Barcelona massacre only two hours before the attack.”

On November 17, El País, Spain’s main pro-social-democratic paper, published a terse article in which intelligence officials confirmed several of OkDiario ’s revelations. Sources in the CNI told El País the CNI “maintained contact” with Satty while he was in Castellón prison for drug dealing, from 2010 to 2014. This relationship, they added, was in line with the usual “established protocols for handling convicts.”

It appears Satty was in contact with the security services well before and well after the 2010-2014 period, however. El País continues, “New evidence emerging from the investigation of the attacks, which the National Court is keeping secret, shows that Es Satty was almost an old acquaintance of the security forces from when he arrived in Spain in 2002. His name already appeared in the contact list of telephones of some of those detained for the March attacks 11, according to sources in the anti-terrorism agencies.”

In 2006, Satty was detained as a member of a terrorist cell based in Vilanova. It appears his status as an “old acquaintance” of the intelligence services served him well, however; he was released and his case was shelved. Later, however, he was arrested for trying to bring 121 kilograms of hashish into Spain in his car from Morocco and jailed for four years in 2010.

After leaving prison in 2014, he traveled to the Brussels area, where many of the individuals involved in the 2015 attacks in Paris were based. He was rejected for an imam position there due to his criminal record, however, and returned to take a job as an imam in Ripoll, in Catalonia. El País did not confirm OkDiario ’s report of contacts between Satty and the Mossos. However, it wrote that it was unusual that he served as an imam in Ripoll, as he had “a criminal record, which in principle makes him ineligible for such a position.”

These reports show how decades-long, criminal foreign policy operations of NATO continue to claim lives and facilitate attacks on democratic rights in Europe itself. Since the eruption of the 2011 war in Syria, networks like Al Qaeda, which emerged from the 1979-1989 CIA war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and IS, whose origins lie in the US-led imperialist wars in Iraq and Syria since 1991, send thousands of fighters to carry out attacks in the Middle East.

After the March 22, 2016 Brussels bombing, the WSWS wrote, “[It] is clear that the individuals who carried out the March 22 bombings and the November 13 and Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris are part of a broader group of people who have been allowed to freely travel to and from the Middle East. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the ease with which these forces permeate national borders and conduct operations is that there are protocols in place to ease their passage and lower any red flags. They operate under a veil of official protection.”

The latest revelations about Satty vindicate yet again this analysis of the rotten foundations of the “war on terror” in Europe. The imperialist interventions, the promotion of anti-Muslim hatreds, and the drive to police-state rule and states of emergency across Europe are based on political lies. The Islamists are not intransigent and undetectable opponents of imperialism, but its somewhat wayward tools.

When they carry out attacks in Europe, instead of against targets chosen by the NATO powers in the Middle East, imperialist governments simply use this as a pretext for more police-state measures. These are aimed not so much at the Islamists, which have deep ties to the state apparatus, but at opposition to austerity and war in the working class.

Many unanswered questions remain based on the revelations about Satty so far. Firstly, if Satty was indeed a police informant who was “deceiving” the CNI, as the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair writes, what did he tell the police he was doing? As his cell amassed a vast collection of bomb-making chemicals that ultimately exploded accidentally and took Satty’s own life, who did the CNI think Satty was going to blow up?

Secondly, did the conflict between Madrid and Barcelona over the October 1 Catalan independence referendum, which had been announced on June 29, play a role in the CNI’s shielding of Satty?

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government responded to the August 17 attack by discussing the imposition of martial law, although Rajoy ultimately decided against it. After Rajoy launched the savage police crackdown on the peaceful vote on October 1, however, he suspended Catalonia’s elected government, placing it directly under police rule, amid mass protests in Barcelona and across Catalonia.

Might sections of the security apparatus, seeking a different pretext for the move toward police-state rule that was being prepared and discussed inside the state machine, have been willing to sanction some type of attack in order to justify the imposition of martial law?

US steps up aid to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter in Yemen

Bill Van Auken

Washington is initiating a series of new policies aimed at building up the military power of the monarchical dictatorship in Saudi Arabia as it carries out a siege that could claim millions of lives in neighboring Yemen.

The Wall Street Journal, citing senior administration officials, reported Saturday that “The Trump administration is looking at ways to quickly strengthen Saudi Arabia's missile defenses and disrupt the flow of advanced Iranian-made weapons across the Middle East as concerns grow over a destabilizing new crisis in the region.”

The so-called “destabilizing new crisis” in the Middle East is one of Washington’s and Riyadh’s own making, flowing from the Trump administration’s attempt to forge an anti-Iranian alliance uniting US imperialism, Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Sunni oil sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and Israel in an anti-Iranian military alliance.

Emboldened by unconditional US support, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman has carried out a sweeping purge of potential rivals within the Saudi regime, while escalating the murderous war in Yemen and carrying out the kidnapping and forced resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri with the aim of destabilizing Lebanon and igniting a sectarian civil war against the Shia-based movement, Hezbollah.

According to the Journal article, the Trump administration views the controversy surrounding Hariri as a “frustrating complication” that is diverting Washington’s drive to “galvanize support for new action against Iran.”

The most criminal of the US-backed Saudi actions has been the imposition of a blockade of Yemen aimed at starving into submission its population and the Houthi rebels who seized much of the western part of the country, including the capital of Sanaa.

Riyadh has justified its blockade by saying it is trying to prevent arms from reaching the Houthis following the firing of a missile from Yemen on November 4 that was shot down near Riyadh’s international airport. In reality, what Saudi Arabia—with the assistance of the US Navy—is turning back are shipments of food, medicine and other vital supplies under conditions of spreading famine and the worst cholera epidemic in modern history.

Iran has denied Saudi charges that the missile was of Iranian manufacture, a position that has been supported by a panel of experts appointed by the United Nations Security council, which issued a statement six days after the missile was fired saying that there has been no evidence of Iranian transfer of short-range missiles to Yemen and charging that Riyadh is exploiting the incident “as justification for obstructing the delivery of commodities that are essentially civilian in nature.”

Washington, which echoed the Saudi propaganda blaming Iran for the attack, has issued no statement condemning the blockade of Yemen, a war crime in which the US is itself complicit. The major European powers have also remained largely silent as a near-genocidal campaign is being executed against the people of Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world. The European arms manufacturers, like their American counterparts, have secured lucrative contracts with the Saudi monarchy.

According to the Journal article, the foremost response of the Trump administration to the crisis in the Middle East is to push more arms on the Saudi regime. Last month, Trump approved a weapons deal that allows Riyadh to purchase $15 billion worth of missiles, launchers, radar and other military technology. “US officials said that deal could be accelerated as a result of the missile fired at Riyadh.”

The newspaper added that, “The US military also could step up its efforts to seize weapons shipments going through the Persian Gulf and across the region,” meaning that the US Navy would escalate operations that are contributing to the blocking of relief supplies and the mass starvation engulfing Yemen.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the US Air Force has more than doubled its refueling flights that keep Saudi and allied warplanes in the air, continuously bombing Yemeni hospitals, schools, residential blocks and basic infrastructure, accounting for the bulk of the 12,000 deaths in the two-and-a-half-year-old war. Washington also increased its supply of jet fuel to the Saudis by 140 percent over the fiscal year that ended in September, according to a report on the Al-Monitor web site.

The bombs and missiles that are killing Yemen are also supplied largely by Washington, with $3 billion worth of bombs provided to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates since 2015 and a $500 million sale of precision-guided munitions approved by the US Senate in June.

The latest atrocity made possible by this arms aid took place on Sunday with a Saudi airstrike in the northern province of Jawf demolishing a home leaving eight children and three women, all from the same family, dead under the rubble.

The two-week-old Saudi blockade, however, threatens to dwarf the number of deaths caused by the bombing campaign. Even before Saudi Arabia shut down Yemen’s airports, sea ports and borders, turning away container ships full of food and relief supplies and fuel tankers that had already been inspected and searched for weapons, 7 million Yemenis were on the brink of famine, while 17 million others did not know where their next meal would come from.

The UN and various relief agencies have warned that, with Yemen dependent upon imports for 90 percent of its food, the blockade could rapidly lead to the deaths of millions.

Three Yemeni cities—Hodeida, Saada and Taiz—ran out of clean water on Friday because of the Saudi blockade preventing the delivery of fuel needed to run pumping and sanitation systems, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported. The lack of clean water will place at least a million more people at risk of cholera on top of the 928,000 already believed to have contracted the disease. The capital of Sanaa and other cities will “find themselves in the same situation” within weeks if the blockade is not lifted, the Red Cross said. The lack of fuel will also shut down generators powering hospitals, condemning many patients to death.

Doctors without Borders (MSF) reported Sunday that the Saudi regime is preventing it from conducting flights in and out of Yemen, despite claims from Riyadh that it was allowing the movement of humanitarian supplies and personnel. The aid agency also said it had been warned by Saudi authorities against operating in areas under the control of the Houthi rebels.

The aid group Oxfam issued a blistering statement warning that “A catastrophe of astonishing proportions is unfolding before our eyes as Yemen’s Houthi-controlled territory is sealed off and suffocated ... Absent a rapid turnaround, we are likely to witness in Yemen an extraordinary level of devastation, the likes of which most of us have never lived through.”

The statement continued by noting that “the US government has led its allies in demonstrations of solidarity with Saudi Arabia against Iran, ignoring a ghastly humanitarian crisis. The international community’s unqualified support for Saudi Arabia’s position nearly culminated in the adoption of a UN Security Council Presidential Statement condemning the Houthis and Iran’s malign activity without so much as a mention of Yemen’s dire humanitarian crisis and the steps taken by Saudi Arabia to push it to the brink of catastrophe.”

The systematic extermination of Yemeni men, women and children by bombardment, starvation and disease exposes the real face of US imperialism. It demonstrates that behind the empty rhetoric about the “war on terror,” “human rights” and “democracy,” it is prepared to kill millions to offset the decline of American capitalism through a drive to assert US global hegemony by military means.

Zimbabwe: Factional warfare continues after Mugabe fails to resign

Chris Marsden

Robert Mugabe defied all expectations last night by not announcing that he was standing down as president in a televised address to the nation.

Mugabe shared a platform with the military leaders who just five days earlier staged a palace coup, rounding up the key political supporters of his wife Grace Mugabe’s G40 faction of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Mugabe himself had been placed under house arrest.

With the military staging a demonstration in the capital Harare on Saturday that attracted hundreds of thousands, including all of the opposition parties, and his ZANU-PF party removing him as leader and expelling his wife from the party earlier that day, Mugabe still refused to go.

In a long speech, made at times haltingly, Mugabe praised the military as the guardian of peace and security, as well as the constitutional order and of the traditions of the independence struggle, but nevertheless declared, “The (ZANU-PF) Congress is due a few weeks from now. I will preside over its processes, which must not be possessed by any acts calculated to undermine it or compromise the outcomes in the eyes of the public.”

ZANU-PF’s Central Committee had earlier appointed former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa as interim leader and named him as their favoured candidate to assume the post of Zimbabwe’s president. A key ally of Mnangagwa and leader of the powerful Veterans Association, Chris Mutsvangwa, backed up an official threat to impeach Mugabe if he did not quit by noon today with a more sinister threat that the military would allow him to be attacked if he refused to go.

Mutsvangwa told Britain’s Daily Mail, “The army gave the dictator a message earlier [Saturday]. Either he steps down or they will let the people into his mansion to take him. The army is threatening to unleash the people and let Mugabe be lynched. The generals said they will not shoot the people for him. Instead, they will abandon their posts and leave him to his fate.”

Mutsvangwa has now said that impeachment proceedings will proceed today and a mass demonstration will take place Wednesday.

Mugabe, who made an appeal for tolerance and forgiveness, is widely assumed to be seeking to protect Grace Mugabe and the rest of his family from retribution by offering to preside over a smooth transition. But he also calculates that he has a stronger hand to play than appearances would suggest.

In the first instance, Mugabe still enjoys some popular support, especially in the countryside. Any obvious ill treatment by the military could backfire by arousing sympathy for the 93-year-old leader whom these same forces until recently held to be the “father of the nation.”

Moreover, despite the euphoric scenes in Harare on Saturday, what is unfolding in Zimbabwe is not the “second revolution,” which was a popular slogan at Saturday’s rally, but an attempted palace coup, which both sides in the immediate struggle and their backers behind the scenes are anxious to prevent from spinning out of control.

A major consideration in seeking a smooth transition is the economic impact of continued instability. The Global Times warned, “As the largest trading partner of Zimbabwe and its largest foreign investor, China will inevitably see its interests affected by the chaos. According to the Xinhua News Agency, the Zimbabwe Investment Authority approved $929 million in foreign direct investment in 2015, with more than half of that from China.”

Prior to staging the coup, General Constantino Chiwenga visited Beijing for talks with leading Chinese military and political figures. Mnangagwa was already there, having fled there via Mozambique after being removed from his post by Mugabe. A report by New Zimbabwe quoted a military source saying that Mnangagwa’s escape to China was made possible by Mutsvangwa, who “facilitated the journey.”

Speculation is rife over whether China organised the coup, but Beijing is generally assumed to be anxious for someone to provide the political and economic stability that Mugabe has proved incapable of securing.

As part of efforts to promote the interests of the aspiring younger layer of Zimbabwean capitalists for whom Generation 40 is named, Mugabe cancelled lucrative Chinese contracts in diamond mining and other areas. This was presented as part of a policy of “indigenisation” of the economy. China has extensive investments in mining, agriculture, energy and the construction sectors.

The Washington Post cited Yun Sun from the Stimson Center in Washington stating, “Mugabe’s preferences for nationalisation and indigenisation in his economic policies, plus his domestic political turmoil, had made China’s large investment in Zimbabwe look risky and led to ‘complaints and grievances’ in Beijing. China wouldn’t actively support a plot to get rid of Mugabe, Sun said, ‘but if there is a domestic campaign to make him gone, China won’t be cheering for him, either.’”

After making his appeal to Beijing, Mnangagwa went to South Africa for talks with the African National Congress and its leader Jacob Zuma. South Africa’s investments in Zimbabwe may not be as important as China’s, but its political support is vital to any putative government.

Zuma sent two of his top aides to negotiate a peaceful transition from Mugabe to Mnangagwa on Friday. He fears that the destabilisation of Zimbabwe would impact heavily on South Africa, and more broadly throughout the continent.

The Southern Africa Development Community meets in Angola on Tuesday to discuss the Zimbabwe situation, also involving Angola, Tanzania and Zambia. But there are suggestions that South Africa is taking a cautious approach, in part because of concern for economic interests it shares with Russia. On November 17, the influential Zimbabwe Mail ran an article citing investments that pit Russian influence against China’s.

It noted that the ALROSA group of diamond mining companies is invested in several projects in Zimbabwe. More importantly, Russia and South Africa together control about 80 percent of the world’s reserves of platinum group metals and are seeking to control prices and supply.

However, “According to the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe (CMZ) and geologists, Zimbabwe has far bigger platinum reserves than Russia. The country currently has the second known largest platinum reserves after South Africa.”

With Zimbabwe seeking to increase production to 500,000 ounces per annum and needing investments of close to $3 billion to do so, a rich prize is there for the taking. Zimplats, one of the top three producers in Zimbabwe, is a unit of South Africa’s Impala Platinum. But, according to the Mail, further investment was hampered for Russia and South Africa by “indigenisation and empowerment regulations which compel foreign-owned companies to sell [a] 51 percent stake to locals.”

Speaking from South Africa on the situation in Zimbabwe, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev tacitly blamed Mugabe for the military takeover, saying, “In most cases, instability emerges when people are not satisfied with their lives. That’s why it is necessary to attract money to the country in order to ensure stability, to attract investors, to create new enterprises.”

Significantly, Sunday’s talks did not include the South African government delegation that took part in the first round, consisting of Minister of Defence Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and State Security Minister Bongani Bongo.

The United States is concerned that events are unfolding without its own political proxies, such as Morgan Tsvangirai of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, taking centre stage. Hence the demands for a swift transition to civilian rule, which it hopes will bring some form of power-sharing.

Speaking Friday at a meeting with three dozen African foreign ministers in Washington, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told those gathered, “[W]e all should work together for a quick return to civilian rule in that country in accordance with their constitution.”

What is not spoken of by most commentators is the impact of Mugabe’s downfall on the expectations of Zimbabwe’s workers and young people. The military, ZANU-PF, and the opposition parties are all promising democratic and economic rebirth, even as they plot to ensure their own continued rule and the hiving off of Zimbabwe’s key assets to various global investors. Under these circumstances, the false unity evident at Saturday’s anti-Mugabe rally will inevitably give way to renewed political and social conflict.

Nearly 200 million are modern slaves or child laborers

Trévon Austin 

According to a report by the United Nation’s International Labour Organization, nearly 200 million people are victims of modern slavery or child labor around the globe. In 2016, 40.3 million men, women and children were victims of modern slavery. Nearly one in ten children, or 151.6 million people, are victims of child labor.

The report defines “modern slavery” as “the various forms of coercion prohibited in international instruments on human rights and labour standards.” This definition includes slavery, state-imposed forced labor, forced marriage, and human trafficking. One in four victims of forced labor are children, and 71 percent of total victims are female.

On any given day in 2016, approximately 16 million individuals were forced to work in the private sector. More than half of this labor involves the domestic, construction and manufacturing sectors. On average, victims are held for 20.5 months before escaping or being released.

The study also reports that 4.8 million people are victims of forced sexual exploitation. On average, victims are held for 23.4 months before escaping or being freed. The vast majority are women and girls, and children represent more than 20 percent of the victims.

By region, Africa has the highest rate of modern slavery, with 7.6 per 1,000 people. The rate is 6.1 per 1,000 people in Asia and the Pacific; 3.9 per 1,000 in Europe and Central Asia; 3.3 per 1,000 in the Arab states; and 1.9 per 1,000 in the Americas. Countries that are or have been recently ravaged by war experience higher levels of exploitation.

The ILO does not include in its definition of child labor those working in legal forms of employment. The definition used in the study includes work that is hazardous, demands too many hours, often deprives children of play and education, and puts their well being at risk. Despite the definition’s limited scope, the study still gives a picture of the staggering level of child labor around the globe.

According to the study, slightly less than half of children in child labor (72.5 million) are performing hazardous work that places their health, safety or moral development at risk. Over 19 million children between the ages of 5 and 11; over 16.3 million between 12 and 14; and 37 million between 15 and 17 are involved in hazardous work. The hours children are forced to work are also horrendous. Approximately 63.3 percent of children between 15 and 17 that are engaged in child labor are forced to work 43 hours or more per week.

Nearly a third of children involved in child labor are outside of the education system. Those who do attend school tend to perform more poorly than their nonworking peers. The time and energy spent working interferes with the ability to benefit fully from classroom hours and impedes study time outside the classroom.

As with modern slavery, a significant proportion of child labor is located in countries afflicted by conflict and disaster. Approximately 17 percent of children in war-torn countries are involved in child labor, nearly double the global average.

The countries included in the report as being affected by armed conflict include Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Colombia, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Other countries, including Syria and Libya, are not included as estimates were not available.

In Africa, one in five children is involved in child labor, making it the region where child labor is most concentrated, followed by Asia and the Pacific. However, child labor is not limited to low-income regions. In fact, over half of affected children live in lower middle- and upper middle-income countries, and 1.3 percent of children in high-income countries are child laborers.

While the percentage of children involved in child labor has fallen slightly from 2012 globally, it has actually increased in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The epidemic of slavery and child labor is one aspect of capitalist exploitation. The International Labour Organization estimates that $150 billion in profits are generated in the private sector each year from forced labor.

The issue is exacerbated in countries that are victims to neocolonial exploitation and imperialist conquest. A video released by CNN this week showed youth being auctioned off as farm laborers in Libya, a country devastated by the US-backed war launched by the Obama administration.

A 2016 investigation by Amnesty International revealed that children as young as seven are working in perilous conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to mine cobalt that ends up in smartphones, cars and computers sold to millions across the world. The mines supply corporations such as Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone.

The United Nations and leaders of industrialized countries have only taken modest measures to tackle the issues of modern slavery and child labor. This epidemic is not a question of laws and reforms, but a consequence of capitalism.