Ecuador referendum signals government’s further turn to right

Cesar Uco

The victory of the “Yes” vote in Ecuador’s February 4 referendum has set the stage for a further swing to the right by the government of President Lenin Moreno, who took office nine months ago as the chosen candidate of his predecessor Rafael Correa, who had occupied the presidency over the previous decade.

The key question among the seven submitted to the electorate limited presidents to a single re-election, which effectively bars Correa from carrying out his original plan to return to the presidency in the 2021 election. The measure was approved by over 64 percent of the voters.

While Moreno had served as his vice-president for six years, Correa denounced his successor as an “impostor” and a “traitor,” breaking with the ruling Alianza PAIS party and forming his own Citizens’ Revolution movement, which campaigned for a “No” vote, which won approximately a third of the votes.

The referendum was written to include other questions aimed at drawing popular support. The measure gaining the most votes (74 percent) bars officials convicted on charges of corruption from serving in public office.

The Correa government was engulfed in a corruption scandal, with an estimated $34 million in bribes paid to government officials by the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht during Correa’s time in office. His former vice president, Jorge Glas, is serving a six-year jail sentence in connection with the Odebrecht payoffs, and Correa himself faces possible charges.

The bribery, however, goes back some 30 years, involving every major bourgeois party in Ecuador.

There were also provisions in the referendum protecting youth against sex crimes, barring mining in environmentally protected areas and easing taxes on real estate sales.

Moreno’s campaign in support of a “Yes” vote was supported by the whole of the Ecuadorian right, including his opponent in the 2017 presidential election, the multimillionaire banker and businessman Guillermo Lasso.

Moreno has embraced much of the program advanced by Lasso, which he ostensibly ran against. This includes tax cuts, cuts in government spending and a turn from dependence upon Chinese loans and investment toward closer relations with Washington.

The daily El Comercio published a column on February 12 spelling out the demands of the Ecuadorian bourgeoisie in the wake of Moreno’s referendum victory. “We must reorient the economy, return to forgotten austerity, rely on private entrepreneurship, encourage the creation of jobs, retire many bureaucratic practices,” it said. It also spoke of creating better conditions for attracting foreign investors.

The turn to the right by Moreno is bound up with the geostrategic conflicts prevailing throughout the region as US imperialism has declared its intention to reassert its hegemony and combat the growing influence of both China and Russia in Latin America.

Under Correa, Ecuador signed agreements that committed the country to shipping roughly half of its oil exports to China, with China in return providing billions of dollars in loans that supplied much of the government’s financing.

Moreno has made it clear that he intends to renegotiate agreements with China and seek to diversify Ecuador’s oil exports.

This, together with his enunciation of a more resolutely pro-business policy, has been noted approvingly by Washington, the first world capital that he visited after his election last year. The US State Department issued a statement “congratulating” Ecuador on the victory of the “Yes” vote in the referendum.

“We look forward to continuing to work with President Lenin Moreno and his government to advance common interests across a broad range of issues such as education, trade, security, environment, and disaster preparedness, among others,” the statement read. “Our common interests will continue to drive the relationship between the people of Ecuador and the United States in a constructive direction.”

The referendum setback for Correa is part of a broader ebbing of the so-called “pink tide,” i.e., the rule by various populist, nationalist bourgeois parties in Latin America. It is of a piece with the election of the right-wing Mauricio Macri in Argentina in 2015, the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the intense crisis of the Maduro government in Venezuela.

The reality, however, is that Correa’s government never posed a challenge to capitalist rule in Ecuador. During the period of the so-called commodity boom, his government was able to introduce policies aimed at ameliorating poverty and investing in education and infrastructure.

With the collapse of oil prices, which account for 40 percent of Ecuador’s export earnings, the country’s economy has gone into reverse. The World Bank has projected a 2.9 percent fall in GDP this year. The Correa government had already been driven to carry out policies aimed at imposing the burden of this crisis onto the backs of the Ecuadorian working class, which created the conditions for a political resurgence of the right.

Throughout his presidency, Correa maintained the use of the US dollar as Ecuador's currency. In 2014, under the impact of falling oil prices and with the country’s debt reaching 40 percent, his government agreed to transfer more than half of its gold reserves, worth US$580 million at the time, to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The move was designed to raise cash to cover a growing deficit brought on by the collapse in oil prices and boost confidence in the markets so that the Ecuadorian government could confront its growing debt crisis.

Moreno’s administration represents only a further shift to the right, with the aim of defending the interests of Ecuador’s capitalist ruling class, and acceding to the pressure from Washington as it attempts to counter Chinese penetration of what US imperialism has long regarded as “its own backyard.”

In the wake of the referendum, Moreno declared, “Confrontation is behind us, this is the time to embrace each other.” This sentiment was directed to the right-wing politicians and parties of the Ecuadorian bourgeoisie. The policies that he is pursuing, however, point to an inevitable confrontation with the Ecuadorian working class.

US and India intervene to avert Sri Lankan government collapse

Pani Wijesiriwardena

The US ambassador to Sri Lanka and his Indian counterpart this week publicly stepped in to halt a planned breakup of the National Unity Government headed by President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe after its heavy losses at local council elections held on February 10.

The Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna (SLPJP), the largest party in the parliamentary opposition, led by former President Mahinda Rajapakse, won 249 councils out of the total of 341 island-wide. Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) secured only 41 councils, while Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) gained only 10.

After the election debacle, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe began blaming each other for the defeat. At their instigation, followers of the two parties publicly announced the termination of the unity agreement.

The US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Atul Keshap, hurriedly met Sirisena and Wickremesinghe separately on February 13 reportedly to advise them to defuse the turmoil in the government and continue with it.

On the same day, in a move clearly coordinated with Washington, the Indian High Commissioner for Sri Lanka, Saranjit Singh Sandhu, met with Sirisena and Wickremesinghe to deliver a similar message.

The immediate response of both the government parties was one of servile adherence to the “advice” coming from their masters. The next day, the Daily Mirror reported that the United National Front (UNF) parliamentary group, led by Wickremesinghe, had decided to “continue the unity government with some changes of portfolios and strategies.”

In 2014, both the US and India were instrumental in bringing forward Sirisena as the “common opposition candidate” to oppose Rajapakse at the 2015 presidential election. Sirisena exploited the widespread popular discontent and anger with the Rajapakse regime to win the poll, then appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister.

Washington and New Delhi intervened to oust Rajapakse’s regime because it tilted its foreign policy toward China. Over the past three years, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have aligned Sri Lanka behind US efforts to confront and encircle China throughout the Indo-Pacific.

Amid rising geopolitical tensions in the region, Washington fears that its strategic gains in Sri Lanka could be reversed by the increasing political instability in Colombo.

Rajapakse, who was jubilant about his local council victory, initially called on Sirisena to dissolve parliament and hold a general election immediately to “end the current political instability in the country.” He quickly shelved that call after the US and Indian diplomatic interventions.

M.A. Sumanthiran of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) lost no time in announcing that although his party would not join the government, it would cooperate on “progressive measures” adopted by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government “as far as the issues of Tamil people were concerned.”

Representing the Tamil capitalist elite, the TNA, which won 34 local councils in the north and east of the island, has repeatedly appealed to the US and India to pressure the Colombo government to grant its power-sharing demands.

Central to the political crisis is the growing social unrest over the government’s austerity measures and anti-democratic methods. The dictates of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the strategic needs of the US and India have left no room for manoeuvre by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government.

In the midst of the local council elections, non-academic workers in all the universities and Water Supply and Drainage Board workers took strike action over higher wages, defying a ban imposed by the Election Commission for the election period.

Recent protests over wages and conditions have included workers in the petroleum sector, ports, rail, postal and plantations. The rural poor have demonstrated against cuts in social services and subsidies, and university students have boycotted classes for months over the privatisation of education.

Tamils in the north and east have repeatedly protested against the continuing military occupation and demanded information about family members who were “disappeared” by military-linked death squads during the island’s protracted civil war.

Despite this widespread opposition, the IMF has insisted the government implement its demands, particularly on slashing the budget deficit through increased taxes, such as the Value Added Tax (VAT) on essential commodities, and cuts in social benefits. As a result, tensions between the two coalition parties, the SLFP and UNP, and the two leaders, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, over how to impose these policies have escalated.

While the media has generally ignored these acute social tensions, an editorial entitled “To make or break of Unity Govt?” on Thursday in the Daily News, the main government mouthpiece, touched on the issue.

The editorial concluded that the UNP and SLFP had been “acting at cross purposes” due to the government’s “sluggishness” in implementing its policies. While the “UNP’s hands were tied in most instances [by the IMF]”, the SLFP was always trying “to project the image that… it was against placing burdens on the public due to the UNP’s economic policies.”

In other words, Sirisena has cynically attempted to distance himself and the SLFP from the government’s austerity offensive dictated by the IMF. As a result, Rajapakse was able to exploit the popular anger and, at the same time, promote poisonous Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism to divide working people on communal lines.

While doing the bidding of the IMF as well as the US and India, the entire political establishment in Sri Lanka—Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim—is desperate to suppress rising social unrest fueled by the austerity agenda that it is pledged to implement. The main bourgeois parties rely above all on the various pseudo-left parties such as the Nava Sama Samaja Party, United Socialist Party and Front Line Socialist Party, as well the trade unions and NGOs, to confine political opposition to safe parliamentary channels.

Carillion Canada bankruptcy threatens 6,000 jobs

Janet Browning & Roger Jordan 

The jobs, wages and pensions of 6,000 workers in Canada are under threat as a result of the bankruptcy of Carillion Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of British-based Carillion PLC.

Carillion PLC’s collapse on January 15 left 50,000 workers globally facing the loss of their livelihoods. Much like its parent company in Britain, Carillion Canada was the recipient, over decades, of billions of dollars in public sector contracts from federal and provincial governments.

Carillion Canada had revenues of $1 billion annually from public-private partnership projects in energy, construction, transportation, health care, property management, and aviation.

It was announced February 5 that Fairfax will acquire part of Carillion Canada’s operations, including 4,500 workers, subject to due diligence and a ruling by the Ontario Superior Court. However, there is no guarantee for the 4,500 workers that Fairfax will continue to employ them.

Carillion is just one example of the corporate plundering that has seen big business rake in huge profits through a comprehensive drive to privatize public services internationally since the 1990s.

Private finance initiative (PFI) projects were first developed under Britain’s Tory government in the early 1990s. However, their use only became widespread after they were championed by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which came to power in 1997. PFIs have been used to systematically undermine and privatize public services, drive down public sector employment and ramp up user fees.

Top advisers to the Blair government travelled to Canada to export PFI, which was eagerly embraced in the form of public-private partnerships or P3s by Canada’s three major capitalist parties—the Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats—as a means to sell off public services, undermine workers’ wages and conditions, and slash public spending.

As in Britain, the result has been a vast deterioration in public services and multi-billion dollar windfalls for the corporate elite.

Traditionally, governments borrowed money for social and transportation infrastructure by issuing bonds on which they paid ultra-low interest rates of 1 or 2 percent per annum. They then used the money raised to design and build hospitals, schools, bridges and highways as “public works” projects. Once built, the facility or infrastructure was owned, operated and maintained by public servants on behalf of the public.

By contrast, in P3 projects a government typically enters into a multi-decade contract with one or more private corporations to design, build, finance and operate public facilities. The government then leases them from the private partner, which acts essentially as a front for the major banks and financial investors. Typical borrowing rates for P3 project, which are part of the bill paid by the government, range from 7 to 9 percent, i.e. 4-5 times higher than typical rates for government borrowing. Moreover, such projects usually involve guaranteed “revenue streams” to ensure the private investors reap windfall profits.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government fervently advocates the use of P3s. Trudeau’s new infrastructure bank, which was set up to launch the wholesale privatization of Canada’s public infrastructure, will use public money to open up tens of billions of dollars of investment opportunities for the global financial elite.

It therefore comes as no surprise that Trudeau’s top economic advisers are strident proponents of privatization and P3s. For example, Michael Sabia, head of the Caisse de depot pension fund in Quebec, which is a major investor in privatization projects, sits on the Trudeau government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth.

Council chair Dominic Barton’s firm, McKinsey & Company, is a global leader in advising governments on how best to dismantle public services. It was a report authored by the Council under Barton’s leadership that urged the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank to woo international investors.

P3s have been embraced by all three of Canada’s major capitalist parties, including the social-democrats of the New Democratic Party or NDP. By 2010, there were hundreds of Canadian P3 projects worth over $200 billion.

Carillion was one of the main beneficiaries. In 2002, Carillion Canada Ltd. won contracts to build the country’s first two P3 hospitals under Ontario Conservative Premier Ernie Eves. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals accused Eves of privatizing health care and of borrowing money on the sly, hiding the true costs of the new hospitals, with contractual pledges to pay Carillion fees for decades. However, once elected, Ontario’s premier McGuinty continued the P3 projects.

When Carillion won a P3 contract to rebuild and maintain the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre in 2002, pension funds put up the money for the $100 million renovations and Carillion got a 25 year operating contract worth about $7 million a year, plus $4 million in “flow-through” payments for things such as gas and electric bills—a huge guaranteed return on its investment.

In 2015, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk examined winter maintenance of Ontario highways and concluded Carillion took twice as long to clear highways as it had taken government crews previously. Fatal crashes on Toronto-area highways during a New Year's 2016 storm, and in Peel, Halton, York and Toronto in 2017, resulted in the termination of Carillion’s contracts.

The Ontario Auditor General’s Report in 2017 criticized successive governments’ use of 74 P3s. The report estimated that because of increased borrowing costs, P3 projects cost Ontario $8 billion more than they would have if they had been fully public. The report demonstrated a P3 hospital in Brampton ended up costing $200 million more than if it had been built as a public works project. Moreover, the facility contained fewer beds than promised.

The report showed P3 contractors gouged hospitals for maintenance work not covered under the contracts, resulting in litigation, and found Carillion had billed for over $200 million in cost over-runs during the construction of the William Osler Hospital.

The political elite is not about to allow Carillion’s demise to hinder their privatization drive. Manitoba Conservative Premier Brian Pallister has announced that the province will build P3 schools in the Winnipeg, Seven Oaks, Pembina Trails, and Brandon school divisions.

Last month, Alberta NDP Transportation Minister Brian Mason signaled Rachel Notley’s trade union-backed government has no interest in reversing the “P3-ing” of Alberta public services. Carillion has three 10-year contracts to maintain 43 percent of Alberta highways worth $96.8 million. New schools, hospitals, and the new Edmonton Light Rail Transit line are being built using P3s.

The most duplicitous response to the Carillion collapse has come from the trade unions, which after decades of conniving in the privatization of public services, and boosting the “progressive” credentials of the NDP and Liberals, the very political parties responsible for adopting P3s, have suddenly begun to issue criticisms of the P3 approach.

“This is a clear sign that privatization doesn’t work,” blustered Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) President Warren Thomas when news of Carillion’s collapse broke. “It's ineffective. It’s over-priced. And as we’re learning today, it’s totally unreliable. This is another example of failed privatization taking more money out of the pockets of Ontarians. I’m demanding that our government face these facts and begin bringing privatized services back under public management, where they belong…Carillion isn’t the only large corporation providing privatized public services in Ontario. It’s time for us to look at all of those contracts and ask ourselves if they’re worth the risk.”

Who does the OPSEU president think he is kidding? This is the same Warren Thomas who demobilized 12,000 college teachers in the face of Liberal-imposed back to work legislation last November, scuttling a four-week strike for job security and higher pay. Thomas also infamously told the Ontario Liberal government prior to the 2014 provincial election that if it chose to privatize highly profitable real estate belonging to the government-owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario, OPSEU’s pension fund would be interested in investing in it.

The unions, OPSEU included, are up to their necks in the assault on public services through privatizations and other attacks on working people. They have endorsed successive Liberal governments at the provincial and federal levels—including those headed by McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne in Ontario and the current Trudeau federal government—on the spurious pretext of “stopping” the right-wing Conservatives. This union backing has enabled Liberal governments to enforce their privatization agenda and attacks on the working class, a key element of which has been the outsourcing of public service contracts to firms like Carillion.

Trump budget proposes massive cuts in food stamps and other social programs

Shelley Connor

On Monday, the Trump administration turned over its $4.4 trillion 2019 budget to the Senate for approval. The budget proposes significant increases in defense spending and border policing. At the same time, it promises to cut or eliminate the programs that low-income Americans depend on to help them feed, house, and educate themselves or their families.

Under Trump’s budget, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly referred to as food stamps, would be cut by more than $213 billion over ten years, nearly 30 percent. The budget also proposes radically altering the administration of the program, with cuts that would result in loss of benefits for at least 4 million people, including the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly, and low-income families with children.

The budget would shift more than $260 billion in food purchasing from individual households to the government. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) would withhold between $24 and $29 billion per year in SNAP benefits—about 40 percent of the benefits issued to struggling families—and use half of those funds to supply boxes of non-perishable food items, such as shelf-stable milk, dry cereal, pasta, peanut butter, beans, and canned foods to families using the program.

Unlike the commodities programs familiar to impoverished families in bygone years, these boxes would not supplement the foods purchased with SNAP benefits; rather, they would replace them altogether. The other half of the withheld funds would not benefit the families in any way; they would simply be unavailable.

The Trump administration claims that the government can efficiently and cheaply source, package, and distribute the proposed commodities, thereby saving money. These savings come at the expense of the poor, as well as the states.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) explains in its analysis of the Trump budget, “The new structure would impose new costs on states, which would be expected to implement the change without adequate financial support. And it would likely force households to incur greater transportation costs (and time) to get food for their families because they may have to pick up the commodities at centralized locations while still traveling to grocery stories for the remainder of their food purchases.”

The CBPP estimates that the changes to SNAP would affect about 34 million people in 16 million households in 2019, almost 90 percent of SNAP participants. The budget calls for an additional $85 billion in SNAP cuts over ten years. It would force states to withdraw benefits from unemployed adults without dependent children after only three months, making no provision for areas with exceptionally high unemployment rates. Currently, states are allowed waivers from the three-month limit for these areas, but under the terms of the Trump budget they would only be able to waive the requirements in areas with unemployment rates above 10 percent, “an extremely high bar that will miss many locations where few jobs are available to lower-skilled workers.”

Moreover, the three-month limit would be extended to adults between the ages of 50 and 62. Due to the unique challenges of this age group—such as outdated job skills and declining health—finding employment can be particularly difficult.

The budget would bar state programs that phase out benefits more gently as the unemployed start earning again, which will place workers at the mercy of “benefit cliffs” and will subject millions of working families to heightened food insecurity. Another two million individuals—mostly low-income seniors, the disabled, and households with more than six members—would face reduced benefits, even though current SNAP spending amounts to less than $2 per person per meal in a household.

SNAP funding is only one of the social programs that the Trump budget fixes its sights upon. Housing budget cuts would see the cessation of housing voucher programs and result in rent increases for people receiving Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance, forcing them to spend up to 35 percent of their income on housing. Currently, they are required to spend 30 percent of their income. The minimum monthly rent would be raised to $150. Most of these families currently live below half of the poverty line, and could see their rents double or even triple.

The housing budget also cuts funding for public housing repairs by 47 percent, compared to 2017. Many public housing units date to the immediate post-World War II period; these units are deteriorating and are, in many cases, unsafe. Public housing currently needs more than $26 billion in repairs; yet instead of upgrading to newer, safer, and more energy efficient units, the Trump budget is effectively defunding what is, in many communities, the only affordable housing for low-income people. Taken alongside the cuts to housing voucher programs, this budget would condemn people to homelessness or to exploitative housing schemes.

Several other social programs have been targeted for cuts or for elimination. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps low-income households pay for utilities, would be eliminated. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which provide aid to disabled people and their dependents, would be cut by $72 billion. Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) would be cut significantly; its ancillary program, the TANF Contingency Fund block grant, would be eliminated completely. The cessation of the TANF Contingency Fund amounts to a cut of $21 billion over ten years.

The Social Services Block Grants, which states can use to create and fund social programs, such as job training, childcare assistance, and after school programs for low-income working families, would be eliminated. The Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG), given to needy students to supplement their Pell Grants, would be eliminated. The Work-Study Program, which allows college students to work on campus to help fund their education, would face significant cuts.

In the midst of these devastating cuts, $716 billion is proposed for defense spending—a seven percent increase. This would amount to the greatest defense spending buildup since the Reagan administration. On Monday, Trump proudly announced, “So we're going to have the strongest military we've ever had by far. We're increasing arsenals of virtually every weapon. We're modernizing and creating brand new—a brand new nuclear force.”

Donald Trump’s proposed budget is nothing less than a declaration of war—not only upon those caught in the cross hairs of American imperialism, but upon America’s low and moderate income residents.

Report details psychological and health impact of deportation on children

Meenakshi Jagadeesan

Last August, the medical journal Frontiers in Pediatrics published an academic report entitled “Fear of Massive Deportations in the United States: Social Implications on Deprived Pediatric Communities” which details long-term health consequences of stress suffered by children whose parents are at risk of deportation. The report, written by Marie Leiner, Izul De la Vega and Bert Johansson, provides a systematic and chilling summary of the socio-psychological impact of mass deportations on millions of people. The report comes amidst an intensified crackdown on immigrants with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) boasting a staggering 30 percent increase in arrests from 2016, totaling at least 143,470 arrests in the 2017 fiscal year.

Leiner and her co-authors point out that regardless of whether the children might be living in the country legally or illegally, their parents—usually the intended targets of immigration raids—tend to use “negative coping mechanisms” to deal with the persistent stress and depression engendered by their situation. Because of the constant fear and insecurity, parents—and by extension—children “will experience limited access to the pillars that sustain society, including access to education, protection by law, basic needs (e.g., food and housing, health care) and opportunities to plan for the future.”

In real terms, this means parents who fear deportations stop taking their children to school, children fail to report family abuse, and parents stop seeking help in acquiring food, shelter or health care, both preventative and urgent, for themselves and their children. Above all, the environment of fear and instability prevents not just the parents, but also children from making any plans for the future.

As the report explains, each of the behaviors outlined above has an even more ominous consequence for childhood development. Missing school means that the children inevitably fall behind their peers; the continuation of abuse leads to a devastating physical and psychological fallout that will create lifelong scars.

Additionally, lack of access to basic needs and preventive health care will inhibit growth and brain development, and the inability to envisage a secure future makes children potentially prone to “many physical, mental and emotional problems.”

What adds to the danger is the fact that the targeted communities also generally tend to be the most economically disadvantaged. Some of the earlier studies on the subject quoted by the report have detailed findings on how living in poverty affects the brain development of children, leading to “decreased reading/language ability and executive functions,” as well as “behavioral, cognitive and emotional problems.” Children of immigrants dealing with the looming threat of deportations thus face double the structural barrier to a healthy life.

While the long-term effects of massive deportations on children have yet to be studied, Leiner and her colleagues point out that the situation they face is not fundamentally different from those faced by children living in condition of systematic “generalized fear.” Studies that have dealt with such conditions—whether due to immigration raids or violence that is the result of terrorism, war or organized crime—have all concluded that it is the main trigger for negative outcomes.

Based on these studies, the conclusion reveals that the long-term effects of the ongoing massive deportations yields a terrible societal consequence. The report notes that the “feeling that society has failed individuals is the seed that generates individuals who are dedicated to crime, delinquency, or who are simply disconnected from society and have no intention to positively contribute to a harmonious and balanced society.”

The dire consequences of massive deportations will not remain restricted to the targeted communities. They could, as Leiner et al. state, trigger “potential unintended consequences involving increased racial/ethnic discrimination, feelings of stigma, and possible lower tolerance of racial/ethnic diversity.” The negative consequences that will be initially seen in immigrant communities will soon spread and “affect every person” in the country.

The report concludes with the suggestion that the only way forward is through the creation of a “multidimensional approach for planning, understanding and considering all social, economic, and cultural implications” of the proposed immigration policies. In addition, what is needed is an investment in “early childhood programs that focus on families as an inseparable nucleus.”

The United States has the dubious distinction of one of two UN member states to not have ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989), the other being Somalia. The basic proposition underlying the convention is that in all actions that affect children a state should make “the best interest of the child” a primary consideration. A hallmark of a civilized society is its treatment of the most vulnerable sections of its population, including children. In this sense, the trauma produced by US government policy against immigrants, supported by both the Democratic and Republican parties, reflects the brutality of American capitalism.

Indictment of Russian nationals used to campaign for censorship and war

Andre Damon

On Friday, the US Justice Department announced charges against 13 Russian nationals and three organizations for allegedly entering into a conspiracy to “interfere in the US political system.” The indictments are the first charges filed by the investigation headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the former head of the FBI.

The indictments are primarily aimed at providing the New York Times, Washington Post, and major broadcast media outlets with fodder for their claim of massive Russian involvement in US politics, including through the manipulation of the 2016 elections. The campaign has been used to justify a regime of Internet censorship and condition the population for war against Russia.

The New York Times led its report on the indictments with a breathless proclamation that it shows “a sophisticated network designed to subvert the 2016 election and to support the Trump campaign.” Agents of the Russian government, the indictment supposedly proves, “posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive.”

There is much in the indictment that is highly suspicious, including one alleged transcript of a supposedly highly-trained agent extensively confessing her activities to family members as an excuse for having to work late. However, even if everything in it were taken at face value, it amounts to very little.

The document alleges that a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency, tasked with carrying out operations all over the world and in Russia itself, had a monthly budget of approximately one million dollars.

By one estimate previously reported by the New York Times and Washington Post, the Russian government supposedly spent about $100,000 in ads on Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election campaign to promote various issues. This figure constitutes approximately one-one thousandth of one percent of the total $6.5 billion spent in the 2016 US election cycle.

The alleged foreign “meddling” is nothing but a rounding error compared to the massive election spending of billionaires and millionaires, who have been given almost unlimited influence by the 2010 Citizens United ruling and subsequent Supreme Court decisions.

Moreover, when it comes to meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, neither Russia, nor anyone else for that matter, can hold a candle to the United States.

During the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia was largely transformed into an American protectorate and an appendage of the CIA and US corporations. The United States buys candidates, creates parties, and sets up NGOs all over the world for the purpose of manipulating elections. And if these are not successful, it resorts to war and regime-change operations.

In a leaked December 2013 speech, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland admitted that the United States “invested over $5 billion” to build “good governance” in Ukraine since 1991. A substantial portion of this $5 billion was spent in promoting the 2013–2014 regime-change operation in Ukraine, which helped spark the civil war that continues to rage in that country.

The over-arching framework of the indictments, as with the anti-Russian campaign as a whole, is the claim that social and political conflict within the United States is the product of foreign interference. In announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein declared that “Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy,” adding, “We must not allow them to succeed.”

The American population does not need Vladimir Putin to undermine “public confidence in democracy.” After all, as Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights said after a visit to the United States last year, “There is no other developed country where so many voters are disenfranchised… and where ordinary voters ultimately have so little impact on political outcomes.”

The American political establishment did not need the Russian government to organize the theft of the 2000 elections, handed to George W. Bush through a 5–4 vote in the Supreme Court, a decision accepted by the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party, in alliance with dominant factions of the military-intelligence apparatus, has focused its opposition to the Trump administration not on its reactionary domestic policy or war-mongering, but on its supposed collusion with Russia. This has been used to both fight out conflicts within the ruling class over foreign policy and to create the framework for domestic repression.

The greatest fear of the Democrats no less than the Republicans is not Putin, but the growth of opposition within the United States. Significantly, while the indictment claims that Russian “meddling” was largely aimed at disparaging Hillary Clinton to assist Trump, it goes on at considerable length to detail how Russian agents supposedly promoted left-wing political organizations, anti-war sentiment, and opposition to the US two-party system.

The indictment alleges that Russian agents aimed to “support Bernie Sanders,” and encourage Americans to “vote for a third-party US Presidential candidate.” One of the posts from an allegedly fraudulent “Russian” page read, “Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it’s not a wasted vote.” Another called on American Muslims to boycott the election, declaring that Hillary Clinton “wants to continue the war on Muslims in the Middle East and voted yes for Invading Iraq.”

The present campaign has many similarities to the McCarthyite witch-hunts against “communist agents,” and the declarations by former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and Southern segregationists that the Civil Rights movement was the work of malevolent “outside agitators.”

In the context of a series of policy documents indicating that “cyber-warfare” would constitute grounds for military retaliation, the indictments also escalate the danger of US military conflict with Russia. Rosenstein declared, “The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States.”

It will also be used to intensify the demand that internet companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter take even more aggressive action to censor information and work with the state to suppress free speech online.

The inauguration of Ramaphosa and the degeneration of the ANC

Chris Marsden

Cyril Ramaphosa took office as president of South Africa yesterday, as the chosen representative of the African National Congress (ANC), and with the enthusiastic support of the major imperialist powers and global corporations.

His elevation to the highest office of state epitomises not only the political bankruptcy of the perspective of bourgeois nationalism, but the transformation of the old nationalist movements, which once professed anti-imperialist and even socialist goals, into direct instruments of imperialist rule. Moreover, workers in every country will recognise in Ramaphosa a particularly venal expression of the role of trade union bureaucrats everywhere as loyal servants of the state and the employers.

Two things recommend Ramaphosa to the world’s bourgeoisie—his fabulous wealth and the fact that he earned it through a readiness to deal ruthlessly with the working class, whose struggles first brought the ANC to power 24 years ago.

In yesterday’s State of the Nation address, Ramaphosa pledged to continue “the long walk” to freedom, in which “all may share in the wealth of our land and have a better life” and to realise Nelson Mandela’s “vision of a democratic, just and equitable society.” But Ramaphosa’s promise to end the era of corruption and “state capture” by the multi-billionaire Gupta family, which characterised the rule of Jacob Zuma, is based on pro-business policies that can only worsen the desperate situation facing workers and youth.

Ramaphosa will act on behalf of corporations who bridle against the clientism and nepotism of the ANC government because it acts as an impediment to their ability to fully exploit South Africa’s rich resources of diamonds, precious metals and minerals. Anglo American SA deputy chairman Norman Mbazima declared: “It’s very helpful if the president of the country understands your industry.”

The Financial Times wrote of the need for “a pact between the state, business and labour in the interest of South African competitiveness.” When Britain’s premier business newspaper speaks of “labour,” it means the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) bureaucracy—the key prop of the ANC in the Tripartite Alliance with the Stalinist South African Communist Party in imposing its attacks on jobs, wages and social conditions.

The crusade against corruption is to be waged by a man who is far-and-away the most corrupt individual in South Africa!

Ramaphosa led the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the struggle against the apartheid regime. From this vantage point, he played a key role in tying the working class to the pro-capitalist perspective of the ANC’s Freedom Charter—which separated the struggle against white supremacy and for formal legal equality for black South Africans from opposition to the capitalist system.

He went on to become the archetypal representative of the self-enrichment of a newly-created layer of black capitalists that was the essential function of the ANC’s policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). In 1996, the ANC selected Ramaphosa to front its penetration of the private sector. Through the National Empowerment Consortium, he utilised trade union pension funds, together with his ability to secure government contracts, to win positions on the boards of some of the country’s largest firms.

Each deal struck brought generous share options, so that, by 2017, he had become the ultimate “tenderpreneur”—with a personal fortune valued at over $500 million. Ramaphosa is South Africa’s second-richest black person after Patrice Motsepe, his brother-in-law and the country’s only black dollar billionaire.

Ramaphosa is above all trusted to become president because of his role as the butcher of Marikana.

No single event so brutally demonstrates the transformation of the trade union bureaucracy into a police force over the working class on behalf of capital as does the August 2012 massacre of 34 miners at Lonmin’s platinum mine.

The miners, striking for a living wage, were in open rebellion against the NUM. Ramaphosa’s company was Lonmin’s BEE partner, holding a 9 percent stake. In that capacity, on August 12, he contacted then Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa, lobbying him to send more officers to Marikana. On August 15, Ramaphosa wrote to the mineral resources minister that the Marikana miners were not engaged in a labour dispute but a “dastardly criminal” act.

Under Ramaphosa’s prompting, the ANC sent in the police to shoot, kill and maim striking workers and arrest 270 on charges of murder and attempted murder under apartheid-era “common purpose” laws.

Less than six months later, Ramaphosa was selected as deputy leader of the ANC, alongside Zuma, signalling the government’s loyalty to the major corporations. As Marikana activist Napoleon Webster said last year: “We know the business community loves Cyril… Cyril is still the same monster who caused the Lonmin massacre.”

Speaking before parliament Wednesday, Ramaphosa declared of Zuma’s removal: “This is not yet uhuru (freedom)… We are going to seek to improve the lives of our people on an ongoing basis, and since 1994, we have done precisely that.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The ANC came to power in April-May 1994 at the head of a mass revolutionary movement of the working class—not only to apartheid rule, but also the immense deprivations inflicted on millions.

However, the ANC’s Freedom Charter was based on the Stalinist perspective of a “two stage revolution.” Establishing democracy was to be the primary goal, to which the socialist aspirations of the working class must be subordinated—by the COSATU union apparatus—until an unspecified future date.

In power ever since, the Tripartite Alliance government has ruthlessly imposed the dictates of global capital and the South African bourgeoisie—enriching a thin layer of black businessmen, politicians and managers, while never undertaking a single measure to genuinely benefit working people.

The bitter reality is that the social position of the working class is worse than it was under apartheid. Income inequality is extraordinarily high—around 60 percent of the population earns less than $7,000 a year, while 2.2 percent of the population earns more than $50,000. Wealth ownership is even more starkly polarised, with 10 percent of the population owning at least 90–95 percent of all assets.

More than half the population officially lives in poverty, earning below $43 per month, while 13.8 million are in extreme poverty. Unemployment officially stands at 28 percent, and 36 percent unofficially. It is a staggering 68 percent among young people.

None of the essential democratic and social needs of the working class and oppressed masses can be met under the rule of the national bourgeoisie, which is organically tied to imperialism and whose own privileges depend on the brutal exploitation of workers and poor farmers.

The advanced workers, above all the younger generation whose lives have been blighted by the ANC’s defence of capitalism and the imperialist world order, must now undertake to build a new revolutionary leadership. Its perspective has to be to take state power and form a workers’ government to implement socialist policies to take over the banks, mining and other major corporations and run them to meet social need, not private profit.

In a globalised economy, facing the domination of the entire world by imperialist powers and giant transnational corporations and banks, this struggle can be successfully waged only based on the strategy outlined by Leon Trotsky in his Theory of Permanent Revolution and elaborated today by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

South Africa’s working class must adopt its own international socialist strategy, consciously seeking to unify its fight against the ANC, COSATU and their corporate and imperialist backers with that waged by their brothers and sisters throughout Africa and the entire world. This means beginning the construction of a section of the ICFI, the world party of socialist revolution.

Ethiopia: Final Days of the Regime

Graham Peebles

Under relentless popular pressure the Ethiopian Prime-Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, has been forced to resign, other members of the government are expected to follow. In his resignation speech he acknowledged that, ”unrest and a political crisis have led to the loss of lives and displacement of many,” Reuters reports. ‘Loss of lives’ of innocent Ethiopians at the hands of TPLF security personnel to be clear. “I see my resignation as vital in the bid to carry out reforms that would lead to sustainable peace and democracy.”

This is a highly significant step in what may prove to be the total collapse of the ruling party. It has been brought about by the peaceful movement for democratic change that has swept across the country since late 2005. Protests began in Oromia triggered by an issue over land and political influence and spread throughout the country.

A little over a month ago, former Prime-Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, announced that the government would release ‘some political prisoners’, in order, Al Jazeera reported, “to improve the national consensus and widen the democratic space.” Since then a relatively small number of falsely imprisoned people (some western media claim 6,000 but this is unconfirmed – nobody knows the exact number, probably hundreds, not thousands) have been released, including some high profile figures (Merera Gudina, chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress, Journalist Eskinder Nega and opposition leader Andualem Arage for example). Many of those set free are in extremely poor health due to the ill treatment and, in some cases, torture suffered in prison.

Despite these positive moves and the ex-Prime-Minister’s liberal sounding rhetoric, the methodology of the ruling party has not fundamentally changed: the TPLF dominated government continues to trample on human rights and to kill, beat and arrest innocent Ethiopians as they exercise their right to public assembly and peaceful protest.

The total number killed by regime forces since protests erupted in November 2015 is unclear: hundreds definitely (the government itself admits to 900 deaths), tens of thousands probably. A million people (Oromo/Somali groups) according to the United Nations have been displaced – due to government-engineered ethnic conflict – and are now in internal displacement camps (IDP’s) or are simply homeless. Tens of thousands have been falsely imprisoned without due process; their ‘crime’ to stand up to the ruling party, to dissent, to cry out for democracy, for freedom, for justice and an end to tyranny.

All ‘political’ prisoners, including opposition party members (British citizen Andergachew Tsige e.g.), and journalists, should, as Amnesty International rightly states, “be freed immediately and unconditionally………as they did nothing wrong and should never have been arrested in the first place.” Not only should all political prisoners be released forthwith, but the laws utilized to arrest and imprison need to be dismantled, and the judicial system — currently nothing more that an arm of the TPLF – freed from political control.

The primary weapons of suppression are the 2009 Anti-Terrorist Proclamation and The Charities and Societies Proclamation. Draconian legislation both, allowing the ruling party to detain anyone expressing political dissent in any form, to use torture and information elicited during torture to be used in evidence — all of which is illegal under the UN Convention against Torture, which the Ethiopian Government signed, and ratified in 1994.

Unstoppable Movement for Change

The release of a small number (relative to the total) of political prisoners and the resignation of the Prime Minister does not alter the approach of the government or their brutal method of governance. It is simply a cynical attempt by the TPLF to subdue the movement for change and to appease international voices demanding human rights be upheld.

Arrests and killings by TPLF security personnel continue unabated. Reports are numerous, the situation on the ground changing daily, hourly: At the end of January, soldiers from the Agazi force arrested an estimated 500 people in northern Ethiopia reports independent broadcaster, ESAT News. In Woldia (also in the north), TPLF soldiers forced “detainees [to] walk on their knees over cobblestones. They [TPLF soldiers] have also reportedly beaten residents including children and pregnant women.” These arrests follow the killing of 13 people in the town; “several others were killed in Mersa, Kobo and Sirinka.” And the BBC Amharic service relates that six people were killed at the Hamaressa IDP camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) (according to UNOCHA Hamaressa IDP camp was home to over 4,000 people internally displaced by the Oromo-Somali disputes) in Eastern Ethiopia. The victims were protesting against the appalling conditions in the camp and demanding they be allowed to go back to their villages when they were shot.

No matter how many people are killed, falsely imprisoned and beaten, the movement for lasting democratic change will not be put down. The principle target of protestors and activists is the dominant faction within the EPRDF coalition, the TPLF, or Woyane (relating to men from the Tigray region), as it is known. This small group took power in 1991 and has controlled all aspects of life in the country including the judiciary, the army, the media and the sole telecommunication supplier (enabling the regime to limit internet access and monitor usage) ever since. The issues driving the protests are broad, interconnected and fundamental; the fact that Ethiopia is a single party state in all but name; the wholesale abuse of human rights; the lack of freedoms of all kinds; the partisan distribution of employment, businesses, and aid; the regime’s dishonesty and corruption; state orchestrated violence false imprisonment and torture.

The people will no longer live under the suffocating blanket of intimidation that has stifled them for the last 27 years, and are demanding fundamental change, calling on the government to step down and for ‘fair and open’ democratic elections. Until now the regime’s response has been crude and predictable; rooted in force, shrouded in arrogance and unwilling to respond to the demands of the people, the government consistently falls back on the only strategy it knows: violence and intimidation; as the people march in unison, the regime unleashes its uniformed thugs. But whereas in the past fear kept people silent, now they are filled with the Fire of Freedom and Justice; they may well be frightened, but in spite of the threats more and more people are acting, engaging in organized acts of civil disobedience (stay-at-home protests) and taking to the streets in demonstration against the regime. Gatherings of thousands of people, innocent men and women, young and old, who refuse any longer to cower to the bully enthroned in Addis Ababa. And with every protestor the regime kills, beats and imprisons the Light of Unity glows a little brighter the resolution of the people strengthens, social cohesion grows.

The demand for change is of course not limited to Ethiopia; throughout the world large groups are coming together demanding freedom and social justice, cooperation and unity; the reactionary forces resist, but it is a global movement that, while it may be denied for a time, cannot be stopped. The TPLF is in chaos, their tyranny is coming to an end, they may cling on to power for a while yet, a few months, a year or two perhaps, but even if they remain in office their hold over the population is at an end. The Ethiopian people have a common foe, a unified cause, a shared purpose. The TPLF is the foe, the cause is their removal and the purpose is to bring lasting democratic change to Ethiopia, and no matter what the regime does, this time they will not be stopped.

Big Pharma Still Tries to Push Dangerous Drug Class

Martha Rosenberg

Bisphosphonate bone drugs are among the most harmful and misrepresented drug classes still on the market. But that has not stopped Pharma-funded medical associations like the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research, the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the National Bone Health Alliance from periodically wringing their hands over low sales. 

This week the New York Times repeats the industry lament. “Currently, many people at risk of a fracture — and often their doctors — are failing to properly weigh the benefits of treating fragile bones against the very rare but widely publicized hazards of bone-preserving drugs, experts say,” it writes. Hip fractures among women 65 and older on Medicare are rising says the piece and Medicare reimbursements for bone density tests are falling. “Doctors who did them in private offices could no longer afford to [do them] which limited patient access and diagnosis and treatment of serious bone loss,” says a doctor quoted in the article which sounds like a Pharma plea for tax-payer funding.

But here is the back story.

The first bisphosphonate bone drug approved for osteoporosis, Merck’s Fosamax, received only a six month review before FDA approval. When its esophageal side effects were revealed, the FDA tried to unapprove it but Merck got the FDA to settle for a warning label that told patients to sit upright for an hour after taking the drug. Six months after Fosamax was approved, there were 1,213 reports of adverse effects including 32 patients hospitalized for esophageal harm. One woman who took Fosamax but remained upright for only thirty minutes was admitted to the hospital with “severe ulcerative esophagitis affecting the entire length of the esophagus” and had to be fed intravenously, according to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Soon bisphosphonates (which include Boniva, Actonel and Zometa) were shown to weaken not strengthen bones by suppressing the body’s bone-remodeling action. Yes bone loss is stopped but since the bone is not renewed, it becomes brittle, ossified and prone to fracture. More than a decade ago, articles in the NEJM, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma and Injury warned of the paradoxical drug results. One-half of doctors at a 2010 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons annual meeting presentation said they’d personally seen patients with bisphosphonate-compromised bone. “There is actually bone death occurring,” said Phuli Cohan, MD on CBS about a woman who’d been on Fosamax for years.

By 2003, dentists and oral surgeons found that after simple office dental work, the jawbone tissue of patients taking bisphosphonates would sometimes not heal but become necrotic and die. They had received no warnings though Merck knew about the jawbone effects from animal studies since 1977.

“Up to this point, this rare clinical scenario was seen only at our centers in patients who had received radiation therapy and accounted for 1 or 2 cases per year,” said the authors of an article titled “Osteonecrosis of the Jaws Associated with the Use of Bisphosphonates: A Review of 63 Cases,” published in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

Despite reports of ulcerative esophagitis, bone degradation, fractures and jawbone death Merck aggressively promoted Fosamax. It hired researcher Jeremy Allen to plant bone scan machines in medical offices across the country to drive sales and to push through the Bone Mass Measurement Act which made bone scans Medicare reimbursable paid by you and me. Hopefully that is changing.

Blaming hip fractures on not enough people taking bisphosphonates is not a new tactic for Pharma. It blamed increasing suicides on not enough people taking antidepressants (even when as much as a fourth of the population takes antidepressants). Get ready for Pharma to blame obesity on not enough people taking prescription obesity drugs. The ruse is even more dishonest because many popular drugs people are taking like GERD medications really do thin bones. First do no harm.

Syrian Quicksand

TOMMY RASKIN

When will we learn? War is quicksand. The destruction of one evildoer usually gives way to a second evildoer, the latter of which we find ourselves “obligated” to fight for the same reasons we were “obligated” to fight the former.

Look at Syria, where ISIL’s downfall has left the region’s other competitors squabbling for control. Tehran and Tel Aviv are feuding after an Iranian drone allegedly drifted into Israel’s airspace and triggered a confrontation with Syrian troops that brought down an Israeli F-16 on Saturday. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proceeded with Operation Olive Branch, an offensive he began in January to counter the Kurds in Afrin before his probable incursion into the Kurdish territory of Manbij.

Atop it all, Bashar al-Assad has continued fighting anti-government holdouts—and his Russian patrons have continued supporting him—as civilians in the Idlib war zone find themselves caught in what The Washington Post on Wednesday characterized as a “death trap.”

Still hankering for war after ISIL’s defeat, the United States military apparatus has stuck around for this slugfest as well. The ostensible purpose of our government’s continued involvement, beyond engaging in general “counter-terrorism,” is to bolster the Kurds’ Syrian Democratic Forces, even though that puts the US on a direct collision course with the Syrian, Russian, and Turkish governments. For its part, the Syria-Russia tandem wants to rout the Kurdish fighters so that Assad can tighten his grip on the country, while Erdogan continues to view any Kurdish stronghold in Syria as a potential breeding ground for attacks on Ankara.

Neither Assad loyalists nor Turkish leaders have hesitated to make these feelings known, by the way; Syrian troops have already battled the Kurds’ US allies, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu demanded last month that US personnel evacuate Manbij so the Turks can overrun it.

Against that backdrop, with the US sticking to its guns, it is difficult not to wonder what the point of all of this is. Our leaders (in this century, anyway) first dragged us to the region to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq; when ISIL replaced him, our leaders decided to stay for more. Now that ISIL is greatly weakened, they want more still, perhaps in order to defeat Assad, the Kurds’ Turkish adversaries, and pockets of Islamist stragglers in Syria. But new rogues will crop up after them, and then what? Will this game ever end?

Our only hope is to abandon the logic of a Pax Americana, which holds that malefactors abroad—through an apparently permanent US war footing—generally can and should be eliminated. It is a tempting system of thought, not least for its simplicity, but history suggests that it is more likely to produce carnage than to bring peace.

If it is peace we want for the people of Syria, then we should heed the advice of libertarians, progressives, and certain conservatives who advocate opening the United States to innocent refugees. Save for that, let us leave the Syrian matter alone.