The political agenda behind the UK ruling elite’s attack on Oxfam

Margot Miller

The UK government cut off its aid budget to the Oxfam charity, amid a two-week media frenzy over alleged sexual misconduct by some of its staff in Haiti.

The attack on Oxfam was followed by the resignation of UNICEF deputy executive director Justin Forsyth, following accusations of inappropriate behaviour toward female aid workers during his time as chief executive of Save the Children. Forsyth admitted sending inappropriate texts and made comments to female staff about their appearance in 2011 and 2015.

At the same time Brendan Cox, widower of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, resigned from charities set up in his wife’s memory following allegations of sexual harassment while he worked at Save the Children. Forsyth and Cox worked together at 10 Downing Street when Gordon Brown was Labour prime minister from 2007 to 2010.

The moves against Oxfam began when the Times, owned by billionaire oligarch Rupert Murdoch , reported in a front-page article that four Oxfam aid workers had been sacked and three had resigned following an internal inquiry into alleged sexual exploitation, downloading pornography, bullying and intimidation. These were alleged to have occurred during the relief operation after the Haiti earthquake in 2010.

The media widely reported that Oxfam gave a reference to an alleged perpetrator, though it later transpired that it was written by an employee who had himself been dismissed. The campaign went into overdrive with claims made that Oxfam staff on its mission to Chad also used prostitutes in 2006. The Sunday Times reported that more than 120 workers from UK charities were alleged to have committed sexual abuse in the past year.

Oxfam’s own inquiry concluded there was a “culture of impunity” among some staff in Haiti. Oxfam allowed country director in Haiti, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, to resign after he admitted using prostitutes in his home in Haiti.

In 2011, Oxfam informed the charities watchdog, the Charities Commission, of its investigation. It would seem that the commission was indifferent to any possible abuse at the time, as it did not even request a copy of the findings.

However, seven years later, the commission has lambasted Oxfam for not disclosing the “full details” and making “no mention of potential sexual crimes involving minors.” The commission cynically declared, “Our approach to this matter would have been different had the full details ... been disclosed to us at the time.”

Penny Mordaunt, secretary of state for the Department for International Development (DfID), followed suit, declaring on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr” show that Oxfam had failed in its “moral leadership” and did “absolutely the wrong thing” by not disclosing all the details.

The immediate fallout of the “revelations” was the resignation of Oxfam’s deputy chief executive Penny Lawrence. Then DfID, which awarded contracts worth £31.7 million to Oxfam last year, announced that it was stopping future finance until the charity could fulfil the “high standards” government ministers expect. The Haitian government temporarily revoked Oxfam’s authorisation to work on the island.

No one can take at face value the claims of the government and its right-wing media backers to be concerned with the welfare of young women in disaster zones.

The campaign by the government and its right-wing media backers is aimed at bringing Oxfam to its knees. Newspapers including the Daily Mail trumpeted on their front pages the fact that Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, disclosed that 7,000 direct debits out of more than 30,000 personal donations had already been cancelled.

Goldring’s initial response was an angry retort to Oxfam’s critics, whom he decried as disproportionate and “gunning” for his organization “which had not murdered babies in their cots.” Many of those targeting Oxfam, on the other hand, do indeed have blood on their hands having supported the wars and so-called “structural adjustment” programmes that have destroyed entire countries and continents.

While Oxfam itself—like other anti-poverty charities—is the beneficiary of countless hours of voluntary work in Britain by people deeply opposed to poverty both at home and abroad, it too operates overseas as a major corporation carrying out multimillion government contracts, with offices alongside the banks and global financial consultants.

Goldring later apologised to the International Development parliamentary committee for his remarks and offered “humblest apologies” to the Haitian government. Oxfam issued a full-page apology in the Guardian over events that took place seven years ago for which no one was arrested, let alone charged.

The New Statesman noted that if Mordaunt were to cut all government funding to Oxfam, as threatened, it “would definitely notice. Of its £409 million income last year, 7 percent came from the UK government. That’s in comparison to donations and legacies which accounted for 26 percent of funding and trading sales which make up just over a fifth.”

It is necessary to stand back from the screaming headlines and make a sober appraisal of the timing and targeting of this unprecedented attack on Oxfam, alongside the forces involved and their motives. As with the #MeToo campaign, its purpose is to engineer political shifts of a reactionary character.

Part of Oxfam’s popularity is its detailed annual reports showing that capitalism is an increasingly irrational system, in which a tiny minority of the obscenely wealthy expropriate the wealth created by the labour of billions, the vast numbers of whom are condemned to live in abject poverty.

Last January’s report was particularly damning. As well as citing the growing inequality, it pointed out that “the key factors driving up rewards for shareholders and corporate bosses at the expense of workers’ pay and conditions … include the erosion of workers’ rights; the excessive influence of big business over government policy-making; and the relentless corporate drive to minimize costs in order to maximize returns to shareholders.”

It was immediately after this that the campaign against Oxfam began, with government ministers attacking the charity for being too “political” and demanding that it be brought to heel.

The offensive demonstrates that even Oxfam’s mild criticisms and palliatives can no longer be tolerated. It is bound up with the concerted shift by the ruling elite to militarism and war, and away from the “soft power” tools—including the various charities it used in the past to push through its geopolitical interests.

While the ruling class has long perpetuated the myth that foreign aid is spent on alleviating poverty and mitigating the consequences of war, the reality is that most of the UK government’s £13.4 billion aid budget, 0.7 percent of GDP, is spent securing Britain’s commercial and geostrategic interests.

Much aid has now been “securitised,” with aid money used to prevent migration from Africa and the Middle East, and to provide security, meaning military, and police operations and training, channelled through a handful of corporations.

Last year, the BBC exposed how a multimillion-pound foreign aid project, ostensibly aimed at training a civilian police force in rebel-held Aleppo, Idlib and Daraa provinces in Syria, ended up in the hands of jihadi groups. The UK government, after briefly suspending the project, soon resumed its funding.

The most rapacious sections of the ruling elite, including those in the “hard Brexit” faction, are now demanding the slashing or ending of the foreign aid budget, with senior military and government figures calling ever more stridently for a substantial increase in military spending.

As part of the offensive against Oxfam, party leadership contender and hard Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg delivered a petition to Downing Street—supported by the right-wing Daily Express—which demanded a “crusade” to “Stop the foreign aid madness.” The Sun, also owned by Murdoch, editorialised that the “Government must strip Oxfam’s cash ... and ditch [the] foreign aid spending target.”

European Union demands Google, Facebook step up Internet censorship

Kumaran Ira 

In a new attack on free speech, the European Union (EU) is calling on major social media and Internet firms including Facebook, Twitter and Google to automatically and immediately censor online material.

On March 1, the EU Commission called on companies and EU states to ensure “the detection and removal of illegal content through reactive (so called ‘notice and action’) or proactive measures.” It also identified a vast amount of material targeted for censorship. According to the Commission, its recommendations apply to all forms of “content ranging from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”

“Considering that terrorist content is most harmful in the first hours of its appearance online, all companies should remove such content within one hour from its referral as a general rule,” it said.

The measures the EU is discussing would force companies to create programs, answerable to no one, to trawl the Internet and delete users’ content. This would consolidate censorship measures the EU proposed last year via the EU Internet Forum, which called on tech firms to work to develop automatic removal of online content.

The EU hailed moves in this direction that have already taken place. According to the EU, “Twitter reported that three quarters of the 300,000 accounts removed between January and June 2017 were deleted before posting their first Tweet. According to YouTube, more than 150,000 videos have been removed since June 2017. Once aware of a piece of terrorist content, Facebook removes 83 percent of subsequently uploaded copies within one hour of upload.”

The EU justified its policy with shopworn claims about the fight against terrorism. “While several platforms have been removing more illegal content than ever before ... we still need to react faster against terrorist propaganda and other illegal content which is a serious threat to our citizens’ security, safety and fundamental rights,” said Digital Commissioner Andrus Ansip.

Press accounts of the latest EU demand for censorship cited the need, as the Guardian put it, to fight “extremist content on the web” that “has influenced lone-wolf attackers who have killed people in several European cities after being radicalised.”

The argument that EU censorship is aimed at so-called lone-wolf terrorists is a lie, above all because lone-wolf terrorists are largely a political fiction. The major terror attacks in Europe were carried out not by isolated individuals, but by members of Islamist networks active in NATO’s proxy wars in the Middle East, and who were actively watched and protected for that reason by European intelligence.

The organizers of terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and in Belgium in 2016 were well known to the intelligence services. The Kouachi brothers who led the Charlie Hebdo attack, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, and the El Bakraoui brothers who carried out the 22 March 2016 Brussels attacks were all well known to European intelligence. They were allowed to travel freely and prepare their attacks, as their networks were intelligence assets operating under state protection.

Similarly, the links of the Islamic State militia to Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri and Manchester bomber Salman Abedi were well known to German and British intelligence, respectively, before they attacked. These attacks were seized on by the EU powers to intensify police-state measures that shred basic democratic rights, such as the state of emergency in France.

Now, the red herring of the fight against “lone-wolf” terrorists is serving as a pretext for yet further attacks on Internet freedom and freedom of speech.

These attacks are well advanced. The EU wants the same IT companies that work closely on Internet censorship with a wide variety of states, above all Washington and the US intelligence agencies, to use similar methods to trample on freedom of speech and other democratic rights in Europe. This is what emerged from recent remarks by Julian King, the EU Commissioner for Security.

Censorship like that being proposed by the EU, King said, is “not only possible, it’s being done already by a number of the larger platforms.” He called for “proactive measures to identify and remove illegal content, including automated means such as upload filters, where this is appropriate.” He also called on IT firms to cooperate with EU “member States, trusted flaggers and among themselves to work together and benefit from best practices.”

Such remarks are a warning. US politicians and IT firms have openly declared that they are seeking to carry out politically targeted censorship, aiming to promote “trusted” news outlets that function as little more than state propaganda outlets. Above all, these censorship measures are being implemented to restrict access to socialist and antiwar publications, such as the World Socialist Web Site, amid rising opposition to war and austerity among American workers and youth.

Last summer, the WSWS identified that a dramatic decline in its readership, together with that of other socialist, antiwar, and progressive web sites, resulted from Google’s implementation of a new algorithm aiming to promote “authoritative” news sources over “alternative” sources of information.

Now, under the guise of fighting “terrorist content,” the EU is similarly seeking to implement repressive measures to censor the Internet that are squarely aimed at rising social and political discontent internationally. Major European powers are already enacting similar censorship laws at the national level. Since January 1, the German Network Enforcement Law has been in effect, enabling Berlin to regulate and censor the Internet along similar lines as the Trump administration and its attack on net neutrality in the United States.

In the name of fighting “illegal” content, the EU aims to target any oppositional views that challenge its plans to slash social spending to finance remilitarization and wars abroad.

As the German ruling elite prepares a new coalition government between the Social Democrats and Christian democrats, the parties involved in the new government have called for strengthening the German armed forces and German influence worldwide, as well as major increases in military spending.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has announced €300 billion in military spending over the next 6 years, as well as calling for deep cuts in basic social programs and a return of the draft.

It is in this context—amid deep popular opposition to EU austerity and militarism, amid recent strikes across Europe, from German metalworkers and British rail workers to Romanian autoworkers—that the EU is seeking to set up the censorship of the Internet and social media.

Kenya lecturers’ strike paralyzes public universities

Eddie Haywood

Lecturers at public universities across Kenya went on strike on March 1, citing low salaries and back pay owed to them. The action is a renewed effort by the lecturers’ unions—the Universities Academic Staff Union (UASU) and the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU)—nearly three months after a strike in December that ended with lecturers receiving non-binding promises from the government to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, including increased salaries.

This time the lecturers have vowed to continue the strike until their demands for increased salaries and funding to upgrade facilities are met by the government.

The lecturers have additionally demanded access to other services that are generally available to employees in the public sector, such as car loans and higher quality medical insurance. On the issue of poor wages, the lecturers and other public employees have blamed pervasive government corruption, which allows officials to swipe funds allocated to the public sector.

In announcing the strike, UASU General Secretary Constantine Wasonga stated, “We want salary structures that will do away with distortions that barely make sense. As a professor, I earn less than my students who are KMPDU members.”

The walkout by lecturers has paralyzed public universities across the country, with facilities shuttered and classes suspended. A number of public hospitals and clinics have also been closed, as several hundred medical student interns are participating in the strike.

At the center of the conflict between the lecturers and the Ministry of Education is the previous year’s budget, which factored in paltry salary increases for lecturers and professors employed at Kenya’s 31 public universities. The other major issue is the Vice Chancellor’s Committee’s failure to implement the pay increases.

Many public universities have fallen into disrepair and neglect after successive governments slashed funding for the public university system, leaving facilities in desperate need of renovation. The ability of universities to provide quality education has been undermined by obsolete facilities and equipment, together with overworked and underpaid academic staff.

The lack of funding for Kenya’s public university system was illustrated in a February 12 letter addressed to Ministry of Education Secretary Amina Mohamed titled “Crisis in Public Universities Due to Underfunding.” The letter, signed by numerous academic staff from several public universities, paints a grim picture of a university system on the brink of collapse.

Besides the funding shortfall for renovation of facilities and salaries of current staff, the letter highlights a deficit of 3.5 billion Kenyan shillings (more than $34 million) in pension benefits owed to retired staff.

For its part, the Kenyatta government has displayed its contempt for academic staff and students alike by refusing to respond or table a counter-offer to lecturers. Officials have made various statements in the media painting striking workers as criminals and blackguarding them for delaying students’ education and graduation.

The Kenyan ruling elite sits atop a social powder keg that threatens to erupt into open class struggle. At one end a corrupt elite hoards massive wealth, while at the other end the Kenyan masses struggle to survive.

For their part, the UASU and KMPDU pursue the material interests of the Kenyan elite. These organizations seek to subjugate workers to the authority of the profit system and are neither able nor willing to carry out the necessary fight to unite the entire Kenyan working class against capitalism, which is the root cause of declining wages and social inequality.

Hung parliament emerges in Italy as social-democratic vote collapses

Alex Lantier

Yesterday’s general elections in Italy have produced a hung parliament and a historic collapse of the ruling social-democratic Democratic Party (PD). Initial projected returns show a surge of right-wing parties including the populist Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League (formerly the Northern League), and uncertainty reigns as to what government might emerge.

Official election results will only be announced this evening. However, current results show the M5S winning 31.93 percent of the vote, the right-wing coalition winning 37.12 percent of the vote, and the PD and its allies winning 23.23 percent. Inside the right-wing coalition, the League won 17.97 percent of the vote, while Forza Italia of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi won only 13.91 percent, and the fascistic Fratelli d’Italia won 4.35 percent.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s PD obtained only 18.98 percent of the vote, and its various political satellites won even less. The social-democratic Free and Equal (LEU) party won 3.35 percent, and the petty-bourgeois Potere al Popolo (Power to the People) party won 1 percent.

All indications are that a hung parliament will emerge, followed by negotiations between the various parties over how to form a governing coalition. Previously, rules over the attribution of seats in the Chamber of Deputies meant that a party winning 40 percent of the vote received an absolute majority of 54 percent. The election law adopted last year removed the bonus. Experts estimate that at least 40 percent of the vote are necessary to receive a majority of the seats. But now it appears that none of the parties will even reach this.

The M5S appears to have done particularly well in the Mezzogiorno, the economically devastated, primarily agricultural areas of southern Italy. It has reportedly won over 40 percent of the vote in the region of Puglia, with over 45 percent in the region’s capital, Bari. Former Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema has reportedly lost his seat.

The M5S has repeatedly said it refuses to make alliances with other parties, and uncertainty reigns as to what government could emerge. Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung raised the possibility of an alliance between the M5S and the League, calling it a “horror scenario for Europe and for the financial markets,” insofar as both of these parties are critical of the European Union (EU).

In France, L ’ Obs raised a possible M5S-League alliance, an “unlikely” PD-Berlusconi alliance, a technocratic government, and concluded that the most likely scenario is “a big mess followed by new elections.” Le Monde called the result an “electoral earthquake,” while La Dépêche wrote that its main fear was that Italy will become an “ungovernable country.”

The election result testifies to the political bankruptcy of the PD and to the vast popular anger with the EU. It comes less than a year after the electoral collapse of both the German Social Democratic Party and France’s Socialist Party.

Not only did the PD supervise years of EU social cuts and mass unemployment in Italy, but Gentiloni called for Italy to join the plans of Berlin and Paris to militarize the EU and aligned himself on NATO’s reckless war threats against Russia. Gentiloni’s government also led the EU intervention in Libya, a former Italian colony devastated by the 2011 NATO war, to set up prison camps for refugees. The PD’s unpopular and reactionary policies paved the way for a degraded, anti-immigrant campaign.

There is broad social opposition, and mass protests erupted against a fascist shooting in Macerata of six African immigrant youth. Nonetheless, it is right-wing or far-right parties that benefit. They were able to rise in the polls and carry the election, by presenting themselves as the best populist protest alternative to the PD and the EU.

In the face of their party’s historic collapse, PD sources are reporting that former prime minister Matteo Renzi is preparing to tender his resignation as PD national secretary. He is scheduled to make an announcement on the elections at 5 p.m.

As for Potere al Popolo, its score reflects the fact that the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left parties offer no alternative to their social-democratic allies. It is drawn from various Stalinist and petty-bourgeois factions of Rifondazione Comunista that have made their hostility to the working class very clear over decades by working with the PD and its forebears—including by voting credits for the Afghan war and pension cuts under the 2006-2007 social-democratic “Union” government.

Workers are profoundly disillusioned with such parties, which are neither capable of nor interested in appealing to workers’ opposition to austerity and war.

Potere al Popolo ’s campaign demonstrated that it offered no alternative to the right-wing policies of the PD, with which it has at most tactical differences. It is allied with Syriza (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”), which is running a pro-austerity, pro-EU government in Greece in alliance with the far-right Independent Greeks (Anel) party. It also received support from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose Unsubmissive France (LFI) party has announced its support for stepped-up military spending and is calling for a return to the draft in France.

What is clear today is that the Italian election has resolved nothing. Like the 2015 and 2016 elections in Spain and the 2017 elections in Germany, which all led to hung parliaments and long governmental negotiations, it has revealed the profound instability and crisis of European bourgeois politics.

Winter Olympics in the Nuclear Shadow

Sheel Kant Sharma


Mixed signals have come from the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics but they are once again wrapped in fierce and heightened rhetoric; from Washington, about the dire consequences of North Korean defiance in word and deed, and Pyongyong calling sanctions and “all blockades” (of ships) acts of war. The thawing at the conclusion of the Winter Olympics in South Korea is prominently traced to President Moon who took the initiative and invited the North Koreans to participate, warmly welcomed them, and held meetings with  their titular leader along with Kim Jong-un’s sister at the inaugural ceremony, and with the former North Korean spy chief Kim Yong-chul  at the closing ceremony. The US vice-president, and the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, added greater value through their presence, albeit maintaining the standoff with North Korea. 

The net outcome of whatever overt or covert diplomacy was at play in Pyeongchang is couched in paradoxical messages. First came word about North Korean willingness to talk with the US after Moon’s meeting with General Kim Yong-chul. Then  appeared the latest advice from Seoul to the US to “lower the threshold for dialogue,” and to North Korea to “show willingness to denuclearise” for talks to make headway towards defusing the situation. And the latest from Washington, with President Trump expressing his willingness to talk with North Korea but “only under the right conditions” at meeting of state governors.

The atmosphere for talks already shows the severe effects of the harsh new US sanctions just announced on North Korea, including on “ships registered in China” in order to maintain maximum pressure, and Trump’s warning that should sanctions fail, phase two of US action may be "very, very unfortunate for the world." The angry Chinese reaction that this would harm cooperation with North Korea coupled with North Korea calling new sanctions 'acts of war' and rejecting any talks about its nuclear weapons bespeak of troubles that lie ahead for diplomacy.

However, not all avenues are closed, given that South Korean president remains open to the invitation from the North for an inter-Korean summit in May. In addition, if a preliminary dialogue between the US and North Korea were to begin as averred by both sides, it might give cause to extend suspension of US-Korea joint military exercises until a possible summit. That Moon’s homily to the US and North Korea was after his meeting with the Chinese vice-premier, who also attended the closing ceremony, may strengthen the view that both Beijing and Seoul are together in tapping the diplomatic openings given by the Winter Olympics. Skeptics in the US voice fears that this Beijing-Seoul commonality of interest and Moon’s warming up to North Korea may have the effect of loosening the US-South Korea alliance. So, what are the chances of a possible headway at this juncture?

Can Washington and Seoul countenance at some point a mutation of the double freeze proposed by Russia and China in the course of the tension-prone developments since January 2017? Can a freeze, as a preliminary step, be reached on further US sanctions or their further implementation (or lifting of the latest sanctions, as China has demanded) in exchange for no further nuclear and missile tests and provocations by North Korea? North Korea’s diplomatic aims from heightened brinkmanship so far remain enigmatic as well as suspect due to their past record. Be that as it may, will a relaxation in its stand and the ensuing inter-Korean thaw facilitate resumption of dialogue if its nuclear weapons were not under the axe to begin with – notwithstanding US insistence on denuclearisation? White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stated that, “denuclearisation must be the result of any dialogue with North Korea.” The finer print of these various assertions might reveal some space for traction away from the stalemate. At what stage, if at all, will US threats about dire consequences persuade China to draw some red lines with regard to Jong-un? Can there be, in principle, a realistic threshold below which military action is conceivable and if so, might that impel China to move to more action to defuse the situation?  (Trump in his latest expressions has praised China.) 

In fact, none of the redeeming features in an analysis of the Pyeongchang outcome would be strangers to Korean history. Jimmy Carter’s diplomacy progressed without North Korea accepting all the conditions of that time; Bill Clinton tried his best to make a breakthrough in the last years of his presidency - including Albright’s visit to North Korea and the then South Korean president's Sunshine Policy; the Six Party Talks struggled on and off despite further setbacks; and the whole policy of strategic patience which, though formally dumped, still hides in the background even as Trump cracks the whip. The avoidance of a nuclear exchange was the métier of diplomacy – as during the Cold War at several extremely frightening junctures.

As for the uniqueness of the present crisis, the North Koreans in their threats to the US mainland are nowhere near Russia and China, whom the new US Nuclear Posture Review darkly paints in adversarial terms. Thus, unlike the two-person zero-sum game that Cold War strategic crises comprised, this time there are more actors with axes to grind, even if not as overt participants. A US comparatively weaker than what it was during previous crisis situations in the Korean Peninsula is a fact of life. At the same time, there are considerable stakes for a rising China in keeping the situation from boiling over. And Kremlin’s denial notwithstanding Russia is coming under fire from Washington particularly in regard to ducking UN sanctions. So, while the rise of hostile talk and angry exchanges do persist, there is also a plurality of stakeholders, who seem to be pushing the envelope, to avoid an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula and its unintended consequences.

The Middle East’s Nuclear Technology Clock Starts Ticking

James M. Dorsey

The Middle East’s nuclear technology clock is ticking as nations pursue peaceful capabilities that potentially leave the door open to future military options.

Concern about a nuclear arms race is fuelled by uncertainty over the future of Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement, a seeming US willingness to weaken its strict export safeguards in pursuit of economic advantage, and a willingness by suppliers such as Russia and China to ignore risks involved in weaker controls.

The Trump administration was mulling loosening controls to facilitate a possible deal with Saudi Arabia as Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu prepared, in an address this week to a powerful Israeli lobby group in Washington, to urge US President Donald J. Trump to scrap the Iranian nuclear deal unless the Islamic republic agrees to further military restrictions and makes additional political concessions.

Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal of its own and fears that the technological clock is working against its long-standing military advantage.

The US has signalled that it may be willing to accede to Saudi demands in a bid to ensure that US companies with Westinghouse in the lead have a stake in the kingdom’s plan to build by 2032 16 reactors that would have 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity.

In putting forward demands for parity with Iran by getting the right to controlled enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of spent fuel into plutonium, potential building blocks for nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia was backing away from a 2009 memorandum of understanding with the United States in which it pledged to acquire nuclear fuel from international markets.

“The trouble with flexibility regarding these critical technologies is that it leaves the door open to production of nuclear explosives,” warned nuclear experts Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski in an article Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

While Israeli opinion is divided on how the US should respond to Saudi demands, Messrs Trump and Netanyahu’s opposition to the Iranian nuclear accord has already produced results that would serve Saudi interests.

European signatories to the agreement are pressuring Iran to engage in negotiations to limit its ballistic missile program and drop its support for groups like Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Iran. Iran has rejected any renegotiation but has kept the door open to discussions about a supplementary agreement. Saudi Arabia has suggested it may accept tight US controls if Iran agreed to a toughening of its agreement with the international community.

The Trump administration recently allowed high-tech US exports to Iran that could boost international oversight of the nuclear deal. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan signed a waiver that allows a Maryland-based company to export broadband networks, satellite dishes and wireless equipment to Iran for stations that monitor nuclear explosions in real time.

Iranian resistance to a renegotiation is enhanced by the fact that Europe and even the Trump administration admit that Hezbollah despite having been designated a terrorist organization by the US is an undeniable political force in Lebanon. “We…have to recognize the reality that (Hezbollah) are also part of the political process in Lebanon,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on the eve of a visit to Beirut.

A US willingness to go easy on demanding that Saudi Arabia adhere to tough safeguards enshrined in US export control laws, widely viewed as the gold standard, would open a Pandora’s box.

The United Arab Emirates, the Arab nation closest to inaugurating its first nuclear reactor, has already said that it would no longer be bound by the safeguards it agreed to a decade ago if others in the region were granted a more liberal regime. So would countries like Egypt and Jordan that are negotiating contracts with non-US companies for construction of nuclear reactors. A US backing away from its safeguards in the case of Saudi Arabia would potentially add a nuclear dimension to the already full-fledged arms in the Middle East.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) cautioned last year in a report that the Iranian nuclear agreement had “not eliminated the kingdom’s desire for nuclear weapons capabilities and even nuclear weapons… There is little reason to doubt that Saudi Arabia will more actively seek nuclear weapons capabilities, motivated by its concerns about the ending of the (Iranian agreement’s) major nuclear limitations starting after year 10 of the deal or sooner if the deal fails.”

Rather than embarking on a covert program, the report predicted that Saudi Arabia would, for now, focus on building up its civilian nuclear infrastructure as well as a robust nuclear engineering and scientific workforce. This would allow the kingdom to take command of all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle at some point in the future. Saudi Arabia has in recent years significantly expanded graduate programs at its five nuclear research centres.

“The current situation suggests that Saudi Arabia now has both a high disincentive to pursue nuclear weapons in the short term and a high motivation to pursue them over the long term,” the report said.

Saudi officials have repeatedly insisted that the kingdom is developing nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes such as medicine, electricity generation, and desalination of sea water. They said Saudi Arabia is committed to putting its future facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Vietnam constitutes a precedent for application of less stringent US safeguards. The US settled for a non-binding Vietnamese statement of intent in the preamble of its agreement that Vietnam had no intention to pursue fuel cycle capabilities.

Tailoring Saudi demands of parity with Iran could be addressed, according to former senior US non-proliferation official Robert Einhorn, by sequencing controls to match timelines in the Iranian nuclear agreement. This could involve:

— establishing a bilateral fuel cycle commission that, beginning in year 10, would jointly evaluate future Saudi reactor fuel requirements and consider alternative means of meeting those requirements, including indigenous enrichment;

— creating provisions for specific Saudi enrichment and reprocessing activities that would be allowed if approved on a case-by-case basis by mutual consent and would kick in in year 15;

— limiting the period after which Saudi Arabia, without invoking the agreement’s withdrawal provision, could end the accord and terminate its commitment to forgo fuel cycle capabilities if it believed the United States was exercising its consent rights in an unreasonably restrictive manner.

Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir recently raised the stakes by declaring that the kingdom was engaged in talks with ten nations about its nuclear program, including Russia and China, nations that impose less stringent safeguards but whose technology is viewed as inferior to that of the United States.

To strengthen its position, Saudi Arabia has added Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, an international law firm specialized in energy regulation, to its army of lobbyists and public relations firms in Washington, in a bid to ensure it gets a favourable agreement with the United States.

“Allowing Moscow to gain a nuclear foothold in Saudi Arabia would deal a serious blow to U.S. regional influence and prestige,” warned the Washington-based Arabia Foundation’s Ali Shihabi.

Nuclear Bravado: Putin’s Nuclear Invincibles

Binoy Kampmark

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, seemed perplexed, sticking to a drafted script.  Politicians on the Hill were troubled.  The Pentagon attempted to be reassuring.  The Russian bear was on the move in indelicate fashion – again.

In his fourteenth state of the nation address, President Vladimir Putin was keen to focus on Russian-made and prowess in military hardware.  This was not an occasion to talk about the tepid and peaceful.  The talk, rather, would be about the latest in jets, missiles (cruise and intercontinental) and drones on steroids.

Mindful of the March 18 election, Putin did spend the first half of his presentation speaking about targeting poverty (20 million Russians live below the poverty line) and improving life-expectancy.  “[F]rom the point of view of the extremely important task of ensuring people’s quality of life and welfare we, of course, have not achieved the level we require.  But we have to do this and will do this.”  Such aspirational talk gave way in the second half to matters military.

It proved to be quite a show.  Putin added to the props of a nuclear theatre, layered with display and illustration.  He has an election to win, but despite being all but guaranteed victory, tough talk is mandatory.  “They need to take account of a new reality and understand [this]… is not bluff.”

The nature of nuclear theatre is that bluff and reality are two sides of the same scratched coin.  Putin made use of video presentations featuring two nuclear delivery systems that were described as beyond detection.  In doing so, he was channelling a Trump styled reality show filled with showmanship, threat, and biting promise.  In an effort to reap popular appeal, he also invited members of the public to come up with names for a few of the weapons systems. The Russian Ministry of Defence has duly obliged, enabling submissions to made to a site.

One delivery system, in particular, was described as including a “low-flying, difficult-to-spot cruise missile… with a practically unlimited range and an unpredictable flight path, which can bypass lines of interception and is invincible in the face of all existing and future systems of both missile defence and air defence.”  This cruise missile is supposedly identical in its external appearance with the Russian X-101, with one difference: it’s nuclear powered.

Another system involves a nuclear-powered underwater drone with the means to travel thousands of miles before finding its point of detonation in, let’s say, a US port, thereby evading any missile systems above water.

Finding a dig at the United States impossible to avoid, one video featured the US state of Florida peppered by Russian missiles.  No one in Washington could have been surprised by the show.  Since the Bush administration’s 2001 decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, accompanied by a failure from Washington to chew over Russian worries over missile defences, Moscow’s military has busied itself.

In frank terms, Putin noted the genesis of the latest modernisation program.  “During all these years since the unilateral US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, we have been working intensively on advanced equipment and arms, which allowed us to make a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons.”

Further stress has been made this year by the Trump administration on improving US anti-ballistic missile capability, though the object has been the overly inflated threat of North Korea.

The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review has also proposed adding to the US nuclear inventory, including a low-yield warhead for the US submarine fleet and a new cruise missile deployable at sea.  There was no mention of a nuclear-powered cruise missile, which was abandoned in the 1960s for fears that it would leave a trail of uncontrolled radioactivity from its unshielded reactor.  As ever, one upmanship between Russia and the United States persists, with US intelligence sources claiming that the Russian variant crashed in testing.

The unmistakable stress in the Nuclear Posture Review is not one of moderation but enthused embrace for the nuclear cause.  “The tone of the document,” poses a sombre Jeffrey Lewis, “as well as some of the more controversial proposals, gives the impression of enthusiasm for the arms race.”  Threats are stressed and underlined; rival powers are blamed.  The US is painted as a paragon of progress in the field of nuclear disarmament, while “others, including Russia and China, have moved in the opposite direction” adding “new types of nuclear capabilities to their arsenals”.

The Putin nuclear show also pokes fun at such goals as total nuclear disarmament, especially by the main nuclear states.  Reducing the nuclear arsenals of the two major powers possessing them has lead to another development: modernisation.

This enables Trump to, for instance, emphasise in self-contradicting fashion “the long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and the requirement that the United States have modern, flexible, and resilient nuclear capabilities”.  Members of the nuclear club persist in their reluctance to abandon their lavishly expensive toys.  The trend, then, is towards improvement, adjustments, and refurbishment.

Euphemised in such a way, the threat of human extinction is obfuscated by different political packaging, not to mention furniture that is quibbled over at summits.  Being modern entails enlightenment, and mass killing with the latest, state of the art nuclear weaponry.  The concern for some US officials will be Trump’s imminent insistence that what the Russians can do, the US can do better.

Emergency declared after earthquake devastates Papua New Guinea

Mike Head 

Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister Peter O’Neill on Thursday declared a state of emergency for four highlands provinces hit by a 7.5-earthquake on Monday. O’Neill’s government had already sent troops into the mineral-rich region.

More than 50 people are feared to have died, mostly as a result of landslides and mudslides that have destroyed villages, crops and roads. But no accurate estimate is possible because, despite the emergency declaration, basic relief supplies are yet to reach most affected areas.

While claiming to be making an “appropriate response” to an “unprecedented disaster” in the Hela, Southern Highlands, Western and Enga Provinces, O’Neill’s emergency declaration is driven by fears of unrest in the region, where opposition has erupted in the past to the mining companies’ destructive activities.

Anger is mounting over the lack of government assistance. Euralia Tagobe, who lives in the town nearest the epicentre, Tari, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “People are very, very upset because we didn’t have our members (MPs) on the ground as soon as possible.”

EMTV journalist Scott Waide told Fairfax Media he had collected verified reports of 31 deaths, but warned: “The truth is, we don’t really know.” Provincial hospitals are reportedly swamped with casualties, with surgeons in Tari operating without power and using lights from mobile phones.

Video taken from a helicopter shows the dense green canopy of forests torn open by massive landslides. Rivers of earth have engulfed waterways that thousands of village people rely on for drinking, washing and cooking.

Pictures show collapsed buildings in Mendi and residents using shovels to clear away landslides. The damage left those injured in villages unable to reach the town’s hospital, Wendy Tinaik, assistant to the hospital’s director, told a journalist.

A Tari resident, Isaac Bulube, told Radio New Zealand: “There’s a lot of residents’ places totally destroyed, and some entire families don’t have a house to live in. Most of the schools, their buildings have gone down; a lot of cracks on the roads, even Tari airport has a crack on the runway, making it impossible for planes to land. There’s a lot of destruction.”

By contrast to the situation facing villagers, the companies conducting the region’s huge mining operations rapidly evacuated their expatriate personnel at the ExxonMobil liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, the Australian-based oil and gas explorer Oil Search’s operations, and the Ok Tedi and Porgera gold, silver and copper mines.

The quake was centered close to ExxonMobil’s $20 billion project, PNG’s largest commercial venture and main source of revenue. Hela NGO worker, Moses Komengi, said local people were particularly confused and fearful when they saw ExxonMobil moving its staff out of the area so quickly.

“We can see the police and the company moving out in choppers,” Komengi told the media. “And ExxonMobil is evacuating all its personnel and employees out of the gas sites. So this is raising the question for the people, why is this happening?”

PNG Red Cross secretary-general Uvenama Rova, said anxiety had grown as people in Hela experienced aftershocks every hour. “People fear the gas might explode,” he said.

Earthquakes are common in PNG, which sits on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. But despite the vast wealth extracted by these companies, successive governments have done little to protect the population in the poverty-stricken country, which was an Australian colony until 1975.

Along with O’Neill’s government, the official Australian response was also pitiful and slow. So far, the Australian government is to send just $200,000 worth of aid, including tarpaulins, water purification tablets and water containers. An airforce Hercules aircraft is conducting aerial surveillance and providing “logistical support” to the PNG military.

O’Neill said the earthquake damage would total hundreds of millions of kina. “We don’t have that kind of money,” he declared. “But we will try and manage the situation as best as possible through the limitations of budgets we have.” He said he could “assure” people in the four provinces “that we will be giving them our top priority in the coming weeks.”

The truth is that the government’s only concern is to suppress discontent and protect the mining operations. Just last August, O’Neill’s government deployed additional heavily-armed troops and police personnel to Highland provinces as part of a broader crackdown on widespread social and political opposition, which intensified following July’s national election. The polling was dominated by accusations that O’Neill’s Peoples National Congress engaged in dubious electoral practices, including outright fraud, in order to cling to office.

Facing a budget crisis, aggravated by a slump in global prices for mining commodities, O’Neill’s government slashed health and education spending by up to 40 percent for the 2016–17 financial year, intensifying the destitution and lack of essential services left by decades of Australian colonial rule.

According to UN figures, 39 percent of PNG’s people live below the poverty line of $US1.90 a day and 66.5 percent of workers earn less than $3.10 a day. Despite the billions of dollars in profits being pumped out of the country, as of 2012, only 18 percent of the population had access to electricity, only 40 percent to clean water and 19 percent to proper sanitation.

O’Neill’s other preoccupation is with satisfying the requirements of the US, Australia and other Western powers that supported his seizure of power in 2011, when he ousted his predecessor Michael Somare, who adopted a “look north” policy, oriented to China. The highlands mining projects are a key aspect in the strategic importance of PNG.

In late 2010, Hillary Clinton, then the Obama administration’s secretary of state, visited PNG to reinforce US interests. Earlier that year she referred specifically to the ExxonMobil project and accused China of trying to “come in behind us, come in under us” in PNG.

Addressing the US congressional Foreign Relations Committee, she stated: “Let’s put aside the moral, humanitarian, do-good side of what we believe in and let’s just talk straight, real politic. We are in a competition with China. Take Papua New Guinea—huge energy find.” Clinton vowed that the US would not retreat from “the maintenance of our leadership in a world where we are competing with China.”

This conflict is only intensifying. China’s acting ambassador to PNG, Yau Min, this week highlighted the growth of Chinese investment and trade. “Especially in the area of economic cooperation our two countries trade volume reached $US2.8 billion in the year 2017,” he said.

Yau said the growth was in line with President Xi Jinping’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative to link Asia with Europe. China would support its state-owned enterprises and Chinese-owned companies like Sinohydro Power to help build infrastructure in PNG such as airports, bridges, roads, schools and warehouses.

EU threats add to pressure on Maldives government

Rohantha De Silva

The EU foreign affairs council has demanded that Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen immediately lift a state of emergency, restore constitutionally guaranteed rights and release all political prisoners. A statement on Monday declared that “if the situation does not improve,” the EU “may consider targeted measures.”

The EU move follows escalating US and Indian attempts to undermine Chinese influence on the strategically-located island nation in the Indian Ocean. The EU has no concerns about the democratic rights of the people of the Maldives but is attempting to advance its own interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

The current political crisis in the Maldives emerged early last month. The country’s Supreme Court ordered the dropping of all convictions and immediate release of opposition leader and former president, Mohamed Nasheed, and eight other political leaders.

The Supreme Court directive followed its inquiry into a petition accusing Yameen of corruption, filed by the opposition parties, led by Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party.

If the court’s order had been carried out, Yameen would have lost his parliamentary majority and his arch-rival Nasheed would be able to contest the forthcoming presidential elections.

Instead, Yameen defied the order, declared a state of emergency and arrested two of the Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, on charges of corruption and conspiring against the government. The three remaining judges then revoked the court’s order.

Nasheed, a stooge of Washington and New Delhi, immediately responded by calling on India to invade the Maldives. He claimed that China was transforming the archipelago into its colony and threatening security across the Indian Ocean.

While New Delhi has not mounted an invasion, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is increasing pressure on Yameen. Modi is fully supported by the Trump administration, which is harnessing India as a strategic partner in its aggressive geo-political confrontation against China.

The heightened international pressure is destabilising Yameen’s government. On Tuesday, Health Minister Dunya Maumoon, a niece of Yameen, resigned in protest against the arrest of former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, her father. She tweeted a call for the “international community” to help “overcome this crisis and to build a stronger democratic system.”

Police allege that Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, an autocratic ruler for 30 years, conspired and bribed the judges in a conspiracy to overthrow the government.

On February 23, Maldivian Prosecutor General Aishath Bisham sent a letter to police declaring that the state of emergency was unconstitutional because the parliament had not followed established procedures.

Bisham referred to the parliament’s extension of emergency on February 20. Although 43 of the 85 assembly members should have endorsed the emergency extension, only 40 members voted for it. The remaining MPs had been barred from entering the parliament.

Bisham’s letter also said all detentions made under the emergency were illegal. Attorney General Mohamed Anil, a loyalist of the president, advised the police to carry out Bisham’s advice but Yameen overrode this.

Desperately fighting for political survival, Yameen is implementing increasingly repressive measures. Last Sunday, the police imposed a curfew banning all political gatherings between 10.30 p.m. and dawn. Daytime political gatherings are already banned and the police have violently suppressed protests.

The ongoing political crisis is affecting the tourist industry, which is worth $US3.5 billion annually and is the country’s main source of foreign income. Hundreds of hotel bookings are being cancelled daily, despite the government’s assurance that the situation is normal in the popular resort islands. If the crisis continues, Moody’s rating agency said it would lower this year’s growth forecast of 4.5 percent.

In another indication of strained relations, the Maldives turned down an Indian invitation to participate in an Indian Ocean multilateral naval exercise on March 6. In attempt to assuage New Delhi, Maldivian ambassador Ahmed Mohamed said his country was not participating because its military was on standby due to the emergency situation.

The Indian media is continuing its anti-China campaign, claiming that Beijing is threatening India’s strategic interests. A Times of India article on February 26 noted that the Maldives is establishing a Joint Ocean Observation Station with China at Makunudhoo, its westernmost atoll. The Maldivian opposition claims the deal involves a provision for a submarine base.

The Times of India report said the facility would provide an important vantage point in the Indian Ocean and be “uncomfortably close to Indian waters and [will] test red lines with regard to ties with the Maldives.” Consisting of 1,192 islands, the Maldives is located astride Indian Ocean sea lanes through which flow 70 percent of world’s petroleum shipments and half of its container traffic.

Concerns are being raised in Indian ruling circles that New Delhi is not aggressively defending its interests in the Indian Ocean. Brahma Chellaney, a former adviser to India’s National Security Council, told the Times of India this week: “The underwater ocean observation centre in the South China Sea will be dual purpose, with civilian and military applications. China’s supposed plan to build such a centre in the Maldives would effectively open a Chinese maritime front against India.”

Chellaney called on New Delhi to warn China and the Maldives that it would not tolerate such a centre. China responded by declaring that the observation station had no military application and was not a submarine base.

In 2015, India signed an agreement with the Maldives to establish 10 radar observation points to watch the movement of ships, particularly Chinese vessels, in the Indian Ocean. That plan has been abandoned because of the tensions between India and the Maldives.

This week, the Japanese foreign ministry issued a statement claiming that its maritime self-defence force observed a Maldivian flagged tanker lying alongside a North Korean flagged tanker in the East China Sea. It claimed there had been “ship to ship transfers” banned by the UN Security Council.

The Maldives government denied the allegations but Nasheed immediately tweeted that the Maldives had violated the UN resolution.

These developments underscore the global strategic dimensions of the Maldivian crisis and its dangerous implications. The US and Indian campaign against China throughout the Indo-Pacific could erupt into direct military conflict with catastrophic consequences.

US government cuts aid to Puerto Rico by half

Antonio Castro

Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rossello, announced Tuesday that the US Treasury Department has cut a $4.7 billion disaster relief loan available to the US territory by more than half, without explanation.

Congress had approved the already meager loan for aid relief in October after Hurricane María ravaged the island in September last year. The storm, and the botched recovery effort that followed, has killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, and caused an estimated $94 billion in damage.

Last month the Treasury Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ominously warned in a letter they would be temporarily withholding the aid loan because they did not believe the island’s government was facing a cash shortage. Federal officials said the money would be released through the Community Disaster Loan Program once the island’s central cash balance decreased to a certain level.

Even before the storm, the island was already struggling with a major financial crisis to the tune of $74 billion in debt. With the economy in shambles after the hurricane, the suggestion that the island is flush with cash is absurd.

The aid cut has put many essential services, especially the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the island’s public power utility, at risk of being interrupted. This means that millions of workers on the island may soon lose access to running water and electricity. This would be in addition to the approximately 30 percent of electric customers who have not had service since María made landfall over five months ago.

Just two days after the relief cut was announced, two major power plants shut down in the Puerto Rican capital, San Juan, affecting 970,000 customers, exposing the continuing fragility of the electrical system. Similar events have become a regular occurrence; just three weeks ago thousands were left without power after an explosion at a PREPA plant just north of the capital. Both events were the result of repairs of storm damage using old scrap materials and patchwork methods out of desperation. Puerto Rico’s power company is currently running with a $300 million loan that will only sustain operations until the end of the month.

Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans are still struggling from the damage from the hurricane. Many people whose houses were severely damaged have received little, if any, aid for home repairs. Entire families are still living with relatives or as refugees in hotels because they don't have anywhere to go.

The recovery “effort” from the beginning has been a series of scandals and backroom dealings which epitomizes the callous indifference of the ruling class to the plight of workers in Puerto Rico. In the immediate aftermath of María, Puerto Ricans struggled to find food and water when the entire island lost electricity, roads became impassable, and fuel for generators ran out. The situation worsened when ports that import about 85 percent of its food supply shut down under the draconian hundred-year-old Jones Act, which the government only reluctantly lifted weeks later.

Shortly thereafter, a Florida company with an unproven record, was granted more than $30 million in contracts from FEMA to provide tarps and plastic sheeting for emergency home repairs. Bronze Star LLC never delivered those urgently needed supplies, which left hundreds of thousands of residents roofless and unprotected from the elements for months.

Next, FEMA awarded a $156 million contract to a one-woman company, Tribute Contracting LLC, to deliver 30 million meals for Puerto Ricans. Only 50,000 of these meals made it to the island, when at least 18.5 million meals were due.

Lastly, most notorious was the Whitefish scandal in which a newly created company consisting of just two employees was granted a $300 million contract to help restore the operations of PREPA. Under enormous public pressure, FEMA was forced to cancel the contract, further delaying the restoration of power.

While millions of Puerto Ricans, who are US citizens, continue to live in such harsh conditions, the federal government argues that there are not enough resources to aid the recovery process. However, unfathomable amounts of money are being funneled into the pockets of the rich while the working class of Puerto Rico, like the working class everywhere, is thrown scraps.

Since María made landfall in September the ruling class passed a historic tax bill granting trillions in tax cuts to the wealthiest layers of society, passed a budget which included $160 billion for the military in a single year, and are currently negotiating millions to be spent on arming border agents and building a wall along the US-Mexico border.

A month after the hurricane, the CEO and owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, made $10.2 billion in a single day, making him the world’s richest person. That is five times the amount of aid now being loaned to Puerto Rico. With a fraction of Bezos’ net worth, which currently stands at $125 billion, the funds needed to rebuild Puerto Rico could be covered and Bezos would remain the richest person in the world.

Elections in Italy deepen European Union crisis

Peter Schwarz

Unless the polls are proved wrong, tomorrow’s parliamentary election in Italy will usher in a new stage in the crisis and instability of the European Union (EU).

No party and no electoral alliance expects to win a governing majority. Under the election law, which is being used for the first time, and awards a third of the seats to those candidates finishing first in electoral districts and two thirds of the seats to regional party lists, 42 percent of the vote is needed for a governing majority.

The right-wing electoral alliance of three-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, which also includes the far-right Lega and fascist Fratelli d’Italia, comes closest to achieving this goal with 38 percent support. But even these parties are deeply divided, meaning that even if they secure a majority a stable government would be unlikely.

The strongest single party, according to the polls, is the Five Star Movement (M5S) founded by comedian Beppe Grillo with close to 30 percent. It has no electoral allies. The Democrats (PD), which lead the current government, have the support of just 22 percent, while a split-off from the PD, Freedoms and Equals, enjoys the support of 5 percent.

Italy thus risks being plunged into a deeper crisis on the same day as the result of Germany’s Social Democratic membership vote on a new government is announced, which could resolve a five-and-a-half-month government crisis. With a population of 61 million, Italy will be the third largest country in the EU after Britain’s departure.

Given Italy’s high indebtedness—at 130 percent of economic output Italy has the highest level of state debt as a percentage of GDP after Greece, and its banks are sitting on the largest quantity of toxic assets in Europe—a sustained government crisis could quickly destabilise the entire European financial system. EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker therefore warned that it is necessary “to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”

But the real source of the crisis is not the political fragmentation of the future parliament, but the social polarisation across the country, which finds only extremely distorted and malignant expression within the official party system.

The growth of poverty and precarious working relations, which is characteristic of all European countries and has impacted wide swathes of the working class and sections of the middle class, is particularly glaring in Italy. While gross domestic product within the EU grew by 8.4 percent nominally over the past decade, and 12.3 percent in Germany, in Italy output shrunk by 5.4 percent. The majority of the population is worse off than it was 10 years ago. The official unemployment rate is 11 percent and rises to 30 percent among youth.

This is the reason for the decline of the Democratic Party. The PD, which emerged out of the Communist Party and incorporated a section of the former Christian Democrats, has organised in conjunction with the EU the destruction of hard-won workers’ rights, attacks on pensions and the slashing of social spending. Their lead candidate Matteo Renzi, who as the self-appointed “destroyer” of the old elites experienced a brief spell of popularity, is today among Italy’s most reviled politicians.

The PD has shared the fate of other social democratic parties—Greece’s PASOK, which within six years crashed from 44 percent to just 6 percent support; France’s Socialist Party, which within five years dropped from being the country’s largest party to just 7 percent of the vote; the Dutch Labour Party, which secured only 6 percent support last year; and Germany’s SPD, which won just 20 percent of the vote in last September’s election, the worst result in its post-war history.

In the past, the social democratic parties ensured the stability of the capitalist order by means of social reforms and concessions. But under the pressure of globalisation, the deepening crisis of the financial system, and inter-imperialist conflicts, they have been transformed into the most rabid advocates of austerity policies, the strengthening of the repressive state apparatus, and war. This is the reason for their decline.

The social interests of the working class find no independent political expression in the existing party system. The election campaign has therefore been dominated by far-right, noxious and repugnant developments.

A central election issue was a vicious anti-refugee propaganda campaign. While the right-wingers openly presented their fascist outlook, called for the deportation of half a million people and defended a fascist who shot indiscriminately at immigrants in the small town of Macerata, the Democrats portrayed themselves as the party most capable of defending Italy’s borders and preventing refugees from travelling to Europe.

Behind such disgusting spectacles, bitter social struggles are brewing. The class struggle, which has long been smothered by social democracy, the trade unions, and their allies in the pseudo-left, is once again on the rise internationally. The rebellion of teachers in West Virginia in the United States, who have been striking for days in defiance of their trade union leaders, marks a milestone in this development.

Workers’ struggles against wage cuts, layoffs and unbearable working conditions are also occurring in Europe with increased regularity. This cannot but have an effect on Italy, which has a long tradition of militant working class struggle. Two years ago, major strikes and protests broke out against the Renzi government’s Jobs Act.

In the face of these developments, all of the parties are drawing closer together. The Five Star Movement, which won support for its angry tirades against the corruption of the existing parties and has to date refused all cooperation with them, has declared its readiness to join a coalition government and abandoned its anti-EU rhetoric.

Their lead candidate, 31-year-old Luigi da Maio, spoke to students at Harvard, bankers in London and businessmen in northern Italy and reassured them that his party would rapidly eliminate the bank’s toxic assets, abandon its announced intention to hold a referendum on the EU, and cooperate with other parties to ensure Italy does not “descend into chaos.”

Berlusconi and Renzi, who cooperated closely to pass the new election law and value each other highly, have raised the prospect of a coalition government.

Berlin and Paris are responding to the crisis in Italy by pressing ahead with the transformation of the EU from an economic into a military union capable of pursuing its predatory interests around the world, building a European army, and strengthening the police and intelligence apparatus to suppress the class struggle. This is the essence of the coalition agreement for a new German government, which will assume office in the coming days unless the SPD membership vote to reject it.

There is hardly any support in the population for these policies, which most of Italy’s parties advocate. They will lead to bitter political conflicts and class struggles. These struggles require a political perspective. They can be successful only if they organise independently of all of the bourgeois parties, their backers in the trade unions, and their pseudo-left henchmen.

The working class must unite internationally and fight for a programme that links the struggle against war, fascism and social attacks with the fight against their source: the capitalist profit system. This is the programme advocated by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections.