Is China Winning the War for Africa?

Cesar Chelala

While traveling in Africa in the 1980 and 1990s, I was surprised to see Chinese crews building roads, schools, and houses. Although at the time this meant little to me, I later realized it was part of a policy of Chinese insertion into the African countries’ economies.

Historically, the African continent has been plundered by foreign powers, mainly but not exclusively European, who have extracted valuable resources, corrupting African elites, and destroying feeble attempts at democracy throughout the continent. On January 17, 1961, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. He was the first legally elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Ludo De Witte, an author of a book about this event, called Lumumba’s murder “the most important assassination of the 20th century.” It was carried out with the joint complicity of the American and Belgian governments, which used Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad. This assassination forever changed the African continent’s political landscape and its economic and political prospects.

China’s approach is different from that of the traditional colonial powers. Its main interests in the African continent are twofold: searching and exploiting oil and mineral resources, and creating new markets for Chinese goods. In addition, building and repairing infrastructure provides jobs for Chinese technicians and laborers.

Unlike other big powers, China has shown relatively minimal interference in the domestic affairs of African countries, while at the same time providing generous aid and loan packages. As Clifton Pannell, Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Georgia said, “Its oft-stated policy in dealing with African states is to stress the notion of mutual benefits, and it has long promoted itself as a partner in solidarity with African states in opposition to colonialism and economic dependency.”

Aid to local economies

Not everybody in Africa is happy about China’s presence on the continent. Although China employs Africans in some of its economic endeavors, many locals resent China’s competition with local factories and entrepreneurs. China, however, has a steady policy of providing assistance and training in agricultural techniques and public health issues.

At the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation which took place in Beijing, President Xi Jinping unveiled eight major initiatives which included purchasing more African goods and encouraging Chinese companies to expand investments to promote industrialization in Africa. Other major areas of cooperation are energy, information, transportation and use of water resources. To ensure the proper development of these initiatives, China will provide $60 billion in support for Africa’s development.

President Xi Jinping encouraged these countries to join in building the Belt and Road Initiative to achieve common developmental goals. In the financial area, China promised support through the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank, and the Silk Road Fund. In addition, Xi Jinping pledged to provide 50,000 government-funded scholarships for African youngsters and invited 2,000 of them to visit China.

Medical aid

China’s medical aid to Africa started in 1963 when it sent 100 healthcare workers to Algeria after it gained independence from France, and has been steadily increasing its numbers since then. By 2014, China was spending about $150 million annually in medical aid to African countries. China now ranks among the top 10 bilateral global health donors to the continent.

Although the exact number is unknown, China has dispatched several Chinese medical teams (CMT) to Africa and assisted in the construction of health facilities and training of African healthcare workers. It has also provided medical equipment and drugs. It is estimated that by 2014 China had helped build 30 hospitals and 30 malaria prevention and control centers, and trained over 3,000 healthcare workers from several African countries.

Malaria is one of the main diseases the Chinese are trying to help prevent and control. China has donated over $26 million in anti-malarial drugs to 35 African countries. China also provided important aid to control the Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people between 2013 and 2016 and has helped in the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.

In its medical aid to Africa, China makes use of its own experience as a developing country, limitations and advantages included. At the same time, China uses its assistance in public health to strengthen its diplomatic relations with African governments.

Military assistance

Although in the past China mainly targeted economic trade and assistance to Africa, Beijing is increasingly developing policies aimed at strengthening military ties in order to gain a stronger geopolitical influence and expand weapons sales in the continent. In that regard, China has been extremely active in selling small arms and light weapons to several African countries.

President Xi Jinping promised to provide $100 million of free military assistance to the African Union to support the establishment of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis. In addition, the Chinese government has invited thousands of African military officials to China for workshops and training courses.

“The concern from a lot of partners is exactly what role China is going to be playing in the region and how it is going to exist with existing military organizations and security forums,” said Duncan Innes-Ker, Asia Regional Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Those who ignore China’s assertive policies in Africa will do so at their own risk.

Turkey plays Khashoggi crisis to its geopolitical advantage

James M. Dorsey

With Turkish investigators asserting that they have found further evidence that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed when he visited the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago, Turkey appears to be leveraging the case to enhance its position as a leader of the Islamic World and reposition itself as a key US ally.

To enhance its geopolitical position vis a vis Saudi Arabia as well as Russia and Iran and potentially garner economic advantage at a time that it is struggling to reverse a financial downturn, Turkey has so far leaked assertions of evidence it says it has of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing rather than announced them officially.

In doing so, Turkey has forced Saudi Arabia to allow Turkish investigators accompanied by Saudi officials to enter the consulate and positioned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the kingdom’s saviour by engineering a situation that will allow the kingdom to craft a face-saving way out of the crisis.

Saudi Arabia is reportedly considering announcing that Mr. Khashoggi, a widely-acclaimed journalist critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who went into self-exile because he feared arrest, was killed in either a rogue operation or an attempt gone awry to forcibly repatriate it him back to the kingdom.

US President Donald J. Trump offered the Turks and Saudis a helping hand by referring this week to the possibility of Mr. Khashoggi having been killed by rogues and dispatching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh and Ankara.

Mr. Khashoggi, seeking to obtain proof of his divorce in the kingdom so that he could marry his Turkish fiancé, visited the consulate two weeks ago for the second time after having allegedly received assurances that he would be safe.

Turkey emerges as the crisis moves towards a situation in which an official version is agreed that seeks to shield Prince Mohammed from being held responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance and likely murder with its international status significantly enhanced.

Turkish leverage is further boosted by the fact that Saudi Arabia — its image in government, political and business circles significantly damaged by the crisis — and the Trump administration that wants to ensure that the kingdom’s ruling family emerges from the crisis as unscathed as possible, are in Ankara’s debt.

As a result, the denouement of the Khashoggi crisis is likely to alter the dynamics in the long-standing competition between Turkey and Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Islamic world.

It also strengthens Turkey’s position in its transactional alliance with Russia and Iran as they manoeuvre to end the war in Syria in a manner that cements Bashar al-Assad’s presidency while addressing Turkish concerns.

Turkey’s position in its rivalry with Saudi Arabia is likely to also benefit from the fact that whatever face-saving solution the kingdom adopts is likely to be flawed when tested by available facts and certain to be challenged by a host of critics, even if many will see Turkey as having facilitated a political solution rather than ensuring that the truth is established.

Already, Mr. Khashoggi’s family who was initially quoted by Saudi Arabia’s state-controlled media as backing Saudi denials of responsibility, insinuations that his fate was the product of a conspiracy by Qatar and/or Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood, and casting doubt on the integrity of the journalist’s Turkish fiancée, has called for “the establishment of an independent and impartial international commission to inquire into the circumstances of his death.”

Turkey and Saudi Arabia differ on multiple issues that divide the Muslim world. Turkey has vowed to help Iran circumvent Saudi-supported US sanctions imposed after Mr. Trump withdrew in May from the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear agreement.

Turkey further backs Qatar in its dispute with a Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led alliance that has diplomatically and economically boycotted the Gulf state for the last 16 months. The credibility of the alliance’s allegation that Qatar supports terrorism and extremism has been dented by the growing conviction that Saudi Arabia, whether in a planned, rogue or repatriation effort gone wrong, was responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.

Mr. Khashoggi’s death, moreover, highlighted differing approaches towards the Brotherhood, one of the Middle East’s most persecuted, yet influential Islamist groupings. Saudi Arabia, alongside the UAE and Egypt, have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

Many brothers have sought refuge in Turkey with Mr. Erdogan empathetic and supportive of the group. A former brother, Mr. Khashoggi criticized Saudi repression of the group.

The Saudi-Turkish rivalry for leadership of the Muslim world was most evident in the two countries’ responses to Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his as yet unpublished plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Turkey emerged as the leader of Islamic denunciation of Mr. Trump’s move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognition of the city as Israel’s capital after Prince Mohammed tried to dampen opposition. Ultimately, King Salman was forced to step in a bid to clarify the kingdom’s position and counter Turkish moves.

No matter how Turkey decides to officially release whatever evidence it has, Saudi Arabia figures out how to respond and halt the haemorrhaging, and Mr. Pompeo holds talks with King Salman and Mr. Erdogan, Turkey is likely to emerge from the crisis strengthened despite its increasingly illiberal and increasingly authoritarian rule at home,

Turkey’s success is all the more remarkable given that it has neither Saudi Arabia’s financial muscle nor the mantle the kingdom adopts as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina.

A successful political resolution of the Khashoggi crisis is likely to earn it the gratitude of the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia, and its other detractors like the UAE who support the kingdom even if it may help it to regain popularity in the Arab world lost as a result of its swing towards authoritarianism, alliance with Iran and Qatar, and support for Islamism.

One immediate Turkish victory is likely to be Saudi acquiesce to Mr. Erdogan’s demand that Saudi Arabia drop its support for Kurdish rebels in Syria that Ankara sees as terrorists – a move that would boost Turkey’s position the Turkish-Russian-Iranian jockeying for influence in a post-war Syria. Turkey is also likely to see Saudi Arabia support it economically.

Turkey may, however, be playing for higher stakes.

Turkey “wants to back Saudi Arabia to the wall. (It wants to) disparage the ‘reformist’ image that Saudi Arabia has been constructing in the West” in a bid to get the US to choose Ankara as its primary ally in the Middle East, said international relations scholar Serhat Guvenc.

Turkey’s relations in recent years have soured as a result of Turkish insistence that the US is harbouring a terrorist by refusing to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the preacher it accuses of having engineered the failed 2016 coup; detaining American nationals and US consulate employees on allegedly trumped up charges, cosying up to Russia and purchasing its S-400 surface to air missile system, and aligning itself with Iran. Relations were further strained by US support for Syrian Kurds.

Mr. Trump, however this week heralded a new era in US-Turkish relations after the release of unsubscribe Andrew Brunson, an evangelist preacher who was imprisoned in Turkey for two years on charges of espionage.

Mr. Guvenc argued that Turkey hopes that Saudi Arabia’s battered image will help it persuade Mr. Trump that Turkey rather than the kingdom is its strongest and most reliable ally alongside Israel in the Middle East.

Said journalist Ferhat Unlu: “”Turkey knows how to manage diplomatic crises. Its strategy is to manage tensions to its advantage,”

World Food Day: A Holistic World Food Policy is Needed

Rene Wadlow

Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live.
String-fellow Barr Citizens of the World (1954)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030) aims by 2030 to “Double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets , and non-farm resources.”

There is a consensus that radical measures are needed to deal with world-wide growing food needs. These measures must be taken in a holistic and coordinated way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer to the national level with new government policies to the world level with better coordinated activities through the United Nations System.

A central theme which citizens of the world have long stressed is that there needs to be a world food policy and that a world food policy is more than the sum of national food security programs. Food security has too often been treated as a collection of national food security initiatives. While the adoption of a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all is essential, a focus on the formulation of national plans is clearly inadequate. There is a need for a world plan of action with focused attention to the role which the United Nations system must play if hunger is to be sharply reduced.

The FAO did encourage governments to develop national food security policies, but the lack of policies at the world level has led to the increasing control of agricultural processes by a small number of private firms driven by the desire to make money. Thus today, three firms —Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta — control about half of the commercial seed market worldwide. Power over soil, seeds and food sales is ever more tightly held.

There needs to be detailed analysis of the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. There has been a merger of the former Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade to become the CME Group Market which deals in some 25 agricultural commodities. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages of 2008 are now looking for ways to get money back. For the moment, there is no international regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains. The word needs a market shaped by shared human values structured to ensure fairness and co-responsibility.

There is likewise a need for a serious analysis of the growing practice of buying or renting potential farm land, especially in Africa and South America, by foreign countries, especially China and the Arab Gulf states. While putting new land under cultivation is not a bad policy in itself, we need to look at the impact of this policy on local farmers as well as on world food prices.

There is a need to keep in mind local issues of food production, distribution, and food security. Attention needs to be given to cultural factors, the division of labour between women and men in agriculture and rural development, in marketing local food products, to the role of small farmers, to the role of landless agricultural labour and to land-holding patterns.

Fortunately, there is a growing awareness that an integrated, holistic approach is needed. World Citizens stress that solutions to poverty, hunger and climate change crisis require an agriculture that promotes producers’ livelihoods, knowledge, resiliency, health and equitable gender relations, while enriching the natural environment and helping balance the carbon cycle. Such an integrated approach is a fundamental aspect of the world citizen approach to a solid world food policy.

Australian housing market slumps toward potential crash

James Cogan

Amid the growing global economic turmoil and uncertainty, statistics, studies and comments published in the financial press are drawing attention to the fragility of the Australian real estate market and the immense social and political implications of a severe slump.

After close to a decade of soaring house prices in the major cities, Australian households are among the most indebted in the world, with household debt compared to income close to 200 percent. Millions of families have been compelled to borrow staggering sums to achieve the so-called “Australian dream” of home ownership.

At the same time, speculators have gambled that the purchase and resale of real estate offered greater capital gains than stocks and other investments. The major Australian banks became among the most profitable in the world by facilitating a speculative frenzy, borrowing at near zero interest rates internationally and lending at higher margins in Australia.

By the end of 2017, housing in Sydney and Melbourne, the country’s largest cities and the focus of real estate speculation, was ranked as among the “least affordable” in the world. Sydney was ranked as the second worst after Hong Kong, with median house prices nearly 13 times median household income. Melbourne was the fifth worst internationally, with prices close to 10 times higher than what the median household earns in a year.

In August 2018, there were 613 suburbs nationally where the median house price was over $1 million—double the number just five years ago and overwhelmingly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Rampant profit-gouging is rife in the financial industry, some aspects of which were revealed during the recent Royal Commission. Between 2013 and 2015, for example, the banks doubled the amount they lent, mainly to speculative investors, on “interest only” repayment terms, meaning lenders did not have pay any of the principal on a loan for as long as seven years. More generally, bank assessors overestimated the income or underestimated the weekly expenses of applicants to justify extending huge loans to make home purchases or acquire small businesses.

A great deal of money has been made by the capitalist class and sections of the upper middle class at the direct expense of millions of workers, who have been effectively transformed into debt slaves to the banks and finance houses. Outstanding housing debt in Australia reached $1.762 trillion in May 2018—a historic high of 130 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

Under these conditions, a slump in the real estate market is now underway. The median home price has fallen 4.4 percent this year in Sydney and 4.6 percent in Melbourne. Auction clearances have dropped to barely 50 percent. The number of unsold properties on the market has soared by 19.5 percent in Sydney and 18.4 percent in Melbourne.

The developing crisis is partly due to oversupply, but also because the banks have taken belated and desperate steps to tighten credit and therefore their exposure to potential problem loans. Up to 40 percent of applications are now being rejected, compared with barely 5 percent in 2017. The number of new loans to investors has fallen 17.7 percent compared with 12 months ago. Even new loans for owner-occupier dwellings are down 3.6 percent.

The downturn is just beginning. Investment house Morgan Stanley predicted this month at least 10 to 15 percent will be slashed off property values over the next several years.

Other analysts are giving more dire estimates. Martin North, a researcher with Digital Finance Analytics, was widely criticised for predicting on the “60 Minutes” current affairs program that prices could crash by as much as 30 to 45 percent and plunge Australia into its worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.

North’s worst-case scenario, however, is based on significant and credible research. A major study this year by his company found that at least one in four mortgage-holding households—some 820,000—are already in financial stress, meaning they can only meet repayments by reducing other expenses such as food, health care and entertainment.

Digital Finance Analytics considered the implications if interest rates rise. While the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has sought to keep rates at historic lows, its ability to continue to do so is in question due to the steady rise of official rates in the United States. The US Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates again in December and throughout 2019.

Each US rise puts downward pressure on the value of the Australian dollar, increasing the borrowing costs of the banks, which source anywhere up to 40 percent of their capital from overseas markets, especially Wall Street.

Even if the RBA did try to resist matching US increases, the major banks will raise their rates regardless. Their parasitic business model consists of borrowing internationally and lending within Australia at higher interest rates. As the cost of their borrowings increase, they are passing on the burden to Australian households.

Even small rate rises will cause staggering social distress. If rates rose just by 2 percent, back to the level in 2012, well over 50 percent of mortgaged households, some 1.6 million, would sink into financial stress due to their huge repayments.

In dozens of working class and middle class suburbs, between 60 and 100 percent of households would be affected. Many borrowers face the prospect of becoming so-called “mortgage prisoners,” condemned to paying off outstanding loans that are greater than the value of their homes. A wave of foreclosures would have to be expected, further aggravating the slump in property prices.

The Digital Finance Analytics study into the impact of interest rates did not consider the impact of a significant rise in unemployment. That is, it assumed that mortgage holders still had jobs and could struggle to meet their repayments.

Several factors are coming together, however, that threaten to plunge Australia into recession and cause a sharp increase in unemployment.

The construction industry and related real estate activity collectively employs 1.4 million people. As the property slump develops, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in this sector may well lose their jobs.

The launch of open trade war by the United States against China, Australia’s largest export market and trading partner, as well as the general descent into dog-eat-dog competition between the major economic blocs, looms as the greatest threat.

On October 12, the RBA expressed guarded, but serious concerns in its latest “Financial Stability Review”. The central bank stated:

“Australia would be sensitive to a sharp contraction in global growth or dislocation in global financial markets because of the importance of trade and capital inflows. A worsening in external conditions could see a downturn in the domestic economy, reduced availability and higher cost of offshore funding and falls in asset prices, with a resulting deterioration in the performance of borrowers and lenders.”

The RBA continued: “In the current environment, a range of possible triggers could precipitate a global economic downturn. An escalation of trade protection could see a sharp fall in trade, business confidence and investment.”

The central bank issued pro forma reassurances about the “resilience” of the Australian financial system and the ability of households to continue to meet their debt obligations.

In the scenario of a property market crash, however, the Australian capitalist class would face the same situation as its counterparts in the US and Europe after the 2008 financial crisis. To save the banks from insolvency, they would demand that the government step in with massive multi-billion bail-outs and impose savage austerity on the working class to pay for them.

It is essential that the working class advance its own interests against the social disaster that the capitalist system has already produced and threatens to inflict. A mass political movement must be developed to fight for a workers’ government that will implement the most far-reaching socialist policies.

The socialist re-organisation of society would necessarily start with the expropriation of all banks and financial institutions which would be placed in public ownership, and an end to the subordination of the basic right to decent housing to the profit interests of a super-wealthy minority.

Fascistic candidate Bolsonaro widens lead in Brazilian polls

Miguel Andrade

A week and a half after the stunning first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, which nearly delivered an outright victory to the fascistic demagogue Jair Bolsonaro, who won 46 percent of the votes, polls are indicating he may get up to 60 percent in the October 28 run-off. He is currently polling a 20 percent lead over Workers Party (PT) candidate Fernando Haddad, who won 29 percent of the votes in the first round and now polls at 40 percent.

Given the crisis-ridden and frenzied character of this year’s Brazilian electoral process, however, a surprise win by Haddad cannot be discounted, especially given that Bolsonaro was polling only 30 percent barely a week before the first round of balloting.

However shocking, Bolsonaro’s lead was consistent with congressional election results. His Social Liberal Party (PSL) went from only one representative elected in 2014 to 52 elected on October 7, only four short of the PT. The PT’s former allies in the Brazilian Democratic Movement—the party of President Michel Temer, who took office after PT President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016—and the former right-wing opposition, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) each saw their caucuses cut in half. The PT also lost 20 percent of its seats in the 513-member House, with analogous results for each of these parties in the Brazilian Senate.

The breakdown of the vote leaves no doubt that the elections amounted to a referendum on the 14 years of PT rule, which culminated in the Rousseff impeachment and the right-wing Temer administration.

Bolsonaro won by at least 25 percentage points, and in some cases 40 points, over Haddad in every major industrial region and former PT stronghold, including the so-called ABC cities that form São Paulo’s “red” industrial belt, where the PT was founded in 1980. He polled similar leads in all the centers of Brazil’s oil extraction and refining industries in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as well as in cities with histories of bitter union struggles and plant occupations well into the 1990s, such as the steelmaking center of Volta Redonda. Most stunningly, he scored similar results in every single city in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which had in every presidential election since the end of the 1964-1985 US-backed military dictatorship, except for 1994, voted for the PT. A seven-term congressional representative from Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro was part of the PT’s congressional alliance until the 2016 impeachment.

Bolsonaro’s wide margins, however shocking, are chiefly the result of the absence of any left-wing alternative to the PT that could give voice to workers’ grievances.

Developments since the first-round election have only exposed with stark clarity that, whoever wins the second round, Brazil will have the most right-wing government since the end of the dictatorship. A PT electoral victory will provide no defense for the working class against the pack of generals who have built up the fascistic Bolsonaro’s demagogic campaign and have already opened the door, through Bolsonaro’s running mate, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, for a “self-coup,” that is, Bolsonaro calling out the army in face of widespread opposition.

Bolsonaro’s victory has served to push the PT far to the right, while it covers up its real policies through its call for the formation of a “democratic front.” This cynical operation is winning the unanimous support of Brazil’s pseudo-left, which has tried to dress up the campaign of the PT, a right-wing bourgeois party, in the language of a “united front,” utterly distorting the policy advanced by Leon Trotsky to mobilize the working class in struggle against fascism in the 1930s.

Barely a day after the elections, the PT’s first action was to ditch the use of the color red to identify its campaign, essentially adapting itself to Bolsonaro’s claim that workers have turned hostile to socialism. Instead, it announced that it would use the colors “green and yellow”—those of the Brazilian flag—making itself essentially indistinguishable from Bolsonaro’s own campaign.

With stunning opportunism, it also ditched any reference to former PT President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, jailed on corruption charges. Haddad replaced Lula as the PT’s presidential candidate after a protracted legal battle failed to overcome a legal ban on the jailed former president running for office.

Initially, the PT believed that promoting Haddad as the standard bearer for Lula would guarantee the party victory. It advanced the slogan “Haddad as president and Lula in power.” In fact, however, polls indicated that a majority of the Brazilian population opposes Lula’s release from prison. Cutting its losses, the PT has now abandoned Lula.

In name of broadening its “anti-fascist front” the PT has increasingly pitched its appeal to big business. The party’s media mouthpiece Brasil247 has repeatedly run pro-business headlines such as “Bolsonaro betrays the markets, denying privatizations” (October 10), “Germans speak of breaking strategic partnerships in case of Bolsonaro win” (October 13), and even celebrated French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s criticism of Bolsonaro’s saying “extremely disagreeable things” about women and gays (also on October 13).

Since the first-round election, Haddad has met with Brazil’s National Bishops Confederation to sign a pact ditching any reference to the right to abortion in the PT’s electoral program. He further pitched a naked sectarian appeal to Catholic voters, expressing concern that the far right would target the Catholic Church and warning that evangelical leaders “have a power project.” The PT has also mobilized its supporters to flood social media with attacks on Bolsonaro for his three divorces and two sons born out of wedlock, while celebrating Haddad’s “30-year marriage” and highlighting the fact that his grandfather was a Greek Orthodox priest in Lebanon, the country from which his family immigrated to Brazil.

Last Sunday, PT spokesmen told the media that in order to win the support of the right-wing PSDB against Bolsonaro, Haddad had invited the PSDB’s neoliberal economist and former central bank president Pérsio Arida to join his government as a prospective finance minister.

In advance of the first-round election, the PT had embraced the demonstrations called under the banner of #elenao (#not him), which in late September drew hundreds of thousands into the streets against Bolsonaro, in spite of the narrow feminist outlook of its upper-middle-class leadership.

After an October 1 poll showed a 4 percent jump for Bolsonaro, the PT disassociated itself from #elenao with lightning speed, following the lead of a layer of demoralized and embittered pseudo-left professors who claimed that “feminists with exposed breasts” at the demonstration had provoked a “backlash” from workers, who had responded by moving toward Bolsonaro.

Brasil247 editor Mauro Lopes declared that “Lula and the PT didn’t make the mistake of putting fascism at the center of the debate.” In other words, the best action in countering the far right was for Brazilians to vote and go home.

In the face of Bolsonaro’s vows that he will “end all activism” in Brazil in order to fix the economy, the PT’s answer is one of appeasement and treachery. The military and businessmen have made clear that the development of far-right movement targeting the masses is their goal. Their attack on the striking truckers in May, who were abandoned by the PT in order not to interfere with the party’s electoral maneuvers, and their support for Bolsonaro has made this abundantly clear.

This threat will only intensify after the elections, whether it brings to power a “democratic” government of the PT or Bolsonaro himself. In the face of this threat, the PT and its affiliated union federation, the CUT, are working day and night to tie the hands of the masses of workers.

This effort is supported by the entire pseudo-left in Brazil, including the Morenoites of the PSTU, who called for Rousseff’s impeachment in 2016. These organizations are under immense class pressure from their social base, a privileged petty-bourgeois layer that is embittered by the turn of the working class away from the PT and blames it for the rise of Bolsonaro.

After the first-round elections, meetings were called at the universities where leaflets were circulated on “how to talk to a Bolsonaro supporter” in another attempt to cover up for the PT’s betrayals.

Workers and youth seeking to fight the far right in Brazil must first and foremost reject the so-called “united front” with the PT, a bourgeois party that is chiefly responsible for the rise of the fascistic Bolsonaro and which demands the subordination of the working class to its right-wing capitalist program.

British PM addresses EU summit as “no deal” Brexit threatened

Thomas Scripps

UK Prime Minister Theresa May will address this evening’s European Union (EU) summit knowing that Britain’s terms for the transitional period preparing the UK’s exit have been rejected.

EU leaders abandoned plans to issue a draft declaration on its future trading arrangements with the UK, prior to an extraordinary EU meeting scheduled for November 17 and 18 that was meant to finalise a deal, but which is now also in doubt.

The EU is demanding an indefinite “backstop” arrangement that would keep Northern Ireland within the sphere of EU regulations—a situation that the hardline pro-Brexit Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will not countenance.

With May hamstrung in seeking a “soft Brexit,” maintaining tariff-free access to the Single European Market, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has shown that he will make no move that does not have the seal of approval of his party’s right-wing. His agenda is shaped solely by the political and economic concerns of British imperialism.

May gave a statement to the House of Commons Monday, to placate her critics within the Tory party and its DUP allies, while still expressing a goal of a “soft” Brexit deal. Having given a wholly unconvincing account of the progress made in securing acceptance of her “Chequers” proposals outlined this July, she reassured the DUP, “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom.”

Turning to the Tory Brexiteers, who see any backstop arrangement, without a time-limit as May had indicated last week, as a mechanism for maintaining British membership of the EU, she said, “I am clear we are not going to be trapped permanently in a single customs territory unable to do meaningful trade deals.”

May yesterday boasted she had secured cabinet unity prior to departing for Brussels, but the reaction in Parliament from several Tory MPs and the DUP’s first minister, Nigel Dodds, made clear this is purely a temporary ceasefire. Shortly after May’s speech, a meeting of eight Brexiteer ministers—Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Chris Grayling, Geoffrey Cox, Liz Truss and Penny Mourdant—was held to discuss their own response. The DUP is still threatening to use its crucial votes to “paralyse” the Tories’ domestic agenda if Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the UK is threatened and has said it believes a no-deal scenario is now “probably inevitable.”

With the government in turmoil and UK-based corporations becoming increasingly nervous as the deadline for a Brexit deal draws near, Labour is advancing itself as a responsible representative of Britain’s ruling elite. Responding to May’s statement in the House of Commons, Corbyn criticised her for “putting party before country” and put forward Labour’s plan for a “permanent customs union” with the EU that allows for the UK to strike its own trade deals. Corbyn spoke of advancing proposals that would have the support of the House of Commons, abandoning his call for a general election.

This comes after ex-party leader Tony Blair spoke openly of his supporters backing May in any no-confidence vote scenario in return for her promising a second referendum, as a means of avoiding the “truly damaging and challenging” possibility of a general election bringing Corbyn to power.

At a Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting Monday evening, Corbyn teamed up with his pro-Remain Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer to secure unity with the Blairites who are divided as to how to proceed. With some such as Caroline Flint and Lisa Nandy considering supporting any deal secured by May, Corbyn responded, “Part of the concern, which the government wants to talk up, is that there is only a no deal alternative. That is clearly not the case and it is clearly not what the majority of MPs want.”

The whole thrust of Labour’s Brexit policy is now directed towards securing a close relationship with the EU through a parliamentary vote, or possibly through a second referendum. This would see the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs side with the Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats and the most strongly pro-Remain Tories. Describing the PLP meeting on Monday, a Labour source outlined Corbyn and Starmer’s plan to the Guardian .

“If she [May] is unable to bring anything back, or brings back the kind of package currently on offer, that won’t be able to command support in the House of Commons. … In those circumstances, Labour can put forward [its offer] which could command a majority in Parliament and does command majority support in the country.”

Corbyn even made a direct offer to May to come on board, saying in the parliamentary debate Monday, “The prime minister faces a simple and inescapable choice: be buffeted this way and that way by the chaos of her own party, or back a deal that can win the support of parliament and the people of this country.”

Some pro-Remain Tories guardedly indicated their support for this line. Former education secretary Nicky Morgan said that MPs would have to “step in” if the prime minister failed to secure a deal. The basis of such a deal, Corbyn has suggested, would be built around Starmer’s “six tests” that include measures that are a de facto repudiation of Brexit such as delivering the “exact same benefits” as membership of the single market and customs union.

Labour’s fraudulent nature of a reference to preventing a “race to the bottom” is made apparent by the emphasis on maintaining economic, security and border agreements with the EU, as demanded by business—combined with references to “fair management of migration” that is a sop to the xenophobic agenda of the pro-Brexit campaigners.

As if to underscore the extent of Corbyn’s political cowardice, it was left to a Blairite pro-Remainer to urge him to put a vote of no-confidence in May. Gareth Snell spoke to the Guardian yesterday as the representative of a group of MPs, who claim to number 20, supportive of forcing a general election to change the direction of Brexit. “There seems to be no majority in the house for what the government is proposing—so why waste any more time and risk a no-deal Brexit?” Snell said. “The Labour frontbench needs to put down a vote of no confidence ASAP to ensure we can put a deal to parliament that has majority support.”

Posed as an anti-Brexit move, a successful motion of no confidence would need May to lose due to pro-Remain Tories deserting her.

May had hoped her plight would have secured a sympathetic response from the EU, but this did not materialise. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said instead, “We were actually pretty hopeful that we would manage to seal an exit agreement. … [A]t the moment, it looks a bit more difficult again.” EU Council President Donald Tusk was less diplomatic, saying, “We must prepare the EU for a no-deal scenario, which is more likely than ever before.”

Some sources suggested that the planned EU summit could be delayed until December, but others spoke of holding the November meeting as a “No Deal Brexit” summit that would be a declaration that May has failed. In similar vein, the former president of the euro group, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, spoke of many more unscheduled months of negotiations that would nullify the plan to trigger Article 50 by March 31 next year. He linked this with the necessity of allowing “for new elections or a second referendum if the deal gets rejected in the medium term, which still seems pretty likely.”

Sears files for bankruptcy, set to close 200 stores

Trévon Austin

After 132 years in business, the former retail giant Sears Holding Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday. Sears will use Chapter 11 filing with the Federal Bankruptcy Court in New York in an attempt to manage its debts and continue operating at least until the end of the holiday season. The company plans to close 142 Sears and Kmart stores by the end of the year, in addition to 46 store closures announced in August.

Thousands of workers will lose their jobs as stores close by the end of the holidays. Some 68,000 employees, including 32,000 full-time workers, will be at risk of losing their jobs if the company fails to stay afloat. Mass layoffs have been common in the retail industry as a whole in recent years with Sears Holding already shrinking its workforce from 178,000 in January.

Sears started out as a watch company in 1886, but rapidly expanded into a massive mail order business. By 1895, the company touted a 532-page mail order catalog advertising a variety of goods, including clothing, tools, appliances and even homes. The company was the country’s premier retailer, comparable to a much earlier version of Amazon. It shipped products to the most remote parts of the US from a three-million square foot mail order hub in Chicago. At its peak the facility handled more than 105,000 orders a day.

By 1931, Sears’ brick and mortar stores outsold its catalog, altering the company’s dynamic and role in the US economy. The company opened its first downtown emporium in 1932, where shoppers could dine, have family photos taken, visit a dentist, have a tire changed and have access a multitude of other services. During the post-World War II boom, Sears stores followed American families as they moved to the suburbs, acting as anchors to the regional malls established to serve suburban consumers.

Sears filing for bankruptcy is the latest catastrophe in a broader crisis in the US retail industry. The last decade has seen a multitude of buyouts, mergers and acquisitions by finance corporations as part of desperate efforts by retailers to avoid bankruptcy or liquidation by corporate robber barons gaining what profit they can before selling or liquidating the retail companies.

US retailers have been forced to close brick-and-mortar stores to maintain profitability, closing thousands of stores in 2018 alone. Figures in May indicated the retail industry was responsible for more than a third of job cuts announced in 2018. An overview of a handful of corporations gives scope to the severity of the issue.

In April, Subway, the fast food chain with the most locations in the world, closed 500 US locations alone.

Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., the parent company of a number of chains included Boston Store, Younkers and Carson’s, went out of business after 150 years in operation. The company began to close all 256 of its locations in April.

The parent company for Toys “R” Us filed for bankruptcy in September 2017, hoping to find a buyer for its operations. The company is now in the process of liquidating all of its 735 properties across the US, and some 1,700 stores worldwide.

In January, Walmart-owned Sam’s Club closed 63 of its locations while laying off an estimated 11,000 workers. The company closed roughly 10 percent of Sam’s Club locations while announcing a raise in its minimum hourly wage from $9 to $11.

The large-scale loss of jobs and crisis of retail is bound up with the process of monopolization occurring in all business sectors. Online retailers like Amazon and Walmart have spearheaded this process, as online shopping becomes more commonplace and the degradation of workers’ living conditions limit their ability to purchase goods and services.

Retailers have been forced to downsize and shift jobs to labor-intensive distribution centers. Even as many companies are increasingly turning to online sales to counteract poor store sales, Amazon continues to tower over other retailers, accounting for 53 percent of all online sales growth in 2016.

Stagnant wages also play a role in the “retail apocalypse.” Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any economic “growth” experienced after the Great Recession has gone to the upper echelons of society. The vast majority of jobs created since 2008 have been part-time or temporary. Retailers are closing stores in predominantly poor and working-class areas, robbing the most disadvantaged of employment.

Studies show that 15 percent of retailers are at risk of shutting down and it is estimated that within five years, up to 25 percent of American malls could close, with tens of thousands of people losing their jobs. The majority of retail-related jobs are continuously fed into massive corporations like Amazon that work their employees to exhaustion, and sometimes death. The ultimate result of the retail crisis is escalation of attacks on the wages and living conditions of workers.

Sears lost over $11 billion since 2011, including $5.8 billion lost in the last five years. More than 1,000 stores have closed in the last decade. Well over 700 Kmart and Sears locations have been shut down in the last two years alone.

While Sears was bleeding out, CEO and hedge fund billionaire Edward S. Lampert lined his and his associates’ pockets. Lampert bought Kmart after it filed for bankruptcy in 2003 and acquired Sears a year later. As CEO, Lampert claimed his strategy was to reinvest in the company by selling off assets and closing stores.

Lampert orchestrated deals that cannibalized the company’s most profitable brands, creating separate entities in which he had stakes. Lampert sold Lands’ End, a clothing brand in which his hedge fund now has a large stake. In 2015, he sold $2.7 billion worth of stores to the retail company Seritage. Lampert is a large investor in Seritage, as well as its chairman.

Lampert’s takeover of Sears epitomizes the ever growing domination of finance capital in the US economy. ESL Investments, Lampert’s hedge fund, holds about 40 percent of Sears Holdings’ debt—some $1.1 billion in loans. Lampert could force Sears to sell its stores to retail companies or transfer them to his own to repay the debt. Sears’ many other debtors will cash in on the company’s assets as well.

Private equity firms have played a nefarious role in the retail apocalypse. A key cause in the large-scale closures is that many retail chains are overwhelmed with the debt which accompanies leveraged buyouts. Sears has a total of $5.6 billion in bank loan and bond debts.

Lampert and other financial parasites will make billions if Sears is eventually liquidated. Sears’ bankruptcy represents a huge loss for the workers employed at the closing stores, but also the working class as a whole. Giant corporations will squeeze every penny they can out of workers while continuing the erosion of their living standards.

Amnesty International: Immigrants separated from family members for alleged “fraud”

Meenakshi Jagadeesan & Norisa Diaz

A new report by Amnesty International (AI) calculates that more than 6,000 people (including at least 3,000 children) were separated from relatives at the border within a four month period from the initial implementation of zero tolerance policy in April 2018.

The report also noted that previous statistics released by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of family separation do not count grandparents or relatives, and those separated due to supposed “insufficient” documentation.

CBP officials told Amnesty that suspected “fraud” numbers are not counted as separations because they are unreliable. What CBP labels as “fraud” are cases of supposedly “unrelated adults” posing as parents or guardians of young children as a way to get into the United States more easily. Fraud detection has been presented as a tool used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to battle child smuggling operations, and protect young migrant children.

However, allegations of fraud are made by CBP routinely and without factual basis at the border. As the report makes clear, this tended to happen even when the adults traveling with the children have documents, such as birth certificates, family photos, and other forms of identification proving guardianship.

What this means is that the numbers of “family unit separations” at the border is substantially under-reported. And even the over 6,000 cases of “family units” being separated might be far less than the actual numbers of migrants who have been subjected to this inhuman practice.

Amnesty researchers interviewed 52 asylum seekers in January, April and May, and found that fifteen of them–13 parents and 2 grandparents–had been separated from the children that they had been traveling with. These were not families separated under “zero tolerance.” The immigrants were asylum-seekers, who had presented themselves at the port of entry with all the required asylum documents–in other words, entering the country the “right way” as the Trump administration puts it. Yet, they were still subjected to detention and separation primarily on the allegation of fraud.

As the report notes, CBP justifications for family separations have proven to be outright lies in many cases, where its own records note that the adults had the necessary documentation to prove guardianship. In addition, often times–as in the documented case of four men whose children were taken away–the border officials simply carried out the separations without feeling compelled to offer any explanation for their actions.

These forced separations have resulted not just in grievous psychological trauma to the children, but also acute mental and physical anguish for the adults concerned. Amnesty found that in many cases, the extent of the suffering caused by detention and separation in fact constitutes torture under US and international law.

Maria, a 55 year old had applied for asylum in New Mexico in August 2017 after crossing the border with her 17-year-old grandson, Mattheus. However, CBP officials held up her application and forcibly separated her from her grandson, who suffers from severe disabilities.

It has been a year since Maria last saw her grandson. Maria told Amnesty researchers, “I believe that because of all of this I’m going through–the fear of going back to Brazil, the fear of being separated from my grandchild, all of this together, I can’t stop thinking about it–that it’s making me really sick..I might need to go look for a psychologist. I don’t remember things, and can’t sleep …I start to talk about something and forget what I was saying. I am crying a lot also because I am still separated from Matheus.”

A young mother, whose child was taken away from her at the border echoed those sentiments: “They told me, ‘you don’t have any rights here, and you don’t have any rights to stay with your son.’ …For me I died at that moment. They ripped my heart out of me. …For me, it would have been better if I had dropped dead. For me, the world ended at that point. …How can a mother not have the right to be with her son?”

The forced family separations are but one weapon that is being used by the Trump administration in its ongoing war against immigrants. Notwithstanding their inhumane and illegal character, family separations are part of a systematic strategy of detering all forms of immigration.

The Amnesty report includes statements from Mexican officials about attempts by the US to negotiate a “safe third country agreement,” while also insisting on illegal pushbacks. What the latter means is that US is leaning heavily on Mexico to carry out document checks of asylum seekers passing through on their way to the United States, and to deport them to their country of origin.

This would be a blatant violation of international law since, for most asylum seekers, a return to their country of origin is tantamount to a death sentence. In addition, the attempt to have Mexico declared a “safe country” for asylum-seekers–which would allow the US to stop accepting asylum applications at the US-Mexico border, except from those under threat from the Mexican state–is also a contravention of international law, since Mexico is not a uniformly safe space for all asylum seekers.

Each of the ruling parties—Democratic and Republican—is responsible for carrying out the attack on immigrants. Under Obama, the government deported 2.7 million people, the most of any president.

Only a socialist movement by the working class can put an end to the nightmare faced by millions of immigrants processed and detained throughout the vast DHS prison system.

The “new cold war,” censorship, and the future of the Internet

Andre Damon 

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a major editorial statement warning about the “breakup of the web” amid the rise of internet censorship and international geopolitical conflicts. “If things continue along this path,” the newspaper warns, “the next decade may see the internet relegated to little more than just another front on the new cold war.”

The editorial begins by alluding to a warning by Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, that, in the Times’ words, “in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split in two—one internet led by China and one internet led by the United States.”

Schmidt, according to the Times, “did not seem to seriously entertain the possibility that the internet would remain global.” While agreeing with this appraisal, the newspaper adds, “if anything, the flaw in Mr. Schmidt’s thinking is that he too quickly dismisses the European internet that is coalescing around the European Union’s ever-heightening regulation of technology platforms. All signs point to a future with three internets.”

Censorship will become common to all of these “spheres,” not just that of China, the Times warns. “Internet censorship and surveillance were once hallmarks of oppressive governments—with Egypt, Iran and China being prime examples.” But it has become clear that this “isn’t just the domain of anti-democratic forces.”

The warning is ironic, given the fact that the Times has, for nearly two years, been at the forefront of justifying the efforts of US technology companies to censor the internet in alliance with leading figures in the Democratic Party, including Senator Mark Warren and Congressman Adam Schiff. For nearly two years, the Times has sought to promote and instigate censorship measures in the name of combating “Russian meddling” in American politics.

That campaign has resulted in a series of sweeping censorship measures, beginning with an initiative, known as “Project Owl,” announced by Google Engineering Vice President Ben Gomes in April 2017, that buried left-wing websites, including the World Socialist Web Site, in search results.

Facebook and Twitter have followed with similar actions, demoting oppositional pages in their users’ news feeds and, just last week, shutting down the accounts of left-wing news pages with millions of followers. The Times has cheered every step of this campaign, going so far as to label the political pages removed by Facebook as “spam” and “domestic disinformation.”

The Times and the American ruling class are now being hoisted in their own petard. Just as the American state and intelligence apparatus have sought to weaponize the internet, so too are other powers, as the internet becomes a battleground for economic and geopolitical conflicts.

What upsets the Times is that American companies, and Google in particular, are not tailoring all their actions according to the geopolitical interests of American imperialism.

“American corporations,” the Times writes, “do little to counteract Balkanization and instead do whatever is necessary to expand their operations. … If the future of the internet is a tripartite cold war, Silicon Valley wants to be making money in all three of those worlds.”

What instigated the Times’ ire at Google is the company’s insistence that it will operate in China, under rules imposed by the Chinese government, in defiance of protests by leading figures within the American government.

The Times pointed to a leaked speech by Gomes that made clear that the company’s plans to create a censored search engine for the Chinese market are in fact much further along than the company had publicly indicated. “Mr. Gomes’s leaked speech from inside Google sounded almost dystopian at times. ‘This is a world none of us have ever lived in before,’ Mr. Gomes told employees. ‘All I am saying, we have built a set of hacks, and we have kept them.’”

Readers of the World Socialist Web Site are familiar with the “dystopian” plans of Mr. Gomes, who has played a leading role in Google’s campaign to censor the internet in the United States and Europe. When he was working to crack down on political opposition within the US, the Times never mentioned his name and defended the censorship program over which he presided.

But now that Google is seeking to implement censorship in cooperation with the Chinese state, the Times is complaining about “[t]he power of a handful of platforms and services.”

In other words, the Times, speaking for the US intelligence apparatus, wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants US technology companies to censor domestic political opposition in the name of preventing “foreign interference.” But it also wants those same companies to reject overtures by foreign governments to prevent “interference” by the Americans, including the US-backed campaign, which the Times alludes to, to promote separatist sentiments among Chinese Uighurs.

The Times, and the American ruling elite for which it speaks, wants to keep the internet “global” only insofar as its rules are written in the United States, insofar as the American ruling class can control the narrative. That other states and other ruling elites are moving to implement their own rules and restrictions, bound up with their own domestic and geopolitical interests, it considers intolerable.

Aside from the Times’ hypocrisy, the phenomenon it points to is very real—and dangerous. The internet emerged as a powerful mechanism for spreading information and sharing ideas, and for undermining national divisions and the control of the professional “gatekeepers”—the establishment media. With the proliferation of hand-held devices and social media platforms, vast troves of information are now available to workers and youth all over the world.

This development terrifies the capitalist ruling elites. The American ruling class, in particular, is fighting a two-front war. It wants to pressure the giant US-based social media and internet companies to suppress domestic opposition, while at the same time undercutting the efforts of its competitors and adversaries, whether in China or in Europe, to establish their own mechanisms of control.

The threat to an open and internationally integrated internet is one expression of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system—between a global economy and the division of the world into nation-states, and between socialized production and the subordination of economic life to the accumulation of private profit. Communication systems are global, but they are being manipulated by rival ruling classes. The spread of information is inherently liberating, but the infrastructure for its dissemination remains under the control of powerful corporations.

The social force capable of securing an open and global internet is the working class, the only genuinely international class, whose interests are bound up with opposition to the capitalist nation-state system. The struggle against censorship is the struggle to defend the social, cultural and technological achievements of mankind. It is inextricably connected to the fight against war, inequality and authoritarianism.

It is, in short, a revolutionary question. The international working class must respond to the two-front war of the capitalist ruling elites with a one-front war against the capitalist system itself. The internet must be established on secure foundations, through the establishment of a global, socialist society, based on equality and democratic control of production.