G20 papers over differences as economic conflicts intensify

Nick Beams

Under intense pressure from President Trump and the US delegation and the threat that they would blow up the meeting, the G20 managed to reach an agreement on the communiqué issued from the leaders’ summit held in Buenos Aires over the weekend.

This was followed by a deal between Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping for a temporary ceasefire in the escalating trade war between the world’s number one and number two economies.

However, it is a measure of the state of relations between the world’s major economic powers that the summit was labelled a limited success because a form of words was found to ensure it did not end in open conflict as did the G7 meeting in June. The APEC summit last month concluded without agreement and issued no final statement.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, at one point, European negotiators believed the talks would “fall apart.” They had seen reports that the US National Security Adviser John Bolton, a key figure in the Trump administration, was “considering pulling out of the G20 summit statement.”

The major differences were not resolved, however, only papered over.

The main issue in drafting the communiqué centred on excluding any reference to “resist protectionism” that had been a routine part of G20 statements—even though it has been increasingly honoured in the breach—since the organisation became the main world economic forum in wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.

The statement pledged to work to “improve a rules-based order that is capable of effectively responding to a rapidly changing world” after the US secured the removal of references to “multilateralism.”

The statement did “recognise” the contribution of the “multilateral trading system” to global growth, but then added: “The system is currently falling short of its objectives and there is room for improvement. We therefore support the necessary reform of the WTO [World Trade Organisation] to improve its functioning.”

Progress on the reform will be reviewed at the G20 summit to be held in Osaka, Japan, next June.

The demand for “reform” of the WTO was at the insistence of the US, which claims that the global trade body has dealt with the US unfairly, and has benefited China. Washington wants the rules changed to enable action over what it claims are the appropriation of intellectual property rights, either by theft or forced technology transfers, and the “market-distorting” state subsidies to Chinese industries.

The other key points of conflict were climate change and refugees. The communiqué called the Paris climate agreement “irreversible” but included a paragraph stating that “the United States reiterates its decision to withdraw.”

On the issue of refugees, the statement, at the insistence of the US, withdrew references to the role of multilateral organisations in playing a part in dealing with the issue and the responsibility of wealthier countries to mitigate the problems.

Under the deal reached between Trump at Xi at the conclusion of the summit, the US agreed to suspend the escalation of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent, which had been scheduled to come into effect next January, for three months.

Under the agreement, China agreed to purchase a “very substantial” amount of US farm, energy and industrial products in order to reduce the trade gap between the two countries. But this deal does not address the core conflict. China had already agreed to make such purchases back in May in talks between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and China’s vice premier and chief trade negotiator Liu He but the agreement was overturned by Trump a few days later as not being sufficient.

The key issue remains US opposition to China’s efforts to expand its technological and industrial base under its “Made in China 2025” plan and investment under its Belt and Road Initiative, all of which the US regards as a threat to its economic and military supremacy.

The US position was again set out in a 53-page report prepared by the office of US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer ten days before the Trump-Xi meeting. It accused China of continuing to organise state-backed theft of intellectual property and technology, downplayed moves by China to ease foreign investment restrictions and raised concerns over its “Made in China 2025” policy.

These issues will be the subject of talks over the next three months, with the US threatening to go ahead with the imposition of higher tariff if it is not satisfied with the outcome.

The US decision to put off the tariff hike did not signify an end to the conflict but was a tactical manoeuvre as it seeks what it calls “structural changes” in the Chinese economy, not merely the purchasing of more American exports.

One of the main considerations appears to have been to provide more time to ensure that the European Union and Japan, as well as other countries, come on side with Washington in its push against China’s industrial development.

Trade manoeuvres by the Trump administration over recent months point in this direction.

The US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCSA), replacing the North America Free Trade Agreement and signed at the G20 summit, was aimed, at least in part, in unifying North America for a push against China. Significantly the USMCA deal contained a provision that parties should not agree to free trade deals with China—an unprecedented “third party” intervention in trade agreements.

The US has also struck agreements for bilateral discussions with both the European Union and Japan. Both had opposed such negotiations but then agreed under the threat that failure to do so would see the imposition of auto tariffs of up to 25 percent on “national security” grounds. In the lead up to the G20 meeting, there was concern among EU negotiators that Trump was again threatening to go ahead with the auto tariffs.

When the trade war against China was launched, the Trump administration came under criticism, not for its anti-China measures as such, but for the way it was proceeding which was repelling potential allies that also have grievances with Beijing. The temporary tariff pull-back is in line with efforts to secure wider support, as reflected in the G20 communiqué for discussions on “reform” of the WTO, for which the US will seek support from other major powers as it targets China.

On the European side, the decision appears to have been taken to try to accommodate US demands at the G20 lest an open split lead to the imposition of the threatened US auto tariffs.

The position of the European powers was summed up by the French President Emmanuel Macron, who noted that Trump did not express any “dissenting opinion.” “His team negotiated, he was present, and we will keep moving forward,” Macron said. In other words, they did not poke at the bear and the bear did not snarl back at them.

Another consideration in the China decision was concerns over the impact on global financial markets of proceeding with higher tariffs. Trump first raised the prospect of talks with Xi at the G20 at the beginning of November following a significant market sell-off in October. Since then markets, especially the hi-tech companies, have been highly sensitive to the prospect of tariff measures because of their effect on sales and global supply chains.

Following the Trump-Xi meeting both sides put their own positive “spin” on the outcome.

“Today is a great day for the United States,” a senior administration official is reported to have said in a background briefing at the end of the summit. “Across the board it was a resounding success.”

In China, an editorial in the state-owned Global Times, noted for its more strident comments on US policy, said the agreement had “momentous significance.” The official Xinhua news agency said the tariff relief showed the two sides could work together. But as the Wall Street Journal reported, absent from Chinese media reports was the fact that the US had imposed a 90-day limit for negotiations on its demands for the far-reaching changes in the structure of the Chinese economy.

On the US side these changes, which seek to reduce China to a kind of semi-colonial status, are regarded as essential if it is to maintain global economic dominance. Beijing, however, regards any back-down as highly dangerous because it would undermine the entire regime. The trade and economic conflict between the world’s two major economic powers has not been overcome but is entering a potentially more explosive stage.

Last light for the Kepler space telescope

Bryan Dyne

After more than nine years of unprecedented discovery of worlds beyond our Solar System, NASA’s Kepler space telescope has exhausted its supply of fuel needed for scientific operations. On October 30, the agency officially retired its tenth Discovery-class mission, leaving behind a legacy of exploration that revolutionized humanity’s understanding of our galaxy’s planets and the stars they orbit.

During its primary and extended mission, the Kepler spacecraft observed 530,506 stars, discovered 2,681 exoplanets, found 2,899 candidate exoplanets that have yet to be confirmed and watched 61 supernovae as they exploded. There have been 2,946 scientific papers published from the 678 gigabytes of data collected by the telescope and beamed back from Kepler’s Sun-circling orbit, which trails further and further behind that of the Earth.

Concept art of Kepler-16b, the first planet found orbiting two suns. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Kepler was the culmination of decades of research and development into new methods to detect Earth-sized planets across interstellar distances. NASA researcher William Borucki began work on extrasolar planet detection in 1983 and published a paper with Audrey Summers in 1984 noting that while the instruments of the time, operating from the Earth’s surface, could detect Jupiter-sized planets, it would take a space-based telescope to find smaller exoplanets, those which might be closer to the Earth in size or composition. This idea was refined for many years until Kepler was finally approved in 2001 and launched on March 9, 2007.

The telescope’s primary mission had a single purpose: to continuously observe a particular region of space and watch for any periodic dimming of the stars in its field of view that would indicate a planet coming between the star and the telescope. In doing so, it would provide the data needed to find out how common planets are around the observed stars and, by extension, in the galaxy and the universe as a whole.

In order to find such planets, Kepler was made using some of the most advanced astronomy technology of the time. The sensor array on the telescope is comprised of 94.6 million individual pixels and was slightly curved to minimize distortion from incoming light reflected off the telescope’s 1.4-meter diameter mirror. It viewed an area of the sky 33,000 times as large as that observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and recorded an image every six seconds. The total package cost about $792 million over two decades to develop, build, launch and operate, the equivalent of 0.1 percent of this year’s Pentagon budget.

Artist’s conception of Kepler and the six patches of sky it viewed during its nine-year lifespan. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle

The telescope’s first target was a small region in the constellation Cygnus that contains 170,000 observable stars up to 3,000 light years (about 28 million billion kilometers) away. For four years (half a year longer than its original mission parameters), Kepler observed this region and found hundreds of confirmed exoplanets and thousands of potential candidates. In the years since, further analysis and follow up observations with other ground- and space-based telescopes have helped to confirm thousands more, with further thousands of candidate planets awaiting review.

Kepler’s mission was modified after the second of the telescope’s four reaction wheels, gyroscopes needed to orient and stabilize the telescope, failed in May 2013. For the next several months, NASA developed a plan to hold the spacecraft steady with the two remaining reaction wheels, small amounts of fuel and the minute but constant pressure of sunlight. While this setup was not as precise as the original telescope configuration, it allowed Kepler to continue operations for another five and a half years.

The database now available as a result of Kepler’s observations stands in stark contrast to the state of exoplanet astronomy only 26 years ago, when the first planets were discovered orbiting a pulsar. Even through the 1990s, it was not certain whether the discoveries that had been made at the time were statistical anomalies and or whether our Solar System was just a fluke in the cosmos. Kepler has conclusively shown that planets are a common occurrence, a fact that has become a mainstay in the scientific research of the astronomical community and the cultural life of the world’s population.

William Borucki, Kepler’s principal investigator, in 1975. Credit: NASA/Lee Jones

It has also revealed that planets and their systems are extraordinarily varied. After Kepler detected its first five planets and many more shortly after, it quickly became apparent that each star likely does have at least one planet orbiting around it. Astronomers were also surprised that very few extrasolar systems fell into any of the theoretical models that had been developed about solar system formation. Some of the earliest discoveries were “hot Jupiters,” massive gas giants that orbited closer to their star than Mercury does to the Sun.

Another interesting type of star system includes multiple small rocky planets orbiting close to very small stars. Moreover, some of these systems, such as Kepler-186, have planets approximately the size of Earth, likely rocky and orbiting around their parent stars at a distance where liquid water could exist on their surface, in what is called the habitable zone. To date, no “typical” planet or solar system has been discovered, forcing astronomers to develop more refined and subtle models of planetary formation, models which will remain under development and revision for the foreseeable future.

The crown jewel of Kepler’s dataset is the planet Kepler-452b. It is the most Earth-like planet discovered to date, with a radius close to that of Earth, a likely rocky composition and an orbit around a star similar to the Sun and within its habitable zone. So far, such planets have proven to be rare, yet if even one exists, it provides a tantalizing hint of thousands and possibly millions more.

Some of these may have already been discovered by Kepler or other exoplanet searchers, such as the one which uncovered seven Earth-sized planets in the Trappist-1 system. Among all the confirmed exoplanets (not just those found by Kepler), 1211 have a radius less than twice that of Earth’s, 135 have an estimated mass less than three times Earth’s and 361 orbit within their star’s habitable zone. While planets in any one of these categories are only rarely also in the other two, it is only a matter of time before even more potential “exo-Earths” are discovered.

Alongside the empirical evidence, there have been a variety of statistical studies using Kepler data to predict how many Earth-sized planets there are in the galaxy. One such study, done in 2013, predicts 11 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the Milky Way. Based on the statistics, the closest of these is likely within 12 light years, our cosmic backyard, and a prime target for further study. The Kepler method only detects planets whose orbits are precisely aligned to block the light of their parent star, so other techniques will be necessary to find these likely nearby neighbors.

Concept art of Kepler-16b, the first planet found orbiting two suns. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

The next step in our study of exoplanets is to determine how many Earth-sized planets in their star’s habitable zone are Earth-like, that is, whether or not they have an atmosphere that humans might be able to breathe and if they actually have standing bodies of liquid water on their surface. While it will take more specialized missions such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in April, or the James Webb Space Telescope, slated to launch in 2021, to start answering these questions, the Kepler space telescope showed that there are likely thousands if not millions of such worlds for humanity to explore.

New Zealand teachers’ struggle at a crossroads

Tom Peters

On November 23, the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) announced that a majority of its 17,000 secondary school teacher members had voted for a one-day strike early next year, after rejecting a second pay offer from the Labour Party-led coalition government.

The vote follows a nationwide strike by 30,000 primary school teachers in August and a second strike in November. Primary and secondary teachers have rejected pay increases of 3 percent per year for three years. The offer is slightly above the official rate of inflation and does not make up for a decade-long pay freeze.

Secondary teachers are calling for an immediate 15 percent increase, while primary teachers in the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) union have demanded 16 percent over two years. Teachers also want more staff and smaller class sizes to address a crisis of under-resourcing, over-crowding and unmanageable workloads.

New Zealand teachers have joined a growing wave of strikes and protests internationally, as workers seek to fight back against austerity measures imposed in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Teachers struck across France on November 12 against plans by Emmanuel Macron’s right-wing government to cut thousands of jobs in public and private schools. In the United States, the teacher unions shut down a wave of strikes earlier this year, falsely claiming that teachers could resolve the crisis in schools by voting for the Democrats.

In New Zealand, after years of virtually no industrial action, tens of thousands of workers have struck in recent months, including nurses and hospital workers, ambulance paramedics, court staff and other public servants, bus and train workers.

The Labour Party-led government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, which took office just over a year ago, is continuing the same pro-business program of austerity as the previous National Party government. It is refusing to seriously address the crisis of homelessness, low wages and the high cost of living, while continuing to starve healthcare, education and other public services of funding.

The union bureaucracy is seeking to contain the growing strike movement and prevent it from becoming a consciously anti-capitalist political campaign against the government. The unions have dragged out disputes, isolated striking workers from each other, and sought to promote illusions in the Labour Party.

The NZEI held a series of one-day strikes from November 12 to 16, with different regions striking on different days. Teachers had initially indicated support for a two-day strike, but the NZEI rejected this. At the same time, the union presented the Ministry of Education’s third offer to teachers and will announce the results of voting on December 4. The offer is almost identical to one that teachers overwhelmingly rejected in September, and is the same as a sellout deal imposed on nurses and other hospital workers by the New Zealand Nurses Organisation in August.

Feilding Intermediate Principal Diane Crate wrote on Facebook that a beginning teacher would receive “around $19 per week from this offer straight away,” while a teacher with 10 years’ experience would receive $27 per week. She criticised the government’s announcement of 600 extra learning support staff, saying these would be spread across 2,500 schools and “there is very little information about what this might look like in reality.” Thousands of existing teacher aides, who “earn only a fraction over minimum wage,” were offered nothing.

Crate observed that the starting wage for a police officer was over $56,000 plus allowances and overtime, while a beginning teacher is paid $47,980 and has large student loan repayments.

On the NZEI Facebook page, Halim Sheridan commented: “The offer does not go anywhere near enough. The salary offer is far too low. There was no extra release time offered. There was no increase in staffing… The minister claims there is no more money. I dismiss this claim. They have cornered themselves fiscally by their own design. There’s money, but they have simply self-imposed austerity. We, our families, our students, New Zealand’s future are worth more… We must not back down.”

On November 9, the government’s Employment Relations Authority urged primary teachers to accept the offer, calling it “a handsome and competitive proposal in the current fiscal environment.” It told NZEI that teachers’ demands were “unrealistic.”

The claim that there is “no more money” is a lie. The current offer to teachers amounts to $700 million over four years. The government has a budget surplus of $5.5 billion, achieved by starving essential services and refusing to grant a substantial pay increase to nurses and other public workers. The government has refused to raise money by increasing taxes on the rich and on corporations.

In addition, Labour and its coalition partners NZ First and the Greens have allocated $2.3 billion to buying four new air force warplanes, as part of plans to spend up to $20 billion by 2030 on upgrading the military and preparing for war.

In an attempt to prepare teachers for another sellout, union leaders expressed sympathy for the government’s position. In a joint statement on November 16, NZEI and PPTA said: “We know that this government has inherited a teacher shortage and a desperate situation for children with additional learning needs because of the failure to plan and fund education properly; and we acknowledge that they are working to try and fix it.”

PPTA President Jack Boyle told TVNZ on November 18 “we absolutely are behind Minister Hipkins, who acknowledges the challenges in education,” while saying the rate of teacher recruitment was “not good enough.” He added: “We absolutely know that [Hipkins] is committed, as are we, to making New Zealand the best place to be a child.”

Political commentator Matt McCarten, a former Unite union leader and Labour Party strategist, noted that the two unions were being “extraordinarily polite” and “playing very nice” with the government.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins bluntly told TVNZ that the government would not increase its offer due to “financial constraints.” He said teachers’ grievances about low pay could not be achieved “overnight.”

The World Socialist Web Site warns that in order to wage a real fight against austerity, workers need to organize independently and rebel against the union bureaucracy. Rank-and-file committees should be formed in every school, including teachers, support staff and parents. These should be democratically controlled by the workers themselves and completely independent of the Labour Party and all the parties in parliament.

Such committees must proceed on the basis of a socialist perspective, aimed at uniting teachers with health workers, transport workers and other sections of the working class in a joint political and industrial offensive against the government and the capitalist system. The billions of dollars hoarded by the super-rich and wasted on the military must be redistributed to address fundamental social needs, including the right to a decent education.

Catalonia rocked by a week of strikes against austerity

Alejandro López 

Hundreds of thousands of workers and students have participated in demonstrations and strikes in Catalonia against the cuts being proposed by the regional nationalist government.

The pseudo-left party Podemos has stepped in to suppress the resurgence of opposition after a decade of austerity to help get a regional budget passed. In return the Catalan nationalists will have to end their opposition to the draft 2019 budget of the Socialist Party (PSOE) government in Madrid.

This week, primary care physicians working for the Catalan Health Institute, which manages 80 percent of the health centres in the region, and doctors of the semi-private health providers went on strike for the fourth day in a row, called by Metges de Catalunya (Doctors of Catalonia) and the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación General del Trabajo (General Confederation of Labour-CGT). They are protesting increased workloads with 1,000 doctors’ jobs cut since 2008, lack of resources, pay cuts and demanding more time to attend patients. According to data provided by the regional government, the strike has received 70 percent support.

On Wednesday, hundreds of doctors protested in front of the regional parliament where firefighters were also protesting precarious jobs and intolerable working conditions. According to the Catalan ombudsman, firefighters worked 460,000 hours overtime last year and the region needs at least 600 more firefighters.

When both groups tried to enter the parliament, the riot police charged them. They responded with chants to the police of “You, you, it also affects you.” Doctors shouted, “The firemen will always be on our side”.

On the same day, university students went on strike to demand a 30 percent reduction in fees and equalization of charges between ordinary and masters degrees. The strike was supported in all the major public universities including the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Pompeu Fabra, University and the University of Barcelona.

The CGT and Labour Union Coordination (Coordinadora Obrera Sindical-COS) called a strike of teaching and research staff at all Catalan public universities. They are demanding the improvement of working conditions, higher salaries and the elimination of wage differentials between teaching and research staff.

Non-teaching staff in schools also went on strike including classroom assistants, extracurricular staff, kitchen staff, and cleaners under the slogan “Without us, no school works, let us fight against outsourcing.”

On Thursday university, primary and secondary school students and teachers joined doctors, nurses, students and firefighters in a one-day strike called by the CGT and two smaller unions, Ustec-Stes and Aspepc-Sps. Around 8,000 people demonstrated in the Catalan capital, where Ustec-Stes spokesperson Ramón Font criticized the Catalan government’s €5 billion budget allocation for education, saying that €16 billion is needed to cover existing needs.

Civil servants joined the protest, holding a two-hour stoppage demanding the return of the wages that were slashed in 2013 and 2014 as part of the Catalan nationalist austerity drive.

For years the regional bourgeoisie has relentlessly promoted Catalan nationalism to bury the socio-economic concerns of workers and youth, both Spanish and Catalan. This had an impact. Support for an independent Catalonia was just 15 percent when the 2008 economic crisis began, rose to around 48 percent in 2013-14 and is now about 38 percent according to polls.

This served as a cover for the massive austerity imposed by the Catalan nationalists, along with their counterparts in Madrid. In 2014 Santi Vila, then Catalan regional Enterprise Minister, openly declared, “If this country had not put forward a discourse based on nationalism, how would it have weathered adjustments of over 6 billion euros?”

It is estimated that between 2009 and 2015 healthcare spending was slashed by 31 percent, the highest of all 19 regions in Spain, social spending by 26 percent, and education spending by 12 percent. Catalonia was the region where university fees rose the most—by around 158 percent—so that the average cost of a university credit is €41.17 compared to the national average of €17.70.

Four years later, the growing levels of protests and strikes are clear indications that the working class is beginning to break out of the political shackles collectively imposed upon it by the nationalists, the trade unions and pseudo-left forces.

Regional president Quim Torra has said virtually nothing about this week’s strikes and protests, claiming that he would “continue working to reach the necessary agreements for the good of our citizens.” Eduard Pujol, spokesperson for Together for Catalonia, accused public workers of exaggerating their claims: “Sometimes we get distracted by issues that are not essential. 85 days waiting lists [in hospitals], should be 82… We are fighting for crumbs. We have to achieve a real resolution of the problem”. Pujol’s “solution” is to once again stoke up nationalism, declaring that Catalonia had to escape the “strangling” of Madrid.

The unions for their part are making every effort to contain the growing levels of militancy by limiting strikes to single days, partial stoppages or are postponing them altogether to avoid joint action with other sections of the working class.

On Wednesday, a planned strike by the Communist Party-led CCOO and Socialist Party (PSOE) aligned UGT of 250,000 regional public sector workers was reduced to a token two-hour stoppage and further action postponed to December 12.

The unions are also avoiding linking workers in the region with their brothers and sisters on strike in the rest of Spain in recent weeks, including Amazon workers in Madrid, postal workers, pilots from Iberia and teachers in the Basque region. Even sections within the state apparatus such as state attorneys, prison guards and judges have been on strike.

Like other countries in Europe and throughout the world, Spain is entering a period of acute social and political crisis, characterised by the resurgence of the class struggle. In this context, pseudo-left forces such as Podemos are intervening to rescue capitalism and maintain the stranglehold of bourgeois parties over the working class.

In Madrid, Podemos is attempting to rally the separatist parties in the Spanish parliament to support the 2019 budget crafted by Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias and PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The Catalan nationalists hold the casting votes to get the budget passed but have so far refused after state attorneys confirmed sedition charges against nine Catalan leaders for their role in declaring independence last year.

In Barcelona, Podemos-backed Catalunya en Comú Podem (CECP) is holding talks with Torra over the regional budget. According to most accounts, CECP is the only party that can allow the budget to pass after the small pseudo-left separatist CUP party, Torra’s erstwhile ally, withdrew its support.

To diffuse popular opposition CECP is proposing the regional budget includes a €1.7 billion increase in social expenditure. The only way the financially bankrupt Catalan government would be able to carry out such an expenditure, the CECP advise, is to vote in favour of the national budget, which allocates an increase in investment in Catalonia of €2.2 billion.

Meanwhile, the leader of the right-wing Popular Party, Pablo Casado, stating that “Catalan autonomy has got out of hand”, has demanded that Sánchez apply Article 155 of the Constitution to suspend the regional government again and impose control from Madrid “immediately, for an indefinite period.” Casado declared, “We have to put order back into Catalonia.”

Strikes and demonstrations shake France

Alex Lantier

A growing wave of strikes and student demonstrations, coinciding with the “Yellow Vest” movement, is shaking the government of French president Emmanuel Macron.

While the Yellow Vest protesters demonstrated yesterday in both France and Belgium, thousands of high school students blocked school buildings in France. In recent days, multiple strikes have hit hospitals, railways, and the petrol and nuclear industries. In the lead-up to a second Saturday of protests on the Champs-Elysees today, the mobilizations are intensifying, and the panic of the government has emerged ever more openly.

In Brussels, hundreds of Yellow Vests protested against austerity and demanded the resignation of the right-wing prime minister, Charles Michel. They chanted: “We are the people, Charles Michel, you are finished.” When the police moved to disperse the crowds with water cannons, clashes erupted during which two police vehicles were burned. Around 5 p.m., Philippe Close, mayor of Brussels, banned the demonstration and threatened to arrest every protester in the city center. The first reports indicated 74 people arrested and 12 police injured.

In France, high school students blockaded around 50 buildings in opposition to the government’s university reforms and reinstatement of compulsory military service, and in support of the Yellow Vests. Louis Broyard, the president of the National High School Student Union, said, “It’s not a very Parisian demonstration; it is a revolt in the provinces and rural areas of the high schools abandoned by the politics of Emmanuel Macron. The schools which were blocked today are not those which typically mobilized for this type of demonstration.”

At the same time, numerous strikes took place or were ongoing: in public transport in Lyon and Mans, by municipal employees in Marseille, refinery workers in La Mède, at the nuclear plant in Flamanville, smelters in Poitou, and many hospitals.

The many thousands of demonstrators who traveled to Paris yesterday from all of France found the capital checkered with police armed with assault rifles and antiriot gear, ready to move on the orders of a government acting as if under a state of siege.

The official justification for the suppression of the Yellow Vests—that they are seeking to disguise attacks on police through an underhanded alliance of the “ultraleft” and the “ultra-right”—is an absurd provocation. A groundswell of opposition of workers across Europe over decades of austerity and militarism is shaking the foundations of the reactionary governments of France, Belgium and beyond.

On the French television news programs, workers have been quoted denouncing the banker-president Macron’s insults against workers, already engraved into common memory: that the opponents of his policies are “slackers,” that a French worker has only “to cross the road” to find a job, etc.

The Yellow Vests are demanding immediate improvement in their purchasing power, an end to the pillaging of workers by the super-rich and attacks on social services, rejection of government proposals for a European army, and Macron’s resignation. This has won them overwhelming popular support.

According to official statistics, 84 percent of the French population say they understand the anger of the “yellow vests,” 81 percent believe that Macron has not listened to their demands, and 75 percent support them. On BFM-TV, presenter Thierry Arnaud called the statistics “catastrophic;” RTL’s Alain Duhamel worried that “the government has lost the battle of public opinion.”

Conflicts within Macron’s crisis government are now openly being reported in the media. On Tuesday, Macron declared that he remained determined to press ahead with the increase in taxes and the rest of his austerity program. “If I cede, it will be said that I am retreating,” he said, before blandly minimizing the scale of the crisis. “It’s not a major problem to spend political capital, so long as one achieves reform.”

Phillippe added on Wednesday: “Yes, on January 1 the taxes will go up. The president has said it, we have fixed the cap and we are going to stick to the cap… We are not going back on it, one assumes.” This prompted the frustrated remark from a right-wing deputy that Alain Juppé, the unpopular prime minister and social cutter, who was forced to resign following the railway workers’ strike in 1995, was “more malleable than him.”

Yesterday, the concerns were raised a further level. Francois Bayrou, CEO of MoDem and formerly a Macron ally, openly attacked the president, declaring: “At a certain point, you cannot govern against the people.” But this is the only thing the government knows how to do.

The mobilization of the Yellow Vests is the first stage in a far larger struggle pitting the working class against the governments of austerity and militarism across Europe. A class confrontation between workers and the financial aristocracy is emerging. It will be a merciless political struggle. To wage such a fight, workers must have their own organizations of struggle, independent of the trade unions.

Fifty years since the betrayal of the May 1968 general strike by the Stalinist French Communist Party and the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), it is critical that workers entering into struggle oppose the efforts by the unions and petty-bourgeois parties to gain control of the movement in order to strangle it.

It is not difficult for workers engaged in struggle, distrustful of the unions, to recognize examples of such efforts. Suddenly, the CGT, whose head Philippe Martinez has previously denounced the Yellow Vests and declared that it would be impossible to join them, has called a demonstration tomorrow in Paris.

The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) is seeking to subordinate the demonstrators to the unions. “The social anger that has been accumulating over years appears to now express itself more clearly and radically. Let us fuse the trade union and ‘Yellow Vest’ movements together,” tweeted the NPA’s ex-presidential candidate Philippe Poutou. In short, he wants workers and youth to be tied to the very organizations which have supported Macron’s labor law and the privatization of the national railway network by Macron, and which are currently negotiating with him over the slashing of pensions and the return of the military service.

The line of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ally of the French Communist Party and leader of La France Insoumise, is in the same direction. He has called on Macron to reintroduce the fortune tax, but only because the ending of the tax “is setting off a powder keg.” Mélenchon has implored Macron to reestablish “public order” through more “social justice” and, reprising his own suggestion last year to become Macron’s prime minister, proposed a dissolution of the National Assembly and new elections.

These proposals have elicited justified hostility from workers. When Mélenchon announced his participation in the Paris Yellow Vest demonstration in Paris on Saturday, Twitter users replied: “Stay home,” and “You do as Marine Le Pen does, trying to take control in order to better kill the movement… Go back and discuss with your mate Macron.”

The Socialist Equality Party will fight to defend the independent organizations established by workers against the efforts of the NPA, Mélenchon and other to break them. It will explain that the only means for workers to win in this struggle is to construct a political movement aiming at the transfer of power to the working class in France and across Europe, in order to expropriate the financial elite.

Merkel backs Ukrainian provocations against Russia

Peter Schwarz 

Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a clear stand on Ukraine’s side in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in the Azov Sea.

Shortly before her departure for the G20 summit in Argentina, the Chancellor spoke to German and Ukrainian business representatives in Berlin in the presence of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. She sharply attacked Russia and declared that the Russian president is fully responsible for the present conflict, triggered by the intrusion of Ukrainian Navy ships into Russian territorial waters.

Merkel called on Russia to release the detained Ukrainian soldiers and to “not simply cut off” Ukrainian cities like Mariupol. She understood, she told the representatives of German industry who were present, that many of them “would like to have good economic relations with Russia”, but here “fundamental principles are at stake”. She promised to talk to the Russian president at the G20 summit to this effect.

The Chancellor did not go as far as to announce additional sanctions against Russia or the deployment of German warships to the Black Sea, as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had demanded. But she left no doubt that Germany would be on the Ukrainian side in the event of a further escalation of the conflict.

The West had guaranteed Ukraine the inviolability of its borders in the 1994 “Budapest Memorandum” in return for the renunciation of nuclear weapons, she said. “Therefore, we have a duty to stand by what we once promised.”

By taking sides with Ukraine, Merkel is drawing Germany deeper into a conflict that has the potential to escalate into a major war or even a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Ukrainian President Poroshenko is deliberately fueling the conflict and has declared martial law because he sees this as the only way to prolong his rule beyond the regular election date of 31 March 2019. The regime of the wealthy oligarch, which came to power in a right-wing coup supported by the US and Germany four years ago, is embroiled in a swamp of corruption that reaches deep into the army, the secret service and the presidential apparatus. By contrast, the vast majority of the Ukrainian population live in a state of bitter poverty and insecurity.

All polls agree that Poroshenko has not the slightest chance of winning a halfway democratic election. That is why he is aggravating the conflict with Russia, either to prevent the election altogether or to carry it out in a fever of nationalist hysteria.

The US is using the Ukrainian conflict to increase its political and military pressure on Russia. It has encouraged and supported the Ukrainian provocation in the Azov Sea. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured Poroshenko that Washington would provide “full support, full assistance, including military assistance.”

That Merkel is dragging Germany into this explosive conflict and taking sides with the Poroshenko regime is irresponsible and criminal. Her course of action is reminiscent of the infamous “blank cheque” issued by Emperor Wilhelm II to Austria-Hungary in 1914 after the Sarajevo assassination. He gave the go-ahead for military action against Serbia, knowing full well that this would trigger a war with Russia and the First World War.

Merkel’s taking sides with Poroshenko took place without a public debate or a vote in parliament. The media are also playing down the issue so as not to alarm the public. In the talk shows with their endless palaver about all possible trifles, the conflict in the Azov Sea and its dangerous implications are not debated.

Merkel is continuing her policy of 2014, when the German government supported the coup against Poroshenko’s pro-Russian predecessor Viktor Yanukovych. Although fascist parties and militias, such as the All-Ukrainian Union Swoboda and the Right Sector, played the leading role in the Maidan coup, it was glorified in Germany as a “democratic revolution”.

Shortly before the Maidan coup, the German government had announced its intention to once again play a political and military role in the world corresponding to Germany’s economic weight. The right-wing coup in Ukraine was the first test of these great-power politics.

However, unlike the US, which considers Russia its most important geopolitical rival after China, the German government did not want to push the conflict with Moscow too far. It depends on Russian energy supplies and also fears that an escalation of the conflict would increase its military and political dependence on the US. Merkel therefore negotiated the Minsk Agreement in cooperation with France, which “froze” the Ukrainian conflict without resolving it.

Against the background of ferocious US war threats against Russia, Merkel is now dropping the mediator’s mask. She still promises to talk to Putin at the G20 summit. But given her accusations, this can only mean that she will increase the pressure on Russia.

The German government is striving to free itself from its military dependence on the US. It wants to build a European army in order to pursue its imperialist interests independently of and also against the US. But this is a long-term project, and until then it will continue to adhere to NATO.

Germany has played a leading role in the NATO military build-up against Russia. German soldiers have been stationed on the Russian-Lithuanian border for two years now, and in October the Bundeswehr provided one fifth of the 50,000 soldiers deployed in Norway in the large-scale manoeuvre “Trident Juncture” rehearsing war against Russia. Now Berlin is supporting the renewed provocations from Kiev and Washington.

It is backed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is always on the front line when it comes to beating the war drum. “Our security is being defended not only, but also in Ukraine. That is why the West must stand firmly on Ukraine’s side,” the paper announced on Thursday. A strong Ukraine was “in the elementary interest of the European Union”.

The F.A.Z. considers a direct military intervention to be too risky. Instead, it recommends arming the Poroshenko regime more strongly. It calls for “assistance to Ukraine in building up its armed forces—organisationally, financially and, where necessary, with weapons”. In addition, the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline should be stopped in order to “increase the cost of its policy for the Russian leadership”.

The mixture of ruthlessness and recklessness with which the federal government and its leading media are heading towards a catastrophic war can only be explained by the deep, global crisis of the capitalist system, which is marked by blatant social inequality, trade wars and national conflicts. Unable to organize the modern, complex economy in the interest of society as a whole, the imperialist powers, like in 1914 and in 1939, are preparing a violent redivision of the world.

Russia has become a target of these imperialist intrigues, but the Putin regime has nothing to oppose them. It represents the interests of a criminal oligarchy and lives in fear of the working class. It reacts by stirring up nationalism, rearming on the one hand and looking for deals with different imperialist powers on the other hand.

Only an independent movement of the international working class fighting for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a socialist society can stop the relapse of humanity into war and barbarism.

Ukraine: Poroshenko declares martial law to crack down on political and social opposition

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Following its provocation of a major international crisis in the Azov Sea last Sunday, ahead of the G20 Summit in Argentina, the Ukrainian regime of Petro Poroshenko, brought to power in a US-backed far-right coup in February 2014, has imposed martial law in 10 of Ukraine’s 24 provinces (oblasts), affecting about 40 percent of the country’s population. Martial law will be in effect until December 27 in ten regions that border Russia and the Black Sea.

It is the first time that martial law has been declared in Ukraine since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. While recklessly escalating the crisis with Russia, with the imposition of martial law the Poroshenko regime is creating conditions for a violent crackdown on social and political opposition in Ukraine.

Under martial law, functions of the police are being performed by the military, which is empowered to raid apartments and cars. The army has been put on high alert and the presence of police has been substantially increased in major cities.

Poroshenko now has the ability to ban public protests and meetings, control and limit transportation, and ban any speech that is broadly defined, and intentionally so, as speech “aiding Russia.” On Friday, it was reported that the Ukrainian government has barred all Russian men aged 16-60 from entering the country.

Poroshenko, who has based his presidency on the support of the major imperialist powers and a narrow base of nationalist and far-right forces in Ukraine, is widely hated, and is expected to lose the presidential elections in March 2019. Recent polls indicated that only 12 percent of the voters would vote for him. Initially, Poroshenko tried to impose martial law for 60 days, which would have delayed the presidential elections. However, after a public outcry, including from his political opponents within the bourgeoisie, he was forced to reduce this period to 30 days.

The regions in which martial law is now in effect are also the parts of the country—especially Donetsk and Lugansk—that are the center of the ongoing fighting of Ukrainian armed forces against the Russian-backed separatists.

They are the regions where a substantial portion of the population, if not a majority, speaks Russian rather than Ukrainian, and follows the Russian media.

Almost five years since the beginning of the civil war in the country’s East, which began after the far-right coup in Kiev in early 2014, and which has claimed the lives of over 10,000 people, there is growing opposition to war and the fascistic policies of the Poroshenko regime. Kiev’s draconian austerity measures have driven some one million Ukrainians to the brink of starvation, with living standards in much of the country now resembling those in completely impoverished countries in Africa.

Social tensions have reached explosive dimensions since Poroshenko imposed gas hikes on October 19th, raising gas prices by over 23 percent in order to gain an additional $3.9 billion IMF loan necessary to the keep the government afloat. The IMF for its part was quick to back the declaration of martial law. It is estimated that the rise in gas prices will bring in an extra $300 million per year to Kiev, which will go to pay off the country’s approximately $16 billion in foreign debt that is scheduled for repayment between 2018 and 2020.

Because of the IMF-imposed gas price hikes, over a million Ukrainians had their heating cut off just as the country heads into winter and temperatures start to drop rapidly. Starting on November 1st, Naftogaz, Ukraine’s national gas company, began disputing debt repayments with several Ukrainian cities, and refused to send gas to areas with unpaid bills. Hundreds of working-class Ukrainians responded by blocking roads and confronting government officials.

In Kryvy Rih, the country’s eighth most populous city, protestors set tires on fire and seized the offices of the local gas provider. The city, located in the southern Dnepropetrovsk province, is now adjacent to four other provinces where martial law has been imposed. In Kherson, over 100,000 were without heat, including 30 of the region’s schools and kindergartens. Kherson is one of the provinces now under martial law.

The town of Smela in central Ukraine was also left without heat, leaving thousands in schools, hospitals and apartment buildings in the freezing cold. Hospital patients had to be moved due to the freezing temperatures. Residents reacted by blocking roads and demanded that the heat be turned back on. On November 12th the town’s mayor declared a state of emergency.

Heat was only returned after Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Poroshenko personally intervened to order its resumption. Hot water and heating bills are expected to increase another 15 percent starting on December 1st in accordance with the IMF agreement, suggesting that the regime can expect even more explosive confrontations as consumer prices continue to rise.

Ukraine has also seen multiple strikes and protests by thousands of miners, including major demonstrations in Kiev in the summer which sent shock waves through the ruling class. More recently, at the Kaputsin coal mine in eastern Ukraine, workers went on strike in October over unpaid wages. Workers have occupied parts of the mine, participated in hunger strikes and threatened to spread the strike to the western regions of the country by blocking roads from western Europe.

In addition, Ukrainian car owners have been blocking border crossings and highways, and burning mounds of tires around the country, after Kiev imposed a new tax on the importation of cars and current cars with foreign registrations. Many Ukrainians purchase used cars with EU registrations due to their better quality and significantly cheaper prices, and then bring them into the country for personal use.

In a chilling demonstration of how the Poroshenko regime is dealing with political opponents, just a day after the declaration of martial law, presidential candidate Anatolyi Hrytsenko of the center-right “Our Ukraine” Party was attacked by 30 masked thugs at a campaign interview in Odessa. Despite the fact that police were standing right at the scene of the assault, no one was detained, according to one of Hrytsenko’s supporters. Police also stated they were investigating the melee as a case of “hooliganism” rather than a planned political attack.

Hrytsenko has since accused Poroshenko of using thugs to do his political dirty work for him. In most polls Hrytsenko is even or ahead of Poroshenko. Just a few weeks ago, another Ukrainian politician died after a barbaric acid attack perpetrated by fascist thugs who are suspected of direct ties to the Poroshenko government.

In yet another demonstration of their boundless hypocrisy, the pro-imperialist media has widely supported Poroshenko’s imposition of martial law. Time Magazine, which pushed for Trump to “stand up to Putin” over the Azov Sea crisis, praised Poroshenko for having “successfully declared martial law” and “energized his defense establishment.” While relentlessly denouncing Putin as a ruthless dictator, the imperialist powers, in pursuit of their geostrategic interests and with the support of their lackeys in the media, are backing a far-right government in Ukraine that is setting a new precedent for the escalation of dictatorial rule in Europe, and provoking a possible war with Russia that would endanger the lives of millions.

Casualties of the social counterrevolution in America

Eric London

This year’s report on mortality rates released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reveal that the American working class is confronting an unprecedented social, economic, health and psychological crisis.

The CDC’s findings show a staggering increase in the indices of social misery in just one year, from 2016 to 2017:

• Life expectancy dropped from 78.7 to 78.6 years, the third consecutive year-by-year decline.

• The age-adjusted death rate increased 0.4 percent, from 728.8 deaths per 100,000 people to 731.9 per 100,000 (including a 2.9 percent increase among young people aged 25-34).

• Drug overdose deaths increased 9.6 percent (including a 45 percent increase in deaths from fentanyl). Drug overdose is the leading cause of death for those under 55.

• Suicide rates increased in 2017 by 3.7 percent, from 13.5 per 100,000 to 14.0 per 100,000.

• The report’s historical figures quantify the devastating impact on the working class of the financial crash of 2007-2008 and its aftermath.

• From 2007 to 2017, suicide deaths rose from 34,598 to 47,173, a 36.3 percent increase.

• Drug overdose deaths nearly doubled, rising 95.0 percent, from 36,010 in 2007 to 70,237 in 2017.

• The total dead from suicide and drug overdose since 2007 alone is 954,365 people—equivalent to the population of America’s 10th largest city. This is more than the total number of US soldiers killed in all of America’s wars, excluding the civil war. With 2018 nearly complete, the total dead has now likely crossed one million people.

The response of the political establishment to the report is entirely predictable: an article or two in the major newspapers, a quick segment on the evening news, and maybe a tweet from a handful of politicians.

But everyone knows that nothing will be done. The stock prices of the corporations peddling pills to disabled veterans and injured workers will continue to rise. By tomorrow, the CDC reports will be long forgotten, buried beneath the ruling class’s anti-Russia and anti-China campaigns, #MeToo hysteria, and demands for internet censorship.

The cause of the deaths of 100,000 people per year from social misery is not a great mystery. It is the product of the capitalist system and the intended result of policies of deindustrialization and social counterrevolution carried out for more than four decades by both the Democrats and Republicans, in collaboration with the trade unions.

This is a widely recognized fact among medical professionals. A 2018 study published by the American Journal of Public Health titled “Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to its Social and Economic Determinants” blames “a multi-decade rise in income inequality and economic shocks stemming from deindustrialization and social safety net cuts” for growing differences in life expectancy between the rich and the poor.

In particular, the study notes the devastating impact of the massive wealth transfer carried out by the Obama administration after the 2008 financial crash. “The 2008 financial crisis along with austerity measures and other neo-liberal policies have further eroded physical and mental well-being,” the report states.

While the banks and corporations received trillions in bailouts, millions of workers lost their homes, their jobs and their sense of dignity and purpose.

Last Monday, when General Motors announced that it was closing five auto plants and laying off 15,000 workers in the US and Canada, its stock soared nearly 7 percent. For the company’s affluent shareholders—including the bureaucracy of the United Auto Workers union (UAW)—this news means longer and more exclusive vacations, new and more expensive cars and homes, and plenty of jewelry and champagne for the holidays.

But for autoworkers, their families and the millions of residents of the impacted areas, it means desperation, drug addiction and death.

Those cities impacted by the GM plant closures—including Detroit and its Warren, Michigan suburb, White Marsh, Maryland and Lordstown, Ohio—are already among the most horribly affected by the opioid crisis after decades of cuts to jobs, wages and social services. The difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 25 percent is already 6.7 years in Youngstown, Ohio, near Lordstown. In metro Detroit the difference is 8.2 years.

GM’s move was hailed by the corporate press. The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post (owned respectively by the multibillionaires Rupert Murdoch and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) praised the decision as a stroke of genius. Automotive News named company CEO Mary Barra “Industry Leader of the Year.”

The duplicitous and staged anger among a relative handful of Democrats, Republicans and UAW officials to GM’s move is totally fraudulent. All those politicians and union bureaucrats who are pounding the podium with one hand are accepting company payoffs with the other.

GM gave billionaire CEO Donald Trump $25,000 for his 2016 presidential run and he reciprocated with massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich. That same year, GM gave more money to Bernie Sanders ($33,000) than to any other senator. In 2018, GM contributed to the campaigns of a majority of those elected to the House and Senate, in equal parts Democratic and Republican.

As for the UAW, this organization of bribe-takers and company agents is responsible for decades of concessions, which have transformed auto towns like Dayton, Toledo and Kokomo from relatively comfortable communities to epicenters of the opioid crisis. In return, the union bosses have been well compensated. A growing list of current and former UAW officials is under federal investigation for accepting bribes from GM, Fiat-Chrysler and Ford in exchange for helping the companies increase exploitation and cut labor costs.

Under capitalism, the working class is entirely excluded from the decision-making process. The political establishment makes nothing available to help the victims of factory closures and deindustrialization, leaving them to die.

Instead of meeting the needs of the working class, the ruling class pockets the wealth created by workers and allocates trillions of dollars to the military and intelligence agencies so that they can implement through military force the demands of the banks and corporations.

The Trump administration cut more than $200 million from health programs to help pay the cost of locking up 14,000 working-class children from Central America, whose only “crime” was to flee their impoverished homelands in search of a better life.

In September, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was transferring $16.7 million from the CDC, $9.8 million from Medicare and Medicaid, $87.3 million from the National Institute of Health and $80 million from refugee care to establish internment camps for immigrant children. And Trump wants workers to believe that immigrants—and not the government and corporations—are to blame for plant shutdowns and cuts to wages and social programs!

The CDC reports provide a quantitative expression of the immense social anger and desperation that have built up in the working class, for which there has been no progressive outlet. The decades-long suppression of the class struggle imposed by the trade unions has forced workers to channel their anger inward, and in their isolation, many are taking self-destructive measures.

But this long period of one-sided class war is coming to a close. This year, which has seen a major increase in strike activity, is only the beginning of a new period that will be marked by increasingly powerful strikes and protests in the US and internationally.

Workers must build their own organizations—rank-and-file committees—to unite and coordinate their struggles across industries and national boundaries. In this way, workers can harness their collective social dissatisfaction and channel it in a political direction in the struggle against capitalism and for socialism. By unleashing their immense social power, workers will storm the commanding heights of the capitalist system and free up trillions of dollars to meet the urgent needs of the human race.