AFRICOM: A Neocolonial Occupation Force?

Eric Draitser

Amid the George HW Bush imperial death-orgy, the endless saga of Midtown Mussolini’s daily news cycle, the seemingly unprecedented political upsurge in France, and countless other show-stopping news stories, you likely missed three very sad, yet revealing, incidents out of the Sahel region of West-Central Africa.

First, on November 18th, a massive offensive against a Nigerian military base by a faction of the Boko Haram terror group known as the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) killed upwards of 100 soldiers. The surprise attack came at a time when Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who famously (and repeatedly) has declared victory against Boko Haram and terrorism, has faced a crisis of legitimacy, falling approval ratings, and an impending election in early 2019.

Just days later, on November 22^nd, while most Americans were gathering with family and eating turkey on Thanksgiving, a contingent of about 50 armed militants kidnapped at least 15 girls in Niger, just outside a town in the Diffa region, near the border with Nigeria. While Boko Haram did not officially claim responsibility, many have attributed the action to the terror group, or one of its factions, given their propensity to use kidnappings for propaganda and fundraising.

And on the very same day, also in Diffa near the Niger-Nigeria border, suspected Boko Haram militants killed seven employees of Foraco, a French well drilling and mining company.

This spate of deadly, and rather brazen, attacks on civilians along the Niger-Nigeria border paints a troubling picture of the continued instability of the region, and give the lie to the idea that counter-terrorism operations, ongoing for a number of years now, have put Boko Haram and other terror groups on the back foot.

This reality is undoubtedly a political liability for Nigerian President Buhari who was elected on the promise of stamping out terrorism and bringing stability and the rule of law to Nigeria. Of course, a number of uncomfortable questions can and should be asked of Buhari, his top military commanders, and other bureaucrats in his administration.

But perhaps the more salient questions should be posed, not to Nigeria’s government, but to the US Government itself, and specifically its African Command (AFRICOM). For it is Washington, not Abuja, that has poured billions of dollars into counter-terrorism and surveillance in the Sahel and West Africa. Considering the laundry list of attacks and killings, one could naturally ask the question: What exactly is the US doing over there, if not counter-terrorism?

Nigeria, Niger, and AFRICOM

These most recent incidents paint a worrying portrait of the on-the-ground reality in the region where terror groups not only continue to exist, but seemingly are thriving. Lucrative trade in illicit goods, drugs, human trafficking, and more has continued to line the pockets of these militant organizations. But the very fact that these killings are continuing calls into question the efficacy of, and agenda behind, the US AFRICOM force.

As the Washington Post reported back in 2013, the US has chosen Agadez, Niger as the site of a massive new drone facility that will act as a “strategic foothold” in West Africa, specifically with regard to the stated mission of surveillance of terrorist networks. And the US has been flying drones from the facility for more than five years.

However, as The Intercept’s Nick Turse has reported, what was originally intended to be a relatively small facility hosting a few US drones and military advisers has ballooned into a more than $100 million investment that will be one of the US’s most costly foreign military construction projects. And instead of simply housing a handful of Predator drones, the facility will be the base for MQ-9 Reaper drones before the end of next year. Naturally, it’s unclear just how many drones are already flying out of the facility, though knowledgeable observers assume a significant number already are.

This base, which will act as a hub of the broader AFRICOM drone surveillance network sprawling over much of the African continent, is just a short flight from where these latest horrific incidents have taken place. And yet, it seems the US either was unable or unwilling to do anything to stop them. Even with the most advanced surveillance and communications equipment, somehow groups of dozens or hundreds of fighters are moving into towns conducting mass kidnappings, pillage, and worse all under the nose of Washington.

And beyond the Agadez base, the US has a military presence in both Niger and Nigeria, with both countries routinely hosting US soldiers and military advisers, often with the specific intent of assisting local forces in the fight against Boko Haram and other terrorist groups. An ambush attack against 4 US soldiers in Niger has recently brought the issue into the headlines as Washington considers reducing the number of ground operations its soldiers directly participate in.

It should also be noted that the US operates a number of other clandestine surveillance hubs throughout the continent, at least one of which is in relatively close proximity to the area where the attacks took place. As the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock reported in 2012:

“A key hub of the U.S. spying network can be found in Ouagadougou, the…capital of Burkina Faso… Under a classified surveillance program code-named Creek Sand, dozens of U.S. personnel and contractors have come to Ouagadougou in recent years to establish a small air base on the military side of the international airport. The unarmed U.S. spy planes fly hundreds of miles north to Mali, Mauritania and the Sahara.”

Moreover, AFRICOM leads annual, large-scale military exercises throughout the region, as well as focusing on broad strategic initiatives that embed US military forces into the military command structures of these countries.

A Little History

It should be noted that the US has been involved in the Sahel region going back to the early years of the George W. Bush administration, even before the establishment of AFRICOM, which was later greatly expanded by the Obama administration.

After 9/11, the United States began to grow its military footprint on the African continent under the guise of a ‘War on Terror’, selling this notion to a United States gripped with fear of terrorism. With programs such as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, later broadened into the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative, Washington managed to provide military and financial assistance to compliant countries in North Africa – a policy whose practical application meant that the US military became the dominant force in the Sahel region, supplying the human and material resources for which the governments of the region were starved. Naturally, this meant an implicit subservience to US military command.

And with the establishment of AFRICOM, these relationships were further cemented such that today we see annual, massive military exercises such as Exercise Flintlock which brings together numerous African countries under the auspices of US military leadership. While this year marked the first time that the more than 20 nations’ militaries were led by African forces, it remains US military at the head of the table.

Any guesses where Flintlock 2018 took place? That’s right, Niger.

It’s the Resources, Stupid

President Obama was not the architect of AFRICOM, which was established in 2007 under Bush, but he was perhaps its greatest champion, greatly expanding its scope and funding.

Obama grandly proclaimed in 2014:

“Today’s principal threat no longer comes from a centralized Al Qaeda leadership. Instead, it comes from decentralized Al Qaeda affiliates and extremists, many with agendas focused in the countries where they operate…We need a strategy that matches this diffuse threat; one that expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military thin, or stir up local resentments.”

As with all things Obama, the truth and disinformation so seamlessly blend together that it can be difficult to parse one from the other. While no doubt there is truth in what he stated, the underlying subtext is much more interesting to consider. For while Obama and his cohorts would endlessly wax poetic about security and stability, the true mission of AFRICOM is neocolonial in nature.

Yes, it must be said that in fact AFRICOM is an occupying force that in no way functions to guarantee the security of African people (see Libya, among others), but rather to guarantee the free flow of resources out of Africa and into the Global North, particularly former colonial powers like France and Britain, and of course the US.

In case there’s any doubt, consider the following statements from Vice-Admiral Robert Moeller, military deputy to former commander of AFRICOM General William ‘Kip’ Ward, who told an AFRICOM conference in 2008 that AFRICOM’s goal was “protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.” Furthermore, Moeller wrote in 2010, “Let there be no mistake. AFRICOM’s job is to protect American lives and promote American interests.”

So, if we strip away the flowery rhetoric about stability and security, both, of course, vital to resource extraction and export, it becomes clear that it is, in fact, natural resources that drive the US strategic interest in Africa, along with countering the growing Chinese footprint on the continent.

The last decade has seen major oil discoveries throughout the Lake Chad Basin which have transformed how the states of West Africa view their economic future. At the heart of the basin is Lake Chad, surrounded by the countries of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.  According to a 2010 assessment from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Chad Basin has “estimated mean volumes of 2.32 billion barrels of oil, 14.65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 391 million barrels of natural gas liquids.”  The potential size of these resources has attracted the attention of political and business leaders, both in the region and internationally.

Those oil reserves have gained the attention of each of the Lake Chad littoral states, and led to something of a scramble among them to siphon off as much oil from their neighbors as possible. Of course, it’s not only oil and gas that are of interest, especially since the US has become a net exporter of oil.

But for France, the former colonial power in the region, which still maintains a large military presence in the Sahel under the auspices of Operation Barkhane, oil remains an essential priority in Africa.

As a top oil executive in Chad told Nigerian daily This Day that, “Currently, oil from Lake Chad being drilled by the Republic of Chad is…shipped through tankers to the international refineries at the Port of Le Havre in France.”

And in Niger, a country rich in mineral deposits such as uranium which are vital to France’s vast nuclear energy sector, France remains the dominant economic player. As Think Africa Press reported in 2014:

“France currently sources over 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy and is dependent on Niger for much of its immediate and future uranium supply. This dependence could grow even further when production at the recently-discovered Imouraren uranium deposit is up and running in 2015. The mine is set to produce 5,000 tonnes of uranium per year and would help make Niger the second-largest uranium producer in the world. Areva, which is 87 percent owned by the French state and holds a majority share in three out of the four uranium mining companies operating in Niger, is funding the new mine.”

And oh, by the way, Niger’s president Mahamadou Issoufou is a former employee of Areva, the French company that dominates the uranium trade in Africa.

Perhaps then we should return our thinking to the recent attack that killed seven employees of the French drilling company Foraco. Was this part of the broader efforts by French capitalists to continue extracting uranium and/or other minerals for shipment back to the “mother country”? One has to wonder, considering Foraco does not confine itself solely to drilling wells for water.

Is the US surveillance architecture so brittle and inept that it simply missed the movement of hundreds of members of the very organizations Washington is allegedly fighting in the region? Is it simply that the US is unable to effectively spy on this area until its massive Agadez base is complete? Is it that these terror groups have grown in sophistication such that they are able to elude the most advanced military and spying capabilities in the world?

The answers to these questions might take some time to fully emerge. But what we do know is that US military in Africa is effectively an occupation and resource extraction force that uses local militaries as proxies for its own agenda. The terror groups operating in the region have made untold millions and committed countless atrocities right under the noses of the purportedly benevolent American military forces.

So, if counter-terrorism is really what the US is interested in in the Sahel and West Africa, then the AFRICOM mission is an abject failure. Of course, seen as a neocolonial occupying force utilizing both hard and soft power to entrench US hegemony and guarantee the free flow of resources from Africa, it is a rousing success.

Peace is possible between India and Pakistan

Pamela Chatterjee

People choose various methods of resistance when dealing with ideological issues – from outright belligerence and violence to democratic collectivism. It depends on their perspective,  beliefs, or sometimes there is just a selfish agenda.

In the long run such methods cannot provide solutions for serious issues which hang on for years, like an incurable ailment which drains the human condition.

Let us deal specifically with the impasse facing India and Pakistan, which has been an ‘ailment’ ever since we parted company after Independence in 1947.

Times have changed in these past 75 years and today, there are many players in this global world, each intent on the benefit to be gained for their own turf , without much consideration for moral issues. We need to solve our problems by narrowing our canvas to negotiate directly as neighbours. Sabre rattling, surgical strikes, killing each others’ soldiers , sometimes barbarically, terrorism; or indeed military hardware (supplied to both sides), is not is not going to frighten either side or solve any problems. It will only fan the flames in both countries and weaken us both.   Also, make us more vulnerable to those with commercial interests, for the sale of the latest ‘killer equipment’ in the international market.

Let us look at the commonalities and strengths of both India and Pakistan and see what is possible for us both, to lead us gradually to non-violent action, to live as good neighbours:

Both countries share so much ..a long common history, tradition, language, after all we were one country, not so long ago. This background has solid foundations, and the cracks and harsh breaks which have emerged in the comparatively short span of less than 75 years, are repairable and in time will not be discernible.

Political parties have their own agenda and often the larger issues in a country, are postponed or forgotten in their own battles to win at any cost. However, there is sympathy and yearning for peace within the rank and file of people, in both countries. People in different stratas of society, be they Intellectuals, professionals, shopkeepers, or people on the street,  speak with such warmth and friendship, eager to learn as to what is really happening ‘there’ – across the barrier. Visitors from both countries are assured of a warm welcome whenever they come to either country.

What then can be done to build a bridge between us both? Importantly there is the legacy of non-violence passed on by leaders of both countries which beckon towards a solution. Gandhiji and and his revered friend Abdul Ghaffar Khan have left a strong inheritance, which is warmly accepted by many thinking people, especially the young. But apart from protest and solidarity  marches, they are thwarted by taking desired action in the thorny situation that exists in both countries.

We have to remember that satyagraha and non-violence were major factors which led to Independence from British rule. It could have been in a less violent way, if more people subscribed to non-violent beliefs. And this was a much more difficult problem to dislodge the  British, with their sprawling empire, at the time – than the settlement now, between us two neighbours.

The road to Gandhi ji’s approach will require patience and persistence. At the time it was the recognition of his stature in India and abroad,  as an outstanding man of moral, innovative ideas and action, which made non-violent action possible. But the legacy is very much there for us both and we can use this effective tool today, to build peace and firm friendship between us.

A strong,united India and Pakistan can deal with terrorists and others stirred up by bellicose speeches from both sides by politicians and unthinking people. And this unity will enable us to deal on an equal footing with other nations and deter interference from countries who have their own agendas.

With no takers in our two countries for ‘killer hardware’, the money saved will be channelized for our economic benefit. ‘Garibi hatao’ will become a reality in this sub-continent.  And with better opportunities, better nourishment, the intellectual acumen latent in our people will flower,for the benefit of people in both our countries, and elsewhere in the world.

Role of women in food security

Sheshu Babu

One of the major goals to be achieved in Sustainable development goals (SDG) policy by countries globally is ‘ food security.’ The UNDP made a ‘ universal call to action to end poverty , protect the planet , and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity’  in the year 2016 and India was one of the countries which agreed to implement plans towards attaining the goals by 2030. Gender equality is most important goal in itself as well as in achieving other goals.

Pathetic picture

Women, as key producers, managers of food at home and consumers, play a vital role in attaining food security . There are many women engaged in production. In India, about 35% of women work in agriculture.( NSSO 2011- 12).  Women farm operators grew from 12.8% to 13.9% from 2011-12 to 2015-16 according to agricultural censuses. (She is the answer, by Bina Agrawal  updated December 10, 2018, indianexpress.com). Yet, their productivity is dependent on factors like social bias towards male in respect of land possession,  inheritance, government transfers, access to markets and credits and modern technology.

In Sub – Saharan Africa, micro- level studies have shown that women play a crucial role in many aspects of crop production. Female – headed households are on the rise. About 31 percent of rural households are headed by women. In Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, women head 17 percent and 14 % respectively. (Women and sustainable food security, www.fao.org ). But women have limited access to finance.

Animal and seafood

Women are also engaged in animal rearing, feeding, milking and other food systems like fishing, marketing of animal products, etc. A number of women look after animals at home while men are engaged in other jobs or occupations or migrate to cities in search of organised or unorganized labor.

Equal Distribution

Despite their key role in food production, the women, specially rural women, live in poor condition.  Attention should be drawn to rights of women on inheriting land since they are vulnerable in male dominated and controlled society. ‘ Women’s rights have to be protected when land rights are formalized through titling or certification, through simple steps like women’s names on land documents’.  (Rural women and food security – of myths and facts,  date 4.9.2018, www.rural21.com). Legal literacy programs and mobilising community workers as para- legals may also help in awareness of their land rights.

Empowering women and achieving gender equality are the most cost effective ways to ensure food security, says U. N. Special rapporteur on right to food. Women’s education alone resulted in a 43 percent reduction in hunger from 1970 to 1995, while women living longer led to an additional 12 percent decline in hunger levels,  according to the report by the U. N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Asian  Development Bank, ADB ( Women and girls are key to ensuring food security- report, by Alisa Tang, Friday 26  July, 2013,  news.trust.org) . Gender equality is ‘ the single most important determinant of food security’ wrote Oliver De Schutter the U. N special rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report ‘ Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s Empowerment as a Tool Against Hunger’. He said that neither strong economic growth nor increased food availability per capita are sufficient to reduce hunger, and especially, child malnutrition, unless gender dimension is integrated more fully.  This requires socio- cultural shift in the thought and political commitment for a long period.

Japanese government rams through new immigration law

Gary Alvernia

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has pushed through legislation that will ease Japan’s highly restrictive immigration policies. The law passed the lower house last week and the upper house on Saturday, despite stalling tactics by the opposition parties. It will come into effect next April.

While portrayed as a “liberalisation” of existing policy, the law reflects concerns within ruling circles over the economic impact of Japan’s declining workforce. The opposition parties have criticised the legislation’s vague wording and alleged lack of safeguards, saying it will lead to an influx of cheap labour.

The law is aimed at attracting semi-skilled workers to Japan. From next year to 2025, half a million overseas workers will be permitted to work in areas of labour shortage and stay as long as five years, with the possibility of qualifying for an additional five-year period.

Changes implemented in April mean that skilled workers and professionals can reduce the time needed to acquire permanent residency from 5 years to either 3 or 1, based on income, experience and job description.

Japan has historically and consistently maintained strict policies against immigration, making the acquisition of citizenship, and even permanent residency, difficult for low-skilled workers who cannot prove ethnic Japanese descent. The policy of Jus sanguinis (“right of blood”) in granting citizenship means that even a child born in Japan will not become a citizen unless at least one parent is ethnically Japanese and a citizen.

In addition, foreign-born residents of Japan often have been subject to persistent xenophobia and discrimination in job hiring, wages and political rights, with little effort made by the government to assist with language training and other support.

This discrimination is rooted in Japan’s geographical isolation and the exclusion of foreigners in feudal times. Following World War II, anti-immigrant measures were continued, in particular through the 1952 dis-enfranchisement (loss of citizenship) of ethnic Koreans and Chinese who had immigrated to Japan, or been brought over as forced labourers before and during the war. Racist and nationalist claims of a “racially homogenous” Japan as necessary for social harmony have served as a key ideological pillar of capitalist rule.

Although some of the most overt and racist forms of discrimination against foreigners were relaxed from the 1980s, ongoing restrictions have meant that the number of non-citizens in Japan, including around 400,000 descendants of those disenfranchised in 1952, is only 2.5 million, or barely 2 percent of the population. By contrast, other developed nations currently have immigrant numbers of around 10-25 percent of their population.

Even this small proportion of immigrants in Japan reflects a substantial change. Since the early 1990s, the immigrant population has more than doubled, and foreign-born youth increasingly make up a larger proportion of the population in the major cities. Demographic research published by NHK news this year estimated that roughly 1 in 8 people under the age of 20 in Tokyo was foreign-born, with the proportion rising to 20 percent in six of the city’s 23 wards.

The immigration intake in 2016 was roughly 430,000, placing Japan fourth among the developed nations. In addition, whereas immigrants previously came predominantly from Korea, China, Taiwan and Brazil, growing numbers now originate from Vietnam, India, Iran and Western Europe.

The primary motivation for increasing immigration is to boost the workforce. As a result of steeply declining birth rates since the 1980s, Japan’s population peaked in 2004. By some estimates, Japan’s population will fall from 125 million to less than 100 million by 2050, with its labour force dropping from 65 million to 40 million. The shrinking population is ageing also. The proportion of people over 65 years old has risen to 28 percent—one of the highest levels in the world.

Japan is already confronting labour shortages, particularly in low-wage sectors like aged-care nursing, hospitality, agriculture, residential construction and shipbuilding, with roughly three jobs for every two available workers. This is not the result of a booming economy, but a diminishing workforce.

While Japan is often held up by the right-wing in other countries as a model of restricted immigration, the result has not been higher wages or better living standards, as is often claimed. On the contrary, the average wage rise of just 2.1 percent this year was the highest increase in 21 years, despite the acute labour shortages.

The cause of the population decline is the persistent stagnation of Japan’s economy since the late 1980s, the deep inroads into living standards by governments and corporations through the casualisation of the workforce, and attacks on essential services such as education. Without the prospect of a stable future, many workers and youth have put off having families.

Incapable of addressing these social issues, the ruling class is looking for other sources of cheap labour. Abe’s initial strategy was to force the elderly and women to enter the workforce by cutting their meagre welfare benefits. Now he is looking to ease, but not remove, immigration restrictions that have an overt class-based character. A points-based system ensures there is an ongoing preference for skilled and wealthier migrants.

The new law formally includes some safeguards such as equal wages, but the detail is yet to be spelled out. There is no guarantee that workers entering the country under the new law will not suffer from the exploitation and discrimination facing foreign workers at present.

Ippei Torii, director of Solidarity Network with Migrants Japan (SNMJ) outlined to CNN how workers are exploited. He described how unskilled workers, especially from poorer nations, are often forced to enter Japan through “backdoor” routes, working without a valid visa, and thus face constant threats of deportation unless they accept terrible working conditions.

Others are subject to abuse through programs like the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), which claims to provide useful training, but in reality condemns them to menial work under harsh conditions.

During a parliamentary hearing in November, trainees described attempting suicide due to long hours and extremely low wages. One Chinese worker stated that she worked 16 hours a day for just 300 yen ($2.63) per hour. Roughly a quarter-million foreign workers are hired under the TITP.

The new law will not lessen the exploitation of foreign workers or “liberalise” Japanese society. On the contrary, unable to recruit the necessary manpower using its current methods, the Japanese ruling class is seeking other means to increase the flow of cheap, vulnerable migrants to exploit.

Demonstrations in Bolivia hit court decision allowing Evo Morales to run for fourth term

Cesar Uco

Protests have continued in Bolivia this week after demonstrators blockaded highways and marched on the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (known by its Spanish acronym, TSE) on December 6 over the TSE’s decision to place President Evo Morales on the ballot for the 2019 election. The action effectively overrides the popular vote in a national referendum held on February 21, 2016, that rejected Morales’s bid for a fourth consecutive term.

The protest was organized by the Committee in Defense of Democracy (CONADE), which is led by the Central Obrera Bolivian (COB) union federation and the Higher University of San Andres—Bolivia’s leading university—as well as various civic and human rights organizations.

While the protests have brought teachers, workers and doctors to the streets, right-wing opponents of the government have also rallied behind them, raising slogans denouncing Morales for attempting to turn Bolivia into a “dictatorship like Venezuela.”

The action by Morales in overriding the referendum has allowed the right to masquerade as a champion of democracy in a country that has historically been identified with fascistic military dictatorships.

Morales called the 2016 referendum with the expectation that he would emerge victorious. The constitution that he had himself promoted in 2009 limited presidents to two consecutive five-year terms.

After losing, he had no intention of respecting the popular vote and set about manipulating the judiciary, controlled by his ruling Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), to ensure that his name would be included in the list of candidates for the presidential elections to be held next year.

On December 4, the six-member Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), the organism responsible for supervising the 2016 referendum, voted to allow the inscription of Evo Morales’s MAS and seven other political organizations on the ballot. The decision, with two voting against, validated a 2017 ruling by the country’s supreme court (the TCP) that invoked a section of the American Convention on Human Rights, saying there should be no restriction on elections, to justify overriding the constitution and the referendum results.

Morales’s leading opponent in next year’s election is Carlos Mesa, who was the president that preceded Morales from 2003 to 2005, when he was driven from office by mass protests of tens of thousands of Bolivians in a protracted period of social upheaval known as Bolivia’s “gas war,” begun over the government’s negotiations with transnational energy corporations to exploit the country’s gas reserves, which account for 45 percent of the country’s exports. Carlos Mesa was seen as a puppet of foreign capitalist interests.

Evo Morales, of Aymara origin, was first elected president 13 years ago on January 22, 2006, with 54 percent of the votes. He won his second and third term in 2009 and 2014, both times with over 60 percent of the vote

Morales’s government was promoted by the pseudo-left and proclaimed part of the “pink tide” that stretched from Lula in Brazil to Chavez in Venezuela, Kirchner in Argentina, Correa in Ecuador and Humala in Peru.

In spite of being rich in raw materials, Bolivia is the third poorest country in the Americas, largely dependent upon the export of raw materials. Its favorable contracts with the then “bourgeois left” governments of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil allowed Bolivia to enjoy a high GDP growth. Bank profits in the country soared, even as Bolivia managed to reduce its extreme poverty rate from 37.6 percent to 16.8 percent.

Still, 40 percent of Bolivia’s population lives in poverty and it remains one of the most socially unequal countries of the Americas.

The global capitalist crisis and the corresponding decline in prices for commodity exports pulled the rug out from under the “pink tide” governments, which were also undermined by rampant corruption, economic mismanagement and pressure from US imperialism favoring more pliant right-wing regimes.

The fortunes of Morales have gone into decline as natural gas prices have fallen and the Bolivian people’s living standards have deteriorated. In August 2010, a 19-day strike paralyzed Potosi—a region rich in minerals. The year ended with the elimination of fuel subsidies, which created inflationary pressures. The government’s promotion of agribusiness interests at the expense of the country’s native population also served to alienate what had been a reliable base for Morales.

President Morales described the protests last Thursday as a failure, claiming that not more than 5,000 people participated, clearly a gross underestimate of the popular hostility to his bid to remain in power.

Activists, including UMSA (Universidad Mayor de San Andres), teachers, medical personnel, unions and indigenous organizations, demonstrated in the Abaroa square in front of the national office of the TSE, facing off with hundreds of police.

El Diario reported: “Protesters threw garbage, eggs and firecrackers at the doors of the electoral body, with the troops responding with tear gas. The police took over the plaza, and in the afternoon some 300 troops in riot gear reinforced the contingent.”

The road blockades succeeded in stopping 80 percent of economic activity in La Paz, affecting private banking, commerce, markets, universities and other daily activities.

El Alto, situated six miles from La Paz. is the second largest city and a traditional stronghold of the Bolivian working class. Marches coming from all parts of Bolivia converged in El Alto. They were received with applause, water and food.

According to La Razon Digital, demonstrators “gave a deadline of 72 hours to the members of the TSE, as of Monday,…[to] disqualify the candidacy of President Evo Morales…or else they would start an indefinite hunger strike throughout Bolivia, accompanied by vigils.”

The protest in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, generally a stronghold of anti-Morales forces, was large, with the Civic Committee Pro Santa Cruz bringing the city to a standstill. The events included protesters blocking roads and clashing with members of the ruling party, MAS.

The protests also largely succeeded in shutting down eight other major cities: La Paz, Oruro, Santa Cruz, Tarija, Cochabamba, Potosí, Chuquisaca and Beni.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Tymoshenko tours Washington to garner support for presidential bid

Jason Melanovski & Clara Weiss

Over the past several days, Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine and head of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” party, has toured Washington to garner support for her presidential bid in the elections in March 2019. Early polling sees her as the front-runner, leading the rest of the potential candidates in a crowded field by nearly twofold.

The campaign for president is formally not set to start until after the end of the state of martial law that the Poroshenko regime declared in 10 of the country’s 24 oblasts (provinces) after it had provoked a clash with the Russian navy in the Kerch Strait, which links the Azov Sea to the Black Sea, in late November.

The current president, Petro Poroshenko, who was brought to power in a US-backed coup carried out by far-right forces in February 2014, is highly unlikely to win. A recent poll by Rating showed that 51.4 percent of Ukrainians would refuse to vote for Poroshenko “under any circumstances.” After years of civil war in the East of the country, which claimed the lives of over 10,000 people, and brutal austerity measures that have provoked a wave of working-class struggles this year, there is widespread hatred of the Poroshenko regime.

Under these conditions, sections of the imperialist elites see Tymoshenko, an oligarch like Poroshenko, as someone willing and able to continue to implement brutal assaults on the working class and their anti-Russia policy.

While Tymoshenko is performing better than her opponents in the polls, according to the most recent poll by the International Republican Institute's (IRI) Center for Insights in Survey Research, if the elections were held today Tymoshenko would garner only 14 percent of the vote among decided voters. Other polls have shown her winning over 20 percent of the vote in the first round compared to just 10 percent for Poroshenko.

Tymoshenko has long been known as an ardent supporter of Ukrainian membership in both the EU and NATO. She maintains close ties to Washington and Berlin, in particular.

Tymoshenko, who used to be one of Ukraine’s richest people due to her involvement with the country’s gas business, first rose to political fame as one of the leading figures in Ukraine’s 2004 US-backed “Orange Revolution.” She subsequently served as the country’s Prime Minister and ran for President in 2010, narrowly losing to the now deposed former President Viktor Yanukovych.

She was imprisoned on corruption charges by the Yanukoyvch government, which was ousted by the coup in February 2014, due to embezzlement charges from a gas deal she negotiated with Russia. At that point she again became a darling of western governments hostile to Yanukovych and his perceived closeness to Moscow. In 2011-2012, German politicians and media were engaged in a frenzied and expensive PR campaign to prop up her image as a martyr under conditions where she was widely hated in the Ukrainian working class.

She was only released due to the 2014 US-backed right-wing coup of the Yanukovych government and later lost the Presidential elections that year to Petro Poroshenko.

However, there are some concerns about Tymoshenko’s reliability in the anti-Russia military buildup due to her former business dealings with Russia’s state-owned natural gas company Gazprom. In 2008 as Prime Minister, she was criticized for being insufficiently militaristic against Russia during the war with NATO-backed Georgia. The magazine Politico described her in early December as “unpredictable, a mercurial and opportunistic shapeshifter who has veered from arch-Ukrainian nationalist to Kremlin partner and back.” According to the magazine, in 2014, the US “worked aggressively to prevent her return to politics.”

In an attempt to assuage all fears of her falling out of line, Tymoshenko toured Washington over the past several days, speaking to influential think tanks and politicians and the media. The ultimate goal of Tymoshenko’s visit was to allay any concerns Ukraine’s western puppet masters may have while promising to continue with United States’ militarization of the country and the Black Sea following the November 25th confrontation between the Ukrainian and Russian navies in the Kerch Strait.

Tymoshenko is also keenly aware of the fact that United States backing will also be necessary to ensure that the elections in March will take place at all. The declaration of martial law in Ukraine is widely seen by Poroshenko’s political opponents as a thinly veiled attempt to delay or cancel the upcoming elections. Tymoshenko herself has criticized Poroshenko’s introduction of martial law as a political campaign and called for it to be ended earlier than planned.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, Tymoshenko attempted to cater to the Democratic Party-led anti-Russia campaign in the US by portraying herself as a victim of the now imprisoned Paul Manafort, claiming that he was paid to discredit her among western governments in 2010 (when she was running against Yanukovych) and that he helped “steal her election.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, over the past days, “Ms. Tymoshenko has held a flurry of meetings with prominent lawmakers, including Sens. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Dick Durban (D., Ill.), Kurt Volker, the top U.S. envoy for Ukraine negotiations at the State Department, and several major think tanks.”

Tymoshenko met with the Atlantic Council, a Washington DC think tank thoroughly embedded in the country’s military intelligence apparatus. Tymoshenko reported to the Ukrainian press that during her meeting she “thanked the United States for the help and support of our state. I called for increased sanctions against Russian aggression, and I also stressed the need to assist the naval forces of Ukraine.”

In an indication that influential sections of the American elites are preparing for a Tymoshenko presidency, the Atlantic Council wrote in late November, “What will happen if the former prime minister, her party, and their allies take over government next year is difficult to predict, but the West should prepare now for that possibility. ...her prospective ascendancy should also be seen as a chance for a new start, improved relations with the West, and progressive development of the country as a whole.”

Tymoshenko also enjoys the support of influential sections of the Ukrainian oligarchy, of which she herself has been part since the destruction of the USSR. Thus, she has already secretly met with Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk at least twice since April of this year. She also has close ties to billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky and is granted significant coverage and support on his 1+1 television station.

At home in Ukraine, Tymoshenko is fraudulently attempting to portray herself as an opponent of the oligarchic far-right Poroshenko government in the guise of a populist running against the IMF and its highly unpopular “reforms”.

In response to recent protests against an IMF-directed hike in consumer gas prices, Tymoshenko called the country’s acquiescence to IMF demands “economic genocide” and has vowed to cut gas prices in half across the country and halt cuts to pensions and health care if elected.

Furthermore, Tymoshenko has promised to end the country’s highly unpopular war against breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine “diplomatically” while continuing with the country’s attempts to formally join NATO despite Russian objections. In order to gain support from war-weary voters while maintaining imperialist backing she has promised a “peace strategy” in public statements while at the same time announcing plans to create a “war cabinet” within her administration if she wins.

That these attempts to appeal to the widespread antiwar moods in the Ukrainian population are completely fraudulent was not only proven by Tymoshenko’s trip to Washington, but also her threats in 2014 to use nuclear weapons against the Ukraine’s Russian population in response to the annexation of Crimea. In her vulgar outburst back then, she also said about the Russian president Vladimir Putin that she was “ready to hold a pistol and shoot that bastard in the head .”

Sri Lankan plantation companies reject workers’ wage demand

W.A. Sunil 

Thousands of plantation workers in Sri Lanka are continuing their indefinite strike, launched on December 4, to demand a 100 percent wage increase. They are among the poorest sections of the working class in the country. Currently their basic daily wage is 500 rupees ($US2.80), and they are demanding 1,000 rupees.

Signalling a direct confrontation with the workers, the plantation employers have repeatedly rejected the demand. A Planters Association of Ceylon (PA) statement last Friday declared that the demand far “exceeded” the revenue capacity of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPC). It could not agree to “a demand that would jeopardise an entire industry that involves not only growers but tea factory owners, exporters and the entire value chain.”

Claiming that the production cost of tea is high, with labour costs accounting for 70 percent, the PA said RPCs would have to absorb an extra 20 billion-rupee increase in wage and gratuity costs if the demand was accepted.

In other words, the plantation owners are insisting that their profits, and those of their international buyers, must be defended by subjecting workers to brutal exploitation.

The RPCs have agreed to increase the daily basic wage only by 20 percent, or 100 rupees, with a 33 percent increase for attendance incentives, up to 80 rupees, plus the productivity incentive and Price Share Supplement.

The employers argue that the workers could thus earn 940 rupees altogether. The so-called incentive allowances are just a gimmick, however. Workers often find it difficult to earn those allowances because of physical difficulties and other impediments such as bad weather and ailments.

What the employers are really demanding is the abolition of the current daily wage system and the implementation of a “revenue share” system that would transform the workers and their families into modern-day sharecroppers.

Under that system, each worker’s family is allocated a plot of land, with a certain number of tea bushes to maintain and harvest. Families are paid after deductions for the costs of fertilisers and agro-chemicals provided by the company, and also the latter’s profit. Workers would lose their minimal social benefits, such as the employee provident fund, employer trust fund and gratuity.

The PA statement claims that workers can earn up to 80,000 rupees per month under this new system. That has already been proved a lie. The workers on estates like the Mathurata and Kelani Valley plantations that have already implemented this system have denied those claims. They have complained that they have been unable to earn enough income to cover their living expenses, even though whole families, including children, have been compelled to work like bonded labourers.

The tea industry is one of the most labour-exploitative industries in the world, providing profits for a chain of global tea companies. The top ten companies are Tata Global Beverages, Unilever, Twinings, Nestle, ITO EN INC, Barry’s Tea, Dilmah, Celestial Seasonings, Harny’s and Sons, and Republic of Tea.

According to a University of Sheffield study paper published in May, “exploitation, including forced labour, is endemic at the base of the global tea and cocoa supply chains.” The study noted that employers extract profits by “under-paying wages” and “under-providing legally-mandated essential services such as drinking water and toilets.”

Professor Genevieve LeBaron, a member of the research team, told the media: “The exploitation we document is not randomly occurring abuse by a few ‘bad apples.’ Instead it is the result of structural dynamics of how global agricultural supply chains are organised.

“Highly profitable companies at the helm of these supply chains exert heavy price pressure on suppliers. This puts extreme pressure on tea and cocoa producers to cut costs, and creates a business ‘demand’ for cheap, and sometimes forced labour.”

When the PA statement insisted that conceding to the workers’ demand would jeopardise “the entire value chain,” it meant all these “highly profitable companies at the helm of these supply chains” that subject workers to super-exploitation.

The tea industry in Sri Lanka has faced increasing competition from other tea-producing countries like Kenya, China, India and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka’s share of the world tea production declined from 10.5 percent in 2000 to 5.4 percent last year.

Due to sanctions or currency issues, the buying power of the major markets, including in Iran, Turkey and Russia, has fallen.

While the average export price slightly increased by 4 percent this year, as compared to last year, the average price of Sri Lankan tea at Colombo auctions declined by 2.2 percent in the first six months of 2018. The export value has fallen by 23 percent since 2014.

The PA statement urged trade unions to “work in the best interest of the industry.” That is, to subordinate the interests of workers to the interests of profit. The unions have shown their commitment to do that through their real practice. As in other sectors, the plantation unions act as industrial police forces against workers. They have agreed to implement a productivity-based wage system.

The current strike was called by Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) led by Arumugam Thondaman with the aim of letting off steam and corralling workers who are justifiably angry over their appalling working and living conditions.

Thondaman and the CWC leaders are lined up with former president Mahinda Rajapakse, who was installed as prime minister on October 26 following the ousting of Ranil Wickremesinghe. Thondaman received a key ministerial post under Rajapakse.

The National Union of Workers (NUW), Democratic Workers Congress (DWC) and Up Country People Front (UPF) are partners in the Wickremesinghe-led United National Front (UNF). Leaders of those unions, P. Digambaram, Mono Ganeshan and P.Radhakrishnan respectively, were ministers in the UNF government. These unions refused to join the ongoing strike, saying the 1,000-rupee demand was unjust. However, members of those unions defiantly joined the strike.

The crisis of the plantation industry is a direct consequence of the crisis of capitalism. The workers are not responsible for that. The critical issues posed before the striking plantation workers are: Who should own the plantations, and how and in whose interest should they be managed? The answer is the plantations should be nationalised and operated under the democratic control of workers.

This can be done only in a struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government, which will implement socialist policies, placing the main industries, banks and other economic nerve centres under workers’ control. This is a part of a broader fight for socialism in South Asia and internationally.

The plantation workers need to break from the unions and form their own independent action committees and unite their struggle with other sections of the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally, including plantation workers in other countries.

Turmoil on Wall Street continues

Nick Beams 

Wall Street had another turbulent day yesterday with the Dow moving in a range of more than 600 points. It closed marginally up, by 34 points, after dropping by more than 500 points in the opening two hours of trading.

The market turmoil was the product of several factors, including: the decision by British Prime Minister Theresa May not to go ahead with a parliamentary vote on the Brexit deal with the European Union; a Chinese court decision brought by the US high-tech firm Qualcomm against Apple; concerns over growth in the US and the global economy; and the continuing impact of the US-China trade war.

The news that May had pulled the plug on the vote in parliament, after saying she faced defeat by a “significant margin,” sent stocks down in the morning session as the prime minister announced she would begin a tour of European capitals to seek a better deal.

The director-general of the business lobby group CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, summed up the mood in the corporate world, describing the decision as “another blow” for companies looking for clarity.

“Investment plans have been paused for two-and-a-half years. Unless a deal is agreed quickly, the country risks sliding towards a national crisis,” she said.

But there is virtually no prospect of a rapid solution. European Council president Donald Tusk said the EU was ready to talk about how to “facilitate” the agreement with the UK but said there would be no renegotiation and May has not indicated when she might bring a revised deal back to parliament.

News out of China that a court had ruled in favour of Qualcomm against Apple over intellectual property and had banned sales of iPhone models was another factor in the initial market slide. The Intermediate People’s Court in Fuzhou granted a preliminary injunction against Apple after finding it in violation of two Qualcomm patents.

Qualcomm said the ruling meant that four Apple subsidiaries are barred from importing and selling seven models, but Apple is disputing this interpretation saying it only applies to phones running on an older operating system.

Whatever the immediate outcome, the ruling is another blow to Apple, which relies on China for 20 percent of its global market under conditions where sales of its latest models have been below expectations. Apple’s market value, which earlier this year topped $1 trillion, has fallen by $250 billion since then.

The bitterness of the conflict between the two US tech giants, which has been ongoing for the past two years, was highlighted by a statement from Apple on the decision.

“Qualcomm’s effort to ban our products is another desperate move by a company whose illegal practices are under investigation by regulators around the world,” it said.

A statement from Qualcomm said that, while it rarely resorted to the courts for assistance, “we also have an abiding belief in the need to protect intellectual property rights” and Apple “continues to benefit from our intellectual property while refusing to compensate us.”

Given that one of the central accusations levelled by the US against Beijing is that Chinese companies steal US intellectual property, there is a certain irony in the fact that a fierce battle between two US tech giants over IP theft is being fought out in a Chinese court.

Concerns over global growth were another major factor in the ongoing slide and volatility in US markets. Signs of a downturn are reflected in the fall in the prices of commodities.

The sharpest fall is in the price of oil, down by 30 percent since the beginning of October. The price of copper, another key indicator of industrial production, is down by 17 percent from levels reached earlier this year. One of the key factors is the slowdown in the Chinese economy which experienced its lowest growth rate in a decade in the third quarter, with indications that it could go lower.

There are also signs of a slowing in Japan with the government reporting that its economy contracted at an annualised rate of 2.5 percent in the third quarter. While this is being put down to a series of natural disasters and the economy is predicted to “bounce back”, there are concerns over future growth.

Kiichi Murshima, an economist at Citi in Tokyo, told the Financial Times that with “the global economy, and Chinese activity in particular slowing, there remains uncertainty as to the extent of a rebound in goods exports in the fourth quarter.”

Global equity markets could also be heavily impacted by a slowdown in the US economy.

“Next year is going to be tough because I think one of the key changes to this year is that the US is going to slow down,” Christian Mueller-Glissmann, a senior analyst at Goldman Sachs told the CNBC business channel on Monday.

“We expect the US to slow down to less than 2 percent by the end of next year and as a result of that you could see the market getting quite scared,” he said.

Mueller-Glissmann also pointed to the effect of the eruption of class struggle in France exemplified by the “yellow vests” movement. He said that previously concerns had centred on Italy and its conflict with the EU over its budget, but this could change.

“Next year, the focus might shift to broader Europe for other reasons,” he said. “We have European Parliament elections, we have relative instability in Germany, and France these days, and I think that this could start to be a bigger story than Italy.”

Another major weight on the US financial markets is the impact of the economic war against China which escalated last week with the arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, a key executive at the Chinese communications giant Huawei at the request of the US Justice Department on alleged fraud over deals with Iran in defiance of US bans.

In a television interview last week, before the arrest announcement, former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach hit out at the basis of the US anti-China measures launched under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act with a report issued last March by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

“I have to reluctantly say that this report makes a very weak case in trying to justify tariffs and the risk of a trade war,” Roach, now a senior fellow at Yale University, told CNBC.

The Trump administration has accused China of forced technology transfers, employing predatory mergers and acquisition policies and cyberhacking to steal intellectual property.

Roach said there was “no evidence whatsoever” that China had forced technology transfers through joint ventures, data did not support the claim of predatory merger and acquisition policies, and there was no new evidence of Chinese cyberhacking since 2015.

“We need to be much more fact-based, which is always a problem, I think, with the Trump administration,” he said.

However, as the arrest of Meng Wanzhou has revealed, the economic war against China is not only being driven by the Trump administration but by the permanent “deep state” intelligence and military apparatus which regards Beijing’s economic rise as an existential threat to US economic and military dominance and is determined to use all measures deemed necessary to prevent it.

UK government’s role in anti-Corbyn campaign exposed

Robert Stevens 

The Integrity Initiative (II), funded by the UK, US governments and NATO, played a central role in efforts to discredit and remove Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Ostensibly based in a former mill in Fife, Scotland, the Integrity Initiative has all the hallmarks of a covert MI5/MI6 intelligence black ops. It was launched in 2015 by the Institute of Statecraft (IoS), a supposedly “independent” think tank and charity. But after first being granted £296,500 in 2017-18 by the Foreign Office, this financial year the II will receive almost 10 times that amount—£1,961,000. The II also receives hundreds of thousands of pounds from the US State Department and NATO. One of its founder funders was Facebook.

Last week, the CyberGuerilla.org web site published documents made available by the Anonymous group, revealing some of the misinformation operations carried out by the IoS/II, based around circulating fake news.

The Anonymous leak disrupted plans by the II to keep the authors of their dirty work unknown to the public. The II’s website states, “We are a network of people and organizations from across Europe dedicated to revealing and combating propaganda and disinformation. Our broader aim is also to educate on how to spot disinformation and verify sources. This kind of work attracts the extremely hostile and aggressive attention of disinformation actors, like the Kremlin and its various proxies, so we hope you understand that our members mostly prefer to remain anonymous.”

Leading figures at the IoS utilise “clusters” of politicians, high-ranking military officials, academics and journalists in countries around the world, ensuring that British imperialism’s aims are reinforced and justified with a constant barrage of propaganda, including influencing social media discussion—with the most obvious target being Russia.

In Spain, the II encouraged pliant journalists to write hatchet pieces—to prevent the nomination of a Spanish official to Director of National Security, one of Spain’s top advisory roles. It operates clusters from UK Embassies and High Commissions in nine European countries—France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia and Spain. It also plans clusters in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland and Portugal.

The latest leaked documents point to a massive operation aimed at subverting politics in the UK, with the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition a main target.

An investigation by Daily Record/Sunday Mail revealed that the Twitter account of the II was used to spread lies and disinformation about Corbyn and his inner circle. This includes retweeting links to articles, including by two journalists from The Times—Edward Lucas, who is one of 22 individuals named as part of the II’s UK cluster’s “Inner Core” assigned to monitor Russia—and Mark Edmonds, the associate editor of the Sunday Times magazine.

The II’s role in the anti-Corbyn campaign confirms the insistence of the Socialist Equality Party and the World Socialist Web Site on the involvement of the highest echelons of the state in the UK, US and Israel in slandering the Labour leader as a dupe of the Eastern European intelligence agencies, an anti-Semite and threat to national security. This was aimed at curtailing the development of a leftward movement among workers and youth that found initial expression in support for Corbyn.

The Institute of Statecraft has close ties to Britain’s military and intelligence agencies. It’s senior manager, Chris Donnelly, was a reserve officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps and previously headed the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst. The Sunday Mail is in possession of documents that “suggest he was appointed an ‘Honorary Colonel in Military Intelligence’ in 2015—the year the Integrity Initiative was formed.”

The Institute of Statecraft’s spokesman, Stephen Dalziel, was a leading figure at the BBC’s World Service, having spent 16 years there from 1988. But before this, according to an online biography, he “joined the Soviet Studies Research Centre at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Using unclassified primary Soviet sources, the Centre worked closely with the Armed Forces to give an accurate picture of the situation in the Soviet Armed Forces by way of lectures and research papers … [and Dalziel] continued to travel to the USSR, as well as making frequent visits to Berlin—West and East.”

The document detailing the UK “cluster” of II’s operation lists 108 individuals, including personnel from the Foreign Office, Ministry of Defence, the Henry Jackson Society, Royal United Services Institute, the Demos think tank, leading Blairite Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, as well as parliamentary staff at the Defence Committee, David Nicholas and Eleanor Scarnell. The names of at least nine journalists include four from Rupert Murdoch’s Times/Sunday Times,which has played a central role in the anti-Corbyn smear campaign—Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch, Dominic Kennedy and Edward Lucas. Also named is leading Guardian columnist and leader writer, Natalie Nougayrede, who was previously the executive editor and managing editor of French daily Le Monde. The other journalists named are the BBC’s Jonathan Marcus, Neil Buckley of the Financial Times and a freelancer, Bruce Jones.

In its article, the Sunday Mail notes that II tweeted an excerpt from an article stating, “Mr Corbyn was a ‘useful idiot’, in the phrase apocryphally attributed to Lenin. His open, visceral anti-westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money...”

This refers to a comment headlined, “Jeremy Corbyn’s sickening support of Soviet empire,” originally published on February 22 in the Times by II cluster member Edward Lucas. Lucas is named in the UK Cluster document as a member of the “Inner Core—Russia” team, along with US neo-con journalist Anne Applebaum.

II also retweeted excepts from four other anti-Corbyn articles. One of these from a blogger, Connor P, was headlined, “Novichok for the Soul. Jeremy Corbyn and the murder of the Russian spy” and was retweeted by Blairite Guardian journalist and leading anti-Corbyn fanatic, Nick Cohen.

The last attack on Corbyn retweeted by the II was less than three months ago, on September 20, just three days before the opening of Labour’s annual conference. It was an article published by politics.co.uk and headlined, “Skripal poisoning: It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.”

Corbyn’s main adviser and director of communications, Seamus Milne, was also singled out for attack by II, which retweeted another Times article, by Mark Edmonds. In an extensive profile of Milne, it cited a statement from Conservative MP Bob Seely, described as a “Russia expert and member of the foreign-affairs select committee.” Seely said Milne is “not a ‘spy’… That would be … beneath him. But what he has done, wittingly or unwittingly, is to work with the Kremlin’s agenda against the interests of western liberal democracies. I have little doubt they see him as an ally against the UK, the US, Nato.”

The Murdoch empire has spent much of this year organising a series of hatchet jobs on Corbyn. Earlier this year, as Lucas was publishing his article, Murdoch’s Sun made scurrilous claims that Corbyn was a paid informer for the Czech secret service in the 1980s as it editorialised that Corbyn “cannot be allowed the keys to No 10.”

In September, the Times regurgitated long discredited assertions that former left Labour leader Michael Foot was a Kremlin agent. It once again referred to Lucas’ statement that Corbyn and others on the left of the Labour Party historically were “useful idiots” and, in a clear reference to Corbyn, said the claim that Foot was paid by Moscow had “topicality as well as historical significance.”