Trump Says ISIS is Defeated, But He Ignores the Much Bigger and More Troubling Picture

Patrick Cockburn

President Trump says that in the coming week the US and its allies will announce that they have captured all of the land previously controlled by Isis. He claims that US-led forces “have liberated virtually all of the territory previously held by Isis in Syria and Iraq … we will have 100 per cent of the caliphate.“

The prediction has sparked a sterile and misleading debate about whether or not Isis is finally defeated, something which will remain unproven since the movement is unlikely to run up a white flag and sign terms of surrender. The discussion has – like all debates about foreign policy in the US – very little to do with the real situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq and everything to do with the forces at play in Washington politics.

In discussing the demise or survival of Isis, pundits make the same glaring omission. They ignore the fact that by far the largest stronghold in Syria held by an al-Qaeda type group is not the few shattered villages for which Isis has been battling in the east of the country. Much more important is the jihadi enclave in and around Idlib province in north-west Syria which is held by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Liberation of Levant Organisation), a powerful breakaway faction from Isis which founded the group under the name of Jabhat al-Nusra in 2011 and with whom it shares the same fanatical beliefs and military tactics. Its leaders wear suicide vests studded with metal balls just like their Isis equivalents.

It is not that the US has any doubts about what HTS is – since last year, a foreign terrorist organisation despite a name change. Nathan A Sales, the State Department’s coordinator of counterterrorism, noted that “today’s designation serves notice that the United States is not fooled by this al-Qaeda affiliate’s attempt to rebrand itself.”

Over the past year HTS has expanded its control to almost all of the Idlib enclave, which the UN estimates to have a population of three million, half of whom are refugees, and can put at least 50,000 fighters into the field. The zone is surrounded on three sides by the Syrian Army backed by the Russians and on the fourth side it shares a common border with Turkey whose local proxies it has crushed. Fighting between Assad government forces and the armed opposition in Idlib has largely died away under the terms of a shaky ceasefire agreed and enforced by Moscow and Ankara.

Blindness in the west to this embattled al-Qaeda-run mini-state, which has a population the same size as Wales and a fighting force not much smaller than the British army, is explained by the fact that such an admission would reveal that the US and its allies are weak players in Syria and there is more than one jihadi group in the country. A recurrent and disastrous theme of western involvement in the war in Syria is for governments and media to focus only on part of the multilayered crisis in which they are engaged.

Pretending that Isis is anything close to the potent threat it used to be is part of the struggle between Trump and the foreign policy and security establishment in Washington. They represent what President Obama derided as “the Washington playbook” which he denounced as always looking to military solutions and always overplaying its hand in fighting wars that never end.

This skewed vision of the Syrian conflict – with its over-emphasis on whether or not the death certificate of the caliphate should be formally signed – diverts attention from a more important question. In the short term, it is true that can Isis carry out guerrilla and terrorist attacks, but for all practical purposes Trump is right in saying that it has been decisively defeated. The caliphate that once ruled a de facto state the size of Great Britain with a population of eight million is gone.

A more important question to ask now is how far the whole al-Qaeda idea and mode of operating have become obsolete and discredited. Not so long ago, this militarised cult of extreme fanaticism with core beliefs derived from the Wahhabi version of Islam was extraordinarily successful. Suicide bombing on an industrial scale enabled it to turn untrained but committed believers into a devastating military weapon.

Suicide attacks as an expression of Islamic faith produced 9/11, which was the most successful terrorist attack in history: the overwhelming impact of the destruction of the Twin Towers provoked the US to jump into a trap of its own making by launching wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, which had scarcely existed as an international organisation before 9/11, instantly took advantage of this overreaction. The US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003 enabled the local al-Qaeda franchise to became the core of the armed resistance of the Sunni Arabs against their enemies at home and abroad.

Can these conditions be recreated in Idlib or in the deserts of western Iraq, eastern Syria or wherever else al-Qaeda type groups have their hideouts from Pakistan to Nigeria and Chechnya to Somalia? A ferociously disciplined group with experienced military leaders will always have an influence out of proportion to its size in chaotic war-time conditions.

But al-Qaeda and its clones should not be allowed to remain a bugbear, a cause of obsessive fear because of its past successes in staging 9/11, dominating the armed opposition in Iraq in 2004-09, and unexpectedly resurrecting itself in Syria and Iraq after 2011.

It once was able to offer miraculous victories to its followers but for the past few years it has been able to offer them nothing but defeat and martyrdom for a cause that has been failing demonstrably.

The al-Qaeda formula worked because it caught its enemies by surprise and this will not happen again. Early successes after 2003 required a degree of covert assistance or tolerance from Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, all of whom imagined at different moments that they could channel or manipulate the jihadis into acting in their own interest.

Al-Qaeda operated through fear and fanaticism but it also required a constituency among the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and Syria which no longer exists; and for which the Sunni have paid a terrible price in the form of lost wars and devastated cities from east Aleppo to Raqqa and Mosul.

Al-Qaeda no longer works as a winning formula, but this does not mean that its destructive capacity is exhausted. Its track record of savagery was such that its limited attacks can still provoke almost unlimited terror among potential victims. I was in Baghdad last year when Isis kidnapped and killed some half dozen police on the main road north to Kirkuk, provoking a wave of fear out of proportion to what had happened among my friends who started to recall past massacres by Isis.

Casual remarks by Trump such as saying that the US might keep troops in Iraq in future to watch Iran will continue to keep the pot boiling which is to the advantage of al-Qaeda. But the all-conquering warrior cult whose columns of fanatical fighters were wining Napoleonic victories in 2014-15 has gone for good and cannot be recreated.

The Robots Taking the Jobs Industry

Dean Baker

There is an old saying that the economy is too simple for economists to understand. There is plenty of evidence of this all around. After all, almost no economists could see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which gave us the great recession. Back in the stock bubble days of the late 1990s, leading economists in both political parties wanted to put Social Security money in the stock market based on assumptions of returns which were at the least incredibly implausible, if not altogether impossible.

The endless scare stories of robots taking all the jobs, or the threat of automation, fit this mode. While this is a recurring theme in major media outlets, it basically makes zero sense.

Replacing human labor with technology is a very old story. It’s called “productivity growth.” We’ve been seeing it pretty much as long as we have had a capitalist economy. In fact, this is what allows for sustained improvements in living standards. If we had not seen massive productivity growth in agriculture, then the bulk of the country would still be working on farms, otherwise we would be going hungry.

However, thanks to massive improvement in technology, less than 2 percent of our workforce is now employed in agriculture. And, we can still export large amounts of food.

If the robots taking our jobs industry were around a hundred years ago, it would be warning about gas powered tractors eliminating the need for farm labor. We would be hearing serous sounding discussion on our radio shows (we will steal radios from the 1919 future) with leading experts warning about how pretty soon there would be no work for anyone. They would tell us we have to prepare for this dark future by fundamentally reorganizing society.

Okay, that story is about as wrong as could possibly be the case, but if anyone buys the robots taking our jobs line, then they better try to figure out why this time is different. After all, what difference does it make if a worker loses their job to a big tractor or they lose their job to a robot?

Getting Serious About Robots and Productivity Growth

The basic story of robots taking our jobs is one of a massive increase in productivity growth. Instead of people driving taxis and trucks, stocking store shelves, and working checkout counters, all this work and more will be dealt with by robots. There are three problems with this story:

1) It has not been happening;

2) No one involved in designing policy expects to happen;

3) It would likely mean more rapid wage growth and improved living standards if it did happen.

On the first point, instead of accelerating to new highs, the rate of productivity growth has actually been very slow in recent years. We did have a period of strong productivity growth from 1995 to 2005, when the average annual rate was just under 3.0 percent. However, this period of strong growth ended abruptly in 2006 for reasons that are not well understood.

Since 2006, productivity growth has fallen to less than a 1.3 percent annual rate. While some (including me) had hoped that a tighter labor market would lead to a pickup in productivity growth, to date we are still not seeing it. Over the last two years productivity growth has averaged less than 1.2 percent.[1] Long and short, there is absolutely zero evidence that we are seeing any mass displacement by robots, automation, or anything else.

The second point is that we do have projections about future rates of productivity growth from folks like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO, the Social Security Administration (SSA), and other forecasters. None of these organizations see any sort of massive acceleration in productivity growth.

In its most recent projections (Table 2-5), CBO put the rate of potential productivity growth at 1.8 percent annually over the next decade. This is somewhat better than we have seen over the last 13 years, but hardly a story of massive labor displacement. The 2018 Social Security Trustees Report puts the long-term economy-wide rate of annual productivity growth at 1.68 percent. Since the economy-wide rate tends to be approximately 0.2 percentage points lower than the rate in the non-farm business sector, this would translate into a rate of productivity growth of just under 1.9 percent in the non-farm business sector. Again, this is somewhat of a pick-up from current levels, but not very different from the CBO story.

We could look at other projections from places like the OECD and I.M.F. and other organizations, but they all show pretty much the same story. None of them show the massive uptick in productivity growth that would be associated with the robots taking all the jobs.

This doesn’t mean such an upturn is impossible, after all these organizations all missed the slowdown that began in 2006 and for that matter the upturn that began in 1995. So their track record in projecting trends in productivity has not been great, but anyone arguing the robots taking all the jobs story should realize that they are going against the consensus in the economics profession.

The last point is that if the robots did start taking more jobs, so what? We had almost 3.0 percent productivity growth from 1995 to 2005 and in the much longer post World War II Golden age from 1947 to 1973. These were periods of relatively low unemployment and strong wage growth.

Suppose robots did start taking more jobs, how fast would the pace of productivity growth be? A 3.0 percent rate would be very impressive, but why would the story be different than it was in the past when we saw productivity growth at this rate? Would it be 4.0 percent annual growth, 5.0 percent? If so, is there any reason this would not just mean even more rapid wage growth and/or shorter workweeks and work years?

Just to focus people on where we are right now, the Federal Reserve Board has been raising interest rates over the last two years in order to deliberately slow the economy. It is ostensibly concerned that we are creating too many jobs. The issue is that rapid job growth would lead to a further tightening of the labor market and therefore more rapid wage growth. A more rapid rate of wage growth could then lead to an acceleration in the inflation rate.

If the pace of productivity growth were to suddenly accelerate, the Fed could be more restrained with interest rate hikes, and possibly even lower rates. There would little reason to be concerned about inflation in an environment of more rapid productivity growth.

So, long and short, we do not now see any evidence of massive job loss due robots, automation, artificial intelligence, or anything else. That could change in the future, but there is little reason to believe it would lead to massive job loss.

Robots Taking the Jobs of the Less-Skilled

There is a slightly different story of job-killing robots that many people seem to have in their minds. This is not one of massive job displacement, but rather a loss of less-skilled jobs. The idea is that even if robots don’t lead to a huge increase in productivity growth, they will lead to the loss of a large share of the jobs now held by less-educated workers.

This is an old story in economics that originally appeared as “skills-biased technical change (SBTC).” It was used to explain the large increase in the gap in wages between college educated workers and non-college educated workers that opened up in the 1980s. My friends Jared Bernstein and Larry Mishel showed there was no correlation between any measures of technology and increased demand for more college-educated labor by industry.

The story of skills biased technical change got even weaker as there was little change in the college-non-college wage gap in the 1990s and the last decade, even as there was a surge in productivity growth from 1995 to 2005 due to information technology. Clearly this simple story did not work.

There was a revised version of the SBTC hypothesis in the last decade pushed most prominently by David Autor. This was the “hollowing out of the middle” story, which argued middle paying jobs were rapidly disappearing, leading to a rise in inequality as middle class jobs were lost to technology. This was counted by a paper by Larry Mishel, Heidi Shierholz, and John Schmitt, that showed the hollowing out story did not fit the decade of the 00s at all.

In spite of great efforts by economists to link rising inequality to technology, the data just doesn’t fir the story. That doesn’t mean that we won’t see technology leading to a rise inequality in the future, just that we have not seen it to date. It is worth noting in this context, that while the unemployment rate for workers with less than a high school degree, just a high school degree, and some college, are all below their pre-recession lows, the unemployment rate for workers with just a college degree is still somewhat higher. Workers with just a college degree have also been seeing the weakest wage growth over the last four years, as I pointed out in my post last week.

So What If Robots Aren’t Taking Jobs Now or Depressing Wages of Less-Educated Workers, What About the Future?

If we look at the data, it’s very hard to blame robots or technology more generally for the problems of inequality we have seen to date, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have this problem in the future. This is true in the sense that none of us know the future, but let’s think about this one a bit further.

People don’t get rich from technology, they get rich because we give certain people ownership of the technology with patent and copyright monopolies. This is not really an arguably point. Bill Gates has a $100 billion because we will arrest anyone that starts to mass produce computers with Windows software without paying Microsoft for the privilege.

The argument is that we want to give people like Gates incentive to innovate or do creative work. But if we are concerned about inequality then we can just give these people less incentive. If the argument is that this will lead to less rapid productivity growth, this is fine. After all, the issue was that we are supposed to be seeing massive rates of productivity growth, so who cares if the rate is a little less massive but we have less inequality? (I argue in Rigged, chapter 5, that there is good reason to believe that we could actually have more rapid productivity growth with weaker protections and more public funding.)

In short, nothing about the robots taking our jobs story makes sense. It hasn’t been happening, no major governmental agency or international organization expects it to happen any time soon, and if it did, it should be a good story for workers. If the robots turn out to be generating inequality it will be because of our robot policy, not the robots.

Yes, I write about this one a great deal. This is because the robots taking the jobs story is constantly appearing in places like the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio. They shouldn’t be taking the argument seriously, but they do. Which means those of us who care about reality have to do what we can to counter it.

Note: The piece originally said that the economy-wide rate of productivity growth tends to be 0.2 percentage points higher than for the non-farm busines sector. Thanks to dumdedumdum for pointing this out in their comment.

Harsh Turkish condemnation of Xinjiang cracks Muslim wall of silence

James M. Dorsey

In perhaps the most significant condemnation to date of China’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in its north-western province of Xinjiang. Turkey’s foreign ministry demanded this weekend that Chinese authorities respect human rights of the Uighurs and close what it termed “concentration camps” in which up to one million people are believed to be imprisoned.

Calling the crackdown an “embarrassment to humanity,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the death of detained Uighur poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit had prompted the ministry to issue its statement.

Known as the Rooster of Xinjiang, Mr. Heyit symbolized the Uighurs’ cultural links to the Turkic world, according to Adrian Zenz, a European School of Culture and Theology researcher who has done pioneering work on the crackdown.

Turkish media asserted that Mr. Heyit, who was serving an eight-year prison sentence, had been tortured to death.

Mr. Aksoy said Turkey was calling on other countries and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to take steps to end the “humanitarian tragedy” in Xinjiang.

The Chinese embassy in Ankara rejected the statement as a “violation of the facts,” insisting that China was fighting seperatism, extremism and terrorism, not seeking to “eliminate” the Uighurs’ ethnic, religious or cultural identity.

Mr. Aksoy’s statement contrastèd starkly with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declaration six months earlier that China was Turkey’s economic partner of the future. At the time, Turkey had just secured a US$3.6 billion loan for its energy and telecommunications sector from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).

The Turkish statement constitutes the first major crack in the Muslim wall of silence that has enabled the Chinese crackdown, the most frontal assault on Islam in recent memory. The statement’s significance goes beyond developments in Xinjiang.

Like with Muslim condemnation of US President Donald J. Trump’s decision last year to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Turkey appears to be wanting to be seen as a spokesman of the Muslim world in its one-upmanship with Saudi Arabia and to a lesser degree Iran.

While neither the kingdom or Iran are likely to follow Turkey’s example any time soon, the statement raises the stakes and puts other contenders for leadership on the defensive.

The bulk of the Muslim world has remained conspicuously silent with only Malaysian leaders willing to speak out and set an example by last year rejecting Chinese demands that a group of Uighur asylum seekers be extradited to China. Malaysia instead allowed the group to go to Turkey.

The Turkish statement came days after four Islamist members of the Kuwaiti parliament organized the Arab world’s first public protest against the crackdown.

By contrast, Pakistani officials backed off initial criticism and protests in countries like Bangladesh and India have been at best sporadic.

Like the Turkish statement, a disagreement between major Indonesian religious leaders and the government on how to respond to the crackdown raises questions about sustainability of the wall of silence.

Rejecting a call on the government to condemn the crackdown by the Indonesian Ulema Council, the country’s top clerical body, Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla insisted that the government would not interfere in the internal affairs of others.

The council was one of the first, if not the first, major Muslim religious body to speak out on the issues of the Uighurs. Its non-active chairman and spiritual leader of Nahdlaltul Ulama, the world’s largest Muslim organization, Ma’ruf Amin, is running as President Joko Widodo’s vice-presidential candiate in elections in April.

The Turkish statement could have its most immediate impact in Central Asia, which like Turkey has close ethnic and cultural ties to Xinjiang, and is struggling to balance relations with China with the need to be seen to be standing up for the rights of its citizens and ethnic kin.

In Kazakhstan, Turkey’s newly found assertiveness towards China could make it more difficult for the government to return to China Sayragul Sautbay, a Chinese national of ethnic Kazakh descent and a former re-education camp employee who fled illegally to Kazakhstan to join her husband and child.

Ms. Sautbay, who stood trial in Kazakhstan last year for illegal entry, is the only camp instructor to have worked in a reeducation camp in Xinjiang teaching inmates Mandarin and Communist Party propaganda and spoken publicly about it.

She has twice been refused asylum in Kazakhstan and is appealing the decision. China is believed to be demanding that she be handed back to the Xinjiang authorities.

Similarly, Turkey’s statement could impact the fate of Qalymbek Shahman, a Chinese businessman of Kazakh descent, who is being held at the airport in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent after being denied entry into Kazakhstan.

“I was born in Emin county in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to a farming family. I wanted to go to Kazakhstan, because China’s human rights record was making life intolerable. I would have my ID checked every 50 to 100 meters when I was in Xinjiang, This made me extremely anxious, and I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Mr. Shahman said in a video clip sent to Radio Free Asia from Tashkent airport.

A guide for foreign businessmen, Mr. Shahman said he was put out of business by the continued checks that raised questions in the minds of his clients and persuaded local businessmen not to work with him.

Said Mr. Zenz, the Xinjiang scholar, commenting on the significance of the Turkish statement: “A major outcry among the Muslim world was a key missing piece in the global Xinjiang row. In my view, it seems that China’s actions in Xinjiang are finally crossing a red line among the world’s Muslim communities, at least in Turkey, but quite possibly elsewhere.”

An open letter to the people of the U.S.A. from President Nicolás Maduro

Nicolás Maduro

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela delivered this Feb. 7 message to the people of the U.S. through social media.

If I know anything, it is about the people, because just like you, I am a man of the people. I was born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Caracas. I was forged in the heat of popular and union struggles in a Venezuela submerged in exclusion and inequality. I am no tycoon; I am a worker of mind and heart.  Today I have the great privilege of presiding over the new Venezuela, rooted in a model of inclusive development and social equality, which Comandante Hugo Chávez forged starting in 1998, inspired by the legacy of Simón Bolivar.

We are living today in a historical crossroad. There are days that will define the future of our countries, giving us a choice between war and peace. Your national representatives of Washington want to bring to their borders the same hatred that they sowed in Vietnam. They want to invade and intervene in Venezuela — they say, as they said then — in the name of democracy and freedom. But this is false. Their history of the usurpation of power in Venezuela is as false as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is a false argument, but it can have dramatic consequences for our entire region.

Venezuela is a country that, by virtue of its 1999 Constitution, has broadly expanded the participatory and protagonist democracy of the people, and that in an unprecedented way so that today Venezuela is one of the countries that has held the largest number of elections in the last 20 years. You may not like our ideology or how our society looks, but we exist and we are millions.

I address these words to the people of the United States of America to warn of the gravity and danger that some sectors in the White House intend, that is, to invade Venezuela with unpredictable consequences for my country and for the entire American region. President Donald Trump also intends to disrupt the worthy initiatives to open a dialogue promoted by Uruguay and Mexico, with the support of CARICOM, for a peaceful solution and dialogue on behalf of Venezuela. We know that for the good of Venezuela we have to sit down and talk because to refuse to dialogue is to choose the path of force. Keep in mind the words of John F. Kennedy: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Those who do not want to dialogue, are they afraid of the truth?

The political intolerance toward the Venezuelan Bolivarian model and the desires for our immense oil resources, minerals and other great riches have prompted an international coalition headed by the U.S. government to commit the serious insanity of waging a military attack on Venezuela under the pretext of a nonexistent humanitarian crisis.

The people of Venezuela have painfully suffered social wounds caused by a criminal commercial and financial blockade, which has been aggravated by the dispossession and robbery of our financial resources and assets in countries aligned with this demented onslaught.

And yet, thanks to a new system of social protection, of direct attention to the most vulnerable sectors of our society, we proudly continue to be a country in the Americas with high human development index and low inequality.

The U.S. people must know that this complex multiform aggression is carried out with total impunity and in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which expressly outlaws the threat or use of force, among other principles and purposes, for the sake of peace and friendly relations between nations.

We want to continue being business partners of the people of the United States, as we have been throughout our history. Their politicians in Washington, on the other hand, are willing to send their sons and daughters to die in an absurd war, instead of respecting the sacred right of the Venezuelan people to self-determination and to safeguard their sovereignty.

Like you, people of the United States, we Venezuelans are patriots. And we shall defend our homeland with all our soul. Today Venezuela is united in a single cry: We demand the cessation of the aggression that seeks to suffocate our economy and socially suffocate our people, as well as the cessation of the serious and dangerous threats of military intervention against Venezuela.

We appeal to the good soul of U.S. society, a victim of its own leaders, to join our call for peace. Let us be all one people against warmongering and war.

Long live the peoples of America!

Australia: Northern Queensland flood causes widespread destruction

Hugh Peters

As rains subside, parts of northern Queensland remain flooded. The region, which has experienced severe droughts over the past decade and bushfires late last year, is now contending with the effects of widespread flooding this month.

So far, the deluge has claimed at least two lives. There are grave fears for another man who went missing after his boat crashed in flood waters near Ayr last Friday.

Last Tuesday, the bodies of Troy Mathieson and Hughie Morton were discovered in a stormwater drain near Aitkenvale Park in Townsville. The men, aged 23 and 21, were reported missing on Monday. Police claimed they were wanted in connection with a break-in at a Dan Murphy’s bottle shop. They were alleged to have run into flood waters after fleeing the scene.

The tragic fatalities are being investigated by the Office of the State Coroner as deaths in custody. Queensland Police Ethical Standards Command has also launched an internal inquiry. Like every other investigation of deaths in custody over the past three decades, the inquiries will undoubtedly attempt to whitewash the role of the police.

While the full extent of the damage to the city of Townsville and northern Queensland remains unknown, initial reports point to a major catastrophe.

An estimated 82,000 homes in Townsville have been affected by the flood. Some 1,500 homes have been assessed, with 738 found to be severely damaged and 252 uninhabitable. According to the Insurance Council, 11,800 claims totalling $147 million in losses have already been lodged. Some 16,000 people have already applied for personal hardship payments.

Relief payments from the federal government are capped at a minuscule $1,000 per person, well below what is needed to address the widespread damage caused by the flood.

Many residents who do not have home and contents insurance have lost everything they own. More than half of those living in the state do not have such insurance.

Cattle graziers have been particularly hit hard by the flooding. Up to 300,000 cattle may have been killed as a result of the flooding and its aftermath, with financial losses expected to approach $300 million. Some graziers have lost all of their livestock.

The devastation is not merely the result of a natural disaster. It is also a product of inadequate urban planning, a lack of disaster management resources, and questionable management of water storage.

The impact of the flooding has again revealed the failure of successive Labor and Liberal-National Party Queensland governments to plan for natural disasters.

Anger among Townsville residents has continued to grow about a decision to delay the opening of the Ross River Dam flood gates until the night of February 3.

The decision not to open the gates sooner was based on a 2012 study which indicated that only 90 properties would be affected during a “one-in-100-year” flood event. The study, however, also stated that if flood levels were greater than anticipated, then waiting to open the dam gates would result in a far greater number of flooded properties.

Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill stated last week: “It is clear the flood levels in the Ross River were greater than a one in 500 years event.” She added that the “rainfall totals over the Ross River dam catchment were in excess of a one in 2,000 years rainfall event.” Such catastrophic events, however, are taking place with increasing frequency.

There are parallels with the 2011 floods, during which the south east Queensland cities of Brisbane and Ipswich were flooded after the Wivenhoe Dam was opened. A royal commission into the flood found that South East Queensland Water Corporation (SEQW) flood engineers had breached protocol in failing to reduce the level of the dam in preparation for forecast rainfall.

In an effort at damage control, the Queensland Labor government has announced an inquiry into “key preparedness and response elements.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has attempted to place blame for the disaster on the Townsville City Council. Labor governments, however, like their Liberal-National Party counterparts, have gutted funding for disaster and emergency services and have opposed any measures that could impact on the profits of the major corporations.

For their part, the Townsville authorities, including Hill, have attempted to divert mounting anger into hostility against alleged looters. Hill last week denounced alleged looters as “scumbags.” She promoted vigilantism, warning those who had committed crimes to “turn themselves in… before the community come looking for you.”

Hill’s comments were part of a broader law and order campaign surrounding the floods. Many of the flood relief operations have been conducted by the military.

Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison toured Townsville in a military camouflage jacket. He traveled in an amphibious military vehicle. The visit provided an opportunity for Morrison to feign sympathy for the victims of the flood while avoiding all serious questions about the causes of the devastation.

When questioned about whether he believed the recent spate of extreme weather events were related to climate change, Morrison responded, “I’m not engaging in broader policy debates today.”

Multiple climate change studies, however, including the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s “State of the Climate 2018” have warned that man-made climate change is leading to “an increase in intense heavy rainfall throughout Australia”.

Morrison’s government has close ties to the major coal companies and other sections of industry responsible for substantial carbon emissions. Previous federal Labor governments have also done nothing to address the growing threat of climate change. Under the former Gillard Labor government’s carbon tax, for instance, carbon emissions were actually forecast to increase.

The failure of all governments to mitigate and prepare for flooding and other disasters is an indictment of the capitalist system, under which all areas of social life, including the safety of ordinary people, are subordinated to the profit dictates of the banks and big business. As in previous disasters, the burden of the recent flooding will fall on workers and the poor.

Study links abuse-deterrent OxyContin with rise in hepatitis C infections

Brian Dixon 

According to a new study published in Health Affairs last week, Purdue Pharma’s switch to a new abuse-deterrent formulation of OxyContin in 2010 led to a rise in hepatitis C infections as addicts switched to injecting heroin.

While prior research has established the connection between the introduction of the abuse-deterrent formulation of OxyContin and a spike in heroin overdoses, the Health Affairs article, written by researchers from the Rand Corporation and the Wharton School, examined the relationship between the introduction of the reformulation and hepatitis C infection rates.

The researchers noted that while opioid overdoses and addiction steadily rose in the 2000s, the rate of hepatitis C infections declined or remained stagnant—until 2010, the year that the abuse-deterrent formulation of OxyContin became available. Hepatitis C infections began to steadily increase shortly afterwards.

The study drew on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, to measure the nonmedical use of OxyContin in different US states, and then computed the rate of OxyContin misuse in each state before the reformulation.

The researchers then divided US states into two groups based upon whether they were above or below the median rates of Oxycontin misuse, and tested whether the growth rate of hepatitis C infections between the two groups differed, controlling for variables such as the unemployment rate and demographic composition.

Their results found that while OxyContin misuse declined after 2010, both hepatitis C infections and heroin deaths increased. Moreover, the researchers found that states with above-median misuse rates saw an increase in hepatitis C infections three times greater than those states with below-median rates (a 222 percent increase compared to a 75 percent increase).

As a falsification test, the researchers replicated their analysis looking at pain reliever misuse, but excluded OxyContin. In both groups, the hepatitis C infections grew at similar rates, demonstrating that the rise in hepatitis C rates was uniquely linked to the OxyContin reformulation.

“Thus, the rise in hepatitis C infections was primarily concentrated in states most affected by the reformulation, and this differential increase began in the year after the reformulation,” the researchers wrote. “The timing of the differential increase strongly suggests that other differences across states (for example, differential changes in economic conditions due to the Great Recession or state-level opioid policy adoption) were not driving the results.”

They note that this case underscores the potential “unintended consequences” of interventions addressing the abuse of prescription opioids when carried out without policies and resources necessary to address substance abuse and addiction. They warn that the transition to an abuse-deterrent formulation may lead to rising rates of other infectious diseases, such as HIV.

Purdue Pharma and the opioid epidemic

Evidence continues to build that Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of OxyContin—along with the criminally negligent actions of other drug manufacturers and drug distributors —was a key factor in the emergence of the opioid epidemic in the United States starting in the late 1990s.

Since 1999, overdose deaths have nearly quadrupled in the United States, rising from 6.1 per 100,000 deaths to 21.7 in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2017, 47,600 people died from overdoses associated with opioids.

According to the National Safety Council, Americans are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose (1 in 96) than die in a car accident (1 in 103) or as the result of an accidental fall (1 in 114).

Following the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of Purdue Pharma’s opioid painkiller OxyContin at the very end of 1995, the company immediately began a marketing blitz of the drug, claiming that it stopped pain for a full 12 hours—despite mounting evidence showing otherwise—while downplaying the drug’s addictive risks.

“The manufacturer targeted physicians who prescribed OxyContin frequently, paid its sales representatives large bonuses as an incentive to increase OxyContin sales, and issued coupons entitling new patients to free samples at participating pharmacies,” noted a 2011 article in the British Medical Journal .

The marketing strategy transformed OxyContin into a blockbuster drug, generating an estimated $35 billion in sales and enriching the owners of the company, the Sackler family, whose wealth is estimated at $14 billion.

The Sackler family is widely known for its philanthropic activities and has sought to distance themselves from the unethical behavior of the company they own. However, a recent court filing by the attorney general of Massachusetts cites internal company documents that highlight the Sackler’s intimate and ongoing involvement in the company’s efforts to market OxyContin and shift the blame of addiction onto addicts rather than the drug.

Health researchers have drawn a strong connection between the company’s marketing activities and the opioid epidemic

For example, a study published last month in JAMA Network Open, drawing upon county-level data, found an association between doctor payments for non-research-based opioid marketing between 2013 and 2015 and an increase in mortality rates from prescription opioid overdoses in the period between 2014 and 2016.

Patients, physicians and industry critics recognized Purdue’s role in the epidemic in the early 2000s, but the company was largely successful in fending off lawsuits until 2007, when a settlement was reached in which the company paid over $600 million in fines and top executives pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges.

In response to this pressure, the company introduced an abuse-deterrent formulation of OxyContin in 2010 that could no longer be crushed and snorted or dissolved and injected. OxyContin was the most widely-abused drug at the time, but no public health measures were in place to help abusers address their addiction.

As the Health Affairs study shows, this led opioid addicts to increasingly turn to injecting heroin, resulting in the spread of Hepatitis C infections.

The hepatitis C virus and drug prices

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the most common blood-borne virus in the United States. It attacks the liver and can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure. According to the CDC, an estimated 2.4 million individuals are living with chronic cases of HCV. In 2016, 18,153 death certificates listed HCV as a cause, although research indicates that this figure greatly underestimates the real number.

The most common mode of HCV transmission is through injectable drug use. Infection rates are particularly high among US prisoners. According to a 2014 article in Public Health Reports, the infection rate of HCV is 1 to 2 percent among the general population, but over 17 percent among the prison population.

While there are effective cures for HCV, efforts to address the disease have been hampered by the high prices of HCV drugs.

Since the disease was first identified in 1989, medical science has made enormous strides in the treatment of HCV. The approval by the FDA of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) drugs starting in 2011—in particular, the drugs Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) approved in 2013 and Harvoni (a combination of sofosbuvir and ledispavir) approved in 2015—represented a major advance, as these drugs significantly reduced the treatment time and side effects. In most cases, Sovaldi and Harvoni could actually cure the disease in a single course of treatment.

These medical breakthroughs, however, immediately came into conflict with the profit system under which new drugs are researched, developed and sold. When the California-based biotech company Gilead Sciences gained approval for the drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni it priced a course of treatment at $84,000 and $94,500, respectively.

Gilead Sciences acquired Sovaldi after it purchased the Georgia-based biotech company Pharmasset in 2012 for $11.2 billion. Pharmasset itself was founded in 1998 by researchers at Emory University who signed licensing agreements to acquire drug candidates discovered by university scientists.

According to a Senate report released in 2015, Pharmasset had initially planned on selling Sovaldi for $36,000 for a course of treatment. While Gilead believed that their acquisition of Pharmasset would be profitable if they priced Sovaldi at $65,000 per course of treatment, it ultimately settled on a price $20,000 higher.

As a result of the exorbitant drug prices, spending on HCV treatments has placed a significant strain on medical providers and insurers, limited patient access, and resulted in the rationing of HCV treatments, especially among vulnerable populations such as prison inmates.

Bankruptcy judge approves sale of Sears to former CEO Edward Lampert for $5.2 billion

Jacob Crosse

New York federal bankruptcy judge, Robert Drain, has agreed to sell Sears Holding Corporation’s remaining assets to current Sears Chairman and notorious asset stripper, Edward Lampert, for $5.2 billion.

The deal to sell Sears to Lampert’s hedge fund, ESL investments, was made on Thursday, January 7. The offer includes an $885 million cash payment. ESL will also assume $1.3 billion worth of liabilities, which include customers’ warranties and $621 million in “senior debt.” The billionaire grifter Lampert sold his plan to Judge Drain as an opportunity to “save jobs.”

Not all of the details of the sale have been released. Prior to approving the sale, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) had objected to Lampert’s offer. The PBGC is the US government agency that insures roughly 37 million workers’ pensions. In a statement filed in court before the sale, the PBGC stated that it could be liable for up to 90,000 Kmart and Sears employee pension plans, which have been underfunded by $1.4 billion.

The PBGC was created to “protect” the pension benefits of Americans in private-sector plans. The agency is not taxpayer-funded; instead it derives funding from insurance premiums and, in Sears’ case, it negotiated deals in which the PBGC would receive royalty payments from sales generated from Kenmore appliance and DieHard battery brands. These two former Sears exclusive brands have already been split off by Lampert from Sears.

Lampert, who roomed with current US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin while they were both at Yale, acquired Kmart through his hedge fund, ESL Investments, in 2003. Following the acquisition of Kmart, Lampert purchased Sears, and formed Sears Holding Corp. in 2005. By the time Sears filed for bankruptcy in October 2018, Lampert personally owned a 31 percent stake in Sears and his hedge fund owned another 18 percent stake.

Under Lampert’s 13-year vampiric reign, Sears Holding Corp. has tumbled from $53 billion in operating revenue in 2006 to less than $17 billion in 2017. Over 4,000 stores have been closed, and approximately 200,000 have been left jobless as Lampert has sold off Kmart and Sears’ most valuable brands and real estate, siphoning stolen assets for his benefit.

As the “retail apocalypse” has left millions of workers without jobs or a reliable pension, Lampert has enriched himself fabulously. He owns multimillion-dollar homes in Florida, Connecticut, and Colorado, in addition to a 288-foot-long $130 million yacht, named “The Fountainhead” after the Ayn Rand novel.

One example of financial chicanery that Lampert has engaged in while “leading” Sears involved loading up the retailer with debt, then charging interest payments. In order to keep the retailer operating as Lampert stripped away its value, Lampert and his connected hedge funds lent the company millions of dollars. Lampert, through ESL and a related hedge fund called JPP, own approximately $2.66 billion in Sears debt. By having Judge Drain approve the sale of Sears to ESL, Lampert will still be able to collect interest payments on this debt, which is estimated to be between $200 to $225 million per year.

While Lampert stands to gain more from the sale compared to any of Sears’ remaining creditors, (Lampert is the largest creditor), Lampert’s lawyers positioned their offer to Judge Drain as an opportunity to save up to “50,000 jobs” and keep up to 450 stores open. If the sale had not been approved, Sears could have been forced to liquidate altogether.

Even before the sale was complete, the 50,000 jobs figure has already been walked back to 45,000. Whatever number is touted by Lampert or ESL of jobs that will allegedly be saved is a lie. As part of the sale, ESL investments will continue to close stores, with many industry analysts projecting that at the most, 250 stores will remain operating after the first post-bankruptcy cuts, with other analysts suggesting only 200 stores would remain open.

However, even if all of the 425 stores were to remain open, the math to reach 45,000 jobs still does not add up. Sears headquarters, located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, once employed between 3,000 and 4,000 people. Forbes reports now that less than 1,000 work at the complex. Even if another 4,000 employees were scattered throughout the country in various warehouses, IT departments or off-site logistic operations, that would still leave about 40,000 employees in 450 stores, or nearly 90 employees per store.

While Sears stores are often physically larger than other big box retailers, such as Walmart or Shopko, anyone who has worked in or visited a Sears recently can attest that it would be a stretch to assume that even 50 employees work at each store, much less 75 or even 90.

Despite Lampert’s lies and his years of deliberate enrichment of himself above all other concerns, Judge Drain justified his decision to hand what remains of the company back to ESL, writing that “the execution risk for this transaction, when one considers the alternative...is reasonable to take.”

There is nothing reasonable about what has been allowed to transpire for the last 13 years. Sears employees, similar to autoworkers, Amazon employees, or teachers, have been left at the mercy of parasitic financial robber barons. Their fate and ability to survive is decided in faraway courtrooms by “impartial” judges serving capitalist interests. However, as courageous workers in Matamoros and in Detroit have shown by taking the first steps in forming rank-and-file committees to coordinate a fight back, the working class is going to make itself heard.

Thousands attend right-wing, anti-Catalan protest in Madrid

Alejandro López

On Sunday, tens of thousands of people joined a protest called by Spain’s main right-wing parties in Madrid’s Plaza de Colon. The Popular Party (PP), Citizens, and the far-right Vox party had chartered hundreds of buses to bring right-wing supporters from across Spain, calling to “throw out” social-democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez over his talks with the Catalan nationalists.

Between 20,000 and 45,000 people attended the protest, listening to speeches from right-wing politicians. Also participating were groups like the neo-Nazi Hogar Social (Social Home); the Spanish Falange; España 2000; and Spain’s main police union, the United Police Union. The role of this last organisation underscores the critical role of the state machine in promoting the protest and the broader rise of neo-fascistic, anti-Catalan agitation.

The protest took place days before 12 Catalan secessionist leaders go to trial tomorrow, facing up to 25 years in prison on charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds for organizing the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. However, Sánchez’s minority Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) government relies on Podemos and the Catalan nationalists support in parliament to try to pass its budget this week.

Earlier in the week, PP and Citizens backed by right-wing media started to agitate in support of the demonstration and—as polls show the PP and Citizens placed to do well if elections proceed—of potentially bringing down the PSOE government over the budget. PP leader Pablo Casado accused Sánchez of “high treason” for discussing the budget with Catalan separatists. He said Sánchez “is committing a criminal act, he is a criminal [acting] against the very democratic continuity of Spanish democracy,” comparing Sánchez to a drug trafficker.

Citizens leader Albert Rivera called for “defending the Constitution beyond ideologies or acronyms.” He added, “We must stop Sanchez in the streets.”

The pretext for the protest was the PSOE government’s decision to include a “mediator” in planned cross-party talks aimed at creating a dialogue with the Catalan nationalists. The PSOE’s decision was part of its attempt to gain the nationalists’ support in the upcoming budget vote, after pro-independence lawmakers earlier this week announced they could block Spain’s 2019 budget. The “mediator” was a longstanding demand of the Catalan nationalists.

Soon after, Casado told Spain’s EFE news agency that appointing a mediator was Spain’s “gravest event” since the failed coup attempt of February 23, 1981—when more than 200 Civil Guards armed with submachine guns held parliament and the cabinet hostage for 18 hours. Casado called Sanchez “the greatest traitor to the historical continuity of Spanish democracy” and a “felon,” while calling his government illegitimate.

Casado’s comments prompted PSOE Finance Minister María Jesús Montero, who said his language was “reminiscent of the [Spanish] Civil War.”

PSOE politicians also attacked Sánchez over the issue, however. Castilla-La Mancha regional premier Emiliano García-Page said Sánchez has to “play his role, defending the Constitution,” while Aragón regional premier Javier Lambán said “approving a budget does not justify concessions that put the Constitution, the unity of Spain, the Rule of Law or decency in question.”

The holding of such a far-right protest in Spain, which still had a fascist government barely four decades ago, well in living memory, is a warning to the working class. The right-wing and neo-fascistic parties do not have mass support and depend on backing directly from the state machine. However, events are confirming the assessment made by the World Socialist Web Sitethat the Spanish ruling elite is seizing on the 2017 Catalan referendum to drastically restructure political life and move towards authoritarian forms of rule.

All Spain’s major capitalist parties fear the growing opposition and strike activity in the working class and youth, internationally and across Europe. As the largely working class “yellow vest” movement brings President Emmanuel Macron’s government to its knees in neighbouring France, and hundreds of thousands protest the far-right government in Italy, strike activity is surging in the Spanish working class.

In January alone, there were 49 strikes according to Spain’s business federation (CEOE), which caused 2.9 million working hours lost. According to the CEOE’s calculations, as compared to the same month last year, the number of workers participating in strikes increased by 622 percent and the amount of hours lost by strikes increased by 575 percent. This was due in large part to a nationwide taxi strike.

No political organisation in Spain speaks for the growing opposition to the PSOE government in the working class, however. What predominates in what passes for the “left” are the pseudo-left politics of Podemos and its various petty-bourgeois allies, and Catalan and Basque nationalist parties. They are state parties largely oriented to the PSOE, however, and all fear rising social opposition in the working class far more than they fear the rising influence of far-right and authoritarian forces.

These forces, like the PSOE itself in government, are all adapting to and helping oversee the drive to austerity and police-state rule. Yesterday, Sánchez said he “respected” the demonstration but demanded “loyalty” from PP and Citizens. Sánchez then recalled that the PSOE loyally supported the PP government of Mariano Rajoy when it sent in the paramilitary police against the Catalan independence referendum—to smash polling stations, suspend Catalan self-government, and jail Catalan politicians as political prisoners on charges of sedition and rebellion.

Before the demonstration, Deputy PM Carmen Calvo had tried to placate the right wing, lamely claiming that what the PSOE calls a “rapporteur” is “not a mediator.” She added that the person would be “someone who can take notes, who can call us to the meetings, who can coordinate.”

By Friday, the PSOE government announced it was backing down. Calvo said talks with Catalan separatist parties over the budget were off, and that Madrid would make no more proposals. “This government made a firm decision to build as many bridges as possible, but right now the framework we have created is not being accepted by the pro-independence parties,” said Calvo.

“Without a budget, the political term gets cut short,” she added, warning that if on Wednesday the Catalan nationalist vetoed the budget in parliament, this could trigger early elections.

Podemos has also only emboldened the right. It was the chief architect in the installation of the PSOE in government last year, adapting itself to Sánchez’s continued threats against the Catalan nationalists. Now, as the PSOE debates whether or not to call snap elections, Podemos is desperately clinging to its budget agreement with the PSOE, Público wrote, to show it can “influence the PSOE to the left.”

Events are also yet again exposing the bankruptcy of the Catalan nationalists, who also helped install the PSOE minority government.

Catalan President Quim Torra asked Sánchez on Sunday to “reconsider” dialogue with the Catalan nationalists. “We wait for him at the table to talk,” Torra offered.

The Catalan nationalists reportedly only threatened to veto the budget in an attempt to strengthen their negotiating position and did not expect the PSOE to break talks. The daily La Vanguardia noted that the Catalan nationalists “had calculated that there was time until Monday or Tuesday to continue negotiating, since the budget is on Wednesday.” Now it appears that the PSOE is staking the survival of its government on an attempt to compel the Catalan nationalists to support its austerity budget even as the PSOE continues to jail Catalan nationalist political prisoners.

Chinese authorities extract forced confessions from student activists

Navin Dewage

Over the past month, Chinese authorities have intensified their crackdown on student labour activists from elite universities, about 50 of whom have been detained. Many are members of the Jasic Workers Solidarity Group, which last year had supported workers seeking to establish an independent union at the Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen.

The Financial Times reported late last month that students had been shown video clips of detained students, purportedly admitting to attempting to “subvert the state” or maintaining contact with foreign journalists. All of the statements have the character of confessions extracted under psychological duress and possibly physical torture.

The students appearing in the video, who have already been in the custody for half a year, include Yue Xin, Gu Jiayue, Zheng Yongming and Shen Mengyu. All of them have a history of pro-labour activism. Gu and Zheng were arrested November 2017 for holding “Maoist discussion groups.”

In the video, Gu declared that she had been victimised by “the radical left-wing theories” due to her “lack of knowledge of Chinese society.” She further stated that “under the police education” she had been able to correct her views.

Zheng confessed to creating a web site “to spread and sensationalise some negative and sensitive events in the society, thus to arise intense discontent among the masses of various classes against the society, against the government, in order to promote our radical left-wing ideas and enlarge our mass basis for it.”

According to the Financial Times, friends of the detainees said the statements appeared to be forced, with one commenting that the students looked so unnatural they thought they had been “drugged.” “Their expressions are dull and their faces colourless, and seem partly swollen,” said one friend. “It makes you wonder what kind of treatment they were receiving inside [the prison].”

Other students condemned the authorities for producing the video. The New York Times reported online posts such as: “Do not use confession videos to cover up your sins; you can’t imagine that people will give up the fight because of a video.”

In July last year, workers at Jasic Technology, which manufactures welding equipment, took industrial action against poor working conditions and abusive management. They sought to establish a trade union independent of the ACFTU, the state-run union that functions as a police force to suppress any opposition by workers.

This struggle, to which management responded by beating up and sacking militant workers, won support from students. Groups of students travelled to Shenzhen to solidarise themselves with the workers’ demonstrations. Some students were intercepted and turned back, while others were detained in police raids on their boarding places.

Families of detained students have been warned by police not to contact foreign media or hire lawyers. One of their friends told Reuters: “There has been no news of these classmates since they went missing in August. Neither families nor lawyers have been allowed to see them. Where they are being held, what they have suffered, we don’t have a clue.”

The detentions have been ongoing, with some students arrested at home with their families and others on university campuses. It is evident that university authorities have supported the abductions and are seeking to suppress student activism. Last year the student-based Marxist Society at the prestigious Peking University was reorganised under close supervision by the state apparatus.

On January 20, another group of labour activists were taken into custody by Shenzhen police, under the charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt the public order.”

On January 26, the Jasic Workers Solidarity Group tweeted: “Emergency: Seven students from Peking University and Renming University were once again kidnapped by the political police!”

One of those detained, Peking University student Zhang Ziwei, described others being grabbed by unidentified people. The Wall Street Journal reported that he had sent a video message to friends in which he said he would hear people going door-to-door. “The proletariat doesn’t fear death, much less repression!” he said in the video.

The police-state crackdown on student activists reflects the fear in the Chinese Communist Party apparatus of a political movement of the working class for basic social and democratic rights that challenges the government itself. The growing radicalisation of students and youth is a product of the deep social gulf that exists between the masses of working people and a regime that defends the interest of the super-rich oligarchs that have benefited from the processes of capitalist restoration since 1978.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests that were brutally suppressed by the CCP regime. While the demonstrations began with students calling for democratic rights, workers in Beijing and in other major cities joined in and issued their own class demands in opposition to the growing inflation and job losses that followed the opening up of China to the capitalist market.

Today, the working class has enormously expanded and poses an even greater threat to the CCP. The number of urban workers in China is estimated to be more than 400 million. The China Labour Bulletin last year reported more than 1,000 strikes and protests by workers. The actual figure is undoubtedly far higher.

Students and workers need to take stock of the situation. While activists have demonstrated considerable courage in the face of state repression, some of the students are reportedly seeking to resurrect the bankrupt, nationalist perspective of Maoism, the Chinese variant of Stalinism.

Maoism, however, proved to be a political and economic dead-end that paved the way in the 1970s for capitalist restoration. The only means for winning economic and democratic rights is through a political struggle to unify Chinese workers with their brothers and sisters around the world against capitalism, the global corporations that dominate the world economy and their political defenders. This is the perspective of the international Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International.