Macron publishes platform for European elections calling for EU police state

Alex Lantier 

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron published a column in media and newspapers across Europe, laying out his program for the upcoming European elections of May 23-26.

Coming after he hailed fascist dictator Philippe Pétain last November, and amid mass “yellow vest” protests demanding his removal from office, Macron’s column abandons the threadbare pretense that he is advocating a liberal development policy for Europe. The article, titled “Renewing Europe,” still criticizes nationalism and Brexit and hails the European Union (EU), but it does so in terms virtually indistinguishable from those of the far right. He hails the EU as the ideal framework to build Europe as a world military power and police state defending its external borders.

Pledging to fight “tirelessly” for the EU, he writes: “We have shown that what we were told was unattainable, the creation of a European defence capability and the protection of social rights, was in fact possible. … Europe is not just a market. It is a project. A market is useful, but it should not detract from the need for borders that protect and values that unite.”

Macron and his orientation to the EU were always deeply reactionary. He campaigned on a viciously right-wing platform, advocating harsh austerity, police-state measures and an escalation of militarism including the return to universal military service. Masses of people understood him to be so right-wing that millions of voters—facing a choice between him and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French presidential run-off—boycotted the vote.

Macron’s hailing of the EU as a military power aggressively policing its borders is a signal received loud and clear by neo-fascistic politicians across Europe. Last year, Macron denounced far-right, anti-immigrant Eastern European politicians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as “crazy minds” and denounced their nationalist politics for creating “division” inside Europe. He had also denounced the far-right Italian government of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini as a “leprosy” spreading across the body of European politics.

Yesterday, however, Orban welcomed Macron’s propositions, saying that now that Macron’s column has been published, it is “high time to discuss seriously of Europe’s future.”

Orban emailed a statement to Reuters about Macron’s column, declaring: “This could mark the beginning of a serious European debate. … On details, of course we have different views, but what is far more important than these different views is that this initiative is a good point of departure for a serious and constructive dialog on the future of Europe.”

If Orban is endorsing Macron’s proposals, it is because Macron’s police-state proposals are compatible with the far-right policies pursued by capitalist regimes across Eastern Europe.

On law enforcement, Macron calls for ratcheting up measures targeting immigrants while also deepening police cooperation between the EU member states. He calls for “stringent border controls,” as well as “a common border force and a European asylum office, strict control obligations and European solidarity to which each country will contribute under the authority of a European Council for Internal Security.”

These policies are to be supplemented with a major escalation of EU political censorship. Echoing the campaign of the Democratic Party in the United States blaming Trump’s presidential victory on Russian political meddling, Macron called for a campaign to censor the Internet, ostensibly in response to the threat of unspecified foreign meddling in EU elections.

Macron warns that “foreign powers seek to influence our vote at each election. I propose creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each member state with European experts to protect their election processes against cyber-attacks and manipulation. In this same spirit of independence, we should also ban the funding of European political parties by foreign powers. We should have European rules that banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet, since respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.”

Particularly amid the “yellow vest” protests, whose statements against Macron the media routinely slander as hate speech, this is an open-ended invitation to censor political opposition to EU policy. It would grant extraordinary powers to unelected “European experts” to censor the Internet, on the model of the collaboration between Paris and Facebook, in whose offices French officials work to monitor and suppress content. Significantly, Macron does not even bother to cite an example of electoral meddling in Europe to justify his assertion that these policies are needed.

The other main concern in Macron’s column is the EU’s development as a major military power. He declares that “Europe is not a second-rank power.” He continues, “Substantial progress has been made in the last two years, but we need to set a clear course: a treaty on defence and security should define our fundamental obligations in association with NATO and our European allies: increased defence spending, a truly operational mutual defence clause, and the European Security Council with the United Kingdom on board to prepare our collective decisions.”

Macron also advocates a protectionist policy, proposing “the adoption of European preference in strategic industries and our public procurement, as our American and Chinese competitors do.”

Macron’s claim that this hyper-militarist policy is compatible with social rights and entitlements is a political fraud. In fact, the pledges of hundreds of billions of euros in new military spending made by EU countries in recent years have come overwhelmingly at the expense of the working class, which has suffered a decade of intense EU austerity and public-sector wage freezes since the 2008 Wall Street crash. Amid the greatest economic crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the EU has worked to throw the working class back decades.

Indeed, despite defining the EU as a “historic success” accomplishing “the reconciliation of a devastated continent in an unprecedented project of peace, prosperity and freedom,” Macron admits the EU “failed to respond to its peoples’ needs for protection from the major shocks of the modern world.”

Not only did the Stalinist dissolution of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in 1991 economically and socially devastate much of Eastern Europe, but it set the stage for eastward EU and NATO expansion that have left NATO and Russia on the brink of war. Last year, both Russia and NATO carried out the largest military exercises since the Cold War and, in Russia’s case, since World War II. And at the same time, a wave of strikes and protests against EU wage freezes and austerity has shaken not only France, but Portugal, Belgium, and Germany in recent weeks.

Faced with this growing working class opposition, Macron is reacting by turning to military-police and anti-immigrant rhetoric, in line with the rest of the ruling elite. This is a warning: the ills of the European Union will not be remedied by attempts to rewrite its founding treaties or other panaceas. The only way to deal with a crisis rooted ultimately in the bankruptcy of European and world capitalism is a turn to the working class and a revolutionary struggle to replace the EU with the United Socialist States of Europe.

Alarming levels of toxins leaking into US groundwater from coal ash ponds

Jessica Goldstein

A report released Monday by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and Earth Justice revealed that 91 per cent of the 250 coal-powered power plants in the US have leaked toxic chemicals into local groundwater. The chemicals are leaked by way of ponds and landfills holding coal waste from the power plants.

The report found elevated levels of arsenic, lithium, and chromium in nearby groundwater and were “far higher” than the acceptable limits, or Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs), set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In some cases, toxin levels were hundreds of times above the EPA’s thresholds.

The report is based on publicly available data on the toxicity levels of coal ash dumps. In 2015, the EPA finalized the first federal regulation for the disposal of coal ash, known as the Coal Ash Disposal Regulations. The regulation established groundwater monitoring requirements for coal ash dumps and required power companies to make the data available to the public beginning in March 2018.

Coal ash contains dangerous toxins which are known to cause serious health problems, including cancer and kidney and liver damage. When coal ash seeps into groundwater, it can contaminate the drinking water of all those who live nearby.

The regulation was implemented in the final years of the Obama Administration with language for corrective action which is deliberately vague: “if a constituent of concern is detected above a statistically significant level, that the groundwater protection standard must be set at either the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) or at the background concentration.”

No timelines or procedures are outlined for the cleanup of these highly-contaminated sites, nor is there any indication that fines will be levied against perpetrators. The regulation is written in the interests of the multibillion-dollar coal and coal-power industries.

It is highly unlikely that the Trump administration will do anything to enforce the very loose terms of the regulation. In June 2018, the Trump administration’s EPA decided to effectively gut the enforcement of a law passed in 2016 requiring it to evaluate hundreds of toxic chemicals.

The EPA itself did not comment specifically on Monday’s report, only saying that it was reviewing it. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is himself a former coal lobbyist and former Special Assistant in EPA’s Pollution Prevention and Toxics office under the George H.W. Bush administration. Appointed acting administrator in July 2018, after former Administrator Scott Pruitt stepped down, and finally approved by Congress in February, Wheeler has promised to roll back environmental protections, including determining that it was no longer necessary to regulate mercury emissions from power plants.

The groundwork for the reactionary environmental policies of the Trump administration was laid by the Obama administration. In 2010, Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) attempted to block the EPA’s proposal to designate coal ash as toxic waste. In 2012, extensive coal ash contamination was found in US water supply after the Obama White House announced that it would cut $105 million from the EPA’s funding, and returned no comment on the report after it was released.

The recent EIP report points to another corporate concession in the EPA’s very minimal regulation. The Coal Ash Rule does not regulate older, closed coal ash dumps, although these dumps also contaminate groundwater. According to the report, hundreds of these older ash dumps dot the country, and most coal plants have a mix of both regulated and unregulated ash dumps on their property.

The report found 10 sites across the US to be heavily contaminated by toxins found in coal ash. Many of these sites are near major metropolitan areas:

* One hour south of San Antonio, Texas beside the San Miguel Power Plant, the groundwater beneath a family ranch is contaminated with at least 12 pollutants at concentrations more than 100 times above MCLs, including cadmium (a probable carcinogen, according to EPA) and lithium (which can cause nerve damage).

* An hour northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the New Castle Generating Station, levels of arsenic in the groundwater near the plant’s coal ash dump were found to be 372 times MCLs for drinking.

* Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee, near the Mississippi River, the TVA Allen Fossil Plant has leaked arsenic into the groundwater at 350 times above MCLs and lead at four times above, which threatens the Memphis drinking water supply.

* 19 miles southeast of Washington, D.C., ash from three coal plants has contaminated groundwater with unsafe levels of at least eight pollutants at the Brandywine landfill in Prince George’s County, Maryland, including lithium at more than 200 times above MCLs and molybdenum (which causes kidney and liver damage) at more than 100 times.

* South of Salt Lake City, Utah, the Hunter Power plant has contaminated the groundwater with lithium at concentrations 228 times MCLs and cobalt at 26 times.

* The Ghent Generating Station, northeast of Louisville, Kentucky, has leaked lithium into the groundwater at 154 times above MCLs and radium at 31 times.

The EPA’s limits for MCLs are already generous. That any levels of these toxic substances are considered “acceptable” in soil or drinking water is a major cause for concern. The EPA’s MCLs for toxic compounds found in coal ash include 10 micrograms/L for arsenic (a known carcinogen), 5 micrograms/L for cadmium, 3 milligrams/L for boron and 0.05 milligrams/L for selenium.

The recent history of the crisis of toxic contamination in the United States points to the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and the pseudo-left environmentalists who serve to prop them up politically. The Democrats, no less than the Republicans, have served the interests of the corporations who continue to pollute the planet for profits. Nothing but minimal regulations are introduced, which can be stripped away or averted when business demands it, while budgets are cut to prevent them from being enforced.

The working class suffers the most from the leaking of toxic substances into the water supply. In Kentucky and Flint, Michigan, workers have spoken out against the years of environmental abuse by the corporations, aided and abetted by both Republicans and Democrats, that have left thousands of workers without clean water. Coal miners in the US and throughout the world face serious threats to their health, such as black lung disease, because of the cost-cutting strategies of the corporations to produce more and more profit in the face of growing competition.

The fight for the basic right to clean water and an environment free of chemical pollutants raises fundamental political questions. These basic rights will not be guaranteed under a system in which the corporations get to make the decisions that affect the lives of the vast majority of the population based on their own profit interests. These corporations are allowed to pollute the earth with the help of the two main political parties in the United States. Workers must understand that these parties are their class enemies and will never fight for their demands for a clean environment.

A socialist solution is needed to the crisis. Workers in the energy industry across the country must form rank-and-file committees to take their industry into their own hands and out of the hands of the global corporations, and reach out to workers worldwide to advance their struggle. The energy industry must be democratically controlled, based on fulfilling the interests of the international working class, not the profits of the corporate oligarchs.

US detains 77,000 immigrants at border in February, a 10 year high

Norisa Diaz

The Trump administration announced Tuesday that 77,000 people were detained crossing the border in February, more than any month since 2009.

While the bourgeois press has treated the announcement as though it supports Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border, in reality the figures testify to the extent of the devastation wreaked by US imperialism on the Central American countries from which these masses of workers and peasants are trying to escape.

The fact that so many people journeyed across the border in one of the coldest months even as Trump was announcing his border crackdown shows the risks these impoverished people are willing to confront in their desperate escape from countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

The Trump administration’s fascistic crackdown on immigrants expanded Friday along the southern border in New Mexico, where Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended 180 immigrants early Tuesday.

The group was comprised primarily of Central American families and unaccompanied children near Sunland Park, New Mexico. One pregnant woman in the group had to be rushed to the hospital upon detention after experiencing intense abdominal pain. Last week, a young pregnant woman miscarried in detention.

Compounding the total number of apprehensions at the border are the large scale sweeps and workplace raids which continue to escalate throughout the country.

The number of businesses targeted for worksite investigations has increased by over 300 percent in the last year alone. In 2018, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) opened 6,848 worksite investigations compared to 1,691 in 2017, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) news release. Newsweek reported that since 2016, there has been a 650 percent surge in workplace arrests by ICE.

Last April, over 100 workers were detained at a Tennessee meatpacking plant. Earlier this year, in January, ICE arrested over 200 in a North Carolina raid.

The majority of those arrested throughout sweeps were from Mexico. However, arrestees also included citizens of Honduras, Venezuela, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Iran, Nigeria, Korea, the Philippines, Romania and the United Kingdom.

Throughout the nationwide mass raids, ICE agents have illegally posed as customers, day laborers and painters to deceive and detain workers. Immigrants and advocates have noted that workers and their communities are increasingly utilizing social media to alert each other of enforcement operations, sightings and checkpoints.

In response to recent lawsuits filed against ICE for the April 2018 raid of nearly 100 immigrants at a Tennessee meatpacking plant, an ICE spokesperson told NBC News that “ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division equally focused enforcement efforts on employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers as well as those employees.”

“The Southeastern Provision case was always a federal criminal investigation that also resulted in administrative immigration arrests,” the spokesperson said. “To describe the operation as an immigration enforcement action is inaccurate; it was a federal criminal investigation that also resulted in immigration arrests.”

This demagogy does not mask the reality of the workplace raids which target the working class. The increased militarization of workplaces across America takes place amid the resurgence of the class struggle as exemplified by the movement of factory workers in Matamoros, Mexico, and the worldwide teacher rebellions.

Ellen Holmes Brandis, a Spanish teacher at Riverside High School in Durham, North Carolina, created a petition to protest last month’s mass raid of over 100. “This is an extra load on both the school professionals and the families affected,” wrote Brandis.

“Students should be enjoying their childhood, having fun learning new things at school, not suffering extreme duress due to ICE. It’s ripping our community apart in many ways, and it’s not only our immigrant students. It’s all students. Our non-immigrant students are frightened for their friends.”

The day after the April 2018 raid in Tennessee, the largest workplace immigration raid in a decade, NBC reported that 600 children from the district missed school. Jessica Bailiff, a physics teacher, said that when her absent students returned, “There’s just fear and sadness written all over their faces.”

Immigrants are on the front lines of the attack on the democratic rights of the working class. Prison detention centers have been erected where immigrants can be indefinitely detained, the constitutional rights to birthright citizenship are under attack, and ICE functions as a modern day Gestapo force striking fear in the entire population.

Meanwhile the numbers of abuses and deaths by both ICE agents and CBP officials continues to rise. In the past four years at least 10 cases of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping or rape at the hands of CBP agents have come to light primarily in the South Texas region. According to government records reviewed by the Daily Beast, the number of women who have suffered miscarriages while in ICE custody nearly doubled from ten in 2016 to eighteen in 2017.

Supporters of immigrants have also been politically targeted. This past month four defendants from No More Deaths in Arizona were convicted by federal authorities for “littering in the desert” by leaving water and life saving aid in the Sonoran Desert.

UK councils and Tory government play down homeless numbers

Tom Pearce

Homelessness and rough sleeping have reached record levels in the UK after a decade of austerity. Nearly 600 people died on the streets in 2017.

The number of people sleeping rough has grown 169 percent over the decade, with experts warning the death toll is set to rise.

Further analysis of the 2017 statistics reveals a connection between deaths among homeless people and the most deprived areas of the UK. Deaths of homeless people were nine times higher in deprived areas of England than in the least disadvantaged areas. The figures show 497 homeless deaths recorded across England and Wales in the most deprived areas, compared to 56 in the least deprived.

A study carried out in 2018 by the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (Feantsa) found that for some of the lowest earners in Britain, the cost of a home has risen faster than anywhere else in Western Europe. Freek Spinnewijn, the director of Feantsa, said, “Housing exclusion and homelessness have taken on dramatic proportions in the UK.”

There were an estimated 21 deaths in Manchester, 18 in Birmingham, 17 each in Bristol, Lambeth (in London) and Liverpool and 15 in Camden (in London) in 2017. Camden, along with Birmingham and Manchester, have all recorded at one time the highest amount of homeless deaths in the past five years.

Ben Humberstone, head of health analysis for the Office for National Statistics, told the BBC, “The figures show that the deprivation level of an area has a real impact. Many more people die homeless in the most deprived areas of England and Wales and 95 percent of the deaths are in urban areas rather than rural areas.”

It is likely that the scale of fatalities is larger, considering that the ONS figures are for deaths registered rather than deaths occurring in each year since 2013. The Local Government Association, which represents councils in England and Wales, said that preventing these deaths was becoming increasingly difficult as homelessness services face a funding shortfall of £100 million next year.

The lack of such basic services is not simply due to tens of billions of pounds in central government austerity cuts, but the implementation of those cuts by the Labour Party who run local authorities in every major town and city in the UK.

The Conservative government has put aside just £1.2 billion for homeless services. Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said, “Councils have used this funding to create an additional 1,750 beds and 500 rough sleeping support staff—and figures published last month show this investment is already starting to have an effect.”

The statistics Brokenshire refers to—showing a reduction in rough sleepers—cannot be trusted. The method for reporting on homeless numbers by councils has changed significantly in the wake of government initiatives, meaning that Labour and Tory councils are playing down the homelessness crisis.

The statistics trumpeted by the government show a fall in homelessness for the first time in seven years. But this is belied by the situation seen by millions of people who cannot walk down any high street in Britain without witnessing the homeless living rough.

Figures released last week show that in 2018 a total of 4,677 people “slept rough” in England, a 2 percent decrease (74 people) on 2017. However, overall homelessness is still on the rise—with an increase of 165 percent (2,909 people) from 2010.

The lower figures showing the 2 percent drop is because instead of making estimates provided by an array of agencies working in the field, councils now make street counts on a single night of the year.

The Guardian reviewed the figures, finding that “more than 30 councils switched from submitting an estimate to a street count from 2017 to 2018, with some councils reporting reductions in rough sleeping of up to 85 percent.”

This percentage figure refers to Southend-on-Sea, which registered a reduction in rough sleeping from 2017 to 2018 (from 72 to 11 people) as a result of the changed method of counting.

In Brighton and Hove, the official number for rough sleepers fell from 178 to 64 people (64 percent) in 12 months due to the single night count method. Even a Brighton Conservative councillor, Robert Nemeth, said, “Physically counting produces lower figures as it will always be the case that not every rough sleeper can be found on any given night. This happened in November 2018 when the count was conveniently carried out when it was snowing. It produced a figure that was under half of what the city’s rough-sleeping campaigners estimated as the real number.”

Other local authorities reporting huge decreases in homeless cases after switching their method to a street count include Redbridge, Eastbourne, Medway, Worthing, Thanet, Exeter, Basildon, Ipswich, Warwick and Gloucester.

Even so, in the top 10 local authorities from the previous year, only Brighton and Hove and the City of Bristol showed a decrease in the number of rough sleepers. All the inner London boroughs—except Tower Hamlets and Lewisham, which showed a fall in numbers, and Kensington and Chelsea, which showed no change—showed an increase. Overall the numbers of rough sleepers have increased year on year in the Inner London Boroughs since 2010.

That what is taking place is deliberate misrepresentation is supported by the fact that several local authorities were “advised” to change their methods by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This came after councils received money through the Rough Sleeper Initiative—a short-term fund aimed at reducing rough sleeping in the most affected areas.

The “targeted” fund launched in March last year is worth just £30 million for 2018 to 2019 “for local authorities with high levels of rough sleeping.” But success is measured according to whether the councils in receipt show reductions pointing to “the government’s ongoing work to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027.”

Algerian protests continue after Bouteflika launches presidential bid

Will Morrow

Protests erupted in Algiers and other major Algerian cities on Sunday night and early Monday, after the state announced that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika will defy mass demonstrations demanding his removal. The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) will run Bouteflika to secure a fifth term.

One of the protests in Algeria last Friday

Sunday night was the deadline for all candidates to submit their candidacies. Bouteflika’s aides waited until the last day to submit the papers on his behalf. The 82-year-old, who has been in power since 1999, is allegedly receiving medical treatment in Switzerland. He has been rarely seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, and no longer appears publicly. The Algerian ambassador to France was compelled to give assurances to an interviewer on the CNews network yesterday that, “Of course, he is still alive.”

A message from Bouteflika was read out on national television on Sunday evening in an attempt to limit the spread of protests. It pledged that if elected, Bouteflika would remain in office for only one year and then call new elections, which he would not contest. Different factions of the regime, which rests on the military and intelligence service, aim to select a successor in consultation with the imperialist powers.

Bouteflika’s letter included an implicit threat, saluting “the national popular army for its mobilization in all circumstances in the accomplishment of its constitutional mission.” In an attempt to placate growing working-class opposition, it made an empty pledge to “rapidly put in place public policies guaranteeing a more equitable redistribution of national wealth and the elimination of marginalization and social exclusion.”

The announcement triggered protests late Sunday, particularly by student youth who have been at the centre of demonstrations since February 22. In Algiers, Tlemcen, Ghardaia and other cities, demonstrators chanted, “Bouteflika, there will be no fifth mandate.” Police closed down metro stations in Algiers, and riot police used water cannon to disperse students marching from the University of Science and Technology to the constitutional council building.

Protests have escalated over the past two weeks, leading to demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of people last Friday. At this point, the protests are of a socially heterogeneous character; slogans are mainly directed at the removal of Bouteflika, though they are fueled by anger over immense social inequality in a country of 40 million people.

The great fear in the ruling class is that the protests will coalesce into a broader working-class movement raising social demands against widespread unemployment, poverty and social inequality. Social conditions in Algeria are explosive. The median age is 28, and youth unemployment is over 25 percent. The protests have been organized almost entirely through social media and were not called initially by any political party.

Millions of youth, including university graduates, have no prospect of a decent future, and thousands have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe in search of a better life. Meanwhile, a layer of billionaires and multimillionaires with close ties to the regime has continued to enrich itself.

An unconnected protest had earlier been called for today by a front organization for the agri-food and retail giant Cevital, headed by billionaire Issad Rebrab, exploiting anger over unemployment to demand lifting of government restrictions on Cevital’s operations in the Kabilya region. A previous protest last December drew thousands. Yesterday, however, Cevital said it was cancelling the protest, fearing that any reference to social issues was dangerous and explosive.

Cevital’s statement said that “this is not the time for sectoral demands,” adding that the demand for “regime change” must be the “sole and unique slogan” of the ongoing protests.

The mouthpieces of European imperialism are increasingly nervous that the situation in Algeria is spinning out of their control. In France, which ruled brutally over the country until 1962, Le Monde published an editorial yesterday after the government’s announcement titled, “Abdelaziz Bouteflika: too little, too late.” It argued that Bouteflika could not afford to wait a year to appoint a successor and must step down now to preserve the regime—minus its figurehead.

Le Monde noted that “the hundreds of thousands of Algerians who have taken to the streets have so far done so with a remarkable restraint,” while police “clearly received orders not to respond with blind repression.” Algeria, it said, “is holding its breath. It is rare in such a situation for such a responsible attitude to last.” While not making public statements, French President Emmanuel Macron has mobilized his entire diplomatic machine to monitor the Algerian crisis.

The Macron government is deeply fearful over the impact of protests within France and its large Algerian immigrant population. Thousands protested in French cities on Sunday in solidarity with protests in Algeria, including 6,000 in Paris, amid seething anger in the French working class over social inequality expressed in ongoing “yellow vest” protests. The great fear of the French ruling class is of a movement uniting workers and youth in France and northern Africa.

Immense geostrategic interests are at stake. Algeria has northern Africa’s largest proven reserves of gas, and total gas production last year was the highest in Africa. It is Europe’s third-biggest gas supplier, after Russia and Norway, providing Spain with half of its demand.

The French state relies upon Algeria to conduct its wars and reconnaissance operations across north and western Africa. European governments also rely on the Bouteflika regime in their criminal efforts to prevent migrants fleeing conditions created by wars and imperialist oppression in Africa from reaching Europe.

In the past two years, auto giants including Peugeot-Citroen, Toyota and Volkswagen have set up assembly plants in Algeria and Morocco in anticipation of growing auto production in Africa. France in particular has voiced concern over rising Chinese economic ties with the Algerian government. China is now the largest importer from and exporter to Algeria.

The Algerian government faces deepening economic problems rooted in the world capitalist crisis. The nationalist program of the bourgeois National Liberation Front (FLN) that took power after the defeat of French colonialism in the 1954-1962 Algerian war has been unable to resolve any of the problems resulting from Algeria’s historic oppression by imperialism.

For 20 years, high world commodity prices permitted the government to fund very limited housing, healthcare and food subsidies to avert a social explosion, even as inequality grew. But oil and gas revenues, making up over 90 percent of Algerian exports, collapsed from $74 billion in 2007 to $24 billion in 2017, as oil prices fell after 2014. Last year, the government pledged to slash subsidies, pulling back last November in the face of mass outrage.

The regime is relying on the utterly servile character of the official bourgeois “opposition” to suppress revolutionary sentiments of the working class and oppressed masses. The Workers Party (PT), led by Louisa Hanoune, which is presented as a far-left opponent of the regime, has backed the FLN for decades. In 2014, the PT opposed calls for Bouteflika not to stand in the last elections.

The PT announced today it would boycott the April elections. It is concerned that standing would expose it too openly, under conditions where it is unclear whether the elections will actually take place, and where Bouteflika’s candidacy is opposed by French imperialism.

Echoing the line of Le Monde, Hanoune warned the regime that Bouteflika’s resignation was “the only solution to avoid the impasse.” She said that if the “partisans of the status quo are so stubborn as to submit the candidacy of Bouteflika, nothing can foretell the future consequences and the reactions of the majority.”

Guaidó returns to Venezuela for next stage of US regime-change operation

Bill Van Auken 

Self-proclaimed “interim president” Juan Guaidó returned to Venezuela after an 11-day absence Monday, escorted into the country by a phalanx of Western diplomats, including the ambassadors of the US, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil and several other countries.

In advance of his return, Washington issued threats of retaliation against any attempt by Venezuelan authorities to apprehend Guaidó, who violated an order of Venezuela’s supreme court barring him from leaving the country after state prosecutors announced the initiation of a criminal investigation into the right-wing opposition operative’s involvement in the US-orchestrated coup.

US National Security Adviser John Bolton warned that any interference with Washington’s Venezuelan puppet would provoke “a strong and significant response” from the US.

Similarly, US Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that any action taken against Guaidó would “not be tolerated & will be met with a swift response.”

After leaving the Simon Bolivar airport, Guaidó was driven to a rally in eastern Caracas, the wealthy district of Venezuela’s capital, where he told a crowd of supporters that the fact that he was not arrested upon arrival was proof that the Venezuelan security forces were not obeying the orders of President Nicolas Maduro’s government. “The chain of command is broken,” he said.

He directed much of his speech to the military, demanding that it not “stand idly by” and ordered them to arrest armed supporters of the Maduro government organized in so-called colectivos based in the poorer neighborhoods of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities.

Guaidó left Venezuela on February 22 to lead the Trojan Horse “humanitarian aid” operation organized by Washington. Both he and his US backers had promoted an attempt the next day to forcibly crash through the Venezuelan border from Colombia with a handful of trucks carrying food and other supplies stockpiled by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as the event that would bring down the Maduro government, forcing the military to turn against it.

Nothing of the kind took place. The “aid” convoys were easily blocked, while clashes between security forces and protesters led to several deaths, concentrated among an indigenous population on Venezuela’s border with Brazil.

The “tidal wave” of aid and millions of supporters that Guaidó had promised failed to materialize. The entire operation was a filthy and cynical propaganda stunt staged by a US government that offered a pittance in terms of food supplies, even as it systematically strangles Venezuela’s economy and impoverishes its population with sweeping sanctions barring the country from the US-dominated financial system and blocking its export of oil.

In his speech in eastern Caracas Monday, Guaidó promised that even more sanctions are to come, but did not provide any details as to their scope.

During his 11 days outside of Venezuela, Guaidó met in Colombia with Pence and the so-called Lima Group, consisting of several Latin American governments along with Canada. He traveled on for meetings with Brazil’s newly installed president, the fascistic former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, as well as the right-wing government of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, and in Paraguay that of Mario Abdo Benítez, a former military officer who has extolled the legacy of the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whom his father served as private secretary. He also went to Ecuador for a meeting with President Lenin Moreno, who is attempting to curry favor with Washington.

Throughout this tour, Guaidó was accompanied by his US “handler,” the State Department’s assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Kimberly Breier, who is described on the department’s website as a “policy expert and intelligence professional with more than 20 years of experience.”

Guaidó, a member of the right-wing party Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party, which has received substantial financial aid from the National Endowment for Democracy and other US agencies, is a creature of US intelligence, groomed for a regime change operation and unknown to the Venezuelan population before he proclaimed himself “interim president” on January 23.

The appeals made by Guaidó to the Venezuelan military, offering a blanket amnesty to anyone who supports his coup and guarantees of their interests, while threatening prosecution of those who fail to do so, have thus far produced few results. The Colombian government and the Venezuelan right-wing opposition claim that some 700 members of the security forces—out of a force of 235,000—have defected, while the Maduro government puts the number at 116.

Guaidó, both before and after the debacle of the “humanitarian aid” stunt of February 23, has appealed openly for a US military intervention to secure the overthrow of the Maduro government. He argued last month that the Venezuelan National Assembly, where he was installed as president in January, was authorized to approve the intervention of an “international force” to “restore the constitutional order and protect the lives of our citizens.” He also invoked the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine used to justify previous imperialist regime-change operations, such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Libya.

The Lima Group has formally rejected military intervention in Venezuela, opting for “diplomatic and financial pressure” to topple the Maduro government.

In a March 1 interview with Patricia Janiot, the anchor of the US Spanish-language television broadcaster Univision, Elliott Abrams, appointed in January as the Trump administration’s special representative for Venezuela, denied that Washington is preparing to use military force, either to topple Maduro or to force through the “humanitarian aid” supplies it has stockpiled on Venezuela’s borders.

Abrams, it should be noted, is a convicted liar, who gave false testimony to the US Congress on the illegal conspiracy to arm and finance the CIA-organized “contra” terrorists who were unleashed upon Nicaragua in the 1980s. He served as the Reagan administration’s point man in justifying and covering up the atrocities of US-backed dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala.

In a Sunday interview with CNN, however, John Bolton gave a full-throated defense of US intervention in Venezuela, declaring, “In this administration we’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine.”

He was referring to the nearly 200-year-old canon of US foreign policy that supposedly endowed Washington with the right to use force in preventing outside powers from establishing a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

Initially invoked as a US policy of opposing any attempt by European empires to re-colonize newly independent countries in Latin America, it was turned into a declaration of a US imperialist sphere of influence and became the rationale for some 50 direct US military interventions in the region along with the fomenting of CIA-backed coups that imposed fascist-military dictatorships over much of the region in the second half of the 20th century.

If this doctrine is being resurrected today against Venezuela, it is because of the close economic and political ties established by Caracas with both Beijing and Moscow. The United States, as Bolton previously acknowledged, is determined to bring the country and its oil wealth—the largest proven reserves in the world—back under the domination of US imperialism and the US-based energy conglomerates.

An indication of Washington’s real intentions was provided by a column published in the Spanish daily El Pais by Hector Schamis, who is an instructor on Latin America at the US School of Foreign Service.

He writes that while “the diplomatic solution would be ideal” in Venezuela, “the problem is that, in politics, the ideal rarely takes place in reality.”

He goes on to state that “without American troops [Yugoslavian president Slobodan] Milosevic would not have gone to the diplomatic negotiating table. Much less would he have died as a prisoner in The Hague in 2006.”

Guaidó has called for anti-government protests on Saturday and announced that he is meeting with leaders of public employee unions today. The union leaderships are seeking to channel the widespread anger of workers over the austerity policies and repressive measures of Maduro’s bourgeois government behind the US imperialist regime-change operation.

The success of this operation would impose a brutal dictatorship of US imperialism and Venezuelan capitalist interests over the masses of working people, leading to far more severe austerity measures and police-state repression.

The desperate crisis created by capitalism in Venezuela and the threat of US military intervention can be countered only by means of the political mobilization of the Venezuelan working class, independently of Maduro’s capitalist government and its trade union stooges. The organization of workers’ assemblies to expropriate foreign and domestic capitalist interests and establish workers’ control over the country’s vast oil wealth must be combined with a struggle to unite the Venezuelan working class with workers throughout the hemisphere to put an end to capitalism.

Warnings of further housing plunge and job losses in Australia

Mike Head 

Dire reports are appearing in Australia’s financial media, away from the view of most of the population, about the state of the economy and its implications, especially for property prices, jobs and the agenda of the next government.

House values could fall by as much as another 25 percent this year, and more than 50,000 construction and retail jobs could be eliminated, according to forecasters. New lending for housing has fallen almost 15 percent since mid-2018.

These fears are interlaced with concerns over the impact of the US-China conflict, the Brexit crisis and global financial volatility.

With a federal election due in May, the corporate elite is denouncing both the fracturing Liberal-National government and the Labor Party opposition for making populist promises in order to buy votes. It is insisting that austerity measures be imposed.

The Australian Financial Review this week highlighted a report by housing market analyst LF Economics, entitled “Let the Bloodbath Begin.” It predicts a worse phase ahead in the bursting of the debt-financed real estate bubble that kept much of Australian capitalism afloat when the mining boom finally imploded in 2012, four years after the global financial crisis.

LF’s baseline prediction is a 15-20 percent average fall in house prices nationally during 2019, although 25 percent is possible, accelerating the 6 percent drop since the 2017 peak. The report lists 18 factors putting pressure on the markets, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, the country’s two largest cities.

One factor is $120 billion worth of interest-only loans, promoted by the predatory banks during the boom, now transitioning to full principal and interest loans by 2021. Heavily-indebted households and over-committed investors face increases of 20 to 50 percent in their mortgage repayments, combined with falling property values, heightening the risks of “considerable financial stress.”

The next five factors relate to a growing credit crunch and changes in the way banks operate following a financial services royal commission into rapacious lending practices and other abuses. The changes include tougher criteria and expense verification on loan applications, producing a rising rate of mortgage rejections.

LF’s other factors include “foreign buyer exodus,” “class action lawsuits” over shoddy construction, “criminal prosecutions” for unsafe buildings, and Labor’s proposed cuts to investors’ tax subsidies.

Along with falling rental income, particularly in Sydney, and construction defects in “off the plan” apartment blocks such as Sydney’s Opal Tower, the market is moving into the “third stage” of a five-stage bubble-bursting process, LF said.

The first two stages surround price falls and cancelled projects while the third stage refers to a deflation of property prices falling past “thresholds that owners are comfortable with.”

Stage four is when a recession starts. Banks suffer a profit “wipe-out,” residential construction comes to a “grinding halt,” properties go unsold as mortgage defaults and unemployment rise. The mindset is “we’re doomed.”

The final stage is when the property market finds its “floor.” Banks have been bailed out or nationalised but credit availability is still limited. Cashed-up buyers or private funds buy distressed debt and dwellings at discounted rates.

Not all corporate analysts agree with this doomsday scenario, but most forecast a further house price fall this year of at least 8 percent, taking the total drop to around 14 percent.

This is a sharp reversal from the 50 to 70 percent rise from 2012 to 2017 that enabled households, hit by falling real wages, to borrow money on the back of higher property values, sending their average debt levels to almost double their income.

In some parts of Australia, house prices have dropped further already. Prices in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, a mining boom state, have fallen 17.8 percent since they peaked four years ago.

The dramatic fall off in foreign buying of housing was confirmed by Foreign Investment Review Board figures showing offshore demand has all but disappeared. UBS analysts said the market had gone from a “super boom,” capped by a record $72 billion in 2015-16, to approvals collapsing by 83 percent over two years to $12.5 billion in 2017-18.

This is another indicator of Australian capitalism’s vulnerability to global turmoil, on top of the feared fallout from the Trump administration’s trade and economic war against China, Australia’s largest single export market.

With total construction work already down in the last quarter of 2018 by 2.6 percent from the same period in 2017, UBS is predicting that 50,000 jobs will be lost in the building industry over the next six months. Analysts are also warning of further retail jobs to go, amid a growing list of retail chain bankruptcies and store closures, sending the official jobless rate up from 5.0 to 5.5 percent by the end of the year.

Such a rise would mean another 67,350 jobless, taking the total above 740,000, even on the seriously understated Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates. “Underemployment,” currently at 8.1 percent, would likely rise as well as more workers are forced into lower-paid temporary, casual and part-time employment.

These conditions are generating ruling class demands for further measures to slash social spending and boost corporate profits.

Treasury Secretary Philip Gaetjens this week told a Senate Estimates committee that falling housing prices could further impact stagnating consumer spending, exacerbating the risks facing the Australian economy as global economic momentum faltered amid a US-China trade conflict.

Gaetjens declared that with “new downside economic risks emerging” both locally and abroad, it was “vital” for the government that “fiscal discipline be maintained to ensure Australia has budget headroom to be adequately prepared for any adverse surprises.”

A series of Australian Financial Review editorials this week focused on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) projection of continued stagnation in real incomes per person and falling living standards for the next six years, on top of a six-year decline since 2012.

According to the IMF, incomes adjusted for inflation would average just 0.3 percent growth a year through to 2024, well below the long-term average of 1.8 percent since the 1960s. But even this figure grossly underestimates the impact on working class households, because it is an average that includes company profits and dividends.

Mining export prices have recovered somewhat since 2016, and company profits have soared, but wages have remained suppressed, with the trade unions keeping workers straitjacketed via union-employer workplace agreements.

On February 25, the financial newspaper featured a column by Craig Emerson, a cabinet minister in the last Labor government of 2007 to 2013, insisting: “The party that wins the coming election will have its work cut out for it if the IMF’s projections about material living standards are any guide.

“Shirking hard decisions in favour of populism will, ironically, fail to gain popular support, as workers continue to struggle on flat wages in a slowing domestic and global economy.”

This is a warning that a Labor Party-led government will be committed to implementing the dictates of the financial markets, regardless of Labor’s pre-election rhetoric of “fairness.”

A February 26 Australian Financial Review editorial issued seven demands of an incoming government, supposedly to reboot “the hard-won productivity reforms of the 1980s and 1990s”—a reference to the pro-market restructuring enforced by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments and their trade union partners.

The demands included slashing company and income taxes to “globally uncompetitive” rates, and “shifting the tax base” to the Goods and Services Tax, which hits working class households the most.

Also on the list were measures to prevent industry-wide wage rises and “excessive minimum wage or penalty rates” and an avoidance of a regulatory “overreaction” to the financial services royal commission. Such a “lapse into anti-business populism” would “heedlessly damage companies and wealth creators.”

The editorial concluded by calling for a return to the “resolve” displayed by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. These comments reveal the anxiety haunting the capitalist class—that falling living conditions and deepening inequality will fuel a working class rebellion that the Labor and union bureaucracy cannot contain.

UK: The human cost of the right-to-buy housing crisis

Charles Hixson

Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme for council house tenants was first launched in 1980. It continues to exercise destructive affects in England’s housing market, according to an analysis of Freedom of Information data.

After requests were sent by Inside Housing magazine to 111 English councils, it emerged that over 40 percent of council houses once sold under right-to-buy terms to their tenants are now being privately rented out.

In some cases, councils have been forced to buy back their own properties at more than six times the price for which they previously sold them, severely damaging their ability to help those who most need housing. Local authorities now pay private landlords to house homeless families in 2,333 right-to-buy properties and have spent £22 million yearly simply renting back the buildings they had once owned as temporary housing.

Some 466 companies or individuals now have leaseholds for at least five former council homes.

The media is full of reports on the devastation wrought by right-to buy, observing that rents take up half of tenants’ income, that the scheme benefits only the wealthiest of tenants, and that it has facilitated an enormous transfer of wealth from the public to private sector.

Homes lost under the scheme have not been replaced in any adequate number. The Resolution Foundation reports that English local authorities and housing associations have built only one home for every two sold under the scheme.

Following the Conservative election victory in 2010, the government stepped up sales of council houses, and by 2013 then Chancellor George Osborne raised the maximum discount available for renting a London Council house to £100,000.

Financial information group Moneyfacts found that the average rate on a two-year buy-to-let loan at a fixed rate had fallen from 5.23 percent in 2010 to 3.26 percent by 2015. Simultaneously, the number of fee-free deals available to landlords saw a huge rise. These policies have been labelled as “asset stripping” and “vote buying.”

By the end of 2017, seven local councils—Milton Keynes, Bolsover, Brighton and Hove, Canterbury, Chester West and Chester, Stevenage, and Nuneaton and Bedworth—actually had letting levels of more than 50 percent of their own former council homes.

In London, where the crisis is worst, 2.3 million people by late 2017 (27 percent of all residents) lived in poverty—most of them from working families. The homeless population reached 170,000, more than double that of just five years before.

In a report published in January by Labour London Assembly member Tom Copley—calling for the abolition of right-to-buy but only in London—he revealed that 54,540 households were living in temporary accommodation, including 87,310 children. Some 38 percent of this property is now being leased from the private sector.

Labour-run Ealing Council has bought back 516 properties they originally sold for a total of £16,230,470. They have spent £107,071,333 repurchasing them—more than six times the original selling price. Since 1998-99, 102,480 London council properties have been sold, but only 3,000 new ones built.

Local authorities which provided 30 percent of the total housing stock in 1980 now only furnish 8 percent. London council rents average £108 weekly, while private rents cost a whopping £359.

According to PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), the next few years will see further pressure on the rental market. Nearly 60 percent of 20- to 39-year-olds in England will rent homes by 2025, while only 26 percent will gain an initial foothold in housing ownership, down from 38 percent in 2013. The biggest change will be among the 25-34 age group, with two-thirds of all households in private rental accommodation by 2025, compared with 48 percent in 2013.

A third of all 35- to 44-year-olds will still be renting in 10 years, up from 24 percent in 2013. Many would-be home buyers will find it impossible to keep up with mortgage payments during a period where food and fuel prices surpass wage packets.

As well as being deprived of housing stock, councils are financially penalised by right-to-buy. Under council housing schemes, rent collected covers building costs in the long-term, eventually allowing for a profit by the local authority which can in turn reinvest. Under right-to-buy regulations, councils must remit part of the receipts of those sales to the government.

A Local Government Association report drawn up by Savills last year concluded that two-thirds of England’s councils will be unable to replace the same number of homes sold off under right-to-buy in five years’ time without “significant” restructuring of the scheme. Sales had peaked between 2015-17, reducing volumes, which was “particularly true in London.”

Prime Minister Theresa May’s government announced last August that it would press ahead on a new £200 million right-to-buy pilot scheme in the West Midlands. And despite Copley’s belated call for right-to-buy’s abolition in London, the Labour Party—who control all the main urban local authorities in Britain—has been at the forefront of the social cleansing of working-class residents throughout the UK.

Campaigning for the Labour leadership in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn argued that the right-to-buy should be extended to include people living in privately rented properties. “So why not go with right-to-buy”, he suggested, adding, “we need to go further and think of new ways to get more people into secure housing.”

Corbyn dare not call for a massive programme of public house building because he wants to prove that Labour will be “fiscally prudent.” The housing charity Shelter says 3.1 million homes will have to be built by 2040 to meet shortfalls.

Corbyn’s suggestion was taken up the following year by Civitas, the pro-free-market think tank. They proposed that tenants be allowed discounts, but they “should never be so high as to impose losses on the landlord” and suggested that discounts be capped and landlords be protected by a capital gains tax concession.

With the total failure of right-to-buy, Labour now promises that it “will suspend the right-to-buy policy to protect affordable homes for local people …”

The party refuses to abolish the scheme, adding the caveat that councils will be “able to resume sales if they can prove they have a plan to replace homes sold like-for-like.”

After so many decades where this pipe dream has never occurred, there is no reason to believe that the intended replacements will ever see the light of day.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has presided over the sell-off of thousands of council properties, has failed to build replacement social housing. Last May, Khan, who is making housing the central plank of his re-election campaign, promised a woefully inadequate 10,000 new council homes in the next four years.

Such has been Khan’s shoddy record on social housing provision, as he has developed cosy relations with private property developers, that his likely Tory challenger, Shaun Bailey, was able to state, “The Mayor came into office saying he’d sort out London’s housing market; instead what he’s overseen is an eye-watering drop of 20 percent in new build starts.”

Access to decent affordable housing is a basic human right, but under capitalism it is increasingly unavailable. Only a socialist reorganisation of society can satisfy the desperate and growing need for decent housing for all. The never-ending austerity programme, which has plunged millions into poverty over the last decade, exacerbating the housing crisis, must be reversed and billions spent to provide decent-paying jobs, free and high-quality health care, housing, education and social services for all. The necessary wealth for this must be taken from the billionaires and used to meet essential social needs.

Spain holds political show trial of Catalan nationalist defendants

Alejandro López & Alex Lantier

Over the last two weeks, Madrid has launched a judicial frame-up of Catalan nationalist politicians and leaders in a public show trial. Their prosecution on charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for organising the 2017 independence referendum is groundless and reactionary.

Defendants include former Catalan regional ministers, the former speaker of the Catalan parliament and leaders of two pro-independence groups, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural. Nine of them have been in preventive custody for over 500 days and face up to 25 years in jail for organising a peaceful referendum on Catalan independence from Spain. The most serious charge they face is rebellion, i.e., “violently and publicly” trying to “abrogate, suspend or modify the Constitution, either totally or partially.”

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) opposed the Catalan referendum, calling for a “no” vote on a proposal that would have divided workers in the Iberian peninsula by forming a Catalan state oriented to the reactionary European Union (EU). But Madrid’s charges against the defendants are lies. The Catalan separatists sought to obtain independence via a peaceful referendum and negotiations with Madrid, who cracked down brutally on pro-independence voters.

Now, the Spanish media and political establishment are whipping up a nationalist frenzy around distorted accounts of various events. One was the September 20, 2017 protest in Barcelona, 10 days before the referendum and the police crackdown that left over 1,000 people injured.

On September 20, paramilitary Civil Guards arrested top Catalan officials and searched state offices for evidence that the referendum had been illegally organized. The ANC and Òmnium called rallies outside the offices. Later that night, as tensions rose, ANC leader Jordi Sánchez and Òmnium President Jordi Cuixart tried to disperse the crowd. Two Civil Guards vehicles were vandalized, but no one was injured.

Last Thursday, Cuixart testified about these events. Under questioning by public prosecutors and the state’s attorney—named by the Socialist Party (PSOE) government—he rejected claims that minor clashes constituted “a continued assault” on searches by the Civil Guards and a judicial team. Cuixart stated it was a legal protest. He also stated that he talked with the Civil Guards in charge of the operation, as shown on video, as well as Catalan interior security official Joaquim Forn (also accused of rebellion), and the head of the regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra.

Despite trolling through Cuixart’s emails and Tweets, prosecutors failed to show that he instigated violence.

Sánchez said the authorities requested help to open up a corridor through which the judicial team could pass, which was done: “That this was a public order issue and it wasn’t my responsibility.” He said that at no point did he encourage “a riotous uprising by ordinary people.”

Charges that Catalan officials were guilty of “misuse of public funds” are also groundless. Former Spanish Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro, who imposed a draconian auditing regime on the Catalan government before the referendum to keep public funds from being used to hold it, testified that “the Catalan government ... had no possibility to call the referendum using public money.” In this, Montoro was repeating his public statements to the Spanish parliament.

Trying to maintain the credibility of the trial without perjuring himself, Montoro added a vague statement that “we cannot exclude that there were fraudulent actions to organize the referendum.”

The Spanish bourgeoisie is using the trial to legitimise its bloody crackdown on the referendum and move towards a fascistic dictatorship by rehabilitating the 20th century fascist regime of Francisco Franco. This is shown by the court’s extraordinary handling of the new, pro-Francoite VOX party.

VOX’s officials have publicly hailed Franco’s army in the 1936-1939 Civil War, which started when he launched a coup against an elected government and ended in a fascist victory and mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of left-wing workers and youth.

VOX was also authorized to constitute itself as a plaintiff in the Catalan trial. When it demanded testimony from Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) party members Antonio Baños and Eulàlia Reguant, they refused. Baños said, “I won’t respond due to democratic dignity and anti-fascism.”

Remarkably, both were fined €2,500 for taking this position.

Last week, the three top officials of the right-wing Popular Party (PP) government that was in power during the referendum crisis all defended the crackdown on voters. Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido all testified. They accused the Catalan nationalists of systematic violence in the autumn of 2017 and of using civilians as “human shields” to keep police away from voting stations. They also all denied they were in charge of the police crackdown.

VOX took this occasion to attack Rajoy for not using the referendum to impose martial law. Its general secretary, Javier Ortega Smith, asked Rajoy why he had not used Article 116 of the constitution—the state of alarm, exception and siege, involving the use of the military—but simply suspended Catalan self-rule, using Article 155 of the Constitution.

Rajoy, the chief architect of a battery of police state laws during his seven-year rule, cynically replied that he “did not want to interfere with the individual liberties of the people.”

The trial has also exposed the bankruptcy and impotence of the Catalan nationalists. Their plan throughout the crisis never went any further than striking a deal with Madrid involving the granting of increased Catalan regional powers. But Madrid offered them no such deal, instead taking their secessionist bluster as an opportunity to crush them and shift official politics far to the right.

Basque regional premier Íñigo Urkullu, who during the crisis acted as an intermediary between Rajoy and Catalan regional premier Carles Puigdemont, told the Supreme Court that “Puigdemont had no intention of declaring independence.” Puigdemont implicitly threatened to do so when Rajoy refused to guarantee that he would not impose Article 155 if new elections were called.

Former parliamentary speaker Carme Forcadell said former regional premier Carles Puigdemont’s October 27 independence declaration, which he immediately suspended, was purely symbolic. She said they hoped for support from the EU, which backed Rajoy’s crackdown: “Our movement has always been pro-European and we believe that self-determination is our right. The EU should support us, not for independence but for exercising our rights.”

Former Catalan regional minister for business Santi Vila declared that “It wasn’t a referendum,” but “It was a major political mobilization.”

These events constitute an urgent warning on the state of Spanish and European democracy. That such a blatant show trial can proceed without provoking the organisation of mass protests and universal condemnation is an indictment of the political system. It is yet another exposure of the impotence of Spain’s pseudo-left Podemos party: despite having won 5 million votes in the 2016 elections, it has organised no meaningful opposition.

The only force that can defend democratic rights is the working class, mobilised independently of and against the entire ruling class.