Gender Gap: A Bridge Still Far

Moin Qazi

 All lives have equal value. No matter where they live on the planet. No matter what state, city, and country you’re born in, whether you are male, female.

– Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Gate s Foundation captures in it mission goal the true spiritual concept of human creation. But today we know that not all lives have equal opportunity. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world.   Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. India has a larger relative economic value at stake in advancing gender equality. However, despite some significant gains, some gaps remain. Although India has narrowed the divide between men and women in primary education and health sector, it doesn’t measure well in major metrics for measuring gender parity.

Gender equality refers to the rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women and men, girls and boys. It does not imply that women and men are the same, but that the interests, needs, and priorities of both women and men should be taken into consideration while recognizing diversity across different populations.

Gender discrimination continues to be an enormous problem within the Indian society as well. Traditional patriarchal norms have relegated women to a secondary status within the household and workplace. This drastically affects women’s health, financial status, education, and political involvement. Women are commonly married young, quickly become mothers, and are then burdened by stringent domestic and financial responsibilities.

India was placed at 108th position in the Global Gender gap Index 2018 amongst 149 countries, behind China and Bangladesh and 10 notches below its own position in 2006. The unpaid care work of women amounted to 291 minutes daily in rural areas and 312 minutes in urban areas as compared to men who spent 29 minutes and 32 minutes in urban and rural areas respectively. Data available closer home substantiates this fact.

What does the empowerment of women entail? At a basic level, it means gaining control over sources of power like material assets, self-assertion and ability to take part in making decisions that affect their lives. For this, women must have equal opportunities, capabilities, and access to resources. This would obviously mean a redistribution of the existing power relations and, finally, a challenge to the patriarchal ideology and male dominance as the concept of women empowerment is linked with gender equality.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, fully empowering women would add some $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025. But despite decades of laudable policies and   efforts, the world has   failed to close the   gender gap.

Economic empowerment means, init s basic idea, the ability to monetize one’s skills and talents. But for most women – particularly women in developing countries – access to the formal labor market is restricted by a host of social, cultural and political barriers.  Agriculture is among the most ubiquitous forms of female entrepreneurship. But, although women produce most of the world’s food, they own less than one-fifth of the world’s farmland.

Women are still perceived as an important “capital-bearing” object, both in how they are seen as a “subordinate”, confined to domestic and caring roles behind closed doors, and how they are portrayed d as a “sexual” form through popular culture. A recent study by OECD found that women in India work nine hours a day on average, compared to seven hours a day for men. Most of this time is spent on unpaid activities, such as household work and care giving for the elderly or for children, leaving little time for paid labour or social and leisure activities. This scarcity of discretionary time is referred to as ‘time poverty’ For example, nursing and care work is largely a female occupation and is often undervalued or seen as a “natural” female trait.

Women face worse prospects in almost every aspect of their daily lives – education, employment opportunities, health or financial inclusion. As the report notes, “We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. From poor education to poor nutrition to vulnerable and low pay employment, the sequence of discrimination that a woman may suffer during her entire life is unacceptable but all too common.”

Women experience barriers in almost every aspect of work, including:

• Whether they have paid work at all;
• The type of work they obtain or are excluded from;
• The availability of support services such as childcare;
• Their pay, benefits, and conditions of work;
• The insecurity of their jobs or enterprises and
• Their access to vocational training

Women bear the greater brunt of poverty. In India, where a patriarchal system is deeply entrenched, only 13 percent of farmland is owned by women. The figure is even lower when it comes to Dalit women who are single. About 12 percent of India’s female population is classified as single, including women who are widowed, divorced, separated, and older unmarried women, according to the 2011 census. About 41 percent of households headed by women in India do not own land and make a living through casual manual labour. . Removing obstacles to land ownership could improve women’s economic and social prospects faster than almost any other policy prescription.

All women, regardless of their marital status, need access to education, good jobs, and support for domestic duties. Both widows and married women deserve freedom from culturally entrenched marital practices that degrade and commodify them, as well as legal protection from their husbands’ debts. Although transforming long-held laws, beliefs and practices may be difficult, it is the only way to keep price tags off women and ensure that they have dignity as well as true economic agency. It has been said that women who are closest to the world’s most pressing issues are best placed to solve them. In many countries, women are adjusting to large-scale economic changes through community-based grassroots organizing efforts. But can women be expected to use local solutions to clean up and compensate for larger economic problems without also being allowed to influence larger decisions?

What needs to be changed? Improvement in access to quality education for girls can boost their future income, save mothers’ and children’s lives, reduce rates of child malnutrition, and reduce overall poverty levels. For all interventions, the fundamental logic is plain: If we are going to end extreme poverty, we need to start with girls and women.

Discrimination against women and girls is a pervasive and long-running phenomenon that has bedevilled Indian society at every level. Socially prescribed gender roles that have become deeply entrenched continue to hold women back. Cultural institutions in India, particularly those of patrilineality (inheritance through male descendants) and patrilocality (married couples living with or near the husband’s parents), play a central role in perpetuating gender inequality and ideas about gender-appropriate behaviour. A culturally embedded parental preference for sons – emanating from their importance as care providers for parents in old age – leads to poorer consequences for daughters.

Women work tirelessly to end poverty and hunger in their families. But it can take much more than hard work. They need new tools to create their own paths forward. They need opportunities that can overcome economic, cultural and gender barriers. It needs multi-sectoral cooperation to create breakthrough ideas and solutions to break down economic, social and technical barriers.

We have for long made paternalistic decision to “protect” these women, thereby eliminating their ability to solve issues that they face. Why couldn’t they decide for themselves how to manage their own situation? Why couldn’t we equip them to decide how they can take their own decisions? The key levers for change, from the ground up, are clearly female education and women’s access to income.

Fortunately, the world is now awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution. Melinda Gates, who is now spearheading a major campaign for a proper time balance for the women, particularly the poor, commends three R’s: “Recognize that unpaid work is still work. Reduce the amount of time and energy it takes. And redistribute it more evenly between women and men”.  Women are far more likely than men to spend money they have under their discretion on the education of their children, the health care for their family and improving their housing. They   tend to invest their financial resources in their homes, the nutrition and health of their families, the education of their children, and their communities.

Women and girls play a lesser recognised role as drivers of growth and progress and powerful agents of change. Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view

Women bear the greater brunt of poverty. In India, where a patriarchal system is deeply What needs to be changed? Improvement in access to quality education for girls can boost their future income, save mothers’ and children’s lives, reduce rates of child malnutrition, and reduce overall poverty levels.

Providing women with more number of better opportunities to fulfill their social, economic, and political roles is now deemed so essential for reducing poverty and improving governance that women’s empowerment has become a development objective in its own right. The key levers for change, from the ground up, are clearly female education and women’s access to income. Women approach the future with creativity optimism and determination. They take economic ups and downs in stride. They show calm in the face of adversity. Above all, they work hard.

We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death. The global statistics on poverty are numbing. The real brunt has always fallen on women and sometimes it is very cruel. Women are commonly married young, quickly become mothers, and are then burdened by stringent domestic and financial responsibilities.

Women and families the world over work tirelessly to end the poverty and hunger in their lives. But it can take much more than hard work. They need new tools to create their own paths forward. They need opportunities that can overcome economic, cultural and gender barriers. It needs multissectoral cooperation to create breakthrough ideas and breakthrough solutions that break through and break down economic, social and technical barriers.  We live in a world in which women living in poverty face gross inequalities and injustice from birth to death.

Empowerment has led to a number of positive changes in women’s own perceptions of themselves, and their role in household decision making women’s self-image and self-confidence was enhanced when they received training on women’s rights and social and political issues. This is a truly uplifting signal of the role women will play in building our future sustainable economy.

The female labour force participation rates (FLFR) in 2011-12 as per NSSO (68th round for 2011-12) was as low as 15.5% as compared to 56.3% for men. Further as per NSSO data, the disparity in average wages per day between men and women ranged between 37.5% in rural areas and 28.32% in urban areas. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) in its Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) observed that he FLFR in 2018 was down to 11%. The few women who did go out to find work found it even more difficult to find employment as seen from the unemployment rate of 14.9% against 4.9% for men in 2018.

The Economic Survey 2017-18 reiterates that s that there is ‘feminisation’ of agriculture sector with women taking part in multiple ways as cultivators, entrepreneurs and labourers.  Feminization may be more of a fall back measure necessitated by the  migration of  rural to men  to urban  areas or death of the husband rather than one out of  by choice.  Traditionally, women have played important role in ensuring food security, diversification through animal tending and backyard poultry and preserving local biodiversity. Family farms could not have survived without women playing a committed role, though they may not be counted as the head of the operational holding.

The Agricultural Census 2015-16 revealed that the share of female operational holdings increased to 13.87%   holdings compared to 12.79% in 2001-02.It also brought out that the average farm size for female holdings is 0.93 ha compared to 1.08 ha for overall.  Further, about 52% of female holdings are of less than 0.5 ha category; operating 12.28% area.

The Executive Summary of High Level Committee on the Status on Women, 2015 emphasizes that “there should be a significant increase in the gender equality investments in India, across Ministries and Departments. A comprehensive need mapping, district upwards, should be the basis for planning for future. A life cycle approach, social equity approach and an approach that covers all dimensions of empowerment should be used so that no group of women are left out”.

For all interventions, the fundamental logic is plain: if we are going to end extreme poverty, we need to start with girls and women. They are the ones who have the grit to lift families out of the pit. People who have pioneered successful social programmes   recognized this potential and sought to evoke it.

Moldova election heralds political instability

Andrei Tudora & Tina Zamfir 

Parliamentary elections were held in the Republic of Moldova on the February 24. The election signaled the culmination of a protracted process of disintegration of the forces that have defined the political establishment in Moldova in the last 20 years.

Under the weight of intensifying geopolitical tensions and popular hostility, the EU-backed Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM) and the Liberal Party (PL), brought to power after the 2009 “colour revolution” against the Russian leaning Party of Communists, essentially lost all political significance. The Party of Communists, the direct descendent of the Stalinist Communist Party of Moldova, was routed at the polls and, for the first time since 1998, will have no representatives in parliament.

The election was won by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), which received 31 percent of the votes and will have the highest number of deputies, followed by the newly formed EU-backed ACUM coalition with 27 percent and the ruling Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) with 24 percent. The PDM will have the second highest number of deputies, due to the peculiarities of the electoral system.

Voter turnout in the country of 3.5 million inhabitants was close to 49 percent. Almost 56 percent participated in the last election in 2014.

The pro-EU opposition immediately contested the results, focussing especially on the vote from the Russian speaking breakaway province of Transnistria that favoured the PDM and PSRM. The week prior to the elections saw a concerted effort by pro-EU forces to paint the vote as tainted by Russian influence campaigns. In an act of censorship, Facebook closed 200 pages and accounts from Moldova that it suggested were linked to the Moldovan government. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s cybersecurity policy chief, claimed that these accounts, which “typically posted local news and political issues,” “shared manipulated photos, divisive narratives, and satire.”

The governing Democratic Party of Moldova is set to remain the principal political decisionmaker in the coming period. The party was a junior member in the pro-Western coalition, coming in last in the 2014 elections. As working people were becoming increasingly hostile to the coalition’s IMF-imposed free-market policies, endemic corruption and alignment with the NATO military provocations against Russia, the coalition disintegrated and the PDM managed to outmanoeuvre its rivals and consolidate power.

PDM officials paid lip service to Moldova’s constitutional neutrality, instituted minimal social assistance programs, and broke away from the more radical elements, who were demanding a union with neighbouring EU member Romania, which shares historical and linguistic ties to Moldova. The PDM has faced open hostility from Germany and other European powers, which have supported violent protests against it, and cut important financial aid to the country. The organizations making up the ACUM coalition have been built up in the course of these protests.

Much is being made in the media of the figure of oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc, head of the PDM and de facto head of government. Lurid accounts of his criminal business dealings are offered to argue that he is a political aberration who has “captured” the Moldovan state. In fact, Plahotniuc is the definitive political product of the last 30 years of capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe.

Beginning his career in the quasi-criminal milieu of the former Stalinist bureaucrats after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Plahotniuc’s fortunes were tied to the Party of Communists of Moldova and to the Social Democratic Party, the former Stalinist ruling party of Romania.

In 2001 Plahotniuc was appointed head of Petrom Moldova, the largest Romanian company operating in the country. He joined the Democratic Party, a political outfit close to the Communists but inclined to faster EU integration and market reforms, after the former became part of the pro-Western regime in 2009. With Plahotniuc’s control over a large part of the Moldovan media and his role as a go-between among the various factions of the governing coalition, he quickly became indispensable to its functioning and to its handlers in Washington and Brussels.

Relations soured with Germany and the EU in 2015 after Plahotniuc side-lined the pro-Romanian factions favoured by Angela Merkel, but he has enjoyed the support of successive US administrations. He also has the backing of the current Romanian government led by the Social Democratic Party, and its head, Liviu Dragnea. Dragnea and the PSD, favoured by the Trump White House, have long been engaged in a tug of war with the EU.

Romania has continued to supply the Moldovan government with funds to offset the loss of EU funding and maintains numerous local assistance and infrastructure projects in Moldova. Romanian news outlets also reported that Romania and Viktor Orban’s Hungary opposed the passing of an EU foreign affairs document condemning the Moldovan government for not respecting “democratic principles, the rule of law and human rights.” These accusations were fuelled by the annulment of the elections in the capital Chisinau, won by a pro-EU ACUM candidate.

It is likely that Plahotniuc will manage to gather the necessary number of defections from the other parties to continue with a PDM Government, with or without the participation of the ACUM bloc. The Socialist Party of President Dodon has already stated that it is entertaining the prospect of another election. Another possibility is that the Socialist Party of Dodon, who has repeatedly stated that he intends to maintain Moldova’s Association Agreement with the EU, will form a government with Plahotniuc organised around Moldovan “independence.”

Regardless of the manoeuvres of the local bourgeoisie, the interests of the impoverished workers of Moldova, many of whom work abroad in Romania, the EU or Russia, will not be represented.

The Republic of Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, is 137th in the world by income per capita, according to the IMF. Economic growth has declined from 6 percent to little more than 2 percent, while foreign investment collapsed from over €500 million in previous years to just €40 million.

According to a study conducted by the Institute for Public Policy, around half of all Moldovans would like to leave the country if they had the chance to do so. The reasons given for this were poverty and the absence of any perspective for the future. The population is already declining sharply. Around 1 million people have left the country in recent years. The average pension is €90 per month, while the average income is around €230. €1 billion were wiped out four years ago in a banking scandal, equivalent to one-eighth of Moldova’s gross domestic product.

Britain rejects International Court of Justice order to return Chagos Islands to Mauritius

Jean Shaoul 

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ordered Britain to hand back the Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia, to Mauritius “as rapidly as possible.” This follows its landmark ruling that the UK’s occupation of the Chagos Islands was unlawful.

The court held that the process of decolonization of Mauritius “was not lawfully completed” in 1968 and that “all Member States” had an obligation to cooperate with the United Nations “to complete the decolonization of Mauritius.”

The decision by an overwhelming majority of 13 to 1, with only the US voting against, follows the UN General Assembly’s decision in 2017 to refer the legal status of the Chagos Islands to the ICJ, the UN’s highest court.

The Chagos Islands make up the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), located halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. Diego Garcia, the largest island, is the site of one of the largest US airbases with some 4,000 US troops as well as British troops stationed there. The implication of the ICJ’s ruling is that the UK’s leasing of Diego Garcia to the US is illegal.

The ICJ’s ruling will be discussed at the UN general assembly, which has already voiced its opposition to Britain’s position by referring the issue to the ICJ in 2017.

The ICJ’s ruling has no binding status. The British government, determined to hold onto its colonial possessions, has rejected both the ICJ’s order and its unanimous ruling that it has jurisdiction because it relates to a UN process of decolonization, not a dispute between two states.

Speaking in Parliament, Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan accused the UN General Assembly of a “misuse of powers” and setting a “dangerous precedent” by referring the issue to the ICJ in 2017. He made the absurd claim that “The defence facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organised crime and piracy.”

The exact opposite is the case, with Britain allowing the CIA to use Diego Garcia as a “dark site” where it detained and tortured people and to refuel extraordinary rendition flights.

In February 2016, Britain also rejected a UN human rights panel ruling that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who sought asylum inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London due to his persecution by the Swedish and British authorities, has been subjected to “arbitrary detention” in violation of international law.

For more than five decades, Britain has carried out one crime after another against the Chagossians—lying, ignoring court decisions, and covering up its actions in pursuit of its imperialist interests.

Harold Wilson’s Labour government granted Mauritius independence in 1968, but not before separating the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, in breach of UN resolution 1514 passed in 1960 banning the breakup of colonies before independence. It then forcibly evicted the vast majority of Chagossians from the archipelago and prevented their return.

The UK denied Mauritius complete independence on all its territories and the 1,344 islanders’ right to return to their homeland to provide the US with a military base, free of local residents. It signed a sordid deal with Washington that was kept secret from both Parliament and the US Congress. This granted the US a 50-year lease on Diego Garcia in return for an $11 million discount on the US-made Polaris nuclear weapons system, which Labour had, when in opposition, pledged to scrap.

Starting in 1965, the islanders were illegally deported to Mauritius and the Seychelles, another former British colony, where they have lived in desperately impoverished conditions, with a few being allowed into Britain. Since then, they and their descendants, who now number 10,000, have campaigned for their rights against a conspiracy of silence, obfuscation, temporising and lies.

In 1982, the UK paid Mauritius the derisory sum of £4 million for the archipelago on an ex-gratia basis. The 1,344 islanders, as a condition of accepting the funds, were required to renounce their right to return to the BIOT. In the 1990s, the few who settled in Britain finally won the right to British citizenship.

In 2000, representatives of the Chagossians came from Mauritius and the Seychelles to pursue a case against the Labour government of Tony Blair, winning a historic ruling that confirmed that the eviction was illegal. British government officials—duplicitous as ever—declared that the indigenous citizens were free to return, but to the “outer homeland islands only.” While the High Court again ruled that the Chagossians were entitled to return, the Foreign Office won on appeal in 2008.

Investigative journalist John Pilger brought the plight of the islanders to the world’s attention with his film Stealing a Nation in 2004.

In 2009, the British Foreign Office went a step further and issued an order turning the Chagos archipelago into a “marine reserve” aimed at making resettlement impossible. This was revealed for the fraud that it was in December 2010, when WikiLeaks published a batch of secret cables from the British government in 2009, reassuring the Americans that “the former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos were a marine reserve.”

After the WikiLeaks revelations, the Chagossians launched an appeal against the declaration of the reserve. In a perverse decision, UK high court judges, Lord Justice Richards and Mr. Justice Mitting, refused to accept the Foreign Office documents as evidence, even though they were now in the public domain, claiming that it would “breach diplomatic privilege.” In effect, they ruled that evidence obtained from leaks or whistle-blowers was inadmissible, setting a dangerous precedent. In June 2013, the judges found against the Chagossians, arguing that the reserve was compatible with European Union law.

In 2015, Mauritius won a ruling at the permanent court of arbitration at The Hague that Britain had acted illegally in the way it had exercised control over the Chagos Islands. It criticised London for failing to consult over establishing a marine reserve around the archipelago, but this changed nothing.

In 2016, after years of delays, the Foreign Office finally announced that Chagos islanders would not be given the right of return to resettle, arguing that the cost and US objections made it impossible. This was confirmed last week, when in a largely unreported ruling the Divisional Court found against the Chagossians’ legal challenge to the 2016 decision.

Chagos Refugees Group leader Olivier Bancoult and fellow native-born Chagossian Solange Horeau had challenged the legality of the government’s failure to permit resettlement, the decision to offer a £40 million “Support Package” to the Chagossian community and the “implicit decision” not to remove the ban on Chagossians living in their homeland. The judges stated, “This is not a case where fundamental rights are affected. ... This is because this Court has to proceed on the basis that the legal rights which existed previously have been extinguished at least by the 2004 Orders.”

The 2004 Orders-in-Council issued a new legal ban on Chagossians living in their homeland, after their successful legal challenge to the original deportation. The Orders were brought in without any parliamentary vote or scrutiny, and effectively exiled Chagossians for a second time.

Algerian workers in France speak out against Bouteflika regime

V. Gnana & Alex Lantier

The expansion of demonstrations in Algeria opposing a fifth term for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has provoked support and solidarity across France. More than 6,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Sunday, and another 1,500 in Marseille, in support of the protests in Algeria.

While hundreds of thousands of “yellow vests” are protesting to demand the resignation of French President Emmanuel Macron and for social equality, many French workers are closely following the opposition to the corrupt Algerian regime. On Sunday, the WSWS interviewed workers of Algerian origin in Paris about the protests and Bouteflika’s announcement on Sunday that he will seek a fifth term.

Itchir said, “It’s been the same for 20 years, and now he wants a fifth mandate. Why does he ask for a fifth term? To keep control of the gas and the money. That’s not how a country can run; we want radical change for the entire Algerian people … We have to sweep aside the government first, down to its roots. And then we will start over.”

He said he believes that Bouteflika is dead, or is so incapacitated that he might as well be. “His brother is in America getting treatment,” Itchir said. “They say he has cancer. Those who are with him, his right-hand man, [prime minister] Ahmed Ouyahia, for example, is a bastard. He’s done nothing… The Bouteflika regime just embezzles funds for itself. Go to the Champs-Elysées, and you’ll find the daughter of [ex-prime minister] Sellal. To buy her apartment on the Champs-Elysées, you need hundreds of thousands of euros.”

Itchir stressed that the unions and the entire Algerian political establishment are hardly different from the clan in power. “The unions are all bastards. The unions and the political parties who bring them to the table, all of them are the same. They eat and steal. They think only of themselves and their families. They don’t think of us, of the youth, of the Algerian people.”

He said that in Algeria “There is nothing for the youth. There are also many young Algerians in Europe. Sometimes they’ll be just over there, selling individual cigarettes.” He added: “As for the Algerian government, you have stolen, you have taken, you have chateaux in France and throughout Europe. Now we need radical change.”

Noting the simultaneous outbreak of “yellow vest” protests against Macron and those in Algeria against Bouteflika, Itchir said that the problems for workers in Europe and Africa are the same.

“It’s the same thing there as here,” he said. “Here we have to run all over, and there we have to run all over. There if you don’t work, you don’t eat, here if you don’t work, you don’t eat. I’ve done the calculations, and it’s the same. I’m here; I didn’t have to get on a boat like others did. I had the chance to request a visa. They said yes. Those who don’t have to take a boat to come. It’s said that France is a paradise, but it’s no paradise. I hope there will be a good change in Algeria.”

Itchir underscored his total lack of confidence in elections, which the Algerian regime intends to rig with the support of the European imperialist powers, including France. “The elections begin on March 19. Bouteflika is going to win it,” he said. “They do it with stuffing—not the voice of the people. Everything is prepared—the lockers, the ballots, everything. That’s in Algeria, but we hope that that will change. We only wish good upon the country.”

He added that he placed his hopes in the escalation of struggles in Algeria: “They have protested in all 48 regions [ wilayas ]. We must have a radical change.”

The WSWS also spoke with Djilali and Elwan, two Algerians originally from Kabylie, a majority Berber region. They expressed their determination for change and anger toward the capitalist regime of the National Liberation Front (FLN), which took power following the Algerian war for independence against France in 1954-1962.

“Algeria is ours,” Djilali said, before pointing to the intolerable situation for workers in the country. “A kilogram of potatoes costs 80 dinars; chili peppers, 220 dinars; beans, 300 dinars. Semolina is 5,000 dinars for per hundredweight. There is no housing. There is no work. We need it. You earn 18,000 dinars [the Algerian minimum wage]. You pay for electricity, rent, gas and it’s gone. We can’t live like this. It’s like in France.”

Elwan attacked the historical trajectory of the Algerian regime. “How many generations did they sacrifice?” he asked. “I was born in 1966. I saw nothing from the war of independence. But from 1966 to 2019, we had no luck. If Algeria was doing well, do you think I would have come to France, to live in this misery? Because it’s misery here, too.”

“In 2019, the people are revolting,” he said. “Now they have gained consciousness.”

He noted the difficulty of unifying the struggles of Arab and Berber workers and oppressed masses in the Maghreb, referring to the Berber revolt of 1949: “We revolted in 1949,” he said. “Every time, the other regions of the country said we were dividing the country, but it’s not true. We don’t want to divide the country.”

This raises the necessity for the unification of the struggles in Europe and the Maghreb in a socialist political movement of the working class, against the establishment parties. Referring to the Stalinist French Communist Party, which voted to support torture during the Algerian war, and the petty-bourgeois French parties allied to the FLN, Elwan said: “On the French elite, I can’t say anything. I don’t know French politics. But it’s France that supports the dictator there. Because otherwise, how does it happen that there are so many elections in Algeria and always the same leaders?”

But he stressed that the establishment parties in Algeria provided no perspective: “These are the parties of power. That is their language: divide and conquer. They create parties for themselves, an opposition elite, but at bottom there is no opposition. It’s 20 years since Louisa Hanoune has been head of the Workers Party.”

Asked about the decision by Hanoune and the PT on Sunday to not participate in the elections, Elwan said: “She saw the people are waking up; she’s afraid. But she’s not a revolutionary. At the moment, it’s the same everywhere.”

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.