Global military spending tops $1.8 trillion, highest on record

Niles Niemuth

Global military spending has reached a new post-Cold War high, topping $1.8 trillion in 2018, according to an annual report published this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This marks a 2.6 percent increase over the previous annual record for worldwide military expenditures in 2017.

Most notably, US military spending increased by 4.6 percent in 2018, to $649 billion, the first annual US spending hike recorded by SIPRI since 2011. This trend is set to continue, with President Donald Trump having signed a $686 billion budget for 2019 and requesting $718 billion for the Pentagon in 2020. The Congressional Budget Office projects that if current funding trends continue, the US will spend $7 trillion on its military over the next decade, equivalent to the amount which will be spent on education, infrastructure and public health programs combined.

Los 15 países con el mayor gasto militar en 2018 (miles de millones de dólares de 2018)

The Trump administration is expending immense sums to modernize and develop the US arsenal to prepare for “great power conflicts,” with China and Russia first among its targets. The Pentagon expects to spend $500 billion over ten years in modernizing all aspects of its nuclear triad—intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers—including the development and deployment of more “usable” low-yield nuclear missiles.

With its continued aim of global dominance, even as its economic position continues to decline, US imperialism far outpaces allies and enemies alike in military spending. In 2018, the US spent more than two and half times the amount of economic rival China ($250 billion) and more than ten times that of the supposedly great menace Russia ($61.4 billion). All told, the US spent as much as the next eight countries combined, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s military spending.

This immense military buildup is being carried out with the support of all factions of the political establishment, without even a whiff of protest. In fact, the Democratic Party’s main critique of Trump has been from the right, demanding an even greater military buildup and a more aggressive posture toward Russia.

El gasto militar mundial por región en 1988-2018 (excepto 1991 por falta de datos de la Unión Soviética para ese año; en miles de millones de dólares constantes de 2017)

The bloody Saudi monarchy, the United States’ chief Arab ally in the Middle East, has held on to the number three spot in military spending, after leading the world in expending the greatest share of its economic output, 8.8 percent of gross domestic product, or $67.6 billion.

The Obama administration funneled more than $110 billion in weaponry to the kingdom over eight years, and the supply of weaponry and training has continued under Trump. Saudi Arabia has been waging an unrelenting onslaught against Yemen for more than four years, utilizing fighter jets and bombs supplied by the US on the defenseless population below, killing tens of thousands and pushing millions to the brink of starvation.

Russia did not qualify for the top five, with its spending falling for the second year in a row, surpassed by France ($63.8 billion) and India ($66.5 billion). The latter dwarfs the military buildup of its neighbor Pakistan ($11.4 billion). The two South Asian nations nearly went to war with each other earlier this year.

Germany increased its world ranking from ninth to eighth, spending nearly $50 billion on its military in 2018, increasing its spending by 9 percent since 2009. The coalition government in Berlin has declared that it will increase its role in foreign military interventions in order to assert its position as Europe’s largest economy. It plans to spend 1.5 percent of its GDP on its military by 2025.

While Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has been presented as a looming threat to Eastern and Central European nations, not to mention the survival of American democracy, the NATO alliance ($963 billion) outspent Russia nearly 16 to 1. Since 2016, thousands of US and Western European soldiers have been deployed to NATO member countries on or near Russia’s western border, to serve as a potential trip wire for war with one of the largest nuclear armed powers in the world.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Poland has been the spearhead of the military buildup in Central Europe, spending $11.6 billion in 2018, 8.9 percent more than the previous year and nearly 50 percent more than in 2009. With approximately 800 US soldiers currently deployed to Poland on a rotating basis just 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the Pentagon is moving towards building a permanent military base, dubbed “Fort Trump.”

Eight of the 15 countries which saw the highest relative annual increase in military spending were in Southeastern or Central Europe. Latvia increased its military expenditures by 24 percent, Bulgaria by 23 percent, Ukraine by 21 percent and Lithuania and Romania both increased outlays by 18 percent. Lithuania led Europe in its rate of increase over the last decade, hiking its military spending by 156 percent.

Spending in Asia and Oceania topped $500 billion, marking the 30th consecutive year of spending increases, led by China, India, Japan ($46.6 billion), South Korea ($43.1 billion) and Australia ($26.7 billion). Countering the rise of China has been a focus of the United States during this period, both with the military buildup under Obama’s Pivot to Asia and currently with Trump’s trade war policies.

Gasto militar en 2018 de Estados Unidos, Rusia y los otros miembros de la OTAN en miles de millones de dólares

What the SIPRI figures show is that nearly three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the much-heralded "triumph" of the capitalist economic order, humanity faces a new arms race, led by US imperialism, which threatens the outbreak of a catastrophic world war between nuclear-armed powers.

As in the First and Second World Wars, the division of the world into nation states competing for control of resources and geo-strategic chokepoints once again threatens to drag the world into catastrophe. A colossal amount of resources is being wasted by competing ruling elites in the effort to assert their regional and global economic interests at the expense of the world’s working class. SIPRI’s data shows that in excess of $41 trillion has been spent on building up arsenals of death and destruction around the world over the last three decades.

With new war crimes being prepared in Washington, DC and the capitals of Europe, those who exposed the past crimes of US imperialism, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, are being silenced. The critical question facing the world’s working class today is not reform or revolution, but revolution or counterrevolution. The international working class must be mobilized to put an end to the mad drive towards war which threatens all of humanity.

The recent period has seen rising interest in socialism and the growth of the class struggle internationally. From the yellow vest protests in France, to mass demonstrations in Algeria, teacher strikes in the US and strikes by maquiladora workers in Mexico, this movement has developed independently of and in opposition to the pro-capitalist trade unions and political organizations.

Sudan: Protest leaders agree to collaborate with Transitional Military Council

Jean Shaoul

Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) has agreed with leaders of the protest movement that forced the removal of long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir to form a joint body to lead a two-year transition to civilian rule. The military ousted Bashir on April 11 in an unsuccessful attempt to put an end to months of strikes and protests.

Ayman Nimir, an opposition negotiator in the coalition known as the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces said, “Today we have taken positive steps and we expect to reach an agreement satisfactory to all parties.”

The TMC is seeking a government of “technocrats” in which it would retain the key interior and defence portfolios—thereby ensuring military rule behind a civilian façade.

Any attempt to present such an arrangement, in a country dominated by a small, wealthy clique as a step towards genuine democracy that would resolve the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers, is a treacherous lie. It exposes the deep chasm that exists between the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces, including the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) of doctors, lawyers and teachers, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Sudan Call, the Unionist Gathering, the Umma Party and the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), and the millions of protesting workers and youth.

Workers and youth came out onto the streets for a fundamental transformation of the entire social order, not a civilian-fronted military regime, technocratic government or political reshuffle, and have already voiced their anger at the agreement with the TMC.

Conscious of what happened to the Egyptian Revolution in 2011-13, protestors continued the mass rallies in the capital Khartoum in the weeks following the army’s ouster of al-Bashir on April 11 and demanded an end to military rule.

Furious at the appointment of regime insider Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, the military chief and al-Bashir’s close aide, as the interim leader of a Transitional Military Council to run the country for two years and the imposition of military rule, including a state of emergency and curfew, they demanded a swift transition to civilian rule.

When Auf claimed that al-Bashir was under arrest, this met with widespread disbelief. No one believed that he was in jail. They demanded his imprisonment, pending prosecution for corruption, abuse of power and crimes against the people. Auf sought to placate the protestors by claiming that the transition period could be as short as a month if it were managed “without chaos.” This was viewed as a threat that the security forces might instigate “chaos” in order to justify a crackdown.

Protests forced the TMC to announce Auf’s resignation and to replace him with Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Burhan within 48 hours of al-Bashir’s ouster.

The TMC then moved to announce some anti-corruption measures, the resignation of some former officials and the dismissal of others, as well as some arrests.

It removed al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP), which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, from the political scene, in part at least to win support from its Saudi Arabian patron. Military intelligence claims that the chief public prosecutor is to question al-Bashir after his transfer to Kobar prison, after suitcases loaded with cash were found in his home.

All of this was met with contempt and suspicion. Last week, protestors encamped in Khartoum were joined by hundreds of workers who had travelled by train from Atbara, with thousands more joining them from cities, towns and villages along the way. There were renewed calls for a general strike.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Atbara has long been a centre of the country’s trade unionists and political activists before and after Sudan’s independence in 1956. It is where the protests started on December 19 over the removal of bread subsidies that tripled its cost, with students setting fire to the local offices of the NCP. Within days, the protests became a generalized political movement across the country, protesting the soaring cost of living and the impact of privatization of the port and railways on jobs and demanding the ouster of al-Bashir.

Last week’s decision of the African Union (AU), meeting under the rotating chair of Egypt’s military dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo, to give the military council three months to implement democratic reforms provoked outrage. This extended the AU’s previous 15-day deadline for Sudan’s TMC to hand over power to civilians, or face suspension from the AU.

El-Sisi was one of the first to voice his support to the TMC.

Protestors are conscious that it was el-Sisi, an army leader and minister of defence in President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, who overthrew the elected government, drowned the opposition to his coup in blood and has introduced legislation enabling him to stay in power until 2030. El-Sisi regards his southern neighbour as his country’s Achilles heel.

Thousands marched on the Egyptian embassy in Khartoum, holding up posters and chanting slogans against el-Sisi, demanding an end to his interference in their country’s affairs. The Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of Sudanese activists who had fled to Egypt to escape al-Bashir’s brutal regime and handed them over to Sudan in recent months.

Sudan’s TMC know they can rely on the support of the major imperialist powers and the region’s dictators, all of whom hate each other but fear even more their own working class and poor peasants and the threat they pose to their shaky regimes.

While the US and the European Union long opposed al-Bashir, backing his indictment at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including genocide in Darfur, and not openly supporting him during the protests, the last thing they want is instability in Sudan and a new wave of refugees heading for Europe. The country is strategically located in the Horn of Africa, alongside the Red Sea and the entrance to the Suez Canal through which much of the region’s oil passes. Washington has issued a statement calling on Sudan to move speedily to democracy.

The petro-monarchies of the Gulf, as well as Turkey, Russia and China have all been competing for influence in the Horn of Africa. Their conflicting agendas and local clients will only serve to accentuate the power struggles within the narrow circles that dominant economic and political life in Sudan.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have reportedly offered $3 billion in aid in the form of cash, food, medicine and petroleum products to Sudan, which is all but bankrupt following the secession of the oil-rich South Sudan in 2012, the civil war in South Sudan and the loss of income from the transport of oil through its pipeline from the south to Port Sudan. Russia and Turkey, which is seeking to build a military base in Suakin, near the Red Sea, have pledged fuel, wheat and other aid, with Russian private contractors training Sudan’s security forces.

Protesters rejected Saudi aid, which they saw as support for the counterrevolution, and chanted, “We don’t want Saudi support.” There is enormous opposition to the government’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, as well as its sale of vast swathes of irrigated agricultural land to Gulf companies at the expense of local farmers.

The movement of the Sudanese working class is part of a growing wave of strikes and demonstrations by workers across North Africa—in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco—and around the world. The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of all the rotten bourgeois parties, trade unions and pro-capitalist alliances, to take power and expropriate the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle for socialism.

Former President Garcia’s suicide exposes desperate crisis of Peruvian bourgeoisie

Armando Cruz & Cesar Uco

Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia shot himself in the early morning of April 17 when a state attorney and policemen arrived at his home to place him under “preliminary detention” following a judge’s order.

Over the previous weeks, there had been speculation that Garcia would be detained following the naming of several of his close collaborators as recipients of bribe money from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

After failed attempts to revive him at the local Casimiro Ulloa hospital, Garcia was pronounced dead at 11AM.

Garcia, who ruled the country twice—first from 1985 to 1990 and later from 2006 to 2011—was, along with four other former presidents, under judicial scrutiny for more than two years after top Odebrecht officials revealed to Peruvian state attorneys that they had been bribing presidents, ministers and potential presidential candidates for nearly two decades in order to be awarded overpriced, lucrative construction contracts.

The money Odebrecht managed to siphon from the Peruvian state through these corrupt arrangements could reach a billion Peruvian soles (over US$ 300 million)—a sum similar to what they stole in Brazil itself.

Though Odebrecht has admitted to having bribed state officials in nearly a dozen other countries, it is in Peru where an investigation into their practices has seen the powerful political figures fall from grace and land in “preventive detention”—imprisonment for those accused of a serious crime, whose liberty might threaten an ongoing legal investigation against them.

In April 2017 a judge ordered the “preventive detention” for 18 months of former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) for having received over US$ 25 million in bribes from Odebrecht. Today he is in holed up in California, seemingly under the protection of US officials.

Months later in the same year, another judge ordered former president Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and his wife Nadine Heredia subjected to the same form of detention. They both spent nine months in prison until one of their appeals was approved by the Supreme Court and they both were released, though the investigation into their alleged crimes continues.

In March 2018, then president and former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had to resign amidst revelations that he had also favored and received money from Brazil’s Odebrecht while he was minister of Economy and Finance under President Ajelandro Toledo. The 80-year old former president is currently serving a 36-month preventive jail sentence for influence trafficking and having two companies, Westfield Capital and First Capital, that collected invoices from Odebrecht for US$ 4.8 million in financial services.

Then in 2018, ex-presidential candidate and daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Keiko Fujimori, was ordered by a judge to remain under “preventive detention” for three years, while state attorneys investigate whether she and her party—Fuerza Popular—laundered money received from Odebrecht for her 2016 election campaign.

Fujimori’s detention shocked a significant segment of the ruling class, which had grown accustomed to a compliant justice system always working in its favor. Fujimori, with her vast influence over the judiciary and the favor of the corporate elite, had always been seen as an “untouchable.” The implications of the Lava Jato scandal—the bribery and kickback schemes involving Odebrecht and other Brazilian companies—meant that no one was really “sacred” anymore in the widely corrupt Peruvian establishment.

All of these corrupt ex-presidents and likely future convicts have issued messages of condolence for Garcia and his circle and denounced the “persecution” against him as the reason for his suicide.

Garcia had voiced opposition to Fujimori’s arrest. In a series of tweets he labeled Fujimori’s arrest a “coup” engineered by a “law-breaking” current President Martín Vizcarra, because Fujimori and her party were the main right-wing opposition to his government.

As more damning revelations surfaced about the flow of money from Odebrecht’s specific bribery accounts to Garcia’s close collaborators and members of his APRA party (the oldest in Peruvian history), his statements became ever more unhinged, including personal attacks on journalists and attorneys investigating the charges.

A turning point occurred when an appeal by a state attorney, Jose Domingo Perez, for a court order barring Garcia from leaving the country for 18 months was approved by a judge. Garcia at first feigned compliance, affirming it would be an honor “to remain in Peru”, but on November 18, in a move nobody expected, he secretly entered the Uruguayan ambassador’s residence asking for “political asylum” and a safe exit to Uruguay.

Garcia’s plea for a diplomatic means of escaping Peru was based on the claim that he was a victim of a “political persecution” by a justice system manipulated by a “dictatorial” Vizcarra, who was hunting down all his political enemies. His APRA subordinates and friends in the media repeated this claim over the following days, urging Uruguay’s President Tabare Vasquez to grant Garcia safe conduct to Montevideo.

Behind the scenes, anonymous sources inside APRA told the press that Garcia was “terrified” of landing in jail “even for a short period” and that he had unofficially sought asylum first in Colombia (where he had fled into exile in 1992 after Fujimori’s father carried out his “self-coup”, shutting down the congress, suspending the constitution and purging the judiciary).

After two weeks of staying at the Uruguayan ambassador’s residence amid protests outside of it—mostly by young people demanding that Garcia not to be allowed to escape—on December 3 the Vasquez government accepted Vizcarra’s petition not to grant Garcia diplomatic protection—since it would allow other individuals under investigation to claim “political persecution”—and Garcia was forced to leave.

Vasquez’ decision came a few days after the US ambassador to Peru, Krishna Urs, and his EU counterpart, Diego Mellado, insisted that there wasn’t any “political persecution” in Peru and that its “democratic institutions” were safe—essentially taking Vizcarra’s side in the dispute.

A few weeks after Garcia left the ambassador’s residence, Odebrecht executives revealed that one of his closest allies, former presidential secretary Luis Nava, had been on the receiving end of multi-million-dollar bribes through the subcontracting of one of Nava’s trucking companies.

During Garcia’s funeral at the APRA headquarters in downtown Lima, his daughter Luciana Garcia read what amounted to a suicide note, in which Garcia implied that his decision to end his life had been taken some time earlier.

In his typical egomaniacal fashion, he boasted of having led “APRA to power on two occasions” and expressed great resentment against politicians who tried to “criminalize” him. To the end, he maintained his innocence and concluded saying: “I have seen others paraded in handcuffs, guarding their miserable existence, but Alan García does not have to suffer those injustices and circuses.”

Garcia’s rise and fall cannot be explained outside of an assessment of the politics and roots of the APRA movement, which dominated much of Peruvian history during the 20th century. At least two of the many military coups that have plagued the country were launched specifically to crush APRA’s appeals for political mobilization of the working class.

APRA was a mass bourgeois party that had a significant following in the 1930s and 1940s. A series of unprincipled alliances, and the party’s failure to contest US imperialist domination of the country, led to a declining membership and splits to the left.

A turning point came with the end of World War II when the bourgeoisie’s fear of the emerging Peruvian working class led APRA to take a more openly anticommunist stand. In the 1960s, its trade union affiliate, the Confederacion de Trabajadores del Peru (CTP), was the rival of the Confederacion General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP). Originally founded by Jose Carlos Mariátegui in 1929, the CGTP over the following decades was persecuted by the Peruvian state and was dispersed until being refounded under the leadership of the Stalinist Communist Party in June 1968. Then APRA suffered the desertion of many of its members in the working class to the Stalinist-led CGTP.

After the death of APRA’s founder, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre—at 84 years old—in August 1979, it was up to Garcia to lead the party into the presidential elections of 1985. He faced the mayor of Lima, Alfonso Barrantes, representing a largely discredited Izquierda Unida (United Left), a conglomerate of left organizations going back to the 1960s. He easily beat Barrantes in the first round.

Garcia’s first term in office was marked by his defiance of the demands of US imperialism and Wall Street, limiting Peru’s foreign debt payments to 10 percent of GDP. Hyperinflation reached 1722.3 percent in 1988 and 2775 percent in 1989. At the time, the Maoist guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso controlled most of the southern Peruvian Andes. Garcia was responsible for ordering the massacre of 300 Senderistas after they had been disarmed and were lying helpless on the floors of three jails in Lima.

During his second term, he followed the neoliberal policies of his predecessor Alejandro Toledo favoring multibillion-dollar foreign investments. That term was marked by the “Baguazo,” a massacre that ended with 23 policemen and 10 indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon basin dead. The protest was ignited by the government’s failure to consult with the indigenous population over a plan to hand over its jungle territory to transnational corporations for raw material exploration. Garcia arrogantly responded that as president he did not have to consult with anyone. The measure was later revoked.

The death of Garcia only underscores the desperate crisis of rule of the Peruvian bourgeoisie, in which every single major political figure and party—including APRA, the country’s oldest—has been implicated in massive corruption.

Economic reversal exposes Australian election myths

Mike Head

Official inflation figures released this week confirm that the May 18 Australian election is being held amid a sharp economic downturn. Regardless of any election promises, the next government, whether headed by Labor or the Liberal-National Coalition, will seek to impose the burden of the slump on workers and young people.

The headline inflation rate, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, came in at zero during the March quarter, pushing the annual rate down from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent. This is an indicator of a rapidly stalling economy. Financial commentators expressed fears of a deflationary spiral, in which heavily-indebted consumers delay purchases in the hope of waiting for lower prices.

The inflation rate is now well below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target of 2–3 percent, leading to predictions that the central bank would be forced to quickly cut its cash interest rate, which already has been at a record low of 1.5 percent for more than two-and-a-half years.

The financial markets are now betting on at least two consecutive 25-point rate cuts, down to just 1 percent, in May and June. A Dow Jones Newswire commentary published by the Australian went further, saying the RBA could roll out as many as four interest rate cuts by the year-end, with the first coming on May 7, just before the election.

Such moves would be a desperate bid to forestall a recession. Already, house prices are falling substantially, construction work is plunging and wages are stagnating amid a slowdown in global economic growth, compounded by fears of an ongoing US-China trade war.

Just months ago, the RBA was signalling that it would lift rates, in line with rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, amid forecasts of a global upturn. The sudden reversal is a sign of mounting concern in ruling circles.

However, interest rate cuts may have little effect in stimulating spending because household debt is at record levels, averaging nearly double disposable income, one of the highest ratios in the world.

With an estimated 40,000 jobs already eliminated by the fall in housing construction, unemployment could worsen quickly. AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said the RBA’s board would “conclude that it’s too risky to wait until unemployment starts to trend up.”

Officially, the joblessness rose only marginally last month, from 4.9 percent to 5 percent, but these statistics seriously understate the real situation. According to figures released last month by the Roy Morgan group, 18.2 percent of the workforce, or around 2.5 million people, are either jobless or under-employed.

Separate figures from the Jobs and Small Business Department showed online employment vacancies fell in March by 1.5 percent, the third successive monthly drop in what is regarded as a leading indicator of the trend ahead.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

As soon as the inflation figure was released, the Australian dollar fell almost 1 percent against the US dollar—another indicator of an anticipated slump.

However, the Australian share market rose about 1 percent to an 11-year high, reaching heights last reached in January 2008 before the last global financial crisis wiped off about 50 percent of its value. Evidently, the financial elite hopes to benefit from rising joblessness by further pushing down real wage levels.

The inflation figures revealed mounting pressures on working class budgets. The costs of fruit and vegetables soared by up to 7.7 percent in the March quarter because of the impact of drought and floods. Clothing and footwear prices dropped, however, following weak retail sales figures. The price of fuel also fell, but has since recovered and recently reached six-month highs.

Falling new dwelling prices and slowing rent rises fed directly into the inflation figure. This is on top of the underlying impact of the more than 10 percent drop in house values over the past 18 months. A six-year housing bubble has burst, wiping billions of dollars off prices and leaving many households with mortgage debts that exceed the market values of their homes.

The inflation result is just the latest economic statistic to underscore the bogus character of the 10-year budget predictions on which both the Coalition and Labor have based their election pledges. Just a week after the government’s April 2 budget, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) effectively demolished the budget forecasts.

The IMF issued a sharp downgrade for global growth predictions, and said Australia’s economy was slowing twice as fast as comparable countries. The bank slashed its 2019 growth estimate for Australia from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent, far below the budget’s unreal forecasts of 2.75 percent in 2019‑ 20 and 2020–21. That alone means cutting billions of dollars from social spending in order to meet the demands of the financial markets for a budget surplus.

Both the Coalition, with its claim that it will “create 1.25 million jobs” over five years, and Labor, which is making populist pitches about “fairness,” are peddling myths, desperate to get through the election before the slump hits.

All the economic indicators verify the analysis made by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in its election manifesto: “The slowing of the Australian economy is proceeding at a faster rate than in any other advanced country, signalling the onset of a deep recession that will spur mass opposition by the working class.”

The SEP’s election campaign is seeking to clarify the necessity for that opposition, if it is to defeat the corporate offensive, to turn to the fight for a genuinely socialist program. What is required is the establishment of a workers’ government to reorganise economic life on the basis of social need and equality, not private profit.

Half of all land in England owned by less than one percent of the population

Margot Miller

The UK is one of the most unequal societies on the planet. The scale of this is effectively documented in new research revealing that one half of all the land in England is the private property of less than one percent of the population. This equates to just 25,000 people. England accounts for just over half (53 percent) of the total area of the UK.

The research is available in a new book by Guy Shrubsole, Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land and How to Take It Back. Shrubsole is a writer, campaigner and investigator at Friends of the Earth.

Although it was broadly understood that the ruling elite owned much of the land, this reality has generally been shrouded in secrecy. New developments in digital mapping, however, as well as the work of campaign groups enabling the release of data under Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), made possible the research that revealed the following statistics:

• The aristocracy and gentry still own 30 percent of the land.

• 18 percent is owned by corporations.

• 17 percent is in the possession of oligarchs and bankers.

• The crown and royal family own 1.4 percent and the Church of England 0.5 percent.

Therefore, this tiny stratum of society owns nearly 70 percent of all land privately. Moreover, it should be noted that the percentage attributed to the aristocracy is likely a vast underestimation, according to Shrubsole. The ownership of 17 percent of the land remains undeclared at the Land Registry—a database that registers property and land sold in England and Wales—because it has not been sold on the open market. This is most likely the property of the aristocracy, passing down the generations. This percentage has barely changed for centuries.

Among the pieces of land owned by the monarchy is the Crown Estate, the Queen’s personal estate at Sandringham, Norfolk. The land within the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster also provides vast amounts of income to Royal family members.

The public sector owns just 8.5 percent of English soil, followed by home owners who own just five percent. Two percent is owned by conservation charities, including the National Trust.

Shrubsole lists the top 100 corporations that possess the most land in England, including some based abroad or offshore to avoid tax liabilities or for money-laundering purposes. The Land Registry, reportedly by accident, sent Private Eye investigative journalist Christian Eriksson, after a FOI request, a huge database of offshore companies that had purchased land in England and Wales from 2005 to 2014. This comprised 113,119 hectares of land worth an astonishing £170 billion ($US 220 billion).

At the top of the list of landowning companies is United Utilities, formed when the Tories privatised the water industry in 1989. Much of the land surrounding its reservoirs is owned by the firm.

Pro-Brexit businessman Sir James Dyson is high on the list. He owns several large grouse moor estates and Beeswax Dyson Farming. Other household names owning vast swathes of land are Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tata Steel and housebuilder Taylor Wimpey.

In an extract from Who Owns England? published in the Guardian, Shrubsole discusses the extensive interests of landowning company Peel Holdings and its many subsidiaries. The company owns up to 1,000 tracts of land nationally totaling around 13,000 hectares. Just in the northwest of England its land interests spread from Liverpool’s John Lennon airport, through fracking country in Lancashire, to one of the largest wind farms in the UK, taking in shopping centres and ports, including the Port of Liverpool.

Peel was the developer behind the 15-hectare MediaCityUK in Salford, the main northern hub of the BBC and ITV. It is based on land next to the 36-mile Manchester Ship Canal that Peel bought in 1993.

Shrubsole searched for Peel Holdings and its subsidiaries on the Companies House website. This revealed a systematic lack of transparency with one holding company owned by another, “like a series of Russian dolls, one nested inside another.”

“Peel Holding s… is also illustrative of corporate landowners everywhere,” continues Shrubsole, adding that “[c]ompanies with big enough budgets can often ride roughshod over the planning system, beating cash-strapped councils and volunteer community groups.”

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

The public sector, which includes central and local government as well as universities, is less secretive about the land they own. This is because they are compelled to advertise land for sale on the open market to offset austerity cuts—and in the process transfer even more land into private hands.

The sale of public land means it cannot be used for housebuilding or environmental improvements. In the last period, vast amounts of public spaces and parks in towns and cities have been hoovered up by the private sector. These landscaped areas are then out of bounds to the general public and especially public protests.

In 1980, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the sale of public housing under “right to buy” and council house building began to drastically decline. Britain was apparently to become a “nation of home owners.” However, most such housing consists of tiny “shoebox” units, as is indicated by the fact that all the 15.1 million homeowners in Britain own just 5 percent of the land.

The Guardian noted that “figures show that if the land were distributed evenly across England’s population, each person would have just over half an acre [0.2 hectare]—an area roughly half the size of Parliament Square in central London.”

Those who can afford to buy their own home may not necessarily own the land it stands on, but only lease it, which ensures not ownership but long-term tenancy. Leasehold properties comprise 27 percent of properties in England and Wales. An annual ground rent is paid to whoever owns the freehold for the length of the lease. After the lease runs out the freeholder becomes the owner of house and land, lock stock and barrel.

Developers are raking in a huge revenue stream in building leasehold properties. A House of Commons Library report revealed an increase in leasehold new builds, from seven percent in 1995 to 15 percent in 2016—with clauses in leases doubling the ground rent every ten years, which are sold on to speculators.

One of those companies that makes its money from the ground rents market is Wallace Estates, which possesses thousands of freehold properties, selling long leases for the annual rents. Wallace Estates is the company with the third-highest number of land titles, possessing a property portfolio worth £200m, the details of which are in the public domain and owned by an elusive Italian count.

The buying up of land is also a convenient investment to avoid paying inheritance or capital gains tax.

Speculation in land has led to parasitical land banking. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Tesco, for example, purchased huge land banks for the future construction of out-of-town shopping complexes. The Guardian estimates that in 2014 the supermarket was sitting on enough land to accommodate 15,000 homes.

Some land promotion companies specialize in preparing land sites for development by doing the leg work of gaining planning permission for developers and then taking a cut from the final sales. The Gladman company made a pretax profit in 2016 of £11.6 million, while in the same year Gallagher’s raked in £79 million.

The Shelter housing charity revealed last month that almost of third of sites approved for building on five years ago have still not been completed. The top ten housing developers have land banks with space for more than 400,000 homes.

UK pension funds and insurance companies commonly buy land as a long-term investment. For example, Legal and General is in possession of 1,500 hectares stretching from Luton to Cardiff.

The Telegraph revealed that close associate of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, Tony Gallagher, head of the aforementioned company, sold his land promotions company after three decades for £250 million—lucrative indeed. This wealth propelled his total fortune to £850 million, but such is the enormity of the wealth of the richest of the rich in Britain that Gallagher was only able to place 52nd on the Sunday Times Rich List.

US Navy SEAL officers attempted to cover up evidence of war crimes

Josh Varlin

Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, a US Navy SEAL awaiting a court-martial for war crimes charges, was systematically protected by his SEAL superiors for a year, a Navy investigation report covered by the New York Times reveals. Gallagher’s trial begins May 28 for premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice and other crimes related to war crimes in Iraq, and there is an ongoing investigation into similar actions in Afghanistan.

The war crimes described in the 439-page report and the subsequent cover-up by Gallagher’s superiors highlight the toleration and promotion of deranged and fascistic elements within the military. The SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air and Land Teams, are the US Navy’s special operations force. They are closely tied to the Central Intelligence Agency, going back to SEAL-CIA operations during the Vietnam War and CIA recruitment from the SEALs today.

The central allegation against Gallagher, who also goes by the nickname “Blade,” is that he murdered a captive Iraqi teenager while deployed to Mosul. SEALs told investigators that on May 4, 2017, Gallagher heard that an Islamic State fighter had been wounded and was in custody. According to the Times, “Chief Gallagher responded over the radio with words to the effect of ‘he’s mine.’”

“A medic was treating the youth on the ground when Chief Gallagher walked up without a word and stabbed the wounded teenager several times in the neck and once in the chest with his hunting knife, killing him, two SEAL witnesses said.”

Gallagher then gathered SEALs for a gruesome reenlistment ceremony over the teenager’s body, complete with an American flag and photos.

That night or the next day, SEALs reported the incident to Gallagher’s immediate superior, a troop chief, as well as Lieutenant Jacob Portier, the platoon commander. Portier has been charged separately for allegedly covering up the stabbing because he lied to his own superior, Lieutenant Commander Robert Breisch, who asked if there was “anything criminal” associated with the reenlistment ceremony.

SEALs also describe Gallagher shooting his sniper rifle “about ten times as often as other snipers,” including shooting a young girl and an unarmed old man (both incidents have two witnesses). A message in a Mosul sniper nest read, “Eddie G puts the laughter in Manslaughter.”

The Times describes how “one senior SEAL” alleged that Gallagher “routinely parked an armored truck on a Tigris River bridge and emptied the truck’s heavy machine gun into neighborhoods on the other side with no discernible targets.”

One SEAL told investigators that other snipers “began shooting warning shots at any civilians they saw on the battlefield so that the civilians would run away and [Gallagher] could not kill them.”

A separate investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) is looking into Gallagher allegedly killing a goat herder in Afghanistan in 2010.

Gallagher’s alleged crimes—with most of those publicly cited in the press backed up by multiple witnesses and photo or video documentation—are an indictment of the American military. The SEALs have such a reputation for brutality, including against their own members, that Rear Admiral Collin Green, the SEAL’s top commander, “ordered a 90-day review of the force’s culture and training,” according to the Times.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Despite beginning in January, any findings or conclusions of the review have not been made public.

However, there is much more involved here than one war criminal. When SEALs attempted to report Gallagher’s actions, they were warned against it. Breisch and Master Chief Petty Officer Brian Alazzawi met with seven SEALs in March 2018, during which Breisch told SEALs “that while the SEALs were free to report the killings, the Navy might not look kindly on rank-and-file team members making allegations against a chief. Their careers could be sidetracked, he said,” according to the Times.

Alazzawi, perhaps saying more than he intended, warned SEALs that their allegations would have a wide “frag [fragmentation] radius” and could implicate many other SEALs.

One of the seven rank-and-file SEALs who attended the meeting described the message from Breisch and Alazzawi as “Stop talking about it.”

A few days after this meeting, Gallagher was awarded a medal for his conduct in Iraq.

It took another month for the SEALs to force their commanding officers to report Gallagher’s war crimes, including the stabbing of the teenager and the shooting of two unarmed civilians, to NCIS. The SEALs had threatened to go up the chain of command or directly to the press.

Either through being told by Breisch or Alazzawi or through some other means, Gallagher himself found out about the March 2018 meeting and set about turning other SEALs against those who had told officers about his crimes. He texted another SEAL chief, “I just got word these guys went crying to the wrong person.”

To a different SEAL, he texted: “The only thing we can do as good team guys is pass the word on those traitors. They are not brothers at all.”

After the internal cover-up failed, various reactionaries have lined up to defend Gallagher. Fox News has given extensive air time to Gallagher’s wife and brother. A letter calling for Gallagher to be freed pending trial was signed by 40 Republican members of Congress.

President Donald Trump, clearly seeking to mobilize fascistic elements in his base, tweeted, “In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly!”

The individual crimes committed as part of the wars and occupations of American imperialism are the product of the more fundamental crime, the launching of the wars themselves. The architects of these crimes, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have gone unpunished after ordering aggressive military action in contravention of international law and the Nuremberg principles. The only person who faced charges related to the CIA’s torture program has been whistleblower John Kiriakou.

War by other means: US/EU sanctions aimed at crippling Syria

Jean Shaoul

This past week has seen massive queues in Syria’s capital Damascus outside petrol (gas) stations.

The fuel shortage has become far worse than during the war—bringing commercial life almost to a standstill. With domestic oil production down as a result of war damage and disruption to only 24,000 barrels per day (BPD), far less than the 136,000 bpd it needs, the government has rationed petrol. Private cars are allowed 20 litres every five days and taxis 20 litres every 48 hours. Before the war, Syria enjoyed relative energy autonomy.

This follows the ending of a credit line and oil supplies from Iran in October and US sanctions against Iran and Syria that have intensified since US President Donald Trump’s declared “the final defeat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Damascus sought to replace Iranian supplies via private sector importers, but this met with little success as ships have been prevented from reaching Syria after entering regional waters. In November, the US Treasury issued a warning, threatening anyone involved in shipping petroleum to the Syrian government with sanctions.

The aim is to cut off the Syrian government and its supporters from the global financial and trade systems. The Pentagon has also made it clear that despite Trump’s plan to withdraw US troops from Syria, the illegal US military presence in Syria will continue indefinitely with a “residual force.”

The US wants to preclude any reunification and reconstruction of the war-ravaged country, by carving out its own sphere of influence in Syria’s northeast. This would seize control over the country’s main oil and gas-producing region, using Syria as a base for preparing a wider and bloodier war against Iran, while encouraging Israel to play a major role in military operations against Syria.

Washington is seeking to create the conditions for a rebellion against the Assad regime, as in Iran and Venezuela, by crashing its economy and exacerbating the country’s social and economic crisis and thereby impose a pro-US regime in Damascus.

The Assad government is compelled to manoeuvre between the threats from an increasingly rapacious US imperialism, the demands of its backers in Moscow and Tehran, and the mounting anger of an impoverished working class against the war profiteers, traffickers and regime insiders benefiting from what little “reconstruction” is taking place.

Washington’s eight-year-long proxy war against Syria—along with its more than four years of intense aerial bombing—has devastated the country, causing immense human suffering.

Nearly half a million people have died. There are 3 million people living with permanent disabilities. Around 11 million people, nearly half the population, have fled their homes. Some 5.6 million are living in neighbouring countries, including 3.6 million living in Turkey, while there are 6.2 million internally displaced, creating the world’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The war, involving hundreds of militias fighting the Syrian regime and each other, has laid waste to industrial cities and infrastructure. Water, sanitation and electrical systems barely function in the former rebel-held areas. Schools and hospitals have been flattened. Some 2 million children are not in school.

US bombing has reduced cities and towns such as Raqqa to rubble, while in rural areas irrigation channels no longer function and grain silos have been destroyed, leading to a 40 percent reduction in food production, particularly wheat.

More than 80 percent of Syrians are living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 per day, in what was a middle-income country. According to a World Bank survey, 56 percent of the country’s businesses have either closed or relocated outside the country since 2009, while unemployment rose from less than 10 percent in 2010 to over 50 percent in 2015. It estimates that the cumulative loss in GDP between 2011 and 2016 was $226 billion, around four times Syria’s 2010 GDP. A third of those losses were in the oil and gas sector.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Soaring inflation, a depreciating currency that has plummeted from a pre-war exchange rate of 50 Syrian pounds to 550 pounds to the dollar, stagnant wages and plummeting purchasing power means that even the basics are unaffordable. The ever-deepening poverty is causing endless privation, compounded by frequent and lengthy water and electricity shutoffs and fuel shortages.

Many are dependent on remittances from Syrians abroad, estimated by the World Bank to be about $1.62 billion in 2016, higher than the total from salaries and wages, as well as unofficial transfers through unlicensed offices, individuals and traffickers.

The wealthy are insulated from all of this, with cafes and restaurants in the upscale neighbourhoods busy, in stark contrast to the long queues to buy subsidised bread and replace empty gas canisters for cooking.

The hardships of the war have been compounded by the sanctions imposed since 2011 by the United States, the European Union (EU) and the UN on imports such as some fuels, as well as Syrian individuals accused of financially supporting the regime. Last January, after Trump said he was bringing US troops in Syria “back home,” the EU issued sanctions against a further 11 businessmen and five associated companies, while the US Congress passed legislation, the Orwellian “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” broadening existing sanctions to include non-US citizens who deal with the Assad regime, so-called secondary sanctions.

While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates appear to be considering giving some financial support to Damascus to counter long-term Iranian hegemony in Syria, these sanctions could hit anyone—including Gulf-based companies involved in Syria’s reconstruction, variously estimated at between $250 billion (about four times Syria’s pre-war GDP) and $400 billion.

The banks block transfers from Syria, making it impossible to source European parts without using prohibitively expensive informal financial networks.

While Russia and Iran’s military support was a crucial factor in the Assad regime’s survival, they do not have the resources to make a major contribution to Syria’s reconstruction. Iran is in the grips of economic crisis, due to US sanctions, and is suffering from unprecedented floods, especially in its oil-producing region.

Syria has indicated both countries will have “first priority” in the allotment of any reconstruction funds that it receives, particularly in the energy and construction sectors. In January 2018, Damascus gave Moscow exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from areas under Assad’s direct control, and later “the restoration of oil fields and the development of new deposits.” Moscow also won a 50-year deal to run Syria’s phosphate industry.

The US and major European powers have refused any significant aid while Assad remains in power, in a bid to force his main international and domestic supporters to withdraw their backing.

Last March, international donors at an EU-hosted conference in Brussels pledged almost $7 billion, including $397 million from the US, for civilians affected by the conflict—far less than the EU said was needed. Last year, only 65 percent of the $3.4 billion required for the inside-Syria plan last year was received, while its regional refugee and resilience plan costing $5.6 billion was only 62 percent funded.

The focus was not on reconstruction, but on measures to encourage refugees to return home amid reports that the Syrian government’s treatment of returning refugees includes killings, disappearances, intimidation and sometimes compulsory military service. New legislation makes it difficult for returnees to prove ownership of the homes they fled. The EU fears an influx of refugees to Europe unless aid for both Syria and the countries hosting the refugees is forthcoming.

The US drive to crash Syria’s economy is bound up with its campaign to reimpose neo-colonial bondage over the entire region and to continue the series of ruinous wars Washington has sparked in the Middle East since 1991 in a bid to exercise unfettered dominance of the world’s most important oil and gas-exporting region.

Sri Lankan president steps up military crackdown

K. Ratnayake

An all-party conference (APC) convened by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday centred on strengthening an island-wide military-police crackdown in the wake of last Sunday’s terrorist bombings.

Sirisena informed the meeting that he was going to “open a security operational centre” to co-ordinate all military operations.

According to the presidential media report, all party leaders attending the APC “extended [their] fullest support to the steps taken by the president to eradicate this threat of terrorism and to ensure national security, as well as to detain the suspects.”

According to the brief report, the opposition Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna led by former president Mahinda Rajapakse, put forward 11 proposals, including strengthening the military intelligence wing.

The entire political establishment has seized on Sunday’s terrible tragedy to ram through police-state measures in the name of fighting terrorism that will be used to suppress the emerging struggles of the working class.

All the parties present at the all-party conference bear responsibility for the draconian measures being put into force. These include the parties of the ruling coalition—Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the United National Party (UNP) of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), as well as two Muslim communal parties, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the All Island Muslim Congress.

Last Sunday’s terrorist bombings targeted three prominent Christian churches and three high profile hotels. Without providing any explanation, officials yesterday substantially revised the death toll down from over 350 to 253 men, women and children. Hundreds were injured, some critically.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, but analysts have pointed out that no direct evidence has been provided. The government blames National Thowheeth Jamma’ath, an Islamic extremist group in Sri Lanka, for the massacre, but claims it had international connections.

The government and security agencies received a warning from a foreign intelligence agency with details of a possible attack on April 4. However, the warning was only sent to police officers on April 11, and then only to a few high-ranking police officers in charge of elite security.

The warning identified National Thowheeth Jamma’ath as preparing to carry out suicide attacks on prominent Christian churches. No-one has given an adequate explanation as to why no action was taken prior to the attack.

Instead the government is looking for scapegoats. On Wednesday, Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando resigned on the president’s request. Sirisena has also asked Inspector General of Police Pujitha Jayasundara to resign.

On Wednesday, all the parliamentary parties backed the president’s proclamation of emergency regulations giving sweeping powers to the military. These include the power to ban processions and meetings, prevent or restrict publications for creating disturbance to public order or disaffection, impose curfews, seize property, including vehicles, and maintain essential services.

The military and police now have the power to arrest persons without a warrant and detain them without trial for one year on the order of the defence secretary. Confessions, which in the past have included the use of torture, can be used as evidence in court.

In an extraordinary move, Sirisena announced yesterday at a media conference that the army was carrying out a major search throughout the entire island. “Every household in the country will be checked. The lists of permanent residents of every house will be established to ensure no unknown persons could live anywhere.”

Army spokesman Brigadier Sumith Atapattu said that over 10,000 personnel have been deployed across the country. The air force has deployed over 1,000 soldiers for security duties while the navy has put its forces on active service. This is in addition to the deployment of 70,000 police, including its notorious special task force units.

This makes clear that the government and security forces are not simply targeting a small Muslim extremist group but the entire population. Sirisena justified the step by saying that similar methods had been used “during the fight against LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] terrorism.”

The three-decade communal war against the separatist LTTE was a culmination of decades of anti-Tamil discrimination which was used to suppress Tamils and divide the working class. Now the methods of that bloody and brutal war are revived in the name of “fighting terrorism.”

The government is whipping up anti-Muslim hysteria under conditions of a resurgence of working-class struggles. Asked if he would be “proscribing the Islamic militant groups responsible for terror attacks,” the president said that if they were proscribed under the state of emergency, the ban would lapse when it was lifted.

Sirisena said that he had asked for new legislation to be drafted to enable the permanent proscription of organisations. He added that officials were studying the laws of countries such as Singapore—a one-party police state—for a model to follow.

Sirisena also said the government was also taking the advice of foreign anti-terrorist experts. The US already has teams from the FBI and the military’s Indo-Pacific Command on the ground in Sri Lanka as “advisers” to local security forces. Washington is exploiting the tragedy to strengthen its military and political relations with Colombo, as it has been doing over the past four years, at the expense of Beijing.

Sirisena also made clear that the government is not about to lift the nationwide ban imposed on social media including Facebook and YouTube on April 21. He said any lifting of the ban was delayed “due to the lack of positive behaviour in the social media” without providing any information of what constituted negative behaviour.

Amid a deep political crisis in Colombo, every faction is clamouring for tough police-state measures.

Last October, Sirisena removed Wickremesinghe as prime minister and replaced him with his arch rival Rajapakse. Sirisena was compelled to reappoint Wickremesinghe as prime minister under pressure from the US after the country’s Supreme Court ruled his dissolution of parliament was unconstitutional.

The political infighting continues, however. Yesterday Sirisena blamed the UNP-led government for “weakening” military intelligence which he claimed to have opposed. For his part, Wickremesinghe accused the president did not inform the cabinet of the advance warning of the bombings.

Yesterday, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the brother of the former president Mahinda Rajapakse and the SLPP’s aspiring presidential candidate, said he would tackle “radical Islam.” He accused the government of not giving “priority to national security,” adding that there was too much talk of “human rights” and “individual freedoms.”

Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who was defence secretary during the final phase of the war against the LTTE, is responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the final army operations, as well as the military-aligned death squads that abducted and “disappeared” hundreds of Tamils and anti-government critics.

These comments are just one more sign that what is underway is the rapid imposition and strengthening of the war-time police-state apparatus in preparation to brutally crack down, not on terrorists, but on the mounting struggles of the working class and rural poor.